During the days following his discharge from the hospital in Kansas City Brush had given much thought to the problem of finding Roberta. One day his eye had fallen on the advertisement of a private detective agency. He called upon the manager and laid most of the facts before him. Now after many forwardings a letter from the agency reached him. It gave the address of the farmhouse and added that one of the daughters in the home, a Miss Roberta Weyerhauser, had left the farm over a year ago, coming to Kansas City and had found employment as a waitress at the Rising Sun Chop Suey Palace.
On the first noon following his return to the city, Brush hurried to the restaurant for lunch. He climbed a narrow staircase, and on the second floor entered a large room hung with Chinese lanterns. The floor rose in gradually ascending levels about a central space reserved for dancing. On each tier there was a ring of tables for the diners. Brush seated himself at one of the tables on the highest level and looked about him. There were five waitresses standing about, and looking at them closely, he decided that any one of them might be Roberta Weyerhauser. They were dressed in a vaguely Chinese costume that included red satin trousers. A disc of rouge had been drawn on each cheek and their eyebrows had been painted in an upward curve at the outer edges. The waitress who came forward to take Brush’s order was a tall bony girl with a mass of disheveled hair and a sullen expression.
“What’ll you have?” she asked.
Brush scanned the card. “What’s specially good?” he asked, slowly.
“’T’s all wonderful.”
“Is there anything here that’s a favorite of yours?”
“I like’m all. I’m crazy about’m all,” replied the girl, coolly, scratching her head with the pencil. “Everyone of m’ll give you a great big thrill you’ll never forget.”
Brush looked up. “Might I ask you your name?” he said.
“Sure. You can know everything. My name’s Whosis. I live with my mother and we don’t keep a phone. I get out at four o’clock, but I only let my boy-friend see me home. I don’t like to dance and the pictures hurt my eyes; so what else would you like to know?”
Brush turned red. “I didn’t mean anything like that,” he said, in a low voice. “All I wanted to know was, was there one of the waitresses here named Roberta Weyerhauser.”
“What is this, anyway?” she replied, angrily. “What’s it to you? Who are you?”
“I . . . I’m just a friend of Miss Weyerhauser’s.”
“Say, who are you? Did somebody send you?”
“Are you Roberta Weyerhauser?”
“No, I’m not. My name’s Lily Wilson, if you must know. And looka here: you tend to your business and I’ll tend to mine. That way we’ll get on better. See?”
Brush looked at her earnestly. “I asked you a question, that’s all,” he said.
“Hurry up. What’ll you have?”
Without looking at him she took down his order, then cast a contemptuous glance at him and started to go. She had scarcely taken ten steps when she was suddenly struck with recognition of who he was. She gave an exclamation of astonishment and hatred and turned to look at him once more. He had been following her with his eyes and their glances met. She hurried off and his dishes were brought to him by another waitress.
He returned that evening for dinner. Dancing was going on. Most of the tables were filled and he was unable to find a place in Roberta’s territory.
At lunch the next day he was back at his former table. Suddenly she was saying angrily in his ear:
“If you keep coming around here any more, I’ll tell the manager and he’ll tell the police. Now that’s the truth.”
“Roberta . . .”
“Don’t you call me that!”
“Won’t you give me ten minutes to talk to you?”
“I never want to see you again. I don’t ever want to.”
“Roberta, I have a right to talk to you.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Listen, for months and months I looked for your father’s house. I tried every road. I didn’t know how to find you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Hurry and give me your order and then never come back again. Now I mean it.”
Brush gave an order.
When she laid the dishes before him, he said: “I’ll have to keep coming back here until you set a place where I can meet you for a short talk.”
“Well, I won’t. I’ll leave this job and I’ll change my room and I’ll go somewhere where you can’t find me. I hate you more than I hate anybody in the world. I never want to see you again and I don’t want to talk to you again. What happened was terrible and I never want to think about it again. Now that’s all.”
