Presently he stopped on the sidewalk, looked around him, and read a sign in glaring, electric letters, Hotel Albert. Despite the heat, the place was ablaze with lights. Men and women were pa.s.sing, pausing--going in. A motor, with a liveried chauffeur whom he remembered having seen before, was standing in front of the Rathskeller. The nightly carousal was beginning.
Hodder retraced his steps, crossed the street diagonally, came to the dilapidated gate he remembered so well, and looked up through the dusk at the house. If death had entered it, there was no sign: death must be a frequent visitor hereabouts. On the doorsteps he saw figures outlined, slatternly women and men in shirt-sleeves who rose in silence to make way for him, staring at him curiously. He plunged into the hot darkness of the hall, groped his way up the stairs and through the pa.s.sage, and hesitated. A single gas jet burned low in the stagnant air, and after a moment he made out, by its dim light, a woman on her knees beside the couch, mechanically moving the tattered palm-leaf over the motionless little figure. The child was still alive. He drew a deep breath, and entered; at the sound of his step Mrs. Garvin suddenly started up.
"Richard!" she cried, and then stood staring at the rector. "Have you seen my husband, sir? He went away soon after you left."
Hodder, taken by surprise, replied that he had not. Her tone, her gesture of anxiety he found vaguely disquieting.
"The doctor has been here?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered absently. "I don"t know where he can be--Richard. He didn"t even wait to see the doctor. And he thinks so much of d.i.c.ky, sir, he sits here of an evening--"
Hodder sat down beside her, and taking the palm-leaf from her hand, began himself to fan the child. Something of her misgiving had communicated itself to him.
"Don"t worry," he said. "Remember that you have been through a great deal, and it is natural that you should be overwrought. Your husband feels strongly. I don"t blame him. And the sight of me this afternoon upset him. He has gone out to walk."
"Richard is proud," she answered simply. "He used to say he"d rather die than take charity--and now he"s come to it. And it"s--that man, sir, who"s got on his brain, and changed him. He wasn"t always like this, but now he can"t seem to think of anything else. He wakes up in the night .... And he used to have such a sweet nature--you wouldn"t have known him... and came home so happy in the evenings in Alder Street, often with a little fruit, or something he"d bought for us, and romp with d.i.c.ky in the yard, and I"d stand and laugh at them. Even after we"d lost our money, when he was sick that time, he didn"t feel this way. It grew on him when he couldn"t get work, and then he began to cut things out of the papers about Mr. Parr. And I have sometimes thought that that"s kept him from getting work. He talks about it, and people don"t know what to make of him. They don"t know how hard he"d try if they"d give him something."....
"We shall find something," said the rector, striving to throw into his voice confidence and calm. He did not dare to look at her, but continued to move the fan.
The child stirred a little. Mrs. Garvin put out her hand.
"Yes, the doctor was here. He was very kind. Oh, sir," she exclaimed, "I hope you won"t think us ungrateful--and that Mr. Bentley won"t. Dr.
Jarvis has hopes, sir,--he says--I forget the name he called it, what d.i.c.ky has. It"s something uncommon. He says it was--brought on by the heat, and want of food--good food. And he"s coming himself in the morning to take him out to that hospital beyond the park--in an automobile, sir. I was just thinking what a pity it is d.i.c.ky wouldn"t realize it. He"s always wanted to ride in one." Suddenly her tears flowed, unheeded, and she clung to the little hand convulsively. "I don"t know what I shall do without him, Sir, I don"t.... I"ve always had him... and when he"s sick, among strangers."...
The rector rose to the occasion.
"Now, Mrs. Garvin," he said firmly, "you must remember that there is only one way to save the boy"s life. It will be easy to get you a room near the hospital, where you can see him constantly."
"I know--I know, sir. But I couldn"t leave his father, I couldn"t leave Richard." She looked around distractedly. "Where is he?"
"He will come back presently," said the rector. "If not, I will look for him."
She did not reply, but continued to weep in silence. Suddenly, above the confused noises of the night, the loud notes of a piano broke, and the woman whose voice he had heard in the afternoon began once more with appalling vigour to sing. The child moaned.
Mrs. Garvin started up hysterically.
"I can"t stand it--I can"t stand her singing that now," she sobbed.
Thirty feet away, across the yard, Hodder saw the gleaming window from which the music came. He got to his feet. Another verse began, with more of the brazen emphasis of the concert-hall singer than ever. He glanced at the woman beside him, irresolutely.
