Teeftallow/Chapter 27

NESSIE SUTTON'S tinkle at the Biggers's doorbell aroused Mrs. Roxie Biggers from her supper table where she sat eating with a sort of absent-minded voracity. As the good woman ate she revolved in her mind a fine stroke of charity. Now, at the ring of her bell, she arose from the table and started for the door still thinking over a detail of her plan. She was planning how she could get fifteen dollars and forty-three cents to buy a minister's Bible from a mail-order house to give to Mr. Tug Beavers.

But her charity did not stop there. Mrs. Biggers had conceived nothing less than the splendid accomplishment of sending Tug to a theological school and making a preacher of him. The thought warmed the old woman's heart with its glory.

The details of her plan and the glory she would receive mixed in her mind in a curious jumble! She now had twenty dollars and sixty-five cents in the Willing Workers’ fund—every lost soul the future Reverend Beavers might succeed in winning to Christ would in reality be her work—with ice-cream suppers during the summer and chicken dinners during the winter, she could rely upon about thirteen dollars a month the year round—the people of Irontown would have to acknowledge she was a power for goodness after such a coup as this—the dues of the Willing Workers were eight dollars and a half a month—when she got to Heaven the stars in her crown, she supposed, would equal the sum of her own charities plus those the Reverend Tug Beavers might perform—she could count on about eight dollars from the Woman's Bazaar; then school entertainments . . . here she opened her door.

​At first Mrs. Biggers saw nothing save the deserted street in the pale shadowless light of the evening's afterglow. Not a soul was abroad. She stood for a moment in her doorway, thinking that some of the village children had rung her bell and then had run away. These children hated the old woman with an odd intensity because she conscripted their labour for charitable and, often, for purely personal ends.

The good old philanthropist decided it had been some child; reflected generously that when it grew older it would come to appreciate her many good qualities, and was about to return to her table when she heard her name faintly called and then she saw a figure shrinking close beside her doorway.

Mrs. Biggers stepped out on the porch and looked at her visitor in surprise, then when she recognized who it was she stiffened with silent resentment that such a person should be on her piazza.

"Is that Nessie Sutton?" she asked, staring into the colourless light, as if doubting her eyes. "What do you want?"

The old woman's tone put an end to the milliner's fantastic notion that she might be allowed to weep out her wretched heart in the Samaritan's arms.

"Miss Roxie . . ." began the girl uncertainly.

"Yes, yes, what do you want, Nessie Sutton?"

The use of her full name, the tone in which it was pronounced, warned Nessie that the interview would not be long. It suggested that she go away as quickly as possible. In fact, it brought to the girl a realization, which was continually slipping away from her, of exactly where she stood in Irontown society, and indeed, in the whole world. A terrible thought seized her that perhaps this was the last chance she would ever have of talking to a woman of her own sort, of seeking forgiveness, of softening a little the universal condemnation. She began speaking with a rush:

"Miss Roxie, I come to you to help me! Miss Roxie, I hope you will! Oh, you don't know how sorry I am for what I—I done! It—it—Miss Roxie, it's like a nightmare! When I wake up at night I kain't believe it! To have ever'​body against you; not a friend, nowhere, nowhere a-tall; I'd—I'd rather be d-e-a-d!"

Her voice quivered in a terrible intensity on the word "dead," and she broke into a stifled sobbing, trying to hold her lips steady and blinking the tears from her eyes.

"What I couldn't understan'," said Mrs. Roxie in a cold voice, "was how you could act that way after all Brother Perry had done for you."

"Oh, I know it, Miss Roxie!" responded the girl miserably. "All of you, ever' person in Irontown has been so good to me. Oh—oh, I can't tell why! I—I!"—the old woman could see her colour painfully in the uncertain light—"God knows," she wailed, "I would do anything in the world—anything, if I could be a pure girl again!" She extended her hands impulsively; then as the good old woman withdrew slightly, she pressed her clenched fists against her breast and stood looking at Mrs. Roxie with a tortured face.

Strangely enough the girl's wretched confession created a stronger repulsion in Mrs. Biggers; it brought the girl's undoing before her, visualized it. She wanted the creature to go away; to take herself off. Nessie seemed something unclean on her porch.

"Of course, there ain't no way to undo that," said Mrs. Biggers, controlling her distaste. "You ort to have thought of all this, Nessie, before you sinned."

The girl came to a pause in her weeping at this splendid but unfortunately retroactive advice.

"Ye-es," she agreed in a melancholy whisper.

