"The fellow works round the house," he explained; "but he's taken a
great fancy to the girl and I hardly know what to do."
"My dear boy," said the staff, "one of the greatest joys in the
world is to suffer for a woman. Let him go to it."
So the Dummy bared his old-young arm - not once, but many times.
Always as the sharp razor nicked up its bit of skin he looked at the
girl and smiled. In the early evening he perched the parrot on his
bandaged arm and sat on the roof or by the fountain in the
courtyard. When the breeze blew strong enough the water flung over
the rim and made little puddles in the hollows of the cement
pavement. Here belated sparrows drank or splashed their dusty
feathers, and the parrot watched them crookedly.
The Avenue Girl grew better with each day, but remained
wistful-eyed. The ward no longer avoided her, though she was never
one of them. One day the Probationer found a new baby in the
children's ward; and, with the passion of maternity that is the real
reason for every good woman's being, she cuddled the mite in her
arms. She visited the nurses in the different wards.
"Just look!" she would say, opening her arms. "If I could only steal
it!"
The Senior, who had once been beautiful and was now calm and placid,
smiled at her. Old Maggie must peer and cry out over the child.
Irish Delia must call down a blessing on it. And so up the ward to
the Avenue Girl; the Probationer laid the baby in her arms.
"Just a minute," she explained. "I'm idling and I have no business
to. Hold it until I give the three o'clocks." Which means the
three-o'clock medicines.
When she came back the Avenue Girl had a new look in her eyes; and
that day the little gleam of hope, that usually died, lasted and
grew.
At last came the day when the alibi was to be brought forward. The
girl had written home and the home folks were coming. In his strange
way the Dummy knew that a change was near. The kaleidoscope would
shift again and the Avenue Girl would join the changing and
disappearing figures that fringed the inner circle of his heart.
One night he did not go to bed in the ward bed that was his only
home, beside the little stand that held his only possessions. The
watchman missed him and found him asleep in the chapel in one of the
seats, with the parrot drowsing on the altar.
Rose - who was the stout woman - came early. She wore a purple dress,
with a hat to match, and purple gloves. The ward eyed her with scorn
and a certain deference. She greeted the Avenue Girl effusively
behind the screens that surrounded the bed.
"Well, you do look pinched!" she said. "Ain't it a mercy it didn't
get to your face! Pretty well chewed up, aren't you?"
"Do you want to see it?"
"Good land! No! Now look here, you've got to put me wise or I'll
blow the whole thing. What's my little stunt? The purple's all right
for it, isn't it?"
"All you need to do," said the Avenue Girl wearily, "is to say that
I've been sewing for you since I came to the city. And - if you can
say anything good - - "
"I'll do that all right," Rose affirmed. She put a heavy silver bag
on the bedside table and lowered herself into a chair. "You leave it
to me, dearie. There ain't anything I won't say."
The ward was watching with intense interest. Old Maggie, working the
creaking bandage machine, was palpitating with excitement. From her
chair by the door she could see the elevator and it was she who
announced the coming of destiny.
"Here comes the father," she confided to the end of the ward. "Guess
the mother couldn't come."
It was not the father though. It was a young man who hesitated in
the doorway, hat in hand - a tall young man, with a strong and not
unhandsome face. The Probationer, rather twitchy from excitement and
anxiety, felt her heart stop and race on again. Jerry, without a
doubt!
The meeting was rather constrained. The girl went whiter than her
pillows and half closed her eyes; but Rose, who would have been
terrified at the sight of an elderly farmer, was buoyantly relieved
and at her ease.
"I'm sorry," said Jerry. "I - we didn't realise it had been so bad.
The folks are well; but - I thought I'd better come. They're
expecting you back home."
"It was nice of you to come," said the girl, avoiding his eyes.
"I - I'm getting along fine."
"I guess introductions ain't necessary," put in Rose briskly. "I'm
Mrs. Sweeney. She's been living with me - working for me, sewing.
She's sure a fine sewer! She made this suit I'm wearing."
Poor Rose, with "custom made" on every seam of the purple! But Jerry
was hardly listening. His eyes were on the girl among the pillows.
"I see," said Jerry slowly. "You haven't said yet, Elizabeth. Are
you going home?"
"If - they want me."
"Of course they want you!" Again Rose: "Why shouldn't they? You've
been a good girl and a credit to any family. If they say anything
mean to you you let me know."
