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.