AN OFFENDER
“Where’s Harry?” was Mr. Gortlandt’s first question.
“He’s gone to the country, to mother. It was so hot this last day or two, I’ve sent him out, with Miss Colton. I’m going Saturday. Sit down.”
“I miss him,” said her visitor, “more than I thought I could. I’ve learned more in these seven years than I thought there was to know. Or in the last two perhaps, since I’ve found you again.”
She looked at him with a little still smile, but there was a puzzled expression behind it, as of one whose mind was not made up.
They sat in the wide window of a top floor apartment, awning-shaded. A fresh breeze blew in upon them, and the city dust blew in upon them also, lying sandy on the broad sill.
She made little wavy lines in it with one finger—
“These windows ought to be shut tight, I suppose, and the blinds, and the curtains. Then we should be cleaner.”
“As to furniture,” he agreed, “but not as to our lungs.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said; “we get plenty of air—but see what’s in it.”
“A city is a dirty place at the best; but Mary—I didn’t come to consider the ethics of the dust—how much longer must I wait?” he asked, after a little pause. “Isn’t two years courting, re-courting—enough? Haven’t I learned my lesson yet?”
“Some of it, I think,” she admitted, “but not all.”
“What more do you ask?” he pursued earnestly. “Can’t we come to a definite understanding? You’ll be chasing off again in a few days; it’s blessed luck that brought you to town just now, and that I happened to be here too.”
“I don’t how about the luck,” said she. “It was business that brought me. I never was in town before when it was so hot.”
“Why don’t you go to a hotel? This apartment is right under the roof, gets the sun all day.”
“It gets the breeze too, and sunlight is good. No, I’m better off in the apartment, with Harry. It was very convenient of the Grants to be away, and let me have it.”
“How does Hal stand the weather?”
“Pretty well. But he was getting rather fretful, so I sent him off two hours ago. I do hope he won’t run away from Miss Colton again. She’s as nervous as I am about him.”
“Don’t you think he is fond of me?” asked the man. “I’ve got to catch up, you see. He can’t help being mine—half mine,” he hastily added, seeing a hint of denial in her look.
“Why yes, he seems fond of you, he is fond of you,” she conceded. “I hope he always will be, and I believe you are beginning to love him.”
“A pretty strong beginning, Mary,” said the man. “Of course I don’t pretend to have cared much at first, but now!—why he’s so handsome, and quick, and such a good little duffer; and so affectionate! When he gives a jump and gets his arms around my neck and his legs around my waist and ‘hugs me all over’ as he calls it, I almost feel as if I was a mother! I can’t say more than that, can I?”
“No, you certainly can’t say more than that. I believe you, I’m not questioning,” for he looked up sharply at her tone.
“I’ve never had much to do with children, you see,” he went on slowly, “no little brothers or sisters, and then only— What astonishes me is how good they feel in your arms! The little fellow’s body is so firm and sinewy—he wriggles like a fish—a big fish that you’re trying to hold with both hands.”
The mother smiled tenderly. She knew the feel of the little body so well! From the soft pink helplessness, the little head falling so naturally into the hollow of the arm or neck, the fumbling little hands; then the gradual gain in size and strength, till now she held that eager bounding little body, almost strong enough to get away from her—but not wanting to. He still loved to nestle up to “Muzz,” and was but newly and partially won by this unaccustomed father.
“It’s seven years Mary! That makes a man all over, they say. I’m sure it has made me over. I’m an older man—and I think, wiser. I’ve repented, I’ve outgrown my folly and seen the justice of my punishment. I don’t blame you an atom for divorcing me—I think you did right, and I respect you for it. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to love you! I can see—now—that I didn’t before.
Her face hardened as she looked at him. “No, you didn’t, Harry, you certainly didn’t, nor the child— When I think of what I was when you married me! Of my proud health!—”
“You are not hurt!” he cried. “I don’t mean that you haven’t been hurt, I could kill myself when I think of how I made you suffer! But you are a finer woman now than you were then; sweeter, stronger, wiser, and more beautiful. When I found you again in Liverpool two years ago it was a revelation. Now see—I don’t even ask you to forgive me! I ask you to try me again and let me prove I can make it up to you and the boy!”
