Black day followed black day, and grudged penny followed grudged penny, till at length there came a day when it seemed the blackness could become no blacker and when his remaining pennies were less than his fingers. On this day he sat long at his window, his wasted, despair-tightened face looking out upon the patched undergarments swinging from lines and upon the boxes and barrels and bottles and papers and rags that littered the deep bottom of the yard, grimly thinking over the prophecy of Kate Morgan. One of the two months she had given his honesty was gone. By the time the second had passed——? He shiveringly wondered.
This day he ate no evening meal. For a week now one meal had been his daily ration, and that meal pitiably poor and pitiably small. He sat about his room till his nickel clock—which Kate Morgan had brought in one day and deposited upon the wash-stand with her undebatable air of finality—reported quarter past nine, when he rose and walked down into the street. It had been one of those warm days that sometimes come in mid-November—benign messages of remembrance, as it were, from departed summer—and now the people of the tenements filled the streets, for on the packed East Side the street, on warm days, is parlor to the parent and the lover, and nursery to the child.
As David stepped forth he did not notice that he was watched by a pair of keen, boyish eyes from under the rim of a battered slouch hat, and had he noticed he would not have been aware that these same eyes had watched him before. It was a Wednesday evening and David, entangled among the people, like a vessel in a sargasso sea, pursued a slow course toward the Mission, never observing that a boy in a battered hat followed him a way then turned back.
He took his place in the shadowed doorway and waited for Helen Chambers to appear. In a few minutes she came out, Dr. Franklin with her as usual. There was also a second man, gray-haired and slightly stooped, whom David recognised as an older brother of Mr. Chambers, and whom he remembered as a clear-visioned, gentle old philosopher greatly loved by his niece. As they passed, David leaned from the shadow to follow her with his eyes, and the light from the street lamp fell across his face. Dr. Franklin, chancing this instant to look in David's direction, excused himself to Helen and her uncle, who moved forward a few paces, and stepped to the doorway. David pressed frantically back into the shadow.
"Good evening," said Dr. Franklin, holding out a firm, cordial hand, into which David laid his limp fingers. "I've seen you about several times since the evening you called. I've been looking for a chance to invite you to the Mission."
David hardly heard him. He was thinking, wildly, "Suppose she should step to his side? Suppose he should draw me into the light?" It was a moment of blissful, agonising consternation.
"Perhaps I'll come," he managed to whisper. He feared lest his whisper had reached her, and lest she had recognised his voice. But she did not look around.
"I shall expect you. Good night."
Dr. Franklin rejoined Helen and her uncle, and David's hearing, which strained after him, heard him explain as they moved away: "A man who came to the Mission in Mr. Morton's time. He often stands about the Mission, looking at it, but he never comes in."
As soon as they were out of sight David, a-tremble at the narrowness of his escape, slipped from the door and hurried away. As he went, the old question besieged him. If, a minute ago, he had been drawn into the light, would she have spoken to him? And if she had, would it not have been coldly, with disdain?
By the time he reached his tenement he had regained part of his lost composure. As he slipped the key into his door, he heard a sudden scrambling sound within. All his senses were instantly called to alertness. He threw open the door, and sprang into the darkened room.
In the same instant a vague figure leaped through the open window out upon the landing of the fire-escape. David crossed the little room at a bound, caught the coat-tails of the escaping figure, dragged it backwards. The figure turned like a flash, threw something over David's head—a sack, David thought—sprang upon David, and tied the something round his neck with a fierce embrace. David staggered backward under the weight of his adversary, and the two went to the floor in the narrow space between the bed and the wall.
Instantly the figure, with a jerk and a catlike squirm, tried to break away, but David's arms, gripped about its body, held it fast. Then it resumed its choking embrace of David's neck. The sack about his head was heavy; the air hardly came through it. He began to gasp. He tried frantically to throw the figure off, but it held its place. Then one hand fell upon a mop of hair. He clutched it and pushed fiercely upward. The embrace broke, and two fists began to beat his face through the sack. An instant later David managed to scramble to his feet and throw off the sack—and he then saw that the writhing, kicking figure he had captured reached midway between his waist and shoulders.
His right hand still fastened in his captive's hair, David lighted the gas. There, at the end of his arm, was a boy with the figure of fourteen and the face of twenty. His clothes, baggy and torn, were for the latter age; the trousers were rolled up six years at the bottom. The face was wrinkled in a scowl, and the eyes gleamed defiance. He was panting heavily. On the floor lay what David had thought was a sack; it was his own overcoat.
"Why you're nothing but a boy!" David cried.
"A boy! Nuttin'! If I'd been in form, I'd 'a' showed you!"
David locked the door, cut off escape by standing before the window, and disentangled his fingers from the boy's locks. He then saw that the boy's dirty yellow hair flowed upward from his forehead in a cow-lick.
The boy put his hands in his pockets and continued his defiant stare.
"Now, sir, what were you doing in here?" David demanded.
"What you t'ink?" the boy returned coolly. "You t'ink I come to collect de rent?"
"You tried to steal my coat."
"Gee, you're wise! How'd you guess it?"
David regarded the little fellow steadily for a minute or more. He now noticed that the figure before him was very thin, and he remembered that once the embrace had been broken the boy had been a mere child even to his own weak strength.
"What did you want that coat for?" he asked.
"It's like dis, cul," the boy answered in a tone of confidence. "I owns a swell clo'es-joint on Fift' Avenoo, an' I'm out gittin' in me fall stock."
"What's your name?" David demanded.
"Reggie Vanderbilt."
David did not try another question. He scrutinised the boy in silence, wondering what he should do with this young thief who, instead of showing the proper caught-in-the-act penitence, persisted in wearing the air of one who is master of the situation. David now took note that the boy's coat-collar was turned up and that the coat was held closed by a button near the throat and a safety pin at the bottom. The gaping front of the coat showed him a white line. He stepped forward, and with a quick hand loosened the button at the throat. It was as he had guessed—nothing but a mere rag of an undershirt that left the chest half bare—and the bare chest was rippled with ribs.
"Keep out o' dere!" the boy snapped, jerking away.
David was silent; then he said accusingly: "You're hungry!"
"Well, if I am—it's me own bellyache!"
"You tried to take that coat because you're hungry?"
"I did, did I?"
"Didn't you?"
"Oh, come stop jabbin' me in de ear wid your questions," the boy returned sharply. "What you t'ink I took it for? To buy me goil a automobile?"
He was silent for several moments, his bright eyes on David; then he threw off his defiant look. "Hungry?" he sniffed. "You don't know what de woid means! Me—well, me belly don't have to look it up in no dictionary. I ain't chawed nuttin' but wind for a mont'."
"You were going to sell it?"
"Nix. Pawn it."
David looked from the boy to the coat, and from the coat to the boy. One hand, in his pocket, mechanically fingered his fortune—seven coppers. After a minute he picked up the coat, put it across his arm, and opened the door.
"Come on," he said.
The boy did not budge. "Where you goin' to take me?" he asked suspiciously.
