Partners (9 page)

She thought of the movies where all the poor Mrs. Becks were sitting enjoying the sorrows of poor imaginary people, to get away from their own sorrow. She thought of the bright stage where the girls from down the hall were dancing now to solace other sad ones searching for forgetfulness. She thought of "gramma" locked into her front room downstairs, taking her sleep alone and trying to forget that she was no longer young. Dale was filled with sadness.

Then she looked about her own little chilly room, lit now only by the dismal light from the oil stove, and was thankful that she still had this. Even this might not be hers for long, if she found no other job, but it was hers tonight, and she must be thankful for that. She wasn't wandering the streets tonight with no refuge from the storm. She was safe, and she was warm, and not even hungry.

So she went and lay down again.

She must have dropped asleep, for a little later she was suddenly roused by voices downstairs, a man tramping heavily in the hall below, calling out, knocking! Perhaps she ought to get up and open her door and listen. Maybe someone had been hurt or sick and had been brought home. The voice was excited, and now it seemed to be coming up the stairs, heavy footsteps, rubbered ones, tramping toward her door! And then that voice again!

George Rand was dog-weary and cold and hungry, but he was too worn out to go in search of something to eat. He wanted to get to his bed and rest.

He had been out all day in the storm, covering the great fire that had been raging in one part of the city, a fire in which not only part of the shopping district but a fine residential section was threatened. It was late when he had handed in his copy and started for his dreary lodging. He had been the last one in the office to finish. He had been distracted by their conversation as they got ready to go! They had talked cheerily of home, or some nightclub they were to visit that evening. One man told how he was making a dollhouse for his little girl for Christmas, and how tonight after he was sure she was asleep he was going to finish the little staircase. Landings it had, real landings, and he described them. He was as eager over it as if he had been a child himself. He told how his wife came and sat near with the dolls she was dressing for the house, and talked to him. Home, that was what that man had. But there was no such thing for George Rand. He had nothing but a dreary room in a cheap lodging house.

One after another finished their copy, donned their overcoats and plunged whistling out into the storm. They were all happy because Christmas coming George's way. Oh, perhaps some of them might invite him over for a turkey dinner, but he wasn't going. Not he! He didn't believe in spoiling other people's Christmas. Christmas was for families, not for lonely bachelors who had no family. He would get through the day somehow, he supposed. He always did. Though this would be the loneliest Christmas he had ever known, because now his mother was gone and there was no hope that he could ever give her the happy holiday time he had been hoping for. His interest in his work seemed to be gone, too. He had hoped so to be a success and take care of her the way he had planned to do when he first left home on his own. But last spring she had slipped away out of the world and left him stranded, and since that time he had just been plodding along, covering all the jobs they had given him without a break. He hadn't realized till now how desperately tired and discouraged he was. Christmas! That had been the goal that he had set up to have his mother in a little home, some kind of a home with him. You couldn't have Christmas without a home. Ever since his father died when he was only sixteen that had been his aim, to make a real home for his mother, and now the reason for it was gone, and he was stranded.

The desolate look was on his face as he handed in his copy. He had found a letter in his box, which usually held assignments. He read it idly. It was a scribbled line of commendation from his chief praising his work and assuring him of a long-coveted promotion for which he had almost ceased to hope. It meant a big raise in his salary, but he was too tired and too blue to feel much excitement. What was the good of more money? It was too late to get the things for his mother that he knew she had needed a long time.

If he had been almost any other young man he would by this time have established a social circle for himself, but he had been so determined to carry out his life ambition, and keep his promise to his dead father to look after his mother, that he had made it paramount. He had not been interested in girls, simply because he didn't have time to go to their shindigs as he called them, nor money to spend on their fancies. Oh, there were some nice girls at the paper, regular girls, who had courage and talent, a lot of initiative. He admired them, but he had never gone beyond a certain point in intimacy. He met them in his work, talked to them as if they were other fellows, but so far his mind had been set on getting his mother into comfort and having a home. After that there would be time enough for girls.

