The woman turned her head towards him without raising her eyelids.
“And you don’t know me any more, Mr. Sanford?”
“Betty! You here!” said Sanford, looking in astonishment at the
crouching figure before him.
“I had to come, sir. The druggist at the corner showed me the house. I
was a-waitin’ outside in the street below, hopin’ to see you come in.
Then I heard the music and knew you were home.” The voice shook with
every word. The young dimpled face was drawn and pale, the pretty
curly hair in disorder about her forehead. She had the air of one who
had been hunted and had just found shelter.
“Does Lacey know you are here?” asked Sanford, a dim suspicion rising
in his mind.
Betty shivered slightly, as if the name had hurt her. “No, sir. I left
him two nights ago. I got away while he was asleep. All I want now is
a place for to-night, and then perhaps to-morrow I can get work.”
“And you have no money?” asked Sanford.
Betty shook her head. “I had a little of my own, but it’s all gone,
and I’m so tired, and—the city frightens me so—when the night
comes.” The head dropped lower, the sobs choking her. After a little
she went on, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, rolled tight in
one hand; and resting her cheek on the bent fingers, “I didn’t know
nobody but you, Mr. Sanford. I can pay it back.” The voice was
scarcely audible.
Sanford stood looking down upon her bowed head. The tired eyelids were
half closed, the tears glistening in the light of the overhanging
lamp, the shadows of her black curls flecking her face. The cloak hung
loosely about her, the curve of her pretty shoulders outlined in its
folds. Then she lifted her head, and, looking Sanford in the eyes for
the first time, said in a broken, halting voice, “Did you—did
you—see—Caleb—Mr. Sanford?”
Sanford nodded slowly in answer. He was trying to make up his mind
what he should do with a woman who had broken the heart of a man like
Caleb. Through the closed door he heard the strains of Bock’s 'cello,
the notes vibrating plaintively. They belonged to some other world.
“Betty,” he said, leaning over her, “how could you do it?”
The girl covered her face with her hands and shrank within her cloak.
Sanford went on, his sense of Caleb’s wrongs overpowering him: “What
could Lacey do for you? If you could once see Caleb’s face you would
never forgive yourself. No woman has a right to leave a man who was as
good to her as your husband was to you. And now what has it all come
to? You’ve ruined yourself, and broken his heart.”
The girl trembled and bent her head, cowering under the pitiless
words; then, in a half-dazed way, she rose from her seat, and, without
looking at Sanford, said in a tired, hopeless voice, as if every word
brought a pain, “I think I’ll go, Mr. Sanford.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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