"It's too late, Miss Charlotte, but, Oh, it ain't too late for some of
the others. Luella May and Sadie Todd and the rest. Miss Charlotte, make
the Town men let 'em alone, and stop the Saturday night games and dances
down here. You can do it. Pa would kill me for saying it, for it is then
he makes his money, but it isn't fair, it isn't fair. You Town women do
the same things, but you are protected and looked after. When Grace
Payne gets drunk at your Country Club you take her home yourself and see
no harm comes to her, and the men she's with protect her from
themselves, but it's not the same with Luella May Spain and--and me."
"How did you know about Grace, Martha?" I faltered with terror in my
heart. I felt a kind of class nakedness that made me burn with positive
physical shame.
"They all watch and talk about what you do, Miss Charlotte, you
especially, because you are more beautiful and more--more strong than
the rest. They all said you'd smash our going to the church meetings
with the Town folks at the Country Club when you got home. But I always
stand up that you are right and you are. The Town on the hill and the
Settlement in the valley are better--better apart. That's why I'm
begging you to go and leave me to fight it out or go under. Please go!"
"Oh, but, Martha, I didn't--I don't--" I was beginning to falter a
denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were
interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards
found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of his
relation to the social structure of the world into which he had
involuntarily been born.
"Bottom of the well, northeast corner," he said, as he set a bucket of
water at my feet with a jolt that dashed a small wave over my white
buckskins, and he held out a dipper full to me with a little twirling
motion that sent another wave on my skirt and which had an unmistakably
professional knack to it. I have seen old Wilks set down beer steins and
cocktail glasses with exactly that twirl ever since he has officiated at
the lockers and sideboard at the Club, and I now know that his motions
had the latest Last Chance style to them. Thus, by gossamer links and
steel cable, the Town and the Settlement seemed to be held together.
"Excuse me for spilling the water on you," added the young scion of the
bartender with grave courtesy, as he held a very dirty little paddie
under the drip of the dipper and elevated the drink for me in such a way
that I had to steady the small hand that held the handle with mine as I
drank.