The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 17

Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her night robe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She stirred and half opened her eyes.

"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!

Put--it--down!"

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed with teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with her mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to full consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown at the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with cold perspiration.

"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"

She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her.

The moon had pa.s.sed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her in--the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that comes in the night watches, when the business of the day is but a dream and Reality visits the couch.

Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night sweat.

Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too weary to follow her mind's dictate.

"Sara! 'Smatter, Sara? 'Smat-ter?" Hattie's tired hand crept toward her friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert across the coverlet. "'Smatter, dearie?"

"N-nothin'."

"'Smat-ter, dear-ie?"

"N-nothin'."

In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree branch tapping at the window an armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther across the chest sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by day.

So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbas.e.m.e.nt of the t.i.tanic store the morning following her laughter was ready enough.

But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday swarm of Sixth Avenue.

Down one block--two, three; then a sudden pause before a narrow store front liberally placarded with invitatory signs to the public, and with a red cross blazoning above the doorway. And Sara Juke, whose heart was full of fear, faltered, entered.

The same thin file pa.s.sed round the room, halting, sauntering, like grim visitors in a grim gallery. At a front desk a sleek young interne, tiptilted in a swivel chair, read a pink sheet through horn-rimmed gla.s.ses.

Toward the rear the young man whose skin was the wind-lashed pink sorted pamphlets and circulars in tall, even piles on his desk.

Round and round the gallery walked Sara Juke; twice she read over the list of symptoms printed in inch-high type; her heart lay within her as though icy dead, and her eyes would blur over with tears. Once, when she pa.s.sed the rear desk, the young man paused in his stacking and regarded her with a warming glance of recognition.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said. "You back?"

"Yes." Her voice was the thin cry of a quail.

"You must like our little picture gallery, eh?"

"Oh! Oh!" She caught at the edge of his desk and tears lay heavy in her eyes.

"Eh?"

"Yes; I--I like it. I wanna buy it for my yacht."

Her ghastly simulacrum of a jest died in her throat; and he said quickly, a big blush suffusing his face:

"I was only fooling, missy. You ain't got the scare, have you?"

"The scare?"

"Yes; the bug? You ain't afraid you've ate the germ, are you?"

"I--I dunno."

"Pshaw! There's a lot of 'em comes in here more scared than hurt, missy.

Never throw a scare till you've had a examination. For all you know you got hay fever, eh! Hay fever!" And he laughed as though to salve his words.

"I--got all them things on the red-printed list, I tell you. I--I got 'em all, night sweats and all. I--I got 'em."

"Sure you got 'em, missy; but that don't need to mean nothin' much."

"I got 'em, I tell you."

"Losin' weight?"

"Feel."

He inserted two fingers in her waistband.

"Huh!"

"You a doctor?"

He performed a great flourish.

"I ain't in the profesh, missy. I'm only chief clerk and bottle washer round here; but--"

"Where is the doctor? That him reading down there? Can I ask him--I--Oh!

Ain't I scared!"

He placed his big, cool hand over her wrist and his face had none of its smile.

"I know you are, little missy. I seen it in you last night when you and--and--"

"My--my friend."

"--your friend was in here. There's thousands come in here with the scare on, and most of 'em with a reason; but I picked you out last night from the gang. Funny thing, but right away I picked you. 'A pretty little thing like her'--if you'll excuse me for saying it--'a pretty little thing like her,' I says to myself. 'And I bet she ain't got n.o.body to steer her!'"

"Honest, did you?"