The red lamps were all lighted in Mrs. Ivy's small parlor, and the disordered tea-table and general confusion of the overcrowded room, gave evidence that one of her frequent “at homes” had been brought to an end.
It might have been inferred that the hostess had also been brought to an end, to judge from her closed eyes and clasped hands, and the effort with which she inhaled her breath and the violence with which she exhaled it. The maid, clearing away the tea things, viewed her with apprehension.
“Excuse me, ma'm, but will you be havin' the hot-water bag?” she asked when she could endure the strain no longer.
Mrs. Ivy opened one reluctant eye and condescended to recall her spirit to the material world.
“Norah, how could you?” she asked plaintively. “Haven't I begged you never to disturb my meditation?”
“Yis, ma'm, but this, you might say, was worse than usual. Me mother's twin sister died of the asthmy.”
“Never speak to me when you see me entering into the silence. I was denying fatigue; now I shall have to begin all over!”
It was evidently difficult for Mrs. Ivy to again tranquilize her spirit. Her eyes roved fondly about the room, resting first upon one cherished object then upon another. Autographed photographs lined the walls, autographed volumes littered the tables. Above her head two small bronze censers sent wreaths of incense curling about a vast testimonial, acknowledging her valiant service in behalf of the anti-tobacco crusade. Flanking this were badges of divers shape and size, representing societies to which she belonged. In the cabinet at her left were still more disturbing treasures such as Gerald's first pair of shoes, and the gavel that the last president of the Federated Sisterhood had used before she had, as Mrs. Ivy was fond of saying, “been called upon to hand in her resignation by the Board of Death.”
Before the error of fatigue had been entirely erased from her mental state, her eyes fell upon a pamphlet, and she immediately became absorbed in its contents. It set forth the need for a Home for Crippled Animals, and by the time she reached the second page she was framing a motion to be presented to her club on the morrow. Mrs. Ivy was greatly addicted to motions; in fact, it was one of her missions in life continually to move that things should be other than they were, without in any way supplying the motive power to change them.
While thus engaged she was interrupted by a belated caller. He was a short, heavy-set young man, with a square prominent jaw, and a twinkle in his eye.
“MisterDecker!” exclaimed Mrs. Ivy, swimming toward him. “After all these months in those wonderful Eastern lands! I can almost catch the odor of sandalwood about you!”
“It's dope,” said Decker, with an easy laugh. “Chinese dope. I've had these clothes cleaned twice, and I can't get rid of it. Had them on one night in an opium den in Hankow. Funny how that smell stays with you.”
“An opium den?” repeated Mrs. Ivy, lifting a protesting hand. “And is no effort being made to stamp out such iniquities in China? Might not some concerted action on the part of the women's clubs in all the Christian countries create a public sentiment against them?”
Decker bit his lip as he stooped to pick up the leaflet she had dropped.
“Gerald's here I suppose?”
“Of course! How thoughtless of me not to explain that I always insist upon the dear lad resting between four and five. He inherits delicate lungs from his father, and an emotional, artistic temperament from me. Then both of his maternal grandparents had heart trouble.”
“Still hammers away at his music, I suppose?” Decker asked, minutely inspecting the photograph of a meek-looking female who appeared totally unable to live up to the bold, aggressive signature with which she had signed herself.
“Dear Miss Snell,” Mrs. Ivy explained, “corresponding secretary of the A. T. L. A. If you hadonlycome sooner you could have met her. What were you asking? Oh, yes! about Gerald's music. Why, you could no more imagine Gerald without music, than you could think of a bird without wings. He would simply perish without a piano. When we are abroad we rent one if we are only going to be in a place ten days. His Papa can't understand this, but then Mr. Ivy is not musical, poor dear; he really doesn't know a fugue from a fantasie.”
“Neither do I,” said Decker. “Do the Queeringtons still live next door?”
“Yes. You know our beloved Doctor has married again.”
“What! Good old Syllogism Queerington! you don't mean it! I wonder if he knows her first name? He taught me four years up at the University and never could remember mine.”
“Oh! here's my boy! Are you feeling better, dear?” Mrs. Ivy turned expectant eyes to the door where a lean, loosely put together young man was just entering. He had the slouching gait that indicates relaxed ambitions as well as relaxed muscles, and his hands were deep in his pockets as if they were at home there.
“Hello, Decker, glad to see you,” he drawled languidly. “Wish you'd stir the fire, Mater dear; it's beastly cold in here.”
“I'll do it,” said Decker shortly.
Gerald Ivy dropped gracefully on the sofa, and became absorbed in examining his nails. He was rather a handsome if anemic youth, with the general air of one who has weighed the world and found it wanting. His eyes, large and brown and effective, swept the room restlessly. They were accomplished eyes, being capable of expressing more emotions in a moment than Gerald had felt in a lifetime.
As he idly turned the leaves of a magazine, he asked Decker how long he had been back in America.
“A couple of months, but I've only been in town two weeks. Sorry to hear you are under the weather.”
