Part 19

Mrs. Oessetrich dined in uniform. Sometimes a summons came and she rushed off during the meal. There was never a moment of the day that found her passive. She tore ahead of the hours as if they were wolves and their breathing was on her neck, and all day long the relentless jangle jangle of her at the telephone. It ran along your nerves. It pricked you into a frenzy. Jangle. Jangle.

"_Hello, Bertha. I'm at a pier in Hoboken. Tell Helga I want the pair of Sevres urns in the drawing-room washed in warm suds and polished. And don't let me discover that you have done it for her. If--if that letter--or cable--if anything that looks like a message from Miss Ermangarde should come, you can reach me in the next hour at the Service Station--no, never mind, I'll call up again._"

But that letter or cablegram never came.

More and more the lean, quick, waiting look of a bird came out in Mrs. Oessetrich and more and more, Paula, who drifted, almost it seemed without footsteps, down to her meals and then back again to her piano and the soft silent sewing of the pink things, came to have the look of sleeping with her eyes wide open, and more and more frequently her mother shot out at her with the "Paula, wake up. Don't stare that way. It makes you look positively silly."

Then one day Bertha stumbled across her in the musty store-room, seated on the floor beside the Beethoven picture, twaddling over it. Poor Paula, her eyes had the tranced look and she was whispering to it, a little sillily.

***

The way that Helga happened to break one of the beautiful Sevres urns the day she was put to rinsing them was because in the very act of lifting it from its pedestal, she fell screaming and twisting with the pain in her side. There seemed to be no way to unlock her of the rigid convulsion there on the floor. Paula came creeping down to her cries and could only stand horrified. Helga writhing on the floor and beating off Bertha. Finally, there was nothing left to do but call in the nearest doctor. At five o'clock Helga was bundled off to a public hospital in an ambulance. At six she was successfully operated upon for appendicitis.

It was strange being up there alone again in the room under the rafters. The silence flowed back and all the little sounds and sings and noises stole out of their corners and seemed to sit about like tame mice on their haunches.

***

Helga lay in a ward, but there was a screen around her cot and a bride had sent her altar flowers to be distributed in the hospital, and there was a fan of white hyacinth on a table, and the afternoon that Mrs. Oessetrich and Paula came, they brought the inevitable and innocuous jar of calves' foot jelly, and that glowed like a drug store urn on the snowlit window sill.

The pretty Helga. Two days after the operation her cheeks began to pinken and the nurse brushed and braided her brown hair over each shoulder and out came the frail, fine, small-boned look.

She loved the warm, clean cot and the smell of hyacinth even through the iodoform and the luxury of waking only to coddle over again cozily on her good side, and when Bertha came to see her and remained all of Thursday afternoon, she had the proprietary air of the convalescent.

"See that good-looking fellow in glasses? He's my doctor. I'd give a dime to know if he's married. Say, look around the screen at that little blonde one three cots down. The one with the green circles under her eyes. That kid--poor kid--what does she do? Getting over an appendix and spry as I am. Nothing to get well for. Cries out some fellow's name all through the ether. What does she do? Last night while the nurse wasn't looking, climbs out barefoot on that little balcony, gives herself a snow bath and swallows a pneumonia bug or two. Dyin'. Say, it's a great life. See that ell over there. Maternity ward. Kid born there fresh every hour. Ought to see. Ever see a maternity ward?"

"Me--yah----"

"The interne, he's a little gone on me if anybody should ask you. He lugged one over to-day for me to see. Three hours old. Ever see a little hard-boiled beet of a kid three hours old?"

"Yah----"

"I want a white one. White as my hands. Look at them, Bertha. Three days in bed and that snow out there on the balcony has nothing on them for whiteness. You don't mind yours that way, do you, Bertha?"

"How?"

"Horny."

"Horny?"

"You're like one of those war tanks, you are. Pushing right on over the barbed wire fences without letting them even scratch you. That's because you're all on the inside of yourself. Like your body was just an ulster."

