THE CALVERTS
Chapter Two

They reached the hotel a few minutes later. It was small and sparsely furnished, but to John it looked like a palace. It was warm, and out of the rain, and brightly lit compared with the dark street outside.

The desk clerk looked at the sodden group, dressed in their ragged clothing. Allegro walked out to the end of his leash, like a self-appointed spokesman for the humans, and shook himself, spraying water everywhere.

"Ah...sir," the desk clerk began. "You aren’t allowed to bring dogs in here with you."

John sighed, trying to decide what to do. He couldn’t very well leave the puppy out in the rain, and he couldn’t travel any farther with the exhausted, shivering children.

Rose spoke up. "Oh, come now, how much is one tiny puppy going to hurt things?"

As if to emphasize her point, Allegro walked back to John and lay down on his feet, promptly falling asleep. John set Nadia down, and she knelt down to pet the puppy.

The desk clerk looked at them in consternation. People occasionally tried to bring their pets in with them, and he always had a hard time turning them away. This group looked as though they could have survived the Titanic, and one of the children was coughing miserably. He couldn’t turn them away.

"All right," he conceded. "But that animal had better not make any noise, or leave a mess on the floor."

John nodded. The puppy had already left a mess on the street, so he didn’t think there was much danger of the dog ruining the plain, hard floor of the hotel. The animal barked when upset, but his bark was still high-pitched and puppyish, and didn’t usually disturb anyone.

"How much for a room?" he asked.

"Two dollars," the clerk replied, eyeing the ragged group and wondering if they had that much between them.

"We’ll need two rooms," Rose added.

"There’s only one available."

Rose looked at John. She didn’t relish the thought of walking out on the streets again, but she couldn’t expect him to leave with the two little girls in need of shelter.

John gestured to her. "How large are American hotel rooms?" he asked her in a low voice.

"I don’t know. I’ve only stayed in expensive hotels." She paused. "You take the room. The girls need a place to sleep."

"I can’t send you back out into the rain like that."

"There’s only one room available, and the children need it more than I do."

"The only other option I can think of is to share."

Rose looked at him, then at the toddlers. "One of us would have to sleep on the floor."

"I will," John told her. He thought for a moment of how others would view this odd arrangement, but the strange turn of events that had brought him here had challenged his views of propriety, especially where the girls were concerned.

Rose dug into one of the inner pockets of her coat, extracting a twenty-dollar bill. "I will pay fifty cents," she told him, "and you will pay a dollar fifty, since three members of the group are yours."

John nodded, extracting one of the bills he had hidden inside the lining of his coat. "What is this?"

"It’s money," Rose told him, looking at him strangely.

He sighed. "I know that. But how does it relate to one dollar and fifty cents?"

Rose looked at the bill. "That’s a five dollar bill. You’ll get three dollars and fifty cents in change. There are one hundred cents in a dollar," she added, trying to explain American currency.

John just nodded, understanding what she was saying, although he was unfamiliar, for the most part, with American money. They brought the money to the desk clerk, who looked at them strangely when they insisted upon paying separately.

"We don’t allow any funny goings-on around here," he told them, refraining from taking their money until they had explained themselves.

"Don’t worry about it," John told him. "Rose is--"

"I’m his sister," Rose interjected, smiling at the desk clerk. "We prefer to keep our bills separate."

The clerk shook his head, not quite believing them, but unwilling to argue. The manager wouldn’t be back until the following afternoon, and he was in charge for the time being.

After John and Rose had signed in, the clerk gave them the key, and they escorted the sleepy children and whining puppy up the stairs. As soon as the children and dog were warmly ensconced in the bed, sleeping soundly, Rose looked at John.

"Are you going to sleep beside them, or shall I?" she asked, glancing at the bed. There was enough space for one adult to fit in beside the sleeping youngsters.

"You can take the bed," John told her, taking an extra blanket from the closet shelf and wrapping it around himself. "I can sleep on the floor."

"They’re your family," she replied, looking at the toddlers with the puppy curled up between them. "You should stay beside them."

"I’m more used to uncomfortable conditions than you are," he pointed out. "You’ve probably never slept anywhere that wasn’t comfortable."