“Oh! I'm a ruin,” said Gerald; “a dilapidated, romantic ruin. Something's gone wrong in the belfry to-day. Is my face swollen, Mater?”
Mrs. Ivy bent over him in instant solicitude.
“I do believe itisswollen, darling; just here. Look, Mr. Decker, doesn't it seem a trifle fuller than the other side?”
Cropsie Decker's eye, not being trained by years of maternal solicitude, failed to distinguish any difference.
“No matter,” said Gerald gloomily; “if it isn't then it's something else. What's the news, Decker?”
“The only news for me is this idiotic talk that has been allowed to go the rounds about Don Morley. That is what I came to see you about. What does Dillingham have to say about it?”
“Oh, you know Dill; he side-steps. The whole thing has blown over here months ago; the subject is as extinct as the dodo.”
“Well, it won't be extinct long! I've cabled Don to come home, and I bet he'll stir things up. There's nothing to hold him now that Margery Sequin's broken her engagement.”
“So sad!” murmured Mrs. Ivy. “I hope young Mr. Dillingham won't do anything desperate. To think of his cup of happiness being dashed from his lips—”
The two young men looked at each other and laughed.
“Don't worry about Dill, Mater. He has more than one cup to fall back on. It is old man Sequin that may do something desperate. I hear they have made no end of a row, but Margery holds her own.”
“They say on the street,” said Decker, “that Mr. Sequin has been counting on the Dillinghams' money to reinforce the bank. He's been going it pretty heavy the last two years.”
“One cannot live by bread alone,” quoted Mrs. Ivy; “our friends have been living the material life, they have forgotten that they are but stewards, and as stewards will be held accountable for the way they use their wealth. Mrs. Sequin makes absolutely no effort to advance the progress of the world. She has refused from the first to join the A.T.L.A. and she is not even a member of the Woman's Club.”
“Well, I hope Mr. Sequin hasn't been playing with Don Morley's money,” said Decker, resuming the subject from which Mrs. Ivy had flown off at a tangent. “Donald has always left everything to him, and doesn't know anything more about his investments than I do. All he is concerned with is spending his income, and that keeps him busy.”
At this moment Norah appeared with fresh tea and cakes, making her way with some difficulty through the labyrinth of red lamps, small tables, foot-stools and marble-crowned pedestals that crowded the room.
“Ah!” cried Mrs. Ivy, “here are some of the little cakes, Gerald, that you love. You will try one, won't you? We have the greatest time tempting his appetite, Mr. Decker. He can only eat what he likes. I have always contended with his father that there was some physical cause for his craving sweets. I never refused them to him when he was a child. But from the time he was born he has never really lived on food, he has lived on music.”
Gerald, at the moment regaling himself with his second cake, gave evidence that he did not rely solely on the sustaining power of music.
“And now, will you excuse me, dear Mr. Decker?” asked Mrs. Ivy, gathering her lavender skirts about her. “I am a very, very busy woman, and my desk claims much of my time. You will come to us again, won't you? Gerald's friends, you know, are my friends.Good-by.” And with a tender pressure of the hand, and a lingering look she was gone.
Gerald waited until the door was closed, then produced cigarettes which he proffered to Decker.
“Mater's last hobby is tobacco,” he smiled indulgently. “She is going to abolish it from the universe. Do you remember how Doctor Queerington used to hold forth on the subject at the university?”
“By the way, your mother tells me he has married again. I don't know why, but that tickles me. Was she a widow?”
Gerald with his elbows on the arms of his chair and holding his teacup with both hands just below the level of his eyes, looked suddenly gloomy.
“No,” he said. “I wish to Heaven she was one!”
“What's the matter with Old Syllogism? I always thought he was a rather good sort.”
“I'm not thinking about him!” Gerald said impatiently. “I am thinking of the girl. She can't be much older than I am and the most exquisite thing you ever beheld. Her coloring is absolutely luminous. She ought to be painted by Besnard or La Touche or some of those French chaps that make a specialty of light. She positively radiates!”
“How did she ever happen to marry the Doctor?”
“Heaven knows! He captured her in the woods somewhere. I don't suppose she had ever seen a man before. Jove! You ought to see her play tennis, and to hear her laugh. She's a perfect wonder, as free and easy as one of the boys, but straight as a die. Doesn't give a flip for money or clothes, or society. Did you ever hear of a really pretty girl being like that?”
“I hope Doctor Queerington likes her as well as you do.”
“Heavens, man! everybody likes her; you can't help it. But nobody understands her. You see they look on her as a child; they haven't the faintest conception of what she is going through.”
“And you think you have?”
“I know it. She's trying to adjust herself, and she can't. She's finding out her mistake and making a game fight to hide it. When she first came she went in for everything. She had never played tennis or golf, and she got more fun out of learning than anybody I ever saw. Then suddenly she stopped. Some old desiccated relative told the Doctor it didn't look well for his wife to be running around with the young people, and that settled it. She gave up like an angel, and she's not the kind that likes to give up either. Now her days are devoted to the heavy domestic, and her evenings to improving her mind in the Doctor's stuffy old study.”
