Chapter IXMichael awoke in the hospital with a bandage around his head and a stinging pain in his shoulder whenever he tried to move.Back in his inner consciousness there sounded the last words he heard before he fell, but he could not connect them with anything at first:“Hit him again, Sam!”Those were the words. What did they mean? Had he heard them or merely dreamed them? And where was he?A glance about the long room with its rows of white beds each with an occupant answered his question. He closed his eyes again to be away from all those other eyes and think.Sam! He had been looking for Sam. Had Sam then come at last? Had Sam hit him? Had Sam recognized him? Or was it another Sam?But there was something queer the matter with his head, and he could not think. He put up his right arm to feel the bandage and the pain in his shoulder stung again. Somehow to his feverish fancy it seemed the sting of Mrs. Endicott’s words to him. He dropped his hand feebly and the nurse gave him something in a spoon. Then half dreaming he fell asleep, with a vision of Starr’s face as he had seen her last.Three weeks he lay upon that narrow white bed, and learned to face the battalion of eyes from the other narrow beds around him; learned to distinguish the quiet sounds of the marble lined room from the rumble of the unknown city without; and when the rumble was the loudest his heart ached with the thought of the alley and all the horrible sights and sounds that seemed written in letters of fire across his spirit.He learned to look upon the quiet monotonous world of ministrations as a haven from the world outside into which he must presently go; and in his weakened condition he shrank from the new life. It seemed to be so filled with disappointments and burdens of sorrow.But one night a man in his ward died and was carried, silent and covered from the room. Some of his last moaning utterances had reached the ears of his fellow sufferers with a swift vision of his life and his home, and his mortal agony for the past, now that he was leaving it all.That night Michael could not sleep, for the court and the alley, and the whole of sunken humanity were pressing upon his heart. It seemed to be his burden that he must give up all his life’s hopes to bear. And there he had it out with himself and accepted whatever should come to be his duty.Meantime the wound on his head was healed, the golden halo had covered the scar, and the cut in his shoulder, which had been only a flesh, wound, was doing nicely. Michael, was allowed to sit up, and then to be about the room for a day or two.It was in those days of his sitting up when the sun which crept in for an hour a day reached and touched to flame his wonderful hair, that the other men of the ward began to notice him. He seemed to them all as somehow set apart from the rest; one who was lifted above what held them down to sin and earth. His countenance spoke of strength and self-control, the two things that many of those men lacked, either through constant sinning or through constant fighting with poverty and trouble, and so, as he began to get about they sent for him to come to their bedsides, and as they talked one and another of them poured out his separate tale of sorrow and woe, till Michael felt he could bear no more. He longed for power, great power to help; power to put these wretched men on their feet again to lead a new life, power to crush some of the demons in human form who were grinding them down to earth. Oh! for money and knowledge and authority!Here was a man who had lost both legs in a defective machine he was running in a factory. He was a skilled workman and had a wife and three little ones. But he was useless now at his trade. No one wanted a man with no legs. He might better be dead. Damages? No, there was no hope of that. He had accepted three hundred dollars to sign a release. He had to. His wife and children were starving and they must have the money then or perish. There was no other way. Besides, what hope had he in fighting a great corporation? He was a poor man, a stranger in this country, with no friends. The company had plenty who were willing to swear it was the man’s own fault.Yonder was another who had tried to asphyxiate himself by turning on the gas in his wretched little boarding-house room because he had lost his position on account of ill health, and the firm wished to put a younger man in his place. He had almost succeeded in taking himself out of this life.Next him was one, horribly burned by molten metal which he had been compelled to carry without adequate precautions, because it was a cheaper method of handling the stuff and men cost less than machinery. You could always get more men.The man across from him was wasted away from insufficient food. He had been out of work for months, and what little money he could pick up in odd jobs had gone mostly to his wife and children.And so it was throughout the ward. On almost every life sin,—somebody’s sin,—had left its mark. There were one or two cheery souls who, though poor, were blest with friends and a home of some kind and were looking forward to a speedy restoration; but these were the exception. Nearly all the others blamed someone else for their unhappy condition and in nearly every case someone else was undoubtedly to blame, even though in most cases each individual had been also somewhat responsible.All this Michael gradually learned, as he began his practical study of sociology. As he learned story after story, and began to formulate the facts of each he came to three conclusions: First, that there was not room enough in the city for these people to have a fair chance at the great and beautiful things of life. Second, that the people of the cities who had the good things were getting them all for themselves and cared not a straw whether the others went without. Third, that somebody ought to be doing something about it, and why not he?Of course it was absurd for a mere boy just out of college, with scarcely a cent to his name—and not a whole name to call his own—to think of attempting to attack the great problem of the people single-handed; but still he felt he was called to do it, and he meant to try.He hadn’t an idea at this time whether anybody else had seen it just this way or not. He had read a little of city missions, and charitable enterprises, but they