PARDONED
IT was one of the most memorable fights that ever had taken place
on that field. For some reason no official was about at the time to
interrupt the battle, and the monitors took a chance in order to see
the sport. The big boy fought like a young tiger, but Joshua’s enduring
qualities won for him in the end, and he beat his enemy unmercifully
before it was over, gouged at his eyes and bit his thumb, and pounded
him until he was a squalling, sobbing, whimpering thing, pleading only
that the fight might end.
Beaver Clegg finally arrived and pulled Joshua off the prostrate boy.
He led him by the arm with quick steps toward the Juvenile Department,
where they faced each other in the little office.
Clegg’s face had been red and mottled until then, but now it became
pallid as he slowly shook his head and brushed nervously at his canted
nose.
“At last, Joshua--at last,” he said morosely. “I thought you could hold
out.”
Joshua’s nose was bleeding, and one eye was almost closed. His
face was covered with dust, and the blood mixed with it made him a
disreputable-looking figure indeed. But his lips were straight and
untrembling, and his one good eye looked steadily at his mentor.
“I have held out, Mr. Clegg,” he said. “I’ve put up with a lot more
than I’ve told you about. But I had to do that. They were goin’ to
parole me at the end o’ the year.”
Clegg sat up straight, and his thick lips parted in surprise and
comprehension.
“Joshua Cole, do you mean that you deliberately started a fight with
Twenty-three forty-four in order to lower your record for good behavior
so that you would not be paroled?”
“Yes, sir--that’s it,” Joshua replied. “I want to stay here with
you and study astronomy. That means more to me than a T-and-H
medal--and--and I don’t wanta go home.”
For a long time Clegg’s colorless eyes looked at him steadily, and his
face was hard to read. Then the eyes began to grow bluer until they
became dark and purple, and Clegg rose briskly.
“All right, Joshua,” he said. “I shall report you to the
superintendent, and then you will be taken to the North Wing and
punished. Do you know how you will be punished, Joshua?”
“Yes, sir--I’ve heard about it. I--I hadn’t forgotten that.”
“Very well, Fifty-six thirty-five. That’s all for the present.”
But as the boy turned away Clegg strode after him and caught his arm at
the door. “You--I’m sorry, Joshua,” he faltered, and his eyes gleamed
with tears. “But you and I have made our own rules, and I guess there
was no other way. On the roof to-night, Joshua--if--if you are able to
stand. There’s a sixteen-day moon to-night, you know.”
He laid a long arm tenderly over the boy’s shoulder, then jerked it
away and bustled back to his little desk.
Number Fifty-six thirty-five did not go to the roof that night. He
lay in bed unable to sleep because of the pain that racked his body.
Each agonizing twinge brought to mind each stroke that had been struck
with the terrible bamboo rod, and each stroke had felled him to the
basement floor, for he had been made to stoop to receive the torture.
Then the great brute of a man who was beating him would wait for him to
regain his feet and stoop again, whereupon, with the rod in both hands,
he would raise it and bring it down with all his might. Each throb of
pain that now shook his shocked young body brought to mind each grunt
that had been forced from the man as he put every ounce of his power
behind the blows. The pain did not ease because of Joshua’s remembrance
that Twenty-three forty-four had received the same number of stripes.
After this Joshua became a model inmate once more, and he was treated
with greater respect by his fellows. That he could fight with
such vigor and dogged determination made them think twice before
antagonizing him.
The year passed and another began, and once more Joshua faced the board
of directors and was presented with a second T-and-H medal. But when
they spoke of parole Joshua told them he wanted to stay in the House of
Refuge. He was older now, more experienced, and Clegg had told him that
it was unnecessary for him to disobey the rules in order to remain,
if he would put the matter squarely to the board. This he endeavored
to do, stating that he was interested in his studies and felt that
he could acquire a better education there than in public school. The
members of the board looked sidewise at one another; they thought they
understood why Joshua wanted to stay, for they knew of his father and
had no respect for him. Joshua, advised by Clegg, made no mention of
his studies in astronomy.
The board dismissed him, promising to take the matter into
consideration. Perhaps they decided at last that Joshua, of all the
inmates of the institution, ought to be allowed to remain until his
twenty-first birthday if he wished to, because his grandfather had
been the founder. Whatever the reason, the boy was told that night by
Beaver Clegg that the board had ruled that he might stay. Furthermore,
he might remain in the Juvenile Department as long as he saw fit. And
Clegg had been authorized to give him special instruction in higher
branches than were taught in his department. It was quite plain to
Joshua that Clegg had spoken highly of his progress as a student, and
that this was the result of his loyal friendship.
