[2]Present, gratuity.
[2]Present, gratuity.
"What!" roared the boy. "Pay him! Tell him to go to hell!"
McGaw watched the boy as he stamped up and down the deck running his hands through his hair and wondered if he had a touch of sun. The mandarin's messenger still remained in an attitude of expectancy in the bow of thesampan. Suddenly the midshipman saw his superior officer rush to the side of theDirigoand throw a Mexican silver dollar at the Chinaman, who caught it with surprising dexterity.
"Tell him," shouted the boy to Yen, "to say to theerfuthat he could not find us, that we had gone away before he could deliver his message!"
The fat Chinaman prostrated himself in thesampan.
"He say allight," remarked Yen.
"Do you believe what he said?" demanded the boy threateningly of McGaw.
"Sure," said the midshipman, "that's right enough! That old friend of Yen's was out here again about an hour ago, snooping around, drunk as a lord. He'd been loading up onsamshuever since he went ashore. He says that Wu was killed over a month ago, that his head is on a temple gate five hundred miles north of here, and that the smoke over there is caused by burning brush on the hillsides. The rebellion is all over until next year. It's a great note for us, isn't it?"
But the boy made no reply. He was staring straight through McGaw out across the lake. Suddenly he stepped close to the midshipman and muttered quietly:
"Say, old man, for the sake of old times, can you forget all that?"
"Sure," gasped McGaw, convinced that his previous suspicions had been correct.
"Then forget it and get up steam!" said the boy, turning sharply on his heel.
The click of the anchor engine was followed by the throbbing of theDirigo'sscrew, but both the Rev. Theophilus and wife supposed them to be the whirr of an unseen electric fan. Saki's dinner was exceptionally good, and there was a cold bottle of vichy for the missionary, who lingered a long time after the coffee to tell about the ravages of the cholera the year before. When at last they ascended to the deck there was nothing to be seen of Chang-Yuan but a glare of tile roofs on the distant horizon.
"Bless me!" remarked the Rev. Theophilus, gazing stupidly at the coffee-colored waves about them. "What is the meaning of all this? Where are we going? I must go ashore. I have no time for pleasure sailing!"
"Certainly not!" echoed his wife. "Kindly return at once! Why, we are miles from Chang-Yuan!"
And then it was, according to McGaw, that the boy more than rose to the occasion and verified the prophecy of the Admiral, though under a somewhat different interpretation, that he would "make good," for, standing by Margaret's side, he saluted the missionary and with eyes straight to the front delivered himself of the following preposterous statement:
"I exceedingly regret that my orders do not permit me to exercise the discretion necessary to return as you request. The Admiral commanding the Asiatic squadronspecifically directed me to proceed at once to this place and rescue the Rev. Theophilus Newbegin and wife. I was given no option in the matter. I was torescueyou, that is all. I received no instructions as to what to do in the event that you preferred not to be rescued, and I interpret my orders to mean that I am to rescue you whether you like it or not. Everything will be done for your entire comfort and Saki has already prepared my stateroom for Mrs. Newbegin. I trust that you will not blame me for obeying my orders."
"Bless me!" stammered the Rev. Theophilus. "Dear me! I really do not know what to say! I am exceedingly disturbed. It seems to me like an unwarrantable interference—not on your part, of course, but on that of the Government. But," he added apologetically, "we cannot blame you for obeying your orders, can we, Henrietta?"
But Mrs. Newbegin's ordinarily vacuous face bore a new and radiant expression.
"I see the hand of Providence in this, Theophilus!" she said.
"Yes—yes!" he answered, wiping his forehead. "God moves in a mysterious way—in an astonishing way, I might say." He looked regretfully over his shoulder toward the fast-vanishing Chang-Yuan.
Margaret slipped her hand into his and laid her head on his arm. "I am so glad, uncle!" she whispered. He patted her cheek.
"Yes, yes, it is probably better this way," he sighed. "Henrietta, let us retire to the cabin and consider what has happened. My young friend, be assured we bear you no ill will for your involuntary action in this matter."
Four evenings later under the snapping stars of the midsummer heaven Margaret Wellington and Jack Russell sat side by side in two camp chairs on the bridge of theDirigo. The gunboat was sweeping round the great curve of the Yang-tse above Hankow and to starboard the pagodas of Wu-chang rose dimly through the lights of the city. Below in the hot cabin sat the Rev. Theophilus and his wife reading "The Spirit of Missions."
