MR. DEMRY
The next afternoon, armed with her flowers and fruit, Nance was
setting forth for Calvary Alley, when Mrs. Clarke called to her from
an upper window.
"If you will wait ten minutes, I will take you down in the machine."
"But I want the walk," Nance insisted. "I need the exercise."
"Nonsense, you are on your feet nearly all the time. I won't be long."
Nance made a wry face at an unoffending sparrow and glanced regretfully
at the long white road that wound invitingly in and out of the woods
until it dropped sharply to the little station in the valley a mile
below. She had been looking forward to that walk all morning. She wanted
to get away from the hot-house atmosphere of the Clarke establishment,
away from Mac's incessant appeals and his mother's increasing dependence.
Aside from amusing her patient and seeing that he obeyed Dr. Adair's
orders, her duties for the past few weeks had been too light to be
interesting. The luxury that at first had so thrilled her was already
beginning to pall. She wanted to be out in the open alone, to feel the
sharp wind of reality in her face, while she thought things out.
"I am going to the cathedral," said Mrs. Clarke, emerging from the
door, followed by a maid carrying coats and rugs. "But I can drop you
wherever you say."
"I'll go there, too," said Nance as she took her seat in the car. "The
old gentleman I'm taking the things to lives just back of there, in the
very house Dr. Adair is trying to get for the clinic."
"Poor soul!" said Mrs. Clarke idly, as she viewed with approval Nance's
small brown hat that so admirably set off the lights in her hair and the
warm red tints of her skin.
"He's been up against it something fierce for over a year now," Nance
went on. "We've helped him all he'd let us since he stopped playing at
the theater."
"Playing?" Mrs. Clarke repeated the one word that had caught her
wandering attention. "Is he an actor?"
"No; he is a musician. He used to play in big orchestras in New York and
Boston. He plays the fiddle."
For the rest of the way into town Mrs. Clarke was strangely preoccupied.
She sat very straight, with eyes slightly contracted, and looked absently
out of the window. Once or twice she began a sentence without finishing
it. At the cathedral steps she laid a detaining hand on Nance's arm.
"By the way, what did you say was the name of the old man you are
going to see?"
"I never said. It's Demry."
"Demry--Never mind, I just missed the step. I'm quite all right. I think
I will go with you to see this--this--house they are talking about."
"But it's in the alley. Mrs. Clarke; it's awfully dirty."
"Yes, yes, but I'm coming. Can we go through here?"
So impatient was she that she did not wait for Nance to lead the way, but
hurried around the bishop's study and down the concrete walk to the gate
that opened into the alley.
"Look out for your skirt against the garbage barrel," warned Nance. It
embarrassed her profoundly to have Mrs. Clarke in these surroundings; she
hated the mud that soiled her dainty boots, the odors that must offend
her nostrils, the inevitable sights that awaited her in Number One. She
only prayed that Mrs. Snawdor's curl-papered head might not appear on the
upper landing.
"Which way?" demanded Mrs. Clarke, impatiently.
Nance led the way into the dark hall where a half-dozen ragged,
dirty-faced children were trying to drag a still dirtier pup up the
stairs by means of a twine string.
"In here, Mrs. Clarke," said Nance, pushing open the door at the left
The outside shutters of the big cold room were partly closed, but the
light from between them fell with startling effect on the white,
marble-like face of the old man who lay asleep on a cot in front of the
empty fireplace. For a moment Mrs. Clarke stood looking at him; then with
a smothered cry she bent over him.
"Father!" she cried sharply, "Oh, God! It's my father!"
Nance caught her breath in amazement; then her bewildered gaze fell upon
a familiar object. There, in its old place on the mantel stood the
miniature of a pink and white maiden in the pink and white dress, with
the golden curl across her shoulder. In the delicate, beautiful profile
Nance read the amazing truth.
Mr. Demry sighed heavily, opened his eyes with an effort and, looking
past the bowed head beside him, held out a feeble hand for the flowers.
"Listen, Mr. Demry," said Nance, breathlessly. "Here's a lady says she
knows you. Somebody you haven't seen for a long, long time. Will you look
at her and try to remember?"
His eyes rested for the fraction of a minute on the agonized face lifted
to his, then closed wearily.
"Can you not get the lady a chair, Nancy?" he asked feebly. "You can
borrow one from the room across the hall."
"Father!" demanded Mrs. Clarke, "don't you know me? It is Elise. Your
daughter, Elise Demorest!"
"Demorest," he repeated, and smiled. "How unnatural it sounds now!
Demorest!"
"It's no use," said Nance. "His mind wanders most of the time. Let me
take you back to the cathedral, Mrs. Clarke, until we decide what's got
to be done."
"I am going to take him home," said Mrs. Clarke, wildly. "He shall have
every comfort and luxury I can give him. Poor Father, don't you want to
come home with Elise?"
"I live at Number One, Calvary Alley," said Mr. Demry, clinging to the
one fact he had trained his mind to remember. "If you will kindly get me
to the corner, the children will--"
"It's too late to do anything!" cried Mrs. Clarke, wringing her hands. "I
knew something terrible would happen to him. I pleaded with them to help
me find him, but they put me off. Then I got so absorbed in Mac that he
drove everything else out of my mind. How long has he been in this awful
place? How long has he been ill? Who takes care of him?"
Nance, with her arms about Mrs. Clarke, told her as gently as she could
of Mr. Demry's advent into the alley fourteen years before, of his
friendship with the children, his occasional lapses from grace, and the
steady decline of his fortune.