"They'll not be mean to her. I'm sure they'll want to write and
thank you. If you'll just give me your address, Mrs. Sweeney - - "
He had a pencil poised over a notebook. Rose hesitated. Then she
gave her address on the Avenue, with something of bravado in her
voice. After all, what could this country-store clerk know of the
Avenue? Jerry wrote it down carefully.
"Sweeney - with an e?" he asked politely.
"With three e's," corrected Rose, and got up with dignity.
"Well, good-bye, dearie," she said. "You've got your friends now and
you don't need me. I guess you've had your lesson about going to
sleep with a cig - about being careless with fire. Drop me a postal
when you get the time."
She shook hands with Jerry and rustled and jingled down the ward,
her chin well up. At the door she encountered Old Maggie, her arms
full of bandages.
"How's the Avenue?" asked Old Maggie.
Rose, however, like all good actresses, was still in the part
as she made her exit. She passed Old Maggie unheeding, severe
respectability in every line of her figure, every nod of her purple
plumes. She was still in the part when she encountered the
Probationer.
"It's going like a house afire!" she said. "He swallowed it
all - hook and bait! And - oh, yes, I've got something for you." She
went down into her silver bag and pulled out a roll of bills. "I've
felt meaner'n a dog every time I've thought of you buying that
parrot. I've got a different view of life - maybe - from yours; but
I'm not taking candy from a baby."
When the Probationer could speak Rose was taking herself and the
purple into the elevator and waving her a farewell.
"Good-bye!" she said. "If ever you get stuck again just call on me."
With Rose's departure silence fell behind the screen. The girl broke
it first.
"They're all well, are they?"
"All well. Your mother's been kind of poorly. She thought you'd
write to her." The girl clenched her hands under the bedclothing.
She could not speak just then. "There's nothing much happened. The
post office burned down last summer. They're building a new one.
And - I've been building. I tore down the old place."
"Are you going to be married, Jerry?"
"Some day, I suppose. I'm not worrying about it. It was something to
do; it kept me from - thinking."
The girl looked at him and something gripped her throat. He knew!
Rose might have gone down with her father, but Jerry knew! Nothing
was any use. She knew his rigid morality, his country-bred horror of
the thing she was. She would have to go back - to Rose and the
others. He would never take her home.
Down at the medicine closet the Probationer was carbolising
thermometers and humming a little song. Everything was well. The
Avenue Girl was with her people and at seven o'clock the Probationer
was going to the roof - to meet some one who was sincerely repentant
and very meek.
In the convalescent ward next door they were singing softly - one of
those spontaneous outbursts that have their origin in the hearts of
people and a melody all their own:
_'Way down upon de S'wanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turnin' ebber -
Dere's wha de old folks stay._
It penetrated back of the screen, where the girl lay in white
wretchedness - and where Jerry, with death in his eyes, sat rigid in
his chair.
"Jerry?"
"Yes."
"I - I guess I've been pretty far away."
"Don't tell me about it!" A cry, this.
"You used to care for me, Jerry. I'm not expecting that now; but if
you'd only believe me when I say I'm sorry - - "
"I believe you, Elizabeth."
"One of the nurses here says - - Jerry, won't you look at me?" With
some difficulty he met her eyes. "She says that because one starts
wrong one needn't go wrong always. I was ashamed to write. She made
me do it."
She held out an appealing hand, but he did not take it. All his life
he had built up a house of morality. Now his house was crumbling and
he stood terrified in the wreck. "It isn't only because I've been
hurt that I - am sorry," she went on. "I loathed it! I'd have
finished it all long ago, only - I was afraid."
"I would rather have found you dead!"
There is a sort of anesthesia of misery. After a certain amount of
suffering the brain ceases to feel. Jerry watched the white curtain
of the screen swaying in the wind, settled his collar, glanced at
his watch. He was quite white. The girl's hand still lay on the
coverlet. Somewhere back in the numbed brain that would think only
little thoughts he knew that if he touched that small, appealing
hand the last wall of his house would fall.
It was the Dummy, after all, who settled that for him. He came with
his afternoon offering of cracked ice just then and stood inside the
screen, staring. Perhaps he had known all along how it would end,
that this, his saint, would go - and not alone - to join the vanishing
circle that had ringed the inner circle of his heart. Just at the
time it rather got him. He swayed a little and clutched at the
screen; but the next moment he had placed the bowl on the stand and
stood smiling down at the girl.
