I held out my hand mechanically, and he pressed it, and went with me to the door.
“Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street,” he repeated...
The mean and sordid aspect of Fowler Street emphasized and seemed to typify my despair, the pungent coal smoke stifled my lungs even as it stifled my spirit. Ugly factories, which were little more than sweatshops, wore an empty, menacing, “Sunday” look, and the faint November sunlight glistened on dirty pavements where children were making a semblance of play. Monotonous rows of red houses succeeded one another, some pushed forward, others thrust back behind little plots of stamped earth. Into one of these I turned. It seemed a little cleaner, better kept, less sordid than the others. I pulled the bell, and presently the door was opened by a woman whose arms were bare to the elbow. She wore a blue-checked calico apron that came to her throat, but the apron was clean, and her firm though furrowed face gave evidences of recent housewifely exertions. Her eyes had the strange look of the cheerfulness that is intimately acquainted with sorrow. She did not seem surprised at seeing me.
“I have come to ask about Mr. Krebs,” I told her.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “there's been so many here this morning already. It's wonderful how people love him, all kinds of people. No, sir, he don't seem to be in any pain. Two gentlemen are up there now in his room, I mean.”
She wiped her arms, which still bore traces of soap-suds, and then, with a gesture natural and unashamed, lifted the corner of her apron to her eyes.
“Do you think I could see him—for a moment?” I asked. “I've known him for a long time.”
“Why, I don't know,” she said, “I guess so. The doctor said he could see some, and he wants to see his friends. That's not strange—he always did. I'll ask. Will you tell me your name?”
I took out a card. She held it without glancing at it, and invited me in.
I waited, unnerved and feverish, pulsing, in the dark and narrow hall beside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung. Once before I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long ago with something of the same feelings. But now they were greatly intensified. Now he was dying....