Chapter TWO: I

It was a well-known thing in that household that Nick required a long time to dress. He had come home from the office promptly at six and had gone at once to his room, where, as he had expected, his evening clothes were laid ready for him. He was to take Mrs. Allanby and Caroline to a dinner at the house of one of his senior partners, and it was an altogether particular and important occasion. Caroline was wearing a new dress, of which he thoroughly approved; she had been ready when he came home, so that he could see it and pass judgment. Mrs. Allanby was still dressing; she was, in spite of her fifty years, a lady of no little quiet coquetry, and on this occasion she had a two-fold desire to look her best, first, because she so valued her nephew’s approbation, and second because she was very anxious to impress upon the senior partner how excellent a family was Nick’s.

He had bathed and shaved, and was standing before the mirror in shirt and trousers, tying his white tie with severe attention, when someone knocked at his door. He was surprised, almost affronted.

“Well!” he called. “What is it?”

“It’s Ca’line!”

“I’m not late! It’s not half past seven yet....”

“No, Ah know it! But someone wants to speak to you on the telephone.”

“Who?”

“Ah don’t know.... A woman.... She wouldn’t tell her name. She said it was important. Shall Ah say you’re busy and can’t come?”

“No!” he said, hastily. “I’ll come!”

And just as he was, hurried into the little sewing room where the upstairs telephone was.

“This is Landry speaking!” he said.

And a forlorn and patient voice answered:

“It’s me--Rosaleen.... It’s about Petey. I’m very sorry to bother you, but I don’t know what to do, exactly.”

“Why? Tell me!”

“The doctor says it’s typhoid fever----”

“By George! That’s too bad!”

“And Katie’s.... It’s hard to tell it over the telephone.... I _wish_--couldn’t I possibly see you just for a few minutes?”

“Of course! I’ll be with you at once. Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” she answered, and gave him the address she had withheld for five years.

Nick turned to Caroline.

“I’ll have to go somewhere first,” he said, hurriedly. “I’ll try not to be late for dinner. But if I am, go without me, and I’ll follow.... Just explain to Anson----”

“Explain what? Where are you going?”

Indignation and disappointment had brought tears to her eyes. This outrageous desertion was too much for her; she struggled for a moment to hold her tongue, but she could not.

“It’s that _waitress_!” she cried. “Ah know it! Some nasty, common, scheming woman.... It’s a _shame_! It’s a _shame_!”

She began to cry.

“It’s a _shame_!” she cried again.

Nick looked at her with frigid disgust.

“It happens to be a--very old friend who’s in great trouble,” he said.

“_What_ old friend? How can you have old friends here that we never heard of?”

He turned away from her and rang up a nearby garage for a taxi.

“It’s a case of serious illness,” he said.

“Do you mean to say you’re _not coming_ to that dinner?” cried Caroline.

“Haven’t you any--heart?” demanded her cousin. “I tell you, someone is seriously ill....”

“What’s it got to do with _you_!” cried Caroline. “Who is it? Why won’t you tell me?”

When they looked back upon that episode later, it didn’t seem _possible_. That these two people, so dignified, so self-restrained, so civilized, should have said what they said to each other, should have enacted so disgraceful a scene!

“Who is this person that’s seriously ill?” Caroline demanded, again, with fierce contempt.

“It’s none of your business!” said Nick.

He was astounded, she was astounded, by such a phrase from him.

“All right!” said she. “Go to your waitress! Ah don’t care! But Ah won’t go to the dinner either! And Ah won’t send any word or make any excuses. _You_ can do that to-morrow, in your office. _You_ can explain to Mr. Anson why nobody came to his dinner party.”

“You couldn’t _do_ such a--beastly, contemptible thing!” cried Nick in alarm. It was the special business of women to make excuses for men; they knew how; they had the art.... “Caroline, if you _don’t_, I’ll never forgive you!”

“Ah don’t give a _darn_!” she cried. “There!”

“You’ve _got_ to go!” he said, but weakly. He couldn’t make her.... He stood there by the telephone, white with rage, trying to think.... But nothing came to his brain except two horribly distressing pictures; he saw Anson and his wife and the other guests waiting, polite but astonished and resentful.... And he saw Rosaleen, wild with anxiety, looking out of a window for him.

“There’s a taxi here, sir!” said a voice, and he saw the parlourmaid in the doorway, frankly interested at this curious spectacle of Miss Caroline in evening dress and Mr. Landry in his shirt sleeves, evidently quarreling.

“Yes, it’s for me!” he said, briefly.

Without another glance at Caroline he ran into his room, hurried on his waistcoat and dress coat, thrust on his overcoat, snatched up hat and stick and rushed out.

Rage burned in him. He didn’t think of Rosaleen as the taxi sped along; he thought of Caroline, with hate, with triumph.

“Let her go to the devil!” he said. “I _won’t be_ bullied!”

II

It was a miserable place over a bakery on Third Avenue, a squalid evil-smelling neighbourhood, with the Elevated trains thundering past. This tall man in evening dress descending from a taxi aroused profound interest; one bright little boy said it was movies. He entered the narrow hallway from which the stairs ascended, steep as a ladder, and after striking a match, saw four name plates beneath four bells. Cohen--Moriarity--Connelly--O’Dea.

As he hesitated before them, Rosaleen herself came hurrying down the steep stairs.

“I saw you coming!” she said. “Oh, Mr. Landry, I didn’t know what to do! He’s sick--he’s very, very sick! The doctor says he’ll either have to go to the hospital or have a nurse, and Katie won’t let him go.... She’s in such a terrible state....”

“Let him have a nurse, of course.”

