People Like That

One of the advantages of being an unrequired person of twenty-six, with an income sufficient for necessities, is the right of choice as to a home locality. I am that sort of person, and, having exercised said right, I am now living in Scarborough Square.

To my friends and relatives it is amazing, inexplicable, and beyond understanding that I should wish to live here. I do not try to make them understand; and therein lies grievance against me. Because of my failure to explain what they are pleased to call a peculiar decision on my part, I am at present the subject of heated criticism. It will soon stop. What a person does or doesn't do is of little importance to more than three or four people. By Christmas my foolishness will have ceased to cause comment, ceased to interest those to whom it doesn't matter really where or how I live.

I like living in Scarborough Square very much. After many years spent in the homes of others I am now the head of half a house, the whole of which is mine; and even though it is situated on the last square of respectability in a part of the town long forgotten by the descendants of its former residents, I am filled with a sense of proprietorship that is warm and comforting, and already I have learned to love it-this nice, old-fashioned house in which I live.

Until very recently Scarborough Square was only a name. There had been no reason to visit it, and had I ventured to it I would have seen little save a tiny park bounded on four sides by houses of shabby gentility, for the most part detached, and of a style of architecture long since surrendered to more undesirable designs. The park is but an open space whose straggly trees and stunted shrubs and dusty grass add dejection to the atmosphere of shrinking respectability which the neighborhood still makes effort to maintain; but that, too, I have learned to love, for I see in it that which I never noticed in the large and handsome parks up-town.

As a place of residence this section of the city I am just beginning to know has become very interesting to me. No one of importance lives near it, and the occupants of its houses, realizing their social submergence and pecuniary impotence, have too long existed in the protection of obscurity to venture into the publicity which civic attention necessitates, and on first acquaintance it is not attractive. I agree with my friends in that. I did not come here because I thought it was an attractive place in which to live.

They cannot say, however, even my most protesting friends, that I am not living in a perfectly proper neighborhood. The front of my house faces, beyond the discouraged little park, a strata of streets which unfold from lessening degrees of dreariness and dinginess to ever-increasing expensiveness and unashamed architectural extravaganzas, to the summit of residential striving, called, for impressiveness, the Avenue, but behind it is a section of the city of which I am as ignorant as if it were in the depths of the sea or the wilds of primeval forest. I have traveled much, but I do not know the city wherein I live. I know but a part of it, the pretty part.

There was something Mrs. Mundy wanted to say to me to-night, and did not say. I love the dear soul. I could not live here without her, could not learn what I am learning without her help and sympathy and loyalty, but at times I wish she were a bit less fond of chatting. She is greatly puzzled. She, too, cannot understand why I have come to Scarborough Square to live, and I am quite certain she thinks it strange I do not tell her. How can I tell that of which I am not sure myself-that is, clearly and definitely sure?

I am not trying to be sure. It is enough that I am here, free to come and go as I choose, to plan my day as I wish, to have time for the things I once had no time for, and why must there always be explanations and reasons and justifications for one's acts? The daily realization each morning, on awaking, that the day is mine, that there are no customs with which to comply, no regulations to follow, no conventions to be conformed to, at the end of two weeks still stirs and thrills and awes me a little, and I am constantly afraid it is not true that I am here to stay. And then again with something of fear and shrinking and uncertainty I realize my bridges are burned and I must stay.

"It's pleased you are with your rooms, I hope, Miss Dandridge?" Hands on her hips, Mrs. Mundy had looked somewhat anxiously at me before going out. "If it's a home-looking place you're after, you've got it, but when you first come down to Scarborough Square it made me feel queer inside to think of your living here, really living. If you think you can be satisfied-"

"I am sure I can be satisfied. Why not?" I smiled and, going over to the window, straightened the curtain which had caught and twisted a fern-leaf growing in its box. "I am a perfectly unincumbered human being who-"

"But an unincumbered woman ain't much of a human being." Mrs. Mundy dropped the afternoon paper she had brought up and stooped to get it. "I mean a woman is made for incumbrances, and if she don't have any-" She hesitated, and looked around the room with its simple furnishings, its firelight and lamplight, its many books and few pictures, its rugs and desk and tables, the gifts of other days, and presently she spoke again. "Being you like so to look out the windows, it's well this house has two front rooms opening into each other. If it's comfortable and convenient that you want to be, you're certainly that, but comforts and conveniences don't keep you company exactly."

