Chapter II

The same street, the same tenement house, but grown even uglier and dingier with the passing of the years. In a small room on the second floor, Jane sits beside the bed on which her mother tosses in the delirium of fever. Her heart is slowly breaking as she listens to the moaning, insistent cry which issues from those parched lips. All through the days and nights of anxious watching, that cry has been ringing in her ears, the call for "Richard, Richard, Richard."

That her mother is dying she knows full well, and how she longs for one loving glance, for one word of affection, to carry with her in the lonely years to come. But no look of recognition comes to the sightless eyes and no word escapes the lips save that never ceasing cry of "Richard, Richard, Richard." A white-capped nurse flits softly about, but Jane pays no heed to her. The doctor enters and hold whispered consultation with the nurse. Jane does not even glance at him. She is tired of hearing him say the same old thing time after time: "While there is life, there is hope." She knows there is no hope, though everything possible has been done to save the precious life now ebbing so swiftly. Thank God, they are no longer poor as when she was a child. Her salary is a splendid one and she has been able to have the best advice, the best care possible, for her dying mother. No, they are no longer poor, but of what avail is money now? It cannot bring back the days that are gone, the happy days before Richard went away. And they were happy, then, so happy.

After her father's death, which had occurred while she was still a mere child, she and mother had devoted themselves to the task of caring for little Richard. They toiled; they starved, they saved--all for Richard. They prayed and planned and hoped--for Richard. He must go to school, he must go to college, he must become a power in the world. For themselves, poor food, poor clothes, the old tenement were good enough, for every cent they saved meant so much the more for Richard when he should have come to man's estate. And Richard? Oh! he had been well content to take all they offered him. He went to school, he went to college; only, somehow, the reports of his doings there were anything but encouraging. They seemed to be merely a series of pranks and mischief, but the devoted mother was very ready to make allowances. The boy was young, he would grow steadier as he grew older. They must have patience with him for a few years yet. At times Jane doubted the wisdom of their course, and when the demands, not only upon their patience but upon their purse, became greater and greater, Jane had counseled removing him from college and setting him to work. Not so the mother. Her cry was ever: "Patience, patience, and all will yet be well." So they bore with him a while longer to their never ceasing sorrow.

His escapades grew wilder, the reprimands of the faculty more severe. At last came the final prank, which had resulted in his disgrace and expulsion. Even then, she and mother was ready to forgive and had written him to come home. No answer from Richard had ever been received. Instead, came the news that the boy had disappeared, run away; the last seen of him was boarding a train for the West. All efforts at tracing him had proved futile, and to this day they knew not where he was.

Mother had never smiled again but had drooped and faded day by day. Time and again Jane had urged moving to more congenial surroundings, to a flat or cottage in the suburbs, to fresh air and sunshine. But no, mother would not have it so; Richard might come back some day and how could he find them if they moved away from the old home in the tenement house?

Even now, when she is dying, her last thought is not for the girl beside her, the girl who has toiled so patiently, watched so faithfully, sacrificed all so generously, for mother and for Richard. Even in delirium, her thoughts are only for the absent one; her words, that insistent, heartrending cry for "Richard, Richard, Richard." Jane bows her head in anguish but whispers low: "Thy will be done."