"I had "em going eight months ago--was starting out for Heth"s with an axe--and you asked me to leave "em to you. I thought you had something--an idea.... Say, V.V., suppose we"d gone and out bagged "em then, like I wanted--would your friend Corinne be lyin" at death"s door now?"
There was, indeed, nothing precisely original in this inquiry; but, put by another, and in so bald a form, it undoubtedly came upon a man somewhat stark and hard. The two men stood talking on a street corner, where they had met by chance, and their conversation here came to an end. V.V."s reply to Sam"s question was indefinite, to say the least of it. He merely observed that he must be getting on back to the office; adding that he didn"t like to be absent for any length of time just now.
But he didn"t say at all, by that annoying habit of reserve he had, whether or not he would agree to write the _articles! That_ was what Samuel O"Neill wanted to know....
It was September now, the third night. At his office the doctor found two calls for him, noted on a sc.r.a.p of brown wrapping-paper in the rudimentary hand of Mrs. Garland. He went out again, disappearing over the Hill into that quarter of the town which was less cheering than honest slums. Returning, about ten, he found the Dabney House entirely silent: all quiet from the direction of the sick-room. All quiet, too, in the tall bare office. Very quiet, indeed....
It was a strange-looking room to be a doctor"s office; on the whole a strange-looking young man to be a doctor; no stereotyped thoughts, it may be, pounding through the head he held so fast between his hands.
Strange entanglements were here, too, with the brilliant life over the Gulf: a life whose visible thread, it is easily surmised, will hardly lead us by this ancient secretary again.
He was all alone in the world; very much so. His father was dead; and his mother, who had married a penniless idealist for love, was dead these many years. Fifteen he was when she died ... a long time ago. And he had had n.o.body since. He had just been beginning to feel close to his Uncle Armistead, and now Uncle Armistead was dead, too. And he had no sisters or brothers. He had no wife or children....
He was alone, and by that token he was free. No tie bound up the hope of others in him. Had he felt the sting of youth"s rage to make things better? No bond of another"s claim withheld him from spending himself to the uttermost.
All this had long been clear. Long clear also were the two paths trod by the n.o.ble army, men and boys. There were those who preached a more abundant living; and there were those who lived that living.... A glorious thing, indeed, it was for a man so to go his quiet ways that he became an example and model to his fellows, who were made better in that their lives had touched his exemplary one. But here, alas, was an aspiration for the saints, not for weak men with known bitternesses and pa.s.sions in their blood, and all youth"s furies hot upon them. And surely in that other summons there was, besides, the thrill of romance, such as the young love. There was the trumpeting to high adventure. Few there were to touch, few to remember, even the saintliest life lived in a n.o.ble narrowness, a n.o.ble silence. But the word of truth, spoken from no matter what obscurity, will rise and ring round the world, and remain forever in the pattern of men"s thought. Here, indeed, was a "bliss to die with, dim-descried."...
So it was that one boy had found his heroic ideal, long since, in the grim voice crying in the wilderness. And in the years the secret picture had grown very clear, curiously full of meaning. There was descried, like something remembered from another life, an innumerable company upon a rocky plain, a little river rushing by, and in the distance a City....
He had seen something of life in his time at the medical school, and before that, when he was still looking about, trying to decide what he should do. He had observed in these days of leisure, read, and burned.
And he had come back to his old home-city, overflowing with fine pa.s.sions, aflame with new-old secrets and forgotten truths. What speeches there had been to make in those days, what roaring things to write, what shouts to be flung from the house-tops!
And now he had been at home again over a year; he had been right here in the Dabney House a year this month. And what had he done for his faith?
He had done precisely what a weak man does, precisely what he had pa.s.sionately resolved never to do. He had found life hard, and he had compromised with it. A minute routine pressed upon him, and he had suffered that routine to swamp his perspective, to drown out his fires.
It was a good and useful work that he did: he never doubted that. To take the pain from a sick body, to put a coat on a bare back, this was worth a man"s doing. But none knew better than he that that body would grow sick again, that back once more wear naked: and all the while the untouched causes of these wrongs festered and reinfected and spread, and a fig for your Settlements and your redoubled "relief." Was there not a bay-tree that flourished, and had he not been summoned in a vision to lay an axe to its roots? Behold, he gave his youth to spraying at the parasites upon a single small leaf.
And was it only the grinding round of work that had brought him to this compromise? Was it possible that personal considerations had seduced him, as Samuel O"Neill appeared to hint? That would be base, indeed....
