he realized that it was she, also that his mother was in there with
her. And yet what had she done that she must come back and hide
away in this manner? Had her husband, the man she had run away
with, deserted her?
He was so intensely curious that he decided to wait a while outside
here to see if his mother might not come out, and then he himself
would call on Esta. He wanted so much to see her again--to know
what this mystery was all about. He waited, thinking how he had
always liked Esta and how strange it was that she should be here,
hiding away in this mysterious way.
After an hour, his mother came out, her basket apparently empty,
for she held it lightly in her hand. And just as before, she
looked cautiously about her, her face wearing that same stolid and
yet care-stamped expression which it always wore these days--a
cross between an uplifting faith and a troublesome doubt.
Clyde watched her as she proceeded to walk south on Beaudry Street
toward the Mission. After she was well out of sight, he turned and
entered the house. Inside, as he had surmised, he found a
collection of furnished rooms, name plates some of which bore the
names of the roomers pasted upon them. Since he knew that the
southeast front room upstairs contained Esta, he proceeded there
and knocked. And true enough, a light footstep responded within,
and presently, after some little delay which seemed to suggest some
quick preparation within, the door opened slightly and Esta peeped
out--quizzically at first, then with a little cry of astonishment
and some confusion. For, as inquiry and caution disappeared, she
realized that she was looking at Clyde. At once she opened the
door wide.
"Why, Clyde," she called. "How did you come to find me? I was
just thinking of you."
Clyde at once put his arms around her and kissed her. At the
same time he realized, and with a slight sense of shock and
dissatisfaction, that she was considerably changed. She was
thinner--paler--her eyes almost sunken, and not any better dressed
than when he had seen her last. She appeared nervous and
depressed. One of the first thoughts that came to him now was
where her husband was. Why wasn't he here? What had become of
him? As he looked about and at her, he noticed that Esta's look
was one of confusion and uncertainty, not unmixed with a little
satisfaction at seeing him. Her mouth was partly open because of a
desire to smile and to welcome him, but her eyes showed that she
was contending with a problem.
"I didn't expect you here," she added, quickly, the moment he
released her. "You didn't see--" Then she paused, catching
herself at the brink of some information which evidently she didn't
wish to impart.
"Yes, I did, too--I saw Ma," he replied. "That's how I came to
know you were here. I saw her coming out just now and I saw you up
here through the window." (He did not care to confess that he had
been following and watching his mother for an hour.) "But when did
you get back?" he went on. "It's a wonder you wouldn't let the
rest of us know something about you. Gee, you're a dandy, you are--
going away and staying months and never letting any one of us know
anything. You might have written me a little something, anyhow.
We always got along pretty well, didn't we?"
His glance was quizzical, curious, imperative. She, for her part,
felt recessive and thence evasive--uncertain, quite, what to think
or say or tell.
She uttered: "I couldn't think who it might be. No one comes
here. But, my, how nice you look, Clyde. You've got such nice
clothes, now. And you're getting taller. Mamma was telling me you
are working at the Green-Davidson."
She looked at him admiringly and he was properly impressed by her
notice of him. At the same time he could not get his mind off her
condition. He could not cease looking at her face, her eyes, her
thin-fat body. And as he looked at her waist and her gaunt face,
he came to a very keen realization that all was not well with her.
She was going to have a child. And hence the thought recurred to
him--where was her husband--or at any rate, the man she had eloped
with. Her original note, according to her mother, had said that
she was going to get married. Yet now he sensed quite clearly that
she was not married. She was deserted, left in this miserable room
here alone. He saw it, felt it, understood it.
And he thought at once that this was typical of all that seemed to
occur in his family. Here he was just getting a start, trying to
be somebody and get along in the world and have a good time. And
here was Esta, after her first venture in the direction of doing
something for herself, coming to such a finish as this. It made
him a little sick and resentful.
"How long have you been back, Esta?" he repeated dubiously,
scarcely knowing just what to say now, for now that he was here and
she was as she was he began to scent expense, trouble, distress and
to wish almost that he had not been so curious. Why need he have
been? It could only mean that he must help.
"Oh, not so very long, Clyde. About a month, now, I guess. Not
more than that."
"I thought so. I saw you up on Eleventh near Baltimore about a
month ago, didn't I? Sure I did," he added a little less joyously--
a change that Esta noted. At the same time she nodded her head
affirmatively. "I knew I did. I told Ma so at the time, but she
didn't seem to think so. She wasn't as surprised as I thought she
would be, though. I know why, now. She acted as though she didn't
want me to tell her about it either. But I knew I wasn't wrong."
He stared at Esta oddly, quite proud of his prescience in this
case. He paused though, not knowing quite what else to say and
wondering whether what he had just said was of any sense or import.
It didn't seem to suggest any real aid for her.
And she, not quite knowing how to pass over the nature of her
condition, or to confess it, either, was puzzled what to say.
Something had to be done. For Clyde could see for himself that her
predicament was dreadful. She could scarcely bear the look of his
inquiring eyes. And more to extricate herself than her mother, she
finally observed, "Poor Mamma. You mustn't think it strange of
her, Clyde. She doesn't know what to do, you see, really. It's
all my fault, of course. If I hadn't run away, I wouldn't have
caused her all this trouble. She has so little to do with and
she's always had such a hard time." She turned her back to him
suddenly, and her shoulders began to tremble and her sides to
heave. She put her hands to her face and bent her head low--and
then he knew that she was silently crying.
