To Him That Hath
By LEROY SCOTT
_Author of "The Walking Delegate"_
New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1907, BY LEROY SCOTT
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, JULY, 1907
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED,
INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
TO THOSE WHOM THE WORLD HAS MADE UGLY AND
WHOSE UGLINESS THE WORLD CANNOT FORGIVE
CONTENTS
BOOK I. THE HIGHEST PRICE
I. An Injustice of God 1
II. What David Found in Morton's Closet 10
III. The Bargain 29
BOOK II. THE CLOSED ROAD
I. David Re-enters the World 45
II. A Call from a Neighbour 56
III. The Superfluous Man 68
IV. An Uninvited Guest 86
V. Guest Turns Host 97
VI. Tom is Seen at Work 107
VII. A New Item in the Bill of Scorn 117
VIII. The World's Denial 123
IX. The Open Road 136
BOOK III. TOWARD THE LIGHT
I. The Mayor of Avenue A 152
II. The Saving Ledge 167
III. A Prophecy 174
IV. Puck Masquerades as Cupid 187
V. On the Upward Path 201
VI. John Rogers 214
VII. Hope and Dejection 226
VIII. Rogers Makes an Offer 235
IX. The Mayor and the Inevitable 244
X. A Bad Penny Turns Up 254
XI. A Love that Persevered 262
XII. Mr. Chambers Takes a Hand 273
XIII. The End of the Deal 282
BOOK IV. THE SOUL OF WOMAN
I. Helen Gets a New View of Her Father 298
II. David Sees the Face of Fortune 313
III. Helen's Conscience 324
IV. The Ordeal of Kate Morgan 331
V. The Command of Love 343
VI. Another World 350
VII. As Love Apportions 357
VIII. A Partial Release 365
IX. Father and Daughter 377
X. The Beginning of Life 391
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
DAVID ALDRICH An author
ALEXANDER CHAMBERS A king of finance
HELEN CHAMBERS His daughter
HENRY ALLEN A lawyer with a political future
CARL HOFFMAN The Mayor of Avenue A
CARRIE BECKER An admirer of the Mayor
WILLIAM OSBORNE A publisher
REV. JOSEPH FRANKLIN Director of St. Christopher's Mission
REV. PHILIP MORTON Dead, but a living memory
JOHN ROGERS A real estate agent
KATE MORGAN A nurse-maid
JIMMIE MORGAN Her father
TOM (last name uncertain) Whose parents were the street
LILLIAN DREW Of the sisterhood of Magdalene
BOOK I
THE HIGHEST PRICE
CHAPTER I
AN INJUSTICE OF GOD
The Reverend Philip Morton, head of St. Christopher's Mission, had often
said that, in event of death or serious accident, he wished David
Aldrich to be placed in charge of his personal affairs; so when at ten
o'clock of a September morning the janitor, at order of the frightened
housekeeper, broke into the bath-room and found Morton's body lying
white and dead in the tub, the housekeeper's first clear thought was of
a telegram to David.
The message came to David while he was doggedly working over a novel
that had just come back from a third publisher. He glanced at the
telegram, then his tall figure sank back into his chair and he stared at
the yellow sheet. Never before had Death struck him so heavy a blow. The
wound of his mother's death had been dealt in quick-healing childhood;
and though his father, a Western mining engineer, had died but seven
years before, David had known him hardly otherwise than as a remotely
placed giver of an allowance. Morton had for years been his best
friend--latterly almost his only friend. For a space the blow rendered
him stupid; then the agony of his personal loss entered him, and wrung
him; and then in beside his personal sorrow there crept a sense of the
appalling loss of the people about St. Christopher's.
But there was no time for inactive grief. He quickly threw a black suit
and a week's linen into a travelling bag, and within an hour after the
New York train pulled out of his New Jersey suburb, he paused across the
street from St. Christopher's Mission--a chapel of red brick, with a
short spire rising above the tenements' flat heads, and adjoining it a
four-story club-house in whose windows greened forth boxes of ivy and
geraniums. The doors of the chapel stood wide, as they always did for
whoso desired to rest or pray, but the doors of the club-house, usually
open, were closed against the casual visitor by the ribboned seal of
death.
David held his eyes on the fourth-story windows, behind which he knew
his friend lay. Minutes passed before he could cross the street and ring
the bell. He was admitted into the large hallway, cut with numerous
doors leading into club-rooms, and hung with prints of Raphaels,
Murillos, Angelicos and other holy master-painters. Overwhelmed though
all his senses were, he was at once struck by the emptiness, the
silence, of the great house--by its strange childlessness.
As he started up the stairway he saw at its top a tall young woman
dressed in black. His mounting steps quickened. "Miss Chambers!" he
said.
She came down the stairway with effortless grace, her hand outheld, her
subdued smile warm with friendship. He quivered within as he heard his
name in her rich voice, as he clasped her hand, as he looked into the
sincerity, the dignity, the rare beauty of her face.
There were none of those personal questions with which long-parted
friends bridge the chasm of their separation. Death made self trivial.
At first they could only breathe awed interjections upon the disaster
that so suddenly had fallen. Then David asked the question that had been
foremost in his mind for the last two hours:
"What caused his death? I've had only a bare announcement."
She gave him the details. "His doctor told me he had a weak heart," she
added. "'In all likelihood,' the doctor said, 'the shock of the cold
bath had caused heart failure. Perhaps the seizure itself was fatal;
perhaps on the other hand the seizure was recoverable but while helpless
he drowned.'
"As soon as I learned of his death I hurried here--I happened to be in
town for a few days," she went on, after a moment. "I thought I might
possibly be of service. But Bishop Harper has sent a Dr. Thorn, and Mrs.
Humphrey told me you were coming, so it seems I can be of no
assistance. But if there's anything I can do, please let me know."
David promised. They spoke of the great misfortune to the Mission--which
she felt even more keenly than he, for her interest in St. Christopher's
had been more active, so was deeper; then she bade him good-bye and
continued down the stairway. He followed her with his eyes. This was but
the second time he had seen her since her mother's death, six months
before; and her beauty, all in black, was still a fresh marvel to him.
When the door had closed upon her, he mounted stairs and passed through
hallways, likewise hung with brown prints and opening into club-rooms,
till he came to the door of Morton's quarters. Mrs. Humphrey answered
his ring, and the housekeeper's swollen eyes flowed fresh grief as she
took his hand and led him into the sitting-room, walled with Morton's
books.
"The noblest, ablest, kindest man on earth--gone--and only thirty-five!"
she said, between her sobs. "Millions might have been called, and no
difference; but he was the one man we couldn't spare. And yet God took
him!"
The same cry against God's injustice had been springing from David's own
grief. Mrs. Humphrey continued her lamentations, but they were soon
interrupted by the entrance of a clergyman, of most pronounced clerical
cut, whom she introduced as Dr. Thorn. Dr. Thorn explained that Bishop
Harper, knowing Morton had no relatives, had sent him to take charge of
the funeral arrangements; and he went on to say that if David had any
requests, he'd be glad to carry them out. It was a relief to David to be
freed of the business details of his friend's funeral. He replied that
he had no wishes, and Dr. Thorn withdrew, taking with him Mrs. Humphrey.
Alone, memories of his friend lying in the next room rushed upon him.
Morton had been some kind of distant cousin--so distant that the exact
fraction of their kinship was beyond computation. After the death of
David's mother, Morton's father had stood in place of David's far-absent
parent; and Morton himself, though David's senior by hardly ten years,
had succeeded to the guardianship on his own father's death nine years
before.
This formal relation had grown, with David's growth into manhood, into
warmest friendship. David had given Morton the admiring love a younger
brother gives his brilliant elder, and had received the affection such
as an older brother would give a younger, who was not alone brother but
a youth of sympathy and promise. It had been Morton who had insisted
that he had a literary future, Morton who had tried to cheer him through
his five years of struggling unsuccess. And so the memories and grief
that now flooded David were not less keen than if Morton's blood and his
had indeed been the same.
After a time David moved to a window and looked out over the geraniums
and ivy into the narrow street, with its dingy, red-faced tenements
zig-zagged with fire-escapes. His mind slipped back six years to when
Morton had taken charge of St. Christopher's, which then occupied
merely an old dwelling, and when he, a boy of twenty, had first visited
the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was then a crowded district
forgotten by those who called themselves good and just, remembered only
by landlords, politicians and saloonkeepers--grimy, quarrelsome,
profane, ignorant of how to live. Now decency was here. There was still
poverty, but it was a respectable poverty. Men brought home their pay,
and fought less often. Shawled wives went less frequently with tin pails
to the side entrances of saloons. It was becoming uncommon to hear a
child swear.
David's mind ran over the efforts by which this change had been wrought:
Morton's forcing the police to close disorderly resorts; his eloquent
appeals to the public for fair treatment of such neighbourhoods as his;
his unwearied visiting of the sick, and his ready assumption of the
troubles of others; his perfect good-fellowship, which made all approach
him freely, yet none with disrespectful familiarity; his wonderful
sermons, so simple, direct and appealing that there was never an empty
seat. He was sympathetic--magnetic--devoted--brilliant. Thus he had won
the neighbourhood; not all, for the evil forces he had fought, led by
the boss of the ward, held him in bitter enmity. But in three or four
hundred families, he was God.
David turned from the window. Mrs. Humphrey had asked if she should not
take him in to see Morton, but he had shrunk from having eyes upon him
when he entered the presence of his dead friend. He now moved to the
door of Morton's chamber, paused chokingly, then stepped into the
darkened room. On the bed lay a slender, sheeted figure. For the first
moment, awe at the mystery of life rose above all other feelings: Monday
he had seen Morton, strangely depressed to be sure, but in his usual
health; this was Saturday, and there he lay!
His emotions trembling upon eruption, David crossed slowly to the bed.
With fearing hand he drew the sheet from the face, and for a long space
gazed down at the fine straight nose, at the deeply-set eyes, and at the
high broad forehead, the most splendid he had ever seen, with the soft
hair falling away from it against the pillow. Then suddenly he sank to a
chair, and his grief broke from him.
Soon his mind began to dwell upon the contrast between Morton and
himself--what a great light was this that had been stricken out, what a
pitiable candle flame was this left burning. In the presence of these
dead powers he felt how small was his literary achievement, how small
his chance of future success, how comparatively trivial that success
would be even if gained. David had felt to its full the responsibility
of life; he had longed, with a keenness that was at times actual
physical pain, that his life might count some little what in advancing
the general good. But he realised now, as he gazed at the white face on
the pillow, that in the field of humanitarianism, as in the field of
literature, his achievement was nothing.
He burnt with a sudden rush of shame that he was alive, and he clenched
his hands and in tense whispers cried out against the injustice of God
in taking so useful a man as Morton and leaving so useless a cumbrance
as himself. But this defiance soon passed into a different mood. He
slipped to his knees, and a wish sobbed up from his heart that he might
change places with the figure on the bed.
This wish was present in his thoughts all that evening and the next two
days as he did his share in the sad routine of the funeral arrangements.
The service was set for the evening so that the people of the
neighbourhood could be present without difficulty or financial loss. At
the hour of beginning the chapel was packed to the doors, and David
learned afterwards that as large a crowd stood without and that many
notables who had come at the appointed time were unable to gain any
nearer the chapel than the middle of the street.
Bishop Harper himself was in charge, and about him were gathered the
best-known clergymen of his persuasion in the city--a tribute to his
friend that quickened both David's pride and grief. Bishop Harper was
ordinarily a pompous speaker of sonorous platitudes, ever conscious of
his high office. But to-night he had a simple, touching subject; he
forgot himself and spoke simply, touchingly. When he used an adjective
it was a superlative, and yet the superlative did not seem to reach the
height of Morton's worth. Morton was "the most gifted, the most devoted"
man of the Bishop's acquaintance, and the other clergymen by their looks
showed complete and unjealous approval of all the Bishop's praise.
David's eyes flowed at the tribute paid Morton by his peers. Yet he was
moved far more by the inarticulate tribute of the simple people who
crowded the chapel. Whatever was good in their lives, Morton had brought
them; and now, mixed with their sense of loss, was an unshaped fear of
how hard it was going to be to hold fast to that good without his aid.
Never before had David seen anything so affecting; and even in after
days, when he saw Morton's death with new eyes, the picture of the love
and grief of this audience remained with him, unsoiled, as the
strongest, sincerest scene he had ever witnessed. The women--factory
girls, scrub-women, hard-working wives--wept with their souls in their
tears and in their spasmodic moans; and the men--labourers, teamsters,
and the like--let the strange tears stream openly down their cheeks,
unashamed. The chapel was one great sob, choked down at times, at times
stopping the Bishop's words. It was as if they were all orphaned.
All through the service, one cry rose from David's heart, and continued
to repeat itself while the audience, and after them the crowd from the
street, filed by the open casket--and still rose as, later, he sat with
bowed head in a front pew beside the coffin:
"If only I could change places, and give him back to them!"
CHAPTER II
WHAT DAVID FOUND IN MORTON'S CLOSET
David was sitting in Morton's study, looking through the six years'
accumulation of letters and documents, saving some, destroying others,
when he came upon a dusty snap-shot photograph. Hands and eyes were
arrested; Morton sank from his mind. Four persons sat in a little
sailboat; their faces were wrinkled in sun-smiles; about and beyond them
was the broad white blaze of the Sound. The four were Miss Chambers and
her mother, Morton and himself.
The day of the photograph ran its course again, hour by hour, in David's
mind, and slowly rose other pictures of his acquaintance with Helen
Chambers: of their first meeting three years before at a dinner at St.
Christopher's Mission; of later meetings at St. Christopher's, where she
had a club and where he was a frequent visitor; of the summer passed at
St. Christopher's two years before, during the early part of which he,
in Morton's stead, had aided her in selecting furnishings for a summer
house given by her father for the Mission children; of two weeks at the
end of that summer which he and Morton had spent at Myrtle Hill, the
Chambers's summer home on the Sound. Since then he had seen her at
irregular intervals, and their friendship had deepened with each
meeting.
She had interested his mind as no other woman had ever done. She had
been bred in the conventions of her class, the top strata of the
American aristocracy of wealth; all her friends, save those she had
gained at the Mission, belonged in this class; and her life had been
lived within her class's boundaries. Given these known quantities, an
average social algebraist would have quickly figured out the unknown
future to be, a highly desirable marriage, gowning and hatting,
tea-drinking, dining, driving, calling, Europe-going, and the similar
activities by which women of her class reward God for their
creation--and in time, the motherhood of a second generation of her
kind.
But there was her character, which by degrees had revealed itself fully
to David: her sympathy, her love of truth, a lack of belief in her
social superiority, an instinct to look very clearly, very squarely, at
things, a courage unconscious that it was courage, that was merely the
natural action of her direct spirit--all these dissolved in a most
simple, charming personality. It was these qualities (a stronger reprint
of her mother's), in one of her position, that made David think her
future might possibly be other than that contained in the algebraist's
solution--that made him regard her as a potential surprise to her world.
And Helen Chambers had interested not only David's mind. In moments when
his courage had been high and his fancy had run riotously free, he had
dared dream wild dreams of her. But now, as he gazed at the photograph,
he sighed. In place and fortune she was on the level of the highest; he
was far below--still only a straggler, obscure, barely keeping alive.
Yes--he was still only a struggler. He nodded as his mind repeated the
sentence. Now and then his manuscripts were accepted--but only now and
then. His English was admirable; this he had been told often. But there
was a something lacking in almost all he wrote, and this too he had been
often told. David had tried to write of the big things, the real
things--but of such one cannot write convincingly till he has thought
deeply or travelled himself through the deep places. David's trouble
was, he did not know life--but no one had told him this. So in his
ignorance of the real difficulty, he had thought to conquer his
unsuccess by putting forth a greater effort. He had gone out less and
less often; he had sat longer and longer at his writing-table; his
English had become finer and finer. And his people had grown more
hypothetical, more unreal. The faster he ran, the farther away was the
goal.
He sighed again. Then his square jaw tightened, his eyes narrowed to
grim crescents, his clenched fist lightly pounded the desk; and to a
phalanx of imaginary editors he announced with slow defiance:
"Some of these days the whole blamed lot of you will be camping on my
door-steps. You just wait!"
He was returning to the sifting of the letters when the bell of the
apartment rang. He answered the ring himself, as Mrs. Humphrey was out
for the afternoon, and opened the door upon a shabby, wrinkled man with
a beery, cunning smile. His manner suggested that he had been there
before.
"Is Mr. Morton at home?" the man asked.
"No," David answered shortly, not caring to vouchsafe the information
that Morton was in his grave these two days. "But I represent him."
"Then I guess I'll wait."
"He'll not be back."
The man hesitated, then a dirty hand drew an envelope from a torn
pocket. "I was to give it only to him, but I guess it'll be all right to
leave it with you."
David closed the door, ripped open the envelope, glanced at the note,
turned abruptly and re-entered Morton's study, and read the lines again:
"You paid no attention to the warning I sent you last Friday. This
is the last time I write. I must get the money to-day, or--you
know!
"L. D."
He was clutched with a vague fear. Who was L. D.? And how could money be
thus demanded of Morton? His mind was racing away into wild guesses,
when he observed there was no street and number on the note. In the same
instant it flashed upon him that the note must be investigated, and that
the address of its writer was walking away in the person of the old
messenger.
He caught his hat, rushed down the stairs, and came upon the old man
just outside the club-house entrance.
"I want to see the writer of that note," he said. "Give me the
address."
"Do better'n that. I'll go with you. I'm the janitor there."
David was too agitated to refuse the offer. They walked in silence for
several paces, then the old man jerked his head toward the club-house
and knowingly winked a watery eye.
"Lucky they don't know where you're goin'," he said. "But I'm safe. Safe
as a clam!" He reassured David with his beery smile.
The vague dread increased. "What do you mean?"
"Innocent front! Oh, you're a wise one, I see. But you can trust me. I'm
safe."
David was silent for several paces. "Who is this man L. D.?"
"This man?" He cackled. "This man! Oh, you'll do!"
David looked away in disgust; the old satyr made him think of the
garbage of dissipation. All during their fifteen-minute car ride his
indefinite fear changed from one dreadful shape to another. After a
short walk the old man led the way into a small apartment house, and up
the stairs.
He paused before a door. "Here's your 'man,'" he said, nudging David and
giving his dry, throaty little laugh.
"Thanks," said David.
But the guide did not leave. "Ain't you got a dime that's makin' trouble
for the rent o' your coin?"
David handed him ten cents. "Safe as a clam," he whispered, and went
down the stairs with a cackle about "the man."
David hesitated awhile, with high-beating heart, then knocked at the
door. It was opened by a coloured maid.
"Who lives here?" he asked.
"Miss Lillian Drew."
David stepped inside. "Please tell her I'd like to see her. I'm from Mr.
Morton."
The maid directed him toward the parlour and went to summon her
mistress. At the parlour door David was met with the heavy perfume of
violets. The room was showily furnished with gilt, upholstery, vivid
hangings, painted bric-a-brac--all with a stiff shop-newness that
suggested recently acquired funds. An ash-tray on the gilded
centre-table held several cigarette stubs. On the lid of the upright
piano was the last song that had pleased Broadway, and on the piano's
top stood a large photograph of a man with a shrewd, well-fed face, his
derby hat pushed back, his hands in his trousers pockets, a jewelled
saddle in his necktie. Across this picture of portly jauntiness was
scrawled, "To lovely Lil, from Jack."
David had no more than seated himself upon a surface of blue
chrysanthemums and taken in these impressions, when the portieres parted
and between them appeared a tall, slender woman in a trained house-gown
of pink silk, with pearls in her ears and a handful of rings on her
fingers. She looked thirty-five, and had a bold, striking beauty, though
it was perhaps a trifle over-accentuated by the pots and pencils of her
dressing-table. Possibly her nature had its kindly strain--doubtless she
could smile alluringly; but just now her dark eyes gazed at David in
hard, challenging suspicion.
David rose. "Is this Miss Drew?"
"You are from Phil Morton?" she asked.
He shivered at the implied familiarity with Morton. "I am."
She crossed to a chair and, as she seated herself, spread her train
fan-wise to its full display. Her near presence seemed to uncork new
bottles of violet perfume.
"Why didn't he come himself?" she demanded, her quick, brilliant eyes
directly upon David.
It was as her note had indicated--she didn't read the papers. Obeying an
unformed policy, David refrained from acquainting her with the truth.
"He's not at home. I've come because his affairs are left with me."
Her eyes gleamed. "So he's run away from home!" She sneered, but the
sneer could not wholly hide her disappointment. "That won't save him!"
She paused an instant. "Well--what're you here for?"
"I told you I represent him."
"You're his lawyer?"
"I'm his friend."
"Well, I'm listening. Go on."
The fear had taken on an almost definite shape. David shrunk from what
he was beginning to see. But it was his duty to settle the affair, and
settle it he could not without knowing its details. "To begin with, I
shall have to ask some information from you," he said with an effort.
"Mr. Morton left this matter entirely in my hands, but he told me
nothing concerning its nature."
She half closed her eyes, and regarded David intently. "You brought the
money?" she asked abruptly.
"No."
"Then he's----" She made a grim cipher with her forefinger, and stood
up. "If there's no money, good afternoon!"
David did not rise. He guessed her dismissal to be a bit of play-acting.
"Whatever comes to you must come through me," he said, "and you of
course realise that nothing can come from me till I understand the
situation."
"He understands it. That's enough."
"Oh, very well then. I see you want nothing." David determined to try
play-acting himself. He rose. "Let it be good-afternoon."
She stopped him at the portieres, as he had expected. "It's mighty
queer, when Morton's been trying hard to keep this thing between himself
and me, for him to send a third person here."
"I can't help that," he returned with a show of indifference.
"But how do I know you really represent him?"
"You must take my word for it. Or you can telephone St. Christopher's
and ask if David Aldrich is not in charge of his affairs."
She eyed him steadily for a space. "You look on the square," she said
abruptly; then she added with an ominous look: "If there's no money, you
know what'll happen!"
David shrugged his shoulders. "I told you I know nothing."
She was thoughtfully silent for several minutes. David studied her face,
in preparation for the coming conflict. He saw that appeal to her
better parts would avail nothing. He could guess that she needed money;
it was plainly her nature, when roused, to spare nothing to gain her
desire. And if defeated, she could be vindictive, malevolent.
In her inward struggle between caution and desire for money, greed had
the assistance of her pride; for a woman living upon her attraction for
men, is by nature vain of her conquests. Also, David's physical
appearance was an element in the contest. Her quick bold eyes, looking
him over, noted that he was tall and straight, square of shoulder,
good-looking.
Greed and its allies won. "Well, if you want to know, come back," she
said.
David resumed his seat. She stood thinking a moment, then went to a
writing-desk. For all his suspense, David was aware she was trying to
display her graces and her gown. She rustled to his chair with the
unhinged halves of a gold locket in her hand.
"Suppose we begin here," she said, handing him one half of the locket.
"Perhaps you'll recognise it--though that was taken in eighty-five."
David did recognise it. It was Lillian Drew at twenty. The face was
fresh and spirited, and had in an exceptional measure the sort of beauty
admired in the front row of a musical-comedy chorus. It was not a bad
face; had the girl's previous ten years been otherwise, the present
Lillian Drew would have been a very different woman; but the face showed
plainly that she had gone too far for any but an extraordinary power or
experience to turn her about. It was bold, striking, luring--a face of
strong appeal to man's baser half--telling of a girl who would make
advances if the man held back.
David felt that she waited for praise. "It's a handsome face."
"You're not the first to say so," she returned, proudly.
She let him gaze at the picture a full minute, keenly watching his face
for her beauty's effect. Then she continued:
"That is the picture of a girl in Boston. And this"--a jewelled hand
gave him the locket's other half--"is a young man in Harvard."
David knew whose likeness was in the locket, yet something snapped
sharply within him when he looked upon the boyish face of Morton at
twenty-one. It was the snap of suspense. His fear was now certainty.
"She probably wouldn't have suited you"--the tone declared she certainly
would--"but Phil Morton certainly had it bad for four or five months."