had scarcely reached his inner consciousness. His impression gathered from such desultory reading had been that the effort in that direction was sporadic and ineffective. And so, in his gigantic ignorance and egotism, yet with his exquisite sensitiveness to the inward call, Michael henceforth set himself to espouse the cause of the People.Was he not one of them? Had he not been born there that he might be one of them, and know what they had to suffer? Were they not his kindred so far as he had any kindred? Had he not been educated and brought into contact with higher things that he might know what these other human souls might be if they had the opportunity? If he had known a little more about the subject he would have added “and if theywould.” But he did not; he supposed all souls were as willing to be uplifted as he had been.Michael went out from the hospital feeling that his life work was before him. The solemn pledge he had taken as a little child to return and help his former companions became a voluntary pledge of his young manhood. He knew very little indeed about the matter, but he felt much, and he was determined to do, wherever the way opened. He had no doubt but that the way would open.“Now young man, take care of yourself,” said the doctor in parting from his patient a few days later, “and for the land’s sake keep away from back alleys at night. When you know a little more about New York you’ll learn that it’s best to keep just as far away from such places as possible. Don’t go fooling around under the impression that you can convert any of those blackguards. They need to be blown up, every one of them, and the place obliterated. Mind, I say, keep away from them.”Michael smiled and thanked the doctor, and walked unsteadily down the hospital steps on feet that were strangely wobbly for him. But Michael did not intend to obey the doctor. He had been turning the matter over in his mind and he had a plan. And that very night about ten o’clock he went back to the alley.Old Sal was sitting on her doorstep a little more intoxicated than the last time, and the young man’s sudden appearance by her side startled her into an Irish howl.“The saints presarve us!” she cried tottering to her feet. “He’s cum back to us agin, sure he has! There’s no killin’ him! He’s an angel shure. B’ys rin! bate it! bate it! The angel’s here agin!”There was a sound of scurrying feet and the place seemed to suddenly clear of the children that had been under foot. One or two scowling men, or curiously apathetic women in whose eyes the light of life had died and been left unburied, peered from dark doorways.Michael stood quietly until the howling of Sal had subsided, and then he spoke in a clear tone.“Can you tell if Sam has been around here tonight? Is he anywhere near here now?”There was no answer for a minute but some one growled out the information that he might and then he might not have been. Some one else said he had just gone away but they didn’t know where. Michael perceived that it was a good deal as it had been before.“I have brought a message for him, a letter,” he said, and he spoke so that anyone near-by might hear. “Will you give it to him when he comes. He will want to see it, I am sure. It is important. I think he will be glad to get it. It contains good news about an old friend of his.”He held out the letter courteously to old Sal, and she looked down at its white crispness as though it had been a message from the lower regions sent to call her to judgment. A letter, white, square-cornered and clean, with clear, firm inscription, had never come within her gaze before. Old Sal had never learned to read. The writing meant nothing to her, but the whole letter represented a mystic communication from another world.Instinctively the neighbors gathered nearer to look at the letter, and Sal, seeing herself the centre of observation, reached forward a dirty hand wrapped in a corner of her apron, and took the envelope as though it had been hot, eyeing it all the while fearfully.Then with his easy bow and touching his hat to her as though she had been a queen, Michael turned and walked away out of the alley.Old Sal stood watching him, a kind of wistful wonder in her bleary eyes. No gentleman had ever tipped his hat to her, and no man had ever done her reverence. From her little childhood she had been brought up to forfeit the respect of men. Perhaps it had never entered her dull mind before that she might have been aught but what she was; and that men might have given her honor.The neighbors too were awed for the moment and stood watching in silence, till when Michael turned the corner out of sight, Sal exclaimed:“Now that’s the angel, shure! No gintlemin would iver uv tipped his ’at to the loikes of Sal. Saints presarve us! That we should hev an angel in this alley!”When Michael reached his lodging he found that he was trembling so from weakness and excitement that he could scarcely drag himself up the three flights to his room. So had his splendid strength been reduced by trouble and the fever that came with his wounds.He lay down weakly and tried to think. Now he had done his best to find Sam. If Sam did not come in answer to his letter he must wait until he found him. He would not give up. So he fell asleep with the burden on his heart.The letter was as follows:Dear Sam:You can’t have forgotten Mikky who slept with you in the boiler room, and with whom you shared your crusts. You remember I promised when I went away to college I would come back and try to make things better for you all? And now I have come and I am anxious to find the fellows and see what we can do together to make life better in the old alley and make up for some of the hard times when we were children. I have been down to the alley but can get no trace of you. I spent the best part of one night hunting you and then a slight accident put me in the hospital for a few days, but I am well now and am anxious to find you all. I want to talk over old times, and find out where Buck and Jim are; and hear all about Janie and little Bobs.I am going to leave this letter with Aunt Sally, hoping she will give it to you. I have given my address below and should be glad to have you come and see me at my room, or if you would prefer I will meet you wherever you say, and we will go together and have something to eat to celebrate.Hoping to hear from you very soon, I am as always,Your brother and friend,MIKKY.