"The only person in the world who believes in me!" said the girl
bitterly. "And he's a fool!"
The Dummy smiled into her eyes. In his faded, childish eyes there
was the eternal sadness of his kind, eternal tenderness, and the
blur of one who has looked much into a far distance. Suddenly he
bent over and placed the man's hand over the girl's.
The last wall was down! Jerry buried his face in the white
coverlet.
* * * * *
The _interne_ was pacing the roof anxiously. Golden sunset had faded
to lavender - to dark purple - to night.
The Probationer came up at last - not a probationer now, of course;
but she had left off her cap and was much less stately.
"I'm sorry," she explained; "but I've been terribly busy. It went
off so well!"
"Of course - if you handled it."
"You know - don't you? - it was the lover who came. He looks so strong
and good - oh, she is safe now!"
"That's fine!" said the _interne_ absently. They were sitting on the
parapet now and by sliding his hand along he found her fingers.
"Isn't it a glorious evening?" He had the fingers pretty close by
that time; and suddenly gathering them up he lifted the hand to his
lips.
"Such a kind little hand!" he said over it. "Such a dear, tender
little hand! My hand!" he said, rather huskily.
Down in the courtyard the Dummy sat with the parrot on his knee. At
his feet the superintendent's dog lay on his side and dreamed of
battle. The Dummy's eyes lingered on the scar the Avenue Girl had
bandaged - how long ago!
His eyes wandered to the window with the young John among the
lilies. In the stable were still the ambulance horses that talked to
him without words. And he had the parrot. If he thought at all it
was that his Father was good and that, after all, he was not alone.
The parrot edged along his knee and eyed him with saturnine
affection.
THE MIRACLE
I
Big Mary was sweeping the ward with a broom muffled in a white bag.
In the breeze from the open windows, her blue calico wrapper
ballooned about her and made ludicrous her frantic thrusts after the
bits of fluff that formed eddies under the beds and danced in the
spring air.
She finished her sweeping, and, with the joyous scraps captured in
her dust-pan, stood in the doorway, critically surveying the ward.
It was brilliantly clean and festive; on either side a row of beds,
fresh white for the day; on the centre table a vase of Easter
lilies, and on the record-table near the door a potted hyacinth. The
Nurse herself wore a bunch of violets tucked in her apron-band. One
of the patients had seen the Junior Medical give them to her. The
Eastern sun, shining across the beds, made below them, on the
polished floor, black islands of shadow in a gleaming sea of light.
And scattered here and there, rocking in chairs or standing at
windows, enjoying the Sunday respite from sewing or the
bandage-machine, women, grotesque and distorted of figure, in
attitudes of weariness and expectancy, with patient eyes awaited
their crucifixion. Behind them, in the beds, a dozen perhaps who had
come up from death and held the miracle in their arms.
The miracles were small and red, and inclined to feeble and
ineffectual wrigglings. Fists were thrust in the air and brought
down on smiling, pale mother faces. With tight-closed eyes and open
mouths, each miracle squirmed and nuzzled until the mother would
look with pleading eyes at the Nurse. And the Nurse would look
severe and say:
"Good gracious, Annie Petowski, surely you don't want to feed that
infant again! Do you want the child to have a dilated stomach?"
Fear of that horrible and mysterious condition, a dilated stomach,
would restrain Annie Petowski or Jennie Goldstein or Maggie McNamara
for a time. With the wisdom of the serpent, she would give the child
her finger to suck - a finger so white, so clean, so soft in the last
week that she was lost in admiration of it. And the child would take
hold, all its small body set rigid in lines of desperate effort.
Then it would relax suddenly, and spew out the finger, and the quiet
hospital air would be rent with shrieks of lost illusion. Then Annie
Petowski or Jennie Goldstein or Maggie McNamara would watch the
Nurse with open hostility and defiance, and her rustling exit from
the ward would be followed by swift cessation of cries, and, close
to Annie or Jennie or Maggie's heart, there would be small ecstatic
gurglings - and peace.
In her small domain the Nurse was queen. From her throne at the
record-table, she issued proclamations of baths and fine combs, of
clean bedding and trimmed nails, of tea and toast, of regular hours
for the babies. From this throne, also, she directed periodic
searches of the bedside stands, unearthing scraps of old toast,
decaying fruit, candy, and an occasional cigarette. From the throne,
too, she sent daily a blue-wrappered and pig-tailed brigade to the
kitchen, armed with knives, to attack the dinner potatoes.
