By degrees Buffalo was beginning to look like his old self. The vacant look I sometimes caught in his eyes had gone and his reflex was getting back to normal. I had given him a couple of my old Munroe suits and some comparatively discreet shirts which seemed to react on him psychologically. He had become Big Bill's aid, our official bouncer, and each morning worked me out with the gloves before we started shooting.
We had been on the picture about a week when he said to me:
"You know, there's a swell girl where I'm stopping knows you."
"What's her name?" I said.
"I forget," said Buffalo. "I forgot to ask her."
"How do you know she knows me?"
"She seen one of them photos with me and you and Miss Mersereau, and she spots you right away. She wants to keep the pitcher, so I tell her sure, keep it."
"What does she look like?" I said.
"Swell looking kid."
"That don't tell me what she looks like. Is she brunette, blond, fat, thin, big or little?"
"I forget how big she is, I never seen her outa bed. She got it bad from what they tell me. I'd say she ain't any too big."
"What do you mean she got it bad?"
"Ain't been outa bed in a month."
"What's wrong with her?"
"Plenty." Buffalo tapped his chest. "And that ain't all,"" he said.
"Lungs, you mean?" I said.
"Up against it bad. Ain't paid her room rent since she took sick and the old woman ain't got the heart to throw her out. She always paid up regular before she quit work."
"Work? What was her job?"
"Hustling."
"Try and tell me what she looks like," I said.
"She's like anyone else if it wasn't for them eyes of hers. When she sees that pitcher of you I wish you'd seen them eyes. 'Where is he now?' she says to me, taking me by the hand, me sitting on her bed. 'You gotta tell me all about him', she says. 'He ain't changed at all and it's going on four years since I seen him'."
"What color is her hair?" I said.
"Kinda blond."
"And her eyes?"
"Kinda grey, kinda blue. But it ain't the color gets you. It's the way she looks at you. Jesus, when she looks at you with them eyes you'd give her your shirt."
"Doctor with her?"
"I never seen one around," said Buffalo. "She was spitting blood last night."
"Didn't say where she knew me?"
"Sure."
"Why the hell didn't you say so in the first place?"
"Sure," said Buffalo. "Noo Haven."
"What was she doing in New Haven?"
"Hustling," said Buffalo. "She says she seen me a few times."
I got up. My heart had begun to beat fast all of a sudden. "Belle Dock?" I said, taking him by the shoulder.
"Sure," said Buffalo. "One of them side-street joints on the way up to the Red Building."
"Must be," I said—more to myself than Buffalo. "Can't be anyone else...Daisy."
"That's her name," Buffalo said. "I remember now that you mention it."
"Is there a phone where you live?" I asked.
"Sure, downstairs in the hall. But she can't go dowstairs."
I went in to Miss Greenberger's office and got Doctor Markovitch on the wire.
"What's that address again, Buffalo?" I said, and repeated it over the line.
"Third floor," said Buffalo.
"Can you go over right away, Doc?" I said. "Urgent case."
"Two patients are here now," he said. "I will go in about half an hour."
Buffalo was knocking gently on the door of a third floor hall bedroom, his ear to the jamb. He stood aside for me to go in first. There was not much light in the room. The bed was behind the door, and as the girl lying on it turned, her movement caused a creaking of broken mattress springs. From the wasted oval of her face her eyes were smiling up at me, and the light was still in them, these eyes that made her a woman apart. Her hair had grown long and lay about her on the pillow. I thought it had become a little darker. And there we were after nearly four years, looking at each other, not knowing what to say, or maybe just unable to say it, and I was holding her, very frail and wasted, in my arms and she was crying a little. I leaned back to get a good look at her, and then I took her face in my hands and kissed her eyes, but when I put my lips to her mouth she pushed me away with an abrupt startled movement, holding up a finger in warning.
"I forgot that," I said. "Buffalo told me one of your lungs was on the bum."
"If that was all!" she said.
"What else?" I said.
She lay back on the pillow, gathering her kimono closer about her, looking at me very hard.
"What else?" I insisted.
She shook her head.
"Daisy," I said, "you must tell me everything."
She closed her eyes, turning her head away from me, and opened her kimono. There was a stained towel under it. I pulled it away....Her breasts were covered with sores....She drew the kimono about her again.
"The doctor came?" I asked.
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He took blood from my arm, and—" she touched her lips, "—I had a coughing spell while he was here. Some of that too he took along."
He said nothing?"
