There was a brief pause.
"Ah, well!... Go on with what you were telling me as we walked up, then!"
"Sure thing. But I don"t catch the conversation. What was all that con you were giving me--?"
"Con?"
"About Johnson and the triangles."
"It simply occurred to me to tell you a funny story, of the sort that men are known to like, with the hope of amusing you--"
"Why, that wasn"t a funny story, Doc."
"I a.s.sure you that it was."
"Don"t see it," said Klinker.
"That is not my responsibility, in any sense."
Thus Doctor Queed, sitting stiffly on his hard little chair, and gazing with annoyance at Klinker through the iron bars at the foot of the bed.
"Blest if I pipe," said Buck, and scratched his head.
"I cannot both tell the stories and furnish the brains to appreciate them. Kindly proceed with what you were telling me."
So Buck, obliging but mystified, dropped back upon the bed and proceeded, tooth-pick energetically at work. His theme was a problem with which nearly every city is unhappily familiar. In Buck"s terminology, it was identified as "The Centre Street mashers": those pimply, weak-faced, bad-eyed young men who congregate at prominent corners every afternoon, especially Sat.u.r.days, to smirk at the working-girls, and to pa.s.s, wherever they could, from their murmured, "h.e.l.lo, Kiddo," and "Where you goin", baby?" to less innocent things.
Buck"s air of leisureliness dropped from him as he talked; his orange-stick worked ever more and more furiously; his honest voice grew pa.s.sionate as he described conditions as he knew them.
"... And some fool of a girl, no more than a child for knowing what she"s doin", laughs and answers back--just for the fun of it, not looking for harm, and right there"s where your trouble begins. Maybe that night after doin" the picture shows; maybe another night; but it"s sure to come. Dammit, Doc, I"m no saint nor sam-singer and I"ve done things I hadn"t ought like other men, and woke up shamed the next morning, too, but I"ve got a sister who"s a decent good girl as there is anywhere, and by G.o.d, sir, I"d _kill_ a man who just looked at her with the dirty eyes of them little soft-mouth blaggards!"
Queed, unaffectedly interested, asked the usual question--could not the girls be taught at home the dangers of such acquaintances?--and Buck pulverized it in the usual way.
"Who in blazes is goin" to teach "em? Don"t you know _anything_ about what kind of homes they got? Why, man, they"re _the sisters of the little blaggards!_"
He painted a dark picture of the home-life of many of these girls: its hard work and unrelenting poverty; its cheerlessness; the absence of any fun; the irresistible allurement of the flashily-dressed stranger who jingles money in his pocket and offers to "show a good time." Then he told a typical story, the story of a little girl he knew, who worked in a department store for three dollars and a half a week, and whose drunken father took over the last cent of that every Sat.u.r.day night.
This girl"s name was Eva Bernheimer, and she was sixteen years old and "in trouble."
"You know what, Doc?" Buck ended. "You"d ought to take it up in the _Post_--that"s what. There"s a fine piece to be written, showin" up them little hunters."
It was characteristic of Doctor Queed that such an idea had not and would not have occurred to him: applying his new science of editorial writing to a practical problem dipped from the stream of everyday life was still rather beyond him. But it was also characteristic of him that, once the idea had been suggested to him, he instantly perceived its value. He looked at Buck admiringly through the iron bars.
"You are quite right. There is."
"You know they are trying to get up a reformatory--girls" home, some call it. That"s all right, if you can"t do better, but it don"t get to the bottom of it. The right way with a thing like this is to _take it before it happens!_"
"You are quite right, Buck."
"Yes--but how"re you goin" to do it? You sit up here all day and night with your books and studies, Doc--where"s your cure for a sorry trouble like this?"
"That is a fair question. I cannot answer definitely until I have studied the situation out in a practical way. But I will say that the general problem is one of the most difficult with which social science has to deal."
"I know what had ought to be done. The blaggards ought to be shot. d.a.m.n every last one of them, I say."
Klinker conversed in his anger something like the ladies of Billingsgate, but Queed did not notice this. He sat back in his chair, absorbedly thinking that here, at all events, was a theme which had enough practical relation with life. He himself had seen a group of the odious "mashers" with his own eyes; Buck had pointed them out as they walked up. Never had a social problem come so close home to him as this: not a thing of text-book theories, but a burning issue working out around the corner on people that Klinker knew. And Klinker"s question had been an acute one, challenging the immediate value of social science itself.