But on this Easter morning, the queen looked tired and worn. Her
crown, a starched white cap, had slipped back on her head, and her
blue-and-white dress was stained and spotted. Even her fresh apron
and sleevelets did not quite conceal the damage. She had come in for
a moment at the breakfast hour, and asked the Swede, Ellen Ollman,
to serve the breakfast for her; and at half past eight she had
appeared again for a moment, and had turned down one of the beds and
put hot-water bottles in it.
The ward ate little breakfast. It was always nervous when a case was
"on." Excursions down the corridor by one or another of the
blue-wrappered brigade brought back bits of news:
"The doctor is smoking a cigarette in the hall;" or, "Miss Jones,
the day assistant, has gone in;" and then, with bated breath, "The
doctor with the red mustache has come" - by which it was known that
things were going badly, the staff man having been summoned.
Suggestions of Easter began to appear even in this isolated ward,
denied to all visitors except an occasional husband, who was usually
regarded with a mixture of contempt and scepticism by the other
women. But now the lilies came, and after them a lame young woman
who played the organ in the chapel on Sundays, and who afterward
went from ward to ward, singing little songs and accompanying
herself on the mandolin she carried with her. The lame young woman
seated herself in the throne-chair and sang an Easter anthem, and
afterward limped around and placed a leaflet and a spray of
lilies-of-the-valley on each bedside stand.
She was escorted around the ward by Elizabeth Miller, known as "Liz"
in Our Alley, and rechristened Elizabeth by the Nurse. Elizabeth
always read the tracts. She had been there four times, and knew all
the nurses and nearly all the doctors. "Liz" had been known, in a
shortage of nurses, to be called into the mysterious room down the
hall to assist; and on those occasions, in an all-enveloping white
gown over her wrapper, with her hair under a cap, she outranked the
queen herself in regalness and authority.
The lame mandolin-player stopped at the foot of the empty bed.
"Shall I put one here?" she asked, fingering a tract.
Liz meditated majestically.
"Well, I guess I would," she said. "Not that it'll do any good."
"Why?"
Liz jerked her head toward the corridor.
"She's not getting on very well," she said; "and, even if she gets
through, she won't read the tract. She held her fingers in her ears
last Sunday while the Bible-reader was here. She's young. Says she
hopes she and the kid'll both die."
The mandolin-player was not unversed in the psychology of the ward.
"Then she - isn't married?" she asked, and because she was young, she
flushed painfully.
Liz stared at her, and a faint light of amusement dawned in her
eyes.
"Well, no," she admitted; "I guess that's what's worrying her. She's
a fool, she is. She can put the kid in a home. That's what I do.
Suppose she married the fellow that got her into trouble? Wouldn't
he be always throwing it up to her?"
The mandolin-player looked at Liz, puzzled at this new philosophy
of life.
"Have - have you a baby here?" she asked timidly.
"Have I!" said Liz, and, wheeling, led the way to her bed. She
turned the blanket down with a practised hand, revealing a tiny red
atom, so like the others that only mother love could have
distinguished it.
"This is mine," she said airily. "Funny little mutt, isn't he?"
The mandolin-player gazed diffidently at the child.
"He - he's very little," she said.
"Little!" said Liz. "He holds the record here for the last six
months - eleven pounds three ounces in his skin, when he arrived. The
little devil!"
She put the blanket tenderly back over the little devil's sleeping
form. The mandolin-player cast about desperately for the right thing
to say.
"Does - does he look like his father?" she asked timidly. But
apparently Liz did not hear. She had moved down the ward. The
mandolin-player heard only a snicker from Annie Petowski's bed, and,
vaguely uncomfortable, she moved toward the door.
Liz was turning down the cover of the empty bed, and the Nurse, with
tired but shining eyes, was wheeling in the operating table.
The mandolin-player stepped aside to let the table pass. From the
blankets she had a glimpse of a young face, bloodless and wan - of
hurt, defiant blue eyes. She had never before seen life so naked, so
relentless. She shrank back against the wall, a little sick. Then
she gathered up her tracts and her mandolin, and limped down the
hall.
The door of the mysterious room was open, and from it came a shrill,
high wail, a rising and falling note of distress - the voice of a new
soul in protest. She went past with averted face.