“Address, Michael Endicott,No —— West 23rd St.”A few days later a begrimed envelope addressed in pencil was brought to the door by the postman. Michael with sinking heart opened it. It read:MiKY ef yo be reely hym cum to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I wunt be thar.SAM.Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly’s corner. How memory stirred at the words. Kelly’s corner was beyond the first turn of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley, and had no outlet except through Kelly’s saloon. Only the “gang” knew the name, “Kelly’s Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only a sort of pocket or hiding place so entitled by Buck for his own and “de kids” private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he would have kept away from Kelly’s corner, for once in there with enemies, and alone, no policeman’s club, nor hospital ambulance would ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly’s corner never got into the newspapers.Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly dear to Michael’s mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter, “Don’t bring no one with you. If you do, I won’t be there,” were sufficient to make him wise.Yet Michael never so much as thought of not keeping the appointment. His business was to find Sam, and it mattered as little to him now that danger stood in the way as it had the day when he flung his neglected little body in front of Starr Endicott and saved her from the assassin’s bullet. He would go, of course, and go alone. Neither did it occur to him to take the ordinary precaution of leaving his name and whereabouts at the police station to be searched for in case he did not turn up in reasonable time. It was all in the day’s work and Michael thought no more about the possible peril he was facing than he had thought of broken limbs and bloody noses the last hour before a football scrimmage.There was something else in the letter that interested Michael and stirred the old memories. That old whistle! Of course he had not forgotten that, although he had not used it much among his college companions. It was a strange, weird, penetrating sound, between a call and whistle. He and Buck had made it up between them. It was their old signal. When Michael went to college he had held it sacred as belonging strictly to his old friends, and never, unless by himself in the woods where none but the birds and the trees could hear, had he let its echoes ring. Sometimes he had flung it forth and startled the mocking birds, and once he had let it ring into the midst of his astonished comrades in Florida when he was hidden from their view and they knew not who had made the sound. He tried it now softly, and then louder and louder, until with sudden fear he stopped lest his landlady should happen to come up that way and think him insane. But undoubtedly he could give the old signal.The next night at precisely ten o’clock Michael’s ringing step sounded down the alley; firm, decisive, secure. Such assurance must Daniel have worn as he faced the den of lions; and so went the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace.“It’s him! It’s the angel!” whispered old Sal who was watching. “Oi tould yez he’d come fer shure!”“He’s got his nerve with him!” murmured a girl with bold eyes and a coarse kind of beauty, as she drew further back into the shadow of the doorway. “He ain’t comin’ out again so pretty I guess. Not if Sam don’t like. Mebbe he ain’t comin’ out ’tall!”“Angels has ways, me darlint!” chuckled Sal. “He’ll come back al roight, ye’ll see!”On walked Michael, down the alley to the narrow opening that to the uninitiated was not an opening between the buildings at all, and slipped in the old way. He had thought it all out in the night. He was sure he knew just how far beyond Sal’s house it was; on into the fetid air of the close dark place, the air that struck him in the face like a hot, wet blanket as he kept on.It was very still all about when he reached the point known as Kelly’s corner. It had not been so as he remembered it. It had been the place of plots, the hatching of murders and robberies. Had it so changed that it was still tonight? He stood for an instant hesitating. Should he wait a while, or knock on some door? Would it be any use to call?But the instinct of the slums was upon him again, his birthright. It seemed to drop upon him from the atmosphere, a sort of stealthy patience. He would wait. Something would come. He must do as he had done with the birds of the forest when he wished to watch their habits. He must stand still unafraid and show that he was harmless.So he stood three, perhaps five minutes, then softly at first and gradually growing clearer, he gave the call that he had given years before, a little barefoot, hungry child in that very spot many times.The echo died away. There was nothing to make him know that a group of curious alley-dwellers huddled at the mouth of the trap in which he stood, watching with eyes accustomed to the darkness, to see what would happen; to block his escape if escape should be attempted.Then out of the silence a sigh seemed to come, and out of the shadows one shadow unfolded itself and came forward till it stood beside him. Still Michael did not stir; but softly, through, half-open lips, breathed the signal once more.Sibilant, rougher, with a hint of menace as it issued forth the signal was answered this time, and with a thrill of wonder the mantle of the old life fell upon Michael once more. He was Mikky—only grown more wise. Almost the old vernacular came to his tongue.“Hi! Sam! That you?”The figure in the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like the Mikky of old.“Wot yous want?” questioned a voice gruffly.“I want you, Sam. I want to see if you look as you used to, and I want to know about the boys. Can’t we go where there’s light and talk a little? I’ve been days hunting you. I’ve come back because I promised, you know. You expected me to come back some day, didn’t you, Sam?”Michael was surprised to find how eager he was for the answer to this question.