FullReads

“But they don’t, now. That’s the reason she hates me,” she said, in conclusion. “The men don’t notice her when I’m around.”

To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld where harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy recesses of the human heart.

Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy, looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed unconscious of their public situation.

The young lawyer looked straight before him while the girl, swept on by her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had been injected into her young life.

“I don’t see what men find about her to like–unless it is her eyes. She’s got beautiful eyes. But she’s vulgar–ugh! The stories she tells–right before men, too! She’d kill any one that got ahead of her, that woman would! And yet she’ll come into my room and cry and cry and say: ‘Don’t take him away from me! Leave him to me.’ Ugh! It makes me sick.” She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: “She wears a wig, too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it’s her own hair.”

The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set expression, and she felt it and was spurred on to do still deeper injustice to herself–an insane perversity.

“Not that I care a cent–I’m not jealous of her. I ain’t so bad off for company as she is. She can’t take anybody away from me, but she must go and break down my faith in the judge.”

She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window again, seeking control.

The “divorce colony” never appeared more sickening in its inner corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those already well known.

The girl turned suddenly to her companion.

“How do those people live out here on their farms?”

She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the train go by.

“By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork.”

“Salt pork!” she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or hay. “Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!”

He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. “So much the better for the poor. Where’d you learn all that, anyway?”

“At school. Oh, you needn’t look so incredulous! I went to boarding school. I learned a good deal more than you think.”

“Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours, speaking from experience.”

“Well, it don’t. What do the women do out here?”

“They work like the men, only more so.”

“Do they have any new things?”

“Not very often, I’m afraid.”

She sighed. After a pause she said:

“You were raised on a farm?”

“Yes. In Minnesota.”

“Did you do work like that?” She pointed at a thrashing machine in the field.

“Yes, I plowed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn’t on the farm for my health.”

“You’re very strong, aren’t you?” she asked admiringly.

“In a slab-sided kind of a way–yes.”

Her eyes grew abstracted.

“I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am, but when he was drunk he was what men call a–a–holy terror. He struck me with the water pitcher once–that was just before baby was born. I wish he’d killed me.” She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless bitterness. “It would have saved me all these months of life in this terrible country.”

“It might have saved you from more than you think,” he said quietly, tenderly.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been brought up against women and men who have defiled you. They’ve made your future uncertain.”

“Do you think it’s so bad as that? Tell me!” she insisted, seeing his hesitation.