Back in the ward Liz leaned over the table and, picking the girl up
bodily, deposited her tenderly in the warm bed. Then she stood back
and smiled down at her, with her hands on her hips.
"Well," she said kindly, "it's over, and here you are! But it's no
picnic, is it?"
The girl on the bed turned her head away. The coarsening of her
features in the last month or two had changed to an almost bloodless
refinement. With her bright hair, she looked as if she had been
through the furnace of pain and had come out pure gold. But her eyes
were hard.
"Go away," she said petulantly.
Liz leaned down and pulled the blanket over her shoulders.
"You sleep now," she said soothingly. "When you wake up you can have
a cup of tea."
The girl threw the cover off and looked up despairingly into Liz's
face.
"I don't want to sleep," she said. "My God, Liz, it's going to live
and so am I!"
II
Now, the Nurse had been up all night, and at noon, after she had
oiled the new baby and washed out his eyes and given him a
teaspoonful of warm water, she placed Liz in charge of the ward, and
went to her room to put on a fresh uniform. The first thing she did,
when she got there, was to go to the mirror, with the picture of her
mother tucked in its frame, and survey herself. When she saw her cap
and the untidiness of her hair and her white collar all spotted, she
frowned.
Then she took the violets out of her belt and put them carefully in
a glass of water, and feeling rather silly, she leaned over and
kissed them. After that she felt better.
She bathed her face in hot water and then in cold, which brought her
colour back, and she put on everything fresh, so that she rustled
with each step, which is proper for trained nurses; and finally she
tucked the violets back where they belonged, and put on a new cap,
which is also proper for trained nurses on gala occasions.
If she had not gone back to the mirror to see that the general
effect was as crisp as it should be, things would have been
different for Liz, and for the new mother back in the ward. But she
did go back; and there, lying on the floor in front of the bureau,
all folded together, was a piece of white paper exactly as if it has
been tucked in her belt with the violets.
She opened it rather shakily, and it was a leaf from the ward
order-book, for at the top it said:
Annie Petowski - may sit up for one hour.
And below that:
Goldstein baby - bran baths.
And below that:
I love you. E.J.
"E.J." was the Junior Medical.
So the Nurse went back to the ward, and sat down, palpitating, in
the throne-chair by the table, and spread her crisp skirts, and
found where the page had been torn out of the order-book.
And as the smiles of sovereigns are hailed with delight by their
courts, so the ward brightened until it seemed to gleam that Easter
afternoon. And a sort of miracle happened: none of the babies had
colic, and the mothers mostly slept. Also, one of the ladies of the
House Committee looked in at the door and said:
"How beautiful you are here, and how peaceful! Your ward is always a
sort of benediction."
The lady of the House Committee looked across and saw the new
mother, with the sunshine on her yellow braids, and her face refined
from the furnace of pain.
"What a sweet young mother!" she said, and rustled out, leaving an
odor of peau d'Espagne.
The girl lay much as Liz had left her. Except her eyes, there was
nothing in her face to show that despair had given place to wild
mutiny. But Liz knew; Liz had gone through it all when "the first
one" came; and so, from the end of the ward, she rocked and watched.
The odor of peau d'Espagne was still in the air, eclipsing the
Easter lilies, when Liz got up and sauntered down to the girl's bed.
"How are you now, dearie?" she asked, and, reaching under the
blankets, brought out the tiny pearl-handled knife with which the
girl had been wont to clean her finger-nails. The girl eyed her
savagely, but said nothing; nor did she resist when Liz brought out
her hands and examined the wrists. The left had a small cut on it.
"Now listen to me," said Liz. "None of that, do you hear? You ain't
the only one that's laid here and wanted to end it all. And what
happened? Inside of a month they're well and strong again, and they
put the kid somewhere, and the folks that know what's happened get
used to it, and the ones that don't know don't need to know. Don't
be a fool!"
She carried the knife off, but the girl made no protest. There were
other ways.
The Nurse was very tired, for she had been up almost all night. She
sat at the record-table with her Bible open, and, in the intervals
of taking temperatures, she read it. But mostly she read about Annie
Petowski being allowed to sit up, and the Goldstein baby having bran
baths, and the other thing written below!
At two o'clock came the Junior Medical, in a frock-coat and grey
trousers. He expected to sing "The Palms" at the Easter service
downstairs in the chapel that afternoon, and, according to
precedent, the one who sings "The Palms" on Easter in the chapel
must always wear a frock-coat.