The Chinese manager of the restaurant seemed to have become aware of these conversations. He strolled about in the neighborhood with affected indifference. Roberta saw him approaching and fled. He stopped at Brush’s table and asked:
“Is everything all right?”
“Oh yes,” said Brush, hastily, “fine. Everything’s fine.”
When Roberta returned with the dessert, Brush whispered, “I want you to marry me, Roberta.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Anyway, we’re married already.”
“You’re crazy as a coot,” repeated Roberta, crying as she punched his check. She hurried away. Brush put thirty dollars into an envelope, solemnly licked the flap and wrote his name, address, and telephone number on the cover.
At a few minutes after four his landlady called him to the telephone.
“I don’t want your money,” said Roberta, “and I won’t take it.”
“Can I see you somewhere?”
There was a short pause. Then, “If you promise not to come to the restaurant any more, I’ll see you for a minute.”
“Now? Can I see you now?”
“I have to go back to work at six.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in a drug store, center of town.”
“Can you be by the steps of the Public Library in about twenty minutes?”
“I guess so. Where’s it at?”
“Why,” said Brush, “it’s still at Ninth and Locust.”
“If I come,” said Roberta, “you’ve got to promise it’s the last time. You’ve got to promise to leave me alone.”
“Roberta, I can’t promise that. But I promise to do everything I can not to trouble you.”
There was a silence, then both furtively hung up.
Roberta was already waiting at the corner when Brush arrived. It was growing colder and a strong wind had risen. She was holding her hat with one hand: the other held Brush’s envelope. She kept her eyes on the distance.
“Hello, Roberta!” he said.
She held out the envelope. “Here—I won’t take it,” she said.
“I won’t take it, either,” he replied. “I owe you money all my life. I’m going to support you until you die.”
She threw the envelope upon the ground. Brush picked it up.
Still looking into the distance, she began speaking in low, angry tones: “I know you think you have me in a corner. Well, you haven’t.”
“Oh, Roberta, you don’t understand!”
“Then what is it? What do you want?”
“Don’t you see? I can’t bear to have you be my enemy. I can’t bear living on in life while there are things in the past that haven’t been put right and fixed up—fixed up with friendship. Roberta—don’t you see that? So that if you’ll only let me call on you now and then, I think you’ll get to know my character better and I think you’ll get to like me. Because the most important thing in my life is that you and I be friends.”
“All right! All right! I haven’t anything against you. Call it friends, if you like, only don’t ever come to the restaurant again. Don’t keep hunting me all the time this way.”
Brush was silent a moment. Then he said, solemnly:
“Nothing can change the fact that you and I are married already.”
“There you go again. That’s awful to say a thing like that. You’re crazy.”
“Roberta, can I go and talk to your father about it?”
At this she became distraught. “Now that’s enough,” she cried. “If you do that, I’ll kill myself. I’m not joking—I tell you plainly I’ll kill myself.”
“Sh! Roberta, I promise I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”
“Oh, you won’t?”
“No, of course not. Now listen and don’t get mad at what I am going to say: I have to be in and near Kansas City for about a week and a half. Will you let me come and see you once a day, or once every other day? just for a talk or a meal or even a movie?”
“What good is talk if all you do is to get back to that . . . that crazy idea of yours?” There was another pause. Roberta shivered. “I’ll be catching cold here,” she said. “I’m not supposed to stand out in the cold this way. . . . I’ll tell you what you can do. My sister Lottie is coming to Kansas City next Sunday to see me. You can talk to her.”
“Will you be there, too?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Where?”
“We’ll meet you here on this corner at four o’clock.”
“Today’s only Tuesday.”
“I don’t care. I can’t see you before Sunday or I’ll go crazy, too.”
“Can I write you letters?”
“Yes, only don’t come to the restaurant. Now I’m going.”
“Roberta, will you . . . accept this present from me?”
He took from his pocket a mass of tissue paper and unwrapped the wrist watch which had last been offered to Jessie Mayhew. Roberta looked at it, then burst into tears and cried: “Don’t you realize I don’t want to have anything to do with you? Don’t you see that my life’s all arranged and I don’t want anything new coming into it and that I don’t want to think about anything that took place a long while ago? Don’t you understand that?”
