A SERIOUS STEP
HE awoke with such a feeling of happiness--a fluttery feeling, which was
in his throat, and also just at the lower end of his breastbone, where
he seemed to have so many kinds of sensations. For a moment he did not
remember what made him so happy. But as he moved, something hard pressed
against his ribs, whereupon the fluttery feeling suddenly spread over
the whole of him, so that the calves of those lead-pipe legs got creepy,
and his shoulder-blades tingled. Then he knew it was all because of the
book.
The process of getting up of a morning was always a simple one. As he
slept in his big clothes, all he had to do was scramble to his feet,
roll up his bedding, splash a little water upon the central portion of
his countenance, dry it away with the apron, and put the apron on.
As a rule he never so much as stirred till Barber or the alarm clock
sounded an order. But on this happy morning he did not wait for orders,
but rose promptly, though it still wanted more than half an hour to
getting-up time. He did yet another unusual thing; noiselessly, so as
not to wake any one, he set his bedding roll on end just outside the
door of Cis's room, then returned to the table, drew out the drawer,
chose a saucer of rose-colored beads, and fell to threading them
swiftly. He had two ideas in mind: first, after yesterday's unpleasant
experience, he was anxious to make a good impression upon Big Tom;
second, and principally, he was stringing now, when he dared not read,
in order that, later on, he might be free to enjoy his book.
He held the long needle in his right hand. He poked the beads to the
needle's tip with the forefinger of his left. He used his tongue, too,
after a fashion, for if a bead was obstinate his tongue tip sometimes
helped--by curling itself noseward over his upper lip. Before now he had
always thought of rose-colored beads as future rose-colored roses in the
beautiful purses that Mrs. Kukor made. But now the beads reminded him of
nothing less than that strange garden laying under the horizontal stone
in China.
He took out all of his saucers--the pink, the green, the brown, the
gold, the blue, the burgundy, the white, the black, the yellow--and
found that they gave him a new pleasure. They were the fruit of
Aladdin's garden, and he planned to offer them in a yellow bowl to that
certain dark-haired little girl. "'What wouldst thou have?'" he quoted.
"'I am ready to obey thee as thy slave,'"--a statement that he
considered highly appropriate. His whispering was accompanied by
gesticulations that bore no relation to bead-stringing, and by tossings
of his yellow head.
"_Now_ what y' mumblin' about?" demanded Big Tom. He was watching from
the bedroom door, and his look denied that Johnnie, though at work, was
making anything like a good impression; quite the contrary--for Barber's
bloodshot eyes were full of suspicion. Should a boy who always had to be
watched and driven suddenly show a desire to keep busy? "Breakfast on?"
he asked.
Johnnie sprang up. "I didn't want to make no noise," he explained. The
next moment lids were rattling and coal was tumbling upon some blazing
kindling as he started the morning fire.
"A-a-a-ah! What y' got this _lamp_ down for?"--it was the next question,
and there was triumph in Big Tom's voice. "Been wastin' oil, have y'?
Come! When did y' light it? Answer up!"
"I didn't light it," replied Johnnie, calmly glancing round, his chin on
his shoulders.
"No? Then what _did_ y' do? Hey? What?"
"Just took it down 'n' rubbed it."
"M-m-m!--Well, y' made a poor job of your rubbin'. I'll say that!"
"I'll rub it again," said Johnnie. He caught up the dish towel with
which he had dried his own face and set to work on the lamp. There was a
faint smile on his lips as he worked. There was a smile in his eyes,
too, but he kept his lids discreetly lowered.
His whole manner irritated Barber, who sauntered to the table, took a
careful survey of it, drew out the drawer, looked it over, then dropped
into the morris chair to pull on his socks. Now he sensed, as had Cis
the day before, that the air of the flat was charged with
something--something that was strange to it. He did not guess it was
happiness. But as Johnnie moved quickly between sink and stove, between
cupboard and table, Big Tom watched him, and thrust out that lower lip.
