XX

To the best of the boy's knowledge the man who had adopted him was

never seen again; but it took some time to assume the fact that he was

dead. Visitors to New York often dived below the surface, to come up

again a week or ten days later. Their experience in these absences they

were not always eager to discuss.

"Why, I've knowed 'em to stay away that long as yer'd swear they'd

been kidnapped," Mr. Honeybun informed the boy. "He's on a little

time; that's all. Nothink but nat'rel to a man of his age--and a

widower--livin' in the country--when he gits a bit of freedom in the

city."

"Yes, but what'll he do for money?"

There was this point of view, to be sure. Mr. Goodsir suggested that

Quidmore had had more money still, that he had only left this sum to

cover Tom's expenses while he was away.

"And listen, son," he continued, kindly, "that's a terr'ble big wad

for a boy like you to wear on his person. Why, there's guys that

free-quents this very house that'd rob and murder you for half as much,

and never drop a tear. Now here I am, an old trusty man, accustomed to

handle funds, and not sneak nothin' for myself. If I could be of any

use to you in takin' charge of it like...."

"Me and you'll talk this over, later," Mr. Honeybun intervened,

tactfully. "The kid don't need no one to take care of his cash when his

father may skin home again before to-night. Let's wait a bit. If he's

goin' to trust anybody it'll be us, his next of kin in this 'ere 'ouse,

of course. That'd be so, kiddy, wouldn't it?"

Tom replied that it would be so, giving them to understand that he

counted on their good offices. For the present he was keeping himself

in the non-committal attitude natural to suspense.

"You see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging

candor, "I can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back

again, at any rate, not for a spell."

The worthies going to their work, the interview ended. At least, Mr.

Goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was

back in Tom's room again.

"Say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and.

I can't stop now; but when I blow in to eat at noon I'll tell yer what

I'd do with 'em, if you was me. Keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside

pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help

till I come back and git you. Yer never knows who's on the same floor

with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe."

Out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting

the line of docks especially. He liked them. On the façades of the

low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into

syllables--New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma.

He had always been fond of geography. It opened up the world. It

told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in

the meantime he could dream about. Over the low roofs of the dock

buildings he could see the tops of funnels. Here and there was the long

black flank of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from

one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and

out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly

shunting up and down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep sound,

the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he

himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would

suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled

his mind to his desolation.

He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious

populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of

his loneliness smote him to a standstill. He would wonder where he

was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing

about the steamer on the Hudson. Like her, he seemed to be afloat.

She, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world

to tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that was always

sailing--sailing--sailing--sailing--with never a port to have come out

of, and never a port in view,

_The Church of the Sea!_

He read the words on the corner of a big white building where Jane

Street flows toward the docks. He read them again. He read them because

he liked their suggestions--immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and

God!

[Illustration: "THAT'S A TERR'BLE BIG WAD FOR A BOY LIKE YOU TO WEAR"]

It was queer to think of God being out there, where there were only

waves and ships and sailors, but chiefly waves and a few seabirds. It

recalled the religion of crippled Bertie Tollivant, the cynic. To the

instructed like himself, God was in the churches that had steeples and

pews and strawberry sociables, or in the parlors where they held family

prayers. They told you that He was everywhere; but that only meant

that you couldn't do wrong, you couldn't swear, or smoke a cigarette,

or upset some householder's ash-barrels, without His spotting you.

Tom Quidmore did not believe that Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant would have

sanctioned this Church of the Sea, where God was as free as wind,

and over you like the sky, and beyond any human power to monopolize

or give away. It made Him too close at hand, too easy to find, and

probably much too tender toward sailors, who were often drunk, and

homeless little boys. He turned away from the Church of the Sea,

secretly envying Bertie Tollivant his graceless creed, but not daring

to question the wisdom of adult men and women.

By the steps of the chop saloon he waited for Mr. Honeybun, who came

swinging along, a strong and supple figure, a little after the whistle

blew at twelve. To the boy's imagination, now that he had been informed

as to his friend's status, he looked like what had been defined to

him as a socialist. That is, he had the sort of sinuosity that could

slip through half-open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glide

noiselessly up and down staircases. It was ridiculous to say it of one

so bony and powerful, but the spring of his step was spiritlike.

"Good for you, lad, to be waitin'! We'll go right along and do it, and

then it'll be off our minds."

What "it" was to be, Tom had no idea. But then he had no suspicions. In

spite of his hard childhood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men

would do him wrong. He had no fear of Mr. Honeybun, and no mistrust,

not any more than a baby in arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse.

"And there's another thing," Mr. Honeybun brought up, as they went

along. "It don't seem to me no good for a husky boy like you to be just

doin' nothink, even while he's waitin' for his pop. I'd git a job, if

you was me."

The boy said that he would gladly have a job, but didn't know how to

get one.

"I've got one for yer if yer'll take it. Work not too 'ard, and 'll

bring you in a dollar and a 'alf a day."

But "it" was the matter in hand, and presently its nature became

evident. At the corner of Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue Mr.