David forced himself to his duty--to search this relationship to its
limits. "And then--he broke it off?" he asked, with a sudden desire to
make her smart.
"No man ever threw me down," she returned sharply, her cheeks flushing.
"I got tired of him. A woman soon gets tired of a mere boy like that.
And he was repenting about a third of the time, and preaching to me
about reforming myself. To live with a man like that----it's not living.
I dropped him."
"But all this was fifteen years ago," David said, calm by an effort.
"What has that to do with your note?"
She sank into a chair before him, and ran the tip of her tongue between
her thin lips. She leaned back luxuriously, clasped her be-ringed hands
behind her head, and regarded him amusedly from beneath her pencilled
eye-lashes.
"A woman comes to New York about four months ago. She was--well, things
hadn't been going very well with her. After a month she learns a man is
in town she had once--temporarily married. She hasn't heard anything
about him for fifteen years. He is a minister, and has a reputation. She
has some letters he wrote her while they had been--such good friends.
She guesses he would just as soon the letters should not be made public.
She has a talk with him; she guessed right.... Now you understand?"
David leaned forward, his face pale. "You mean Morton has been paying
you--to keep still?"
She laughed softly. She was enjoying this display of her power. "In the
last three months he has paid me the trifling sum of five thousand."
David stared at her.
"And he's going to pay me a lot more, or--the letters!"
His head sank before her bright, triumphant eyes, and he was silent. He
was a confusion of thoughts and emotions, amid which only one thought
was distinct--to protect Morton if he could. He tried to push all else
from his mind and think of this alone.
A minute or more passed. Then he looked up. His face was still pale,
but set and hard. "You are mistaken in at least one point," he said.
"And that?"
"About the money you are going to get. There'll be no more."
"Why not?" she asked with amused superiority.
"Because the letters are valueless." He watched her sharply to see the
effect of his next words. "Philip Morton was buried two days ago."
Her hands fell from her head and she stood up, suddenly white. "It's a
lie!"
"He was buried two days ago," David repeated.
Her colour came back, and she sneered. "It's a lie. You're trying to
trick me."
David rose, drew out a handful of clippings he had cut from the
newspapers, and silently held them toward her. She glanced at a
headline, and her face went pale again. She snatched the clippings, read
one half through, then flung them all from her, and abruptly turned
about--as David guessed, to hide from him the show of her loss.
In a few moments she wheeled around, wearing a defiant smile. "Then I
shall make the letters public!"
"What good will that do you? Think of all those people----"
"What do I care for those people!" she cried. "I'll let them see what
their saint was like!"
David stepped squarely before her; his tall form towered above her, his
dark eyes gleamed into hers. "You shall do nothing of the kind," he
said harshly. "You are going to turn over the letters to me."
She did not give back a step. "Oh, I am, am I!" she sneered. At this
close range, penetrating the violet perfume, he caught a new
odour--brandy.
"You certainly are! You're guilty of the crime of blackmail. You've
confessed it to me, and I have your letter demanding money--there's
proof enough. The punishment is years in prison. Give me those letters,
or I'll have a policeman here in five minutes."
She was shaken, but she forced another sneer. "To take me to court is
the quickest way to make the letters public," she returned. "You're
bluffing."
He was, to an extent--but he knew his bluff was a strong one. "If you
keep them, you will give them out," he went on grimly. "Between your
making them public and going unharmed, and their coming out in the
course of the trial that will send you to prison, I choose the latter.
Morton is dead; the letters can't hurt him now. And I'd like to see you
suffer. The letters, or prison--take your choice!"
She slowly drew back from him, and her look of defiance gave place to
fear. She stared without speaking at his square face, fierce with
determination--at his roused, dominating masculinity.
"Which is it to be?"
She did not move.
"You choose prison then. Very well. I'll be back in five minutes."
He turned and started to leave the room.
"Wait!"
He looked round and saw a thoroughly frightened face.
"I'll get them."
She passed out through the beflowered portieres, and in a few minutes
returned with a packet of yellow letters, which she laid in David's
hand.
"These are all?" he demanded.
"Yes."
A more experienced investigator might have detected an unnatural note in
her voice that would have prompted a further pursuit of his question;
but David was satisfied, and did not mark a cunning look as he passed
on.
"Here's another matter," he said threateningly. "If ever a breath of
this comes out, I'll know it comes from you, and up you'll go for
blackmail. Understand?"
Now that danger was over her boldness began to flow back into her. "I
do," she said lightly.
He left her standing amid her crumpled, forgotten train. As he was
passing into the hall, she called to him:
"Hold on!"
He turned about.
She looked at him with fear, effrontery, admiration. "You're all right!"
she cried. "You're a real man!"
* * * * *
As David came into the street, his masterful bearing fell from him like
a loosened garment. There was no disbelieving the prideful revelation of
Lillian Drew--and as he walked on he found himself breathing, "Thank God
for Philip's death!" Had Philip lived, with that woman dangling him at
the precipitous edge of exposure, life would have been only misery and
fear--and sooner or later she would have given him a push and over he
would have gone. Death comes too late to some men for their best fame,
and to some too early. To Philip Morton it had come in the nick of time.
One thought, that at first had been merely a vague wonder, grew greater
and greater till it fairly pressed all else from David's mind: where had
Philip got the five thousand dollars for which Lillian Drew had sold him
three months' silence? David knew that Philip Morton had not a penny of
private fortune, only his income as head of the Mission; and that of
this income not a dollar had been laid by, so open had been his purse to
the hand of distress. He could not have borrowed the money in the usual
manner, for he had no security to give; and sums such as this are not
blindly loaned with mere friendship as the pawn.
David entered Philip's study with this new dread pulsing through him. It
was his duty to his friend to know the truth, and besides, his suspense
was too acute to permit remaining in passive ignorance; so he locked the
study door and began seeking evidence to dispel or confirm his fear. He
took the books from the safe--he remembered the combination from the
summer he had spent at the Mission--and turned them through, afraid to
look at each new page. But the books dealt only with small sums for
incidental expenses; the large bills were paid by cheque from the
treasurer of the Board of Trustees. There was nothing here. He looked
through the papers in the desk--among them no reference to the money. He
scrutinised every page of paper in the safe, except the contents of one
locked compartment. No reference. Knowing he would find nothing, he
examined Morton's private bank-book: a record of the monthly cheque
deposited and numerous small withdrawals--that was all.
And then he picked up a note-book that all the while had been lying on
the desk. He began to thumb it through, not with hope of discovering a
clue but merely as a routine act of a thorough search. It was half
engagement book, half diary. David turned to the page dated with the day
of Morton's death, intending to work from there backwards--and upon the
page he found this note of an engagement:
"5 P. M.--at Mr. Haddon's office--first fall meeting of Boy's Farm
Committee."
He turned slowly back through the leaves of September, August, July,
June, finding not a single suggestive record. But this memorandum, on
the fifteenth of May, stopped him short:
"Boy's Farm Committee adjourned to-day till fall, as Mr. Chambers
and Mr. Haddon go to Europe. Money left in Third National Bank in
my name, to pay for farm when formalities of sale are completed."
Instantly David thought of an entry on the first of June recording that,
with everything settled save merely the binding formalities, the farmer
had suddenly broken off the deal, having had a better offer.
Here was the money, every instinct told David. But the case was not yet
proved; the money might be lying in the bank, untouched. He grasped at
this chance. There must be a bank-book and cheque-book somewhere, he
knew, and as he had searched the office like a pocket, except for the
drawer of the safe, he guessed they must be there. After a long hunt for
the key to this drawer, he found a bunch of keys in the trousers Morton
had worn the day before his death. One of these opened the drawer, and
sure enough here were cheque-book and bank-book.
David gazed at these for a full minute before he gained sufficient
mastery of himself to open the bank-book. On the first page was this
single line:
May 15. By deposit 5,000
This was the only entry, and the fact gave him a moment's hope. He
opened the cheque-book--and his hope was gone. Seven stubs recorded that
seven cheques had been drawn to "self," four for $500 each, and three
for $1,000.
Even amid the chill of horror that now enwrapped him, David clearly
understood how Morton had permitted himself to use this fund. Here was a
woman with power to destroy, demanding money. Here was money for which
account need not be rendered for months. In Morton's situation a man of
strong will, of courageous integrity, might have resigned and told the
woman to do her worst. But David suddenly saw again Morton's dead face
upon the pillow, and he was startled to see that the mouth was small,
the chin weak. He now recognised, what he would have recognised before
had the fault not been hidden among a thousand virtues, that Morton did
not have a strong will. He recognised that a man might have genius and
all the virtues, save only courage, and yet fail to carry himself
honourably through a crisis that a man of merest mediocrity might have
weathered well.
If exposure came--so Temptation must have spoken to Morton--all that he
had done for his neighbours would be destroyed, and with it all his
power for future service. He could take five hundred dollars, buy the
woman's silence, and somehow replace the money before he need account
for his trust. But she had demanded more, and more, and more; and once
involved, his only safety, and that but temporary, was to go on--with
the terror of the day of reckoning before him.
And then, while he sat chilled, David's mind began to add mechanically
three things together. First, the engagement Philip had had on the day
of his death with the Boys' Farm Committee; at that he would have had to
account for the five thousand dollars, and his embezzlement would have
been laid open. Second, the certainty of exposure from Lillian Drew,
since he had no more money to ward it off. Third, was it not remarkable
that Morton's heart trouble, if heart trouble there had been, with
fifteen hundred minutes in the day in which to strike, had selected the
single minute he spent in his bath?
As David struck the sum of these, there crawled into his heart another
awful fear. Would a man who had not had the courage to face the danger
of one exposure, have the courage to face a double exposure? Had
Morton's death been natural, or----
Sickened, David let his head fall forward upon his arms, folded on the
desk--and so he sat, motionless, as twilight, then darkness, crept into
the room.
CHAPTER III
THE BARGAIN
David was still sitting bowed amid appalling darkness, when Mrs.
Humphrey knocked and called to him that dinner waited. He had no least
desire for food, and as he feared his face might advertise his
discoveries to Dr. Thorn and Mrs. Humphrey, he slipped out of the
apartment and sent word by the janitor that he would not be in to
dinner. For an hour and a half he walked the tenement-cliffed streets,
trying to force his distracted mind to deduce the probable consequences
of Morton's acts.
At length one result stood forth distinct, inevitable: Morton's death
was not going to save his good name. In a few days his embezzlement
would be discovered. There would be an investigation as to what he had
done with the money. Try as the committee might to keep the matter
secret, the embezzlement would leak out and afford sensational copy for
the papers. Lillian Drew, out of her malevolence, would manage to triple
the scandal with her story; and then someone would climax the two
exposures by putting one and one together, as he had done, and deducing
that Morton's lamented death was suicide. In a week, perhaps in three
days, all New York would know what David knew.
He was re-entering the club-house, shortly after eight o'clock, when the
sound of singing in the chapel reminded him that the regular Thursday
even prayer-meeting had been turned into a neighbourhood memorial
service for Morton. He slipped quietly into the rear of the chapel. It
was crowded, as at the funeral. Dr. Thorn, who was temporarily at the
head of the Mission, was on the rostrum, but a teamster from the
neighbourhood was in charge of the meeting. The order of the service
consisted of brief tributes to Morton, brief statements of what he had
meant to their lives. As David listened to the testimonies, uncouth in
the wording, but splendid in feeling, the speaker sometimes stopped by
his own emotion, sometimes by sobbing from the audience--his tears
loosened and flowed with theirs.
And then came a change in his view-point. He found himself thinking, not
of Morton the individual, Morton his friend, but of Morton in his
relation to these people. What great good he had brought them! How
dependent they had been upon him, how they now clung to him and were
lifted up by his memory! And how they loved him!
But what would they be saying about him a week hence?
The question plunged into David like a knife. He hurried from the chapel
and upstairs into Morton's study. Here was the most ghastly of all the
consequences of Morton's deeds. What would be the effect on these people
of the knowledge he had gained that afternoon? They were not
discriminating, could not select the good, discard and forget the evil.
He still loved Morton; Morton to him was a man strong and great at
ninety-nine points, weak at one. Impregnable at all other points,
temptations had assailed his one weakness, conquered him and turned his
life into complete disaster. But, David realised, the neighbourhood
could not see Morton as he saw him. They could see only the evils of his
one point of weakness, see him only as guilty of larger sins than the
most sinful of themselves--as a libertine, an embezzler, a suicide.
And they would be helped to this new view by the elements he had fought.
How old Boss Grogan would rejoice in Morton's fall--how his one eye
would light up, and triumph overspread his veinous, pouched face! How he
and his henchmen, victory-sure, would return to their attack on the
Mission, going among its people with sneers at Morton and at them!
There was no doubt in David's mind of the effect of all this upon them.
The words of a shrivelled old woman who had given tribute in the chapel
stayed in his memory. "He has been to me like St. Christopher, what this
place is called from," she had quavered. "He holds me in his arms and
carries me over the dark waters." Exactly the case with all of them,
David thought. Morton, who had lifted them out of darkness, was
supporting them over the ferry of life--till a few days ago by his
presence among them, now and in the future by the powerful influence in
which he had enarmed them. Once they saw their St. Christopher as baser
than themselves [and what a picture Grogan would keep before their
eyes!], they would call him hypocrite, despise his support and the
shore whither he carried them; his strength to save them would be gone,
and they would fall back into the darkness out of which they had been
gathered.
David's concern was now all for these unsuspecting hundreds mourning and
praising Morton in the chapel. Presently, amid the chaos in his mind,
one thought assumed definite shape: if the people were kept in
ignorance, if Morton were kept pure in their eyes, would not their love
for him, the saving influence he had set about them, remain just as
potent as though he were in truth unspotted? Yes--without doubt. And
then this question asked itself: could they be kept in ignorance? Yes,
if the embezzlement could be concealed--for Morton's relations with
Lillian Drew and his suicide would come before the public only by being
dragged, as it were, by this engine of disgrace.
David's whole mind, his whole being, was suddenly gripped by the thought
that by concealing the embezzlement he could save these hundreds of
persons from falling back into the abyss. But how conceal it? The answer
was ready at his mind's ear: by replacing the money. But where get the
money? He had almost nothing himself, for the little fortune from his
father with which he had been eking out his meagre earnings was now in
its last dollars, and he had hardly a friend in New York. Again the
answer was ready: take into the secret some rich man interested in the
Mission--he'd gladly furnish the money rather than have St.
Christopher's dishonoured.
This idea rapidly shaped itself into a definite plan. At half-past nine
David left the study and descended the stairs, with the decision to
complete the lesser details of his scheme that night, leaving only the
getting of the money for the morrow. The moment he stepped into the
never-quiet street, he pressed back into the shadow of the club-house
entrance, for out of the chapel was riling the mourning crowd--some of
the women crying silently, some of the men having traces of recent
tears, all stricken with their heavy loss. Yes, their loss was grievous,
but, God helping him, that which was left them they should not
lose!--and David gazed upon them till the last was out, with a tingling
glow of saviourship.
Half an hour later he was standing before the apartment house he had
visited that afternoon. A dull glow through Lillian Drew's shades
informed him she was at home; and, glancing through the open basement
window into the janitor's apartment, he saw his guide of the afternoon
stretched on a shabby lounge. He was not proud of the part he was about
to play; but for Lillian Drew to remain in town--danger was in this that
must be avoided.
That afternoon he had noticed there was a telephone in the house. He now
walked back to a drug store on whose front he had seen the sign of a
public telephone. He closed himself in the booth, and soon had Lillian
Drew on the wire.
"This is a friend with a tip," he said. "I just happened to overhear a
man ask a policeman to come with him to arrest you."
"What was the man like?" came tremulously from the receiver.
David began a faithful description of himself, but before he was half
through he heard the receiver at the other end of the wire click into
place upon its hook. He returned to where he had a view of the entrance
of the apartment house, and almost at once he saw Lillian Drew come
hurriedly out. He then walked over to Broadway, asked a policeman to
arrest a woman on his complaint, and led the officer to the apartment
house.
He rang the janitor's bell, and after a minute it was answered by his
"safe" friend. He put on his most ominous look. "Is Lillian Drew in?" he
demanded.
"No; she just went out," the janitor answered, glancing in fear at the
policeman.
The officer gave him a shove. "Bluffin' don't work on me. You just take
us up, you old booze-tank, and we'll have a look around for ourselves."
They searched the flat, followed about by the frightened black maid, but
found no Lillian Drew. As they were leaving the house David again
directed his ominous look upon the janitor. "Don't you tell her we were
here," he ordered; and then he whispered to the policeman, but for the
janitor's ears, "I'll get her in the morning."
He walked away with the officer, but quickly returned to his place of
observation. He saw the janitor come furtively out and hurry away, and
in a little while he saw Lillian Drew enter--and he knew that the
janitor, who had summoned her, had told of her narrow escape and of the
danger in which she stood.
He wandered about, passing the house from time to time. Toward twelve
o'clock, when he again drew near the house, the great van of a storage
warehouse was before it, and men were carrying out furniture. Beside the
van stood an express wagon in which was a trunk, and coming out of the
doorway was a man bearing on his back another trunk, from the end of
which dangled a baggage check. As the man staggered across the sidewalk,
David stepped behind him, caught the tag and read it by the light that
streamed from the entrance. The trunk was checked to Chicago.
Lillian Drew would make no trouble. One part of his plan was completed.
Half an hour later David was back in Morton's study, beginning another
part of his preparation. To prevent suspicion when the Boys' Farm
Committee discovered the replaced money, to make it appear that the
drawing of the fund was no more than a business absurdity such as is
normally expected from clergymen, David had determined to surround the
presence of the money in the safe with the formality of an account. At
the head of a slip of paper he wrote, "Cash Account of Boys' Summer
Home," and beneath it, copying from the stubs of the cheque-book: "June
7, Drawn from Bank $500"; and beneath this, under their respective
dates, the six other amounts. Then at the foot of these he wrote under
date of September fifteenth, the day before Morton's death, "Cash on
hand, $5,000."
These items he set down in a fair copy of Morton's hand, not a
difficult mimicry since their writing was naturally much alike and had a
further similarity from their both using stub pens. He wrote with an
ink, which he had secured for the purpose on his way home, that
immediately after drying was of as dead a black as though it had been on
paper for weeks. He put the slip, with the bank-book and cheque-book,
into the drawer of the safe. To-morrow the five thousand dollars would
go in there with them, and Morton's name, and the people of St.
Christopher's, would be secure.
He had not yet disposed of the letters Lillian Drew had given him. He
carried the packet into the sitting-room, tore the letters into shreds
and heaped them in the grate between the brass andirons. Then he touched
a match to the yellow pile, and watched the destroying flames spring
from the record of Morton's unholy love--as though they were the red
spirit of that passion leaping free. He sat for a long space, the dead
hush of sleep about him, gazing at where the heap had been. Only ashes
were left by those passionate flames. A symbol of Morton, thus it struck
David's fancy. Just so those flames had left of Morton only ashes.
The next morning David had before him the task of getting the money. He
had determined to approach Mr. Chambers first, and he was in the great
banking house of Alexander Chambers & Company, in Wall Street, as early
as he thought he could decently appear there. He was informed that Mr.
Chambers had gone out to attend several directors' meetings--not very
surprising, since Mr. Chambers was a director in half a hundred
companies--and that the time of his return was uncertain, if indeed he
returned at all. David went next to the office of Mr. Haddon, treasurer
of the Mission and of the Boys' Farm Committee, and one of the Mission's
largest givers. Mr. Haddon, he was told, had left the office an hour
before for St. Christopher's.
David hurried back to the Mission, wondering what Mr. Haddon's errand
there could be, and hoping to catch him before he left. As he was
starting up the stairway the janitor stopped him. "Mr. Haddon was asking
for you," the janitor said. "And Miss Chambers, too. I think she's in
the reception room."
David turned back, walked down the hall and entered the dim reception
room. She was sitting in a Flemish oak settle near a window, her hands
clasped upon an idle book in her lap, gazing fixedly into vacancy. Her
dress of mourning was almost lost in the shadow, and her face alone,
softly lighted from between the barely parted dark-green hangings, had
distinctness. He paused at the door and gazed long at her. Then he
crossed the bare floor.
She rose, gave him her firm, slender hand, and, allowing him half the
settle, resumed her seat. Now that he could look directly into her face,
he saw there repressed anxiety.
"I came down this morning on an errand about the Flower Guild," she
said. "I'm going back to the country this afternoon. I've been waiting
to see you because I wanted to tell you something."
She paused. David was conscious that she was making an effort to keep
her anxiety out of her voice and manner.
"It's not at all important," she went on. "Just a little matter about
Mr. Morton. Oh, it's nothing wrong," she added quickly, noticing that
David had suddenly paled. "I'm sure nothing unpleasant is going to
develop. But I wanted you to know it, so that if there was any little
difficulty, you wouldn't be taken by surprise."
David's pulses stopped. "Yes?" he said. "Yes?"
She had become very white. "It's about the money of the Boys' Farm
Committee. Day before yesterday morning Mr. Haddon went to the Third
National Bank to arrange for withdrawing the funds he had deposited in
Mr. Morton's name. He found--Mr. Morton had withdrawn it."
"Yes?"
"Please remember, I'm sure nothing's wrong. Of course Mr. Haddon acted
immediately. He called a meeting of the committee; they decided to make
a quiet investigation at once. Father told me about it. So far they
haven't found the money, but of course they will. The worst part is, the
newspapers have somehow learned that five thousand dollars is missing
from the Mission. The sum is not so large, but for it to disappear in
connection with a place like this--you can see what a great scandal the
papers are scenting? Several reporters were here just a little while
ago. I sent them upstairs to Mr. Haddon."
He stared at her dizzily. His plan was come to naught. Morton's shame
was about to be trumpeted over the city. The people of St. Christopher's
were about to topple back into the abyss.
"What is Mr. Haddon doing upstairs?"
"It occurred to him that possibly Mr. Morton had put the money in the
safe in his study. I'm certain the money's there. Mr. Haddon's up in the
study with a safe-opening expert."
For a moment David sat muted by the impending disaster. Then he rose.
"Come--let's go up!" he said.
They mounted the stairs in silence, and in the corridor leading to
Morton's apartment passed half a dozen reporters. David unlocked the
apartment with his latch-key, led the way to Morton's study, and pushed
open its door. Before the safe sat a heavily spectacled man carefully
turning its dial-plate and knob. On one side of him stood Dr. Thorn, his
formal features pale, and on the other side gray-haired Mr. Haddon, his
hard, lean face, milled with financial wrinkles like a dollar's edge, as
expressionless as though he was in the midst of a Wall Street crisis.
Mr. Haddon recognised the presence of David and Helen with a slight nod,
but Dr. Thorn stepped to David's side.
"You've heard about it?" he asked in an agitated voice.
"Yes--Miss Chambers told me."
At that moment the safe door swung open. "There you are," said the
spectacled man, with a complacent little grunt.
Mr. Haddon dismissed the man and knelt before the safe. Helen and Dr.
Thorn leaned over him, and David, still stunned by the suddenness of the
catastrophe, looked whitely on from behind them. A minute, and Mr.
Haddon's search was over.
He looked about at the others. "It's not here," he said quietly.
A noise at the door caused all to turn in that direction. There stood
the reporters. They had edged into the apartment as the safe-expert had
gone out.
"Will you gentlemen please wait outside!" requested Mr. Haddon, sharply.
"We've got to hurry to catch the afternoon editions," one spoke up.
"Can't you give us the main facts right now? You've got 'em all--I just
heard you say the money wasn't here."
"I'll see you in a few minutes," answered Mr. Haddon, and brusquely
pressed them before him into the corridor.
When he reëntered the study he looked at them all grimly. "There's
absolutely no keeping this from the papers," he said.
"But there must still be another place the money can be!" Helen cried.
"I've investigated every other place," returned Mr. Haddon, in the calm
voice of finality. "The safe was the last possibility."
They all three stared at each other. It was Dr. Thorn that spoke the
thought of all. "Then the worst we feared--is true?"
Mr. Haddon nodded. "It must be."
David could not speak, nor think--could only lean sickened against the
desk. The exposure of Morton--and a thousand times worse, the ruin of
St. Christopher's--both inevitable!
