Read Ebook: Die Romantik der Chemie by Nagel Oskar

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Ebook has 816 lines and 35052 words, and 17 pages

"Name?" growled the doctor. Jeremiah Madden sank to a chair and told his name, of his wife, and how sick she was. He also interspersed a few facts about Irish moors, love and business in America. And he ended with: "An my doc he sez' no one can save her but Doctor Van Dorn. He's the cancer man of New York. The only one who can possibly save her! He sez that," repeated Jeremiah. "Oh fer Gawd's sake, Doc! I can't pay yuh now but--"

The doctor swung about in his swivel chair. "My time is entirely mortgaged," he stated curtly. "I can't keep up to my work. Your wife will probably die anyway; accept the inevitable. You couldn't pay me, and I haven't the time. All New York bothers me. Good morning."

He turned back to his desk. Jeremiah went toward the door. His step was a blind shuffle. Hand on the knob, he paused. "Doc," he said, "I love her so, an' the little kids, they need her. I feel like she'd live if you'd help her. I promise I'd pay. All my life I'd pay an' thank Gawd I could--" he stopped. The doctor moved his shoulders impatiently.

"The Virgin will reward yuh--" said Jeremiah. "Oh, Doc! Fer Gawd's sake!"

"Good morning," answered the doctor with another impatient move of his shoulders. Jeremiah left. A young person in crisp white said, "Your turn next, Madam." Madam went in. "Oh, Doctor, my heart--" she began. The doctor got up to move her chair so that the light would not trouble her.

Jeremiah spent the morning in going from office to office. First he told the unfavourable report of his doctor. He met sympathy in some quarters, curt refusals in others, and worst of all he sometimes met: "Cancer of the stomach? Not much chance--"

At half after one, sick from the sunlight of the cruelly hot streets, he turned into an office for his last try. He felt numb.... His tongue was thick. He looked with resentment on a well-dressed woman who waited opposite him. "Flowers on her bunnit," he thought, "while my Mary--" He thought of his hard labour and, with bitterness, of the "Boss." He had never felt this way before. If he'd had money, he reflected, how quickly that first doctor would have helped him.... The other refusals had come from truer reasons. His own doctor's report, although Jeremiah didn't realise this, had stopped all efforts. If the doctor had said no one but Van Dorn could help her, Lord, what chance had they? This was their line of reason.

Jeremiah sat in the outer waiting room. At last his turn came. The doctor looked tired; he was gruff in his questions. "I'll come with you and look at her," he said at last. Jeremiah felt a sob rise in his throat. The doctor rang a bell.

"Tell Miss Evelyn," he said to the maid who answered him, "that we'll have to give up our drive this afternoon. She's my little girl," he explained to Jeremiah. "Her mother's dead,--I don't see as much of her as I should. A doctor has no business with a family. I'm ready. Come on."

They went out by a back door, leaving an office full of patients. The sun was hot. Jeremiah prayed fervently even while he answered the doctor's questions and responded to his pleasantries. At last they came to the building which held Jeremiah's home. They mounted the long stairs. Two or three children, playing on them, stopped their squabbling and looked after the doctor with awe.

"He's got a baby in that case," said one, a fat little girl with aggressive pig-tails.

"There is too many now," said a boy. "They don't all get fed, and they're all beat up fierce. Our teacher in that there corner mission sez as how Gawd is love. Why don't he come down here an' love?"

There was an awed silence after this. Outright heresy as it was, the immediate descent of a thunderbolt was expected.

Upstairs Jeremiah opened the door of the flat. The kitcheiche Kultur haben k?n Several of them sobbed loudly.... Johnny Madden sat on the table, eating a piece of bread thickly spread with molasses. On seeing Jeremiah the women were suddenly silent. Jeremiah swayed and leaned against the door.

The small Cecilia heard him and came from the bedroom.

"Paw," she said, "I'll do all I kin fer yuh. I always will.... She was happy. She sez as how she seen green fields an' rain." Jeremiah took her in his arms. He hid his face against her thin little shoulder. His shook. Cecilia was very quiet. She had not cried. She looked over her father's head at the roomful of gaping women. Something flashed across her face. Her teeth set.

The man sobbed convulsively and Cecilia remembered him. "She was happy," Cecilia said in a less assured tone. "She sez as how she seen green fields with rain on 'em like Ireland."

THE VISION OF A PROMISED LAND

As Mrs. Madden had said, "The kids that grow up better than their folks go to the devil." Cecilia felt this at eleven, for she was all of Johnny's mother, and the role was a difficult one. She had learned to spat him and kiss him judiciously, and at the proper times. She had learned to understand his marble games and to coax him into attendance at Catechism.

Cecilia had begun to understand a great many things at eleven that some of us never understand. One thing made learning easy for her,--she loved so greatly that she was often submerged into the loved, and so saw their viewpoint.

"Paw," said Cecilia. She had turned about on the piano stool, and Jeremiah looked up from his paper. "Well?" he questioned.

"I been thinking," she said, "that it would be genteel to ask the priest to supper. It ain't as though we hadn't a hired girl to do fer us, an' it would be polite."