"Don't roll so, Helga. The wound...."

"That ain't the worst. I got what they call on the soap box speeches in Union Square, a social sore. And they bring me calves' foot jelly for it. There's a laugh for you, old tombstone! I got a social sore and they bring me calves' foot jelly for it...."

But the following Sunday when Bertha arrived she was a very subdued Helga.

"He's coming at four."

"Who?"

"Barney. I didn't ask him, Bertha. Didn't even know he knew I was here. I got a postal. You must have told him."

"He kept asking."

"I wouldn't have sent for him. If his old woman was to pass on to-morrow and--and he wanted me, I'd never do it to him--that's something, ain't it, Bertha? I want him. I could have him. He would never find out. He wouldn't understand if I tried to tell him. To him fire don't cleanse--it only scars after you've been through it."

"Yah. Barney is not a wise man. He is yoost a--good man----"

"That just about says it."

"Yah----"

"What are you staring at?"

"I--why you, Helga. You're pretty."

"This nightgown. So coarse! I'm a fright in it. They give them to you like that in the wards. Ugh--and him coming at four. Bertha--would you----"

"What?"

"It's a long trip back to the house, but up in our room, there's a box of some of my little things. I keep it hid. There's no telling when a girl's room can get pried into. There's a little box of my things up on top of the wardrobe. You can reach up and feel for it if you get on a chair. He's--coming at four."

"But Helga, I thought----"

"I want to deck myself out, so anyways he'll know what he's missing--I hate him seeing me like this. All he's ever seen of me is around ugly kitchen things, in ugly kitchen duds. Bertha--if I could just have those few things to deck myself out in when Barney comes. As long as he's going to lose me, he might as well think I'm worth losing. Will you go--Bertha--will you----?"

"Yah----"

The package was behind the wooden frill of the wardrobe. Reaching for it was a difficult tiptoe process that made the chair wobble, and a shower of old dust came down on the shoulders of Bertha's reefer. Hurrying down the steep rear staircase, Mrs. Oessetrich popped out a sudden head.

"That you, Bertha?"

"Yah----"

"I thought you were gone for the afternoon."

"I came back for a minute."

"Did you go to see Helga?"

"Yah----"

"How is she?"

"Better."

"Do you think she will be well in time to be back for the dinner to my Ambulance Corps? It's a great nuisance getting help from the agencies."

"Yah--maybe----"

"You are going out again?"

"Yah--I----"

"Of course, it's your afternoon, but the von Schlegels are coming to tea and it would help if you would stay in and----"

"I cannot--to-day----."

"Oh very well. I dislike asking favors as much as I dislike being denied them. What's that you are carrying?"

"A box."

"That is rather self-evident, but what is in it?"

"Some--oh--I don't know."

"Bertha, I have never known you to be impertinent."

"Mrs. Oessetrich, I am not."

"Very well. If you prefer not to tell me I suppose that technically it is none of my affair. But even with a trusted servant I cannot seem to get over my aversion to seeing packages carted out of my house. Of course with you it's different, but just the same I dislike it. Hurry along, then."

For some reason, taking that long crosstown walk back to the Tenth Avenue Hospital, Bertha's cheeks and eyeballs and the hand that clutched the box began to burn.

***

Helga's eyes were too bright. She threw herself about the cot while she waited and when Bertha returned, she was all thumbs at the package and when the knot would not untie, she lay back against the pillow and began to cry.

"I'm too weak. Help me, Bertha. I give myself the cotton-flannel horrors in this hospital sack. Fortheluvvaga don't stand gaping. It's only silk and it won't bite."

"Helga!"

"Helga what? Helga what?"

There was nothing to do then but to lift out the filmy white crepe gown with the rill of French Valenciennes, and slide it on to Helga. She came up out of it like a flower, her neck and arms suddenly lovely under the shy mesh of the lace. There was another gown just as sheer in the box and oddments and ends of ribbon and trinkety bits of jewelry, and the nurse helped, too, and tied a bandeau of ribbon on Helga's hair and fluffed up the pillows and finally there was something very doll-like about her as she lay back tiredly.

