whole East Side is in a panic of shopping, he had seen a bewigged and
beshawled matron shed a purse and pass on her way unheeding. Promptly
Abraham set his foot upon it, carefully and casually he picked it up,
and then, all inconveniently, he remembered Miss Bailey and her
admonitions! Miss Bailey and her anecdotes of boys who, in circumstances
identical with his, had chosen the path of honor, and had found it to
lead to riches, approbation, glory, and self-righteousness.
Abraham opened the purse. It contained fifteen cents. He appropriated
the nickel as a first instalment of the reward so soon to be his, and
then sped fleetly--as Miss Bailey's heroes had ever done--after the
brown-shawled matron and glory. But the matron had evidently not been
trained in the school of high honor. She regarded Abraham with
suspicion rather than with gratitude. She examined the purse in the same
spirit, and her investigations led to loud outcries upon her part, and
to swift flight upon Abraham's.
Abraham Wishnewsky was so ill-advised as to confide the details of this
adventure to a young gentleman who rejoiced in a rabbit face, close-set
lashless eyes, and the name of Isidore Cohen. Isidore was new to Room
18, and new to his place beside the gentle Abraham. Miss Bailey and her
applied ethics were startlingly new to him. And he never reported to
Abraham any effort to experiment in revolutionary doctrines.
Some of the more credulous among the feminine First Readers also weighed
these precepts in the balance and found them wanting.
"You know how Teacher says," Sarah Schodsky remarked to Bertha
Binderwitz, as the two friends, arms intertwined, heads close together,
walked and talked in the yard at the recess hour. "You know how she says
we dasen't never to tell no lies."
Bertha nodded. "That's how she _says_," she agreed.
"Well," resumed Sarah, "you see how Mamie Untermeyer don't comes no more
on the school?"
Bertha had remarked this absence.
"Well, Mamie she lives by her auntie. She is got a awful auntie. Und she
asks her auntie for a penny for buy hokey pokey. Und her auntie makes a
mean laugh und says, 'What you think I am, anyway?' und Mamie, she tells
it right out what she thinks over her auntie, like Teacher says, 'We
shall all times tell what we thinks.' She lays on the bed now mit
bangages on the head. It ain't so awful healthy you shall tell truths
on aunties."
This report also reached the rabbit ears of Isidore Cohen. And again he
wondered that Miss Bailey should waste her time--and his--in folly.
And then he made an amazing discovery. Teacher actually believed what
she taught. She was ready to meet confidence with trust, and to practise
what she preached.
"I never seen nothing like it," he reported to his friend, Hymie
Solomon. "She looks like she knew a awful lot, but she don't know
nothings 'tall."
"What do you suppose is the matter with her?" demanded Hymie. "Miss
Blake, she don't act crazy. She don't give us no talk 'out no sense."
Now Hymie and Isidore were old friends and cronies. In the days before a
Truant Officer and their distracted fathers had consigned them to
school, Hymie and he had trod the ways which might have led them to the
Children's Court and the Reformatory; but the Board of Education chanced
to be the first power that laid hands upon them, and Hymie, who was a
year older than his friend, and who had once undergone some intermittent
education, was put in Miss Blake's class, while Isidore, virgin soil
where prescribed learning was concerned, joined the First Readers. Miss
Bailey's teachings as reported by Isidore formed amazing subjects for
conversation.
"Und she says," he would report, "that nobody dasn't to steal nothings
off of somebody."
"Then how does she think we shall ever get anything?"
"Somebody shall give it to us."
"Who?"
"Teacher ain't said."
"No, I guess she ain't. I'd like to see her gettin' along on just what
was give to her."
"Well," Isidore remembered, "she says we shall 'work-un-strive.'"
"She does, does she? An' git pinched by the Gerry Society? She knows as
good as you do that nobody would let you work. An' she knows as good as
you do, too, that craps ain't safe round here no more; an' that you just
can't git nothin' unless you take it. She's actin' crazy just to fool
you."
"No, she ain't," Isidore maintained, "she don't know nothings over them
things."
