Jane Street dates from a period earlier than the development of that civic taste which gives to all New York north of Fourteenth Street the picturesqueness of a sum in simple arithmetic. Jane Street has atmosphere, period, chic. You know at a glance that the people who built these trim little red-brick houses still felt that impulse which first came to Manhattan from The Hague, to be fostered later by William and Mary, and finally merged in the Georgian tradition. Jane Street is Dutch. It has Dutch quaintness, and, as far as New York will permit it, Dutch cleanliness. It might be a byway in Amsterdam. Instead of cutting straight from the Hudson River Docks to Greenwich Avenue, it might run from a canal with barges on it to a field of hyacinths in bloom.
But Tom Quidmore saw not what you and I would have seen, a relief from the noise and fetidness of a hot summer's morning in a neighborhood reeking with garbage. When his heart had been fixed on that dream-city, Wilmington, Delaware, he found himself in a dingy little alley. Not often querulous, he became so now.
"What are we doing down here?"
The reply startled him. "I'm—I'm sick."
Looking again at the man who shuffled along beside him, he saw that his face had grown ashy, while his eyes, which earlier in the day had had life in them, were lusterless. The boy would have been frightened had it not been for the impulse of affection.
"Let's go back to Bere. Then you can have the doctor. I'll get a cab and steer the whole business."
Without answering, Quidmore stopped at a brown door, level with the pavement, in a big, dim-windowed building, with fire escapes zigzagging down the front. Jane Street is not exclusively clean and trim and Dutch. It has lapses—here a warehouse, there a dwelling tumbling to decay, elsewhere a nondescript structure like this. It looked like a lodging house for sailors and dock laborers. In the basement was a restaurant to which you went down by steps, and bearing the legend Pappa's Chop Saloon.
While Quidmore stood in doubt as to whether to ring the bell or to push the door which already stood a little open, two men came out of the Chop Saloon and began to mount the steps. In faded blue overalls the worse for wear, they had plainly broken a day's work, possibly begun at five o'clock, for a late breakfast. The one in advance, a sturdy, well-knit fellow of forty or forty-five, got a sinister expression from a black patch over his left eye. His companion was older, smaller, more worn by a bitter life. All the twists in his figure, all the soured betrayals in his crafty face, showed you the habitual criminal.
None of these details was visible to Quidmore,because his imagination could see only the bed for which he was craving. To the boy, who trusted everyone, they were no more than the common type of workman he was used to meeting in the markets. The fellow with the patch on his eye, making an estimate of the strangers as he mounted the steps, spoke cheerily.
"I say, mate, what can I do for yer?"
The voice with a vaguely English ring was not ungenial. Not ungenial, when you looked at it, was the strongly-boned face, with a ruddiness burnt to a coarse tan. The single gray-blue eye had the sympathetic gleam which often helps roguery to make itself excusable to people with a sense of fun.
Quidmore muttered something about wanting to see Mrs. Pappa.
"Right you are! Come along o' me. I'll dig the old gal out for yer. Expects you wants a room for yerself and the kid. Hi, Pappa!"
Pappa came out of a dim, musty parlor as the witch who foretells bad weather appears in a mechanical barometer. She was like a witch, but a dark, classic witch, with an immemorial tradition behind her. Her ancestors might have fought at Marathon, or sacrificed to Neptune in the temple on Sunium. In Jane Street she was archaic, a survival from antiquity. Her thoughts must have been with the nymphs at Delphi, or following the triremes carrying the warriors from Argolis to Troy, as silent, mysterious, fateful, she led the way upstairs.
They followed in procession, all four of them. The doorstep acquaintances displayed a solicitude not lessthan brotherly. The hall was without furniture, the stairs without carpet. The softwood floors, like the treads of the stairs, were splintered with the usage of many heavy heels. Where the walls bulged, through the pressure of jerry-built stories overhead, the marbled paper swelled into bosses. Tom found it impressive, with something of strange stateliness.
"Yer'll be from the country," the one-eyed fellow observed, as they climbed upward.
"Yes, sir," Tom answered, civilly. "We're on our way to Wilmington, Delaware, but my father felt a little sick."
"Well, he's struck a good place to lay up in. I say, Pappa," he called ahead, "seems to me as the big room with two beds'd be what'd suit the gent. It's next door to the barthroom, and he'll find that convenient. Mate," he explained further, when they stood within the room with two beds, "this'll set ye' back a dollar a day in advance. That right, Pappa, ain't it?"
Pappa assenting with some antique sign, Quidmore drew out his pocketbook to extract the dollar. With no ceremonious scruples the smaller comrade craned his neck to appraise, as far as possible, the contents of the wallet.
"Wad," Tom heard him squirt out of the corner of his mouth, in the whisper of a ventriloquist.
His friend seemed to wink behind the patch on his left eye. Tom took the exchange of confidence as a token of respect. He and his father were considered rich, the effect being seen in the attentions accorded them. This was further borne out when the genialone of the two rogues turned on the threshold, as his colleague was following Pappa downstairs.
"Anythink I can do for yer, mate, command me. Name of Honeybun—Lemuel Honeybun. Honey Lem some of the guys calls me. I answers to it, not takin' no offense like." He pointed to the figure stumping down the stairs. "My friend, Mr. Goodsir. Him and me been pals this two year. We lives on the ground floor. Room back of Pappa."
The door closed, Tom looked round him in an interest which eclipsed his hopes of the tunnel. This was adventure. It was nearly romance. Never before had he stayed in a hotel. The place was not luxurious, but never, in the life he could remember, having known anything but necessity, necessity was enough. Moreover, the room contained a work of art that touched his imagination. On the bare drab mantelpiece stood the head of a Red Indian, in plaster painted in bronze, not unlike the mummified head of Rameses the Great. The boy couldn't take his eye away from it. This was what you got by visiting strange cities more intimately than by trucking to and from the markets.