"We must get him away from here!" cried Mrs. Clarke when she had gained
control of herself. "Go somewhere and telephone Mr. Clarke. Telephone Dr.
Adair. Tell him to bring an ambulance and another nurse and--and plenty
of blankets. Telephone to the house for them to get a room ready. But
wait--there's Mac--he mustn't know--"
It was the old, old mother-cry! Keep it from Mac, spare Mac, don't let
Mac suffer. Nance seized on it now to further her designs.
"You go back to Mr. Mac, Mrs. Clarke. I'll stay here and attend to
everything. You go ahead and get things ready for us."
And Mrs. Clarke, used to taking the easiest way, allowed herself to be
persuaded, and after one agonized look at the tranquil face on the
pillow, hurried away.
Nance, shivering with the cold, got together the few articles that
constituted Mr. Demry's worldly possessions. A few shabby garments in the
old wardrobe, the miniature on the shelf, a stack of well-worn books, and
the violin in its rose-wood case. Everything else had been sold to keep
the feeble flame alive in that wasted old form.
Nance looked about her with swimming eyes. She recalled the one happy
Christmas that her childhood had known. The gay garlands of tissue paper,
the swinging lanterns, the shelf full of oranges and doughnuts, and the
beaming old face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that
Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly
friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick
to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic
silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his
misfortune upon the one he loved best.
As the old man's fairy tales had long ago stirred Nance's imagination and
wakened her to the beauty of invisible things, so now his broken, futile
life, with its one great glory of renunciation, called out to the soul of
her and roused in her a strange, new sense of spiritual beauty.
For one week he lived among the luxurious surroundings of his daughter's
home. Everything that skill and money could do, was done to restore him
to health and sanity. But he saw only the sordid sights he had been
seeing for the past fourteen years; he heard only the sounds to which his
old ears had become accustomed.
"You would better move my cot, Nancy," he would say, plucking at the
silken coverlid. "They are scrubbing the floor up in the Lavinski flat.
The water always comes through." And again he would say: "It is nice and
warm in here, but I am afraid you are burning too much coal, dear. I
cannot get another bucket until Saturday."
One day Mrs. Clarke saw him take from his tray, covered with delicacies,
a half-eaten roll and slip it under his pillow.
"We must save it," he whispered confidentially, "save it for to-morrow."
In vain they tried to reassure him; the haunting poverty that had stalked
beside him in life refused to be banished by death.
Mrs. Clarke remained "the lady" to him to the end. When he spoke to her,
his manner assumed a faint dignity, with a slight touch of gallantry, the
unmistakable air of a gentleman of the old school towards an attractive
stranger of the opposite sex.
His happiest hours were those when he fancied the children were with him.
"Gently! gently!" he would say; "there is room for everybody. This knee
is for Gussie Gorman, this one for Joe, because they are the smallest,
you know. Now are you ready?" And then he would whisper fairy stories,
smiling at the ceiling, and making feeble gestures with his wasted old
hands.
The end came one day after he had lain for hours in a stupor. He stirred
suddenly and asked for his violin.
"I must go--to the--theater, Nancy," he murmured. "I--do not want--to
be--a--burden."
They laid the instrument in his arms, and his fingers groped feebly over
the strings; then his chin sank into its old accustomed place, and a
great light dawned in his eyes. Mr. Demry, who was used to seeing
invisible things, had evidently caught the final vision.
That night, worn with nursing and full of grief for the passing of her
old friend, Nance threw a coat about her and slipped out on the terrace.
Above her, nebulous stars were already appearing, and their twinkling
was answered by responsive gleams in the city below. Against the velvety
dusk two tall objects towered in the distance, the beautiful Gothic
spire of the cathedral, and the tall, unseemly gas pipe of Clarke's
Bottle Factory. Between them, under a haze of smoke and grime, lay
Calvary Alley.
"I don't know which is worse," thought Nance fiercely, "to be down there
in the mess, fighting and struggling and suffering to get the things you
want, or up here with the mummies who haven't got anything left to wish
for. I wish life wasn't just a choice between a little hard green apple
and a rotten big one!"
She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the new moon dodging
behind the tree trunks and, as she watched, she grappled with the
problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning
comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his
conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better
than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on
every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working
children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his
son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding
pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her
father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her
children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than
Birdie, now in the state asylum paying the penalty of their joint
misdeed? Was the tragedy in the great house back of her any more poignant
than the tragedy of Dan Lewis bound by law to an insane wife and burdened
with a child that was not his own? She seemed to see for the first time
the great illuminating truth that the things that make men alike in the
world are stronger than the things that make them different. And in this
realization an overwhelming ambition seized her. Some hidden spiritual
force rose to lift her out of the contemplation of her own interests into
something of ultimate value to her fellowmen.
After all, those people down there in Calvary Alley were her people, and
she meant to stand by them. It had been the dream of her life to get out
and away, but in that moment she knew that wherever she went, she would
always come back. Others might help from the top, but she could help
understandingly from the bottom. With the magnificent egotism of youth,
she outlined gigantic schemes on the curtain of the night. Some day,
somehow, she would make people like the Clarkes see the life of the poor
as it really was, she would speak for the girls in the factories, in the
sweatshops, on the stage. She would be an interpreter between the rich
and the poor and make them serve each other.
"Nance!" called an injured voice from the music room behind her, "what in
the mischief are you doing out there in the cold? Come on in here and
amuse me. I'm half dead with the dumps!"
"All right, Mr. Mac. I'm coming," she said cheerfully, as she stepped in
through the French window and closed it against her night of dreams.