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: