第39章

"I'll admit," said Mr.Wright smoothly, "that Iwasn't overanxious for my boy's marriage with a girl whose mother was--unfortunate.But if your charge had been true, Warham, I'd have made the boy do her justice, she being only seventeen.Come, Sam."Sam slunk toward the door.Warham stared fiercely at the elder Wright."And you call yourself a Christian!" he sneered.

At the door--Sam had already disappeared--Mr.Wright paused to say, "I'm going to give Sam a discipline he'll remember.The girl's only been foolish.Don't be harsh with her.""You damned hypocrite!" shouted Warham."I might have known what to expect from a man who cut the wages of his hands to pay his church subscription."But Wright was far too crafty to be drawn.He went on pushing Sam before him.

As the outer door closed behind them Mrs.Wylie appeared."Iwant you both to get out of my house as quick as you can," she snapped."My boarders'll be coming to dinner in a few minutes."Warham took his straw hat from the floor beside the chair behind him."I've nothing to do with this girl here.Good day, madam."And he strode out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

Mrs.Wylie looked at Susan with storming face and bosom.Susan did not see.She was gazing into space, her face blanched.

"Clear out!" cried Mrs.Wylie.And she ran to the outer door and opened it."How dare you come into a respectable house!" She wished to be so wildly angry that she would forget the five dollars which she, as a professing Christian in full church standing, would have to pay back if she remembered."Clear out this minute!" she cried shrilly."If you don't, I'll throw your bundle into the street and you after it."Susan took up the bundle mechanically, slowly went out on the stoop.The door closed with a slam behind her.She descended the steps, walked a few yards up the street, paused at the edge of the curb and looked dazedly about.Her uncle stood beside her."Now where are you going?" he said roughly.

Susan shook her head.

"I suppose," he went on, "I've got to look after you.You shan't disgrace my daughter any further."Susan simply looked at him, her eyes unseeing, her brain swept clean of thought by the cyclone that had destroyed all her dreams and hopes.She was not horrified by his accusations; such things had little meaning for one practically in complete ignorance of sex relations.Besides, the miserable fiasco of her romantic love left her with a feeling of abasement, of degradation little different from that which overwhelms a woman who believes her virtue is her all and finds herself betrayed and abandoned.She now felt indeed the outcast, looked down upon by all the world.

"If you hadn't lied," he fumed on, "you'd have been his wife and a respectable woman."The girl shivered.

"Instead, you're a disgrace.Everybody in Sutherland'll know you've gone the way your mother went.""Go away," said the girl piteously."Let me alone.""Alone? What will become of you?" He addressed the question to himself, not to her.

"It doesn't matter," was her reply in a dreary tone."I've been betrayed, as my mother was.It doesn't matter what----""I knew it!" cried Warham, with no notion of what the girl meant by the word "betrayed." "Why didn't you confess the truth while he was here and his father was ready to marry him to you? I knew you'd been loose with him, as your Aunt Fanny said.""But I wasn't," said Susan."I wouldn't do such a thing.""There you go, lying again!"

"It doesn't matter," said she."All I want is for you to go away.""You do?" sneered he."And then what? I've got to think of Ruthie." He snatched the bundle from her hand."Come on! I must do all I can to keep the disgrace to my family down.As for you, you don't deserve anything but the gutter, where you'd sink if I left you.Your aunt's right.You're rotten.You were born rotten.You're your mother's own brat.""Yes, I am," she cried."And I'm proud of it!" She turned from him, was walking rapidly away.

"Come with me!" ordered Warham, following and seizing her by the arm.

"No," said Susan, wrenching herself free.

"Then I'll call a policeman and have you locked up."Uncle and niece stood regarding each other, hatred and contempt in his gaze, hatred and fear in hers.

"You're a child in law--though, God knows, you're anything but a child in fact.Come along with me.You've got to.I'm going to see that you're put out of harm's way.""You wouldn't take me back to Sutherland!" she cried.

He laughed savagely."I guess not! You'll not show your face there again--though I've no doubt you'd be brazen enough to brass it out.No--you can't pollute my home again.""I can't go back to Sutherland!"

"You shan't, I say.You ran off because you had disgraced yourself.""No!" cried Susan."No!"

"Don't lie to me! Don't speak to me.I'll see what I can do to hide this mess.Come along!"Susan looked helplessly round the street, saw nothing, not even eager, curious faces pressed against many a window pane, saw only a desolate waste.Then she walked along beside her uncle, both of them silent, he carrying her bundle, she tightly clutching her little purse.