“Talking to the Doctor,” confessed Decker, “always affected me like looking at Niagara Falls; grand, and imposing and awe-inspiring, but a little goes a long way. How is she standing it?”
“Getting thinner and paler and prettier every day. She's a country girl, you know, used to horses, and outdoor exercise. She must have been beastly homesick, but she's game through and through. It was awfully hard for her to bluff at first. That's because she is so honest. But she has had to learn. No woman, good or bad, can get through life without learning to bluff, only it comes harder for the good ones. What's that confounded racket in the street?”
They rose and went to the window, Gerald looking over the shoulder of his shorter companion.
A superannuated gray mule hitched to a heavy cart had come to a standstill in the middle of the street, and a group of excited negroes were vainly trying to induce him to move on. With one ear cocked forward, and his forefeet firmly planted, the decrepit animal dumbly made his declaration of independence, taking the blows that rained upon his back with the dogged heroism of one who has resolved to die rather than surrender.
“By Jupiter, if those coons aren't fixing to build a fire under him!” exclaimed Decker. “They'd rather fool with a balking mule than eat watermelon! Let's go out to see the sport.”
When Decker reached the porch, having left Gerald at the hall mirror, inspecting his face with minute solicitude, a new figure had appeared on the scene. It was a girl dressed in white, standing in the Queeringtons' yard, and as he looked he saw her suddenly dart out of the gate and into the street as if she had been shot from a cannon.
“Stop pulling his head like that!” she demanded. “Don't you dare to strike him again. Take that fire away!”
The negroes fell back somewhat astonished, and the driver arrested his whip in the air.
“I'll show you how to make him go,” she went on; “put mud in his mouth. Yes, mud, a big lump of mud. There, that'll do; make it into a ball, and put it in. Yes, you can! Oh, dear! Give it to me!”
She seized the mule's lower jaw with her thumb and forefinger, and with a deft movement succeeded in getting the unwelcome substance between the animal's teeth.
The mule evinced surprise, then curiosity. His fore feet relaxed, his eye lost its fire, and when a gentle pressure fell upon his halter, he was too engrossed in the new sensation to resist it.
“Bravo, Miss Lady!” called Gerald, sauntering forward to meet her. “I told you you were irresistible. What did you whisper in his ear?”
“Lots of things!” she said, accepting his immaculate handkerchief to wipe the mud from her hands, “but of course the mud helped. Uncle Jimpson taught me that trick. He says a mule has room in his head for only one thought at a time, and all you have to do is to change his balking thought for some other and he'll go.”
“I hope you will never have to put mud in my mouth,” said Gerald, looking at her with no attempt to conceal his admiration. “Can't you come over and see mother for a bit? She'd love to give you a cup of tea.”
“I don't like tea in the afternoon; it spoils my supper.”
“Well, then, come over to see me. There's a friend of mine I want you to meet. I've been telling him about you.”
“I can't. I'm drawing pictures for Bertie. He'll be disappointed.”
“So will I. So will Decker.”
“Decker?” Miss Lady flashed a glance at him. “You don't mean Cropsie Decker?”
“Yes, I do; the special correspondent for theHerald-Post. Is that sufficient inducement?”
Miss Lady looked at him rather strangely. “I'll come,” she said after a moment's hesitation.
They did not return to the parlor but to the music-room, a large room on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing beside him, a rapt expression on her elevated profile.
Miss Lady flitted about from object to object, asking questions, not waiting for answers, seeing everything, commenting on everything while the two young men stood side by side on the hearth rug and watched her. She was like a humming-bird afraid to light.
“Please, Mrs. Queerington,” Gerald begged at last. “You know you don't care for those old kodaks. I'll show them to you another time. I want you to talk to Decker. Sit down here in this big chair and I'll sit at your feet, where I belong, and Cropsie'll sit anywhere he likes and tell us about his adventures.”
“But where's your mother? I thought you said she was serving tea?”
“She'll be down directly. Now, tell us a story, Decker. A man can't wander around the Orient for a year without having something exciting happen to him.”
“I'm afraid I haven't an experiencing nature,” said Decker, smiling. “You ought to have Morley here. He's the fellow that went over with me, Mrs. Queerington. I'll back him against the field for having adventures. You remember that big fire last year in Tokyo? Don was the first Johnny on the spot, doing the noble hero act, dragging out women and children and gallantly fighting the flames, while I lay up in bed at the Imperial Hotel and fought mosquitoes! He was in a collision at sea, just off the coast of Korea, got mixed up in a Chinese uprising in Nanking and was arrested for a spy while taking pictures of the fortifications at Miyajima. If I had half his luck I'd be the highest priced man in the syndicate.”
