"Vell, ve see," said Koerner.
"Now, pa, you must let Miss Elizabeth bring a lawyer," and then she whispered to Elizabeth: "You bring one anyway, Miss Elizabeth. Don't mind what he says. He's always that way."
Elizabeth brought out her flowers and fruit then, and Koerner glanced at them without a word, or without a look of gratitude, and when she had arranged the flowers on his little table, she bade him good-by and took Gusta with her and went.
As they passed out, the white rubber-tired carts were being wheeled down the halls, the patients they bore still breathing profoundly under the anesthetics, from which it was hoped they would awaken in their clean, smooth beds. The young women hurried out, and Elizabeth drank in the cool wintry air eagerly.
"Oh, Gusta!" she said, "this air is delicious after that air in there!
I shall have the taste of it for days."
"Miss Elizabeth, that place is sickening!"--and Elizabeth laughed at the solemn deliberation with which Gusta lengthened out the word.
[Illustration: Elizabeth]
V
"Come in, old man." Marriott glanced up at Dick Ward, who stood smiling in the doorway of his private office.
"Don't let me interrupt you, my boy," said Dick as he entered.
"Just a minute," said Marriott, "and then I'm with you." Dick dropped into the big leather chair, unbuttoned his tan overcoat, arranged its skirts, drew off his gloves, and took a silver cigarette-case from his pocket. Marriott, swinging about in his chair, asked his stenographer to repeat the last line, picked up the thread, went on:
"And these answering defendants further say that heretofore, to wit, on or about--"
Dick, leaning back in his chair, inhaling the smoke of his cigarette, looked at the girl who sat beside Marriott's desk, one leg crossed over the other, the tip of her patent-leather boot showing beneath her skirt, on her knee the pad on which she wrote in shorthand. The girl's eyelashes trembled presently and a flush showed in her cheeks, spreading to her white throat and neck. Dick did not take his eyes from her. When Marriott finished, the girl left the room hurriedly.
"Well, what's the news?" asked Marriott.
"Devilish fine-looking girl you've got there, old man!" said Dick, whose eyes had followed the stenographer.
"She's a good girl," said Marriott simply.
Dick glanced again at the girl. Through the open door he could see her seating herself at her machine. Then he recalled himself and turned to Marriott.
"Say, Bess was trying to get you by 'phone this morning."
"Is that so?" said Marriott in a disappointed tone. "I was in court all morning."
"Well, she said she'd give it up. She said that old man Koerner had left the hospital and gone home. He sent word to her that he wanted to see you."
"Oh, yes," said Marriott, "about that case of his. I must attend to that, but I've been so busy." He glanced at his disordered desk, with its hopeless litter of papers. "Let's see," he went on meditatively, "I guess"--he thought a moment, "I guess I might as well go out there this afternoon as any time. How far is it?"
"Oh, it's 'way out on Bolt Street."
"What car do I take?"
"Colorado Avenue, I think. I'll go 'long, if you want me."
"I'll be delighted," said Marriott. He thought a moment longer, then closed his desk, and said, "We'll go now."
When they got off the elevator twelve floors below, Dick said:
"I've got to have a drink before I start. Will you join me?"
"I just had luncheon a while ago," said Marriott; "I don't really--"
"I never got to bed till morning," said Dick. "I sat in a little game at the club last night, and I'm all in."
Marriott, amused by the youth's pride in his dissipation, went with him to the cafe in the basement. Standing before the polished bar, with one foot on the brass rail, Dick said to the white-jacketed bartender:
"I want a high-ball; you know my brand, George. What's yours, Gordon?"
"Oh, I'll take the same." Marriott watched Dick pour a generous libation over the ice in the glass.
"Don't forget the imported soda," added Dick with an air of the utmost seriousness and importance, and the bartender, swiftly pulling the corks, said:
"I wouldn't forget you, Mr. Ward."
The car for which they waited in the drifting crowd at the corner was half an hour in getting them out to the neighborhood in which the Koerners lived. They stood on the rear platform all the way, because, as Dick said, he had to smoke, and as he consumed his cigarettes, he discoursed to Marriott of the things that filled his life--his card games and his drinking at the club, his constant attendance at theaters and cafes. His cheeks were fresh and rosy as a girl's, and smooth from the razor they did not need. Marriott, as he looked at him, saw a resemblance to Elizabeth, and this gave the boy an additional charm for him. He studied this resemblance, but he could not analyze it. Dick had neither his sister's features nor her complexion; and yet the resemblance was there, flitting, remote, revealing itself one instant to disappear the next, evading and eluding him. He could not account for it, yet its effect was to make his heart warm toward the boy, to make him love him.
Marriott let Dick go on in his talk, but he scarcely heard what the boy said; it was the spirit that held him and charmed him, the spirit of youth launching with sublime courage into life, not yet aware of its significance or its purpose. He thought of the danger the boy was in and longed to help him. How was he to do this? Should he admonish him?
No,--instantly he recognized the fact that he could not do this; he shrank from preaching; he could take no priggish or Pharisaical attitude; he had too much culture, too much imagination for that; besides, he reflected with a shade of guilt, he had just now encouraged Dick by drinking with him. He flung away his cigarette as if it symbolized the problem, and sighed when he thought that Dick, after all, would have to make his way alone and fight his own battles, that the soul can emerge into real life only through the pains and dangers that accompany all birth.
Marriott's knock at the Koerners' door produced the sensation visits make where they are infrequent, but he and Dick had to wait before the vague noises died away and the door opened to them. Mrs. Koerner led them through the parlor--which no occasion seemed ever to merit--to the kitchen at the other end of the house. The odor of carbolic acid which the two men had detected the moment they entered, grew stronger as they approached the kitchen, and there they beheld Koerner, the stump of his leg bundled in surgical bandages, resting on a pillow in a chair before him. His position constrained him not to move, and he made no attempt to turn his head; but when the young men stood before him, he raised to them a bronzed and wrinkled face. His white hair was rumpled, and he wore a cross and dissatisfied expression; he held by its bowl the new meerschaum pipe Elizabeth had sent him, and waved its long stem at Marriott and Dick, as he waved it scepter-like in ruling his household.
"My name is Marriott, Mr. Koerner, and this is Mr. Ward, Miss Elizabeth's brother. She said you wished to see me."
"You gom', huh?" said Koerner, fixing Marriott with his little blue eyes.
"Yes, I'm here at last," said Marriott. "Did you think I was never going to get here?" He drew up a chair and sat down. Dick took another chair, but leaned back and glanced about the room, as if to testify to his capacity of mere spectator. Mrs. Koerner stood beside her husband and folded her arms. The two children, hidden in their mother's skirts, cautiously emerged, a bit at a time, as it were, until they stood staring with wide, curious blue eyes at Marriott.
"You bin a lawyer, yet, huh?" asked Koerner severely.
"Yes, I'm a lawyer. Miss Ward said you wished to see a lawyer."
"I've blenty lawyers alreadty," said Koerner. "Der bin more as a dozen hier." He waved his pipe at the clock-shelf, where a little stack of professional cards told how many lawyers had solicited Koerner as a client. Marriott could have told the names of the lawyers without looking at their cards.
"Have you retained any of them?" asked Marriott.
"Huh?" asked Koerner, scowling.
"Did you hire any of them?"
"No, I tell 'em all to go to hell."