sweet-looking as she had always been, standing under the box bush beside
the bench, and breaking off one of the green branches. The branch parted
and the stem flew back to its place again, leaving a green sprig in her
hand. She turned at that moment directly toward him, and he could see
from his hiding-place how she lifted the leaves to her lips, and that a
tear was creeping down her cheek.
Then he dashed the bushes aside with both arms, and with a cry that no
one but she heard sprang toward her.
Young Van Bibber stopped his mail phaeton in front of the club, and went
inside to recuperate, and told how he had seen them driving home through
the Park in her brougham and unchaperoned.
“Which I call very bad form,” said the punctilious Van Bibber, “even
though they are engaged.”
MY DISREPUTABLE FRIEND, MR. RAEGEN
Rags Raegen was out of his element. The water was his proper
element--the water of the East River by preference. And when it came to
“running the roofs,” as he would have himself expressed it, he was “not
in it.”
On those other occasions when he had been followed by the police, he
had raced them toward the river front and had dived boldly in from the
wharf, leaving them staring blankly and in some alarm as to his safety.
Indeed, three different men in the precinct, who did not know of
young Raegen's aquatic prowess, had returned to the station-house and
seriously reported him to the sergeant as lost, and regretted having
driven a citizen into the river, where he had been unfortunately
drowned. It was even told how, on one occasion, when hotly followed,
young Raegen had dived off Wakeman's Slip, at East Thirty-third Street,
and had then swum back under water to the landing-steps, while the
policeman and a crowd of stevedores stood watching for him to reappear
where he had sunk. It is further related that he had then, in a spirit
of recklessness, and in the possibility of the policeman's failing
to recognize him, pushed his way through the crowd from the rear and
plunged in to rescue the supposedly drowned man. And that after two or
three futile attempts to find his own corpse, he had climbed up on the
dock and told the officer that he had touched the body sticking in the
mud. And, as a result of this fiction, the river-police dragged the
river-bed around Wakeman's Slip with grappling irons for four hours,
while Rags sat on the wharf and directed their movements.
But on this present occasion the police were standing between him and
the river, and so cut off his escape in that direction, and as they had
seen him strike McGonegal and had seen McGonegal fall, he had to run for
it and seek refuge on the roofs. What made it worse was that he was not
in his own hunting-grounds, but in McGonegal's, and while any tenement
on Cherry Street would have given him shelter, either for love of him or
fear of him, these of Thirty-third Street were against him and “all that
Cherry Street gang,” while “Pike” McGonegal was their darling and their
hero. And, if Rags had known it, any tenement on the block was better
than Case's, into which he first turned, for Case's was empty and
untenanted, save in one or two rooms, and the opportunities for dodging
from one to another were in consequence very few. But he could not know
this, and so he plunged into the dark hall-way and sprang up the first
four flights of stairs, three steps at a jump, with one arm stretched
out in front of him, for it was very dark and the turns were short. On
the fourth floor he fell headlong over a bucket with a broom sticking
in it, and cursed whoever left it there. There was a ladder leading from
the sixth floor to the roof, and he ran up this and drew it after him as
he fell forward out of the wooden trap that opened on the flat tin roof
like a companion-way of a ship. The chimneys would have hidden him, but
there was a policeman's helmet coming up from another companion-way,
and he saw that the Italians hanging out of the windows of the other
tenements were pointing at him and showing him to the officer. So he
hung by his hands and dropped back again. It was not much of a fall,
but it jarred him, and the race he had already run had nearly taken his
breath from him. For Rags did not live a life calculated to fit young
men for sudden trials of speed.
He stumbled back down the narrow stairs, and, with a vivid recollection
of the bucket he had already fallen upon, felt his way cautiously with
his hands and with one foot stuck out in front of him. If he had been in
his own bailiwick, he would have rather enjoyed the tense excitement
of the chase than otherwise, for there he was at home and knew all the
cross-cuts and where to find each broken paling in the roof-fences, and
all the traps in the roofs. But here he was running in a maze, and
what looked like a safe passage-way might throw him head on into the
outstretched arms of the officers.
