So he did not trouble her, he knew her of old; and besides he was too
ill, too dazed with drugs to bother with such things.
He lost every penny of the money in Quint's gambling house within a
month.
So the Quest family, father, mother and little daughter sifted through
the wide, coarse meshes of the very last social stratum that same
winter, and landed on the ultimate mundane dump heap.
Quest now lay all day across a broken iron bed, sometimes stupefied,
sometimes violent; his wife, dismissed from the Hippodrome for flagrant
cause, now picked up an intermittent living and other things in an
east-side rink. The child still remained about, somewhere, anywhere--a
dirty, ragged, bruised, furtive little thing, long accustomed to
extremes of maudlin demonstration and drug-crazed cruelty, frightened
witness of dreadful altercations and of more dreadful reconciliations,
yet still more stunned than awakened, more undeveloped than precocious,
as though the steady accumulation of domestic horrors had checked mental
growth rather than sharpened her wits with cynicism and undesirable
knowledge.
Not yet had her environment distorted and tainted her speech, for her
father had been an educated man, and what was left of him still employed
grammatical English, often correcting the nasal, up-state vocabulary of
the mother--the beginning of many a terrible quarrel.
So the child skulked about, alternately ignored or whined over, cursed
or caressed, petted or beaten, sometimes into insensibility.
Otherwise she followed them about instinctively, like a crippled kitten.
Then there came one stifling night in that earthly hell called a New
York tenement, when little Stephanie Quest, tortured by prickly heat,
gasping for the relief which the western lightning promised, crept out
to the fire escape and lay there gasping like a minnow.
Fate, lurking in the reeking room behind her, where her drugged parents
lay in merciful stupor, unloosed a sudden breeze from the thunderous
west, which blew the door shut with a crash. It did not awaken the man.
But, among other things, it did jar loose a worn-out gas jet.... That
was the verdict, anyway.
Pluris est oculatus testis unus quam auriti decem.
But, as always, the Most High remained silent, offering no testimony to
the contrary.
This episode in the career of Stephanie Quest happened in the days of
the Great Administration, an administration not great in the sense of
material national prosperity, great only in spirit and in things of the
mind and soul.
Even the carpenter, Albrecht Schmidt, across the hallway in the
tenement, rose to the level of some unexplored spiritual stratum, for he
had a wife and five children and only his wages, and he did not work
every week.
"Nein," he said, when approached for contributions toward the funeral,
"I haff no money for dead people. I don't giff, I don't lend. Vat it
iss dot Shakespeare says? Don't neffer borrow und don't neffer lend
noddings.... But I tell you what I do! I take dot leedle child!"
The slim, emaciated child, frightened white, had flattened herself
against the dirty wall of the hallway to let the policemen and ambulance
surgeon pass.
The trampling, staring inmates of the tenement crowded the stairs, a
stench of cabbage and of gas possessed the place.
The carpenter's wife, a string around her shapeless middle, and looking
as though she might add to her progeny at any minute, came to the door
of her two-room kennel.
"Poor little Stephanie," she said, "you come right in and make you'self
at home along of us!"
And, as the child did not stir, seemingly frozen there against the
stained and battered wall, the carpenter said:
"_Du_! Stephanie! Hey you, Steve! Come home und get you some
breakfast right away quick!"
"Is that their kid?" inquired a policeman coming out of the place of
death and wiping the sweat from his face.
"Sure. I take her in."
"Well, you'll have to fix that matter later----"
"I fix it now. I take dot little Steve for mine----"
The policeman yawned over the note book in which he was writing.
"It ain't done that way, I'm tellin' you! Well, all _right_! You can
keep her until the thing is fixed up----" He went on writing.
The carpenter strode over to the child; his blond hair bristled, his
beard was fearsome and like an ogre's. But his voice trembled with
Teuton sentiment.
"You got a new mamma, Steve!" he rumbled. "Now, you run in und cry mit
her so much as you like." He pulled the little girl gently toward his
rooms; the morbid crowd murmured on the stairs at the sight of the child
of suicides.
"Mamma, here iss our little Steve alretty!" growled Schmidt. "Now, py
Gott! I got to go to my job! A hellofa business iss it!
Schade--immer--schade! Another mouth to feed, py Gott!"
*FOREWORD*
On the Christmas-tide train which carried homeward those Saint James
schoolboys who resided in or near New York, Cleland Junior sat
chattering with his comrades in a drawing-room car entirely devoted to
the Saint James boys, and resounding with the racket of their
interminable gossip and laughter.
The last number of their school paper had come out on the morning of
their departure for Christmas holidays at home; every boy had a copy and
was trying to read it aloud to his neighbour; shrieks of mirth
resounded, high, shrill arguments, hot disputes, shouts of approval or
of protest.
"Read this! Say, did you get this!" cried a tall boy named Grismer.
"Jim Cleland wrote it! What do you know about our own pet novelist----"
"_Shut_ up!" retorted Cleland Junior, blushing and abashed by accusation
of authorship.
"He wrote it all right!" repeated Grismer exultantly. "Oh, girls! Just
listen to this mush about the birds and the bees and the bright blue
sky----"
"Jim, you're all right! That's the stuff!" shouted another. "The girl
in the story's a peach, and the battle scene is great!"
"Say, Jim, where do you get your battle stuff?" inquired another lad
respectfully.
"Out of the papers, of course," replied Cleland Junior. "All you have
to do is to read 'em, and you can think out the way it really looks."
The only master in the car, a young Harvard graduate, got up from his
revolving chair and came over to Cleland Junior.
The boy rose immediately, standing slender and handsome in the dark suit
of mourning which he still wore after two years.
"Sit down, Jim," said Grayson, the master, seating himself on the arm of
the boy's chair. And, as the boy diffidently resumed his seat: "Nice
little story of yours, this. Just finished it. Co you still think of
making writing your profession?"
"I'd like to, sir."
"Many are called, you know," remarked the master with a smile.
"I know, sir. I shall have to take my chance."
Phil Grayson, baseball idol of the Saint James boys, and himself guilty
of several delicate verses in the Century and Scribner's, sat on the
padded arm of the revolving chair and touched his slight moustache
thoughtfully.
"One's profession, Jim, ought to be one's ruling passion. To choose a
profession, choose what you most care to do in your leisure moments.
That should be your business in life."
The boy said:
"I like about everything, Mr. Grayson, but I think I had rather write
than anything else."
John Belter, a rotund youth, listening and drawing caricatures on the
back of the school paper, suggested that perhaps Cleland Junior was
destined to write the Great American Novel.
Grayson said pleasantly:
"It was the great American ass who first made inquiries concerning the
Great American Novel."
"Oh, what a knock!" shouted Oswald Grismer, delighted.
But young Belter joined in the roars of laughter, undisturbed, saying
very coolly:
"Do you mean, sir, that the Great American Novel will never be written,
or that it has already been written several times, or that there isn't
any such thing?"
"I mean all three, Jack," explained Grayson, smiling. "Let me see that
caricature you have been so busy over."
"It's--it's _you_, sir."
"What of it?" retorted the young master. "Do you think I can't laugh at
myself?"
He took the paper so reluctantly tendered:
"Jack, you _are_ a terror! You young rascal, you've made me look like a
wax-faced clothing dummy!"
"Tribute to your faultless apparel, sir, and equally faultless
features----"
A shriek of laughter from the boys who had crowded around to see;
Grayson himself laughing unfeignedly and long; then the babel of eager,
boyish voices again, loud, emphatic, merciless in discussion of the
theme of the moment.
Into the swaying car and down the aisle came a negro in spotless white,
repeating invitingly:
"First call for luncheon, gentlemen! Luncheon served in the dining car
forward!"
His agreeable voice was drowned in the cheering of three dozen famished
boys, stampeding.
Cleland Junior came last with the master.
"I hope you'll have a happy holiday, Jim," said Grayson, with quiet
cordiality.
"I'm crazy to see father," said the boy. "I'm sure I'll have a good
time."
At the vestibule he stepped aside, but the master bade him precede him.
And as the fair, slender boy passed out into the forward car, the breeze
ruffling his blond hair, and his brown eyes still smiling with the
anticipation of home coming, he passed Fate, Chance, and Destiny,
whispering together in the corner of the platform. But the boy could
not see them; could not know that they were discussing him.