"An' her grown up," sneered Hymie; "say, but you're easy!"
This faith in and affection for Miss Bailey were not confined to the
little First Readers who inhabited Room 18 from nine until twelve, and
again from one until three. These were Miss Bailey's official
responsibilities, but Gertie Armusheffsky's education was a private
affair, though her devotion was no less wholehearted. Her instruction
was carried on sometimes amid the canaries and fern baskets of Room 18,
and sometimes at Miss Bailey's home.
For Gertie, though nearly fifteen years old, was allowed but rare and
scanty freedom for the pursuit of learning. The grandfather with whom
she lived had imported her from Poland to assist him in the conduct of
his little shop in Goerck Street.
He was a miserly old man. The shop was little and mean, and Gertie's
life in it was little and miserly and mean. These things she bore with
the wonderful patience or stoicism of her race. She bore, too, bad air,
long hours, and uncongenial toil, but she could not bring any
resignation to bear on the lovelessness of her life, the squalor, the
ugliness.
"I ain't puttin' up no kick," she would assure Miss Bailey, in her newly
acquired and strictly modern vernacular, "about doin' all the woik in
the store, an' in the back room too. Didn't I know I was comin' over to
cook an' sew an' see to everything for him? What gits on my noives is
his everlasting grouch."
"It must be hard," Miss Bailey acquiesced, "especially as you have no
one else, no friends."
Gertie shook her head. "Ain't got a friend in the world only you," said
she. "How could I have any one come to see me with him carryin' on like
he does? An' I can't get away from him. He paid my way over, an' if I
did git a job the Gerry Society would give me back to him."
"But you're nearly old enough now," Miss Bailey encouraged her, "to do
as you please, and you're getting on so nicely with your reading and
writing that you will be able to get a very good position."
"Not 'til he's dead," the girl answered. "I guess you wouldn't learn me
no more if you knew how often I wish he'd choke himself, or fall down
cellar, or go out an' git run over. But he don't never go out. He says
he's afraid something would happen to the store. But that's a pipe! What
bothers him is the cash he's got tucked around in crazy places. Every
once in a while I fall into some of it, and then he 'most has a fit
explaining how it's change a customer is comin' back for. Last year it
wasn't quite so bad. He went to night school one term. You would have
died laughing to see him all folded up at a kid's desk tryin' to write
in a copy book. They learned him to write three words that term, but
when he found out that he couldn't read them in print, it sort of
discouraged him, and he stayed home."
"It's awfully hard for you," Miss Bailey repeated, "but you mustn't let
yourself say such things or think such things--about his getting killed,
I mean--it's not"--she found herself on the verge of saying "Christian,"
but remembered that Gertie made no pretence to the Christian
virtues--"not loving," she ended, and felt that the meaning of the two
words was very much the same.
"Well, I don't love him," said Gertie shortly, "I hate him!"
"That's another thing you mustn't say."
"All right, I won't say it. I do it all the time."
"What's the capital of Massachusetts?" demanded Miss Bailey, changing
the subject with a jerk.
"It's Grandpa's capital that's bothering me," laughed Gertie, but she
allowed herself to be led away from the trials and problems of Goerck
Street into the cool groves of learning.
* * * * *
A few mornings later Miss Blake, whose kingdom, Room 17, bordered upon
Miss Bailey's territory, bustled into Room 18 with a fat and elaborate
purse in her hand.
"You know that wicked little Hymie Abrahams who seems to be always
getting into trouble," she began, when the First Readers had stiffened
to straight "attention" and sat, each in his little place, like some
extraordinary form of tin soldiers.
Miss Bailey nodded. She had indeed for many days been haunted by the
fear that Hymie Abrahams would perpetrate some too flagrant breach of
discipline, and be degraded to the First Reader class, and she
naturally dreaded the advent of such a wolf among her little lambs.
