Presley assented in meaningless words. He sipped his wine mechanically, looking about that marvellous room, with its subdued saffron lights, its glitter of glass and silver, its beautiful women in their elaborate toilets, its deft, correct servants; its array of tableware—cut glass, chased silver, and Dresden crockery. It was Wealth, in all its outward and visible forms, the signs of an opulence so great that it need never be husbanded. It was the home of a railway “Magnate,” a Railroad King. For this, then, the farmers paid. It was for this that S. Behrman turned the screw, tightened the vise. It was for this that Dyke had been driven to outlawry and a jail. It was for this that Lyman Derrick had been bought, the Governor ruined and broken, Annixter shot down, Hooven killed.
The soup, purée à la Derby, was served, and at the same time, as hors d’oeuvres, ortolan patties, together with a tiny sandwich made of browned toast and thin slices of ham, sprinkled over with Parmesan cheese. The wine, so Mrs. Gerard caused it to be understood, was Xeres, of the vintage.
Mrs. Hooven crossed the avenue. It was growing late. Without knowing it, she had come to a part of the city that experienced beggars shunned. There was nobody about. Block after block of residences stretched away on either hand, lighted, full of people. But the sidewalks were deserted.
“Mammy,” whimpered Hilda. “I’m tired, carry me.”
Using all her strength, Mrs. Hooven picked her up and moved on aimlessly.
Then again that terrible cry, the cry of the hungry child appealing to the helpless mother:
“Mammy, I’m hungry.”
“Ach, Gott, leedle girl,” exclaimed Mrs. Hooven, holding her close to her shoulder, the tears starting from her eyes. “Ach, leedle tochter. Doand, doand, doand. You praik my hairt. I cen’t vind any subber. We got noddings to eat, noddings, noddings.”
“When do we have those bread’n milk again, Mammy?”
“Tomorrow—soon—py-and-py, Hilda. I doand know what pecome oaf us now, what pecome oaf my leedle babby.”
She went on, holding Hilda against her shoulder with one arm as best she might, one hand steadying herself against the fence railings along the sidewalk. At last, a solitary pedestrian came into view, a young man in a top hat and overcoat, walking rapidly. Mrs. Hooven held out a quivering hand as he passed her.
“Say, say, den, Meest’r, blease hellup a boor womun.”
The other hurried on.
The fish course was grenadins of bass and small salmon, the latter stuffed, and cooked in white wine and mushroom liquor.
“I have read your poem, of course, Mr. Presley,” observed Mrs. Gerard. “ ’The Toilers,’ I mean. What a sermon you read us, you dreadful young man. I felt that I ought at once to ‘sell all that I have and give to the poor.’ Positively, it did stir me up. You may congratulate yourself upon making at least one convert. Just because of that poem Mrs. Cedarquist and I have started a movement to send a whole shipload of wheat to the starving people in India. Now, you horrid réactionnaire, are you satisfied?”
“I am very glad,” murmured Presley.
“But I am afraid,” observed Mrs. Cedarquist, “that we may be too late. They are dying so fast, those poor people. By the time our ship reaches India the famine may be all over.”
“One need never be afraid of being ‘too late’ in the matter of helping the destitute,” answered Presley. “Unfortunately, they are always a fixed quantity. ‘The poor ye have always with you.’ ”
“How very clever that is,” said Mrs. Gerard.
Mrs. Cedarquist tapped the table with her fan in mild applause.
“Brilliant, brilliant,” she murmured, “epigrammatical.”
“Honora,” said Mrs. Gerard, turning to her daughter, at that moment in conversation with the languid Lambert, “Honora, entends-tu, ma chérie, l’esprit de notre jeune Lamartine.”
Mrs. Hooven went on, stumbling from street to street, holding Hilda to her breast. Famine gnawed incessantly at her stomach; walk though she might, turn upon her tracks up and down the streets, back to the avenue again, incessantly and relentlessly the torture dug into her vitals. She was hungry, hungry, and if the want of food harassed and rended her, full-grown woman that she was, what must it be in the poor, starved stomach of her little girl? Oh, for some helping hand now, oh, for one little mouthful, one little nibble! Food, food, all her wrecked body clamoured for nourishment; anything to numb those gnawing teeth—an abandoned loaf, hard, mouldered; a half-eaten fruit, yes, even the refuse of the gutter, even the garbage of the ash heap. On she went, peering into dark corners, into the areaways, anywhere, everywhere, watching the silent prowling of cats, the intent rovings of stray dogs. But she was growing weaker; the pains and cramps in her stomach returned. Hilda’s weight bore her to the pavement. More than once a great giddiness, a certain wheeling faintness all but overcame her. Hilda, however, was asleep. To wake her would only mean to revive her to the consciousness of hunger; yet how to carry her further? Mrs. Hooven began to fear that she would fall with her child in her arms. The terror of a collapse upon those cold pavements glistening with fog-damp roused her; she must make an effort to get through the night. She rallied all her strength, and pausing a moment to shift the weight of her baby to the other arm, once more set off through the night. A little while later she found on the edge of the sidewalk the peeling of a banana. It had been trodden upon and it was muddy, but joyfully she caught it up.
“Hilda,” she cried, “wake oop, leedle girl. See, loog den, dere’s somedings to eat. Look den, hey? Dat’s goot, ain’t it? Zum bunaner.”
But it could not be eaten. Decayed, dirty, all but rotting, the stomach turned from the refuse, nauseated.
“No, no,” cried Hilda,
