Once on the train, with the towers of the university building out of
sight, Victor's mind went forward toward the great city whereto he was
now hurrying in the spirit of one about to enter a tiger-haunted jungle.
Hitherto he had been unafraid of its tumult, for there his mother lived.
Her home, vague of outline as it was, offered refuge from the thunder
and the shouting. But now its shelter was worse than useless, for its
lintel was marked with a sign of shame and terror, and this the law and
the lawless knew equally well.
"How will she seem to me now," he asked himself. "What will she say to
me when we meet?"
On one point he was sternly resolved. "She must leave the city at once.
We will go West somewhere. I will earn our living now." And at the
moment earning a living seemed easy.
The close of a beautiful spring day was spreading over the town as he
made his way up the stairway into the unwonted silence of the
thoroughfare. The wind was from the east, clean and cool and sweet. As
he looked down at the river from the bridge and marked its water flowing
swiftly from the lake toward the splendid sunset sky he exulted over the
power of man, of science, to reverse the natural current of a stream.
"So must I change the whole course of my mother's life," he thought with
returning resolution. "It must be done. It can be done. It's all in the
will."
The hit-or-miss squalor of California Avenue filled him with renewed and
augmented disgust as he descended from the car at the corner and began
his search for his mother's apartment, which was the top story of a
shabby wooden building standing between two shops. The stairway reeked
with associations of poverty, a shifty poverty, and Victor's gorge rose
at it. The second flight, though cleaner, was musty with decaying wood,
and the doorway--on which a dim card was tacked--sadly needed paint. He
began to realize sharply the sacrifices which had enabled him to live in
the care-free comfort of his chapter-house, and his heart softened.
After knocking twice without obtaining a response he tried the knob. It
yielded and he went in. All was silent and dim. For an instant he
hesitated. "Perhaps I'm in the wrong pew after all," he thought; but as
he looked about him he recognized the ghost-room furniture of his
boyhood. On the wall was a familiar picture--the crayon portrait of a
black-whiskered man. The same old battered walnut table which he
remembered so well occupied one corner, and behind it three long tin
cones stood upright on their larger ends. He shivered with disgust at
them and turned to the lounge, over which, scattered as if by a gale of
wind, lay the leaves of the hated Sunday edition of the _Star_. All else
was neat and tidy, though threadbare with use. It was, indeed, very far
from being "the gilded den of vice" which the reporter had depicted.