CHAPTER XXIII
When Jacky's father--with that honest young kiss warm upon hischeek--reached the little "two-family" house, he saw the red sign on thedoor: _Scarlet Fever_.
"He's got it," he thought, fiercely; "but why in hell did she send forme?--and a telegram!--to the _house_! She's mad." He was panting withanger as he pressed the button at Lily's door; "I'll tell her I'll neversee her again, long as I live!" Furious words were on the tip of histongue; then she opened the door, and he was dumb.
"Oh, Mr. Curtis--don't--don't let them take Jacky! Oh, Mr. Curtis!" Sheflung herself upon him, sobbing frantically. "Don't let them--I'll killthem if they touch Jacky! Oh, my soul and body! He'll die if they takehim--I won't let them take him--" She was shaking and stammering andgasping. "I won't have him touched.... You got to stop them--"
"Lily, _don't_! What's the matter?"
"This woman downstairs 's about crazy, because she has three children. Ihope they all catch it and die and go to hell! She's shut up there with'em in her flat. She won't put her nose outside the door! She come uphere this morning, and saw Jacky, and she said it was scarlet fever.Seems she knew what it was, 'cause she had a boy die of it--glad he did!And she sent--the slut!--a complaint to the Board of Health--and thedoctor, he come this afternoon, and said it was! And he said he wasgoing to take Jacky _to-night_!"
Her voice made him cringe; her yellow tigress eyes blazed at him; he hadknown that Lily, for all her good humor, had occasional sharp gusts oftemper, little squalls that raced over summer seas of kindliness! Buthe had never seen this Lily: A ferocious, raucous Lily, madly maternal!A Lily of the pavements.... "An' I said he wasn't going to do no suchthing! An' I said I'd stop it: I said I'd take the law to him; I saidI'd get Jacky's father: I--"
"Good God! Lily--"
"Oh, what do I care about _you_? I ain't goin' to kill Jacky to protect_you_! You got to stop them taking him!" She clutched his arm and shookit: "I never asked nothing of you, yet. I ask it now, and you'll _do_it, or I'll tell everybody in town that he's yours--" Her menacing voicebroke and failed, but her lips kept moving; those kind, efficient handsof hers, clutching at him, were the claws of a mother beast. Mauricetook her arm and guided her into the little parlor, where a row ofhyacinths on the window sill made the air overpoweringly sweet; he satdown beside her on the sofa.
"Get steady, Lily, and tell me: I'll see what can be done. But there'sto be no _father_ business about it, you understand? I'm just a'friend.'"
So, stammering and breaking into sobs and even whispered screams, andmore outrageous abuse of her fellow tenant, she told him: It was scarletfever, and there were children in the house. The Board of Health,"sicked on by that damned woman," said that Jacky must go to thehospital--to the contagious ward. "And the doctor said he'd be betteroff there; he said they could do for him better than me--me, his mother!They're going to send a ambulance--I telegraphed you at fouro'clock--and here it is six! You _must_ have got it by five--why didn'tyou come? Oh--my God, _Jacky_!" Her suffering was naked; shocking towitness! It made Maurice forget his own dismay.
"I was out," he began to explain, "and--"
But she went on, beads of foam gathering in the corners of her mouth: "Ididn't telephone, for fear _she'd_ get on to it." He could see that shewas angry at her own consideration. "I'd ought to have sent for youwhen he come down with it!" ... Where had he been all this time,anyway!--and her nearly out of her head thinkin' this rotten womandownstairs was sicking the Board o' Health on to her! "And look how I'vewashed her father for her! I'll spit on him if--if--if anything happensto Jacky. Yes, I tell you, and you mind what I say: If Jacky dies, I'llkill her--my soul and body, I'll kill her anyway!"
"Lily, get steady. I'll fix things for you. I'll go to the Board ofHealth and see what can be done; just as--as a friend of yours, youunderstand."