“But we can’t. There’s no place for a nurse to sleep. And it’s not a fit place for little Petey, either. He ought to go to the hospital. He won’t have any chance here. I know it’s dreadful of me, but I----”

She had suddenly seized one of his hands with both of hers and pressed it violently, quite distraught, quite unconscious of what she did.

“I don’t care! I made up my mind that I _would_ ask you.... Won’t you come upstairs and talk to Katie? You don’t know how she feels about a hospital.... She’s only known people in the wards, where--it isn’t so nice.... When you’re so poor, you’re--so helpless.... If you’d just tell her that Petey’s to have a private room and a nurse and everything done for him, and that she can see him any time she wants...? Oh, I know it will cost a fortune! I have no right to ask you.... But I knew you’d do it!”

“You don’t know how glad I am to be asked,” said Nick. “Come on! Let’s go upstairs!”

This where she lived--where she had lived for five years! This dirty, dilapidated hole, dark, airless, with grimy windows on a malodourous court, with the thundering roar of the trains making the very walls shake, with these pitiful and fragile little children always underfoot! He had known that she was poor, that the whole family was poor, but he had not imagined anything like this. He had never set foot in such a place before. It filled him with horror, these mean, cramped little quarters which the despair of poverty had left dirty and neglected. There wasn’t a chair in that room on which he dared to sit, one had a broken back, another a broken seat, another had a leg missing....

There came bursting into the room a big, gaunt woman like a fury, desperate with grief and fright.

“What is it ye want?” she cried, to Nick.

Rosaleen began to whisper to her, and she became calmer, became little by little composed and shrewd. This was a man from whom benefits might be expected.

“I thought maybe you were from the Board!” she explained. “’Tis them do be worrying the likes of us whenever there is any sickness in it at all.”

She had been living in a very nightmare of fear; her little child was ill and the world was conspiring to snatch it from her. She was quite determined that it should not go. She didn’t know, poor soul, just what awful powers the police and the health officials might have. She was accustomed to their authority. It might be the law to take her child away. But law or no law, she would not have it! She saw hope in this rich friend of Rosaleen’s; she clung to him; she fawned upon him.

She opened the door of the room where Petey lay. There was nothing in it but two big wooden beds. Outside from the fire escape hung a line of limp clothing fluttering in the night wind; nothing else to be seen.... The sick baby lay motionless in the centre of one of the wide beds, blazing with fever, his face scarlet, his brow pitifully contorted, his eyes closed. His limp little body seemed scarcely to raise the bed covers; his arms lay outside the counterpane, with their thin, flat wrists, the tiny, stubby hands....

The mother flew over to him and tucked his arms under the blanket.

“Do you want to catch yer death!” she cried, harshly, to the unconscious child.

She passed her hand over his burning head, feeling the hard, round little skull under the fine hair.

“He’s that hot!” she said. And suddenly began wailing.

“Oh, he cannot live at all! Well do I know he’s to be took from me! Petey! Oh, Petey, my darlin’!”

Rosaleen tried to quiet her.

“Listen, Katie dearie!” she said. “Mr. Landry’s going to help us! Petey’s going to have a beautiful big room all to himself----”

Her sister swore at her.

“I will not let thim lave a hand on Petey!” she cried. “They’ll not take him from me!”

“Katie, you can go with him!” Rosaleen promised. “You can go to the hospital with him and sit by him for a while, can’t she, Mr. Landry?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “It’ll be just as Rosaleen says.”

III

They had gone, Katie and her baby, in a private ambulance, and Nick had arranged with the doctor for the child’s reception. It seemed as if a terrible storm had come and gone, leaving an unnatural calm. He sat in the little hole Katie called her “parlour,” with its dirty lace curtains, its little gilt table, the two broken rocking chairs with “tidies” fastened to their backs by stained red ribbons.

Rosaleen tried to explain to him. She tried, in her tongue-tied way, to draw for him a picture of all these lives. Katie, she told him, was a wonderful woman, a wife of unlimited loyalty, a mother of passionate and ceaseless devotion. Her husband was a shipping clerk; he had worked in various department stores, but he was very unlucky; he was always hurting himself, straining his back, crushing his fingers, dropping crates on his feet. And with the three children, and big Pete laid up so often, you could see....

“And I don’t make much,” she said, simply. “Sometimes we think we _can’t_ get on. But we do.”

She sighed, with all that dreadful resignation of hers.

But Nick had nothing to say to that recital of hers; he sat in complete silence for a long time. Rosaleen watched him covertly; she worshipped him; she thought, that in his evening dress, he was the most distinguished, the most magnificent creature she had ever seen. Oh, there was no one like him! Her Nick, who never failed her, who always understood her, who never took advantage of her misfortunes.... He did not look at her; how was she to know that _he_ was worshipping _her_, abashed and humble before her matchless compassion and unselfishness. She suffered all things, endured all things, and was kind....

In squalor, poverty and incessant anxiety, she had kept her spirit tranquil and true. Her affection which never criticised, made no demands, seemed to him to sanctify this place. He remembered that when he had first learned of her origin, in Miss Amy’s violent words, he had believed himself “disillusioned”; and had been bitter and angry toward her. That was nearly eight years ago; she was thirty now; the best of her youth was over, had passed in cruel and thankless servitude. No matter what happened in the future, that couldn’t be effaced, those wrongs could never be repaired. Lawrence had exploited her shamelessly, Miss Amy had exploited her, her sister in her blind and pitiful motherhood would have drained her dry of blood for the benefit of her children; he himself had repudiated and deserted her. And she had no rancour, no bitterness even toward life in the abstract. She was simply resigned, a little sorrowful, but brave, patient, enduring to the uttermost end.

He got up suddenly and held out his hand.

“Good night!” he said, brusquely. “You’ll hear from me very soon.”