Part 23 (1/2)

When the good-byes were said, Nora stood a moment watching the Doctor's little figure moving jerkily down the street under its white umbrella. ”I believe he was sent,” she said to herself. ”I must try to be to some other puir soul what he has been to me this day.”

At her desk at headquarters Nora found a memorandum of four letters to be written,--three to men in the prison at Sing-Sing. These she despatched speedily, with the aid of a typewriter; but the fourth she wrote with her own hand, for it was in answer to one from an orphan girl who was coming to New York in search of work, and who desired to be put in the way of finding a safe boarding-place. Nora's heart was touched by a peculiar sympathy at the thought of the girl's loneliness, so closely allied to her own, and she wanted her to feel that it was a friend, and not merely an officer of the Army, who responded to her appeal, and held out the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p.

It was eleven o'clock when the letters were written, and Nora ran downstairs to vary her industry by cutting out baby-clothes in the workroom. Just as she was taking the shears in hand, however, news was brought in of an accident to a factory-girl who had crushed her foot in the machinery, and had been brought home to her lodgings in the house on the next corner.

To this house Nora went, and found the girl alone, and weeping more from loneliness than suffering. The doctor had left, promising to come again, and to send an ambulance later in the day, to take the sufferer to the hospital. Nora knocked gently at the chamber door.

”Come in!” a voice from within answered wearily.

The visitor, standing in the doorway, was impressed by the dreariness of disorder which reigned inside. Such a room would have been impossible to Nora herself while hands and knees and a scrubbing-brush were left to her. In one sweeping glance she took in the hastily dumped clothing on the floor, the bureau heaped with mussy finery, the fly-specked window-pane, and soiled bed-spread.

”Who are you?” asked the girl, raising her head from the pillow. ”Oh, one of those Salvation Army women,” she added, as she caught sight of the dark bonnet.

”Yes,” answered Nora, ”I heard of your accident and that you were all alone. I have come to try to help you.”

”You can't. n.o.body can help me. I wish I was dead.” With this the girl buried her face in the pillow and resumed her half-hysterical weeping.

Nora wisely wasted no words in trying to prove her ability to help, but began quietly to hang up the clothes, to slip the soiled lace and bra.s.s chains from the top of the bureau into the drawer, to close the blinds, and fold a towel over a basin on the chair within reach of the sufferer.

”There,” she said, ”maybe if you could wash you'd feel a bit more comfortable, and I'll run round to my lodgings--they're not far off--and back in no time.”

When she reappeared, it was with a snowy white dimity spread taken from her own bed, a pitcher of ice-water, and a large palm-leaf fan.

When the bed was re-made, the self-appointed nurse seated herself by the bedside of the sick girl, promising to stay until the coming of the ambulance, and settling down to listen to all the details of the accident, which seemed to give the victim a grewsome satisfaction in rehearsing.

When the ambulance arrived, and the patient departed, the nurse began to realize that it was three o'clock, and that she had had no food since seven. As the Bible-reading was at four, she had time only for a hastily swallowed cup of tea, and a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, with a bit of cold meat, before the reading, after which she went home, bathed, rested, and supped, before presenting herself again at headquarters for the night duty, which called her to patrol the streets with a companion officer (a dull, rather coa.r.s.e woman, who ”exhorted” and sang through her nose) until after midnight.

Then she went home and to bed, inwardly thanking Heaven for her happy day. She felt, as she would have said, that she had been ”awfu'

favored.”

CHAPTER XIV

TWO SOUL-SIDES

”Thanks to G.o.d, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides--one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.”

A man's character is like the body of a child,--it grows unequally and in sections. Certain qualities in Flint had lain throughout these thirty-three years wholly undeveloped and unaffected by the culture of other characteristics. In his case the dormancy of the sympathetic side of his nature was no doubt largely due to the absence of those close family ties which call out in most of us our first sense of the kins.h.i.+p of the race.

Flint had no recollection of either father or mother, and he was an only child. On his mother's death, he was sent to the home of an uncle and aunt in Syracuse. They received him without enthusiasm, and only because it was inevitable that the child should be cared for, and there was no one else to undertake the task. Flint sometimes recalled, with a feeling of bitterness against Fate, those early years of repression, when silence and self-obliteration were the only merits or attractions asked for in the orphan boy.

Those formative years might have proved a much drearier period but for the circ.u.mstance that his uncle's house was provided with a library, made up of books of all grades and qualities. To these volumes young Jonathan was at liberty to help himself without let or hindrance, provided he handled them with care.

Mr. Mullett Flint was a collector of books, but not a reader. Elzevirs and Aldines and first editions bound by Riviere pleased him as so much pottery might have pleased him, and he took great pride in relating how the value of his purchases had increased on his hands. His guidance in the paths of literature would not have been of great benefit to his nephew had he been disposed to offer it; but, in fact, he wasted little thought either on the contents of books or on his nephew's mental progress. His tastes, interests, and ambitions lay wholly in the business world, in the making of money, and the handling of mercantile affairs of magnitude. Had Jonathan, as he grew older, shown more sharpness and sagacity, some bond of sympathy, if not attachment, might have formed itself between the two. As it was, they drifted farther and farther apart. The uncle looked with a shrug of his shoulders at the boy curled up in one of the library arm-chairs on a Sat.u.r.day morning, poring over a volume of the Waverley Novels, when he himself was briskly making ready to betake himself to business.

”I wish that boy had any enterprise. I'd rather see him breaking windows or shooting cats out the back door than dawdling like that,”

he said once to his wife.

”Yes,” answered that worthy lady,--”and he wears out the furniture so!”