As Michael had no definite knowledge of either his exact age, or what
month his birthday came, there could be no day set for his coming of
age. The little information that could be gathered from his own memory
of how many summers and winters he had passed showed that he was
approximately seven years old at the time of the shooting affray. If
that were correct it would make him between nineteen and twenty at the
time of his graduation.
On the first day of July following his first winter in New York Michael
received a brief letter from Mr. Endicott, containing a check for a
thousand dollars, with congratulations on his majority and a request
that he call at the office the next day.
Michael, eager, grateful, overwhelmed, was on hand to the minute
appointed.
The wealthy business man, whose banking affairs had long since righted
themselves, turned from his multifarious duties, and rested his eyes
upon the young fellow, listening half-amused to his eager thanks.
The young man in truth was a sight to rest weary eyes.
The winter in New York had put new lines into his face and deepened the
wells of his blue eyes; they were the work of care and toil and
suffering, but—they had made a man’s face out of a boy’s fresh
countenance. There was power in the fine brow, strength in the firm,
well-moulded chin, and both kindliness and unselfishness in the lovely
curves of his pleasant lips. The city barber had been artist enough not
to cut the glorious hair too short while yet giving it the latest clean
cut curve behind the ears and in the neck. By instinct Michael’s hands
were well cared for. Endicott’s tailor had looked out for the rest.
“That’s all right, son,” Endicott cut Michael’s sentence short. “I’m
pleased with the way you’ve been doing. Holt tells me he never had a
more promising student in his office. He says you’re cut out for the
law, and you’re going to be a success. But what’s this they tell me
about you spending your evenings in the slums? I don’t like the sound
of that. Better cut that out.”
Michael began to tell in earnest protesting words of what he was trying
to do, but Endicott put up an impatient hand:
“That’s all very well, son, I’ve no doubt they appreciate your help and
all that, and it’s been very commendable in you to give your time, but
now you owe yourself something, and you owe the world something. You’ve
got to turn out a great lawyer and prove to the world that people from
that district are worth helping. That’s the best way in the long run to
help those people. Give them into somebody else’s hands now. You’ve
done your part. When you get to be a rich man you can give them
something now and then if you like, but it’s time to cut out the work
now. That sort of thing might be very popular in a political leader,
but you’ve got your way to make and it’s time you gave your evenings to
culture, and to going out into society somewhat. Here’s a list of
concerts and lectures for next winter. You ought to go to them all. I’m
sorry I didn’t think of it this winter, but perhaps it was as well not
to go too deep at the start. However, you ought to waste no more time.
I’ve put your application in for season tickets for those things on
that list, and you’ll receive tickets in due time. There’s an art
exhibition or two where there are good things to be seen. You’ve got to
see and hear everything if you want to be a thoroughly educated man. I
said a word or two about you here and there, and I think you’ll receive
some invitations worth accepting pretty soon. You’ll need a dress suit,
and I had word sent to the tailor about it this morning when it
occurred to me—”
“But,” said Michael amazed and perturbed, “I do not belong in society.
People do not want one like me there. If they knew they would not ask
me.”
“Bosh! All bosh! Didn’t I tell you to cut that out? People don’t know
and you’ve no need to tell them. They think you are a distant relative
of mine if they think anything about it, and you’re not to tell them
you are not. You owe it to me to keep still about it. If I guarantee
you’re all right that ought to suit anybody.”
“I couldn’t go where people thought I was more than I was,” said
Michael, head up, eyes shining, his firmest expression on his mouth,
but intense trouble in his eyes. It was hard to go against his
benefactor.
“You got all those foolish notions from working down there in the
slums. You’re got a false idea of yourself and a false notion of right
and wrong. It’s high time you stopped going there. After you’ve been to
a dance or two and a few theatre suppers, and got acquainted with some
nice girls who’ll invite you to their house-parties you’ll forget you
ever had anything to do with the slums. I insist that you give that
work up at once. Promise me you will not go near the place again. Write
them a letter—”
“I couldn’t do that!” said Michael, his face expressive of anguish
fighting with duty.
“Couldn’t! Nonsense. There is no such word. I say I want you to do it.
Haven’t I proved my right to make that request?”
“You have,” said Michael, dropping his sorrowing eyes slowly, and
taking out the folded check from his pocket. “You have the right to ask
it, but I have no right to do what you ask. I have begun the work, and
it would not be right to stop it. Indeed, I couldn’t. If you knew what
it means to those fellows—but I cannot keep this if you feel that way!
I was going to use it for the work—but now—”
Michael’s pauses were eloquent. Endicott was deeply touched but he
would not show it. He was used to having his own way, and it irritated,
while it pleased him in a way, to have Michael so determined. As
Michael stopped talking he laid the check sadly on the desk.
“Nonsense!” said Endicott irritably, “this has nothing to do with the
check. That was your birthday present. Use it as you like. What I have
given I have given and I won’t take back even if I have nothing more to
do with you from this time forth. I have no objection to your giving
away as much money as you can spare to benevolent institutions, but I
say that I do object to your wasting your time and your reputation in
such low places. It will injure you eventually, it can’t help it. I
want you to take your evenings for society and for lectures and
concerts—”
“I will go to the concerts and lectures gladly,” said Michael gravely.
“I can see they will be fine for me, and I thank you very much for the
opportunity, but that will not hinder my work. It begins always rather
late in the evening, and there are other times—”
“You’ve no business to be staying out in places like that after the
hour of closing of decent places of amusement.”
Michael refrained from saying that he had several times noticed society
ladies returning from balls and entertainments when he was on his way
home.
“I simply can’t have it if I’m to stand back of you.”
“I’m, sorry,” said Michael. “You won’t ever know how sorry I am. It was
so good to know that I had somebody who cared a little for me. I shall
miss it very much. It has been almost like having a real father. Do you
mean that you will have to give up the—fatherliness?”
Endicott’s voice shook with mingled emotions. It couldn’t be that this
young upstart who professed to be so grateful and for whom he had done
so much would actually for the sake of a few wretched beings and a
sentimental feeling that he belonged in the slums and ought to do
something for them, run the risk of angering him effectually. It could
not be!
“It means that I shall not do any of the things I had planned to do for
you, if you persist in refusing my most reasonable request. Listen,
young man—”
Michael noticed with keen pain that he had dropped the customary “son”
from his conversation, and it gave him a queer choky sensation of
having been cut off from the earth.
“I had planned”—the keen eyes searched the beautiful manly face before
him and the man’s voice took on an insinuating tone; the tone he used
when he wished to buy up some political pull; the tone that never
failed to buy his man. Yet even as he spoke he felt an intuition that
here was a man whom he could not buy—
“I had planned to do a good many things for you. You will be through
your studies pretty soon and be ready to set up for yourself. Had you
thought ahead enough to know whether you would like a partnership in
some old firm or whether you want to set up for yourself?”
Michael’s voice was grave and troubled but he answered at once:
“I would like to set up for myself, sir. There are things I must do,
and I do not know if a partner would feel as I do about them.”
“Very well,” said Endicott with satisfaction. He could not but be
pleased with the straightforward, decided way in which the boy was
going ahead and shaping his own life. It showed he had character. There
was nothing Mr. Endicott prized more than character—or what he called
character: “Very well, when you get ready to set up for yourself, and I
don’t think that is going to be so many years off from what I hear, I
will provide you an office, fully furnished, in the most desirable
quarter of the city, and start you off as you ought to be started in
order to win. I will introduce you to some of my best friends, and put
lucrative business in your way, business with the great corporations
that will bring you into immediate prominence; then I will propose your
name for membership in two or three good clubs. Now those things I will
do because I believe you have it in you to make good; but you’ll need
the boosting. Every man in this city does. Genius alone can’t work you
up to the top; but I can give you what you need and I mean to do it,
only I feel that you on your part ought to be willing to comply with
the conditions.”
There was a deep silence in the room. Michael was struggling to master
his voice, but when he spoke it was husky with suppressed feeling:
“It is a great plan,” he said. “It is just like you. I thank you, sir,
for the thought, with all my heart. It grieves me more than anything I
ever had to do to say no to you, but I cannot do as you ask. I cannot
give up what I am trying to do. I feel it would be wrong for me. I feel
that it is imperative, sir!”
“Cannot! Humph! Cannot! You are like all the little upstart reformers,
filled with conceit of course. You think there is no one can do the
work but yourself! I will pay some one to do what you are doing! Will
that satisfy you?”
Michael slowly shook his head.
“No one could do it for pay,” he said with conviction. “It must be done
from—perhaps it is love—I do not know. But anyway, no one was doing it,
and I must, for THEY ARE MY PEOPLE!”
As he said this the young man lifted his head with that angel-proud
look of his that defied a universe to set him from his purpose, and
Endicott while he secretly reveled in the boy’s firmness and purpose,
yet writhed that he could not control this strength as he would.
“Your people! Bosh! You don’t even know that! You may be the son of the
richest man in New York for all you know.”
“The more shame mine, then, if he left me where you found me! Mr.