"And now," said the boy, as he drew her hand through his, "you are going to be happy forever and always. The world is full of wonderful things and nice, kind people who are trying to do good and yet have a jolly time while they are doing it. And you will have the dearest mother a girl ever had. How proud she'll be of you! Now promise to forgive me; you know why I did it! Do you suppose I'd have dared to do it if I hadn't?"
"Yes," she answered happily, "I knew why you did it and I forgive you, only, of course, it really was very wicked. But——"
The sentence was never finished—to the delight of the government pilot behind them.
"What do you think my uncle will say when we tell him?" she laughed.
"He'll say, 'Bless me! Dear me! I don't know!'" answered the boy, and they both giggled hysterically.
Abaft the black shadow of the smokestack Yen and the Shan-si man stood in silence watching the two on the bridge. The Shan-si man raised his arm once more in the direction of Wu-chang and made a joke.
"Above is Heaven's Hall!" said he. "Below are—the two most foolish things in all the world—a boy and a girl!"
"There is no essential incongruity between crime and culture."—Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying."
"There is no essential incongruity between crime and culture."
—Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying."
It was five o'clock, Sunday afternoon, and the slanting sunbeams had crawled across the bed and up the walls and vanished somehow into the ceiling when Voltaire McCartney came to himself, kicked off the patchwork quilt, elevated his torso upon one elbow and took an observation out of the dingy window. The prospect of the Palisades to the northwest was undimmed, for the wind was blowing fresh from the sea and the smoke from the glucose factory on the Jersey side was making straight up the river in a long, black horizontal bar, behind which the horizon glowed in a brilliant, translucent mass of cloud. McCartney swung his thin legs clear of the bed and fumbled with his left hand in the pocket of a plaid waistcoat dangling from the iron post. The act was unconscious, equivalent to the automatic groping for one's slippers which perchance the reader's own well-regulated feet perform on similar occasions. The pocket in question yielded a square of white tissue, which the fingers deftly folded, transferred to the other hand, and then filled with tobacco. Like others nourished upon stimulants and narcotics, McCartney awokeabsolutely, without a trace of drowsiness, nervously ready to do thenext thing, whatever that might chance to be. His first act was to pull on his shoes, the second to slip his suspenders over his rather narrow shoulders, and the third to light the cigarette. Then he sauntered across the room to the window sill, upon which slept profoundly a small tortoise-shell cat, and picked up a pocket volume, well worn, which he shook open at a point designated by a safety match. For several moments he devoured the page with his eyes, his hollow face filled with peculiar exaltation. Then he expelled a cloud of smoke sucked from the glowing end of his cigarette, tossed away the butt, and thrust the book into his hip pocket.
"O would there were a heaven to hear!O would there were a hell to fear!Ah, welcome fire, eternal fire,To burn forever and not tire!"Better Ixion's whirling wheel,And still at any cost to feel!Dear Son of God, in mercy giveMy soul to flames, but—let melive!"
"O would there were a heaven to hear!O would there were a hell to fear!Ah, welcome fire, eternal fire,To burn forever and not tire!
"Better Ixion's whirling wheel,And still at any cost to feel!Dear Son of God, in mercy giveMy soul to flames, but—let melive!"
He turned away from the window, and pale against the gaudy west his profile shone drawn and haggard. Restlessly he filched his pocket for another cigarette, and tossed himself wearily into a painted rocker. The cat awakened, elongated herself in a prodigious and voluptuous yawn of her whole body, dropped to the floor and leaped with a single spring into her master's lap. He stroked her sadly.
"Isabeau! My poor Isabeau! I envy you—creature perfect in symmetry, perfect in feeling!"
The cat rubbed her head against the buttons of his coat. McCartney leaned back his head. The little roomwas bare of ornament or of furniture other than the chair, save for a deal table at the foot of the bed, bearing a litter of newspapers and yellow pad paper.
"I am discouraged by the street,The pacing of monotonous feet!"
"I am discouraged by the street,The pacing of monotonous feet!"
murmured the man in the rocker. The light died out above the Palisades; the cat snuggled down between her master's legs.
"Dear Son of God, in mercy giveMy soul to flames, but let melive!"
"Dear Son of God, in mercy giveMy soul to flames, but let melive!"
he added softly. Then he lifted the cat gently to the floor, threw on a short, faded reefer coat, and opened the door.
"Well, Isabeau, it's time for us to go out and earn our supper!"
