Chapter XXII

One summer in the Old Hotel; of the World's wagging on,
Kern Garland, and Prince Serge Suits; of how Kern leaves
the Works for Good and has a Dream about Mr. V.V.'s
Beautiful Lady; of how Mr. V.V. came to sit in the still
Watches and think again of John the Baptist.

And still the world wagged on.

Calamity befell one House out of many, and the natural cycles did not stir a hair's breadth. The evening and the morning were another day, and another and another. May ran indifferent out, with blue skies and a maddening sequence of "Continued Heat." Then presently the long days had reached their length, loitered awhile, turned slowly backward. And June had become July, and midsummer lay fast over the half-empty town.

It was a summer that broke records for heat, and those fled from it who could. But in the industrious backwaters of towns, where steady work means steady bread, it is the custom of men to take the climate as it comes to them, freezing or sweating at the weather-man's desire. Mountain and ocean, awninged gardens and breeze-swept deck: those solaces are not for these. Ninety Fahrenheit it ran and over, day after day, half of June, half of July. But in the old Dabney House Mrs. Garland stood on by the steaming wash-tubs, and Kern fared daily to the bunching-room at Heth's and its air like the breath of a new bake-oven, and Vivian, the doctor, was never "on his vacation" when his sick called, and stout Mr. Goldnagel, week on week, mopped his bald Hebraic head and repaired while you waited, with all work strictly guaranteed.

Of these four it was the young physician who kept the busiest, for his work never ended. Falling back from his brief appearance in the upper world, he had been speedily swallowed again by his own environment. Routine flattened him out as never before; the problem of life was to find time to sleep.

For one thing, there was a mild epidemic of typhoid this summer, breaking out in those quarters of the town where moderate conveniences (as Mrs. Garland called them) were matters of hearsay only, and the efficient and undermanned Health Department, fighting hard, did not have the law to drive home orders where they would do the most good. But the doctor of the Dabney House needed no epidemic to keep him occupied, so acceptable was his no-bill custom--still maintained--to the unwell laity of the vicinage. Through the dingy waiting-room, old state bedchamber, there rolled a waxing stream, and the visiting rounds of V. Vivian, M.D., ran long and overlong.

Had these been pay patients, carriage trade, Receipts would have soared dizzily in these days, and handsome additions might have been made to that Beirne residue of fifteen thousand dollars, now lying useless, not even at three per centum, in Mr. Heth's Fourth National Bank. But here trooped only the unworthy with unworthy troubles, not always of the body; the poor and the sinful with their acute complaints; waiters and day-laborers and furtive sisters in sorry finery, plumbers' helpers with broken heads, bankrupt washerwomen, married grocer's clerks with coughs not destined to stop. To these through the sweltering days and nights, young Dr. Vivian ministered according to his gifts. They took his pills, his bottles and his "treatment"; they lauded but rarely took his moral counsel; and not a few spoke of loans....

All July the old hotel rang with the blows of hammer and the rasp of saw, in preparation for its new birth in September, as the Union Settlement House. There came often, in the late afternoons, the Rev. George Dayne, the tireless and kind-faced Secretary of Charities, who wandered whistling over the lower floor, while his mind's eye saw, beyond the litter of boards and brick and demolished partitions, the emerging visage of a great institution. And Mr. Dayne rarely failed to climb the stairs for a little chat with the young man in the polished coat who, under promise of secrecy, had called these wonders into being.

More regular were the visits of Hon. Samuel O'Neill, desirous of talking over the state of the Union, particularly as touching the new advanced labor law he was now beginning to draft--"stiffest factory legislation ever passed in the South." And sometimes, when the condition of the sick permitted it, these two would slip away from the Dabney House for a welcome swim, with a growing swarm of boys behind; for Vivian had been the best swimmer on the river in his day, and still did things from the springboard which many lads with two sound feet could not copy. So diversion from the medical grind was not wanting. And once in June, the doctor lunched with Mr. Dayne at Berringer's, and twice he was dragged off to supper at the Cooneys' and enjoyed himself very much, and once he took Sunday dinner with his aunt, Mrs. Mason, and his little Mason cousins: only that time he was called away from the table before dessert, and got back to South Street just a minute before Mrs. Meeghan died....

