He was not too ill to eat, but too ill when not eating to stay anywhere
but on his bed. He went back to it again, lying with his face buried
in the pillow as before. The boy resumed his patient sitting. He would
have been bored with it now, had he not had his dreams.
All the same, it was a relief when about four o'clock, just as the
westering sun was beginning to wake the Red Indian to an horrific life,
Mr. Honeybun, pushing the door ajar softly, peeped in with his good eye.
"I say, mate!" he whispered, "wouldn't you like me to take the young
gent for a bit of a walk like? Do him good, and him a-mopin' here all
by hisself."
The walk meant Tom's initiation into the life of cities as that life
is led. Not that it went very far, but as far as it went it was a
revelation. It took him from one end of Jane Street to the other, along
the docks of the Cunard and other great lines, and as far as Eighth
Avenue in the broad, exciting thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street. New
York as he had seen it hitherto, from the front seat of a motor truck,
had been little more entertaining than a map. Besides, he was only
developing a taste for this sort of entertainment. Games, school,
scraps with other boys, had been enough for him. Now he was waking
to an interest in places as places, in men as men, in differences of
attitude to the drama known as life. In Mr. Honeybun's attitude he grew
interested especially.
"I don't believe that nothink don't belong to no one," Tom's guide
observed, as the wealth of the city spread itself more splendidly.
"Things is common proputty. Yer takes what yer can put yer 'and on."
"But wouldn't you be arrested?"
"Yer'd be arrested if yer didn't look out; but what's bein' arrested?
No more'n the measures what a lot of poor, frightened, silly boobs'll
take agin the strong man what makes 'em tremble. At least," he added,
as an afterthought, "not when yer conscience is clear, it ain't."
Fascinated by this bold facing of society, Tom ventured on a question.
"Have you ever been arrested, Mr. Honeybun?"
Mr. Honeybun straightened himself to the martyr's pose. "Oh, if yer
puts it that way, I've suffered for my opinions. That much I'll admit.
I'm--" he brought out the statement proudly--"I'm one o' them there
socialists. You know what a socialist is, don't yer?"
Tom was not sure that he did.
"A socialist is one o' them fellers who whatever he sees knows it
belongs to him if he can get ahold of it. It's gettin' ahold of it
what counts. Now if you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in
yer 'ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as I could take
it--why, then it'd be mine. That's the law o' Gord, I believes; and I
tries to live up to it."
Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, Tom was nevertheless
perplexed by it. "But wouldn't that be something like burglary?"
"Burglary is what them may call it what ain't socialists; but it don't
do to hang a dog because yer've give him a bad name. A lot o' good
people's been condemned that way. When I'm in court I always appeals to
justice."
"And do you get it?"
"I get men's. I don't get Gord's. You see that apple?" They stopped
before a window in Horatio Street where apples were displayed. "Now,
do yer suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in partic'lar?
No! That apple didn't know nothink about men's laws when it blossomed
on a apple tree. It just give itself generallike to the human race. If
you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git away with it,
it'd be yours. Stands to reason it'd be. Gord's law! But if that there
policeman, a-squintin' his ugly eye at us this minute--he knows Honey
Lem, he does!--was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty days. Man's
law! And I'll leave it to you which is best worth sufferin' for."
In this philosophy of life there was something Tom found reasonable,
and something in which he felt a flaw without being able to detect it.
He chased it round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the long
dull hours with his father. It passed the time; it helped him to the
habit of thinking things out for himself. His mind being clear, and his
intuitions acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond his
years. When, on the morrow, they walked in the cool of the day down
the length of Hudson Street till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought
the subject up from another point of view.
"But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took something from you? What then?"
"He'd git it in the nut," the socialist answered, tersely. "Not if
there'd be two of 'em," he added, in amendment. "If there's two I don't
contend. I ain't a communist."
"Is that what a communist is, a fellow who'll contend with two?"
"A communist is a socialist what'll use weepons. If there's somethink
what he thinks is his in anybody's 'ouse, he'll go armed, and use
vi'lence. They never got that on me. I never 'urt nobody, except onst
I hits a footman, what was goin' to grab me, a wee little knock on the
'ead with a silver soup ladle I 'ad in me 'and and lays 'im out flat.
Didn't do him no 'arm, not 'ardly any. That was in England. But them
days is over, since I lost my eye. Makes yer awful easy spotted when
yer've lost a eye."
"How did you lose it, Mr. Honeybun?"
"I lost it a-savin' of the life of a beautiful young lady. 'Twas quite
a tale." The boy looked up expectantly while his friend thought out the
details. "I was footin' it onst from New Haven to New York, and I'd got
to a pretty little town as they call Old Lyme. Yer see, I'd been doin'
a bit o' time at New Haven--awful 'ard on socialists they was in New
Haven in them days--and when I gits out I was a bit stoney-broke till
I'd picked up somethink else. Well there I was, trampin' it through Old
Lyme, and I'd got near to the bridge what crosses the river they've
got there--the Connecticut I think it is--and what should I see but a
'orse what a young lady was drivin' come over the bridge like mad. The
young lady she was tuggin' at the reins and a-hollerin' like blazes for
some one to save her life. I ain't no 'ero, kid. Don't go for to think
that I'm a-sayin' that I am. But what's a man to do when he sees a
beautiful young lady in danger o' bein' killed?" He paused to take the
bodily postures with which he stopped the runaway. "And the tip of the
shaft," he ended, "it took me right in the eye, and put it out. But,
Lord, what's a eye, even to a Socialist, when yer can do somethink for
a feller creeter?"