Algy Keen, his face swollen with crying, his black hair limp and
uncurled, sat on the edge of the bed in the back room of a dingy Mercer
lodging-house. The windows had been left open after Mary had been
taken away, so that the room was cold; and there were still two chairs
facing each other,--a certain distance apart. The room was in dreary
order, and there was the scent of flowers in the chill air. The bed
was tumbled, for the forlorn man had dropped down upon it to rest. But
he was too tired to rest, and was sitting up again, dangling his
stockinged feet on the shabby carpet and talking to Dr. Lavendar. He
snuffled, and his poor, weak lips shook, and he rubbed the back of his
trembling hand across his nose. Algy had had broken nights for a
fortnight, and the last three days and nights of Mary's life he had
almost no sleep at all; these two days when she lay dead in their bare
room he had slept and wept and slept again; and now, when he and Dr.
Lavendar had come back from the funeral, he sat on the edge of the bed
and whimpered with weakness and grief.
"Well, sir, she was a good girl," he said. "I don't care what anybody
says, she was a good girl. I ain't saying that things was just right,
to begin with. But that wasn't Mary's fault. No; she was a good girl.
And her folks treated her bad. They'd always treated her mean bad. My
goodness! if they'd 'a' let me come to see her respectable, as you
would any of your lady friends, 'stead of skulkin' 'round--... _I can't
stand the smell of those flowers_," he broke out, in a high, crying
voice; "I left them all out there at the cemetery, and I smell them
here--I smell them here," he moaned, trembling.
"I like to smell them," Dr. Lavendar said. "They mean the old
friendship for Mary. Mrs. King sent them. She's our doctor's wife in
Old Chester. She always liked Mary."
"I don't see how she could help it," Algy said, his face crumpling with
tears. "Well, she was a good girl. And she was a good wife, sir, too.
I tell you, you never saw a better wife. I used to come home tired,
and there'd be my slippers out for me. Yes, sir; she never missed it.
And she was always pleasant, too; you mayn't call just being pleasant,
religion, but I--"
"I do," Dr. Lavendar interposed.
"Well, so do I," Algy said, his face lightening a little. "I call it a
better religion than her folks showed. Well, now, sir, I loved
Mary"--he stopped and cried, openly--"I loved her (I didn't need that
hell-hound of a brother to come after me)--yes, I was just as fond of
her; and yet there was times when I come home at night--not--not
quite--well, maybe a little--you know?"
"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.
"But, my God, sir, Mary was pleasant. It isn't every woman that would
be pleasant then, is it?"
"No, it isn't, Algy."
"Course, next day she'd tell me I done wrong. (She never told me so at
the time--Mary had sense.) And I always said: 'Well, yes, Mary, that's
so. And I'll never do it again.' But she was pleasant. Course I
don't mean she was lively. She used to remember--well, that we'd made
a mistake. _You_ know? And she used to kind a brood on it. She
talked to you considerably about it, I guess. She said you comforted
her. She said you said that maybe her--her mistake had brought her to
be kind o' more religious--saved her, as you might say."
"I said that she had come to know her Saviour through His forgiveness."
"I don't think Mary needed any forgiveness," the poor husband said,
with tearful resentment; "I think her folks needed it."
"I'm sorry for them," Dr. Lavendar said. "They have got to remember
that they might have been kinder. That's a hard thing to have to
remember."