"And you," said Latimer, "what sort of a life have you been leading?"

His voice was harsh and his manner repellant only because Nature had served him the cruel turn of making them so. He was bitterly conscious as he spoke of having chosen the wrong words and uttered them with an appearance of relentless rigour which he would have made any effort to soften.

Baird made a quick movement towards the girl.

"Have you any work?" he asked. "Do you need help? Don't mind telling us.

My friend is to take charge of your church at the Mills."

The girl interrupted him. She had turned miserably pale under Latimer's question.

"'Tain't no church of mine!" she said, passionately; "I h'ain't nothin'

to do with it. I never belonged to no church anyhow, an' I'm leadin' the kind o' life any girl'd lead that hadn't nothin' nor nobody. I don't mean," with a strangled sob, "to even myself with _her_; but what'ud she ha' done if she'd ha' slipped like I did--an' then had nothin' nor--nor nobody?"

"Don't speak of her!" cried Latimer, almost fiercely.

"'Twon't hurt her," said the girl, struggling with a sob again; "she's past bein' hurt even by such as me--an' I'm glad of it. She's well out of it all!"

She turned as if she would have gone away, but Baird checked her.

"Wait a moment," he said; "perhaps I can be of some service to you."

"You can't do nothin'," she interrupted. "Nobody can't!"

"Let me try," he said; "take a note to Miss Starkweather from me and wait at the house for a few minutes. Come, that isn't much, is it? You'll do that much, I'm sure."

She looked down at the floor a few seconds and then up at him. It had always been considered one of his recommendations that he was so unprofessional in his appearance.

"Yes," she said, slowly, "I can do that, I suppose."

He drew a note-book from his breast-pocket and, having written a few words on a leaf of it, tore it out and handed it to her.

"Take that to Miss Starkweather's house and say I sent you with it."

When she was gone, he turned to Latimer again.

"Before I go," he said, "I want to say a few words to you--to ask you to make me a promise."

"What is the promise?" said Latimer.

"It is that we shall be friends--friends."

Baird laid his hand on the man's gaunt shoulder with a nervous grasp as he spoke, and his voice was unsteady.

"I have never had a friend," answered Latimer, monotonously; "I should scarcely know what to do with one."

"Then it is time you had one," Baird replied. "And I may have something to offer you. There may be something in--in my feeling which may be worth your having."

He held out his hand.

Latimer looked at it for a second, then at him, his sallow face flushing darkly.

"You are offering me a good deal," he said, "I scarcely know why--myself."

"But you don't take my hand, Latimer," Baird said; and the words were spoken with a faint loss of colour.

Latimer took it, flushing more darkly still.

"What have I to offer in return?" he said. "I have nothing. You had better think again. I should only be a kind of shadow on your life."

"I want nothing in return--nothing," Baird said. "I don't even ask feeling from you. Be a shadow on my life, if you will. Why should I have no shadows? Why should all go smoothly with me, while others----" He paused, checking his vehemence as if he had suddenly recognised it. "Let us be friends," he said.

CHAPTER XV

The respectable portion of the population of Janway's Mills believed in church-going and on Sunday-school attendance--in fact, the most entirely respectable believed that such persons as neglected these duties were preparing themselves for damnation. They were a quiet, simple, and unintellectual people. Such of them as occasionally read books knew nothing of any literature which was not religious. The stories they had followed through certain inexpensive periodicals were of the order which describes the gradual elevation of the worldly-minded or depraved to the plane of church-going and Sunday-school. Their few novels made it their _motif_ to prove that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Any hero or heroine of wealth who found peace of mind and married happily, only attained these objects through the assistance of some noble though humble unsecular person whose example and instruction led them to adopt unsecular views. The point of view of Janway's Mills was narrow and far from charitable when it was respectable; its point of view, when it was not respectable, was desperate. Even sinners, at Janway's Mills, were primitive and limited in outlook. They did not excuse themselves with specious argument for their crimes of neglecting church-going, using bad language, hanging about bar-rooms, and loose living. They were not brilliant wrongdoers and made no attempt at defending themselves or pretending that they did not know they were going to perdition. The New England mind is not broad or versatile, and, having begun life in a Puritan atmosphere, it is not quick to escape its influence. Society at the Mills recognised no social distinction which was not founded upon the respectability of church-going and the observance of social laws made by church-goers; it recognised none because it absolutely _knew_ of none.

The great world was not far from Janway's Mills, but they did not touch each other. Willowfield was near, Boston and New York themselves were not far distant, but the curious fact being that millions of human minds may work and grow and struggle as if they were the minds of dwellers upon another planet, though less than a hundred miles may separate them, the actual lives, principles, and significances of the larger places did not seem to touch the smaller one. The smaller one was a village of a few streets of small houses which had grown up about the Mills themselves.

The Mills gave employment to a village full of hands, so the village gradually evolved itself. It was populated by the uneducated labouring class; some were respectable, some were dissolute and lived low and gross lives, but all were uneducated in any sense which implies more than the power to read, write, and make a few necessary calculations. Most of them took some newspaper. They read of the multi-millionaires who lived in New York and Chicago and California, they read of the politicians in Washington, they found described to them the great entertainments given by millionaires' wives and daughters, the marvellous dresses they wore, the multifarious ways in which they amused themselves, but what they read seemed so totally unlike anything they had ever seen, so far apart from their own lives, that though they were not aware of the fact, the truth was that they believed in them with about the same degree of realisation with which they believed in what they heard in the pulpit of the glories of the New Jerusalem. No human being exists without an ambition, and the ambition of Janway's Millers of the high-class was to possess a neat frame-house with clean Nottingham lace curtains at the windows, fresh oilcloth on the floor of the front hall, furniture covered with green or red reps in the parlour, a tapestry Brussels carpet, and a few lithographs upon the walls. It was also the desire of the owners of such possessions that everyone should know that they attended one of the churches, that their house-cleaning was done regularly, that no member of the family frequented bar-rooms, and that they were respectable people.