Quidmore threw himself on his bed, his face buried in the meager pillow. He was suffering apparently not from pain, but from some more subtle form of distress. Being told that there was nothing he could do for the invalid, Tom sat silent and still on one of the two small chairs which helped out the furnishings. It was not boring for him to do this, because he swam in novelty. He recalled the steamer he had seen that morning, sailing from he didn't know where,sailingtohe didn't know where, but on the way. He, too, was on the way. He was on the way to something different from Wilmington, Delaware. It would be different from Bere. He began to wonder if he should ever go back to Bere. If he didn't go back to Bere ... but at this point in Tom's dreams Quidmore dragged himself off the bed.
"Let's go down to the chop saloon, and eat."
XVIII
Hewas not too ill to eat, but too ill when not eating to stay anywhere but on his bed. He went back to it again, lying with his face buried in the pillow as before. The boy resumed his patient sitting. He would have been bored with it now, had he not had his dreams.
All the same, it was a relief when about four o'clock, just as the westering sun was beginning to wake the Red Indian to an horrific life, Mr. Honeybun, pushing the door ajar softly, peeped in with his good eye.
"I say, mate!" he whispered, "wouldn't you like me to take the young gent for a bit of a walk like? Do him good, and him a-mopin' here all by hisself."
The walk meant Tom's initiation into the life of cities as that life is led. Not that it went very far, but as far as it went it was a revelation. It took him from one end of Jane Street to the other, along the docks of the Cunard and other great lines, and as far as Eighth Avenue in the broad, exciting thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street. New York as he had seen it hitherto, from the front seat of a motor truck, had been little more entertaining than a map. Besides, he was only developing a taste for this sort of entertainment. Games, school, scraps with other boys, had been enough for him. Now he was wakingto an interest in places as places, in men as men, in differences of attitude to the drama known as life. In Mr. Honeybun's attitude he grew interested especially.
"I don't believe that nothink don't belong to no one," Tom's guide observed, as the wealth of the city spread itself more splendidly. "Things is common proputty. Yer takes what yer can put yer 'and on."
"But wouldn't you be arrested?"
"Yer'd be arrested if yer didn't look out; but what's bein' arrested? No more'n the measures what a lot of poor, frightened, silly boobs'll take agin the strong man what makes 'em tremble. At least," he added, as an afterthought, "not when yer conscience is clear, it ain't."
Fascinated by this bold facing of society, Tom ventured on a question. "Have you ever been arrested, Mr. Honeybun?"
Mr. Honeybun straightened himself to the martyr's pose. "Oh, if yer puts it that way, I've suffered for my opinions. That much I'll admit. I'm—" he brought out the statement proudly—"I'm one o' them there socialists. You know what a socialist is, don't yer?"
Tom was not sure that he did.
"A socialist is one o' them fellers who whatever he sees knows it belongs to him if he can get ahold of it. It's gettin' ahold of it what counts. Now if you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in yer 'ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as I could take it—why, then it'd be mine. That's the law o' Gord, I believes; and I tries to live up to it."
Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, Tom was nevertheless perplexed by it. "But wouldn't that be something like burglary?"
"Burglary is what them may call it what ain't socialists; but it don't do to hang a dog because yer've give him a bad name. A lot o' good people's been condemned that way. When I'm in court I always appeals to justice."
"And do you get it?"
"I get men's. I don't get Gord's. You see that apple?" They stopped before a window in Horatio Street where apples were displayed. "Now, do yer suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in partic'lar? No! That apple didn't know nothink about men's laws when it blossomed on a apple tree. It just give itself generallike to the human race. If you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git away with it, it'd be yours. Stands to reason it'd be. Gord's law! But if that there policeman, a-squintin' his ugly eye at us this minute—he knows Honey Lem, he does!—was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty days. Man's law! And I'll leave it to you which is best worth sufferin' for."
In this philosophy of life there was something Tom found reasonable, and something in which he felt a flaw without being able to detect it. He chased it round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the long dull hours with his father. It passed the time; it helped him to the habit of thinking things out for himself. His mind being clear, and his intuitions acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond his years. When, on the morrow, they walked in thecool of the day down the length of Hudson Street till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought the subject up from another point of view.
"But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took something from you? What then?"
"He'd git it in the nut," the socialist answered, tersely. "Not if there'd be two of 'em," he added, in amendment. "If there's two I don't contend. I ain't a communist."
"Is that what a communist is, a fellow who'll contend with two?"
"A communist is a socialist what'll use weepons. If there's somethink what he thinks is his in anybody's 'ouse, he'll go armed, and use vi'lence. They never got that on me. I never 'urt nobody, except onst I hits a footman, what was goin' to grab me, a wee little knock on the 'ead with a silver soup ladle I 'ad in me 'and and lays 'im out flat. Didn't do him no 'arm, not 'ardly any. That was in England. But them days is over, since I lost my eye. Makes yer awful easy spotted when yer've lost a eye."
"How did you lose it, Mr. Honeybun?"
"I lost it a-savin' of the life of a beautiful young lady. 'Twas quite a tale." The boy looked up expectantly while his friend thought out the details. "I was footin' it onst from New Haven to New York, and I'd got to a pretty little town as they call Old Lyme. Yer see, I'd been doin' a bit o' time at New Haven—awful 'ard on socialists they was in New Haven in them days—and when I gits out I was a bit stoney-broke till I'd picked up somethink else. Well there I was, trampin' it through Old Lyme, and I'dgot near to the bridge what crosses the river they've got there—the Connecticut I think it is—and what should I see but a 'orse what a young lady was drivin' come over the bridge like mad. The young lady she was tuggin' at the reins and a-hollerin' like blazes for some one to save her life. I ain't no 'ero, kid. Don't go for to think that I'm a-sayin' that I am. But what's a man to do when he sees a beautiful young lady in danger o' bein' killed?" He paused to take the bodily postures with which he stopped the runaway. "And the tip of the shaft," he ended, "it took me right in the eye, and put it out. But, Lord, what's a eye, even to a Socialist, when yer can do somethink for a feller creeter?"