Rose had to concede that he was right. She wanted her freedom, but some things would take some getting used to. "All right," she told him, pulling off her coat and hanging it on a hook in the closet, revealing her damp silk dress. She shivered. "I’ll take the bed."

So saying, she crawled beneath the covers, trying to find a comfortable position beside the sleeping children. Her damp dress was cold, and she wished she could remove it as well, but not with the man in the room. Shivering, she pulled the covers up to her chin.

John lay down on the hard floor, wishing he had someplace softer to sleep. Still, they were out of the rain, and in a warm room. Mary and Nadia were fast asleep, and Mary’s cough seemed to have stopped. Pulling the blanket tighter around him, he closed his eyes.

*****

Rose was awakened at sunrise by Nadia’s whimpers. The child was still curled up asleep beside her, but she was crying and calling out in her sleep, speaking in a language that Rose did not understand.

Rose didn’t know who Nadia was calling for, but suspected that it was someone she had lost on the ship. She wasn’t sure about the Calvert family, but she didn’t think Nadia belonged to John. There was no resemblance between the two, and Mary was so close in age that she was certain that the children did not share a mother.

She shook the little girl gently, waking her. Nadia stared up at her, startled, as Allegro crawled over and placed his head in the toddler’s lap.

"Are you all right?" Rose whispered to Nadia, pulling her into her lap.

Nadia stared at her uncomprehendingly, her dark eyes still filled with tears, before curling up into a ball in Rose’s lap and hugging the dog to her.

Rose sighed, rocking the child. She didn’t know what to make of this situation she had found herself in.

*****

A few hours later, John had the girls bathed, dressed, and fed a simple breakfast at a small restaurant two doors down from the hotel. He had taken Allegro around the back of restaurant, digging scraps out of the trash to feed to the dog, as he recalled some people doing both for their pets and for themselves in London. New York, he was already observing, was not so different. Perhaps Miriam had been right in her cynicism about the opportunities available in America.

He returned to the front of the restaurant as Rose came out, leading the two girls by the hands. Both toddlers were much more cheerful this morning, after a good night’s sleep and a filling breakfast. Rose had eaten with them, still asking for her own bill, and Mary had spent much of the meal admiring her. The toddler seemed in awe of the tall, redheaded woman, and Rose had bought a piece of penny candy for each of the children before leaving the restaurant.

She handed a bag of leftovers to John. "Here," she told him. "For later."

John nodded, taking the bag. On the rare occasions in London when he had spent the money to eat in a restaurant, he had always spirited away the leftovers with him. Some restaurant owners approved, some did not. John had always assumed that he was entitled to anything he paid for, and took what was left.

"Where are you going now?" Rose asked him, as they prepared to part ways.

"Ah...actually..." He dug the twenty dollar bill with the note on it out of his coat and showed it to Rose. "Would you happen to know where this is?"

Rose looked at the address. It was for a residence in one of the classier areas of the city. She had been there a few times, but wasn’t quite certain how to get there from the section of town they were in.

"Um...first you need to find out where in the city you are," she told him.

"Don’t you know?"

"We’re a few blocks from Pier Fifty-Four. That’s all I know. This isn’t the sort of place I’m used to frequenting."

After a few inquiries, they learned where they were. Rose, thinking quickly, told John where to find the neighborhood he sought, in the eastern portion of the city. She had noted the location of the el the night before while wandering the streets, and pointed out where it was.

John thanked her, walking away in that direction with the children and dog. He looked back once, to see Rose watching after them. He waved, wondering if they would see her again.

"Good luck, Rose Dawson," he mumbled under his breath, still not sure what her story was, or why she had been on the streets. Was there something about the upper class that drove young women away? Rose was the second first class woman he had met who had abandoned her old world. Miriam was the first, and he sincerely hoped that Rose’s fate was better than Miriam’s was.

John made his way to the el, trying to determine how to get to Miriam’s old neighborhood. He soon learned that the el did not go directly there, as it was an upper class neighborhood, and, after studying the schedule and locations that the train went to, he figured out which stop was the closest to where he was going.

Herding his small group into the noisy, crowded train, he found a seat and set the girls down, remaining standing himself. Holding Allegro in one arm, he watched the world go by outside the window, wondering what their reception would be at Miriam’s old home.

Chapter Three
Stories