THE SAVING LEDGE
David, in a kind of trance, followed Mr. Rogers over the six-story
house, hardly hearing the agent's discourse upon his duties and the
tenants. Twenty-four families and a considerable number of boarders
lived in the tenement--in all, close to a hundred and a half souls. They
were mostly Germans and Jews--tailors, furriers, jewellers,
shop-keepers; people who were beginning to gain a fair footing in their
adopted country. David's work was to be much as the Mayor had outlined.
The halls were to be daily swept and frequently scrubbed, minor repairs
to be executed, the furnace to be attended to, and ashes, waste-paper
and kitchen-refuse to be separated and prepared for the city's ash and
garbage wagons.
The tour of installation ended, David started for his old home to begin
the removal, armload at a time, of his few belongings. As he walked
among the school-hurrying children, over snow grimed by ten thousand
feet, he felt dazed for fear that this world of hope he had entered
might suddenly vanish. Failure had been his so constantly that this
beginning of success seemed unreal. He dared allow himself to feel only
a tentative exultation.
At the entrance of his old tenement he met Kate Morgan coming out. He
had not seen her since she had glided past him through Mr. Allen's hall,
suit-case in hand. He stopped, at a loss what to do or say, wondering
how she would receive him.
"Good afternoon," he said, heavily.
She paled, looked him squarely in the face and passed without a word.
With a pang he watched her walk stiffly away. Her friendship, save for
Tom's, was the only friendship he had known since he had left prison.
Now it was lost.
An hour later, as he was coming from his room with his last armload, he
met her again. She sneered in his face. "Coward!" she snapped out and
brushed him by. He called after her, but she marched on and into her
door without looking back.
David had thought his "rent" would be a single room, but it had proved
to be a five-room flat in the basement. In the front room of this,
during the odd moments his afternoon's work allowed him, he arranged his
belongings, to which Mr. Rogers had added a bed, a table and a couple of
chairs. When all was in order he found the room looked bare, beyond his
needs. After all, his "rent" might as well have been but a single room.
Little good to him were the four rooms behind, locked and vacant.
Darkness had fallen and he was sitting in his room wondering how he
would live through the month that must elapse before his salary would be
due, when Mr. Rogers came in.
"It has occurred to me that perhaps you could use a little ready money,"
Mr. Rogers said in his low voice, and he laid several bills upon
David's table. "There's one month's wages in advance." And before David
had recovered from his surprise, Mr. Rogers was out of the room.
While David was still staring at this money, there was another knock. He
opened the door upon the Mayor of Avenue A. The Mayor walked in and
lowered himself into the one rocking-chair.
"Well, I see you've landed with Rogers," he called out, as though David
were a block away. "You'll find Rogers quiet, but the real thing. He's
got a heart that really beats."
He looked about. "Just usin' this one room, I see. What're you doin'
with the others?"
"Nothing."
"Why don't you rent 'em?"
"D'you think I can?"
"Can? You can't help it. Why, only yesterday a family was askin' me to
help 'em find a cheap flat. Le's see how much them four rooms would be
worth. I pay thirty a month up on the second floor; this might fetch
sixteen or eighteen. You've got the best room; take that off and
say--well, say twelve a month. How'd that suit you?"
"If I could only get it!"
The Mayor drew out a fat wallet. "That fixes my family up, then. Here's
your twelve."
"You're in earnest?" David asked, slowly.
"Sure. The family'll be in to-morrow."
"But I can't take the money in advance--and from you."
"It ain't my money. It's theirs. And advance!--nothin'! Rent's always in
advance. And if I don't cinch the bargain now, somebody'll come along
and offer you thirteen, and then where'll I be? Here, stick this in your
pants and shut up!"
David took the money. "Mr. Hoffman, I don't know how I can ever thank
you for your favours--"
"Oh, this ain't no favour. This's business. But if you think it's a
favour--well, some day I may be on my uppers. Remember it then." A
pillowy hand drew forth his watch, lit up with diamonds. "Well, by
George, if I don't chase right over to my joint I won't even have any
uppers. My blamed waiters's always forgettin' to water the soup!"
