Tomorrow About This Time (22 page)

Before the account was finished Bannard was out of the car. “Will you excuse me a moment?” he said hurriedly. “I must go in and see. This is the beautiful baby I told you about,” he finished, looking at Silver.

“Oh, please let me come, too. Perhaps there is something I can do. I have had a course in nursing.”

“Come then,” said Bannard and hurried into the house without knocking.

Greeves put out his hand to stop her, but Silver was gone before he realized. Pneumonia! Didn’t the child know that was contagious? What did Bannard mean by letting her go? Suppose she should catch it and die, now when he had just got her, leave him as her mother had done! He shuddered and sprang out of the car, resolved to bring her back again into the clean air and sunshine, away from germs and contamination. What was the use of being a specialist on germs if one couldn’t save one’s own from danger? So he stumbled up the steps and into a deserted room.

There was no squalor nor dirt. The walls were grimy with age and use, and the bare floor was worn in hollows by many feet, but both were clean as soap and water could make them. He looked around. There was nothing in the room but a cookstove neatly blacked with a pot of stew simmering away, a wooden table covered with oilcloth, two chairs, and an old sofa with lumpy springs. A painted dresser held a few cheap dishes, some spoons and forks, and a pair of crude steps shallow almost as a ladder led up through an open door, winding out of sight. He could just see the flash of Silver’s gray-blue tweed skirt as she disappeared up those impossible stairs.

“Silver!” he called and then without knowing it, “Alice!” But no one answered him. The sound of the factory nearby kept up a monotonous clatter in regular rhythm, and there were subdued voices overhead. He stepped to the door and looked up. Such stairs! He never had seen their like. They were like carvings in a sheer wall. They went winding up in the shallow space like pictured stairs, like the stairs in a nightmare. How did anybody ever climb them? Didn’t Bannard know any better than to let a girl go up a place like that? He put a tentative foot on the first step and perceived that it was hollowed out in bowl shape by many feet that had gone before. He groped with his hand to the wall that seemed to advance and slap him in the face. He lifted another foot to another step and went winding and groping up in the dark and uncertainty. A woman appeared at the head of the stairs weeping. She had wonderful dark hair, and her eyes were piteous.

“I have come for my daughter. She ought not to be in here,” he shouted at her. The woman chattered some jargon at him that had a tang of French, or was it Italian? But he could understand nothing but the words “doctor” and “little ba-bee” and then more tears. She passed beyond his sight.

He lifted himself another step and yet another and stood head and shoulders in a room light and clean with whitewash, a large framed picture of the painted Christ on the cross hung on the wall opposite him over the head of a big brass bed made up with white sheets trimmed with hand-knit lace, and on the clean pillow lay a little face, the most beautiful baby face Greeves had ever looked upon, short black curls tumbled on the pillow, long curling lashes dark upon the rounded cheek, beautiful baby lips gasping for breath, treacherous blue shadows deepening around the eyes and nose.

“These windows ought to be up if it’s pneumonia,” Bannard explained in a whisper. He stretched out a strong arm and threw up both windows. Silver was leaning over the baby feeling her forehead, touching the pulse of the little fluttering restless hand.

“She ought to have oxygen, Mr. Bannard. Can’t you get some quick?” Silver looked up.

“I’ll get it,” said the minister. “Can you stay here till I come?”

She nodded. “Quick!” She was down on her knees beside the bed, putting the spoon that the mother handed her to the little tight-shut lips.

“She ought not to be here!” repeated Greeves wildly, but Bannard swept him along down the stairs with a strong arm.