"Dig down in the corner of the box there, Bertha, right-hand corner, there's a little rose quartz pin will look sweet on this lace. If there's one thing I love it's rose quartz, it's the color of a girl's cheeks."

"Oh, Helga--Helga----"

"'Oh Helga, Helga' what? I know what you're thinking. Well you're wrong. Maybe this stuff of mine dates back to--well, you know the days it dates back to--and maybe you don't. And what if what you are thinking is right? Well, what if it is? McMurty----"

"I--don't know--what I'm thinking, Helga."

"I want him to see me once, the color of something lovely instead of something reeking of brown soap. Give me that rose quartz. It's the color of a girl's cheeks and that's the color Barney's entitled to."

Barney came. He was shy about coming around the cot-side of the screen and stood outside twirling his hat until the nurse, who had directed him, had to come all the way down the ward again and steer him in, and even then he could not be brought to approach the cot, advancing one step and retreating two, his great figure in bulky civilian clothing, exhaling the cold snow smell of outdoors. The red of his face ran up under the red of his hair and mustache. He jutted it out fiercely and then sucked it in again.

"Look, Bertha, he's scared of me."

Persiflage and poor Barney. It fuddled him and made him blink.

"Look, Bertha, he's afraid I'm a doll in a box."

"It's snowing for proper," he said. "Just came up now in a flurry."

He had a voice that shook things when he spoke. The spoon in the medicine glass trembled. Helga laughed at it and cried right into the laugh and licked off a tear with the little pink adder of her tongue.

"Howdy--Barney."

"You _do_ look like a doll in the box--laying there."

"I'll be going," said Bertha.

"Don't you be going," he said, "We'll be wanting you," and sat down in the creaky edge of a chair there beside the cot and drew off his leather mitts and unwound his muffler and blew on his hands. And blew and blew.

"You're better, ain't you, Helga?"

She raised her bare arm in a half wreath over her head.

"Lots you care."

He blew and he blew.

"I couldn't come before, Helga. I been in trouble. Sit down, Bertha, we'll be needing you. My old woman died, Helga. Dead and buried this day week."

"I better be going," said Bertha.

"Wait, you, Big One. You know how to help...."

"What?"

He leaned over to touch Helga shyly, where her throat throbbed.

"I want to carry her off from here. Home. There's bedside weddings. I've read of a many of them. To-morrow, Bertha, we'll do the fixings. Helga?"

Helga lay so white and still. You could almost see the heart of her seem to stir the rill of the Valenciennes. And her eyes were closed and the brown braids lay in ropes against her pallor.

"Helga?"

"I better be going," said Bertha.

Outside it was snowing in sudden loose flakes that spat you roundly on the cheek. It snowed up in merry little geysers. Slantwise and down your neck. The whole street blew forward like the frilled petticoat of a frantic lady. Your hat. Your heart. Your breathing. The wind lashed at them so and froze the tears to your cheeks....

***

Something had happened. The screen stood huddled closely about the cot. A white interne came out with a tank. Oxygen. An electric bulb on a flexible stand was bent away from the bed, so that its light flowed down into a pool on the floor. There was a cruel rasping noise against the grain of the silence. It made you cold all over like the jerking back of a hangnail against the direction of the flesh. You stood outside the screen and listened and trembled. The noise was Helga, breathing.

There was something on the chair. It rose and fell. It was Barney's back as he sat by the cot side, all curved forward with his great empty hands between his knees and his eyes like empty cups.

The pink was gone from Helga's face. It was as if some one had held up a transparent finger before a candle and then blown out the flame. The laxness of the hand. It hung down like a lily on a broken stalk. After a time the dead old eyes of Barney swung toward the drift of hand. But without seeing. He only looked. Crowded hurting corner, filled with the little gale of Helga's breathing. The curve of Barney. That twisted neck of the lamp and the bulb that glared to the floor.