The Garlands rarely saw their boarder now except at mealtimes, and by no means always then. Kern, for her part, was off to the Works at quarter to seven each morning, and had stopped coming home for dinner since the heat got so bad. However, the women observed him, and talked him over of nights as they washed the dishes in the new detached kitchen. For the Garland _ménage_ boasted this moderate convenience now, directly attributable to the remarkable growth of Receipts (voluntary) which had reached $21.75 by the book for the single month of June. It was agreed that Mr. V.V. was not so jokey at the supper-table as formerly, and looked po'ly, in fine, and no wonder, the heat and all, and the way he let Hazens and Epsteins roust him out of bed in the middle of his sleep.

Kern deplored the doctor's thinness, and hardly less, in her secret heart, his strange indifference to his personal appearance. She observed to her mommer that she never see a gempman go so shabby. She longed to admonish Mr. V.V. on some of these matters, but on the whole hardly saw her way clear. However, it is possible to do a thing or two by indirection in this world, as one half the race has had gone reason to learn. And one sultry night in mid-July, the little buncher seemed able to talk of nothing but the astonishing suit Jem Noonan had just obtained at the One-Price Outfitting Company for the somewhat laughable sum of $7.90. A three-piece Prince serge, warranted fast, with the English shoulders and high-cut vest, which only last week had been $15, for Jem had seen it in the window with his own eyes, but had waited around, knowing that the Mid-Summer Stock Rejuicing Sales were now about due. Such a Chance Would Not Soon Occur Again: so it said on the card in the window, and so Didymus himself would have believed, hearing Kern Garland's abandoned eulogies....

And, sure enough, Mr. V.V., at length fired out of his purely civil interest, was visited with a brilliant association of ideas, as his eye betrayed. It was a matter, it will be remembered, which he had always meant to take up some day.

"Did you say the One-Price," he inquired, not without an inner sense of cleverness and enterprise, "or was it the Globe?"

Kern's heart thrilled. She was a woman, and hence the mother of all men. And this, of course, was the moment to introduce quite simply, the subject of the Genuine Mouldform Garments like the pixtures in the magazines, $15, rejuiced from as high as $28.50, and would look, oh, so fine and stylish long after the Prince serge had worn slick and faded....

"But I thought you spoke of the Prince as something especially fine," said Mr. V.V., with rather a long face for the way expenses seemed to be mounting up.

"Fine for on'y a carpenter, oh, yes," said Kern, "but not hardly what you'd recmend to a doctor, oh, no."

The young man said ruefully that perhaps he had better investigate the One-Price bargains, before Jem Noonan gobbled them all up. Then his eyes rested on Kern across the table, and the light of enterprise died out of them....

To take this child away from the Heth Works would be easy, indeed, but what to do with her then? That was a question which money could not answer. Kern's education had stopped at twelve. She was nineteen years old, born to work, and qualified to do nothing in the world but make cheroots.

After all, could anything more suitable happen to her than that she should take a fancy to Jem Noonan, the upstanding, square-jawed, taciturn youth who had appeared at the Dabney House in his Sunday blacks one night in May, and had reappeared regularly once a week since? Noonan was master of his trade at twenty-one, a lodge man, an attendant at ward meetings, and laying by money to embark as a contractor; he bade fair to be a power some day. And, though he seemed to be almost completely dumb, there must be something uncommon in him that he should be so drawn to the gay, dreaming little creature who was so clearly made of other clay than his....

"I haven't seen Jem for some time," said the doctor aloud, casually. "How are you and he getting on these days?"

Kern gave an impish little exclamation: she never liked for Mr. V.V. to mention Jem.

"Him and me mostly get off!... Him and _I_ mostly get off...."

And then she giggled briefly, and sprang up with eyes too bright and went skipping and kicking for the detached kitchen to see if there was any hot lightbread.