*CHAPTER I*
An average New York house on a side street in winter is a dark affair;
daylight comes reluctantly and late into the city; the south side of a
street catches the first winter sun rays when there are any; the north
side remains shadowy and chilly.
Cleland Senior's old-fashioned house stood on the north side of 80th
Street; and on the last morning of Cleland Junior's Christmas vacation,
while the first bars of sunshine fell across the brown stone facades on
the opposite side of the street, the Clelands' breakfast room still
remained dim, bathed in the silvery gray dusk of morning.
Father and son had finished breakfast, but Cleland Senior, whose other
names were John and William, had not yet lighted the cigar which he held
between thumb and forefinger and contemplated in portentous silence. Nor
had he opened the morning paper to read paragraphs of interest to
Cleland Junior, comment upon them, and encourage discussion, as was his
wont when his son happened to be home from school.
The house was one of those twenty-foot brown stone
houses--architecturally featureless--which was all there was to New York
architecture fifty years ago.
But John William Cleland's dead wife had managed to make a gem of the
interior, and the breakfast room on the second floor front, once his
wife's bedroom, was charming with its lovely early American furniture
and silver, and its mellow, old-time prints in colour.
Cleland Junior continued to look rather soberly at the familiar
pictures, now, as he sat in silence opposite his father, his heart of a
boy oppressed by the approaching parting.
"So you think you'll make writing a profession, Jim?" repeated John
Cleland, not removing his eyes from the cigar he was turning over and
over.
"Yes, father."
"All right. Then a general education is the thing, and Harvard the
place--unless you prefer another university."
"The fellows are going to Harvard--most of them," said the boy.
"A boy usually desires to go where his school friends go.... It's all
right, Jim."
Cleland Junior's fresh, smooth face of a school boy had been slowly
growing more and more solemn. Sometimes he looked at the prints on the
wall; sometimes he glanced across the table at his father, who still sat
absently turning over and over the unlighted cigar between his fingers.
The approaching separation was weighing on them both. That, and the
empty third chair by the bay window, inclined them to caution in speech,
lest memory strike them suddenly, deep and unawares, and their voices
betray their men's hearts to each other--which is not an inclination
between men.
Cleland Senior glanced involuntarily from the empty chair to the table,
where, as always, a third place had been laid by Meachem, and, as
always, a fresh flower lay beside the service plate.
No matter what the occasion, under all circumstances and invariably
Meachem laid a fresh blossom of some sort beside the place which nobody
used.
Cleland Senior gazed at the frail cluster of frisia in silence.
Through the second floor hallway landing, in the library beyond, the boy
could see his suitcase, and, lying against it, his hockey stick.
Cleland Senior's preoccupied glance also, at intervals, reverted to
these two significant objects. Presently he got up and walked out into
the little library, followed in silence by Cleland Junior.
There was a very tall clock in that room, which had been made by one of
the Willards many years before the elder Cleland's birth; but it ticked
now as aggressively and bumptiously as though it were brand new.
The father wandered about for a while, perhaps with the vague idea of
finding a match for his cigar; the son's clear gaze followed his
father's restless movements until the clock struck the half hour.
"Father?"
"Yes, dear--yes, old chap?"--with forced carelessness which deceived
neither.
"It's half past nine."
"All right, Jim--any time you're ready."
"I hate to go back and leave you all alone here!" broke out the boy
impulsively.
It was a moment of painful tension.
Cleland Senior did not reply; and the boy, conscious of the emotion
which his voice had betrayed, and suddenly shy about it, turned his head
and gazed out into the back yard.
Father and son still wore mourning; the black garments made the boy's
hair and skin seem fairer than they really were--as fair as his dead
mother's.
When Cleland Senior concluded that he was able to speak in a perfectly
casual and steady voice, he said:
"Have you had a pretty good holiday, Jim?"
"Fine, father!"
"That's good. That's as it should be. We've enjoyed a pretty good time
together, my son; haven't we?"
"Great! It was a dandy vacation!"
There came another silence. On the boy's face lingered a slight
retrospective smile, as he mentally reviewed the two weeks now ending
with the impending departure for school. Certainly he had had a
splendid time. His father had engineered all sorts of parties and
amusements for him--schoolboy gatherings at the Ice Rink; luncheons and
little dances in their own home, to which school comrades and children
of old friends were bidden; trips to the Bronx, to the Aquarium, to the
Natural History Museum; wonderful evenings at home together.
The boy had gone with his father to see the "Wizard of Oz," to see
Nazimova in "The Comet"--a doubtful experiment, but in line with
theories of Cleland Senior--to see "The Fall of Port Arthur" at the
Hippodrome; to hear Calve at the Opera.
Together they had strolled on Fifth Avenue, viewed the progress of the
new marble tower then being built on Madison Square, had lunched
together at Delmonico's, dined at Sherry's, motored through all the
parks, visited Governor's Island and the Navy Yard--the latter
rendezvous somewhat empty of interest since the great battle fleet had
started on its pacific voyage around the globe.
Always they had been together since the boy returned from Saint James
school for the Christmas holidays; and Cleland Senior had striven to
fill every waking hour of his son's day with something pleasant to be
remembered.
Always at breakfast he had read aloud the items of interest--news
concerning President Roosevelt--the boy's hero--and his administration;
Governor Hughes and _his_ administration; the cumberous coming of Mr.
Taft from distant climes; local squabbles concerning projected subways.
All that an intelligent and growing boy ought to know and begin to think
about, Cleland Senior read aloud at the breakfast table--for this
reason, and also to fill in every minute with pleasant interest lest the
dear grief, now two years old, and yet forever fresh, creep in between
words and threaten the silences between them with sudden tears.
But two years is a long, long time in the life of the young--in the life
of a fourteen-year-old boy; and yet, the delicate shadow of his mother
still often dimmed for him the sunny sparkle of the winter's holiday.
It fell across his clear young eyes now, where he sat thinking, and made
them sombre and a deeper brown.
For he was going back to boarding school; and old memories were uneasily
astir again; and Cleland Senior saw the shadow on the boy's face;
understood; but now chose to remain silent, not intervening.
So memory gently enveloped them both, leaving them very still together,
there in the library.
For the boy's mother had been so intimately associated with preparations
for returning to school in those blessed days which already had begun to
seem distant and a little unreal to Cleland Junior--so tenderly and
vitally a part of them--that now, when the old pain, the loneliness, the
eternal desire for her was again possessing father and son in the
imminence of familiar departure, Cleland Senior let it come to the boy,
not caring to avert it.
Thinking of the same thing, both sat gazing into the back yard. There
was a cat on the whitewashed fence. Lizzie, the laundress--probably the
last of the race of old-time family laundresses--stood bare-armed in the
cold, pinning damp clothing to the lines, her Irish mouth full of wooden
clothes-pins, her parboiled arms steaming.
At length Cleland Senior's glance fell again upon the tall clock. He
swallowed nothing, stared grimly at the painted dial where a ship
circumnavigated the sun, then squaring his big shoulders he rose with
decision.
The boy got up too.
In the front hall they assisted each other with overcoats; the little,
withered butler took the boy's luggage down the brown-stone steps to the
car. A moment later father and son were spinning along Fifth Avenue
toward Forty-second Street.
As usual, this ordeal of departure forced John Cleland to an unnatural,
off-hand gaiety at the crisis, as though the parting amounted to
nothing.
"Going to be a good kid in school, Jim?" he asked, casually humorous.
The boy nodded and smiled.
"That's right. And, Jim, stick to your Algebra, no matter how you hate
it. I hated it too.... Going to get on your class hockey team?"
"I'll do my best."
"Right. Try for the ball team, too. And, Jim?"
"Yes, father?"
"You're all right so far. You know what's good and what's bad."
"Yes, sir."
"No matter what happens, you can always come to me. You thoroughly
understand that."
"Yes, father."
"You've never known what it is to be afraid of me, have you?"
The boy smiled broadly; said no.
"Never be afraid of me, Jim. That's one thing I couldn't stand. I'm
always here. All I'm here on earth for is you! Do you really
understand me?"
