was dim. A screen shaded it from the bed, where Conlon muttered and
cried out faintly, intermittently, as though in conversation with some
one who was present only to himself. His voice was like the ghost or
shadow of a voice, not a whisper, but strained of all resonance. One
might fancy him standing on the bank of the deadly river and talking
across to some one beyond the fog, and fancy that the voices would so
creep through the fog stealthily, not leaping distances like earthly
sounds, but struggling slowly through nameless obstruction.
Kelly rubbed his hands before the fire.
“I was his inchimate friend.”
Harding said: “Are you going to talk like a blanked idiot all night, or
leave off maybe about twelve?”
“I know ye for a hard man, too, Simmy,” said Kelly, pathetically; “an'
'tis the nathur of men, for an Irishman is betther for blow-in' off his
shteam, be it the wrath or the sorrow of him, an' the Yankee is betther
for bottlin' it up.”
“Uses it for driving his engine mostly.”
“So. But Conlon--”
“Conlon,” said Harding slowly, “that's so. He had steam to drive with,
and steam to blow with, and plenty left over to toot his whistle and
scald his fingers and ache in his belly. Expanding that there figure, he
carried suction after him like the 1:40 express, he did.”
“'Tis thrue.” Kelly leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I mind me
when I first saw him I hadn't seen him before, unless so be when he was
puttin' the wather-main through the sand-hills up the river an' bossin'
a gang o' men with a fog-horn voice till they didn't own their souls,
an' they didn't have any, what's more, the dirty Polocks. But he
come into me shop one day, an' did I want the job o' plumbin' the
court-house?
“'Have ye the court-house in your pocket?' says I, jokin'.
“'I have,' says he, onexpected, 'an' any plumbin' that's done for the
court-house is done in the prisint risidence of the same.'
“An' I looks up, an' 'O me God!' I says to meself, ''tis a man!' wid
the black eyebrows of him, an' the shoulders an' the legs of him. An' he
took me into the shwale of his wake from that day to this. But I niver
thought to see him die.”
“That's so. You been his heeler straight through. I don't know but I
like your saying so. But I don't see the how. Why, look here; when I bid
for the old water contract he comes and offers to sell it to me, sort
of personal asset. I don't know how. By the unbroke faces of the other
Water Commissioners he didn't use his pile-driving fist to persuade
'em, and what I paid him was no more'n comfortable for himself. How'd
he fetch it? How'd he do those things? Why, look here, Kelly, ain't he
bullied you? Ain't you done dirty jobs for him, and small thanks?”
“I have that.”
Kelly's hands trembled. He was bowed down and thoughtful, but not angry.
“Suppose I ask you what for?”
“Suppose ye do. Suppose I don' know. Maybe he was born to be king over
me. Maybe he wasn't. But I know he was a mastherful man, an' he's dyin'
here, an' me blood's sour an' me bones sad wid thinkin' of it. Don'
throuble me, Simmy.”
Harding leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, where the
lamp made a nebulous circle of light.
“Why, that's so,” he said at last, in conclusion of some unmentioned
train of thought. “Why, I got a pup at home, and his affection ain't
measured by the bones he's had, nor the licks he's had, not either of
'em.”
Kelly was deep in a reverie.
“Nor it ain't measured by my virtues. Look here, now; I don' see what
his measure is.”
“Hey?” Kelly roused himself.
“Oh, I was just thinking.”
Harding thought he had known other men who had had in some degree
a magnetic power that seemed to consist in mere stormy energy of
initiative. They were like strong drink to weaker men. It was more
physical than mental. Conlon was to Kelly a stimulant, then an appetite.
And Conlon was a bad lot. Fellows that had heeled for him were mostly
either wrecked or dead now. Why, there was a chap named Patterson that
used to be decent till he struck Conlon, when he went pretty low; and
Nora Reimer drowned herself on account of Patterson, when he got himself
shot in a row at some shanty up the railroad. The last had seemed a
good enough riddance. But Nora went off her head and jumped in the new
reservoir. Harding remembered it the more from being one of the Water
Company. They had had to empty the reservoir, which was expensive. And
there were others. A black, blustering sort of beast, Conlon. He had
more steam than was natural. Harding wondered vaguely at Kelly, who was
spelling out the doctor's directions from a piece of paper.
“A powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle. 'Tis no tin-course
dinner wid the champagne an' entries he's givin' Conlon the night. Hey?
A powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle.”
Harding's mind wandered on among memories of the little city below, an
intricate, irregular history, full of incidents, stories that were never
finished or dribbled off anywhere, black spots that he knew of in white
lives, white spots in dark lives. He did not happen to know any white
spots on Conlon.
