'Why worse?' I went on. 'I won't eat her, and surely your husband can't want the three girls to attend to him.'
'Please, please, Sir,' she cried, 'don't speak so loud. He might hear and then our good times would be over.'
'Over?' I questioned. 'Is he such a brute?'
'Oh, Sir,' she cried with tears in her voice, 'forgive me! I'll tell you everything tomorrow. Now I must go,' and away she hurried, evidently in extreme excitement or fear.
The next morning in came the mother again, and she told me the father was very suspicious and had told her that I was too young for Katchen to wait upon me. 'Nonsense!' I cried. 'I want Katchen to come out with me to the theatre.'
'Oh, Sir, please not!' cried the mother passionately. 'Then he'd be sure to know and he'd be furious. Be content with me for a week or so and he may forget-and I'll send Katchen to you again.'
'All right;' I said, 'it's idiotic,' but I had a good deal of work to do and wasn't sorry to be forced to get on with it.
Three or four days more elapsed and Katchen brought me my coffee again and sat on my bed talking with me. I had my arm round her pretty, slim waist and was kissing her, when a knock came on the door and a man's voice called her loudly. She sprang from the bed with white face and frightened eyes and vanished.
I got up, bathed and dressed quickly, and then rang to have the breakfast things taken away. The mother came in; evidently she had been crying.
'Please, please Sir, take care,' she said. 'He's in one of his mad rages: he came back from work on purpose to catch Katchen. Oh, Sir, take care and don't go out till noon.'
'I'm going out very soon,' I said, carelessly, 'and shan't put it off for anyone.'
'I pray you go very quietly,' she said in a low voice. 'We all want you to stay.'
'I don't understand,' I said, feeling bewildered, for there were not many students who could pay what I was paying.
'Nobody could understand,' she cried, 'how unhappy I am. Please Sir,' she added imploringly.
'All right,' I said, laughing to reassure her. 'I'll slip out like a mouse and return just as quietly-'
'Please come back before six,' she said. I promised and went.
That evening I got back about five and saw the mother. I asked for Katchen.
The mother said, 'I'll send her, Sir, but please let her go soon; he comes home from work soon after six.'
Katchen came and was more loving than before, though manifestly on the qui vive, listening for every sound. Before six, even, she kissed me and said she'd have to go and I took her to the door; there the kissing began again and lasted, I suppose, longer than we thought, for just as I opened the door that gave on the passage to her room, there was a man at the bottom of the short flight of stairs; he sprang up them as the girl ran into the door to the right leading to her apartment. The man came straight to me. He was about my height and sturdily built, plainly a man of forty-five at least, or fifty.
'You can leave this house tomorrow,' he said in a low hoarse voice.
'Who are you to give me orders?' I asked.
'I'm the master here,' he replied, 'and I tell you, you had better go.'
'My month's only beginning,' I replied, 'and I want the usual notice.'
'If you don't go tomorrow,' he said, 'you'll be carried out-'
'You're a fool to threaten,' I said. 'To go soon would be to prove that I was afraid of you and I'm not.'
'If you had more sense, you would be,' he replied.
'Get out of my way,' I retorted, 'I'm going.'
'You go,' he said, 'and don't come back.'
As he didn't move I pushed him slightly. He at once seized my right arm and struck savagely at my face.
As a trained athlete, I had already weighed the possibilities; as he pulled my arm I went with it to destroy his balance. As he struck I threw my head aside and my left foot behind him. The next moment he over-balanced, and slipping back to recover himself, slipped on the stairs and went with a crash to the bottom and lay still.
At once the neighboring door opened and the mother and Katchen rushed out. I had already sprung down and lifted the man; his nose was bleeding, but his head was not seriously hurt. He would be quit for a painful bruise and a headache, and so I informed the woman, who seemed scared to death. With her help, I carried him into his bedroom, and on the way saw the two younger daughters: Lisabeth, whom I knew slightly, an ordinary girl of thirteen or so, and Marie a pretty child of ten, who, to my surprise, stared while Katchen wept.
That evening I got a letter from the mother, asking me to go, saying the Father threatened to kill me, and she was frightened. 'Pray, pray, go,' she ended. 'I don't want any money, dear Mr. Harris, and forgive me.'
Next morning she came in with my breakfast. 'He's gone to work,' she said,
'in a silent, black rage; he says if you don't go, he'll kill you. Please, dear Mr.
Harris, do go. You'll easily get other rooms.'
'I won't go a foot,' I said, 'and tell him if he tries to kill me, he'll get badly hurt. I thought I had taught him that.' To my wonder she broke into a storm of tears.
'I'm the most unhappy creature in the world. I wish he'd kill me.'
'Don't cry,' I said, 'of course, if you really want it I'll go, but-'
She seized my hand and kissed it, wetting it with tears. 'I'll tell you everything,' she said. 'I owe it to you. I don't know how to begin. I loved my husband and at first was very happy with him. He has lots of good qualities.
He works hard and he thinks of his home, but I don't know how to tell it. One day, when Katchen was about twelve, she came to me and said her father kissed her funnily and since then-Oh, I can't tell you. He took her into my bed! Oh, it is dreadful! Fancy, in my bed. I know I can trust you not to tell anybody, but I am the most unhappy woman in all the world. My dear children, ruined by their father! Was ever anyone so unhappy! What am I to do? If I had told you at first, it might have made all the difference, but I couldn't bear to. But now forgive us and forget us. Oh, I am so-miserable.'
I comforted her as best I could. I was horror stricken and filled with disgust for the man. Perhaps a point of envy sharpened my hatred of him. It ended by my saying, 'I'll go within a week and I will write it so that you can show it to him, but I must get a place and I can't get one in a moment. In a week or so I'll be gone.'
Strange, the fact that her father had used her killed my liking for Katchen.
But Lisabeth more than filled her place. One morning Lisabeth came in with my coffee. 'Oh, I'm glad you've come,' I said. 'What good wind blew you in?'
'They're all crying,' she said. 'Father's been raging; but I wouldn't care what he said.'
'Suppose I ask you for a kiss,' I said, smiling and holding out my hand, 'would you be afraid to give it?'
'Not I,' she cried, coming to my side at once and giving me not one kiss, but a dozen. 'You see,' she said, sitting on the edge of my bed, Father has scared them, but he can't scare me and he knows it. He tried to kiss me the other day, but I wouldn't have it.'
'Go to mother,' I said, 'or Kate, but leave me alone.'
'There he is now!' she exclaimed, and at that moment the father's voice was heard in peremptory tone.
'Lisabeth, you're wanted.'
'I'm not either,' she replied cheekily; 'you go away!' And to my astonishment he went off grumbling.
Lisabeth appealed to me and came to me in my new lodging, and I gave her dresses and trinkets as soon as I found that she was perfectly free of her father's influence. 'I never liked him,' she said to me once. 'As soon as I saw how he made mother suffer, I was through with him. Kate can stand him, but I can't.'
I found Lisabeth an engaging practical mistress. Although so young, she reckoned everything in cash. 'I want a purse,' she used to say, 'and when I've ten thousand marks in it, I'll feel safer.' And before she was fifteen she had the ten thousand marks. She was very well made, but had not nearly so pretty a face as her sister Kate; yet, in worldly wisdom, was a hundred years ahead of her.
For some reason or other, I didn't get a place in a week, but I told the woman I had seen one that would do and it would be free in two or three days. I hadn't seen Katchen in the meantime. One afternoon I had been out, and I had given the order to send for my things in the morning to transfer them to my new lodging. At that time it was very difficult to get two rooms and a bathroom without getting a whole apartment, and I had been lucky to find