"Won't you please look again!" Helen cried, with desperate hope.
"Perhaps you overlooked something."
Mr. Haddon knelt once more, and slowly fluttered the pages of the books
and scrutinised each scrap of paper. Soon he paused, and studied a slip
he had come upon. Then he rose, and David saw at the head of the slip,
"Cash Account of Boys' Summer Home." It was the paper he had prepared to
hide Morton's embezzlement.
Mr. Haddon's steady eyes took in David and Dr. Thorn. "Could anybody
have been in the safe since Mr. Morton's death?"
"It's hardly possible," returned Dr. Thorn. "Mr. Aldrich has been in the
study almost constantly."
Mr. Haddon's eyes fastened on David; a quick gleam came into them.
David, unnerved as he was, could not keep his face from twitching.
There was a long silence. Then Mr. Haddon asked quietly:
"Could you have been in the safe, Mr. Aldrich?"
David did not recognise whither the question led. "Why, yes," he said
mechanically.
Mr. Haddon held out the slip of paper. "According to this memorandum in
Mr. Morton's hand, the money was in the safe the day before his death."
His eyes screwed into David. "Perhaps you can suggest to us what became
of the money."
David stared at him blankly.
"The money--was there--when Morton died!" said Dr. Thorn amazedly. He
looked from one man to the other. Then understanding came into his face,
and a great relief. "You mean--Mr. Aldrich--took it?"
"I took it!" David repeated stupidly.
He turned slowly to Helen. Her white face, with its wide eyes and parted
lips, and the sudden look of fear she held upon him, cleared his head,
made him see where he was.
"I did not take the money!" he cried.
"No, of course not," returned Mr. Haddon grimly. "But who did?"
"If I'd taken it, wouldn't I have disappeared? Would I have been such a
fool as to have stayed here to be caught?"
"If the thief had run away, that would have fastened the guilt on him at
once. To remain here, hoping to throw suspicion on Mr. Morton--this was
the cleverest course."
"I did not take the money!" David cried desperately. "It's a lie!"
Helen moved to David's side, and gazed straight into Mr. Haddon's
accusing face. Indignation was replacing her astoundment; her cheeks
were tingeing with red.
"What, would you condemn a man upon mere guess-work!" she cried. "Merely
because the money is not there, is that proof that Mr. Aldrich took it?
Do you call this justice, Mr. Haddon?"
Mr. Haddon's look did not alter, and he did not reply. The opinion of
womankind he had ever considered negligible.
Helen turned to David and gave him her hand. "I believe you."
He thanked her with a look.
"It must have been Mr. Morton," she said.
Her words first thrilled him. Then suddenly they rang out as a knell. If
he threw off the guilt, it must fall on Morton; if Morton were publicly
guilty, then the hundreds of the Mission--
Mr. Haddon's hard voice broke in, changeless belief in its tone: "Mr.
Aldrich took it."
David looked at Mr. Haddon, looked whitely at Helen. And then the great
Thought was conceived, struggled dizzily, painfully, into birth. He
stood shivering, awed, before it....
He slowly turned and walked to a window and gazed down into the street,
filled with children hurrying home from school. The Thought spoke to him
in vivid flashes. He had no relatives, almost no friends. He loved Helen
Chambers; but he was nobody and a beggar. He had not done
anything--perhaps could never do anything--and even if he did, his work
would probably be of little worth. He had wanted his life to be of
service; had wanted to sell it, as it were, for the largest good he
could perform. Well, here were the people of St. Christopher's toppling
over the edge of destruction. Here was his Great Bargain--the chance to
sell his life for the highest price.
As to what he had done with the five thousand, which of course he'd be
asked--well, an evening of gambling would be a sufficient explanation.
He turned about.
"Well?" said Mr. Haddon.
David avoided Helen's look. He felt himself borne upward to the apex of
life.
"Yes ... I took it," he said.
BOOK II
THE CLOSED ROAD
CHAPTER I
DAVID RE-ENTERS THE WORLD
The history of the next four years of David's life is contained in the
daily programme of Croton Prison. At six o'clock the rising gong
sounded; David rolled out of his iron cot, washed himself at the faucet
in his cell, and got into his striped trousers and striped jacket. At
six-thirty he lock-stepped, with a long line of fellows, to a breakfast
of hash, bread and coffee. At seven he marched to shoe factory or
foundry, where he laboured till twelve, when the programme called him to
dinner. At one he marched back to work; at half-past five he marched to
his cell, where his supper of bread and coffee was thrust in to him
through a wicket. He read or paced up and down till nine, when the going
out of his light sent him into his iron cot. Multiply this by fifteen
hundred and the product is David's prison life.
It would be untruth to say that a sense of the good he was doing
sustained a passionate happiness in David through all these years.
Moments of exaltation were rare; they were the sun-blooming peaks in an
expanse of life that was otherwise low and gloom-hung. David had always
understood that prisons in their object were not only punitive--they
were reformative. But all his intelligence could not see any strong
influence that tended to rouse and strengthen the inmates' better part.
Occasional and perfunctory words from chaplains could not do it.
Monotonous work, to which they were lock-stepped, from which they were
lock-stepped, and which was directed and performed in the lock-step's
deadening spirit, this could not do it. Constant silence, while eating,
marching, working, could not do it. The removal for a week of a man's
light because he had spoken to a neighbour, this could not do it. Nor
could a day's or two days' confinement, on the charge of "shamming" when
too ill to work, in an utterly black dungeon on a bit of bread and a few
swallows of water.
Rather this routine, these rules, enforced unthinkingly, without
sympathy, had an opposite energy. David felt himself being made
unintelligent--being made hard, bitter, vindictive--felt himself being
dehumanised. One day as he sat at dinner with a couple of hundred mates,
silent, signalling for food with upraised fingers, a man and woman who
were being escorted about the prison by the warden, came into the room.
The woman studied for several minutes these first prisoners she had ever
seen--then the dumb rows heard her exclaim: "Why look,--they're human!"
To David the discovery was hardly less astonishing. He had been
forgetting the fact.
Yes, moments of exaltation were rare. More frequent were the dark times
when the callousness and stupidity of some of the regulations enraged
him, when the weight of all the walls seemed to lie upon his chest--when
he frantically felt he must have light and air, or die;--and he cursed
his own foolishness, and would have traded the truth to the people of
St. Christopher's for his freedom. Prometheus must often have repented
his gift of fire. But the momentum of David's resolve carried him
through these black stretches; and during his normal prison mood, which
was the restless gloom of all caged animals, his mind was in control and
held him to his bargain.
But always there was with him a great fear. Was Morton's memory
retaining its potency over the people of St. Christopher's? Were they
striving to hold to their old ideals, or were they gradually loosening
their grip and slipping back into the old easy ways of improvidence and
dissipation? Perhaps, even now, they were entirely back, and his four
years had paid for nothing. The long day carrying the liquid iron to the
moulds would have been easier, the long night in the black cell would
have been calmer, had he had assurance that his sacrifice was fulfilling
its aim. But never a word came from St. Christopher's through those
heavy walls.
And always he thought of Helen Chambers. He could never forget the stare
of her white face when he had acknowledged his guilt, how she had first
tried to speak, then turned slowly and walked away. The four walls of
his mind were hung with that picture; wherever he turned, he saw it. He
had wanted to spring after her and whisper his innocence, but there had
flashed up a realisation that his plan was feasible only with a perfect
secrecy, and to admit one person to his confidence might be to admit the
world. Besides, she might not believe him. So, silent, he had let her
walk from the room with his guilt.
He often wondered if she ever thought of him. If she did, it was
doubtless only to despise him. More likely, he had passed from her mind.
Perhaps she was married. That thought wrung him. He tried to still the
heavy pain by looking at the impassable gulf that lay between them, and
by telling himself it was natural and fitting that she should have
married. He wondered what her husband was like, and if she were happy.
But the walls were mute.
Long before his release he had decided he should settle in New York.
Life would be easiest, he knew, if he were to lose himself in a new part
of the world. But St. Christopher's, where four prison years and the
balance of his dishonoured life were invested, was in New York; Helen
Chambers was in New York. The rest of the world had no like attractions;
it could hide him--that was all. But save at first while he was gaining
a foothold--and could he not then lose himself among New York's
millions?--he did not desire to hide himself.
He did not care to hide himself because the prison had given him a
message, and this message he intended speaking publicly. He had pondered
long over society's treatment of the man who breaks its law. That
treatment seemed to him absurd, illogical. It would have been laughably
grotesque in its deforming incompetence had it not been directed at
human beings. It was a treatment bounded on one side by negligence, on
the other by severity. It maimed souls, killed souls; it was criminal.
David's sense of justice and humanity demanded that he should protest
against this great criminal--our prison system. He knew it as prison
reformers did not--from the inside. He could speak from his heart. And
as soon as he had gained a foothold, he would begin.
At length came the day of his liberation, and he found himself back in
New York, twenty dollars, his prison savings, in his pocket, the
exhaustion of prison life in his flesh, and in his heart a determination
to conquer the world. He knew but one part of New York--the
neighbourhood of St. Christopher's Mission--and that part drew him
because of his interest in it, and also because he must live cheaply and
there life was on a cheap scale. He hesitated to settle in the immediate
neighbourhood; but he could settle just without its edge, where he could
look on, and perhaps pass unnoticed. He at length found a room on the
fifth floor of a dingy tenement, seven or eight blocks from the Mission.
The room had a chair, a bed, a promise of weekly change of sheets, and a
backyard view composed of clothes-lines, bannered with the block's
underwear, and the rear of a solid row of dreary tenements. Five years
before the room would have been unbearable; now it was luxury, for it
was Freedom.
After paying the first month's rent of five dollars and buying a few
dishes, a little gas stove and a small supply of groceries, he had nine
dollars left with which to face the world and make it give him place. If
he spent twenty cents a day for food, and spent not a cent for other
purposes, he could eat for six weeks. But before then rent would again
be due. Four weeks he could stand out, no longer; by then he must have
won a foothold.
Well, he would do it.
By the time he had made a cupboard out of the soap-box the grocer had
given him and had set his room in order, dusk was falling into the
gulch-like backyard and the opposite wall was springing into light at a
hundred windows. He ate a dinner from his slender store, using his bed
as a chair and his chair as a table, and after its signs were cleared
away he sat down and gazed across the court into the privacy of five
strata of homes. He saw, framed by the windows, collarless men and
bare-armed women sitting with their children at table; the odours of a
hundred different dinners, entangled into one odour, filled his
nostrils; family talk, and the rumble and clatter of the always-crowded
streets, came to his ears as a composite murmuring that was an
inarticulate summary of life.
But none of these impressions reached his mind; that had slipped away to
Helen Chambers. The question that had asked itself ten thousand times
repeated itself again: was she married? He tried to tell himself quietly
that it was none of his affair, could make no difference to him--but the
suspense of four years was not to be strangled by self-restraint. The
desire to know the truth, to see her if he could, mounted to an impulse
there was no withstanding.
And another oft-asked question also came to him. Was the Mission still a
power for good? And this also roused an uncontrollable desire to know
the truth. He left his room and set out for St. Christopher's, wondering
if he would be recognised. But, though often Morton's guest, he had
mixed but little in the affairs of the Mission, and not many from the
hard-working neighbourhood had been able to attend his brief trial; so
he was known by sight to few, and no one now gave him a second look.
As he came into the old streets, with here and there a little shop that
had been owned by one of Morton's followers, and here and there among
the passers-by a face that was vaguely familiar, his suspense grew and
grew--till, when St. Christopher's loomed before him, it seemed his
suspense would almost choke him. He paused across the street in the
shadow of a tenement entrance, and stared over at the club-house and at
the chapel with its spire rising into the rain-presaging night. Light
streamed from the open door of the chapel; on the club-house
window-sills were the indistinct shapes of flower-boxes; boys and girls,
young men and women, parents, were entering the club-house. Everything
seemed just the same. But were the people the same? Had his four years
been squandered--or spent to glorious purpose?
He slipped across the street and looked cautiously into the chapel.
There were the three rows of pews, the plain pulpit bearing an open
Bible, behind which Morton used to preach, the organ at which a stooped
girl, a shirt-waist maker, used to play the hymns and lead the
congregation's singing--all just as in other days.
The chapel was empty, save the corner of a rear pew in which sat a
troubled, poorly-dressed woman, and a gray-haired man whose clerical
coat made David guess him to be Morton's successor. The voice of his
advice was gentle and persuasive, and when the woman's rising to go
revealed his shaven face, David saw that it had strength and kindness,
spirit and humility--saw that the man's vigour remained despite his
obvious sixty years.
David entered the chapel and approached the director of the Mission. The
old man held out his hand. "I'm glad to see you," he said. "Is there
anything in which I can serve you?"
David strove for a casual manner, but prison had made him too worn, too
nervous, to act a part requiring so much control. "I was just--going
by," he stammered, taking the hand. "I used to know the Mission--years
ago--when Mr. Morton was here. So I came in."
"Ah, then you knew Mr. Morton!" said the director warmly.
"A--a little."
"Even to know him a little was a great privilege," he said with
conviction, admiration. "He was a wonderful man!"
David braced himself for one of the two great questions of his last four
years. "Does the neighbourhood still remember him?"
"Just as though he were still here," the director answered, with the
enthusiasm an unjealous older brother may feel for the family genius.
"He has left an influence that amounts to a living, inspiring presence.
That influence, more than anything I have done, has kept the people just
as earnest for truer manhood and womanhood as when he left them. I feel
that I am only the assistant. He is still the real head."
David got away as quickly as he could, a mighty, quivering warmth within
him. On the other side of the street, he gave a parting glance over his
shoulder at the chapel. He stopped short, and stared. While they had
talked, the director of the Mission had turned on additional lights,
among which had been an arc-light before the great stained-glass window
at the street end of the chapel. The window was now a splendid glow of
red and blue and purple, and printed upon its colours was this legend:
[Illustration]
David stared at the window, weak, dizzy. There was a momentary pang of
bitterness that Morton should be so honoured, and he be what he was.
Then the glow that had possessed him in the chapel flowed back upon him
in even greater warmth. The window seemed to David, in his then mood,
to be the perpetuation in glowing colour of Morton's influence. It
seemed to throw forth into the street, upon the chance passer-by, the
inspiration of Morton's life.
Yes,--his four years had counted!
Half an hour later he took his stand against the shadowed stoop of an
empty mansion in Madison Avenue, and gazed across at a great square
three-story stone house, with a bulging conservatory running along its
left side--the only residence in the block that had re-opened for the
autumn. All thought of Morton and the Mission was gone from him. His
mind was filled only with the other great fear of his last four years.
If she came out of the door he watched, if he glimpsed her beneath a
window shade, then probably she still belonged in her father's
house--was still unmarried.
A cold drizzle had begun to fall. He drew his head down into his
upturned collar, and though his weakened body shivered, he noticed
neither the rain nor the protest of his flesh. His whole being was
directed at the house across the way. Slow minute followed slow minute.
The door did not open, and he saw no one inside the windows. His heart
beat as though it would shake his body apart. The sum of four years
suspense so weakened him that he could hardly stand. Yet he stood and
waited, waited; and he realised more keenly than ever how dear she was
to him--though to possess her was beyond his wildest dreams, and perhaps
he might not even speak to her again.
At length a nearby steeple called the hour of ten. Presently a carriage
began to turn in towards the opposite sidewalk. David, all a-tremble,
his great suspense now at its climax, stepped forth from his shadow. The
carriage stopped before the Chambers home. He hurried across the street,
and a dozen paces away from the carriage he stooped and made pretense of
tying his shoe-lace; but all the while his eyes were on the carriage
door, which the footman had thrown open. First a man stepped forth, back
to David, and raised an umbrella. Who? The next instant David caught the
profile. It was Mr. Chambers. After him came an ample, middle-aged
woman, brilliantly attired--Mrs. Bosworth, Mr. Chambers's widowed
sister, who had been living with him since his wife's death.
A moment later Mr. Chambers was helping a second woman from the
carriage. The umbrella cut her face from David's gaze, but there was no
mistaking her. So she still lived in the house of her father!
She paused an instant to speak to the footman. For a second a new fear
lived in David: might she not come with her father to her father's
house, and still be married? But at the second's end the fear was
destroyed by the conventional three-word response of the footman. David
watched her go up the steps, her face hidden by the umbrella, watched
her enter and the door close behind her. Then, collapsed by the vast
relief which followed upon his vast suspense, he sank down upon the
stoop, and the three words of the footman maintained a thrilling
iteration in his ears.
The three words were: "Thank you, _Miss_."
CHAPTER II
A CALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR
The next morning David was awakened by the ringing of a gong. He tumbled
out of bed in order to be ready for the march to breakfast at half past
six; and he had begun to dress before it dawned upon him that he was a
free man, and that the ringing was a prank a four-year habit had played
upon him--a prank that, by the way, was to be repeated every morning for
many a week to come.
He slipped back into bed, and lay there considering what he should first
do. He had to find work quickly, but he felt his four walled years had
earned him a holiday--one day in which to re-acquaint himself with
freedom. So, after he had eaten, he felt his way down the dark,
heavy-aired stairways, stepped through the doorway, and then paused in
wonderment.
All was as fresh, as marvellous, as yesterday. The narrow street was a
bustle of freedom--pounding carts, school-going boys and girls, playing
children, marketing wives--no stripes, no lock-steps, no guards. And the
yellow sun! He held his bleached face up to it, as though he would press
against its sympathetic warmth; and he sucked deeply of the September
air. And the colours!--the reds and whites and browns of the children,
the occasional green of a plant on a window sill, the clear blue of the
strip of sky at the street's top. He had almost forgotten there were
colours other than stripes, the gray of stone walls, the black of steel
bars.
And how calmly the streetful of people took these marvels!
At first he expected the people he threaded among to look into his face,
see his prison record there, draw away from him, perhaps taunt him with
"thief." But no one even noticed him, and gradually this fear began to
fade from him. As he was crossing the Bowery, a car clanged at his back.
He frantically leaped, with a cry, to the sidewalk, and leaned against a
column of the elevated railroad--panting, exhausted, heart pounding. He
had not before known how weak, nerveless, prison had made him.
He found, as he continued his way, that the sidewalk undulated like a
ship's deck beneath his giddy legs; he found himself afraid of
traffic-crowded corners that women and children unhesitatingly crossed;
he found himself stopping and staring with intensest interest at the
common-places of street life--at hurrying men, at darting newsboys, at
rushing street cars and clattering trucks, at whatever moved where it
willed. Old-timers had told him of the dazedness, the fear, the
interest, of the first free days, but he was unprepared for the
palpitant acuteness of his every sensation.
After a time, in Broadway, he chanced to look into a mirror-backed
show-window where luminous satins were displayed. Between two smirking
waxen women in sheeny drapery he saw that which brought him to a pause
and set him gazing. It was his full-length self, which he had not seen
these four years. The figure was gaunt, a mere framework for his shoddy,
prison-made suit; the skin of his face snugly fitted itself to the
bones; his eyes were sunken, large; his hair, which he uncovered, had
here and there a line of gray. He was startled. But he had courage for
the future; and after a few moments he said to himself aloud, a habit
prison had given him: "A few weeks, and you won't know yourself."
As he walked on, the consciousness of freedom swelled within him. If he
desired, he could speak to the man ahead of him, could laugh, could
stand still, could walk where he wished, and no guard to report on him
and no warden to subtract from his "good time." More than once, under
cover of the rattle of an elevated train, he shouted at his voice's top
in pure extravagance of feeling; and once in Fifth Avenue, forgetting
himself, he flung his arms wide and laughed joyously--to be suddenly
restored to convention by the hurried approach of a policeman.
All day he watched this strange new life--much of the time sitting in
parks, for the unaccustomed walking wearied him. When he came to his
tenement's door--flanked on one side by a saloon, and on the other side
by a little grocery store before which sat a basket of shrunken potatoes
and a few withered cabbages and beans, and in which supplies could be
bought by the pennyworth--a hand fell upon his arm and a voice called
out with wheezy cordiality: "Good evenin', friend."
David glanced about. Beside him was a loose bundle of old humanity,
wrapped up in and held together by a very seedy coat and stained, baggy
trousers frayed at the bottom. The face was covered with gray bristle
and gullied with wrinkles. Over one eye hung a greasy green flap; the
other eye was watery and red.
"Good evening," returned David.
"Excuse me for stoppin' you," said the old man with an ingratiating
smile that unlipped half a dozen brown teeth. "But we're neighbours, and
I thought we ought to get acquainted. Me an' my girl lives just across
the hall from you. Morgan's my name--Old Jimmie Morgan."
"Aldrich is mine. I suppose I'll see you again. Good evening." And
David, eager to get away from the nodding old man, started through the
door.
His neighbour stepped quickly before him, and put a stubby hand against
his chest. "Wait a minute, Mr. Aldrich. I'm in a little trouble. I've
got to get some groceries, and my daughter--she carries our money--she
ain't in. I wonder if you couldn't loan me fifty cents till mornin'?"
David knew that fifty cents loaned to him was fifty cents lost. He shook
his head.
"Mebbe I could get along on twenty-five then. Say a quarter."
"I really can't spare it," said David, and tried to press by.
"Well, then make it a dime," wheedled the old man, stopping him again.
"You'll never miss a dime, friend. Come, what's a dime to a young man
like you. And it'll get me a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee. That'll
help an old man like me a lot, for Katie won't be home till mornin'."
Merely to free himself David drew out one of his precious dimes.
"Thank you, thank you!" The dirty, wrinkled hand closed tightly upon the
coin. "You've saved an old man from goin' hungry to bed."
David again turned to enter. He almost ran against a slight,
neatly-dressed girl, apparently about twenty, who was just coming out of
the doorway. Her black eyes were gleaming, and there were red spots in
her cheeks. At sight of her the old man started to hurry away.
"Jim Morgan! You come here!" she commanded in a ringing voice.
The old man stopped, and came slowly toward her with a hang-dog look.
"You've been borrowing money of that man!" she declared.
"No I ain't. We were talkin'--talkin' politics. Honest, Katie. We were
just talkin' politics."
"You were begging money!" She turned her sharp eyes upon David. "Wasn't
he?"
The old man winked frantically for help with his red eye, and started to
slip the dime into his pocket. The girl, without waiting for David's
answer, wheeled about so quickly that she caught both the signal for
help and the move of the hand pocketward. She pointed at the hand. "Stop
that! Now open it up!"
"Nothin' in it, Katie," whined her father.
"Open that hand!"
It slowly opened, and in the centre of the grimy palm lay the dime.
"Give it back to him," the girl ordered.
Old Jimmie handed David the coin.
The girl's eyes blazed. Her wrath burst forth. "Now, sir, you will
borrow money, will you!" her sharp voice rang out. "You will lie to me
about it, will you!"
David hurried inside and heard no more. He made a pot of coffee and
warmed half a can of baked beans over his little gas stove. Of this
crude meal his stomach would accept little. His condition should have
had the delicate and nourishing food that is served an invalid. His
appetite longingly remembered meals of other days: the fruit, the eggs
on crisp toast, the golden-brown coffee, at breakfast; the soup, the
roast, the vegetables, the dessert, at dinner--linen, china, service,
food, all dainty. He turned from the meals his imagination saw to the
meal upon his chair-table. He smiled whimsically. "Sir," he said
reprovingly to his appetite, "you're too ambitious."
He had placed his can of condensed milk and bit of butter out on the
fire-escape, which he, adopting the East Side's custom, used as an
ice-chest, and had put his washed dishes into the soap-box cupboard,
when he was startled by a knock. Wondering who could be calling on him,
he threw open the door.
Kate Morgan stood before him. "I want to see you a minute. May I come
in?"
"Certainly."
David bowed and motioned her in. Her quick eyes noted the bow and the
gesture. He drew his one chair into the open space beside the bed.
"Won't you please be seated?"
She sat down, rested one arm on the corner of his battered wash-stand
and crossed her knees.
