Collins said, without looking up, “We hoped you’d get her; but instead of that, you’ve lost her. Rotten luck, old boy. Gillespie gone, the gal gone; it breaks you down to an ordinary level with the rest of us, doesn’t it?”
“You generally have something in that flask of yours, don’t you?”
“Generally.”
“Give it to me.”
“Easy on it. This stuff is a lot older than I am.”
Kildare tipped up the flask and drained it. Collins shook it, shook its emptiness, and sighed.
“O.K.,” he said. “I guess you need it. You’re tops with me, brother, but you’re a yellow dog with the rest of the hospital. By the way, where do you think the Messenger girl can be?”
He held out the newspaper. The disappearance was spilled right across the front page. Detective agencies, boy scouts, and the whole countryside out there in Long Island were looking for her. There was a twenty-thousand-dollar reward.
As Kildare read, Collins kept offering information.
“Don’t get in the path of the Cavendish or she’ll cut your throat, because it’s on account of your leaving, she says, that Gillespie is taking it easy over on Staten island. And she’d sort of like to keep you away. She thinks you’re the death of the old man. I talked to the Lamont girl too. She acts as though she never heard of you.”
“I sold my soul for a mess of pottage, didn’t I?” asked Kildare.
“Well, didn’t you?”
“I wish there were some more in that flask!”
“Jimmy, don’t be so damned smiling and desperate. There’s going to be another day and week and month and year. And you’ll be aces high again in the windup.”
“Will you shut up?”
“Sure.”
The telephone rang. His mother’s voice took him by surprise on the wire.
“I’m downstairs,” she said. “Can you see me?”
He wrenched off his clothes, got into whites so that his street dress would not start her asking questions, and hurried down to the reception room. The broad, unbeautiful face of his mother waited for him there. She hugged him, and he held on to her. The good soapy smell which was his earliest memory still clung to her.
“What’s wrong?” asked Kildare.
“Nothing, darling. Father had some people to see, so I sneaked over here. We’re going to be down for days.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Not a thing I’m telling you. We’re going to take time off and see the Fair.”
“What’s wrong?” insisted Kildare.
“Oh, Jimmy. I’m afraid that your father’s a sick man.”
“Wait till I get my hat. We’ll go over and see him.”
“You can’t. He’ll hate me if he thinks that I’ve talked out of school.”
“How does he seem?”
“Jimmy, Jimmy, it’s the heart! I swore that I wouldn’t tell you, and now it’s out!”
“Everybody has a heart,” said Kildare. “I’m going over to see him.”
“If you do, he’ll know that I’ve brought you. And he’ll never forgive me. Wait till tomorrow. Will you do that?”
“I’ll do that.”
“Are you all right, Jimmy?”
“Me? I’m right as rain.”
“There’s such a trouble in me that I can’t see whether or not you’re telling me the truth; but you sound as though you were lying, dear.”
“I’m not lying very much…I’ve got to see father.”
“If he knows you’re bothered about him,” said Mrs. Kildare, “he’ll turn a lot sicker than he is. I think what steadies him is knowing that while he’s going down, you’re going up. Ten times a day he starts telling me what Doctor Gillespie is doing for you, and what a great man you’ll be. If he died tomorrow, he’d die happy. Oh, what a weak fool I am to have come and blabbed to you, darling!”
“Tomorrow. I have to wait till tomorrow, do I?”
“You will wait?”
“I’ll do what you say. How does he look?”
“It seems to me that there’s a shadow in his eye, Jimmy. But maybe, after the report he’s had, it’s chiefly fear.”
“He’s had a report?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Jimmy! If God takes him, it’s in God’s own time. He’s had the life he’s wanted, and so long as he knows that you’re going on and up toward the top, nothing can make him really unhappy. I want you to think of it that way. And now I must run.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THERE did not seem to be enough air for breathing, and Kildare’s brain made no sense. It kept going around and around like a squirrel in a cage. He could prevent the family from knowing about his disasters for a few hours, but after that the blow would strike them doubly hard. He went up to the roof to see if breathing and thinking might be more possible there, but the fog would not lift from his brain.
After a moment he saw a woman coming toward him, stepping around the chimneys and the ventilators. There was rain-mist in the air so that the glow of New York came straight up from the ground and kept the towers all in a glow. This was the light by which he recognised Mary Lamont.
“I saw you coming up,” she said. “Do you mind my following?”
“Look,” said Kildare, “a day or two ago I was riding pretty high. I had the hospital by the heels, and all that. I was going to step into Gillespie’s boots. You know?”
“I know,” she said.
“Now I’m down,” said Kildare. “I’m socked in the eye. Gillespie hates my heart. Carew has no use for me. Everybody knows that I’ve tried to sell out for cash, only I wasn’t good enough to get by. And somehow that puts in my mind what I wanted to say to you a couple of days ago. I was going to tell you that if you were a few years older and I were making some money, I’d probably ask you to marry me.”
She stepped in close to him. Under her coat he could see the white of her uniform at the throat and there was a dim high light on her cheek and in her eyes.
“You’re damned nice,” said Kildare. “You’re going to be gentle and cherishing and all that before you smack me down.”
“Why did you wait till everything went wrong before you talked to me?” asked Mary Lamont.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I was a fool, I guess. Would you have thought it meant something a couple of days ago?”
She said: “I’m not very much in your mind. But you’re hurt and you want a bit of comfort. Isn’t that it?”
“I don’t know. You tell me, will you?”
“Are you just going to stand there?” she asked.
He took her in his arms.
“You don’t give a damn, but you want to make me happy,” said Kildare. “You’re rather nice. You’re all give and no take.”
He put a finger under her chin and pushed back her head a little, slowly. She made no effort to resist the small pressure.
“Tell me to go to the devil. Don’t be a nurse. I’m not so sick,” said Kildare.
“I think you’re terribly sick, Jimmy,” she said.
“I’m not,” said Kildare, “and don’t let me maul you around like this. If this keeps on for another minute, you’ll be fitted into my mind so that I never can get you out.”
“You’ll get me out whenever you want to,” she said.
“I wonder if you’d be damned fool enough to say that you’d marry me?”
“I wonder too,” she said.
“I’ve got sixty-seven cents a day.”
“I know.”
“I can tell you something that you won’t believe.”
“Can you?”