Part 14 (1/2)

She uncorked the vials, filled a gla.s.s with water and stood before the mirror, a tablet between her fingers. Suddenly she bowed graciously to her reflection, and raised the gla.s.s to it.

”Well, here's mud in your eye,” she said.

The tablets were unpleasant to take, dry and powdery and sticking obstinately half-way down her throat. It took her a long time to swallow all twenty of them. She stood watching her reflection with deep, impersonal interest, studying the movements of the gulping throat. Once more she spoke aloud.

”For G.o.d's sake, try and cheer up by Thursday, will you?” she said. ”Well, you know what he can do. He and the whole lot of them.”

She had no idea how quickly to expect effect from the veronal. When she had taken the last tablet, she stood uncertainly, wondering, still with a courteous, vicarious interest, if death would strike her down then and there. She felt in no way strange, save for a slight stirring of sickness from the effort of swallowing the tablets, nor did her reflected face look at all different. It would not be immediate, then; it might even take an hour or so.

She stretched her arms high and gave a vast yawn.

”Guess I'll go to bed,” she said. ”Gee, I'm nearly dead.”

That struck her as comic, and she turned out the bathroom light and went in and laid herself down in her bed, chuckling softly all the time.

”Gee, I'm nearly dead,” she quoted. ”That's a hot one!”

III.

Nettie, the colored maid, came in late the next afternoon to clean the apartment, and found Mrs. Morse in her bed. But then, that was not unusual. Usually, though, the sounds of cleaning waked her, and she did not like to wake up. Nettie, an agreeable girl, had learned to move softly about her work.

But when she had done the living-room and stolen in to tidy the little square bedroom, she could not avoid a tiny clatter as she arranged the objects on the dressing-table. Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder at the sleeper, and without warning a sickly uneasiness crept over her. She came to the bed and stared down at the woman lying there.

Mrs. Morse lay on her back, one flabby, white arm flung up, the wrist against her forehead. Her stiff hair hung untenderly along her face. The bed covers were pushed down, exposing a deep square of soft neck and a pink nightgown, its fabric worn uneven by many launderings; her great b.r.e.a.s.t.s, freed from their tight confiner, sagged beneath her arm-pits. Now and then she made knotted, snoring sounds, and from the corner of her opened mouth to the blurred turn of her jaw ran a lane of crusted spittle.

”Mis' Morse,” Nettie called. ”Oh, Mis' Morse! It's terrible late.”

Mrs. Morse made no move.

”Mis' Morse,” said Nettie. ”Look, Mis' Morse. How'm I goin' get this bed made?”

Panic sprang upon the girl. She shook the woman's hot shoulder.

”Ah, wake up, will yuh?” she whined. ”Ah, please wake up.”

Suddenly the girl turned and ran out in the hall to the elevator door, keeping her thumb firm on the black, s.h.i.+ny b.u.t.ton until the elderly car and its Negro attendant stood before her. She poured a jumble of words over the boy, and led him back to the apartment. He tiptoed creakingly in to the bedside; first gingerly, then so l.u.s.tily that he left marks in the soft flesh, he prodded the unconscious woman.

”Hey, there!” he cried, and listened intently, as for an echo.

”Jeez. Out like a light,” he commented.

At his interest in the spectacle, Nettie's panic left her. Importance was big in both of them. They talked in quick, unfinished whispers, and it was the boy's suggestion that he fetch the young doctor who lived on the ground floor. Nettie hurried along with him. They looked forward to the limelit moment of breaking their news of something untoward, something pleasurably unpleasant. Mrs. Morse had become the medium of drama. With no ill wish to her, they hoped that her state was serious, that she would not let them down by being awake and normal on their return. A little fear of this determined them to make the most, to the doctor, of her present condition. ”Matter of life and death,” returned to Nettie from her thin store of reading. She considered startling the doctor with the phrase.