Very conscious, because all the ward was staring at his
gorgeousness, he went over to the bed where the new mother lay. Then
he came back and stood by the table, looking at a record.
"Have you taken her temperature?" he said, businesslike and erect.
"Ninety-eight."
"Her pulse is strong?"
"Yes; she's resting quietly."
"Good. - And - did you get my note?"
This, much as if he had said, "Did you find my scarf-pin?" or
anything merely casual; for Liz was hovering near.
"Yes." The nurse's red lips were trembling, but she smiled up at
him. Liz came nearer. She was only wishing him Godspeed with his
wooing, but it made him uncomfortable.
"Watch her closely," he said, "she's pretty weak and despondent."
And he looked at Liz.
"Elizabeth," said the Nurse, "won't you sit by Claribel and fan
her?"
Claribel was the new mother. Claribel is, of course, no name for a
mother, but she had been named when she was very small.
Liz went away and sat by the girl's bed, and said a little prayer to
the effect that they were both so damned good to everybody, she
hoped they'd hit it off. But perhaps the prayer of the wicked
availeth nothing.
"You know I meant that," he said, from behind a record. "I - I love
you with all my heart - and if only you - - "
The nurse shook down a thermometer and examined it closely. "I love
you, too!" she said. And, walking shakily to one of the beds, she
put the thermometer upside down in Maggie McNamara's mouth.
The Junior Medical went away with his shoulders erect in his
frock-coat, and his heavy brown hair, which would never part
properly and had to be persuaded with brilliantine, bristling with
happiness.
And the Nurse-Queen, looking over her kingdom for somebody to lavish
her new joy on, saw Claribel lying in bed, looking at the ceiling
and reading there all the tragedy of her broken life, all her
despair.
So she rustled out to the baby-room, where the new baby had never
batted an eye since her bath and was lying on her back with both
fists clenched on her breast, and she did something that no trained
nurse is ever supposed to do.
She lifted the baby, asleep and all, and carried her to her mother.
But Claribel's face only darkened when she saw her.
"Take the brat away," she said, and went on reading tragedies on the
ceiling.
Liz came and proffered her the little mite with every art she knew.
She showed her the wrinkled bits of feet, the tiny, ridiculous
hands, and how long the hair grew on the back of her head. But when
Liz put the baby on her arm, she shuddered and turned her head away.
So finally Liz took it back to the other room, and left it there,
still sleeping.
The fine edge of the Nurse's joy was dulled. It is a characteristic
of great happiness to wish all to be well with the world; and here
before her was dry-eyed despair. It was Liz who finally decided her.
"I guess I'll sit up with her to-night," she said, approaching the
table with the peculiar gait engendered of heel-less hospital
carpet-slippers and Mother Hubbard wrappers. "I don't like the way
she watches the ceiling."
"What do you mean, Elizabeth?" asked the Nurse.
"Time I had the twins - that's before your time," said Liz - "we had
one like that. She went out the window head first the night after
the baby came, and took the kid with her."
The Nurse rose with quick decision.
"We must watch her," she said. "Perhaps if I could find - I think
I'll go to the telephone. Watch the ward carefully, Elizabeth, and
if Annie Petowski tries to feed her baby before three o'clock, take
it from her. The child's stuffed like a sausage every time I'm out
for five minutes."
Nurses know many strange things: they know how to rub an aching back
until the ache is changed to a restful thrill, and how to change the
bedding and the patient's night-dress without rolling the patient
over more than once, which is a high and desirable form of
knowledge. But also they get to know many strange people; their
clean starchiness has a way of rubbing up against the filth of the
world and coming away unsoiled. And so the Nurse went downstairs to
the telephone, leaving Liz to watch for nefarious feeding.
The Nurse called up Rose Davis; and Rosie, who was lying in bed with
the Sunday papers scattered around her and a cigarette in her
manicured fingers, reached out with a yawn and, taking the
telephone, rested it on her laced and ribboned bosom.
"Yes," she said indolently.
The nurse told her who she was, and Rosie's voice took on a warmer
tinge.
"Oh, yes," she said. "How are you?... Claribel? Yes; what about
her?... What!"
"Yes," said the Nurse. "A girl - seven pounds."