It was an ambition which was according to their lights, and could be despised by no honest human being, however dull it might appear to him.

It resulted oftener than not in the making of excellent narrow lives which brought harm to no one. The lives which went wrong on the street-corners and in the bar-rooms often did harm. They produced discomfort, unhappiness, and disorder; but as it is also quite certain that no human being produces these things without working out his own punishment for himself while he lives on earth, the ends of justice were doubtless attained.

If a female creature at the Mills broke the great social law, there was no leaning towards the weakness of pity for her, Janway's was not sufficiently developed, mentally, to deal with gradations or analysis of causes and impelling powers. The girl who brought forth a child without the pale of orthodox marriage was an outcast and a disgraced creature, and nobody flinched from pronouncing her both.

"It's disgustin', that's what I call it," it was the custom for respectable wives and mothers to say. "It's disgustin'! A nice thing she's done for herself. I h'ain't no patience with girls like her, with no fear o' God or religion in them an' no modesty and decency. She deserves whatever comes to her!"

Usually every tragedy befell her which could befall a woman. If her child lived, it lived the life of wretchedness and was an outcast also. The outcome of its existence was determined by the order of woman its mother chanced to be. If the maternal instinct was warm and strong within her and she loved it, there were a few chances that it might fight through its early years of struggle and expand into a human being who counted as _one_ at least among the world's millions. Usually the mother died in the gutter or the hospital, but there had been women who survived, and when they did so it was often because they made a battle for their children.

Sometimes it was because they were made of the material which is not easily beaten, and then they learned as the years went by that the human soul and will may be even stronger than that which may seem at the outset overwhelming fate.

When the girl Susan Chapman fell into misfortune and disgrace, her path was not made easy for her. There were a few months when the young mill hand who brought disaster upon her, made love to her, and hung about her small home, sometimes leaning upon the rickety gate to talk and laugh with her, sometimes loitering with her in the streets or taking her to cheap picnics or on rather rowdy excursions. She wore the excited and highly pleased air seen in young women of her class when the masculine creature is paying court. She spent her wages in personal decoration, she bought cheap feathers and artificial flowers and remnants on "bargain days," and decked herself with them. Her cheap, good looks reached their highest point because she felt the glow of a promotive triumph and her spirits were exhilarated. She was nearer happiness than she had ever been before. The other girls, who were mill hands like herself, were full of the usual rather envious jokes about her possible marriage. To be married was to achieve a desirable distinction and to work at home instead of at the Mills. The young man was not an absolute villain, he was merely an ignorant, foolish young animal. At first he had had inchoate beliefs in a domestic future with the girl. But the time came when equally inchoate ideas of his own manhood led him to grow cool. The New England atmosphere which had not influenced him in all points, influenced him in the matter of feeling that the woman a man married must have kept herself respectable. The fact that he himself had caused her fall from the plane of decency was of comparatively small moment.

A man who married a woman who had not managed to keep straight, put himself into a sort of ridiculous position. He lost masculine distinction. This one ceased to lean on the gate and talk at night, and went to fewer picnics. He was in less high spirits, and so was the girl.

She often looked pale and as if she had been crying. Then Jack Williams gave up his place at the Mill and left the village. He did not tell his sweetheart. The morning after he left, Susan came to her work and found the girls about her wearing a mysterious and interested air.

"What are you whispering about?" she asked. "What's the secret?"

"'Tain't no secret," was the answer. "Most everybody's heard it, and I guess it ain't no secret to you. I guess he told you when he made up his mind to go."

"Who?" she asked.

"Jack Williams. He's gone out to Chicago to work somewhere there. He kept it pretty dark from us, but when he went off on the late train last night, Joe Evans saw him, and he said he'd had the offer of a first-rate job and was going to it. How you stare, Sue! Your eyes look as if they'd pop out o' yer head."

She was staring and her skin had turned blue-white. She broke into a short hysteric laugh and fell down. Then she was very sick and fainted and had to be taken home trembling so that she could scarcely crawl as she walked, with great tears dropping down her cold face. Janway's Mills knew well enough after this that Jack Williams had deserted her, and had no hesitation in suggesting a reason for his defection.

The months which followed were filled with the torments of a squalid Inferno. Girls who had regarded her with envy, began to refuse to speak to her or to be seen in her company. Jack Williams's companions were either impudent or disdainful, the married women stared at her and commented on her as she passed; there were no more picnics or excursions for her; her feathers became draggled and hung broken in her hat. She had no relatives in the village, having come from a country place. She was thankful that she had not a family of aunts on the spot, because she knew they would have despised her and talked her over more than the rest. She lived in a bare little room which she rented from a poor couple, and she used to sit alone in it, huddled up in a heap by the window, crying for hours in the evening as she watched the other girls go by laughing and joking with their sweethearts.

One night when there was a sociable in the little frame Methodist church opposite, and she saw it lighted up and the people going in dressed in their best clothes and excited at meeting each other, the girls giggling at the sight of their favourite young men--just as she had giggled six months before--her slow tears began to drip faster and the sobs came one upon another until she was choked by them and she began to make a noise.

She sobbed and cried more convulsively, until she began to scream and went into something like hysterics. She dropped down on her face and rolled over and over, clutching at her breast and her sides and throwing out her arms. The people of the house had gone to the sociable and she was alone, so no one heard or came near her. She shrieked and sobbed and rolled over and over, clutching at her flesh, trying to gasp out words that choked her.