McCartney gazed solemnly down from the small rostrum upon which he was standing at the end of the saloon without so much as a smile in answer to the roar of appreciation with which his time-worn anecdote had been received.
"Dot's goot!" shouted an abdominal "Dutchman," pounding the table with his beer mug. "Gif us 'n odder!"
"Ya!" exclaimed hisconfrère. "Dot feller, he was a corker, eh?" He put up his hands and making a trumpet of them bawled at McCartney: "Here, kommen sie unt haf a glass bier mit us!"
Three teamsters, a card sharp, a porter, two cabbies, and a dozen unclassables nodded their heads and stamped,while the bartender passed up a foaming stein to the performer. McCartney blew off the froth, bowed with easy grace to the assembled company, and drank. Then he descended to the table occupied by the Germans.
"May you all have better luck than the gentleman in my story," he remarked. "But I for one shall go straight to the other place. Heaven for climate—hell for society, eh? Hoch der Kaiser!"
The Germans threw back their heads and laughed boisterously.
"Make that beer a sandwich, will you? Here, Bill, bring me a slice of cold beef and a cheese sandwich!"
The bartender opened a small ice chest and produced the desired edibles, to which variation in their offered hospitality the two interposed no objection, being in fact somewhat in awe of their intellectual, if not distinguished, guest. As McCartney ate he produced a handful of transparent dice.
"Ever see any dice like those?" he asked, rolling them across the wet table. The first German examined them with approval.
"Dose is pooty, eh?" he remarked to his neighbor. "I trow you for die Schnapps, eh?"
McCartney watched them covetously as they emptied the leathern shaker, solemnly counting the spots at the conclusion of each cast.
"Here, let me show you how," volunteered their guest. "Poker hands." He rattled the dice and poured them forth. They came up indiscriminately.
"Not so goot, eh?" commented the German. "I'll trow you. I'll trow ennyboty mitcleardice. Venn dey ain't loated I can trow mit ennyboty." He held them up to the light. "Dese is clear—goot."
"Three times for a dollar," said McCartney.
"So," answered the German. He threw carefully, and counted two sixes, an ace, a three, and a five. He left in the sixes and threw the others. This time he got an ace and two fives. Once more he put them back, but accomplished no better result.
"Now, I'll show you," said McCartney, and emptied the shaker. The dice tumbled upon the table to the tune of two aces, two deuces, and a five. He put back the deuces and the five and threw another ace, a three, and a five.
"I win," he remarked. "You don't know how!"
"Vat's dot? Don't know how, eh!" roared the other. "I trow you for fife dollars, see? Gif me dose leetle dice." He threw with a heavy bang that shook the table. This time he got two sixes, two aces, and a five, and put back the latter. Securing another ace he leaned back and took a heavy draught of beer. "Full house! Beat dat eef you can!"
McCartney tossed the dice carelessly upon the board for two fours, one ace, and two fives. To the amazement of the Germans, he left in the ace and returned the other four to the shaker. This time he got two more aces. His last throw gave him another ace and a five.
"Zum teuffel!" growled the German, thrusting his hand into his pocket and drawing forth a dirty wad of bills. "Here, take your money!" He handed McCartney six dollars.
"Kind sirs, good night," remarked McCartney, thrusting the bills into his waistcoat pocket and arising from his place. "I must betake me hence. Experience is the only teacher. Let me advise you never to play games of chance with strangers."
The two Germans stared at him stupidly.
"You don't understand? Permit me. You saw the dice were not loaded? Very good! You examined them? Very good again. Your powers of observation are uncultivated, merely. The stern mother of invention—that is to say necessity—has obeyed the law of evolution. Three of the dice in my pocket bear no even numbers. The information is well worth your six dollars. Again, good night."
"Betrüger!" cried the loser of the six dollars, arising heavily and upsetting his beer. "Dot feller skivinded us mit dice geloaded!Sheet! Sheet!"
They blundered toward the side entrance, while McCartney side-stepped into an adjacent portal. Long Acre Square gleamed from end to end. Above him an electric display, momentarily vanishing and reappearing, heralded the attributes of the cigar sacred to the Scottish bard. Peering through the haze generated by the countless lights a few tiny stars repaid diligent search. A scanty number of pedestrians was abroad. The pantheon of delights shone silent save for an occasional clanging car. The Germans passed in search of an officer, excitedly jabbering about the "sheet," their angry expressions reverberating along the concrete, fading gradually into the hum of the lower town.