And while he felt his way his mind was terribly acute to the fact that
as yet no door on any of the landings had been thrown open to him,
either curiously or hospitably as offering a place of refuge. He did not
want to be taken, but in spite of this he was quite cool, and so,
when he heard quick, heavy footsteps beating up the stairs, he stopped
himself suddenly by placing one hand on the side of the wall and the
other on the banister and halted, panting. He could distinguish from
below the high voices of women and children and excited men in the
street, and as the steps came nearer he heard some one lowering the
ladder he had thrown upon the roof to the sixth floor and preparing to
descend. “Ah!” snarled Raegen, panting and desperate, “youse think you
have me now, sure, don't you?” It rather frightened him to find the
house so silent, for, save the footsteps of the officers, descending and
ascending upon him, he seemed to be the only living person in all the
dark, silent building.
He did not want to fight.
He was under heavy bonds already to keep the peace, and this last had
surely been in self-defence, and he felt he could prove it. What he
wanted now was to get away, to get back to his own people and to lie
hidden in his own cellar or garret, where they would feed and guard him
until the trouble was over. And still, like the two ends of a vise, the
representatives of the law were closing in upon him. He turned the knob
of the door opening to the landing on which he stood, and tried to push
it in, but it was locked. Then he stepped quickly to the door on the
opposite side and threw his shoulder against it. The door opened, and
he stumbled forward sprawling. The room in which he had taken refuge was
almost bare, and very dark; but in a little room leading from it he saw
a pile of tossed-up bedding on the floor, and he dived at this as though
it was water, and crawled far under it until he reached the wall beyond,
squirming on his face and stomach, and flattening out his arms and legs.
Then he lay motionless, holding back his breath, and listening to the
beating of his heart and to the footsteps on the stairs. The footsteps
stopped on the landing leading to the outer room, and he could hear the
murmur of voices as the two men questioned one another. Then the door
was kicked open, and there was a long silence, broken sharply by the
click of a revolver.
“Maybe he's in there,” said a bass voice. The men stamped across the
floor leading into the dark room in which he lay, and halted at the
entrance. They did not stand there over a moment before they turned and
moved away again; but to Raegen, lying with blood-vessels choked, and
with his hand pressed across his mouth, it seemed as if they had been
contemplating and enjoying his agony for over an hour. “I was in this
place not more than twelve hours ago,” said one of them easily. “I come
in to take a couple out for fighting. They were yelling 'murder' and
'police,' and breaking things; but they went quiet enough. The man is a
stevedore, I guess, and him and his wife used to get drunk regular and
carry on up here every night or so. They got thirty days on the Island.”
“Who's taking care of the rooms?” asked the bass voice. The first voice
said he guessed “no one was,” and added: “There ain't much to take care
of, that I can see.” “That's so,” assented the bass voice. “Well,” he
went on briskly, “he's not here; but he's in the building, sure, for he
put back when he seen me coming over the roof. And he didn't pass me,
neither, I know that, anyway,” protested the bass voice. Then the bass
voice said that he must have slipped into the flat below, and added
something that Raegen could not hear distinctly, about Schaffer on the
roof, and their having him safe enough, as that red-headed cop from the
Eighteenth Precinct was watching on the street. They closed the door
behind them, and their footsteps clattered down the stairs, leaving the
big house silent and apparently deserted. Young Raegen raised his head,
and let his breath escape with a great gasp of relief, as when he had
been a long time under water, and cautiously rubbed the perspiration
out of his eyes and from his forehead. It had been a cruelly hot, close
afternoon, and the stifling burial under the heavy bedding, and the
excitement, had left him feverishly hot and trembling. It was already
growing dark outside, although he could not know that until he lifted
the quilts an inch or two and peered up at the dirty window-panes. He
was afraid to rise, as yet, and flattened himself out with an impatient
sigh, as he gathered the bedding over his head again and held back
his breath to listen. There may have been a minute or more of absolute
silence in which he lay there, and then his blood froze to ice in his
veins, his breath stopped, and he heard, with a quick gasp of terror,
the sound of something crawling toward him across the floor of the outer
room. The instinct of self-defence moved him first to leap to his feet,
and to face and fight it, and then followed as quickly a foolish sense
of safety in his hiding-place; and he called upon his greatest strength,
and, by his mere brute will alone, forced his forehead down to the bare
floor and lay rigid, though his nerves jerked with unknown, unreasoning
fear. And still he heard the sound of this living thing coming creeping
toward him until the instinctive terror that shook him overcame his
will, and he threw the bed-clothes from him with a hoarse cry, and
sprang up trembling to his feet, with his back against the wall,
and with his arms thrown out in front of him wildly, and with the
willingness in them and the power in them to do murder.