“I don't know that I particularly envy him his luck in the incident that happened here just before he left,” said Gerald, lighting a fresh cigarette.
“It was nothing to his discredit,” said Decker hotly. “He happened to be a witness when that fool Dillingham got into a shooting scrape, and he left town because he did not want to testify against the man his niece was going to marry. He didn't consider the consequences, he never does. It was a toss up when I met him in 'Frisco whether he would come home, or go on.”
“Didn't he know he was indicted?” asked Gerald.
“Certainly not. Neither of us knew it until I got home and found people talking about 'Poor Donald Morley,' and acting as if he were a refugee from justice. Two or three letters came from Mrs. Sequin, but she was so busy urging Don to stay away that she hadn't time to write anything else. We did get one old home paper, somewhere in Java, with an account of the trial. That was the first intimation Don had that Dillingham was throwing off on him. Even then he could scarcely believe it; there's nothing in him to understand a man like Lee Dillingham.”
“But he was with him,—that night at the saloon,” ventured Miss Lady, sitting up very straight and listening very intently.
Gerald smiled skeptically. “He went in out of the rain, my dear lady; that's what he wrote home, I understand; and he didn't indulge in a single drink. Rather a strain on the imagination in the light of subsequent events.”
“See here, Ivy,” said Decker, rising and standing before the fire with his square jaw thrust out, and the twinkle gone from his eye. “I happen to know this story from beginning to end, and we both know Don Morley. He's as full of faults as a porcupine is of quills, but he's neither a liar nor a coward. If he says he was sober that night I'd stake my life he was.”
There was an uncomfortable pause during which Gerald tenderly felt his afflicted face, and Decker glared at the chandelier.
“He ought to have stayed to explain,” said Miss Lady, not daring to look up; “a man's first duty is to himself and—and to those who care for him.”
“That was the trouble,” said Decker slowly. “It seems that the one person Don cared most about wouldn't listen to an explanation. He wrote her full particulars, and asked her to telegraph him if he should go or stay. When I met him in 'Frisco he had been waiting for that wire for three days, and he was nearly off his head. I got him on the steamer almost by main force. We laid over ten days in Honolulu, and he got the notion that a letter would be waiting for him in Yokohama, and that he would take the next steamer home. All the way across I heard about that girl from the time the Chino brought our coffee in the morning until we went below again for the night. He all but said his prayers to her; cut out everything to drink; even refused to play a friendly game of poker. Why, I've tramped so many decks to the tune of that girl's charms that I could write a book about her.”
“What is her name?” asked Gerald greatly interested.
“Heavens, I don't know! She was a wood nymth, a dryad, a jewel, a flower, I could keep it up indefinitely. He had a new one for her every day. When we reached Japan, he couldn't wait for the steamer to dock but went ashore in the pilot boat, and made a bee line for Cook's. There was nothing there. It was like that at every port we touched. Each time he would get his hopes up to fever heat, and each time he'd be disappointed. I never saw such perseverance and belief. He made excuse after excuse for her. He was too proud to write again, and he got leaner and leaner and more and more homesick. You know that collision I spoke of? Well, he got in that by waiting over a steamer at Nagasaki in the hope of getting a letter before he left Japan.”
“What happened next?” asked Gerald; “did another planet swim into his ken?”
“Hardly. The smash came just before I left him, a couple of months ago. We were at Raffles Hotel in Singapore having tea with some French girls from the steamer. Our purser happened along and gave Don a letter which I recognized as being from Mrs. Sequin. He read the first sheet, then looked up in a wild sort of way, and asked if we'd mind excusing him as he had something he wanted to see to before the steamer sailed. At five o'clock he'd never shown up, and I had to hustle our bags ashore and start out to look for him. He'd been awfully seedy for a couple of months and when he got left I knew something serious had happened. I found him late that night in the foreign hospital out of his head with a fever. It seems the letter had told him that his girl was going to be married, and half beside himself he had gotten into a rikisha, and ridden for hours in the tropical sun, trying to face the fact. Of course in the run-down state he was in, it put him out of business, and by the time he got back to Raffles', he didn't know who he was, nor where he was. I stayed with him until theHerald-Postsent for me to come home. Maybe you don't think I hated to leave the old chap, in that God-forsaken country, lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, with all his illusions smashed.”
“Did he want to come with you?” asked Gerald.
“He didn't want anything. He had wanted one thing so long there was no more want left in him. I tried to get him to let me engage passage for him on the next home-bound steamer. But he said he doubted if he'd ever come back, that as soon as he was able to travel he would go on around the world, and that it didn't make much difference where he landed.”
“Quite a tragic little romance,” Gerald said. “What a lot of mischief you women have to answer for, Mrs. Q.!”
But Miss Lady did not hear him, she was still leaning forward absorbed in Decker's narrative.
“If he comes home, in answer to your cable, when can he get here?” she asked.
“Not before Christmas I should say.”
“If I were Lee Dillingham I should go South for the winter,” Gerald said, going to the piano and striking a few random chords.
