Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? Part 7

"She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with,"

she said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help her--and she never knew and she never cared." Gertrude's dreamed had strayed and wandered into vagaries without form or outline, and in the morning nothing of it was left but an unreasonably heavy heart, and a restless desire to do--she knew not what.

VII.

When Avery took his seat in the a.s.sembly he learned that Ettie Berton's father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an ever-ready champion.

Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented or advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor, indeed, were they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the Legislature to promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his peculiar abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill which other men feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and through him to a reading. For a while Avery watched this process with amus.e.m.e.nt. He wrote to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous letters about it; but finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly denounced both King and Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have wrought the sudden change.

"He has introduced a bill which is now before my committee," he wrote, "that pa.s.ses all belief. It is infamous beyond words to express, and, to my dismay, it finds many advocates beside King and Berton. That a conscienceless embruted inmate of an opium dive in Mott Street might acknowledge to himself in the dark, and when he was alone, that he could advocate such a measure, seems to me possible; but men who are in one sense reputable, who--many of them--look upon themselves as respectable; men who are fathers of girls and brothers of women, could even consider such a bill, I would not have believed possible, and yet, I am ashamed to say that I learn now for the first time, that our state is not the only one where similar measures have not only found advocates, but where there were enough moral lepers with voting power to establish such legislation. It makes me heartsick and desperate. I am ashamed of the human race. I am doubly ashamed that it is to my s.e.x such infamous laws are due.

"You were right, my dear Miss Gertrude; you were right. It is outrageous that we allow mere conscienceless politicians to legislate for respectable people, and yet my position here is neither pleasant, nor will it, I fear, be half so profitable as you hope--as I hoped, before I came and learned all I now know. But, believe me, I shall vote on every bill and make every speech, with your face before me, and as if I were making that particular law to apply particularly to you."

Gertrude smiled as she re-read that part of his letter.

She wondered what awful bill Ettie's father had presented. She had never before thought that a legislator might strive to enact worse laws than he already found in the statute books. She had thought most of the trouble was that they did not take the time and energy to repeal old, bad laws that had come to us from an ignorant or brutal past.

It struck her as a good idea, that a man should never vote on a measure that he did not feel he was making a rule of action to apply to the woman for whom he cared most; she knew now that she was that woman for Selden Avery. He had told her that the night he came to bring the news that he was elected. It had been told in a strangely simple way.

Her father and mother had laughingly congratulated him upon his election, and Mr. Poster had added, banteringly: "If one may congratulate a man upon taking a descent like that."

Gertrude had held one of her father's hands in her own, and tried by gentle pressure to check him. Her father laughed, and added: "The little woman here is trying to head me off. She appears to think--"

"Papa," said Gertrude, extending her other hand to Avery, "I do think that Mr. Avery is to be congratulated that he has the splendid courage to try to do something distinctly useful for other people, than simply for the few of us who are outside or above most of the horrors of life.

I do--" Avery suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes told the rest. "Mr. Foster," he said, still holding the girl's hand, and blus.h.i.+ng painfully, "there can never be but one horror in the world too awful for me to face, and that would be to lose the full respect and confidence of your daughter. I know I have those now, and for the rest --" He glanced again at Gertrude. She was pale, and she was looking with an appeal in her eyes to her mother.

Mrs. Foster moved a step nearer, and put her arm about the girl. "For the rest, Mr. Avery, for the rest--later on, later on," she said, kindly.

"Gertrude has traveled very fast these past few months, but she is her mother's girl yet." Then she smiled kindly, and added: "Gertrude has set a terrible standard for the man she will care for. I tremble for him and I tremble for her."

"Tut, tut," said her father, "there are no standards in love--none whatever. Love has its own way, and standards crumble--"

"In the past, perhaps. But in the future--" began his wife.

"In the future," said Gertrude, as she drew nearer to her mother, "in the future they may not need to crumble, because,--because--" Her eyes met Avery's, and fell. She saw that his muscles were tense, and his face was unhappy.

"Because men will be great enough and true enough to rise to the ideals, and not need to crumble the ideals to bring them to their level."

Avery bent forward and grasped her hand that was within her mother's.

"Thank you," he said, tremulously. "Thank you, oh, darling! and the rest can wait," he said, to Mrs. Poster, and dropping both hands, he left the room and the house.

Gertrude ran up-stairs and locked her door.

Mr. Foster turned to his wife with a half amused, half vexed face.

"Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish. What's to become of Martin, I'd like to know?"

"John Martin has never had a ghost of a chance at any time--never," said his wife, slowly trailing her gown over the rug, and dragging with it a small stand that had caught its carved claw in the lace. It toppled and fell with a crash. The beautiful vase it had held was in fragments. "Oh, Katharine!" exclaimed her husband, springing forward to disengage her lace. "Oh, it is too bad, isn't it?"

And Katherine Foster burst into tears, and with her arms suddenly thrown about her husband's neck she sobbed: "Oh, yes, it is too bad! It is too bad!" But it did not seem possible to her husband that the broken vase could have so affected her, and surely no better match could be asked for Gertrude. It could not be that. He was deeply perplexed, and Katherine Foster, with a searching look in her face, kissed him sadly as one might kiss the dead, and went to her daughter's room.

She tapped lightly and then said, "It is I, daughter."

The girl opened the door and as quickly closed and locked it. Instantly their arms were around each other and both were close to tears.

"Don't try to talk, darling," whispered Mrs. Foster, as they sat down upon the couch. "Don't try to talk. I understand better than you do yet, and oh, Gertrude, your mother loves you!"

"Yes, mamma," said the girl, hoa.r.s.ely. "Dear little mamma--poor little mamma, we all love you;" and Mrs. Foster sighed.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed? 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 pa.s.sing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street door and faced him. "h.e.l.lo, 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--"