The room was very dark, but the windows of the one beyond let in a
little stream of light across the floor, and in this light he saw moving
toward him on its hands and knees a little baby who smiled and nodded at
him with a pleased look of recognition and kindly welcome.
The fear upon Raegen had been so strong and the reaction was so great
that he dropped to a sitting posture on the heap of bedding and laughed
long and weakly, and still with a feeling in his heart that this
apparition was something strangely unreal and menacing.
{Illustration with caption: He sprang up trembling to his feet.}
But the baby seemed well pleased with his laughter, and stopped to throw
back its head and smile and coo and laugh gently with him as though the
joke was a very good one which they shared in common. Then it struggled
solemnly to its feet and came pattering toward him on a run, with both
bare arms held out, and with a look of such confidence in him, and
welcome in its face, that Raegen stretched out his arms and closed the
baby's fingers fearfully and gently in his own.
He had never seen so beautiful a child. There was dirt enough on its
hands and face, and its torn dress was soiled with streaks of coal and
ashes. The dust of the floor had rubbed into its bare knees, but the
face was like no other face that Rags had ever seen. And then it looked
at him as though it trusted him, and just as though they had known each
other at some time long before, but the eyes of the baby somehow seemed
to hurt him so that he had to turn his face away, and when he looked
again it was with a strangely new feeling of dissatisfaction with
himself and of wishing to ask pardon. They were wonderful eyes, black
and rich, and with a deep superiority of knowledge in them, a knowledge
that seemed to be above the knowledge of evil; and when the baby smiled
at him, the eyes smiled too with confidence and tenderness in them that
in some way frightened Rags and made him move uncomfortably. “Did you
know that youse scared me so that I was going to kill you?” whispered
Rags, apologetically, as he carefully held the baby from him at arm's
length. “Did you?” But the baby only smiled at this and reached out its
hand and stroked Rag's cheek with its fingers. There was something so
wonderfully soft and sweet in this that Rags drew the baby nearer and
gave a quick, strange gasp of pleasure as it threw its arms around his
neck and brought the face up close to his chin and hugged him tightly.
The baby's arms were very soft and plump, and its cheek and tangled
hair were warm and moist with perspiration, and the breath that fell
on Raegen's face was sweeter than anything he had ever known. He felt
wonderfully and for some reason uncomfortably happy, but the silence was
oppressive.
“What's your name, little 'un?” said Rags. The baby ran its arms more
closely around Raegen's neck and did not speak, unless its cooing in
Raegen's ear was an answer. “What did you say your name was?” persisted
Raegen, in a whisper. The baby frowned at this and stopped cooing
long enough to say: “Marg'ret,” mechanically and without apparently
associating the name with herself or anything else. “Margaret, eh!” said
Raegen, with grave consideration. “It's a very pretty name,” he added,
politely, for he could not shake off the feeling that he was in the
presence of a superior being. “An' what did you say your dad's name
was?” asked Raegen, awkwardly. But this was beyond the baby's patience
or knowledge, and she waived the question aside with both arms and began
to beat a tattoo gently with her two closed fists on Raegen's chin and
throat. “You're mighty strong now, ain't you?” mocked the young giant,
laughing. “Perhaps you don't know, Missie,” he added, gravely, “that
your dad and mar are doing time on the Island, and you won't see 'em
again for a month.” No, the baby did not know this nor care apparently;
she seemed content with Rags and with his company. Sometimes she drew
away and looked at him long and dubiously, and this cut Rags to the
heart, and he felt guilty, and unreasonably anxious until she smiled
reassuringly again and ran back into his arms, nestling her face against
his and stroking his rough chin wonderingly with her little fingers.