"Said he'd have a talk with you."
"I was going to stop by at his office on the way down but I couldn't wait to see you. I'm going to ring him up now," I said.
"No, no...not yet," she said, holding me.
Her hands were thin and wasted like her face, but her eyes were brighter than I had ever seen them, and her lips quite red, though there was no rouge on them.
"There's no hurry," she said. "Nothing he can do."
"Don't say that," I said. "He's a great doc. He'll have you up and around before you know it."
She smiled and shook her head. "I'm so happy to have you with me again," she said.
"You're going to get well," I said.
"You didn't forget me?" she asked.
"Not for a day," I said.
"You like me...still?"
"I love you, you little bastard," I said. "Always I'll love you... "Why did you go away?"
On my shoulder she hid her face.
"Why did you go away?" I repeated.
"Maybe because I loved you too," she whispered.
Buffalo had slipped out, but I knew he was in the hall.
"You've got to get another room," I said. "There's not enough air here and the L makes a hell of a racket. Have you eaten anything today?"
"No appetite," she said.
"Buffalo!" I shouted..."Buffalo, go down to that Greek lunchroom across the street and have them send up a bowl of soup and some fruit....That can't hurt you," I said to her.
When he came back with it I said I was going to phone the doctor, and had to see someone at the office. But Buffalo would stick around.
"You won't be long?" she said, catching at my sleeve.
"Not if you promise to take some food."
"I promise," she said.
I was sitting in Doctor Markovitch's consulting room, staring at the crosses marked on the Wasserman blood analysis.
"It is the t.b. I do not like," he said.
He flicked with his fingernail the positive report from the laboratory on the presence of tubercular bacilli.
"We moved her into the room across the hall," I said. "Bigger, more air. Less noise from the L."
"The nurse come?"
"With her now."
Then I shot the question at him that was on my mind.
"What are the chances, Doc?"
"Quite frankly, not very good....This t.b...." he shook his head.
"And the other?"
"Whether I begin the treatment now or in two weeks time make no difference. With her condition I prefer to wait. I treat the t.b, first."
"She's in bad shape all right," I said.
He raised his hands.
"Undernourished, no resistance...and the life she led! Three months since the hemmorhages start."
"Can she hold out, you think?"
"I cannot say. This t.b.! The other is a question of time."
I heard the door of the waiting room open and close. This was the third time. I got up.
"Don't tell her what you think, Doc," I said. "It won't help her any to know it. When we can move her I'll shoot her up to that sanitorium you were talking about. I know you'll do your best."
"It mean a lot to you that she get well," he said looking at me curiously.
"A lot," I said.
At the door he said reflectively: "She is not like the girls of her métier I treat every day."
"From a good family," I said. "Near Providence. Guy she left home with ditched her in New Haven, in the family way....Her people wouldn't take her back... Kid stillborn. She worked in a store, then in a concession at Savin Rock. In with a bad bunch there.... On the docks a year later, that's where I knew her.... Just didn't have any luck."
"I will do all I can, but I do not give you false hope," he said.
I got up an hour earlier every morning so that I could spend some time with Daisy before going to the studio. I worked with Buffalo and the landlady to make her new room bright and cheery. Fresh flowers were sent up every day and Buffalo bought her a canary. I got her a gramophone with a lot of records they played in New Haven when we were there: Glow Worm, selections from The Quaker Girl, Oh You Beautiful Doll!, All Alone, Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own, and On the Mississippi. The latest records, too, I brought her. The landlady, relieved to have the back rent paid up, went to no end of trouble to prepare the dishes the doctor had prescribed for Daisy. Before she was married she had been cooking for Vanderbilts, she said. She could not have taken better care of Daisy had she been her own daughter. The nurse was a cheerful woman with a sense of humor, and put Buffalo and me out when she thought Daisy had been talking too much and saw the flush mounting to her cheeks.
"Her mind needs to get well as much as her body, or I'd have put you out long ago," she used to say, excusing herself for letting us stay so long.
The nurse was right. Each day our patient's morale improved. She seemed to be taking a new interest in life, and to be filled with a real desire to get well, and a confidence that her recovery was assured. Buffalo's canary helped us a lot. There was a whistling record, and every time we put it on the canary would pipe up in opposition and try to drown it out. Daisy never got tired of this duet. She named the canary Whistling Rufus. After a while he got so tame she used to leave the door of his cage open and let him fly around the room.
