“Hello! Dick, welcome home! I see you have returned from abroad.”
Dick shook his head soberly. “Oh, no!” he replied, “I am not back yet.
But I got tired of havin’ my house stay empty--thought I might as well
let it help pay my expenses (it’s awful expensive travelin’, you know),
so I’ve got some tenants in the house. Goin’ to let each floor separate,
’cause it is too expensive a house for anybody to take whole, ’cept some
rich feller like me.”
During the last six months the floor exactly opposite Dick’s window had
been vacant. After three months had passed without a tenant, he told Dr.
Griffin that he had decided to reserve that floor for his own use.
“I’m goin’ to come home pretty soon and settle down, you see,” he said,
“and so I thought I’d keep that floor for myself. I don’t need the whole
house, and I can just as well let the other tenants stay.”
And now, after three months more had passed, here were people moving
into his apartments!
Dr. Griffin called that very afternoon, and found Dick looking unusually
animated.
“Well, well, Dick!” he exclaimed. “So, after all you’ve decided to rent
your apartments? You have neighbors, I see. I fear you will never return
now and settle down as you intended.”
“Why, that’s no neighbors, Doctor,” replied Dick, contemptuously;
“that’s my family. I’ve come home to stay, and brought my family, you
see.”
“You don’t tell me so! Why, what a stupid old fellow I am, to be sure!”
cried the Doctor, with feigned self-scorn. “How large a family have you,
Dick?”
“Well, only--only one, as I care ’specially about. Look--look at her,
Doctor!” catching the Doctor’s hand and leaning forward in his chair.
“See her a-fixin’ the nice little curtain at the window? She’s a regular
neat one, she is, my little woman over there. She was a-cleanin’ the
windows and things this mornin’ with her hair so slick and a span clean
apron on. That’s the kind of girl I like. I allers liked that kind.
Isn’t she the right kind, eh, Doctor?”
Dr. Griffin saw a trim young woman with rosy cheeks, looping back scrim
curtains with pink ribbons. He nodded gravely.
“From my brief acquaintance, I should say she was,” he answered. “I
congratulate you on your good luck. With such a family as that, you
ought to be a happy fellow!”
“Queer little fellow; queer little fellow,” he said to himself, as he
went down the stairs. “Strange notion that about his home and family.”
When Dick awoke the following day he felt a new sense of happiness in
the thought of his neighbor opposite. He hurried through his tedious
ceremony of dressing, ate his frugal breakfast, hobbled into his
invalid-chair, and gave an eager glance across the street. Yes, there
were the dainty curtains still at the window, so it was no dream. He
watched for a glimpse of the occupant, but she did not appear. Then he
laughed a little softly to himself.
“Of course, she wouldn’t be hangin’ around the window at all hours; she
isn’t that sort; and, of course, I’m over there now, and she’s a-pourin’
coffee for me; we take breakfast sort of late to-day, ’cause we’re just
home from Europe, and I haven’t gone down to the office yet. After I get
off she’ll brush around and set things to right, and--hello! I must have
gone now you know for there she is a-whiskin’ the dust off the
window-sill as pretty as ever and as neat as a pin. All the time I’m
down at the office with them pesky clerks of mine a-botherin’ me I’ll be
thinkin’ of that sweet little woman up here waitin’ for me.”
“We do have very sociable times,” Dick told the Doctor a month later.
“That little woman and I seem made for each other. She’s just the right
sort. We never have no fusses, and things go so comfortable-like all the
time.”
“And how do you like the other party? There’s a man there also, I see.
How do you like him?”
Dick flushed painfully, and a deep frown settled on his face. There was
a man whom he saw from time to time sitting at the window after the
dinner hour reading his paper. But the moment he made his appearance,
Dick closed his eyes or left the window seat. He regarded the man as an
intruder--a shadow upon his home life, a serpent in his Eden.
Sunday was a day of restlessness and discontent, because the man was
there all day long, and on Sundays he avoided the invalid-chair, which
was his seat on all other days. Now, when he heard Dr. Griffin speak of
the man as a real being, he suffered all the bitter and mortifying pangs
of jealousy which might come to a man who hears a stranger give words to
a suspicion of his wife’s disloyalty to which he has striven to blind
himself.
