Eleanore reached Daniel both her hands without saying a word. Gertrude, who was lying on the sofa, straightened up, smiled gently, and then lay down again. Daniel asked her what was the matter. Eleanore answered for her, saying that she had not felt well since some time in the afternoon. “She must go to bed, she is tired,” added Eleanore.
“Well, come then,” said Daniel, and helped Gertrude to get up. But her legs were without strength; she could not walk. She looked first at Daniel and then at Eleanore; she was plainly worried about something.
“You won’t care, will you, Father, if I go home with them?” asked Eleanore in a tone of flattery.
“No, go, child,” said Jordan, “it will do me good to be alone for a few minutes.”
Daniel and Eleanore took Gertrude between them. At the second landing in their apartment, Daniel took Gertrude in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom. She did not want him to help her take off her clothes; she sent him out of the room. A cup of warm milk was all she said she wanted.
“There is no milk there,” said Eleanore to Daniel, as she entered the living room. He stopped suddenly, and looked at her as if he had awakened from a fleeting dream: “I’ll run down to Tetzel Street and get a half a litre,” said Eleanore. “I’ll leave the hall door open, so that Gertrude will not be frightened when I come in.”
She had already hastened out; but all of a sudden she turned around, and said with joyful gratitude, her blue eyes swimming in the tears of a full soul: “You dear man.”
His face took on a scowl.
There was a fearful regularity in his walking back and forth. The chains of the hanging lamp shook. The flame sent forth a thin column of smoke; he did not notice it. “How long will she be gone?” he thought in his unconscious, drunken impatience. He felt terribly deserted.
He stepped out into the hall, and listened. There hovered before him in the darkness the face of Philippina. She showed the same scornful immobility that she showed when her father struck her in the face. He stepped to the railing, and sat down on the top step; a fit at once of weakness and aimless defiance came over him. He buried his face in his hands; he could still hear Theresa saying, “All that nice money.”