“It’s not easy for me to forgive,” she answered slowly— “I’m not of the forgiving nature. But there is a good deal of reason in your position. You were my husband, you are Hal’s father, there’s no escaping that.”
“Perhaps, if you will let the rest of my life make up for that time of my Godforsaken meanness, you won’t want to escape it, Mary! See—I have followed you about for two years. I accepted your terms, you did not promise me anything, but for the child’s sake I might try once more, try only as one of many, to see if I could win you—again. And I love you now a hundred times better than I did when I married you!”
She fanned herself slowly with a large soft fan, and looked out across the flickering roofs. Below them lay the highly respectable street on which the house technically fronted, and the broad, crowded, roaring avenue which it really overlooked.
The rattle of many drays and more delivery wagons rose up to them. An unusual jangle drowned his words just then and she smilingly interpreted “that’s railroad iron—or girders, I can tell lots of them now. About four A. M. there is a string of huge milk wagons. But the worst is the cars. Hear that now—that’s a flat wheel. How do you like it?”
“Mary—why do you bring up these cars again when I’m trying my best to show you my whole heart? Don’t put things like that between us!”
“But they are between us, Henry, all the time. I hear you tell me you love me, and I don’t doubt you do in a way; yes, as well as you can, very much indeed!—I know. But when it comes to this car question; when I talk to you of these juggernauts of yours; you are no more willing to do the right thing than you were when I first knew you.”
Mr. Cortlandt’s face hardened. He drew himself up from the eager position in which he had leaned forward, and evidently hesitated for a moment as to his words.
In spite of his love for this woman, who, as he justly said, was far more beautiful and winsome than the strong, angular, over-conscientious girl he had married, neglected and shamed, his feelings as a business man were strong within him.
“My dear—I am not personally responsible for the condition of these cars.”
“You are President of the Company. You hold controlling shares of the stock. It was your vote that turned down the last improvement proposition.”
He looked at her sharply.
“I’m afraid someone has been prejudicing you against me Mary. You have more technical information than seems likely to have reached you by accident.”
“It’s not prejudice, but it is information; and Mr. Graham did tell me, if that’s what you mean. But he cares. You know how hard the Settlement has worked to get the Company to make the streets safer for children—and you wouldn’t do a thing.”
Mr. Cortlandt hesitated. It would never do to pile business details on his suit for a love once lost and not yet regained.
“You make it hard for me Mary,” he said. “Hard because it is difficult to explain large business questions to a—to anyone not accustomed to them. I cannot swing the affairs of a great corporation for personal ends, even to please you.”
“That is not the point,” she said quickly.
He flushed, and hastily substituted “Even to suit the noblest humanitarian feelings.”
“Why not?” said she.
“Because that is not what street cars are run for,” he pursued patiently. “But why must we talk of this? It seems to put you so far away. And you have given me no answer.”
“I am sorry, but I am not ready yet.”
“Is it Hugh Graham?” he demanded. The hot color leaped to her face, but she met his eyes steadily. “I am much interested in Mr. Graham,” she said, “and in the noble work he is doing. I think I should really be happier with him than with you. We care for the same things, he calls out the best in me. But I have made no decision in his favor yet, nor in yours. Both of you have a certain appeal to my heart, both to my duty. With you the personal need, with him the hope of greater service. But—you are the father of the child, and that gives you a great claim. I have not decided.”
The man looked relieved, and again drew his chair a little closer. The sharp clangor of the cars rose between the,.
“You think I dragged in this car question,” she said. “Really, I did it because it is that sort of thing which does most to keep us apart, and—I would like to remove it.”
He leaned forward, playing with her big fan. “Let’s remove it by all means!” he said.
She looked at his bent head, the dark hair growing somewhat thin on top, almost tenderly.
“If I could feel that you were truly on the right side, that you considered your work as social service, that you tried to run your cars to carry people—not to kill them!—If you could change your ground here I think—almost—” she stopped, smiling up at him, her fan in her lap, her firm delicate white hands eagerly clasped; then went on,
“Don’t you care at all for the lives lost every day in this great city—under your cars?”
