PUCK MASQUERADES AS CUPID
David had suggested school to Tom, but the boy would none of it.
"What, set in one o' dem agony seats, biffin' your brain wid books, a
skinny lady punchin' holes t'rough you wid her eyes! Not for mine,
pard!"
A job was what he wanted, and David at length concluded that after Tom
had been tamed by the discipline of a few months of regular work, he
would perhaps be more amicable toward education.
There were but two men of whom David could ask aid in finding a place
for the boy, Mr. Rogers and the Mayor of Avenue A. Mr. Rogers was
beginning to be something of a puzzle to David. One thing that made
David wonder was the smallness of Mr. Rogers's business compared with
his ability. They had had a few short talks and David had discovered
there lurked behind that reserved exterior a sharp intelligence which
now and then flashed out unexpected poniards of bitter wit. David
contrasted him with another rental agent he had met, doing several times
Rogers's business, and the second man seemed a nonentity. Yet Rogers was
the agent of but half a dozen tenements, and made no effort to extend
his clientage.
David also wondered at what he could regard only as idiosyncrasies. The
dingy brown of Rogers's hair seemed to him hardly a natural colour; he
guessed hair dye. But hair dye he associated with vanity, with the man
who would falsify his gray hair to extend his beauship, and vanity
Rogers apparently had not. And one day, while sweeping out Rogers's
office, David had tried on Rogers's spectacles, which had been left on
the desk, and had discovered he could see through them as well as with
his naked eyes. The lenses were blanks. Why should the man wear blank
spectacles, why should he dye his hair? Mere idiosyncracies of
course--yet rather queer ones.
Rogers was always kind and courteous to David, and David heard from
tenants and neighbours many stories of the agent's warm heart--of rent
advanced from the agent's own pocket when a tenant was out of work, of
food that came covertly to fatherless families, of mysterious money and
delicacies that came to the sick poor. Yet he was invariably cold and
distant to David, and cold and distant to all others; so much so that to
try to thank him was an embarrassment. Sometimes, when musing about
Rogers's business restraint, his colourless dress, his reserve, his
stealthy generosity, it seemed to David that Rogers sought obscurity and
anonymity with the zeal that other men seek fame and brass tablets.
It was the reserve of Rogers and the constraint David felt in his
presence, and even more the knowledge of the greater influence of the
Mayor of Avenue A, that made David choose to ask the latter's aid in
seeking work for Tom. So about four o'clock of the afternoon following
Helen's call, he walked into the Pan-American Café. At a large table in
a front corner sat the Mayor, two other men, and half a dozen women, all
drinking of coffee and eating of cake, and all shaking with full-voiced
laughter that bubbled straight from the diaphragm. David was in no
hurry, so he sat down in the opposite corner of the almost empty café to
wait the departure of the Mayor's friends.
The ladies about the Mayor were hearty beauties of from ten to twenty
years' acquaintance with womanhood; and among them there was an
abundance of furs and diamonds. Most of them were misses, David learned
from the way the Mayor addressed them. The Mayor, David soon perceived,
was the center of their interest. Their pleasantries, their
well-seasoned smiles, their playful blushes, were all directed at him,
and now and then one of his sallies was reproved by a muff's soft blow
upon his mouth. The rôle of target seemed to please him; he bent now to
this one, now to that, made sweeping flourishes, made retorts that drew
upon him more of the same pleasant missiles. It began to dawn upon David
that his saviour was very much of a gallant.
Presently the Mayor, rising to greet a newcomer, noticed David. After a
few moments he excused himself and took a chair at David's table. A silk
vest that was a condensed flower garden made the mayoral front a
gorgeous sight to behold.
There was a new respect in the Mayor's manner. "I see you're flyin' in
high society these days," he began, in a whisper.
"You refer to Miss Chambers? She's merely interested in me as you
are--in my reform." David said this quietly, as though the subject was
closed.
His dignity was not lost on the Mayor. "Say, you've taken an all-fired
brace to yourself in the last ten days, ain't you! As for your lady
friend--well, if the way she was talkin' to you is the way reformers
talk, gee I wish some one like her'd try to make a man out o' me! She's
all right, friend. I've seen her before and I've heard a lot about her.