And now his mother was gone, and his thought of a home was gone, too. Sometime, maybe, things would be brighter, but he hadn't reached the point where he could think that yet.

As Rand turned the corner into his own street a terrific gust of wind seized him and almost took his breath away. Merciless sleet lashed out at him like a rank of drawn sabers. As he got his breath again he felt how easily one could drop and let the storm put an icy end to things. Futile life! Why did one have to live? He felt as if his great reason for living was gone now. Money? What was money when he had no one to help him enjoy it?

The snow came hurtling in long slant lines straight from the side of the sky now. It was thick and white and breathtaking, with a pitiless sting in the tail of each lovely flake.

The city lights only made weirdly luminous the menacing white gloom in which he moved.

The clang of an ambulance ahead cut sharply into the awesome loneliness with a sudden shut-in nearness, then the sound seemed to go silent, into the snow, like plush. A great white light blurred out uncertainly ahead, and two burly figures stooped and lifted a huddled form from the snow. The sleet stung into his eyes so viciously he could scarcely see. Scattered words came strangely through the intimate silence. He caught the phrase "passed out" and then the gong clanged harshly staccato, and the lights of the ambulance were snuffed out in the whiteness again.

As Rand went up the steps of his lodging house, his keys in his hand, he noticed that the outer door of the vestibule was open a crack. The pale ghastly stab of light from the low-powered electric bulb swinging from the ceiling of the vestibule slashed a yellow gash in the storm. A drift of snow had filtered in and was holding the door. It would neither open nor shut. He put his shoulder to it and almost fell across a dark bundle, lying just inside on the floor.

He gave it a shove out of the way with his foot and applied his latch key to the inner door, but a strange sound like the mew of a sick kitten arrested his attention, and looking down he saw the bundle of keys and stared at the thing. Was he going out of his mind? The bundle seemed to be wrapped in an old ragged coat, and it was distinctly agitated, emitting weird terrifying little sounds. Had somebody left a cat in the vestibule?

Suddenly the coat flapped apart and a tiny baby hand and arm clawed out futilely, feebly!

Rand watched it with growing horror. A baby! Abandoned! And on a night like this!

As the coat slowly dropped away the scrawny little body was revealed, naked except for a huddle of dirty rags about the loins.

The thin little arms beat vaguely at the freezing air, the pinched baby face was blue with cold, the whole tiny body was trembling and shaking the rigors of terrible cold. The pitiful quivering lips and chin, the grieved look in the frightened eyes, the feeble hoarse little wail, cut him to the heart.

A baby! Like that!
More
life! And he used to believe in a God!

Rand knew nothing whatever about babies, but just ordinary common sense told him that it would not take long for the cold to snuff out this little life. It might already be too late to save it! Was that ambulance too far gone out of hailing distance?

With a wild idea of calling it Rand jerked open the door again. But the icy blast swooped in and lashed at the baby, silencing it in the midst of a pathetic squeak, slithering down upon the unclad little body, like a cruel thing that was glad to hurt.

The baby gasped and choked and turned bluer in the face, and then puckered its pitiful lips in a long terrified wail, and Rand was horrified at what he had done. With all his might he pushed, and shut that door. Obviously this unclad child could not go out again into the storm.

Awkwardly he stooped and pulled the filthy coat about the little naked, shaking body. He had had to pull off his glove to find his keys that had fallen on the floor, and his hand came in contact with the small icy claw of the baby as it beat impotently at bitter emptiness and shivered violently. He had never seen a baby shiver before. Its tiny waxen eyelids fluttered open, and two bright eyes searched this strange cold world.

Double panic seized Rand. He must do something!

Frantically he unlocked the inner door. Reluctantly, fearfully, he picked up the old coat by its ragged fringes and lifted it as if it were a basket, the baby in imminent peril of sliding out, and so carrying it he strode down the hall to the landlady's door and gave a thunderous knock. Slow unwilling steps came presently, and "gramma" poked her head irritably out of the door.

"Where is Mrs. Beck?" Rand demanded.

