Part 6 (1/2)

”You don't know what you mean.”

It was silly, childish, unreasonable, that I should speak sharply to Bettina, and equally unreasonable that fear and horror and sickening suspicion should possess me, but possessed I was by sensations. .h.i.therto unexperienced, and for a moment the gaslight from the lamp on the opposite street corner wavered and circled in a confusing, bewildering way. Sudden revelations, sudden realizations, were unsteadying me. Was Selwyn really some one I did not know? Was his life less single than I believed it? Hateful, ugly, disloyal questions surged tumultuously for a half-minute; then reason returned, and shame that I should insult him with doubt, cooled the flame in my face.

”It's too late to go to the Binkers. We'd better go home. We'll go there some other afternoon.”

I turned from Bettina's amazed eyes. My tone of voice a moment before was still perplexing her, and unblinkingly she was searching my face. Hitherto her directness, her frankness of speech and use of words, had amused me, and I had permitted, perhaps, too great an exercise of her gift of comment; but applied personally it was a different matter.

”We'll go to the corner and turn there,” I said. ”That will be the nearest way home.”

”But don't you want to see who she is?” Scarborough Square customs were those most familiar to Bettina, and they exacted understanding of doubtful situations. ”Don't you want to see what--what she looks like?”

”Why should I? Mr. Thorne knows many people I do not know.” I moved toward the corner. ”Come on. It's getting late.”

”Gentlemen like him don't know girls like her. She lives down here somewhere, and he lives where you used to live. He couldn't be sweet on her, because--because he couldn't.” She caught up with me. ”He's yours, ain't he, Miss Danny? You'd better tell him--”

I hated myself for looking across the street, but as I hurried on my eyes were following Selwyn and the girl, and when I saw the latter stop and bury her face in her hands, saw Selwyn say something to her, saw him turn in one direction and she in another, I, too, stopped; for a moment was unable to move.

We had reached the corner as Selwyn left the opposite one and came toward us. Head down, as if deeply thinking, he did not look up until close to us. Under the gaslight I waited, not knowing why, and Bettina being behind me, he thought I was alone when presently he saw me.

”Dandridge!” He stared as if stupefied with amazement. Lifting his hat mechanically, he came closer. ”What in the name of Heaven are you doing here alone this time of night? Are you losing your mind?”

His entire absence of embarra.s.sment, his usual disapproval of my behavior, his impatient anger, had an unlooked-for effect, and sudden relief and hot joy so surged over me that I laughed, a queer, nervous, choking little laugh.

”I am not alone. It is not yet six, and I have been to see a boy who is what you are not--the head of a house. I mean a house with a family in it. Have you, too, been visiting?”

His face flushed, and frowningly he turned away. ”I had business down here. I had to come to it as it could not be brought to me.

Where are you going?”

”Home.”

Bettina, who in some unaccountable way had managed to stay behind me, came forward and bowed as if to an audience. ”I've been taking her to where she goes, Mr. Thorne, and grannie knows all the places.

There ain't one that's got a disease in it, and Mr. Crimm would tell us if it wasn't right to go to them. She don't ever go anywhere by herself. She's too new yet.”

Selwyn smiled grudgingly. Bettina's fat and short little body made effort to stretch to protective requirements, and her keen eyes raised to his held them for a moment. Then she turned to me.

”Maybe he'd like to go to some of the homes we go to and see--”

”No. He doesn't want to see.” I caught her hand and slipped it through my arm. ”It's much more comfortable not to see. One can sleep so much better. Are you going our way?” I turned to Selwyn.

”If you are, we'd better start.”

For a full block we said nothing. Selwyn, biting the ends of his close-cut mustache, walked beside me, hands in his pockets and eyes straight ahead, and not until Bettina had twice asked him if he knew where Rowland Street was did he answer her.

”Rowland Street?” He turned abruptly, as if brought back to something far removed in thought. ”What on earth do you know of Rowland Street?”

”Nothing--I never knew there was a street by that name until last week when I heard a girl talking to grannie, who said she lived on it. She did her hands, when she talked, just like the girl with you did.” Bettina twisted hers in imitative movements. ”She didn't keep her hands still a minute.”

”Few girls do when they talk. They apparently prefer to use their hands to their brains.” Selwyn's shoulders shrugged impatiently, then his teeth came together on his lip. Again he stared ahead and, save for Bettina's chatter, we walked in silence to Scarborough Square.

There had been few times in my life in which speech was impossible, but during the quarter of an hour it took us to reach home words would not come, and numbness possessed my body. A world of possibilities, a world I did not know, seemed suddenly revealing itself, and at its dark depths and sinister shadows I was frightened, and more than frightened. Conflicting and confusing emotions, a sense of outrage and revolt, were making me first hot and then cold, and distrust and suspicion and baffling helplessness were enveloping me beyond resistance. The happy ignorance and unconcern and indifference of my girlhood, my young womanhood, were vanis.h.i.+ng before cruel and compelling verities, and that which, because of its ugliness, its offensiveness, its repulsiveness, I had wanted to know nothing about, I knew I would now be forced to face.