Rags forgot the lateness of the night and the darkness that fell upon
the room in the interest of this strange entertainment, which was so
much more absorbing, and so much more innocent than any other he had
ever known. He almost forgot the fact that he lay in hiding, that he
was surrounded by unfriendly neighbors, and that at any moment the
representatives of local justice might come in and rudely lead him away.
For this reason he dared not make a light, but he moved his position so
that the glare from an electric lamp on the street outside might fall
across the baby's face, as it lay alternately dozing and awakening,
to smile up at him in the bend of his arm. Once it reached inside the
collar of his shirt and pulled out the scapular that hung around his
neck, and looked at it so long, and with such apparent seriousness, that
Rags was confirmed in his fear that this kindly visitor was something
more or less of a superhuman agent, and his efforts to make this
supposition coincide with the fact that the angel's parents were on
Blackwell's Island, proved one of the severest struggles his mind had
ever experienced. He had forgotten to feel hungry, and the knowledge
that he was acutely so, first came to him with the thought that the
baby must obviously be in greatest need of food herself. This pained
him greatly, and he laid his burden down upon the bedding, and after
slipping off his shoes, tip-toed his way across the room on a foraging
expedition after something she could eat. There was a half of a
ham-bone, and a half loaf of hard bread in a cupboard, and on the table
he found a bottle quite filled with wretched whiskey. That the police
had failed to see the baby had not appealed to him in any way, but that
they should have allowed this last find to remain unnoticed pleased him
intensely, not because it now fell to him, but because they had been
cheated of it. It really struck him as so humorous that he stood
laughing silently for several minutes, slapping his thigh with every
outward exhibition of the keenest mirth. But when he found that the room
and cupboard were bare of anything else that might be eaten he sobered
suddenly. It was very hot, and though the windows were open, the
perspiration stood upon his face, and the foul close air that rose from
the court and street below made him gasp and pant for breath. He dipped
a wash rag in the water from the spigot in the hall, and filled a cup
with it and bathed the baby's face and wrists. She woke and sipped up
the water from the cup eagerly, and then looked up at him, as if to ask
for something more. Rags soaked the crusty bread in the water, and put
it to the baby's lips, but after nibbling at it eagerly she shook her
head and looked up at him again with such reproachful pleading in her
eyes, that Rags felt her silence more keenly than the worst abuse he had
ever received.
It hurt him so, that the pain brought tears to his eyes.
“Deary girl,” he cried, “I'd give you anything you could think of if
I had it. But I can't get it, see? It ain't that I don't want to--good
Lord, little 'un, you don't think that, do you?”
The baby smiled at this, just as though she understood him, and touched
his face as if to comfort him, so that Rags felt that same exquisite
content again, which moved him so strangely whenever the child caressed
him, and which left him soberly wondering. Then the baby crawled up onto
his lap and dropped asleep, while Rags sat motionless and fanned her
with a folded newspaper, stopping every now and then to pass the damp
cloth over her warm face and arms. It was quite late now. Outside he
could hear the neighbors laughing and talking on the roofs, and when one
group sang hilariously to an accordion, he cursed them under his breath
for noisy, drunken fools, and in his anger lest they should disturb the
child in his arms, expressed an anxious hope that they would fall off
and break their useless necks. It grew silent and much cooler as the
night ran out, but Rags still sat immovable, shivering slightly every
now and then and cautiously stretching his stiff legs and body. The arm
that held the child grew stiff and numb with the light burden, but he
took a fierce pleasure in the pain, and became hardened to it, and at
last fell into an uneasy slumber from which he awoke to pass his hands
gently over the soft yielding body, and to draw it slowly and closer to
him. And then, from very weariness, his eyes closed and his head fell
back heavily against the wall, and the man and the child in his arms
slept peacefully in the dark corner of the deserted tenement.