After Cropsie Decker left, Miss Lady sat very quiet in the big chair, while Gerald played to her. It was well that only the kindly old bust of Liszt looked down on her tense white face, and clasped hands.
For over two months she had been fighting a specter, never daring to lift her eyes to it, but fighting it blindly, passionately, unceasingly. She had denied its existence, refuted every memory, filled her life to the brim with other interests, other affections, and here suddenly she had met it face to face, and it was no longer horrible, but a beautiful, radiant vision, a thing to be buried in her innermost being, a sacred, solemn thing, not to be looked at, or dwelt upon, but no longer to be denied.
The stormy, insistent strains of the “Appassionata” filled the room, surging through every fiber of her, lifting and abasing her by turns. How could she get hold of herself while Gerald played like that? She was sinking in a great sea of emotion and the music swept about her like a mighty gale, shutting out everything in the world but Donald Morley. He had not failed her, it was she who had failed him. He was coming home, and it was too late. She would have to meet him face to face, to see all that he had suffered in his eyes and speak no word. Surely she might give him this one hour, just while the music lasted; give it to him and to herself for the lifetime together they had missed.
She did not know when the music stopped, she did not know when Gerald came back to the hassock at her feet. He had evidently been there some time when she was aware of his elbow on the arm of her chair, and his head buried in it.
“Gerald!” she said, starting up; “what's the matter?”
“Everything. Is that your trouble?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are unhappy,” he said, catching her hand.
She sprang to her feet and snapped on the electric lights.
“Do I look as if I were unhappy?” she demanded, flashing on him her old, bright smile. “It was the music, and the twilight, and the way you played. That sonata ought never to be played except in a crowded room with all the lights on.”
“It wasn't the music,” Gerald persisted; “you know it wasn't. Something's troubling you, and something is troubling me. May I tell you what is the matter with me, Miss Lady?”
He was looking at her very intently across the table, and Miss Lady for the first time recognized the danger signals in his eyes.
“Let me guess!” she cried, her wits springing to her rescue. “I think I know. I thought so when I first came in. It's mumps!”
Gerald's hand flew instinctively to his face, and his eyes sought the mirror. Miss Lady, in applying to Gerald Ivy, Uncle Jimpson's remedy for a balking mule, had averted a disaster.
Time was an abstraction of which the inhabitants of Bean Alley took little notice. The arbitrary division of one's life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.
On this particular fall afternoon, just outside Phineas Flathers' cottage, a lively game was in progress. It was a game known in Bean Alley as “Sockabout,” and it had to do with caps or battered hats laid in a row, and with a small rubber ball that was thrown into them from a distance. Like many other apparently simple diversions, Sockabout had its complexities. In fact, the rules admitted of so many interpretations that an umpire was indispensable.
Under ordinary circumstances Chick Flathers would have scorned so passive a role as umpire, but to-day he was handicapped. In the first place he had no cap to contribute to the row on the ground, and in the second he was burdened with a very large and wriggly bundle, which gave evidence of marked disfavor the moment he ceased to jolt it violently on his knees.
In the midst of an unusually fierce altercation, in which four boys contended for the same cap, Skeeter Sheeley's voice rose above the clamor.
“It's our turn! Umpire says so, didn't you, Chick? Aw, you did, too! I kin understand you better 'n you kin understand yourself. 'Course it's ours. Stop shovin' me, Gussie McGlory, I'll swat yer in the jaw in a minute! Look out, Chick! Look out fer the kid!”
The youngest resident of Bean Alley was probably saved from premature death by the timely appearance of two ladies at the far end of the street.
Chick, recognizing the younger one, started joyfully to meet her, but at sight of her companion he stopped short. For two years he had regarded that plump, smiling, elderly lady as his arch enemy. She was after him. She wanted to put him in something that sounded like “The Willows Awful Home.” Once she had almost gotten him, but Aunt 'Tella interposed. He was not afraid of the truant officer, nor of the cop, although they were generally after him, too, but he had horrible nightmares in which he saw himself being dragged into captivity by this bland lady in the purple dress, who always smiled.
Just as he was seeking a hiding-place sufficiently large to accommodate himself and his charge, he was summoned home. Considerable commotion was apparent in the crowded kitchen and Mr. Flathers was moving about with an alacrity unusual to him.
“Git off your shoes and stockings, Chick, and turn your coat inside out. Here, I'll hold the baby; yer Mammy's nursing the other one. Shove that beer can under the stove, and hide that there cuckoo clock.”
Chick followed instructions with the air of one who understood the situation. It was not the first time he had prepared hurriedly for visitors.
“They're stopping at Jireses',” reported Mr. Flathers from the window. “Here, take this kid and set out there on the door-step. Don't you dare budge till they've saw you and spoke to you.”
Chick resumed his position on the door-step with a heavy heart. The line of battle had been pushed south, and he was completely out of the firing line.