“Aw, what ye givin’ us?” responded the suspicious Sam. “D’yous s’pose I b’lieve all that gag about yer comin’ here to he’p we’uns? Wot would a guy like yous wid all dem togs an’ all dem fine looks want wid us? Yous has got above us. Yous ain’t no good to us no more.”Sam scratched a match on his trousers and lit an old pipe that he held between his teeth, but as the match flared up and showed his own face a lowering brow, shifty eyes, a swarthy, unkempt visage, sullen and sly, the shifty eyes were not looking at the pipe but up at the face above him which shone out white and fine with its gold halo in the little gleam in the dark court. The watchers crowding at the opening of the passage saw his face, and almost fancied there were soft shadowy wings behind him. It was thus with old Sal’s help that Michael got his name again, “The Angel.” It was thus he became the “angel of the alley.”“Sam!” he said, and his voice was very gentle, although he was perfectly conscious that behind him there were two more shadows of men and more might be lurking in the dark corners. “Sam, if you remember me you will know I couldn’t forget; and I do care. I came back to find you. I’ve always meant to come, all the time I was in college. I’ve had it in mind to come back here and make some of the hard things easier for”—he hesitated, and—“forusall.”“How did yous figger yous was goin’ to do that?” Sam asked, his little shifty eyes narrowing on Michael, as he purposely struck another match to watch the effect of his words.Then Michael’s wonderful smile lit up his face, and Sam, however much he may have pretended to doubt, knew in his deepest heart that this was the same Mikky of old. There was no mistaking that smile.“I shall need you to help me in figuring that out, Sam. That’s why I was so anxious to find you.”A curious grunt from behind Michael warned him that the audience was being amused at the expense of Sam, Sam’s brows were lowering.“Humph!” he said, ungraciously striking a third match just in time to watch Michael’s face. “Where’s yer pile?”“What?”“Got the dough?”“Oh,” said Michael comprehendingly, “no, I haven’t got money, Sam. I’ve only my education.”“An’ wot good’s it, I’d like to know. Tell me those?”“So much good that I can’t tell it all in one short talk,” answered Michael steadily. “We’ll have to get better acquainted and then I hope I can make you understand how it has helped. Now tell me about the others. Where is Buck?”There was a dead silence.“It’s hard to say!” at last muttered Sam irresponsibly.“Don’t you know? Haven’t you any kind of an idea, Sam? I’d so like to hunt him up.”The question seemed to have produced a tensity in the very atmosphere, Michael felt it.“I might, an’ then agin’ I might not,” answered Sam in that tone of his that barred the way for further questions.“Couldn’t you and I find him and—and—help him, Sam? Aunt Sally said he was in trouble.”Another match was scratched and held close to his face while the narrow eyes of Sam seemed to pierce his very soul before Sam answered with an ugly laugh.“Oh, he don’t need none o’ your help, you bet. He’s lit out. You don’t need to worry ’bout Buck, he kin take car’ o’ hisse’f every time.”“But won’t he come back sometime?”“Can’t say. It’s hard to tell,” non-committally.“And Jim?” Michael’s voice was sad.“Jim, he’s doin’ time,” sullenly.“I’m sorry!” said Michael sadly, and a strange hush came about the dark group. Now why should this queer chap be sorry? No one else cared, unless it might be Jim, and Jim had got caught. It was nothing to them.“Now tell me about Janie—and little Bobs—” The questioner paused. His voice was very low.“Aw, cut it out!” snarled Sam irritably. “Don’t come any high strikes on their account. They’re dead an’ you can’t dig ’em up an’ weep over ’em. Hustle up an’ tell us wot yer wantin’ to do.”“Well, Sam,” said Michael trying to ignore the natural repulsion he felt at the last words of his one-time friend, “suppose you take lunch with me tomorrow at twelve. Then we can talk over things and get back old times. I will tell you all about my college life and you must tell me all you are doing.”Sam was silent from sheer astonishment. Take lunch! Never in his life had he been invited out to luncheon. Nor had he any desire for an invitation now.“Where?” he asked after a silence so long that Michael began to fear he was not going to answer at all.Michael named a place not far away. He had selected it that morning. It was clean, somewhat, yet not too clean. The fare was far from princely, but it would do, and the locality was none too respectable. Michael was enough of a slum child still to know that his guest would never go with him to a really respectable restaurant, moreover he would not have the wardrobe nor the manners. He waited Sam’s answer breathlessly.Sam gave a queer little laugh as if taken off his guard. The place named was so entirely harmless, to his mind, and the whole matter of the invitation took on the form of a great joke.“Well, I might,” he drawled indifferently. “I won’t make no promises, but I might, an’ then again I might not. It’s jes’ as it happens. Ef I ain’t there by twelve sharp you needn’t wait. Jes’ go ahead an’ eat. I wouldn’t want to spoil yer digestion fer my movements.”“I shall wait!” said Michael decidedly with his pleasant voice ringing clear with satisfaction. “You will come, Sam, I know you will. Good night!”And then he did a most extraordinary thing. He put out his hand, his clean, strong hand, warm and healthy and groping with the keenness of low, found the hardened grimy hand of his one-time companion, and gripped it in a hearty grasp.Sam started back with the instant suspicion of attack, and then stood shamedly still for an instant. The grip of that firm, strong hand, the touch of brotherhood, a touch such as had never come to his life before since he was a little child, completed the work that the smile had begun, and Sam knew that Mikky, the real Mikky was before him.Then Michael walked swiftly down that narrow passage,—at the opening of which, the human shadows scattered silently and fled, to watch from other furtive doorways,—down through the alley unmolested, and out into the street once more.“The saints presarve us! Wot did I tell yez?” whispered Sal. “It’s the angel all right fer shure.”“I wonder wot he done to Sam,” murmured the girl. “He’s got his nerve all right, he sure has. Ain’t he beautiful!”
Michael awoke in the hospital with a bandage around his head and a stinging pain in his shoulder whenever he tried to move.