While the business of breakfast was on, instead of standing up to the
table for his bowl of oats, Johnnie made sandwiches for the two lunches.
Hot tea, well sugared, went into Barber's pail. Another tin compartment
Johnnie packed with the cooked prunes. A third held slabs of corned-beef
between bread. Sour pickles were added to these when he filled Cis's
lunchbox, which closely resembled a camera. And now the wide-open, fixed
look of his eyes, the uplift at the corners of his mouth, his swelled
nostrils and his buoyant step told Cis that he was engaged in some
adventure, high and stirring.
But Barber, still watching the boy sharply, made up his mind that the
punishment of the day before had done a lot of good. In fact, it seemed
to have brought about a complete transformation. For during the two or
three minutes that Big Tom allowed himself after eating for the filling
of his pipe, Johnnie swept the table clear, washed, dried and put away
the dishes, and was so far along with his morning's work that he was
wiping off the stove.
Leaving, Barber omitted his usual warnings and directions; and did not
even wait outside the door for a final look back, but went promptly
down, as the creaking stairs testified, and out, as told by the sucking
move and gentle rattle of the hall door.
It was Cis who lingered. When the flat was clear of her stepfather, she
fairly burst from her tiny room, and halted face to face with Johnnie,
from whose strong right hand the stove rag was even then falling. Her
eyes both questioned and challenged him. And the sudden breaking of his
countenance into a radiant grin, at one and at the same time, answered
her--and confessed.
"Johnnie!" she whispered.
He stretched up to her pink ear to answer, for Grandpa was at the table,
still busy over his bowl. "A book," he whispered back, his air that of
one who has seen the dream of a lifetime realized.
"_What?_ What kind of a book? And where'd you get it? Show it to me."
He went into the little closet. When he came out, she went in. And
presently, as she sauntered into the kitchen once more, he plunged past
her and the tiny room received him a second time--all of which was
according to a method they had worked out long ago. He was up-headed,
and his eyes sparkled as he unpinned a towel from under Grandpa's chin
and trundled the wheel chair back from the table. His look said that he
defied all criticism.
She reached for the camera-box. Her manner wholly lacked enthusiasm. "I
guess it's a good story," she conceded kindly. "I heard about it lots
when I was in school. But, my! It's so raggy!"
"Raggy!" scoffed Johnnie. "Huh! I don't care what it _looks_ like!"
When she, too, was gone, he omitted his usual taking of the air at the
window. He even denied himself the pleasure of calling up his four
millionaires and telling them of his good fortune. The main business of
the day was the book. Would Aladdin's order for a palace, complete, be
carried out? Would that ambitious Celestial marry the Princess of his
choice? Johnnie could scarcely wait to know.
Following a course that he had found good these several years past, he
wound the alarm clock a few times and set it to ring sharp at four in
the afternoon--which would give him more than a full hour in which to
wash Grandpa, make the beds and sweep before Big Tom's return. This
done, he opened the book on the table, dug a hand into his tousled mop,
and began to read--to read as he might have drunk if thirst were
torturing him, and a cool, deep cup were at his lips. For the book was
to him really a draught which quenched a longing akin to thirst; it was
a potion that gave him new life.
As the story of stories unfolded itself, step by step, the ragged street
urchin whose father had been a poor tailor, attained to great
heights--to wealth and success and power. Johnnie gloried in it all,
seeing such results as future possibilities of his own, and not
forgetting to remark how kind, through all the upward trending of
fortune, Aladdin had been to his mother (though he, himself, did not
pause in his enjoyment of the tale to take the regular train trip with
Grandpa).
Twice during the morning the old soldier, by whimpering insistently,
brought himself to Johnnie's attention. But the moment Grandpa was
waited upon, back Johnnie went to his book, and page was turned upon
page as the black magic of the hateful African wafted that most perfect
of palaces many a league from its original site, and separated for his
own wicked purposes the loving Aladdin and his devoted Buddir al
Buddoor.