“A man--a--yes--there’s a man there sometimes,” Dick stammered; “he’s
a--a sort of poor relative, don’t you know. One of my relations, you
see, and I can’t very well turn him off.”
“Oh, I see,” answered the Doctor, noticing Dick’s confusion and
hastening to help him out. “Well, everybody has some one of that sort.
I’ve half a dozen poor relatives who live on me. Some one of them is
with us most of the time. A little uncomfortable occasionally may be,
because every man’s house is his castle where he wants to be alone at
times. But we who have homes have no right to be selfish; we must share
them with less fortunate people. Happiness must not make us selfish.”
Dick’s face brightened. His heart had grown light and happy while the
Doctor spoke.
“That’s just what I tell myself and the little woman,” he said. “Often
she doesn’t like to have the fellow droppin’ in and spoilin’ our chats”
(Dick felt an immense satisfaction in saying this), “but I tell her with
just our two selves we’d get selfish with happiness unless we had
somethin’ to do for another. But he does break up our Sundays
awfully--scarcely can get a word alone, that fellow’s pokin’ around so.”
“Oh, well, you can afford him one day in the week, and I wouldn’t let
him bother me; just be as happy as if he wasn’t around.”
Somehow Dick felt much better after this talk. He had tried to ignore
the presence of the man opposite, but now he could acknowledge it, and
definitely locate the man in his thought as a poor dependent, who was
benefitted by his bounty. He enjoyed thinking that the little woman
objected more or less to the fellow, and that she allowed him so much
liberty only to please Dick. As the weeks rolled on he confessed to the
Doctor that the fellow was really useful at times.
“Rainy days he goes to market for the little woman,” he said, “and often
runs out on errands for us.”
“Dick’s house” had been occupied six months when a whole week passed
without his seeing his “little woman” at the window. During that six
months there had scarcely been an afternoon during which she had not sat
for an hour or two at the window with her sewing. Dick had grown to
think of that hour as the bright spoke in the wheel of the day. She
looked at him so kindly and gently, and he used to imagine he was lying
on a lounge in the room, reading aloud to her as she sewed, and that her
kind, warm smile was one of love, not of pity. And when a whole week
passed without his once seeing her, Dick found himself in a nervous
fever, with a blinding headache from having gazed so eagerly and
anxiously across the street, and Grandfather Levy sent for Dr. Griffin.
“There’s somethin’ the matter over the way,” whispered Dick, as soon as
the Doctor was alone with him. “I haven’t seen her for a whole week;
there’s a strange woman there, and I’m sure she’s sick. I couldn’t sleep
all last night for worryin’ about her.”
Dr. Griffin went to the window and looked out. Then he took a magnifying
glass from his pocket, and deliberately stared into the window opposite.
Then he went back to Dick. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you are to be
congratulated. You are a father. I saw the nurse walking up and down the
room with the child in her arms. It is a bad habit, by the way, and you
must tell her not to teach it to the child. You can’t begin too young
with them.”
After the Doctor went away, Dick buried his face in his pillow and wept
softly.
“A little baby--yes, my little baby,” he whispered. “God bless the
little woman. Some day she will sit with it at the window, and I shall
have them both for company.”
And then one day, a soft, warm day, late in May, there she sat at the
window again, with lilies instead of roses in her cheeks, and the bundle
of flannel in her arms. She smiled at Dick, and tears of joy and love
welled up in his eyes as he gazed upon the two.
“I’ve got two of ’em for company now, the little woman and the baby,” he
whispered.
After that the days seemed very happy and bright, and Dick thought
himself the richest man on earth. Only he wondered why the roses did not
come back to the little woman’s cheeks.
“She doesn’t look as well as she ought to,” he told the Doctor one day
in June, and the Doctor, peering over his spectacles, shook his head as
he looked at her, but Dick did not see it.
Passing down the block one day, Dr. Griffin came face to face with a
little girl who wheeled a baby carriage, and, as he glanced under the
awning, he was startled to see two weirdly brilliant eyes, the very
counterpart of Dick’s, gazing up at him.