The doctor was in and none too pleased at interruption. He wore a yellow and blue striped dressing-gown, and he was lying on his sofa, laughing with a dark girl, her face scaly with inexpensive powder, who perched on the arm. Half-emptied highball gla.s.ses stood beside them, and her coat and hat were neatly hung up with the comfortable implication of a long stay.

Always something, the doctor grumbled. Couldn't let anybody alone after a hard day. But he put some bottles and instruments into a case, changed his dressing-gown for his coat and started out with the Negroes.

”Snap it up there, big boy,” the girl called after him. ”Don't be all night.”

The doctor strode loudly into Mrs. Morse's flat and on to the bedroom, Nettie and the boy right behind him. Mrs. Morse had not moved; her sleep was as deep, but soundless, now. The doctor looked sharply at her, then plunged his thumbs into the lidded pits above her eyeb.a.l.l.s and threw his weight upon them. A high, sickened cry broke from Nettie.

”Look like he tryin' to push her right on th'ough the bed,” said the boy. He chuckled.

Mrs. Morse gave no sign under the pressure. Abruptly the doctor abandoned it, and with one quick movement swept the covers down to the foot of the bed. With another he flung her nightgown back and lifted the thick, white legs, cross-hatched with blocks of tiny, iris-colored veins. He pinched them repeatedly, with long, cruel nips, back of the knees. She did not awaken.

”What's she been drinking?” he asked Nettie, over his shoulder.

With the certain celerity of one who knows just where to lay hands on a thing, Nettie went into the bathroom, bound for the cupboard where Mrs. Morse kept her whisky. But she stopped at the sight of the two vials, with their red and white labels, lying before the mirror. She brought them to the doctor.

”Oh, for the Lord Almighty's sweet sake!” he said. He dropped Mrs.

Morse's legs, and pushed them impatiently across the bed. ”What did she want to go taking that tripe for? Rotten yellow trick, that's what a thing like that is. Now we'll have to pump her out, and all that stuff. Nuisance, a thing like that is; that's what it amounts to. Here, George, take me down in the elevator. You wait here, maid. She won't do anything.”

”She won't die on me, will she?” cried Nettie.

”No,” said the doctor. ”G.o.d, no. You couldn't kill her with an ax.”

IV.

After two days, Mrs. Morse came back to consciousness, dazed at first, then with a comprehension that brought with it the slow, saturating wretchedness.

”Oh, Lord, oh, Lord,” she moaned, and tears for herself and for life striped her cheeks.

Nettie came in at the sound. For two days she had done the ugly, incessant tasks in the nursing of the unconscious, for two nights she had caught broken bits of sleep on the living-room couch. She looked coldly at the big, blown woman in the bed.

”What you been tryin' to do, Mis' Morse?” she said. ”What kine o' work is that, takin' all that stuff?”

”Oh, Lord,” moaned Mrs. Morse, again, and she tried to cover her eyes with her arms. But the joints felt stiff and brittle, and she cried out at their ache.

”Tha's no way to ack, takin' them pills,” said Nettie. ”You can thank you' stars you heah at all. How you feel now?”

”Oh, I feel great,” said Mrs. Morse. ”Swell, I feel.”

Her hot, painful tears fell as if they would never stop.

”Tha's no way to take on, cryin' like that,” Nettie said. ”After what you done. The doctor, he says he could have you arrested, doin' a thing like that. He was fit to be tied, here.”

”Why couldn't he let me alone?” wailed Mrs. Morse. ”Why the h.e.l.l couldn't he have?”

”Tha's terr'ble, Mis' Morse, swearin' an' talkin' like that,” said Nettie, ”after what people done for you. Here I ain' had no sleep at all for two nights, an' had to give up goin' out to my other ladies!”

”Oh, I'm sorry, Nettie,” she said. ”You're a peach. I'm sorry I've given you so much trouble. I couldn't help it. I just got sunk. Didn't you ever feel like doing it? When everything looks just lousy to you?”

”I wouldn' think o' no such thing,” declared Nettie. ”You got to cheer up. Tha's what you got to do. Everybody's got their troubles.”

”Yeah,” said Mrs. Morse. ”I know.”