Then slowly into view crept one of those anachronisms of the metropolis—a huge, shaggy horse slowly stalking northward, dragging a rickety express wagon whereon reposed a semisomnolent yokel. Hitched by its shafts to the tail of the wagon trailed a decrepit brougham (destined, probably, for country-depot service), behind this a debilitated Stanhope buggy, followed by a dogcart, a phaeton, a buckboard, with last of all ahoodless Victoria. This picturesquely mournful procession of vanished respectability staggered hesitatingly past our hero, who regarded it with vast amusement. To his fanciful imagination it appeared like the fleshless vertebræ of a sea serpent slowly writhing into the obscurity of the night. Occasionally one of the component dorsals would strike an inequality in the pavement and start upon a brief frolic of its own, swinging out of line at a tangent until hauled back into place again by the pull of the shaggy horse. Sometimes all started in different directions at one and the same time, and the semblance to a skeleton snake was heightened—even the ominous rattle was not wanting. The Victoria looked restful to McCartney, whose legs were always tired.
"Why should we fret that others ride?Perhaps dull care sits by their side,And leaves us foot-men free!"
"Why should we fret that others ride?Perhaps dull care sits by their side,And leaves us foot-men free!"
he hummed to himself, recollecting an old college glee.
"All the same that old bandbox looks not uncomfortable. How long is it since I have used a cushion! Poverty makes a poor bedfellow!"
As the last equipage swung by, McCartney took a few steps in the same direction and clambered in. He had become a "foot-man" in fact, but a very undignified and luxurious one, who lay back with his feet crossed against the box in front of him. Of all the lights on Broadway none glowed so comfortingly for McCartney as the tip of his cigarette.
"My prayer is answered," he remarked softly to himself. "Thus do I escape the 'monotonous feet.' Had I only Isabeau I should have attained the height of human happiness—to have dined, to smoke, to ride on cushionsunder the starlight, to have six dollars, and not to know where one is going—a plethora of gifts. So I can spare Isabeau for the nonce. Doubtless she would not particularly care for the delights of locomotion."
Thus Voltaire sailed northward, noticed only by solitary policemen and lonely wayfarers. Near Eightieth Street his eye caught the burning circle of a clock pointing at half-past nine, and he stretched himself and yawned again. They were passing the vestibule of an old church which contrasted quaintly with the more ambitious modern architecture of the neighborhood. From the interior floated out the gray unison of a hymn. McCartney swung himself to the ground and listened while the skeleton rattled up the avenue.
"Egad!" thought he, "yon prayerful folk are not troubled with my disorder. Hell is for them what Jersey City is for me—a vital reality."
A woman, her head shrouded in a worn gray shawl, approached timidly and stationed herself near the door. McCartney could see that she was weeping and that she had a baby in her arms. He grumbled a bit to himself at this business. It did not suit his fancy—his scheme. Having planned a continuation of this night of comedy so auspiciously begun, he disliked any incongruity.
"Broke?" he inquired without rising. The woman nodded.
"What's the matter?"
"Dan cleared out the flat and skipped yesterday afternoon. We've had nothing to eat—me and the kid—all day."
"Let's look at your hands."
The woman held out a thin, rough, red hand. McCartney gave it a glance and continued:
"What's your kid's name?"
"Catherine."
McCartney gazed at her intently.
"Look here, do you think those folks in there would help you?"
"I don't know. It's better than the Island."
"Don't try it," advised McCartney. "They'd think you were working some game on 'em. Leave this graft to me."
The woman started back, half frightened, but McCartney's smile reassured her.
"Here's yours on account." He handed her the five-dollar bill he had secured from the Germans. "Iknow how.Youdon't.Youneed it.Idon't." He waved aside her thanks. "Now go home, and, listen to me, don't take Dan back—he's no good."
The woman hurried away, and with her departure silence fell again.
McCartney seated himself upon the curb and lit still another cigarette, eying the door expectantly. Once he arose and dropped a piece of silver into the poorbox inside the porch, listening intently to the loud rattle it made in falling. It was clearly the sole occupant, for no answering clink came in response.
"Alas for the rarityOf Christian charityUnder the sun,"
"Alas for the rarityOf Christian charityUnder the sun,"
softly murmured McCartney.
"You will be lonely in there all by yourself, littleone. Here's a brother to keep you company," said he, pushing in another.
The hymn ceased and the congregation began to pass out. McCartney retired into the darkness of a corner, scrutinizing every face among the worshipers. Last of all came a little old man scuffling along with the aid of a cane. His snowy beard gave him an aspect singularly benign. McCartney laughed to himself.
"Grandpapa, I trust we shall become better acquainted," he remarked under his breath, as he followed the old fellow down the street.
The loud vibrations of the bell in the deserted rooms of the floor below brought no immediate response, and instead of a brighter blaze of hospitality, the light in the hall was hurriedly extinguished. McCartney only pressed his thumb to the round receptacle of the bell the more assiduously, repeating the process at varying intervals until the light again illumined the door. A shadow hesitated upon the lace curtain, then the door itself was slowly, doubtfully opened, and the old man shuffled into the vestibule, peering suspiciously through the iron fretwork. McCartney, without going too close—he knew well the dread of human eyes, face to face—looked nonchalantly up and down the street, realizing that he must give his quarry time to regain the self-possession this midnight visit had shattered. After a pause the bolt was shot and the door opened upon its chain.
"Was that you ringing? What do you want?"
"Yes, it was I who rang. I trust you'll excuse the lateness of my call. It's imperative for me to see you."
"Who are you? And what do you want to see me about?"
"My name is Blake. Blake of theDaily Dial. It is a personal matter."
"Don't know you. Don't know any Blake. Don't read theDial. What is the personal matter?"
"For God's sake, sir, let me speak with you! It's a matter of life and death. Don't deny me, sir. Hear me first."
The little old man closed the door a couple of inches.
"Want money, eh?"
"Help, sir. Only a word of sympathy. I've a dying child——"
"Can't you come round in the morning?"
"It will be too late then. I implore you to listen to me for only a few moments. I've been waiting two hours upon the sidewalk for you to return, and it's too late for me to go elsewhere."
The door opened sufficiently for the old man to thrust his face close to the crack and inspect his visitor from head to heels. Evidently McCartney's appearance and the manner of his speech had made an impression which was now struggling with prudence and common sense. The deacon, moreover, had a reputation to support. It would not do to turn an applicant away who might be in dire extremity—and who might go elsewhere and carry the tale with him.
"Won't a bed ticket do you, eh? And come in the morning?"
McCartney saw the vacillation in the other's mind.
"I'm sorry, but I must see you now, if at all. To-morrow might be too late."
The owner of the house closed the door, unslipped the chain and retreated inside the hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving the way free for his visitor to follow.McCartney entered, hat in hand, and shut the door behind him, catching at a glance the austerity of the furniture and walls. To him every inch of the Brussels carpet, the ponderous, polished walnut hatrack, the massive blue china stand with its lonely umbrella and stout bamboo cane, and the heavily framed oil copy of St. John spoke eloquently.
"I must ask your pardon again, sir, for disturbing you. But a man of your character, as you have no doubt discovered, must suffer for the sake of his reputation. I——"
McCartney swayed and seized a yellow-plushportièrefor support. In a moment he had regained control of himself—apparently.
"A touch of faintness. I haven't eaten since morning." He looked around for a chair. The old man made a show of concern.
"Nothing to eat! Dear me! Well, well! Come in and sit down. Perhaps I can find something."
Deacon Andrews led the way past the stairs and swung open the door to the dining room. It had a musty smell, just a hint of the prison pen at noon time, and McCartney shuddered. The old man disappeared into the darkness, struck a sulphur match, a fact noted by his guest, and with some difficulty lighted a gas jet in a grotesquely proportioned chandelier. The gas, which had blazed up, he turned down to half its original volume.
"There, sit down," said he, pointing to a mahogany chair shrouded in a ticking cover, and settled himself in another on the opposite side of a great desert of table. McCartney did as he was bidden, mentally tabulating the additional facts offered to his observation by the remainder of the room. There was evident the same barevastness as in the outer hall. Two more oils, one of mythological, the other of religious purport, balanced each other over the wings of a huge black carven sideboard. For the rest the yellow and brown wall paper repeated itself interminably into the shadow.
"Feel better?" asked the deacon.
"Yes, much," answered McCartney. "I'm used to going without food. The body can stand suffering better than the mind—and the heart."
"Let's try and fix up the body first," remarked the deacon, opening a compartment beneath the sideboard. "Here, try some of these," and he placed a plate of water biscuits upon the table.
McCartney essayed more or less successfully to eat one, while the old man retreated into the pantry and, after a hollow ringing of water upon an empty sink, returned with a thick tumbler of Croton.