“Course if a man ain't in politics for his health he ain't in it for the
health of the community, either, and that's all right. And if he opens
the morning by clumping Mrs. Conlon on the head, why, she clumps him
back more or less, and that's all right.” Then, if he went down-town and
lied here and there ingeniously in the way of business, and came home at
night pretty drunk, but no more than was popular with his constituency,
why, Conlon's life was some cluttered, but never dull. Still, Harding's
own ways being quieter and less cluttered, he felt that if Conlon were
going off naturally now, it was not, on the whole, a bad idea. It would
conduce to quietness. It would perhaps be a pity if anything interfered.
The clock in a distant steeple struck twelve, a dull, unechoing sound.
“Simmy,” said Kelly, pointing with his thumb, “what do he be sayin',
talkin'--talkin' like one end of a tiliphone?”
They both turned toward the bed and listened.
“Telephone! Likely there's a party at the other end, then. Where's the
other end?”
“I don' know,” whispered Kelly. “But I have this in me head, for ye
know, when the priest has done his last, 'tis sure he's dhropped his
man at the front door of wherever he's goin', wid a letther of
inthroduction in his hatband. An' while the man was waitin' for the
same to be read an' him certified a thrue corpse, if he had a kettleful
of boilin' impatience in himself like Tom Conlon, wouldn't he be passin'
the time o' day through the keyhole wid his friends be-yant?”
“'Tain't a telephone, then? It's a keyhole, hey?”
“Tiliphone or keyhole, he'd be talkin' through it, Conlon would, do ye
mind?”
Harding looked with some interest. Conlon muttered, and stopped, and
muttered again. Harding rose and walked to the bed. Kelly followed
tremulously.
“Listen, will ye?” said Kelly, suddenly leaning down.
“I don' know,” said Harding, with an instinct of hesitation. “I don'
know as it's a square game. Maybe he's talkin' of things that ain't
healthy to mention. Maybe he's plugged somebody some time, or broke a
bank--ain't any more'n likely. What of it?”
“Listen, will ye?”
“Don' squat on a man when he's down, Kelly.”
“'Sh!”
“_Hold Tom's hand. Wait for Tom_,” babbled the ghostly voice, a thin,
distant sound.
“What'd he say? What'd he say?” Kelly was white and trembling.
Harding stood up and rubbed his chin reflectively. He did not seem to
himself to make it out. He brought a chair, sat down, and leaned close
to Conlon to study the matter.
“_What's the heart-scald, mother?_” babbled Conlon. “_Where'd ye get it
from? Me! Wirra!_”
“'Tis spheakin' to ghosteses he is, Simmy, ye take me worrd.”
“Come off! He's harking back when he was a kid.”
Kelly shook his head solemnly.
“He's spheakin' to ghosteses.”
“_What's that, mother? Arra! I'm sick, mother. What for? I don' see.
Where'm I goin'?_'
“You got me,” muttered Harding. “I don' know.”
“_Tom'll be good. It's main dark. Hold Tom's hand_.”
Kelly was on his knees, saying prayers at terrific speed.
“Hear to him!” he stopped to whisper. “Ghosteses! Ora pro nobis--”
“_Tom ain't afraid. Naw, he ain't afraid._”
Harding went back to his window. The air was heavy and motionless, the
stars a little dim. He could see the dark line of the river with an
occasional glint upon it, and the outline of the hills beyond.
The little city had drawn a robe of innocent obscurity over it. Only a
malicious sparkle gleamed here and there. He thought he knew that city
inside and out, from end to end. He had lived in it, dealt with it,
loved it, cheated it, helped to build it, shared its fortunes. Who knew
it better than he? But every now and then it surprised with some hidden
detail or some impulse of civic emotion. And Kelly and Conlon, surely he
knew them, as men may know men. But he never had thought to see
Conlon as to-night. It was odd. But there was some fact in the social
constitution, in human nature, at the basis of all the outward oddities
of each.
“Maybe when a man's gettin' down to his reckonin' it's needful to show
up what he's got at the bottom. Then he begins to peel off layers of
himself like an onion, and 'less there ain't anything to him but layers,
by and by he comes to something that resembles a sort of aboriginal boy,
which is mostly askin' questions and bein' surprised.”
Maybe there was more boyishness in Conlon than in most men. Come
to think of it, there was. Conlon's leadership was ever of the
maybe-you-think-I-can't-lick-you order; and men followed him, admitting
that he could, in admiration and simplicity. You might see the same
thing in the public-school yard. Maybe that was the reason. The sins of
Conlon were not sophisticated.
