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VIII

The day Gertrude received Avery's letter about bill number 408, she asked her father what the bill was about. He looked at her in surprise, and then at his wife. "I don't know anything about it, child," he said; "Why?"

Gertrude drew from her pocket Avery's letter and read that part of it. Her father's face clouded.

"What business has he to worry you with his dirty political work? I infer from what he says that it is a bill that I've only heard mentioned once or twice. The sort of thing they do in secret sessions and keep from the newspapers in the main. That is, they are only barely named in the paper and under a number or heading which people don't understand. I'm disgusted with Avery – perfectly!" Gertrude was surprised, but with that ignorance and absolute sincerity of youth, she appealed to her mother.

"Mamma, do you see any reason why, from that letter, papa should be vexed with Mr. Avery? It seemed to me to have just the right tone; but I am sorry he did not tell me just what the bill is."

"You let me catch him telling you, if it's what I think it is," retorted her father, rather hotly. "It's not fit for your ears. Good women have no business with such knowledge and – "

Mrs. Foster held up a warning finger to her daughter, but the girl had not been convinced.

"Don't good men know such things, papa? Don't such bills deal with people in a way which will touch women, too? I can't see why you put it that way. If a bill is to be passed into a law, and it is of so vile a nature as you say and as this letter indicates, in whose interest is it to be silent or ignorant? Do you want such a bill passed? Would mamma or I?"

Her father laughed, and rose from the table. "It is in the interest of nothing good. No, I should say if you or your mother, or any other respectable mother at all, were in the Legislature, no such bill would have a ghost of a chance; but – "

Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon her father. They were very wide open and perplexed.

"Then it can be only in the interest of the vilest and lowest of the race that good men keep silent, and prefer to have good women ignorant and helpless in such – " she began; but her father turned at the door and said, nervously and almost sharply, "Gertrude, if Avery has no more sense than to start you thinking about such things, I advise you to cut his acquaintance. Such topics are not fit for women; I am perfectly disgusted with – "

As he was passing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street door and faced him. "Hello, Martin! Glad to see you! The ladies are still at luncheon; won't you come right in here and join them in a cup of chocolate?"

He was heartily glad of the interruption, and felt that it was very timely indeed that Mr. Martin had dropped in.

"No, I can't take off my top-coat. Get yours. I want you to join me in a spin in the park. I've got that new filly outside." Mr. Foster ran up-stairs to get ready for the drive, and the ladies insisted that a cup of hot chocolate was the very thing to prepare Mr. Martin for the nipping air. He was a trifle ill at ease. He wanted to speak of Selden Avery, and he feared if he did so that he would say the wrong thing. He had come to-day, partly to have a talk with his friend Foster about certain gossip he had heard. Fate took the reins.

In rising, Gertrude had dropped Avery's letter. John Martin was the first to see it. He laughingly offered it to her with the query: "Do you sow your love letters about that way, Miss Gertrude?"

"Gertrude's love letters take the form of political speeches just now, and bills and committee reports and the like," laughed her mother. "Her father was just showing his teeth over that one, He thinks women have no – "

"Mr. Martin, tell me truly," broke in the girl, "tell me truly, don't you think that we are all equally interested in having only good laws made? And don't you think if a proposed measure is too bad for good women even to be told what it is, that it is bad enough for all good people to protest against?"

"How are they going to protest if they don't know what it is?" laughed Martin. "Well, Miss Gertrude, I believe that is the first time I ever suspected you to be of Celtic blood. But what dreadful measure is Avery advocating now?" he smiled. "Really, I shouldn't have believed it of Avery!"

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Poster, entering with his top-coat buttoned to the chin, and his driving-hat in hand. Gertrude still held the letter. "No, nor should I have believed it of Avery. It was an outrageous thing for him to do. What business has Gertrude or Katherine with his disgusting old bills. Just before you came in I advised Gertrude to cut him entirely, and – "

Mrs. Foster was trying to indicate to her husband that he was off the track, and that Mr. Martin did not understand him; but he had the bit in his teeth and went on. "You agree with me now, don't you? What do you think of his mentioning such things to Gertrude?" He reached over and took the letter from his daughter's hand, and read a part of the obnoxious paragraph.

John Martin's face was a study. He glanced at the two ladies, and then fixed his eyes upon Gertrude's father.

