HAWKINS sat at the table in his room, and twined and twined one old storm-beaten hand over the other. For hours he had sat like that. It was light in the room now, for it was long after seven o'clock. His bed had not been slept in. He was dressed in his shiny best suit; he wore his frayed black cravat. He had been dressed like that since midnight; since he had returned home after Claire had fled into her house, and John Bruce had strode by him on the sidewalk with set, stony face and unseeing eyes; since, on reaching his room here, he had found a note whose signature was false because it read “Paul Veniza,” when he knew that it came from Crang. Crang was taking precautions that his return should not leak out! The note only corroborated what he had heard through the door. He was to be at Paul Veniza's at eight o'clock with the traveling pawn-shop..
The note had said nothing about any marriage; but, then, he knew! He was to be the best man. And so he had dressed himself. After that he had waited. He was waiting now.
“The first,” said Hawkins, with grave confidence to the cracked mirror. “Yes, that's it—the first in line, because Iamher old father, and there ain't nothing can change that.”
His own voice seemed to arouse him. He stared around the shabby room that was his home, his eyes lingering with strange wistfulness on each old battered, and long familiar object—and then suddenly, with a choking cry, his head went down, buried in his arms outflung across the table.
“Pawned!” the old man cried brokenly. “It's twenty years ago, I pawned her—twenty years ago. And it's come to this because—because I ain't never redeemed her—but, oh God, I love her—I love my little girl—and—and she ain't never going to know how much.”
His voice died away. In its place the asthmatic gas-jet spat venomous defiance at the daylight that was so contumaciously deriding its puny flame.
And after a little while, Hawkins raised his head. He looked at his watch.
“It's time to go,” said Hawkins—and cleared his throat.
Hawkins picked up his hat and brushed it carefully with his coat sleeve; his shoulders, and such of his attire as he could reach, he brushed with his hands; he readjusted his frayed black cravat before the cracked mirror.
“I'm the best man,” said Hawkins.
Oblivious to the chattering gas-jet, he descended the stairs, and went out to the shed in the rear that housed the traveling pawn-shop.
“The first in line,” said the old cab driver, as he climbed into the seat.
Five minutes later, he drew up in front of the onetime pawn-shop. He consulted his watch as he got down from his seat and entered the house. It was twenty-five minutes of eight.
He twisted his hat awkwardly in his hands, as he entered the rear room. He felt a sudden, wild rush of hope spring up within him because there was no sign of Crang. And then the hope died. He was early; and, besides, Claire had her hat on and was dressed to go out. Paul Veniza, also dressed, lay on the cot.
No one spoke.
Then Paul Veniza's frame was racked with a fit of coughing, and out of a face ashen in pallor his eyes met Hawkins' in silent agony—and then he turned his head away.
Hawkins twisted at his hat.
“I came a little early;” he said wistfully, “because I thought mabbe you might—that mabbe there might be some change—that mabbe you might not——”
He stopped. He was looking at Claire. Her face was very white too. Her smile seemed to cut at his heart like a knife.
“No, Hawkins,” she said in a low voice; “there is no change. We are going to Staten Island. You will drive Doctor Crang. There is a limousine coming for father and me, that will be more comfortable for father.”
Hawkins' eyes went to the floor.
“I—I didn't mean that kind of a change,” he said.
“I know you didn't, Hawkins. But—but I am trying to be practical.” Her voice broke a little in spite of herself. “Doctor Crang doesn't know that you overheard anything last night, or that you know anything about the arrangements, so—so I am explaining them to you now.”
Hawkins' eyes were still on the floor.
“Ain't there nothing”—his voice was thick and husky—“ain't there nothing in all the world that any of us can do to make you change your mind? Claire, ain't there nothing, nothing at all? John Bruce said there wasn't, and you love John Bruce, but——”
“Don't, Hawkins!” she cried out pitifully.
The old shoulders came slowly up, and the old head; and the old blue eyes were of a sudden strangely flints like.
“I've got to know,” said Hawkins, in a dead, stubborn way.
“There is nothing,” she answered.
Hawkins' eyes reverted to the floor. He spoke now without lifting them.
“Then—then it's—it's like saying good-by,” he said, and the broken note was back again in his voice. “It's—it's so many years that mabbe you've forgotten, but when you were a little girl, and before you grew up, and—and were too big for that, I—I used to hold you in my arms, and you used to put your little arms around my neck, and kiss me, and—and you used to say that—Hawkins would never let the bugaboos get you, and—and I wonder if—if——”
“Oh, Hawkins!” Claire's eyes were full of tears. “I remember. Dear, dear Hawkins! And I used to call you Daddy Hawkins. Doyouremember?”