The low, irregular murmur from the bed, the heavy heat of the night,
made Harding drowsy. Kelly repeating the formula of his prayers, a kind
of incantation against ghosts, Conlon with his gaunt face in the shadow
and his big hands on the sheet clutching at nothing visible, both faded
away, and Harding fell asleep.
He woke with a start. Kelly was dancing about the bed idiotically.
“He's shweatin'!” he gabbled. “He's shweatin'! He'll be well--Conlon.”
It made Harding think of the “pup,” and how he would dance about him,
when he went home, in the crude expression of joy. Conlon's face was
damp. He muttered no more. They piled the blankets on him till the
perspiration stood out in drops. Conlon breathed softly and slept. Kelly
babbled gently, “Conlon! Conlon!”
Harding went back to the window and rubbed his eyes sleepily.
“Kind of too bad, after all that trouble to get him peeled.”
The morning was breaking, solemn, noiseless, with lifted banners and
wide pageantries, over river and city.
Harding yawned.
“It's one on Father Ryan, anyway. That's a good thing. Blamed old
windbag!”
Kelly murmured ecstatically, “Conlon will get well--Conlon!”
ST CATHERINE'S
ST. CATHERINE'S was the life work of an old priest, who is remembered
now and presently will be forgotten. There are gargoyles over the
entrance aside, with their mouths open to express astonishment. They
spout rain water at times, but you need not get under them; and there
are towers, and buttresses, a great clock, a gilded cross, and roofs
that go dimly heavenward.
St. Catherine's is new. The neighborhood squats around it in different
pathetic attitudes. Opposite is the saloon of the wooden-legged man; then
the three groceries whose cabbages all look unpleasant; the parochial
school with the green lattice; and all those little wooden houses--where
lives, for instance, the dressmaker who funnily calls herself “Modiste.”
Beyond the street the land drops down to the freight yards.
But Father Connell died about the time they finished the east oriel, and
Father Harra reigned over the house of the old man's dreams--a red-faced
man, a high feeder, who looked as new as the church and said the virtues
of Father Connell were reducing his flesh. That would seem to be no
harm; but Father Harra meant it humorously. Father Connell had stumped
about too much among the workmen in the cold and wet, else there had
been no need of his dying at eighty-eight. His tall black hat became a
relic that hung in the tiring room, and he cackled no more in his thin
voice the noble Latin of the service. Peace to his soul! The last
order he wrote related to the position of the Christ figure and the
inscription, “Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden: I will give you
rest.” But the figure was not in place till the mid-December following.
And it was the day before Christmas that Father Harra had a fine
service, with his boy choir and all; and Chubby Locke sang a solo,
“Angels ever bright and fair,” that was all dripping with tears, so to
speak. Chubby Locke was an imp too. All around the altar the candles
were lighted, and there hung a cluster of gas jets over the head of the
Christ figure on the edge of the south transept. So fine it was that
Father Harra came out of his room into the aisle (when the people were
gone, saying how fine it was, and the sexton was putting out the gas
here and there), to walk up and down and think about it, especially
how he should keep up with the virtues of Father Connell. Duskier and
duskier it grew, as the candles went out cluster by cluster till only
those in the south transept were left; and Dennis, coming there, stopped
and grunted.
“What!” said Father Harra.
“It's asleep he is,” said the sexton. “It's a b'y, yer riverence.”
“Why, so it is! He went to sleep during the service. H'm--well--they
often do that, Dennis.”
“Anyways he don't belong here,” said Dennis.
“Think so? I don't know about that. Wait a bit. I don't know about that
Dennis.”
The boy lay curled up on the seat--a newsboy, by the papers that had
slipped from his arms. But he did not look businesslike, and he did not
suggest the advantages of being poor in America. One does not become a
capitalist or president by going to church and to sleep in the best of
business hours, from four to six, when the streets are stirring with
men on their way to dinners, cigars and evening papers. The steps of St.
Catherine's are not a bad place to sell papers after Vespers, and one
might as well go in, to be sure, and be warm while the service lasts;
only, as I said, if one falls asleep, one does not become a capitalist
or president immediately. Father Harra considered, and Dennis waited
respectfully.
“It's making plans I am against your natural rest, Dennis. I'm that
inconsiderate of your feelings to think of keeping St. Catherine's open
this night. And why? Look ye, Dennis. St. Catherine's is getting itself
consecrated these days, being new, and of course--But I tell ye, Dennis,
it's a straight church doctrine that the blessings of the poor are a
good assistance to the holy wather.”