"I don't want company yet. You and Bettina are all I need. I haven't said I was to live here a thousand years, or that I wouldn't get tired of myself in less time, but until I do-"

There was a ring at the front-door bell and Mrs. Mundy went to answer it. The puzzled look I often saw in her eyes when talking to me still filled them, but she said nothing more except good night, and when I heard her footsteps in the hall below I went to the door and locked it. This new privacy, this sense of freedom from unescapable interruption, was still so precious, that though an unnecessary precaution, I turned the key that I might feel perfectly sure of quiet hours ahead, and at my sigh of satisfaction I laughed.

Going into my bedroom, which adjoined my sitting-room, I hung in the closet the coat I had left on a chair, put away my hat and gloves, and again looked around, as if they were still strange-the white bed and bureau, the wash-rugs, the muslin curtains, the many contrasts to former furnishings-and again I sighed contentedly. They were mine.

The house I am now living in is indeed an old-fashioned one, but well built and of admirable design. The rooms are few-only eight in all-and four of them I have taken for myself-the upper four. The lower floor is occupied by Mrs. Mundy and Bettina, her little granddaughter. When I first saw the house its condition was discouraging. Not for some time had it been occupied, and repairs of all kinds were needed. To get it in order gave me strange joy, and the weeks in which it was being painted and papered and beautified with modern necessities were of an interest only a person, a woman person, can feel who has never had a home of her own before. When everything was finished, the furnishings in place, and I established, I knew, what I no longer made effort to deny to myself-that I was doing a daring thing. I was taking chances in a venture I was still afraid to face.

Kitty came to see me yesterday. Her mortification at my living in Scarborough Square is poignant. Not since she learned of my doing so has her amazement, her incredulity, her indignation and resentment, lessened in the least, but her curiosity is great and her affection sincere, and yesterday she yielded to both.

She was on her wedding journey when I left the house in which for many years we had lived together, and, knowing it would spoil her trip did I tell of what I had done, I did not tell. Two days ago she got back, and over the telephone I gave her my new address.

"But I can't understand-" During most of her visit Kitty was crying. She cries easily and well. "I can't take it in, can't even glimpse why you want to live in such a horrid old place. It's awful!"

"Oh no, it isn't. It's a very nice place. Look how the sun comes through those little panes of glass in those deep windows and chirps all over the floor. I never knew before how much company sunshine could be; how many different things it could do, until I came to Scarborough Square. This is a very interesting place, Kitty."

"It's fearful!" Kitty shuddered. "The sun shines much better on the Avenue, and you might as well be dead as live in this part of the town. When people ask me where you are I'm-"

"Ashamed to tell them?" I laughed. "Don't tell them, if the telling mortifies you. Those who object to visiting me in my new home will soon forget I'm living. Those to whom it does not matter where I live will find where I am without asking you. I wouldn't bother."

"But what must I say when people ask me why you've come down here? why you've made this awful change from living among the best people to living among these-I don't know what they are. Nobody knows."

"They are perfectly good people." I took a pin out of Kitty's hat and tried the latter at a different angle. "The man on the corner is named Crimm. He's a policeman. The girl next door makes cigarettes, and her friend around the corner works at the Nottingham Overall factory. The cigarette-girl has a beau who walks home with her every evening. He's delicate and can't take a job indoors. Just at present he's an assistant to the keeper of Cherry Hill Park."

Kitty stared at me as if not sure she heard aright. The tears in her big blue eyes disappeared and into them came incredulity. "Do you know them-the cigarette-girl, and the overall-girl, and the policeman?" Her voice was thin with dismay and unbelief. "Do you really know people like that?"