His bare feet and legs were cold in the biting November air, and he had jolted the baby until he felt there were no more jolts left in him. It was, moreover, a terrifying business to sit there and calmly wait his fate.
“Them's them!” announced Skeeter Sheeley, racing down the alley. “They give Mr. Jires some oranges. If they give you one, you goin' to gimme half?”
Chick was too miserable to answer. The bars of an institution seemed to be already closing upon him.
Mrs. Ivy, holding her skirts very high and picking her way gingerly around the frozen puddles, was the first to reach him.
“Ah! Here's our good little friend Rick, or Dick, is it? And this is the sweet little baby sister that God sent you.”
“Naw it ain't,” said Skeeter; “that there's a boy, an' it ain't no kin to him. Its paw's in the pen, an' its maw's up fer ninety days, an' its jes' boardin' at his house.”
“The case that was reported for the Home,” said Mrs. Ivy, turning with a significant nod to her companion who had just come up.
At the word “home” Chick shuddered. It was the most terrible word in the English language to him.
“What's the matter with your thumb, old fellow?” Miss Lady asked, seeing his frightened look. “Come here, Skeeter, and tell me what he says.”
She relieved Chick of the young person whose parents were not in a position to minister to his wants, and sat on the door-step between the two boys, listening with flattering attention to a detailed description of each hero's wounds and scars and how they had been received.
Mrs. Ivy, meanwhile, a veritable spider in the midst of a web of institutions, was warily planning to ensnare every helpless, poverty-stricken fly that came her way. To her, the web was not made for the fly, but the fly for the web; supplying flies was her chief occupation.
Standing just inside the kitchen door with her skirts still gathered carefully about her, she viewed her surroundings with mournful sympathy.
“The fact are,” Phineas was saying as he held his coat together at the collar, in a pretended effort to conceal his lack of a shirt, “that we ain't been prosperin' since you was last here. Looks like the hand of the Lord—”
“Ah, Mr. Flathers,” remonstrated Mrs. Ivy, with a finger on her lip, “never forget that whom He loveth He chasteneth.”
“I don't, Mrs. Ivy, I don't. I keep that in mind. If it wasn't fer that, Mrs. Ivy, I declare I don't know what I would do. Now you comin' to-day was a answer to prayer! I just ast that some way would be pervided 'fore the rent man come back at six o'clock. I didn't say in my prayerwhatway, I just saidaway, thataway would be pervided. And when I seen you and the young lady turnin' in the alley, I sez to Maria, 'never try to shake my faith no more, the clouds has been lifted!'”
Mrs. Ivy, who was much more given to dispensing morals than money, shifted her position.
“Mr. Flathers,” she said, looking at him with what she conceived to be a searching glance, “do you ever drink?”
Assuring himself that Chick had gotten the can quite out of sight, Phineas looked at her reproachfully:
“Me? Why, Mrs. Ivy, I thought everybody knowed that since I joined the Church—of course I ain't denying that therewasa time when I knowed the taste of liquor. There ain't no good denying that, and, besides confession is good fer me, it humbles my spirit, Mrs. Ivy, it keeps me from being a publican.”
“And tobacco?” queried Mrs. Ivy. “Liquor and tobacco go hand in hand, they are twin evils. Are you addicted to the use of tobacco?”
“Not me!” said Phineas, truthfully for once. “I ain't soiled my lips with a seegar for over twenty years, and you couldn't git me to chew if you chloroformed me. Ef liquor is the drink, terbaccer is the food of the devil, as I see it.” Mrs. Ivy beamed upon him, as she opened the silver bag at her belt. “I shall report your case at our next meeting,” she said with enthusiasm. “I shall quote your very words. And now I am going to pin this little badge on you, this little white badge that tells the world you belong to the Anti-Tobacco League. You have the honor of wearing what few of our greatest statesmen can wear! You have proven that a humble laborer can lead the way to Reform.”
Miss Lady appeared at this point with the Boarder, who like most individuals of his class, complained continuously of the quantity and quality of his food.
“You find us in a bad way, Mis' Squeerington,” Phineas said, offering her a bottomless chair with the air of a Christian martyr. “If my sister Myrtella knowed the half of what we was passin' through she wouldn't continue to steel her heart against us.”
“Myrtella's heart's all right,” said Miss Lady cheerfully; “she takes care of Chick, doesn't she?”
“She does, mam, in a way. But there's heavy expenses on a pore man with a family. Mrs. Flathers now ain't been able to have a see-ance since before the baby come. She did give one trance settin' yesterday, but she says she don't know what's got into her, she feels so sort of weak like!”
“How long has she been taking care of this other baby?” Miss Lady asked.
“Most ever since ours come. The Juvenile Court was looking round fer some one to nurse him till his maw got out of the jail hospital. I sez to Maria, 'Here's a chanct to do a good Christian act an' earn a honest penny. We'll take it in an' treat it like our own, sez I, an' the Lord will not fergit us, sez I!”
