Chapter 4

( Originally Published 1915 )

IN WHICH IT APPEARS THAT DAME NATURE, PROMPTED BY HER TRADITIONAL ABHORRENCE OF A VACUUM, HAS ALREADY ACTED IN THE MATTER OF HILDA

LAVENUE'S was warm. Food and music were good. In the upholstered corners of the inner restaurant, one hardly heard the noisy chatter of the crowded cafe beyond the front partition. The food and the sip of wine steadied Hilda, and the music soothed her spirit.

She was beginning to feel comfortable now with the redoubtable Moran. Almost always men were more or less subtly aggressive with her, to so great an extent that she kept on her guard with them as a matter of course and all the time. But this man was not aggressive at all. It piqued her that he was not. He drank none of the wine, but expanding gradually in this warm atmosphere of physical well being, became more talkative.

In response to her shrewd questions, he told her, much about the boxing business—the sort of boys that are attracted to it, the exacting nature of the work, relations between boxers and their managers, ultimate money rewards. Her quick grasp on the practical side of it appealed to him; until finally she knew that he was talking to her as directly and frankly as he would have talked to a man. He even voiced his surprise, saying

"I never met a lady before that I could talk to this way."

"So ?" she remarked, smiling a little, and looking off at the violinist, who was so amusingly like a well-Ted young Beethoven. "I'm a business woman, you see."

"But the business women I've seen couldn't ask intelligent questions about the boxing game. They weren't interested."

Hilda's smile faded, slowly. She lowered her eyes, and thoughtfully turned a salt shaker round and round between her slim fingers.

"I worked for a very big man once," she said then, soberly. "It was my first job. His name was Harris Doreyn —The Doreyn Company, in Chicago. If I know anything I learned it from himi And one thing he impressed upon me above everything else was that I must always keep my mind open to new facts—no matter what."

He thought this over, deliberately, with knit brows. She covertly watched him as he worked it out, and then nodded. He was not a rapid thinker. But she felt that he would be thorough.

"I take it you're a success in business," said he, a little later.

"Oh, yes," she replied, "I suppose you would have to call me a success."

"And you've made good young."

"Young?" A. faint smile, that had in it something akin to bitterness, curled the corners of her mouth. "My dear man, I'm a thousand years old."

He frankly didn't understand this. So she changed the subject.

"Listen," she said, "what on earth are those crazy children doing with a baby ?"

He visibly collected his thoughts. "Oh," he replied then, "that's a queer story, too. We've only had it since morning."

"You don't mean that it is less than a day old ?" "Oh, no. About two months."

"And they were giving it paregoric !" she mused, aloud. Then, "Where's its mother ?"

"In the hospital at Auteuil. She's a girl that was dancing at the Parnasse."

"Where's the father, then ?"

Moran hesitated, then said—"He died last week. It's been very hard on Juliette—not like most of these Paris cases. He was really in love with her. They were to have been married this week. Pretty decent of him, too, the way these French people look at things. You see, she couldn't bring him anything—she had no dot. His death broke her all up. She's been walking around with a fever, and last night she went to pieces."

She liked him for his simple way of telling the pitiful little story. Then she fell to thinking of the baby. "Is it a boy or a girl ?" she asked.

"Girl," said he.

"What do those chorus girls know about babies?" "Not very much."

"They're such helpless little things !"

He made no reply, and for a little time they were silent. The well-fed young Beethoven was playing the hackneyed but haunting Humoresque, of Dvorak, with muted stringsi Hilda felt rather than heard the :plaintive melody. Her thoughts were on babies—plump little soft-skinned creatures, with fat legs and dimpled knees.

"I helped bring up my young sister and brother," said she, speaking as much to the salt shaker as to him. He inclined his head. "So much depends on taking just the right care of them."

They were silent again.

"Listen," said she. "How are they managing to-night? Aren't all those girls busy at the Parnasse ?"

"Yes, they're working. But one of the hotel maids is staying around."

