"It was there then," he went on."But now--it's--it's heartbreaking, Susie when your face is in repose.""I've gone through a fire that has burned up every bit of me that can burn," said she."I've been wondering if what's left isn't strong enough to do something with.I believe so--if you'll help me.""Help you? I--help anybody? Don't mock me, Susie.""I don't know about anybody else," said she sweetly and gently, "but I do know about me.""No use--too late.I've lost my nerve." He began to sob.
"It's because I'm unstrung," explained he.
"Don't think I'm a poor contemptible fool of a whiner....
Yes, I _am_ a whiner! Susie, I ought to have been the woman and you the man.Weak--weak--weak!"She turned the gas low, bent over him, kissed his brow, caressed him."Let's do the best we can," she murmured.
He put his arm round her."I wonder if there _is_ any hope," he said."No--there couldn't be.""Let's not hope," pleaded she."Let's just do the best we can.""What--for instance?"
"You know the theater people.You might write a little play--a sketch--and you and I could act it in one of the ten-cent houses.""That's not a bad idea!" exclaimed he."A little comedy--about fifteen or twenty minutes." And he cast about for a plot, found the beginnings of one the ancient but ever acceptable commonplace of a jealous quarrel between two lovers--"I'll lay the scene in Fifth Avenue--there's nothing low life likes so much as high life." He sketched, she suggested.They planned until broad day, then fell asleep, she half sitting up, his head pillowed upon her lap.
She was awakened by a sense of a parching and suffocating heat.
She started up with the idea of fire in her drowsy mind.But a glance at him revealed the real cause.His face was fiery red, and from his lips came rambling sentences, muttered, whispered, that indicated the delirium of a high fever.She had first seen it when she and the night porter broke into Burlingham's room in the Walnut Street House, in Cincinnati.
She had seen it many a time since; for, while she herself had never been ill, she had been surrounded by illness all the time, and the commonest form of it was one of these fevers, outraged nature's frenzied rise against the ever denser swarms of enemies from without which the slums sent to attack her.
Susan ran across the hall and roused Clara, who would watch while she went for a doctor."You'd better get Einstein in Grand Street," Clara advised.
"Why not Sacci?" asked Susan.
"Our doctor doesn't know anything but the one thing--and he doesn't like to take other kinds of cases.No, get Einstein....You know, he's like all of them--he won't come unless you pay in advance.""How much?" asked Susan.
"Three dollars.I'll lend you if----"
"No--I've got it." She had eleven dollars and sixty cents in the world.
Einstein pronounced it a case of typhoid."You must get him to the hospital at once."Susan and Clara looked at each other in terror.To them, as to the masses everywhere, the hospital meant almost certain death;for they assumed--and they had heard again and again accusations which warranted it--that the public hospital doctors and nurses treated their patients with neglect always, with downright inhumanity often.Not a day passed without their hearing some story of hospital outrage upon poverty, without their seeing someone--usually some child--who was paying a heavy penalty for having been in the charity wards.
Einstein understood their expression."Nonsense!" said he gruffly."You girls look too sensible to believe those silly lies."Susan looked at him steadily.His eyes shifted."Of course, the pay service _is_ better," said he in a strikingly different tone.
"How much would it be at a pay hospital?" asked Susan.
"Twenty-five a week including my services," said Doctor Einstein."But you can't afford that.""Will he get the best treatment for that?"
"The very best.As good as if he were Rockefeller or the big chap uptown.""In advance, I suppose?"
"Would we ever get our money out of people if we didn't get it in advance? We've got to live just the same as any other class.""I understand," said the girl."I don't blame you.I don't blame anybody for anything." She said to Clara, "Can you lend me twenty?""Sure.Come in and get it." When she and Susan were in the hall beyond Einstein's hearing, she went on: "I've got the twenty and you're welcome to it.But--Lorna hadn't you better----""In the same sort of a case, what'd _you_ do?" interrupted Susan.
Clara laughed."Oh--of course." And she gave Susan a roll of much soiled bills--a five, the rest ones and twos.
"I can get the ambulance to take him free," said Einstein.
"That'll save you five for a carriage."
She accepted this offer.And when the ambulance went, with Spenser burning and raving in the tightly wrapped blankets, Susan followed in a street car to see with her own eyes that he was properly installed.It was arranged that she could visit him at any hour and stay as long as she liked.
She returned to the tenement, to find the sentiment of the entire neighborhood changed toward her.Not loss of money, not loss of work, not dispossession nor fire nor death is the supreme calamity among the poor, but sickness.It is their most frequent visitor--sickness in all its many frightful forms--rheumatism and consumption, cancer and typhoid and the rest of the monsters.Yet never do the poor grow accustomed or hardened.And at the sight of the ambulance the neighborhood had been instantly stirred.When the reason for its coming got about, Susan became the object of universal sympathy and respect.She was not sending her friend to be neglected and killed at a charity hospital; she was paying twenty-five a week that he might have a chance for life--twenty-five dollars a week! The neighbors felt that her high purpose justified any means she might be compelled to employ in getting the money.