But no ... No, his mind, though it seemed without mercy to-night, would acquit him of that. If he had been seduced, it was by a voice in him, confused, it might be, but strong nevertheless, and not dishonest. He had thought that perhaps people could be more gently acquainted with their responsibilities, that in their hearts they wanted to correct their own mistakes. He had asked who appointed him a judge over men....
And now there were articles to write, to publish in November, to begin to prepare now. Hard articles they must be, that broke heads or hearts, implied faiths, too, and did not care. And in the young man"s ears there rang, and would not cease, the cry of a girl in great sorrow: "You"ve never meant anything but trouble to me since the first minute I saw you."... And again, in another voice: "I really didn"t mean to do anything so bad."...
As if he hadn"t known that....
He was alone in the world, and by that token he was a lonely man. He had no mother or brother or sisters. He had no wife or children.... No, nor would have this side the undiscovered country....
Abruptly the young man rose from his seat at the secretary; stood, pushing back his hair. Twenty-seven years old he was, a lame slum doctor in a fire-new suit of Prince serge, lately bought cheap at a sale; but he had a face that people sometimes turned to look at in the street.
And he spoke aloud, in a voice that might have sounded queer if there had been anybody to hear it:
"Don"t I know they"re doing the best they can, all the time? Seems to me I"ve had that proved ... Give "em a chance, and _they"re all good_...."
Far in the stillness there sounded the sweet mad voice of the Garlands"
clock. It struck seven, and then two, and then fell silent. V. Vivian glanced at his watch. It seemed to be quarter to twelve, though he did not see how that was possible. He opened his office door, and stood listening. Presently he stepped through; went walking without noise down the long hall, which was pitch-black but for a dim haze of light just perceptible at its extreme farther end. When he came to this small patch, the young man lifted the curtain, and stood motionless.
A single gaslight burned in the sick-room, shaded with a green globe and turned down very low. The electric fan was silent, and the faint fever-smell was in the air. In the nearer white bed the nurse slept, with light snores. In the other, Kern Garland slept, lying almost at the bed"s edge. One of her arms had wandered from the covers; the small hand was curled about the polished leg of Writing-Desk, which was squeezed as close to the bed as it would go.
Vivian went in on silent feet. Presently he sat down in his accustomed chair on the farther side of the bed. He stared fixedly at the small flushed face, which looked more elfin than ever now that the flesh was wasting away....
What demerit had this little girl that she should be ordered to give up her health and life only that others might wear fine raiment and live in kings" houses? Surely it was not G.o.d who had laid that sentence upon her.
Corinne Garland and the Heth Works: it was long since these two had first seized his mind like a watchword. For here was no matter of one small girl who worked more hours than her strength would bear; no matter even of one large factory which harnessed the life of three hundred men and women and drove them over-hard. But was not this the perfect symbol of that preying of the fortunate upon the unfortunate, of that crushing inequality of inheritance, which reacted so deadeningly upward and downward, and more than anything else hobbled the feet of Man? By one flagrant instance, by Kern at Heth"s, all the pitiful wrong-headedness was made plain. Pinned forever to the accident of economic birth, all their energies sucked up by the struggle for bread and meat, these poor were mocked with bitter "equality" which did not equalize, but despoiled of all chance to extricate themselves from their poverty. And their terrible revenge was to spread their own stagnation upward. Neither could the rich extricate themselves from their riches. The sorriest thing in the picture was that they did not desire to. Behold how blindly they struggled to cut the brotherly cord that bound them to what was common and unclean, and that cord their souls" one light....
The still young man looked at the face of his little patient, and his mind went back to that day when he and O"Neill had visited the Heth Works, last October, and he had seen Kern at her machine. He had come back ablaze, and he had then written that Severe Arraignment which Mr.
Heth had threatened to sue the "Post" for publishing, but never had....
And then ... and then he had thought that perhaps nothing so loud and harsh would be needed. Hopeful months went by. Then trouble had come to a family, and he had stayed his hand again.... And now, Kern Garland, who was dear to him, whose right and need he had failed to voice....
"Oh!... _Mr. V.V.!_"
Without warning, the little girl sat up in bed, her cheeks bright, her eyes wide and shining. Yet it seemed that she had called Mr. V.V."s name a little before her eyes fell upon his silent figure.
"Oh, Mr. V.V.!" she repeated in a low eager voice, hardly above a whisper.... "I been havin" the loveliest dreams!..."
The young man put out a hand and pressed it firmly against her hot forehead.
"Lie down, little Kern."
She lay down obediently, her face wearing a strange half-smile. Though her eyes were wide, her look was that of a person between sleeping and waking: she showed no surprise at Mr. V.V."s being there by her bedside.