"Oh, come now, sis," exclaimed Clyde, drawing near to her instantly
and feeling intensely sorry for her at the moment. "What's the
matter? What do you want to cry for? Didn't that man that you
went away with marry you?"
She shook her head negatively and sobbed the more. And in that
instant there came to Clyde the real psychological as well as
sociological and biological import of his sister's condition. She
was in trouble, pregnant--and with no money and no husband. That
was why his mother had been looking for a room. That was why she
had tried to borrow a hundred dollars from him. She was ashamed of
Esta and her condition. She was ashamed of not only what people
outside the family would think, but of what he and Julia and Frank
might think--the effect of Esta's condition upon them perhaps--
because it was not right, unmoral, as people saw it. And for that
reason she had been trying to conceal it, telling stories about it--
a most amazing and difficult thing for her, no doubt. And yet,
because of poor luck, she hadn't succeeded very well.
And now he was again confused and puzzled, not only by his sister's
condition and what it meant to him and the other members of the
family here in Kansas City, but also by his mother's disturbed and
somewhat unmoral attitude in regard to deception in this instance.
She had evaded if not actually deceived him in regard to all this,
for she knew Esta was here all the time. At the same time he was
not inclined to be too unsympathetic in that respect toward her--
far from it. For such deception in such an instance had to be, no
doubt, even where people were as religious and truthful as his
mother, or so he thought. You couldn't just let people know. He
certainly wouldn't want to let people know about Esta, if he could
help it. What would they think? What would they say about her and
him? Wasn't the general state of his family low enough, as it was?
And so, now he stood, staring and puzzled the while Esta cried.
And she realizing that he was puzzled and ashamed, because of her,
cried the more.
"Gee, that is tough," said Clyde, troubled, and yet fairly
sympathetic after a time. "You wouldn't have run away with him
unless you cared for him though--would you?" (He was thinking of
himself and Hortense Briggs.) "I'm sorry for you, Ess. Sure, I
am, but it won't do you any good to cry about it now, will it?
There's lots of other fellows in the world beside him. You'll come
out of it all right."
"Oh, I know," sobbed Esta, "but I've been so foolish. And I've had
such a hard time. And now I've brought all this trouble on Mamma
and all of you." She choked and hushed a moment. "He went off and
left me in a hotel in Pittsburgh without any money," she added.
"And if it hadn't been for Mamma, I don't know what I would have
done. She sent me a hundred dollars when I wrote her. I worked
for a while in a restaurant--as long as I could. I didn't want to
write home and say that he had left me. I was ashamed to. But I
didn't know what else to do there toward the last, when I began
feeling so bad."
She began to cry again; and Clyde, realizing all that his mother
had done and sought to do to assist her, felt almost as sorry now
for his mother as he did for Esta--more so, for Esta had her mother
to look after her and his mother had almost no one to help her.
"I can't work yet, because I won't be able to for a while," she
went on. "And Mamma doesn't want me to come home now because she
doesn't want Julia or Frank or you to know. And that's right, too,
I know. Of course it is. And she hasn't got anything and I
haven't. And I get so lonely here, sometimes." Her eyes filled
and she began to choke again. "And I've been so foolish."
And Clyde felt for the moment as though he could cry too. For life
was so strange, so hard at times. See how it had treated him all
these years. He had had nothing until recently and always wanted
to run away. But Esta had done so, and see what had befallen her.
And somehow he recalled her between the tall walls of the big
buildings here in the business district, sitting at his father's
little street organ and singing and looking so innocent and good.
Gee, life was tough. What a rough world it was anyhow. How queer
things went!
He looked at her and the room, and finally, telling her that she
wouldn't be left alone, and that he would come again, only she
mustn't tell his mother he had been there, and that if she needed
anything she could call on him although he wasn't making so very
much, either--and then went out. And then, walking toward the
hotel to go to work, he kept dwelling on the thought of how
miserable it all was--how sorry he was that he had followed his
mother, for then he might not have known. But even so, it would
have come out. His mother could not have concealed it from him
indefinitely. She would have asked for more money eventually
maybe. But what a dog that man was to go off and leave his sister
in a big strange city without a dime. He puzzled, thinking now of
the girl who had been deserted in the Green-Davidson some months
before with a room and board bill unpaid. And how comic it had
seemed to him and the other boys at the time--highly colored with a
sensual interest in it.
But this, well, this was his own sister. A man had thought so
little of his sister as that. And yet, try as he would, he could
no longer think that it was as terrible as when he heard her crying
in the room. Here was this brisk, bright city about him running
with people and effort, and this gay hotel in which he worked.
That was not so bad. Besides there was his own love affair,
Hortense, and pleasures. There must be some way out for Esta. She
would get well again and be all right. But to think of his being
part of a family that was always so poor and so little thought of
that things like this could happen to it--one thing and another--
like street preaching, not being able to pay the rent at times, his
father selling rugs and clocks for a living on the streets--Esta
running away and coming to an end like this. Gee!
Chapter 14
The result of all this on Clyde was to cause him to think more
specifically on the problem of the sexes than he ever had before,
and by no means in any orthodox way. For while he condemned his
sister's lover for thus ruthlessly deserting her, still he was not
willing to hold her entirely blameless by any means. She had gone
off with him. As he now learned from her, he had been in the city
for a week the year before she ran away with him, and it was then
that he had introduced himself to her. The following year when he
returned for two weeks, it was she who looked him up, or so Clyde
suspected, at any rate. And in view of his own interest in and
mood regarding Hortense Briggs, it was not for him to say that
