«Yes, this is Mrs. Hemple speaking.»
«Why, the woman we sent to you has returned here with the claim that you refused to pay her for her time.»
«I explained to you that she refused to stay,» said Luella hotly. «She didn’t keep her agreement, and I didn’t feel I was under any obligation——»
«We have to see that our people are paid,» the agency informed her; «otherwise we wouldn’t be helping them at all, would we? I’m sorry, Mrs. Hemple, but we won’t be able to furnish you with any one else until this little matter is arranged.»
«Oh, I’ll pay, I’ll pay!» she cried.
«Of course we like to keep on good terms with our clients——»
«Yes—yes!»
«So if you’ll send her money around to-morrow? It’s seventy-five cents an hour.»
«But how about to-night?» she exclaimed. «I’ve got to have some one to-night.»
«Why—it’s pretty late now. I was just going home myself.»
«But I’m Mrs. Charles Hemple! Don’t you understand? I’m perfectly good for what I say I’ll do. I’m the wife of Charles Hemple, of 14 Broadway——»
Simultaneously she realized that Charles Hemple of 14 Broadway was a helpless invalid—he was neither a reference nor a refuge any more. In despair at the sudden callousness of the world, she hung up the receiver.
After another ten minutes of frantic muddling in the kitchen, she went to the baby’s nurse, whom she disliked, and confessed that she was unable to cook her husband’s dinner. The nurse announced that she had a splitting headache, and that with a sick child her hands were full already, but she consented, without enthusiasm, to show Luella what to do.
Swallowing her humiliation, Luella obeyed orders while the nurse experimented, grumbling, with the unfamiliar stove. Dinner was started after a fashion. Then it was time for the nurse to bathe Chuck, and Luella sat down alone at the kitchen table, and listened to the bubbling perfume that escaped from the pans.
«And women do this every day,» she thought. «Thousands of women. Cook and take care of sick people—and go out to work too.»
But she didn’t think of those women as being like her, except in the superficial aspect of having two feet and two hands. She said it as she might have said «South Sea Islanders wear nose-rings.» She was merely slumming to-day in her own home, and she wasn’t enjoying it. For her, it was merely a ridiculous exception.
Suddenly she became aware of slow approaching steps in the dining-room and then in the butler’s pantry. Half afraid that it was Doctor Moon coming to pay another call, she looked up—and saw the nurse coming through the pantry door. It flashed through Luella’s mind that the nurse was going to be sick too. And she was right—the nurse had hardly reached the kitchen door when she lurched and clutched at the handle as a winged bird clings to a branch. Then she receded wordlessly to the floor. Simultaneously the door-bell rang; and Luella, getting to her feet, gasped with relief that the baby doctor had come.
«Fainted, that’s all,» he said, taking the girl’s head into his lap. The eyes fluttered. «Yep, she fainted, that’s all.»
«Everybody’s sick!» cried Luella with a sort of despairing humor. «Everybody’s sick but me, doctor.»
«This one’s not sick,» he said after a moment. «Her heart is normal already. She just fainted.»
When she had helped the doctor raise the quickening body to a chair, Luella hurried into the nursery and bent over the baby’s bed. She let down one of the iron sides quietly. The fever seemed to be gone now—the flush had faded away. She bent over to touch the small cheek.
Suddenly Luella began to scream.
IV
Even after her baby’s funeral, Luella still couldn’t believe that she had lost him. She came back to the apartment and walked around the nursery in a circle, saying his name. Then, frightened by grief, she sat down and stared at his white rocker with the red chicken painted on the side.
«What will become of me now?» she whispered to herself. «Something awful is going to happen to me when I realize that I’ll never see Chuck any more!»
She wasn’t sure yet. If she waited here till twilight, the nurse might still bring him in from his walk. She remembered a tragic confusion in the midst of which some one had told her that Chuck was dead, but if that was so, then why was his room waiting, with his small brush and comb still on the bureau, and why was she here at all?