A tear found a furrow and trickled down the old weather-beaten face unchecked, as Hawkins raised his head.
“Claire! Claire!” His voice trembled in its yearning. “Will—will you say that again, Claire?”
“Dear Daddy Hawkins,” she whispered.
His arms stretched out to her, and she came to them smiling through her tears.
“You've been so good to me,” she whispered again. “Youareso good to me—dear, dear Daddy Hawkins.”
A wondrous light was in the old cabman's face. He held the slight form to him, trying to be so tenderly careful that he should not hurt her in his strength. He kissed her, and patted her head, and his fingers lingered as they smoothed the hair back from where it made a tiny curl about her ear.
And then he felt her drawing him toward the couch—and he became conscious that Paul Veniza was holding out his hands to them both.
And Claire knelt at the side of the couch and took one of Paul Veniza's hands, and Hawkins took the other. And no one of them looked into the other's face.
The outer door opened, and Doctor Crang came in. He stood for an instant surveying the scene, a half angry, half sarcastic smile spreading over his sallow face, and then he shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, you're here, like me, ahead of time, Hawkins, I see!” he said shortly. “You're going to drive me to Staten Island where——”
Claire rose to her feet.
“I have told Hawkins,” she said quietly.
Hawkins' hand tightened over Paul Veniza's for a moment, and then he turned away.
“I—I'll wait outside,” said Hawkins—and brushed has hand across his eyes as he went through the doorway.
Paul Veniza was racked with a sudden fit of coughing again. Doctor Crang walked quickly to the couch and looked at the other sharply. After a moment he turned to Claire.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked crisply.
“Yes; I am ready,” she answered steadily.
“Very well, then,” said Crang, “you had better go out and get into the old bus. You can go with Hawkins and me.”
“But”—Claire looked in a bewildered way at Paul Veniza—“but you said——”
“I know I did,” Crang interrupted brusquely, “but we're all here a little early and there's lots of time to countermand the other car.” He indicated Paul Veniza with a jerk of his head. “He's far from as well as he was last night. At least you'll admit that I'm agooddoctor, and when I tell you he is not fit to go this morning that ought to be enough for both of you. I'll phone and tell them not to send the limousine.”
Still Claire hesitated. Paul Veniza had closed his eyes.
Crang shrugged his shoulders.
“You can do as you like, but I don't imagine”—a snarl crept into his voice—“that it will give him any joy to witness the ceremony, or you to have him. Suit yourselves; but I won't answer for the consequences.”
“I'll go,” said Claire simply—and as Paul Veniza lifted himself up suddenly in protest, she forced him gently back upon the couch again. “It's better that way,” she said, and for a moment talked to him in low, earnest tones, then kissed him, and rose, and walked out from the room.
Crang, with a grunt of approval, started toward the telephone.
“Wait!” Paul Veniza had raised himself on his elbow.
Crang turned and faced the other with darkened face.
“It is not too late even now at the last moment!” Paul Veniza's face was drawn with agony. “I know you for what you are, and in the name of God I charge you not to do this thing. It is foul and loathsome, the basest passion—and whatever crimes lay at your door, even if murder be among them, no one of them is comparable with this, for you do more than take a human life, you desecrate a soul pure as the day God gave it life, and——”
The red surged into Crang's face, and changed to mottled purple.
“Damn you!” he flung out hoarsely. “Hold your cackling tongue! This is my wedding morning—understand?” He laughed out raucously. “My wedding morning—and I'm in a hurry!”
Paul Veniza raised himself a little higher. White his face was—white as death.
“Then God have mercy on your soul!” he cried.
And Crang stared for a moment, then turned on his heel—and laughed.
JOHN BRUCE turned the corner, and, on the opposite side of the street, drew back under the shelter of a door porch where he could command a view of the entrance to Paul Veniza's house. And now he stood motionless, waiting with cold patience, his eyes fixed on the doorway across the street. He was there because Crang was either at the present moment within the house, or presently would come to the house. It was nearly eight o'clock. The old traveling pawn-shop was drawn up before the door.
He had no definite plan now. No plan was needed. He was simply waiting for Crang.
His eyes had not left the doorway. Suddenly, tense, he leaned a little forward. The door opened. No; it was only Hawkins! He relaxed again.
Only Hawkins! John Bruce's face grew a little sterner, his lips a little more tightly compressed. Only Hawkins—only an old man who swayed there outside the door, and whose face was covered with his hands.