"Good Gad!" he said, slowly and almost below his breath. "If I were in your place I should shoot him. The infamous – " He checked himself, and the two men withdrew. Gertrude and her mother waved at them from the window, and then the girl said: "I intend to know what that bill is. What right have men to make laws that they themselves believe are too infamous for good women even to know about? Don't you believe if all laws or bills had to be openly discussed before and with women, it would be better, mamma? I do."

Her mother's cheek was against the cold glass of the window. She was watching the receding forms. Presently she turned slowly to her daughter and said, in a trembling tone: —

"Such bills as this one," she drew a small printed slip from her bosom and handed it to Gertrude, "such bills as that would never be dreamed of by men if they knew they must pass the discussion of a pure girl or a mother – never! Their only chance is secret session, and the fact that even men like your – like Mr. Martin and – and – " she was going to say "your father," but the girl pressed her hand and she did not. "That even such as they – for what reason heaven only knows – think they are serving the best interests of the women they love by a silence which fosters and breeds just such measures as – "

Gertrude was reading the queer, blind phraseology of the bill. Katherine had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten years."

Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened, hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of a sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other men keep silence – furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like that! Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try to prevent women from knowing – oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She sprang to her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves me is one of those men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is aroused, not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through, not at the awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not kept that such as we may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for coming to me – to us – with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his horror, making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees, in the intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours and mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and her white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening her eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were chairman of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have been presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto power, that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there enough men, even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who, in spite of their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little sisters, are such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old girl! A mere baby! And – oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even of – such a bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton, poor little thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!"

Mrs. Foster opened her lips to say that several states already had the law, and that one had placed the age at seven; but she checked herself. Her daughter's excitement was so great, she decided to wait. The experience of the past few months had awakened the fire in the nature of this strong daughter of hers. She had seen the cool, steady, previously indifferent, well-poised girl stirred to the very depths of her nature over the awful conditions of poverty, ignorance, and vice she had, for the first time, learned to know. Gertrude had become a regular student of some of the problems of life, and she had carried her studies into practical investigation. It had grown to be no new thing for her to take Francis, or Ettie, or both, when she went on these errands, and the study of their points of view – of the effect of it all upon their ignorance-soaked minds, had been one of the most touching things to her. Their imaginations were so stunted – so embryonic, so undeveloped that they saw no better way. To them, ignorance, poverty, squalor, and vice were a necessary part of life. Wealth, comfort, happiness, ambition were, naturally and rightly, perquisites, some way, some how, of the few.

"God rules, and all is as he wishes it or it would not be that way," sagely remarked Francis King, one day. It had startled Gertrude. Her philosophy, her observation, her reason, and her religion were in a state of conflict just then. She had alway supposed that she was an Episcopalian with all that this implied. She was beginning to doubt it at times.

Mrs. Foster looked at her daughter now, as she sat there flushed and excited. She wondered what would come of it all. She had always studied this daughter of hers, and tried to follow the girl's moods. Now she thought she would cut across them.

"Gertrude, you may put that bill with your letter. Mr. Avery mailed it to me. Of course he meant that I should show it to you if I thought best. I did think best, but now – but – I don't want you to excite yourself too – " She broke off suddenly. Her daughter's eyes were upon her in surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the girl's hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay little mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't it?" she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father says. But – "

"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some more distant point.

"Perfectly," said her mother. "He was evidently deeply disturbed by the bill. He felt that you were, and should be, his confidant. He simply did not dream of hiding it from you, I believe. It was the spontaneous act of one who so loves you that his whole life – all of that which moves him greatly – must, as a matter of course, be open to you. I thought that all out when the bill came addressed to me. He – " The girl kissed her in silence.

"You have such splendid self-respect, Gertrude. Most of us – most women – have none. We do not expect, do not demand, the least respect that is real from men. They have no respect for our opinions, and so upon all the real and important things of life, they hold out to us the sham of silence as more respectful than candor. And we – most of us – are weak enough to say we like it. Most of us – "

Gertrude slipped down upon a cushion at the feet of her mother, and put her young, strong arms about the supple waist. She had of late read from time to time so much of the unrest and scorn back of the gay and compliant face of her mother. "Mamma, my real mamma," she said, softly, "I

"Men of your father's generation did not want mental comrades in their wives, Gertrude. They – "

"A telegram, Miss Gertrude," said James, drawing aside the portiere.

"The bill has been rushed through. Passed. Nineteen majority. Avery." Gertrude read it and handed it to her mother, and both women sat as if stunned by a blow.