"Nowhere. You're going to take me."
"Where?"
"To the pawnshop," said David.
The boy gave a sneer of disgust, and an outward push with an open, dirty hand. "Oh, say now, cul, don't feed me dat infant's food! D'you t'ink I can't see t'rough dat steer? I'm wise to where—to de first cop!"
He shuffled from his place against the wall. "Well, you got me. Come on. Let's go."
He stepped through the door and stood quietly till David had the key in the lock. Then suddenly he darted toward the stairway. David sprang after him and caught his coat-tail just as he was taking three stairs at one step. David fastened his right hand upon the boy's sleeve, and side by side they marched down the four flights of stairs and into the street.
"Now take me to the pawnshop," David directed.
The boy gave a knowing grunt but said nothing. He walked quietly along till they sighted a policeman standing on a corner half a block ahead. Then he began to drag backward, and David had fairly to push him. As they came up to the officer David glanced down, and saw tenseness, alertness, fear—the look of the captured animal that watches for a chance to escape.
The officer noticed David's grip on the boy's sleeve. "What you caught there?" he demanded.
"Just a friend of mine," David answered, and passed on.
After a few paces the boy peered stealthily up, an uncomprehending look in his face. "Say, pard, you're a queer guy!" he said; and a moment later he added: "You needn't hold me. I'll go wid you."
David withdrew his hand, and a little further on the boy led David for the first time in his life into a pawnbroker's shop. David threw the coat upon the counter and asked for as much as could be advanced upon it.
A large percentage of pledges are never redeemed, and the less advanced on an unredeemed pledge the greater the pawnbroker's profit when it is sold. The money-lender looked the coat over. "A dollar and a half," he said.
"Ah, git out wid your plunk and a half!" the boy cut in. "Dat's stealin' widout takin' de risks. T'ree."
"It ain't worth it," returned the usurer.
The boy picked up the coat. "Come on," he said to David, and started out.
"Two!" called out the pawnbroker.
The boy walked on.
"Two and a half!"
The boy returned and threw the coat upon the counter.
Twenty minutes later they were back in the room, and several grocery parcels lay on the bed. With a gaze that was three parts wonderment and one part suspicion, the boy watched David cooking over the gas stove. He made no reply to David's remarks save when one was necessary, and then his answer was no more than a monosyllable.
At length the supper was ready. The table was the soap-box cupboard, so placed that one of them might have the edge of the bed as his chair. On this table were a can of condensed milk, a mound of sliced bread, and a cube of butter in its wooden dish. On the gas stove stood a frying-pan of eggs and bacon and a pot of coffee.
After the boy, at David's invitation, had blackened a basin of water with his hands, they sat down. David gave the boy two eggs and several strips of bacon, and served himself a like portion. Then they set to—one taste of eggs or bacon to three or four bites of bread. The boy never stopped, and David paused only to refill the coffee cups from time to time and to pour into them a pale string of condensed milk. And the boy never spoke, save once there oozed through his bread-stuffed mouth the information that his "belly was scairt most stiff."
Presently the boy's plate was clean to shininess—polished by pieces of bread with which he had rubbed up the last blotch of grease, the last smear of yellow. He looked over at the frying-pan in which was a fifth egg, and an extra strip of bacon. David caught the stare, and quickly turned the egg and bacon into the boy's plate.
The boy looked from the plate to David. "You don't want it?" he asked fearfully.
"No."
He waited for no retraction. A few minutes later, after having finished the egg and meat and the remaining slices of bread, he leaned back with a profound sigh, and steadily regarded David.
At length he said, abruptly: "Me name's Tom."
"Thanks," said David. "What's your last name?"
The boy's defiance and suspicion had fallen from him. "Jenks I calls meself. But I dunno. Me old man had a lot o' names—Jones, Simmons, Hall, an' some I forget. He changed 'em for his healt'—see? So I ain't wise to which me real name is."
Under David's questioning he became communicative about his history. "You had to be tough meat to live wid me old man. Me mudder wasn't built to stand de wear and tear, an' about de time I was foist chased off to school, she went out o' biz. I stayed wid me old man till I was twelve. He hit de booze hard, an' kep' himself in form by poundin' me. He was hell. Since den I been woikin' for meself."
It was now twelve by Kate Morgan's clock—an hour past David's bed-time. "Where do you live?" he asked Tom.
"In me clo'es," Tom answered, grinning. David found himself liking that grin, which pulled the face to one side like a finger in a corner of the mouth.
"Where are you going to stay to-night?"
"Been askin' meself de same question." He stood up. "But I guess I'd better be chasin' meself so you can git to bed."
"Don't go just yet," said David. He looked at his narrow bed, then looked at Tom. "Suppose you stay with me to-night. I guess we can double up in the bed there."
Tom's mouth fell agape. "Me—sleep—in—your—bed?"
"Of course—why not?"
The boy sank back into his chair. "Well, say, you are a queer guy!" he burst out. He stared at David, then slowly shook his head. "I won't do it. Anyhow, I couldn't sleep in a bed. It'd keep me awake. But I'm up agin it, an' I'll stay if you'll let me sleep on de floor."
"But there are no extra bed-clothes."
"Wouldn't want 'em if dere was. I'd be too hot."
So it was settled. Ten minutes later the room was dark, David was in bed, and Tom was lying in the space between the bed's foot and the wall, with David's coat for extra covering and with Browning's poems and a volume of Molière as a pillow. There was deep silence for another ten minutes, then a cautious whisper rose from the foot of the bed.
"Are you asleep?"
"No," said David.
"Say, why didn't you have me pinched?" the voice asked.
No answer.
The voice rose again. "Why did you gimme dat extry egg?"
No answer.
"Why did you ask me to stay here? Ain't you afraid I'll skin out wid your clo'es?"
Again there was no answer. But presently David said: "Better go to sleep, Tom."
There was a brief, deep silence; then once more the voice came from the foot of the bed. "I ain't just wise to you," said the voice, and there was a note of huskiness in it, "but say, pard, you gits my vote!"
The first object David's eyes fell upon when they opened the next morning was Tom, sitting beside the bed, a look of waiting eagerness on his pinched face. The instant he saw David was awake he sprang up, and David perceived the boy had on one pair of the boxing-gloves.
"Can you use de mitts?" Tom asked excitedly.
"A little. I used to, that is," David answered, smiling at the odd figure the cow-lick, the eager face, the baggy coat and the big boxing-gloves combined to make of the boy.
"Come on, den!—git up! Let's have a go."
David slipped out of bed, and while he was dressing Tom entertained him with an account of the Corbett-Britt fight, kinematograph pictures of which he had seen at one of the Bowery theatres. Tom danced about the narrow space between the bed and the wall, taking the part of one man, then of the other, giving blows and receiving blows, feinting, ducking, rushing and being rushed against imaginary ropes, and gasping out bits of description: "Corbett breaks in an' lands like dis—Jimmie hands back dis poke—Corbett goes groggy—dey clinch—bing! bang! biff!—Den Jimmie gits in dis peach—Corbett kerplunks—one, two, t'ree, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—an' Corbett's a has-been!"