Mrs. Biggers continued looking coldly and speculatively at her. The old woman really had a bit of very helpful advice which she might give if she were so minded; that was for Nessie to get out of town at once and escape the mob—but was she so minded? She did not know. She had a feeling that the obscenity and humiliation of mob violence were a part of the girl's just punishment. It would "learn her," she thought. She might even be interfering with God's vengeance. A Biblical text floated across her mind, ​"If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." But then, in the depth of her heart, Mrs. Roxie had a feeling that God's purposes were more or less like everybody else's, rather subordinate to her own. Now this girl was such a miserable wretch, such a come-down from the trim pretty Nessie Sutton of Sunday-school and church, that she decided Nessie had had enough. So she said laconically, "The best thing for you to do is to git out of town, or they'll run you out."

Thus, perhaps, the very kindest act, the single deed unaffected by religious vanity which Mrs. Biggers ever performed in all her life was when she violated her conscience, betrayed her accomplices, and contravened the will of her God.

Nessie stopped breathing, and then whispered, wide-eyed, "Yes, they told me that."

This somehow irritated Mrs. Roxie.

"Who did?" she probed sharply.

The name of the Negro boy was on the tip of Nessie's tongue, but she checked herself.

"I promised not to tell," she said feebly.

The old woman was furious that any one else had exposed her plans, so she simply repeated in a hard tone, "Well, the best thing for you to do is to git out o' town."

"But, Miss Roxie, where must I go?" trembled the girl.

The old woman withdrew into her door. "You know better'n I do where women like you go to, and that's all I got to say, so good-bye." Then she added in a less angry and more corrective tone, "I hope God'll touch your heart, Nessie, an' turn you away from your sins," and she closed her door in the unfortunate's face.

A violent trembling seized the girl at this implication of her class and forewarning of her future. She was so unsteady she could hardly get off the porch and to the gate. . . . "You know better than I do where women like you go . . ." Women like her . . . prostitutes. . . . Ah, to what bourne did prostitutes journey?

For several moments Nessie stood before the gate with her ​imaginings of this repulsive lurid life rising before her eyes. At last she shook off the feeling of sickness it brought and addressed her thoughts to the necessity of escaping the mob. She let herself out the gate and stood listening with open mouth for the faintest rumour of a disturbance.

By this time night was come. She stood in the dark street trying to plan some course of action. Instinctively she turned away from the business part of town and began hurrying toward the outskirts; but after a little distance she reflected that every household within twenty miles had heard of her misfortune and not one family would take her in for the night. And yet she was afraid to turn back into Irontown again. She paused in suspense, listening intently. The only sound she heard was the faint faraway shriek of the evening train blowing for a crossing.

The eerie sound reminded the girl that she had not cashed her check and that it was impossible for her to buy a ticket on the train. This absolute necessity dispelled for a moment her fear of the mob. She turned and hurried townward again, hoping to get enough money from one of the smaller shops to pay her fare somewhere. She repassed the Biggers's home, a black mass outlined against a dark sky. In her conversation with Mrs. Roxie she had forgotten the check, the real reason why she had gone to the old woman. To enter the house again, after her ejection, was impossible. She would go to some out-of-the-way shop. But now at every step she took toward the centre of the village her fear of the mob mounted. It seemed to the girl that every tree along the street was the covert of some spy. She tried to walk silently, but her high heels would click. She peered into the darkness. Yet she wanted to hurry and catch the train which she could now hear murmuring in the south.

Then the old riddle confronted her again— where could she go? To what place could she turn to escape from her past? It seemed her only refuge was in a still more evil future.

Again the world of prostitutes limned itself before Nessie's ​shrinking imagination: vile districts, nocturnal debauches, drunkenness, lewdness, what a hell!

No matter where she went it would be to this. Everywhere women would avoid her, men beset her, she would become a prostitute, a haunter of shadowy streets, a painted creature of slinking defiance, an apprehensive accoster of men to be spurned in silence, or accepted and used carelessly. To what end should she endure all this contempt and obscenity?—to live? Was that all? To eat, to sleep, to breathe!

Out of the increasing murmur to the south she heard a louder shriek of the approaching train. Now, in her changed mood, she knew that no train would ever bear her out of her great damnation. Mrs. Biggers's treatment had shown her that; a good woman, a charitable woman . . .

"I would rather die than lead such a life," she thought desperately. "God forgive me, but I'd rather die!"

She was hurrying now toward the depot. As she passed the dim lights of the first shop she hesitated momentarily between the last force of her old purpose and the beginning of a new and terrible resolution. The next moment she walked quickly past. Her check suddenly had become of no more importance than a wisp of blank paper; even the mob itself was becoming something far away and unrelated to her. There was, after all, a way for the train to bear her out of her misery.

Now at the approaching noise of the engine a sudden fear of missing it set the girl running toward a cross street she knew. This street led down to the railroad track at a point two or three hundred yards beyond the station. She must get to this street, get down to the track before the train left the station. It would remain there only two or three minutes. Her heart began beating as her purpose grew upon her.