"My Gawd! Well, what do you think of that! Excuse me a moment; my
cigarette's set fire to the sheet. All right - go ahead."
"She's taking it pretty hard, and I - I thought you might help her.
She - she - - "
"How much do you want?" said Rose, a trifle coldly. She turned in
the bed and eyed the black leather bag on the stand at her elbow.
"Twenty enough?"
"I don't think it's money," said the Nurse, "although she needs that
too; she hasn't any clothes for the baby. But - she's awfully
despondent - almost desperate. Have you any idea who the child's
father is?"
Rosie considered, lighting a new cigarette with one hand and
balancing the telephone with the other.
"She left me a year ago," she said. "Oh, yes; I know now. What time
is it?"
"Two o'clock."
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Rosie. "I'll get the fellow on
the wire and see what he's willing to do. Maybe he'll give her a
dollar or two a week."
"Do you think you could bring him to see her?"
"Say, what do you think I am - a missionary?" The Nurse was wise, so
she kept silent. "Well, I'll tell you what I will do. If I can bring
him, I will. How's that yellow-haired she-devil you've got over
there? I've got that fixed all right. She pulled a razor on me
first - I've got witnesses. Well, if I can get Al, I'll do it. So
long."
It did not occur to the Nurse to deprecate having used an evil
medium toward a righteous end. She took life much as she found it.
And so she tiptoed past the chapel again, where a faint odour of
peau d'Espagne came stealing out into the hall, and where the
children from the children's ward, in roller-chairs and on crutches,
were singing with all their shrill young voices, earnest eyes
uplifted.
The white Easter lilies on the altar sent their fragrance out over
the gathering, over the nurses, young and placid, over the hopeless
and the hopeful, over the faces where death had passed and left its
inevitable stamp, over bodies freshly risen on this Easter Sunday
to new hope and new life - over the Junior Medical, waiting with the
manuscript of "The Palms" rolled in his hand and his heart singing a
hymn of happiness.
The Nurse went up to her ward, and put a screen around Claribel,
and, with all her woman's art, tidied the immaculate white bed and
loosened the uncompromising yellow braids, so that the soft hair
fell across Claribel's bloodless forehead and softened the defiance
in her blue eyes. She brought the pink hyacinth in its pot, too, and
placed it on the bedside table. Then she stood off and looked at her
work. It was good.
Claribel submitted weakly. She had stopped staring at the wall, and
had taken to watching the open window opposite with strange
intentness. Only when the Nurse gave a final pat to the bedspread
she spoke.
"Was it a boy - or a girl?" she asked.
"Girl," said the nurse briskly. "A little beauty, perfect in every
way."
"A girl - to grow up and go through this hell!" she muttered, and her
eyes wandered back to the window.
But the Nurse was wise with the accumulated wisdom of a sex that has
had to match strength with wile for ages, and she was not yet ready.
She went into the little room where eleven miracles lay in eleven
cribs, and, although they all looked exactly alike, she selected
Claribel's without hesitation, and carried it to the mysterious room
down the hall - which was no longer a torture-chamber, but a
resplendently white place, all glass and tile and sunlight, and
where she did certain things that are not prescribed in the hospital
rules.
First of all, she opened a cupboard and took out a baby dress of
lace and insertion, - and everybody knows that such a dress is used
only when a hospital infant is baptised, - and she clothed Claribel's
baby in linen and fine raiment, and because they are very, very red
when they are so new, she dusted it with a bit of talcum - to break
the shock, as you may say. It was very probable that Al had never
seen so new a baby, and it was useless to spoil the joy of
parenthood unnecessarily. For it really was a fine child, and
eventually it would be white and beautiful.
The baby smelled of violet, for the christening-robe was kept in a
sachet.
Finally she gave it another teaspoonful of warm water and put it
back in its crib. And then she rustled starchily back to the
throne-chair by the record-table, and opened her Bible at the place
where it said that Annie Petowski might sit up, and the Goldstein
baby - bran baths, and the other thing written just below.
III
The music poured up the well of the staircase; softened by distance,
the shrill childish sopranos and the throaty basses of the medical
staff merged into a rising and falling harmony of exquisite beauty.
Liz sat on the top step of the stairs, with her baby in her arms;
and, as the song went on, Liz's eyes fell to her child and stayed
there.