David seated himself on the edge of the bed. He had a better view of her
than when he had seen her in the doorway, and he could hardly believe
she was the daughter of the old man who had stopped him. She wore a
yellow dress of some cheap goods, with bands of bright red about the
bottom of the skirt, bands of red about the short loose sleeves that
left the arms bare from the elbows, a red girdle, and about the
shoulders a red fulness. The dress was almost barbaric in its colouring,
yet it suited her dark face, with its brilliant black eyes.
There was neither embarrassment nor over-boldness in the face; rather
the composure of the woman who is acting naturally. There was a touch of
hardness about the mouth and eyes, and a touch of cynicism; in ten
years, David guessed, those qualities would have sculptured themselves
deep into her features. But it was an alert, clear, almost pretty
face--would have been decidedly pretty, in a sharp way, had the hair not
been combed into a tower of a pompadour that exaggerated her face's
thinness.
She did not lose an instant in speaking her errand. "I want you to
promise not to lend my father a cent," she began in a concise voice. "I
have to ask that of every new person that moves in the house. He's an
old soak. I don't dare give him a cent. But he borrows whenever he can,
and if he gets enough it's delirium tremens."
"He told me he wanted a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee," David said in
excuse of himself.
"Soup and coffee! Huh! Whiskey. That's all he thinks of--whiskey. His
idea of God is a bartender that keeps setting out the drinks and never
strikes you for the price. If I give him a decent suit of clothes, it's
pawned and he's drunk. He used to pawn the things from the house--but he
don't do that any more! He mustn't have a cent. That's why I've come to
ask you to turn him down the next time he tries to touch you for one of
his 'loans.'"
"That's an easy promise," David answered with a smile.
"Thanks."
Her business was done, but she did not rise. Her swift eyes ran over the
furnishings of the room--the bed, the crippled wash-stand, with its
chipped bowl and broken-lipped pitcher, the dishes in the soap-box
cupboard, the gas stove under the bed, the bare, splintered floor, the
walls from which the blue kalsomine was flaking--ran over David's
shapeless clothes. Then they stopped on his face.
"You're a queer bird," she said abruptly.
He started. "Queer?"
She gave a little jerk of a nod. "You didn't always live in a room like
this, nor wear them kind of clothes. And you didn't learn your manners
over on the Bowery neither. What's the matter? Up against it?"
David stared at her. "Don't you think there may be another queer bird in
the room?" he suggested.
She was not rebuffed, but for a second she studied his face with an
even sharper glance, in which there was the least glint of suspicion.
"You mean me," she said. "I live across the hall with my father. When
I'm at work I'm a maid in swell families--sometimes a nurse girl.
Nothing queer about that."
"No--o," he said hesitatingly.
She returned to the attack. "What do you do?"
"I'm looking for work."
"What have you worked at?"
The directness with which she moved at what interested her might have
amused David had that directness not been searching for what he desired
for the present to conceal. "I only came to New York yesterday," he said
evasively.
"But you've been in New York before?"
"Not for several years."
She was getting too close. "I'm a very stupid subject for talk," he said
quickly. "Now you--you must have had some very interesting experiences
in the homes of the rich. You saw the rich from the inside. Tell me
about them."
She was not swerved an instant from her point. "You're very interesting.
The first minute I saw you I spotted you for a queer one to be living in
a place like this. What've you been doing since you were in New York
before?"
David could not hold back a flush; no evasive reply was waiting at his
lips. Several seconds passed. "Pardon me, but don't you think you're a
little too curious?" he said with an effort.
Her penetrating eyes had not left him. Now understanding flashed into
her face. She emitted a low whistle.
"So that's it, is it!" she exclaimed, her voice softer than it had been.
"So you've been sent away, and just got out. And you're starting in to
try the honesty game."
There was no foiling her quick penetration. He nodded his head.
He had wondered how the world would receive him. She was the first
member of the free world he had met who had learned his prison record,
and he waited, chokingly, her action. He expected her face to harden
accusingly--expected her to rise, speak despisingly and march coldly
out.
"Well, you are up against it good and hard," she said slowly. There was
sympathy in her voice.
The sympathy startled him; he warmed to her. But straightway it entered
his mind that she would hasten to spread her discovery, and to live in
the house might then be to live amid insult.
"You have committed burglary on my mind--you have stolen my secret," he
said sharply.
"Oh, but I'll never tell," she quickly returned. And David, looking at
her clear face, found himself believing her.
She tried with quick questions to break into his past, but he blocked
her with silence. After a time she glanced at a watch upon her breast,
rose and reached for the door-knob. But David sprang quickly forward.
"Allow me," he said, and opened the door for her.
The courtesy did not go unnoticed. "You must have been a real 'gun,' a
regular high-flyer, in your good days," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Oh, your kind of manners don't grow on cheap crooks."
She held out her hand. "Well, I wish you luck. Come over and see me
sometime. Good night."
When he had closed the door David sat down and fell to musing over his
visitor. She was dressed rather too showily, but she was not coarse. She
was bold, but not brazen; hers seemed the boldness, the directness, of a
child or a savage. Perhaps, in this quality, she was not grown up, or
not yet civilised. He wondered how a maid or a nurse girl could support
a father on her earnings, as he inferred she did. He wondered how she
had so quickly divined that he was fresh from prison. He remembered a
yellow stain near the ends of the first two fingers of her left hand;
cigarettes; and the stain made him wonder, too. And he wondered at her
manner--sharp, no whit of coquetry, a touch of frank good fellow-ship at
the last.
Presently a hand which had been casually fumbling in the inside pocket
of his coat drew out a folded paper. It was the bulletin of the work at
St. Christopher's, and he now remembered that the director of the
Mission (Dr. Joseph Franklin, the bulletin gave his name) had handed it
to him the night before and that he had mechanically thrust it into his
pocket and forgotten it. He began to look it through with pride; in a
sense it was the record of _his_ work. He read the schedule of religious
services, classes, boys' clubs and girls' clubs. Toward the middle of
the latter list this item stopped him short:
WHITTIER CLUB--Members aged 17 to 20. Meets Wednesday evenings.
Leader, Miss Helen Chambers.
This was Wednesday evening. David put on his hat, and ten minutes later,
his coat collar turned up, his slouch hat pulled down, he was standing
in the dark doorway of a tenement, his eyes fastened on the club-house
entrance twenty yards down the street.
After what seemed an endless time, she appeared. Dr. Franklin was with
her, evidently to escort her to her car. David gazed at her, as they
came toward his doorway, with all the intensity of his great love. She
was tall, almost as tall as Dr. Franklin; and she had that grace of
carriage, that firm poise of bearing, which express a noble, healthy
womanhood under perfect self-control. David had not seen her face last
night; and he now kept his eyes upon it, waiting till it should come
within the white circle of the street lamp near the doorway.
When the lamp lifted the shadows from her face, a great thrill ran
through him. Ah, how beautiful it was!--beauty of contour and colour,
yes, but here the fleshly beauty, which so often is merely flesh for
flesh's sake, was the beautiful expression of a beautiful soul. There
was a high dignity in the face, and understanding, and womanly
tenderness. It was a face that for seven years had to him summed up the
richest, rarest womanhood.
She passed so close that he could have touched her, but he flattened
himself within the doorway's shadow. After she had gone by he leaned out
and followed her with his hungry eyes.
Could he ever, ever win her respect?
CHAPTER III
THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN
The next day the search for work had to be begun, and David felt himself
squarely against the beginning of his new career as an ex-convict. He
saw this career, not as a part to be abandoned when it wearied him, like
a rôle assumed for a season by a sociological investigator, but as the
part he must play, must _live_, to the end of his days. His immediate
struggle, his whole future, would not be one whit other than if he were
in truth the thief the world had branded him. Writing for the magazines
was not to be thought of, for he needed quick, certain money. He was
friendless; he had no profession; he had no trade; he had never held a
position; he had no experience of a commercial value. All in all his
equipment for facing the world, barring his education, was identical
with the equipment of the average discharged convict.
David did not look forward into this career with resignation. There was
nothing of the willing martyr in him. The life he must follow was not
going to be easy; it would demand his all of courage and endurance. He
longed to stand before the world a clean man, and the longing was at
times a fierce rebellion. He had bought a great good, but he was paying
therefor a bitter price, and every day of his life he must pay the
price anew. Yet he faced the future with determination, if not with
happiness. He believed that earnest work and earnest living would regain
the world's respect--would slowly force the world to yield him place.
He tried to forbid himself thinking of Helen Chambers as having the
slightest part in his future. She was a thousand times farther removed
than four years before, when his name had been fair, and then the space
of the universe had stretched between them. And yet the desire some day
to appear well in her eyes was after all the strongest motive, stronger
even than the instinct of self-preservation, that urged him upon the
long, uphill struggle.
David had determined first to seek work on a newspaper. Some of the
things he had written in that far-away time beyond the prison, came back
to him. They were not bad--they were really good! If he could get on one
of the papers, and could manage to hold his place for a few months
without his story being learned, perhaps by then he would have so proved
his worth that he would be retained despite his prison record. He would
do his best! Who knew?--life might have a very endurable place for him
somewhere in the years ahead. He grew almost excited as he gazed at the
dimly-seen success.
Before starting out upon his first try at fortune, he gazed into the
mirror above his wash-stand and for a long time studied his face,
wondering if the men he was going to meet would read his record there.
The forehead was broad, and about the grey eyes and the wide mouth were
the little puckering wrinkles that announce the dreamer. The chin was
the chin of the man of will. In health the face would have suggested a
rare combination of idealism and will-power; but now there brooded over
it that hesitancy, that blanched gloom, which come from living within
the dark shadows of prison. No one looking at his thin, slightly
stooping figure would have ever guessed that here was Dave Aldrich, the
great half-back of '95.
After filling the forenoon by writing for his belongings, which his New
Jersey landlady had promised to keep till he should send for them, and
by dreaming of the future, David set out for the hurly-burly that
seethes within and without the sky-supporting buildings of Park Row. At
the entrance to the first newspaper office, his courage suddenly all
flowed from him. Would he be recognised as a jail-bird? His ill-fitting
prison-made suit, that clothed him in reproach, that burned him--was it
not an announcement of his record? He turned away in panic.
But he had to go in, and fiercely mastering his throbbing agitation, he
returned to the office and entered. The city editor, a sharp-faced young
man, after hearing that David had no newspaper experience, snapped out
in a quick voice, "Sorry, for I need a man--but I've got no time to
break in a green hand," and the following instant was shouting to a
"copy" boy for proofs.
At the next place the slip on which David had been required to write his
business, came back to him with the two added words, "Nothing doing." At
the third place the returned slip bore the statement, "Got all the men I
need." The fourth editor, whom he saw, gave him a short negative. The
fifth editor sent word by mouth of the office boy that his staff was
full. It required all David's determination to mount to the sixth
office, that of an able and aggressively respectable paper.
The boy who took in his request to the city editor returned at once and
led David across a large dingy room, with littered floor, and
grime-streaked windows. Young men, coatless, high-geared, sat at desks
scribbling with pencils and clicking typewriters; boys, answering the
quick cries of "copy!" scurried about through the heavy tobacco smoke.
The room was a rectangular solid of bustling intensity.
The city editor, who occupied a corner of the room, waved David to a
chair. Again David repeated the formula of his desire, and again he was
asked his experience.
"I've had no experience on a paper," he replied, "but I've done a lot of
writing in a private way."
"You're practically a new man, then." The editor thought for a moment,
and David eagerly watched his face. It was business-like, but kindly.
"Why, I guess I might take the trouble to lick a man into shape--if he
seemed to have the right stuff in him. Anyhow, I might give you a trial.
But you're not very young to be just beginning the game. What've you
been working at?"
David felt the guilty colour warming his cheeks. "Writing."
"All the time?"
He tried to speak naturally. "The last few years I have been trying to
do some--manual work."
"Here in the city?"
"No. Out of town."
The editor could not but notice David's flushed face and its strained
look. He eyed David narrowly, and his brow wrinkled in thought. David
strove to force a natural look upon his face. "Aldrich," the editor said
to himself, "Aldrich--David Aldrich you said. That sounds familiar.
Where have I heard that in the last few days?"
"I don't know," said David, his lips dry; but he thought of a paragraph
he had read on the ride from prison announcing his discharge.
"O-o-h!" said the editor, and his eyes sharpened. David understood. The
editor had also remembered the paragraph.
The editor's gaze dropped to his desk, as though embarrassed. "I'm very
sorry--but I'm afraid I can't use you after all. I really don't need any
men. But I hope you'll find something without trouble."
The blow was gently delivered, but it was still a blow--one that, as he
walked dazedly from the office, made his courage totter. He told himself
that he had counted upon just such experiences as this, that he had
planned for a month of rebuffs--and gradually, as the evening wore away,
he preached spirit back into himself. However, he would make no further
attempts to find newspaper work. Even should he be so lucky as to secure
a place, some one of the score or two score fellow-workers would be
certain to connect him with the newly-liberated convict, as the editor
had done, and then--discharge. For the present, it would be better to
seek a position among the large business houses.
At dawn the next morning David was reading the "Help Wanted" columns of
a newspaper, and two hours later he was sitting in the office of the
superintendent of the shipping department of a wholesale dress-goods
house that had advertised for a shipping clerk. The superintendent
scrutinised David's face, making David feel that the prison mark was
appearing, like an image on a developing plate, and then demanded: "Why
do you want a job like this? This ain't your class."
"Because I need it."
"Had any experience as a shipping clerk?"
"No. But I'm mighty willing to learn."
"Well, let's see your letters from previous employers."
David hesitated. "I have none." He felt the red proclamation of his
record begin to burn in his cheeks.
"Have none!" The superintendent looked suspicious. "No references at
all?"
David shook his head; his cheeks flamed redder.
"Who've you worked for?"
To mention here his four years of writing would be absurd. "No one," he
stammered--"that is, I've had no business experience."
The superintendent's reply came out sharply: "No experience--no
references--can't use you. Good morning."
David stumbled out, not noticing the relief his dejection gave the other
applicants waiting outside the office. He saw the difficulty of his
situation with a new, startling clearness; the superintendent had summed
it up with business-like conciseness--"no experience, no references." A
sudden fear, a sudden consternation, clutched him. Would he ever be able
to pass that great wall standing between him and a position?--that wall
builded of his prison record, of no experience, of no references?
Whether or not, he must try. He hurried to another office that had
advertised for help, and to another, and to another--and so on for days.
Usually he was turned away because there was really no work, but several
times because to the penetrating questions he could return only his
distrust-rousing answers. His courage tried to escape; but he caught it
and held it, desperately.
Saturday evening an expressman delivered a box sent by his old New
Jersey landlady. The charge was a dollar, and the dollar's payment was a
tragedy. The box contained only a few of the things he had left behind
him. His landlady, though kind, was careless, his things had become
scattered during the four years, and the contents of the box were all
she had been able to get together. There were a few of his books, a few
photographs and prints, a few ornaments, a pair of boxing gloves, most
of his manuscripts, and an overcoat. The overcoat at least was worth
having, with cool weather but a few weeks off.
The second week was an elaboration of the first few days, and the first
half of the third was the same. Then he had three days' work at
addressing envelopes--girls' work and boys' work, for which he was paid
eighty-five cents a day. Then the search again.
At length he found a place. It was in a small department store in One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street--a store that in fifteen years had
developed from a notion shop occupying a mere hole in the wall. The
proprietor was one of those men who do not see the master chances, the
thousands and the millions, but who see a multitude of little chances,
the pennies and the dollars. He squeezed his creditors, his customers,
his shopgirls--kept open later than other stores to squeeze a few last
drops of profit from the day. His success was the sum of thousands of
petty advantages.
When David came to him he saw that here was a man in cruel need. The
labour of a man in cruel need is yours at your own price--is, in fact, a
bargain. He had had enough experience with bargains in merchandise to
know that when a rarely good bargain offers it is best to snap it up and
not question too closely into the reasons for its cheapness. So he
offered David a place in the kitchen furnishing department. Salary, five
dollars a week.
David accepted. His first week's salary, minus ten cents a day for car
fare and ten cents for luncheon, amounted to three dollars and eighty
cents. He had begun a second month in his room, and his landlady, seeing
how poor he was, again demanded her rent in advance. After paying her,
David had a dollar and a quarter left. But he had a job--a poor job, but
still a job.
The following Sunday afternoon, as he sat at his window, pretending to
read, but in reality staring dreamily down through the spider's-web of
clothes lines into the deep, dreary backyard, Kate Morgan came in. It
was the first time he had seen her since her visit of a month before,
though he had called several times at her flat, to be told by her father
that she was away at work.
"Good afternoon!" she cried, and giving him her hand she marched in
before he could speak. "Take the chair yourself this time," she said,
and sat down on the bed, her feet hanging clear.
She wore a black tailored suit and a beplumed hat. Evidently she had
just come in from walking, for the warm colour of the late October air
was in her cheeks. There was no doubt about it this time--she was
pretty. And there was a lightness, a sauciness, in her manner that had
not showed on her previous visit.
"Well, sir, how've you been?" she demanded, after David had taken the
chair.
He tried, somewhat heavily, to fit his mood to hers. "I can't say I've
cornered the happiness market. You haven't noticed a rise in quotations,
have you?"
"Nope," she said, swinging her feet--and David had to see that they were
very shapely and in neat patent leather shoes, and that the ankles were
very trim. "I just got back this morning. How's dad been? And how many
loans has he stuck you for?"
"To be exact, he's tried seven times and failed seven times."
"Good! But dad's better now than he used to be. When I first began to go
away I'd leave him enough money to last for a week, or till I'd be home
again. He always went off on a spree--never failed. So now I mail him
thirty cents every day. It ain't quite enough to live decent on, and at
the same time it ain't quite enough to get drunk on. See? So I guess he
keeps pretty sober."
"I guess he does," said David, not quite able to restrain a smile. "But
how've you been?"
"Me?" She shook her head with a doleful little air. "I've been having a
regular hell of a time. I've been nurse girl in a swell house on Fifth
Avenue. It's built out of gold and diamonds and such stuff. The missus
was one of these society head-liners. You know the sort--good shape,
good complexion, swell dresses, and that's all. Somebody made the
dresses, her make-up box made her complexion, and her corset made her
figure. Soul, heart, brain--pst! Once every day or two she'd come to the
nursery just long enough to rub a bit of her complexion on the
children's faces. And she treated me like I wasn't there. Oh, but
wouldn't I like to wring her neck! But I'll get square with her, you
bet!"
She gave a grimly threatening jerk of her little head, then smiled
again. "But what's your luck? Got a job yet?"
"Yes."
"What doing?"
David shrunk from telling this brilliantly-dressed creature how lowly
his work was, but he had to confess. "Clerking in a department store."
"How much do you make?"
That awful inquisitiveness!
"Five dollars a week."
Her black eyes stared at him, then suddenly she leaned back and laughed.
He reddened. She straightened up, bent forward till her elbows rested on
her knees, and gazed into his face.
"Five--dollars--a--week!" she said. "And you a king crook!" She shook
her head wonderingly. "And, please sir, how do you like being honest at
five dollars a week?"
"Hardly as well as I would at six," he answered, trying to speak
lightly.
She was silent for almost a minute, her eyes incredulously on him. "Mr.
David Aldrich," she remarked slowly, "you're a fool!"
He was startled--and his wonderment about her returned. "I've often said
the same," he agreed. "But do you mind telling why you think so?"
"A man that can make his hundreds a week, works for his living at five."
He assumed such innocence of appearance as he could command. "I'm a
little surprised to hear this, especially from a woman who also works
for her living."
Her look of wonderment gave place to a queer little smile. "Hum!" She
straightened up. "D'you mind if I smoke?" she asked abruptly, drawing a
silver cigarette case from a pocket of her skirt.
The women David had known had not smoked. But he said "no" and accepted
a cigarette when she offered him the open box. She struck a match, held
the flame first to him, then lit her own cigarette.
She drew deeply. "To-day's the first time I've dared smoke for a month.
Ah, but it's good!"
She stared again at David, and now with that penetrating gaze of her
last visit. A minute passed. David grew very uncomfortable. Then she
announced abruptly: "You're on the dead level!"
The queer little smile came back. "Yes, I work for my living. And I keep
my flat, keep my father, dress myself, have plenty of money for good
times, and put aside enough so that I can knock off work whenever I
like--all on a maid's twenty a month. And how do you suppose I do it?"
David wondered what was coming next, but did not answer. A fear that had
been creeping into his mind suddenly grew into definiteness.
"People around here think I've got a rich old lover," she said.
He felt a sinking at his heart. This had been his sudden fear. And she
took the shame in such a matter-of-fact way!
"I let 'em think so, for that explains everything to them. But they're
wrong." The queer smile broadened. "What do you think?"
"I could never guess," said David.
She leaned forward, and her voice lowered to a whisper. "You and
me--we're in the same trade."
"What! You're a----" He hesitated.
"That's it," she said. "A nurse girl or a maid in a rich house sees a
lot of things lying around. Or, if she wants to, she can stay for two or
three weeks or a month, learn where the valuables are kept, make a plan
of the house, get hold of keys. Then she gets a pal, and they clean the
place out. That's me."
There was a glow of excitement in her eyes, and pride, and a triumphant
sense of having startled him. For the moment he merely stared at her,
could make no response.
"There, we know each other now," she said, and took several puffs at her
cigarette. "But ain't you tired of the honesty life at five per?"
"No."
"You soon will be!" she declared. "Then you'll go back to the old thing.
All the other boys that try the honesty stunt do. They're up against too
stiff a proposition. You're way out of my class, but when you get tired,
mebbe I can put something in your way that won't be so bad. By-the-by,
you ain't ready for something now, are you?" A vindictive look came into
her face. "Mrs. Make-Up-Box gets it next. And she'll get it, too!"
"I'm going to stick it out," said David.
She gave a little sniff. "We'll see!"
Her eyes swept the room, fell upon the little heap of photographs and
prints lying on the box in which he had stacked his books. "Why don't
you put those things up?"
"I don't know--I just haven't."
"We'll do it now."
She slipped to her feet, went out the door, and two minutes later
reappeared with a handful of tacks, a hammer, and a white curtain. She
took off her hat and coat, and for the next half hour she was tacking
the pictures upon the scaling walls--first trying them here and there,
occasionally asking David's advice and ignoring it if it did not please
her. Then she ordered him upon the chair, and made him, under her
direction, fasten the curtain into place.
"Well, things look a little better," she said when all was done,
surveying the room. Then, without so much as "by your leave," she washed
her hands in his wash-bowl and arranged her hair before his mirror,
chatting all the while. Hat and coat on again, she opened the door.
"Mister," she said, nodding her head and smiling a keen little smile, "I
give you two months. Then--the old way!"
She closed the door and was gone.
On the third morning of the new week, as David left the elevated station
to walk the few blocks to the store, he noticed that a policeman's eyes
were on him. David thought he recognised the officer as one who had been
present at his trial, and hurried uneasily away. A block further on he
glanced over his shoulder; the policeman was following. The uneasiness
became apprehension, and the apprehension would have become
consternation had he, a little after entering the store, seen the
officer also come in.
A few minutes after he had begun to dust his tinware, he was summoned to
the office. The proprietor's little pig-eyes were gleaming, his great
pig-jowl flushing. He sprang to his full height, which was near David's
shoulder. "You dirty, lying, cut-throat of a convict!" he roared. "Get
out o' my store!"
"What's that?" gasped David.
The proprietor shook a fat fist at David's face. "Get out o' here! You
came to me as an honest man! I hired you as an honest man! You deceived
me. You're nothing but a dirty, sneaking jail-bird! You came in here
just to get a chance to rob me! You'd have done it, too, if a policeman
hadn't give me a tip as to what you are! Get out o' here, or I'll have
you kicked out!"
David grew afire with wrath. It was useless to plead for his place; but
there was a dollar and seventy cents due him. For that he choked his
anger down. "Very well, I'll go," he said, as calmly as he could. "But
first pay me for my two days."
"Not one red cent!" David's two days' pay was one of the kind of atoms
of which his success was composed. "Not a cent!" he roared. "You say
another word about pay, and I'll have you arrested for the things you've
already stolen from me. Now clear out!--you low, thieving jail-bird
you!"
