The next two or three nights were occasions for the interchange of
confidence. During the days the new pals saw little of each other, and
sometimes nothing at all. With the late afternoon they could "clean
themselves," and take a little relaxation. For this there was no great
range of opportunity. Relaxation for Lemuel Honeybun had hitherto run
in directions from which he now felt himself cut off. He knew of no
others, while the boy knew of none of any kind.
"I tell yer, Goody," Tom overheard, through the open door of the room
back of Pappa's, one day while he was climbing the stairs, "I ain't
a-goin' to go while I've got this job on me hands. The Lord knows I
didn't seek it. It's just one of them things that's give yer as a
dooty, and I'm goin' to put it through. When Quidmore's come back, and
it's all over, I'll be right on the job with the old gang again; but
till he does it's nix. Yer can't mean to think that I don't miss the
old bunch. Why, I'd give me other eye...."
Tom heard no more; but the tone of regret worried him. True, if he
wanted to break the bond this might be his chance. On the other hand,
the thought of being again without a friend appalled him. While waiting
in the hope that Quidmore might come back, the present arrangement
was at least a cosy one. Nevertheless, he felt it due to his spirit of
independence to show that he could stand alone. He waited till they
were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and the air through the open
window was cool enough to allow of their being comfortable, before he
felt able to take an offhand, man-to-man tone.
"You know, Honey, if you want to beat it back to your old crowd, I can
get along all right. Don't hang round here on my account."
"Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice meself. If I'm to be
yer next o' kin, I'll be it and be damned. Done 'arder things than this
in me life, and pulled 'em off, too. I'll stick to yer, kid, as long as
yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my life, and never
see another quart bottle."
The pathos of the life for which he might be letting himself in turned
his thoughts backward over his career.
"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might
still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born.
True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell
it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I
'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other
day--steward on one of the Cunarders he was--said he wouldn't 'a
knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges.
Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon
parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But
it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought me where I am, and I
don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I
wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings
bank in Brooklyn. Friends as 'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by
them. And if I hadn't lost me eye--but how was I to know that that
low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and 'd
let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball
cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York
right atop o' me."
Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young
lady's life."
Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for
finding the right words.
"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that
there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both
sides to onst, now can I?"
He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son
of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at
the age of seventeen.
"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what
it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit
I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to
seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by
somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and
me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll
inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I did inherit
somethink--inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his
seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was
mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes
later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and
havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's
easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and
that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was.
Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and
get a move on--and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail.
You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?"
Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released
from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America.
"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and
find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been
landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it
is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid.
Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for
nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've
worked for--or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a
injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of
fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for
yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?"
A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his
position.
"I've been thinkin', Kiddy, that since yer used to be a State ward,
yer'll have to be a State ward agin, if the State knows you're knockin'
round loose."
The boy cried out in alarm. "Oh, but I won't be. I'll kill myself
first."
He could not understand this antipathy, this horror. In a mechanical
way the State had been good to him. The Tollivants had been good to
him, too, in the sense that they had not been unkind. But he could
not return to the status. It was the status that dismayed him. In
Harfrey it had made him the single low-caste individual in a prim
and high-caste world, giving everyone the right to disdain him. They
couldn't help disdaining him. They knew as well as he did that in
principle he was a boy like any other; but by all the customs of their
life he was a little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it was
still possible to respect himself; but to go back and hang on to the
outer fringe of the organized life of a Christian society would have
ravaged him within. He said so to Honeybun energetically.
"That's the way I figured that yer'd feel. So long as you're on'y
waitin'--or yer can say that you're on'y waitin'--till yer pop comes
back, it won't matter much. It'll be when school begins that it'll go
agin yer. There's sure to be some pious woman sneepin' round that'll
tell someone as you're not in school when you're o' school age, and
then, me lad, yer'll be back as a State ward on some down-homer's farm."