Back in his inner consciousness there sounded the last words he heard before he fell, but he could not connect them with anything at first:
“Hit him again, Sam!”
Those were the words. What did they mean? Had he heard them or merely dreamed them? And where was he?
A glance about the long room with its rows of white beds each with an occupant answered his question. He closed his eyes again to be away from all those other eyes and think.
Sam! He had been looking for Sam. Had Sam then come at last? Had Sam hit him? Had Sam recognized him? Or was it another Sam?
But there was something queer the matter with his head, and he could not think. He put up his right arm to feel the bandage and the pain in his shoulder stung again. Somehow to his feverish fancy it seemed the sting of Mrs. Endicott’s words to him. He dropped his hand feebly and the nurse gave him something in a spoon. Then half dreaming he fell asleep, with a vision of Starr’s face as he had seen her last.
Three weeks he lay upon that narrow white bed, and learned to face the battalion of eyes from the other narrow beds around him; learned to distinguish the quiet sounds of the marble lined room from the rumble of the unknown city without; and when the rumble was the loudest his heart ached with the thought of the alley and all the horrible sights and sounds that seemed written in letters of fire across his spirit.
He learned to look upon the quiet monotonous world of ministrations as a haven from the world outside into which he must presently go; and in his weakened condition he shrank from the new life. It seemed to be so filled with disappointments and burdens of sorrow.
But one night a man in his ward died and was carried, silent and covered from the room. Some of his last moaning utterances had reached the ears of his fellow sufferers with a swift vision of his life and his home, and his mortal agony for the past, now that he was leaving it all.
That night Michael could not sleep, for the court and the alley, and the whole of sunken humanity were pressing upon his heart. It seemed to be his burden that he must give up all his life’s hopes to bear. And there he had it out with himself and accepted whatever should come to be his duty.
Meantime the wound on his head was healed, the golden halo had covered the scar, and the cut in his shoulder, which had been only a flesh, wound, was doing nicely. Michael, was allowed to sit up, and then to be about the room for a day or two.
It was in those days of his sitting up when the sun which crept in for an hour a day reached and touched to flame his wonderful hair, that the other men of the ward began to notice him. He seemed to them all as somehow set apart from the rest; one who was lifted above what held them down to sin and earth. His countenance spoke of strength and self-control, the two things that many of those men lacked, either through constant sinning or through constant fighting with poverty and trouble, and so, as he began to get about they sent for him to come to their bedsides, and as they talked one and another of them poured out his separate tale of sorrow and woe, till Michael felt he could bear no more. He longed for power, great power to help; power to put these wretched men on their feet again to lead a new life, power to crush some of the demons in human form who were grinding them down to earth. Oh! for money and knowledge and authority!
Here was a man who had lost both legs in a defective machine he was running in a factory. He was a skilled workman and had a wife and three little ones. But he was useless now at his trade. No one wanted a man with no legs. He might better be dead. Damages? No, there was no hope of that. He had accepted three hundred dollars to sign a release. He had to. His wife and children were starving and they must have the money then or perish. There was no other way. Besides, what hope had he in fighting a great corporation? He was a poor man, a stranger in this country, with no friends. The company had plenty who were willing to swear it was the man’s own fault.
Yonder was another who had tried to asphyxiate himself by turning on the gas in his wretched little boarding-house room because he had lost his position on account of ill health, and the firm wished to put a younger man in his place. He had almost succeeded in taking himself out of this life.
Next him was one, horribly burned by molten metal which he had been compelled to carry without adequate precautions, because it was a cheaper method of handling the stuff and men cost less than machinery. You could always get more men.
The man across from him was wasted away from insufficient food. He had been out of work for months, and what little money he could pick up in odd jobs had gone mostly to his wife and children.
And so it was throughout the ward. On almost every life sin,—somebody’s sin,—had left its mark. There were one or two cheery souls who, though poor, were blest with friends and a home of some kind and were looking forward to a speedy restoration; but these were the exception. Nearly all the others blamed someone else for their unhappy condition and in nearly every case someone else was undoubtedly to blame, even though in most cases each individual had been also somewhat responsible.
All this Michael gradually learned, as he began his practical study of sociology. As he learned story after story, and began to formulate the facts of each he came to three conclusions: First, that there was not room enough in the city for these people to have a fair chance at the great and beautiful things of life. Second, that the people of the cities who had the good things were getting them all for themselves and cared not a straw whether the others went without. Third, that somebody ought to be doing something about it, and why not he?
Of course it was absurd for a mere boy just out of college, with scarcely a cent to his name—and not a whole name to call his own—to think of attempting to attack the great problem of the people single-handed; but still he felt he was called to do it, and he meant to try.
He hadn’t an idea at this time whether anybody else had seen it just this way or not. He had read a little of city missions, and charitable enterprises, but they had scarcely reached his inner consciousness. His impression gathered from such desultory reading had been that the effort in that direction was sporadic and ineffective. And so, in his gigantic ignorance and egotism, yet with his exquisite sensitiveness to the inward call, Michael henceforth set himself to espouse the cause of the People.