When he was alone David sat with eyes looking at his fortune, which he
had heaped upon the table, and with mind looking at the situation in
which he now found himself. Five years before he would have regarded
this janitor's position much as a man on a green, sun-lit bank of a
cliff-walled torrent would regard a little bare ledge below against
which the water frothed in anger--as something not worth even a casual
thought. But he had been in that stream, which sweeps its prey onward to
destruction; his hands had slipped from its smooth walls; and just as he
had been going down he had caught the little ledge and dragged himself
upon it--and now this bare rock to him was the world. He did not think
of the green fields and the sun above, toward which he must try to
climb; he could only, as it were, lie gasping upon his back, and marvel
at the miracle of his escape.
He was still sitting so when there was still another knock. He had
asked his landlady to send Tom over when the boy returned, and as he
crossed the room he hoped he would find Tom at the door. Sure enough,
there stood the boy. He came in quietly, with hesitation, for during the
past week and more the two had hardly spoken--they had merely been aware
of one another's existence.
"What's all dis mean?" he asked slowly, looking round in amazement.
In a rush of spirits David clapped his hands on Tom's shoulders. "It
means, my boy, that we're going to begin to live! See this room? The
rent's paid for as long as we stay here. And look at the table!"
Tom looked instead at David's face. "Gee, pard, if you ain't got a
grin!" he cried. Forthwith a grin appeared on his own face. He turned to
the table--and stared.
"Say, look at de bank!" he gasped.
"That's something to eat, Tom. And new clothes. There's twenty-four
dollars in that pile, and twenty-four coming in every month, with no
rent to pay."
"Don't say nuttin, pard. If dis is a dream, just let me sleep. But
what's de graft? How did you get next to all dis?"
David related his day's experience. When he had ended Tom did a few
steps of a vaudeville dance, then seized David's hand.
"Well, ain't dis luck! It's like God woke up. But what you goin' to do
wid all de coin?"
"Oh, buy railroads and such things!"
David held on to the hand the boy had given him and took the other.
"Tom," he said gravely, looking down into the boy's face, "I've got an
idea neither of us is very proud of all the things he's done lately.
D'you think so?"
The boy's eyes fell to the floor.
"I shouldn't care to tell you all I've done. Should you care to tell
me?"
The tangled head shook.
"Well, from now on we're going to be straight--all on the level. Aren't
we?"
Tom looked up. "I guess we are, pard," he said in a low voice.
They looked steadily into each other's eyes for a moment. Then David
gave Tom a quick push. "On with your hat, my boy! Let's see if the
grocery man won't take some of this money."
After their dinner had been bought, eaten, and the dishes cleared away,
David began to tack up prints. Tom meditatively watched him for several
minutes, then suddenly announced:
"I seen her to-day."
David turned sharply. He knew the answer, but he asked, "Saw who?"
"You know. De lady what I fetched up. I seen her on de street."
David tried to appear unconcerned. "Did she say anything?"
"She asked how you was."
"What did you tell her?"
"I didn't know what to say. I was afraid o' queerin' somet'ing you might
'a' told her. I just said you was better."
David tacked up another print, during which time Tom again watched him
thoughtfully. Then Tom asked, abruptly:
"She's a friend o' yourn, ain't she?"
"No."
"I t'ought she was!" His voice was disappointed. "Why ain't she?"
"Well--I guess she don't like me."
"Don't like you!" cried Tom indignantly. "Den she's had a bum steer!" He
thought. "I wonder what's queered her agin' you?"
"Oh, several things," David answered vaguely. Then obeying an impulse,
born of the universal craving for sympathy, he went on: "For one thing,
she believes I put you up to stealing."
"She t'inks you knew anyt'ing about dat!" he cried, springing up
excitedly.
"She believes you were stealing regularly, and that it was all done
under my direction."
"Is dat de way she sizes up de facts? Well, ain't dat just like a woman!
Wouldn't it just freeze your eyeballs, de way goils do t'ings!
"But see here, pard. Swell friends can do a guy a lot o' good. Why don't
you hang on to her? Why don't you put her wise?"
"She wouldn't believe me. My boy--" the tone tried to be light--"when
the world is certain to regard your truth as a lie, it's just as well to
keep still."
David went on with his tacking, and a minute or more went by before Tom
asked, quietly: "But wouldn't you like her to know de facts? Wouldn't
you like her to be your friend?"
"Oh, yes--why not?" David responded in his voice of affected unconcern.
Tom gazed steadily at David's back, his thin face wrinkled with thought.
At length his head nodded, and he said to himself in a whisper: "So she
t'inks he put me up to it, does she?"