"Yes, father."
Red-capped porter, father and son halted near the crowded train gate
inside the vast railroad station.
Cleland Senior said briskly:
"Good-bye, old chap. See you at Easter. Good luck! Send me anything
you write in the way of verses and stories."
Their clasped hands fell apart; the boy went through the gate, followed
by his porter and by numerous respectable and negligible travelling
citizens, male and female, bound for destinations doubtless interesting
to them. To John Cleland they were merely mechanically moving
impedimenta which obscured the retreating figure of his only son and
irritated him to that extent. And when the schoolboy cap of that only
son disappeared, engulfed in the crowd, John Cleland went back to his
car, back to his empty, old-fashioned brownstone house, seated himself
in the library that his wife had made lovely, and picked up the _Times_,
which he had not read aloud at breakfast.
He had been sitting there more than an hour before he thought of reading
the paper so rigidly spread across his knees. But he was not interested
in what he read. The battle fleet, it seemed, was preparing to sail
from Port-of-Spain; Mr. Taft was preparing to launch his ponderous
candidacy at the fat head of the Republican party; a woman had been
murdered in the Newark marshes; the subway muddle threatened to become
more muddled; somebody desired to motor from New York to Paris;
President Roosevelt and Mr. Cortelyou had been in consultation about
something or other; German newspapers accused the United States of
wasting its natural resources; Scotti was singing _Scarpia_ in "Tosca";
a new music hall had been built in the Bronx----
Cleland Senior laid the paper aside, stared at the pale winter sunshine
on the back fence till things suddenly blurred, then he resumed his
paper, sharply, and gazed hard at the print until his dead wife's
smiling eyes faded from the page.
But in the paper there seemed nothing to hold his attention. He turned
to the editorials, then to the last page. This, he noticed, was still
entirely devoted to the "Hundred Neediest Cases"--the yearly
Christmastide appeal in behalf of specific examples of extreme distress.
The United Charities Organization of the Metropolitan district always
made this appeal every year.
Now, Cleland Senior had already sent various sums to that particular
charity; and his eyes followed rather listlessly the paragraphs
describing certain cases which still were totally unrelieved or only
partially aided by charitable subscriptions. He read on as a man reads
whose heart is still sore within him--not without a certain half
irritable sense of sympathy, perhaps, but with an interest still dulled
by the oppression which separation from his son always brought.
And still his preoccupied mind plodded on as he glanced over the several
paragraphs of appeal, and after a while he yawned, wondering listlessly
that such pitiable cases of need had not been relieved by somebody among
the five million who so easily could give the trifles desired. For
example:
"Case No. 47. A young man, 25, hopelessly crippled and
bedridden, could learn to do useful work, sufficient to support
him, if $25 for equipment were sent to the United Charities
office."
Contributors were asked to mention Case No. 47 when sending cheques for
relief.
He read on mechanically:
"Case No. 108. This case has been partly relieved through
contributions, but thirty dollars are still required. Otherwise,
these two aged and helpless gentlewomen must lose their humble
little home and an institution will have to take care of them.
Neither one has many more years to live. A trifling aid, now,
means that the few remaining days left to these old people will
be tranquil days, free from the dread of separation and
destitution."
"Case 113. The father, consumptive and unable to work; the
mother still weak from childbirth; the only other wage-earner a
daughter aged sixteen, under arrest; four little children
dependent. Seventy dollars will tide them over until the mother
can recover and resume her wage-earning, which, with the
daughter's assistance, will be sufficient to keep the family
together. Three of the children are defectives; the oldest
sister, a cash-girl, has been arrested and held as a witness for
attending, at her mother's request, a clinic conducted by people
advocating birth-control; and the three dollars a week which she
brought to the family has been stopped indefinitely."
"Case 119. For this case no money at all has been received so
far. It is the case of a little child, Stephanie Quest, left an
orphan by the death or suicide of both drug-addicted parents,
and taken into the family of a kindly German carpenter two years
ago. It is the first permanent shelter the child has ever
known, the first kindness ever offered her, the first time she
has ever had sufficient nourishment in all her eleven years of
life. Now she is in danger of losing the only home she has ever
had. Stephanie is a pretty, delicate, winsome and engaging
little creature of eleven, whose only experience with life had
been savage cruelty, gross neglect, filth and immemorial
starvation until the carpenter took her into his own too
numerous family, and his wife cared for her as though she were
their own child.
"But they have five children of their own, and the wife is soon
to have another baby. Low wages, irregular employment, the
constantly increasing cost of living, now make it impossible for
them to feed and clothe an extra child.
"They are fond of the little girl; they are willing to keep and
care for her if fifty dollars could be contributed toward her
support. But if this sum be not forthcoming, little Stephanie
will have to go to an institution.
"The child is now physically healthy. She is of a winning
personality, but somewhat impulsive, unruly, and wilful at
times; and it would be far better for her future welfare to
continue to live with these sober, kindly, honest people who
love her, than to be sent to an orphanage."
"Case No. 123. A very old man, desperately poor and ill and
entirely----"
John Cleland dropped the paper suddenly across his knees. A fierce
distaste for suffering, an abrupt disinclination for such details
checked further perusal.
"Damnation!" he muttered, fumbling for another cigar.
His charities already had been attended to for the year. That portion
of his income devoted to such things was now entirely used up. But he
remained uneasily aware that the portion reserved for further
acquisition of Americana--books, prints, pictures, early American
silver, porcelains, furniture, was still intact for the new year now
beginning.
That was his only refuge from loneliness and the ever-living grief--the
plodding hunt for such things and the study connected with this pursuit.
Except for his son--his ruling passion--he had no other interest, now
that his wife was dead--nothing that particularly mattered to him in
life except this collecting of Americana.
And now his son had gone away again. The day had to be filled--filled
rather quickly, too; for the parting still hurt cruelly, and with a dull
persistence that he had not yet shaken off. He must busy himself with
something. He'd go out again presently, and mouse about among musty
stacks of furniture "in the rough." Then he'd prowl through auction
rooms and screw a jeweller's glass into his right eye and pore over
mezzotints.
He allowed himself just so much to spend on Americana; just so much to
spend on his establishment, so much to invest, so much to give to
charity----
"Damnation!" he repeated aloud.
It was the last morning of the exhibition at the Christensen Galleries
of early American furniture. That afternoon the sale was to begin. He
had not had time for preliminary investigation. He realized the
importance of the collection; knew that his friends would be there in
force; and hated the thought of losing such a chance.
Turning the leaves or his newspaper for the advertisement, he found
himself again confronted by the columns containing the dreary "Hundred
Neediest Cases." And against every inclination he re-read the details
of Case 119.
Odd, he thought to himself angrily, that there was nobody in the city to
contribute the few dollars necessary to this little girl. The case in
question required only fifty dollars. Fifty dollars meant a home,
possibly moral salvation, to this child with her winning disposition and
unruly ways.
He read the details again, more irritated than ever, yet grimly
interested to note that, as usual, it is the very poor with many burdens
who help the poor. This carpenter, living probably in a tenement, with
a wife, an unborn baby, and a herd of squalling children to support, had
still found room for another little waif, whose drug-sodden parents had
been kind to her only by dying.
John Cleland turned the page, searched for the advertisement of the
Christensen Galleries, discovered it, read it carefully. There were
some fine old prints advertised to be sold. His hated rivals would be
there--beloved friends yet hated rivals in the endless battle for
bargains in antiquities.
When he got into his car a few minutes later, he told the chauffeur to
drive to Christensen's and drive fast. Halfway there, he signalled and
spoke through the tube:
"Where is the United Charities Building? _Where_? Well, drive there
first."
"Damn!" he muttered, readjusting himself in the corner under the lynx
robe.
*CHAPTER II*
"Would you care to go there and see the child for yourself, Mr. Cleland?
A few moments might give you a much clearer idea of her than all that I
have told you," suggested the capable young woman to whom he had been
turned over in that vast labyrinth of offices tenemented by the "United
Charities Organizations of Manhattan and the Four Boroughs, Inc."
John Cleland signed the cheque which he had filled in, laid it on the
desk, closed his cheque-book, and shook his head.
"I'm a busy man," he said briefly.