“Greeves, just run over to that grocery and ring up Doctor Carr. Tell him I said to come instantly to Angelo’s house. I must go for oxygen. You stand by till I come. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Before the dazed professor of bacteriology knew what was happening or could put in a protest, Bannard’s car had given a lurch and darted down the road, and Greeves found himself walking across that squalid street, entering the grimy, unsanitary grocery and asking if he might telephone for the doctor. It reminded him of France. But it was very different from sitting in an office and telling other officers where to go and what to do. He had done reconstruction work, yes, by proxy. It was not the same. He had been an executive. But this was close contact. He hurried back with the idea of carrying Silver bodily out of the infected air and found himself once more standing at the top of those ladderlike stairs in that white airy room, gazing at the little blackening face, listening to the gasping of the baby, the mother’s tears, and his daughter’s voice praying in low, gentle tones: “Oh, Jesus, You know how this mother loves her baby. Come and help us if it be Your will. Save this little darling’s life. For Jesus’ sake, we ask it.” And the mother bowed and crossed herself, hushing her sobs.

Someone brushed roughly by Greeves on the stairs almost upsetting his balance. To think these people lived every day on stairs like this. Incredible! A tall man, young, splendidly built came quickly to the bed and knelt on the other side from the mother and Silver. And he took the little fluttering hand in his big rough one. His face was tender, and there were tears raining down his cheeks, but he paid no attention to them. “Poppie come, Mary, Poppie come! You hear Poppie, Mary? Poppie come home from his work to stay with Mary!”

Greeves stood and gazed transfixed at the face of the rough man before him, transformed by love, tender and sweet with fatherhood! So this was what it meant to be a father!

This was the way he would have felt if he had let himself! This was what he threw away carelessly when he took himself out of the reach of his first little child and brought another carelessly into the world to leave to any Fate that came her way.

“Let Poppie hold it, Mary. Let Poppie hold it!” The strong hand grasped the weak, restless fingers, and the little hand relaxed. For an instant the great dark eyes opened wide in recognition of the beloved face, and the dark head that had kept up its restless motion back and forth from side to side on the pillow rested. The parched lips that had murmured hoarsely “No! No! No!” were quieted. Then the blessed oxygen in the hands of Silver and Bannard reached her nostrils, and she drew a long deep breath. The gasping ceased little by little, and another breath came. A sigh of relief. The fluttering lids drooped, and the long lashes lay on the white cheeks again. A restful natural sleep was coming to the little one.

The doctor came in quietly, laid a practiced finger on the fluttering pulse. The child started and opened her eyes once more. Her glance rested on the doctor in frightened question then turned to the father and was content, dropping off to sleep again. The doctor nodded to Silver in answer to some question about the oxygen, opened his case, and prepared some drops that he handed to Angelo. The father took it and held it to the little lips with as much skill as one trained to such service could have rendered. Greeves stood there watching him with almost jealous eyes, seeing as in a vista a long line of tender services he might have rendered had his heart been right to his own. Where did this rough untaught man learn such angelic gentleness? Here in this bare little house with an environment of the plainest necessities, the father had fenced in a little piece of the kingdom of heaven for his child. Greeves suddenly realized that he was envying this rough untaught working man. With all his knowledge and culture he had missed the blessedness of living that this other man had found, and even his sorrow was sacred because of the love that was between him and his child.

Bannard had gone out again and now returned, bringing with him the district nurse. She quietly took things in her capable hands, and the minister’s group was no longer needed.

As he stumbled shakily toward the treacherous stair Greeves caught hold of the crude railing and gave one more glance back at the big brass bed with the exquisitely knitted white spread and the tiny white face framed in dark curls on the big pillow. The Madonna mother was standing at the head on one side, the tender father kneeling at the other, tears raining unchecked down their sorrowful faces, and the face of the painted Christ overhead looked on with yearning eyes. It was a sight he never would forget.

He felt his way down the dark chute, for it was little else, groping with his feet for shallow steps, and stumbled out into the sunshine, silent and thoughtful. He forgot how it was that he came to go into that house of sorrow, forgot that he had let his child stay as long as she was needed, forgot the words of criticism he had prepared for Bannard for letting her go into the infectious atmosphere. For the first time in years he had become a part of a great suffering universe. He forgot his own individuality and his grievances, and his heart was throbbing with sorrow for another.

Meantime Athalie, at home, was dressing elaborately for her evening with Bobs in the city.

Chapter 17

D
own the street from the direction of the schoolhouse proceeded a merry group of girls, stopping at their various respective houses on the way to leave books, lunch boxes, and tidy up hair and hands and face. Laughing and chattering they came on with a sudden hush of awe as they approached the silver gate, so long an unopened portal to young people.