"I do." I laughed in the puzzled and protesting face, kissed it. "To every sort of people other people not of their sort are 'people like that.' Our customs and characteristics and habits of thought and manner of life separate us into our particular groups, but in many ways all people are dreadfully alike, Kitty. To the little cigarette-girl you're a 'person like that.' Did you ever wonder what she thought of you?"

"Why should I wonder? It doesn't matter what she thinks. I don't know her, never will know her. I can't understand why you want to know her, to know people who-"

"I want to know all sorts of people." Again I tilted Kitty's hat, held her off so as to get a better effect. "You see, I've wondered sometimes what they thought of us-these people who haven't had our chance. Points of view always interest me."

"What difference does it make what they think? You're the queerest person I've ever known! You aren't very religious. You never did go to church as much as I did. Are you going in for slums?"

"I am not. I wouldn't be a success at slumming. I'm not going in for anything except-"

"Except what?"

"My dear Kitty," I picked up the handkerchief she had dropped and put it on the table, "I wouldn't try to understand, if I were you, why people do things. Usually it's because they have to, or because they want to, and occasionally there are other reasons. I used to wonder, for instance, why certain people married each other. Often now, as I watch husbands and wives together, I still wonder if, unmarried, they would select each other again. I suppose you went to the Bertrands' dinner-dance last night?"

"I went, but I wish I hadn't. Billy didn't want to go, and we came away as soon as we could. Everybody asked about you. I haven't seen any one yet who doesn't think it very strange that you won't live with me. That beautiful little Marie Antoinette suite on the third floor is all fixed for you, and you could use the automobiles as much as you choose. It's wicked and cruel in you to do like this and not live with me. It looks so-"

"Peculiar." I nodded in the eyes as blue as a baby's. "But a person who isn't peculiar isn't much of a person. You see, I don't care for things which are already fixed for me. I like to do my own fixing. And I don't want to live in anybody else's home, not even yours, though you are dear to want me. I am grateful, but I prefer to live here. My present income would make an undignified affair of life among the friends of other days. I'd feel continually as if I were overboard and holding on to a slippery plank. Down here I'm independent. I have enough for my needs and something to give-. That's a good-looking hat you have on. Did you get it in Paris?"

Kitty shook her head. "New York." Otherwise she ignored my question. Hats usually interested her. She talked well concerning them, but to-day she would not be diverted from more insistent subjects.

"It must have cost a good deal to fix up this old house. Anywhere else it would look very well." Her eyes were missing no detail. "You'd make a pig-sty pretty, but it takes money-"

"Everything takes money. I sold two or three pieces of Aunt Matilda's jewelry for enough to put the house in order. She expected me to sell what I did not wish to keep. In her will was a note to that effect."

"She had more jewelry than any human being I ever saw." Into Kitty's face came dawning understanding. "It was the only way she could leave you any of-"

"Your father's money," I nodded. "Not until after her death did I understand why she used to take all of your father's gifts in jewelry. I know now."

"It was a good investment. I wish she'd bought twice as much. She had so little else to leave you," Kitty was looking at me speculatively. "How on earth are you going to live on a thousand dollars a year? Our servants cost us twice that. Billy says it's awful, but-"

"It is if you can't afford it. You can. I believe all people ought to spend every dollar they can afford, and not a cent they can't. That's what I do. Aunt Matilda thought I was impractical, but I'm fearfully prudent. I live within my income and I've deposited with a trust company, so I can't spend it, a sum of money quite large enough to care for me through a spell of illness in the greediest of hospitals, if I should be ill. And if I should die I'm prepared for all expenses. It's a mistake to think I don't look ahead. I thought once of having a stone put up in the cemetery so as to be sure I had not forgotten anything, but I guess that can wait."

Kitty, still staring at me, got up. "I never expect to understand you. Neither does father. He's mortified to death about your coming down here to live. He knows people are talking; so do I; and we don't know what to say."

"Oh, people always talk! And don't say anything. No one escapes criticism. It's human pastime to indulge in it. To prefer Scarborough Square to the Avenue may be queer, but at present I do prefer it. That's why I'm here. You can say that if you choose."

