A POINT OF
ETHICS
A POINT OF ETHICS.
"AS I understand it," said Virginia Imboden, reflectively, "the question resolves itself into this: To what extent can a woman of irreproachable character assist a woman of no character without being injured in the eyes of others?"
Frances Neville changed her position restlessly, and lifted a hand in protest against such an unqualified statement.
"You have put the case much too strongly," she objected, "if you are speaking of Miss Bertram."
There was a slight irritability in her tone. Miss Herrick, who was at the piano, carelessly playing Chopin, caught it, and whirled round on the stool to face the group of friends who were scattered about her apartment in various attitudes of restfulness. Virginia Imboden lay on the rug before the grate, her fair head vividly outlined by the dancing flames. Frances Neville was stretched on the broad divan near her, and in the depths of a great easy-chair Mrs. Ogilvie, whose sombre gown recalled her recent bereavement, had been dreamily listening to the music, which swept her thoughts back to the old days when she and John were so happy together.
To her, as to Ruth Herrick, the words just spoken were a discord in the harmony of a social evening after the strain of the week. Miss Herrick rose and turned on the electric light, whose radiance, under silk shades, threw a softened light over the apartment. Her guests, startled by the unexpected illumination, blinked protestingly at her as they changed their positions to more conventional ones, while she drew the shades to screen the rooms, with their picturesque group, from the gaze of inquisitive neighbors. Outside, the wind whimpered through the courts of the big hotel, and the cheerless rain of November beat against the window-panes. Mrs. Ogilvie lent ear to it for a moment, and turned with a little shiver from the mental contemplation of the obtrusive grave on the hillside to the homely picture of the firelight blazing on the hearth.
"If you girls are going to discuss that subject," laughed Miss Herrick, apologetically, "you will need all the light there is. Ruminating in the dark, to Polish music, is apt to make one's point of view a little morbid."
She dropped into a "cosey hollow" near the fire and clasped her hands behind her head in her favorite attitude of rest and reflection.
"Now that we have the honor of your attention you shall decide the question for us," said Miss Imboden, with conviction. "It must be taken up and disposed of. It's something we have to settle, and we cannot shirk the issue any longer."
Ruth Herrick smiled down at the earnest face upturned to her.
"You make it highly impressive, Virginia," she said gently,—"almost too impressive, I think; for, after all, the issue, as you call it, is a very simple one. It has to do with a bright and charming young woman who has come among us, of whom we know little, but of whom we have grown very fond. Is n't that all?"
"How trying you are!" murmured her friend, protestingly. She drew her dark brows together in a frown, then went on quickly.
"That is n't all. It is n't even the beginning. Here is the situation, impartially put. A woman (young, and clever, and charming, I grant you) comes to us from nowhere. Her life, so far as we are concerned, apparently began the day we met her. None of us has heard a word from her of home, or parents, or friends. None of us knows where she came from, or what or who she is. Before we realized what this might imply we became fond of her, as you say. Insensibly she grew into our affections and our lives. We asked her no questions and she volunteered no information. After this condition has been existing for several months we discover that she is a marked woman in our profession,—that she is credited with a past,—that her reserve, reticence, and gayety are making her talked about,—and that we are coming in for some share of the—the—well, feeling that exists about her. Now, if this is so, are we held to her by our friendly interest? If we knew she was all right it would be different, because then we could speak about her with the force and courage that we should have. But we don't know, and that's the trouble."
Miss Herrick became serious.
"I did n't know it was so bad as that," she said quietly. She looked at the others with a question in her glance. Even Mrs. Ogilvie lowered her head in reflective consideration of Miss Imboden's statement.
"I had not realized," continued the hostess, gravely, "that it had gone so far. The problem has seemed to me a very simple one—no problem at all. Whatever the girl has been, she is now all that she should be, so far as we know. We know how hard she works, how plainly she lives, how lonely she is except for our affection and our companionship. If she has done wrong and is trying to make amends, this is no time for us to push her back. Surely, as her friends, we should give her all the help we can. I don't wish to dictate or to suggest to any one of you what her course should be, but to me we seem very smug and virtuous as we sit here criticising this girl from our own self-assured little pedestals. How do we know what environment and temptations she may have had? How do we know what we should have done if we had been in her place? I shall certainly continue to love her and to tell her so. And if the uplifting influence of my society will help her," ended the girl more lightly, "she shall have all that I have time to give her."