But she flung over her shoulder as she vanished: "Jem he lacks 'magination...."

Returning with rolls, the small diplomat reverted to the question of the Mouldform Garment, which, it seemed to be settled, Mr. V.V. was to purchase on the morrow. Kern's endeavor was to convey the idea that, in cases such as this, many men ever made it a practice to keep the old suit by, like for rainy days, and under no circumstances to give it away to the first person comes along and asts them for it. Clearly the reference here was to her father, the erring Mister, who had appeared at the Dabney House in June's first blush and was now (it was presumable) wearing Mr. V.V.'s derby down many a sunny lane.

"And the shirts they got at the One-Price Company!" cooed Kern. "And the shoes!... Lor, them people're givin' away stock awmost!..."

However, Mr. V.V. did not purchase shoes and shirts next day, or even a Genuine Mouldform Garment. For that day was Tuesday, July 17th, the day when the professional mercury in the Government "kiosk" set its new record, which was like to stand for many years. One hundred and one it announced, not without a touch of pride; and that day Ours was the hottest city in the United States (some said in the world), and many private thermometers showed one hundred and four, five, and six. And on that day Corinne Garland wilted abruptly in the sickening heat, and her tall machine at the Heth Works stood silent after three P.M....

Kern came home and went to bed, and suddenly all the current of life in the Dabney House was changed. It was after five when Mr. V.V., returning from his rounds, heard the news, with a tightening feeling around his heart, and went down the long hall to see her.

The little girl lay silent, with feverish cheeks, and did not make a game of sticking out her tongue, which was certainly a bad symptom. However, Kern was sensitive with Mr. V.V.; she didn't like to answer his questions, wouldn't tell the truth in fact. It took a grizzled gentleman from the other end of town, Dr. Halstead, late physician to Mr. Armistead Beirne, to fix the diagnosis beyond doubt. Typhoid, said he, confirming the first impression of his learned young colleague. Kern Garland had typhoid.

Well, it wasn't her lungs, at any rate, objects of suspicion since the pleurisy in January. Only--only--how had she ever been allowed to stay on at the Works so long?...

The little girl had also a nervous constitution, hardly fitted for weathering many gales. So observed the grizzled visitor, aside. And, glancing about the poor room with its sway-backed double bed, he advised that she be sent off to a hospital without delay, and so smiled cheerily at the small patient and went chugging back to his handsome house on Washington Street, having pooh-poohed all mention of a fee.

But Kern cried bitterly at the threat of a hospital, and Mr. V.V. instantly promised that she shouldn't stir a foot from where he was. He didn't mean that she should suffer by it, either. But it would be a strange thing if he, a resident physician with the riches of the world behind him (practically speaking), could not do all that a hospital could do, and perhaps that little more beside that might make all the difference....

There followed a day of intense activity, and at the end of that time--behold the power of money in the bank, so decried by transcendentalists.

Mrs. Garland slept alone in a new room containing the sway-backed double bed, and (to tell the truth) not one earthly thing besides. Kern slept in a brand-new single bed of white iron, new-mattressed and sheeted, and not far away stood another bed exactly like it. Beside Kern's bed stood a table holding glasses and bottled milk and thermometer and cracked ice and charts and liquid diet. In one of the windows stood three potted geraniums, growing nicely and bright red. Another window, where the noonday sun shone in too warmly, was fitted with a red-striped awning; and in a third--for the pleasant old room, at the extreme back of the house, had no less than four of them--a baby electric fan, operated from a storage battery, ran musically hour by hour. And through all these marvels moved the biggest and most incredible marvel of all: a lady in a blue-and-white dress and long apron, with spectacles and a gentle voice, who was paid _twenty-five dollars a week_ to wait upon and give sponge baths to her, Kern Garland.

Yes, you could do something with one thousand dollars put into a checking account, and fourteen thousand more waiting behind that on a certificate of deposit. But was it not the irony of life, was it not life itself, that the little buncher, who only the other day would have thrilled to her marrow at the mere thought of all these things, should have won her lady's glories only when she was too strangely listless to care for them?...