And then--all of a sudden--and for no reason that Johnnie could name,
but as if some good genie of his own were watching over him, and had
whispered a warning, he cast off the enthrallment of Asia, stopped
dragging at his hair, started to his feet, slid the book under his
collar-band, and took stock of the time.
It was twelve. Indeed, the noon whistles were just beginning to blow.
But they and the clock did not reassure him. He had been dimly aware,
the past hour or so, of a strange state of quiet overhead. That
awareness now resolved itself into a horrible fear--the fear that, in
spite of lunches put up and a clock wound to clang at four in the
afternoon, the day was--Saturday!
"Gee!" breathed Johnnie, and paled to a sickly white.
His first thought was to make sure one way or another. Scurrying to the
window, he pushed it up, hung out of it toward the Gamboni casement, and
called to a sleek head that at this time of the day was almost certain
to be bobbing in sight. There it was, and "What day is this, Mrs.
Gamboni?" he demanded. "Quick! Is it Saturday?"
"_Si!_"
Saturday! A half-day! _Barber!_
He threw himself backward, then stood for a moment, panic-stricken. Of
course it was Saturday. Which explained why Mrs. Kukor was out. Oh, why
had she not stopped by on her way to church? Oh, why had he left any of
his work undone? Oh, for some genie to finish it all up in a second!
Oh, for some Slave of a Ring or a Lamp!
"Gee!" he breathed again. "This was the shortest Saturday mornin' in the
world!"
There now came to the fore the practical side of his nature. He knew he
must do one of two things: stay, and take the whipping that Big Tom
would surely give him, or--go.
What had heretofore kept him from going was the fact that he had no
clothes. By the end of his first year in the flat, the little suit he
had been wearing when he came was in utter rags. Big Tom had bought him
no new suit, declaring that he could not afford it. So Johnnie had had
to decide between putting on some of Cis's old garments or Barber's
mammoth cast-offs. He chose the latter, which Mrs. Kukor offered to
alter, but Barber refused her help. And she knew at once what Johnnie
did not guess: the longshoreman wanted the boy to appear ridiculous.
The plan worked. The first time Johnnie had ventured into the area
wearing his baggy breeches and a voluminous shirt, the boys who had from
the first called "Girl's hair!" at him changed their taunt to "Old
clothes!" It had sent him scurrying back into the flat, and it had kept
him there, so that Big Tom had some one to look after Grandpa steadily,
and bring in a small wage besides.
But now not even the likelihood of being mocked for his ragged misfits
could keep Johnnie back. Darting into the hall, he crouched in the dark
passage a moment to listen, his heart pounding so hard that he could
hear it; then certain that the way was yet clear, he straddled the
banisters and, with his two strong hands to steady him and act as a
brake to his speed, took the three flights to the ground floor.
As Big Tom usually entered the area by the tunnel-like hall that led in
from the main street to the south, Johnnie headed north, first taking
care to glance out into the area before he charged across it, blinded by
its glare after the semidark of the Barber rooms. He was hatless. His
hair and his fringe flew. His feet flew, too, as if the longshoreman
were at their horny little heels.
The north tunnel gained, he scampered along it. As he dodged out of it,
and westward, again the glare of the outdoors blinded him, so that he
did not see a crowd that was ahead of him--a crowd made up wholly of
boys.
He plunged among the lot. Instantly a joyous wrangle of cries went up:
"Girl's hair! Girl's hair! Old clothes! Old clothes!" A water-pistol
discharged a chill stream into his face. Hands seized him, tearing at
his rags.
Savagely he battled at the center of the mob, hitting, kicking, biting.
His sight cleared, and he made the blows of his big hands tell. "Leave
me alone!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"
The crowd doubled as men and women rushed up to see what the excitement
was all about. Then hands laid hold of Johnnie's tormentors, hauling
them back, and suddenly he found himself free. Once more he took to his
heels, and panting, dripping, scarlet and more ragged than before, he
fled ignominiously.