Tom gaped in admiration. "I suppose it hurt awful."
"Was in 'orspital three months," the hero said, quietly. "Young lady, she visits me reg'lar, calls me her life-saver, and every name like that, and kind o' clings to me. But, Lord, marriage ain't never been much of a fancy to me. Ties a man up, and I likes to be free, except when I'm sufferin' for socialism. Besides, if I was to marry every woman what I've saved their lives I'd be one o' them Normans by this time. When yer wants company a good pal'll be faithfuller than a wife, and nag yer a lot less."
"Mr. Goodsir's your pal, ain't he, Mr. Honeybun?"
"Yes, and I'm sick of him. He don't develop. He ain't got no eddication. Yer can see for yerself he don't talk correct. That's what I've took to in yer gov'nor and you, yer gentleman way o' speakin'. Only yer needn't go for to tell yer old man all what I'vebeen a-gassin' of to you. I can see he's what they call conservative. He wouldn't understand. You're the younger generation, mind more open like. You and me'd make a great team if we was ever to work together."
With memories of his mother in his mind, Tom answered sturdily, "I wouldn't be a socialist, not for anything you could offer me."
They left it at that. Mr. Honeybun was content to point out the historic sites known to him as they turned homeward. There was the house where a murder had been committed; the store where a big break had been pulled off; a private detective's residence.
"Might go out agin some day, if yer pop don't mind it," he suggested, when they had reached their own hallway. "I gits the time in the late afternoon. Yer see, our job at the market begins early and ends early, and lately—" there was a wistful note—"well, I feels kind o' fed up with the low company Goodsir keeps. Every kind o' joint and dive and—and—Chinamen—and—" Out of respect for the boy he held up the description. "You'd 'ardly believe it, but an innercent little walk like what we've just took, why, it'll do me as much good as a swig o' water when you wake up about three in the mornin', with yer tongue 'angin' out like a leather strap, after a three-days' spree."
Unable to get the full force of this figure, Tom thanked his guide politely, and was bounding up the stairs two steps at a time, when the man who stood watching him spoke again.
"If I'd ever a-thought that I'd 'a had a kid like you, it'd 'a' been pretty near worth gittin' married for."
Tom could only turn with one of those grins which showed his teeth, making his eyes twinkle with a clear blue light, when adequate words for kindness wouldn't come to him.
XIX
Thedays settled into a routine. When they rose in the morning a colored woman "did" their room while they went down to the chop saloon for breakfast. Returning, Quidmore threw himself on his bed again. He did this after each meal, poking his nose deep into the limp pillow. Hardly ever speaking, he now and then uttered a low moan.
Tom watched patiently, ready to tell him the time or bring him a drink of water. When the day grew too hot he fanned him with an old newspaper.
"Why don't we go home, dad?" he asked anxiously on the third day. "I could get you there as easy as anything."
"I'm not well enough."
"You don't seem very sick to me. You don't have any pain and you can eat all right."
"It isn't that kind of bein' sick. It's—" he sought for a name—"it's like nervous prostration."
More nearly than he knew he had named his malady. In his own words, he was all in; and he was all in to the end of the letter of the term. Of that moral force which is most of what any man has to live upon some experience had drained him. He had spent his gift of vitality. All in was precisely the phrase to apply to him. He had cashed the last cent of whatever he had inherited or saved in the way of inner strength, and now he could not go on.
"What's the good of it anyhow?" he asked of Tom in the night. "There's nothin' to it, not when you come to think of it. You run after something as if you couldn't live without it; and then when you get it you curse your God that you ever run."
Tom shuddered in his bed, but he was used to doing that. There was hardly a night when he was not wakened by a nightmare. If it was not by a nightmare, it was by the soft complaining voice.
"Are you awake, Tom?"
"Yes, dad. Can I get you anything?"
"No; I only wanted to know if you was awake."
Tom kept awake as long as he could, because he knew the poor wretch was afraid of lying sleepless in the dark. To keep him awake, perhaps for less selfish reasons, too, the soft voice would take this opportunity of giving him advice.
"Don't you ever go to wanting anything too much, boy. That's what's done for me. You can want things if you like; but one of the tricks in the game is to know how to be disappointed. I never did know, not even when I was a little chap. If I cried for the moon I wouldn't stop till I got it. When I was about as old as you, not gettin' what I wanted made me throw a fit. If I couldn't get things by fair means I had to get 'em by foul; but I got 'em. It don't do you no good, boy. If I could go back again over the last six months...."
For fear of a confession Tom stopped his ears, but no confession ever came. The tortured soul could dribble its betrayals, but it couldn't face itself squarely.
"Look out for women," he said, gently, on another night. "You're old enough now to know how they'll play the Dutch with you. When I was your age there was nothing I didn't understand, and I guess it's the same with you. Don't ever let 'em get you. They got me before I was—well, I don't hardly know what age I was, but it was pretty young. Look out for 'em, boy. If you ever damn your soul for one of 'em, she'll do you dirt in the end. If it hadn't been for her...."
To keep this from going further, the boy broke in with the first subject he could think of. "I wonder if they'll remember to pick the new peas. They'll be ready by this time. Do you suppose they'll ...?"
"I don't care a hang what they do." After a brief silence he continued: "I'd 'a left the place to you, boy, only my brother-in-law, my sister's husband, has a mortgage on the place that'd eat up most of the value, so I've left it to her. That'll fix 'em both. I wish I could 'a done more for you."
