“It is well to pay your debts, on the chance you’ll lose your money.”
IN four days’ time Black received a letter from the paralysis
specialist that delighted him. It consisted solely of questions
regarding trains and Soot City conveyances and the distance from the
station to the patient’s abiding place. To the genial undertaker
intercourse with a man too busy to con a time-table was social
promotion.
He went at once to Emma, and in a mixed state of reverence and elation
read her the physician’s curt note, with his own copious comment.
“Sounds ’cute, don’t he?” said Black. “He knows I understand him. It
must be a kind of comfort to him comin’ to a strange place to find a
man of his own stamp who feels just his way about the game o’ life.”
Putting his tongue in his cheek, he was soon lost in wonder to find
himself, after long years of comparative obscurity, so very like this
shining light of medical science.
Emma almost said her thought aloud; it was well she did not, for she
was saying inwardly, “You can always tell when Jerry Black’s been to
the city, he has such an extra green look.”
With Martha Long for aid, she prepared for the doctor joyfully. They
washed everything just for the love of the unaccustomed, that seizes
women under suspense. Everything had been washed for the wedding, and
was still much cleaner than its ordinary state. There was one day when
the house-cleaning was finished and the doctor not yet come; so Martha
undertook a little rudimentary cooking, and Emma raked up the little
space of yard and dug out the weeds from the beds of cinder-spotted
marigolds.
She tended Jarlsen more and more, and the friendliness Martha showed
toward her pleased her mightily. She would take her to the Swede’s bed
and show her how his looks were coming back, and then, forgetful of her
presence, would stand in silent wonder at the expression of wisdom fast
becoming habitual to him.
He seemed to know more of what was, and is, and is to be, than any of
the people she had seen, and he had not seemed so wise when he had
lips wherewith to speak wisely. For a half hour and more she would
sometimes watch him, unconscious of time, and at last a fit of longing,
like a mother’s, would bend her to him. Anxious for his thoughts, she
would put her hand on his temple as if feeling for them. He would
smile and say “Emma”; then her blushes would come as they had when he
was a bright mystery to her, because she dared not raise her eyes to
his face; and she took the utterance of her name as an answer to her
craving.
Quarry and her father had become cares she could not shoulder; she
simply could not think of them. Quarry never returned from work without
company, and he and his friends would sit in the yard on Emma’s chairs,
which they carried from the kitchen without her permission. In a man
she liked, this proceeding might have been annoying; but from Quarry it
was a liberty that was enraging.
One day Emma heard him stirring up strife with his tongue; he was a
fascinating speaker, even when--as the Swedes said--he “talked beside
his mouth,” which is their idiom for conversational embellishment.
She called him to her. “Send them away,” she said shortly.
Without a word of dissent he made them move, and Mr. Butte shambled out
to bring in the chairs.
“Take them in yourself,” she called wickedly. “You was strong enough to
get them out there.”
With a more sullen compliance he put them just within the narrow
doorsill.
Still she eyed him with her mouth stretched into something like a
smile. “Put ’em in their places,” she said.
Again Quarry obeyed her.
Then her contemptuous smile became laughter. “You wouldn’t hev done
thet ef you hedn’t got wind of what I’m goin’ to even to you. See
here--you talk too much. Would you talk less if you had more money? I
guess maybe. Here’s what you said at Martha Long’s party. You showed
how it was a good thing August Jarlsen got the blast, because I kind
o’ leaned toward you latterly. And as for you, you says you’d always
leaned toward me, and it was better to have August Jarlsen saved
learnin’ it.” The girl covered him with her tragic eyes, and expressed
her own strong instinct in a gesture she had learned from the
Polacks--she crossed herself with a rapid hand. She had never before
felt Quarry to be so evil. “Now,” she said, “fifty dollars if you’ll
stop that!”
For a moment delight leaped from his eyes. He threw out his hand; then
he looked at her darkly, his expression altered to one of fear and
misgiving.
“All right,” he said finally.
“Well, I’ll pay you later,” said Emma, and every word she spoke cut
like a whip, her voice was so shrill with contemptuous anger.
She was a young girl, and had hoped he would not take the money; partly
because she didn’t wish to believe that he could be mean enough to
take it from her, when he knew that he was the last person the Swede
would give it to, had he any longer the power to give.
Her lips shrank away from her teeth in contemptuous, writhing smiles
when she thought of it.
She scarcely knew how to array herself for the doctor’s visit. She
wanted to impress him with a sense of her fitness to nurse the patient.
She had had visions of Jarlsen’s departure in an ambulance for some
city hospital, where a uniformed woman would hear his groans and heed
them for hire only.
Quarry knew nothing of the doctor’s advent. Emma understood that he
would talk about it, and that her enemies would say she must be sure of
Jarlsen’s death when she dared let loose a first-class pill-man on him.
Then, besides, the Englishman was unreasonable and iterative, like many
Englishmen; and she knew how he would search his mind for ways to tell
her that Jarlsen was as good as dead already. “I ought to pay him right
away, or he’ll do a little of his fancy talkin’, maybe.”
Black went to the station in a funeral carriage, which was the more
imposing as there were but four in Soot City. (Casually--he paid toll
on the turnpike for the eight horses that drew these vehicles, and they
were always taxed as “pleasure teams.” Again casually--he saw no joke
in this, even when the mourners received legacies.) He wore a red tie
with his black, professionally sombre clothes, and this he did as he
would not imply Jarlsen’s death to the doctor, in case the physician
should be standing on the platform and should see him before he could
get speech of him. Black employed his imagination in this sort of
futile arrangement of improbable circumstance.
On the doctor’s arrival they drove directly to the Buttes. They
alighted at the Bridge and saw thence to Emma’s doorway, where Quarry
was standing. He looked as though he had had rum in his tea, and as if
even that had not reconciled him to existence.
“Where’s Emma?” he asked of Black.
“She’s in with August. Dr. Brent, this gentleman lives here; he’s an
old friend of Mr. Butte’s, and Mr. Jarlsen’s too, I may say.”
Quarry, returned in the noon recess to find a perfect stranger about
to invade the house; did not understand the situation, as was very
evident. He grinned absently, and went toward Jarlsen’s room door.
“Emma, come out here.” His tone was wheedling, and his fingers were
tapping nervously on the wall. She came out to him quickly; her eyes
were bright and her face was full of a vigorous hope.
“Hurry up!” she said; “I want to bring the doctor in.”
“Could you oblige me with the trifle you named Thursday? I want to blow
it right in this noon.”
Emma thought it wise to pay him at once, although her heart was beating
in her ears--she longed so for the doctor’s opinion on Jarlsen. She
hesitated, and then said: “It is in the wallet between the shake-downs
in the lean-to chamber. Put it back where you found it.”
She forgot him as she greeted the doctor; her whole mind was full of
the Swede.