It was after he had spent the first ten dollars he drew from his fund
in New York that Tom felt the impulse to tell Honey of the way in
which he was becoming involved with Maisie Danker. The ten dollars had
melted. In signing the formalities for drawing the amount, he expected
to have enough to carry him along till spring, when Maisie's visit was
to end. He dreaded its ending, and yet it would have this element of
relief in it; he would be able to keep his money. At a pinch he could
spare ten dollars, though he couldn't spare them very well. More than
ten dollars....
And before he knew it the ten dollars had vanished as if into air.
Once Maisie knew what he had done her caprices multiplied. To her as
to him ten dollars to "blow in"--she used the airy expression too--was
a small fortune. It was only their instincts that were different. His
was to let it go slowly, since the spending of a penny was against the
protests of his conscience; hers to make away with it. If Tom could
"draw the juice" for a first ten, he could draw it for a second, and
for a third and a fourth after that. It was not extravagance that
whipped her on; it was joy of life.
Tom's impulse to tell Honey was not acted on. It was not acted on
after he drew the second ten; nor after he drew the third. After he
had drawn the fourth his unhappiness became so great that he sought a
confidant.
And yet his unhappiness was not absolute; it was rather a poisoned
bliss. Had Maisie been content with what he could afford, the winter
would have been like one in Paradise. But almost before he himself
was aware of the promptings of thrift, she vanquished them with her
ridicule.
"There's nothing I hate so much as anything cheap. If a fella can't
give me what I like, he can keep away."
Time and time again Tom swore he would keep away. He did keep away, for
a day, for two or three days in succession. Then she would meet him
in the dark hallway, and, twining her arms around his neck without a
word, would give him one of those kisses on the lips which thrilled him
into subjection. He would be guilty of any folly for her then, because
he couldn't help himself. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty dollars, all the
hoarded inheritance from the Martin Quidmore who was already a dim
memory, would be well thrown away if only she would kiss him once again.
He lost the healthy diversion which might have reached him through the
Ansleys because they had taken the fat boy to Florida. Tom learned
that from little Miss Ansley a few days after the return of the father
and mother from New York. One afternoon as both were coming from their
schools they had met on their way toward Louisburg Square. Even in her
outdoor dress, she was quaintly grown-up and Cambodian. A rough brown
tweed had a little gold and a little red in it; a brown turban not
unlike a fez bore on the left a small red wing tipped with a golden
line. Maisie would have emphasized the red; she would have been vivid,
eager to be noticed. This girl didn't need that kind of advertisement.
Seeing her before she saw him, he wondered whether she would give
him any sign of recognition. At Harfrey the girls whom he saw at the
Tollivants, and who proclaimed themselves "exclusive," always forgot
him when they met him on the street. This had hurt him. He waited in
some trepidation now, fearing to be hurt again. But when she saw him
she nodded and smiled.
"Guy's better," she said, without greeting, "and we're all going off
to Florida to-morrow. Guy and I don't want to go a bit; but mother's
afraid of his catching cold, and father has to be in Washington,
anyhow. So we're off."
Though he walked by her side for no more than a few yards, Tom was
touched by her friendliness. She was the first girl of that section of
the world for which he had only the term "society" who had not been
ashamed to be seen with him in a street. Little Miss Ansley even paused
for a minute at the foot of her steps while they exchanged remarks
about their schools. She went to Miss Winslow's. She liked her school.
She was sorry to be going away as it would give her such a lot of back
work to make up. She might go to Radcliffe when Guy went to Harvard,
but so far her mother was opposed to it. In these casual observations
she seemed to Tom to lose something of her air of being a woman of the
world. On his own side he lost a little of his awe of her.
The snuffing out of this interest threw him back on the easing of
his heart by confidence. It was not confidence alone; it was also
confession. He was deceiving Honey, and to go on deceiving Honey began
to seem to him baser than dishonor. Had Honey been his father, it would
have been different. Fathers worked for their sons as a matter of
course, and almost as a matter of course expected that their sons would
play them false. There was no reason why Honey should work for him; and
since Honey did work for him, there was every reason why he who reaped
the benefit should be loyal. He was not loyal. He had even reached the
point, and he cursed himself for reaching it, at which Honey was an Old
Man of the Sea fastened on his back.
