|A HANSOM cab, somewhat woebegone in appearance, threaded its way in a
curiously dejected manner through the heart of New York's East Side. A
fine drizzle fell, through which the street lamps showed as through a
mist; and, with the pavements slippery, the emaciated looking horse,
the shafts jerking and lifting up at intervals around its ears, appeared
hard put to it to preserve its footing.
The cabman on his perch drove with his coat collar turned up and his
chin on his breast. He held the reins listlessly, permitting the horse
to choose its own gait. At times he lifted the little trap door in the
roof of the cab and peered into the interior; occasionally his hand,
tentatively, hesitantly, edged toward a bulge in his coat pocket-only to
be drawn back again in a sort of panic haste.
The cab turned into a street where, in spite of the drizzle, hawkers
with their push-carts under flaring, spitting gasoline banjoes were
doing a thriving business. The horse went more slowly. There was very
little room. With the push-carts lining the curbs on both sides, and
the overflow of pedestrians from the sidewalks into the street, it was
perhaps over-taxing the horse's instinct to steer a safe course for the
vehicle it dragged behind it. Halfway along the block a wheel of
the hansom bumped none too gently into one of the push-carts, nearly
upsetting the latter. The hawker, with a frantic grab, saved his wares
from disaster-by an uncomfortably narrow margin, and, this done, hurled
an impassioned flood of lurid oratory at the two-wheeler.
The cabman lifted his chin from his breast, stared stonily at the
hawker, slapped the reins mechanically on the roof of the cab as an
intimation to the horse to proceed, and the cab wended its way along
again.
At the end of the block, it turned the corner, and drew up before a
small building that was nested in between two tenements. The cabman
climbed down from his perch, and stood for a moment surveying the three
gilded balls that hung over the dingy doorway, and the lettering--“Paul
Veniza. Pawnbroker”--that showed on the dully-lighted windows which
confronted him.
He drew his hand across his eyes; then, reaching suddenly inside the
cab, lifted a bundle in his arms, and entered the shop. A man behind the
counter stared at him, and uttered a quick ejaculation. The cabman went
on into a rear room. The man from behind the counter followed. In the
rear room, a woman rose from a table where she had been sewing, and took
the bundle quickly from the cabman's arms, as it emitted a querulous
little cry.
The cabman spoke for the first time.
“She's dead,” he said heavily.
The woman, buxom, middle-aged, stared at him, white-faced, her eyes
filling suddenly with tears.
“She died an hour ago,” said the cabman, in the same monotonous
voice. “I thought mabbe you'd look after the baby girl for a bit, Mrs.
Veniza--you and Paul.”
“Of course!” said the woman in a choked voice. “I wanted to before,
but--but your wife wouldn't let the wee mite out of her sight.”
“She's dead now,” said the cabman. “An hour ago.”
Paul Veniza, the pawnbroker, crossed to the cabman's side, and, placing
his hands on the other's shoulders, drew the man down into a chair.
“Hawkins,” he said slowly, “we're getting on in years, fifty each of us,
and we've known each other for a good many of those fifty.” He cleared
his throat. “You've made a mess of things, Hawkins.”
The woman, holding the baby, started suddenly forward, a red flush
dyeing her cheeks.
“Paul!” she cried out sharply. “How can you be so cruel at such an hour
as this?”
The pawnbroker shook his head. He had moved to the back of the cabman's
chair. Tall, slight, grave and kindly-faced, with high forehead and the
dark hair beginning to silver at the temples, there seemed something
almost esthetic about the man.
“It is _the_ hour,” he said deliberately; “the one hour in which I must
speak plainly to my old friend, the one hour that has come into his
life which may mean everything to him.” His right hand slipped from the
cabman's shoulder and started, tentatively, hesitantly, toward a bulge
in the cabman's coat pocket--but was drawn back again, and found its
place once more on the cabman's shoulder. “I was afraid, Hawkins, when
you married the young wife. I was afraid of your curse.”
The cabman's elbows were on the table; he had sunk his chin in his
hands. His blue eyes, out of a wrinkled face of wind-beaten tan, roved
around the little room, and rested finally on the bundle in the woman's
arms.
“That's finished now,” he said dully.
“I pray God it is,” said Paul Veniza earnestly; “but you said that
before--when you married the young wife.”
“It's finished now--so help me, God!” The cabman's lips scarcely moved.
He stared straight in front of him.
