An hour later came a light step, swiftly, and the little doctor appeared. He is as tall as I, but looks so very young that he seems small to me. He entered my room, cheerfully, looking as fresh and nice as if rosy dreams had filled his night.
"Well! How are things wagging?" he inquired breezily.
He was fanning himself with his neat straw hat, and I asked him to sit down for a moment.
"Sure! But only for a minute or two. I have a throat clinic to attend at one o'clock. There's just time for this visit, then a bite at Childs' and a skip to Bellevue."
I looked at my watch and found he had allowed himself just fifty minutes for these various occupations.
"Don't let me detain you, my dear boy," I told him. "I – I just wanted to say that I haven't the least idea whether – whether that young creature in the other room has a cent to bless herself with. It seems to me – I think that she should have every care, and I shall be glad if you will consider me responsible – er – within the limits of a moderate income."
"Thanks," he said, "that's very kind of you."
His eyes strayed on my desk, and he pounced upon a copy of "The City's Wrath."
"Tell you what," he said, "that's a tip-top book. I borrowed my mother's copy and read it all night. The fellow who wrote it knows something about the slender connection between body and soul, in this big city. He's looked pretty deep into people's lives."
No compliments I ever received, with the exception of Frieda's, gave me greater pleasure than the appreciation of this honest, strong lad.
"Will you kindly give me your full name?" I asked him.
"Thomas Lawrence Porter," he answered.
I took the volume and wrote it down on the first page, adding kindest regards and my signature, and handed it to him, whereat he stared at me.
"D'ye mean to say you're the chap who wrote that book," he said, and wrung my hand, painfully. "I'm proud to meet you. If you don't mind, I'd like to come in some time and – and chat about things with you, any evening when you're not busy. You know an awful lot about – about people."
"My good friend," I told him, "don't permit youthful enthusiasm to run away with you. But I shall be delighted to have you drop in. And now, since your time is so limited, you had better go and see your patient."
He tucked his book under his arm and went down the hallway. After remaining in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour, he came out again, cheerfully.
"Doing exceedingly well," he called to me. "By-by; see you again very soon, I hope."
He vanished down the stairs, and I took up my book again, holding it in one hand while I went to the windows, intending to draw down a blind against the sunlight that was streaming in. The heat was entering in gusts and, for a second, a sparrow sat on my window ledge with head drooping, as if it were about to succumb. Then I drew down the blinds and immediately let them up again, reflecting that in the room opposite mine they were lowered for the sake of darkness and air and that my action would lessen the latter. So I sponged off my cranium and panted. It was being revealed to me that babies, whatever their other qualifications, were exquisitely complicated nuisances.
Yet an Arab, I told myself, refuses to step on a piece of paper, lest upon it might be written the name of the Deity, while some Hindoos carry little brooms and sweep the path before them, that they may not tread upon one of Buddha's creatures. Who knows whether divinity does not leave its signature on every infant, and who can reasonably doubt that infinite goodness possesses an equity in prospective men and women. Shall I be less civil than a sand-washed Bedouin or the monk of a Benares shrine? It behooves me to welcome a chance to acquire merit by showing patience.
The book I held was as charming as ever, of course, but since I knew the story by heart I dropped it on my knees and waged a losing fight against a fly, which persisted in perching itself on my brow. Before me flitted the idea that a skull-cap made of sticky fly-paper might be patentable and sell by the million, combining protection and revenge; I must look into the matter. Finally hunger troubled me and I decided to go out for refreshment. Before my neighbor's door I stopped for an instant, my eyes seeking to penetrate the dimness. Eulalie came to me at once and began to whisper.
"Would Monsieur be so very kind as to remain here for a few moments and watch?" she said. "I am going to run over to my sister's and tell her to buy a chicken and make broth. It will be very good for our poor, dear lady. In ten minutes I will be back."
Man's freedom of action is apparently a mere academic concept. Theoretically, I was entirely at liberty to refuse, to look down upon this woman from the superior height of my alleged intellectuality and inform her that my soul craved for an immediate glass of iced tea and some poached eggs on toast. I could have asserted that I did not purpose to allow myself to be bulldozed by an infant seven hours and ten minutes old. As a matter of fact, I was helpless and consented, Eulalie shaking the stairs during her cautious, down-ward progress. It was with some of the feelings of an apprentice in the art of lion-taming that I entered the room. Would the proceeding be tranquil and dignified, or accompanied by roars?
I sat down upon the rocker just vacated by Eulalie and gazed on the horsehair sofa as if the package resting on it were explosive, with a fuse alight. I had feared that it would be thrust upon my lap, but it is likely that my competency had been justifiably suspected. I dared not move the chair, fearing to make a noise, and could see nothing of the white arms or the Murillo face. Suddenly, an orgy of steam-whistling began, rousing my apprehensions while recalling workers to their factories. It proved but a false alarm and stillness prevailed in the top-floor back, for at least three minutes, when the dreaded wail arose.
"Please, Eulalie," came a husky, low voice. "Give me my baby."
It was then that my already damp brow began to stream. She wanted her baby and wouldn't be happy till she got it. My duty, I realized, was to go to the sofa and pick up the animated and noisy parcel. It would then have to be conveyed to the bed! Nervously, I prepared to obey.
"Eulalie has gone out for a few minutes," I explained, in the subdued tones I deemed suitable to a sickroom. "Here – here is the bundle. I think it wriggles."
"Thank you ever so much and – and please turn him the other way – yes, those are the feet. And would you pull up the shade a little bit, I think I would have more air."
I raised the thing, letting in a flood of light, and feasted my eyes in utter liberty. Poor child, she must have a cold, for she suffers from hoarseness. She paid little more heed to me than did the ancient Roman ladies to the slaves they refused to recognize as men. I realized my small importance when she tenderly pushed aside the little folds and revealed diminutive features over which she sighed, contentedly, while I drew my chair a little nearer to the bed. Since a Murillo was on free exhibition, I might as well gaze upon it and admire. That faint little wailing had stopped at once.
"Don't you think he is ever so good and well-behaved?" she asked me, after a while.
I assented, forbearing to tell her that his existence had not yet been sufficiently long to prove him entirely free from all taint of original sin.
"It's such a comfort," she assured me.
Already, by the saintly grace of a mother's heart, she was endowing her offspring with all the virtues. The wondrous optics of motherhood revealed beauty, wisdom, good intent, the promise of great things to come, all concentrated in this tabloid form of man. So mote it be!
The tiny head rested on her outstretched rounded arm and she closed her eyes once more. The plentiful chestnut hair had been braided tight and pinned at the top of her head.
"I wish Gordon McGrath could see her," I told myself. "No, Frieda wouldn't do the picture justice. She would seek to improve on Nature's handiwork; she would etherealize it, make it so dainty that it would become poetry instead of the beautiful plain language the universal mother sometimes speaks. Gordon would paint something that lived