CHAPTER TWO

_At Last She Didn't Care_

Mildred stood in the middle of the room, directly under the electric light that filled the room with its bright rays. She could see the end of the key, as it turned in the lock, and, in that moment, a scheme entered her head, like a flash. Locating the direction of the door, and facing toward it, she reached up suddenly and switched off the light. Instantly the room was ingulfed in darkness. She hurried to the door, and stood just to one side. Presently the knob turned and the man entered. He stood on the threshold a moment, and she heard him say:

"Ah, the little girl is sleeping peacefully," and laughed. "That was a devil of a dose a-whiskey that girl gave her, though! Knocked her stiff! Darned if I don't believe she was handing the straight dope after all." He advanced now toward the middle of the room. Quick as a flash she stepped out, and, seeing he had left the key in the lock, she jerked the door closed, and, turning the key, which she allowed to remain, rushed to the end of the steps, and hurried down as fast as she could safely venture.

It was dark outside, and no one stood about the entrance. She struck the pavement, looked up and down a brief moment, and then hurried in a direction that led to whither she knew not, but to escape was her only thought. She hurried along for fully three blocks, and then turned in another direction, and then one block in another, and paused--feeling safe at last.

Up to this time, she was not conscious that her head was aching to a point that was almost splitting. She placed her hand upon her forehead, and only then was she aware that she had the paper she had picked from the dresser, closely clutched in her hand. The words she had seen there, made her at once forget her headache and all else.

She thought of something then. She looked at the watch on her wrist. "Yes, thank God, there is yet time." An hour later she came back to the place where she had stood, and continued in the direction she had been going, looking from right to left for a lodging house.

She stopped at several places where a sign over the front advertised rooms, but, at each one they wanted men only. She had no thought of going back to where she had been stopping the last week; and, besides, she knew not where she was, nor did she know the street or number where she had been stopping, therefore was confident she could not have found it, had she wished to return.

Upon the street, she encountered many people celebrating the event of the coming year, and then she tried a small house that set back in a yard, and which appeared very neat from where she viewed it. She secured a room, and retired at once. Setting the oil lamp on a chair next to the bed, she unfolded the paper and read the article on the front page carefully, over and over again. It was an Effingham paper, and a date of some time before. When she had read it, until she was convinced that she was not dreaming, she sighed restfully as she murmured:

"At last, oh Lord, at last!"

It was the Effingham _Age-Herald_, and the issue contained the article by Sidney Wyeth, in which he severely arraigned the leading people of his race in that city for their disregard of the general welfare of their people.

"I'm so glad, so glad," she whispered softly. "And to think that it came to my attention in such an extraordinary manner!" She felt her forehead, and winced when the heat and throb came into contact with the touch. She made a wry face, as she recalled the taste of stale whiskey. Only then did she become aware, that when she had turned at the sound of the piano, someone had filled her glass with liquor. And she had drunk it before she realized that it had been doped. She thought of the incident; from the time she had met Miss Jones at the corner, and had been informed of the part of the town she was in. She shuddered and drew the coverlets closely about her, as her mind went over it again. She then tried to recall how she had followed Miss Jones to the place where she had met the men. And there she had drunk for the first time in her life, whiskey, although she was not at the moment aware of it. She rose out of the bed, as the dream came back to her; how the tornado had taken Sidney into the air, and then the story of the hills and the Indians. She pondered for a time, and wondered if such a thing had been the history of the _Rosebud Country_. And Sidney Wyeth had not been caught in a tornado, but had swept a multitude of people with his pen, in a burning article. She read over a part of it again. The very evils he had berated the most fiercely, were the things she had heard Wilson Jacobs deplore, and speak of more than once. Yes, Sidney Wyeth had written the truth. And from the way it was pictured, she reckoned that it must have created a bit of excitement. And that was the kind of man Sidney Wyeth was. She smiled as she thought of it.

"And I love him. Was it because of these principles, that I strangely felt were inherent in him, that he has been my dream, which has grown larger in my estimation, in the months I have had no word of him?" she asked herself. "I am going to him--I am, tomorrow. Of course," she replied to herself in the next sentence, "I am not going directly to him.... He wouldn't quite appreciate that--oh, he wouldn't appreciate me at all; but I love him, and am going where he is, and after that----" she had no other words, nor thoughts. To be where he was, maybe to see him, became the uppermost desire in her mind.

She did not, strangely enough, think any more about the Y.M.C.A. She thought of her lover as, with a peaceful smile, she fell asleep. She did not dream that night, but lay as she had fallen asleep, and it was six o'clock the following morning, the first of January, when she awakened.

She lay a half hour without any thoughts in her mind, and then, observing a window next to the bed, she raised it slightly, and peeped out. It was not yet so very light. It was, apparently, a quiet street, occupied by working people who were now in many numbers on the way to their work. A boy with a bunch of papers under his arm was passing in their midst, and then suddenly she wrapped on the window pane. He looked up, being accustomed to doing so, and, catching sight of her hand, entered the gate and stood under the window with an upraised paper, while she fished out a nickel and dropped it into his hand.

