In these tragic days Barry Malleson also did heroic service. It is true that he was not possessed, to any considerable extent, of the power of initiative. And it is true also that he had little capacity for making organized effort. But, acting under the advice and instruction of others, he made his work invaluable. His chair at the office of the Malleson Manufacturing Company had been practically deserted for weeks. He was not needed there. As a matter of fact he never had been needed there. But the cessation of the company’s activities, and the president’s attitude of hostility toward him, had made his presence at the factory even less necessary, not to say less welcome, than it had ever been before. He was entirely free to engage in charitable work, and to the best of his ability, and to the extent of his means, he did engage in it. And it was none the less to his credit that his labors in this behalf were carried on under the direct supervision of the rector of Christ Church, and of his zealous co-workers, Ruth Tracy and Mary Bradley. Many a desolate home was lightened, for the time being at least, by his cheery words, his winning smile, and his material gifts as he made his scheduled calls or accompanied the Widow Bradley on her pathetic rounds. For she, too, had vacated an office chair to give her time to charity. She traveled the streets of poverty-stricken sections by day, and many a night she spent at the bedside of the sick, or in well-nigh hopeless efforts to comfort those in the deepest of all affliction. What little money she had, beyond an amount sufficient to supply her own daily needs, was soon exhausted, for she could not bear to see suffering while she had a penny to relieve it. But the sympathy of her heart, the comfort of her voice, the work of her hands, these things were inexhaustible.
She sat, one night, at the bedside of a dying child—a poor, half-starved, half-frozen waif of a girl, offspring of improvident and penniless parents, innocent victim of the stubbornness of forces contending for economic mastery. The tossing of the shrunken little body had ceased, and no moaning came now from the pale, pinched lips. The child lay, mindless, motionless, with weakly fluttering pulse, waiting, unwittingly, for the long release. Out in the one other room the mother sat, huddled over the embers of a wood fire in a broken stove, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, hopeless and horror-stricken. At midnight Barry Malleson came in. He had not knocked at the door. He had found knocking in these doleful days to be a superfluous task. The woman barely noticed him as he entered. She did not lift her face from her hands. By the light of the tallow dip in the other room he saw Mary Bradley sitting at the bedside of the child. She motioned to him to come in.
“Will I disturb her?” he whispered, as he tiptoed to the door.
“No,” she replied; “nothing will ever disturb her again.”
“I heard you were here,” he said, “and I came to walk home with you. It’s after midnight.”
“That was very thoughtful of you, Barry. But I shall not go home to-night. I can’t leave the woman, and I can’t leave the child. Don’t you see I can’t leave her?”
His eyes followed hers toward the bed, and rested for a moment on the white, pathetic face, marked with the sign of speedy dissolution, lying quietly against the soiled pillow.
“I see,” he said. “What’s to be done?”
“Nothing,” she replied, and repeated, “nothing; nothing.”
“You know,” he continued, “I’d stop this whole fiendish business in five minutes if I had any voice in the board; but they won’t listen to me, not one of them.”