«Mrs. Hemple.»
She looked up. The weary, shabby figure of Doctor Moon stood in the door.
«You go away,» Luella said dully.
«Your husband needs you.»
«I don’t care.»
Doctor Moon came a little way into the room.
«I don’t think you understand, Mrs. Hemple. He’s been calling for you. You haven’t any one now except him.»
«I hate you,» she said suddenly.
«If you like. I promised nothing, you know. I do the best I can. You’ll be better when you realize that your baby is gone, that you’re not going to see him any more.»
Luella sprang to her feet.
«My baby isn’t dead!» she cried. «You lie! You always lie!» Her flashing eyes looked into his and caught something there, at once brutal and kind, that awed her and made her impotent and acquiescent. She lowered her own eyes in tired despair.
«All right,» she said wearily. «My baby is gone. What shall I do now?»
«Your husband is much better. All he needs is rest and kindness. But you must go to him and tell him what’s happened.»
«I suppose you think you made him better,» said Luella bitterly.
«Perhaps. He’s nearly well.»
Nearly well—then the last link that held her to her home was broken. This part of her life was over—she could cut it off here, with its grief and oppression, and be off now, free as the wind.
«I’ll go to him in a minute,» Luella said in a far-away voice. «Please leave me alone.»
Doctor Moon’s unwelcome shadow melted into the darkness of the hall.
«I can go away,» Luella whispered to herself. «Life has given me back freedom, in place of what it took away from me.»
But she mustn’t linger even a minute, or Life would bind her again and make her suffer once more. She called the apartment porter and asked that her trunk be brought up from the storeroom. Then she began taking things from the bureau and wardrobe, trying to approximate as nearly as possible the possessions that she had brought to her married life. She even found two old dresses that had formed part of her trousseau—out of style now, and a little tight in the hips—which she threw in with the rest. A new life. Charles was well again; and her baby, whom she had worshipped, and who had bored her a little, was dead.
When she had packed her trunk, she went into the kitchen automatically, to see about the preparations for dinner. She spoke to the cook about the special things for Charles and said that she herself was dining out. The sight of one of the small pans that had been used to cook Chuck’s food caught her attention for a moment—but she stared at it unmoved. She looked into the ice-box and saw it was clean and fresh inside. Then she went into Charles’s room. He was sitting up in bed, and the nurse was reading to him. His hair was almost white now, silvery white, and underneath it his eyes were huge and dark in his thin young face.
«The baby is sick?» he asked in his own natural voice.
She nodded.
He hesitated, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he asked:
«The baby is dead?»
«Yes.»
For a long time he didn’t speak. The nurse came over and put her hand on his forehead. Two large, strange tears welled from his eyes.
«I knew the baby was dead.»
After another long wait, the nurse spoke:
«The doctor said he could be taken out for a drive to-day while there was still sunshine. He needs a little change.»
«Yes.»
«I thought»—the nurse hesitated—»I thought perhaps it would do you both good, Mrs. Hemple, if you took him instead of me.»
Luella shook her head hastily.
«Oh, no,» she said. «I don’t feel able to, to-day.»
The nurse looked at her oddly. With a sudden feeling of pity for Charles, Luella bent down gently and kissed his cheek. Then, without a word, she went to her own room, put on her hat and coat, and with her suitcase started for the front door.
Immediately she saw that there was a shadow in the hall. If she could get past that shadow, she was free. If she could go to the right or left of it, or order it out of her way! But, stubbornly, it refused to move, and with a little cry she sank down into a hall chair.
«I thought you’d gone,» she wailed. «I told you to go away.»
«I’m going soon,» said Doctor Moon, «but I don’t want you to make an old mistake.»
«I’m not making a mistake—I’m leaving my mistakes behind.»
«You’re trying to leave yourself behind, but you can’t. The more you try to run away from yourself, the more you’ll have yourself