"You've done a lot for me, as it is."
"You don't know."
There was another silence. It might have lasted ten minutes. The boy was falling once more into a doze when the soft voice lisped again,
"Tom."
He did his best to drag himself back from sleep. "Yes, dad? Do you want to know what time it is? I'll get up and look."
"No, stay where you are. There's somethin' I want to say. I've been a skunk to you."
"Oh, cut it, dad...."
"I won't cut it. I want to say it out. When I—when I first took you, it wasn't—it wasn't so much that I'd took a fancy to you...."
"I know it wasn't, dad. You wanted a boy to pick the berries. Let's drop it there."
But the fevered conscience couldn't drop it there. "Yes; at first. And then—and then it come into my mind that you might be—might be the one that'd do somethin' I didn't want to do myself. I thought—I thought that if you done it we might get by on it. We got by on it all right—or up to now we've got by—but I didn't get real fond of you till—till...."
"Oh, dad, let's go to sleep."
"All right. Let's. I just wanted to say that much. I was glad afterward that...."
The boy breathed heavily, pretending that he was asleep. He was soon asleep in earnest, and for the rest of the night was undisturbed. In the morning his father didn't get up, and Tom went down to the chop saloon to bring up something that would serve as breakfast. He did the same at midday, and the same in the evening. It was a summer's evening, with a long twilight. As it began to grow dark Quidmore seemed to rouse himself. He needed tooth paste, shaving cream, other small necessities. Sitting up on the bed, he made out a list of things, giving Tom the money with which to pay for them. If he went to the pharmacy in Hudson Street he would be back in half an hour.
"All right, dad. I know the way. I'm an old hand in New York by this time."
He was at the door when Quidmore called him back.
"Say, boy. Give us a kiss."
Tom was stupefied. He had kissed his adopted mother often enough, but he had never been asked to do this. Quidmore laughed, pulling him close.
"Ah, come along! I don't ask you often. You're a fine boy, Tom. You must know as well as I do what's been...."
The words were suspended by a hug; but once he was free Tom fled away like a small young wild thing, released from human hands. Having reached the street, he began to feel frightened, prescient, awed. Something was going to happen, he could not imagine what. He made his purchases hurriedly, and then delayed his return. He could be tender with the man; he could be loving; but he couldn't share his secrets.
But he had to go back. In the dim upper hall outside the door he paused to pump up courage to go in. He was not afraid in the common way of fear; he was only overcome with apprehension at having a knowledge he rejected forced on him.
The first thing he noticed was that no light came through the crack beneath the door. The room was apparently dark. That was strange because his father dreaded darkness, except when he was there to keep him company. He crept to the door and listened. There was no sound. He pushed the door open. The lights were out. In panic at what he might discover, he switched on the electricity.
But he only found the room empty. That was so far a relief. His father had gone out, and would be back again. Closing the door behind him, he advanced into the room.
It seemed more than empty. It felt abandoned, as if something had gone which would not return. He remembered that sensation afterward. He stood still to wonder, to conjecture. The Red Indian gleamed with his bronze leer.
The next thing the boy noticed was an odd little pile on the table. It was money—notes. On top of the notes there was silver and copper. He stooped over them, touching them with his forefinger, pushing them. He pushed them as he might have pushed an insect to see whether or not it was alive.
Lastly he noticed a paper, on which the money had been placed. There was something scribbled on it with a pencil. He held it under the dim lamp. "For Tom—with a real love."
The tears gushed to his eyes, as they always did when people showed that they loved him. But he didn't actually cry; he only stood still and wondered. He couldn't make it out. That his father should have gone out and forgotten all his money was unusual enough, but that he should have left these penciled words was puzzling. It was easy to count the money. There were seven fifty-dollar bills, with twenty-eight dollars and fifty-four cents in smaller bills and change. He seemed to remember that his father had drawn four hundred dollars for the Wilmington expenses, with a margin for purchases.
He stood wondering. He could never recall how long he stood wondering. The rest of the night became more or less a blank to him; for, to the best of the boy's knowledge, the man who had adopted him was never seen again.
XX
Tothe best of the boy's knowledge the man who had adopted him was never seen again; but it took some time to assume the fact that he was dead. Visitors to New York often dived below the surface, to come up again a week or ten days later. Their experience in these absences they were not always eager to discuss.
"Why, I've knowed 'em to stay away that long as yer'd swear they'd been kidnapped," Mr. Honeybun informed the boy. "He's on a little time; that's all. Nothink but nat'rel to a man of his age—and a widower—livin' in the country—when he gits a bit of freedom in the city."
"Yes, but what'll he do for money?"
There was this point of view, to be sure. Mr. Goodsir suggested that Quidmore had had more money still, that he had only left this sum to cover Tom's expenses while he was away.
"And listen, son," he continued, kindly, "that's a terr'ble big wad for a boy like you to wear on his person. Why, there's guys that free-quents this very house that'd rob and murder you for half as much, and never drop a tear. Now here I am, an old trusty man, accustomed to handle funds, and not sneak nothin' for myself. If I could be of any use to you in takin' charge of it like...."
"Me and you'll talk this over, later," Mr. Honeybun intervened, tactfully. "The kid don't need no one to take care of his cash when his father may skin home again before to-night. Let's wait a bit. If he's goin' to trust anybody it'll be us, his next of kin in this 'ere 'ouse, of course. That'd be so, kiddy, wouldn't it?"
Tom replied that it would be so, giving them to understand that he counted on their good offices. For the present he was keeping himself in the non-committal attitude natural to suspense.
"You see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging candor, "I can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back again, at any rate, not for a spell."