Honeybun pointed across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very

solidity inspired confidence. Tom could read for himself that it was a

savings bank.

"Now what I'd do if it was my wad is this. I'd put three hundred

and twenty-five of it in that there bank, which'd leave yer more'n

twenty-five for yer eddication. But yer principal, no one won't be

able to touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer'll be gettin' yer

interest piled up on top of it."

Tom's heart leaped. He had long meditated on savings banks. They had

been part of his queer vision. To become "something big" he would have

to begin by opening some such account as this. With Mr. Honeybun's

proposal he felt as if he had suddenly grown taller by some inches, and

older by some years.

"You'll come over with me, won't you?"

Mr. Honeybun demurred. "Well, yer see, kid, I'm a pretty remarkable

character in this neighborhood. There's lots knows Honey Lem; and

if they was to see me go in with you they might think as yer hadn't

come by your dough quite hon--I mean, accordin' to yer conscience--or

they might be bad enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between

us. When I puts a few dollars into my own savings bank--I'm a savin'

bird, I am--I goes right over to Brooklyn, where there ain't no wicked

mind to suspeck me. So go in by yerself, and say yer wants to open a

account. If anyone asks yer, tell him just how the money come to yer,

and I don't believe as yer'll run no chanst of no one not believin'

yer."

So it was done. Tom came out of the building with his bank book

buttoned into his breast pocket, and a conscious enhancement of life.

"And now," Mr. Honeybun suggested, "we'll make tracks for Pappa's and

eat."

The "check," like the meal, was light, and Mr. Honeybun paid it. Tom

protested, since he had money of his own, but his host took the

situation gracefully.

"Lord love yer, kid, ain't I yer next o' kin, as long as yer guv'nor's

away? Who sh'd buy yer a lunch if it wasn't me?"

Childhood is naturally receptive. As Romulus and Remus took their food

from a wolf when there was no one else to give it them, so Tom Quidmore

found it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, and then by

a thief. It became amazing, a few years later, on looking back on it;

but for the moment murderer and thief were not the terms in which he

thought of those who had been kind to him.

Not that he didn't try. He tried that very afternoon. When his next o'

kin had gone back to his job of lifting and heaving in the Gansevoort

Market, he returned to the empty room. It was his first return to

it alone. When he had gone up from his breakfast in the chop saloon

both Goodsir and Honeybun had accompanied him. Now the emptiness was

awesome, and a little sinister.

He had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully that is, waking

every half hour to listen for the shuffling footstep. He heard other

footsteps, dragging, thumping, staggering, but they always passed on

to the story above, whence would come a few minutes later the sound

of heavy boots thrown on the floor. Now and then there were curses,

or male voices raised in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song.

During the earlier nights he had slept through these signals of Pappa's

hospitality, or if he had waked, he knew that a grown-up man lay in the

other bed, so that he was safe. Now he could only lie and shudder,

till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. He did his best

to keep awake, so as to unlock the door the instant he heard a knock;

but in spite of his efforts he slept.

This return after luncheon brought him for the first time face to face

with his state as a reality. There was no one there. It was no use

going back to Bere, because there would be no one there. Rather than

become again a State ward with the Tollivants, he would sell himself to

slavery. What was he to do?

The first thing his eye fell upon was his father's suitcase, lying

open on the floor beside the bed, its contents in disorder. It was the

way Quidmore kept it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed

one. The futility of this clothing was what struck the boy now. The

peculiar grief of handling the things intimately used by those who

will never use them again was new to him. He had never supposed that

so much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. Stooping over

the suitcase, he had accidentally picked one up, and burst into sudden

tears. They were the first he had actually shed since he used to creep

away to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the Tollivants.

It occurred to him now that he had not cried when his adopted mother

disappeared. He had not especially mourned for her. While she had

been there, and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved her

in the way in which he loved so easily when anyone opened the heart

to him; but she had been no part of his inner life. She was the cloud

and sunshine of a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of

the morrow. Of the two, he grieved more for the man; and the man was a

murderer, and probably a suicide.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words in the attempt

to work up a fortifying moral indignation. It was then, too, that he

called Mr. Honeybun a thief. He must react against these criminal

associations. He must stand on his own feet. He was not afraid of

earning his own living. He had heard of boys who had done it at an

age even earlier than thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires.

They had always, however, so far as he knew, had some sort of ties

to connect them with the body politic. They had had the support of

families, sympathies, and backgrounds. They hadn't been adrift, like

that haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but the God of

the Sea to keep her from foundering. He could have believed in this

God of the Sea. He wished there had been such a God. But the God that

was, the God who was shut up in churches and used only on Sundays, was

not of much help to him. Any help he got he must find for himself; and

the first thing he must do would be to break away from these low-down

companionships.

And just as, after two or three hours of meditation, he had reached

this conclusion, a tap at the door made him start. Quidmore had come

back! But before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed open,

and he saw the patch over the left eye.

"Got away early, son. Now, seems to me, we ought to be out after them

overalls."