“No,” said Brush, sadly.
“Well, I’ve got to go now,” she said, and went down the street.
Left alone, Brush went into the Library and settled down to read the article on Confucius in the Encyclopædia Britannica. His mind wandered from the subject, however, and presently he took a piece of paper from his pocket and began the first of his daily letters to the woman he meant to marry.
That evening he walked by Queenie’s boarding-house, staring at the lighted windows on the top floor. The lights went out and a few minutes later Bat tore down the front steps and hurried away along the street. Brush rang the bell.
“Hello, Queenie! How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Brush. How are you?”
“Can we go in here and talk where they won’t see us? How are they, Queenie?”
“Didn’t you know? Mr. Martin’s terrible sick.”
“Herb?”
“Yes. He isn’t here any more. He’s out to a hospital ten, fifteen miles in the country. . . . Yes. Mr. Baker says the doctors say he’s going to die soon. Course, I don’t know.”
“Have you seen him there?”
“Yes. I went out with some laundry that come back late. The car fare’s twenty cents each way.”
“Queenie, will you go there with me tomorrow?”
“Well, . . .”
“You can go in and see him first, and when you’ve finished visiting, ask him if I can come up and see him. I won’t say anything to make him mad, I promise. Will you do that?”
“I suppose I could go in the morning—I suppose I could. Mrs. Kubinsky’s daughter—lives next door—could come in and answer the bell.”
The next morning Brush appeared with a bunch of carnations and they started off.
“It’s a nice ride,” said Queenie. “There’s nothing I like more than a good long street-car ride in the country.”
“How’s Father Pasziewski, Queenie?”
“Well, you know he was sick, and hardly had he got better than he began doing everything again. He went on hikes with the Knights of St. Ludowick and he took Mary’s Flowers to the Zoo, like he used to do in the old days. He did all those things and the gall stones come back. Yes, sir, sure as you live.”
“Did they?”
“Yes. You know, I don’t think he’ll ever get well. He’s awful disappointed, Mr. Brush. Way down deep he’s an awful disappointed man.”
“What about?”
“About the way his young people have turned out. You know all those Knights of St. Ludowick he took so much trouble with two years ago? Well, they’ve turned out to be practically gangsters. Yes, sir, they hold people up in the park and they steal automobiles and everything. And a lot of Mary’s Flowers have become taxi-dancers.”
“M-m-m! What’s a taxi-dancer, Queenie?”
“Well, now you ask me, I don’t quite know, myself. Only when at a dance a man hasn’t got a girl himself, he pays other girls to dance with him. Something like that. Father Pasziewski says he might as well hold the meetings of Mary’s Flowers at Billy Kohn’s Roseland Glades.”
“It’s not immoral to be a taxi-dancer, is it, Queenie?”
“No, I guess not; but it’s not as good as a trip to the Zoo. He just don’t know what to do about it. They want to make a little money on the side, what with the depression and everything. Another thing: none of those Polish workmen that used to do bowling in the basement—none of them have jobs any more. They all live on cabbage; that’s all they live on. Let’s talk about something else, Mr. Brush. I declare I can’t talk about the depression for very long at a time. I get dizzy.”
Brush shyly glanced sideways at Queenie: “Does Father Pasziewski . . . does he still ever say anything about me?”
“I told you—Didn’t I tell you?—he prays for you.”
Brush turned pale. His heart stopped beating.
Queenie added: “You’re on the Friday list. I’m on the Tuesday list; that was yesterday.”
After a pause Brush asked, in a low voice: “You didn’t just say that to be nice, did you, Queenie? Is that true?”
“Why, of course it’s true! I thought I told you before.”
