The Helpers

Connie's answer was prompt and decisive. "Quite as well able as the best of us would be under similar conditions."

"I wouldn't make it conditional; but we've never been able to keep step in that journey. Why is Margaret's case exceptional?"

"Did I say it was? It isn't. She is just one of any number of poor girls who are trying to live honestly, with the barriers of innocence all down and an overwhelming temptation always beckoning."

Myra shook her head. "That is making temptation a constraint, when it can never be more than a lure. I must confess I can't get far enough away from the conventional point of view to understand how a young woman like Margaret, who has been lifted and carried and set fairly upon her feet, could be tempted to go back to the utter misery and degradation of the other life."

Constance spoke first to the sophism, and then to the particular instance.

"It is not true that temptation is always a lure. It is oftener a constraint. And you say you can't understand. It is terribly simple. They sin first for a thing which they mistake for love; but after that it is for bread and meat, and surcease from toil which has become a mere frenzied struggle to keep body and soul together. You don't know what it is to be poor, Myra, – with the barriers down. Have you any idea how much Margaret earned last week, working steadily the six days and deep into the nights?"

"Oh, not very much, I suppose. But her necessities are not large."

"Are they not? They are as large as yours or mine. She must eat and drink and have a bed to sleep on and clothes to cover her. And to provide these she was paid three dollars and eighty-five cents for her week's work; and two dollars of that had to go for rent. Is the temptation a lure or a constraint in her case?"

Myra was silenced, if not convinced, and she went back to the fact existent with sympathy no more than seemingly aloof.

"You hinted at Margaret's peculiar besetment in one of your letters. Is that what you have to stay and fight?"

Constance nodded assent.

"I have been hoping you were mistaken. Dick is still loyally incredulous. Isn't there a chance that you or Tommie, or both of you, have taken too much for granted?"

Connie's "No" was almost inaudible, and there was chastened sorrow in her voice when she went on to tell how Tommie had seen Jeffard and Margaret together, not once, but many times; how the man was always persuading, and the woman, reluctant at first, was visibly yielding; how within a week Tommie had seen Jeffard give her money.

"And she took it?" Myra queried.

"She didn't want to take it. Tommie says she almost fought with him to make him take it back. But he wouldn't."

Myra's sympathy circled down, but it alighted upon Connie. "You poor dear! after all your loving-kindnesses and helpings! It's miserable; but you can't do anything if you stay."

"Yes, I can. I couldn't stay alone, of course, and she will give up her room and come here to live with me. That will give me a better hold on her than I have now."

"But if you had a hundred eyes you couldn't safeguard her against her will!"

"No; but it isn't her will, – it's his. And he will not come here."

Myra's brows went together in a little frown of righteous indignation. "I should hope not, – the wretch! You were right, after all, Connie, and I'll retract all the charitable things Dick wanted me to say. He is too despicable" —

It was Connie's hand on the accusing lips that cut short the indignant arraignment.

"Please don't!" she pleaded. "He is all that you can say or think, but my ears are weary with my own repetitions of it."

Myra took the hand from her lips and held it fast while she tried to search her cousin's face. But the gathering dusk had mounted from the level of the street to that of the upper room, and it baffled the eye-questioning.

"Connie Elliott! I more than half believe" – She stopped abruptly, as if there had been some dumb protest of the imprisoned hand, and then went on with a swift change from accusation to gentle reproach. "I believe you have only just begun to tell me your troubles, – and I've been with you all day! What are some more of them?"

"I have told you the worst of them, – or at least that part of them which makes it impossible for me to go away. But there is another reason why I ought to stay."

"Is that one namable, too?"

"Yes; but perhaps you won't understand. And you will be sure to tell me it isn't proper. I think one of Mr. Lansdale's few pleasures is his coming here."

"Few remaining pleasures, you would say, if you were not too tender-hearted. Is it wise, Connie?"

"Why not? – if it is a comfort to him?"