Was he not one of them? Had he not been born there that he might be one of them, and know what they had to suffer? Were they not his kindred so far as he had any kindred? Had he not been educated and brought into contact with higher things that he might know what these other human souls might be if they had the opportunity? If he had known a little more about the subject he would have added “and if theywould.” But he did not; he supposed all souls were as willing to be uplifted as he had been.
Michael went out from the hospital feeling that his life work was before him. The solemn pledge he had taken as a little child to return and help his former companions became a voluntary pledge of his young manhood. He knew very little indeed about the matter, but he felt much, and he was determined to do, wherever the way opened. He had no doubt but that the way would open.
“Now young man, take care of yourself,” said the doctor in parting from his patient a few days later, “and for the land’s sake keep away from back alleys at night. When you know a little more about New York you’ll learn that it’s best to keep just as far away from such places as possible. Don’t go fooling around under the impression that you can convert any of those blackguards. They need to be blown up, every one of them, and the place obliterated. Mind, I say, keep away from them.”
Michael smiled and thanked the doctor, and walked unsteadily down the hospital steps on feet that were strangely wobbly for him. But Michael did not intend to obey the doctor. He had been turning the matter over in his mind and he had a plan. And that very night about ten o’clock he went back to the alley.
Old Sal was sitting on her doorstep a little more intoxicated than the last time, and the young man’s sudden appearance by her side startled her into an Irish howl.
“The saints presarve us!” she cried tottering to her feet. “He’s cum back to us agin, sure he has! There’s no killin’ him! He’s an angel shure. B’ys rin! bate it! bate it! The angel’s here agin!”
There was a sound of scurrying feet and the place seemed to suddenly clear of the children that had been under foot. One or two scowling men, or curiously apathetic women in whose eyes the light of life had died and been left unburied, peered from dark doorways.
Michael stood quietly until the howling of Sal had subsided, and then he spoke in a clear tone.
“Can you tell if Sam has been around here tonight? Is he anywhere near here now?”
There was no answer for a minute but some one growled out the information that he might and then he might not have been. Some one else said he had just gone away but they didn’t know where. Michael perceived that it was a good deal as it had been before.
“I have brought a message for him, a letter,” he said, and he spoke so that anyone near-by might hear. “Will you give it to him when he comes. He will want to see it, I am sure. It is important. I think he will be glad to get it. It contains good news about an old friend of his.”
He held out the letter courteously to old Sal, and she looked down at its white crispness as though it had been a message from the lower regions sent to call her to judgment. A letter, white, square-cornered and clean, with clear, firm inscription, had never come within her gaze before. Old Sal had never learned to read. The writing meant nothing to her, but the whole letter represented a mystic communication from another world.
Instinctively the neighbors gathered nearer to look at the letter, and Sal, seeing herself the centre of observation, reached forward a dirty hand wrapped in a corner of her apron, and took the envelope as though it had been hot, eyeing it all the while fearfully.
Then with his easy bow and touching his hat to her as though she had been a queen, Michael turned and walked away out of the alley.
Old Sal stood watching him, a kind of wistful wonder in her bleary eyes. No gentleman had ever tipped his hat to her, and no man had ever done her reverence. From her little childhood she had been brought up to forfeit the respect of men. Perhaps it had never entered her dull mind before that she might have been aught but what she was; and that men might have given her honor.
The neighbors too were awed for the moment and stood watching in silence, till when Michael turned the corner out of sight, Sal exclaimed:
“Now that’s the angel, shure! No gintlemin would iver uv tipped his ’at to the loikes of Sal. Saints presarve us! That we should hev an angel in this alley!”
When Michael reached his lodging he found that he was trembling so from weakness and excitement that he could scarcely drag himself up the three flights to his room. So had his splendid strength been reduced by trouble and the fever that came with his wounds.
He lay down weakly and tried to think. Now he had done his best to find Sam. If Sam did not come in answer to his letter he must wait until he found him. He would not give up. So he fell asleep with the burden on his heart.
The letter was as follows:
Dear Sam:You can’t have forgotten Mikky who slept with you in the boiler room, and with whom you shared your crusts. You remember I promised when I went away to college I would come back and try to make things better for you all? And now I have come and I am anxious to find the fellows and see what we can do together to make life better in the old alley and make up for some of the hard times when we were children. I have been down to the alley but can get no trace of you. I spent the best part of one night hunting you and then a slight accident put me in the hospital for a few days, but I am well now and am anxious to find you all. I want to talk over old times, and find out where Buck and Jim are; and hear all about Janie and little Bobs.I am going to leave this letter with Aunt Sally, hoping she will give it to you. I have given my address below and should be glad to have you come and see me at my room, or if you would prefer I will meet you wherever you say, and we will go together and have something to eat to celebrate.Hoping to hear from you very soon, I am as always,
Your brother and friend,
MIKKY.
“Address, Michael Endicott,No —— West 23rd St.”
A few days later a begrimed envelope addressed in pencil was brought to the door by the postman. Michael with sinking heart opened it. It read:
MiKY ef yo be reely hym cum to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I wunt be thar.
SAM.
Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly’s corner. How memory stirred at the words. Kelly’s corner was beyond the first turn of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley, and had no outlet except through Kelly’s saloon. Only the “gang” knew the name, “Kelly’s Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only a sort of pocket or hiding place so entitled by Buck for his own and “de kids” private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he would have kept away from Kelly’s corner, for once in there with enemies, and alone, no policeman’s club, nor hospital ambulance would ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly’s corner never got into the newspapers.
Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly dear to Michael’s mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter, “Don’t bring no one with you. If you do, I won’t be there,” were sufficient to make him wise.
Yet Michael never so much as thought of not keeping the appointment. His business was to find Sam, and it mattered as little to him now that danger stood in the way as it had the day when he flung his neglected little body in front of Starr Endicott and saved her from the assassin’s bullet. He would go, of course, and go alone. Neither did it occur to him to take the ordinary precaution of leaving his name and whereabouts at the police station to be searched for in case he did not turn up in reasonable time. It was all in the day’s work and Michael thought no more about the possible peril he was facing than he had thought of broken limbs and bloody noses the last hour before a football scrimmage.
There was something else in the letter that interested Michael and stirred the old memories. That old whistle! Of course he had not forgotten that, although he had not used it much among his college companions. It was a strange, weird, penetrating sound, between a call and whistle. He and Buck had made it up between them. It was their old signal. When Michael went to college he had held it sacred as belonging strictly to his old friends, and never, unless by himself in the woods where none but the birds and the trees could hear, had he let its echoes ring. Sometimes he had flung it forth and startled the mocking birds, and once he had let it ring into the midst of his astonished comrades in Florida when he was hidden from their view and they knew not who had made the sound. He tried it now softly, and then louder and louder, until with sudden fear he stopped lest his landlady should happen to come up that way and think him insane. But undoubtedly he could give the old signal.
The next night at precisely ten o’clock Michael’s ringing step sounded down the alley; firm, decisive, secure. Such assurance must Daniel have worn as he faced the den of lions; and so went the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace.
“It’s him! It’s the angel!” whispered old Sal who was watching. “Oi tould yez he’d come fer shure!”
“He’s got his nerve with him!” murmured a girl with bold eyes and a coarse kind of beauty, as she drew further back into the shadow of the doorway. “He ain’t comin’ out again so pretty I guess. Not if Sam don’t like. Mebbe he ain’t comin’ out ’tall!”
“Angels has ways, me darlint!” chuckled Sal. “He’ll come back al roight, ye’ll see!”
On walked Michael, down the alley to the narrow opening that to the uninitiated was not an opening between the buildings at all, and slipped in the old way. He had thought it all out in the night. He was sure he knew just how far beyond Sal’s house it was; on into the fetid air of the close dark place, the air that struck him in the face like a hot, wet blanket as he kept on.
It was very still all about when he reached the point known as Kelly’s corner. It had not been so as he remembered it. It had been the place of plots, the hatching of murders and robberies. Had it so changed that it was still tonight? He stood for an instant hesitating. Should he wait a while, or knock on some door? Would it be any use to call?
But the instinct of the slums was upon him again, his birthright. It seemed to drop upon him from the atmosphere, a sort of stealthy patience. He would wait. Something would come. He must do as he had done with the birds of the forest when he wished to watch their habits. He must stand still unafraid and show that he was harmless.
So he stood three, perhaps five minutes, then softly at first and gradually growing clearer, he gave the call that he had given years before, a little barefoot, hungry child in that very spot many times.
The echo died away. There was nothing to make him know that a group of curious alley-dwellers huddled at the mouth of the trap in which he stood, watching with eyes accustomed to the darkness, to see what would happen; to block his escape if escape should be attempted.
Then out of the silence a sigh seemed to come, and out of the shadows one shadow unfolded itself and came forward till it stood beside him. Still Michael did not stir; but softly, through, half-open lips, breathed the signal once more.
Sibilant, rougher, with a hint of menace as it issued forth the signal was answered this time, and with a thrill of wonder the mantle of the old life fell upon Michael once more. He was Mikky—only grown more wise. Almost the old vernacular came to his tongue.
“Hi! Sam! That you?”
The figure in the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like the Mikky of old.
“Wot yous want?” questioned a voice gruffly.
“I want you, Sam. I want to see if you look as you used to, and I want to know about the boys. Can’t we go where there’s light and talk a little? I’ve been days hunting you. I’ve come back because I promised, you know. You expected me to come back some day, didn’t you, Sam?”
Michael was surprised to find how eager he was for the answer to this question.
“Aw, what ye givin’ us?” responded the suspicious Sam. “D’yous s’pose I b’lieve all that gag about yer comin’ here to he’p we’uns? Wot would a guy like yous wid all dem togs an’ all dem fine looks want wid us? Yous has got above us. Yous ain’t no good to us no more.”
Sam scratched a match on his trousers and lit an old pipe that he held between his teeth, but as the match flared up and showed his own face a lowering brow, shifty eyes, a swarthy, unkempt visage, sullen and sly, the shifty eyes were not looking at the pipe but up at the face above him which shone out white and fine with its gold halo in the little gleam in the dark court. The watchers crowding at the opening of the passage saw his face, and almost fancied there were soft shadowy wings behind him. It was thus with old Sal’s help that Michael got his name again, “The Angel.” It was thus he became the “angel of the alley.”
