XVIINEW LODGERS FOR HARROW STREET
PIDGE MUSSER was ending her second year in the editorial rooms ofThe Public Square, when a short story came in from Rufus Melton. Meanwhile, his work had begun to appear in magazines of large popular appeal. This manuscript, calledThe Boarded Door, had doubtless not fitted into any of them. The chief thing about the story to Pidge was that her cheeks burned as she read.
This made her angry. Another thing, the story was so familiar to her. She seemed to be in and out of Melton’s mind, hearing his typewriter, understanding even his corrections. But also she saw what the author could not—his fluctuations of fancy, which uncentered the tale.
“He’s beginning to be read,” said John Higgins. “It’s not a bad story. We’d better take it.”
“It is not his best work. There’s a cavity in it,” said Pidge. “If it were by a new name altogether, we’d write the author suggesting that he work over the weak part.”
“Do it,” said John Higgins.
Pidge laughed nervously. “He won’t like it,” she said.
“Don’t mind that. Rufus Melton can write. He’ll have his hour, but go ahead and scuttle the ship, young woman. We don’t care about pleasing our passengers.”
Back at her own desk, Pidge was smitten with the idea that she wasn’t being fair. In the course of reading Melton’s story, she had not once forgotten that he had failed to pay back that fifty dollars. Not only that, Rufus Melton hadn’t mentioned it; and he was said to be making money right now. She had to write the letter to Melton three times. Films of ice formed on the sentences and had to be skimmed off, in spite of her most rigid effort. She carried the sheet, signed by “The Editors,” to John Higgins, with a restless feeling that damage was done.
“That’s just like what Dicky Cobden would say,” he remarked, handing it back. “Send it along with the manuscript.”
Pidge wasn’t allowed to forget Dicky Cobden, though Richard, himself, was across the world and remained across, apparently groping to find the exact antipodes from Washington Square, New York. Between Miss Claes’ affection for him and John Higgins’ and Nagar’s; considering her occasional use of his “parlor” in Harrow Street and her daily use of his old desk in the office, to say nothing of the position she occupied through his kindness and care—no, she wasn’t being allowed to forget.
About the same time that Rufus Melton’s story came in to the office, a dingy bit of white paper came to Harrow Street for Pidge. It was like a paper youwould see in the street around a public school building. Pidge was awed at the unfailing magic of the post-office authorities, that the letter had ever been delivered. It was from Fanny Gallup, who had married Albert and left the pasting table shortly after Pidge’s change of fortune. Pidge had seen Fanny but once in the meantime, but had asked her to write or telephone in case of need.
Pidge found the hall designated in the third floor of a condemned building in Foley Street, and was directed to a door through which came the sounds of a crying child. Her knock was answered, and the caller gradually realized through the shadows that she was being grinned at. She smiled back, wondering if the shoeless creature were Fanny’s sister or mother. She wore no outer waist and a heavy plaid skirt that was splashed with wash water. An infant shrank into the hollow curve of her body, and another child sat wailing on the wet floor behind.
“I thought you’d come, Musser.”
It was Fanny herself. Pidge had crossed the threshold to look into eyes in which hate and hunger moved in a narrow orbit; narrow like the wet spot on the floor, in which the first-born played. Tired back, draggled hair, merely a stretched and faded vestige of a girl was Fanny Gallup now. Laugh and street talk were gone for the time, at least; gone as Albert, the barber, as much a myth as ever, so far as Pidge was concerned, though the place hypothecated a male parent. These three remaining seemed purposeless bitsof life which a perverted scheme permitted to live on.
Pidge hated herself for becoming involved in the complication. For the moment, she hated New York that could not keep itself clean. No rent, no food, somebody else’s washing in the tubs, and the rags of Fanny and her children unwashed.
“... No, it ain’t no good to think of staying, Musser, because they’re tearing the buildin’ down.”
“How much rent do you owe?”
“Five weeks. But it ain’t no good to pay that, because I got to get out anyway. Gawd, Redhead, you look like a doll in a window!”
“Is there any place around here where you can go?”
“It’s hard to get in with the two, and you’d have to pay a month in advance,” Fanny said.
“How soon do you have to leave here?”
“Four days. That’s why I sent the letter.”
“Have you got any—anything to eat?”
“That’s why I sent the letter. That’s why they keep squalling all the time.”
“I’ll be back before dark,” Pidge said, turning into the hall.
“You’ll—sure—come—back?”
“Sure,” called Pidge.
She returned with her arms full of groceries, and went home promising to come back the next afternoon.
“... Bring them here. There is no other way,” Miss Claes said.
“But they’re not clean!” Pidge moaned. “They are too sick to keep clean.”
“We can freshen them up a little,” said Miss Claes.
“But there’s nothing Fanny can do, unless the two children are taken from her. I mean she’s held to the room with them now, and they’ve been crying so long that they can’t stop. They both cry at once, and she doesn’t hear them; they look and listen for a second and then go on crying. If one stops, he hears the other. The place smelled like a sty, and the packages of food I brought got wet and spoiled before they were opened.”
“Forget about them until to-morrow, Pidge, and then get a taxicab and bring them here. I’ve got a second-floor room toward the back.”