"Oh, I'm sorry! I _wish_ you had time to see her for a moment. You may
obtain permission through the Manhattan Charities Concern, a separate
organization, winch turns over certain cases to the excellent
child-placing agency connected with our corporation."
"Thank you; I haven't time."
"Mr. Chiltern Grismer would be the best man to see--if you had time."
"Thank you."
There was a chilly silence; Cleland stood frowning at space, wrapped in
gloomy preoccupation.
"But," added the capable young woman, wistfully, "if you are so busy
that you have no time to bother with this case personally----"
"I _have_ time," snapped Cleland, turning red. For the man was burdened
with the inconvenient honesty of his race--a sort of tactless
truthfulness which characterized all Clelands. He said:
"When I informed you that I'm a busy man, I evidently but
unintentionally misled you. I'm not in business. I _have_ time. I
simply don't wish to go into the slums to see somebody's perfectly
strange offspring."
The amazed young woman listened, hesitated, then threw back her pretty
head and laughed:
"Mr. Cleland, your frankness is most refreshing! Certainly there is no
necessity for you to go if you don't wish to. The little girl will be
_most_ grateful to you for this generous cheque, and happy to be
relieved of the haunting terror that has made her almost ill at the
prospect of an orphanage. The child will be beside herself with joy
when she gets word from us that she need not lose the only home and the
only friends she has ever known. Thank you--for little Stephanie
Quest."
"What did the _other_ people do to her?" inquired John Cleland,
buttoning his gloves and still scowling absently at nothing.
"What people?"
"The ones who--her parents, I mean. What was it they did to her?"
"They were dreadfully inhuman----"
"_What_ did they do to the child? Do you know?"
"Yes, I know, Mr. Cleland. They beat her mercilessly when they happened
to be crazed by drugs; they neglected her when sober. The little thing
was a mass of cuts and sores and bruises when we investigated her case;
two of her ribs had been broken, somehow or other, and were not yet
healed----"
"Oh, Lord!" he interrupted sharply. "That's enough of such devilish
detail!---- I beg your pardon, but such things--annoy me. Also I've
some business that's waiting--or pleasure, whichever you choose to call
it----" He glanced at his watch, thinking of the exhibition at
Christensen's, and the several rival and hawk-like amateurs who
certainly would be prowling around there, deriding him for his absence
and looking for loot.
"Where does that child live?" he added carelessly, buttoning his
overcoat.
The capable young woman, who had been regarding him with suppressed
amusement, wrote out the address on a pad, tore off the leaf, and handed
it to him.
"--In case you ever become curious to see little Stephanie Quest, whom
you have aided so generously----" she explained.
Cleland, recollecting with increasing annoyance that he had three
hundred dollars less to waste on Christensen than he had that morning,
muttered the polite formality of leave-taking required of him, and bowed
himself out, carrying the slip of paper in his gloved fingers, extended
as though he were looking for a place to drop it.
Down in the street, where his car stood, the sidewalks were slowly
whitening under leisurely falling snowflakes. The asphalt already was a
slippery mess.
"Where's _that_!" he demanded peevishly, shoving the slip of paper at
his chauffeur. "Do you know?"
"I can find it, sir."
"All right," snapped John Cleland.
He stepped into the little limousine and settled back with a grunt.
Then he hunched himself up in the corner and perked the fur robe over
his knees, muttering. Thoughts of his wife, of his son, had been
heavily persistent that morning. Never before had he felt actually
old--he was only fifty-odd. Never before had he felt himself so alone,
so utterly solitary. Never had he so needed the comradeship of his only
son.
He had relapsed into a sort of grim, unhappy lethargy, haunted by
memories of his son's baby days, when the car stopped in the
tenement-lined street, swarming with push-carts and children.
The damp, rank stench of the unwashed smote him as he stepped out and
entered the dirty hallway, set with bells and letter boxes and littered
with debris and filthy melting snow.
The place was certainly vile enough. A deformed woman with sore eyes
directed him to the floor where the Schmidt family lived. On the
landing he stumbled over several infants who were playing affectionately
with a dead cat--probably the first substitute for a doll they had ever
possessed. A fight in some room on the second floor arrested his
attention, and he halted, alert and undecided, when the dim hallway
resounded with screams of murder.
But a slatternly young woman who was passing explained very coolly that
it was only "thim Cassidys mixing it"; and she went her way down stairs
with her cracked pitcher, and he continued upward.
"Schmidt? In there," replied a small boy to his inquiry; and resumed
his game of ball against the cracked plaster wall of the passage.
Answering his knock, a shapeless woman opened the door.
"Mrs. Schmidt?"
"Yes, sir,"--retying the string which alone kept up her skirt.
He explained briefly who he was, where he had been, what he had done
through the United Charities for the child, Stephanie.
"I'd like to take a look at her," he added, "if it's perfectly
convenient."
Mrs. Schmidt began to cry:
"_Ex_-cuse me, sir; I'm so glad we can keep her. Albert has all he can
do for our own kids--but the poor little thing!--it seemed hard to send
her away to a Home----" She gouged out the tears abruptly with the back
of a red, water-soaked hand.
"Steve! Here's a kind gentleman come to see you. Dry your hands,
dearie, and come and thank him."
A grey-eyed child appeared--one of those slender little shapes, graceful
in every unconscious movement of head and limbs. She was drying her
thin red fingers on a bit of rag as she came forward, the steam of the
wash-boiler still rising from her bare arms.
A loud, continuous noise arose in the further room, as though it were
full of birds and animals fighting.
For a moment the tension of inquiry and embarrassment between the three
endured in silence; then an odd, hot flush seemed to envelop the heart
of Cleland Senior--and something tense within his brain loosened,
flooding his entire being with infinite relief. The man had been
starving for a child; that was all. He had suddenly found her. But he
didn't realize it even now.
There was a shaky chair in the exceedingly clean but wretchedly
furnished room. Cleland Senior went over and seated himself gingerly.
"Well, Steve?" he said with a pleasant, humourous smile. But his voice
was not quite steady.
"Thank the good, kind gentleman!" burst out Mrs. Schmidt, beginning to
sob again, and to swab the welling tears with the mottled backs of both
fists. "You're going to stay with us, dearie. They ain't no policeman
coming to take you to no institoot for orphan little girls! The good,
kind gentleman has give the money for it. Go down onto your knees and
thank him, Steve----!"
"Are you really going to _keep_ me?" faltered the child. "Is it
_true_?"
"Yes, it's true, dearie. Don't go a-kissing me! Go and thank the good,
kind----"
"Let me talk to the child alone," interrupted Cleland drily. "And shut
the door, please!"--glancing into the farther room where a
clothes-boiler steamed, onions were frying, five yelling children
swarmed over every inch of furniture, a baby made apocryphal remarks
from a home-made cradle, and a canary bird sang shrilly and incessantly.
Mrs. Schmidt retired, sobbing, extolling the goodness and kindness of
John Cleland, who endured it with patience until the closed door shut
out eulogies, yells, canary and onions.
Then he said:
"Steve, you need not thank me. Just shake hands with me. Will you?
I--I like children."
The little girl, whose head was still turned toward the closed door
behind which had disappeared the only woman who had ever been
consistently kind to her, now looked around at this large, strange man
in his fur-lined coat, who sat there smiling at her in such friendly
fashion.
And slowly, timidly, over the child's face the faintest of smiles crept
in delicate response to his advances. Yet still in the wonderful grey
eyes there remained that heart-rending expression of fearful inquiry
which haunts the gaze of children who have been cruelly used.
"Is your name Stephanie?"
"Yes, sir."
"Stephanie Quest?"
"Yes, sir."
"What shall I call you? Steve?"
"Yes, sir," winningly grave.
"All right, then. Steve, will you shake hands?"
The child laid her thin, red, water-marred fingers in his gloved hand.
He retained them, and drew her nearer.
"You've had a rather tough deal, Steve, haven't you?"
The child was silent, standing with head lowered, her bronzed brown hair
hanging and shadowing shoulders and face.
"Do you go to school, Steve?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not to-day?"
"No, sir. It's Saturday."
"Oh, yes. I forgot. What do you learn in school?"