The Boarder, taking advantage of this assurance of hospitality, set up such a peremptory demand for food, that Miss Lady was compelled to walk the floor with him.
“Where is Mrs. Flathers?” she asked in despair. “Can't we give him a bottle or something?”
Maria, more limp, and inanimate than usual, came out of the dim interior of the adjoining room, carrying a yet more limp and inanimate bundle which she exchanged with Miss Lady for hers, and silently retired into the inner room where she was followed by Mrs. Ivy.
“An' this here is ours!” exclaimed Phineas, bending with sudden enthusiasm over the child in Miss Lady's arms, and tenderly lifting the shawl from the weazened face and tiny claw-like hands. “This here is Loreny. There ain't nary one of the rest of 'em lived over two weeks, an' this here one is goin' on four. Kinder looks like we're goin' to keep her with us, don't it?”
Miss Lady could find no answer. The white lips and the blue circles about the small, sunken eyes, bespoke the same disinclination to risk life under such circumstances as had been shown by all the other little Flatherses.
“Course she ain't like that other baby,” Phineas went on with genuine earnestness, “but then he's a boy, an' eats more. She's goin' to git fat an' pretty, ain't you, Loreny?”
He put his coarse brown thumb into the little hand which closed about it and clung to it, and sat watching her, unmindful of his visitor.
“She don't look what you'd call strong,” he went on, anxiously, “but you wouldn't say she was sick, would you?”
“I am afraid I should,” Miss Lady said gravely; “she looks very sick to me.”
“She does? Then I'd better git the doctor,” Phineas rose hurriedly, then sat down again. “But he never done the others no good. Maria always contended it was him that killed 'em. Ain't there somethin' we kin do? Don't you know somethin'?”
“Yes, I think I do, only you may not be willing to do it.”
“You try me. I'll do anything you say, Miss. If the Lord will only spare her—”
“It's not the Lord that's taking her,” Miss Lady cried impatiently, “it's you that are sending her, Mr. Flathers. Can't you see that you are killing your baby?”
He looked at her in amazed horror.
“Yes, you are!” went on Miss Lady fiercely, “you are selling her food to another baby; you are letting her mother work so hard that she can scarcely nourish herself. Just look at Mrs. Flathers! Anybody can see that if she had better food and less to do she'd be a different person.”
“Oh, Maria was real pretty onct,” Phineas said somewhat resentfully, “but when a man marries one of them slim little blondes he never knows what he's gittin'. They sort of shrink up on yer an' git faded an' stringy.”
“Yes, but think what she got,” said Miss Lady determined to press the matter home. “Myrtella says you were a strong, handsome young man, who could have turned your hand to almost anything, and look at you now! A broken-down loafer, sitting around the saloons, talking religion while your baby starves. I don't wonder Myrtella is ashamed of you, I am ashamed of you, and if this poor little girl ever lives to grow up, she will be ashamed of you, too!”
“No, no,” cried Phineas brokenly, his head in his hands, “she won't be that—if the Lord,—I mean if she lives, I'll be a better man, Mis' Squeerington, indeed I will. Nobody ever will know in the world how much I want children of my own. That's why I 'dopted Chick—that's one reason I took in this new one. Seemed like as if my baby went—”
“We'll try to keep her,” Miss Lady said with a rush of sympathy. “I'll do everything I can but you must help, Mr. Flathers. You are willing to do your part, aren't you?”
His emotions, used to responding to false stimulants, being now appealed to by the one genuine feeling in him, threatened to become uncontrolled.
“There, there!” Miss Lady said, “if you really want to save her, I think there's a way.”
“Not a Orphan's Home?” asked Phineas, lifting one eye from the baby's petticoat where his head had been buried.
“No, a clean home of her own. There's no reason why you shouldn't go to work, Mr. Flathers, and support your family decently. I'll take Chick home with me. Myrtella will be glad to have him for a little visit. Mrs. Ivy is going to send the other baby to the Foundling's Home. Then you'll only have to look after Mrs. Flathers and the baby; you surely can do that, can't you?”
“Yes 'm, I kin do that. 'Course any man kin do that. But I been out of a regular job so long, you'd sorter help me find something to start on?”
“I'll get you something to do, if you will only stick to it. Perhaps Mrs. Sequin can give you work at her new house. She gave our old colored man, Uncle Jimpson, a place.”
“Jes' so it ain't garden work, nor gittin' up coal, nor nothin' that brings on rheumatism.”
“Have you rheumatism?”
“No, mam, Praise God! I have escaped this far by bein' kereful. You know what it means, Mis' Squeerington, when a man with a family gits down with the rheumatism. There's Jires, now—”
“Yes, and Mr. Jires does more for his family lying flat on his back than you do for yours, up and walking around! You're not fooling me one bit, Mr. Flathers, and there's no use trying to fool yourself. You either mean seriously to go to work or you don't. Which is it?”