“It cannot be helped, my dear. Our men are as careful as men can be.
But these swarming children will play in the streets—”
“Where else can they play!” she interjected.
“And they get right in front of the cars. We are very sorry; we pay out thousands of dollars in damages: but it cannot be helped!”
She leaned back in her chair and her face grew cold.
“You speak as if you never heard of such things as fenders,” she said.
“We have fenders!—almost every car—”
“Fenders! Do you call that piece of rat-trap a fender! Henry Cortlandt! We were in Liverpool when this subject first came up between us! They have fenders there that fend and no murder list!”
“Conditions are different there,” said he with an enforced quiet. “Our pavement is different.”
“Our children are not so different, are they?” she demanded. “Our mothers are made of the same stuff I suppose?”
“You speak at if I wanted to kill them! As if I liked to!”
“I thought at first it would hurt you as it did me,” she said warmly. “I turned to you with real hope when we met in Liverpool. I was glad to think I knew you, and I had not been glad of that for long! I thought you would care, would do things.”
Do what he would, his mouth set hard in its accustomed lines. “Those English fender are not practicable in this country, Mary. They have been tried.”
“When? Where? By whom?” she threw at him. “I have read about it, and heard about it. I know there was an effort to get them adopted, and that they were refused. They cost more than this kind!” and she pointed disdainfully at the rattling bit of stub-toed slat-work in front of a passing car.
“Do you expect me to make a revolution in the street car system of America—to please you? Do you make it a condition? Perhaps I can accomplish it. Is it a bargain? Come—”
“No,” she said slowly. “I’m not making bargains. I’m only wishing, as I have wished so often in years past—that you were a different kind of man—”
“What kind do you want me to be?”
“I want you to be—I wish you were—a man who cared to give perfect service to his country, in his business.”
“Perhaps I can be yet. I can try. If I had you to help me, with your pure ideals, and the boy to keep my heart open for the children. I don’t know much about these things, but I can learn. I can read, you can tell me what to read. We could study together. And in my position perhaps, I could really be of some service after all.”
“Perhaps?” She watched him, the strong rather heavy face, the attractive smile, the eyes that interested and compelled. He was an able, masterful man. He surely loved her now. She could feel a power over him that her short miserable marriage had never given her; and her girlhood’s attraction toward him reasserted itself.
A new noise rose about them, a dissonant mingled merry outcry, made into a level roaring sound by their height above the street.
“That’s when the school up here lets out,” she said. “We hear it every day. Just see the crowds of them!”
They leaned on the broad sill and watched the many-colored torrent of juveniles pouring past.
“One day it was different,” she said. “A strange jarring shrillness in it, a peculiar sound. I looked out, and there was a fight going on; two boys tumbling about from one side of the street to the other, with a moving ring around them, a big crowd, all roaring in one key.”
“You get a birdseye view of life in these streets, don’t you. Can you make out that little chap with the red hair down there?”
“No—we are both near-sighted, you know. I can’t distinguish faces at this distance. Can you?”
“Not very clearly,” he said. “But what a swarm they are!”
“Come away,” said she, “I can’t bear to look at them. So many children in that stony street, and those cars going up and down like roaring lions!”
They drew back into the big sunny room, and she seated herself at the piano and turned over loose sheets of music.
He watched her with a look of intensest admiration, she was so tall, so nobly formed, her soft rich gown flowed and followed as she walked, her white throat rose round and royal from broad smooth shoulders.
He was beside her; he took away the music, laid it out of reach, possessed himself of her hands.
“Give them back to me, Mary,” he pleaded. “Come to me and help me to be a better man! Help me to be a good father. I need you!”
She looked at him almost pleadingly. His eyes, his voice, his hands,—they had their old-time charm for her. Yet he had only said “Perhaps”—and he might study, might learn.
He asked her to help him, but he did not say “I will do this”—only “I may.”
In the steady bright June sunshine, in the sifting dust of a city corner, in the dissonant, confused noise of the traffic below, they stood and looked at one another.