But her old man--Lord, but I'd like to set for a week or so on his
windpipe! Real estate is one o' his thousand lines, you know. He owns a
lot o' tenements in this part o' town--none near St. Christopher's, o'
course--and as a landlord, say, he's just partic'lar hell!"
"I've come to ask another favour of you," David cut in, quickly. "You've
seen the boy that stays with me. I want to get him a job if I can. I
thought possibly you might be able to help me."
"I've seen the kid, yes. Somethin' of a sleight o' hand performance,
ain't he?--now he's there and now he ain't. Where'd you pick him up?"
"We just fell in with each other a couple of months ago. There's a man
in him."
"I see. And you're trying to dig it out. You'll have to do a little
blastin' on the job, don't you think? As for gettin' him work"--he shook
his head slowly--"there's about five thousand families on Avenue A, and
each family's got five boys, and about once in so often the street out
there is blockaded with their mas beggin' me to get 'em jobs. There's
how I'm fixed."
"You can't help me then?"
"You've sized it up. Sorry. Wish I could."
After a moment David asked hesitantly: "You couldn't use a boy here,
could you?"
"Here! Nothin' I could use a boy for."
"Help in the kitchen, carry things up from the cellar, clean up," David
suggested.
The Mayor shook his head.
"It would be great for the boy if he could work a while for some one
like you that would understand him, make allowances, and break him in
properly," David went on eagerly. "He's never held a job, and a stranger
wouldn't have much charity for his shortcomings, wouldn't keep him long.
You don't need him, but still you can make things for him to do. In
three or four weeks I'll have found another job for him, and by then
you'll have him worked into shape to hold it. Of course I'll pay his
wages myself--say three dollars a week; only he must think it's coming
from you."
The Mayor's look changed to that sharp, penetrating gaze with which he
had searched David's interior on his first visit. "Yes, you're in dead
earnest," he grunted after a few seconds.
He raised a fat forefinger. "See here, friend. You're cuttin' into my
business. I'm an octopus, a trust--you understand?--and any man that
tries any philanthropic stunts in my part o' town, I run him out o'
business. See? Now you send the kid around and I'll let him bust things
here for a while. But keep your coin. I reckon three dollars ain't
goin' to put Carl Hoffman on the bum."
David thanked him warmly. "But you don't need the boy," he ended in a
determined voice, "so I can't let you pay him."
The Mayor regarded David steadily for a moment. "Have it your own way,"
he said abruptly; and suddenly his big fist reached across the table,
and to David it was like shaking hands with a fervent pillow. "Friend,
I've sized you up for the real thing. You made your mistake, and it was
a bad one--but we all make 'em. You belong 'way up. I'm proud to know
you."
David flushed and was stammering out his appreciation, when the Mayor
interrupted with, "Oh, a friend that's good enough for Miss Chambers is
good enough for me."
He glanced over his shoulder at the group he had left, then leaned
confidentially across the table and asked in a whisper: "What d'you
think o' the bunch?--the ladies I mean."
"Why, they seem to be very fine," David answered, surprised. "And they
admire you."
"Friend," said the Mayor with an approving nod, "you certainly ain't
been lookin' on with your blind eye. They do that! And every afternoon
it's the same--either them, or some other bunch. And d'you know what
they're after?"
"No."
"Me. They want to marry me. And there ain't a girl on the avenue between
fifteen and seventy that ain't tryin' to do the same. Friend, I can't
help bein' pop'lar with the ladies. I like 'em--God bless 'em! But when
you've got a whole avenue tryin' to marry you, it's hell!"
He shook his head with an air of sadness. "I don't want to marry. I was
married once for about a year. It was when I was a kid. I guess she was
a pretty nice girl, but she was too much like her mother, and when she
went I swore I'd keep out o' that kind o' trouble. But they're closin'
in on me. One of 'em's sure to get me. I don't know which one, or mebbe
I could head her off. I ought to keep away from 'em, but I can't leave
'em alone, and they won't leave me alone. Oh, hell!"
He rose with a groan. "Well, send round the kid," he said, and carefully
pulling down his vest and smoothing his dozen hairs, he rejoined his
friends. As David left the café he heard a deep roar from the Mayor, and
had a glimpse of a fair suitress of forty rebuking the Mayor's mouth
with her muff.