"Things--writing--reading."
"Do you like school?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you like best?"
"Dancing."
"Do they teach _that_? What kind of dancing do you learn to do?"
"Fancy dancing--folk-dances. And I like the little plays that teacher
gets up for us."
"Do you like any other of your studies?" he asked drily.
"Droring."
"Drawing?"
"Yes, sir," she replied, flushing painfully.
"Oh. So they teach you to draw? Who instructs you?"
"Miss Crowe. She comes every week. We copy picture cards and things."
"So you like to draw, Steve," nodded Cleland absently, thinking of his
only son, who liked to write, and who, God willing, would have every
chance to develop his bent in life. Then, still thinking of his only
son, he looked up into the grey eyes of this little stranger.
As fate would have it, she smiled at him. And, looking at her in
silence he felt the child-hunger gnawing in his heart--felt it, and for
the first time, vaguely surmised what it really was that had so long
ailed him.
But the idea, of course, seemed hopeless, impossible! It was not fair to
his only son. Everything that he had was his son's--everything he had
to give--care, sympathy, love, worldly possessions. These belonged to
his son alone.
"Are you happy here with these kind people, Steve?" he asked hastily.
"Yes, sir."
But though his conscience should have instantly acquitted him, deep in
his lonely heart the child-hunger gnawed, unsatisfied. If only there
had been other children of his own--younger ones to play with, to have
near him in his solitude, to cuddle, to caress, to fuss over as he and
his dead wife had fussed over their only baby!----
"Steve?"
"Sir?"
"You are sure you will be quite happy here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would you----" A pause; and again he looked up into the child's face,
and again she smiled.
"Steve, I never had a little girl. It's funny, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
A silence.
"Would you like to--to go to a private school?"
The child did not understand. So he told her about such schools and the
little girls who went to them. She seemed deeply interested; her grey
eyes were clear and seriously intelligent, and very, very intently fixed
on him in the effort to follow and understand what he was saying.
He told her about other children who lived amid happy surroundings; what
they did, how they were cared for, schooled, brought up; what was
expected of them by the world--what was required by the world from those
who had had advantages of a home, of training, of friends, and of an
education. He was committing himself with every word, and refused to
believe it.
At times he paused to question her, and she always nodded seriously that
she understood.
"But this," he added smilingly, "you may not entirely comprehend, Steve;
that such children, brought up as I have explained to you, owe the human
race a debt which is never cancelled." He was talking to himself now,
more than to her; voicing his thoughts; feeling his way toward the
expression of a philosophy which he had heretofore only vaguely
entertained.
"The hope of the world lies in such children, Steve," he said. "The
world has a right to expect service from them. You don't understand, do
you?"
Her wonderfully clear eyes were almost beautiful with intelligence as
they looked straight into his. Perhaps the child understood more than
she herself realized, more than he believed she understood.
"Shall I come to see you again, Steve?"
"Yes, sir, please."
There was a pause. Very gently the slight pressure of his arm, which
had crept around her, conveyed to her its wistful meaning; and when she
understood she leaned slowly toward him in winning response, and offered
her lips with a gravity that captivated him.
"Good-bye, Steve, dear," he said unsteadily. "I'll come to see you
again very soon. I surely, surely will come back again to see you,
Steve."
Then he put on his hat and went out abruptly--not down town to
Christensen's, but back to the United Charities, and, after an hour,
from there he went down town to his attorney's, where he spent the
entire day under suppressed excitement.
For there were many steps to take and much detail to be attended to
before this new and momentous deal could be put through--a transaction
concerning a human soul and the measures to be taken to insure its
salvage.
*CHAPTER III*
During the next few weeks John William Cleland's instinct fought a
continuous series of combats with his reason.
Instinct, with her powerful allies, loneliness and love, urged the
solitary man to rash experiment; reason ridiculed impulse and made it
very clear to Cleland that he was a fool.
But instinct had this advantage; she was always awake, whispering to his
mind and heart; and reason often fell asleep on guard over his brain.
But when awake, reason laughed at the conspirators, always in ambush to
slay him; and carried matters with a high hand, rebuking instinct and
frowning upon her allies.
And John Cleland hesitated. He wrote to his only son every day. He
strove to find occupation for every minute between the morning awakening
in his silent chamber and the melancholy lying down at night.
But always the battle between reason and instinct continued.
Reason had always appealed to Cleland Senior. His parents and later his
wife and son had known the only sentimental phenomena which had ever
characterized him in his career. Outside of these exceptions, reason
had always ruled him. This is usually the case among those who inherit
money from forebears who, in turn, have been accustomed to inherit and
hand down a moderate but unimpaired fortune through sober generations.
Such people are born logical when not born fools. And now Cleland
Senior, mortified and irritated by the increasing longing which obsessed
him, asked himself frequently which of these he really was.
Every atom of logic in him counselled him to abstain from what every
instinct in him was desiring and demanding--a little child to fill the
loneliness of his heart and house--something to mitigate the absence of
his son, whose absences must, in the natural course of events, become
more frequent and of longer duration with the years of college imminent,
and the demands of new interests, new friends increasing year by year.
He told himself that to take another child into his home would be unfair
to Jim; to take her into his heart was disloyal; that the dear past
belonged to his wife alone, the present and the future to his only son.
And all the while the man was starving for what he wanted.
Well, the arrangements took some time to complete; but they were fairly
complete when finished. She kept her own name; she was to have six
thousand dollars a year for life after she became twenty-one. He
charged himself with her mental, moral, spiritual, physical, and general
education.
It came about in the following manner:
First of all, he went to see a gentleman whom he had known for many
years, but whose status with himself had always remained a trifle
indefinite in his mind--somewhere betwixt indifferent friendship and
informal acquaintanceship.
The gentleman's name was Chiltern Grismer; his business, charity and
religion. He did not dispense either of these, however; he made a
living for himself out of both. Cleland had learned at the United
Charities that Grismer was an important personage in the _Manhattan
Charities Concern_, a separate sectarian affair with a big office
building, and a book bindery in Brooklyn for the immense tonnage of
sectarian books and pamphlets published and sold by the "Concern," as it
called itself. The profits were said to be enormous.
Grismer, tall, bony, sandy and with a pair of unusually light yellowish
eyes behind eye-glasses, appeared the classical philanthropist of the
stage. With his white, bushy side-whiskers, his frock coat, and his
little ready-made black bow-tie, slightly askew under a high choker, he
certainly dressed the part. In fact, any dramatic producer would have
welcomed him in the role, for he had no "business" to learn; it was
perfectly natural for him to join his finger tips together while
conversing; and his voice and manner left nothing whatever to criticize.
"Ah! My friend of many years!" he exclaimed as Cleland was ushered into
his office in the building of the Manhattan Charities Concern. "And
how, I pray, can I be of service to my old friend, John Cleland?
M-m-m'yes--my friend of many years!"
Cleland told his story very simply, adding:
"I understand that your Concern is handling Case 119, Grismer--acting, I
believe, for a child-placing agency."
"_Which_ case?" demanded Grismer, almost sharply.
"Case 119. The case of Stephanie Quest," repeated Cleland.
Grismer looked at him with odd intentness for a moment, then his eyes
shifted, as though something were disturbing his suave mental
tranquillity:
"M-m-m'yes. Oh, yes. I believe we have this case to handle among many
others. M-m-m! Quite so; quite so. Case 119? Quite so."
"May I have the child?" asked Cleland bluntly.
"Bless me! Do you really wish to take such chances, Cleland?"
"Why not? Others take them, don't they?"
"M-m-m'yes. Oh, yes. Certainly. But it is usually people of
the--ah--middle and lower classes who adopt children. M-m-m'yes; the
middle and lower classes. And, naturally, _they_ would not be very much
disappointed in a foundling or waif who failed to--ah--develop the
finer, subtler, more delicate Christian qualities that a gentleman in
your position might reasonably expect--m-m-m'yes!--might, as it were,
demand in an adopted child."
"I'll take those chances in the case in question," said Cleland,
quietly.
"M-m-m'yes, the case in question. Case 119. Quite so.... I am
wondering----" he passed a large, dry hand over his chin and mouth,
reflectively, while his light-coloured eyes remained alertly on duty.
