The two friends descended the long stairs in silence. Vivian"s meditations were rather tense. He recalled the hard words of the Severe Arraignment; he remembered the unforgivable speech he had made in the summer-house; before his mind"s eye rose the moment in his uncle"s lamplit den when he had told the girl to her face that her father was a homicide. Sacrificing natural inclinations to kindliness, he had done and said these things. And Sam O"Neill, knowing practically nothing of the facts in the case, had the nerve to stand up ...
O"Neill, descending, reflected that old V.V. was undoubtedly a queer one. Chuck full of hazy optimism, he was of late. Hazy optimism: O"Neill repeated the phrase, liking it. Still it was possible he might manage to work on the girl"s feelings--O"Neill was sure it was the girl--whatever that was worth. He was a kind of appealing fellow, and did have connections with the swells, though it was really he, O"Neill, and Mrs.
O., who ought ...
"Well, be good," said he, as they emerged from the decayed grand entrance. "I"m breakin" in a new stenographer--troubles of my own. See you again in a day or two."
"All right. And by the way," said the tall doctor, speaking with polite restraint, "please don"t get it into your head that I"m letting up on these people, or anything of that sort. As a matter of fact, my tendency is all the other way. Not to judge them too harshly--not to do the--the most serious injustice--that"s what _I"ve_ got to guard against...."
He turned away, bareheaded in the mild January sunshine, and crossed to Meeghan"s, where his telephone call proved to be from Rev. Mr. Dayne, desiring a personal conference later in the day. c.u.mbered with many cares though he was, the kind-faced Secretary of Charities had been captured at sight by Vivian"s plan of buying the old Dabney House, and bringing it to life again as a great Settlement. The problem now engrossing both was how to raise the necessary money, twenty-five thousand dollars being a large sum, particularly with the benevolent field just swept clean by the a.s.sociated Charities canva.s.s. However, the tireless Secretary seldom despaired, V. Vivian never. The young man promised eagerly to call on Mr. Dayne, whom, in common with most of the rest of the world, he admired immensely.
Hanging up the receiver, Vivian purchased a five-cent box of blacking, a commodity not ranking among Meeghan"s best sellers, and returned to make ready for his professional rounds. In the closet of his bedroom, where he went for hat and coat, he was struck with the brooding sense of something lost, and readily recalled the episode of the trousers. He became conscious of a certain feeling of dest.i.tution. Undoubtedly the whole question of new clothes would have to be taken up seriously some day. For the present there did not lack a sense of economic precariousness: it was he and these trousers against the world....
While brushing his hat in the bedroom, Vivian wondered if Mister had yet donned the gift articles, and how he looked in them. He fell to musing about Kern"s erring parent, thinking what a strange life he led. It was many and many a year ago since Mister and society had parted company; and through all this time, it was certain that every hand had been against him. In many cities he had stood before sarcastic judges, and been sent on to serve his little time. Adown highways unnumbered he had sawed wood, when necessary; received handouts, worn hand-me-downs; furnished infinite material for the wags of the comic press. Long he had slept under hedges and in ricks, carried his Lares in a bandana kerchief, been forcibly bathed at free lodging-houses in icy winters.
Dogs had chased him, and his fellow man: he had been bitten by the one and smitten by the other. Ill-fame and obloquy had followed him like a shadow. And yet--so strong and strange are our ruling pa.s.sions--nothing could wean him from the alluring f.e.c.kless ways which had heaped all these disasters upon him....
Thus and otherwise philosophizing, V. Vivian slipped on his overcoat (which had so far escaped Mr. Garland"s requisitions) and flung wide the office windows to rid his chambers of the medical smell. He had had a busy morning, his habit of having no billheads, while regarded as demoralizing by professional brethren of the neighborhood, being clearly gratifying to the circ.u.mambient laity. It was now getting toward noon, and the doctor was in a hurry. Besides calls on his sick, he was very anxious to get uptown before dinner and inquire after his uncle Armistead Beirne, who had lain ill, with a heavy, rather alarming illness, since a day or two after his New Year"s reception. This call was purely avuncular, so to say, Mr. Beirne employing a reliable physician of his own....
The young man picked up his doctor"s bag and opened the door. At the far end of the long hall, where the Garlands" apartments were, he caught a glimpse of a skirt, just whisking out of sight. He thought he recognized the skirt, which was a red one, and called, in surprise:
"Corinne!"
There was no answer.
"Corinne!" he called, louder. "Is that you?"
Sure enough, Kern"s face peeped out of a door, a long distance away.
"It"s me, and it ain"t me," she cried, mockingly. "I"m here _in-cog."_
And her head bobbed back out of sight again.
"What"re you talking about?" called Vivian into the emptiness. "Did you feel too weak to work?"
"Like in the books," said Kern, and stuck her head out again with a giggle. "Why, I thank you kindly," she went on in a mincing stage voice.
"I"m feeling very, very, _very_ well, my Lord Dook, Mr. V.V. On"y I decided I"d spend to-day lazyin" at my writin"-desk, readin" over my billy-doox from peers of the rellum, "stead of working my hands and legs off in that nasty, _nasty_, NASTY--"
"Stop that cuckoo-clock nonsense!" called Mr. V.V., starting to walk towards her. "What are you doing here, I say?"
"I"m helping mommer soak colliflower, Mr. V.V. Honest!" "But why didn"t you stay at the Works? Come, stop this foolishness, Corinne, and answer me sensibly."