He watched Hawkins. The old cabman moved blindly along the sidewalk for the few steps that took him to the corner, and turning the corner, out of sight of the house, sat down on the edge of the curb, and with his shoulders sunk forward, buried his face in his hands again.
And John Bruce understood; and his fingers, in his pocket, snuggled curiously around the revolver that was hidden there. He wanted to go to that old bent figure there in its misery and despair, who was fighting now so obviously to get a grip upon himself. But he did not move. He could not tell Hawkins what he meant to do.
Were they minutes or were they hours that passed? Again the front door of Paul Veniza's house opened, and again John Bruce leaned tensely forward. But this time he did not relax. Claire! His eyes drank in the slim, little, dark-garbed figure, greedy that no smallest gesture, no movement, no single line of face or form should escape him. It was perhaps the last time that he would see her. He would not see her in his prison cell—he would not let her go there.
A queer sound issued from his throat, a strange and broken little cry. She was gone now. She had crossed the sidewalk and entered the traveling pawn-shop. The curtains were down, and she was hidden from sight. And for a moment there seemed a blur and mist before John Bruce's eyes—then Hawkins, still around the corner, still with crouched shoulders, still with his face hidden in his hands, took form and grew distinct again. And then after a little while, Hawkins rose slowly, and came back along the street, and climbed into the driver's seat of the traveling pawnshop, and sat fumbling at the wheel with his hands.
The door of Paul Veniza's house opened for the third time—and now John Bruce laughed in a low, grim 'way, and his hand, hugging the revolver in his pocket, tightened and grew vise-like in its grip upon the weapon. It was Crang at last!
And then John Bruce's hand came out from his pocket—empty.
Not in front of Claire!
He swept his hand across his forehead. It was as though a sudden shock had aroused him to some stark reality to which he had been strangely oblivious. Not in front of Claire! Claire was in the car there. He felt himself bewildered for a moment. Hawkins had said nothing about driving Claire too.
Crang's voice reached him from across the street:
“All right, Hawkins! Go ahead!”
Where was Paul Veniza? Crang had got into the car, and the car was moving forward. Wasn't Paul Veniza going too?
Well, it did not matter, did it? Crang was there. And it was a long way to Staten Island, and before then a chance would come,mustcome; he would make one somehow, and——-
John Bruce ran swiftly out into the street, and, as the car turned the corner, swung himself lightly and silently in beside Hawkins. Crang would not know. The curtained panel at the back of the driver's seat hid the interior of the car from view.
Hawkins turned his head, stared into John Bruce's face for an instant, half in a startled, half in a curiously perplexed way, made as though to speak—and then, without a word, gave his attention to the wheel again.
The car rattled on down the block.
John Bruce, as silent as Hawkins, stared ahead. On the ferry! Yes, that was it! It was a long way to Staten Island. Claire would not stay cooped up in a closed car below; she would go up on deck to get the air. And even if Crang accompanied her, it would not prove very difficult to separate them.
He looked around suddenly and intercepted a furtive, puzzled glance cast at him by Hawkins.
And then Hawkins spoke for the first time.
“You'd better get off, John Bruce,” he said in a choked voice. “You've done all you could, and God bless you over and over again for it, but you can't do anything more now, and it won't do you any good to come any further.”
“No,” said John Bruce, “I'm going all the way, Hawkins.”
Hawkins relapsed into silence. They were near the Battery when he spoke again.
“All the way,” Hawkins repeated then, as though it were but a moment gone since John Bruce had spoken. “All the way. Yes, that's it—after twenty years. That's when I pawned her—twenty years ago. And I couldn't never redeem her the way Paul Veniza said. And she ain't never known, and thank God she ain't never going to know, that I—that I——” A tear trickled down the old face, and splashed upon the wrinkled skin of the hand upon the wheel. And then old Hawkins smiled suddenly, and nodded toward the clock on the cowl-board—and the speed of the car increased. “I looked up the ferry time,” said Hawkins.
They swung out in front of the ferry house, and the car stopped. A ferry, just berthing, was beginning to disgorge its stream of motors and pedestrians.
“We're first in line,” said Hawkins, nodding his head. “We'll have to wait a minute or two.”
John Bruce nodded back indifferently. His eyes were fixed on the ferry that he could just see through the ferry house. Certainly, Claire would not stay down in the confined space of the ferry's run-way all the trip; or if she did, Crang wouldn't. His face set. Quite unconsciously his hand had gone to his pocket, and he found his fingers now snuggling again around the weapon that lay there.
And then he looked at Hawkins—and stared again at the other, startled. Strange, he had not noticed it before! The smile on Hawkins' face did not hide it. The man seemed to have aged a thousand years; the old face was pinched and worn, and deep in the faded, watery blue eyes were hurt and agony. And a great sympathy for the man surged upon John Bruce. He could not tell Hawkins, but—— He reached out, and laid his hand on the other's arm.