From the next room came a wailing voice: "Maw--"
"Yes, Sweety; in a minute--" She grasped Maurice's hand, clung to it,kissed it. "Mr. Curtis, I'll never make trouble for you after this! Oh,I'll go to New York, and live there, if you want me to. I'll do_anything_, if you just make 'em leave Jacky! (Yes, darling Sweety,maw's coming.) You'll do it? Oh, I knew you'd do it!" She ran out of theroom.
He got up, beside himself with perplexity: but even as he tried to thinkwhat on earth he could do, the doctor came. The ambulance would arrive,he said, with bored cheerfulness, in twenty minutes. Lily, rushing fromJacky's bedside, flew at him with set teeth, her trembling handsgripping the white sleeve of his linen jacket.
"This gentleman's a friend of mine," she said, jerking her head towardMaurice; "he says you _shan't_ carry Jacky off!"
The doctor's relief at having a man to talk to was obvious. And whileMaurice was trying to get in a word, there came another whimper from theroom where Jacky lay, red and blotched, talking brokenly to himself:"Maw!" Lily ran to him, leaving the two men alone.
"Thank Heaven!" the doctor said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornetas a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He toldit, and Maurice listened, frowning.
"What can be done?" he said; "I--I am only an acquaintance; I hardlyknow Mrs. Dale; but she sent for me. She's frantic at the idea of theboy being taken away from her."
"He'll _have_ to be taken away! Besides, he'll have ten times bettercare in the hospital than he could have here."
"Can she go with him?" Maurice said.
"Why, if she can afford to take a private room--"
"Good heavens! money's no object; anything to keep her from doing somewild thing!"
"You a relation?" the doctor asked.
"Not the slightest. I--knew her husband."
"The thing for you to do," said the doctor, "is to hustle right out to atelephone; call up the hospital. Get Doctor Nelson, if you can--"
"Nelson!"
"Yes; if not, get Baker; tell him I--" then followed concise directions;"But try and get Nelson; he's the top man. They're frightfully crowded,and if you fool with understrappers, you'll get turned down. I'd do it,but I've got to stay here and see that she doesn't get perfectly crazy."
Almost before the doctor finished his directions, Maurice was rushingdownstairs.... That next half hour was a nightmare. He ran up thestreet, slippery with ice; saw over a drug store the blue sign of thepublic telephone, and dashed in--to wait interminably outside the booth!A girl in a silly hat was drawling into the transmitter. Once Maurice,pacing frantically up and down, heard her flat laugh; then, to hisdismay, he saw her, through the glass of the door, instead of hanging upthe receiver, drop a coin into the slot....
"Damn! _Another_ five minutes!"
He turned and struck his fist on the counter. "Why the devil don't youhave two booths here?" he demanded.
The druggist, lounging against the soda-water fountain, smiled calmly:"You can search _me_. Ask the company."
"Can't you stop that woman? My business is important. For God's sakepull her out!"
"She's telephoning her beau, I guess. Who's going to stop a ladytelephoning her beau? Not me."
The feather gave a last flirtatious jerk--and the booth was empty.
Maurice, closing its double doors, and shutting himself into the tinybox where the fetid air seemed to take him by the throat and the spacewas so narrow he could hardly crowd his long legs into it, rushed intoanother delay. Wrong number! ... When at last he got the right numberand the hospital, there were the usual deliberate questions; and the,"I'll connect you with So-and-so's desk." Maurice, sitting with thereceiver to his ear, could feel the blood pounding in his temples. Hismind whirled with the possibilities of what Lily might say in hisabsence: "She'll tell the doctor my name--" As his wire was connected,first with one authority and then with another, each authority asked thesame question, "Are you one of the family?" And to each he gave the sameanswer, "No; a friend; the doctor asked me to call you up."
Finally came the voice of the "top man"--the voice which had spoken inLily's narrow hall six years ago, the voice which
had joked with Edithat the Mortons' dinner party, the voice which had burst into extravagantguffaws under the silver poplar in his own garden--Doctor Nelson'svoice--curt, impersonal: "Who is this speaking?"
Then Maurice's voice, disguised into a gruff treble, "A friend."