His eyes brightened and deepened as he watched her changing color. Softly he drew her towards him. “Even if you do not love me now, you shall in time, you shall, my darling!”
But she drew back from him with a frightened start, a look of terror.
“What has happened!” she cried. “It’s so still!”
They both rushed to the window. The avenue immediately below them was as empty as midnight, and as silent. A great stillness widened and spread for the moment around one vacant motionless open car. Without passenger, driver, or conductor, it stood alone in the glaring space; and then, with a gasp of horror, they both saw.
Right under their eyes, headed towards them, under the middle of the long car—a little child.
He was quite still, lying face downward, dirty and tumbled, with helpless arms thrown wide, the great car holding him down like a mouse in a trap.
Then people came rushing.
She turned away, choking, her hands to her eyes.
“Oh!” she cried, “Oh! It’s a child, a little child!”
“Steady, Mary, steady!” said he, “the child’s dead. It’s all over. He’s quite dead. He never knew what hit him.” But his own voice trembled.
She made a mighty effort to control herself, and he tried to take her in his arms, to comfort her, but she sprang away from him with fierce energy.
“Very well!” she said. “You are right! The child is dead. We can not save him. No one can save him. Now come back—come here to the window—and see what follows. I want to see with my own eyes—and have you see—what is done when your cars commit murder! Child murder!”
She held up her watch. “It’s 12:10 now,” she said.
She dragged him back to the window, and so evident was the struggle with which she controlled herself, so intense her agonized excitement, that he dared not leave her.
“Look!” she cried. “Look! See the them crowd now!”
The first horrified rush away from the instrument of death was followed by the usual surging multitude.
From every direction people gathered thickly in astonishing numbers, hustling and pushing about the quiet form upon the ground; held so flat between iron rails and iron wheels, so great a weight on so small a body! The car, still empty, rose like an island from the pushing sea of heads. Men and women cried excited directions. They tried with swarming impotent hands to lift the huge mass of wood and iron off the small broken thing beneath it, so small that it did not raise the crushing weight from the ground.
A whole line of excited men seized the side rail and strove to lift the car by it, lifting only the rail.
The crowd grew momently, women weeping, children struggling to see, men pushing each other, policemen’s helmets rising among them. And still the great car stood there, on the body of the child.
“Is there no means of lifting these monsters?” she demanded. “After they have done it, can’t they even get off.”
He moistened his lips to answer.
“There is a jacking crew,” he said. “They will be here presently.”
“Presently!” she cried. “Presently! Couldn’t these monsters use their own power to lift themselves somehow? not even that?”
He said nothing.
More policemen came, and made a scant space around the little body, covering it with a dark cloth. The motorman was rescued from many would be avengers, and carried off under guard.
“Ten minutes,” said she looking at her watch. “Ten minutes and it isn’t even off him yet!” and she caught her breath in a great sob.
Then she turned on the man at her side: “Suppose his mother is in that crowd! She may be! Their children go to this school, they live all about below here, she can’t even get in to see! And if she could, if she knew it was her child, she can’t get him out!”
Her voice rose to a cry.
“Don’t, Mary,” said he, hoarsely. “It’s—it’s horrible! Don’t make it worse!”
She kept her eyes on her watch-face, counting the minutes She looked down at the crowd shudderingly, and said over and over, under breath, “A little child! A little soft child!”
It was twelve minutes and a-half before the jacking crew drove up, with their tools. It was a long time yet before they did their work, and that crushed and soiled little body was borne to a near-by area grating and laid there, wrapped in its dingy shroud, and guarded by a policeman.
It was a full half hour before the ambulance arrived to take it away.
She drew back then and crouched sobbing by the sofa. “O the poor mother! God help his mother!”
He sat tense and white for a while; and when she grew quieter he spoke.
“You were right, Mary. I—naturally, I never—visualized it! It is horrible! I am going to have those fenders on every car of the four systems!”
She said nothing. He spoke again.
“I hate to leave you feeling so, Dear. Must I go?”
She raised a face that was years older, but did not look at him.
“You must go. And you must never come back. I cannot bear to see your face again!”
And she turned from him, shuddering.