“Don't take it too hard, Hawkins,” he said gently. “I—perhaps—perhaps, well, there's always a last chance that something may happen.”
“Me?” said Hawkins, and bent down over his gears as he got the signal to move forward. “Do I look like that? I—I thought it all out last night, and I don't feel that way. I'll tell you what I was thinking about. I was just thinking that I did something to-day when I left my room that I haven't done before—in twenty years. I've left the light burning.”
John Bruce stared a little helplessly.
“Yes,” said Hawkins. He smiled at John Bruce. “Don't you worry about me. Mabbe you don't understand, but that's all I've been thinking about since we've been waiting here. I've left the light burning.”
Sick at heart, John Bruce turned his head away. He made no response.
Hawkins paid the fare, ran the car through the ferry house, and aboard the ferry itself. He was fumbling with a catch of some kind behind his seat, as he proceeded slowly up the run-way.
“He'll want a little air in there,” said Hawkins, “because it's close down here. It opens back, you know—the whole panel. I had it made that way when the car was turned into a traveling pawn-shop—didn't know what tough kind of a customer Paul might run into sometime, and I'd want to get in beside him quick to help, and I——” The old cabman straightened up.
The car was at the extreme forward end of the ferry—and suddenly it leaped forward. “Jump, John Bruce! Jump clear!” old Hawkins cried. “There's only two of us going all the way—and that's Crang and me! Claire and Paul 'll be along in another car—tell them it was an accident, and——”
John Bruce was on his feet—too late. There was a crash, and the collapsible steel gates went down before the plunging car, and the guard chain beyond was swept from its sockets. He reeled and lost his balance as something, a piece of wreckage from the gates or chain posts, struck him. He felt the hot blood spurt from shoulder and arm. And then, as the car shot out in mid-air, diving madly for the water below, and he was thrown from his feet, he found himself clinging to the footboard, fighting wildly to reach the door handle. Claire was in there! Claire was in there!
There was a terrific splash. A mighty rush of water closed over him. Horror, fear, madness possessed his soul. Claire was in there! Claire was in there—and somehow Hawkins had not known! Yes, he had the door handle now! He wrenched and tore at the door. The pressure of the water seemed to pit itself against his strength. He worked like a maniac. It opened. He had it now! It opened. He could scarcely see in the murky water—only the indistinct outlines of two forms undulating grotesquely, the hands of one gripped around the throat of the other—only that, and floating within his reach a woman's dress. He snatched at the dress. His lungs were bursting. Claire! It was Claire! She was in his arms—then blackness—then sunlight again—and then, faintly, he heard a cheer.
He held her head above the water. She was motionless, inert.
“Claire! Claire!” he cried. Fear, cold, horrible, seized upon him. He swam in mad haste for the iron ladder rungs at the side of the slip.
Faces, a multitude of them, seemed to peer at him from above, from the brink of this abyss in which he was struggling. He heard a cheer again. Why were they cheering? Were they cheering because two men were locked in a death grip deep down there in the water below?
“Claire!” he cried out again.
And then, as his hand grasped the lower rung, she opened her eyes slowly, and a tremor ran through her frame.
She lived! Was he weak with the sudden revulsion that swept upon him now? Was that it? He tried to carry her up—and found that it was beyond his strength. And he could only cling there and wait for assistance from above, thankful even for the support the water gave his weight. It was strange! What were those red stains that spread out and tinged the water around him? His arm! Yes, he remembered now! His shoulder and arm! It was the loss of blood that must have sapped his strength, that must be sapping it now so that—-
“John!” Claire whispered. “You—John!”
He buried his face in the great wet masses of hair that fell around her. Weak? No, he was not weak! He could hold her here always—always.
He felt her clutch spasmodically at his arm.
“And—and Hawkins, John?” she faltered.
He lifted his head and stared at the water. Little waves rippled across its surface, gamboling inconsequentially—at play. There wasn't anything else there. There never would be. He made no answer.
A sob shook her shoulders.
“How—how did it happen?” she whispered again.
“I think a—a gear jammed, or something,” he said huskily.
He heard her speak again, but her voice was very low. He bent his head until it rested upon hers to catch the words.
She was crying softly.
“Dear, dear Hawkins—dear Daddy Hawkins,” she said.
A great mist seemed to gather before John Bruce's eyes. A voice seemed to come again, Hawkins' voice; and words that he understood now, Hawkins' words:
“I've left the light burning.”