"I"ll speak to her," he said.
Mrs. Garvin did not appear to hear him, but flung herself down beside the lounge. As he seized his hat and left the room he had the idea of telephoning for a nurse, when he almost ran into some one in the upper hall, and recognized the stout German woman, Mrs. Breitmann.
"Mrs. Garvin"--he said, "she ought not to be left--"
"I am just now going," said Mrs. Breitmann. "I stay with her until her husband come."
Such was the confidence with which, for some reason, she inspired him, that he left with an easier mind.
It was not until the rector had arrived at the vestibule of the apartment house next door that something--of the difficulty and delicacy of the errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had promised to stop it. Hodder accused himself of cowardice.
To his horror, Hodder felt stealing over him, incredible though it seemed after the depths through which he had pa.s.sed, a faint sense of fascination in the adventure. It was this that appalled him--this tenacity of the flesh,--which no terrors seemed adequate to drive out.
The sensation, faint as it was, unmanned him. There were still many unexplored corners in his soul.
He turned, once more contemplated the bells, and it was not until then he noticed that the door was ajar. He pushed it open, climbed the staircase, and stood in the doorway of what might be called a sitting room, his eyes fixed on a swaying back before an upright piano against the wall; his heart seemed to throb with the boisterous beat of the music. The woman"s hair, in two long and heavy plaits falling below her waist, suddenly fascinated him. It was of the rarest of russet reds. She came abruptly to the end of the song.
"I beg your pardon--" he began.
She swung about with a start, her music dropping to the floor, and stared at him. Her tattered blue kimono fell away at her elbows, her full throat was bare, and a slipper she had kicked off lay on the floor beside her. He recoiled a little, breathing deeply. She stared at him.
"My G.o.d, how you scared me!" she exclaimed. Evidently a second glance brought to her a realization of his clerical costume. "Say, how did you get in here?"
"I beg your pardon," he said again, "but there is a very sick child in the house next door and I came to ask you if you would mind not playing any more to-night."
She did not reply at once, and her expression he found unsolvable. Much of it might be traced to a life which had contracted the habit of taking nothing on trust, a life which betrayed itself in unmistakable traces about the eyes. And Hodder perceived that the face, if the stamp of this expression could have been removed, was not unpleasing, although indulgence and recklessness were beginning to remould it.
"Quit stringin" me," she said.
For a moment he was at a loss. He gathered that she did not believe him, and crossed to the open window.
"If you will come here," he said, "I will show you the room where he lies. We hope to be able to take him to the hospital to-morrow." He paused a moment, and added: "He enjoyed your music very much when he was better."
The comment proved a touchstone.
"Say," she remarked, with a smile that revealed a set of surprisingly good teeth, "I can make the box talk when I get a-goin". There"s no stopping me this side of grand opera,--that"s no fable. I"m not so bad for an enginoo, am I?"
Thus directly appealed to, in common courtesy he a.s.sented.
"No indeed," he said.
"That"s right," she declared. "But the managers won"t have it at any price. Those jays don"t know anything, do they? They"ve only got a dream of what the public wants. You wouldn"t believe it, but I"ve sung for "em, and they threw me out. You wouldn"t believe it, would you?"
"I must own," said the rector, "that I have never had any experience with managers."
She sat still considering him from the piano stool, her knees apart, her hands folded in her lap. Mockery came into her eyes.
"Say, what did you come in here for, honest injun?" she demanded.
He was aware of trying to speak sternly, and of failing. To save his life he could not, then, bring up before himself the scene in the little back room across the yard in its full terror and reality, reproduce his own feelings of only a few minutes ago which had impelled him hither. A month, a year might have elapsed. Every faculty was now centred on the woman in front of him, and on her life.
"Why do you doubt me?" he asked.
She continued to contemplate him. Her eyes were strange, baffling, smouldering, yellow-brown, shifting, yet not shifty: eyes with a history. Her laugh proclaimed both effrontery and uneasiness.
"Don"t get huffy," she said. "The kid"s sick--that"s on the level, is it? You didn"t come "round to see me?" The insinuation was in her voice as well as in her words. He did not resent it, but felt an odd thrill of commingled pity and--fear.
"I came for the reason I have given you," he replied; and added, more gently: "I know it is a good deal to ask, but you will be doing a great kindness. The mother is distracted. The child, as I told you, will be taken to the hospital in the morning."