A wild rage, the eruptive sum of long insults and suffering, burst forth
in David. He took one step forward, and his open hand smacked
explosively upon the flesh-padded cheek of the proprietor. The
proprietor tottered, sputteringly recovered his balance--and again the
hand smacked with a sharp report.
When the proprietor gained his balance a second time, it was to find
David towering over him, face inflamed, fists clenched.
"My money, or by God I'll smash your head off!" David cried furiously.
The proprietor blanched, trembled. A fear-impelled hand drew silver from
his pocket and gave David the amount. David glanced at it, and obeying
an impulse that he was to regret again and again, flung the hard coins
straight into the man's face. Then he walked out of the office, secured
his hat from the cloak-room near by, and marched through the store. At
the door the frantic proprietor, who had rushed ahead to call for the
police, tried to block David's way, but David bore down upon him with so
menacing a look that he stepped aside.
Fortunately the street was filled with people, and the next instant
David was lost among them. For half an hour he aimlessly walked the
streets with his wrath. Then the realisation of his situation began to
cool him. However unjust had been his discharge, and however brutish its
manner, the great fact was not thereby changed. He was discharged, and
he had in his pocket less than a dollar.
Then the wearying, heart-breaking search for work began anew. That he
had found one situation made him think he might find another, but at the
end of a week he had met with nothing but failure. He still kept on the
march, but the spirit was gone out of him. The search for work became
purely an affair of the muscles: his legs carried him from office to
office, at each his lips repeated their request. Muscle, that was
all--muscle whipped to action by the fear of starvation.
But though his spirit was worn weak, his resentment was not. He
raged--at times frantically. Why did the world refuse work to the poor
beings the prisons sent back to it? Some of them were inspired by good
resolutions; to them life was dear; they were worth saving. How did the
world expect them to live and be honest, if it refused them means of
life and of honesty? He could find but one answer to his questions: the
world was selfish, heartless. He cursed the world, and he cursed the God
that made it.
And he cursed himself, his foolishness that had brought him here; and he
cursed Morton and St. Christopher's. At times he burned with the desire
to clear his name, come what might to the people of the Mission. It is
so hard for one, unfed, cold, hopeless, to be heroic. But his judgment
told him that the truth from him would go unbelieved; and the great
resolution behind his bargain, the long habit of silence, also
restrained his declaration of innocence.
But even amid these gloomy weeks there were gentler periods. He often
slipped at night into the neighbourhood of St. Christopher's, and
stealthily gazed at the club-house, its windows aglow with friendliness
to all but himself; at the chapel, with the Morton memorial window
sending its warm inspiration into the streets--as it did, so he had
learned, throughout the night. He told himself, when he thus stood with
his work before his eyes, that he should be content. His struggles were
hard--yes; his suffering was great. But that his suffering, the
suffering of one man, should hold these hundreds a little nearer to the
plain decencies of life, to truth and purity and honour, a little nearer
to God--this was worth while. Yes, the bargain was a great bargain.
And every Wednesday evening he looked forth from the shadow of a doorway
upon Helen Chambers as she left the Mission. And at the moment she
passed his door he each time felt the same supreme pang. Three feet
away!--as far away as the stars!
CHAPTER IV
AN UNINVITED GUEST
Black day followed black day, and grudged penny followed grudged penny,
till at length there came a day when it seemed the blackness could
become no blacker and when his remaining pennies were less than his
fingers. On this day he sat long at his window, his wasted,
despair-tightened face looking out upon the patched undergarments
swinging from lines and upon the boxes and barrels and bottles and
papers and rags that littered the deep bottom of the yard, grimly
thinking over the prophecy of Kate Morgan. One of the two months she had
given his honesty was gone. By the time the second had passed----? He
shiveringly wondered.
This day he ate no evening meal. For a week now one meal had been his
daily ration, and that meal pitiably poor and pitiably small. He sat
about his room till his nickel clock--which Kate Morgan had brought in
one day and deposited upon the wash-stand with her undebatable air of
finality--reported quarter past nine, when he rose and walked down into
the street. It had been one of those warm days that sometimes come in
mid-November--benign messages of remembrance, as it were, from departed
summer--and now the people of the tenements filled the streets, for on
the packed East Side the street, on warm days, is parlor to the parent
and the lover, and nursery to the child.
As David stepped forth he did not notice that he was watched by a pair
of keen, boyish eyes from under the rim of a battered slouch hat, and
had he noticed he would not have been aware that these same eyes had
watched him before. It was a Wednesday evening and David, entangled
among the people, like a vessel in a sargasso sea, pursued a slow course
toward the Mission, never observing that a boy in a battered hat
followed him a way then turned back.
He took his place in the shadowed doorway and waited for Helen Chambers
to appear. In a few minutes she came out, Dr. Franklin with her as
usual. There was also a second man, gray-haired and slightly stooped,
whom David recognised as an older brother of Mr. Chambers, and whom he
remembered as a clear-visioned, gentle old philosopher greatly loved by
his niece. As they passed, David leaned from the shadow to follow her
with his eyes, and the light from the street lamp fell across his face.
Dr. Franklin, chancing this instant to look in David's direction,
excused himself to Helen and her uncle, who moved forward a few paces,
and stepped to the doorway. David pressed frantically back into the
shadow.
"Good evening," said Dr. Franklin, holding out a firm, cordial hand,
into which David laid his limp fingers. "I've seen you about several
times since the evening you called. I've been looking for a chance to
invite you to the Mission."
David hardly heard him. He was thinking, wildly, "Suppose she should
step to his side? Suppose he should draw me into the light?" It was a
moment of blissful, agonising consternation.
"Perhaps I'll come," he managed to whisper. He feared lest his whisper
had reached her, and lest she had recognised his voice. But she did not
look around.
"I shall expect you. Good night."
Dr. Franklin rejoined Helen and her uncle, and David's hearing, which
strained after him, heard him explain as they moved away: "A man who
came to the Mission in Mr. Morton's time. He often stands about the
Mission, looking at it, but he never comes in."
As soon as they were out of sight David, a-tremble at the narrowness of
his escape, slipped from the door and hurried away. As he went, the old
question besieged him. If, a minute ago, he had been drawn into the
light, would she have spoken to him? And if she had, would it not have
been coldly, with disdain?
By the time he reached his tenement he had regained part of his lost
composure. As he slipped the key into his door, he heard a sudden
scrambling sound within. All his senses were instantly called to
alertness. He threw open the door, and sprang into the darkened room.
In the same instant a vague figure leaped through the open window out
upon the landing of the fire-escape. David crossed the little room at a
bound, caught the coat-tails of the escaping figure, dragged it
backwards. The figure turned like a flash, threw something over David's
head--a sack, David thought--sprang upon David, and tied the something
round his neck with a fierce embrace. David staggered backward under the
weight of his adversary, and the two went to the floor in the narrow
space between the bed and the wall.
Instantly the figure, with a jerk and a catlike squirm, tried to break
away, but David's arms, gripped about its body, held it fast. Then it
resumed its choking embrace of David's neck. The sack about his head was
heavy; the air hardly came through it. He began to gasp. He tried
frantically to throw the figure off, but it held its place. Then one
hand fell upon a mop of hair. He clutched it and pushed fiercely upward.
The embrace broke, and two fists began to beat his face through the
sack. An instant later David managed to scramble to his feet and throw
off the sack--and he then saw that the writhing, kicking figure he had
captured reached midway between his waist and shoulders.
His right hand still fastened in his captive's hair, David lighted the
gas. There, at the end of his arm, was a boy with the figure of fourteen
and the face of twenty. His clothes, baggy and torn, were for the latter
age; the trousers were rolled up six years at the bottom. The face was
wrinkled in a scowl, and the eyes gleamed defiance. He was panting
heavily. On the floor lay what David had thought was a sack; it was his
own overcoat.
"Why you're nothing but a boy!" David cried.
"A boy! Nuttin'! If I'd been in form, I'd 'a' showed you!"
David locked the door, cut off escape by standing before the window, and
disentangled his fingers from the boy's locks. He then saw that the
boy's dirty yellow hair flowed upward from his forehead in a cow-lick.
The boy put his hands in his pockets and continued his defiant stare.
"Now, sir, what were you doing in here?" David demanded.
"What you t'ink?" the boy returned coolly. "You t'ink I come to collect
de rent?"
"You tried to steal my coat."
"Gee, you're wise! How'd you guess it?"
David regarded the little fellow steadily for a minute or more. He now
noticed that the figure before him was very thin, and he remembered that
once the embrace had been broken the boy had been a mere child even to
his own weak strength.
"What did you want that coat for?" he asked.
"It's like dis, cul," the boy answered in a tone of confidence. "I owns
a swell clo'es-joint on Fift' Avenoo, an' I'm out gittin' in me fall
stock."
"What's your name?" David demanded.
"Reggie Vanderbilt."
David did not try another question. He scrutinised the boy in silence,
wondering what he should do with this young thief who, instead of
showing the proper caught-in-the-act penitence, persisted in wearing the
air of one who is master of the situation. David now took note that the
boy's coat-collar was turned up and that the coat was held closed by a
button near the throat and a safety pin at the bottom. The gaping front
of the coat showed him a white line. He stepped forward, and with a
quick hand loosened the button at the throat. It was as he had
guessed--nothing but a mere rag of an undershirt that left the chest
half bare--and the bare chest was rippled with ribs.
"Keep out o' dere!" the boy snapped, jerking away.
David was silent; then he said accusingly: "You're hungry!"
"Well, if I am--it's me own bellyache!"
"You tried to take that coat because you're hungry?"
"I did, did I?"
"Didn't you?"
"Oh, come stop jabbin' me in de ear wid your questions," the boy
returned sharply. "What you t'ink I took it for? To buy me goil a
automobile?"
He was silent for several moments, his bright eyes on David; then he
threw off his defiant look. "Hungry?" he sniffed. "You don't know what
de woid means! Me--well, me belly don't have to look it up in no
dictionary. I ain't chawed nuttin' but wind for a mont'."
"You were going to sell it?"
"Nix. Pawn it."
David looked from the boy to the coat, and from the coat to the boy. One
hand, in his pocket, mechanically fingered his fortune--seven coppers.
After a minute he picked up the coat, put it across his arm, and opened
the door.
"Come on," he said.
The boy did not budge. "Where you goin' to take me?" he asked
suspiciously.
"Nowhere. You're going to take me."
"Where?"
"To the pawnshop," said David.
The boy gave a sneer of disgust, and an outward push with an open, dirty
hand. "Oh, say now, cul, don't feed me dat infant's food! D'you t'ink I
can't see t'rough dat steer? I'm wise to where--to de first cop!"
He shuffled from his place against the wall. "Well, you got me. Come on.
Let's go."
He stepped through the door and stood quietly till David had the key in
the lock. Then suddenly he darted toward the stairway. David sprang
after him and caught his coat-tail just as he was taking three stairs at
one step. David fastened his right hand upon the boy's sleeve, and side
by side they marched down the four flights of stairs and into the
street.
"Now take me to the pawnshop," David directed.
The boy gave a knowing grunt but said nothing. He walked quietly along
till they sighted a policeman standing on a corner half a block ahead.
Then he began to drag backward, and David had fairly to push him. As
they came up to the officer David glanced down, and saw tenseness,
alertness, fear--the look of the captured animal that watches for a
chance to escape.
The officer noticed David's grip on the boy's sleeve. "What you caught
there?" he demanded.
"Just a friend of mine," David answered, and passed on.
After a few paces the boy peered stealthily up, an uncomprehending look
in his face. "Say, pard, you're a queer guy!" he said; and a moment
later he added: "You needn't hold me. I'll go wid you."
David withdrew his hand, and a little further on the boy led David for
the first time in his life into a pawnbroker's shop. David threw the
coat upon the counter and asked for as much as could be advanced upon
it.
A large percentage of pledges are never redeemed, and the less advanced
on an unredeemed pledge the greater the pawnbroker's profit when it is
sold. The money-lender looked the coat over. "A dollar and a half," he
said.
"Ah, git out wid your plunk and a half!" the boy cut in. "Dat's stealin'
widout takin' de risks. T'ree."
"It ain't worth it," returned the usurer.
The boy picked up the coat. "Come on," he said to David, and started
out.
"Two!" called out the pawnbroker.
The boy walked on.
"Two and a half!"
The boy returned and threw the coat upon the counter.
Twenty minutes later they were back in the room, and several grocery
parcels lay on the bed. With a gaze that was three parts wonderment and
one part suspicion, the boy watched David cooking over the gas stove. He
made no reply to David's remarks save when one was necessary, and then
his answer was no more than a monosyllable.
At length the supper was ready. The table was the soap-box cupboard, so
placed that one of them might have the edge of the bed as his chair. On
this table were a can of condensed milk, a mound of sliced bread, and a
cube of butter in its wooden dish. On the gas stove stood a frying-pan
of eggs and bacon and a pot of coffee.
After the boy, at David's invitation, had blackened a basin of water
with his hands, they sat down. David gave the boy two eggs and several
strips of bacon, and served himself a like portion. Then they set
to--one taste of eggs or bacon to three or four bites of bread. The boy
never stopped, and David paused only to refill the coffee cups from time
to time and to pour into them a pale string of condensed milk. And the
boy never spoke, save once there oozed through his bread-stuffed mouth
the information that his "belly was scairt most stiff."
Presently the boy's plate was clean to shininess--polished by pieces of
bread with which he had rubbed up the last blotch of grease, the last
smear of yellow. He looked over at the frying-pan in which was a fifth
egg, and an extra strip of bacon. David caught the stare, and quickly
turned the egg and bacon into the boy's plate.
The boy looked from the plate to David. "You don't want it?" he asked
fearfully.
"No."
He waited for no retraction. A few minutes later, after having finished
the egg and meat and the remaining slices of bread, he leaned back with
a profound sigh, and steadily regarded David.
At length he said, abruptly: "Me name's Tom."
"Thanks," said David. "What's your last name?"
The boy's defiance and suspicion had fallen from him. "Jenks I calls
meself. But I dunno. Me old man had a lot o' names--Jones, Simmons,
Hall, an' some I forget. He changed 'em for his healt'--see? So I ain't
wise to which me real name is."
Under David's questioning he became communicative about his history.
"You had to be tough meat to live wid me old man. Me mudder wasn't built
to stand de wear and tear, an' about de time I was foist chased off to
school, she went out o' biz. I stayed wid me old man till I was twelve.
He hit de booze hard, an' kep' himself in form by poundin' me. He was
hell. Since den I been woikin' for meself."
It was now twelve by Kate Morgan's clock--an hour past David's bed-time.
"Where do you live?" he asked Tom.
"In me clo'es," Tom answered, grinning. David found himself liking that
grin, which pulled the face to one side like a finger in a corner of the
mouth.
"Where are you going to stay to-night?"
"Been askin' meself de same question." He stood up. "But I guess I'd
better be chasin' meself so you can git to bed."
"Don't go just yet," said David. He looked at his narrow bed, then
looked at Tom. "Suppose you stay with me to-night. I guess we can double
up in the bed there."
Tom's mouth fell agape. "Me--sleep--in--your--bed?"
"Of course--why not?"
The boy sank back into his chair. "Well, say, you are a queer guy!" he
burst out. He stared at David, then slowly shook his head. "I won't do
it. Anyhow, I couldn't sleep in a bed. It'd keep me awake. But I'm up
agin it, an' I'll stay if you'll let me sleep on de floor."
"But there are no extra bed-clothes."
"Wouldn't want 'em if dere was. I'd be too hot."
So it was settled. Ten minutes later the room was dark, David was in
bed, and Tom was lying in the space between the bed's foot and the wall,
with David's coat for extra covering and with Browning's poems and a
volume of Molière as a pillow. There was deep silence for another ten
minutes, then a cautious whisper rose from the foot of the bed.
"Are you asleep?"
"No," said David.
"Say, why didn't you have me pinched?" the voice asked.
No answer.
The voice rose again. "Why did you gimme dat extry egg?"
No answer.
"Why did you ask me to stay here? Ain't you afraid I'll skin out wid
your clo'es?"
Again there was no answer. But presently David said: "Better go to
sleep, Tom."
There was a brief, deep silence; then once more the voice came from the
foot of the bed. "I ain't just wise to you," said the voice, and there
was a note of huskiness in it, "but say, pard, you gits my vote!"
CHAPTER V
GUEST TURNS HOST
The first object David's eyes fell upon when they opened the next
morning was Tom, sitting beside the bed, a look of waiting eagerness on
his pinched face. The instant he saw David was awake he sprang up, and
David perceived the boy had on one pair of the boxing-gloves.
"Can you use de mitts?" Tom asked excitedly.
"A little. I used to, that is," David answered, smiling at the odd
figure the cow-lick, the eager face, the baggy coat and the big
boxing-gloves combined to make of the boy.
"Come on, den!--git up! Let's have a go."
David slipped out of bed, and while he was dressing Tom entertained him
with an account of the Corbett-Britt fight, kinematograph pictures of
which he had seen at one of the Bowery theatres. Tom danced about the
narrow space between the bed and the wall, taking the part of one man,
then of the other, giving blows and receiving blows, feinting, ducking,
rushing and being rushed against imaginary ropes, and gasping out bits
of description: "Corbett breaks in an' lands like dis--Jimmie hands back
dis poke--Corbett goes groggy--dey clinch--bing! bang! biff!--Den Jimmie
gits in dis peach--Corbett kerplunks--one, two, t'ree, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten--an' Corbett's a has-been!"
By this time David was half-dressed, and had drawn on the other pair of
gloves. They gravely shook hands and drew apart. "Be careful, and don't
make me a has-been," David cautioned.
"Oh, mudder! Fetch me a step-ladder!" besought Tom, looking upward at
David's head. He spat from one side of his mouth, drew his head down
between his shoulders, rushed in, and began directing a fury of blows at
David's stomach, which was near the level of his fists; and it took all
David's long-rusted, but one-time considerable, skill to ward off the
rapid fists. He made no attempt to get in a blow himself, and this soon
drew on him Tom's wrath.
"I ain't no baby!" the boy yelled in disgust. "Punch me!"
David proceeded to land a few light touches about the slender body.
"A-a-h, punch me!" Tom gasped. "Harder!"
David obeyed, and landed a chest blow that sent Tom to his back. David
dropped to his knees beside him, alarmed, for the boy's face was white
and dazed. But Tom rose to an elbow and pushed David away. His lips
moved silently, then with sound: "Seven, eight, nine, ten." At "ten" he
sprang to his feet and rushed at David again.
But David threw up his hands. "That's enough for to-day. And finish
fights are against the New York law."
Tom grumblingly drew off the gloves. After their breakfast of bread and
coffee David asked him what he was going to do that day.
"Look for odd jobs."
"Where will you stay to-night?"
"Dunno."
"How did you like the floor?"
"Bully!"
"Well, suppose you come back and try it again to-night. Be here at six.
Will you?"
"Will I!" gasped the boy. "You can just bet your gran'mudder's
suspenders dat I will!"
When David returned at six, after another day of hopeless search, he
found Tom sitting in the doorway of the tenement. The boy's face lighted
up with his lop-sided smile; David felt a quick glow at having someone
to give him a welcoming look--even though that someone were only a
ragged, stunted boy in an old slouch hat that from time to time slipped
down and eclipsed the sharp face.
They had dinner, and after it they set forth on a walk. David left the
guidance to Tom, and the boy led the way down the Bowery, where, to the
hellish music of elevated trains, and by the garish light that streamed
from restaurants, pawnshops, music-halls and saloons, moved the
all-night procession of thieves and thugs, cheap sports and cheap
confidence men, gutter-rags of men and women, girls whose bold, roving
eyes sought markets for their charms--all those whom we of sheltered
morals are wont to consider the devil's irretrievable share, without
thinking much, or caring much, as to why they should be his. Tom's
tongue maintained a constant commentary on everything they passed; to
talk was clearly one of his delights. What he said was interesting, and
was given a grotesque vivacity by his snappy diction of the streets;
but David shivered again and again at the knowledge he had where he
should have had ignorance.
The boy was erudite in the wickedness of this part of the city. That
innocent-looking second-hand store, which was run by the fat old woman
in the doorway, was in reality a "fence;" that laundry was an opium den;
in the back of that brilliantly-lighted club-room, whose windows were
labelled "The Three Friends' Association," there was a gambling joint;
that saloon was the hang-out of a gang of men and women thieves; in that
music hall, through whose open door they glimpsed a dancer in a red
knee-skirt doing the high kick, the girls got their brief admirers drunk
and picked their pockets;--and so on, and on, missing nothing that he
should not have known.
At Chatham Square they turned into the Jewish quarter and shouldered
homeward through narrow streets that from wall to wall were a
distracting entanglement of playing children, baby carriages, families
on door-steps, promenading lovers, hurrying men, arguing groups,
flambeau-lighted pushcarts whose bent and bearded proprietors offered
the chaotic crowd every commodity from cucumbers to clothes. The latter
part of their walk took them by St. Christopher's, through the glowing
colours of the Morton memorial window; and the Mission came in for a few
of Tom's sentences. It was a great place to steal women's pocketbooks.
"A lot o' swell ladies from Fift' Avenoo comes down dere to monkey wid
de kids--hell knows what for. Dere easy fruit. I pinched two or t'ree
fat leathers dere meself."
David marvelled at the boy's intimacy with wickedness, yet he understood
it. Evil was the one thing Tom had had a chance to become acquainted
with; it had for him the familiar face that virtue has for children
raised amid happier circumstances. The conditions of its childhood,
whether good or bad, are the normal conditions of life to the child. So
to Tom wickedness was normal; he talked of stealing, of gambling, of
women, with the natural vivacity that another boy might have talked of
his marbles.
David saw, as definitely as the calendar sees to-morrow, the future of
this boy if there were no influence counter to the influence that was
now sweeping him toward his fate. He saw arrest (Tom had boasted that he
had been arrested once)--prison--a hardening of the boy's nature--a life
of crime. He heard little of the rest of the boy's chatter, and
presently he came to a decision--a very unpretentious decision, for he
was poorer than poverty, and what confidence he once had in his personal
influence had slipped away. But the little he could do for the boy, that
he would do.
"How would you like to stay with me for awhile, Tom?" he asked when they
were back in his room. "I can't offer you anything but the floor for a
bed--and perhaps not that after a few weeks."
"D'you mean I can stay wid you?" Tom cried, springing up, his eyes
a-gleam. "Say, dat'll be great! We'll divide on de price! An' we'll have
a little go wid de mitts ev'ry day!"
"Very well. But I want to place one condition on your staying. You're to
be strictly honest with me, and you're not to steal. You understand?"
The boy made a grimace. "All right--since you ask me. But say, you're
queer!"
The next morning David bought Tom a red cotton sweater and advanced him
a quarter with which to buy a stock of papers. Two weeks passed, every
day very much like the one before it. David found no work, and Tom made
but little. During the two weeks the rent fell due, and most of David's
library went to a second-hand book dealer and the proceeds went to the
landlady. Then, two or three at a time, the rest of the books were
carried to the second-hand store.
At length there came a morning when there was not a cent, and when, to
perfect the day's despair, David woke with a burning soreness throughout
his body--the consequence of having been caught the day before in a cold
rain and having walked for several hours in his wet clothes. He crawled
out of bed, but soon crept in again. His muscles could make no search
for work that day.
Tom proposed a doctor. David dismissed the suggestion; doctors required
money. But, money or no money, Tom saw there had to be one thing--food.
He sat gazing for several minutes at the boxing-gloves, their last
negotiable possession, which his favour had thus far kept out of the
pawnshop; then with a set face he put them under his arm and walked out
of the room. He returned with fifty cents.
That night Tom came home discouraged. He had hunted work all day, but no
one wanted him. "Dey all wanted to hire a good suit o' clo'es," he
explained to David. But the next morning he seemed confident. "I t'ought
of a place where I t'ink I can git a job," he said, as he started away
after having prepared for David a breakfast that David's feverish lips
could not touch.
His confidence was well founded, for that evening he entered the room
with an armload of bundles. "Look at dis, will you!" he cried, dropping
the parcels on the bed. "Bread, an' butter, an' eggs, an'
steak--ev'ryt'ing. You got to git well, now! You're goin' to git fat!"