His thought veered, swept out of its channel by an unwonted wave of bitterness. Klinker had offered him this material, Klinker had advised him to write an editorial about it, Klinker had pointed out for him, in almost a superior way, just where the trouble lay. Nor was this all. Of late everybody seemed to be giving him advice. Only the other week it was Fifi; and that same day, the young lady Charles Weyland. What was there about him that invited this sort of thing?... And he was going to take Klinker"s advice; he had seized upon it gratefully. Nor could he say that he was utterly insensate to Fifi"s: he had caught himself saying over part of it not ten minutes ago. As for Charles Weyland"s ripsaw criticisms, he had a.n.a.lyzed them dispa.s.sionately, as he had promised, and his reason rejected them in toto. Yet he could not exactly say that he had wholly purged them out of his mind. No ... the fact was that some of her phrases had managed to burn themselves into his brain.
Presently Klinker said another thing that his friend the little Doctor remembered for a long time.
"Do you know what"s the finest line in Scripture, Doc? _But He spake of the temple of His body._ I heard a minister get that off in a church once, in a sermon, and I don"t guess I"ll ever forget it. A dandy, ain"t it?... Exercise and live straight. Keep your temple strong and clean. If I was a parson, I tell you, I"d go right to Seventh and Centre next Sat.u.r.day and give a talk to them blaggards on that. _But He spake of_ ..."
Klinker stopped as though he had been shot. A sudden agonized scream from downstairs jerked him off the bed and to his feet in a second solemn as at the last trump. He stared at Queed wide-eyed, his honest red face suddenly white.
"G.o.d forgive me for talkin" so loud.... I"d ought to have known...."
"What is it? Who was that?" demanded Queed, startled more by Klinker"s look than by that scream.
But Klinker only turned and slipped softly out of the door, tipping on his toes as though somebody near at hand 4 were asleep.
Queed was left bewildered, and completely at a loss. Whatever the matter was, it clearly concerned Buck Klinker. Equally clearly, it did not concern him. People had a right to scream if they felt that way, without having a horde of boarders hurry out and call them to book.
However, his scientist"s fondness for getting at the underlying causes--or as some call it, curiosity--presently obtained control of him, and he went downstairs.
There is no privacy of grief in the communism of a middle-cla.s.s boarding-house. It is ordered that your neighbor shall gaze upon your woe and you shall stare at his anguish, when both are new and raw. That cry of pain had been instantly followed by a stir of movement; a little shiver ran through the house. Doors opened and shut; voices murmured; quick feet sounded on the stairs. Now the boarders were gathered in the parlor, very still and solemn, yet not to save their lives unaware that for them the humdrum round was to go on just the same. And here, of course, is no matter of a boarding-house: for queens must eat though kings lie high in state.
To Mrs. Paynter"s parlor came a girl, white-faced and shadowy-eyed, but for those hours at least, calm and tear-less and the mistress of herself. The boarders rose as she appeared in the door, and she saw that after all she had no need to tell them anything. They came and took her hand, one by one, which was the hardest to bear, and even Mr. Bylash seemed touched with a new dignity, and even Miss Miller"s pompadour looked human and sorry. But two faces Miss Weyland did not see among the kind-eyed boarders: the old professor, who had locked himself in his room, and the little Doctor who was at that moment coming down the steps.
"Supper"s very late," said she. "Emma and Laura ... have been much upset. I"ll have it on the table in a minute."
She turned into the hail and saw Queed on the stairs. He halted his descent five steps from the bottom, and she came to the banisters and stood and looked up at him. And if any memory of their last meeting was with them then, neither of them gave any sign of it.
"You know--?"
"No, I don"t know," he replied, disturbed by her look, he did not know why, and involuntarily lowering his voice. "I came down expressly to find out."
"Fifi--She--"
"Is worse again?"
"She ... stopped breathing a few minutes ago."
"_Dead!_"
Sharlee winced visibly at the word, as the fresh stricken always will.
The little Doctor turned his head vaguely away. The house was so still that the creaking of the stairs as his weight shifted from one foot to another, sounded horribly loud; he noticed it, and regretted having moved. The idea of Fifi"s dying had of course never occurred to him.
Something put into his head the simple thought that he would never help the little girl with her algebra again, and at once he was conscious of an odd and decidedly unpleasant sensation, somewhere far away inside of him. He felt that he ought to say something, to sum up his att.i.tude toward the unexpected event, but for once in his life he experienced a difficulty in formulating his thought in precise language. However, the pause was of the briefest.