Mrs. Garland feebly protested against the doctor's staggering expenditures, as in duty bound, but was silenced when he told her that, by a lucky chance, he had a fund given him by a benevolent relative for just such cases. The doctor took advantage of the interview to announce a stiff raise in board-charges, saying, in quite a censorious way, that he had been expecting for some time to hear a demand from her for such an increase. As it was, through her failure to protect her own interests, she and Kern had been doing the full duties of an office-boy for him, doing them, he might say, faithfully and well, without compensation of any sort whatsoever. This imposition must cease at once.

"Again," said he, "I am growing--somewhat heartier. I am quite aware that I eat more. I say that thirty-five dollars a month, and probably more, is the proper amount for me to pay."

And he said it so sternly, with such a superior gempman's way to him, that Mrs. Garland, feeling convicted of guilt,--and, to tell the truth, missing Kern's earnings sorely,--could only reply: "Just as you say, sir, well, now, and thank you kindly, I'm sure."

The first excitement gradually subsided, and the Dabney House settled to the long pull. Days slipped by, all just alike.

Kern's malady discouraged reading aloud. It discouraged conversation. Visitors were not allowed. But twice, without the nurse's knowledge,--Miss Masters took her rest-time every afternoon from three to seven,--rules were suspended to admit Miss Sadie Whirtle, of Baird & Himmel's,--an enormous, snapping, red-cheeked girl she proved to be, whose ample Semitic countenance gave a copious background for violet talcum, but who said nothing wittier in Vivian's hearing than "Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure"--and once to admit Miss Henrietta Cooney, of Saltman's bookstore. Hen came by from the store late one August afternoon, having heard something of the case which seemed to worry V.V. more than all his others put together. She was allowed to spend twenty minutes in the sick-room, provided she did not permit Kern to talk. Having faithfully obeyed these instructions, Henrietta returned to the office, where the doctor sat in his shirt-sleeves, humped over Miss Masters's chart.

"She's an odd little thing," said Hen, "very cute and dear with her staring eyes and her yes-ma'ams. I was telling her about the Thursday Germans, first explaining that a German had nothing to do with Germany--or has it? You know you told me she was wild about parties. She was so, so interested.... V.V., she's quite a sick girl, isn't she?"

"Quite sick," replied V.V. He glanced out of his weather-worn window, and said: "But she's going to be better to-morrow."

"Oh! That's the crisis, or whatever you call it?"

He answered by a nod, and Hen continued:

"She never belonged in the Works, and she certainly never belonged to that fat woman with the beak I met in the hall. She's a changeling--that's it. Speaking of the Works, V.V., I had quite a long letter from Cally Heth this week."

"Oh!" said V.V. "Oh, yes!--from Miss Heth. How is she?"

Hen, who had been strolling about the tall chamber and peeking into the instrument cabinet, noted the young man's guarded tone; and she wondered how many times V.V. and her cousin Cally had met, and what part he had played in all that affair, and in general what these two thought of each other.

"Well, she's certainly in much better spirits than when I had the note from her in July. One thing, her answering my letters at all shows it. They're in Switzerland now, at the National House, Lucerne, and J. Forsythe Avery has, turned up, which is a pretty good sign of the times, I should say. He's a social barometer, you know,--the last man in the world to turn up where it would hurt his position, whatever it is. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear some fine day that Mr. Canning had sneaked back, too, now that the worst is over, and wasn't so very bad at that. There's a man I'd like to have five minutes' talk with," said Henrietta Cooney. "I think I'd give him something to put in his memory-book."

Hen, having her own theory of events, gave a defiant tug to her new sailor-hat. She considered that she looked very nice to-day, and she did. She, too, had been patronizing the midsummer sales, and beside the sailor, she had on a new linen skirt which she had got for $1.75, though the original price-mark was still on it and said $5.