David in his surprise sat up in bed. "Why, where did you get all those
things?"
"Didn't I say I'd git a job? Well, I did! In a big hardware store. I'm
errand boy--ev'ryt'ing! De boss say, 'Tom do dis; Tom do dat.' I do 'em
all, quick! De next minute I say to de boss, 'anyt'ing else?' He pays me
six a week, I'm so quick."
"But you've only worked a day. You haven't been paid already?"
"Sure. I hands de boss a piece o' talk: me mudder's sick, an' I needs
ready coin bad. So he pays me a dollar ev'ry day."
David made a mental note that later there must be a few more remarks on
the subject of lying; but this was not the time to reprove Tom's fib. He
took the boy's hand in his hot, weak grasp. "You're mighty good to me,
Tom," he said, huskily.
Tom's face slipped to one side and twitched. His blinking eyes avoided
David's gaze. "Oh, dat's nuttin'," he gruffly returned. "Nobody goes
back on his pal."
At the end of the first week of David's illness Kate Morgan returned
home, having given up her position, and thenceforward she prepared most
of his meals, chatted much with him, and lent him ten-cent novels. One
result of their chats was that Kate became strengthened in her
conviction that David had been a thief of great skill and daring.
Contradiction availed him nothing. "Your last haul was a big one--you
told me so yourself," she would say. "And only the top-notchers have
your kind of talk and manners."
One day she returned to the matter of her former prophecy. "You've had
enough of this," she said. "When you get out of bed, and get your
strength back, you'll be at the old game again. You see!"
During this time Tom left for work regularly at half-past seven, and
returned regularly at half-past six; and each evening he insisted on
turning his dollar in to David, to be spent under David's direction. One
night, as Tom was giving frightful punishment to an imaginary opponent
with the boxing gloves--he had redeemed them with part of his second
day's pay--several coins slipped from his pocket and went ringing upon
the floor. When Tom rose from picking them up David's thin face was
gazing at him in sorrowful accusation. The boy paled before the look. He
was silent for a moment. Then he asked mechanically, almost without
breath: "What's de matter?"
"Haven't you been stealing from your employers?" David asked, in a low
voice.
The boy's colour came back. "No I ain't. Honest."
"Then where did you get that money?"
"Why--why, Kate Morgan give it to me. She t'ought I might want to buy a
few extry t'ings."
David was unconvinced, but from principle he gave Tom the benefit of the
doubt. He had the instinctive masculine repugnance to accepting money
from a woman; so a moment later, when Kate came in, he said to her: "I
want to thank for you for loaning that money to Tom. I understand and
appreciate--but I don't need the money. You must take it back."
"What money?" she asked blankly.
She turned about on Tom, who was sitting at the foot of the bed where
David could not see him. The boy's face was very white, and he was
hardly breathing. He looked appealingly at her.
Kate's face darkened. "Tom," she said sharply, "I told you not to tell
that!"
When she had gone, David called Tom to him and took his hand. "I beg
your pardon, Tom," he said.
Tom made no answer at all.
All these days, when David was not chatting with Kate, or reading about
the love of the fair mill-girl and the mill-owner's son, he was wanly
staring into his future. He longed for the day when he could begin
search again--and that day was also his great fear. Often he lay
thinking for hours of Helen Chambers. He thought of the lovers she must
have; of her marriage that might not be far off; of the noble place she
would have in life--honoured, admired, a doer of good. He would never
meet her, never speak to her--never see her, save perhaps as he had been
doing, from places of shadow.
Well ... he prayed that she might be happy!
CHAPTER VI
TOM IS SEEN AT WORK
It was toward four o'clock of the day before Thanksgiving--an afternoon
of genial crispness. The low-hung sun, visible in the tenement districts
only in westward streets, was softened to a ruddy disk by the light
November haze. Before the entrance to the club-house of the Mission were
massed two or three hundred children. Here was childhood's every size;
and here were rags and dirt--well-worn and well-mended decency--the
cheap finery of poverty's aristocracy. There was much pushing and
elbowing in a struggle to hold place or to gain nearer the entrance, and
the elbowed and elbowing pelted each other with high-keyed words. But,
on the whole, theirs was a holiday mood; the faces, lighted by the red
sunlight that flowed eastward through the deep street, were eagerly
expectant.
Across the way stood a boy, near the size of the largest children in the
crowd. He wore a red sweater, and his hands were thrust into the pockets
of baggy trousers voluminously rolled up at the bottom. He was watching
the nervous group, with curiosity and a species of crafty meditation in
his gleaming, black-browed eyes. It was Tom. Had David seen him there,
he might have thought the boy had paused for a moment while out on an
errand for his employer; but if Tom was on an errand it was evidently
not one of driving importance, for he remained standing in his place
minute after minute.
Presently he crossed the street and drew up to a be-shawled girl whose
black stockings were patched with white skin. He gave her a light jab
with his elbow. "Hey, sister--what's de row?" he asked.
She turned to him a thin face that ordinarily must have been listless,
but that was now quickened by excitement. "It's the children's
Thanksgiving party," she explained.
"What you wearin' out de pavement for? Why don't you go in?"
"It ain't time for the doors to open yet."
Tom fell back and stood in the outskirts of the crowd, occasionally
sliding the tip of his tongue through the long groove of his mouth, the
same meditative look upon his watchful face. Soon the door swung open
and the crowd surged forward, to be halted by a low, ringing voice:
"Come, children!--please let's all get into line first, and march in
orderly."
Two middle-aged women, enclosed in a subdued air of wealth, appeared
through the door, and marched down the three steps and among the
children. The boy's eyes closed to bright slits, his lips drew back from
his teeth. The next instant a third woman appeared at the top of the
steps--young, tall, fresh-looking, gracefully dignified.
"Ain't she a queen!" Tom ejaculated to himself.
She paused a moment and bent over to speak to a child, and the boy
discovered that the rich, low-pitched voice he had heard was hers. As
she stood so, the front of her tailored coat swung open, and the boy
caught a glimpse of a silver-mounted bag, hooked with a silver clasp to
her belt. A brighter gleam sprang into his eyes.
She came down the steps, pushed in among the children, and with the two
other women began to form the group into a double line. Tom, with
quick-squirming movements, edged through to the inner circle of the
excited crowd, in which she was tightly buried up to her shoulders. At
intervals he gave sharp upward glances at her face; she was entirely
absorbed in making ordered lines of this entanglement. The rest of the
time his eyes were fastened on her belt. Presently the children were
thrown turbulently about her by one of those waves of motion that sweep
through crowds, and he managed to be pressed against her, the left side
of his coat held open to shield off possible eyes. His right hand crept
deftly forward under her coat--found the bag--loosened it.
But suddenly a child's shoulder was jammed against his closed hand,
driving it against the young woman's side, and for an instant holding it
captive. She glanced down and saw Tom's arm. Instantly her firm grasp
closed about the wrist and jerked out the hand, which dropped the bag.
Like a flash Tom delivered a blow upon her wrist. She gave a sharp cry
of pain, but her grip did not break. As he struck again she caught him
about the wrist with her free hand. He jerked and twisted violently,
but her hands had a firm, out-of-doors strength. He was prisoner.
Startled cries of "Pick-pocket!" and "Get a cop!" sprang up in the
shrill voices of the children. The young woman, very pale but composed,
looked sternly down at Tom.
"So, young man, I've caught you in the very act," she said slowly.
He looked sullenly at the pavement.
"What shall I do with you?"
Tom raised his shoulders. "Dat's your biz," he answered gruffly.
"Arrest him!" "They've gone for a policeman!" shouted the childish
voices.
At this the boy sent up a quick glance at the young woman. Despite its
severity, kindness was in her face. He dropped his head, the sullenness
seemed to go out of him, and his body began to tremble. The next instant
his sleeve was against his face and he was blubbering.
"I couldn't help it!" he sobbed.
"You couldn't help it!" she exclaimed.
"No! It was because o' me brudder. I've never stole before. Honest,
lady. But me poor brudder's been sick for t'ree mont's. I tried to find
a job. I can't find none. Our money's all gone, an' dere ain't no one
but me. What can I do, lady?"
The young woman looked at him questioningly. One of Tom's sharp eyes
peeped up at her, and saw sympathy struggling with unbelief. His
blubbering increased. "It's de God's trut', lady! You can send me to
hell, if it ain't. Me brudder's sick--dere's nuttin' to eat, an' no
medicine, an' nobody'd gimme work. So help me God!"
At this instant the cry rose, "Here's the policeman!" and almost at once
the officer, pressing through the alley that opened among the children,
had his hand on Tom's collar. "So you was caught with the goods on," he
cried, giving the boy a rough shake. "Well, you chase along with me!
Come along, lady. It's only two blocks to the station."
He jerked Tom forward and started away. But the young woman, who still
held one of Tom's wrists, did not move. "Will you wait, please?" she
said quietly, a flash in her brown eyes. "What right have you to touch
this boy?"
"Why, didn't he nab your pocket-book?"
"I'm not saying," she said, looking at him very steadily. "You can
arrest him only on complaint. I am the only one who can make a
complaint. And I make none. Please let go!"
The policeman stared, but his hand dropped from Tom's collar.
"Thank you," she said.
She called one of the women to her side. "You can easily get on without
me, Mrs. Hartwell," she said in a low voice. "The most important thing
for me is to look into this boy's case. I'm going to have him take me to
his brother--if there is a brother."
Tom overheard the last sentence. His face paled. "Please don't take me
to me brudder," he begged, a new ring in his voice. "He t'inks I'm
honest. He'll t'row me out when you tell him! Don't take me. What's de
use? I told you de trut'."
"If there is a brother, I want to talk with him," she answered. She
requested the policeman to follow at a distance, and then asked Tom to
lead them to his home.
"An' see that you take us to the right place, too," said the officer,
with a warning look. "An' don't try to get away, for I'll be watchin'
you."
They started off. The young woman did not take Tom's arm, for the same
reason that she asked the policeman to follow several yards behind--that
there might be no apparent capture, and no curious trailing crowd.
Tom's body palpitated with the dread of facing David--of what David
would say to him, of the way David would look at him, but most of all of
the change in David's attitude toward him, when these accusers should
make plain to David that for two weeks he had been lying and stealing.
He thought of escape--to get away from this young woman would be an easy
matter; but a glance at the officer behind assured him that to try would
mean merely the exchange of a kind captor for a harsh one. He preferred
his chances with the young woman. So he led them on, his dread swelling
with every step that brought them nearer to David.
The policeman was left waiting at the tenement entrance. Tom guided the
young woman to his door, paused chokingly there, then led her into the
little, dingy room, which was filled with a deeper hue of the coming
twilight. David was lying in a doze, his face turned upward.
She glanced at the bed, saw only that a man was sleeping there, then
glanced about. The poverty of the room and the sick figure confirmed
Tom's story. She put a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "Please waken
your brother," she whispered.
She stepped nearer the bed, but Tom hung fearfully back. And now she saw
for the first time David's face with some distinctness. She
started--bent over him--stared down at the face on the pillow. She
trembled backward a pace. One hand reached out and caught a chair.
Tom, seeing his chance to escape, slipped out and took refuge in the
Morgan's flat. The closing door roused David from his light sleep. He
slowly opened his eyes--opened them upon the white face looking down
upon him. The face seemed unreal, merely the face in a frequent dream.
He closed his eyes, then opened them. The face was still there.... A
great, wild, dizzy thrill went through him.
Slowly his haggard face rose from the pillow and he rested upon his
elbow. "Miss Chambers!" he whispered, at length.
For moments she could only stare back at him--the friend once admired,
who by his own confession had stolen the money of tenement children, had
gambled it away, had counted on the guilt falling upon Morton. Then her
voice, straining at steadiness, came out, and haltingly spoke the
nearest thing that did not require thought--an explanation of her
presence.
Her words hardly reached his mind. There was only one thing, the dizzy,
impossible fact--she was before him! His body was chill, fire; his mind
was chaos.
"You have been sick long?" she asked.
He took control of himself by a supreme effort. "For two weeks. It's
nothing--just the grip."
"The boy told me for three months."
"That's just an invention of Tom's." He was conscious that, at his
words, a look of doubt flitted across her face.
She had wondered, as he had done, what her attitude toward him should
be, if chance ever brought them together--what it should be if he were
striving to live honorably--what, if he had slipped down and were living
by thievery. At this moment, without conscious thought, her attitude was
established. But, though decision was against him, he was helpless, in
need.
"Is there anything at all that I can do for you?" she asked.
He shook his head. If there was one person above all others from whom he
could not accept service, that person was the woman he loved and who, he
was certain, beneath her courteous control, must despise him. He had
always known she believed him guilty, yet he had not half fore-measured
the pain the eye-knowledge of it would give him. He longed to tell her
the truth, as he often had longed before, and as he often would
again--but he dared not, for to tell one person was to endanger, perhaps
destroy, all the good of his act. Besides, even if he were to tell, who
would believe him? She? No. She would believe, as the rest of the world
would believe, that his statement was a dastardly attempt to whiten
himself by blackening the memory of his sainted friend.
"You are certain I can do nothing?"
"Nothing," he said.
"Pardon me for being insistent, but--" she hesitated, white with the
stress of the situation, then forced herself to go on--"the boy said
that--that you had--nothing. Are you sure I can not do some little thing
for you?"
At this moment David forgot that he was penniless, forgot that he had no
work for the time when he left his bed, and probably could find none;
remembered only how he loved this woman, and how low he was in her eyes.
"The boy was not telling the truth," he said. "We have plenty. We need
nothing--thank you."
She could not speak of the past; her delicacy forbade her. She could not
query into his present intentions; her judgment on him, subconsciously
rendered upon circumstantial evidence, and supported by his past, made
that unnecessary. And, furthermore, the whirling confusion within her
made speech on both impossible. The one surface fact her emotions could
allow her speech upon, that she had spoken of. She felt she must get
away as quickly as she could.
She rose. His wide, love-hungry eyes gathered in every one of her last
motions and expressions. He did not know when, if ever, he would see her
again.
There was a sharp knock at the door. She held out her hand to him. He
was not expecting this, but he laid his wasted hand tremblingly within
it.
"Good-bye," she said.
Impulsively his soul reached out for some shred of her regard. "I'm
trying to live honest now!" he burst out, in subdued agony.
She regarded him an instant. "I'm glad of it," she said quietly.
The sharp knock sounded once more.
"Good-bye," she repeated.
"Good-bye," he said in a dry whisper.
She turned toward the door, his love-hungry eyes gathering in the last
of her.... Yes, he was utterly beyond the pale.
CHAPTER VII
A NEW ITEM IN THE BILL OF SCORN
But before Helen's hand reached the knob, the door opened gently,
pushing her to one side. Kate Morgan's head slipped cautiously in, and
was followed at once by the rest of her body when she saw that David was
awake.
"I didn't hear an answer, so I thought you must be asleep," she said. "I
looked in to see if I couldn't do something."
The same instant her eyes fell upon Helen. "Oh!" she said sharply, and
her glance, as quick as a snap-shot camera, took in every detail of
Helen's appearance, and besides read Helen's character and her
approximate position in the world. "I thought you were alone," she said
to David.
"Miss Chambers was just going," he returned. He heavily introduced the
two. Kate acknowledged the introduction with a little bow and a "pleased
to meet you," and turned upon David a rapid, suspicious look, which
demanded, "How do you come to know a woman of this kind?"
"As Mr. Aldrich said, I was just going," Helen remarked, reaching again
for the door-knob. "So I wish you good afternoon."
If David's wits had been about him, he would have seen the flash of
sudden purpose in Kate's face. "You're sure I can't do anything?" she
asked quickly.
"Nothing," he returned.
She turned to Helen, her manner hesitating, and in it a touch of
humility--the manner of one who is presuming greatly and knows she is
presumptuous. Had David been observant at this instant, he could have
understood a thing over which he had often wondered--how this aggressive
personality could hold positions where servility was the first
requisite.
"I was just going out too," she said with a little appealing smile. "If
you don't mind, I'll--I'll walk with you."
Helen could not do other than acquiesce, and Kate hurried from the room
with, "I'll put on my hat and meet you in the hall in just a second."
Helen looked again upon David, and again he felt, beneath her perfect
courtesy, an infinite, sorrowful disdain. "Good-bye once more," she
said; and the next instant the door had closed upon her.
David gazed at the door in wide-eyed stupor ... and gazed ... and gazed.
He had hardly moved, when, half an hour later, Kate Morgan re-entered.
The humble bearing of her exit was gone. She was her usual sharp,
free-and-easy self, and she had a keen little air of success.
"That Miss Chambers is one of the swells, ain't she?" she asked,
dropping into the chair and crossing her knees.
David admitted that she was.
"I sized her up that way the first second. I walked with her to a
church-looking place, and told her a lot about myself--a maid, out of
work and looking for a job, you know." She gave David a sly wink. "She
didn't say much herself, and didn't seem to hear all I said. She's got
some kind of a club over at that church place and she asked me to visit
the club, and said perhaps later I might care to join. And she promised
to see if some of her friends didn't need a maid."
Her keen little smile of triumph returned, and she added softly, "Jobs
in swell houses ain't so easy to pick up."
"See here!" said David sharply, "are you planning a trick on one of Miss
Chambers's friends?"
Instantly her face was guileless. "Oh, she'll forget all about me," she
said easily. "But see here yourself! How do you happen to know a woman
of her sort? She told me how Tom brought her up here"--she smiled at
memory of the story--"but you must have known her before?"
David had foreseen the question, and his wits had made ready an
answer--for to bare to Kate's inquisitive mind the truth of his one-time
friendship with Helen, this for a score of reasons he could not do.
"She's one of these philanthropic women. She's interested in all sorts
of queer people. I'm one of them. She's tried to reform me."
If Kate discredited his explanation she did not show her unbelief. She
went on to question him about Helen and his acquaintance with her, and
it was a terrific strain on his invention to return plausible answers.
He prayed that she would go, or stop, and when Tom crept fearfully in a
few minutes later, his arms full of bundles, the boy's appearance was as
an answer to his prayer. She turned upon Tom and began quizzing and
joking him about his recent adventure, but the boy, hardly answering
her, kept his eyes fixed upon David in guilty apprehension.
Presently, to the relief of David but not of Tom, she went out. Tom
stared at David from near the window where he had stood all the while,
pulsing with fear of the upbraiding, and perhaps something worse, that
he knew was coming. David gazed back at him through narrow eyes that
twitched at their corners.
"Tom," he said, "you lied to me about the job."
"Yes," the boy returned in a whisper.
"And you lied to me about Miss Morgan loaning you money?"
"Yes."
"And you've been stealing all this time."
"Yes. But--"
David's thin right hand stretched across the faded comforter. Tom came
forward in slow wonderment and took it. David's other arm slipped about
his shoulders and drew Tom down upon the bed.
"It was wrong--but, boy, what a heart you've got!" he said huskily.
A tremor ran through Tom's body, as though sobs were coming. Then the
body stiffened, as though sobs were being fought down.
"Is dat all you're goin' to say?" asked a gruff, wondering whisper.
David's arm tightened. "What a heart you've got!"
The thin body quivered again, and again stiffened. But the eruption was
not to be controlled. Sharp sobs exploded, then by a tense effort were
subdued. Tom struggled up, and David saw a scowling face, tightly
clenched against the emotion that makes you lose caste to show. The
boy's look was a defiant declaration of his manhood.
Suddenly another sob broke forth. His emotion was out--his manhood gone.
He turned abruptly. "A-a-h, hell, pard!" he whispered fiercely,
tremulously, then snatched his hat and rushed out.
All the rest of the afternoon, and all during the time Tom, who slipped
back a little later, was shamefacedly busy with the dinner, and all
during the evening, David thought of but one thing--Helen Chambers. He
was dizzily weak; collapse had quickly followed the climacteric
excitement of being beside her, of speaking to her. Her visit had
brought him no hope, no encouragement; if anything, an even blacker
despair. Before, he had only guessed how thoroughly she must despise
him--her disdain had been but a vague quantity of his imagination. Now
her scorn had been before his own eyes. And he had seen its wideness,
its deepness, even though the merest trifle of it showed upon the
surface of her courtesy. A warm spring, though amid the serenity of
overhanging leaves and of an embracing flower-set lawn, is full token of
vast molten depths beneath the earth's controlled face. He did not feel
resentful toward her. Knowing only what she knew, she could not regard
him other than she did.
Twice he had caught a look of doubt upon her face--once when he had
spoken of his three months' illness as being an invention of Tom's, and
again when he had declared to her that he was trying to live honestly.
The looks now recurred to him. They puzzled him. He strained long at
their meaning; and then it entered him like a plunging knife, and he
gasped with the sudden pain.
She believed that the invention was _his_, that his honesty was a lie,
that he was the master of Tom's thefts!
CHAPTER VIII
THE WORLD'S DENIAL
That night Tom confessed he had privately saved a few dollars; and from
the Morgans' flat he brought David's overcoat and several of the other
articles they had pawned. David's conscience demanded that the savings
should not be used, and he wondered what right they had to their own
property, redeemed with stolen money. But need conquered ethics. A day
or two later the landlady demanded her rent, giving the choice between
payment and the street; the money went to her. Hunger pressed them; the
redeemed articles began to return one by one to the pawnshop.
In a few days the grip left David, and though still weak, he began to
creep about the streets, looking for work. He believed success
impossible--and immediately success came.
The great stores were enlisting armies of temporary employes for the
holiday season, and as at this time there are not enough first-class men
and women to fill the ranks, they were accepting the second-class and
the third and the tenth, examining no one closely. David heard of this
chance, and, quailing at heart and expecting nothing, joined the line of
applicants at the big department store of Sumner & Co.
"What experience?" demanded the superintendent when David reached his
desk.
"None," said David.
The superintendent glanced him over, saw that his face was good.
"Work for nine a week?"
"Yes."
He scratched on a slip of paper and handed it to David.
"Start in at once in the check-room."
David reeled away from the desk. That evening he and Tom celebrated the
advent of the Impossible by eating twenty cents' worth of food; and his
excited hope, fearful, daring, kept sleep from his eyes all night. He
knew he was only a temporary man, but his hope reasoned that if he gave
exceptional satisfaction he might be retained after the great
post-Christmas discharge. If retained permanently, he might work his way
up in the store; and if he could remain only a few months, at least he
would then be able to say, when seeking a new place and asked for his
record, "I worked last for Sumner and Company; I refer you to them." His
hope told him this position might prove the foothold he sought--and he
determined to exert all that was in him to make it so.
Toward the end of his fourth day here, a woman for whom he had just laid
upon the counter several packages she had checked two or three hours
before, declared that a small parcel containing gloves was missing.
Weary and exasperated from her day among the jostling shoppers, she
berated David in loud and angry voice. He suggested that possibly she
had not checked the parcel, that she might have checked it in some
other store, that perhaps she had ordered it delivered and had forgotten
it, that possibly she had dropped it.
Nothing of the kind! She knew what she'd done with it! They'd been
careless, and given it to some other woman!
David, still very courteous, suggested that possibly it had been picked
up and taken to the lost-and-found desk. She might inquire there.
She would not! She had left it here! She had been robbed!
She was departing ragefully, but David followed her and by using his
best persuasion secured her grudging consent to wait till he himself
should inquire at the lost-and-found desk. A few minutes later he
returned with the package. She could say nothing more, for on the
wrapper was the stamp of the desk and the hour the parcel had been
turned in. She made a curt apology--it came hard, but still it was an
apology--and went out.
David had his reward. The superintendent over him, attracted by the
woman's angry voice, had drawn near and looked on unseen. He now came
forward. "That was well done, Aldrich," he said. "I couldn't have
handled her better myself."
David grew warm. Yes, this place might prove his foothold!
A similar thought came to one of the other four men in the check-room.
This man, a regular employe in the room, had recently been reproved
several times for negligence and discourtesy, and he knew his hold on
his place was precarious. The fear now struck him, at the great
discharge might not he be sent away and this new man Aldrich be kept?
