Chapter FIVE

Miss Waters was clearing out her desk that morning. She had a pupil drawing in the studio, but it was a pupil who was meek and ignorant and could be left alone. She was trying to figure out just how much she owed, writing in an exercise book, with great precision, the amount, the date, and the nature of each bill.

WILLIAM WELLS--GROCER--EGGS, COFFEE, BREAD, JAM--MAY 4TH, 1915. $3.07.

That was an old one.... Bills for paints, brushes, paper, for headache powders, cold cream and “druggists’ sundries,” for framing, bills of carpenters, coal and wood men, icemen, butchers. And she had got into one of her panics, at the sight of all these debts, and the thought of her penniless old age. Her mind would rush round like a little animal in a cage, looking for a chance of escape. She felt trapped and terrified. She didn’t know how to earn or how to save. She foresaw herself starving in a garret, dying in the ward of a hospital, going mad, being paralysed and helpless, all the spectres that haunted her hours of serious thought.

There was a ring at the door bell. She didn’t go. She always waited hoping that the presumable collector would go away. But it rang again and again, and at last the meek little pupil called out, “I think your bell is ringing, Miss Waters!” So finally she opened the door, to see there the obliging little Italian fruiterer.

“Telephone!” he cried, in great excitement. “Telephone, Missa Wata!”

Having no telephone in her own flat, Miss Waters had long ago made an “arrangement” with Tony, by which she was permitted to give her friends his telephone number, and was to be summoned by him when anyone of them should call for her. It didn’t happen very often.

“Oh, my!” she said. “I’m so busy! Do you know who it is, Tony?”

He shook his head.

“Telephone!” he cried, again.

“Er--chi?” she enquired. “Chi, Tony?”

“Doan know!” he cried, in distress. “Doan know! Missa Wata coma quick!”

She slipped into a rain-coat and hurried out to the little shop on the corner, where at the back, among barrels and boxes and crates and a pungent smell of oranges, was Tony’s telephone. She picked up the receiver.

“Ye-hes?” she enquired, in her most cultivated voice.

“Number please!” said the operator.

“I don’t want a number,” Miss Waters explained. “Someone called me!”

“Your party’s hung up!” said the operator.

Miss Waters didn’t comprehend, but Tony’s wife, an opulent young woman nursing a big baby, exclaimed:

“Your fren, she no wait. You come too slow. She go away. Gooda-bye.”

Miss Waters was frantically distressed, and protested through the telephone. But the operator had no consolation to give her, and Tony and his wife were smiling and indifferent. She left the shop, after buying an orange to placate Tony, and returned to her flat. But her distress did not subside; she felt that she had been called upon and had not responded, that in some way she had failed someone.

And suddenly came to the conclusion that it must have been Rosaleen. She “just felt” that it was. And it worried her beyond measure. She knew that Rosaleen was quite alone in her studio now, for Mell and Bainbridge had gone to Provincetown for the month of July, and she felt sure that something was wrong. Rosaleen wouldn’t have called her out for nothing. She peered into the studio; the meek pupil was still drawing a “study” of empty boxes; then she hurried out of the flat and back to Tony’s fruit store.

It was Rosaleen’s own voice that answered, and she gave an odd cry:

“Miss Waters!... I’d been trying....”

“I thought so, dear! Was there----”

“Please come right away!” Rosaleen interrupted her, with desperate earnestness. “Just as quickly as you possibly can! Please, _please_ hurry!”

“What’s wrong, my dear?”

“Oh, never _mind_! I’ll tell you when you get here. Hurry!”

Her great anxiety made the poor old soul slower than ever. With fumbling, trembling fingers she tried to dress in such a way as to be ready for any emergency; then she went into the studio to excuse herself to the pupil, and couldn’t get away from her; stood there saying utterly unnecessary things, repeating herself. At last she was hurrying across the park in the glare of the July sun, trying to walk her fastest, but with a nightmare sensation of being as stiff as a wooden doll, and covering no ground. She hurried up the dark stairs and knocked on the studio door. It was flung open and Rosaleen confronted her.

She gave a shriek of terror.

“Rosaleen!” she cried. “Oh!... Rosaleen!”

To see neat, fair Rosaleen like this, white as a ghost, with her hair half down, her dress spattered with blood!...

“What _is_ it? What _is_ it?” she cried.

“Hush!” whispered Rosaleen, shaking her arm. “Keep quiet! You’ve got to help me!”