"Cally," she continued, "wrote a good deal about her mother's being dropped from the officers of the Associated Charities. Well it's too bad, of course, but somebody's got to take the blow, V.V., and I imagine it's going about where it belongs. Serves her right, I say, for the sort of mother she's always been, doing her best to educate all the decent feeling out of Cally, and then trying to break her when she was doing the best thing she ever did in her life. In fact--I don't want to brag, but I expect the talk I've spread around town has had a good deal to do with the way things have gone. She married mother's brother and all that," said Hen, "but I detest and despise her and always have."

V.V. burst out laughing, and Hen observed: "Well, I'm glad I said that. It's the first smile I've seen from you this month."

She stood by the old secretary, looking down at him, and she thought what a hard life he had down here, and how his face looked too refined for this so practical world....

"Now, V.V., really," said she, "why can't you leave your work to this man Finnegan for just a week and pack your little bag and run down to Aunt Rose Hopwood's farmette--really? Tee Wee and Loo are there, and everybody'll be delighted to have you. In the open air all day, sleep ten hours every night, eat your blessed head off. No mosquitoes. No malaria--"

"I can't go now, Hen. It's impossible. Thank you just the same."

He spoke quite irritably, for him, and Hen, having had this subject up more than once before, desisted and turned to go.

"Well, take some sort of care of yourself, V.V.," she said from the door. "Don't be a goose. And, by the way, be very gentle with your little friend Corinne. You know she thinks you put up the moon."

V.V. had meant to be gentle with Corinne, but in the light of this remark he resolved to be gentler still. He sat for ten minutes in abstraction after Henrietta had gone; and then, rising abruptly, picked up the chart, went down the long hall, pushed aside the light green curtain that swung in front of a door, and passed into the sick-room.

Kern lay alone with her geraniums, awning, whirring fan, and other ladylike appurtenances. Mr. V.V. sat down by the white iron bed and introduced a thermometer into her mouth. He possessed himself of her wrist, took out his silver watch and presently wrote something on the chart. He took out the thermometer and again jotted upon the chart. Then he gave the patient two tablespoonfuls of peptonoids. All this in silence. And then Kern said in a whimpering little voice:

"Mr. V.V., I'm so _hongry_."

"I know it, poor child. Just a little more patience now: you're going to begin to get better right away, and before you know it you'll be sitting down to the finest dinners that ever you popped into your mouth. Ring the bell and order what you like--stuff, stuff, stuff--banquets all day long. And that reminds me," said he, hurrying away from this too toothsome subject--"your holiday, as soon as you feel strong enough to travel. It's high time we were making pretty definite plans about that. The question is, what sort of place do you think you'd like to go to?"

"Oh!... Do you mean--any place--go to _any_ place I like?"

"Any place in the world," replied Mr. V.V., the magnificent.

Kern thought for some time, her eyes on the window, and then said:

"I'd like to go to some place where there's mountains and a sea." She added, as if to soften the baldness of her specifications, the one word: "Like."

Mr. V.V. thought of Marathon, which on the whole didn't promise to suit. He was visited with an ingenious idea, viz.: that Kern should go to no less than two places on her convalescent tour, one containing Mountains, the other containing a Sea! And so it was settled to the general satisfaction....

"Only hurry up and get well," said the tall doctor, "or you'll find the crowds gone from Atlantic City before you get there."

He had risen, but paused, looking down at the flushed little face in which the sunken dark eyes looked bigger than ever. Thoughts of himself were in his mind; and they were not pleasant thoughts.

"Kern," said he--for he had by now fallen into the family habit, abandoning the too stately Corinne--"suppose you were absolutely well, and had a thousand dollars, what would you do for yourself with it?"

It was a game well calculated to interest the little girl even in the listlessness and apathy of fever. Kern spoke first of duck, of French fried potatoes and salads rich with mayonnaise; then, hurrying on with increasing eagerness, of taking a steamer to Europe and buying her and mommer Persian clo'es....

Her medical adviser was obliged to check these too exciting flights.

"I mean more as a--as an occupation," he explained. "You know, of course, you've bunched your last cheroot. I was wondering what sort of nicer work you would like to fit yourself for--later on?"

Kern boggled a good deal over the answer to this, but finally got it out.

