HOPE AND DEJECTION
A week or two later Rogers cut out all qualifying words and said from
his heart, "I'm glad you know!" He and David quickly became comrades;
and many an hour they sat in the room behind the office talking of life,
of philosophy, of books. David now learned that Rogers had done a large
part of his really wide reading while in prison; and he now understood
Rogers's frequent mispronunciation--Rogers had acquired his less common
words entirely from reading, and never having heard them spoken, and
lacking such fundamentals of education as rules of pronunciation, he had
for fifteen years been pronouncing his new words as seemed to him
proper.
David was surprised to find that Rogers, for all his occasional bitter
flashes, was an optimist. He often marvelled how Rogers had retained
this hopefulness for the world's future; he could explain it only by a
great natural soundness in the man. Rogers believed the world was
marching forward, and he often said, his eyes illumined with belief:
"The time is coming, Aldrich--I shall not see it, and you may not, but
it's coming--when there will be no human waste, when the world will have
learned the economy of men!"
Frequently they discussed society's treatment of the criminal, and
David learned that Rogers burned with an indignation as great as his
own. If ever Rogers's obsessing fear should be fulfilled, if he should
be found out, then his one desire, a desire always with him, was to
speak out his bitter accusation in the world's face.
One warm, exuberant Sunday toward the end of February, they walked
northward through Riverside Park, the broad, glinting Hudson at their
left. When they reached the height crowned by Grant's tomb, Rogers, who
had been silent for several minutes, now and then slipping meditative
glances at David, laid a hand on David's arm and brought him to a pause.
"Look across yonder," he whispered, pointing to the Palisades that
lifted their mighty shoulders from the Hudson's farther edge.
"Wonderful, aren't they," said David, letting his eyes travel northward
along the giant wall till it dimmed away.
"Yes--but I didn't mean the view."
Rogers drew nearer, and went on in a whisper, while the crowd of Sunday
promenaders sauntered by their backs:
"I told you I saw many big business opportunities, and that I had to let
them all pass. Over there is one I did not let pass. Several years ago I
saw that some of the people who were being crowded off Manhattan island
would in the future live over there. The land was cheap then; I saw it
would some day be immensely valuable. After a great deal of
manoeuvring, in which Mr. Hoffman helped me, I secured an option for
four years on five pieces of ground that lie together. A few months ago
I renewed the option for three more years; each time I paid the owners
a thousand dollars for the option. Under its terms, I guarantee them a
big price, and they are bound to sell the land only through me. So you
see I am, in effect, the head of a small land syndicate. Over there is
my big venture--my big hope."
"And has the development you expected come?"
"It is coming. I have learned that a big company is buying all the land
over there it can get hold of. They're going to establish a new suburb.
They're buying secretly and through several agents; they want to keep
the different holders from guessing what's up, so they can get the land
at their own price. Well, for my land they'll have to pay me _my_
price!"
That evening they called on Kate Morgan. Once, shortly after that first
dinner together in the Pan-American Café, when David had dropped in to
see her he had found Rogers there, and he had discovered on Rogers's
controlled face a look he thought might betoken more than a commonplace
interest. Since then Rogers had often called, and that which David had
at first seen as a possibility he now saw developing toward a fact.
Old Jimmie was sleeping off the effects of a "loan" in a back room, so
they had Kate and the little parlour to themselves. Kate was in the
depth of the blues. David asked her what was the matter.
"Soap!" she cried fiercely. "My life's nothing but soap. It's 'That
kind's nine cents for a box of three cakes, ma'am. Three boxes?
Twenty-seven cents, please.' Or it's 'this variety is thirteen cents a
box--regular value twenty-five.' That's all. It's just that, and only
that, nine hours a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a
year--soap!--soap!--soap! Oh, I'm going soap-mad! I can't stand it! I
won't stand it!"
She gazed rebelliously at the two men.
"You must try something new," said David.
"And please, sir, what'll that be?" she demanded, sarcastically.
"Something that will use your energy and intelligence. How would you
like to be a stenographer? A few months in a business school would fit
you for a position. You would develop and advance rapidly, and soon have
a responsible place."
"I'd like that," she said, decidedly. "I've thought of it--I know I
could do the work. But how about the months while I study? I did have a
little money on hand, but I couldn't live and keep my father on that
soap-counter's five dollars, so I've had to use some of it every week.
It's all gone. I must live--and I'm broke. No, I've got to stick to the
soap!"
"Can't you and your father take two cheap rooms, sell most of your
furniture, and live on the proceeds while you study?" David persisted.
"Everything here was bought on instalment. It's about half paid for. If
sold, it'd bring about enough to pay off the balance. I might as well
just give it back to the dealer."
Rogers, who thus far had been silent, now said quietly: "You leave the
settling with the instalment dealer to me. I'll guarantee to get enough
out of him to keep you going till you're through school."
She laughed. "You'll be the first that ever got anything out of an
instalment dealer!"
"I'll get it," he assured her. "If I don't get quite enough from him,
I'll borrow the rest for you."
She looked at him sharply. "That means you'd loan it all. You're mighty
kind. But I could never pay it back--to take it would be the same as
stealing. I've never stolen from friends, and I'm not going to begin
now."
But in the end Rogers prevailed; and when they left it had been settled
that Kate was immediately to enter a business school.