She crossed to the piano and drifted into the rhythmic melody of the Twelfth Nocturne, while Mrs. Ogilvie leaned her cheek against the unresponsive wood of the instrument and listened. From her comfortable rest on the big divan Miss Neville took up the discussion.
"You were always something of a prig, Virginia," she said, with vivacious bluntness. "But you 're fairly distinguishing yourself to-night. You 're not talking to Park Row. You 're talking to Miss Bertram's friends."
Miss Imboden flushed a little.
"I don't forget that I'm speaking to my own friends, too," she said with dignity. "If you have any idea that I would say these things to anybody else, banish it."
She raised her voice a little, above the seductive swing of the music.
"Surely you don t misunderstand me—all of you," she urged. "I don't want to seem 'smug' and self-satisfied, as Ruth puts it. No one is fonder of Miss Bertram than I. But I'm alone here in New York, and I have nothing in the world except my health, my very ordinary journalistic ability, and my reputation as a 'hard-working and respectable lady,' to quote my appreciative janitor. Can I afford to jeopardize the most precious of these by being the acknowledged friend of a woman whose reputation is, as a matter of fact, the subject of unpleasant talk? My mother sits in our little home out West reading the newspaper clippings about my work and pasting them in a scrapbook. Every word she reads or hears about me is precious gold to her. Can I run the risk of having my name and hers carelessly linked in newspaper gossip with another name that is mentioned with sneers? This is n't mere fancy. It has been done already—and in connection with you, Ruth," she broke in suddenly, wheeling about and facing her incredulous hostess. "Herforth said to me to-day, 'saw Miss Herrick at the theatre the other night with Miss Bertram. They 'not friends, are they?' and his accent of surprise said more than he meant to, I assure you. Mr. Davidson has spoken to Miss Neville about it—very nicely and guardedly, of course, but what he said amounted to a warning, and half a dozen of our women friends have labored with us individually and collectively along the same lines. You must all admit that. I'm willing to help Miss Bertram in any way I can. I 'll advise her about her stories, I 'll divide my assignments with her, as we 're both on space, but as for 'the precious boon of companionship,' that's another story! Does my companionship do her good enough to compensate for the harm hers does me? And what is true in my case is true in yours. There is the situation in a nutshell. I don't like to say these things. I almost hate myself while I'm saying them, for they seem such worldly counsel. I know how much finer Ruth's point of view is. But we must remember where we are. Truth is speaking to you, my friends, though Truth realizes that it may not prevail in a gathering which is decidedly not in sympathy with the speaker."
She ended with a stage sigh, and the others laughed, glad of any relief in a topic that had been depressing to all.
"Does n't it seem to you," said Mrs. Ogilvie, in her quiet way, "that before we decide this question the person most concerned should be heard from? Surely there is some way of learning the truth and of defending her,—or of getting her to defend herself. The person we should hear from next is—"
"Miss Bertram," said Miss Herrick's maid, at the door. With a quick and expressive glance at the group, the hostess went to meet the new arrival.
"If that had happened in a play," murmured Miss Imboden, "we should have thought it a very forced situation. And yet here she is, at just the right moment, to speak for herself. Query, will she speak?"
The young woman who was entering the room with Miss Herrick came forward with the assured air of one who joins a circle of tried friends. She greeted the others with the brilliant smile and charm of manner to which they had all succumbed early in their acquaintance with her, and sank contentedly into a low seat near the fire. Her cheeks were flushed by her encounter with the boisterous wind outside, and a few drops of rain sparkled on her dark hair. Looking at her a little consciously, the group became aware of a change in her manner—a brightness, a sparkle, an apparent freedom from care which they had not observed before. Miss Herrick was the first to comment upon it.
"You seem very happy," she said, resting her hand affectionately on her friend's shoulder. "I hope something nice has happened to you."
Alice Bertram caught the caressing hand in her own, and held it against her cheek such an ecstatic little laugh that the others smiled in sympathy.