Mary Truman and Roberta Moffat went first by reason of Mary’s having been the instigator of the function. Mary’s heavy braid of bright long hair had needed little tidying. It ended in a massive wave of gold below the crisp dark-blue ribbon and frilled in little golden tendrils about her face. Mary wore no hat to rumple the smoothness of the ripples from the delicate line of parting on her crown. She scorned hats, except for Sunday.

Her neat blue-and-white checked gingham dress was just low enough to show the white of her throat, above the sheer collar that matched the rolled-back cuffs and pockets banded with the gingham. The whole school thought that Mary Truman was always well dressed.

Those little gingham bindings on the organdy pockets, for instance, marked the line between the banker’s daughter and other girls whose mothers had not the time to bother with such details.

Roberta Moffat was short and fat, attired in pink chambray whose hem had visibly been “let down” and whose yoke had faded to a nice dependable flesh tint, but her round pleasant face was always wreathed with smiles. She had a glitter of white even teeth and a pair of nice black eyes above the little pug nose that was covered with freckles. Always copying Mary as far as her limited means allowed, she wore no hat, gathered her scant locks into a pigtail, and acquired a habit of tossing back the straight locks that would keep falling over her eyes where the hair wasn’t quite long enough from a defunct bang to catch into the confining pink ribbon that held the pigtail. The ribbon was washed and dyed and showed signs of droop but had been retied and stuck out bravely for the occasion.

“I guess she’ll be glad when she sees somebody coming to call on her so soon, don’t you, Mary?” whispered Roberta with a soft giggle.

“I should think she ought to,” said Mary seriously. “I certainly am glad you are all with me, girls. Just think how I’d feel now if I were alone!” And she squeezed Roberta’s plump elbow lovingly.

Emily Bragg was tall, and her sleek brown hair had been bobbed, not for purposes of style however. The top was longer than the rest and fastened at the side with a barrette that gave her the look of an old-fashioned china doll with painted hair all made up hard. She wore a straight little one-piece frock of brown denim with characters worked around the edges in red yarn. On her head was a boy’s brown wool cap, one of her brother Tom’s, and the big shell-rimmed glasses that sheltered her merry eyes and gave her the look of a good-natured boy. She climbed trees and fences, could whistle as well as any of her brothers, and everybody liked her, but she wasn’t a beauty. She was just behind Mary and Roberta, walking arm in arm with little Carol Hamilton, a slight little fairy with pink cheeks and short golden curls who always dressed in pale blue and was adored because she was so pretty.

Della McBride was much taller than the rest, wore her long brown braids in a coronet around her head and had big dark-blue eyes with long lashes. The seriousness of her face was somewhat accentuated by a retreating chin. She was wearing a middy blouse and a dark-blue skirt, and her companion, Vera Morse, a quiet girl with pale eyes and her hair “done up” and brought in sleek loops over her ears, wore a white shirtwaist left over from last year and a brown wool skirt. She carried a brown straw sailor hat in her hand, and talked in a low sweet voice.

They were a wholesome group as they fluttered up to the steps and sounded the old brass knocker, their subdued chatter like the chirps of a bunch of sparrows on the garden wall.

Anne Truesdale let them into the house and seated them in the drawing room dubiously. Such a circumstance had not happened since the days of Miss Lavinia, six whole callers at once in the old house! Then with deep reluctance, only goaded by an indubitable conscience, she mounted the stairs and tapped at Athalie’s door.

“Oh, come in,” drawled that young woman affably. “I’ll let you fasten this dress. I can’t seem to reach around there anymore. I was just about to ring for you. It fastens up the back under that drapery.”

Anne paused in dismay and surveyed the young woman but made no move to investigate the hooks in question.

“There are some young persons down in the drawing room came to call on you,” she announced severely, as if it were a reward far too good for the girl before her but must be handed over for honesty’s sake.

Athalie swung around and faced her. “Come to see
me?
What are they? Men?”