He told himself that this was the damnedest ingratitude; and yet he
couldn't tell himself that it wasn't so. It was. There were days when
Honey's way of speaking, Honey's way of eating, the smell of Honey's
person, and the black patch on his eye, revolted him. Here he was,
a great lump of a fellow sixteen years of age, and dependent for
everything, for _everything_, on a rough dock laborer who had been a
burglar and a convict. It was preposterous. Had he jumped into this
situation he would not have borne it for a week. But he had not jumped
into it; it had grown. It had grown round him. It held him now as if
with tentacles. He couldn't break away from it.
And yet Honey and he were bound to grow apart. It was in the nature of
the case that it should be so. Always of a texture finer than Honey's,
schooling, association, and habits of mind were working together to
refine the grain, while Honey was growing coarser. His work, Tom
reasoned, kept him not only in a rut but in a brutalizing rut. Loading
and unloading, unloading and re-loading, he had less use for his mind
than in the days of his freebooting. Then a wild ass of the desert,
he was now harnessed to a dray with no relief from hauling it. From
morning to night he hauled; from night to morning he was stupefied with
weariness. In on this stupefaction Tom found it more and more difficult
to break. He was agog with interests and ideas; for neither interests
nor ideas had Honey any room.
Nor had he, so far as Tom could judge, any room for affection. On the
contrary, he repelled it. "Don't you go for to think that I've give up
bein' a socialist because I got a soft side. No, sir! That wouldn't be
it at all. What reely made me do it was because it didn't pay. I'd make
big money now and then; but once I'd fixed the police, the lawyers,
and nine times out o' ten the judge, I wouldn't have hardly nothink
for meself. If out o' every hundred dollars I was able to pocket
twenty-five it'd be as much as ever. This 'ere job don't pay as well to
start with; but then it haven't no expenses."
Self-interest and a vague sense of responsibility were all he ever
admitted as a key to his benevolence. "It's along o' my bein' an
Englishman. You can't get an Englishman 'ardly ever to be satisfied
a'mindin' of his own business. Ten to one he'll do that and mind
somebody else's at the same time. A kind o' curse that's on 'em, I
often thinks. Once when I was doin' a bit--might 'a been at Sing
Sing--a guy come along to entertain us. Recited poetry at us. And I
recolleck he chewed to beat the band over a piece he called, 'The White
Man's Burden.' Well, that's what you are, Kid. You're my White Man's
Burden. I can't chuck yer, nor nothink. I just got to carry yer till
yer can git along without me; and then I'll quit. The old bunch'll be
as glad to see me back as I'll be to go. There's just one thing I want
yer to remember, Kid, that when yer've got yer eddication there won't
be nothink to bind me to you, nor--" he held himself very straight,
bringing out his words with a brutal firmness--"_nor you to me_. Yer'll
know I'll be as glad to go the one way as you'll be to go the t'other,
so there won't be no 'ard feelin' on both sides."
* * * * *
It was a Sunday night. Tom had taken his troubles to bed with him,
because he had nowhere else to take them. In bed you struck a truce
with life. You suspended operations, at least for a few hours. You
could sleep; you could postpone. He slept as a rule so soundly, and so
straight through the night, that, hunted as he was by care, he had once
in the twenty-four hours a refuge in which the fiendish thing couldn't
overtake him.
It had been a trying Sunday because Maisie had tempted him to a wilder
than usual extravagance. There was enough snow on the ground for
sleighing. She had been used to sleighing in Nashua. The singing of
runners and the jingling of bells, as a sleigh slid joyously past her,
awakened her longing for the sport. By coaxing, by teasing, by crying a
little, and, worst of all, by making game of him, she had induced him
to find a place where he could hire a sleigh and take her for a ride.
Snow having turned to rain, and rain to frost, the landscape through
which they drove was made of crystal. Every tree was as a tree of
glass, sparkling in the sun. A deep blue sky, a keen dry wind, a little
horse which enjoyed the outing as briskly as Maisie herself, made the
two hours vibrant with the ecstasy of cold. All Tom's nerves were taut
with the pleasure of the motion, of the air, of the skill, acquired
chiefly at Bere, with which he managed the spirited young nag. The
knowledge of what it was costing him he was able to thrust aside. He
would enjoy the moment, and face the reckoning afterward. When he did
face the reckoning, he found that of his fourth ten dollars he had
spent six dollars and fifty-seven cents. Only three days earlier he had
had the crisp clean bill unbroken in his hand....