Miss Waters followed her into the back room, but she couldn’t suppress another scream. For there on one of the cots lay the enormous bulk of a man, with his eyes closed and his hair dank and wet across his brow.

“What shall I do with him?” whispered Rosaleen.

“Who _is_ he?” Miss Waters asked.

“Why, Lawrence Iverson, of course!”

“What’s the matter with him, Rosaleen?” Miss Waters cried. “Is he--drunk?”

“No! He tried to kill himself!”

“Mercy!”

“He cut his wrist with a knife, and said he was going to bleed to death----”

“Send for a doctor _quickly_!”

“No! Then he’d be put in prison. It’s against the law.” They both stared helplessly at the silent man.

“We ought to tie it up,” said Miss Waters.

“I did. I don’t think it’s bleeding any more. But I’m afraid it was too late. He wouldn’t let me touch it at first. Oh, Miss Waters! Is he dying?”

Miss Waters couldn’t help thinking so; anyone who lay quiet with closed eyes and a face as white as that was presumably dying.

“I think you _ought_ to get a doctor,” she said. “You might be accused of murdering him.”

“I can’t help it,” said Rosaleen. “I told him I wouldn’t.”

“Did he talk?”

“Yes, lots. He came in while I was eating my lunch.... Came bursting in the moment I opened the door. And he said he’d lost everything--he said ‘Heaven had mocked him’.... Then he said, ‘Rosaleen, I’m going to kill myself, and I must have you near me when I die,’ and he took a knife out of his pocket.... Oh!...”

She gripped Miss Waters’ hand violently, struggling against a sort of convulsion of sickness and terror.

“Oh! No, no, no! Don’t comfort me, or anything.... I’ve _got_ to brace up.... If I let go ... one minute ... I’ll scream!”

Miss Waters felt that if Rosaleen screamed, she would go mad. With trembling hands she took off her jacket and hat, and laid them on a chair.

“Shall we give him some brandy?”

“I haven’t any.”

“I’ll run out and get some.”

Rosaleen blanched at the thought of waiting alone with her sinister guest, but she gallantly agreed. And Miss Waters put on her things again and went, with weak knees and pounding heart, down the stairs to the street. She didn’t know where to get brandy; she stood irresolutely outside the house for a moment; then she hurried to the FINE FEATHERS’ shop and approached the elder partner, Miss Sillon.

“I want some brandy for a sick person!” she whispered. “Have you any?”

“Yes, I have!” answered Miss Sillon. “What _is_ the matter, Miss Waters? You look absolutely done up. Who’s sick?”

“Oh, no one special!” cried Miss Waters, in mortal terror lest this acute young woman should penetrate the mystery.

Miss Sillon asked no more questions, but fetched a small flask and gave it to Miss Waters.

“Call on me, you know, if you want anything,” she said. “I’m awfully practical!”

“Oh, no, thank you!” said Miss Waters. “I--I--I have a trained nurse and a doctor waiting....”

Rosaleen let her in.

“He’s groaning now,” she said. “Is that a good sign, do you think?”

Miss Waters shook her head.

“Here’s the brandy,” she said.

“How do you give it?” asked Rosaleen. “With water? Hot? Out of a spoon?”

Miss Waters reflected. Then she remembered often having seen in moving pictures flasks being held to the lips of injured persons. So Rosaleen lifted up his head and Miss Waters poured a little brandy down his throat. He opened his great black eyes and fixed her with a sombre, dreadful stare.

“Oh, mercy!” she cried.

Rosaleen hastily laid his head back on the pillow and came round to look at him.

“Mr. Iverson!” she cried. “Are you better?”

He groaned and flung his arms across his face. And began to sob in a hoarse, heart-rending voice.

“Oh, Lawrence dear!” she cried, kneeling down beside him. “What is the trouble? What can I do for you?”

His great body was shaking with the violence of his sobs. Rosaleen put her arms about him.

“Please don’t cry!” she entreated.

She tried gently to take his arms away, so that she could see his face, but he resisted, and she was afraid to persist, for fear of hurting his bandaged wrist. She laid her cheek against his hands and clasped him tighter, suffering with him, in anguish at his despair.

“Tell me!” she said. “What can I do for you?”

Very slowly he took down his arms and let her see his awful face, his desperate and forlorn regard.

“Well!” he said. “What do you imagine you can do? _I’m going blind!_”