The strangest notions began to swarm in Nessie’s head. She seemed to be running and stumbling in a nightmare; the occasional lighted door she passed, the mob which now had dwindled to a remote threat, all became part of this fluid ​unreality. It seemed to Nessie that she herself was somehow becoming unreal; her body, her legs running and stumbling through the dark, unkept street would presently slip away, out of the village, out of reach of the mob, out of any coming life of shame; it was all ending; she was ending; a leap, a crashing in the darkness— She heard the express shriek for the station, a tremendous cacophony, stunning the night with its power.

Nessie darted past a shop that stood on the business street at the head of the cross alley she sought. She was running now in frantic haste lest the train roar past the other end of the alley before she reached it. She was hardly twenty feet down this thoroughfare before she heard a sharp running behind her. A new terror of capture by the mob filled the girl. She flew down the littered alley panic struck, but the footsteps of a man closed behind her and a moment later an urgent guarded voice called her name, "Nessie! Nessie! Is that you, Nessie?"

She tried to run faster with the terror of a woman before a man's superior speed. The voice cried out, "For God's sake, wait, Nessie! Where are you going?"

The lowered tones, the desperate urgency somewhat assured the panic-stricken girl. She checked her flight and stood gasping, her heart drumming, unable to speak. A smallish figure not much taller than herself appeared in the darkness. A moment later she recognized Mr. Belshue. She was neither surprised, relieved, nor did he move her tortured emotions in any degree whatever save to fill her with a violent impatience.

"What in the world do you want?" she demanded, with her heart shaking her husky voice.

"Thank God, I've found you!" panted the jeweller, coming up beside her. "I've hunted everywhere, at your hotel, the Grand, on the streets. . . ."

"What do you want? What do you want?" cried the girl tensely.

"I want to get you out of this town to-night, this minute, ​right now!" He laid hold of her arm and began drawing her toward his shop at the end of the alley.

"Stop! Stop! I don't want to go. Where are you going to take me?"

"Where do you want to go?"

"Nowhere! There's no place for me to go! Let me alone!" She tried to jerk loose from him and her ears strained toward the station.

"Nessie, what do you mean?" cried the jeweller, frightened at her wild manner.

She tried to pull herself free. "Stop! Let go!" she wheezed in her effort. Suddenly she went limp and cried out miserably, "Oh, I've got enough of you and Irontown and ever'body in the whole world. Do please go away and let me alone. Let me alone! Turn me loose!" She whipped out the last in sharp cries and again tried to wrench herself free.

The jeweller ran his arm through hers and so linked her to him.

"Nessie," he warned, "they are going to mob you!"

"No, they won't!"

"But they will!"

"I say they won't. Turn me loose!"

"What'll you do?"

"I know. Turn me loose."

At the girl's tone the jeweller caught her other shoulder and tried to see her face in the gloom.

"Nessie!" he cried in a shocked voice, "you don't mean . . ." he broke off in horror at her implication.

The girl stood silent save for her fluttering audible breathing. The fingers on Nessie's shoulder became a palm drawing her pityingly toward the jeweller.

"My poor dear child, what a horrible idea! Poor girl, don't let them drive you mad! I'll do anything, all I can to help you, Nessie, anything in the world I can do. I've got a car in front of my shop. I've hunted you all afternoon. Now, come along, Nessie." His arm linked through hers, slipped down around her waist. He was drawing her to him, ​and Nessie recalled with painful clearness that other night in the Scovell House, ages ago, it seemed, when he had kissed her and when Miss Scovell had warned her against him. Now his pity, his sympathy, his caresses wrung at the overwrought girl, but still she pushed away from him, moved now by her inherent truthfulness.

"But—but, listen, Mr. Belshue—what are you going to do with me?"

"Marry you, Nessie, if you will let me."

"Marry me!" she echoed in a ghastly tone.

He patted her shoulder gently.

"Mr. Belshue—Mr. Belshue—you—you kain't marry me. . . . I—I'm a ruined girl."

Came a silence; the pressure of the jeweller's arms on her shoulder and waist did not relax.

"You are not, Nessie," he said in a moved voice, "but you may become so unless somebody helps you."

"Oh, but I am, I am!" sobbed the girl piteously. "I—I—he—Ab—" but at the first syllable of her lover's name something seemed to lock in her throat.

The lonely man drew her to him with a profound tenderness, caressing her cheek, her hair.

"No man can ruin a woman, Nessie," he whispered in her ear. "The people do that."

At the entrance of a little side alley on the main street of the village a man and a woman entered an automobile just as the locomotive pulled away from the station that evening. As the puffs of the engine smote the night, came the whirring of the car's self-starter; a moment later the motor whispered and the headlights spurted up the dark shabby street. Automobile and train moved off through the night on their separate ways.