"You've got no business preferring it." Kitty snapped the buttons of her glove with tearful emphasis. "Mrs. Jamieson said last night that a person with eyes and eyelashes like yours had no right to live as you are living, with just an old woman to do things for you. She came down to see why you were here, but you wouldn't tell her. She can't understand any more than I can."

I kissed Kitty good-by, but I did not try to make her understand. I no longer try to make people understand things. Many of them can't. Kitty is a dear child, adorably blue-eyed and pink-cheeked, and possessed of an amount of worldly wisdom that is always amazing and at times distressing, but much that interests me has, so far, never interested her. Refusing to study, she has little education, but she has traveled a good deal, speaks excellent French, dances perfectly, dresses admirably, and has charming manners when she wishes. I love her very much, but I no longer feel it is my duty to live with her.

I am not living in Scarborough Square because I feel it is my duty to live here. Thank Heaven, I don't have to tell any one why I am here!

Kitty's mother had been dead only a year when Aunt Matilda, who had adopted me several years earlier on the death of my parents, married her father. I was twelve and Kitty eight when the marriage took place, and with canny care I tried to shield her from the severity of Aunt Matilda's system in rearing a child. I had been reared by it.

I owe much to Aunt Matilda. She sent me to good schools, to a good college; took me with her on most of her trips abroad, and at twenty presented me to society, but she never knew me, never in the least understood the hunger in my heart for what it was not in her power to give. I never told her there was hunger in my heart. I rarely told her of anything she could not see for herself.

In childhood I had learned the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, too, she failed to understand.

That I would not marry as she wished was a grievous blow to her. I had no desire to marry, and it was when refusing to do so that certain realizations came to me sharply, and all the more acutely, because I had so long been seemingly indifferent to them. On the morning following the night in which I had faced frankly undeniable facts I went to Aunt Matilda's room and told her I could no longer be dependent, told her of my purpose to earn my own living. I was strong, healthy, well educated. There was no reason why I should not do what other women were doing.

As I talked her amazement and indignation deepened into anger, and had I been a child I "would undoubtedly have been punished for my impertinence and audacity in daring to desire to go out into the world to earn what there was no necessity for my earning. Socially, a woman could be autocratic, I was told, but in all things else she should be dependent on the stronger sex.

"But there is no stronger-sex person for me to be dependent upon, even were I willing to depend," I said, and made effort to keep back what I must not say to her, but surely would have said to others. For years I had been the recipient of her bounty, the object of her care, and she still thought of me as something to be protected. That I should prefer to work, prefer to take my place in the world of women-workers, was beyond her grasp.

"Mr. Chesmond understood when I married him-it is part of our marriage contract-that you were to have the same advantages as his daughter. He has very willingly given you these. If you no longer care to accept his protection, you can marry. Opportunities such as come to few girls have come to you. A home of your own is yours for the taking. In my day-"

"But this is not your day!" I bit my lip. When Aunt Matilda's face got a certain shade of red and her breath became short and quick, I was uneasy. The doctor had warned us of the seriousness of her condition. She was pitifully afraid of death-it was the only thing she was afraid of-and death might come at any time. To prevent excitement there must be with her no discussion, and, as far as possible, no opposition to her will.

"Your day and mine are very far apart." I made effort to speak quietly. "Women no longer have to be adjuncts to men because they don't know how to be anything else. They can stand up now by themselves. Conditions have forced them to face life much more-"

"Face fiddlesticks!" Aunt Matilda's hands made an impatient gesture. "Women have no business doing what many of them are doing today. They are forgetting the place to which they were appointed by their Creator. But even if you were at liberty to carry out your silly ideas, what could you do? How could you earn your living? You play well, paint a little, read books that do you no good, and hardly enough of the new novels to discuss them. All this sociological stuff, those scientific things I see in your room, are absurd for a woman to bother with. Men dislike women who think too much and know too much. You are well educated and clever enough, but what could you do if you were suddenly left without means of support?"