The girl"s cheek rested against the door-facing. She stopped her foolishness.
"Mr. V.V., I"m fired."
A bullet would not have stopped Mr. V.V."s advance more abruptly.
"You"re WHAT?"
Kern nodded slowly a number of times. "I wasn"t goin" to tell you till I got me another job, and maybe never, on"y you caught me--"
"Come here," said Mr. V.V. in rather a queer voice. "Walk," he added, as she began to take the long hall at a skip.
Kern came at a walk. Eyeing Mr. V.V. as she drew near, she soon made out that he was taking it even harder than she had expected. She herself had accepted the loss of her position with the easy fatalism of the poor, though it was a serious enough matter, in the slack midwinter and following three weeks of idleness. However, after her s.e.x, her present overweening instinct was to erase that sort-of-white look from Mr.
V.V."s face.
"It"s on"y some of that sickenin" MacQueen"s foolishness," she called out from some distance away--"and I was tired of workin" in that old nasty place anyway. Up and said he didn"t have no job for me. Didn"t have _a_ job for me. So I just laughed at him and stayed round a little while, havin" a good time, and then he happened up to the bunchin" room and told me to git. So I gitted ... Lor, Mr. V.V.! I can find all the good places _I_ want. Goodness me, sir! I"ll get more orfers of jobs--"
"Come into the office," said Mr. V.V., turning back.
In the office, Kern, acting under medical instruction, sat down on the horsehair lounge with one leg gone, and told her simple story in detail.
In these weeks, while she had gone down with mild pleurisy, been successfully "tapped" and haled back to something like an economically valuable condition, the work of the world had marched on. That another operative sat now on Kern"s stool and manipulated Kern"s machine might appear natural enough, as the superintendent, it seemed, had insisted with his sour smile. But this was not to consider Kern"s exceptional skilfulness, known and recognized throughout the Heth Works. Replace a girl who could bunch sixty-five hundred cheroots in a single day? No, no, you could hardly do that....
For this dismissal there was an explanation, and it was not hidden from the young physician. He spoke slowly, struggling not to betray the murder in his heart.
"The devil"s doing this because he knows you"re a friend of mine. He hits you to punish me.... By George, I"ll show him!"
The intensity of his face, which in all moods looked somehow kind-of-sorrowful to her, made Kern quite unhappy. She was moved by a great desire to soothe Mr. V.V., to conjure a smile from him....
"Lor, Mr. V.V.! What do you and "me care for his carryin"s on? We can get on heaps better without him than he can without Me! The Consolidated"ll jump down my throat--"
"You are going back to the Works," spoke Mr. V.V., in his repressed voice.
"Oh!" replied Kern, trying not to look surprised. "Well, then, all right, sir, Mr. V.V. Just whatever--"
"I"ll give him one chance to take you back himself. I"ll a.s.sume, for his sake, that there"s a misunderstanding.... If he refuses, so much the worse for him. I shall know where to go next."
"Oh!--You mean John Farley?"
It was a shrewd guess. John Farley, sometime of the sick, and ever a good friend of the Dabney House, was known to hold past-due "paper," of the hard-driving Heth superintendent.
But Mr. V.V., continuing to speak as if something pained him inside, only said, "I was not thinking of Farley...."
The young man stood silent, full of an indignation which he could not trust himself to voice. Yet already he was beginning to put down that tendency to a too harsh judgment which, as he himself admitted, was his besetting sin ... Perhaps there was some misunderstanding: this contemptible business hardly seemed thinkable, even of MacQueen. At the worst, it was MacQueen personally and n.o.body else. No argument was needed to show that the owners would not for a moment tolerate such methods in their Works. Merely let them know what sort of thing their superintendent was up to, that was all. O"Neill should see ... Mr. Heth, to be sure, he did not happen to know personally....
"Well, then. That"s all settled," Kern was saying, eagerly, "and I "11 go back to MacQueen or not go back, just whichever you want me, and don"t less think about him any more. Oh, Mr. V.V.--"
"He can consider himself lucky if he doesn"t lose _his_ job for this day"s work."
"Mr. V.V., _what d"you think?" _cried Kern; and having caused him to turn by this opening, she fixed him with grave eyes, and hurried on: "Well, there was a man here named Avery, and he was ridin" his automobile slow down a dark road and his lamps went out. And there was two men walkin" down the road, and he ran over one of them. So he turns back to see if the man was hurted, and the road bein" so dark he runs over him again. So he turns back again, scared he had killed him, and then the other man that had hopped into the ditch, he sings out to his friend, "Get up, you d.a.m.n fool, _he"s comin" back!""_
Having quite failed to follow Kern"s cheer-up narrative, Mr. V.V."s stare remained blank, engrossed; but presently he was caught, first by the silence, then by his little friend"s wide and intensely expectant gaze, just beginning to fade into childlike disappointment. He promptly burst into a laugh. It began as a dutiful laugh, but Kern"s expression soon gave it a touch of genuineness.
"Ha, ha!" said he. "That"s a good one! Well, where on earth did you get that one?"
"Off Sadie Whirtle!" cried Kern; and springing up gleefully from the sofa, began to pirouette and kick about the bleak office.
The young man watched her, b.u.t.toning his overcoat, his specious merriment dying.... For all the high wages she earned, the Works was of course the last place on earth for her; but for the moment that did not happen to be the point.