POLLY PENDLETON’S VISITOR

THE cynically smiling driver of Haddon’s car at a late hour that morning deposited a solitary passenger at the door of a certain apartment building high up on Manhattan Island. Seeing the bewilderment of his charge, the chauffeur himself entered the elevator with him and touched as with no unaccustomed hand a certain button near a door. He then discreetly departed.

The door opened. There appeared almost in the face of the waiting visitor the figure of a young woman—exceedingly comely even at that hour of the day—a young woman of oval face, of dark, long-lashed eyes, of dark curling hair, of shapeliness of figure scantly veiled by the pink kimono which she wore in morning negligÉe.

It was Polly Pendleton. She was alone. Her praiseworthy partner had before this arisen for her morning cocktail, her morning coffee, her morning cigarette, and her morning stroll downtown.

Joslin stood motionless, silent. In a flash she recognized him. Then he stalked in.

“Well!” said she. “I wasn’t expecting anyone this morning.” She flushed, half angry. “I don’t allow this.”

“My name is Joslin—David Joslin,” began her visitor. “Ye don’t remember me—last night——”

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Polly. “Of course I do. You wore the same clothes then you’re wearing now.”

“They’re the only ones I have,” said the young man, “an’ they’re not mine. I don’t reckon ye want me to come in?”

“Why, yes,” said she, for one half instant hesitant, and closed the door. “Why not, after all?”

He looked about him curiously at the narrow quarters. So, then, this was her home! These were her belongings—the half-emptied glasses on the little buffet, the ashes in a tray, the powder puff, pink-stained, on the dresser-top, the manicure nail pad, the little burnt cork on a hairpin’s end.

“Won’t you sit down?” began Polly Pendleton, more flustered than she had ever been in all her life. “Will you have a little drink?”

He looked at her in astonishment “Surely ye ain’t meanin’ that ye’d take a drink of liquor, Ma’am?” said he.

“Well,” said Polly Pendleton, with a moue, “once in a long while—in case I’m not feeling well, you know! How about yourself? You look rocky.”

He looked in grave contemplation at the half-filled bottle upon the tiny buffet—the glasses which had seen use.

“Ma’am,” said he, “sometimes in my country a man takes a drink of liquor. Sometimes a woman smokes a pipe. But I don’t think I’ll take no drink this mornin’. It ain’t my usual custom.”

Polly seated herself in a deep-cushioned armchair near the window, her half-consumed cigarette still between her fingers. A pleasing enough picture she presented, as, half leaning forward, she sat staring curiously at this apparition of the morning.

“You’re an odd sort!” said she, at length, flinging up a hand nervously. “Well, I’ve not got down to the pipe yet.”

“Say, friend,” she went on suddenly, half apologetically, “I was talking to my partner last night. She said that she thought our act rather broke you up. Of course you know it was all joshing—nothing more. That’s the way we do at those dinner parties—they sort of expect it of us girls, you know. There’s nothing in it, of course. I hope you didn’t mind it?”

“No,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mind. The ways of sin are allurin’, Ma’am.”

“What’s that!” But then she spread out her hands. An awkward silence fell.

The eyes of David Joslin, roaming around the little apartment, spied Polly’s violin resting upon the dresser-top.

“Ye play the violin, Ma’am,” said he. “Ye’re the first womern I ever knew in all my life who could. I reckon ye studied?”

“Years,” said she simply. “It cost me a lot of money—and at that they don’t like the best things I do. You can play?”—eagerly.

“Only a few of the mounting tunes—ballets such as our folks teached us years ago.”

“Ballads? You mean the folk songs?”

“Maybe. I could play ‘Barbara Allen.’ They tolt me it was Scotch.”

“The Scotch have pretty melodies sometimes,” said Polly Pendleton judicially. Then she smiled frankly. “You see, I’m half Irish myself—and half French.”

“What?” David Joslin sat up suddenly and looked at her straight. “Ma’am, my own granny was half Irish and half French. There wasn’t nuvver a womern in all the mountings like her. That maybe accounts fer a heap of things. My granny loves to sing and dance. She’s over ninety year old.”

The unweighed flattery of his tone was a thing to be valued. She extended to him the instrument and bow.

“Play for me,” said she. “Play ‘Barbara Allen.’ Do something for me this morning!”

So David Joslin, student of Calvin, Cumberland mountaineer, self-elected minister—and as he now fully felt, lost soul—thus cast away in a buffet flat of upper Manhattan, played the old ballad of “Barbara Allen” to one of the gayest young persons at that time in the great city. He played it in minors, bowing very badly, missing the key sometimes a half-note or so, slurring here, over-accentuating there, phrasing after his own quaint mountain fashion, but none the less producing something which might have been called a melody. Polly’s foot began to beat upon the floor, her fingers upon the arm of the chair.

“Man!” said she, after he had finished, “if I could take you into vaudeville, we’d break this country! That’s class!”

“It’s not much,” said he, misunderstanding. “I nuvver had no lessons. I’ve nuvver been to school in all my life, an’ I nuvver seen a music book in all my life—I reckon that’s music ye got over thar?” He nodded towards the sheets which he saw standing in their rack.

“You’re an odd chap,” said she, with a strange softness in her tone. “I’ve never seen a man like you—never in all my life. You’re a strange chap. What brought you here?”

“I come out, Ma’am, to build a college fer my people. I come out to git my education. I come up here with Mr. Haddon, jest to talk to a few friends of his’n about timber an’ oil, ye know.”

“Jimmy Haddon, eh?” Polly’s lips set rather tight together. “Well, he’s a good business man. You have to hand him that. But say—keep an eye on him, that’s all. Listen here, son—you’re what we call ‘easy’ in the city. You don’t belong here—you’re too straight—you’re too good for it.”