There was silence in the little, plainly furnished room for a moment;
then the pawnbroker spoke again:
“I was born here in New York, you know, after my parents came from
Italy. There was no money, nothing--only misery. I remember. It is like
that, Hawkins, isn't it, where you have just come from, and where you
have left the young wife?”
“Paul!” his wife cried out again. “How can you say such things? It--it
is not like you!” Her lips quivered. She burst into tears, and buried
her face in the little bundle she snuggled to her breast.
The cabman seemed curiously unmoved--as though dazed, almost detached
from his immediate surroundings. He said nothing.
The pawnbroker's hands still rested on the cabman's shoulders, a
strange gentleness in his touch that sought somehow, it seemed, to offer
sympathy for his own merciless words.
“I have been thinking of this for a long time, ever since we knew that
Claire could not get better,” he said. “We knew you would bring the
little one here. There was no other place, except an institution. And so
I have been thinking about it. What is the little one's name?”
The cabman shook his head.
“She has no name,” he said.
“Shall it be Claire, then?” asked the pawnbroker gently.
The cabman's fingers, where they rested on his cheeks, gathered a fold
of flesh and tightened until the blood fled, leaving little white spots.
He nodded his head.
Again the pawnbroker was silent for a little while.
“My wife and I will take little Claire--on one condition,” he said at
last, gravely. “And that condition is that she is to grow up as our
child, and that, though you may come here and see her as often as you
like, she is not to know that you are her father.”
The cabman turned about a haggard face.
“Not to know that I am her father--ever,” he said huskily.
“I did not say that,” said Paul Veniza quietly. He smiled now, leaning
over the cabman. “I am a pawnbroker; this is a pawn-shop. There is a way
in which you may redeem her.”
The cabman pressed a heavy hand over his eyes.
“What is that way?” He swallowed hard as he spoke.
“By redeeming yourself.” The pawnbroker's voice was low and earnest.
“What have you to offer her to-day, save a past that has brought only
ruin and misery? And for the future, my old friend? There is no home.
There was no home for the young wife. You said when you married Claire,
as you have said to-night, that it was all finished. But it was not
finished. And your curse was the stronger. Well, little Claire is only
a baby, and there would be years, anyhow, before just a man could take
care of her. Do you understand, my old friend? If, at the end of those
years, enough of them to make sure that you are sure of yourself, you
have changed your life and overcome your weakness, then you shall have
little Claire back again, and she shall know you as her father, and be
proud of you. But if you do not do this, then she remains with us, and
we are her parents, and you pledge me your word that it shall be so.”
There was no answer for a long time. The woman was still crying--but
more softly now. The cabman's chin had sunk into his hands again. The
minutes dragged along. Finally the cabman lifted his head, and, pushing
back his chair, stumbled to his feet.
“God--God bless you both!” he whispered. “It's all finished now for
good, as I told you, but you are right, Paul. I--I ain't fit to have her
yet. I'll stand by the bargain.” He moved blindly toward the door.
The pawnbroker interposed.
“Wait, Hawkins, old friend,” he said. “I'll go with you. You'll need
some help back there in the tenement, some one to look after the things
that are to be done.”
The cabman shook his head.
“Not to-night,” he said in a choked way. “Leave me alone to-night.”
He moved again toward the door, and this time Paul Veniza stepped aside,
but, following, stood bareheaded in the doorway as the other clambered
to his perch on the hansom cab.
Hawkins slapped his reins on the roof of the cab. The horse started
slowly forward.
The drizzle had ceased; but the horse, left to his own initiative, was
still wary of the wet pavements and moved at no greater pace than a
walk. Hawkins drove with his coat collar still turned up and his chin on
his breast.
And horse and man went aimlessly from street to street--and the night
grew late.
And the cabman's hand reached tentatively, hesitantly, a great many
times, toward a bulge in his coat pocket, and for a great many times
was withdrawn as empty as it had set forth. And then, once, his fingers
touched a glass bottle neck... and then, not his fingers, but his
lips... and for a great many times.
It had begun to rain again.
The horse, as if conscious of the futility of its own movements, had
stopped, and, with head hanging, seemed to cower down as though seeking
even the slender protection of the shafts, whose ends now made half
circles above his ears.
Something slipped from the cabman's fingers and fell with a crash to the
pavement. The cabman leaned out from his perch and stared down at the
shattered glass.
“Broken,” said the cabman vacantly.