"I am happy," she said emphatically, "and something very nice has happened. I have won a big wager, I have proved the truth of my most cherished theory, and to-night I'm at liberty to tell you girls all about it,—you dear girls who have been so good to me. I shall never forget that. Do you suppose I have n't realized how fine it has been of you to take me as I am, without a question even in your manner,—to take me into your big hearts so thoroughly and so warmly? Every day and every night I 've thought of the goodness of it and the beauty of it. I 've known how strange my reserve must have seemed to you. Any one but you would have tried to break through it, and would have asked me about the past I seemed so anxious to conceal."
She looked at them fondly, her eyes resting longest on Miss Herrick, who smiled back at her in warm responsiveness. Virginia Imboden had colored a little, but was looking at the new arrival with a reflection of the other woman's joy in her clear eyes. Miss Neville and Mrs. Ogilvie were eloquently silent. Alice Bertram's glance swept round the circle and rested reflectingly on a ring on Miss Herrick's hand, which she had kept in her own. She twisted this about rather nervously as she continued.
"You must have wondered who I am. I know you have realized that I am not what I seemed to be. The part I played was so new to me that I'm afraid I did n't do it very well. I'm going to ask you to let me tell you the whole story to-night. I warn you, though, that it's very egotistical, and I shall talk about myself the whole time! I came to tell it to Ruth and to ask her to pass it on. It is part of my good fortune to find you all together, for I'm going away to-morrow, and shall not return. I'm so glad my last night in New York will be spent with you."
She stopped for a moment.
"Going away!" they echoed, in dismal chorus. Mrs. Ogilvie crossed the room and dropped onto the ottoman at Miss Bertram's feet, her eyes full of tears.
"We shall be so sorry to lose you," she said softly.
"I know—I'm sure you will," the girl told her, looking down into the wet eyes with a responsive dimness in her own. "But we 're not parting forever. I'm going out of newspaper work for all time. But I hope to see you girls very often, in the years to come."
She laughed a little nervously.
"I hardly know how to start my story," she said. "I feel as if I ought to say I was always a strange child, as the romantic heroines of fiction usually begin. I was not an especially strange child, but my father was and is a strange man. You all know of him."
She mentioned the name of a man famous throughout the country as one of the West's great mining kings. His eccentricities of character were as conspicuous and as much discussed as his vast wealth. The newspaper women recalled the printed stories of his princely home, his beautiful wife, his munificent gifts to various public enterprises, and, above all, his odd theories and experiments. Despite his wealth, he had socialistic leanings, and was idolized by his miners, they knew. And this was his daughter,—this quietly attired young woman who had worked side by side with them for six months in the relentless grind of journalism.
"When I left college," continued that young person with a businesslike air, "my father naturally assumed that I would develop into the modern product that he most despised,—the society girl. My brothers, of course, he took in hand as soon as they were graduated. He gave them a rigorous business training, and they had to work their way from the bottom as faithfully as if they had n't a cent. They were bright boys, and father was very proud of the way they got on. He used to talk about it a good deal, and then look at me and sigh. It was trying, especially as I had some of his spirit in me, I suppose, so I resolved to give him a little surprise. Am I boring you to death?"
She looked deprecatingly at the interested faces around her, and, reassured by their expressions and emphatic denials, went on.
"One day my father was particularly vigorous in his denunciation of idle women. I felt, foolishly, that his remarks were directed at me. He was really very fond of me, but I think he classed me with my pet kitten in the matter of intelligence, notwithstanding my university diploma. I let him talk until he had finished, and then I told him calmly that I was quite as competent to support myself as my brothers were, and that I could, if necessary, earn as much money in a year as they had earned during their first year of work.
"My father laughed good-naturedly at this," added Miss Bertram, smiling again at the recollection. "He scoffed at the whole idea as utterly absurd. It piqued me, and on the impulse of the moment I made a wager with him.
"On my twenty-first birthday he had invested a very large sum of money for me. I was to have the yearly income to spend. I offered to wager the entire sum (everything I had in the world, you see) that I could go to a strange city, take a new name, and earn my own living for six months. I was not to take a penny with me, except the money to pay for my ticket to New York, and I was not to borrow a cent from anybody. I was to pay for my own clothes, food, and lodgings for six months. If I failed, every cent I had in the world would go back to my father, and I was to live for five years on what he chose to give me. If I succeeded, he was to double the gift he made me on my twenty-first birthday, and he was to consent to my going abroad at the end of the experiment for a post-graduate course in German universities."