"What is it?" said Bertha.

"Pneumonia," said the nurse, and put Helga's hand back under the coverlet as you would a flower or a letter.

"Oh--Helga."

"She was coming along so nicely. She must have become delirious suddenly during the night. The second case of the kind in this ward in one week. They found her out there in that little balcony standing in the snow. Just in her flimsy nightdress. Barefoot. She must have been very sly about it. The night nurse had scarcely turned her back. I've never had a patient do it on me. Let me touch wood. Of course, they all say that I'm not only careful, I'm fanatical. It's double pneumonia. Of course some do rally, but--poor child--you're her nearest relative--or friend----."

"Me? Yes, I guess."

"You can stay and wait if you want."

"Yah--please."

"Has she ever been a mental case?"

"How?"

"A nervous history, I mean."

"Why I--dunno."

"It must have been sudden insanity or hysteria caused her to find her way out to that balcony. Second case in one week. I always say ward patients should be kept in ignorance of such accidents. Dangers of auto-suggestion."

"Oh, Helga--Helga----"

The white rose leaves of Helga's eyelids. One of them seemed to Bertha to crinkle at one corner.

Barney beat his big hands loosely together as they hung between his knees. His big hands. His empty hands.

She seemed to know with her smile that he was there. It lit once toward him and she tried to reach out her hand, but it just drifted along the bedside and hung loose, and he kissed it and put it back under the coverlet as if it were a small dead bird.

"Oh God," cried Barney in his voice that seemed to have the mustache growing right on it. "There's no meaning to your wisdom. That talk is bunk."

"Yes, there is--meaning--somewhere----"

"To you maybe, Big One, but not to me...."

"Maybe."

At dawn Helga began to slip away. She tried to keep the little thread of the smile on her lips but such a foolish sniveling thing was happening.

The years were like water surging her backward.

It was at Mrs. Farley's and she was coming down one cold morning, adjusting the criss-cross straps to her apron and tasting her lips as if they were bitter.

"Fortheluvvaga" was the last thing Helga said before she died. "Warmed-over oatmeal again. This oleo is strong enough to walk. Give me a snack of little Lord Fauntrollo's sweet butter--Bertha----"

***

The boys kept marching. Barney, who was forty, came to say good-by. It was odd to see him. Barney, who was forever bringing all the stray cats on his beat to the back-door for the leavings. Sometimes there were three or four of them standing around him, with hopeful vertical tails and meouwing up into his face. His brick-red, open fireplace of a face. Barney, all bristling now with new phrases which he wore as cockily as his puttees. "To hell with the Kaiser. Dirty Huns."

To hate was not so different from to love. Barney had discovered that. Only it was difficult to steam up the hate. Tramp. Tramp. Tramp-tramp-tramp. It was strange to see him with his fine square back and the curving seams, walking off down the street after the good-by. His shoulders were very ferocious looking and pedestrians made little respectful detours to pass him. Barney, fine and fighty and hating enough to be patriotic.

***

Even Bertha bought a Liberty Bond. When Mrs. Oessetrich was not driving the ambulance she stood on the steps of the Treasury Building or the Public Library and sold Liberty Bonds and collected Red Cross funds. A stretcher was laid along the sidewalk. The money rained down on it. Give. Give. More stretchers for more maimed bodies. And the frightening part of it was that you gave. Gave because the piece of cheesecloth bunting snapping in the breeze made your eyes hot and your heart hot. Bertha gave. It was hard for her to pass one of the stretcher things and not drop a coin. The terrible futility of those marching little scissors-like men. You knew it deep down in your heart and hated the hating.

Bertha could sometimes sit upstairs in her room, big and bitter and inarticulate with it. Paula, who never played any more, since the Beethoven. Olga, gorging the little scissors men with the aniseed cakes of stultification. Barney, who was tender to kittens, marching away with the places for cartridges corrugated along his belt. Mrs. Oessetrich baiting in the public square. And yet the bunting. It made your tonsils tighten. So hating the hate, Bertha gave. Dropped the twenty-five cent pieces on to the stretchers, that there might be more stretchers, and bought a one-hundred-dollar Liberty Bond.