David sent Tom to the Mayor, and walked over to a hardware store on the
Bowery to order some new ash cans. As he was returning through the
Bowery a man stepped to his side with a quiet, "Hello, pal." Startled,
David looked about. Beside him was a wiry, gray man, with deep-lined
face and a keen, shifty eye. It was a man David had known in prison--a
cynical, hardened gentleman who had been running counter to the law for
thirty years, during which time he had participated in scores of daring
robberies and had known most of the country's cleverest criminals. Bill
Halpin was his name--at least the most recent of his dozen or two.
Halpin had taken a fancy to David while they were prison-mates, why
David could not understand; and his greeting was warm to come from one
of his contemptuous nature. The two walked on together, and David, in
response to Halpin's queries, told that he had gone to work with the
determination to live honestly. Halpin gave a sneer of unbelief--he
sneered at all things save the frankly evil--but said nothing. When they
reached David's tenement, David asked him in, but he said he had an
engagement with a pal, and went away after promising to come around some
other time.
David shovelled the furnace full of coal and was beginning his
preparations for dinner, aglow with his new hopes and with the thought
that he had regained Helen for his friend, when there was a knock at his
door. He opened the door, expecting his usual caller--a tenant with a
grievance. Kate Morgan stepped into the room.
David had seen her in finery before, but never in such finery as now.
There was a white velvet hat with two great black plumes that curled
down upon her back hair; a long black coat, through whose open front
glowed the warm red of a gown; a black fur scarf round her neck and a
black muff enclosing her white-gloved hands.
She stepped into the room and her eyes--brighter than ever were the eyes
of the furs' original owners--gleamed over the scarf with hard defiance.
"Good evening, _Mister_ Aldrich."
David flushed. "Good evening." He drew his one rocking-chair toward her.
"Won't you sit down?"
She sank into the chair, threw open the coat so that the full glory of
its white satin lining and of the red dress were displayed, and thrust
out a little patent-leathered foot.
"I saw you with Miss Chambers last night," she said, her brilliant eyes
darting contempt at him. "Of course you told her all about that Allen
affair. You're not only a coward. You're a squealer."
David was standing with his back to his mantel, and Kate had to see the
erectness, the confidence, the decision, that had come to him since the
night of their adventure. "I don't know why you're saying these things,"
he returned quietly, "but if saying them pleases you, go on."
"Well, ain't we got high and dignified since we became a janitor!" she
sneered. "A janitor! Sweeping--scrubbing--listening to the kicks of
dirty tenants--digging with your hands in the garbage to separate paper,
tin cans, greasy bones. Lord, but ain't you high up in life!"
"Go on," said David.
She drew out her cigarette box--she knew he disliked to see her
smoke--lighted a cigarette, and blew a little cloud toward him.
"A janitor! What a poor, weak, miserable soul you've got. Think of a man
turning from excitement, an easy life, good things, and taking up this!
But you're not a real man. You'd rather do dirty work for a year than
earn a year of good times by a night's work. Wouldn't you like to know
what I cleaned up the other night after you sneaked out?"
"What you wanted, I suppose."
"That's it--I got all I went after! I'm on Easy Street for a year. And
I'm enjoying life, too. You set that down. While you clean up other
people's dirt, and live in a basement, and cook yourself three-cent
dinners!"
All her fierceness, all her scorn, were in her words, gave them a jagged
edge; and she thrust them in deep and twisted them vindictively. David,
very white, looked steadily down at her, but made no reply.
"And besides, you're a squealer!"
He continued silent.
She sent out a puff of smoke, her eyes blazing at him, and thrust again:
"And a damned coward!"
David grew yet paler, but he continued his steady, silent gaze.
She sat looking up at him for several moments, without speaking again.
Then slowly something of the fierce scorn, the wild desire to pain him,
went out of her face.
"And so you're going to stick to honesty?" she presently asked,
abruptly, her voice still hard. "As tough as it is?"
"Yes," said David, quietly as before.
"And nothing can change you?"
He shook his head.
She continued staring up at him. For an instant faint twitches broke her
face's hard surface, but it tightened again. Suddenly, to David's
astoundment, she whirled about in her chair, presenting him her back;
and he saw a white hand clench and her little body grow rigid. Then
suddenly she sprang up, hurled her cigarette box across the room, and
turned upon him with a deep gasp, her face convulsed.