"Gone ta the movies!" answered the old woman in a sharp querulous voice.

"Well, somebody has left a baby in the vestibule," explained Rand excitedly, "and I don't know what to do with it."

"Well, you better call the p'lice," answered the crone indifferently. "I've got the rheumatiz. I can't be bothered!" And she made as if to close the door.

"But it's freezing!" roared Rand.

"Put it outside and call the p'lice!" reiterated the old woman. "There's the pay phone in the hall. It isn't my baby. It isn't yours, is it?"

"No, but I'm not a murderer, if you are!" shouted Rand as the door closed in his face.

He heard the grinding of the key in the lock, and the old woman's whine.

"I can't be bothered! I've got the rheumatiz!"

Fiercely Rand grappled the child in his arms with a half-caressing motion to still the ghastly little wails. He went to the telephone and fumbled with his free hand for a nickel but could find none. The baby was kicking out of its covers again and wailing heartbrokenly.

With an exclamation of impatience Rand grasped the old coat tighter around the baby and tore up the stairs two steps at a time. Those two schoolteacher-women on the second-floor front! They would likely know what to do. Perhaps they would help. But his several knocks brought no response.

He turned wildly, dazedly, not knowing what to do next, and felt the quiver of the shivering little creature in his arms. He had not known how small and helpless a baby would feel in his arms. He was frightened at the responsibility thrust upon him. Angry, too, at the whole situation, and most of all at the old woman who ought to know what to do and ought to try to help, and wouldn't.

Then as he turned from that second-story front room he caught the line of dim light in the little back bedroom at the extreme end of the hall. Ah! The small pale girl lodged there, whose oranges he had once picked up for her. Perhaps she would help. He didn't know her name. He doubted if he had ever heard it, but he strode down the hall, gripping the little dirty bundle and frantically trying to still the wails that came from it.

He knocked imperatively and then called out in a clear voice that could easily be heard down on the first floor if the kind old hag down there happened to be listening.

"Can you help me, quick? I've found a baby in the vestibule freezing to death!"

He heard a step and the door was opened almost instantly, though the girl inside looked as if she had been interrupted crying. There were tears on her white cheeks and dark circles under her eyes.

So, here was another in some kind of trouble! Some more of the thing they called Life! He and she, and the filthy little freezing baby, and that huddled form in the storm being shoved into an ambulance! What was it all about anyway?

There was no light in the second-story back save what came from a small oil stove in the middle of the room, but even in the shadows he could not fail to see the drawn, tired look on the sweet young face of the girl as she put out instant arms to take the baby.

"The poor little beggar is frightfully dirty!" he warned, suddenly aware of the girl's delicate refinement. "Perhaps you'd better not touch him. Couldn't I lay him on the floor somewhere till I can call for help?"

The baby wailed feebly and flopped its arms till the old coat fell away from the little shivering body again.

"The poor little lamb!" crooned Dale suddenly, gathering the little waif into her arms tenderly. "Dirt doesn't matter. Poor little darling mite! I wonder what we ought to do first?"

"The sweet old saint down on the first floor suggested putting him out on the doorstep and phoning for the police," said Rand contemptuously, "but I couldn't locate a nickel and hold him, too, so I came to find a place to park him."

"She would talk that way!" said Dale bitterly. "Would it hurt him, do you suppose, to put him right into warm water? I have some here on the stove. Or should it be cold first? I don't know."

"Search me!" said Rand shrugging his shoulders helplessly. "What I don't know about babies would fill several books. But since you ask, I shouldn't suppose anything one would do could really injure the little beggar if he can weather lying naked in that vestibule with a drift of snow close beside him."

"Oh, poor little soul!" said Dale sorrowfully, and then took the initiative.

"Turn on the light, please, won't you? I have a little tin tub in the closet over there, under that curtain. Could you get it, and pour some cold water in from the pitcher on the washstand, and then temper it with some hot water from the pan on the stove. It mustn't be too hot, you know, at first, just warm and comfortable, and we can pour in more as he gets used to the warmish temperature."