Bertha with her Liberty Bond. It was engraved on tough beautiful paper and scrolled like a bank note. Sometimes she sat and looked at it with her lips a little finicky and folded back from her white square teeth. A wise old Chinese smile. Even the delirious, banging day of the Armistice the smile persisted. The faces of all the little hurrying, scurrying people were so merely guzzled. So merely victorious. An oppressor had been laid. But somehow you trembled. Old hates for new....

***

There was no evading it. Paula's queerness. For two weeks there had been no way to induce her to leave the fourth-floor room. She clung to it like a bit of ash blonde moss. It seemed to embarrass Mrs. Oessetrich, this timid, this astonishing, this not quite rational tenacity of Paula's. She hated even Bertha's knowing it and what went on between mother and daughter usually happened behind closed doors. Paula sat on her little sewing-chair and just faced her parent when she coaxed and cajoled and threatened, and would not be pried out. It was dreadful for Mrs. Oessetrich. Placed her rather in the position of luring a wild bird out of ambush with crumbs. Once she even tried to force her, but Paula's teeth went together with a click and her fingers clenched down around the seat of the chair, and frail little Paula, who looked as if Fra Lippo Lippi had painted her; frail Paula who loved Chopin and the miniature melodies of Mozart, there was no budging her. Not so much as an inch. She gritted her teeth and sat. Just sat.

Bertha used to tiptoe in with her meals. She would eat for Bertha. But sometimes it took an hour. Spoonful by spoonful of the broths that were tilted up against her teeth, and then the slow difficult gulps of muffin or of shredded meat. They were the hardest. She had a way of looking at Bertha over the top of the spoon. Those eyes would hang in Bertha's darkness. Disks of hot blue light.

Something of a sequence was taking place in Paula's aching brain. That was the plain fact that was so embarrassing to her mother.

First the trousseau things. Then the yards of maline veiling which she would pin to her hair and let trail off behind. Mrs. Oessetrich burned the veil one night in the furnace so that the house smelled with it.

And now Paula's sewings for the hours and hours in the little chair were all doll size. Baby things. It made the red fly up into Mrs. Oessetrich's face, and behind the carefully locked door, she went into long, low-voiced pleading conferences with Paula.

But it was no use. The piano remained closed and day after day Paula sat and sewed the small things.

Dr. Ehrenfest came. She only laughed at him, her large blue eyes seeming almost to cover her face and at the slightest approach in her direction, her hands locking down over the sides of the chair.

Down in the drawing-room, over the tea things that Bertha was spreading, Dr. Ehrenfest kept stroking his slim point of beard.

"Well, 'Tilda, let us face our facts."

"I have never been the one to dodge them, Ehrey."

"I think the only thing to do right now is to call in Lauer on this case."

"Dr. Emil Lauer the--the----."

"Yes. The neurologist."

"Then Paula is----."

"It may be only a temporary neurosis. But right now, Lauer is our man. He has that splendid place out at Hill's End. It may be just what Paula needs."

"You mean----"

"His sanitarium. I consider it one of the best in the country."

"Don't mince words with me, Ehrey. Dr. Lauer's place is a private asylum."

"I can't see that calling a spade a bludgeon helps matters."

"I hate minced facts. I can swallow my dose undiluted."

"Well, then, I want a psychopathist like Lauer in on Paula's case."

"All right. All right. I'll have another lump, Bertha. All right."

But her face seemed to shrink, the cheeks to recede, leaving the frontal part with its avian thrust even more leanly forward.

"I've seen it coming. 'Tilda, since----"

"Since Harrison, of course, you mean."

"You cannot suppress every normal instinct in a high-strung girl like Paula and expect----"

"Harrison was not the man for her. He proved it by what happened subsequently."

"What happened subsequently might not have occurred if----"