At the end of an hour’s ride they reached the hospital. It was one of a number of institutions set in a great park. Brush waited downstairs while Queenie, bearing the carnations, went into the wards. When she returned she said:
“He says you can come up. I’ll wait for you here. . . . And, Mr. Brush, he says . . . he was kinda violent, Mr. Brush . . . he says, you’re not to preach to him. He feels so strong about it, I guess you’d better not.”
“Oh, I won’t. Honest, I won’t. I’ve learned not to. That’s one of the things I’ve learned. Is he in pain, Queenie?”
“I don’t know, but he looks terrible. I want you to be ready for it; he don’t look at all well to me.”
Brush entered the ward on tiptoe and looked about. He saw Herb’s eyes resting on him sardonically. He sat down by the bed, appalled.
“Hello, nuts! How are you?” said Herb.
“I’m all right.”
“I know. You’re perfect. You’re always perfect. It’s great.”
Brush kept his eyes on him, but made no answer.
“Well, since you’ve come here, I’ve got something to say to you,” continued Herb. “I didn’t send for you. You came all by yourself. See? And I’m going to do the talking. If there’s any talking going on I’m going to do it. Do you get that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, in the first place, you might as well know that I’m on the point of croaking, and I don’t care if I do. And since that’s settled, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. All you’ve got to do is to say yes or no.”
“Of course, I will, Herb.”
“Wait ’til you hear what it is, damn you. . . . That’s all, just yes or no. It’s all one to me, if you can’t do it. Yes or no, and then quits. Oh, don’t sit there like a cock-eyed idiot with your mouth open. Shut your mouth, anyway; you never can tell what’ll fly in. . . . It’s not even a favor I’m asking you; it’s just a proposition. I’m not going to thank you, either. It’s just one of those things; take it or leave it.”
A nurse who was leaning over an adjacent bed turned and said: “You mustn’t get excited, Fifty-seven, or I’ll have to send your caller away. Just a few minutes, that’s all.”
Herb groaned: “Oh, go to hell. . . . God! I hate hospitals! . . . Now, listen, Jesus, it’s this way. . . . Hell, what is your name?”
“Brush—George Brush.”
“Brush, then. I’ve got two hundred and forty dollars in the bank and I’m going to leave them to you so that you can do something for me. Now, I’m going to make this story short and snappy, see? I don’t know whether you knew about it, but I had a wife and kid. I lived at Queenie’s, and she lived with some friends of hers. We hadn’t quarreled or anything . . . we weren’t separated . . . it was just that way, that’s all. I didn’t see the point of living in the same house with her. I didn’t see myself coming home to eat at regular hours, and wheeling baby-carriages about the streets and all that tripe—I’m not that kind of fella, that’s all. Well, one day she beat it. She’s never been seen since, so I guess it was with somebody that was passing through town. And she left the kid behind. The people she was staying with were awful sore, so I took the kid and parked it in another house where I knew some people. I pay them three dollars a week for it. So I’m going to leave you this money and, if you want to, you can see they get their three dollars a week. I couldn’t give them the money in a lump or God knows what they’d do with it. Do you get the idea?”
He paused for breath. Brush started to say something, when Herb called out in anguish: “Now don’t say anything. You always make a fool of yourself when you say something. If you go into that soft stuff of yours I’ll kill you.”
“I won’t, Herb, I won’t. I want to ask if I can adopt the kid . . . I mean, forever.”
“Oh, I don’t give a goddamn.”
“What’s its name, Herb? How old is it?”
“I don’t know its name. . . . Oh, I guess it’s called Elizabeth. It’s four or five years old.”
“Herb, can I have it for my own, legally?”
“Oh, I wish I hadn’t brought the thing up! Drop it! Drop it! Forget it!”
“Well, say yes or no, Herb. I could bring a lawyer . . .”
“You don’t need a lawyer. Just take it.”
“That’s fine, Herb. There’s nothing I’d like more.”
“Poops! Well, don’t say I saddled you with anything. It’s just a proposition. It’s all one to me.”
Herb began fumbling under his pillow. He brought out a bankbook and some blank checks.
“Herb, I don’t need the money,” said Brush, hastily, “I’ve got more now than I know what to do with.”