"Good, eh? Nothing like plain flour food and Adam's ale! Now, what is it you want to say? I must be getting to bed."
McCartney hastily swallowed the last of the biscuit and leaned forward.
"If I could be sure my dear wife and child could have this to-night, I should be happy indeed. Oh, sir, poverty can be borne—but to see those whom we love suffer and be powerless to help them—I can hardly address myself to you, sir. I have never asked for charity before. I'm a hard-working man. I had a good position, a little home of my own, and a wife and child whom I loved devotedly. I care for nothing else in the world. Then came the chance that ended so disastrously for us. I thought it was the tide in my affairs, you know, that might lead on to fortune. My wifewas offered a position in a traveling company at sixteen dollars a week, and they agreed to take me with them as press agent at thirty-five—fifty dollars a week all told. Can you blame us?"
"I don't approve of play acting," said the deacon.
"Don't think the less of my wife for that. She meant it for the best." McCartney's face worked and he brushed his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Look here, what's the use wasting time," interrupted the deacon. "How do I know who you are?"
"You have only my word, sir, that is true."
"What did you say you did for a living?"
"I'm a reporter. I live by my pen, sir, and I write articles on various subjects for the newspapers. I have even written a very modest book. But the modern public has crude taste in literature," sighed McCartney.
"Well, go on, now, and tell me about your trip or whatever it was," said the deacon.
"I gave up for the time, as I said, the precarious livelihood of a space writer. We sublet our rooms. I spent what little money I had saved upon a costume for my wife, and we started out making one-night stands."
"What was the name of your play?" inquired the deacon abruptly.
"'The two Orphans,'" replied McCartney without hesitation. "We got along well enough until we reached Rochester, and there the show broke down—went to the wall. We were stranded, without a cent, in a theatrical boarding house. My wife was taken down with pneumonia and little Cathie——"
"Little what?" asked the deacon.
"Short for Catherine—caught the croup. We had nowhere to turn. I pawned my watch to pay our boardbill. We were sleeping in a single room—the three of us. For days I tramped the streets of Rochester looking for some work to do, but I was absolutely friendless and could find nothing. My wife got a little better, but little Catherine seemed to grow worse. I pawned my wife's wedding ring, all my clothes but those I have on, even my baby's tiny little bracelet we bought for her on her second birthday—O God, how I suffered! We talked it all over and decided that as New York was the only place where I was known, I had better return and earn enough money to send for them as soon as I could. The manager let me use his pass back to the city. I reached here three days ago, but I have found no work of any sort. Some of the press boys have shared their meals with me, but for the moment I'm penniless. Meantime my wife is lying sick in a strange household and my little girl may be dying!" McCartney sobbed brokenly. "I'm at my last gasp. I've nowhere to sleep to-night. No money to buy breakfast. I can't even pay for a postage stamp to write to them!"
"What street did you stay in at Rochester?"
"1421 Maple Avenue," shot back McCartney. "I wish you could see my little Catherine—she's such a tiny ball of sunshine. Every morning she used to come and wake me, and say, 'Come, daddy, come to breaf-crust!' She couldn't pronounce the word right—I hope she never will. She called the little dog I gave her a fox 'terrial' dog. Some people say children are all alike. If they could only seeher—if she's still alive. WhyIwouldn't give ten cents to live if I could only make sure Edith would have enough to get along on and give Catherine a decent education. I want that girl to grow up into a fine noble woman like her mother. And to thinkthe last time I saw her she was lying in a stuffy hall bedroom in a third-class lodging house, her little forehead burning with fever, with my poor sick wife stretched beside her, fearing to move lest she should wake the child. She may be dead by this time, for I've had no work for three days, and I've been able to send them nothing—nothing! They may have been turned out into the streets, for the board bill was a week overdue when I left them. Don't you see it drives me nearly mad? I'm worse off a thousand times than if I stayed there with them. Sometimes I think there can't be any God, for if there was He'd never let me suffer so. And all for a little money—just because I can't pay the fare back to my sick wife and dying baby—my poor, sweet, little baby!"
McCartney's voice broke and he buried his haggard face on his arms. For a moment or two neither spoke, then the deacon sighed deeply.
"You do seem to have had hard luck," he remarked awkwardly. McCartney was still too overcome with emotion to reply.
"I reckon I'll have to break my rule and help you without references. I don't believe in giving, as a rule, unless you know who you are giving to."
He put his hand in his pocket.
"But I'll do it this time." He placed two quarters upon the table.