Phineas Flathers' strong impulse was to flee the scene. He saw his liberty vanishing before the awful prospect held out by this pretty young lady who could be so sympathetic one moment and so stern the next. But the tiny claw-like fingers of Loreny held him fast. He looked at his imprisoned thumb and smiled tenderly. Then he faced Miss Lady squarely for the first time.
“You help me git a job, Miss, an' I'll promise to take keer of this here baby.”
“What you need,” came the murmur of Mrs. Ivy's voice from the next room, where she was taking leave of Maria Flathers, “is more beauty in your home, something to uplift you and inspire you. I am going to send you one of our traveling art galleries, you may keep the pictures a whole week, long enough to learn the titles and the names of the painters. Just think what it will mean to lift your tired eyes to a beautiful, serene Madonna! And couldn't you have more color in your home? We find color so stimulating. Scarlet geraniums for instance. Wouldn't you like some scarlet geraniums?”
“I dunno where we'd put 'em at,” Maria said wearily, shifting the weight of the Boarder to her other arm. Then her face hardened suddenly, and she wheeled into the kitchen.
“Flathers,” she said, “it's him coming round the house now. He said he'd be back before six, an' wouldn't stand no foolin'. What you goin' to do, Flathers?”
Before Miss Lady and Mrs. Ivy could make their exit, the way was blocked by a heavy-set, muscular, one-eyed man who placed a hand on either side of the door jamb and unnecessarily announced that there he was. Frantic efforts on the part of Phineas to signify to the newcomer by winks and gestures, that the presence of guests would prevent his talking business, were without effect.
“You ladies'll have to excuse me,” said the intruder cheerfully, “but I can't fool with this bunch no longer. It's pay, or git out, this time and no mistake.”
Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder, and the Boarder who insisted upon being jolted every instant he was not sleeping or eating, began to cry also. Whereupon Loreny, who had been laid upon the kitchen table, heard the noise and felt called upon to add her voice to the chorus.
By this time Chick and his colleagues, scenting excitement from afar, had followed its trail and now presented themselves breathless and interested to await developments. “Puttin' out” was not a particular novelty in Bean Alley, but the presence of guests added a picturesque feature.
“If you can wait a week longer,” said Phineas with some attempt at dignity, “I'll be in a position to settle up to date. I'm expectin' to git a job—”
At this the rent man threw back his head and laughed, and the youngsters back of him laughed, and even the Boarder stopped crying a moment to see what had happened.
“But he really is,” insisted Miss Lady, coming to Phineas' assistance. “He's going to work the first of the week. Surely you can wait a week longer.”
“I can, Miss!” said the man in the door, gallantly. “I been waiting a week longer on Flathers for more'n two months. There ain't absolutely no use in arguing the matter further. It's pay up, or git out,to-day.”
“Well, if this ain't the limit!” said Phineas, with the air of one who had reached it many times before, but never such a limitless limit as this.
“But if we pay this month's rent for him, can't you let him make up the back rent later?” argued Miss Lady, trying to comfort Maria who threatened to become hysterical.
“When you've known Flathers as long as I have, you won't talk about him paying up.”
“But you can't put them out like this, with that little baby and no place to go!”
“There's the Charity Organization, and the Alms House,” suggested Mrs. Ivy, wiping her eyes through sympathy.
“I'd hate to drive 'em to that,” said the man doggedly, “but I got my own family to consider, and I ain't what I once was, since I lost my eye.”
“Poor man,” sighed Mrs. Ivy; “how fortunate It was the left one! How did it happen?”
“Shot out,” said the man, nothing loath to enter into particulars. “In a scrap between a pair of young swells that was hangin' round my place. Shot out in cold blood when I wasn't lookin'.”
“But, my good man, didn't you prosecute?” asked Mrs. Ivy. “You know we have a Legal Aid Society for just such cases as yours.”
{Illustration: Maria began to cry, and forgot to jolt the Boarder}
“Yes'm, but one of the young gentlemen skipped the country, lit out fer foreign parts, took to the tall timber, as you might say.”
“But he was not the one who did the shooting, was he?” asked Miss Lady, a sudden bright spot on either cheek, and the steady determination in her eye that had been Flathers' undoing.
“I ain't never been able to say which one done it,” said the man, faltering under her steady gaze.
“Perhaps it was worth your while not to say?”
The man shot a quick glance of suspicion at her, then his eye came back to Phineas.
“Of course, I don't want to push him into the Poor House, and if he expects to get work—”
“I do, Dick,” said Phineas fervently. “Monday morning I put my shoulder-blade to the wheel somewhere.”
“Well, if the ladies'll stand for this month,” said the man, evidently anxious to get away, “I'll wait a week longer on the back rent.”
Miss Lady was preoccupied and silent on the way home. The world sometimes seemed desperately sordid, and human nature a baffling proposition.
At her gate Mrs. Ivy halted suddenly: “Do you know,” she said, “it has just occurred to me! I shouldn't be one bit surprised if that horrid one-eyed man was the very one Mr. Morley shot!”