"Well," said Miss Blake, "he can't be all bad. I guess he has some human
feelings. He brought me this bag this morning. Says his mother doesn't
need it any more, and wants me to have it. It's almost new, you see, and
really very handsome. Just let me show you the fittings. I guess his
mother wouldn't find much use for powder puffs and mirrors and
smelling-salts. Not if I know anything about the women of the East Side,
she wouldn't."
She spread the glittering useless things upon Miss Bailey's desk, and
the force with which this bribe carried away her earlier dislike showed
that Hymie Solomon had mastered the art of character reading. And Miss
Bailey, as she reviewed the dainty paraphernalia spread before her,
found herself wondering how soon Madame Solomon would miss her treasures
and come storming in pursuit of them. And beside Miss Bailey's desk sat
Isidore Cohen in an agony of doubt and disillusionment. His one childish
attribute was that of believing that all he knew must be common
knowledge. Therefore he argued that the powers before him knew as well
as he did that Hymie Solomon was motherless, and that Miss Blake would
be most unwise to look her gift purse in the pedigree. And so, as Miss
Blake exhibited and Miss Bailey admired, the work of weeks was undone.
One teacher was acting as a "fence," and another was cheering and
encouraging her. He had doubted this "honesty the best policy"
propaganda from the first. But he had believed in the sincerity of its
prophet.
Yet he might have been prepared. Had not his father, wise and
experienced in the ways of the world, armed him with the formula:
"Krists is fakes"? His own adventures had corroborated this, and Miss
Bailey from the very first had made no attempt to conceal her connection
with that despised sect. Of course she was a fake. No more than half an
hour ago she had thrilled her audience with misinformation, and
manufactured biography all going to prove the nobleness--even the
expediency--of honesty; and now she was purring delightedly over the
fruits of Hymie's sleight-of-hand.
Isidore's was not a sentimental nature. Idealism was not his forte. And
yet he could not help wishing that, if only for the confusion of Hymie
and his father, Miss Bailey had proved to be "on the level."
Mr. Cohen _pere_ believed in nothing but the rights of man, though his
opinion of man was so low as to preclude his having any rights at all.
He was especially opprobrious toward all those in authority, and he
made no exception in the case of his son's teacher. "She belongs to the
machine," he would asseverate with warmth. "Run by the machine, paid by
the machine, a part of the machine. Policemen, firemen, teachers,
inspectors, they are all the same. All parts of the big machine. And
what is it chewing? Us. What does it live on? Us again. Don't you try to
fool me about that teacher of yours."
Isidore had been making no such attempt, and he repudiated the idea with
scorn. He was accustomed to vehement paternal outbreaks, for Mr. Cohen
was a popular orator in his social club, and he often rehearsed his
eloquence in the home circle. Not often, however, did Isidore understand
or remember the fervid periods. This attack upon Miss Bailey he did
remember, though he did not understand. To him a machine was a
sewing-machine, and his father, though he evidently meant something,
could not have meant to associate her with that most useful member of
the family.
"Just like all the rest of them," his father had said. "A grafter," and
now that Miss Blake had fallen from honesty, what proof was there that
Miss Bailey was not equally approachable?
And certainly Miss Blake played the game with the promptness and surety
of an old understanding. Influence or income are the counters in the
game, and she dealt both cheerily. Three days after the presentation of
the purse the post of Monitor of Supplies in Room 17 fell vacant, and
Hymie Solomon received it. That was the influence, he was "holding down
a job." Two days later he discovered a market for surplus textbooks and
other school supplies. Thus was the income assured. No one could doubt
Miss Blake was familiar with the rules.
"You'd never believe," said she to her neighbor in fond and unfounded
pride, "what a little responsibility will do for an almost incorrigible
boy. You wouldn't know Hymie. He stays behind almost every afternoon
when I go home, getting things straightened out."
"They all have their good points," said Constance Bailey. "I am thinking
of doing something of the same kind about Isidore Cohen. We must hold
their interest, you know."
It was about a week later. Miss Bailey and her monitors were putting
Room 18 to rights after the stress and storm of the day. Gold-fish,
window-boxes, canaries, and pencil points were all being ministered to
by their respective supervisors, and the door opened and Gertie
Armusheffsky appeared. Such a distracted, tear-stained, white-lipped
Gertie that Miss Bailey swept her monitors into their weird wrappings
and dismissed them with all speed.