The sun rose hissing out of the East River, a broad, red disc of heat.
It swept the cross-streets of the city as pitilessly as the search-light
of a man-of-war sweeps the ocean. It blazed brazenly into open windows,
and changed beds into gridirons on which the sleepers tossed and
turned and woke unrefreshed and with throats dry and parched. Its glare
awakened Rags into a startled belief that the place about him was on
fire, and he stared wildly until the child in his arms brought him back
to the knowledge of where he was. He ached in every joint and limb, and
his eyes smarted with the dry heat, but the baby concerned him most, for
she was breathing with hard, long, irregular gasps, her mouth was open
and her absurdly small fists were clenched, and around her closed eyes
were deep blue rings. Rags felt a cold rush of fear and uncertainty come
over him as he stared about him helplessly for aid. He had seen babies
look like this before, in the tenements; they were like this when the
young doctors of the Health Board climbed to the roofs to see them,
and they were like this, only quiet and still, when the ambulance came
clattering up the narrow streets, and bore them away. Rags carried the
baby into the outer room, where the sun had not yet penetrated, and laid
her down gently on the coverlets; then he let the water in the sink run
until it was fairly cool, and with this bathed the baby's face and hands
and feet, and lifted a cup of the water to her open lips. She woke at
this and smiled again, but very faintly, and when she looked at him he
felt fearfully sure that she did not know him, and that she was looking
through and past him at something he could not see.
He did not know what to do, and he wanted to do so much. Milk was the
only thing he was quite sure babies cared for, but in want of this he
made a mess of bits of the dry ham and crumbs of bread, moistened with
the raw whiskey, and put it to her lips on the end of a spoon. The baby
tasted this, and pushed his hand away, and then looked up and gave a
feeble cry, and seemed to say, as plainly as a grown woman could have
said or written, “It isn't any use, Rags. You are very good to me, but,
indeed, I cannot do it. Don't worry, please; I don't blame you.”
“Great Lord,” gasped Rags, with a queer choking in his throat, “but
ain't she got grit.” Then he bethought him of the people who he still
believed inhabited the rest of the tenement, and he concluded that as
the day was yet so early they might still be asleep, and that while they
slept, he could “lift”--as he mentally described the act--whatever
they might have laid away for breakfast. Excited with this hope, he ran
noiselessly down the stairs in his bare feet, and tried the doors of
the different landings. But each he found open and each room bare and
deserted. Then it occurred to him that at this hour he might even risk
a sally into the street. He had money with him, and the milk-carts and
bakers' wagons must be passing every minute. He ran back to get the
money out of his coat, delighted with the chance and chiding himself for
not having dared to do it sooner. He stood over the baby a moment before
he left the room, and flushed like a girl as he stooped and kissed one
of the bare arms. “I'm going out to get you some breakfast,” he said.
“I won't be gone long, but if I should,” he added, as he paused and
shrugged his shoulders, “I'll send the sergeant after you from the
station-house. If I only wasn't under bonds,” he muttered, as he slipped
down the stairs. “If it wasn't for that they couldn't give me more'n a
month at the most, even knowing all they do of me. It was only a street
fight, anyway, and there was some there that must have seen him pull
his pistol.” He stopped at the top of the first flight of stairs and
sat down to wait. He could see below the top of the open front door, the
pavement and a part of the street beyond, and when he heard the rattle
of an approaching cart he ran on down and then, with an oath, turned and
broke up-stairs again. He had seen the ward detectives standing together
on the opposite side of the street.