At three o'clock the elevator-man brought Rosie Davis along the
hall - Rosie, whose costume betrayed haste, and whose figure, under a
gaudy motor-coat, gave more than a suggestion of being unsupported
and wrapper-clad. She carried a clinking silver chatelaine, however,
and at the door she opened it and took out a quarter, extending it
with a regal gesture to the elevator-man.
"Here, old sport," she said, "go and blow yourself to a drink. It's
Easter."
Such munificence appalled the ward.
Rosie was not alone. Behind her, uncomfortable and sullen, was Al.
The ward, turning from the episode of the quarter, fixed on him
curious and hostile eyes; and Al, glancing around the ward from the
doorway, felt their hostility, and plucked Rosie's arm.
"Gee, Rose, I'm not going in there," he said. But Rosie pulled him
in and presented him to the Nurse.
Behind the screen, Claribel, shut off from her view of the open
window, had taken to staring at the ceiling again.
When the singing came up the staircase from the chapel, she had
moaned and put her fingers in her ears.
"Well, I found him," said Rosie cheerfully. "Had the deuce of a time
locating him." And the Nurse, apprising in one glance his stocky
figure and heavy shoulders, his ill-at-ease arrogance, his weak, and
just now sullen but not bad-tempered face, smiled at him.
"We have a little girl here who will be glad to see you," she said,
and took him to the screen. "Just five minutes, and you must do the
talking."
Al hesitated between the visible antagonism of the ward and the
mystery of the white screen. A vision of Claribel as he had seen her
last, swollen with grief and despair, distorted of figure and
accusing of voice, held him back. A faint titter of derision went
through the room. He turned on Rosie's comfortable back a look of
black hate and fury. Then the Nurse gave him a gentle shove, and he
was looking at Claribel - a white, Madonna-faced Claribel, lying now
with closed eyes, her long lashes sweeping her cheek.
The girl did not open her eyes at his entrance. He put his hat
awkwardly on the foot of the bed, and, tiptoeing around, sat on the
edge of the stiff chair.
"Well, how are you, kid?" he asked, with affected ease.
She opened her eyes and stared at him. Then she made a little clutch
at her throat, as if she were smothering.
"How did you - how did you know I was here?"
"Saw it in the paper, in the society column." She winced at that,
and some fleeting sense of what was fitting came to his aid. "How
are you?" he asked more gently. He had expected a flood of
reproaches, and he was magnanimous in his relief.
"I've been pretty bad; I'm better."
"Oh, you'll be around soon, and going to dances again. The Maginnis
Social Club's having a dance Saturday night in Mason's Hall."
The girl did not reply. She was wrestling with a problem that is as
old as the ages, although she did not know it - why this tragedy of
hers should not be his. She lay with her hands crossed quietly on
her breast and one of the loosened yellow braids was near his hand.
He picked it up and ran it through his fingers.
"Hasn't hurt your looks any," he said awkwardly. "You're looking
pretty good."
With a jerk of her head she pulled the braid out of his fingers.
"Don't," she said and fell to staring at the ceiling, where she had
written her problem.
"How's the - how's the kid?" - after a moment.
"I don't know - or care."
There was nothing strange to Al in this frame of mind. Neither did
he know or care.
"What are you goin' to do with it?"
"Kill it!"
Al considered this a moment. Things were bad enough now, without
Claribel murdering the child and making things worse.
"I wouldn't do that," he said soothingly. "You can put it somewhere,
can't you? Maybe Rosie'll know."
"I don't want it to live."
For the first time he realised her despair. She turned on him her
tormented eyes, and he quailed.
"I'll find a place for it, kid," he said. "It's mine, too. I guess
I'm it, all right."
"Yours!" She half rose on her elbow, weak as she was. "Yours! Didn't
you throw me over when you found I was going to have it? Yours! Did
you go through hell for twenty-four hours to bring it into the
world? I tell you, it's mine - mine! And I'll do what I want with it.
I'll kill it, and myself too!"
"You don't know what you're saying!"
She had dropped back, white and exhausted.
"Don't I?" she said, and fell silent.
Al felt defrauded, ill-treated. He had done the right thing; he had
come to see the girl, which wasn't customary in those circles where
Al lived and worked and had his being; he had acknowledged his
responsibility, and even - why, hang it all - -
"Say the word and I'll marry you," he said magnanimously.
"I don't want to marry you."
He drew a breath of relief. Nothing could have been fairer than his
offer, and she had refused it. He wished Rosie had been there to
hear.