“Shut up! Write what I tell you!”
Brush made out two checks, one for twenty dollars to Herbert Martin; one to himself for the remainder. With great difficulty Herb signed them. “In the back pages here,” he added, “you’ll find the kid’s address. Mrs. Barton, something Dresser Street. Get that?”
“Yes.”
“And underneath it’s my mother’s address. I give her four dollars a week. She hasn’t been getting any for these last few weeks since the time when I was taken cuckoo, so I don’t know what she’s doing. She don’t know, either, she’s so full of gin. Some day when you think of it you might slip her twenty, thirty dollars, see? I don’t care, though. They can all go to hell, for all I care. I’m glad I’m clearing out.”
There was a long pause during which he glared angrily at the top of the windows. Brush sat stiffly beside the bed.
Herb’s eyes slid toward Brush. He said, “I see that the tricks the fellows played on you didn’t do you any harm.”
“No, no,” said Brush quickly. “I was all right next day.”
“They oughtn’t to put the window-curtains up so high. They don’t know how to run a hospital, that’s all. You’d better go now before you say something wrong, Brush. You’d better not say anything, but just go. Only, leave your address, and if I think of anything else I’ll have them write it to you.”
Brush went. He turned at the door and looked back. Herb had covered his face with the sheet. Brush rejoined Queenie without speaking. They walked through the grounds in silence and stood by a marked telephone pole, waiting for the street car. Suddenly Brush flung himself face downward on the grass.
“Why, Mr. Brush, what’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to go on living, Queenie. I don’t want to go on living in a world where things like that can happen. Something’s the matter with the world, through and through.”
At first, Queenie did not answer. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth. Then she said, “Mr. Brush, I’m ashamed of your talking that way.”
“I believe there’s a God, all right; but why’s he so slow in changing the world? Why does he deliberately disappoint people like Father Pasziewski, and why does he let fine fellows like Herb get so mixed up?”
“Mr. Brush, it’s awful to think things like that. I won’t listen to you.”
“But isn’t there an explanation?”
“I won’t listen to you?”
Queenie covered her ears with her hands. Suddenly Brush rose and, taking hold of Queenie’s wrists, firmly peered into her eyes. He said, softly, as though to himself, “Queenie, wouldn’t it be terrible if I lost my faith?”
Queenie had no protests left in her. She stared back at him. He continued, slowly: “Even . . . then . . . I’d go on . . . just as I am, I guess . . . wouldn’t I? . . . Only, I wouldn’t get any pleasure out of it. The world isn’t worth living in for its own sake. Anyway, I haven’t lost my faith, but now I know it’s not so easy as I thought it was. . . . Queenie, here’s your twenty cents. I can’t go back with you. I’ve got to walk back and think these things over.”
The street car was hurtling toward them. Queenie screamed out: “You’re not going to walk all that way!”
“Oh yes, I am.”
Queenie was already on the step when another thought occurred to him: “Queenie, have you ever had anything to do with babies?”
“Yes.”
“I’m bringing you one tonight.”
“What?”
“I say that—”
“Step lively,” said the conductor.
“I’m bringing you a baby about three o’clock. Herb’s.”
“Conductor,” said Queenie, sharply, “will you hold this car a minute. . . . You’d better come and ride on this car, Mr. Brush. You’re not well.”
“I’m bringing an old lady, too—Herb’s mother.”
The conductor rang his bell. “Get on or off, lady,” he said. “This car’s gotta go places.”
The car bore off an anxious Queenie, but not before she had leaned out of the window and called, “Now take care of yourself.”
Brush walked to Kansas City. Gradually the exhilaration of the exercise and the interest of making plans for his new dependents drove away his dejection. He called on the Bartons and carried Elizabeth off to her new home. Herb’s mother refused to put her foot out of her room, or to permit Brush to enter it, but she listened through a crack to the arrangements he was making with her landlady. He then sent a telegram of reassurance to Herb and sat down to tell Elizabeth the story of the Flood.