Clancy stayed in bed the next morning. He got worse. He was cold. Nora lighted a fire in the range, but he shivered as if his heart and his bones were frozen. He doubled his knees up to his chest and snagged the blankets around him, but he couldn’t keep warm. Nora finally called the doctor, a man from Limerick. It was after ten before he got there. He said that Clancy should go to the hospital. The doctor left to make the arrangements, and Nora got Clancy’s best clothes together and helped him into them. There was still a price tag on his long underwear and there were pins in his shirt. In the end, nobody saw the new underwear and the clean shirt. At the hospital, they drew a curtain around his bed and handed the finery out to Nora. Then he stretched out in bed, and Nora gave him a kiss and went away.
He groaned, he moaned for a while, but he had a fever and this put him to sleep. He did not know or care where he was for the next few days. He slept most of the time. When John came back from Chicago, the boy’s company and his story of the trip picked Clancy’s spirits up a little. Nora visited him every day, and one day, a couple of weeks after Clancy entered the hospital, she brought Frank Quinn, the doorman, with her. Frank gave Clancy a narrow manila envelope, and when Clancy opened it, asking crossly what it was, he saw that it was full of currency.
“That’s from the tenants, Clancy,” Frank said.
“Now, why did they do this?” Clancy said. He was smitten. His eyes watered and he couldn’t count the money. “Why did they do this?” he asked weakly. “Why did they go to this trouble? I’m nothing but an elevator man.”
“It’s nearly two hundred dollars,” Frank said.
“Who took up the collection?” Clancy said. “Was it you, Frank?”
“It was one of the tenants,” Frank said.
“It was Mrs. DePaul”, Clancy said. “I’ll bet it was that Mrs. DePaul.”
“One of the tenants,” Frank said.
“It was you, Frank,” Clancy said warmly. “You was the one who took up the collection.”
“It was Mr. Rowantree,” Frank said sadly. He bent his head.
“You’re not going to give the money back, Jim?” Nora asked.
“I’m not a Goddamned fool!” Clancy shouted. “When I pick up a dollar off the street, I’m not the man to go running down to the lost-and-found department with it!”
“Nobody else could have gotten so much, Jim,” Frank said. “He went from floor to floor. They say he was crying.”
Clancy had a vision. He saw the church from the open lid of his coffin, before the altar. The sacristan had lighted only a few of the Vaseline-colored lamps, for the only mourners were those few people, all of them poor and old, who had come from Limerick with Clancy on the boat. He heard the priest’s youthful voice mingling with the thin music of the bells. Then in the back of the church he saw Mr. Rowantree and Bobbie. They were crying and crying. They were crying harder than Nora. He could see their shoulders rise and fall, and hear their sighs.
“Does he think I’m dying, Frank?” Clancy asked.
“Yes, Jim. He does.”
“He thinks I’m dying,” Clancy said angrily. “He’s got one of them soft heads. Well, I ain’t dying. I’m not taking any of his grief. I’m getting out of here.” He climbed out of bed. Nora and Frank tried unsuccessfully to push him back. Frank ran out to get a nurse. The nurse pointed a finger at Clancy and commanded him to get back into bed, but he had put on his pants and was tying his shoelaces. She went out and got another nurse, and the two young women tried to hold him down, but he shook them off easily. The first nurse went to get a doctor. The doctor who returned with her was a young man, much smaller than Clancy. He said that Clancy could go home. Frank and Nora took him back in a taxi, and as soon as he got into the tenement, he telephoned Mr. Coolidge and said that he was coming back to work in the morning. He felt a lot better, surrounded by the smells and lights of his own place. Nora cooked him a nice supper and he ate it in the kitchen.
After supper, he sat by the window in his shirtsleeves. He thought about going back to work, about the man with the cleft chin, the wife-beater, Mr. Rowantree and Bobbie. Why should a man fall in love with a monster? Why should a man try to kill himself? Why should a man try to get a man fired and then collect money for him with tears in his eyes, and then perhaps, a week later, try to get him fired again? He would not return the money, he would not thank Mr. Rowantree, but he wondered what kind of judgment he should pass on the pervert. He began to pick the words he would say to Mr. Rowantree when they met. “It’s my suggestion, Mr. Rowantree,” he would say, “that the next time you want to kill yourself, you get a rope or a gun. It’s my suggestion, Mr. Rowantree,” he would say, “that you go to a good doctor and get your head examined.”
The spring wind, the south wind that in the city smells of drains, was blowing. Clancy’s window