“An' me wid children of me own to be missin' their father this Christmas
Eve!” began Dennis indignantly.
“Who wouldn't mind, the little villains, if their father had another
dollar of Christmas morning to buy 'em presents.”
“Ah, well,” said the sexton, “yer riverence is that persuadin'.”
“It's plain enough for ye to see yourself, Dennis, though thick-headed
somewhat. There you are: 'Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden;' and
here he is. Plain enough. And who are the weary and heavy-laden in this
city?”
“Yer riverence will be meanin' everybody,” chuckled Dennis.
“Think so? Rich and poor and all? Stuff! I don't believe it. Not
to-night. It'll be the outcasts, I'm thinking, Dennis. Come on.”
“An' the b'y, yer riverence?”
“The what? Oh, why, yes, yes. He's all right. I don't see anything the
matter with him. He's come.”
It was better weather to go with the wind than against it, for the
snow drove in gritty particles, and the sidewalks made themselves
disagreeable and apt to slip out from under a person. Little spurts
of snow danced up St. Catherine's roofs and went off the ridgepoles in
puffs. It ought to snow on Christmas Eve; but it rightly should snow
with better manners and not be so cold. The groceries closed early.
Freiburger, the saloon man, looked over the curtains of his window.
“I don't know vat for Fater Harra tack up dings dis time by his kirch
door, 'Come--come in here.' Himmel! der Irishman!”
Father Harra turned in to his supper, and thought how he would trouble
Father Conner's reputation for enterprise and what a fine bit of
constructive ability himself was possessed of.
The great central door of St. Catherine's stood open, so that the drift
blew in and piled in windrows on the cold floor of the vestibule. The
tall front of the church went up into the darkness, pointing to no
visible stars; but over the doors two gas jets flickered across the big
sign they use for fairs at the parochial school. “Come in here.” The
vestibule was dark, barring another gas jet over a side door, with
another sign, “Come in here,” and within the great church was dark as
well, except for a cluster over the Christ figure. That was all; but
Father Harra thought it a neat symbol, looking toward those who go from
meagre light to light through the darkness.
Little noises were in the church all night far up in the pitch darkness
of rafter and buttress, as if people were whispering and crying softly
to one another. Now and again, too, the swing door would open and remain
so for a moment, suspicious, hesitating. But what they did, or who they
were that opened it, could hardly be told in the dusk and distance.
Dennis went to sleep in a chair by the chancel rail, and did not care
what they did or who they were, granted they kept away from the chancel.
How the wind blew!--and the snow tapped impatiently at stained windows
with a multitude of little fingers. But if the noises among the rafters
were not merely echoes of the crying and calling wind without, if any
presences moved and whispered there, and looked down on flat floor and
straight lines of pews, they must have seen the Christ figure, with
welcoming hands, dominant by reason of the light about it; and, just on
the edge of the circle of light, shapeless things stretched on cushions
of pews, and motionless or stirring uneasily. Something now came dimly
up the aisle from the swing door, stopped at a pew, and hesitated.
“Git out!” growled a hoarse voice. “Dis my bunk.”
The intruder gave a nervous giggle. “Begawd!” muttered the hoarse voice.
“It's a lady!”
Another voice said something angrily. “Well,” said the first, “it ain't
behavin' nice to come into me boodwer.”
The owner of the giggle had slipped away and disappeared in a distant
pew. In another pew to the right of the aisle a smaller shadow whispered
to another:
“Jimmy, that's a statoo up there.”
“Who?”
“That. I bet 'e's a king.”
“Aw, no 'e ain't. Kings has crowns an' wallups folks.”
“Gorry! What for?”
“I don' know.”
The other sighed plaintively. “I thought 'e might be a king.”
The rest were mainly silent. Some one had a bad cough. Once a sleeper
rolled from the seat and fell heavily to the floor. There was an oath
or two, a smothered laugh, and the distant owner of the giggle used it
nervously. The last was an uncanny sound. The wakened sleeper objected
to it. He said he would “like to get hold of her,” and then lay down
cautiously on his cushion.
Architects have found that their art is cunning to play tricks with
them; whence come whispering galleries, comers of echoes, roofs that
crush the voice of the speaker, and roofs that enlarge it. Father
Connell gave no orders to shape the roofs of St. Catherine's, that on
stormy nights so many odd noises might congregate there, whispering,
calling, murmuring, now over the chancel, now the organ, now far up in
the secret high places of the roof, now seeming to gather in confidence
above the Christ figure and the circle of sleepers; or, if one vaguely
imagined some inquisitively errant beings moving overhead, it would seem
that newcomers constantly entered, to whom it had all to be explained.