"I can't go home," cried Gertie in desperation. "Honest, Miss Bailey,
he'd kill me if I did."
And after listening to the girl's story, Miss Bailey congratulated
herself that she had no other charges old enough to be caught in trouble
as difficult.
Old Mr. Armusheffsky had read of a fire in a Brooklyn glove factory:
hundreds of pairs of damaged gloves were spoken of. Now Mr. Armusheffsky
kept his store very dark, and only the most fatal damages could be
detected in its dim light. Catastrophes such as this of the glove
factory were his opportunities. He always--he never left the store--sent
Gertie to negotiate with the bereaved manufacturers, the insurance
agents, or whoever chanced to be in authority over the debris. Upon this
day there chanced to be no debris: the fire and the firemen had done
their work. There was no one even to interview. And Gertie, somewhat
apprehensive as to her grandfather's displeasure and disappointment, set
out for home. She enlivened her homeward way by a visit to a big
department store, where she envied the be-pompadoured damsels behind the
counters; plunged into the squirming crowd around a bargain table and
secured a jabot of real German Mechlin lace for thirteen cents. After
this transaction she had in her purse the twelve cents left of her
quarter dollar, and the jabot, the check showing its cost and the date,
an unused trolley transfer, and the five dollars deposit which she was
to have paid on the purchase of gloves. The purse was of the hand-bag
variety, showy yet strong. It had been given to her as a reward and an
encouragement by Miss Bailey.
"An' when I got off the car at the 'loop'," she ended, "an' changed into
the Second Avenue cable, somebody in the crowd swiped me bag. I didn't
have even a transfer left, an' I had to walk here. I was pushing along
in the crowd lookin' at the signs 'Beware of pickpockets', an' thinkin'
it was good I had no pockets to pick, when it come over me that my bag
was gone. Just that easy! Me what ought to have known better. Say, you
know it would be just as good as suicide to go an' give that 'pipe' to
Grandpa. So I was thinking maybe you'd go round and sort of break the
news. He's got a lot of respect for you. An' honest, I ain't kiddin'.
He'd kill me for that five dollars." Then with sudden fury she ended,
"I'd kill _him_ for five cents."
Miss Bailey had never responded with less alacrity to a cry for help.
She had a genuine horror of the fierce, sore-eyed old vulture, with whom
she had had to struggle so determinedly for the privilege of teaching
Gertie. "Of course," she said at last, "he will have to know--" But Miss
Bailey was wrong, Mr. Armusheffsky never knew.
Room 18's door opened again to admit two policemen, one plain-clothes
man, who silently showed his badge to Miss Bailey, and three garrulous
and dishevelled neighbors of the Armusheffsky menage.
At sight of Gertie the neighbors grew vociferous, triumphant. The
policemen stationed themselves one on either side of Gertie, and the
plain-clothes man explained to Miss Bailey that old Armusheffsky had
been found murdered in his store, and that every man and woman for
blocks around was as ready as these incoherent samples to testify that
his granddaughter had often wished him dead, and had sometimes
threatened to kill him.
"So I guess," he ended pleasantly, "that 'The Tombs' will be this young
lady's address for a spell."
"But I've been in Brooklyn all day," protested Gertie when at last she
found speech.
"Can you prove it? Talked to anybody? Got any witnesses?"
Gertie recapitulated her story.
"Got the goods you bought? Got the check on them?"
Gertie explained the loss of the purse.
The plain-clothes man shook his head. "I'm sorry, Miss," said he to Miss
Bailey, "but I guess it's a case for the sergeant. Of course if that
hand satchel turns up it will be all right, but the case looks bad to
me. She ain't the first what took the quickest way out of things she
couldn't stand. I don't blame them myself, but that's the jury's
business. Mine is to take the girl along with me. Your thinking so much
of her will go a good ways to help her out. The patrol wagon is at the
door. We'll just be moseying along."