"I don't know what I could do. It's what I want to find out. Half of my life has been spent in school and college, and during these years I was taught little that would be of practical service in case of need. I'd like to use part of my time trying to make educators understand they don't educate. For cultural purposes, for acquiring knowledge of facts, their system may be admirable, but for the pursuit of a happy livelihood-"

I stopped. Aunt Matilda was looking at me as if I were suffering from an attack of some kind. Marriage to her was the divinely arranged destiny for a woman, and she had neither patience nor sympathy with my refusal to accept the opportunity that was mine to fulfil the destiny of my sex and at the same time become the wife of the man she had long wished me to marry. The power of money was dear to her. She understood it well, and my failure to appreciate it properly was peculiarly exasperating to her. Discussion was useless. It never got farther than where it started. If I said that which I wanted much to say, it would merely mean hearing again what I did not want to hear. Concerning the pursuit of a happy livelihood we were not apt to agree.

For a half-minute longer I hesitated. Should I make the issue now or wait until there had been time for her to realize I meant what I said? Before I could speak she did that which I had never seen her do before. She burst into tears.

"You must never mention such a thing as this again." Her words came stumblingly and her usually firm and strong hands trembled badly. "With my health in its present condition I couldn't get on without you. You are all I have to really love, and I need you. Don't you see what you have done? You have made me ill. Ill!"

She was strangely upset and in her eyes was a confused and frightened look that was new to them, and quickly I went toward her, but she motioned me away.

"Give me my medicine, and don't ever speak of such a thing again-such a thing as you have just spoken of! You have always been beyond my comprehension."

She swallowed the medicine I brought her in nervous gulps, the tears running down her face as they might have done down a child's, but she would not let me do anything for her, insisting only that she wanted to be quiet. Seeing it was best to leave her, I went to my room and locked the door, and for hours I fought the hardest fight of my life.

The one weapon she knew she could use effectively, she had used. If she needed me I could not leave her, but her complete self-reliance made it difficult to feel that any one was necessary to her. I was indignant at the way she had treated me. I was not a child to be disposed of, and yet of my future she was disposing as though it were a thing that could be tied to a string, and untied at will. Were she well and strong, I would take matters in my own hands and make the break. Surely I could do something! I had no earning capacity, but other women had made their way, and I could make mine. If she were perfectly well-

But she was not well. Through those first hours, and through most of the hours of the night that followed, the knowledge of the insidious disease that was hers was the high, hard wall against which I struck at every turn of thought, at every possibility at which I grasped, and in the dawn of a new day I knew I must not go away.

It was not easy to surrender. Always my two selves are fighting and I wanted much to know more of life than I could know in the costly shelter, controlled by custom and convention, wherein I lived. I had long been looking through stained glass. I was restless to get out and see clearly, to know all sorts of people, all conditions of life, and the chance had seemed within my grasp-and now it must be given up.

There are times when I am heedless of results, when I am daring and audacious and count no cost, but that is only where I alone am concerned. When it comes to making decisions which affect others I am a coward. I lack the courage to have my own way at the expense of some one else; and though through the night I protested stormily, if inwardly, that I was not meant for gilded cages, but for contact, for encounter, I knew I should yield in the end.

The next day I told her I would not go away. She said nothing save she hardly thought I had entirely lost my senses, but the thing I am gladdest to remember since her death is the look that came into her eyes when I told her. For two years longer I lived with her, years for her of practical invalidism, and for me of opportunity to do for her what she had never permitted me to do before. Two weeks after Kitty's marriage she died suddenly, and at times I still shiver with the cold clamminess that came over me as I stood by her in her last sleep and realized my aloneness in the world. My parents had died in my early childhood. I had no brothers or sisters, no near relatives, save an uncle who lived abroad and some cousins here in town. Mr. Chesmond was very kind, but I could not continue to accept what he had willingly given his wife's adopted child, and Kitty no longer needed me. It is a fearful feeling, this sense of belonging to no one, of having no one belonging to you. Lest it overwhelm me, I went at once to work upon the house in Scarborough Square left me by Aunt Matilda, together with an annuity of a thousand dollars. Already it means much to me. For a while, at least, it is a haven, a shelter, a home. What it may prove-

I have been thinking much to-day of Aunt Matilda. Perhaps it is because Selwyn was here last night. She was afraid I would marry him.