And now, with Joshua Cole deep in his studies and steadily acquiring
a practical working knowledge of astronomy far beyond his years, it
will be necessary for this narrative to skip to a day when word reached
the House of Refuge that Joshua’s mother was dying. He was sent to her
deathbed immediately, but arrived too late.
During the funeral and afterward he was thrown in contact with many of
his relatives on her side of the house whom he never before had met.
Joshua gathered that they had forgiven his mother now, and for them he
harbored a boy’s supreme contempt.
One old querulous gentleman in particular aroused his boyish wrath,
though the uncle--for so he was--did not seem to realize it. He came
from a far-off town in Virginia, and was said to be very wealthy. This
was Peter Henry Florence, his mother’s oldest brother, who had been
given his father’s name.
Despite the boy’s dislike for him, the flabby-skinned old man took a
great interest in him. He had not known before that Blanche’s eldest
son had been placed in a reformatory, and under his breath he heaped up
imprecations on the head of the father. He was for using his influence
as the son of old Peter D. Florence, the founder, in having Joshua
released. And when he found out that Joshua did not want to leave, and
had argued futilely against the boy’s strange obstinacy, he purposed
going to the House of Refuge at once and demanding special privileges
for his sister’s son. All of which he seemed to forget entirely in a
day or two, for he went his choleric way back home and left no word
behind him.
So Joshua returned to the only man on earth that he loved and admired
and considered a friend, and wrapped himself in his astronomy for three
years more.
Then came a day when he stood, dry-eyed, beside a bed on which lay
the still form of Beaver Clegg. The master had been found dead in
his bed that morning--of heart failure, the doctors said. It had
long threatened him, and the ugly man with a beautiful soul had been
prepared, for Joshua held in his hand a note to him which had been
penned several years before.
It told him that all along Clegg had tricked him into believing that
he--Clegg--was breaking the rules of the institution when he led Joshua
to the roof of nights and schooled him in astronomy. Beaver Clegg’s
department had been virtually his to regulate as he saw fit, and if
he chose to take a boy from bed and teach him on the roof at night it
was the concern of no one but himself. Thus had the old instructor
inveigled Joshua into mastering studies which were distasteful to him.
Thus had he tried him in the furnace to find out whether his love for
science was genuine, and one which was worth much sacrifice.
Tears threatened to deluge Joshua’s eyes when he read the note, and the
flood broke when he was told that Beaver Clegg had willed to him his
telescope and books and telescopic photographs, and the clippings of
over twenty painstaking years.
And so it came about that Joshua Cole went before the board again and
asked for his rights in the matter of parole. Whereupon the board
decided to pardon him. And at the age of twenty, a quiet, serious,
unworldly youth with an ascetic face and kindly gray-blue eyes, he left
the House of Refuge, his home for over six years, with his telescope
over his shoulder.
But he did not go home. Lester had long since left the old house on
Grant Avenue and was working in a shoe store, living alone in rented
quarters. Only the father was there, with the faithful Zida to minister
to his fickle wants when he was in from a trip. Joshua had heard that
John Cole was playing the races and drinking more than ever, and he had
no desire to see him. But he was penniless, so he called on Lester for
aid, which was refused. The younger brother was earning barely enough
to keep himself, he said, and he looked upon Joshua with little favor,
referring often in his speech to his brother’s sojourn in the House of
Refuge and snickering the name of Tony.
There seemed no friend to turn to in his dilemma, and Joshua, confined
to his studies for so many years, imprisoned and inexperienced in
worldly matters, decided to carry out the boyish plan that he had
evolved when he and Lester waited in the swampy lot for Slinky
Dawson to come along with the note that told of his disgrace at
school. Out there in the West somewhere was the girl that he never
had forgotten--Madge Mundy of the frizzly red-gold hair and the
Oriental-topaz eyes. He would find her.
So, with the exception of his telescope, he left in Lester’s keeping
all of the precious things bequeathed to him by Beaver Clegg; and the
night of the same day that he came from the House of Refuge he sought
the freight yards under cover of darkness.
Three times, as he stole along looking for an empty boxcar in a train
that evidently was about to move out, he imagined that somebody was
following him. And now he found his car and pushed his telescope
through a side door. He scrambled in after it, closed the door, and
stood silent in total darkness. Soon the train began to move, but
whether or not it was westward-bound the new recruit in Vagabondia
had no means of knowing. It would take him away from Hathaway at all
events, and for this he longed, since the city of his birth had showed
him little but unkindness.
And on top of the car in which Joshua rode the figure of a young man
lay flat, awaiting the coming of a brakeman over the running boards,
whose lantern he saw swinging up toward the locomotive. His name was
Felix Wolfgang, and he was of Norwegian extraction, but in the House of
Refuge his number had been Twenty-three forty-four.