A few hours later, 'Tana sat in a box at the theater; for the party she had suggested had been arranged, and pretty Miss Margaret was radiant over the evening planned for her, and 'Tana began to enjoy her role of matchmaker. She had even managed to tell Margaret, in a casual manner, that Miss Seldon's idea of a decided engagement between herself and Max had never a very solid foundation, and now had none at all. He was her good friend--that was all, and she was to leave for Italy in a month.
And Margaret went up to her and kissed her, looking at her with puzzled, admiring eyes.
"They tried at home to make me think very differently," she said. "But you are a queer girl, Miss Montana. You have told me this on purpose, and--"
"And I want to hear over in Italy that you are going to make a boy I like very happy some of these days. Remember, Margaret, you are--or will be--a millionairess, while he has not more than a comfortable income; and boys--even when they are in love--can be proud. Will you think of that?"
Margaret only blushed and turned away, but the answer was quite satisfying to 'Tana, and she felt freer because her determination had been put into words, and the last bond connecting her with the old life was to be broken. Ever since the snows had gone, some cord of her heart-string had been drawing all her thoughts to those Northern hills, and she felt the only safety was to put the ocean between them and her.
The home Mr. Seldon had offered her with his sister was a very lovely one, but to it there came each week letters about the mines and the people there. Mr. Seldon had already gone out, and would be gone all summer. As he was an enthusiast over the beauties and the returns of the country, his letters were full of material that she heard discussed each day. Therefore, the only safety for herself lay in flight; and if she did not go across the ocean to the East, she would surely grow weaker and more homesick until she would have to turn coward entirely and cross the mountains to her West.
Realizing it all, she sat in her dainty array of evening dress and watched with thoughts far away the mimic scene of love triumphant on the stage before her. When, on the painted canvas, a far-off snow-crowned mountain rose to their view, her heart seemed to creep to her throat and choke her, and when the orchestra breathed softly of the winds, music, and the twittering of birds, the tears rose to her eyes and a great longing in her heart for all the wild beauty of her Kootenai land.
Then, just as the curtain went down on the second act, some one entered their box.
"You, Harvey?" said Max, with genuine pleasure. "Good of you to look me up. Let me introduce you to my aunt and Miss Haydon. You and Miss Rivers are old acquaintances."
"Yes; and that fact alone has brought me here just now," he managed to say to Lyster. "To confess the truth, I have been to see Miss Rivers at her home this evening, having got her address from Roden, and then had the assurance to follow her here. You may be sure I would not have spoiled your evening for any trivial thing, but I come because of a woman who is dying."
"A woman who is dying?" repeated 'Tana, in wonder. "And why do you come to me?"
"She wants to see you. I think--to tell you something."
"But who is it?" asked Lyster. "Some beggar?"
"She is a beggar now at least," agreed Mr. Harvey--"a poor woman dying. She said only to tell Miss Rivers, and here is a line she sent."
He gave her a slip of paper, and on it was written:
"Come and take some word to Dan Overton for me. I am dying.
OVERTON'S WIFE."
She arose, and Margaret exclaimed at the whiteness of her face.
"Oh, my dear," sighed Miss Seldon, "you know how I warned you not to give your charities individually among the beggars of a city. It is really a mistake. They have no consideration, and will send for you at all hours if you will go. It is so much better to distribute charity through some organization."
But 'Tana was tying her opera cloak, and moving toward the entrance.
"I am going," she said. "Don't worry. Is it far, Mr. Harvey? If not, perhaps I can be back to go home with you when the curtain goes down."
"It is not far," he answered. "Will you come, Lyster?"
"No!" said 'Tana; "you stay with the others, Max. Don't look vexed. Maybe I can be of some use, and that is what I need."
Many heads turned to look at the girl whose laces were so elegant, and whose beautiful face wore such a startled, questioning expression. But she hurried out of their sight, and gave a little nervous shiver as she wrapped her white velvet cloak close about her and sank into a corner of the carriage.
"Are you cold?" Harvey asked, but she shook her head.
"No. But tell me all."
"There is not much. I was with a doctor--a friend of mine--who was called in to see her. She recognized me. It is the little variety actress who came over the Great Northern, on our train."
"Oh! But how could she know me?"
"She did not know your name; she only described you, remembering that I had talked with you and your friends. When I told her you were in the city, she begged so for you to come that I could not refuse to try."
"You did right," she answered. "But it is very strange--very strange."
Then the carriage stopped before a dingy house in a row that had once belonged to a very fashionable quarter, but that was long ago. Boarding houses they were now, and their class was about number three.
"It is a horrible place to bring you to, Miss Rivers," confessed her guide; "and I am really glad Miss Seldon did not accompany you, for she never would have forgiven either of us. But I knew you would not be afraid."
"No, I am not afraid. But, oh, why don't they hurry?"
He had to ring the bell the second time ere any one came to the door. Then, as the harsh jangle died away, steps were heard descending the stairs, and a man without a coat and with a pipe in his mouth, shot back the bolt with much grumbling.
"I'll cut the blasted wire if some one in the shebang don't tend to this door better," he growled to a lady with a mug of beer, who just then emerged from the lower regions. "Me a-trying to get the lines of that new afterpiece in my head--chock-full of business, too!--and that bell clanging forever right under my room. I'll move!"
"I wish you would," remarked Harvey, when the door opened at last. "Move a little faster when you do condescend to open the door. Come, Miss Rivers--up this way."
And the lady of the beer mug and the gentleman of the pipe stared at each other, and at the white vision of girlhood going up the dark, bad-smelling stairway.
"Well, that's a new sort in this castle," remarked the man. "Do you guess the riddle of it?"