By this time David was half-dressed, and had drawn on the other pair of gloves. They gravely shook hands and drew apart. "Be careful, and don't make me a has-been," David cautioned.
"Oh, mudder! Fetch me a step-ladder!" besought Tom, looking upward at David's head. He spat from one side of his mouth, drew his head down between his shoulders, rushed in, and began directing a fury of blows at David's stomach, which was near the level of his fists; and it took all David's long-rusted, but one-time considerable, skill to ward off the rapid fists. He made no attempt to get in a blow himself, and this soon drew on him Tom's wrath.
"I ain't no baby!" the boy yelled in disgust. "Punch me!"
David proceeded to land a few light touches about the slender body.
"A-a-h, punch me!" Tom gasped. "Harder!"
David obeyed, and landed a chest blow that sent Tom to his back. David dropped to his knees beside him, alarmed, for the boy's face was white and dazed. But Tom rose to an elbow and pushed David away. His lips moved silently, then with sound: "Seven, eight, nine, ten." At "ten" he sprang to his feet and rushed at David again.
But David threw up his hands. "That's enough for to-day. And finish fights are against the New York law."
Tom grumblingly drew off the gloves. After their breakfast of bread and coffee David asked him what he was going to do that day.
"Look for odd jobs."
"Where will you stay to-night?"
"Dunno."
"How did you like the floor?"
"Bully!"
"Well, suppose you come back and try it again to-night. Be here at six. Will you?"
"Will I!" gasped the boy. "You can just bet your gran'mudder's suspenders dat I will!"
When David returned at six, after another day of hopeless search, he found Tom sitting in the doorway of the tenement. The boy's face lighted up with his lop-sided smile; David felt a quick glow at having someone to give him a welcoming look—even though that someone were only a ragged, stunted boy in an old slouch hat that from time to time slipped down and eclipsed the sharp face.
They had dinner, and after it they set forth on a walk. David left the guidance to Tom, and the boy led the way down the Bowery, where, to the hellish music of elevated trains, and by the garish light that streamed from restaurants, pawnshops, music-halls and saloons, moved the all-night procession of thieves and thugs, cheap sports and cheap confidence men, gutter-rags of men and women, girls whose bold, roving eyes sought markets for their charms—all those whom we of sheltered morals are wont to consider the devil's irretrievable share, without thinking much, or caring much, as to why they should be his. Tom's tongue maintained a constant commentary on everything they passed; to talk was clearly one of his delights. What he said was interesting, and was given a grotesque vivacity by his snappy diction of the streets; but David shivered again and again at the knowledge he had where he should have had ignorance.
The boy was erudite in the wickedness of this part of the city. That innocent-looking second-hand store, which was run by the fat old woman in the doorway, was in reality a "fence;" that laundry was an opium den; in the back of that brilliantly-lighted club-room, whose windows were labelled "The Three Friends' Association," there was a gambling joint; that saloon was the hang-out of a gang of men and women thieves; in that music hall, through whose open door they glimpsed a dancer in a red knee-skirt doing the high kick, the girls got their brief admirers drunk and picked their pockets;—and so on, and on, missing nothing that he should not have known.
At Chatham Square they turned into the Jewish quarter and shouldered homeward through narrow streets that from wall to wall were a distracting entanglement of playing children, baby carriages, families on door-steps, promenading lovers, hurrying men, arguing groups, flambeau-lighted pushcarts whose bent and bearded proprietors offered the chaotic crowd every commodity from cucumbers to clothes. The latter part of their walk took them by St. Christopher's, through the glowing colours of the Morton memorial window; and the Mission came in for a few of Tom's sentences. It was a great place to steal women's pocketbooks. "A lot o' swell ladies from Fift' Avenoo comes down dere to monkey wid de kids—hell knows what for. Dere easy fruit. I pinched two or t'ree fat leathers dere meself."
David marvelled at the boy's intimacy with wickedness, yet he understood it. Evil was the one thing Tom had had a chance to become acquainted with; it had for him the familiar face that virtue has for children raised amid happier circumstances. The conditions of its childhood, whether good or bad, are the normal conditions of life to the child. So to Tom wickedness was normal; he talked of stealing, of gambling, of women, with the natural vivacity that another boy might have talked of his marbles.
David saw, as definitely as the calendar sees to-morrow, the future of this boy if there were no influence counter to the influence that was now sweeping him toward his fate. He saw arrest (Tom had boasted that he had been arrested once)—prison—a hardening of the boy's nature—a life of crime. He heard little of the rest of the boy's chatter, and presently he came to a decision—a very unpretentious decision, for he was poorer than poverty, and what confidence he once had in his personal influence had slipped away. But the little he could do for the boy, that he would do.
"How would you like to stay with me for awhile, Tom?" he asked when they were back in his room. "I can't offer you anything but the floor for a bed—and perhaps not that after a few weeks."
"D'you mean I can stay wid you?" Tom cried, springing up, his eyes a-gleam. "Say, dat'll be great! We'll divide on de price! An' we'll have a little go wid de mitts ev'ry day!"
"Very well. But I want to place one condition on your staying. You're to be strictly honest with me, and you're not to steal. You understand?"
The boy made a grimace. "All right—since you ask me. But say, you're queer!"
The next morning David bought Tom a red cotton sweater and advanced him a quarter with which to buy a stock of papers. Two weeks passed, every day very much like the one before it. David found no work, and Tom made but little. During the two weeks the rent fell due, and most of David's library went to a second-hand book dealer and the proceeds went to the landlady. Then, two or three at a time, the rest of the books were carried to the second-hand store.
At length there came a morning when there was not a cent, and when, to perfect the day's despair, David woke with a burning soreness throughout his body—the consequence of having been caught the day before in a cold rain and having walked for several hours in his wet clothes. He crawled out of bed, but soon crept in again. His muscles could make no search for work that day.
Tom proposed a doctor. David dismissed the suggestion; doctors required money. But, money or no money, Tom saw there had to be one thing—food. He sat gazing for several minutes at the boxing-gloves, their last negotiable possession, which his favour had thus far kept out of the pawnshop; then with a set face he put them under his arm and walked out of the room. He returned with fifty cents.
That night Tom came home discouraged. He had hunted work all day, but no one wanted him. "Dey all wanted to hire a good suit o' clo'es," he explained to David. But the next morning he seemed confident. "I t'ought of a place where I t'ink I can git a job," he said, as he started away after having prepared for David a breakfast that David's feverish lips could not touch.
His confidence was well founded, for that evening he entered the room with an armload of bundles. "Look at dis, will you!" he cried, dropping the parcels on the bed. "Bread, an' butter, an' eggs, an' steak—ev'ryt'ing. You got to git well, now! You're goin' to git fat!"
David in his surprise sat up in bed. "Why, where did you get all those things?"