"That isn't right," said Hilda. "You Can't just leave a baby with anybody."

"What are you going to do ?" said he. "there's the way it is."

"And it has colic."

"Nothing serious, the doctor said."

"But don't you see, everything depends on the feeding. You can't do it offhand. I know babies, and you can't. How often do they feed it? At regular times?"

"Oh, no. When it cries, mostly."

"Do they measure the amounts ?"

"I don't know about that. I don't think so." A moment later he said, bluntly, "You wouldn't want to come around and look things over, would you ?"

"Look things over ? How do you mean?"

"Why, I'll tell you"— he was a thought embarrassed now—"I don't think myself that baby's going to get the right kind of care in that crowd. And it's serious, you know."

"Yes," said she, thoughtfully, "it is serious."

"That's what I said to myself to-night. I've never been so close to a baby as this. And it struck, me—`This little thing's alive.' And, like you said, it's helpless. Seems to me it ought to be kept quiet and fed real carefully. Those girls are crazy, you know. They keep grabbing it up, and cuddling it, and fighting over it. I told them they'd excite it too much. And Blondie gave it some cndy."

Hilda sat straight up and. turned her eyes full o his. "Good heavens !" she cried. "That's awful !"

"That's what I thought," said he. "I got the candy out of its mouth with my finger. Of course, I know you couldn't give much time to it, but if you would come around to-morrow and sort of look things over . . ."

She was pursing her lips, and turning the salt shaker round and round, very slowly.

"I'll come," she said. And added, in a low tone, "I've got time enough for that—or something."

It occurred to Hilda that night, in a sleepless interval between efforts to fix her mind on the novel that lay propped on her knees, that the really sensible thing would have been to go directly to that baby and take charge. It would have been easy enough to arrange. Moran, the four American dancers, and several of the English chorus girls were staying at a little "American plan" hotel in the crowded district behind the Madeleine. She could have got a room there for herself and taken the baby right in with her for the night.

Still, there was the practical side of the situation to consider. She knew, for one thing, that she was dreadfully tired. All night the back of her head ached. And confused mental images of sweaty, nearly naked men in short trunks and blood-stained boxing gloves came and went in her mind until she could have got up, dressed, and, in sheer desperation, tramped about the streets. At moments, she even thought seriously of doing this, feeling that it might so exhaust her as to make sleep possible. But these impulses were always followed by the more sober reflection that the last thing on earth she could do would be to tramp about Paris, alone, in the small hours of morning. She was not even certain that had the matter been presented to her for a decision, she could have brought herself to go, late at night with her new and grotesquely fascinating friend to his little theatrical hotel, even for the purpose of caring for that pathetically homeless and helpless baby.

For Hilda Wilson's was by no means an unconventional nature. If she was stirring with resentments and incipient rebellions, these were quite vague in her mind. They did stir her. They had, it appeared, worn her nerves danger- ously close to the breaking point. They had got her into her present difficulty, making it necessary for her to give up her strong positive hold on life, her work. But they meant nothing more to her consciousness than an acutely personal problem.

The trouble was, doubtless, that with the job gone, there were no other interests in her life to takes its place. Nothing that she could lay hold on. And the job, for the present, was certainly gone. She could not reconsider after sending that cablegram to Joe Hemstead. He had never yet seen outright indecision in her, even in small matters. . . . She could not reconsider, anyway. For she was in no condition to carry the job.

No, a rest was indicated. But how on earth was she to get it? As she considered the difficulties that beset a youngish and distinctively attractive woman who may venture to travel aimlessly and unescorted about Europe, bitter feelings arose within her. It was difficult enough to manage, even with the job to steady one.

The fact appeared to be that she couldn't rest. The most she could hope to do would be to substitute some other positive interest for the job. If she could really manage this, it might work out as an equivalent to a rest. Or it might not.