He had been hardly able to eat his supper, and after supper the usual
two hours of study to which he gave himself on Sunday nights were as
time thrown away. Luckily, Honey's consideration left him the room
to himself. Honey was like that. If Tom had to work, Honey effaced
himself, in summer by sitting on the doorstep, in winter by going to
bed. Much of Tom's wrestling with Virgil was carried on to the tune of
Honey's snores.
This being Sunday evening, and Honey less tired than on the days on
which he worked, he had gone to "chew the rag," as he phrased it,
with a little Jew tailor, who lived next door to Mrs. Danker. Tom was
aware that behind this the motive was not love for the Jew tailor, but
zeal that he, Tom, should be interfered with as little as possible in
his eddication. Tom's eddication was as much an obsession to Honey
as it was to Tom himself. It was an overmastering compulsion, like
that which sent Peary to find the North Pole, Scott to find the South
one, and Livingstone and Stanley to cross Africa. What he had to
gain by it had no place in his calculation. A machine wound up, and
going automatically, could not be more set on its purpose than Lemuel
Honeybun on his.
But to-night his absenting of himself was of no help to Tom in giving
his mind to the translation from English into Latin on which he was
engaged. When he found himself rendering the expression "in the
meantime" by the words _in turpe tempore_, he pushed books and paper
away from him, with a bitter, emphatic, "Damn!"
Though it was only nine, there was nothing for it but to go to bed. In
bed he would sleep and forget. He always did. Putting out the gas, and
pulling the bedclothes up around his ears, he mentally waved the white
flag to his carking enemy.
But the carking enemy didn't heed the white flag; he came on just the
same. For the first time in his life Tom Whitelaw couldn't sleep.
Rolling from side to side, he groaned and swore at the refusal of
relief to come to him. He was still wide awake when about half past
ten Honey came in and re-lit the gas, surprised to see the boy already
with his face turned to the wall. Not to disturb him, Honey moved round
the room on tiptoe.
Tom lay still, his eyes closed. He loathed this proximity, this sharing
of one room. In the two previous years he hadn't minded it. But he was
older now, almost a man, able to take care of himself. Not only was he
growing more fastidious, but the self-consciousness we know as modesty
was bringing to the over-intimate a new kind of discomfort. Long
meaning to propose two small separate rooms as not much dearer than the
larger one, he had not yet come to it, partly through unwillingness
to add anything to their expenses, and partly through fear of hurting
Honey's feelings. But to-night the lack of privacy gave the outlet of
exasperation to his less tangible discontents.
He rolled over on his back. One gas jet spluttered in the antiquated
chandelier. Under it a small deal table was heaped with his books and
strewn with his papers. Beside it stood an old armchair stained with
the stains of many lodgers' use, the entrails of the seat protruding
horribly between the legs. Two small chairs of the kitchen type, a
wash-stand, a chest of drawers with a mirror hung above it, two or
three flimsy rugs, and the iron cots on which they slept, made a
setting for Honey, who sat beneath the gaslight, sewing a button on
his undershirt. Turned in profile toward Tom, and wearing nothing but
his drawers and socks, he bent above his work with the patience of
a concentrated mind. He was really a fine figure of a man, brawny,
hairy, spare, muscled like an athlete, a Rodin's Thinker all but the
thought, yet irritating Tom as the embodiment of this penury.
So not from an impulse of confession, but to ease the suffering of his
nerves, Tom told something about Maisie Danker. It was only something.
He told of the friendship, of the dancing lessons, of the movies, of
the sleigh-ride that afternoon, of the forty dollars drawn from the
bank. He said nothing of their kisses, nor of the frenzy which he
thought might be love. Honey pulled his needle up through the hole, and
pushed it back again, neither asking questions nor looking up.
"I guess we'll move," was his only comment, when the boy had finished
the halting tale.