The worthies going to their work, the interview ended. At least, Mr. Goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was back in Tom's room again.
"Say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and. I can't stop now; but when I blow in to eat at noon I'll tell yer what I'd do with 'em, if you was me. Keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help till I come back and git you. Yer never knows who's on the same floor with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe."
Out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting the line of docks especially. He liked them. On the façades of the low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into syllables—New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas,Arizona, Oklahoma. He had always been fond of geography. It opened up the world. It told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in the meantime he could dream about. Over the low roofs of the dock buildings he could see the tops of funnels. Here and there was the long black flank of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly shunting up and down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep sound, the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled his mind to his desolation.
He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of his loneliness smote him to a standstill. He would wonder where he was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing about the steamer on the Hudson. Like her, he seemed to be afloat. She, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world to tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that was always sailing—sailing—sailing—sailing—with never a port to have come out of, and never a port in view,
The Church of the Sea!
He read the words on the corner of a big white building where Jane Street flows toward the docks. He read them again. He read them because he likedtheir suggestions—immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and God!
"THAT'S A TERR'BLE BIG WAD FOR A BOY LIKE YOU TO WEAR"
It was queer to think of God being out there, where there were only waves and ships and sailors, but chiefly waves and a few seabirds. It recalled the religion of crippled Bertie Tollivant, the cynic. To the instructed like himself, God was in the churches that had steeples and pews and strawberry sociables, or in the parlors where they held family prayers. They told you that He was everywhere; but that only meant that you couldn't do wrong, you couldn't swear, or smoke a cigarette, or upset some householder's ash-barrels, without His spotting you. Tom Quidmore did not believe that Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant would have sanctioned this Church of the Sea, where God was as free as wind, and over you like the sky, and beyond any human power to monopolize or give away. It made Him too close at hand, too easy to find, and probably much too tender toward sailors, who were often drunk, and homeless little boys. He turned away from the Church of the Sea, secretly envying Bertie Tollivant his graceless creed, but not daring to question the wisdom of adult men and women.
By the steps of the chop saloon he waited for Mr. Honeybun, who came swinging along, a strong and supple figure, a little after the whistle blew at twelve. To the boy's imagination, now that he had been informed as to his friend's status, he looked like what had been defined to him as a socialist. That is, he had the sort of sinuosity that could slip through half-open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glidenoiselessly up and down staircases. It was ridiculous to say it of one so bony and powerful, but the spring of his step was spiritlike.
"Good for you, lad, to be waitin'! We'll go right along and do it, and then it'll be off our minds."
What "it" was to be, Tom had no idea. But then he had no suspicions. In spite of his hard childhood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men would do him wrong. He had no fear of Mr. Honeybun, and no mistrust, not any more than a baby in arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse.
"And there's another thing," Mr. Honeybun brought up, as they went along. "It don't seem to me no good for a husky boy like you to be just doin' nothink, even while he's waitin' for his pop. I'd git a job, if you was me."
The boy said that he would gladly have a job, but didn't know how to get one.
"I've got one for yer if yer'll take it. Work not too 'ard, and' ll bring you in a dollar and a 'alf a day."
But "it" was the matter in hand, and presently its nature became evident. At the corner of Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue Mr. Honeybun pointed across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very solidity inspired confidence. Tom could read for himself that it was a savings bank.
"Now what I'd do if it was my wad is this. I'd put three hundred and twenty-five of it in that there bank, which'd leave yer more'n twenty-five for yer eddication. But yer principal, no one won't be ableto touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer'll be gettin' yer interest piled up on top of it."
Tom's heart leaped. He had long meditated on savings banks. They had been part of his queer vision. To become "something big" he would have to begin by opening some such account as this. With Mr. Honeybun's proposal he felt as if he had suddenly grown taller by some inches, and older by some years.
"You'll come over with me, won't you?"
Mr. Honeybun demurred. "Well, yer see, kid, I'm a pretty remarkable character in this neighborhood. There's lots knows Honey Lem; and if they was to see me go in with you they might think as yer hadn't come by your dough quite hon—I mean, accordin' to yer conscience—or they might be bad enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between us. When I puts a few dollars into my own savings bank—I'm a savin' bird, I am—I goes right over to Brooklyn, where there ain't no wicked mind to suspeck me. So go in by yerself, and say yer wants to open a account. If anyone asks yer, tell him just how the money come to yer, and I don't believe as yer'll run no chanst of no one not believin' yer."
So it was done. Tom came out of the building with his bank book buttoned into his breast pocket, and a conscious enhancement of life.
"And now," Mr. Honeybun suggested, "we'll make tracks for Pappa's and eat."
The "check," like the meal, was light, and Mr. Honeybun paid it. Tom protested, since he hadmoney of his own, but his host took the situation gracefully.
"Lord love yer, kid, ain't I yer next o' kin, as long as yer guv'nor's away? Who sh'd buy yer a lunch if it wasn't me?"
Childhood is naturally receptive. As Romulus and Remus took their food from a wolf when there was no one else to give it them, so Tom Quidmore found it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, and then by a thief. It became amazing, a few years later, on looking back on it; but for the moment murderer and thief were not the terms in which he thought of those who had been kind to him.
Not that he didn't try. He tried that very afternoon. When his next o' kin had gone back to his job of lifting and heaving in the Gansevoort Market, he returned to the empty room. It was his first return to it alone. When he had gone up from his breakfast in the chop saloon both Goodsir and Honeybun had accompanied him. Now the emptiness was awesome, and a little sinister.
