Ten days later he telephoned me while I was at supper to ask if I could
come to his room. I said: “What’s up?”
“The old guy’s boy is coming after him,” Sheener said. “He’s got the
shakes, waiting. I want you to come and help me take care of him.”
“When’s the boy coming?”
“Gets in at midnight to-night,” said Sheener.
I promised to make haste; and half an hour later I joined him in
Sheener’s room. Sheener let me in. Evans himself sat in something like a
stupor, on a chair by the bed. He was dressed in a cheap suit of
ready-made clothes, to which he lent a certain dignity. His cheeks were
shaved clean, his mustache was trimmed, his thin hair was plastered down
on his bony skull. The man stared straight before him, trembling and
quivering. He did not look toward me when I came in; and Sheener and I
sat down by the table and talked together in undertones.
“The boy’s really coming?” I asked.
Sheener said proudly: “I’m telling you.”
“You heard from him?”
“Got a wire the day he got my letter.”
“You’ve told Bum?”
“I told him right away. I had to do it. The old boy was sober by then,
and crazy for a shot of booze. That was Monday. He wanted to go out and
get pied; but when I told him about his boy, he begun to cry. And he
ain’t touched a drop since then.”
“You haven’t let him?”
“Sure I’d let him. But he wouldn’t. I always told you the class was
there. He says to me: ‘I can’t let my boy see me in this state, you
know. Have to straighten up a bit. I’ll need new clothes.’”
“I noticed his new suit.”
“Sure,” Sheener agreed. “I bought it for him.”
“Out of his savings?”
“He ain’t been saving much lately.”
“Sheener,” I asked, “how much does he owe you? For money loaned and
spent for him.”
Sheener said hotly: “He don’t owe me a cent.”
“I know. But how much have you spent on him?”
“If I hadn’t have give it to him, I’d have blowed it somehow. He needed
it.”
I guessed at a hundred dollars, at two hundred. Sheener would not tell
me. “I’m telling you, he’s my pal,” he said. “I’m not looking for
anything out of this.”
“If this millionaire son of his has any decency, he’ll make it up to
you.”
“He don’t know a thing about me,” said Sheener, “except my name. I’ve
just wrote as though I knowed the old guy, here in the house, see. Said
he was sick, and all.”
“And the boy gets in to-night?”
“Midnight,” said Sheener, and Evans, from his chair, echoed: “Midnight!”
Then asked with a certain stiff anxiety: “Do I look all right, Sheener?
Look all right to see my boy?”
“Say,” Sheener told him. “You look like the Prince of Wales.” He went
across to where the other sat and gripped him by the shoulder. “You
look like the king o’ the world.”
Old Evans brushed at his coat anxiously; his fingers picked and twisted;
and Sheener sat down on the bed beside him and began to soothe and
comfort the man as though he were a child.
V
The son was to arrive by way of Montreal, and at eleven o’clock we left
Sheener’s room for the station. There was a flower stand on the corner,
and Sheener bought a red carnation and fixed it in the old man’s
buttonhole. “That’s the way the boy’ll know him,” he told me. “They
ain’t seen each other for--since the boy was a kid.”
Evans accepted the attention querulously; he was trembling and feeble,
yet held his head high. We took the subway, reached the station, sat
down for a space in the waiting room.
But Evans was impatient; he wanted to be out in the train shed, and we
went out there and walked up and down before the gate. I noticed that he
was studying Sheener with some embarrassment in his eyes. Sheener was,
of course, an unprepossessing figure. Lean, swarthy, somewhat flashy of
dress, he looked what he was. He was my friend, of course, and I was
able to look beneath the exterior. But it seemed to me that sight of him
distressed Evans.
In the end the old man said, somewhat furtively: “I say, you know, I
want to meet my boy alone. You won’t mind standing back a bit when the
train comes in.”
“Sure,” Sheener told him. “We won’t get in the way. You’ll see. He’ll
pick you out in a minute, old man. Leave it to me.”
Evans nodded. “Quite so,” he said with some relief. “Quite so, to be
sure.”
So we waited. Waited till the train slid in at the end of the long train
shed. Sheener gripped the old man’s arm. “There he comes,” he said
sharply. “Take a brace, now. Stand right there, where he’ll spot you
when he comes out. Right there, bo.”
“You’ll step back a bit, eh, what?” Evans asked.
“Don’t worry about us,” Sheener told him. “Just you keep your eye
skinned for the boy. Good luck, bo.”
We left him standing there, a tall, gaunt, shaky figure. Sheener and I
drew back toward the stairs that lead to the elevated structure, and
watched from that vantage point. The train stopped, and the passengers
came into the station, at first in a trickle and then in a stream, with
porters hurrying before them, baggage laden.
The son was one of the first. He emerged from the gate, a tall chap, not
unlike his father. Stopped for a moment, casting his eyes about, and saw
the flower in the old man’s lapel. Leaped toward him hungrily.
They gripped hands, and we saw the son drop his hand on the father’s
shoulder. They stood there, hands still clasped, while the young man’s
porter waited in the background. We could hear the son’s eager
questions, hear the older man’s drawled replies. Saw them turn at last,
and heard the young man say: “Taxi!” The porter caught up the bag. The
taxi stand was at our left, and they came almost directly toward us.
As they approached, Sheener stepped forward, a cheap, somewhat
disreputable, figure. His hand was extended toward the younger man. The
son saw him, looked at him in some surprise, looked toward his father
inquiringly.
Evans saw Sheener too, and a red flush crept up his gaunt cheeks. He did
not pause, did not take Sheener’s extended hand; instead he looked the
newsboy through and through.
Sheener fell back to my side. They stalked past us, out to the taxi
stand.
I moved forward. I would have halted them, but Sheener caught my arm. I
said hotly: “But see here. He can’t throw you like that.”
Sheener brushed his sleeve across his eyes. “Hell,” he said huskily. “A
gent like him can’t let on that he knows a guy like me.”
I looked at Sheener, and I forgot old Evans and his son. I looked at
Sheener, and I caught his elbow and we turned away.
He had been quite right, of course, all the time. Blood will always
tell. You can’t keep a fast horse in a poor man’s stable. And a man is
always a man, in any guise.
If you still doubt, do as I did. Consider Sheener.