But against that eager motion in the darkness above the Christ figure
below was bright in his long garment, and quiet and secure. The cluster
of gas jets over his head made light but a little distance around, then
softened the dusk for another distance, and beyond seemed not to touch
the darkness at all. The dusk was a debatable space. The sleepers all
lay in the debatable space. They may have sought it by instinct; but
the more one looked at them the more they seemed like dull, half-animate
things, over whom the light and the darkness made their own compromises
and the people up in the roof their own comments.
The clock in the steeple struck the hours; in the church the tremble was
felt more than the sound was heard. The chimes each hour started their
message, “Good will and peace;” but the wind went after it and howled it
down, and the snow did not cease its petulance at the windows.
*****
The clock in the steeple struck five. The man with the hoarse voice sat
up, leaned over the back of the seat and touched his neighbor, who rose
noiselessly, a huge fat man and unkempt.
“Time to slope,” whispered the first, motioning toward the chancel.
The other followed his motion.
“What's up there?”
“You're ignorance, you are. That's where they gives the show. There's
pickin's there.”
The two slipped out and stole up the aisle with a peculiar noiseless
tread. Even Fat Bill's step could not be heard a rod away. The aisle
entered the circle of light before the Christ figure; but the two
thieves glided through without haste and without looking up. The
smaller, in front, drew up at the end of the aisle, and Fat Bill ran
into him. Dennis sat in his chair against the chancel rail, asleep.
“Get onto his whiskers, Bill. Mebbe you'll have to stuff them whiskers
down his throat.”
There was a nervous giggle behind them. Fat Bill shot into a pew,
dragging his comrade after him, and crouched down. “It ain't no use,”
he whispered, shaking the other angrily. “Church business is bad luck. I
alius said so. What's for them blemed noises all night? How'd come they
stick that thing up there with the gas over it? What for'd they leave
the doors open, an' tell ye to come in, an' keep their damn devils
gigglin' around? 'Taint straight I won't stand it.”
“It's only a woman, Bill,” said the other patiently.
He rose on his knees and looked over the back of the seat. “'Tain't
straight. I won't stand it.”
“We won't fight, Bill. We'll get out, if you say so.”
The owner of the giggle was sitting up, as they glided back, Fat Bill
leading.
“I'll smash yer face,” the smaller man said to her.
Bill turned and grabbed his collar.
“You come along.”
The woman stared stupidly after, till the swing door closed behind them.
Then she put on her hat, decorated with too many disorderly flowers.
Most of the sleepers were wakened. The wind outside had died in the
night, and the church was quite still. A man in a dress suit and
overcoat sat up in a pew beneath a window, and stared about him. His
silk hat lay on the floor. He leaned over the back of the seat and spoke
to his neighbor, a tramp in checked trousers.
“How'd I g-get here?” he asked thickly.
“Don' know, pardner,” said the tramp cheerfully. “Floated in, same as
me?” He caught sight of the white tie and shirt front. “Maybe you'd
give a cove a shiner to steady ye out They don't give breakfasts with
lodgin's here.”
The woman with the giggle and the broken-down flowers on her hat went
out next; then a tall, thin man with a beard and a cough; the newsboy
with his papers shuffled after, his shoes being too large; then a lame
man--something seemed the matter with his hip; and a decent-looking
woman, who wore a faded shawl over her head and kept it drawn across her
face--she seemed ashamed to be there, as if it did not appear to her a
respectable place; last, two boys, one of them small, but rather stunted
than very young. He said:
“'E ain't a king, is 'e, Jimmy? You don' know who 'e is, do you, Jimmy?”
“Naw.”
“Say, Jimmy, it was warm, warn't it?”
*****
Dennis came down the aisle, put out the gas, and began to brush the
cushions. The clock struck a quarter of six, and Father Harra came in.
“Christmas, Dennis, Christmas! H'm--anybody been here? What did they
think of it?”
Dennis rubbed his nose sheepishly.
“They wint to shleep, sor, an'--an' thin they wint out.”
Father Harra looked up at the Christ figure and stroked his red chin.
“I fancied they might see the point,” he said slowly. “Well, well, I
hope they were warm.”
The colored lights from the east oriel fell over the Christ figure and
gave it a cheerful look; and from other windows blue and yellow and
magical deep-sea tints floated in the air, as if those who had whispered
unseen in the darkness were now wandering about, silent but curiously
visible.