George lived with his mother after Henriette had left his home. He was wretchedly unhappy and lonely. He could find no interest in any of the things which had pleased him before. He was ashamed to meet any of his friends, because he imagined that everyone must have heard the dreadful story—or because he was not equal to making up explanations for his mournful state. He no longer cared much about his work. What was the use of making a reputation or earning large fees when one had nothing to spend them for? All his thoughts were fixed upon the wife and child he had lost. He was reminded of Henriette in a thousand ways, and each way brought him a separate pang of grief. He had never realized how much he had come to depend upon her in every little thing—until now, when her companionship was withdrawn from him, and everything seemed to be a blank. He would come home at night, and opposite to him at the dinner-table would be his mother, silent and spectral. How different from the days when Henriette was there, radiant and merry, eager to be told everything that had happened to him through the day!
There was also his worry about little Gervaise. He might no longer hear how she was doing, for he could not get up courage to ask his mother the news. Thus poor George was paying for his sins. He could make no complaints against the price, however high—only sometimes he wondered whether he would be able to pay it. There were times of such discouragement that he thought of different ways of killing himself.
A curious adventure befell him during this period. He was walking one day in the park, when he saw approaching a girl whose face struck him as familiar. At first he could not recollect where he had seen her. It was only when she was nearly opposite him that he realized—it was the girl who had been the cause of all his misery!
He tried to look away, but he was too late. Her eyes had caught his, and she nodded and then stopped, exclaiming, “Why, how do you do?”
George had to face her. “How do you do?” he responded, weakly.
She held out her hand and he had to take it, but there was not much welcome in his clasp. “Where have you been keeping yourself?” she asked. Then, as he hesitated, she laughed good-naturedly, “What’s the matter? You don’t seem glad to see me.”
The girl—Therese was her name—had a little package under her arm, as if she had been shopping. She was not well dressed, as when George had met her before, and doubtless she thought that was the reason for his lack of cordiality. This made him rather ashamed, and so, only half realizing what he was doing, he began to stroll along with her.
“Why did you never come to see me again?” she asked.
George hesitated. “I—I—” he stammered—“I’ve been married since then.”
She laughed. “Oh! So that’s it!” And then, as they came to a bench under some trees, “Won’t you sit down a while?” There was allurement in her glance, but it made George shudder. It was incredible to him that he had ever been attracted by this crude girl. The spell was now broken completely.
She quickly saw that something was wrong. “You don’t seem very cheerful,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
And the man, staring at her, suddenly blurted out, “Don’t you know what you did to me?”
“What I did to you?” Therese repeated wonderingly.
“You must know!” he insisted.
And then she tried to meet his gaze and could not. “Why—” she stammered.
There was silence between them. When George spoke again his voice was low and trembling. “You ruined my whole life,” he said—“not only mine, but my family’s. How could you do it?”
She strove to laugh it off. “A cheerful topic for an afternoon stroll!”
For a long while George did not answer. Then, almost in a whisper, he repeated, “How could you do it?”
“Some one did it to me first,” was the response. “A man!”
“Yes,” said George, “but he didn’t know.”
“How can you tell whether he knew or not?”
“You knew?” he inquired, wonderingly.
Therese hesitated. “Yes, I knew,” she said at last, defiantly. “I have known for years.”
“And I’m not the only man.”
She laughed. “I guess not!”
There followed a long pause. At last he resumed, “I don’t want to blame you; there’s nothing to be gained by that; it’s done, and can’t be undone. But sometimes I wonder about it. I should like to understand—why did you do it?”
“Why? That’s easy enough. I did it because I have to live.”
“You live that way?” he exclaimed.
“Why of course. What did you think?”
“I thought you were a—a—” He hesitated.
“You thought I was respectable,” laughed Therese. “Well, that’s just a little game I was playing on you.”
“But I didn’t give you any money!” he argued.
“Not that time,” she said, “but I thought you would come back.”
He sat gazing at her. “And you earn your living that way still?” he asked. “When you know what’s the matter with you! When you know—”
“What can I do? I have to live, don’t I?”
“But don’t you even take care of yourself? Surely there must be some way, some place—”
“The reformatory, perhaps,” she sneered. “No, thanks! I’ll go there when the police catch me, not before. I know some girls that have tried that.”
“But aren’t you afraid?” cried the man. “And the things that will happen to you! Have you ever talked to a doctor—or read a book?”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it all. If it comes to me, I’ll go over the side of one of the bridges some dark night.”
George sat lost in thought. A strange adventure it seemed to him—to meet this girl under such different circumstances! It was as if he were watching a play from behind the scenes instead of in front. If only he had had this new view in time—how different would have been his life! And how terrible it was to think of the others who didn’t know—the audience who were still sitting out in front, watching the spectacle, interested in it!
His thoughts came back to Therese. He was curious about her and the life she lived. “Tell me a little about it,” he said. “How you came to be doing this.” And he added, “Don’t think I want to preach; I’d really like to understand.”
“Oh, it’s a common story,” she said—“nothing especially romantic. I came to Paris when I was a girl. My parents had died, and I had no friends, and I didn’t know what to do. I got a place as a nursemaid. I was seventeen years old then, and I didn’t know anything. I believed what I was told, and I believed my employer. His wife was ill in a hospital, and he said he wanted to marry me when she died. Well, I liked him, and I was sorry for him—and then the first thing I knew I had a baby. And then the wife came back, and I was turned off. I had been a fool, of course. If I had been in her place should have done just what she did.”