"I have been wondering whether you have looked about before deciding on
this particular child. There are a great many other deserving cases,
m-m-m'yes--a great many deserving cases----"
"I want this particular child, Grismer."
"Quite so. M-m-m'yes." He looked up almost furtively. "You--ah--have
some previous knowledge, perhaps, of this little girl's antecedents?"
Mr. Grismer's voice grew soft and persuasive; his finger tips were
gently joined. Cleland, looking up at him, caught a glimmer resembling
suspicion in those curiously light-coloured eyes.
"Yes, I have learned certain things about her," he said shortly. "I
know enough! I want that child for mine and I'm going to have her."
"May I ask--ah--just what facts you have learned about this unfortunate
infant?"
Cleland, bored to the verge of irritation, told him what he had learned.
There was a silence during which Grismer came to the conclusion that he
had better tell Cleland another fact which necessary legal investigation
of the child's antecedents might more bluntly reveal. Yes, certainly
Grismer felt that he ought to place himself on record at once and
explain this embarrassing fact in his own way before others cruelly
misinterpreted it to Cleland. For John Cleland's position in New York
among men of wealth, of affairs, of influence, and of culture made this
sudden and unfortunate whim of his for Stephanie Quest a matter of
awkward importance to Chiltern Grismer, who had not cared to figure in
the case at all.
Grismer's large, dry hand continued to massage his jaw. Now and then
the bony fingers wandered caressingly toward the white side-whiskers,
but always returned to screen the thin lips with a gentle, incessant
massage.
"Cleland," he began in a solemn voice, "have you ever heard that this
child is--ah--is a very distant connection of my family?--m-m-m'yes--my
immediate family. Have you ever heard any ill-natured gossip of this
nature?"
Cleland, too astonished to reply, merely gazed at him. And Grismer
wrongly concluded that he had heard about it, somewhere or other.
"M-m-m'yes--a connection--very distant, of course. In the event that you
have heard of this unfortunate affair from sources perhaps unfriendly to
myself and family--m-m-m'yes, unfriendly--possibly it were judicious to
explain the matter to you--in justice to myself."
"I never heard of it," said Cleland, "--never dreamed of such a
connection."
But to Grismer all men were liars.
"Oh, I did not know. I thought you might have heard malicious rumours.
But it is just as well that you should be correctly informed.... Do you
recollect ever reading anything concerning my--ah--late sister?"
"Do you mean something that happened many, many years ago?"
"That is what I refer to. Did you read of it in the newspapers?"
"Yes," said Cleland. "I read that she ran away with a married man."
"Doubtless," continued Grismer with a sigh, "you recollect the dreadful
disgrace she brought upon my family? The cruel scandal exploited by a
pitiless and malicious press?"
Cleland said nothing.
"Let me tell you the actual facts," continued Grismer gently. "The
unfortunate woman became infatuated with a common Pullman conductor--an
Irishman named Conway--a very ordinary man who already was married.
"His religion forbade divorce; my wretched sister ran away with him. We
have always striven to bear the disgrace with resignation--m-m-m'yes,
with patience and resignation. That is the story."
Cleland, visibly embarrassed, sat twisting the handle of his
walking-stick, looking persistently away from Grismer. The latter
sighed heavily.
"And so," he murmured, "our door was forever closed to her and hers.
She became as one ignobly dead to us--as a soul damned for all
eternity."
"Oh, come, Grismer----"
"Damned--hopelessly, and for all eternity," repeated Grismer with a
slight snap of his jaw; "--she and her children, and her children's
children----"
"What!"
"--The sins of the parents that are borne through generations!"
"Nonsense! That is Old Testament bosh----"
"Pardon!" said Grismer, with a pained forbearance. "It is the creed of
those who worship and believe the truth as taught in the church of which
I am a member."
"Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Granted," said Grismer sadly.
He sat caressing his jaw in silence for a while, then:
"Her name was Jessie Grismer. She--ah--assumed the name of Conway....
God did not bless the unholy union. There was a daughter, Laura. A
certain Harry Quest, the profligate, wasted son of that good man, the
Reverend Anthony Quest, married this girl, Laura Conway.... God,
mindful of His wrath, still punished the seed of my sinful sister, even
until the second generation.... Stephanie Quest is their daughter."
"Good heavens, Grismer! I can't understand that you, knowing this, have
not done something----"
"Why? Am I to presume to interfere with God's purpose? Am I to
question the righteousness of His wrath?"
"But--she is the little grandchild of your own sister!----"
"A sister utterly cut off from among us! A sister dead to us--a soul
eternally lost and to be eternally forgotten."
"Is that your--_creed_--Grismer?"
"It is."
"Oh. I thought that sort of--I mean, I thought such creeds were out of
date--old-fashioned----"
"God," said Chiltern Grismer patiently, "is old-fashioned, I
believe--m-m-m'yes--very old fashioned, Cleland. But His purposes are
terrible, and His wrath is a living thing to those who have the fear of
God within their hearts."
"Oh. Well, I'm sorry, but I really can't be afraid of God. If I were,
I'd doubt Him, Grismer.... Come; may I have the little girl?"
"Do you desire her to abide under your roof after what you have
learned?"
"Why, Grismer, I'd travel all the way to hell to get her now, if any of
your creed had managed to send her there. Come; I've seen the child.
It may be a risk, as you say. In fact, it can't help being a risk,
Grismer. But--I want her. May I have her?"
"M-m-m----" he touched a bell and a clerk appeared. Then he turned to
Cleland. "Would you be good enough to see our Mr. Bunce? I thank you.
Good afternoon! I am happy to have conversed again with my old friend,
John Cleland,--m-m-m'yes, my friend of many years."
An hour later John Cleland left "our" Mr. Bunce, armed with proper
authority to begin necessary legal proceedings.
Talking it over with Brinton, his attorney, that evening, he related the
amazing conversation between himself and Chiltern Grismer.
Brinton laughed:
"It isn't religious bigotry; it's just stinginess. Grismer is the
meanest man on Manhattan Island. Didn't you know it?"
"No. I don't know him well--though I've been acquainted with him for a
long while. But I don't see how he can be stingy."
"Why?"
"Well, he's interested in charity----"
"He's paid a thumping big salary! He makes money out of charity. Why
shouldn't he be interested?"
"But he publishes religious books----"
"Of course. They sell. It's a great graft, Cleland. Don't publish
novels if you want to make money; print Bibles!"
"Is that a fact?"
"You bet! There are more parasites in pulpit, publishing house and
charity concerns, who live exclusively by exploiting God, than there
were unpleasant afflictions upon the epidermis of our late friend, Job.
And Chiltern Grismer is one of them--the old skinflint!--hogging his
only sister's share of the Grismer money and scared stiff for fear some
descendant might reopen the claim and fight the verdict which beggared
his own sister!"
"By Gad!" exclaimed Cleland, very red; "I've a mind to look into it and
start proceedings again if there is any ground----"
"You can't."
"Why?"
"Not if you adopt this child."
"Not in her behalf?"
"Your motives would be uncharitably suspected, Cleland. You can give
her enough. Besides, you don't want to stir up anything--rattle any
skeletons--for this little girl's sake."
"No, of course not. You're quite right, Brinton. No money could
compensate her. And, as you say, I am able to provide for her amply."
"Besides," said Brinton, "there's the paternal aunt, Miss Rosalinda
Quest. She's as rich as mud. It may be that she'll do something for
the child."
"I don't want her to," exclaimed Cleland angrily. "If she'll make no
objection to my taking the girl, she can keep her money and leave it to
the niggers of Senegambia when she dies, for all I care! Fix it for me,
Brinton."
"You'd better go down to Bayport and interview her yourself," said the
lawyer. "And, by the way, I hear she's a queer one--something of a
bird, in fact."
"Bird?"
"Well, a vixen. They say so. All the same, she's doing a lot of real
good with her money."
"How do you mean?"
"She's established a sort of home for the offspring of vicious and
degenerate parents. It's really quite a wonderful combination of clinic
and training school where suspected or plainly defective children are
brought to be taught and to remain under observation--really a finely
conceived charity, I understand. Why not call on her?"