“What do ye mean?” said he. “Too good! I’m the wustest of sinners. But if I accepted sin—say, if I made a lot of money—several hundred dollars a month—an’ had it clear—would ye tell me to throw that over an’ go back home?”

The dark eyes of Polly Pendleton looked straight into his face now.

“There’s a lot of things a girl can understand without explaining very much,” said she, simply. She saw the rising somber flame in this man’s eyes that met her own so straight. And then, suddenly, he broke out, all restraints gone.

“Last night ye touched me—it was in a joke—ye was makin’ me foolish. Ye don’t know how foolish ye made me then. Ye took away my brains. Ye got my soul. God!”

“I don’t want you to talk that way to me!” flashed Polly, swift tears in her eyes. “No, no—don’t—don’t! It wasn’t right for me to make fun of you—I ought to have known you were different. I came home last night, and I talked about you to my partner. Somehow, I don’t know why, you seem like a preacher to me. Besides, once in a while a woman sees something in a real man that gets close to her.”

She rose now and spread out her arms, a very beautiful vision of young womanhood, a sort of fair frailness about her after all, in spite of her eager vitality and her overflowing joy in life.

“Why, listen,” said she. “I know about men. You needn’t make any map to explain anything more to me. You’d be foolish, you’d be crazy; and I’ll not have it. I’m not good enough for you. You mustn’t stay here. You mustn’t be foolish over a girl like me—I’m not worth it. I’m—I’m notgood!” She slurred the last two words hurriedly together. “Get on out of here before you’re spoiled.”

Her voice trembled. “The city will get you, some time. It’s got me. It’s got my partner. We’re gone. Lost souls! You? Oh, don’t, don’t! You haven’t gone the gait that we have. Listen to me now—I think enough of a good square chap not to want to see him go the wrong way. Can’t you see that a dancing girl can be a good pal after all? I’m trying to help you.”

“Easy!” said he, his voice trembling in his own self-scorn. “I had nothin’, only what ye taken away from me.”

“Take some of this, won’t you?” said Polly Pendleton, her doubled hands full of bills which she held out to him, her dark eyes shining. “Here, take it. Do something with it. You wouldn’t call that tainted money, would you?... It isn’t tainted yet. Look!”

But he put back her hands. “No,” said he. “My God! No! From ye?”

He hurt her, because she wholly mistook his real meaning. Her face fell, but she shook her head bravely, like a fighter taking a blow in the ring.

“Ye never cared,” he added; “ye don’t feel—ye don’t care.” The low notes of his voice rumbled through the little room.

An odd feeling of helplessness seized her all at once. “It’s a good thing for you, I don’t,” said she at length. “Don’t I know men are fools enough without making another fool to add to the list? If I cared—good God, if I cared! Why, I don’t dare care for anybody. Now, don’t you think you’d better be going?”

She had his hat in her hand, and was replacing the violin and bow.

He rose and stood before her, his hands clenched tight, his eyes still burning, his voice vibrant.

“Ma’am,” said he, “I nuvver seen ye but once. Maybe I nuvver will agin. But I’ll al-waysremember what ye said to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was hopin’ ye’d say it would be a good piece of business fer me to stay here this winter fer a while. I was hopin’ I could see ye an’ hear ye play some time, now an’ then. I was hopin’—I was hopin’ what I ortern’t to hope. Ma’am, I nuvver seen no womern like ye in all my life. I reckon I nuvver will agin.”

“Well,” said Polly Pendleton, at length having herself in hand, “you’ve got none the best of me at that—I’ve seen a considerable many fools in my time, but you’re the human limit, son! The best thing I can do is to tie a can to you and get you started West as soon as possible. You’ll spoil over night. You ain’t strictly human. You’re the worst Rube that ever hit this island from any place on earth. Get out now—you’re liable to be arrested any minute!

“And yet,” she added—still laughing kindly, and all the half-virginal softness of her original nature coming into the wistfulness of her tone—“I’m so glad you came! You’re a good sort.” She held out her hand. “Listen, friend—when you think of me I hope you’ll say I was a good sort too.”

He reached out his arms, his hands trembling. “Ma’am,” said he, “I’m a married man. I had two children, onct. My father was a preacher. Ye was right, I’m startin’ out to be a preacher myself. I was startin’ out to do something in the world to hep the rest of them. But if ye hadn’t said what ye said jest now to me, I’d be willin’ to throw it all away for jest—for jest—for jest——”

How, he knew not, nor she, he caught her arms, soft and white, in the grip of his great hands, and stood looking down at her fiercely, she as helpless as a child in his grasp.

She was struggling to escape him now. “It’s not right!” said she. “I’m alone here—Oh, are you any kind of a man after all?”

At this he dropped her arms, his own falling lax.

“Why, of course I’m a man,” said he quietly. “Of course I am. That’s all I am. I’m a lost man, a damned one.”

“Go!” she whispered to him hoarsely. “I’m not worth that. Go on away, and leave me something decent to remember.” She heard the door close softly.

Within half an hour after Joslin had left, Polly Pendleton, unfinished cigarette in hand, turned in her cushioned armchair as she heard the strident call of the telephone.

“Yes?” she replied. “Who is it, please?... You, Jimmy?... No, don’t come up. I’m awfully busy to-day.... I’ve got to work.

“Who?—the wild man?... Keep him?... Ask him to stay here this winter? I should say not! I told him to get out of town!

“Oh, come now, Jimmy,” she went on in rejoinder to what she evidently heard. “There’s no use talking that way.... Oh, you’re sore? Well, I can’t help it. I wouldn’t have done any different even if you had told me what you wanted.... You don’t care if I never come back? Oh, very well—same to you, and many of ‘em!... So long, Jimmy, and when you get decent come up. I may let you in, and then again maybe not.”