Endicott, have you ever been down in the alley where I used to live? Do
you know the conditions down there?”
“No, nor I don’t want to go. And what’s more I don’t want you to go
again. Whatever you were or are, you ought to see that you are mine
now. Why, youngster, how do you know but you were kidnapped for a
ransom, and the game went awry? There are a thousand explanations of
your unknown presence there. You may have been lost—”
“Then have I not a debt to the people with whom I lived!”
“Oh, poppycock!” exclaimed the man angrily. “We’d better close the
conversation. You understand how I feel. If you think it over and
change your mind come back and tell me within the week. I sail Saturday
for Europe. I may not be back in three or four months. If you don’t
make up your mind before I go you can write to me here at the office
and my secretary will forward it. You have disappointed me beyond
anything I could have dreamed. I am sure when you think it over you
will see how wrong you are and change your mind. Until then, good-bye!”
Michael arose dismissed, but he could not go that way.
“I shall not change my mind,” he said sadly, “but it is terrible not to
have you understand. Won’t you let me tell you all about it? Won’t you
let me explain?”
“No, I don’t want to hear any explanations. There is only one thing for
me to understand and that is that you think more of a set of vagabonds
in an alley than you do of my request!”
“No! That is not true!” said Michael. “I think more of you than of any
living man. I do not believe I could love you more if you were my own
father. I would give my life for you this minute—”
“There is an old word somewhere that says, ‘To obey is better than
sacrifice.’ Most people think they would rather be great heroes than do
the simple every-day things demanded of them. The test does not always
prove that they would—”
Michael’s head went up almost haughtily, but there were great tears in
his eyes. Endicott dropped his own gaze from that sorrowful face. He
knew his words were false and cruel. He knew that Michael would not
hesitate a second to give his life. But the man could not bear to be
withstood.
“If you feel that way I cannot take this!” Michael sadly, proudly held
out the check.
“As you please!” said Endicott curtly. “There’s the waste-basket. Put
it in if you like. It isn’t mine any longer. You may spend it as you
please. My conditions have nothing to do with what is past. If you do
not prize my gift to you by all means throw it away.”
With a glance that would have broken Endicott’s heart if he had not
been too stubborn to look up, Michael slowly folded the check and put
it back into his pocket.
“I do prize it,” he said, “and I prize it because you gave it to me. It
meant and always will mean a great deal to me.”
“H’m!”
“There is one more thing perhaps I ought to tell you,” hesitated
Michael “The farm. I am using it in my work for those people. Perhaps
you will not approve of that—”
“I have nothing further to do with the farm. You bought it, I believe.
You desired to pay for it when you were earning enough money to be able
to do so. That time has not yet come, therefore nothing further need be
said. It is your farm and you may use it as a pleasure park for pigs if
you like. I don’t go back on my bargains. Good afternoon.”
Endicott turned to the ’phone, took up the receiver and called up a
number. Michael saw that the conversation was ended. Slowly, with heavy
step and heavier heart, he went out of the office.
There were new lines of sadness on Michael’s face that day, and when he
went down to the alley that evening his gentleness with all the little
“kids,” and with the older ones, was so great that they looked at him
more than once with a new kind of awe and wonder. It was the gentleness
of sacrifice, of sacrifice for them, that was bringing with it the pain
of love.
Old Sal who came over to “look in” that evening, as she put it, shook
her head as she stumped back to her rejuvenated room with its gaudy
flowered wall, bit of white curtain and pot of flowers in the window,
all the work of Michael and his follower Sam.
“I’m thinkin’ he’ll disuppeer one o’ these days. Ye’ll wake up an’
he’ll be gahn. He’s not of this worrld. He’ll sprid his wings an’ away.
He’s a man-angel, thet’s wot he is!”
Michael went home that night and wrote a letter to Mr. Endicott that
would have broken a heart of stone, telling his inmost thought; showing
his love and anguish in every sentence; and setting forth simply and
unassumingly the wonderful work he was doing in the alley.
But though he waited in anxiety day after day he received not a word of
reply. Endicott read the letter every word, and fairly gloated over the
boy’s strength, but he was too stubborn to let it be known. Also he
rather enjoyed the test to which he was putting him.
Michael even watched the outgoing vessels on Saturday, looked up the
passenger lists, went down to the wharf and tried to see him before he
sailed, but for some reason was unable to get in touch with him.
Standing sadly on the wharf as the vessel sailed he caught sight of
Endicott, but though he was sure he had been seen he received no sign
of recognition, and he turned away sick at heart, and feeling as if he
had for conscience’s sake stabbed one that loved him.