His wits set to work. He now remembered that David had evaded questions
about his past. Perhaps in it there was something that would change his
chief's opinion. That night he followed David, warmed by his
strengthened hope, from the store, and made inquiries in the little
grocery shop in David's tenement. Just a poor man who had been having a
hard time--this was all he could learn. He hung around the tenement, and
presently David came down and walked away. He followed. After several
blocks David stopped before St. Christopher's and gazed across the
street at it. The shadowing man wondered. Then it occurred to him that
in there they might know something about this man Aldrich.
He entered.
The next morning David was summoned to the office of the superintendent
of his department. He was still aglow from the commendation of
yesterday. But the superintendent's face struck him cold.
"Are you the David Aldrich who stole five thousand dollars from St.
Christopher's Mission?" the superintendent asked quietly.
For a minute David could not speak. His foothold--lost! Again the abyss!
"I am," he said. But here was a man different from the other employer
that had discharged him. Here a plea might be effective. "I am," he
repeated. And then he went on desperately: "But whatever I may have
done, I'm honest now. As honest as any man. And I'll work hard--nothing
will be too hard! I ask only a chance--any sort of a chance. A chance to
earn my living!--a chance to remain honest!"
"I have not acted hastily," the superintendent returned. "I have called
up the Mission and confirmed a report I had from another source. I know
your whole story. Your pay is in this envelope. That is all."
David went out, dizzily falling ... falling ... falling into depths he
felt were hopeless. And as he fell, in the sickened swirl of his mind
one sudden thought stood forth, sharp, ironic: It was St. Christopher's
that had pushed him from his foothold, that had sent him plunging back
into the abyss!
Once more began the search for work. But now fewer men were needed;
there was time to question. But he tramped on, and on, looking always
for a man who would not question, and always rebuffed--his clothes
growing shabbier and shabbier, his shoes growing thinner, his little
money wasting away--foot-sore, heart-sore, gripped by despair.
He had chanced upon at intervals in the Bowery and on Broadway several
of his Croton prison-mates. All of them that had tried to be honest had
been conquered by the difficulties, and had gone back to their old
trades. He now, on his despairing walks, met two of them again, and both
urged him to quit his foolish struggle and join with them. Nothing
during the three terrible months had revealed to him how his moral
instincts had suffered as did the fact that he was now tempted.
During these black days he saw little of Tom. David did not want to
talk, did not want to box, there were no meals; so the boy came home
only to sleep. David was certain Tom was stealing again, but he had not
the heart for reproof. One can hardly seek to convert a thief to honesty
when one can only offer starvation for reform.
Since Helen Chambers's call David had now and then had a faint hope that
he might in some way hear from her. But no word came. He understood. She
scorned him for the deed of four years ago, she believed he was now
regularly practising theft and was directing the thefts and lies of a
boy. Her sympathy, her instinct to aid, might impel her to establish
friendly relations with a repentant thief, but never with such a thief
as she considered him.
On his recovery David had resumed his Wednesday evening visits to his
accustomed doorway near St. Christopher's. One night he saw that which
poured a new agony into the cup he had thought already overbrimming.
When Helen Chambers stepped from the Mission a man he had never before
seen was beside her--a tall man, of maturity and dignity. With the
instant instinct of the lover he recognized here another lover; and he
read, in a smiling glance she turned up as they passed the doorway, that
this man had her admiration and her confidence.
The next morning--the night had held the cup constantly to his lips--he
went to the Astor Library and secured a copy of the _Social Register_.
The man's name, as it had come to him across the darkness in Helen's low
resonant voice, was Allen. There were many Allens in the _Register_,
but only one that could possibly be the Allen he had seen the night
before. The _Register's_ data, and deductions therefrom, informed David
that Mr. Henry Allen was forty, a member of half a dozen clubs, a man of
wealth and social standing, and a lawyer of notable achievement.
Just the sort of husband Helen Chambers deserved! David closed the book
and crept out.
The evening of the day before he found work in the department store,
Kate Morgan had told him she had just secured a new place. "Did you get
it through Miss Chambers?" he had suspiciously demanded.
"No," she had answered, smiling defiantly. At parting she had said with
sharp decision, standing at his door: "You've had enough of the honest
life. You're going to be with me on this job. Set that down." Without
giving him a chance to reply, she had stepped out and closed the door.
He did not see her again till the middle of December, when one Sunday
evening she knocked, walked in and promptly sent Tom on an errand.
"I can only stay for two minutes," she said, speaking rapidly and in a
low voice. "This is supposed to be my Sunday off, but one of the maids
is sick, so instead of a day I get an hour and a half. Say, it's
certainly a swell house. The family is just a man and his mother. Just
them two in a house big enough for a town--and think of the way we rub
ribs down here! They've got carloads of silver, all of it solid; and the
old lady has simply got barrels of jewelry. They're going to have a big
blow-out on Christmas, so none of the servants get a holiday then. But
almost all of them are going to get New Year's Eve and New Year's Day
out. The house will be almost empty New Year's Eve. That's when we'll
clean it up."
"You seem to have no doubt that I shall join you," David said dryly.
"None at all!" she answered promptly.
"Well, I shall certainly not!"
"You may think you'll not," she returned, undisturbed. "But you will.
Anybody but a fool would have come to his senses long ago. You've found
you can't get a job. You've got to live. It's steal or starve. Of course
you're going to be in."
"I shall not!" David returned doggedly.
The days of the second half of the month moved slowly by. David
continued walking the streets, occasionally daring to ask for work. His
money was all gone, and everything was in the pawnshop except his
overcoat, from which he hardly dared part at this season. His clothes
were now so worn and shapeless as of themselves to insure the refusal of
any place but that of a labourer. A labourer's place he possibly could
have found--for a labourer's character is not questioned, since usually
there is opportunity for him to steal no more than the value of a pick
and shovel, and the wages left behind would more than cover such a loss.
But for a labourer's work David had not a labourer's strength.
He was forced down ... down; finally to those low services by which the
dregs of the city's population keep a decrepit life within themselves.
The odd jobs about saloons which are usually done for beer-payment he
performed under the inspiration of the free-lunch counter. He peeled
potatoes in Bowery restaurants where dinners are fifteen cents, his work
to pay for a meal; and when the dinner, which he had seen cooked in a
filthy kitchen and served in half-washed dishes, was put before him, his
stomach so revolted that he often turned from the untasted food and
hurried into the street.
He was at the bottom of the abyss. Light, hope, were far above--the
walls were smooth and high--his climbing strength was gone. He could not
last much longer. He wondered, darkly, fearfully, what would be the end.
Yet he had not given up; there was still bitterness, rebellion, in him,
and still an automatic, staggering courage.
Three days before New Year's Kate Morgan called again. "I'm home to
stay; my father's so sick I had to throw up my job," she said with a
wink. She drew a ring of keys from the pocket of her skirt and silently
held them before David's eyes; then, with a sharp little smile, she
slipped them back, and drew out five sheets of paper, on each of which
was a rough diagram of one of the floors of her late employer's house,
with the doors and stairways marked and the location of the valuables.
She explained the plans to him, adding details not charted, and on
rising to go she handed him the sheets that he might familiarise himself
with the house.
"But I shall have nothing to do with this," he said desperately,
thrusting back the papers.
"Oh, yes you will," she returned, putting her hands behind her back.
He let the sheets fall to the floor, but she went out without giving
them another glance. He looked at the papers, picked them up, stared at
them whitely; and then, in a sort of frenzy, as though he would
annihilate temptation, he tore the sheets into a thousand flakes and
thrust them into his pocket.
The next morning he set forth with the despairing energy of the man who
has a new fear, who has fiercely summoned all his resources for a last
struggle. But mid-winter is a season when even a skilled man of
blameless reputation has trouble in finding work; for David there was no
chance whatever. And then, in his extreme desperation, he determined on
a new course--in asking for work he would openly tell his record.
Perhaps some one, out of sympathy for the struggle he was making, would
give him an opportunity. He had thought of this plan before, but he had
put it aside, because, he had reasoned, to avow himself a thief was to
murder his chances. But the old course had brought him nothing; the new
plan held at least a possibility.
David walked the streets half the day before he could drive himself to
try this plan. At length a superintendent consented to see him and
listen to his story and appeal. "I appreciate your frankness," the
superintendent replied, not unkindly. "But I am under strict orders on
this point; I can take only men of the straightest records. But I hope
you'll find something."
David was left without courage to try the plan again that afternoon. The
next day he could find no one willing to hear him. In the evening Kate
Morgan called again. Everything was in readiness for their venture of
the following night, she told him. Once more he declared that he would
have nothing to do with the affair. But to himself his words sounded
only of the lips; and his indignation did not quicken the least trifle
when Kate flung a dry laugh into his face.
The following morning, the last day of December, he spurred his spent
courage on to another attempt. He at length found a wholesale notion
store where a packer was wanted. The head of the packing department was
large and powerful, with coarse, man-driving features; but, undeterred
by this appearance, David recited his story.
The superintendent stared amazedly at David, and swore. "Well if you
ain't got the nerve!" he roared. "You admit you're a crook, and yet you
ask me for a job! What d'you think we're runnin' here?--a reform school?
Not on your life! Now you see if you can't find the door out o'
here--and quick!"
David had neither the strength nor the spirit to reply to this man as he
had replied to the owner of the department store in One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street. When he reached the open air he walked a few paces,
then paused and leaned against the front of a building. He felt an utter
exhaustion--there was not another effort in him. He was like a horse,
driven to the last ounce of its strength, that lies down in its tracks
to die; the whip can only make it quiver, cannot make it rise. He
chanced to turn his head, and saw himself in the mirror that backed the
show-window--a thin, stooping figure with a white line of a mouth and a
gray, haggard face. He was so numb, so spiritually spent, that this
spectre of himself stirred not a single emotion within him.
That evening he swept a saloon, and ate of the cheese and corn-beef
sandwiches at the free-lunch counter till the bartender ordered him out.
Then he wandered aimlessly through the night, which was balmy despite
the month, with no desire to return to the dingy four walls of his
unheated room. He remembered in a vague way that this was the night Kate
Morgan had set for the robbery; and perhaps his staying from home was
due to the unfelt guidance of his conscience. He had no definite
thoughts or sensations; only a vast, stunning sense of absolute defeat.
A little after eleven o'clock he found himself wandering along the East
River, and presently he turned upon a dock and walked toward the water
between two rows of trucks, facing each other, their shafts raised
supplicatingly to the stars. He seated himself at the end of the dock,
and his chin in his two hands, looked out upon the river. Save for the
reflection, like luminous, writhing arms, that the few lights of
Brooklyn reached toward him on the water's surface, and save for the
turbulent brilliance under the Williamsburg Bridge's great bow of arc
lights, the river, which the tide was dragging wildly out to sea, was as
black as blindness.
He gazed forth into the darkness, forth upon the swirling water--dully,
without thought, in the flat stupor of unrising defeat.... Presently a
bell began to send down the hour from a neighbouring steeple.
Mechanically he counted the strokes. Twelve. The number at first had no
significance, but after a moment its meaning thrilled him through. This
was the New Year!... The New Year!... And how was he beginning it?
Penniless--friendless--without work--with little strength--with no
courage--without hope. A happy New Year, indeed!
Suddenly all the bitterness that had been gathering and smouldering
within him these last four months, burst out volcanically. And his
passion was not alone in his own behalf; it was in behalf of the
thousands of others who had made a similar struggle, and to whom the
world had similarly denied the privilege of honesty. Starved and
hopeless! Why? Because he could not work?--because there was no
work?--because the world had decided the moral development of such as he
required further punishment? No. Because the rich, powerful world was
afraid!--afraid of its dollars! Because, if he were taken in, given a
chance to live honestly, he might steal a bolt of cloth, or a coat, or a
vase, or a shawl! There was the reason--the only reason. A bolt of cloth
against a human life, begging to live! A coat against a human soul,
agonising to be honest! Cloths and coats mean dollars--mean carriages,
and diamonds, and wines. Cloths and coats must be guarded.
But the human life? The human soul?
In his wild rage David rose, turned his back upon the dark river, and
shook his fist at the great indifferent city.
CHAPTER IX
THE OPEN ROAD
At one o'clock David, still aflame with bitterness, was entering his
room when a door across the hall opened and Kate Morgan looked out.
"Come into my house!" she snapped in a whisper.
David could not see her face, but her voice told him she was angry. He
followed her. Actresses' photographs on the walls, a rug of glaring
design, cheap red-and-green upholstered furniture that overcrowded the
little room--such was Kate Morgan's parlour. She closed the door, then
turned, her eyes blazing, and swore at him.
"A nice time to be getting home! I've been waiting two hours for you!"
For a moment he looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Oh, you're thinking of
that robbery. You needn't have waited. I told you I'd have nothing to do
with it."
"Drop that bluffing! You know you're in it!"
He started toward the door.
"Where you going?" she demanded.
"To bed."
She seized his arm, stepped between him and the door and stared
wrathfully up at him. She now saw how pale and drawn his face was. Her
wrath slowly left her. "You're tired--blue," she said, abruptly, but
softly.
He nodded. "So I'm going to bed."
"Let's chat a minute first," she said, and drew him to the largest of
the chairs, and pushed him down into it. "And we'll have something to
eat, just you and me. I've made dad go to bed. It's all ready. I'll
bring it in here."
She moved a little table before him and went out. Could David have seen
the look she held upon him through the door, he would have been puzzled,
perhaps startled. After she had made three trips into the rear of the
flat there were upon the table a plate of sandwiches, a dish of olives,
a pie, and two cups of coffee, all served with a neatness that, after
the Bowery restaurants, was astonishing to David.
"Now, we'll begin," she said, and sat down on the opposite side of the
little table. The food had a wonderful taste to David, and the
coffee--it was real coffee--warmed his chilled body. For several minutes
they both ate in silence, then Kate pushed back her chair, lighted a
cigarette, and sat regarding him with eyes that grew very soft.
When he had finished she leaned suddenly forward and laid a hand on one
of his.
"I don't like it for you to look this way, David," she said.
He started at the touch and at the "David." She saw the start and drew
her hand away. "Why shouldn't I call you David? We're good pals, ain't
we? I'm tired of this miss and mister business. Call me Kate."
He was still too surprised to make an immediate answer, and she went on
softly, "You look very bad!"
The remark brought flooding back to him all his misery and hopelessness,
all his rebellion, and he forgot his wonder at her overture. "Why
shouldn't I?" he asked bitterly.
She nodded. "I understand," she said. "The world's got no use for a man
that's been a crook. He's got no chance. I've seen a lot of boys come
back, and swear they'd never touch another job. They tried--some of 'em
hard, but none as hard as you. But nobody wanted 'em. What way was open?
Only one--to go back to cracking cribs. They all went back." She paused,
then added: "Now I want to ask you one square question: what's the use
trying?"
David was remembering his four months' futile struggle when he
involuntarily echoed, "What's the use!"
"Yes, what?" she continued quickly. "The world may not owe you a living,
but it owes you the right to live. It owes you that much. If it won't
let you live by working, why, you've got to live by stealing. There's no
other way. You've tried the first--"
She went on, but David heard no more. His bitterness, his resentment,
were making a fiercer plea. Yes, he had tried! Could any man try harder?
And what had he gained? Rebuff--insult--uttermost poverty. There was no
use in trying further--none whatever. There was left only the second
way--the one road that is always open, that always welcomes the
repentant thief whom the world refuses.
Why should he not enter this only road? He had no single friend who
would be pained. He had no faintest hope of a future. All that could be
lost was lost. The thief's trade promised him the necessities of life.
He had offered to pay the world in work for these necessities, but the
world had refused his payment. What could he do, then, but take
them?--Besides, would it not be just treatment of the world--of the
world that had destroyed him, of the world that cared more for dollars
than for souls--if some of its all-precious wealth were taken from it?
He looked up; his face was tight-set, vindictive; his eyes glittered.
Kate's gaze was fixed upon him, waiting. "It's time we were starting,"
she said. "It's almost two."
He breathed deeply, almost convulsively.
"Come on," he said.
She reached across and seized his hand. "I knew you'd come in!" she
cried triumphantly. "We'll turn a lot of tricks together, you and me!"
He gripped her hand so hard that she gave a little gasp, but he did not
answer. For a minute or more they looked silently into each other's
face.
"Come, we must go," she said.... "You have your diagram of the house?"
"No. I tore it up."
She drew some sheets from the front of her flannel waist. "Here's
another, then. You may need it."
From beneath the red-and-green sofa she took a suit-case, which she
threw open. In it were a full set of burglar's tools. "We really don't
need 'em, for I've got keys to almost everything. But we'll take 'em
along and twist the locks a bit, so they'll never suspect the job may
have been done by someone who'd been in the inside--that is, by me.
We'll bring the swag back in the suit-case."
She looked at David, as at a superior artist, for commendation of her
plan; but he silently regarded the strange instruments in the bag. She
slipped on a pair of rubbers, fastened on a little hat, and had David
help her into a short jacket which had large pockets in the lining.
David drew on his overcoat, picked up the suit-case, and together they
crept down the black stairways and out into the street. She chattered
softly all the while, as though fearing David, if left to his own
thoughts, might withdraw from the adventure.
Shortly before three o'clock Kate paused, in one of the Seventies near
Fifth Avenue, before a flight of broad steps leading up to a broad stoop
and a broad entrance. "Here we are," she whispered.
They searched the street in both directions with quick glances. Not a
soul was in sight. Then they slipped to the shadowed servants' entrance
beneath the stoop, and in less than a minute Kate had unlocked a door of
iron grating and a second door of wood, and they were standing in a dark
hallway. She opened the grip, handed David a lantern, took one for
herself, tied a handkerchief over his face so that all below the eyes
was hidden, and masked herself likewise. Then with a jimmy and a wrench
she hurried away.
Two minutes later she reappeared. She was inspired with the desire to
impress David with her skill as a thief, as another woman might be
inspired to attract male attention by the display of her beauty. "I just
opened a back window and broke the latch," she whispered. "We'll lock
these doors when we go out, and they'll think we got in through the
window. Now, come on. But hadn't you better take off your shoes? They're
pretty heavy."
David sat down upon a chair, and she turned her lantern's bar of light
upon his feet, so that he could better manage the laces. When the shoes
came off, there were his heels and toes gleaming whitely. In the
confusion of strange sensations that had begun to flow in upon him, he
had forgotten that his stockings were only tops. He quickly shifted his
feet out of the embarrassing rays.
"That's all right," said Kate. "There'll be plenty of new ones
to-morrow."
They went up a narrow stairway, then a broad one, stealthily following
the guidance of the lantern's white finger, pausing breathless at every
three or four steps to reach forth with their ears for any possible stir
of life--Kate tense and alert with excitement, David giddied by a
choking, throbbing, unshaped emotion. After a dozen of these pauses,
when to David the rubadub of his heart seemed to resound through the
house, Kate led him across deep rugs and through a broad doorway hung
with tapestries.
"The drawing-room," she whispered, and slowly sweeping it with her
lantern she revealed to him its gorgeous fittings. Then her lantern
sought out a curio cabinet, of glass sides and gilded frame, standing in
a corner. "That's what we want in here," she said. At her order David
set down the suit-case he had carried, and they tiptoed to the cabinet
over rugs worth hundreds of dollars a step.
"You get the good things in there, I'll go upstairs after the old lady's
sparklers, and then we'll both go down and get the silver," she
whispered, as she unlocked the cabinet with one of her keys. "I'll meet
you here in a little while."
A sudden fear of being alone leaped up in David. He clutched Kate's arm
and threw the lantern's light into her face. Of the face he saw only a
narrow slit between her handkerchief and hat-brim, amid which her eyes
gleamed like black diamonds.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "You're trembling."
"It must be--my nerves are gone," he whispered, with an effort.
"Oh, you'll be all right when you've been fed up and done another job or
two."
He watched her little figure glide out of the room behind its headlight,
then he turned to the contemplation of the miniature portraits in
gem-set frames, the old hand-painted fans, the heavy old-fashioned
lockets and earrings and bracelets, that lay upon the glass shelves of
the cabinet.
He had no distinct thought toward the articles--there was no thought,
not even a vague one, in his mind. His throat and lips were dry, his
eyes were wide and fixed. His dizzy, unpowering emotion had so increased
that he would not have been surprised had he slipped to the floor and
spread out like a boneless sea creature. He was mental and emotional
incoherence.
The intention to steal had brought him here. That intention was over an
hour old, but since it had been neither fulfilled nor countermanded, it
was stored energy; and presently it began to move his will-less members,
as the stored energy of a coiled spring sets an automaton at its
appointed task. He took from the floor the plunder-bag Kate had given
him, and holding the lantern and the edge of the bag's mouth in his left
hand, he swung open the plate-glass door of the cabinet. His eyes
selected a golden bracelet, and his hand moved slowly forward and took
it up.
Then suddenly his fingers unclosed, the bracelet clicked back upon the
glass shelf, and his hand withdrew from the cabinet. The coiled spring
of his intention had snapped. The touch of what was another man's had
readjusted his confused senses. His blurred feelings became definite,
his dumb brain articulate. He saw what he was doing, saw it clearly, as
a bare act, unjustified by the arguments his bitterness had urged upon
him an hour before--saw that he was committing a theft!
A chill swept through him and he sat stiffly upright in his chair and
stared at the bracelet he had dropped. In the mood he had been in an
hour or two hours before David would not have drawn back from theft, any
more than any other normal starving man, could it have been committed
quickly, upon impulse. But the hour that had passed, the deliberation
which was surrounding the theft, had given opportunity to his moral
being to overthrow the impulse and assert itself.
He rose, forgetting even to take the cabinet key. He would leave the
house at once.
But as he passed out of the drawing-room it came to him that he could
not go away without telling Kate of his purpose. Before him he saw a
flight of stairs; she was somewhere above. He stealthily mounted, passed
through a doorway and found himself in a library. He stood a moment with
strained ears, but got no sound of her. He must go through the floor,
and perhaps through the floor above; but before proceeding further he
must get the lay of the house.
He moved noiselessly toward the library table, drawing out the plan Kate
had given him. He set the lantern on the table beside a telephone,
spread out the sheets and was sitting down when cautious footfalls
sounded without. The next instant a blade of light stabbed the room's
darkness.
"Kate?" he whispered.
"Yes."
They came toward each other and each threw his light into the other's
masked face.
"I've got the old lady's twinklers," she said. "Where's your swag?"
"I didn't take it," he whispered. "I've changed my mind. I'm leaving."
"What!"
"I'm not going to take anything. I'm going away. I came to tell you
that."
She drew a step nearer and for a space her black eyes gazed up into his
in amazement. The deep night silence of the great house flooded over
them.
"You mean it?" she demanded.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I cannot. It was a mistake, my coming."
Her eyes suddenly gleamed like knife points, she trembled with passion,
and she plunged her whispered words in up to the hilt.
"So that's the kind of nerve you've got! Oh, my God!... What a damned
coward you are!... Well, get out! I don't want you!"
She brushed him wrathfully by, and tensely erect, her free hand
clenched, walked out of the room behind the shaft of light.
He stood motionless where she had left him, alone amid the great hush.
Her words had pierced to the seat of life. He quivered with the
pain--deserved pain, he realised, for it was not a noble part to leave a
comrade at such a time. But he had made a mistake in coming, and the
only way to correct it was to go. He wished she would go with him, but
he knew the result of asking her. She would stab him again, and walk
away in contempt.
He sighed, set his lantern on the table, and folded and pocketed the
plans of the house. As he laid hold of his lantern to start away he saw
on the table, in the lantern's ribbon of light, three or four letters
that had evidently been written during the evening and left to be mailed
in the morning. He started, sank to a chair, and gazed fixedly at one of
the envelopes. The name on it was "Miss Helen Chambers."
Amid all the sensations that swirled within him, his mind instantly made
one deduction: Kate Morgan had, after all, secured a place through
Helen Chambers, and they were now in the home of one of her friends.
For a minute or more he sat staring at the envelope. It was almost as if
Helen herself had surprised him in his guilty presence here. Then,
across the darkness of the room, there came the faintest of sounds.
He thought it was Kate. "Is that you?" he whispered.