"That's so, that's so," said Jeremiah. He laid aside his paper. "You're like your maw," he added. Cecilia knew he was pleased. She smiled happily.

"An' have ice-cream?" suggested the interested Jeremiah.

"Yes," said Cecilia, "an' chicken, an' fried potatoes, an' waffles, an' of course pie, an' biscuits, an' suchlike. I'd like to entertain Father McGowan, he's been good to us."

"Yes," answered Jeremiah. They were both silent. The vision of an overcrowded and smelling flat had come to sober them. Also the memory that always went with it.... "Play me 'The Shepherd Boy,'" said Jeremiah. He closed his eyes while Cecilia banged it out in very uneven tempo, owing to difficulties in the bass.

Johnny came in. He sat down on a lounge covered with a green and red striped cloth. He looked at Jeremiah with a supercilious expression.

"The other fellahs' fathers wears their shoes in the house," he stated coldly. "The Shepherd Boy" stopped suddenly. Cecilia went toward the "parlor." "Johnny!" she called on reaching it. Johnny followed meekly. The parlor was the torture chamber. When he went in Cecilia put her hands on his shoulders.

"Johnny," she said in her gentle little way. "Um?" he answered, wriggling beneath her hands.

"Johnny," she repeated, "it ain't polite to call down your paw."

"I know, dear," said Cecilia. "I know, but it ain't polite to call down your paw, an' nothing can make it so."

"Aw right," answered John sullenly. Cecilia leaned over and kissed him. John didn't mind, "none of the fellahs being around." He went back to the living room. Jeremiah had put on his shoes. He looked at Johnny, awaiting his approval.

"An' Norah," said Cecilia, excited to the point of hysteria, "you see that I get the plate with the crack in it, an' the glass with the piece outa it."

"Sure, I will," answered Norah. "Now go 'long."

Cecilia went to the dining room. They were going to eat there, because they were going to have company. Norah was not going to sit down with them either. It was to be most formal and "elegant."

And now for the decorations. Cecilia put on two candlesticks, each at a corner of the table. They did not match, but why be particular? Then she took a bunch of peonies, and, removing all foliage, jammed them tightly in a vase that had the shape of a petrified fibroid growth, and had accumulated gilt, and a seascape for decoration.

"It looks bare," said Cecilia. She went to her room and brought out a new hair-ribbon, worn only twice. She unearthed this from below a hat trimmed with pink roses. The hat was gorgeous and beautiful, but she could not wear it.... Looking on "bunnits with pink roses on 'em" always made her a little sick. The hair-ribbon was tied around the vase in a huge bow. Cecilia stood off to admire.

"Norah!" she called.

Norah appeared. "Ain't that grand?" she commented. "Now ain't it?"

"Well," answered Cecilia, "I don't care if I do say it, I think it's pretty swell! Norah, you use the blue glass butter dish, won't you?"

"Sure," answered Norah, and then with mutters of waffle batter, she disappeared. Cecilia stood a moment longer looking at the table in all its beauty. The plates were upside down. Napkins stood upright in tumblers. The knives and forks were crossed in what was to Cecilia the most artistic angle.

Father McGowan was a charming guest. He looked at the decorations and then on the small Cecilia with softened eyes: "Now I'll bet you fixed this beautiful table!" he said. Cecilia nodded, speechless. She drew a long, shaky breath. Life was so beautiful.... Father McGowan put his hand on her curls. His touch was very gentle.

"Good little woman?" inquired the priest of Jeremiah.

"She's maw and all to all of us," answered Jeremiah. There was a silence while they ate.

"This chicken," said Father McGowan, "is fine!"

"It's too brown, I'm afraid," answered Cecilia with the deprecatory attitude proper while speaking of one's own food. Her father looked at her with pride. The priest's eyes twinkled.

The priest leaned across the table. "Have you a patent protection on those bricks?" he asked.

"Why, no," answered Jeremiah. The priest talked long and fast. Cecilia could not understand all of what he said, but he mentioned unusual qualities of Jeremiah's product. His own knowledge of such things came through a brother in the same business. The necessity of a little risk and a big push. He talked loudly, and excitedly. He mentioned Cecilia and John as the incentive to gain.... He spoke of what he knew to be true of Jeremiah's product. Jeremiah sat very silent. If what the priest said were true! They went to the living room, where, over a pitcher of beer, there was more talk, incomprehensible to Cecilia.

Then the priest smiled, and said: "All right, Jerry. In five years you'll be a millionaire. Now, Cecilia, I want to hear a piece." Cecilia sat down to play "The Shepherd Boy." Her fingers trembled so that it wasn't as good as usual, but the priest was pleased. Then she left, and wiped the rest of the dishes for Norah. Norah said that the priest was a "swell talker" and that she hadn't minded the extra work.

Cecilia went up to bed very happy. She slipped out of her pink silk dress and hung it in the closet. As she reached up, a hat, all over bobbing roses, slid from the closet shelf to the floor. Cecilia's smile faded. She put it back, and shut the door.

THE FIRST STEP INTO CANAAN

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