“Whose child is this? Does it live over in the brick flats there?”
queried the Doctor.
The little girl nodded.
“Second flight up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Queer enough, queer enough,” he mused, as he walked on.
“Your baby has eyes exactly like you, Dick,” said the Doctor, a few days
later. “Honestly, no joking; I saw the little fellow on the street and
knew him by his eyes.”
After that Dick’s heart went out to the baby more and more, and he was
eager to see it. One day he saw the little nurse-girl wheeling the
carriage, and as fast as his lame body would permit he hurried and
hobbled down to the street, hoping it would pass near him. Sure enough
it did, and Dick’s heart jumped into his throat as he leaned on his cane
and peered into the carriage to catch his first glimpse of the baby he
had grown to think of as his own. Yes, those were his own eyes--his very
own gazing up at him, and he touched the little hand with reverence and
awe. The baby laughed and twisted its small soft fingers about his
thumb, and clung to his hand as if unwilling to let him go. For weeks
after that he would wake at night, thinking he felt that clinging touch
upon his hand; and those great dark, startled eyes, the very counterpart
of his own, seemed illuminating the night for him.
It was early November when he failed to see the baby at the window or on
the street; nor did the mother appear at the window for four days. The
morning of the fifth day, Dick saw from his window a little white hearse
drawn by white ponies pause at the house opposite, and then some one
came out with a small casket followed by the “male relative” and a few
sad-faced friends.
That day Dick entered Gethsemane, and the mourners who followed the
little baby to its last resting-place shed no bitterer tears than he.
Mixed with his keen anguish for the loss of the child was fear for the
life of the mother who was too ill to attend the burial.
That night Dr. Griffin was sent for, and he found Dick so ill and
feverish that he was alarmed. His tears mingled with Dick’s, when the
poor boy told him of the baby’s death, and begged him to go over and
inquire after the “little woman.”
“You can ask the janitor, Doctor; just say friends opposite want to
inquire after her; you needn’t say no more.”
The Doctor did as Dick desired, and came back shortly, making an effort
to speak cheerfully.
“The janitor says Mrs.--”
“The little woman,” interrupted Dick. “Yes, yes; how is she?” Not for
worlds would he have heard her name spoken.
“She is ill, suffering from a prostration caused by grief,” the Doctor
replied. “But she is young, and she will rally in a few weeks no doubt.
You must brace up, old man, and be ready to comfort her. If you don’t
look after yourself a little better I won’t promise for the consequences
to your health. You’ve overtaxed yourself lately, and you must keep very
quiet now for a few days.”
But each day Dick dragged himself to the window to see if the little
woman was visible. And on the tenth day after the baby’s funeral, a
black hearse with nodding black plumes, and black horses with jet
harness and dangling black tassels, stood at the house opposite; and
Dick, with panting breath and wild eyes, crawled down the stairs, and
out upon the street, for he seemed choking in the house, and he thought
he must hinder those cruel people from taking away the little woman. He
could not, could not let her go from him forever, and when he saw them
lifting the casket into the hearse, he reached out his arms, tried to
cry out and stop them, and then he fell over weak and helpless, with
strange sounds ringing in his ears and warm blood spurting from his
mouth. When he awoke to consciousness he was lying on his couch, and Dr.
Griffin and Grandfather Levy were bending over him with tears in their
eyes.
He tried to speak, and with each syllable the blood gushed again from
his lips.
“You mustn’t talk,” said the Doctor. “You are very weak and it may be
fatal to you if you do not keep quiet.”
He drew the Doctor’s head down close to his lips.
“It’s no use tryin’ to save me,” he whispered. “I’d rather go--I
couldn’t stand it livin’ on with both of ’em gone. I’ve nothin’ to live
for now--no ambition or pleasure left. I’ve had all the pleasure I’ll
ever get out of life, Doctor, this year back. It’s kinder to let me
go--and--follow my family.”
* * * * *
The hemorrhage set in anew, and with the red gushing tide, Dick’s soul
passed out to seek those of the little woman and the baby.