"Well, that was the trouble--he'd been at it then. But nothing like as bad. After we'd been out there about a month he disappeared for a whole week. They took him back at the store, and gave him another chance; but the second time they discharged him, and he drifted round for ever so long before he could get another job. We spent all our money and had to move to a cheaper place.
Then he got something to do, but they hardly paid him anything, and he didn't stay there long. When he found out about the baby--""The baby?" Ann Eliza faltered.
"It's dead--it only lived a day. When he found out about it, he got mad, and said he hadn't any money to pay doctors' bills, and I'd better write to you to help us. He had an idea you had money hidden away that I didn't know about." She turned to her sister with remorseful eyes. "It was him that made me get that hundred dollars out of you.""Hush, hush. I always meant it for you anyhow.""Yes, but I wouldn't have taken it if he hadn't been at me the whole time. He used to make me do just what he wanted. Well, when I said I wouldn't write to you for more money he said I'd better try and earn some myself. That was when he struck me. . . . Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about yet! . . . I tried to get work at a milliner's, but I was so sick I couldn't stay. I was sick all the time. I wisht I'd ha' died, Ann Eliza.""No, no, Evelina."
"Yes, I do. It kept getting worse and worse. We pawned the furniture, and they turned us out because we couldn't pay the rent;and so then we went to board with Mrs. Hochmuller."Ann Eliza pressed her closer to dissemble her own tremor.
"Mrs. Hochmuller?"
"Didn't you know she was out there? She moved out a month after we did. She wasn't bad to me, and I think she tried to keep him straight--but Linda--""Linda--?"
"Well, when I kep' getting worse, and he was always off, for days at a time, the doctor had me sent to a hospital.""A hospital? Sister--sister!"
"It was better than being with him; and the doctors were real kind to me. After the baby was born I was very sick and had to stay there a good while. And one day when I was laying there Mrs.
Hochmuller came in as white as a sheet, and told me him and Linda had gone off together and taken all her money. That's the last Iever saw of him." She broke off with a laugh and began to cough again.
Ann Eliza tried to persuade her to lie down and sleep, but the rest of her story had to be told before she could be soothed into consent. After the news of Ramy's flight she had had brain fever, and had been sent to another hospital where she stayed a long time--how long she couldn't remember. Dates and days meant nothing to her in the shapeless ruin of her life. When she left the hospital she found that Mrs. Hochmuller had gone too. She was penniless, and had no one to turn to. A lady visitor at the hospital was kind, and found her a place where she did housework;but she was so weak they couldn't keep her. Then she got a job as waitress in a down-town lunch-room, but one day she fainted while she was handing a dish, and that evening when they paid her they told her she needn't come again.
"After that I begged in the streets"--(Ann Eliza's grasp again grew tight)--"and one afternoon last week, when the matinees was coming out, I met a man with a pleasant face, something like Mr.
Hawkins, and he stopped and asked me what the trouble was. I told him if he'd give me five dollars I'd have money enough to buy a ticket back to New York, and he took a good look at me and said, well, if that was what I wanted he'd go straight to the station with me and give me the five dollars there. So he did--and he bought the ticket, and put me in the cars."Evelina sank back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft of the pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they held each other without speaking.
They were still clasped in this dumb embrace when there was a step in the shop and Ann Eliza, starting up, saw Miss Mellins in the doorway.
"My sakes, Miss Bunner! What in the land are you doing? Miss Evelina--Mrs. Ramy--it ain't you?"Miss Mellins's eyes, bursting from their sockets, sprang from Evelina's pallid face to the disordered supper table and the heap of worn clothes on the floor; then they turned back to Ann Eliza, who had placed herself on the defensive between her sister and the dress-maker.
"My sister Evelina has come back--come back on a visit. she was taken sick in the cars on the way home--I guess she caught cold--so I made her go right to bed as soon as ever she got here."Ann Eliza was surprised at the strength and steadiness of her voice. Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss Mellins's baffled countenance: "Mr. Ramy has gone west on a trip--a trip connected with his business; and Evelina is going to stay with me till he comes back."