She stopped for breath, while her hearers closed about her with enthusiastic comments and questions.
"I have succeeded," she told them, with shining eyes. "The six months ended last night, and I sent my father a telegram. I also sent him a telegraphic copy of the amounts of my weekly earnings, which 'The Searchlight's' auditor gave me when I asked for it. I have not been a brilliant journalistic success, but I have supported myself in comparative comfort. Working on space, I have averaged twenty dollars a week for six months. My brothers did not earn more than fifteen when they began to 'make their living.'
"I told the city editor last night that I was going to resign, and he asked me to reconsider the matter, and said he'd put me on a weekly salary of twenty-five dollars if I would stay. Of course he has n't the faintest idea who I am. I got him to write out the offer, and to-night I'm going to mail it to my father,—just for glory and to down him more thoroughly. Before I left my room to-night I got a telegram from him. Here it is. Is n't he a dear?"
She unrolled the slip of yellow paper and gave it to Miss Herrick, who passed it round to the others. The girls read it eagerly.
"Our loving congratulations. Your mother and I are prouder than ever of our girl. Come home at once and show your brothers how to make a success of life."
"Is n't he fine?" repeated his daughter with conviction. "I'm going home to-morrow. I have saved enough to take me there in a new gown and with a general effect of affluence. I shall have the best accommodations all the way. It will take the very last cent I have saved, but that does n't matter. I 've won my wager and I'm content!"
She tossed the telegram into the air and caught it again with a gay laugh.
"I have no regrets over the end of my newspaper life," she added soberly, "except that I shall miss you girls—dreadfully. I 've grown very fond of you." She hurried on as if not daring to dwell on this too long. "I'm going abroad almost immediately, to be gone two years; so I shall not see you for that time, unless you run over there. My family will come next summer, as usual, and we shall travel about—I don't quite know where. Of course the work was hard and often unpleasant, but now that it's over, I don't mind that."
She folded the telegram and her face clouded at a sudden recollection.
"I don't know whether you have heard this," she said, "but it has come to me within the last day or two that a few busybodies have been saying unpleasant things about me. They 're the type who won't admit that they don't know everything. They know nothing about me, so they made up some interesting and exciting yarns and told them freely. I believe they have made me out a sort of adventuress."
Her lips curled as she spoke. Evidently she had no idea of the nature of the "interesting and exciting yarns" she mentioned. "I'm glad I did n't know about it sooner," she ended lightly. "It might have worried me. I hate to have my affairs talked over by strangers."
She rose as she spoke, but let them sweep her back into her chair amid a whirl of protestations, for another hour of excited questions, ejaculations, and plans for the future. Then they let her go, promising to see her off for the West the next day.
Left alone, her friends dropped meekly into chairs and surveyed each other, Miss Imboden with some embarrassment, Miss Herrick a little triumphantly, the others smiling in serene acceptance of the situation.
Miss Imboden spoke first, as befitted the young person who had discoursed so fluently on the same subject earlier in the evening.
"It's all delightful," she said, "and I'm heartily glad. I hope you won't set me down as a double-dyed young prig who goes about tearing her friends up by the roots in her anxiety to discover whether they are good enough for her. Do you think I should have told Alice that I have not been as—as loyal to her as she thought me?" she asked anxiously.
Miss Herrick responded promptly.
"Not for the world," said she. "This is an easy problem. I saw the deadly purpose in your eye toward the end of the evening and stopped it with an awful glare. That was emphatically the time for one of your 'brilliant flashes of silence.'"
She helped Miss Imboden into her coat and tucked in her sleeves with sisterly care.
"A certain amount of precaution is an excellent thing, little girl," she said seriously. "Theoretically you were all right. Practically you were wrong, as you now know, in this case. The rest of us felt that, because we 're older and more experienced than you. Perhaps we read human nature a little better."
A sudden thought struck her, and notwithstanding Miss Imboden's flushed cheeks she added, teasingly:—
"After all, the great question of the evening is still unsettled: To what extent can a good woman help an erring sister without being injured in the eyes of others? Think it over, Virginia dear, and let us know!"
Miss Imboden has not solved her problem yet.