“Sam!” he said, and his voice was very gentle, although he was perfectly conscious that behind him there were two more shadows of men and more might be lurking in the dark corners. “Sam, if you remember me you will know I couldn’t forget; and I do care. I came back to find you. I’ve always meant to come, all the time I was in college. I’ve had it in mind to come back here and make some of the hard things easier for”—he hesitated, and—“forusall.”
“How did yous figger yous was goin’ to do that?” Sam asked, his little shifty eyes narrowing on Michael, as he purposely struck another match to watch the effect of his words.
Then Michael’s wonderful smile lit up his face, and Sam, however much he may have pretended to doubt, knew in his deepest heart that this was the same Mikky of old. There was no mistaking that smile.
“I shall need you to help me in figuring that out, Sam. That’s why I was so anxious to find you.”
A curious grunt from behind Michael warned him that the audience was being amused at the expense of Sam, Sam’s brows were lowering.
“Humph!” he said, ungraciously striking a third match just in time to watch Michael’s face. “Where’s yer pile?”
“What?”
“Got the dough?”
“Oh,” said Michael comprehendingly, “no, I haven’t got money, Sam. I’ve only my education.”
“An’ wot good’s it, I’d like to know. Tell me those?”
“So much good that I can’t tell it all in one short talk,” answered Michael steadily. “We’ll have to get better acquainted and then I hope I can make you understand how it has helped. Now tell me about the others. Where is Buck?”
There was a dead silence.
“It’s hard to say!” at last muttered Sam irresponsibly.
“Don’t you know? Haven’t you any kind of an idea, Sam? I’d so like to hunt him up.”
The question seemed to have produced a tensity in the very atmosphere, Michael felt it.
“I might, an’ then agin’ I might not,” answered Sam in that tone of his that barred the way for further questions.
“Couldn’t you and I find him and—and—help him, Sam? Aunt Sally said he was in trouble.”
Another match was scratched and held close to his face while the narrow eyes of Sam seemed to pierce his very soul before Sam answered with an ugly laugh.
“Oh, he don’t need none o’ your help, you bet. He’s lit out. You don’t need to worry ’bout Buck, he kin take car’ o’ hisse’f every time.”
“But won’t he come back sometime?”
“Can’t say. It’s hard to tell,” non-committally.
“And Jim?” Michael’s voice was sad.
“Jim, he’s doin’ time,” sullenly.
“I’m sorry!” said Michael sadly, and a strange hush came about the dark group. Now why should this queer chap be sorry? No one else cared, unless it might be Jim, and Jim had got caught. It was nothing to them.
“Now tell me about Janie—and little Bobs—” The questioner paused. His voice was very low.
“Aw, cut it out!” snarled Sam irritably. “Don’t come any high strikes on their account. They’re dead an’ you can’t dig ’em up an’ weep over ’em. Hustle up an’ tell us wot yer wantin’ to do.”
“Well, Sam,” said Michael trying to ignore the natural repulsion he felt at the last words of his one-time friend, “suppose you take lunch with me tomorrow at twelve. Then we can talk over things and get back old times. I will tell you all about my college life and you must tell me all you are doing.”
Sam was silent from sheer astonishment. Take lunch! Never in his life had he been invited out to luncheon. Nor had he any desire for an invitation now.
“Where?” he asked after a silence so long that Michael began to fear he was not going to answer at all.
Michael named a place not far away. He had selected it that morning. It was clean, somewhat, yet not too clean. The fare was far from princely, but it would do, and the locality was none too respectable. Michael was enough of a slum child still to know that his guest would never go with him to a really respectable restaurant, moreover he would not have the wardrobe nor the manners. He waited Sam’s answer breathlessly.
Sam gave a queer little laugh as if taken off his guard. The place named was so entirely harmless, to his mind, and the whole matter of the invitation took on the form of a great joke.
“Well, I might,” he drawled indifferently. “I won’t make no promises, but I might, an’ then again I might not. It’s jes’ as it happens. Ef I ain’t there by twelve sharp you needn’t wait. Jes’ go ahead an’ eat. I wouldn’t want to spoil yer digestion fer my movements.”
“I shall wait!” said Michael decidedly with his pleasant voice ringing clear with satisfaction. “You will come, Sam, I know you will. Good night!”
And then he did a most extraordinary thing. He put out his hand, his clean, strong hand, warm and healthy and groping with the keenness of low, found the hardened grimy hand of his one-time companion, and gripped it in a hearty grasp.
Sam started back with the instant suspicion of attack, and then stood shamedly still for an instant. The grip of that firm, strong hand, the touch of brotherhood, a touch such as had never come to his life before since he was a little child, completed the work that the smile had begun, and Sam knew that Mikky, the real Mikky was before him.
Then Michael walked swiftly down that narrow passage,—at the opening of which, the human shadows scattered silently and fled, to watch from other furtive doorways,—down through the alley unmolested, and out into the street once more.
“The saints presarve us! Wot did I tell yez?” whispered Sal. “It’s the angel all right fer shure.”
“I wonder wot he done to Sam,” murmured the girl. “He’s got his nerve all right, he sure has. Ain’t he beautiful!”