"Very well," said Cleland, reluctantly, not caring very much about
encountering "vixens" and "birds" of the female persuasion.
Except for this paternal aunt and the Grismers, there turned out to be
no living human being related to the child Stephanie.
Once assured of this, John Cleland undertook the journey to Bayport,
running down in his car one morning, and determined that a combination
of mild dignity and gallant urbanity should conquer any untoward
symptoms which this "bird" might develop.
When he arrived at the entrance to the place, a nurse on duty gave him
proper directions how to find Miss Quest, who was out about the grounds
somewhere.
He found her at last, in nurse's garb, marching up and down the gravel
paths of the "Common Sense Home for Defectives," as the institution was
called.
She was pruning privet hedges. She had a grim face, a belligerent eye,
and she stood clicking her pruning shears aggressively as he approached,
hat in hand.
"Miss Quest, I presume?" he inquired.
"I'm called Sister Rose," she answered shortly.
"By any other name----" began Cleland, gallantly, but checked himself,
silenced by the hostility in her snapping black eyes.
"What do you wish?" she demanded impatiently.
Cleland, very red, swallowed his irritation:
"I came here in regard to your niece----"
"Niece? I haven't any!"
"I beg your pardon; I mean your great-niece----"
"What do you mean? I haven't any that I know of."
"Her name is Stephanie Quest."
"Harry Quest's child? Has he really got a baby? I thought he was lying!
He's such a liar--how was I to know that he has a baby?"
"You didn't know it, then?"
"No. He wrote about a child. Of course, I supposed he was lying. That
was before I went abroad."
"You've been abroad?"
"I have."
"Long?"
"Several years."
"How long since you've heard from Harry Quest?"
"Several years--a dozen, maybe. I suppose he's living on what I settled
on him. If he needed money I'd hear from him soon enough."
"He doesn't need money, now. He doesn't need anything more from
anybody. But his little daughter does."
"Is Harry dead?" she asked sharply.
"Very."
"And--that hussy he married----"
"Equally defunct. I believe it was suicide."
"How very nasty!"
"Or," continued Cleland, "it may have been suicide and murder."
"Nastier still!" She turned sharply aside and stood clicking her shears
furiously. After a silence: "I'll take the baby," she said in an
altered voice.
"She's eleven years old."
"I forgot. I'll take her anyway. She's probably a defective----"
"She is _not_!" retorted Cleland so sharply that Sister Rose turned on
him in astonishment.
"Madame," he said, "I want a little child to bring up. I have chosen
this one. I possess a comfortable fortune. I offer to bring her up
with every advantage, educate her, consider her as my own child, and
settle upon her for life a sum adequate for her maintenance. I have the
leisure, the inclination, the means to do these things. But you,
Madame, are too busy to give this child the intimate personal attention
that all children require----"
"How do you know I am?"
"Because your time is already dedicated, in a larger sense, to those
unhappy children who need you more than she does.
"Because your life is already consecrated to this noble charity of which
you are founder and director. A world of unfortunates is dependent on
you. If, therefore, I offer to lighten your burden by relieving you of
one responsibility, you could not logically decline or disregard my
appeal to your reason----" His voice altered and became lower: "And,
Madame, I already love the child, as though she were my own."
After a long silence Sister Rose said:
"It isn't anything you've advanced that influences me. It's
my--failure--with Harry. Do you think it hasn't cut me to the--the
soul?" she demanded fiercely, flinging the handful of clipped twigs onto
the gravel. "Do you think I am heartless because I said his end was a
nasty one! It was! Let God judge me. I did my best."
Cleland remained silent.
"As a matter of fact, I don't care what you think," she added. "What
concerns me is that, possibly--probably, this child would be better off
with you.... You're _the_ John Cleland, I presume."
He seemed embarrassed.
"You collect prints and things?"
"Yes, Madame."
"Then you are _the_ John Cleland. Why not say so?"
He bowed.
"Very well, then! What you've said has in it a certain amount of common
sense. I have, in a way, dedicated my life to all unfortunate children;
I might not be able to do justice to Harry's child--give her the
intimate personal care necessary--without impairing this work which I
have undertaken, and to which I am devoting my fortune."
There was another silence, during which Sister Rose snapped her shears
viciously and incessantly. Finally, she looked up at Cleland:
"Does the child care for you?"
"I--think so."
"Very well. But I sha'n't permit you to adopt her."
"Why not?"
"I may want her myself when I'm too old and worn out to work here. I
wish her to keep her name."
"Madame----"
"I insist. What did you say her name is? Stephanie? Then her name is
to remain Stephanie Quest."
"If you insist----"
"I do! And that's flat! And you need not settle an income on her----"
"I shall do so," he interrupted firmly. "I have ample means to provide
for the future of anybody dependent on me, Madame."
"Do you presume to dictate to me what I shall do concerning my own
will?" she demanded; and her belligerent eyes fairly snapped at him.
"Do what you like, Madame, but it isn't necessary to----"
"Don't instruct _me_, Mr. Cleland!"
"Very well, Madame----"
"I shall do as I always have done, and that is exactly as I please," she
said, glancing at him. "And if I choose to provide for the child in my
will, I shall do so without requesting your opinion. Pray understand
me, Mr. Cleland. If I let you have her it is only because I am
self-distrustful. I failed with Harry Quest. I have not sufficient
confidence in myself to risk failure with his daughter.
"Let the matter stand this way until I can consult my attorney and
investigate the entire affair. Take her into your home. But remember
that she is to bear her own name; that the legal guardianship shall be
shared by you and me; that I am to see her when I choose, take her when
I choose.... Probably I shall not choose to do so. All the same, I
retain my liberty of action."
Cleland said in a low voice:
"It would be--heartless--if----"
"I'm not heartless," she rejoined tartly. "Therefore, you need not
worry, Mr. Cleland. If you love her and she loves you--I tell you you
need not worry. All I desire is to retain my liberty of action. And I
intend to do it. And that settles it!"
Cleland Senior went home in his automobile.
In a few days the last legal objection was removed. There were no other
relatives, no further impediments; merely passionate tears from the
child at parting with Schmidt; copious, fat tears from the carpenter's
wife; no emotion from the children; none from the canary bird.
*CHAPTER IV*
In February the child departed from the Schmidts' in charge of an
elderly, indigent gentlewoman, recommended to Mr. Cleland at an
exorbitant salary. Mrs. Westlake was her name; she inhabited, with a
mild and useless husband, the ancient family mansion in Pelham. And
here the preliminary grooming of Stephanie Quest began amid a riot of
plain living, lofty thinking, excision of double negatives acquired at
hazard, and a hospital regime of physical scrubbing.
During February and March the pitiless process continued, punctuated by
blessed daily visits from Cleland Senior, laden with offerings, edible
and otherwise. And before April, he had won the heart of Stephanie
Quest.
The first night that she slept under Cleland's roof, he was so excited
that he sat up in the library all night, listening for fear she should
awake, become frightened, and cry out.
She slept perfectly. Old Janet had volunteered as nurse and wardrobe
mistress, and a new parlour-maid took her place. Janet, aged sixty, had
been his dead wife's childhood nurse, his son's nurse in babyhood: then
she had been permitted to do in the household whatever she chose; and
she chose to dust the drawing-room, potter about the house, and offer
herself tea between times.
Janet, entering the library at six in the morning, found Mr. Cleland
about ready to retire to bed after an all-night vigil.
"What do you think of what I've done--bringing this child here?" he
demanded bluntly, having lacked the courage to ask Janet's opinion
before.
Janet could neither read nor write. Her thoughts were slow in
crystallizing. For a few moments master and ancient servant stood
confronted there in the dusk of early morning.
"Maybe it was God's will, sor," she said at last, in her voice which age
had made a little rickety.
"You don't approve?"
"Ah, then Mr. Cleland, sor, was there annything you was wishful for but
the dear Missis approved?"
That answer took him entirely by surprise. He had never even thought of
looking at the matter from such an angle.
And after Janet went away into the dim depths of the house, he remained
standing there, pondering the old Irishwoman's answer.
Suddenly his heart grew full and the tears were salt in his throat--hot
and wet in his closed eyes.