"Didn't I say I'd git a job? Well, I did! In a big hardware store. I'm errand boy—ev'ryt'ing! De boss say, 'Tom do dis; Tom do dat.' I do 'em all, quick! De next minute I say to de boss, 'anyt'ing else?' He pays me six a week, I'm so quick."
"But you've only worked a day. You haven't been paid already?"
"Sure. I hands de boss a piece o' talk: me mudder's sick, an' I needs ready coin bad. So he pays me a dollar ev'ry day."
David made a mental note that later there must be a few more remarks on the subject of lying; but this was not the time to reprove Tom's fib. He took the boy's hand in his hot, weak grasp. "You're mighty good to me, Tom," he said, huskily.
Tom's face slipped to one side and twitched. His blinking eyes avoided David's gaze. "Oh, dat's nuttin'," he gruffly returned. "Nobody goes back on his pal."
At the end of the first week of David's illness Kate Morgan returned home, having given up her position, and thenceforward she prepared most of his meals, chatted much with him, and lent him ten-cent novels. One result of their chats was that Kate became strengthened in her conviction that David had been a thief of great skill and daring. Contradiction availed him nothing. "Your last haul was a big one—you told me so yourself," she would say. "And only the top-notchers have your kind of talk and manners."
One day she returned to the matter of her former prophecy. "You've had enough of this," she said. "When you get out of bed, and get your strength back, you'll be at the old game again. You see!"
During this time Tom left for work regularly at half-past seven, and returned regularly at half-past six; and each evening he insisted on turning his dollar in to David, to be spent under David's direction. One night, as Tom was giving frightful punishment to an imaginary opponent with the boxing gloves—he had redeemed them with part of his second day's pay—several coins slipped from his pocket and went ringing upon the floor. When Tom rose from picking them up David's thin face was gazing at him in sorrowful accusation. The boy paled before the look. He was silent for a moment. Then he asked mechanically, almost without breath: "What's de matter?"
"Haven't you been stealing from your employers?" David asked, in a low voice.
The boy's colour came back. "No I ain't. Honest."
"Then where did you get that money?"
"Why—why, Kate Morgan give it to me. She t'ought I might want to buy a few extry t'ings."
David was unconvinced, but from principle he gave Tom the benefit of the doubt. He had the instinctive masculine repugnance to accepting money from a woman; so a moment later, when Kate came in, he said to her: "I want to thank for you for loaning that money to Tom. I understand and appreciate—but I don't need the money. You must take it back."
"What money?" she asked blankly.
She turned about on Tom, who was sitting at the foot of the bed where David could not see him. The boy's face was very white, and he was hardly breathing. He looked appealingly at her.
Kate's face darkened. "Tom," she said sharply, "I told you not to tell that!"
When she had gone, David called Tom to him and took his hand. "I beg your pardon, Tom," he said.
Tom made no answer at all.
All these days, when David was not chatting with Kate, or reading about the love of the fair mill-girl and the mill-owner's son, he was wanly staring into his future. He longed for the day when he could begin search again—and that day was also his great fear. Often he lay thinking for hours of Helen Chambers. He thought of the lovers she must have; of her marriage that might not be far off; of the noble place she would have in life—honoured, admired, a doer of good. He would never meet her, never speak to her—never see her, save perhaps as he had been doing, from places of shadow.
Well ... he prayed that she might be happy!
It was toward four o'clock of the day before Thanksgiving—an afternoon of genial crispness. The low-hung sun, visible in the tenement districts only in westward streets, was softened to a ruddy disk by the light November haze. Before the entrance to the club-house of the Mission were massed two or three hundred children. Here was childhood's every size; and here were rags and dirt—well-worn and well-mended decency—the cheap finery of poverty's aristocracy. There was much pushing and elbowing in a struggle to hold place or to gain nearer the entrance, and the elbowed and elbowing pelted each other with high-keyed words. But, on the whole, theirs was a holiday mood; the faces, lighted by the red sunlight that flowed eastward through the deep street, were eagerly expectant.
Across the way stood a boy, near the size of the largest children in the crowd. He wore a red sweater, and his hands were thrust into the pockets of baggy trousers voluminously rolled up at the bottom. He was watching the nervous group, with curiosity and a species of crafty meditation in his gleaming, black-browed eyes. It was Tom. Had David seen him there, he might have thought the boy had paused for a moment while out on an errand for his employer; but if Tom was on an errand it was evidently not one of driving importance, for he remained standing in his place minute after minute.
Presently he crossed the street and drew up to a be-shawled girl whose black stockings were patched with white skin. He gave her a light jab with his elbow. "Hey, sister—what's de row?" he asked.
She turned to him a thin face that ordinarily must have been listless, but that was now quickened by excitement. "It's the children's Thanksgiving party," she explained.
"What you wearin' out de pavement for? Why don't you go in?"
"It ain't time for the doors to open yet."
Tom fell back and stood in the outskirts of the crowd, occasionally sliding the tip of his tongue through the long groove of his mouth, the same meditative look upon his watchful face. Soon the door swung open and the crowd surged forward, to be halted by a low, ringing voice: "Come, children!—please let's all get into line first, and march in orderly."
Two middle-aged women, enclosed in a subdued air of wealth, appeared through the door, and marched down the three steps and among the children. The boy's eyes closed to bright slits, his lips drew back from his teeth. The next instant a third woman appeared at the top of the steps—young, tall, fresh-looking, gracefully dignified.
"Ain't she a queen!" Tom ejaculated to himself.
She paused a moment and bent over to speak to a child, and the boy discovered that the rich, low-pitched voice he had heard was hers. As she stood so, the front of her tailored coat swung open, and the boy caught a glimpse of a silver-mounted bag, hooked with a silver clasp to her belt. A brighter gleam sprang into his eyes.
She came down the steps, pushed in among the children, and with the two other women began to form the group into a double line. Tom, with quick-squirming movements, edged through to the inner circle of the excited crowd, in which she was tightly buried up to her shoulders. At intervals he gave sharp upward glances at her face; she was entirely absorbed in making ordered lines of this entanglement. The rest of the time his eyes were fastened on her belt. Presently the children were thrown turbulently about her by one of those waves of motion that sweep through crowds, and he managed to be pressed against her, the left side of his coat held open to shield off possible eyes. His right hand crept deftly forward under her coat—found the bag—loosened it.
But suddenly a child's shoulder was jammed against his closed hand, driving it against the young woman's side, and for an instant holding it captive. She glanced down and saw Tom's arm. Instantly her firm grasp closed about the wrist and jerked out the hand, which dropped the bag. Like a flash Tom delivered a blow upon her wrist. She gave a sharp cry of pain, but her grip did not break. As he struck again she caught him about the wrist with her free hand. He jerked and twisted violently, but her hands had a firm, out-of-doors strength. He was prisoner.
Startled cries of "Pick-pocket!" and "Get a cop!" sprang up in the shrill voices of the children. The young woman, very pale but composed, looked sternly down at Tom.
"So, young man, I've caught you in the very act," she said slowly.
He looked sullenly at the pavement.
"What shall I do with you?"
Tom raised his shoulders. "Dat's your biz," he answered gruffly.
"Arrest him!" "They've gone for a policeman!" shouted the childish voices.
At this the boy sent up a quick glance at the young woman. Despite its severity, kindness was in her face. He dropped his head, the sullenness seemed to go out of him, and his body began to tremble. The next instant his sleeve was against his face and he was blubbering.
"I couldn't help it!" he sobbed.
"You couldn't help it!" she exclaimed.
"No! It was because o' me brudder. I've never stole before. Honest, lady. But me poor brudder's been sick for t'ree mont's. I tried to find a job. I can't find none. Our money's all gone, an' dere ain't no one but me. What can I do, lady?"
The young woman looked at him questioningly. One of Tom's sharp eyes peeped up at her, and saw sympathy struggling with unbelief. His blubbering increased. "It's de God's trut', lady! You can send me to hell, if it ain't. Me brudder's sick—dere's nuttin' to eat, an' no medicine, an' nobody'd gimme work. So help me God!"
At this instant the cry rose, "Here's the policeman!" and almost at once the officer, pressing through the alley that opened among the children, had his hand on Tom's collar. "So you was caught with the goods on," he cried, giving the boy a rough shake. "Well, you chase along with me! Come along, lady. It's only two blocks to the station."
He jerked Tom forward and started away. But the young woman, who still held one of Tom's wrists, did not move. "Will you wait, please?" she said quietly, a flash in her brown eyes. "What right have you to touch this boy?"
"Why, didn't he nab your pocket-book?"
"I'm not saying," she said, looking at him very steadily. "You can arrest him only on complaint. I am the only one who can make a complaint. And I make none. Please let go!"
The policeman stared, but his hand dropped from Tom's collar.
"Thank you," she said.
She called one of the women to her side. "You can easily get on without me, Mrs. Hartwell," she said in a low voice. "The most important thing for me is to look into this boy's case. I'm going to have him take me to his brother—if there is a brother."
Tom overheard the last sentence. His face paled. "Please don't take me to me brudder," he begged, a new ring in his voice. "He t'inks I'm honest. He'll t'row me out when you tell him! Don't take me. What's de use? I told you de trut'."
"If there is a brother, I want to talk with him," she answered. She requested the policeman to follow at a distance, and then asked Tom to lead them to his home.
"An' see that you take us to the right place, too," said the officer, with a warning look. "An' don't try to get away, for I'll be watchin' you."
They started off. The young woman did not take Tom's arm, for the same reason that she asked the policeman to follow several yards behind—that there might be no apparent capture, and no curious trailing crowd.
Tom's body palpitated with the dread of facing David—of what David would say to him, of the way David would look at him, but most of all of the change in David's attitude toward him, when these accusers should make plain to David that for two weeks he had been lying and stealing. He thought of escape—to get away from this young woman would be an easy matter; but a glance at the officer behind assured him that to try would mean merely the exchange of a kind captor for a harsh one. He preferred his chances with the young woman. So he led them on, his dread swelling with every step that brought them nearer to David.
The policeman was left waiting at the tenement entrance. Tom guided the young woman to his door, paused chokingly there, then led her into the little, dingy room, which was filled with a deeper hue of the coming twilight. David was lying in a doze, his face turned upward.
She glanced at the bed, saw only that a man was sleeping there, then glanced about. The poverty of the room and the sick figure confirmed Tom's story. She put a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "Please waken your brother," she whispered.
She stepped nearer the bed, but Tom hung fearfully back. And now she saw for the first time David's face with some distinctness. She started—bent over him—stared down at the face on the pillow. She trembled backward a pace. One hand reached out and caught a chair.
Tom, seeing his chance to escape, slipped out and took refuge in the Morgan's flat. The closing door roused David from his light sleep. He slowly opened his eyes—opened them upon the white face looking down upon him. The face seemed unreal, merely the face in a frequent dream. He closed his eyes, then opened them. The face was still there.... A great, wild, dizzy thrill went through him.
Slowly his haggard face rose from the pillow and he rested upon his elbow. "Miss Chambers!" he whispered, at length.
For moments she could only stare back at him—the friend once admired, who by his own confession had stolen the money of tenement children, had gambled it away, had counted on the guilt falling upon Morton. Then her voice, straining at steadiness, came out, and haltingly spoke the nearest thing that did not require thought—an explanation of her presence.
Her words hardly reached his mind. There was only one thing, the dizzy, impossible fact—she was before him! His body was chill, fire; his mind was chaos.
"You have been sick long?" she asked.
He took control of himself by a supreme effort. "For two weeks. It's nothing—just the grip."
"The boy told me for three months."
"That's just an invention of Tom's." He was conscious that, at his words, a look of doubt flitted across her face.
She had wondered, as he had done, what her attitude toward him should be, if chance ever brought them together—what it should be if he were striving to live honorably—what, if he had slipped down and were living by thievery. At this moment, without conscious thought, her attitude was established. But, though decision was against him, he was helpless, in need.
"Is there anything at all that I can do for you?" she asked.
He shook his head. If there was one person above all others from whom he could not accept service, that person was the woman he loved and who, he was certain, beneath her courteous control, must despise him. He had always known she believed him guilty, yet he had not half fore-measured the pain the eye-knowledge of it would give him. He longed to tell her the truth, as he often had longed before, and as he often would again—but he dared not, for to tell one person was to endanger, perhaps destroy, all the good of his act. Besides, even if he were to tell, who would believe him? She? No. She would believe, as the rest of the world would believe, that his statement was a dastardly attempt to whiten himself by blackening the memory of his sainted friend.
"You are certain I can do nothing?"
"Nothing," he said.
"Pardon me for being insistent, but—" she hesitated, white with the stress of the situation, then forced herself to go on—"the boy said that—that you had—nothing. Are you sure I can not do some little thing for you?"
At this moment David forgot that he was penniless, forgot that he had no work for the time when he left his bed, and probably could find none; remembered only how he loved this woman, and how low he was in her eyes.
"The boy was not telling the truth," he said. "We have plenty. We need nothing—thank you."
She could not speak of the past; her delicacy forbade her. She could not query into his present intentions; her judgment on him, subconsciously rendered upon circumstantial evidence, and supported by his past, made that unnecessary. And, furthermore, the whirling confusion within her made speech on both impossible. The one surface fact her emotions could allow her speech upon, that she had spoken of. She felt she must get away as quickly as she could.
She rose. His wide, love-hungry eyes gathered in every one of her last motions and expressions. He did not know when, if ever, he would see her again.
There was a sharp knock at the door. She held out her hand to him. He was not expecting this, but he laid his wasted hand tremblingly within it.
"Good-bye," she said.
Impulsively his soul reached out for some shred of her regard. "I'm trying to live honest now!" he burst out, in subdued agony.
She regarded him an instant. "I'm glad of it," she said quietly.
The sharp knock sounded once more.
"Good-bye," she repeated.
"Good-bye," he said in a dry whisper.
She turned toward the door, his love-hungry eyes gathering in the last of her.... Yes, he was utterly beyond the pale.
But before Helen's hand reached the knob, the door opened gently, pushing her to one side. Kate Morgan's head slipped cautiously in, and was followed at once by the rest of her body when she saw that David was awake.
"I didn't hear an answer, so I thought you must be asleep," she said. "I looked in to see if I couldn't do something."
The same instant her eyes fell upon Helen. "Oh!" she said sharply, and her glance, as quick as a snap-shot camera, took in every detail of Helen's appearance, and besides read Helen's character and her approximate position in the world. "I thought you were alone," she said to David.
"Miss Chambers was just going," he returned. He heavily introduced the two. Kate acknowledged the introduction with a little bow and a "pleased to meet you," and turned upon David a rapid, suspicious look, which demanded, "How do you come to know a woman of this kind?"
"As Mr. Aldrich said, I was just going," Helen remarked, reaching again for the door-knob. "So I wish you good afternoon."
If David's wits had been about him, he would have seen the flash of sudden purpose in Kate's face. "You're sure I can't do anything?" she asked quickly.
"Nothing," he returned.
She turned to Helen, her manner hesitating, and in it a touch of humility—the manner of one who is presuming greatly and knows she is presumptuous. Had David been observant at this instant, he could have understood a thing over which he had often wondered—how this aggressive personality could hold positions where servility was the first requisite.
"I was just going out too," she said with a little appealing smile. "If you don't mind, I'll—I'll walk with you."
Helen could not do other than acquiesce, and Kate hurried from the room with, "I'll put on my hat and meet you in the hall in just a second."
Helen looked again upon David, and again he felt, beneath her perfect courtesy, an infinite, sorrowful disdain. "Good-bye once more," she said; and the next instant the door had closed upon her.
David gazed at the door in wide-eyed stupor ... and gazed ... and gazed. He had hardly moved, when, half an hour later, Kate Morgan re-entered. The humble bearing of her exit was gone. She was her usual sharp, free-and-easy self, and she had a keen little air of success.
"That Miss Chambers is one of the swells, ain't she?" she asked, dropping into the chair and crossing her knees.
David admitted that she was.
"I sized her up that way the first second. I walked with her to a church-looking place, and told her a lot about myself—a maid, out of work and looking for a job, you know." She gave David a sly wink. "She didn't say much herself, and didn't seem to hear all I said. She's got some kind of a club over at that church place and she asked me to visit the club, and said perhaps later I might care to join. And she promised to see if some of her friends didn't need a maid."
Her keen little smile of triumph returned, and she added softly, "Jobs in swell houses ain't so easy to pick up."
"See here!" said David sharply, "are you planning a trick on one of Miss Chambers's friends?"
Instantly her face was guileless. "Oh, she'll forget all about me," she said easily. "But see here yourself! How do you happen to know a woman of her sort? She told me how Tom brought her up here"—she smiled at memory of the story—"but you must have known her before?"
David had foreseen the question, and his wits had made ready an answer—for to bare to Kate's inquisitive mind the truth of his one-time friendship with Helen, this for a score of reasons he could not do. "She's one of these philanthropic women. She's interested in all sorts of queer people. I'm one of them. She's tried to reform me."
If Kate discredited his explanation she did not show her unbelief. She went on to question him about Helen and his acquaintance with her, and it was a terrific strain on his invention to return plausible answers. He prayed that she would go, or stop, and when Tom crept fearfully in a few minutes later, his arms full of bundles, the boy's appearance was as an answer to his prayer. She turned upon Tom and began quizzing and joking him about his recent adventure, but the boy, hardly answering her, kept his eyes fixed upon David in guilty apprehension.
Presently, to the relief of David but not of Tom, she went out. Tom stared at David from near the window where he had stood all the while, pulsing with fear of the upbraiding, and perhaps something worse, that he knew was coming. David gazed back at him through narrow eyes that twitched at their corners.
"Tom," he said, "you lied to me about the job."
"Yes," the boy returned in a whisper.
"And you lied to me about Miss Morgan loaning you money?"
"Yes."
"And you've been stealing all this time."
"Yes. But—"
David's thin right hand stretched across the faded comforter. Tom came forward in slow wonderment and took it. David's other arm slipped about his shoulders and drew Tom down upon the bed.
"It was wrong—but, boy, what a heart you've got!" he said huskily.
A tremor ran through Tom's body, as though sobs were coming. Then the body stiffened, as though sobs were being fought down.
"Is dat all you're goin' to say?" asked a gruff, wondering whisper.
David's arm tightened. "What a heart you've got!"
The thin body quivered again, and again stiffened. But the eruption was not to be controlled. Sharp sobs exploded, then by a tense effort were subdued. Tom struggled up, and David saw a scowling face, tightly clenched against the emotion that makes you lose caste to show. The boy's look was a defiant declaration of his manhood.
Suddenly another sob broke forth. His emotion was out—his manhood gone. He turned abruptly. "A-a-h, hell, pard!" he whispered fiercely, tremulously, then snatched his hat and rushed out.
All the rest of the afternoon, and all during the time Tom, who slipped back a little later, was shamefacedly busy with the dinner, and all during the evening, David thought of but one thing—Helen Chambers. He was dizzily weak; collapse had quickly followed the climacteric excitement of being beside her, of speaking to her. Her visit had brought him no hope, no encouragement; if anything, an even blacker despair. Before, he had only guessed how thoroughly she must despise him—her disdain had been but a vague quantity of his imagination. Now her scorn had been before his own eyes. And he had seen its wideness, its deepness, even though the merest trifle of it showed upon the surface of her courtesy. A warm spring, though amid the serenity of overhanging leaves and of an embracing flower-set lawn, is full token of vast molten depths beneath the earth's controlled face. He did not feel resentful toward her. Knowing only what she knew, she could not regard him other than she did.
Twice he had caught a look of doubt upon her face—once when he had spoken of his three months' illness as being an invention of Tom's, and again when he had declared to her that he was trying to live honestly. The looks now recurred to him. They puzzled him. He strained long at their meaning; and then it entered him like a plunging knife, and he gasped with the sudden pain.
She believed that the invention washis, that his honesty was a lie, that he was the master of Tom's thefts!
That night Tom confessed he had privately saved a few dollars; and from the Morgans' flat he brought David's overcoat and several of the other articles they had pawned. David's conscience demanded that the savings should not be used, and he wondered what right they had to their own property, redeemed with stolen money. But need conquered ethics. A day or two later the landlady demanded her rent, giving the choice between payment and the street; the money went to her. Hunger pressed them; the redeemed articles began to return one by one to the pawnshop.
In a few days the grip left David, and though still weak, he began to creep about the streets, looking for work. He believed success impossible—and immediately success came.
The great stores were enlisting armies of temporary employes for the holiday season, and as at this time there are not enough first-class men and women to fill the ranks, they were accepting the second-class and the third and the tenth, examining no one closely. David heard of this chance, and, quailing at heart and expecting nothing, joined the line of applicants at the big department store of Sumner & Co.
"What experience?" demanded the superintendent when David reached his desk.
"None," said David.
The superintendent glanced him over, saw that his face was good.
"Work for nine a week?"
"Yes."
He scratched on a slip of paper and handed it to David.
"Start in at once in the check-room."
David reeled away from the desk. That evening he and Tom celebrated the advent of the Impossible by eating twenty cents' worth of food; and his excited hope, fearful, daring, kept sleep from his eyes all night. He knew he was only a temporary man, but his hope reasoned that if he gave exceptional satisfaction he might be retained after the great post-Christmas discharge. If retained permanently, he might work his way up in the store; and if he could remain only a few months, at least he would then be able to say, when seeking a new place and asked for his record, "I worked last for Sumner and Company; I refer you to them." His hope told him this position might prove the foothold he sought—and he determined to exert all that was in him to make it so.
Toward the end of his fourth day here, a woman for whom he had just laid upon the counter several packages she had checked two or three hours before, declared that a small parcel containing gloves was missing. Weary and exasperated from her day among the jostling shoppers, she berated David in loud and angry voice. He suggested that possibly she had not checked the parcel, that she might have checked it in some other store, that perhaps she had ordered it delivered and had forgotten it, that possibly she had dropped it.
Nothing of the kind! She knew what she'd done with it! They'd been careless, and given it to some other woman!
David, still very courteous, suggested that possibly it had been picked up and taken to the lost-and-found desk. She might inquire there.
She would not! She had left it here! She had been robbed!
She was departing ragefully, but David followed her and by using his best persuasion secured her grudging consent to wait till he himself should inquire at the lost-and-found desk. A few minutes later he returned with the package. She could say nothing more, for on the wrapper was the stamp of the desk and the hour the parcel had been turned in. She made a curt apology—it came hard, but still it was an apology—and went out.
David had his reward. The superintendent over him, attracted by the woman's angry voice, had drawn near and looked on unseen. He now came forward. "That was well done, Aldrich," he said. "I couldn't have handled her better myself."
David grew warm. Yes, this place might prove his foothold!
A similar thought came to one of the other four men in the check-room. This man, a regular employe in the room, had recently been reproved several times for negligence and discourtesy, and he knew his hold on his place was precarious. The fear now struck him, at the great discharge might not he be sent away and this new man Aldrich be kept?
His wits set to work. He now remembered that David had evaded questions about his past. Perhaps in it there was something that would change his chief's opinion. That night he followed David, warmed by his strengthened hope, from the store, and made inquiries in the little grocery shop in David's tenement. Just a poor man who had been having a hard time—this was all he could learn. He hung around the tenement, and presently David came down and walked away. He followed. After several blocks David stopped before St. Christopher's and gazed across the street at it. The shadowing man wondered. Then it occurred to him that in there they might know something about this man Aldrich.
He entered.
The next morning David was summoned to the office of the superintendent of his department. He was still aglow from the commendation of yesterday. But the superintendent's face struck him cold.
"Are you the David Aldrich who stole five thousand dollars from St. Christopher's Mission?" the superintendent asked quietly.
For a minute David could not speak. His foothold—lost! Again the abyss!
"I am," he said. But here was a man different from the other employer that had discharged him. Here a plea might be effective. "I am," he repeated. And then he went on desperately: "But whatever I may have done, I'm honest now. As honest as any man. And I'll work hard—nothing will be too hard! I ask only a chance—any sort of a chance. A chance to earn my living!—a chance to remain honest!"
"I have not acted hastily," the superintendent returned. "I have called up the Mission and confirmed a report I had from another source. I know your whole story. Your pay is in this envelope. That is all."
David went out, dizzily falling ... falling ... falling into depths he felt were hopeless. And as he fell, in the sickened swirl of his mind one sudden thought stood forth, sharp, ironic: It was St. Christopher's that had pushed him from his foothold, that had sent him plunging back into the abyss!
Once more began the search for work. But now fewer men were needed; there was time to question. But he tramped on, and on, looking always for a man who would not question, and always rebuffed—his clothes growing shabbier and shabbier, his shoes growing thinner, his little money wasting away—foot-sore, heart-sore, gripped by despair.
He had chanced upon at intervals in the Bowery and on Broadway several of his Croton prison-mates. All of them that had tried to be honest had been conquered by the difficulties, and had gone back to their old trades. He now, on his despairing walks, met two of them again, and both urged him to quit his foolish struggle and join with them. Nothing during the three terrible months had revealed to him how his moral instincts had suffered as did the fact that he was now tempted.
During these black days he saw little of Tom. David did not want to talk, did not want to box, there were no meals; so the boy came home only to sleep. David was certain Tom was stealing again, but he had not the heart for reproof. One can hardly seek to convert a thief to honesty when one can only offer starvation for reform.
Since Helen Chambers's call David had now and then had a faint hope that he might in some way hear from her. But no word came. He understood. She scorned him for the deed of four years ago, she believed he was now regularly practising theft and was directing the thefts and lies of a boy. Her sympathy, her instinct to aid, might impel her to establish friendly relations with a repentant thief, but never with such a thief as she considered him.
On his recovery David had resumed his Wednesday evening visits to his accustomed doorway near St. Christopher's. One night he saw that which poured a new agony into the cup he had thought already overbrimming. When Helen Chambers stepped from the Mission a man he had never before seen was beside her—a tall man, of maturity and dignity. With the instant instinct of the lover he recognized here another lover; and he read, in a smiling glance she turned up as they passed the doorway, that this man had her admiration and her confidence.
The next morning—the night had held the cup constantly to his lips—he went to the Astor Library and secured a copy of theSocial Register. The man's name, as it had come to him across the darkness in Helen's low resonant voice, was Allen. There were many Allens in theRegister, but only one that could possibly be the Allen he had seen the night before. TheRegister'sdata, and deductions therefrom, informed David that Mr. Henry Allen was forty, a member of half a dozen clubs, a man of wealth and social standing, and a lawyer of notable achievement.
Just the sort of husband Helen Chambers deserved! David closed the book and crept out.
The evening of the day before he found work in the department store, Kate Morgan had told him she had just secured a new place. "Did you get it through Miss Chambers?" he had suspiciously demanded.
"No," she had answered, smiling defiantly. At parting she had said with sharp decision, standing at his door: "You've had enough of the honest life. You're going to be with me on this job. Set that down." Without giving him a chance to reply, she had stepped out and closed the door.
He did not see her again till the middle of December, when one Sunday evening she knocked, walked in and promptly sent Tom on an errand.
"I can only stay for two minutes," she said, speaking rapidly and in a low voice. "This is supposed to be my Sunday off, but one of the maids is sick, so instead of a day I get an hour and a half. Say, it's certainly a swell house. The family is just a man and his mother. Just them two in a house big enough for a town—and think of the way we rub ribs down here! They've got carloads of silver, all of it solid; and the old lady has simply got barrels of jewelry. They're going to have a big blow-out on Christmas, so none of the servants get a holiday then. But almost all of them are going to get New Year's Eve and New Year's Day out. The house will be almost empty New Year's Eve. That's when we'll clean it up."
"You seem to have no doubt that I shall join you," David said dryly.
"None at all!" she answered promptly.
"Well, I shall certainly not!"
"You may think you'll not," she returned, undisturbed. "But you will. Anybody but a fool would have come to his senses long ago. You've found you can't get a job. You've got to live. It's steal or starve. Of course you're going to be in."
"I shall not!" David returned doggedly.
The days of the second half of the month moved slowly by. David continued walking the streets, occasionally daring to ask for work. His money was all gone, and everything was in the pawnshop except his overcoat, from which he hardly dared part at this season. His clothes were now so worn and shapeless as of themselves to insure the refusal of any place but that of a labourer. A labourer's place he possibly could have found—for a labourer's character is not questioned, since usually there is opportunity for him to steal no more than the value of a pick and shovel, and the wages left behind would more than cover such a loss. But for a labourer's work David had not a labourer's strength.
He was forced down ... down; finally to those low services by which the dregs of the city's population keep a decrepit life within themselves. The odd jobs about saloons which are usually done for beer-payment he performed under the inspiration of the free-lunch counter. He peeled potatoes in Bowery restaurants where dinners are fifteen cents, his work to pay for a meal; and when the dinner, which he had seen cooked in a filthy kitchen and served in half-washed dishes, was put before him, his stomach so revolted that he often turned from the untasted food and hurried into the street.
He was at the bottom of the abyss. Light, hope, were far above—the walls were smooth and high—his climbing strength was gone. He could not last much longer. He wondered, darkly, fearfully, what would be the end. Yet he had not given up; there was still bitterness, rebellion, in him, and still an automatic, staggering courage.
Three days before New Year's Kate Morgan called again. "I'm home to stay; my father's so sick I had to throw up my job," she said with a wink. She drew a ring of keys from the pocket of her skirt and silently held them before David's eyes; then, with a sharp little smile, she slipped them back, and drew out five sheets of paper, on each of which was a rough diagram of one of the floors of her late employer's house, with the doors and stairways marked and the location of the valuables. She explained the plans to him, adding details not charted, and on rising to go she handed him the sheets that he might familiarise himself with the house.
"But I shall have nothing to do with this," he said desperately, thrusting back the papers.
"Oh, yes you will," she returned, putting her hands behind her back.
He let the sheets fall to the floor, but she went out without giving them another glance. He looked at the papers, picked them up, stared at them whitely; and then, in a sort of frenzy, as though he would annihilate temptation, he tore the sheets into a thousand flakes and thrust them into his pocket.
The next morning he set forth with the despairing energy of the man who has a new fear, who has fiercely summoned all his resources for a last struggle. But mid-winter is a season when even a skilled man of blameless reputation has trouble in finding work; for David there was no chance whatever. And then, in his extreme desperation, he determined on a new course—in asking for work he would openly tell his record. Perhaps some one, out of sympathy for the struggle he was making, would give him an opportunity. He had thought of this plan before, but he had put it aside, because, he had reasoned, to avow himself a thief was to murder his chances. But the old course had brought him nothing; the new plan held at least a possibility.
David walked the streets half the day before he could drive himself to try this plan. At length a superintendent consented to see him and listen to his story and appeal. "I appreciate your frankness," the superintendent replied, not unkindly. "But I am under strict orders on this point; I can take only men of the straightest records. But I hope you'll find something."
David was left without courage to try the plan again that afternoon. The next day he could find no one willing to hear him. In the evening Kate Morgan called again. Everything was in readiness for their venture of the following night, she told him. Once more he declared that he would have nothing to do with the affair. But to himself his words sounded only of the lips; and his indignation did not quicken the least trifle when Kate flung a dry laugh into his face.
The following morning, the last day of December, he spurred his spent courage on to another attempt. He at length found a wholesale notion store where a packer was wanted. The head of the packing department was large and powerful, with coarse, man-driving features; but, undeterred by this appearance, David recited his story.
The superintendent stared amazedly at David, and swore. "Well if you ain't got the nerve!" he roared. "You admit you're a crook, and yet you ask me for a job! What d'you think we're runnin' here?—a reform school? Not on your life! Now you see if you can't find the door out o' here—and quick!"
David had neither the strength nor the spirit to reply to this man as he had replied to the owner of the department store in One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. When he reached the open air he walked a few paces, then paused and leaned against the front of a building. He felt an utter exhaustion—there was not another effort in him. He was like a horse, driven to the last ounce of its strength, that lies down in its tracks to die; the whip can only make it quiver, cannot make it rise. He chanced to turn his head, and saw himself in the mirror that backed the show-window—a thin, stooping figure with a white line of a mouth and a gray, haggard face. He was so numb, so spiritually spent, that this spectre of himself stirred not a single emotion within him.
That evening he swept a saloon, and ate of the cheese and corn-beef sandwiches at the free-lunch counter till the bartender ordered him out. Then he wandered aimlessly through the night, which was balmy despite the month, with no desire to return to the dingy four walls of his unheated room. He remembered in a vague way that this was the night Kate Morgan had set for the robbery; and perhaps his staying from home was due to the unfelt guidance of his conscience. He had no definite thoughts or sensations; only a vast, stunning sense of absolute defeat.
A little after eleven o'clock he found himself wandering along the East River, and presently he turned upon a dock and walked toward the water between two rows of trucks, facing each other, their shafts raised supplicatingly to the stars. He seated himself at the end of the dock, and his chin in his two hands, looked out upon the river. Save for the reflection, like luminous, writhing arms, that the few lights of Brooklyn reached toward him on the water's surface, and save for the turbulent brilliance under the Williamsburg Bridge's great bow of arc lights, the river, which the tide was dragging wildly out to sea, was as black as blindness.
He gazed forth into the darkness, forth upon the swirling water—dully, without thought, in the flat stupor of unrising defeat.... Presently a bell began to send down the hour from a neighbouring steeple. Mechanically he counted the strokes. Twelve. The number at first had no significance, but after a moment its meaning thrilled him through. This was the New Year!... The New Year!... And how was he beginning it? Penniless—friendless—without work—with little strength—with no courage—without hope. A happy New Year, indeed!
Suddenly all the bitterness that had been gathering and smouldering within him these last four months, burst out volcanically. And his passion was not alone in his own behalf; it was in behalf of the thousands of others who had made a similar struggle, and to whom the world had similarly denied the privilege of honesty. Starved and hopeless! Why? Because he could not work?—because there was no work?—because the world had decided the moral development of such as he required further punishment? No. Because the rich, powerful world was afraid!—afraid of its dollars! Because, if he were taken in, given a chance to live honestly, he might steal a bolt of cloth, or a coat, or a vase, or a shawl! There was the reason—the only reason. A bolt of cloth against a human life, begging to live! A coat against a human soul, agonising to be honest! Cloths and coats mean dollars—mean carriages, and diamonds, and wines. Cloths and coats must be guarded.