Evil

I was too busy at the Art School to pay much heed to Lyndhurst and Piddington affairs. Mrs. Piddington was watching me closely. Because she was English she called me “my dear” which did not in the least mean that I was dear to her nor she to me. I kept out of Frank’s way. Mrs. Piddington had a good many friends (those people in the Lyndhurst hotel whom she thought worthwhile). Among them was a widow with two daughters about my own age. I had nothing in common with these girls.

Mrs. Piddington said, “Marie is having a birthday party. She is not asking you because she says she knows no friends of hers who would get on with you.”

“Thank goodness she is not asking me. I hate her stuck-up companions.”

“It is a pity you are not more friendly. You are very much alone.”

“I have lots of friends, thank you, and I have my work.”

“That Art School outfit!” sniffed Mrs. Piddington.

One day Mrs. Piddington said, “How did you get through the square today? I went out just after you and found it impossible because of the dense throng attending that large funeral in the Anglican church.”

“I managed. I found a quiet, lovely little street, so quaint, not one soul in it. The house doors opened so quaintly right onto the pavement. All the windows had close green shutters, nearly every shutter had a lady peeping through. There was a red lantern hanging over each door. It was all romantic, like old songs and old books! I wonder if the ladies flutter little lace handkerchiefs and throw red roses to gentlemen playing mandolins under their windows at night?”

“Stop it! Little donkey!” shouted Mrs. Piddington. “Don’t tell me you went through Grant Street?”

“Yes, that was the name.”

“You went into Grant Street? Haven’t you seen the headlines in the newspaper for the last week? Grant Street a scandal in the heart of San Francisco’s shopping area!”

“I have not time to read the paper. Why is Grant Street a scandal?”

“It is a red light district.”

“What is a red light district?”

“A place of prostitutes.”

“What are prostitutes?”

Mrs. Piddington gave an impatient tongue-click.

“If I ever hear of your going into Grant or any other such place again, home I send you packing! Straight to school, straight home again! Main thoroughfares, no short cuts, d’you hear?”

Frank came into the room. There was an evil grin on his face. He had heard her snapping tones, saw our red faces.

“In hot water, eh kid?”

I hurried from the room.

We had just come up from dinner. Mrs. Piddington was commenting on the family who sat opposite to us at table.

“The man seems very decent to that child.”

“Why shouldn’t he be decent to his own son?” I asked.

“The child is not his.”

“Was the woman married twice? The child calls him father.”

“No, she was not married twice, the boy is not the man’s son.”

“He must be!”

She noted my frown of puzzle.

Frank was out. “Sit there, little fool, your sister has no right to send you out into the world as green as a cabbage!” She drew a chair close to mine, facing me. “Now, it is time you learned that it takes more than a wedding ring to produce children. Listen!”

Half an hour later I crept up to my room at the top of the house afraid of every shadowed corner, afraid of my own tread smugged into the carpet’s soft pile. Horrors hid in corners, terrors were behind doors. I had thought the Lyndhurst provided safety as well as board and lodging. Boarding houses I had supposed were temporary homes in which one was all right. No matter if San Francisco was wicked, I thought the great heavy door of the Lyndhurst and my board money could shut it all out.

Mrs. Piddington told me that evil lurked everywhere. She said even under the sidewalks in certain districts of San Francisco were dens that had trap doors that dropped girls into terrible places when they were just walking along the street. The girls were never heard of again. They were taken into what was called “white slavery”, hidden away in those dreadful underground dens, never found, never heard of.

Mrs. Piddington spared me nothing. Opium dens in Chinatown, drug addicts, kidnappings, murder, prostitution she poured into my burning, frightened ears, determined to terrify the greenness out of me.

I was glad when the carpet of the hallways and stairs came to an end, glad when I heard my own heels tap, tap on the bare top-stair treads and landing. I looked around my room fearfully before I closed and locked my door. Then I went over to the window. I wanted to see if San Francisco looked any different now that I knew what she was really like. No, she did not! My hand was on old Dick’s cage as I looked over the chimneys and roofs. Old Dick nibbled at my finger. It gave me such a curious feeling of protection and reality.

“Dick, I don’t believe it, not all. If it was as wicked as she said the black would come up the chimneys and smudge the sky; wicked ones can shut their doors and windows but not their chimneys. There is direct communication always between the inside of the houses and the sky. There is no smudge on the sky above the chimneys. San Francisco’s sky is clear and high and blue. She even said, Dick, that she was not sure of that dirty old Art School of mine—it was in a squalid district and that I was never, never to go off the main thoroughfares. I was never to speak to anyone and I was never to answer if anyone spoke to me. All right, Dick, I’ll do that but all the rest I am going to forget!”

The most close-up ugliness I saw during my stay in San Francisco was right in the Lyndhurst, in Mrs. Piddington’s own private sitting room.

It was Christmas Eve. The Piddingtons had gone to the theatre and left me sitting there by their fire writing letters home. There was a big cake on the table beside me just come from home along with parcels that were not to be opened till Christmas morning.

A tap on the door. A friend of Frank Piddington’s was there with a great bunch of roses to Christmas Mrs. Piddington.

“She is not in,” I said.

“ ’Sno matter, I’ll wait.”

“They will be very late.”

“Thas-all-right.”

He pushed past me into the sitting room, steadying himself by laying his hands one on either of my shoulders. He was very unsteady. I thought he was going to fall.

“Don’ feel s’good,” he said, and flung himself into an arm-chair and the roses onto the table.

I went to get water for the flowers and when I came back he was already heavily asleep. His flushed face had rolled over and was pillowed on my home cake.

I stood looking in dismay. He must be very ill. He had seemed hardly able to walk at all. He had gone to sleep with a lighted cigar between his fingers, its live end was almost touching the upholstery of the chair. I dare not take it from his hand, I dare not go to my room and leave it burning. The evening was early. I sat and watched and watched. The cigar smouldered to its very end. The ash did not fall but kept its shape. Would the cigar burn him when it reached his skin and wake him? No, just before it reached the end it went out.

Creak, slam! creak, slam! went the heavy old door of the Lyndhurst, surely it must have swallowed all its inmates by now; but the Piddingtons did not come. I could not go now because Mrs. Piddington enjoyed fainting at shocks. If she came in after midnight and saw a man asleep in her sitting room she was sure to faint. Half after midnight I heard her hand on the door knob and sprang!

“Don’t be frightened, he’s asleep and very ill!”

“Who’s asleep? Who’s ill?”

“Mr. Piddington’s friend.”

Mrs. Piddington circled the sleeping man sniffing.

“Frank, take that drunk home!”

Frank burst into guffaws of coarse laughter.

“Our innocent!—entertaining drunks after midnight on Christmas Eve! Ha, ha!”