A woman in armor :: :: University of Virginia Library

Or she wrapped the boy and tramped with
him away out of the town's murk, and watched
the winter sky in the river. Wherever she was
she had him with her.

During these days there was a constant rapping
at the back door. Women with shawls over
their heads, or men in dirty blouses, wanted to
know how Miss Dimmock was. Could they do
anything for her? Some of them she went and
met, and as soon as they saw her still, tearless
face they wept tears for her, and would have
lain themselves down to bridge her way.

To George alone she talked of his mother.
All the outer symbols of death she translated for
him, giving him the inner meaning. But when
his heart ached for mamma, and he went up and

cried in the vacant room, she was careful not to
substitute her own love for that which he had
lost, so jealous was she for her little girl. She
comforted him but kept his mother alive to him.
Very young children are too lately from God
to grieve much over death. She gave him an
absent mamma, and this sufficed him.

It was a chill November night. He had eaten
his supper and watched her strange face while
he ate. Now, before the grate, he nestled at
her breast, and put some of those questions
which troubled his unformed soul—where the
material and immaterial mixed grotesquely:
“What house in heaven did mamma riv in?
Does 'ey have stairs? Was it rong way off?
Does big mans ever go 'ere—big mans, Toola,
'at come and scare mamma?”

While the big man's shadow lay over his
thoughts the door-bell sent a violent clang
through the house, which Rikka echoed by a
crash in her department.

“Ven die pell ring,” muttered Rikka, whose
convictions, like the Persian law, knew no changing,
“der man no lets you into das haus?”
She went immediately to impress this regulation
on the comer. The hall lamp was not lighted.
While she blundered about it, leaving the door
ajar until she could make a light with which to
search her enemy out, he moved smoothly past
her and entered the parlor.

Helen turned her head.

He stood in the shadow like Mephistopheles,
and tried to distinguish the objects in the room.

She rose and lighted a gas-jet. Then drawing
George to her knees, stood still, as if inquiring
his business.

G. Guest, Esq., placed his right hand on his
bosom. In his left hand he supported the latest
hat, swathed to within an inch of its top in
folds of crêpe.

“Miss Dimmock?” he ventured to inquire
tenderly and sympathetically.

“My name is Helen Dimmock.”

“Yes—ah—exactly!” He produced a card-case
and handed a card to Helen. She scarcely
needed a glance at the name of “G. Guest,
Esq.” George had fastened on her, and was
drawing his breath quickly.

“Well, Miss Dimmock, how do you do?”
G. Guest, Esq., extended his large, white,
patronizing hand. As Helen paid no manner
of attention to it, he drew it home and bestowed
on her a pitying smile which she could not
reject.

“I have no recollection of meeting you before,”
he pursued, gracefully moving toward a chair.
“You were the sister—or half-sister?—of my
late wife.” As he made mention of “my late
wife,” he drew a snuffling breath, which he
meant to palm off as a sigh. “Am I not right?”
with a melancholy air.

Helen sat down without replying. For her

girl's and boy's sakes she would keep as still as
possible before this man. It was easy to divine
his errand. She knew not what to do or say,
she was so broken. If she met and fought him
he could return with the law on his side. He
had all the advantage and knew it.

G. Guest, Esq., sat down also, turning his
broad, insolent face slowly to take in the room.
The very air of the man sickened her, yet she
hoped, half deliriously, that there might be
some solid spot in him—or whereon had Nina
founded her great love? The worst men have
fine strata somewhere in their characters.

“I have but a few minutes,” began G. Guest,
Esq., looking at an elegant chronometer and
settling his pompous shoulders for business.
“But I must say, Miss Dimmock, that you
have used me very cruelly. Yes, very cruelly
indeed. I was not even apprised of my wife's
sudden decease.” (His grieved, childlike manner
was touching.) “I left her in good health
—blooming! Went out of the city a few days
to prepare a home for her reception elsewhere—”
(Helen started)—“return, and find that the
grave has swallowed all that is beautiful on earth,
and sheds no light upon my pathway, which
was lately teeming with sweet and fragrant blossoms
of hope! I feel”—spouted G. Guest,
Esq., who descended to flowery strains and
poetic figures in order to put himself on a level
with Helen Dimmock, whom he had heard was

a blue-stocking, or composer, or something of
the sort—“I feel—desolate! No cheering ray
blooms upon my breast! If I only could have
assisted in doing honor to her inanimate clay it
would have afforded me the greatest pleasure
which man is capable of feeling!”

Helen was shutting her teeth, yet she scorned
him too much to resent his harangue.