Two days before--after Tom had gratefully refused a second better-paying
job--David had had a conference with the Mayor. "I been doin' my best
talkin' to get him to go," the Mayor said despairingly, "but he says I
was good to him when he needed a job and now he's never goin' to leave
me. Say, if I don't get rid o' him pretty soon, I got to start my own
dish factory. And here's an interestin' point for you, friend: since
he's had them better offers he's been hintin' at a raise."
When David entered his room, after telling Rogers good night, he found
Tom, who had avoided him the night before and all the day, sitting far
down in the rocking-chair, wrapped in dejection. He understood the boy's
gloom, for he had suggested a plan to the Mayor.
Tom dropped his eyes when David came in, and answered David's "Hello
there," with only a mumble. But at length he looked guiltily up.
"Is dat job you was tellin' me about took yet?" he asked.
David tried to wear an innocent face. "Why? What's the matter?"
"De boss told me yesterday he was losin' money, dat he'd have to cut
down his force, an' dat he'd have to let me go."
"Yes?"
"I told him he'd been a friend to me when I was hard up, an' I was goin'
to stick by him now't he was up agin it. I said I was goin' to work for
him for nuttin'."
"Oh!" said David.
"But he wouldn't let me. So I'm fired. How about dat odder job?"
"I'm afraid it's taken, Tom."
David pulled a chair before the boy and for ten minutes spoke his best
persuasion in favour of entering school.
"Yes, de Mayor handed me out de same line o' talk. He told me what a lot
you'd done for me. He was right, too. An' he told me how much you wanted
me to go to school."
He looked steadily, silently, at David. "D'you really want me to go as
much as all dat, pard?"
"There's nothing I'd rather have you do."
"An' you won't miss de t'ree a week I been fetchin' in?"
"I don't think we'll miss it much."
There was an inward struggle. "Dere's nuttin' I'd not sooner do, pard,"
he said, huskily. "But since you want me to--all right."
The next morning he started to school. At the end of the day he informed
David that he was in a class "wid kids knee-high to a milk-bottle,"
that his teacher was "one o' dem t'inks-she-is beauts dat steps along
dainty so she won't break de eart'," and "de whole biz gives me de
bellyache." He was miserable for weeks--and so was his teacher--and so
were his class-mates. But he gradually became adjusted to school life,
and when some of the rudiments were fixed in his head, he began to make
rapid progress. He had become great friends with Helen Chambers, whom he
often saw at the Mission, and his desire to please her was another
incentive to succeed in school.
One day David had a note from Dr. Franklin inviting him to call at the
Mission, and a day or two later Helen explained the invitation. Dr.
Franklin had learned that David was living in the neighbourhood; knowing
that Helen had once been friends with him, he had spoken of David to
her; she had told of David's struggle and his purpose--and the
invitation was the consequence. Helen advised David to accept, and one
evening he called. The gray old man received him in such a spirit of
unobtrusive forgiveness, referred only vaguely and hastily to the theft,
praised him so sincerely for his struggle, and spoke so hopefully of the
future, that David could take none of it amiss. He had to like the man,
and be glad that such a one was Morton's successor.
When he left he gazed long at the glowing memorial window, which was now
restored. What resentment there continued in his heart was for the
moment swept out. He was glad that Morton's memory was clear--glad it
was his dishonour that kept the memory so.
All this time David worked hard upon his story--becoming closer friends
with Rogers, frequently seeing Kate, who was studying with all her
energy, occasionally meeting Dr. Franklin, and now and then walking with
Helen from the Mission to her car, or part of the way to her home. Most
of the time his belief in the story was strong, and he worked with
eagerness and with a sense that what he wrote had life and soul. But at
intervals depression threw him into its black pit, and all his
confidence, his strength of will, were required to drag himself out.
Several times Helen Chambers rescued him. Once she took him to visit her
Uncle Henry, whom she had told of David's struggle. The old man's genial
courtesy, and genuine interest in the book, were an inspiration for
days. And once she forced him to come to her home and read to her a part
of what he had written; and her eager praise lifted him again into the
sunlight of enthusiasm.
So, working hard, the winter softened into spring, the spring warmed
into summer, the summer sharpened into early autumn--and the book was
done. He immediately sent it, as he had promised, to Helen, who was then
at one of the family's country places. Three days afterward there came a
note from her. It told how the story had gripped her, and how it had
gripped her Uncle Henry, who was visiting them--how big it was just as a
story--how splendid it was in purpose; it told what a great promise the
book was for his future; and finally it told that she had sent the
manuscript to her publisher friend.
But the flames of enthusiasm enkindled by this note sank and died away;
and he was possessed by the soul-chilling reaction, the utter disbelief
in what one has done, that so often follows the completion of a
sustained imaginative task. His people were wooden, their talk wooden,
their action wooden, and the wires that were their vital force were
visible to the dullest eye. Helen, he told himself, had judged his work
with the leniency of a friend for a friend. Hers was not a critical
estimate. He knew that the publisher's answer, when it came after the
lapse of a month or two months, would be the formal return of his
manuscript. Success meant too much to him to be possible--his promotion
to more pleasant work, a rise in the world's opinion, the partial
repayment of his debt, a higher place in Helen's regard, the beginning
of his dreamed-of part in saving the human waste.
No, these things were not for him. He had failed too often with his pen
for success to come at last.