IX

At the close of the Legislature, John Berton, professional starter, and his friend and ally, the father of Francis King, had returned to the city. Francis had grown, so her father thought, more handsome and less agreeable than ever. Her eyes were more dissatisfied, and she was, if possible, less pliant. She and Ettie Berton were working now in a store, and Francis said that she did not like it at all. The money she liked. It helped her to dress more as she wished, and then it had always cut Francis to the quick to be compelled to ask her father for money whenever she needed it, even for car fare.

She had lied a good many times. Her whole nature rebelled against lying, but even this was easier to her than the status of dependence and beggary, so she had lied often about the price of shoes, or of a hat or dress, that there might be a trifle left over as a margin for her use in other ways. Her father was not unusually hard with her about money, only that he demanded a strict accounting before he gave it to her.

"What in thunder do you want of money?" he would ask, more as a matter of habit than anything else. "How much 'll it take? Humph! Well, I guess you'll have to have it, but – " and so the ungracious manner of giving angered and humiliated her.

"Pa, give me ten cents; I want it fer car fare. Thanks. Now fork over six dollars; I got to get a dress after the car gets me to the store," was Ettie Berton's method. Her father would pretend not to have the money, and she would laugh and proceed to rifle his pockets. The scuffle would usually end in the girl getting more than she asked for, and was no unpleasant experience to her, and it appeared to amuse her father greatly. It was not, therefore, the same motive which actuated the two when they decided to try their fortunes as shop girls. The desire to be with Francis, to be where others were, for the sight and touch of the pretty things, for new faces and for mild excitement, were moving causes with Ettie Berton. The money she liked, too; but if she could have had the place without the money or the money without the place, her choice would have been soon made. She would stay at the store. That she was a general favorite was a matter of course. She would do anything for the other girls, and the floorwalkers and clerks found her always obedient and gaily willing to accept extra burdens or to change places. For some time past, however, she had been on a different floor from the one where Francis presided over a trimming counter, and the girls saw little of each other, except on their way to and from the store.

At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a child nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen, and her new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found that the motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and had gone with them to their homes.

As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not tell Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time, hut she appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one Wednesday evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King told Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my business, and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had ought to tell you, for – for – since I been in the store, I've learnt a good deal about – about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much of anything."

"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude.

"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get married. I never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the Legislature, we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now – "

"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude, intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore, prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside her. "Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long, I'll break his neck for him. I ain't marryin' a widower if I do like Ettie."

In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come to my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of Ettie's – of – about the change in her manner toward you."

"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted.

Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the weekly evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She was surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange, mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner was gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would be flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch in her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The child drank the wine but began to cry.

"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer than yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the olives when you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be all right after a little I'm sure. Don't cry."

"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said, and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of physical origin were the tears of such a child.

"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling.

Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes.

"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but – Oh, of course maybe I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that time, an' so I don't like it now when I am sick." She laughed in a childish way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, I'll tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so afterwards, n' I guess it did."

Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently. She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face down. "Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you? He told me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you wouldn't be mad at me, and" – she began to weep again.

"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry with you. I am sorry it happened, but – Ettie, who is he?" Ettie sobbed on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older girl said, with lips close to the child's ear:

"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so young as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?"

"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his own as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier."

Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.

"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me – and so would pa."

"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently into the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier! the mean devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on me! But I'll kill him before he shall go – do you any real harm, Ettie! I will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I thought – I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall form of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles tense.

Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the moist forehead and trying to quiet her.

"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn't want you to know," sobbed the child, with pauses between her words. "He said nobody needn't ever know if I'd do just's he told me. He said – but when pa came home I was so scared, an' I'm sick most all the time, an' – an', oh, if I wasn't so awful afraid to die I'd wisht I was dead!"

"Dead!" gasped Francis, grasping Ettie's wrist and pulling her hand from her face in a frenzy of the new light that was dawning upon her half-dazed but intensely stimulated mental faculties. She half pulled the smaller girl to her feet.

"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the God's truth or I'll tear him to pieces right in the store. You tell me the God's truth! has he – done anything awful to you?" A young tiger could not have seemed more savage, and Ettie clung with her other arm to Gertrude.

"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the clutch upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superstition and ignorance of her type: "Cross my heart I Hope I may die!" she added, and as Francis relaxed her grasp upon the wrist, Ettie fell in an unconscious little heap upon the floor.

Francis was upon her knees beside her in an instant, and Gertrude was about to ring for a light and for her mother when Francis moaned: "Oh, send for a doctor, quick. Send for a doctor! She was lying and she crossed her heart. She will die! She will die!"