"What I'd truly like to be, Mr. V.V., if I could, is a writer, sort of."

"Oh!... Yes, yes--a writer! Well, that's very nice. A very nice occupation--writing."

The child was encouraged to go on. Staring at him with her grave investigatory eyes, she said, quite timidly:

"Mr. V.V., do you think I could _ever_ be an eppig poet, sir?... Like Homer the Blind Bard, y' know?"

Mr. V.V.'s encouraging smile became a little fixed. Yet there came nothing of a smirk into it, nothing the least bit superior.... Was this the explanation of the little girl's odd yearning toward pens and desks? How came she to revere the Bard, where even to hear his name? Was it possible that Mrs. Garland's changeling had a spark in her, a magic urging her on?...

"Epic poet, is it?" said he aloud, cheerily. "Oh, I daresay something of the sort can be arranged. No harm in having a try anyhow! First thing, of course, is to get a good education...."

And he spoke of the High School, when Kern got back from her trip, with a little brushing-up, first, perhaps, under his personal supervision....

And next morning, when Kern's temperature stood down a whole degree at nine o'clock, these great plans seemed to come nearer at a bound. That day the Dabney House drew a long breath and smiled. Miss Masters was even more confident than Vivian that the hard corner had been turned. So the verdict went to Hen Cooney, who telephoned from Saltman's; and so it went to Jem Noonan, who was to be found waiting in front of the Dabney House every evening in these days, silently biting a Heth Plantation Cheroot, which he smoked because Kern made them, though secretly preferring the White River brand, made by the Trust. A great capacity for waiting had Jem. And that was the afternoon also that Doctor mysteriously vanished from his office before four o'clock, having left no word where he could be reached with his office-boy, Mrs. Garland; and was still out when O'Neill called at quarter to six, to talk about his factory law....

Next day, these novel excitements continued. For when Corinne Garland first opened her eyes that morning, they fell at once upon an imagined wonder out of fairyland. There it stood close to her bed's head, shining gloriously in the early sun, looking, oh, so real.... Kern lay extremely still, gazing wide-eyed: for well she knew the way of dreams, how you forgot and moved a little, and then it all winked out. But after a time, when It did not stir or dance about at all, there came to her a desperate courage, and she stretched out a trembling little hand. And lo, the hand encountered a solid unmistakable. And then Kern gave a great gasping Oh, and sat up in bed; and presently, being very weak, she began to cry, she was so happy.

It really was the prettiest Writing-Desk in the world, a desk for a duchess's boudoir, all made of polished rosewood, and standing tall and graceful on four curving legs. It had an astounding lid, this Writing-Desk had; that you either locked up or let down; and when you let it down the lid had a shining slab of plate glass all screwed on, thus becoming the loveliest place to write on that you could well imagine. And the inside parts of the Desk were running over with delightful things, note-paper and envelopes, and pads and pencils, and new white blotting-paper and--true as true, dull black, with the cutest little silver belt--a beautiful Founting Pen. Inside also were pigeonholes of the best quality, like in the Netiquette. And in one of the pigeonholes there lay, sure enough, a note; not, indeed, from a mustached count with a neyeglass, but from one who perhaps seemed not less of the purple to the fevered little buncher.

This note was written in the best jokey vein throughout, beginning, "Miss Corinne Garland, City--Dear Madam," and signed, "Your most obliged and obedient servant, Writing-Desk."...

It had been the intention of Mr. V.V. to call personally at the sick-room before breakfast, to see how Kern liked the arrival and appearance of Writing-Desk. But Miss Masters frustrated him at the door, saying that the child's heart was set upon conveying her thanks by formal note, and she had worried and fretted so over being refused that it seemed best to give her her way, particularly as she did not seem so well to-day. And in his disappointment over these tidings, the doctor presently forgot the desk entirely.