"There, half a dollar'll keep you nicely for a while. Of course, there's no use sendin' money to Rochester. Your landlady can't turn sick folks into the street, and if she does they can go to the hospital——"
He paused, startled by the look on McCartney's face, for the latter had risen like an avenging angel, white and trembling. Pointing at the two harmless coins, he cried:
"Is that your answer to the appeal of a starving man? Is that all your religion has done for you? Is that how you obey your Lord's teachings? 'Cup of cold water' indeed! Cold water! Cold water! That's what you've got instead of blood; you withered old epidermis! You miserable, dried-up apology for a human being!" He paused for breath, sweeping the room with indignant scorn.
"I know your kind! You old Christian Shylock! You bought those chromos at an auction! You took that old sideboard for a debt—yes, a debt at eighteen per cent interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing psalms and bag your trousers with kneeling on the platforms at prayer meetings and then loan out the church's money to yourself on worthless securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. You read a penny newspaper and take books out of a circulating library. You put a petticoat on these chairs so your miserly little body won't wear out the seats."
The lean vagabond half shouted his anathema, the pallor of his face and brow darkening red from the violence of his passion. It was the very ecstasy of anger. Before it the little man with the white hair shrank into himself, diminishing into his chair, seeking moral opportunity of escape.
McCartney looked at the two coins contemptuously.
"Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "Half a dollar for a dying child and a starving woman, to say nothing of a shelterless man!" He broke into a mirthless laugh. "Allow me to return your generous answer to my application for assistance. A code of morals of my own, which doubtless you would not appreciate, compels me to restore what is obviously ten times more precious to the donor than to the recipient."
He filliped the two coins across the table into the lap of his host, who still crouched furtively with his head near the table.
"It makes me sick to look at you! Who could gaze without disgust upon the spectacle of an ossified creature like yourself, creeping through bare, deserted old age toward a grave mortgaged to the devil? Ugh! It is the horridest spectacle I have seen in a month."
"You're mad!" muttered the old man with hoarse fearfulness.
"Sometimes, but not now!" retorted McCartney. "I'll hold my evening session for Misers a moment longer. I pity you, Lord Pinhead Penurious! I pity you that you should have gone through life, a small term of say sixty years, in such stupidity. Sixty years of grubbing, of weighing meat and adding figures, of watching the prices fools pay for stocks, and how many days oflife? How many good deeds? Oh, marvelous lack of wit! What know you of real happiness? Let me introduce myself, since you're so blind. What do you think I am, my good old Noddy Numbskull?"
"Crazy!" gasped the old man. "Do be quiet! Let me get you something more to eat."
"A thief, at your service. Oh, don't start! I'll not carry away your mahogany sideboard nor your bronze chandelier. I steal only to keep myself in purse—to eat. You dig to add to the column of figures in your pass book. I walk among the gods. My brain is worth twenty gray bags like yours. I have thoughts and dreams in terms to you unintelligible. I can live more in a week than haply you have done in the course of your whole crawling existence. What do you know of the spirit? Behind your altar sits a calf of gold. You grovel beforeit and slip out at the bottom the shekels you drop in at the top. To you the moon will always be made of green cheese, that 'orbed maiden with white fire laden'! Your hands are callous from counting money, your brain is——"
The old fellow arose. "Leave my house! Get out of here!"
He was an absurd figure, not more than five feet high, in his black broadcloth suit and string tie, as he faced McCartney's blazing eyes, and the latter laughed at him.
"I will fast enough. But you see I'm having a sensation—living. I'm doing good. Oh, yes, I am. If not to you, at least to myself. Do you think I'll ever forget little 'Cathie'? God! How I could have loved a real child! And I've only a cat." He laughed again. "I don't blame you for thinking me crazy—even you. Come, now, wasn't my picture of the phthisic wife and moaning child worth a place on the line—I mean, wasn't it good, eh? Worth more than two beggarly quarters? It gave me a thrill—what I need—it'll keep me alive for another twenty-four hours, without this." He held up a nickel-plated hypodermic syringe. It shone in the gaslight, and the old man started back and held out his hands.
"Don't shoot!" he cried in senile terror.
"Carrion!" cried McCartney. "Why do I waste my time on you? Why? Because I'm in your debt. I owe you little Catherine. I shall never forget her. And you, you—you are her foster father! God forbid!"
The old man sat down resignedly at the extreme side of the table.