"One of the family?"
"No."
Five minutes later Maurice, coming out of that horrible little booth,the matter arranged at an expense which, later, would give Jacky'sfather some bad moments, was cold from head to foot. When he reachedLily's house the ambulance was waiting at the door. Upstairs, the doctorsaid, "Well?"
And Lily said: "Did you do it? If you didn't, I'll--"
"I did," Maurice said. Then he asked if he could be of any furtherservice.
"No; the orderly will get him downstairs. He's too heavy for Mrs. Daleto carry. She's got her things all ready. You--" he said, smiling atMaurice, "Mr.--? I didn't get your name. You look all in!"
Maurice shook his head: "I'm all right. Mrs. Dale will you step in here?I want to speak to you a minute." As Lily preceded him into the diningroom, he said, quickly, to the doctor, "I want to tell her not to worryabout money, you know." To Lily--when he closed the door--he was brieflyruthless: "I'll pay for everything. But I just want to say, if hedies--"
She screamed out, "_No--no!_"
"He won't," he said, angrily; "but if he does, you are to say hisfather's dead. Do you understand? Say his name was--what did you callit?--William?"
"I don't know. My God! what difference does it make? Call it anything!John."
"Well, say his father was John Dale of New York, and he's dead. Promiseme!"
She promised--"Honest to God!" her face was furrowed with fright. Asthey went back to the doctor Maurice had a glimpse of Lily's bedroom,where Jacky, rolled in a blanket, was vociferating that he would _not_be carried downstairs by the orderly.
"Oh, Sweety," Lily entreated; "see, nice pretty gentleman! Let him carryyou?"
"Won't," said Jacky.
At which Maurice said, decidedly: "Behave yourself, Jacobus! I'll carryyou."
Instantly Jacky stopped crying: "You throwed away the present I giveyou," he said; "but," he conceded, "you may carry me."
The doctor objected. "It isn't safe--"
"Oh, let's get it over," Maurice said, sharply; "I shan't see anychildren. It's safe enough! Anything to stop this scene!"
The bothered doctor half consented, and Maurice lifted Jacky, verygently; as he did so, the little fellow somehow squirmed a hand out ofthe infolding blanket, and made a hot clutch for his father's ear; hegripped it so firmly that, in spite of Maurice's wincing expostulation,he pulled the big blond head over sidewise until it rested on his ownlittle head. That burning grip held Maurice prisoner all the waydownstairs; it chained him to the child until they reached the street.There the clutch relaxed, but for one poignant moment, as Maurice liftedJacky into the ambulance, father and son looked into each other's eyes,and Maurice said--the words suddenly tumbling from his lips:
"Now, my little Jacky, you'll be good, won't you?" Then the ambulancerolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heartswelling in his throat: "Why did I say '_my_'?" As he walked home hetried to explain the possessing word away: "Of course I'd say 'my' toany child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heardme?" Even while he thus denied the Holy Spirit within him, he wasfeeling again that hot, ridiculous tug on his ear. "_I_ was the only onewho could manage him," he thought.... "Of course what I said didn't meananything."
He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water--black andswift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a starglimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up theriver a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the emptydarkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge,was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in themaze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his"little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, on one of the hillsides beyondMedfield, was Edith in the schoolhouse. And Eleanor was loving him andtrusting him; and Lily was "blessing him" (so she had told him) for hisgoodness; and Edith was "betting on him"! ... "I wonder if anybody wasever as rotten as I am?" Maurice pondered.
Then he forgot his "rottenness," and smiled. "He obeyed _me_! Lilycouldn't do a thing with him; what did he mean about the 'present'? Ibelieve it was that old cigar! He must have seen me pitch it into thegutter. He wanted me to carry him; wouldn't look at that orderly! Whatmade him grab my ear?"
When Maurice said that, down, down, under his rage at Lily, under hisfear of exposure, under his nauseating disgust at himself--somethingstirred, something fluttered. The tremor of a moral conception:
Paternal pride.
"_What_ a grip!"
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