“Well, well!”—smoothing his full cheeks
with his hem-stitched cambric. “We must forgive
in this world. Forgive! To err is human,
to forgive divine!”—with a patronizing glance
from the corner of his eye. “Therefore, I forgive
you!”

“Let it pass,” pursued G. Guest, Esq.,
spreading his hands as if to dispense a benediction
over a penitent.

“I see! You are scarcely to blame. You
were occupied with your own grief. And I
have a consolation left. I have my boy! Dear
little fellow!” (unctuously.) “Come here, little
fellow.”

George clung to Helen, sobbing as if his heart
would burst.

“Timid little fellow, very.” G. Guest, Esq.,
bent forward and poked his son experimentally
with one long white finger. “Doesn't know
me very well yet. My business has kept me
so much away from him. But we shall get acquainted.”

“You propose taking him from me at once?”

She could speak, could she, this scornful, self-curbing
girl. Good! He now knew where to
plant his heel. One can imagine this man imprisoning
a wretched insect on his palm and
watching its controtions with real delight in the
thought that, “I—I am god over you!”

“Certainly, Miss Dimmock, certainly,” nodding,
and pulling his tawny mustache. “I
propose taking him away with me to-morrow
morning! Your own heart would tell you that I
would want immediate possession of my child!”

“My own heart tells me that a man who has
neglected his child from its birth, and killed its
mother, is likely to have very little regard for
his child!”

“There you are mistaken!” explained G.
Guest, Esq., indulgently. “Wrong in your
premises!” He smiled a bright and winning
smile. “I did not neglect my wife and child.
Unfortunate circumstances separated me from
them. I searched—as I can prove—everywhere
for them without happening to discover the right
place until recently. I can show you my advertisements
for them!” He brought out from
his pocket-book some newspaper cuttings; as
Helen mechanically read them she noticed the
date was clipped from all. He watched her
slyly. “Perhaps you never wanted to see those,
Miss Dimmock! I assure you,” as she returned
them, “the whole case is quite romantic! It
would be very interesting in the courts!”

Helen looked at the man. She noted his
benevolent, well-preserved face. A phrenologist
would canonize him. She noted the air of candor,
of tenderness, he could assume, and the
triumphant insolence he knew so well how to
sheathe, and she told herself there was no soundness
in him. Even if she dragged up the shame
Nina died concealing, and fought him in the
courts, he had not enough of hard, honest
wickedness in him for the law to grasp. He
was a soft—a cottony villain.

He leaned back, folding his arms easily, and
watched her, winking and purring like a cat. It
was a snatch of some funeral hymn which had
caught in his throat.

“I fear,” he pursued suavely, “that my family
have been a burden to you already, so my
naming an early day for removing the little
fellow will be a positive relief. Not that the
dear departed flower could have been aught but
a light—”

“Stop!” Helen Dimmock's eyes lanced him
suddenly with two sharp steel points.

He smiled. He looked actually relieved.

“Thank you! Ah, thank you! I feared
they had been a burden to you. But your tone
assures me that this was not so. I learn you
have no means excepting what your own exertions
bring you. That seems a pitiable case for
a woman so young. And when I consider that,
in addition to supporting yourself by labor, you

also sustained my wife and child, I feel that I
ought to offer some remuneration—to refund
the money.”

“That is sufficient!” said Helen Dimmock,
rising. “If you wish to remain in this room
any longer I will leave it. I remember that my
sister was obliged to wear your name, so I shall
not send for the police unless you force me to!”

How grandly she could scorn, couldn't she?
He would put the heel down again! He smiled
behind his sensual mouth. Thus they stood
looking at each other several seconds.

“Ah, well, good-night!” he said, as if they
had been taking a lingering adieu! “You are
nervous, I see. I hope you will feel better after
you are relieved of this urchin's noise and have
a few days in which to compose yourself! I
will call for him at eight in the morning, and ask
as a last favor, Miss Dimmock, that you have
him ready by that time. I have some little feeling
against you, Miss Dimmock,” confessed G.
Guest, Esq., with the most charming candor,
as he moved toward the door. “You, in a
measure, stole my family from me. Yes, now,
you really did.”

Should she cry aloud? Should she appeal to
the generosity of manhood, and beg him not to
bereave her again—so soon and so utterly?
Should she not beg to know at least whither he
was taking Nina's baby? Oh, how could she
bear it? But all her nature revolted from asking

any favors of this creature, who regarded
no one in the world excepting himself.

“Georgie—his name is Georgie, isn't it?—
Hi, Georgie! Good-night, little fellow! Your
pa will come for you in the morning. Good-night,
Miss Dimmock; good-night!”

Bowing and waving his weed-covered hat, he
backed through the door, cheering them to the
last with his bright smile!