Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories | Page 6

they told her the next morning; but it could not last more than a few
hours now. It was impossible for John Kirby to live, they said; but John
Kirby lived.
He lived, to struggle through agonies undreamed of, back to days of
new pain. There were days and weeks and months when he lay, merely
breathing, now lightly, now just a shade more deeply.
There came a day when great doctors gathered about him to exult that
he undoubtedly, indisputably winced when the hypodermic needle hurt
him. There was a great day, in late summer, when he muttered
something. Then came relapses, discouragements, the bitter retracing of
steps.
On Christmas Day he opened his eyes, and said to the grave, thin
woman who sat with her hand in his:
"Margaret!"
He slipped off again too quickly to know that she had broken into tears
and fallen on her knees beside him.
After a while he sat up, and was read to, and finally wept because the
nurses told him that some day he would want to get up and walk about
again. His wife came every day, and he clung to her like a child.
Sometimes, watching her, a troubled thought would darken his eyes;
but on a day when they first spoke of the terrible past, she smiled at
him the motherly smile that he was beginning so to love, and told him
that all business affairs could wait. And he believed her.
One glorious spring afternoon, when the park looked deliriously fresh
and green from the hospital windows, John received permission to
extend his little daily walk beyond the narrow garden. With an invalid's
impatience, he bemoaned the fact that his wife would not be there that
day to accompany him on his first trip into the world.
His nurse laughed at him.
"Don't you think you're well enough to go and make a little call on Mrs.
Kirby?" she suggested brightly. "She's only two blocks away, you
know. She's right here on Madison Avenue. Keep in the sunlight and
walk slowly, and be sure to come back before it's cold, or I'll send the

police after you."
Thus warned, John started off, delighted at the independence that he
was gaining day after day. He walked the two short blocks with the
care that only convalescents know; a little confused by the gay, jarring
street noises, the wide light and air about him.
He found the address, but somehow the big, gloomy double house
didn't look like Margaret. There was a Mrs. Kirby there, the maid
assured him, however, and John sat down in a hopelessly ugly
drawing-room to wait for her. Instead, there came in a cheerful little
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Kippam. She was of the
chattering, confidential type so often found in her position.
"Now, you wanted Mrs. Kirby, didn't you?" she said regretfully. "She's
out. I'm the housekeeper here, and I thought if it was just a question of
rooms, maybe I'd do as well?"
"There's some mistake," said John; and he was still weak enough to feel
himself choke at the disappointment. "I want Mrs. John Kirby--a very
beautiful Mrs. Kirby, who is quite prominent in--"
"Oh, yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Kippam, lowering her voice and growing
confidential. "That's the same one. Her husband failed, and all but
killed himself, you know--you've read about it in the papers? She sold
everything she had, you know, to help out the firm, and then she came
here--"
"Bought out an interest in this?" said John, very quietly, in his winning
voice.
"Well, she just came here as a regular guest at first," said Mrs. Kippam,
with a cautious glance at the door. "I was running it then; but I'd got
into awful debt, and my little boy was sick, and I got to telling her my
worries. Well, she was looking for something to do--a companion or
private secretary position--but she didn't find it, and she had so many
good ideas about this house, and helped me out so, just talking things
over, that finally I asked her if she wouldn't be my partner. And she
was glad to; she was just about worried to death by that time."
"I thought Mrs. Kirby had property--investments in her own name?"
John said.
"Oh, she did, but she put everything right back into the firm," said Mrs.
Kippam. "Lots of her old friends went back on her for doing it," the
little woman went on, in a burst of loyal anger. "However," she added,

very much enjoying her listener's close attention, "I declare my luck
seemed to change the day she took hold! First thing was that her friends,
and a lot that weren't her friends, came here out of curiosity, and that
advertised the place.