The woman did not answer, but listened to the footsteps as they went along the hall. Then a door opened and shut.
"They've gone to Goldie's room," she said. "That's queer. Goldie ain't the sort to have very high-toned friends, so it can't be a long-lost sister," and she smiled contemptuously.
"She's a beauty, anyway, and I'm going to see her when she makes her exit, if I have to sit up all night."
"Oh! And what about the afterpiece?"
"To the devil with the afterpiece! It hasn't any angels in it."
Inside Goldie's room, a big Dutch blonde in a soiled blue wrapper sat by the bed, and stared in open-mouthed surprise at the new-comers.
"Is it you she's been askin' for?" she asked, bluntly.
But 'Tana did not reply, and Harvey got the blonde to the door, and after a few whispered words, induced her to go out altogether, and closed the door behind her.
"I thought you'd come," whispered the little woman on the bed. "I thought the note would bring you. I saw you talk to him, and I dropped to the game. You're square, too, ain't you? That's the kind I want now. That swell who went for you is the right sort, too. I minded his face and yours. But tell him to go out for a minute. It won't take long--to tell you."
Harvey went, at a motion from 'Tana. She had not uttered a word yet. All she could do was to stare in wonder at the wreck of a woman before her--a painted wreck; for, even on her deathbed, the ghastly face was tinted with rouge.
"I can't get well--doctor says," she continued. "There was a baby; it died yesterday--three hours old; and I can't get well. But there is another one I want to tell you of. You tell him. It is two years old. Here is the address. Maybe he will take care of it for me. He was good-hearted--that's why he married me; thought I was only a little girl without a home. Any woman could fool him, for he thought all women were good. He thought I was only a little girl; and I had been married three years before."
She smiled at the idea of that past deception, while 'Tana's face grew hard and white.
"How you look!" said the dying woman. "Well, it's over now. He never cared for me much, though--not so much as others did. He was never my real husband, you know, for I never had a divorce. He thought he was, though; and even after he left me, he sent me money regular for me to live quiet in 'Frisco, but it didn't suit me. Then he got turned dead against me when I tried to make him think the child was his. He wouldn't do anything for me after that; I had cheated him once too often."
"And was it?" It was the first time 'Tana had spoken, and the woman smiled.
"You care, too, do you? Well, yes, it was. You tell him so; tell him I said so, and I was dying. He'll take care of her, I think. She's pretty, but not like me. He never saw her. She's with a woman in Chicago, where I boarded. I haven't paid her board now for months, but it's all right; the woman's a good soul. Dan Overton will pay when you tell him."
"You write an order for that child, and tell the woman to give it to me," said 'Tana, decidedly, and looked around for something to write with. A sheet of paper was found, and she went to Harvey for a pencil.
"'Most ready to go?" he asked, looking at her anxiously.
She nodded her head, and shut the door.
"But I can't write now; my hands are too weak," complained the woman. "I can't."
"You've got to!" answered the girl; and, taking her in her strong young hands, she raised her up higher on the pillow. "There is the paper and pencil--now write."
"It will kill me to lay like this."
"No matter if it does; you write."
"You're not a woman at all; you're like iron--white iron," whined the other. "Any woman with a heart--" and the weak tears came in her eyes.
"No, I have no heart to be touched by you," answered the girl. "You had a chance to live a decent life, and you wouldn't take it. You had an honest man to trust you and take care of you, and you paid him with deceit. Don't expect pity from me; but write that order."
She tried to write but could not, and the girl took the pencil.
"I will write it, and you can sign it," she said; "that will do as well."
Thus it was accomplished, and the woman was again laid lower in the bed.
"You are terrible hard on--on folks that ain't just square," she said. "You needn't be so proud; you ain't dead yet yourself. You don't know what may happen to you."
"I know," said the girl, coldly, "that if I ever brought children into the world, to be thrown on strangers' hands and brought up in the streets to live your sort of life, I would expect a very practical sort of hell prepared for me. Have you anything more to tell me? I'm going."
"Oh--h! I wish you hadn't said that about hell. I'm dreadful afraid of hell," moaned the woman.
"Yes," said the girl; "you ought to be."
"How hard you are! And the doctor said I would die to-night."
Then she lay still quite a while, and when she spoke again, her voice seemed weaker.
"You have that order for Gracie, and you are so hard-hearted. I don't know what you will do--and I don't want her to grow up like me."
"That is the first womanly thing I have heard you say," replied the girl.
She went over to the bed and took the woman's hands in hers, looking at her earnestly.
"Your child shall have a beautiful and a good home," she said, reassuringly. "I am going for her myself to-morrow, and she will never lack care again. Have you any other word to give me?"
The woman shook her head, and then as 'Tana turned away, she said:
"Not unless you would kiss me. You are not like other women; but--will you kiss me?"
And, with the pressure of the dying kiss on her lips, 'Tana went out the door.
"Please give her every care money can secure for her," she said to the woman at the door; while the man, minus the pipe, was there to open it.
"Mr. Harvey, can I trouble you to look after it for me? You know the doctor and can learn all that is needed. Have the bills sent to me; and let me know when it is all--over."
They reached the theater just as the curtain went down on the last act, and she remained in the carriage until her own party came out.
"I can hardly thank you enough for coming after me to-night," she said, as she shook hands very cordially with Harvey. "You can never be a mere acquaintance to me again. You are my friend."
"Have I ignorantly done some good?" he asked, and she smiled at him.
"Yes--more than you know--more than I can tell you."
"Then may I hope not to be forgotten when you are in Italy?"
"Oh!" and the color flushed over all the pallor caught from that deathbed. "But I--I don't think I will go to Italy after all, Mr. Harvey. I have changed my mind about that, and think I will go back to the Kootenai hills instead."