"Here I am!" she cried, stretching out to him her open hands. "I tried
to get you to come to my way. You wouldn't come. I've come to your way.
Here I am!"
This whizzing from one pole to the other was too great a speed for
David. "What?" he gasped.
"I lied about New Year's night! I took nothing--not a thing! You
wouldn't let me. I've acted to you like a devil. You're not a coward.
You did not leave me in Allen's house. I saw you waiting behind the
palm. I've tried to keep away from you. I didn't want to give in. But
I've come! I've give in! I'll be whatever you want me to be,
David!--whatever you want me to be!"
David was not yet at the other pole. "Whatever I want you to be?" he
said dazedly.
"Yes! Yes! I'll be honest--be anything!" she answered, breathless. She
moved a quick step nearer, and went on in an appealing, breaking voice:
"But don't you see, David? Don't you see? I love you! Take me!"
David was there. A wave of pain, of self-shame, of infinite regret,
swept through him. For a moment, while he tried to get hold of himself,
he looked down into the quivering, passionate, tear-lit face; then he
took the hands outstretched to him.
"Kate," he said imploringly, "I'm so sorry--so sorry! Forget me. I am
nobody--nothing."
"I love you!"
"Think how poor I am, how far down."
"I love you!"
The low tensity of that iterated cry shamed out of existence all
evasive reasons--drove David straight to what he thought his uttermost
answer. "Forgive me," he said, sick with loathing of himself. "But
you've forced me to say it.... I don't love you."
"I love you!"
She had paled at his words, and her cry was only a whispered gasp; but
her fixed upward gaze, passionate, appealing, mandatory, did not waver
an instant. David had but one word left--and that, he had thought, was
to be forever unspoken. But it had to be spoken now. After a moment, in
which her face seemed to swim before him, he said, huskily:
"I love someone else."
She drew suddenly back, there was a sharp indrawing of the breath, the
face hardened, the eyes above the fur neckpiece gleamed fiercely.
"Who?"
He shook his head.
"Who?"
"I cannot say."
The eyes narrowed to slits, and she looked him through as on the day she
had guessed he was just from prison--only now her intuition was
quickened a hundred fold. They stood motionless a few seconds, he trying
to parry her instinct; then from her came a low, sharp "A-a-h!" and,
after a second, "So it's her!"
He shivered. There was another moment of tense silence. Then she said,
abruptly:
"It's Miss Chambers?"
He did not move an eyelash.
"You love Miss Chambers!" she announced decisively.
Her hands clenched. "I hate her! Why shouldn't she stay in her own
world! Why should she come mixing in my affairs! Oh! I could----!" She
finished with a tensing of her whole figure.
She glared silently at David for a moment; then a harsh, mocking laugh
broke from her.
"So, you're in love with Miss Chambers! Miss Chambers--a janitor. What a
lovely match! Of course you've told her, and she's said yes!"
"I shall never tell her," David said quietly.
The bitterness and mockery began to fade slowly from her face, and
meditation came in their stead; and when she spoke again her tone was
the tone of argument. "Don't you know that she's far, far above you?
You're a fool to think of her! Why, you can never get her--never! You
see that, don't you?"
"Yes." He raised a peremptory, entreating hand. "Please!--let's not
speak of her."
Her whole body quickened. "After her, do you like any woman better than
me?" she demanded.
He shook his head. "No."
"She's out of the question for you--she doesn't live!" She crept slowly
toward David, her eyes burning into his. "There's no one between us,"
she said in a low, choked voice. Then her voice blazed up, her words
rushed out. "You do not want me now, but you will! I'll make you love
me. I'll be anything you like--I'll be honest!--I'll work! Yes, yes,
I'll make you love me, David!"
Her hands had clutched his, and she now held up her quivering face.
"I'm going to be honest for your sake, David. Kiss me!"
David was agonised with the pang of her tragedy, with the shame of his
own great part in it. "Forgive me," he whispered huskily; and he stooped
and pressed his lips to hers.
She gave a little cry and flung her arms about his neck and held him
tight. Then breathing against his cheek, "You'll love me yet, David!"
she abruptly withdrew her arms, and the next moment was out of the
room.