The girl was speaking in a cold, matter-of-fact voice, as of things about which she was no longer able to suffer. “So, there I was—on the street,” she went on. “You have always had money, a comfortable home, education, friends to help you—all that. You can’t imagine how it is to be in the world without any of these things. I lived on my savings as long as I could; then I had to leave my baby in a foundling’s home, and I went out to do my five hours on the boulevards. You know the game, I have no doubt.”
Yes, George knew the game. Somehow or other he no longer felt bitter towards this poor creature. She was part of the system of which he was a victim also. There was nothing to be gained by hating each other. Just as the doctor said, what was needed was enlightenment. “Listen,” he said, “why don’t you try to get cured?”
“I haven’t got the price,” was the answer.
“Well,” he said, hesitatingly, “I know a doctor—one of the really good men. He has a free clinic, and I’ve no doubt he would take you in if I asked him to.”
“YOU ask him?” echoed the other, looking at George in surprise.
The young man felt somewhat uncomfortable. He was not used to playing the role of the good Samaritan. “I—I need not tell him about us,” he stammered. “I could just say that I met you. I have had such a wretched time myself, I feel sorry for anybody that’s in the same plight. I should like to help you if I could.”
The girl sat staring before her, lost in thought. “I have treated you badly, I guess,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m ashamed of myself.”
George took a pencil and paper from his pocket and wrote the doctor’s address. “Here it is,” he said, in a business-like way, because he felt that otherwise he could become sentimental. He was half tempted to tell the woman what had happened to him, and all about Henriette and the sick child; but he realized that that would not do. So he rose and shook hands with her and left.
The next time he saw the doctor he told him about this girl. He decided to tell him the truth—having already made so many mistakes trying to conceal things. The doctor agreed to treat the woman, making the condition that George promise not to see her again.
The young man was rather shocked at this. “Doctor,” he exclaimed, “I assure you you are mistaken. The thing you have in mind would be utterly impossible.”
“I know,” said the other, “you think so. But I think, young man, that I know more about life than you do. When a man and a woman have once committed such a sin, it is easy for them to slip back. The less time they spend talking about their misfortunes, and being generous and forbearing to each other, the better for them both.”
“But, Doctor,” cried George. “I love Henriette! I could not possibly love anyone else. It would be horrible to me!”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But you are not living with Henriette. You are wandering round, not knowing what to do with yourself next.”
There was no need for anybody to tell George that. “What do you think?” he asked abruptly. “Is there any hope for me?”
“I think there is,” said the other, who, in spite of his resolution, had become a sort of ambassador for the unhappy husband. He had to go to the Loches house to attend the child, and so he could not help seeing Henriette, and talking to her about the child’s health and her own future. He considered that George had had his lesson, and urged upon the young wife that he would be wiser in future, and safe to trust.
George had indeed learned much. He got new lessons every time he went to call at the physician’s office—he could read them in the faces of the people he saw there. One day when he was alone in the waiting-room, the doctor came out of his inner office, talking to an elderly gentleman, whom George recognized as the father of one of his classmates at college. The father was a little shopkeeper, and the young man remembered how pathetically proud he had been of his son. Could it be, thought George, that this old man was a victim of syphilis?
But it was the son, and not the father, who was the subject of the consultation. The old man was speaking in a deeply moved voice, and he stood so that George could not help hearing what he said. “Perhaps you can’t understand,” he said, “just what it means to us—the hopes we had of that boy! Such a fine fellow he was, and a good fellow, too, sir! We were so proud of him; we had bled our veins to keep him in college—and now just see!”
“Don’t despair, sir,” said the doctor, “we’ll try to cure him.” And he added with that same note of sorrow in his voice which George had heard, “Why did you wait so long before you brought the boy to me?”
“How was I to know what he had?” cried the other. “He didn’t dare tell me, sir—he was afraid of my scolding him. And in the meantime the disease was running its course. When he realized that he had it, he went secretly to one of the quacks, who robbed him, and didn’t cure him. You know how it is, sir.”
“Yes, I know,” said the doctor.
“Such things ought not to be permitted,” cried the old man. “What is our government about that it allows such things to go on? Take the conditions there at the college where my poor boy was ruined. At the very gates of the building these women are waiting for the lads! Ought they to be permitted to debauch young boys only fifteen years old? Haven’t we got police enough to prevent a thing like that? Tell me, sir!”
“One would think so,” said the doctor, patiently.
“But is it that the police don’t want to?”
“No doubt they have the same excuse as all the rest—they don’t know. Take courage, sir; we have cured worse cases than your son’s. And some day, perhaps, we shall be able to change these conditions.”
So he went on with the man, leaving George with something to think about. How much he could have told them about what had happened to that young fellow when only fifteen years old! It had not been altogether the fault of the women who were lurking outside of the college gates; it was a fact that the boy’s classmates had teased him and ridiculed him, had literally made his life a torment, until he had yielded to temptation.
It was the old, old story of ignorant and unguided schoolboys all over the world! They thought that to be chaste was to be weak and foolish; that a............