Gertie went with him without a word. Her escape from her grandfather's
vituperations seemed to make her oblivious to everything else. Miss
Bailey, however, was comforted by no such blindness. She realized that
tragedy, perhaps death, had come to Room 18, and she set about averting
them with characteristic energy.
The one frail thread upon which Gertie's life hung led to one or two
pawn shops whence purses, not hers, were reported. Then it snapped, and
a whole mountain of circumstantial evidence was piled up in readiness to
drop on her defenceless head when the days of the trial should come.
Constance Bailey had never been so close to tragedy before, and she bore
the juxtaposition very badly. She persisted in, and insisted upon
effort, after the police and the reporters had done their best and
worst. But always she was met, though never quite daunted, by the
challenge to produce the purse with the proofs of alibi.
Under these conditions it naturally occurred that the little First
Readers received but a very divided attention. Affairs of state in Room
18 were left largely to the board of monitors, and more than ever did it
seem desirable to Isidore Cohen to secure a portfolio within that
cabinet. For more than a week he had been ready to present his
application. The proof of his fitness for office was wrapped in a
newspaper under the decayed mattress upon which he slept. And he only
waited a propitious moment to lay it and his application before
Teacher. Her new habit of dashing away at the stroke of three had
hitherto interfered with his plan, but about a week after Gertie's
arrest he found courage to elude the janitor, and to make his way to
Room 18 at a quarter past eight in the morning.
And Miss Bailey arriving--pale, distraught, and heavy-eyed--at eight
twenty-five, found the lost purse lying upon her blotter, and Isidore
Cohen ready with the speech of presentation.
"Mine auntie," it began--he had never had an aunt--"she don't needs this
pocket-book no more. You can have it."
Miss Bailey dropped into her chair. "Isidore!" cried she. "Oh, Isidore!
You're the cleverest boy! I would rather have this bag than anything
else in the world."
A moment later her joy was gone again. The bag was absolutely empty, and
Constance Bailey did some of the keenest thinking of her career.
"It would be quite perfect," said she, "if I only had a few little
things in it. Perhaps a transfer, a lace collar, or some pieces of
paper"--she caught the gleam in Isidore's rabbit eye, and amended
quickly--"not money, of course. It would be foolish to carry money in a
bag like this"--the gleam vanished--"but just a few papers and things
would seem more natural."
"Stands somethings like that to my house," Isidore vouchsafed
generously. "Mine auntie don't needs them too."
"Then perhaps," said Constance Bailey carefully, "perhaps, dear, your
aunt would let me have them."
"I likes," said Isidore, dashing off at an unmistakably natural tangent,
"I likes I shall be monitors maybe off of somethings."
Miss Bailey felt the teeth of the trap, but she knew that her hand was
touching the very life of Gertie Armusheffsky, and she made no effort to
escape. "And what sort of a monitor would you like to be?" she asked
casually.
"Off of supplies," was his decided answer.
"I think that could be arranged," she replied. "And these little things
to put in my bag?"
"I could to git 'em 'fore the other kids comes in," said Isidore.
And a few moments later she had obtained leave of absence from the
principal, and was buttoning her gloves while she gave her final
instructions to the substitute who would minister until luncheon hour to
the First Readers.
"I'm quite sure you will have no trouble. The children understand that
I shall be back in the afternoon. If you want pencils, paper, or
anything else, Isidore Cohen will get them for you. For Isidore"--and
she laid her hand upon his narrow head--"Isidore is monitor of
supplies."
Very late that afternoon a disillusioned monitor of supplies fared
unostentatiously homeward from Room 18. He had never met candor equal to
Miss Bailey's, and he was in the grip of the paralyzing conviction that
for as long as he remained within her sphere of influence, honesty would
be the only expedient policy.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 32 (illustration): "healthy or somebody" changed to "healthy for
somebody".
Page 43: "be the man" changed "by the man".
Page 150: "or the hospital ward" changed to "or at the hospital ward".
Page 244: "chauffers" changed to "chauffeurs".