She tried again to follow her novel. But never much of a reader, she felt the want of a reading habit to aid her in fixing her attention on the manufactured characters of the story. There suddenly flashed into her mind the problem of Annie Haggerty, the bundle wrapper in her department, who had "gone wrong." She had very properly regarded Annie as a demoralizing influence, and had urged strongly that she be dismissed. But Mr. Martin, backed as usual by Joe Hemstead, had pleaded for the girl. They were keeping her there now. She must talk with May Isbell about that. "Welfare work" was all right enough—a good thing, indeed—but there were practical limits. Then she fell to thinking again of tiger-like men, shining with sweat, who tore savagely at each other. . .

Many times during the night she came to the definite decision that she would keep away from Moran and his dancing and singing acquaintances; that she would even keep away from the baby, whose story had touched deep warm places within her. She thought, in swift flashes, of difficulties that would arise. It was erratic. It would be hard to explain. No, better an irresponsible journey.

But in the morning she did precisely what she had told Blink Moran she would do—went to the little "American plan" theatrical hotel back of the Madeleine. She even went earlier than she had intended.

It was of no particular use to think about substituting some other positive interest for the job. That matter had been taken out of her hands on the preceding afternoon when she went to a "the tango" in a taxi with a well-dressed, dignified prize-fighter and a badly dressed dancing girl with cow eyes. And she had seen rough men in an activity which was, it appeared, a business, and which had proved, as an experience, unexpectedly and intensely vital. Indeed, as she hurried through her breakfast and ordered a cab, it seemed to her that, underlying the confusions of that nearly sleepless night, the intention to do precisely this thing had never for an instant wavered. If she gave virtually no thought as to where this course might lead her, it was because she had already accepted it.

The rooms at the Hotel de l' Amerique—for such it was called—were not large, but they were reasonably clean. Hilda found the baby sleeping restlessly on a cot in the room occupied by Millicent and Blondie. The window was closed tight, and the air was heavy. The two girls were there, Blondie in bed, dozing heavily, with the remains of a petit dejeuner on a chair at her elbow; Millicent, in a somewhat ragged negligee, was brushing her teeth. Adele, who brought Hilda in, was dressed for the day. She looked white and tired.

Hilda and Adele stood by the cot, looking down at the new little human being.

"It isn't very fat," whispered Hilda.

"Not very," said Adele, ruefully.

The baby's eyelids opened and the eyes rolled, exposing the whites ; then the lids closed again. The corners of its little mouth curved upward. The lips were none too red.

"That's colic," observed Hilda. "No mistake about it."

"I'm afraid so," replied Adele.

Hilda looked at the rumpled hair and sleep-flushed complexion of the girl in the bed, and at the muss of breakfast things on the tray. She took in again the torn negligee of Millicent, who was now using a towel vigorously. She considered the litter of clothing and newspapers on the chairs and the floor. For a moment she stared thoughtfully out the window at a nest of chimney pots. "I've certainly got to do something," she thought. "I can't just loaf. Never in the worldi

"See here," she said, "I'm going to move in here and take care of this baby myself. Probably I can get a room."

"Oh—will you !" breathed Adele, with suddenly shining eyes and a tremulous smile. "I've worried so. It would be such a help !"

Accordingly Hilda engaged a room on the same floor. By early afternoon she had packed her wardrobe trunk and removed it from the big hotel on the Rue de Rivoli. She decided to keep her room there for the present. Otherwise May Isbell would wonder; and the men of Armandeville et Cie.

Before evening a baby's sleeping basket, decorated with pink ribbons, had been delivered at the Hotel de l'Amerique; and an alcohol lamp, and a dozen graduated feeding bottles, and tins of food preparations; and many bundles of white clothing. Also a clinical thermometer and other small parcels from the drug store. Blue and white porcelain bottles of very costly milk came from the laiterie in the Rue des Mathurins. And a book on the care of infants from the American book store.

At all which signs of personal authority and organizing ability, Adele and Millicent looked with frank and complete admiration. Blondie said it was kind of the lady.