"Mr. V.V., I had on a white sating Persian dress, lowneg, and embroidery and loops of pearls put on all over it, and white sating pumps, and a fan all awstritch feathers. I was at a German--y" know?--"
"You mustn"t talk now, Kern. Put your arm under the cover and go back to sleep--"
"_Lemme_, Mr. V.V.! Please. It"s on"y a minute to tell. Can"t I, sir?...
I was at a German, with ladies and gempmen, and there was pink lights--and vi"lins--and plants--and little presents they give you for dancin"--and flowers--and such lovely clo"es!... On"y I didn"t have a partner. Like a stag, y" know? And then pretty soon I saw people looking at me, and kep" on looking, and one of "em that looked somep"n like Miss Masters, on"y it wasn"t her, says, "Wot"s that girl a-doin" here?" she says. "Why, she"s a buncher down to Heth"s." So I walked on off and set down at my Writin"-Desk, and made out I didn"t notice and was writin"
notes or somep"n, like. And then I looks up and they was all coming over to me, like sayin" move on now, and then I looks off again and there was you and Miss Heth, settin"...."
Her listener was by no means surprised at the introduction of this name.
Many times had Kern spoken of her meeting with Miss Heth, that Sunday she took the note, though Mr. V.V. did not know that from that day dated her preference for white dresses, as compared with red....
"Settin" on a velvet settee you was," whispered Kern, her hand picking at the sheet, "by a founting, a boy with wings and a pink lamp on his head, pourin" water out of a gool" pitcher. And I went runnin" over to you to ast you must I go--or somep"n. And then up comes all the ladies and gempmen and says, "This girl don"t belong here," they says, "she must go at once." And Miss Heth she gets up and says, "Not at all, this here girl is a friend of me and Doctor"s." And I says, "No, ma"am, it"s right what they say, I don"t belong here." But she says to them to leave me be. "And do you, Co-rinne," she says--just that away, like you used to say--"do you, Corinne, come and set on this velvet settee with me and Doctor, and listen to this here founting play." And I felt sad someways and I says, "Oh, no, ma"am, it"s all a mistake me being here, and these clo"es mustn"t belong to a workin"-girl like me. I might go to school some day," I says, "and be a writer sort of, mebbe; but I ain"t a lady, ma"am, Miss Heth, no, nor never will be." And Miss Heth she takes my face between her hands--yes, sir, she did, Mr. V.V., right there before "em all--and she says, kind of surprised, "Why, Co-rinne, I thought Doctor he told you long ago," she says. "You been a lady all the time ..." And then ... and then I woke up!... Wasn"t that funny?" said Kern. And her face indicated that she might have told more, if she had had a mind to....
She lay staring, with parted lips and that same remote half-smile, as of one not yet fully returned from fairy wanderings in far lands. She did not seem to expect her inquiry to bring forth any response from the man sitting in the shadows, and it didn"t, so far as words went. Mr. V.V."s fingers had closed over her exposed wrist; presently he put the bony little arm back under the cover, rose, and went over silently to the other gas-jet where the little fixture was. The nurse, who had risen on an elbow at the first sound of voices, had lain down again at the young man"s signal. She did not stir now, though perhaps she was not asleep.
Mr. V.V. returned to the bed with a cup in his hand. Kern was lying exactly as he had left her--"the wonder was not quite yet gone from that still look of hers."
"Drink this, Kernie...."
She drank incuriously, with his supporting hand upon her back; was gently lowered upon her pillow again; and then she turned upon her side, wide-eyed still, but silent.
"Now, go to sleep. I"ll sit here by you...."
He noted the fact of beef-tea at twelve-thirty upon the chart, and sat again in the shadows. Soon Kern"s eyelids drooped, and in time she fell asleep.
But the doctor sat on in the dim room, long after his charity sick had slipped back again to her happy dreams. And as he sat, there waxed a flame in him, and he pledged himself that henceforward there should be no pausing, neither compa.s.sion nor compunction. What mattered the troubles of individuals? What mattered himself, or that Duty to-night seemed visaged like an Iron Maid? Here, indeed, there beckoned him the great good task. The day of the rocky plain and the prophet in a loincloth was gone; but was there less might in the printed word and the penny newspaper? Spare this child, Lord, and the wrongs done upon her shall not again lack a voice....
And later, much later, when the tall young man limped back to his desolate office, he did not at once go to bed, though the small hours then were fast growing. Six weeks, and more, he had to write his articles in: but there was that in him now which would not be denied. He sat again at his old secretary, a cheap pad before him, and the words that ran from his stub of a pencil were words winged with fire....