The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1931-07-31

| stage-door regime, was little above
! that of a managing janitor. His jobs
were chiefly mental chores. Locks to
! be repaired on apartment doors; foy-
| ers and elevators TO be kept in show
| state; vacant apartments TO be shown
to prospective tenants and alterca-
| tons of one sort or another TO be adj
| justed between his help.
There were cOmpensations, of
course He had married. meanwhile,
quiet, enormously strong and quite
personable girl who had been en-
ployed as housemaid in one of the
apartments of the building in which
children. Peter would have liked it.
hal there been. With the strange
pride of the frustrated. strong Tessa
would never admit her disappointment.
At fifty, Tessa, with one of those
quick corrosive changes which can
sometimes attack the strong. began TO
succumb to a cruel form of rheuma-
tiSm which knotted her joints so that
within a period of two years she be-
came practically bed-ridden. 1t was
terrible to be forced to behold the slow
disintegration of the magnificent body
that had been Tessa's. and with the
physical, there began slowly and
surely TO sink into desuetude the men,
tai companionable. sweet-hatured
and helpful woman began to slump
into a querulous, bed-ridden invalid,
half frantic most of the time with
pain; intolerant of it, all of the time.
Poor Peter! The spectacle of Tessa.
slippipg into her invalidism was one
which he could only watch with d
sense of helpless despair. More and
more, her predicament became a drain
upon hIs time and energies.
At fifty-five he had lost the position
of superintendent over the large upper
west side apartment house, and on
smaller pay, and in quarters much
more cramped, was presiding over the
tawdry destinies of a siX-story tene-
ment house on the lower east side
This time his living quarters were two
rooms below the level Of the sidewalk,
and his monthly stipend less than half
of what it had been in the larger
building. And yet in some ways life
was easier. The little apartment he
shared with the now completely bed
ridden Tessa, meant fewer hours to
devote to the chores Of keeping the
household moving.
hn ~
ronment of this house something so
depressing that 1t seemed to Peter,
struggling always with the problem of
keeping afioat the sinking spirits of
Tessa. as if the rows of days were
simply too drab TO face. II was not
alone his own plight, but day after
day there marched before his troubled
eyes the woes of the pcverty-stricken,
the lame, the halt, the blind, who
dwelt around them. Evtctions, for
reasons of poverty or sickness, were
not unusual.
1t was a grim, bitter job, this bust
ness Of being janitor to the poverty
stricken families of the building.
Sickness Iurked under that roof, crime,
CRIME and sometimes even hunger.
One old woman, as a matter of fact.
had been found dead in her rear apart
ment OF simple complaint easily dag
nosed. Hunger. Little wonder that
Tessa. who had always been sensitive
to pain of others, lay there not only
drenched in her own misery, but SEEM
ing to feel, with the antennae of her
intuition. the poverty that lay every
where around her.
Lean mean years filled with terror
Of one sort of another, but through
it all Peter and Tessa clinging fast
to the murky nest of the two rear
rooms they called home and as time
moved on Peter becoming more ard
more obsessed with the fear of losing
his job through having to give more
and more time TO the task of tending
Tessa.
The night that he found ruin of u
woman propped up against the door as
| he was about to enter his apartment
proved a memorable one.
1t was while he was picking her up
to carry her out to the curb and turn
her over to the mercies of the corner
| policeman, that recognition came to
| Peter. Recognition, and a fash Of an
ger so binding that it seemed TO him
for a moment that here. now nothing
could prevent his digging talons into
the throat of the creature before him.
Pent up in him, all through the years,
were passions about to be released.
Here in his arms a derelict. rem
nant. a skeleton of comic opera, was
the object of his lifetime of ha-
tred
Somehow again, once more, II did
not work out that way. Peters talons
| did not sink in to blemish that last
remnant of the beauty of Hilda $
throat. He has given her roof, and in
| her befogged way she knows that a
/ janitor, whom at heart she despiseS
for being a mental has come to her
succOr.
There are two women for Peter TO
tend now. The helpless Tessa and the
| curious temperamental derelict whom
| they have taken into their home.
Sometimes she sings and creates the
furore of cracked melody and pitiful
| dance in the little tenement they all
| share together
Sometimes she rises in wrath and
strikes the old janitor whose humble
| Iot she shares