She smiled with an expression of satisfaction, as she read the article relating to the Y.M.C.A. for colored youth of the city, and was glad to note that Wilson Jacobs came in for a great deal of praise. She laid it aside for a time, and was thoughtful again.

"Yes," she whispered to herself, "I will leave the city at once. The one thing I so much desired, and which has kept me here through these weary months, has been obtained." She closed her lips and planned further.

She decided to go to Effingham. She would send an expressman for her things at Mother Jane's that morning. She would then purchase a ticket and go by the first train. She turned to the editorial column of the paper, and was made happy by a lengthy editorial, relating the effort for the Y.M.C.A., and praising Wilson Jacobs further.

She did not know, however, that the editor of the paper that she was reading, and who was one of the most ardent supporters in the Christian forward movement in the south, had been at the Y.M.C.A. the evening before. He had come with the others, out of curiosity, when Wilson Jacobs had torn into the building, bareheaded and looking like an insane man. And he had written the article the first thing in the new year.

She arose and dressed herself at seven o'clock, and slipped out of the house without awakening anyone. It was getting light now, and she went some blocks before she encountered an expressman that satisfied her. She gave him the instructions, and walked about, impatiently, while she waited for him to return. As she was waiting, she became possessed with a desire to see the little house occupied by the Jacobs, and where she had spent so many happy, hopeful months.

She had no trouble finding it, since light had given her an acquaintance with her surroundings. She found that she was not far from it, and then recognized with a start, that the same drayman she had sent for the goods, was the one who had taken the same from the Jacobs' a few months before. He had not recognized her, and she now gave him no further chance to do so.

She walked until the house was in sight, and then, going around a block, she found herself within a half block of it. Smoke was coming from the kitchen chimney, and she knew they were astir.

"Bless them!" she murmured, as she realized how happy must be their hearts that morning. "And that is why they are astir so soon. They do not usually arise until nearly eight o'clock."

As she stood gazing longingly at the house, she saw Constance emerge from the rear, and scatter wheat to a few chickens they had taken a delight in raising the past summer. "If I could only go to her in this minute, and feel her caress for just a moment, I would leave the city the happiest woman in the world." She stopped when she had said this. To realize that she was slipping out of the city like a criminal, without greeting the friends she had there, made her feel peculiarly guilty. She had no enmity in her heart toward anyone--not even the man who haunted her into the position she now assumed, and whose sole purpose had been to satisfy an animal desire. She knew she could not go to Constance, nor to Mother Jane's--nor to anyone. She would leave the city without saying goodbye to a soul. She turned her face away, as she recalled that she had left Cincinnati the same way. She had no friends there, and had avoided making acquaintances. She almost choked with guilty anguish as she asked herself:

"Is it always to be this way? Am I forever to go from place to place under cover like a criminal? Am I always to be without friends?" She couldn't make answer. She could have a certain kind of friends; but she shuddered when she realized what kind they would be. She had never told anyone the secret.

She had no desire, strangely, to do so. Only one person among those she loved knew it, she now conjectured. And she would leave to be near him soon. He knew--a part of it ... and he had turned away and had passed out of her life, when he learned it. He would never come back; he would never forget it--and even if, through any possible chance, she proved to him that it was all a very different problem, could he ever forgive her? Perhaps that was what made it harder to bear. She almost believed he would not. In reading his book, she had marked a cold, decided stand, and she felt that, if he had made up his mind against her, which he had apparently done, he was not likely to change.... It depended upon the strength of his resolutions. She could never get beyond a certain point in her dreams. But in spite of that fact, something within her longed to be near him; to see him; not to ask forgiveness--not to do anything; but just to be near him, that was all.

Wilson Jacobs stood on the porch at the front of the house now, smoking a cigar in a way, she could at this distance see, he enjoyed. Yesterday morning he could not have smoked in so much peace; but today, the future was brighter than it had ever been for him; she felt this, and it was true. As he stood looking about him, Wilson Jacobs was happy. He was not happy over his own success--for Wilson Jacobs did not feel that he had made the success--but he was happy from the fact that the young Negro men of that wicked, criminally torn city, would soon be the recipients of a movement that would insure a brighter future, less tinged with degradation and vice.

Presently he turned, as though responding to a call, and entered the house. Mildred surmised that he had been called to breakfast. She turned on her heel, and went back to the expressman's place, and met him returning with the things.

They were all packed. The trunk only required a rope around it, and it was ready for the station. She instructed the expressman to this end, and met him at the depot, where she purchased a ticket for Effingham.

She strolled outside and to a nearby restaurant, where she partook of a hearty breakfast, for she was hungry. She returned to the station, and waited patiently for the arrival of the train from the north, that would take her away from the city where she had been for many months. If it had not fallen to her lot to encounter the man who had known her back in Cincinnati, she could have left the city with friends at the depot, and much more ceremoniously; but she was glad that she was leaving it as it was. When she had awakened the evening before, she had, for a moment, felt that she could not leave it without a terrible pang of conscience.

The train had arrived, and the people were hurrying in that direction. She joined them, and, as she was passing through the gate, she turned for a moment, and looked into the face of the man who had sent her away like this. She regarded him without a tremor of fright. At last she didn't care. A moment later she entered the car.