However, Kern's note arrived in the office an hour later, through the Kindness of Miss Masters, as the envelope advised. Mr. V.V. suspended a sentence to one of his sick in the middle to read it:

MY DEAR DR. VIVIAN:

Oh, Mr. V.V., how can I ever thank you for given me this
lovely Writen Desk. I greatly appreciate your kind gift. Just
putten my hands on it makes me so happy, I could cry, oh the
soft feel this Pretty wood has got to it.

Your kind thought of me at this time has indeed pleased me.
One is never so appreciative of the thought of one's friends,
if I can call you my Friend, Mr. V.V., as when one lies in
pain upon a sickbed, th'o I have no pain. It's the lovlyest
sweetest dearest Desk ever was Mr. V.V., and how can me and
Mommer ever make up for all you done for us. I don't know. I
have every hope for a speedy change for the better in my
condition, and I never dreamed Id' have a Ladys Writen Desk
truly, or haven one would make me oh so Happy. My first note,
dear Dr. Vivian, goes to you.

With repeated thanks for your considerate thought of me
during my illness, believe me, with kind remembrances,

Yours very cordially,

Your faithful friend CORINNE.

The young man distributed mental italics as he read. He detected at sight the footprints of the Netiquette and Complete Letter Writer. But he did not smile once as he read and reread the odd little mosaic, and folded it at last and put it away in a pigeonhole of its own. No, his stabbing thought was only, Why didn't I do it all long ago?... Why?...

And similar things he thought next morning, and the next and next. For Kern did not get well, no matter what the calendar said, no matter how loyally Writing-Desk stood at her elbow to serve her, as It had said in the Note. Her morning temperature shot up a degree again, and there it stood day after day, and would not go down. Kern obviously grew thinner and weaker. And there came a day when the President of the Settlement Association, Mr. Stewart Byrd, came in person to the Dabney House before ten o'clock, and sent all the workmen away. He said there must be no noise about the place that day....

That relapse passed, but no one could say what a day might bring forth. The young doctor looked back over the past; he bowed beneath the burden that he felt upon him. However, due credit must be given to his friend Samuel O'Neill for assisting him to bring his sober meditations to a focus.

In these days O'Neill, having got his stiff factory law drafted, was becoming concerned with the problem of landing it on the statute-books. The complexion of the incoming legislature, which met in January, promised to be conservative; and the Commissioner, breathing threatenings and slaughter against the waist-coated interests which had so flouted his warnings last winter, had decided that a preliminary press campaign would be needed--beginning, say, November 1st--to arouse public opinion to the needs of reform. The lively "Chronicle," the "labor paper," offered space for a series of contributed articles from the Commission office, always provided that "hot stuff" only was furnished, by which was meant vigorous, if not libelous, assaults upon the existing order.

Now it became the earnest wish of Commissioner O'Neill that these hot-stuff articles should be written for him by his friend V.V., of the reformatory passions and the pen of a ready writer. And, the whole subject having been discussed several times in an indecisive sort of way, O'Neill one night whacked out a jagged argument.

"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 scrap 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 nobody 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 noble 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 passions 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 noble narrowness, a noble 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 passions, 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 passionately 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 God 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 compassion 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....

* * * * *

If this was a compact offered, it seemed that it had been sealed in high places. Next morning, which was the morning of September 4th, Miss Masters came smiling to the Garland breakfast-table; and all that day, for the first time in seven weeks, Kern's temperature did not move above 103. On the morning following, it slipped down another half-degree; on the third, the same; and on the fourth morning there existed no reasonable doubt that she was going to get well.

But V. Vivian, the doctor, was not one to forget his mistakes in thanksgiving, merely because the consequences had been lifted from his shoulders. If he had failed once to provide for his little friend, there should never be any trouble on that score again. So he made it all sure and definite now, by the legal-sounding paper he drew up; and Henry Bloom, the undertaker on the next block, who was also a notary public, came in and certified the signature. And he too declined his fee for his trouble, to the wealthy young testator's perceptible annoyance....

That was on September 12th. And next day it was that the morning "Post" informed all readers that Mrs. B. Thornton Heth and Miss Heth, having just returned from a summer's travel in Europe, had arrived in the city, and were again at their town-house, No. 903 Washington Street.