There was no answer; only dead quiet. In sudden fear he sprang up and
directed the lantern's pointer of light toward whence the sound had
come. The white spot fell upon the skirt of a dressing-gown. He jerked
the pointer upward. The luminous circle enframed the square-jawed,
clean-shaven face of a man--of the man he had seen with Helen
Chambers--of Mr. Allen.
Instantly the room was filled with a blinding glare, and David saw Mr.
Allen standing in the doorway, his left hand still on the electric-light
key, his right holding out a revolver.
"Yes, it's I," said Mr. Allen in a quiet, grim voice. "Suppose you
remove your mask and give me the equal pleasure of seeing whom I'm
meeting."
There was no disobeying, with a revolver's muzzle staring coldly at him.
David drew the handkerchief down and let it fall about his neck.
Mr. Allen gazed a moment at David's face, thin, haggard, yet rare in its
fineness. "H'm. A new variety." His gaze shifted till its edge took in
the telephone on the table, and there it rested reflectively. Then he
remarked, as though completing his thought aloud, "I guess it will be
safer for you to do the telephoning. Will you please call up Central and
ask her to give you Police Headquarters?"
Wild, contrary impulses tugged at David, but man's primal instinct,
self-preservation, controlled him the first moment.
"I have been near starvation," he said, forcing his words to calmness.
"I came here to steal--yes; but when I tried to steal, I could not. I--I
did not steal!"
His plea snapped off harshly. The world had driven him here, and with a
rush he realised the world would not forgive him for being here.
Bitterness swept into him in a great wave, and the recklessness that
feels that all is lost. Besides, he could not ask mercy of Helen
Chambers's lover.
Mr. Allen gave an ironic laugh. "I've been hearing that sort of story
for fifteen years. There never was a guilty man.--Call up Central."
The natural animal hatred of a rival flared up. David looked Mr. Allen
defiantly in the face. "If you want Central, call her yourself!" he said
slowly.
Mr. Allen was surprised, but his surprise passed immediately under his
control. "Of course you are aware," he said quietly, "that you have the
choice between calling up and being shot."
"And you are aware," David returned, "that you have the choice between
calling up and shooting."
Mr. Allen was silent a moment. "The killing of a man who enters your
house is justified by law," he warned grimly.
"Well--why don't you shoot?"
"Are you going to call up?"
"So then--you're afraid to shoot!" taunted David.
Mr. Allen remained silent. He gazed at David over the pistol barrel, and
David gazed back at the pistol and at Mr. Allen. Their wills had locked
horns, stood braced.
"I'm getting very tired," said David, throwing a leg over a corner of
the table. "If you don't shoot soon I'll have to go."
At this instant David saw in the doorway behind Mr. Allen the small
figure of Kate Morgan. In her right hand there shone a little pistol, in
her left she held a heavy walking-stick.
Mr. Allen broke his silence. "If you make a move toward your pocket
while I cross the floor, it'll be your last move."
David's will had conquered, but his exultation did not speak. He was
watching Kate Morgan, fascinated. Her pistol rose, then fell, and the
pistol and walking-stick exchanged hands. Mr. Allen took the first step
toward the telephone. The stick came up, whizzed down upon Mr. Allen's
pistol hand. The weapon went flying upon the rug, and Mr. Allen let out
a sharp cry and started to whirl around. As the stick struck flesh David
sprang forward, and with the skill of his old boxing-days, with all his
strength and weight focussed in the blow, he drove his fist against Mr.
Allen's unguarded chin. Mr. Allen fell limply upon the deep carpet.
"Come on! Out of here!" cried David, seizing Kate's arm.
She jerked away and stood tensely erect, glaring at him. "Go, you
coward! I stay here!"
"But you'll get caught!"
"That's my business!" she blazed. "Get out!--I'm going to finish the
job."
She whirled about, jerked the handkerchief from her face, thrust it into
Allen's mouth, and tied this gag securely in place with a handkerchief
which she took from the pocket of Allen's dressing-gown. Then she tied
his feet with the dressing-gown's rope girdle, and his hands with one of
the silken ropes that held back the hangings in the broad doorway. This
done, she sprang to the electric-light key, and the room filled with
blackness.
She flashed her lantern on David, who had stood watching her rapid
actions in amazement. "Why don't you go? Get out!"
"See here, it's crazy to stay here. You know it. You've got to come with
me."
His lantern, which he had taken up, showed a face that darted scorn and
rage. "Go with you?--I'll die first!" she returned in a low, fierce
whisper. And then she added, each slow word edged with infinite
contempt:
"Oh, what a poor damned coward!"
He quivered, but he said quietly, "If you won't go, I'll stay with you."
"Stay with me? You'll not! I won't have you!"
She turned abruptly and left the room. He stood thinking for a space;
then he went out and crept down the stairway. As he passed the
drawing-room door he saw Kate bending in front of the open curio
cabinet. He crept down another flight to the first floor and hid himself
behind a palm in an angle of the great hall. He strained his ears for
trouble, ready to rush upstairs at the first sound. After a time a wand
of light was thrust down the stairway. Then came Kate, the suit-case in
one hand, feeling her way with the wand like a blind man with a cane.
For a moment the searching light pierced through the palm into his face,
and David thought he was discovered; but she glided on and down the
basement stairs. He let several minutes pass; then he too slipped out
into the street.
* * * * *
Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was the direction of the subconscious,
that led David in his circuitous homeward journey, past St.
Christopher's Mission. He was walking slowly along, the caution of the
first part of his flight forgotten in the mixture of despair and shame
that now possessed him, when he waded into pools of coloured light that
lay upon the sidewalk and the street. He looked up. There, aglow with
its inspiration, was the window to the memory of Philip Morton. He
involuntarily stepped back a pace or two, and leaning against a stack of
bricks designed for repairs in the Mission's basement, alone in the
deserted street, he gazed steadfastly at the luminous words.
He had often looked at that tribute, as he had upon the whole Mission,
with a sense of thankfulness that his life was counting. But now there
was no thankfulness within him. Anger began to burn, revolt to rise.
That sainted man there was the cause of all his misery, all his
degradation. The shame of his trial, the loss of his four prison years,
the refusal of work, his insults, his lost strength, his lost character,
his ragged clothes, his starving, his uttermost poverty, his uttermost
despair--all these rushed upon him in one hot turbulent flood of
rebellion. Of all these inflictions that man was directly the cause! And
more--that man had made him a thief! And yet that man was worshipped as
a saint--while he, he was a starving outcast!
His resentment culminated in a wild impulse. His right hand clutched one
of the bricks on which it rested, and he took a quick step forward. The
brick crashed through Morton's glowing name.
BOOK III
TOWARD THE LIGHT
CHAPTER I
THE MAYOR OF AVENUE A
Three or four blocks east of the Bowery and lying north of the Jewish
quarter is a little region somewhat less crowded, somewhat quieter,
somewhat more clean, than the rest of the tenement country that lies
about it. It is held by Germans--Americanised Germans. But Poles and
Magyars, Jews of Roumania, Hungary and Russia, are edging their way into
it; such frequent signs as "_Gyogyszertár_," which, evil as it strikes
the eye, signifies nothing more malignant than "drugstore," announce
this invasion even to casual passers-by. Some day the region will know
the children of Germany no more; it will be a Babel of the tongues of
central Europe. But as yet, if you walk along its four avenues, A, B, C
and D, all lined with little shops, or lounge about its shady Tompkin's
Square, you will see many a face that will carry your memory back to
Berlin and Cologne and the beer-gardens and Sunday promenades of their
work-people and petty bourgeois.
It was the evening after David's adventure with Kate Morgan. From the
snowy air of broad Avenue A a good-natured crowd was turning into a
gilded entrance, over which incandescent lights pricked the words
"Liberty Assembly Hall." The crowd was chiefly German, but in it were
many of the newer peoples of the neighbourhood. There were broad
husbands and broad wives; children led by hand, babies carried in arms;
young people in couples and in hilarious groups; solitary and furtive
men and women. Most were in their finest, and some of the finery would
not have made the opera ashamed; but many were dressed in
shabbiness--though they, too, wore their best.
David, who had wandered into Avenue A, as he often did in his aimless
night walks, paused momentarily and listlessly watched the in-going
stream of people. A New Year's ball, he decided; but the word "Mayor"
recurred so often in the bits of conversation he overheard that his
inert curiosity prompted him to draw near a friendly-looking man who
stood without the entrance.
"What's going on in there?" he asked.
"Installing the Mayor of Avenue A," the man returned.
David had vaguely heard of the "Mayors" who exercise an unofficial
authority in several districts of New York. "How's the Mayor chosen?" he
asked. "By election?"
"No. Carl Hoffman's the most popular man on the Avenue; he's got coin
and influence; we all want him. That's how it is."
"What does he do?"
"If you need a dollar, and ain't got it, you go to Carl. If a poor woman
ain't got any coal, she lets Carl know and she's got it. If you're
dispossessed or in trouble with the police, Carl fixes you up. If you
can't get work, you go see Carl. He's the poor man's friend--everybody's
friend."
For several moments David was silent. Then he asked abruptly, "Is this a
private ceremony?"
"Oh, no; go on in, if you want to."
David joined the entering crowd, mounted a broad flight of stairs,
passed through a short hallway, and came into a large hall. Every chair
was taken and people stood in the aisles and along the sides. Three
electric-light chandeliers, wound in bunting and loaded with glass
pendants, were each a glittering sun. The maroon walls were relieved by
raised gold-and-white scroll work, and by alternate mirrors and
oil-paintings set into the plastering. These paintings were Tyrolean
scenes, cascades and moon-lit seas--such as the art-fostering department
store supplies at a dollar or two, golden frame included.
At the further end of the hall was a stage, draped with American flags.
At the stage's back a band, in purple and gold braid, was blowing out
its brass instruments; and at the stage's front, beneath "_OUR MAYOR_"
in evergreen letters that hung from the proscenium arch, sat four rotund
men in a row.
David slipped into a corner at the rear, where his shabbiness saw more
of its own kind. A moment later "The Watch on the Rhine" thundered from
the stage and rolled among the Alps and the cascades and over the
moon-lit seas. Then "The Star-Spangled Banner" sent forth its
reverberations, and when its last echo had been lost far down an Alpine
gorge, the most rotund of the four rotund men--they were the Mayors of
Avenues A, B, C and D, a neighbour told David--stepped to a table and
rapped for order. He assumed his most impressive attitude, gazed slowly
over the polyglot audience, drew a deep breath, and began in a sonorous
voice that, now swelling, now softening, was the perfect servant of his
eloquence.
"It is not within the power of human speech to express how much I, as
Mayor of Avenue B, feel the great honour of acting as master of
ceremonies on this brilliant and distinguished occasion, graced by so
much fairness of the softer sex, made by the Creator as the greatest
reward and adornment of life, when your honourable Mayor is to be
installed to serve his eleventh successive and successful term." But
despite the impotence of speech, the Mayor of Avenue B filled ten
minutes in an attempt to suggest faintly the contents of his prideful
breast. Then he swept onward into a eulogy of the Mayor of Avenue A,
ending with, "And now, Carl Hoffman, rise and receive the oath of
office."
Cheers and hand-clapping echoed through the Alps. The tallest of the
four Mayors stepped forward. The applause doubled and the band thundered
into "Hail the Conquering Hero." The Mayor of Avenue A bowed and smiled
and smiled and bowed, and swept his arm, now to this side, now to that,
in magnificent salutation. His face was inflated with good feeding, and
was as smooth as a child's balloon; a few hairs lay in pencil lines
across his shiny head; from pocket to pocket athwart his snow-white vest
hung a heavy golden chain--in lieu of a hoop, one could fancy, to hold
fast the bulging flesh. It was well that his face was broad; a thin face
would have cramped the wide, shining smile he held upon his uproaring
constituency.
When the tumult had somewhat abated, the master of ceremonies, his
portly dignity replaced by portly lightsomeness, caught the Mayor's arm.
"Here he is, ladies and gents!" he shouted. "Look at him! The champion
heavyweight, catch-as-catch-can philanthropist of New York. I am
authorized to challenge any other philanthropist of his class in the
city for a match, the gate receipts to the winner, and a thousand
dollars side bet!"
The crowd again broke loose. A deep, gruff, joyous voice rose from the
Mayor's interior. "Moxie, get your wife to sew a button on your mouth!"
The hall was one gleeful roar at this sally.
"Raise your right hand," said the Mayor of Avenue B, when there was
partial quiet. "Now repeat after me: I, Carl Hoffman, do hereby promise
to the best of my ability--"
"Why, sure!" approved the deep voice.
"To be a friend to any man, woman or child that needs a friend. So help
me God!"
"Sure thing!" responded a hearty rumble.
The crowd once more applauded, and David noted that the hands which
clapped longest were feminine.
The Mayor of Avenue A beamed upon the audience. "That's me," he said,
with a grand upward sweep of his right arm. "I don't need to tell you
what I'm goin' to do. I been doin' it for ten years. I guess my
record'll do all the talkin' that's needed. But this much I'll say for
myself: If anybody durin' this new year needs a friend and he don't
chase himself around to the Pan-American Café and ask for Carl
Hoffman--well, he deserves a lot more trouble than he's got!"
He went on and told how glad he was to see his friends, and how proud he
was to be their Mayor, but through it all David was hearing only the
oath of office and the Mayor's first few sentences; and when later the
ushers began to clear away the chairs for dancing, and David slipped
down to the street and walked homeward through the swirling snow, he
still thought only of the Mayor's offer to the man who needed a friend.
The next day at eleven o'clock--he had figured the morning rush would be
over by then--David approached the Pan-American Café. On the café's one
side was a delicatessen store, displaying row on row of wurst to entice
the Germans within, and on the other side a costumer's shop, its windows
filled with suits of armour, night-mare masks, and gorgeous
seventeenth-century court gowns of sateen, spangles and mosquito
netting. The long glass front of the café was hung with holiday greens,
among which appropriate signs informed the street that a Hungarian
orchestra played nightly, that real German beer and indubitable Rhenish
wine were purchasable within, and that a superlatively good dinner was
to be had for only thirty cents.
David came to a pause at the café's storm-door. Doubts and fears that
had been rising now stampeded him: the Mayor's talk was only platform
talk; the Mayor was doubtless like all others who had refused him,
insulted him. He walked up and down the avenue, passing and repassing
the café and the narrow little shops that edged the sidewalk. Then he
told himself that he had nothing to lose; another refusal would be
merely another refusal. He summoned back his courage, delivered himself
into its hands, and entered.
He found himself in a wide, long room, whose green walls were hung with
signs of breweries and with placards announcing the balls of "The Carl
Hoffman Association," "The Twin Brothers," "The Lady Orchids," and a
dozen other social organisations of the neighbourhood. Six rows of
tables, some marble-topped, some linen-covered, with chairs stacked upon
them, stretched the length of the room. Among these black-jacketed
waiters, armed with long mops, were scrubbing the linoleum-covered
floor.
One of the waiters quickly cleared the chairs from a table and came
forward to meet David. "Nothing to eat, thank you," David said. "I want
to see Mr. Hoffman."
"Sorry--he's out. But he's likely to be in any minute. Just sit down.
No, wait--there he is now."
David looked about. Coming in from the street was the ample form of the
Mayor of Avenue A, his cheeks pink with the cold. "Got four discharged
and paid two fines," the Mayor announced to the waiters who had all
looked up expectantly. "And when I got 'em out o' the court-room I lined
'em up and gave 'em gentle hell. They'll keep sober for awhile--yes,
sir!"
He turned to David. "Why some decent men ain't never sure the New Year's
really begun till they've poured themselves neck-full o' whiskey--mebbe
the God that made 'em understands, but Carl Hoffman certainly don't."
David admitted that no more did he, and then asked for a few minutes'
talk--in private.
"Hey, John, take these things," and the Mayor burdened David's waiter
with overcoat, muffler and hat; and David saw that a waistcoat of
garlanded silk had replaced the white one of last night. "And, say,
boys," he shouted to the others, "suppose you let the rest o' that
scrubbin' go for a bit and get busy at somethin' out in the kitchen."
He led David to a rear corner where, enclosed by heavy red ropes, was
the platform from which the Hungarian orchestra administered its nightly
music. They lifted the chairs from a table and sat down facing each
other.
"Well, now, what can I do for you?" the Mayor asked.
David did not give his courage time to escape. "I was at your
inauguration last night," he began, quickly, "and I heard you say that
if any man needed help--"
"The poor man's friend--that's me," broke in the Mayor with a quick nod,
folding his plump hands, on one of which burnt a great diamond, upon the
table.
"And the poor man--that's me," said David.
"Well, you've come to the right doctor. What's ailin' you?"
The Mayor's eyes became sharp, and his face became as stern as its pink
fulness would permit. "But one word first. Some people think I'm an easy
mark. I ain't. I've got two rules: never to give a nickel to a man that
don't deserve it, and never to give the icy mitt to the man that
deserves the warm hand. I guess I ain't never broke either rule. A
grafter ain't got no more chance with me than a lump o' lard in a fryin'
pan. I ain't sayin' these things to hurt your feelin's, friend. Only
just to let you know that if you ain't all on the level you're wastin'
your precious time. If you are on the level--fire away. I'm your man."
This was rather disconcerting. "I can only tell you the truth," said
David.
"It wouldn't do you no good to tell nothin' else," the Mayor said dryly.
"I can generally tell when the chicken in a chicken pie is corned beef."
David gathered his strength. "I shall tell you everything. To begin
with, I've been a thief--"
"A thief!" the Mayor ejaculated. He stared. "Tales o' woe always begin
with the best thing a fellow can say about himself. If you start off
with bein' a thief, Lord man, what'll you be when you get through!"
"I'm beginning with the worst. I'm out of prison about four months. I
was sent up for--for stealing money from a mission--from St.
Christopher's Mission--four or five years ago."
Again the Mayor stared, and again his face took on its stern look. "So
you're that man!" he said slowly. "I remember about it. The Mission
ain't far from here. Well, friend, one o' my waiters'd fire me out o'
here for disorderly conduct if I told you in plain English what I think
o' that trick. But it was a dirty, low-down piece o' business, and what
came to you is only a little part o' what you should 'a' got."
David rose. It was as he had expected--another refusal. "I see you care
to do nothing for me. Good morning."
"Did I say so? Set down. You're talkin' the truth--that's somethin'. At
least it don't sound much like one o' them fancy little lies a fellow
makes up to make a good impression. Well, what d'you want from me?"
David sat down. He spoke quickly, desperately. "I came back from prison
determined to live honestly. I've been trying for four months to get
work. No one will have me. I won't tell you what I've been through. I
must have work, if I'm to live at all. I've come to you because I
thought you might help me get work--any kind of work."
For a minute or more the Mayor silently studied David's thin features.
Then he said abruptly: "Excuse me for leavin' your troubles, but I been
out in this cold air and I'm as empty as my hat. I've got to have a bite
to eat, or I'll all cave in. And you'll have some with me. I don't like
to eat alone.
"Oh, John!" the deep voice roared out. "Say, John, fetch us some eggs.
How'll you have your eggs? Scrambled? Scrambled eggs, John, bacon, rolls
and coffee for two.
"Now back to your troubles, friend." He shook his head slowly. "You're
up against a stiff proposition. There ain't much of a demand for
ex-crooks right now."
He once more began to scrutinise David's face. "Don't let this bother
you, friend; I'm just seein' what's inside you," he said, and continued
his stare.
One minute passed, two minutes, and that fixed gaze did not shift. David
grew weak with suspense. He knew he was on trial, and that the next
moment would hear his sentence.
Suddenly the Mayor thrust a big hand across the table and grasped
David's. "It ain't the icy mitt for you. Jobs are scarce, but--let's
see. What kind o' work have you done? I remember readin' about you;
wasn't you a professor, or somethin' in that line o' business?"
David swam in a vertigo of vast relief; his hand instinctively clutched
the edge of the table; the Mayor's face looked blurred, far away.... "I
was a writer ... for magazines."
"My pull wouldn't help a lot with the literary push." The Mayor's eyes
again became keen. "And I suppose you now want somethin' o' the same
sort--somethin' fancy?"
The dizziness was subsiding. "Anything--so it's work!"
The Mayor meditated a moment. "Well, I only know o' one job just now,
and you wouldn't have it."
"What is it?" demanded David, tensely.
"The agent o' the house where I live told me a couple o' days ago he
wanted a new janitor."
"I'll take it!"
"Sweepin'--scrubbin'--sortin' rubbish--everybody cussin' you--twelve
dollars a month."
The wages made David hesitate. He calculated. "I'll take it--if the
agent will have me."
"He'll have you. Rogers's got a special interest in chaps that're makin'
the fight you're makin'."
David half rose. "Hadn't I better see him at once?" he asked, anxiously.
"The job may be taken any minute."
"Set down, young man. That job ain't goin' to run away. Here comes
breakfast. I'll go with you when we're through. Gee, I could eat a
house."
David made no boasts, but when he rose from his first meal since the
midnight supper with Kate Morgan thirty-three hours before, he had
effaced his share of the breakfast. He noted that the Mayor's portion
had hardly been touched, and the Mayor saw he observed this. "I had a
sudden turn o' the stomach," the Mayor explained. "I never know when
it's goin' to let me eat, or when it's goin' to say there's nothin'
doin'."
They walked away through a deep cross street of red tenements with
fire-escapes climbing the walls like stark, grotesque vines. David was
filled with dread lest he might find the position already occupied. He
wanted to run. But despite his suspense he had to notice that the Mayor
was smiling at all the women on both sides of the street, and that every
pretty one who passed was followed by a look over the Mayor's shoulder.
At the end of five minutes they turned into a tenement of the better
sort, on the large front window of whose first floor David read in gilt
letters, "John Rogers--Real Estate."
"Here's where I live--on the floor above," said the Mayor. "You just
wait here in the hall a minute or two while I have a chat with Rogers."
The Mayor entered the office, and David paced the narrow hallway. Would
he get the job? No--this Rogers would never hire a thief. Anyhow, even
if Rogers would, someone else had the job already. It couldn't be true
that at last he was to gain a foothold--even so poor a foothold. No,
this was to be merely one more rejection.
At length the Mayor came out, carefully smoothing the few hairs that
lined his crown like a sheet of music paper. "Rogers is waitin' for you;
go right in. See you soon. Good-bye." He shook hands and went out,
cautiously replacing his hat.
David entered, palpitant. The office was bare, save for real estate maps
on the walls, a few chairs and a desk. Mr. Rogers turned in his swivel
chair and motioned David to a seat beside him. "Mr. Hoffman has told me
about you," he said, briefly, and for a moment he silently looked David
over; and David, for his part, did the same by the man whose "yes" or
"no" was about to re-create or destroy him. Mr. Rogers was a slight,
spectacled man with dingy brown hair and a reddish pointed beard; and
his plain wrinkled clothes were instantly suggestive of mediocrity. His
face had the yellowish pallor of old ivory, and its apparent stolidity
would have confirmed the impression of his clothes, had there not
gleamed behind his spectacles a pair of quick watchful eyes.
"Do you mind if I ask you about yourself?" Mr. Rogers said, quietly.
"Ask anything you please."
"Mr. Hoffman has told me of your--unfortunate experience of the last
four or five years. Since coming out you have made a real effort at
finding work?"
David outlined the struggles of the past four months. Mr. Rogers heard
him through without show of emotion other than an increased brightness
of the eyes, then asked: "Have you not, under such hard circumstances,
been tempted to steal again?"
David paled, and hesitated. A reformed thief who had attempted theft no
later than yesterday, would certainly not be employed. He saw his
chance, so near, fade suddenly away. But he had determined upon absolute
frankness.
"Yes," he admitted in a low tone. Then his voice became tremulous with
appeal: "But I yielded only once! I was in the act of stealing--but I
stopped myself. I could not. I took nothing!--not a thing!"
David expected to see the yellow face harden, but it did not change.
"You know the character of the work," Mr. Rogers resumed. "It is not
pleasant."
David's hope rushed back. "That makes no difference to me!"
"And the pay is small--only twelve dollars a month and your rent."
"Yes! Yes! That's all right!"
"Then," concluded the low, even voice, "if it's convenient to you, I
should like to have you begin at once."