He had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully that is, waking every half hour to listen for the shuffling footstep. He heard other footsteps, dragging, thumping, staggering, but they always passed on to the story above, whence would come a few minutes later the sound of heavy boots thrown on the floor. Now and then there were curses, or male voices raised in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song. During the earlier nights he had slept through these signals of Pappa's hospitality, or if he had waked, he knew that a grown-up man lay in the other bed, sothat he was safe. Now he could only lie and shudder, till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. He did his best to keep awake, so as to unlock the door the instant he heard a knock; but in spite of his efforts he slept.
This return after luncheon brought him for the first time face to face with his state as a reality. There was no one there. It was no use going back to Bere, because there would be no one there. Rather than become again a State ward with the Tollivants, he would sell himself to slavery. What was he to do?
The first thing his eye fell upon was his father's suitcase, lying open on the floor beside the bed, its contents in disorder. It was the way Quidmore kept it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed one. The futility of this clothing was what struck the boy now. The peculiar grief of handling the things intimately used by those who will never use them again was new to him. He had never supposed that so much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. Stooping over the suitcase, he had accidentally picked one up, and burst into sudden tears. They were the first he had actually shed since he used to creep away to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the Tollivants.
It occurred to him now that he had not cried when his adopted mother disappeared. He had not especially mourned for her. While she had been there, and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved her in the way in which he loved so easily when anyone opened the heart to him; but she had been no part of his inner life. She was the cloud and sunshineof a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of the morrow. Of the two, he grieved more for the man; and the man was a murderer, and probably a suicide.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words in the attempt to work up a fortifying moral indignation. It was then, too, that he called Mr. Honeybun a thief. He must react against these criminal associations. He must stand on his own feet. He was not afraid of earning his own living. He had heard of boys who had done it at an age even earlier than thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires. They had always, however, so far as he knew, had some sort of ties to connect them with the body politic. They had had the support of families, sympathies, and backgrounds. They hadn't been adrift, like that haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but the God of the Sea to keep her from foundering. He could have believed in this God of the Sea. He wished there had been such a God. But the God that was, the God who was shut up in churches and used only on Sundays, was not of much help to him. Any help he got he must find for himself; and the first thing he must do would be to break away from these low-down companionships.
And just as, after two or three hours of meditation, he had reached this conclusion, a tap at the door made him start. Quidmore had come back! But before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed open, and he saw the patch over the left eye.
"Got away early, son. Now, seems to me, we ought to be out after them overalls."
The boy stood blank. "What overalls?"
"Why, for yer job to-morrow. Yer can't work in them good clo'es. Yer'd sile 'em."
In a second-hand shop, known to Honey Lem, in Charles Street, they found a suit of boy's overalls not too much the worse for wear. Honey Lem pulled out a roll of bills and paid for them.
"But I've got my own money, Mr. Honeybun."
"Dooty o' next o' kin, boy. I ain't doin' it for me own pleasure. Yer'll need yer money for yer eddication. Yer mustn't forgit that."
The overalls bound him more closely to the criminal from whom he was trying to cut loose. More closely still he found himself tied by the scraps of talk he overheard between the former pals that evening. They were on the lowest of the steps leading up from the chop saloon, where all three of them had dined. Tom, who had preceded them, stood on the sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within earshot.
"I tell yer I can't, Goody," Mr. Honeybun was saying, "not as long as I'm next o' kin to this 'ere kid. 'Twouldn't be fair to a young boy for me to keep no such company."
Mr. Goodsir made some observation the nature of which Tom could only infer from Mr. Honeybun's response.
"Well, don't yer suppose it's a damn sight 'arder for me to be out'n a good thing than it is for you to see me out'n it? I don't go in for no renounciation. But when yer've got a fatherless kid on yer 'ands ye' must cut out a lot o' nice stuff that'll go all rightwhen yer've only yerself to think about. Ain't yer a Christian, Goody?"
Once more Mr. Goodsir's response was to Tom a matter of surmise.
"Well, then, Goody, if yer don't like it yer can go to E and double L. What's more, I ain't a-goin' to sleep in our own room to-night, nor any night till that guy comes back. I'm goin' to sleep in the kid's room, and keep him company. 'Tain't right to leave a young boy all by hisself in a 'ouse like this, as full o' toughs as a ward'll be full o' politicians."
Tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the knowledge that the other bed in his room would not remain so creepily vacant was consciously a relief. He slept dreamlessly that night, because of his feeling of security. In the morning, not long after four, he was wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to and fro.
"Come, little shaver! Time to git up! Got to be on yer job at five."
The job was in a market that was not exactly a market since it supplied only the hotels. Together with the Gansevoort and West Washington Markets, it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food on the continent of America. Railways and steamers brought it from ranches and farms, from plantations and orchards, from rivers and seas, from slaughter-stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north and the south and the west, from the tropics and farther than the tropics, to feed the vast digestive machine which is the basis of New York's energies. Tom's job was not hard, but it was incessant. Hiswas the duty of collecting and arranging the empty cases, crates, baskets, and coops, which were dumped on the raised platform surrounding the building on the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. Trucks and vans took them away full on one day, and brought them back empty on another. It was all a boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order, according to sizes and shapes. The sizes in the main were small; the shapes were squares and oblongs and diminishing churnlike cylinders. Nimbleness, neatness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and all three of them the boy supplied.
Fatigue that night made him wakeful. His companion in the other bed was wakeful too. In talking from bed to bed Tom found it a comfort to be dealing with an easy conscience. Mr. Honeybun had nothing on his mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. Speculation on the subject of Quidmore's disappearance, and possible fate, turned round and round on itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses.
"And there's another thing," came from Mr. Honeybun. "If he don't come back, why, you'll come in for a good bit o' proputty, won't yer? Didn't he own that market-garden place, out there on the edge of Connecticut?"
"He left it to his sister. He told me that the other night. You see, I wasn't his real son. I wasn't his son at all till about a year ago."
This statement coming to Mr. Honeybun as something of a shock, Tom was obliged to tell the story of his life to the extent that he knew it. The only details that he touched on lightly were those whichbore on the manner in which he had lost his "mudda." Even now it was difficult to name her in any other way, because in no other way had he ever named her. Obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollections, which in themselves were clear enough, his tale was brief.
"So yer real name is Whitelaw," Mr. Honeybun commented, with interest. "I never hear that name but once. That was the Whitelaw baby. Ye'll have heard tell o' that?"
Since Tom had never heard tell of the Whitelaw baby, the lack in his education was supplied. The Whitelaw baby had been taken out to the Park on a morning in May, and had vanished from its carriage. In the place where it had lain was found a waxen image so true in likeness to the child himself that only when it came time to feed him did the nurse make the discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. The mystery had been the source of nation-wide excitement for the best part of two years. It was talked of even now. It couldn't have been more than three or four years earlier that Mr. Honeybun had seen a daily paper, bearing the headlines that Harry Whitelaw had been found, selling like hotcakes to the women shopping in Twenty-third Street.
"And was he?" Tom asked, beginning at last to be sleepy.
"No more'n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer'd blowed it in the air. The father, a rich banker—a young chap he was, too, I believe—he offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as'd put him on the track o' the gang what had kidnapped the young'un; and every son of a gun what thought he was a socialist was out to win the money. This 'ere Goody, he had a scheme. Tried to work me in on it, and I don't know but what I might a took a 'and if a chum o' mine hadn't got five year for throwin' the same 'ook without no bait on it. They 'auled in another chap I knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do with it, and tried to make him squeal; but—" A long breath from Tom interrupted this flow of narrative. "Say, kiddy, yer ain't asleep, are yer? and me tellin' yer about the Whitelaw baby?"
"I am nearly," the boy yawned. "Good night—Honey! Wake me in time in the morning."
"That's a good name for yer to call me," the next o' kin commended. "I'll always be Honey to you, and you'll be Kiddy to me; and so we'll be pals. Buddies they call it over here."
Echoes of a street brawl reached them through the window. Had he been alone, the country lad of thirteen would have shivered, even though the night was hot. But the knowledge of this brawny companion, lying but a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a puppy, and fall asleep trustfully.
XXI
Thenext two or three nights were occasions for the interchange of confidence. During the days the new pals saw little of each other, and sometimes nothing at all. With the late afternoon they could "clean themselves," and take a little relaxation. For this there was no great range of opportunity. Relaxation for Lemuel Honeybun had hitherto run in directions from which he now felt himself cut off. He knew of no others, while the boy knew of none of any kind.
"I tell yer, Goody," Tom overheard, through the open door of the room back of Pappa's, one day while he was climbing the stairs, "I ain't a-goin' to go while I've got this job on me hands. The Lord knows I didn't seek it. It's just one of them things that's give yer as a dooty, and I'm goin' to put it through. When Quidmore's come back, and it's all over, I'll be right on the job with the old gang again; but till he does it's nix. Yer can't mean to think that I don't miss the old bunch. Why, I'd give me other eye...."
Tom heard no more; but the tone of regret worried him. True, if he wanted to break the bond this might be his chance. On the other hand, the thought of being again without a friend appalled him. While waiting in the hope that Quidmore might come back,the present arrangement was at least a cosy one. Nevertheless, he felt it due to his spirit of independence to show that he could stand alone. He waited till they were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and the air through the open window was cool enough to allow of their being comfortable, before he felt able to take an offhand, man-to-man tone.
"You know, Honey, if you want to beat it back to your old crowd, I can get along all right. Don't hang round here on my account."
"Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice meself. If I'm to be yer next o' kin, I'll be it and be damned. Done 'arder things than this in me life, and pulled 'em off, too. I'll stick to yer, kid, as long as yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my life, and never see another quart bottle."
The pathos of the life for which he might be letting himself in turned his thoughts backward over his career.
"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born. True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I 'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other day—steward on one of the Cunarders he was—said he wouldn't 'a knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges. Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought mewhere I am, and I don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings bank in Brooklyn. Friends as'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by them. And if I hadn't lost me eye—but how was I to know that that low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and' d let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York right atop o' me."
Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young lady's life."
Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for finding the right words.
"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both sides to onst, now can I?"
He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at the age of seventeen.
"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I didinherit somethink—inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was. Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and get a move on—and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail. You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?"
Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America.
"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid. Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've worked for—or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?"
A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his position.
"I've been thinkin', Kiddy, that since yer used to be a State ward, yer'll have to be a State ward agin, if the State knows you're knockin' round loose."
The boy cried out in alarm. "Oh, but I won't be. I'll kill myself first."
He could not understand this antipathy, this horror. In a mechanical way the State had been good to him. The Tollivants had been good to him, too, in the sense that they had not been unkind. But he could not return to the status. It was the status that dismayed him. In Harfrey it had made him the single low-caste individual in a prim and high-caste world, giving everyone the right to disdain him. They couldn't help disdaining him. They knew as well as he did that in principle he was a boy like any other; but by all the customs of their life he was a little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it was still possible to respect himself; but to go back and hang on to the outer fringe of the organized life of a Christian society would have ravaged him within. He said so to Honeybun energetically.
"That's the way I figured that yer'd feel. So long as you're on'y waitin'—or yer can say that you're on'y waitin'—till yer pop comes back, it won't matter much. It'll be when school begins that it'll go agin yer. There's sure to be some pious woman sneepin' round that'll tell someone as you're not in school when you're o' school age, and then, me lad, yer'll be back as a State ward on some down-homer's farm."
Tom lashed the bed in the darkness. "I won't go! I won't go!"
"That's what I used to say the first few times theypinched me; but yer'll jolly well have to go if they send yer. Now what I was thinkin' is this. It's in New York State that yer'd be a State ward. If you was out o' this State there'd be all kinds o' laws that couldn't git yer back again. Onst when I'd been doin' a bit o' socializin' in New Jersey, and slipped back to Manhattan—well, you wouldn't believe the fuss it took to git me across the river when the p'lice got wind it was me. Never got me back at all! Thing died out before they was able to fix up all the coulds and couldn'ts of the lor."
He allowed the boy to think this over before going on with his suggestion.
"Now if you and me was to light out together to another State, they wouldn't notice that we'd gone before we was safe beyond their clutches. If we was to go to Boston, say! Boston's a good town. I worked Boston onst, me and a chap named...."
The boy felt called on to speak. "I wouldn't be a socialist, not if it gave me all Boston for my own."
The statement, coming as it did, had the vigor of an ultimatum. Though but a repetition of what he had said a few days before, it was a repetition with more force. It was also with more significance, fundamentally laying down a condition which need not be discussed again.
After long silence Mr. Honeybun spoke somewhat wistfully. "Well, I dunno as I'd count that agin yer. I sometimes thinks as I'll quit bein' a socialist meself. Seems to me as if I'd like to git back with the old gang, and be what they calls a orthodock. You know what a orthodock is, don't yer?"
"It's a kind of religion, isn't it?"
"It ain't so much a kind of religion as it's a kind o' way o' thinkin'. You're a orthodock when you don't think at all. Them what ain't got no mind of their own, what just believes and talks and votes and lives the way they're told to, they're the orthodocks. It don't matter whether it's religion or politics or lor or livin', the people who don't know nothink but just obeys other people what don't know nothink, is the kind that gits into the least trouble."
"Yes, but what do you want to be like that for? Youhavegot a mind of your own."
"Well, there's a good deal to be said, Kiddy. First there's you."
"Oh, if it's only me...."
"Yes, but when I'm yer next o' kin it isn't on'y you; it's you first and last. I got to bring you up an orthodock, if I'm going to bring you up at all. Yer can't think for yerself yet. You're too young. Stands to reason. Why, I was twenty, and very near a trained gasfitter, before I'd begun thinkin' on me own. What yer does when yer're growed up'll be no concern o' mine. But till youaregrowed up...."
Tom had heard of quicksands, and often dreamed that he was being engulfed in one. He had the sensation now. Circumstances having pushed him where he would not have ventured of his own accord, the treacherous ground was swallowing him up. He couldn't help liking Honey Lem, since he liked everyone in the world who was good to him; he was glad of his society in these lonely nights, and of the sense of his comradeship in the background even in the day;but between this gratitude and a lifelong partnership he found a difference. There were so many reasons why he didn't want permanent association with this fairy godfather, and so many others why he couldn't find the heart to tell him so! He was casting about for a method of escape when the fairy godfather continued.
"This 'ere socialism is ahead of its time. People don't understand it. It don't do to be ahead o' yer time, not too far ahead, it don't. Now I figure out that if I was to go back a bit, and git in among them orthodocks, I might do 'em good like. Could explain to 'em. I ain't sure but what I've took the wrong way, showin' 'em first, and explainin' to 'em afterwards. Now if I was to stop showin' 'em at all, and just explain to 'em, why, there'd be folks what when I told 'em that nothink don't belong to nobody they'd git the 'ang of it. Begins to seem to me as if I'd done me bit o' sufferin' for the cause. Seen the inside o' pretty near every old jug round New York. It's aged me. But if I was to sackerfice me opinions, and make them orthodocks feel as I was one of 'em, I might give 'em a pull along like."
The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the morning. In the afternoon Honey Lem had a new idea. Without saying what it was, he took the boy to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an electric bus going northward, and Tom had a new experience. Except for having crossed it in the market lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him.
Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when shops were shut, residences closed, and saunterers relatively few, it added a new concept to those already in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. These ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these pictures, jewels, flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more than appeal to his eye. They set free a function of his being that had hitherto been sealed. The first atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware was consciously in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in some life before he was born, rich and beautiful things had been his accessories. He had been used to them. They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a matter of course. To see them was not so much a discovery as it was a return to what he had been accustomed to. He was thinking of this, with an inward grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when Honey went back to the topic of the night before.
"The reason I said Boston is because they've got that great big college there. If I'm to bring yer up, I'll have to send yer to college."
The opening was obvious. "But, Honey, you don't have to bring me up."
"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o' sendin' yer to college, mind that now."
There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one means he mustgo by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some sort, he might be obliged to depend on him.
The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner."
Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning the houses opposite.
"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the façade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps, and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live."
Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was wheeled away by the nurse.
"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money. We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else."
They went into the Park by the same little opening through which the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash had taken,almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the baby, which remained a mystery.
"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be 'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your age."
Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had readJuliet Allingham's Sin, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because his name was Harry, and mine's Tom."
"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim."
"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...."
The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion? A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself. He sprang to his feet.
"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find them."
To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his mother and stolen babies as they went off to the Zoo.
XXII
Themove to Boston was made during August, so that they might be settled in time for the opening of the schools. The flitting was with the ease of the obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore became again Tom Whitelaw. There were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of both.
"Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of Lemuel, and if any old sneeper was to look me up.... Not but what Lemuel isn't a more aristocraticker name than George; but there's times when somethink what no one won't notice'll suit you best. So I'll be George Honeybun, a pal o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed."
The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and prudential. In the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was something to the boy to know that he had had a father. His father had been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had been a Whitelaw; there was a whole line of Whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be known by names. A slim link with a past, at least it was a link. The Quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. It signified the ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he had sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to him.
It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. In the unlikely event of the State of New York busying itself with the fate of its former ward, the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending school in Boston according to the law, would have the best chance of going unmolested.