JIM
I used to think that it would have been better for Jim if he had never
been born. What the good bishop said of some children--that they were
not so much born into the world as they were damned into it--seemed true
of Jim, if ever it was true of any one. He had had a father, once, who
was kind to him, but it was long since. The one he called by that name
last had been sent to Sing Sing, to the lad's great relief, for a
midnight burglary, shortly after he married Jim's mother. His back hurt
yet when he thought of the evil days when he was around. If any one had
thought it worth while to teach Jim to pray, he would have prayed with
all his might that his father might never come out. But no one did, so
that he was spared that sin. I suppose that was what it would have been
called. I am free to confess that I would have joined Jim in sinning
with a right good will, even to the extent of speeding the benevolent
intentions of Providence in that direction--anyhow, until Jim should be
able to take care of himself. I mean with his fists. He was in a way of
learning that without long delay, for ever since he was a little shaver
he had had to fight his own way, and sometimes his mother's. He was
thirteen when I met him, and most of his time had been put in around the
Rag Gang's quarters, along First Avenue and the river front, where that
kind of learning was abundant and came cheap.
His mother drank. I do not know what made her do it--whether it was the
loss of the first husband, or getting the second, or both. It did not
seem important when she stood there, weak and wretched and humble, with
Jim. And as for my preaching to her, sitting in my easy-chair, well fed
and respectable, that would come near to being impertinence. So it
always struck me. Perhaps I was wrong. Anyway, it would have done her no
good. Too much harm had been done her already. She would disappear for
days, sometimes for weeks at a time, on her frequent sprees. Jim never
made any inquiries. On those occasions he kept aloof from us, and
paddled his own canoe, lest we should ask questions. It was when she had
come home sobered that we saw them always together. Now it was the rent,
and then again a few groceries. With such lifts as she got, sandwiched
in with much good advice, and by the aid of an odd job now and then,
Mrs. Kelly managed to keep a bit of a roof over her boy and herself,
down in the "village" on the river front. At least, Jim had a place to
sleep. Until, one day, our visitor reported that she was gone for
good--she and the boy. They were both gone,--nobody in the neighborhood
knew or cared where,--and the room was vacant. Except that they had not
been dispossessed, we could learn nothing. Jim was not found, and in the
press of many things the Kellys were forgotten. Once or twice his
patient, watchful eyes, that seemed to be always trying to understand
something to which he had not found the key, haunted me at my office;
but at last I forgot about them too.
Some months passed. It was winter. A girl, who had been one of our
cares, had been taken to the city hospital to die, and our visitor went
there to see and comfort her. She was hastening down the long aisle
between the two rows of beds, when she felt something tugging feebly at
the sleeve of her coat. Looking round, she saw on the pillow of the bed
she had just passed the face of Jim's mother.
"Why, Mrs. Kelly!" she exclaimed, and went to her. "Where--?" But the
question that rose to her lips was never spoken. One glance was enough
to show that her time was very short, and she was not deceived. The
nurse supplied the facts briefly in a whisper. She had been picked up
in the street, drunk or sick--the diagnosis was not clearly made out at
the time, but her record was against her. She lay a day or two in a
police cell, and by the time it was clear that it was not rum this time,
the mischief was done. Probably it would have been done anyhow. The
woman was worn out. What now lay on the hospital cot was a mere wreck of
her, powerless to move or speak. She could only plead with her large,
sad eyes. As she tried to make them say that which was in her soul, two
big tears rolled slowly down the wan cheeks and fell on the coarse
sheet. The visitor understood. What woman would not?
"Jim?" she said, and the light of joy and understanding came into the
yearning eyes. She nodded ever so feebly, and the hand that rested in
her friend's twitched and trembled in the effort to grasp hers.
"I will find him. It is all right. Now, you be quite happy. I will bring
him here."
The white face settled back on the pillow, and the weary eyes closed
with a little sigh of contentment very strange in that place. When the
visitor passed her cot ten minutes later, she was asleep, with a smile
on her lips.
It proved not so easy a matter to find Jim. We came upon his track in
his old haunts after a while, only to lose it again and again. It was
clear that he was around, but it seemed almost as if he were purposely
dodging us; and in fact that proved to have been the case when at last,
after a hunt of weary days and nights through the neighborhood, he was
brought in. Ragged, pale, and pinched by hunger, we saw him with a shock
of remorse for having let him drift so long. His story was simple
enough. When his mother failed to come back, and, the rent coming due,
the door of what had been home to him, even such as it was, was closed
upon him, he took to the street. He slept in hallways and with the gang
among the docks, never going far from the "village" lest he should miss
news of his mother coming back. The cold nights came, and he shivered
often in his burrows; but he never relaxed his watch. All the time his
mother lay dying less than half a dozen blocks away, but there was no
one to tell him. Had any one done so, it is not likely that the guard
would have let him through the gate, as he looked. Seven weeks he had
spent in the streets when he heard that he was wanted. The other boys
told him that it was the "cruelty" man sure; and then began the game of
hide-and-seek that tried our patience and wore on his mother, sinking
rapidly now, but that eventually turned up Jim.
[Illustration: "'Oh, mother! You were gone so long!'"]
We took him up to the hospital, and into the ward where his mother
lay. Away off at the farther end of the room, he knew her, the last in
the row, and ran straight to her before we could stop him, and fell on
her neck.
"Mother!" we heard him say, while he hugged her, with his head on her
pillow. "Mother, why don't you speak to me? I am all right--I am."
He raised his head and looked at her. Happy tears ran down the thin face
turned to his. He took her in his arms again.
"I am all right, mother; honest, I am. Don't you cry. I couldn't keep
the rooms, mother! They took everything, only the deed to father's
grave. I kept that."
He dug in the pocket of his old jacket, and brought out a piece of
paper, carefully wrapped in many layers of rags and newspaper that hung
in dirty tatters.
"Here it is. Everything else is gone. But it is all right. I've got you,
and I am here. Oh, mother! You were gone so long!"
Longer--poor Jim--the parting that was even then adding another to the
mysteries that had vexed my soul concerning you. Happiness at last had
broken the weary heart. But if it added one, it dispelled another: I
knew then that I erred, Jim, when I thought it were better if you had
never been born!