The rest of the house was immediately aroused, and the room invaded by a body of lodgers and servants. Soon followed a couple of policemen, and finally the proprietor in person. The fact of suicide was so apparent that Roger’s presence was easily explained. From the child nothing but sobs could be obtained. After a vast amount of talking and pushing and staring, after a physician had affirmed that the stranger was dead, and the ladies had passed the child from hand to hand through a bewildering circle of caresses and questions, the multitude dispersed, and the little girl was borne away in triumph by the proprietor’s wife, further investigation being appointed for the morrow. For Roger, seemingly, this was to have been a night of sensations. There came to him, as it wore away, a cruel sense of his own accidental part in his neighbor’s tragedy. His refusal to help the poor man had brought on the catastrophe. The idea haunted him awhile; but at last, with an effort, he dismissed it. The next man, he assured himself, would have done no more than he; might possibly have done less. He felt, however, a certain indefeasible fellowship in the sorrow of the little girl. He lost no time, the next morning, in calling on the wife of the proprietor. She was a kindly woman enough, but so thoroughly the mistress of a public house that she seemed to deal out her very pity over a bar. She exhibited toward her protégée a hard, business-like charity which foreshadowed vividly to Roger’s mind the poor child’s probable portion in life, and repeated to him the little creature’s story, as she had been able to learn it. The father had come in early in the evening, in great trouble and excitement, and had made her go to bed. He had kissed her and cried over her, and, of course, made her cry. Late at night she was aroused by feeling him again at her bedside, kissing her, fondling her, raving over her. He bade her good night and passed into the adjoining room, where she heard him fiercely knocking about. She was very much frightened; she fancied he was out of his mind. She knew that their troubles had lately been thickening fast; now the worst had come. Suddenly he called her. She asked what he wanted, and he bade her get out of bed and come to him. She trembled, but she obeyed. On reaching the threshold of his room she saw the gas turned low, and her father standing in his shirt against the door at the other end. He ordered her to stop where she was. Suddenly she heard a loud report and felt beside her cheek the wind of a bullet. He had aimed at her with a pistol. She retreated in terror to her own bedside and buried her head in the clothes. This, however, did not prevent her from hearing a second report, followed by a deep groan. Venturing back again, she found her father on the floor, bleeding from the face. “He meant to kill her, of course,” said the landlady, “that she mightn’t be left alone in the world. It’s a wonderful mixture of cruelty and kindness!”
It seemed to Roger an altogether pitiful tale. He related his own interview with the deceased, and the latter’s menace of suicide. “It gives me,” he said, “a sickening sense of connection with this bloodshed. But how could I help it? All the same, I wish he had taken my ten dollars.”
Of the antecedent history of the dead man they could learn little. The child had recognized Lawrence, and had broken out again into a quivering convulsion of tears. Little by little, from among her sobs, they gathered a few facts. Her father had brought her during the preceding month from St. Louis; they had stopped some time in New York. Her father had been for months in great want of money. They had once had money enough; she could not say what had become of it. Her mother had died many months before; she had no other kindred nor friends. Her father may have had friends, but she never saw them. She could indicate no source of possible assistance or sympathy. Roger put the poor little fragments of her story together. The most salient fact among them all was her absolute destitution.
“Well, sir,” said the proprietress, “living customers are better than dead ones; I must go about my business. Perhaps you can learn something more.” The little girl sat on the sofa with a pale face and swollen eyes, and, with a stupefied, helpless stare, watched her friend depart. She was by no means a pretty child. Her clear auburn hair was thrust carelessly into a net with broken meshes, and her limbs encased in a suit of rusty, scanty mourning. In her appearance, in spite of her childish innocence and grief, there was something undeniably vulgar. “She looks as if she belonged to a circus troupe,” Roger said to himself. Her face, however, though without beauty, was not without interest. Her forehead was symmetrical and her mouth expressive. Her eyes were light in color, yet by no means colorless. A sort of arrested, concentrated brightness, a soft introversion of their rays, gave them a remarkable depth. “Poor little betrayed, unfriended mortal!” thought the young man.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Nora Lambert,” said the child.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“And you live in St. Louis?”
“We used to live there. I was born there.”