"By God, I pity you!" exclaimed the lean man. "Do you hear that?Ipityyou—I!—a wretched,drugged, wilted, useless bundle of nerves twisted into the image of a man; a chap born with a silver spoon, with gifts, who tossed them all into the gutter—threw 'a pearl away richer than all his tribe'; a miserable creature who can't live without this" (he pressed the needles into his wrist), "and yet I wouldn't change with you! I'm more of a man than you. My very wants are sweeter than any joys your brutish senses can ever feel.
"O would there were a heaven to hear!O would there were a hell to fear!Dear Son of God, in mercy giveMy soul to flames, but let me live!
"O would there were a heaven to hear!O would there were a hell to fear!Dear Son of God, in mercy giveMy soul to flames, but let me live!
"You don't know what that means! Haven't the vaguest idea. You're a mummy. You'll be the same ten thousand years from now. I suppose you think I made it up, eh?
"I am discouraged by the street,The pacing of monotonous feet.
"I am discouraged by the street,The pacing of monotonous feet.
"That's allyouwant. You couldn't understand anything else, and yet it's my torture, and my salvation!"
The glow came back into McCartney's eyes and he repeated:
"Yes, that picture of little Catherine was worth more than two quarters. It ought to have been good for twenty dollars. It's worth more than that to me."
McCartney's voice had grown strong and clear.
The old fellow looked at him sharply and changed his tone. He must get this madman out of his house. He must humor him.
"Come, come, that's all right. Cheer up! Why, I had a little girl of my own once."
McCartney pierced him through and through with swimming eyes.
"And her memory was only worth two miserable quarters? You lie, you wretched old man, you lie!"
The old fellow started back. The door banged. McCartney was gone.
Note.—Action takes place about the year 1915.
Ralston strode briskly up Fifth Avenue, conscious all about him of the electric pressure of War. It was six o'clock—the hour when the hard outlines of the tops of office buildings and the prosaic steeples of contemporary religion, flushed with rose, and "fretted with golden fire," melt with a glow of unreality into the darkening blue. Here and there in the eastern sky tiny points trembled elusively, and a molten crescent followed him along the housetops, its pale disk growing each instant brighter.
Wheel traffic on the avenue, between the hours of nine and seven, had been suspended, and many pedestrians preferred the icy inequality of the street to the crowds upon the pavements. For the most part the movement was northward, meeting at the corners transverse streams of clerks and salesgirls jostling one another, arm in arm, down the side streets. Here and there could be seen an officer in service coat, with sword dangling beneath, and occasional knots of soldier boys in the uniform of the National Guard.
A little lad with an air of vast importance ran just ahead of Ralston, unlocking the bases of the electric lightsand, in some mysterious way, turning them on. To his intense gratification he had succeeded in distancing his fellow across the way by half a block. Above the shuffle of feet could be heard the cries of the newsmen, "Extra! Extra! President calls for twenty new regiments! Latest extra! Twelfth to the front." These, clutching huge bundles of papers to their breasts, hurled themselves against the tide of humanity, appearing from all directions and sweeping down like vultures upon any individual wayfarer so unfortunate as to have his hand momentarily in his pocket. Their bundles quickly disappeared. Then they would run panting to the corners where the paper wagons were in waiting. It was a scene full of inspiration to Ralston, but it impressed him that, after all, the crowd seemed primarily interested in its own affairs—its business, its cold ears, its suppers.
For the newspapers the war had created a fierce, insatiable public maw. Circulations sprang by leaps into the millions. Extras followed one another by minutes. For the people in the shops it meant night work and longer hours; for society, something new to talk about; for the theaters, packed houses which roared at topical songs in which "war" rhymed with "bore," "rations" with "nations," "company" with "bump any," "foes" with "toes," "sword" with "board," and gloried in "Eddie" Foy and "Jo" Weber dressed as major generals. "Light Cavalry" and "Dixie" had superseded all other selections upon the musical programmes, and special rows of seats were reserved for "officers in uniform." The bars were jammed, traveling men sat in more thickly serried ranks than usual in the hotel windows, and Slosson's Billiard Parlors were lined with standing spectators.The commercial life of the city boiled over. Only the brokers came home early.
As Ralston entered Madison Square he found himself entangled in a dense throng wedged around an improvised scaffolding, upon which was displayed the electric-lighted bulletin of one of the big dailies. A man in a yellow-and-black-striped sweater was rapidly painting with a brush upon a blackboard in some white liquid the latest marching orders: