It was a miserable place over a bakery on Third Avenue, a squalid
evil-smelling neighbourhood, with the Elevated trains thundering past.
This tall man in evening dress descending from a taxi aroused profound
interest; one bright little boy said it was movies. He entered the
narrow hallway from which the stairs ascended, steep as a ladder, and
after striking a match, saw four name plates beneath four bells.
Cohen--Moriarity--Connelly--O’Dea.
As he hesitated before them, Rosaleen herself came hurrying down the
steep stairs.
“I saw you coming!” she said. “Oh, Mr. Landry, I didn’t know what to do!
He’s sick--he’s very, very sick! The doctor says he’ll either have to go
to the hospital or have a nurse, and Katie won’t let him go.... She’s in
such a terrible state....”
“Let him have a nurse, of course.”
“But we can’t. There’s no place for a nurse to sleep. And it’s not a fit
place for little Petey, either. He ought to go to the hospital. He won’t
have any chance here. I know it’s dreadful of me, but I----”
She had suddenly seized one of his hands with both of hers and pressed
it violently, quite distraught, quite unconscious of what she did.
“I don’t care! I made up my mind that I _would_ ask you.... Won’t you
come upstairs and talk to Katie? You don’t know how she feels about a
hospital.... She’s only known people in the wards, where--it isn’t so
nice.... When you’re so poor, you’re--so helpless.... If you’d just tell
her that Petey’s to have a private room and a nurse and everything done
for him, and that she can see him any time she wants...? Oh, I know it
will cost a fortune! I have no right to ask you.... But I knew you’d do
it!”
“You don’t know how glad I am to be asked,” said Nick. “Come on! Let’s
go upstairs!”
This where she lived--where she had lived for five years! This dirty,
dilapidated hole, dark, airless, with grimy windows on a malodourous
court, with the thundering roar of the trains making the very walls
shake, with these pitiful and fragile little children always underfoot!
He had known that she was poor, that the whole family was poor, but he
had not imagined anything like this. He had never set foot in such a
place before. It filled him with horror, these mean, cramped little
quarters which the despair of poverty had left dirty and neglected.
There wasn’t a chair in that room on which he dared to sit, one had a
broken back, another a broken seat, another had a leg missing....
There came bursting into the room a big, gaunt woman like a fury,
desperate with grief and fright.
“What is it ye want?” she cried, to Nick.
Rosaleen began to whisper to her, and she became calmer, became little
by little composed and shrewd. This was a man from whom benefits might
be expected.
“I thought maybe you were from the Board!” she explained. “’Tis them do
be worrying the likes of us whenever there is any sickness in it at
all.”
She had been living in a very nightmare of fear; her little child was
ill and the world was conspiring to snatch it from her. She was quite
determined that it should not go. She didn’t know, poor soul, just what
awful powers the police and the health officials might have. She was
accustomed to their authority. It might be the law to take her child
away. But law or no law, she would not have it! She saw hope in this
rich friend of Rosaleen’s; she clung to him; she fawned upon him.
She opened the door of the room where Petey lay. There was nothing in it
but two big wooden beds. Outside from the fire escape hung a line of
limp clothing fluttering in the night wind; nothing else to be seen....
The sick baby lay motionless in the centre of one of the wide beds,
blazing with fever, his face scarlet, his brow pitifully contorted, his
eyes closed. His limp little body seemed scarcely to raise the bed
covers; his arms lay outside the counterpane, with their thin, flat
wrists, the tiny, stubby hands....
The mother flew over to him and tucked his arms under the blanket.
“Do you want to catch yer death!” she cried, harshly, to the unconscious
child.
She passed her hand over his burning head, feeling the hard, round
little skull under the fine hair.
“He’s that hot!” she said. And suddenly began wailing.
“Oh, he cannot live at all! Well do I know he’s to be took from me!
Petey! Oh, Petey, my darlin’!”
Rosaleen tried to quiet her.
“Listen, Katie dearie!” she said. “Mr. Landry’s going to help us!
Petey’s going to have a beautiful big room all to himself----”
Her sister swore at her.
“I will not let thim lave a hand on Petey!” she cried. “They’ll not take
him from me!”
“Katie, you can go with him!” Rosaleen promised. “You can go to the
hospital with him and sit by him for a while, can’t she, Mr. Landry?”
“Yes,” said Nick. “It’ll be just as Rosaleen says.”