Myra hesitated, not because she had nothing to say, but because she knew not how to say the thing demanded.

"You haven't given me leave to be quite frank with you, Connie. But it seems to me that your kindness in this case is – is mistaken kindness."

Constance's rejoinder was merely an underthought slipping the leash. "It is not to be expected that any one would understand," she said.

"But I do understand," Myra asserted, this time with better confidence. "I'm not supposed to have the slightest inkling of your feelings, – you've never lisped a word to me, – but Mr. Lansdale's motives are plain enough to be read in the dark. If he were a well man he would have asked you to marry him long ago."

"Do you think so?" said Constance half absently. "I'm not so sure about that. He is far away from home and wretchedly ill; and he has many acquaintances and few real friends."

"But he loves you," Myra persisted.

"He has never said anything like that to me."

"It is quite possible that he never will, in view of the insurmountable obstacle."

"His ill-health, you mean? Myra, dear, you surely know love better than that – now. Love is the one thing which will both sow and reap even in the day when the heavens are of brass and the earth is a barren desert."

The under-roar of traffic in the street made the silence in the upper room more effective by contrast; like the sense of isolation which is often sharpest in a jostling throng. Myra rose and went to the window again, coming back presently to stand over Constance and say, "I suppose it is ordained that you should be a martyr to somebody or something, Connie, dear; and when the time comes I'm not going to say you nay, because I think you will be happier that way. If Mr. Lansdale should be tempted to say that which I am sure he has determined not to say, is your answer ready?"

Connie's hands were clasped over one knee, and the poise was of introspective beatitude. But the answer to Myra's query was not irrelevant.

"He is the truest of gentlemen; what would your answer be, Myra?"

It was the young wife in Myra Bartrow, that precious bit of clay as yet plastic under the hand of the master-potter, that prompted the steadfast reply.

"If I loved him as I ought, I should pray God to make me unselfish enough to say yes, Connie."

"So should I," said Constance simply; and Myra made the lighting of the lamp an excuse for the diversion which the three soft-spoken words demanded. And when she went back to the matter of fact, she touched lightly upon what she conceived to be a wound yet far from healing.

"You have silenced me, Connie, but I can at least provide for the contingency. If the event shapes itself so that you are free to come to us, don't let Margaret stand in the way. Bring her with you, and we'll find room and work for her."

Connie's eyes were shining, but there was a loving smile struggling with the tears. "I said you were good, like Dick, Myra, dear, and I can't put it any stronger. If I don't take you at your word, it will not be for anything you have left unsaid. Isn't that Dick coming?"

It was. There was a double step in the corridor, and Bartrow came in with Stephen Elliott. Since the battle persuasive with the daughter had kept her single-eyed, Myra had had but brief glimpses of the father during the day; but now she remarked that his step was a little less firmly planted than it had been in that holiday time when he had played the unwonted part of escort in ordinary to two young women who had dragged him whither they would, – and whither he would not. Moreover, there was the look of the burden-bearer in his eyes, though their fire was undimmed; and an air of belated sprightliness in his manner which went near to Myra's heart, because she knew it came of conscious effort. These jottings and others, the added stoop of the shoulders, and the lagging half-step to the rear in entering, as of one who may no longer keep pace with younger men, Myra made while Dick was timing the dash for their train.

"Thirty-five minutes more, and we'll quit you, – say, Uncle Steve, that clock of yours is slow, – that's half an hour for supper, and five minutes for the yum-yums at the car-step. Gear yourselves, you two, and we'll all go and make a raid on the supper-room at the station."

"Indeed, we sha'n't," said Connie, in hospitable protest. "You are going to eat bread and butter and drink strong tea on the top floor of the Thorson Block. I've had the water cooking for an hour, and you sha'n't make me waste gasoline in any such way."

Dick would have argued the point with her; was, in fact, beginning the counter-protest, when Myra stopped him.'