I was working hard at the studio and everything was going smoothly. We were ahead of schedule and Julius beamed on me. The cameraman I had brought from the Vitagraph made Mersereau look better than she had ever looked on the screen, and the story gave her plenty of opportunity to do what she did best.
When Sunday came I spent most of the day between Daisy's room and the Greek restaurant across the street. Daisy's spirits were good, and Doctor Markovitch seemed more hopeful about her than he had been since the start.
The next week we lost three days work on account of retakes, due to laboratory trouble. The big Bowery set was up. I had started shooting it on Saturday and, to keep the picture within the estimate, Julius asked me to work half a day Sunday and get through with it. I could not very well refuse. On Saturday the doctor decided to begin a mild 606 treatment. On Sunday morning Daisy was not feeling any too good, and when I told her I had to work she began to cry.
"I've been waiting a whole week for today," she said.
"Listen," I said, "I'll be through by noon. If I didn't have to work I wouldn't, and you know it. I'm leaving Buffalo here, and if there's anything you want all he has to do is phone me."
When I kissed her goodbye she held on to me, and I said:
"Now, listen, if you act that way I won't be able to keep my mind on my work, and it will take just that much longer to make the scenes."
"I'm sorry," she said. "But I feel so bad today I want you with me. It isn't fair, I know...You've been wonderful to me."
"It's eight now," I said. "I'll be back by one o'clock."
I put on the whistling record and let Rufus out of his cage. He perched on the corner of the gramophone and piped up with a flurry of wings and feathers that always made her laugh.
This time she just smiled a little. When I got to the door she waved and kissed her hand to me.
All went well until eleven o'clock. I was finishing up the sequences I had started on Saturday. There were about sixty extras working, and the set had to be changed a bit to show a lapse of time before taking the last two long shots. While they were redressing it and changing the lights I went down to phone.
"How soon can you come in?" said Buffalo when I got him.
"Anything wrong?" I said.
"There's two things," he said. "When you was gone the nurse opens the window and the canary gets away.... That starts her crying again, and a while ago she starts spitting blood."
"You called the doctor ?"
"Sure. That's how you got me so quick. Was downstairs talking to him. He's coming over."
"Only two scenes left. Car is waiting for me. Tell her I'll be right in," I said.
Halfway through the next long shot the lights went out. It was twenty minutes before they came on again. I figured I could make a cut, and overlapped the last half of the scene, but before it was finished the lights turned yellow and then went out again.
"Jesus! What the hell is it now?" I yelled.
"Looks like the generator," said the boss electrician, and beat it over to the power house.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. I sent a man over after him. The cameraman was at the sliding doors that overlooked the yard, thirty feet below. Some one was yelling up at him.
"What is it?" I called.
"Main line," he said. "They just phoned through. Have the juice in an hour. How about going to lunch?"
I started for the power house without answering him. On the way down they called me to the phone.
"Yes, yes...talking. Who is it?" I said.
Buffalo's voice said:
"Someone wants to talk to you."
"Yes," I said. "Go ahead."
And then her voice came to me over the wire, very weak:
"Come back to me...quick...please, oh please!....I am going to die...I want you with me...I'm afraid to be alone!"
"I'm coming," I shouted. "Right away...right away...you hear me?"
"Don't lose no time," said Buffalo's voice.
"Where is she?" I said.
"She made me carry her down so she could talk to you herself."
"Get her back to bed. I'll be right in," I said and hung up.
As I beat it for the door Julius came out of his office. He called after me but I paid no attention. He followed me. As I opened the door of the car he grabbed me by the arm.
"Where you going?" he asked, "You'll have the lights in a few minutes."
"Let go of me,"" I yelled at him, and to the driver: "The ferry....Step on it!"
"What's the matter with you, crazy?" Julius called after me.
In fifteen minutes we drove up the wooden runway to the ferry. They were hauling the chain across it. The boat was pulling out.
"Next boat in twenty minutes," said the driver.
From the 125th Street ferry we drove to the nearest subway station. I got off at 42nd Street. One hour and forty minutes after I had quit the studio I was at the house.
When I stepped into the hall Buffalo and the landlady were at the foot of the stairs. She was wiping her eyes with the backs of chapped hands, having no apron. One look at the two of them told me.
"The doctor came?" I said for something to say, feeling the need.
"Just left," said Buffalo. "Nothing he could do."
As I started up the stairs I saw the nurse coming down. She turned to go back with me. Buffalo and the Landlady started up after us. I signed to them to let me go up alone.