"Not that memory and love are lessened, dear," he explained with
tremulous, voiceless lips, "--but you have been away so long, and here
on earth time moves slowly without you--dearest--dearest----"
"Th' divil's in that young wan," panted Janet outside his chamber door.
"She won't be dressed! She's turning summersalts on her bed, God help
her!"
"Did you bathe her?" demanded Cleland, hurriedly buttoning his collar
and taking one of the scarfs offered by old Meacham.
"I did, sor--and it was like scrubbing an eel. Not that she was
naughty, sor--the darlint!--only playful-like and contrayry--all over
th' tub, under wather and atop, and pretindin' the soap and brush was
fishes and she another chasin' them----"
"Janet!"
"Sorr?"
"Has she had her breakfast?"
"Two, sorr."
"What?"
"Cereal and cream, omelet and toast, three oranges and a pear, and a
pint of milk----"
"Good heavens! Do you want to kill the child?"
"Arrah, sorr, she'll never be kilt with feedin'! It's natural to the
young, sorr--and she leppin' and skippin' and turnin' over and over like
a young kid!--and how I'm to dress her in her clothes God only
knows----"
"Janet! Stop your incessant chatter! Go upstairs and tell Miss
Stephanie that I want her to dress immediately."
"I will, sorr."
Cleland looked at Meacham and the little faded old man looked back out
of wise, tragic eyes which had seen hell--would see it again more than
once before he finished with the world.
"What do you think of my little ward, Meacham?"
"It is better not to think, sir; it is better to just believe."
"What do you mean?"
"Just that, sir. If we really think we can't believe. It's pleasanter
to hope. The young lady is very pretty, sir."
Cleland Senior always wore a fresh white waistcoat, winter and summer,
and a white carnation in his button-hole. He put on and buttoned the
one while Meacham adjusted the other.
They had been together many years, these two men. Every two or three
months Meacham locked himself in his room and drank himself stupid.
Sometimes he remained invisible for a week, sometimes for two weeks.
Years ago Cleland had given up hope of helping him. Once, assisted by
hirelings, he had taken Meacham by a combination of strategy and force
to a famous institute where the periodical dipsomaniac is cured if he
chooses to be.
And Meacham emerged, cured to that extent; and immediately proceeded to
lock himself in his room and lie there drunk for eighteen days.
Always when he emerged, ashy grey, blinking, neat, and his little,
burnt-out eyes tragic with the hell they had looked upon, John Cleland
spoke to him as though nothing had happened to interrupt the routine of
service. The threads were picked up and knotted where they had been
broken; life continued in its accustomed order under the Cleland roof.
The master would not abandon the man; the man continued to fight a
losing fight until beaten, then locked himself away until the enemy gave
his broken body and broken mind a few weeks' respite. Otherwise, the
master's faith and trust in this old-time servant was infinite.
"Meacham?"
"Sir."
"I think--Mrs. Cleland--would have approved. Janet thinks so."
"Yes, sir."
"You think so, too?"
"Certainly, sir. Whatever you wished was madame's wish also."
"Master James is so much away these days.... I suppose I am getting
old, and----"
He suffered Meacham to invest him with his coat, lifted the lapel and
sniffed at the blossom there, squared his broad shoulders, twisted his
white moustache.
There was no more attractive figure on Fifth Avenue than Cleland Senior
with the bright colour in his cheeks, his vigorous stride and his
attire, so suitable to his fresh skin, sturdy years and bearing.
Meacham's eyes were lifted to his master, now. They were of the same
age.
"Will you wear a black overcoat or a grey, sir?"
"I don't care. I'm going up to the nursery first. The nursery," he
repeated, with a secret thrill at the word, which made him tingle all
over in sheerest happiness.
"The car, sir?"
"First," said Cleland, "I must find out what Miss Stephanie wishes--or
rather, I must decide what I wish her to do. Telephone the garage,
anyway."
There was a silence; Cleland had walked a step or two toward the door.
Now, he came back.
"Meacham, I hope I have done what was best. On her father's side there
was good blood; on her mother's, physical health.... I know what the
risk is. But character is born in the cradle and lowered into the grave.
The world merely develops, modifies, or cripples it. But it is the same
character.... I've taken the chance--the tremendous responsibility....
It isn't a sudden fancy--an idle caprice;--it isn't for the amusement of
making a fine lady out of a Cinderella. I want--a--baby, Meacham. I've
been in love with an imaginary child for a long, long time. Now, she's
become real. That's all."
"I understand, sir."
"Yes, you do understand. So I ask you to tell me; have I been fair to
Mr. James?"
"I think so, sir."
"Will _he_ think so? I have not told him of this affair."
"Yes, sir. He will think what madame would have thought of anything
that you do." He added under his breath: "As we all think, sir."
There was a pause, broken abruptly by the sudden quavering appeal of
Janet at the door once more:
"Mr. Cleland! Th' young lady is all over the house, sor! In her
pajaymis and naked feet, running wild-like and ondacent----"
Cleland stepped to the door:
"Where's that child?"
"In the butler's pantry, sor----"
"I'm up here!" came a clear voice from the landing above. Cleland,
Janet and Meacham raised their heads.
The child, in her pyjamas, elbows on the landing rail, smiled down upon
them through her thick shock of burnished hair. Her lips were applied
to an orifice in an orange; her slim fingers slowly squeezed the fruit;
her eyes were intently fixed on the three people below.
When Cleland arrived at the third floor landing, he found Stephanie
Quest in the nursery, cross-legged on her bed. As he entered, she
wriggled off, and, in rose-leaf pyjamas and bare feet, dropped him the
curtsey which she had been taught by Mrs. Westlake.
But long since she had taken Cleland's real measure; in her lovely grey
eyes a thousand tiny devils danced. He held out his arms and she flung
herself into them.
When he seated himself in a big chintz arm-chair, she curled up on his
knees, one arm around his neck, the other still clutching her orange.
"Steve, isn't it rather nice to wake up in bed in your own room under
your own roof? Or, of course if you prefer Mrs. Westlake's----"
"I don't. I don't----" She kissed him impulsively on his
freshly-shaven cheek, tightened her arm around his neck.
"You know I love you," she remarked, applying her lips to the orange and
squeezing it vigorously.
"I don't believe you really care much about me, Steve."
Her grey eyes regarded him sideways while she sucked the orange;
contented laughter interrupted the process; then, suddenly both arms
were around his neck, and her bewitching eyes looked into his, deep,
very deeply.
"You know I love you, Dad."
"No, I don't."
"Don't you _really_ know it?"
"Do you, really, Steve?"
There was a passionate second of assurance, a slight sigh; the little
head warm on his shoulder, vague-eyed, serious, gazing out at the early
April sunshine.
"Tell me about your little boy, Dad," she murmured presently.
"You know he isn't very little, Steve. He's fourteen, nearly fifteen."
"I forgot. Goodness!" she said softly and respectfully.
"He seems little to me," continued Cleland, "but he wouldn't like to be
thought so. Little girls don't mind being considered youthful, do
they?"
"Yes, they _do_! You are teasing me, Dad."
"Am I to understand that I have a ready-made, grown-up family, and no
little child to comfort me?"
With a charming little sound in her throat like a young bird, she
snuggled closer, pressing her cheek against his.
"_Tell_ me," she murmured.
"About what, darling?"
"About your lit--about your boy."
She never tired hearing about this wonderful son, and Cleland never
tired of telling about Jim, so they were always in accord on that
subject.
Often Cleland tried to read in the gravely youthful eyes uplifted to his
the dreamy emotions which his narrative evoked--curiosity, awe, shy
delight, frank hunger for a playmate, doubt that this wonder-boy would
condescend to notice her, wistfulness, loneliness--the delicate tragedy
of solitary souls.
Always her gaze troubled him a little, because he had not yet told his
son of what he had done--had not written to him concerning the advent of
this little stranger. He had thought that the best and easiest way was
to tell Jim when he met him at the railroad station, and, without giving
the boy time to think, brood perhaps, perhaps worry, let him see little
Stephanie face to face.
It seemed the best way to John Cleland. But, at moments, lying alone,
sleepless in the night, he became horribly afraid.
It was about that time that he received a letter from Miss Rosalinda
Quest: