A burning impulse swept into him to tell her his innocence. For a moment his innocence trembled on his lips. But the old compelling reasons for silence rushed forward and joined battle with the desire of his love. His hands clenched, his body tightened, he stared at her tensely.
At length he drew a deep breath, swallowed with difficulty. "May the prophecy come true!" his dry lips said.
"It will!"
She studied him thoughtfully for a minute or more. "Something has been occurring to me and I'd like to talk to you about it." She rose. "But I must be going. Won't you walk with me to the car, and let me talk on the way?"
A minute later they were in the street, from which the day had all but faded and into which the shop-windows and above them the tier on tier of home-windows, were stretching their meagre substitute. David's blood was leaping through him, and in him were the lightness and the all-conquering strength of youth. The crisp winter air that thrust its sting into many of the stream of home-coming workers, tinglingly pricked him with the joy of living.
"Have you thought again of writing?" she asked.
"About as much as a man who has leaped from a house-top to try his wings, thinks again of flying."
"I am speaking seriously. If the impulse to write should return, would you have time for writing?"
"I think I could manage three or four hours a day."
"Then why not try?"
"The ground where one alights is so hard, Miss Chambers!"
"But perhaps you did not soar the other time because you had over-worn your wings. Perhaps they have grown strong and developed during their rest. Many of us used to believe they would carry you far up. Why not try? You have nothing to lose. And if you succeed—then the dream you have told me of will begin to come true."
For several paces David was silent. "I, too, have thought of this. As you say, there is nothing to lose. I shall try."
"Why not take an idea in the field of your dream?" she pursued eagerly. "Why not write a story illustrating how the criminal is to be saved?—say, the story of a boy amid evil surroundings that urged him toward a criminal life; the boy to come under good influence, and to develop into a splendid citizen."
"That may be just the idea," said David.
They discussed the suggestion warmly the remainder of their walk to the car. A little farther on, as they were coming out upon the Bowery, the Mayor of Avenue A swayed into view. Astonishment leaped into his pink face when he saw who David's companion was. His silk hat performed a wide arc, and David had a sense that backward glances over the Mayor's shoulders were following them.
"And you really believe in me?" David asked, as Helen's car drew to a stop.
"I do—and I believe all the other things I have said." She gave the answer with a steady look into his eyes and with a firm pressure of her hand.
"I hope you'll not be disappointed!" he breathed fiercely, exultantly.
He retreated to the sidewalk and standing there, the clanging of the elevated trains beating his ears, he watched the slow passage of her car through the press of jostling, vituperating trucks, volleying over the cobble-stones, till it disappeared beyond Cooper Union. Then he turned away, and strode the streets—chin up, shoulders back, eyes straightforward—powered with such a hope, such a determination to do, as he had not known since his first post-college days. Perhaps he would conquer the future. He would try.
Yes ... hewouldconquer it!
David had suggested school to Tom, but the boy would none of it.
"What, set in one o' dem agony seats, biffin' your brain wid books, a skinny lady punchin' holes t'rough you wid her eyes! Not for mine, pard!"
A job was what he wanted, and David at length concluded that after Tom had been tamed by the discipline of a few months of regular work, he would perhaps be more amicable toward education.
There were but two men of whom David could ask aid in finding a place for the boy, Mr. Rogers and the Mayor of Avenue A. Mr. Rogers was beginning to be something of a puzzle to David. One thing that made David wonder was the smallness of Mr. Rogers's business compared with his ability. They had had a few short talks and David had discovered there lurked behind that reserved exterior a sharp intelligence which now and then flashed out unexpected poniards of bitter wit. David contrasted him with another rental agent he had met, doing several times Rogers's business, and the second man seemed a nonentity. Yet Rogers was the agent of but half a dozen tenements, and made no effort to extend his clientage.
David also wondered at what he could regard only as idiosyncrasies. The dingy brown of Rogers's hair seemed to him hardly a natural colour; he guessed hair dye. But hair dye he associated with vanity, with the man who would falsify his gray hair to extend his beauship, and vanity Rogers apparently had not. And one day, while sweeping out Rogers's office, David had tried on Rogers's spectacles, which had been left on the desk, and had discovered he could see through them as well as with his naked eyes. The lenses were blanks. Why should the man wear blank spectacles, why should he dye his hair? Mere idiosyncracies of course—yet rather queer ones.
Rogers was always kind and courteous to David, and David heard from tenants and neighbours many stories of the agent's warm heart—of rent advanced from the agent's own pocket when a tenant was out of work, of food that came covertly to fatherless families, of mysterious money and delicacies that came to the sick poor. Yet he was invariably cold and distant to David, and cold and distant to all others; so much so that to try to thank him was an embarrassment. Sometimes, when musing about Rogers's business restraint, his colourless dress, his reserve, his stealthy generosity, it seemed to David that Rogers sought obscurity and anonymity with the zeal that other men seek fame and brass tablets.
It was the reserve of Rogers and the constraint David felt in his presence, and even more the knowledge of the greater influence of the Mayor of Avenue A, that made David choose to ask the latter's aid in seeking work for Tom. So about four o'clock of the afternoon following Helen's call, he walked into the Pan-American Café. At a large table in a front corner sat the Mayor, two other men, and half a dozen women, all drinking of coffee and eating of cake, and all shaking with full-voiced laughter that bubbled straight from the diaphragm. David was in no hurry, so he sat down in the opposite corner of the almost empty café to wait the departure of the Mayor's friends.
The ladies about the Mayor were hearty beauties of from ten to twenty years' acquaintance with womanhood; and among them there was an abundance of furs and diamonds. Most of them were misses, David learned from the way the Mayor addressed them. The Mayor, David soon perceived, was the center of their interest. Their pleasantries, their well-seasoned smiles, their playful blushes, were all directed at him, and now and then one of his sallies was reproved by a muff's soft blow upon his mouth. The rôle of target seemed to please him; he bent now to this one, now to that, made sweeping flourishes, made retorts that drew upon him more of the same pleasant missiles. It began to dawn upon David that his saviour was very much of a gallant.
Presently the Mayor, rising to greet a newcomer, noticed David. After a few moments he excused himself and took a chair at David's table. A silk vest that was a condensed flower garden made the mayoral front a gorgeous sight to behold.
There was a new respect in the Mayor's manner. "I see you're flyin' in high society these days," he began, in a whisper.
"You refer to Miss Chambers? She's merely interested in me as you are—in my reform." David said this quietly, as though the subject was closed.
His dignity was not lost on the Mayor. "Say, you've taken an all-fired brace to yourself in the last ten days, ain't you! As for your lady friend—well, if the way she was talkin' to you is the way reformers talk, gee I wish some one like her'd try to make a man out o' me! She's all right, friend. I've seen her before and I've heard a lot about her. But her old man—Lord, but I'd like to set for a week or so on his windpipe! Real estate is one o' his thousand lines, you know. He owns a lot o' tenements in this part o' town—none near St. Christopher's, o' course—and as a landlord, say, he's just partic'lar hell!"
"I've come to ask another favour of you," David cut in, quickly. "You've seen the boy that stays with me. I want to get him a job if I can. I thought possibly you might be able to help me."
"I've seen the kid, yes. Somethin' of a sleight o' hand performance, ain't he?—now he's there and now he ain't. Where'd you pick him up?"
"We just fell in with each other a couple of months ago. There's a man in him."
"I see. And you're trying to dig it out. You'll have to do a little blastin' on the job, don't you think? As for gettin' him work"—he shook his head slowly—"there's about five thousand families on Avenue A, and each family's got five boys, and about once in so often the street out there is blockaded with their mas beggin' me to get 'em jobs. There's how I'm fixed."
"You can't help me then?"
"You've sized it up. Sorry. Wish I could."
After a moment David asked hesitantly: "You couldn't use a boy here, could you?"
"Here! Nothin' I could use a boy for."
"Help in the kitchen, carry things up from the cellar, clean up," David suggested.
The Mayor shook his head.
"It would be great for the boy if he could work a while for some one like you that would understand him, make allowances, and break him in properly," David went on eagerly. "He's never held a job, and a stranger wouldn't have much charity for his shortcomings, wouldn't keep him long. You don't need him, but still you can make things for him to do. In three or four weeks I'll have found another job for him, and by then you'll have him worked into shape to hold it. Of course I'll pay his wages myself—say three dollars a week; only he must think it's coming from you."
The Mayor's look changed to that sharp, penetrating gaze with which he had searched David's interior on his first visit. "Yes, you're in dead earnest," he grunted after a few seconds.
He raised a fat forefinger. "See here, friend. You're cuttin' into my business. I'm an octopus, a trust—you understand?—and any man that tries any philanthropic stunts in my part o' town, I run him out o' business. See? Now you send the kid around and I'll let him bust things here for a while. But keep your coin. I reckon three dollars ain't goin' to put Carl Hoffman on the bum."
David thanked him warmly. "But you don't need the boy," he ended in a determined voice, "so I can't let you pay him."
The Mayor regarded David steadily for a moment. "Have it your own way," he said abruptly; and suddenly his big fist reached across the table, and to David it was like shaking hands with a fervent pillow. "Friend, I've sized you up for the real thing. You made your mistake, and it was a bad one—but we all make 'em. You belong 'way up. I'm proud to know you."
David flushed and was stammering out his appreciation, when the Mayor interrupted with, "Oh, a friend that's good enough for Miss Chambers is good enough for me."
He glanced over his shoulder at the group he had left, then leaned confidentially across the table and asked in a whisper: "What d'you think o' the bunch?—the ladies I mean."
"Why, they seem to be very fine," David answered, surprised. "And they admire you."
"Friend," said the Mayor with an approving nod, "you certainly ain't been lookin' on with your blind eye. They do that! And every afternoon it's the same—either them, or some other bunch. And d'you know what they're after?"
"No."
"Me. They want to marry me. And there ain't a girl on the avenue between fifteen and seventy that ain't tryin' to do the same. Friend, I can't help bein' pop'lar with the ladies. I like 'em—God bless 'em! But when you've got a whole avenue tryin' to marry you, it's hell!"
He shook his head with an air of sadness. "I don't want to marry. I was married once for about a year. It was when I was a kid. I guess she was a pretty nice girl, but she was too much like her mother, and when she went I swore I'd keep out o' that kind o' trouble. But they're closin' in on me. One of 'em's sure to get me. I don't know which one, or mebbe I could head her off. I ought to keep away from 'em, but I can't leave 'em alone, and they won't leave me alone. Oh, hell!"
He rose with a groan. "Well, send round the kid," he said, and carefully pulling down his vest and smoothing his dozen hairs, he rejoined his friends. As David left the café he heard a deep roar from the Mayor, and had a glimpse of a fair suitress of forty rebuking the Mayor's mouth with her muff.
David sent Tom to the Mayor, and walked over to a hardware store on the Bowery to order some new ash cans. As he was returning through the Bowery a man stepped to his side with a quiet, "Hello, pal." Startled, David looked about. Beside him was a wiry, gray man, with deep-lined face and a keen, shifty eye. It was a man David had known in prison—a cynical, hardened gentleman who had been running counter to the law for thirty years, during which time he had participated in scores of daring robberies and had known most of the country's cleverest criminals. Bill Halpin was his name—at least the most recent of his dozen or two.
Halpin had taken a fancy to David while they were prison-mates, why David could not understand; and his greeting was warm to come from one of his contemptuous nature. The two walked on together, and David, in response to Halpin's queries, told that he had gone to work with the determination to live honestly. Halpin gave a sneer of unbelief—he sneered at all things save the frankly evil—but said nothing. When they reached David's tenement, David asked him in, but he said he had an engagement with a pal, and went away after promising to come around some other time.
David shovelled the furnace full of coal and was beginning his preparations for dinner, aglow with his new hopes and with the thought that he had regained Helen for his friend, when there was a knock at his door. He opened the door, expecting his usual caller—a tenant with a grievance. Kate Morgan stepped into the room.
David had seen her in finery before, but never in such finery as now. There was a white velvet hat with two great black plumes that curled down upon her back hair; a long black coat, through whose open front glowed the warm red of a gown; a black fur scarf round her neck and a black muff enclosing her white-gloved hands.
She stepped into the room and her eyes—brighter than ever were the eyes of the furs' original owners—gleamed over the scarf with hard defiance.
"Good evening,MisterAldrich."
David flushed. "Good evening." He drew his one rocking-chair toward her. "Won't you sit down?"
She sank into the chair, threw open the coat so that the full glory of its white satin lining and of the red dress were displayed, and thrust out a little patent-leathered foot.
"I saw you with Miss Chambers last night," she said, her brilliant eyes darting contempt at him. "Of course you told her all about that Allen affair. You're not only a coward. You're a squealer."
David was standing with his back to his mantel, and Kate had to see the erectness, the confidence, the decision, that had come to him since the night of their adventure. "I don't know why you're saying these things," he returned quietly, "but if saying them pleases you, go on."
"Well, ain't we got high and dignified since we became a janitor!" she sneered. "A janitor! Sweeping—scrubbing—listening to the kicks of dirty tenants—digging with your hands in the garbage to separate paper, tin cans, greasy bones. Lord, but ain't you high up in life!"
"Go on," said David.
She drew out her cigarette box—she knew he disliked to see her smoke—lighted a cigarette, and blew a little cloud toward him.
"A janitor! What a poor, weak, miserable soul you've got. Think of a man turning from excitement, an easy life, good things, and taking up this! But you're not a real man. You'd rather do dirty work for a year than earn a year of good times by a night's work. Wouldn't you like to know what I cleaned up the other night after you sneaked out?"
"What you wanted, I suppose."
"That's it—I got all I went after! I'm on Easy Street for a year. And I'm enjoying life, too. You set that down. While you clean up other people's dirt, and live in a basement, and cook yourself three-cent dinners!"
All her fierceness, all her scorn, were in her words, gave them a jagged edge; and she thrust them in deep and twisted them vindictively. David, very white, looked steadily down at her, but made no reply.
"And besides, you're a squealer!"
He continued silent.
She sent out a puff of smoke, her eyes blazing at him, and thrust again:
"And a damned coward!"
David grew yet paler, but he continued his steady, silent gaze.
She sat looking up at him for several moments, without speaking again. Then slowly something of the fierce scorn, the wild desire to pain him, went out of her face.
"And so you're going to stick to honesty?" she presently asked, abruptly, her voice still hard. "As tough as it is?"
"Yes," said David, quietly as before.
"And nothing can change you?"
He shook his head.
She continued staring up at him. For an instant faint twitches broke her face's hard surface, but it tightened again. Suddenly, to David's astoundment, she whirled about in her chair, presenting him her back; and he saw a white hand clench and her little body grow rigid. Then suddenly she sprang up, hurled her cigarette box across the room, and turned upon him with a deep gasp, her face convulsed.
"Here I am!" she cried, stretching out to him her open hands. "I tried to get you to come to my way. You wouldn't come. I've come to your way. Here I am!"
This whizzing from one pole to the other was too great a speed for David. "What?" he gasped.
"I lied about New Year's night! I took nothing—not a thing! You wouldn't let me. I've acted to you like a devil. You're not a coward. You did not leave me in Allen's house. I saw you waiting behind the palm. I've tried to keep away from you. I didn't want to give in. But I've come! I've give in! I'll be whatever you want me to be, David!—whatever you want me to be!"
David was not yet at the other pole. "Whatever I want you to be?" he said dazedly.
"Yes! Yes! I'll be honest—be anything!" she answered, breathless. She moved a quick step nearer, and went on in an appealing, breaking voice: "But don't you see, David? Don't you see? I love you! Take me!"
David was there. A wave of pain, of self-shame, of infinite regret, swept through him. For a moment, while he tried to get hold of himself, he looked down into the quivering, passionate, tear-lit face; then he took the hands outstretched to him.
"Kate," he said imploringly, "I'm so sorry—so sorry! Forget me. I am nobody—nothing."
"I love you!"
"Think how poor I am, how far down."
"I love you!"
The low tensity of that iterated cry shamed out of existence all evasive reasons—drove David straight to what he thought his uttermost answer. "Forgive me," he said, sick with loathing of himself. "But you've forced me to say it.... I don't love you."
"I love you!"
She had paled at his words, and her cry was only a whispered gasp; but her fixed upward gaze, passionate, appealing, mandatory, did not waver an instant. David had but one word left—and that, he had thought, was to be forever unspoken. But it had to be spoken now. After a moment, in which her face seemed to swim before him, he said, huskily:
"I love someone else."
She drew suddenly back, there was a sharp indrawing of the breath, the face hardened, the eyes above the fur neckpiece gleamed fiercely.
"Who?"
He shook his head.
"Who?"
"I cannot say."
The eyes narrowed to slits, and she looked him through as on the day she had guessed he was just from prison—only now her intuition was quickened a hundred fold. They stood motionless a few seconds, he trying to parry her instinct; then from her came a low, sharp "A-a-h!" and, after a second, "So it's her!"
He shivered. There was another moment of tense silence. Then she said, abruptly:
"It's Miss Chambers?"
He did not move an eyelash.
"You love Miss Chambers!" she announced decisively.
Her hands clenched. "I hate her! Why shouldn't she stay in her own world! Why should she come mixing in my affairs! Oh! I could——!" She finished with a tensing of her whole figure.
She glared silently at David for a moment; then a harsh, mocking laugh broke from her.
"So, you're in love with Miss Chambers! Miss Chambers—a janitor. What a lovely match! Of course you've told her, and she's said yes!"
"I shall never tell her," David said quietly.
The bitterness and mockery began to fade slowly from her face, and meditation came in their stead; and when she spoke again her tone was the tone of argument. "Don't you know that she's far, far above you? You're a fool to think of her! Why, you can never get her—never! You see that, don't you?"
"Yes." He raised a peremptory, entreating hand. "Please!—let's not speak of her."
Her whole body quickened. "After her, do you like any woman better than me?" she demanded.
He shook his head. "No."
"She's out of the question for you—she doesn't live!" She crept slowly toward David, her eyes burning into his. "There's no one between us," she said in a low, choked voice. Then her voice blazed up, her words rushed out. "You do not want me now, but you will! I'll make you love me. I'll be anything you like—I'll be honest!—I'll work! Yes, yes, I'll make you love me, David!"
Her hands had clutched his, and she now held up her quivering face. "I'm going to be honest for your sake, David. Kiss me!"
David was agonised with the pang of her tragedy, with the shame of his own great part in it. "Forgive me," he whispered huskily; and he stooped and pressed his lips to hers.
She gave a little cry and flung her arms about his neck and held him tight. Then breathing against his cheek, "You'll love me yet, David!" she abruptly withdrew her arms, and the next moment was out of the room.
Kate's last sentence, "You'll love me yet, David!" recurred to him constantly during the next two days. He would not, of course—yet he could but muse upon the possibility. We are all creatures of change. Our views of to-day may not be our views of to-morrow, our dislikes of this year may be our desires of next. Since, as Kate had said, Helen Chambers did not live for him, might there not take place within him such a change as would make him yearn for the love he now could not accept?
David looked forward with dread to his next meeting with Kate. He feared another such scene, so painful to them both, as the one they had just passed through. But his fear was needless. Kate's nature was an impetuous one, little schooled to control, but her will was strong and she was capable of restraint as well as of abandon. She knew enough of character to see that David could be eventually won to be more than friend only by now asking and giving no more than friendship; and she was strong enough to hold herself to this course.
When she came in three evenings later, both manner and dress were sober, though her eyes showed what was behind her self-control. They greeted each other with constraint; but she at once said abruptly, "I'm going to behave," and went on to tell David that, after two days' searching, she had found a position in a department store and had begun work that morning.
"I'm a soap saleslady," she said. "Lace-box soap, a three-cake box for nine cents, takes off skin and all—you know the kind. I get five dollars a week. That's two hundred and sixty dollars for a year's work. I've made that, and more, in a night. Oh, it pays to be honest!"
She had broken the constraint, but nevertheless David was grateful for the entrance of Rogers who just then chanced in. David introduced the two, and after a few moments of chat Rogers invited David and Kate to dine with him at the Mayor's café, where he had all his meals; and a little later they set out for the Pan-American.
The restaurant was filled with diners—fair Germans sitting behind big glass steins, olive-skinned Jews and Hungarians, and women in plenty of both hues. Most were more or less Americanised, but many announced by the queer cut of their clothes that they were recent pilgrims. Some tables were quiet with a day's weariness, some buzzed with business, some (and most of these were Jewish) were eager with discussion on music, literature, politics, religion. Above the buzz of four tongues rose a wild, wailing air of the Carpathians that the orchestra, in red velvet jackets, were setting free with excited hands from their guitar, mandolin, xylophone and two violins.
The Mayor, in vest of effulgent white, was circulating among his guests, joking, wishing good appetites, radiating hospitality from his glowing face. His well-organised kitchen and dining-room apparently ran themselves, so during the dinner hours there was nothing to interrupt his being merely host. He beckoned Rogers's party, who had paused at the door, toward him with a grand wave of his jewelled hand, and led them to a table at the rear of the room.
"Well, friends, if your appetites are as good as my dinner, you've certainly got a good time comin'," he said, and moved on to other guests.
On the way over Kate had announced that she was going to do some studying at home—reading was one of David's interests, so she had decided it must be one of hers—and had asked for advice; and this now led to a discussion upon books between David and Rogers. David discovered that his employer had no use for poetry, had a fair acquaintance with fiction, and in history and philosophy was much better read than himself.
Rogers, in his unexcitable way, talked well. At times his remarks were brilliant in their analysis, and at times there came those quick, caustic thrusts of wit that pierce like a sword to the heart of pretense and false ideas. He expressed himself with ease in a wide vocabulary, though many of the less common words he mispronounced—a fault that to David was elusively familiar. He spoke always in a quiet, even tone, that would have led a casual hearer to believe that he was merely a cold mentality, that he had not the fire of a soul. But David had the feeling now, as he had had before and as he was often to have again, that in looking into those glowing eyes he was looking into the crater of a volcano.
During this play of wits Kate could only look silently on. She had known that David was in education above the level of her friends, but the side of himself he was now showing she had not before seen. His richness where she had nothing seemed to remove him to an impossible distance. Her face became drawn with sharp pain.
But presently the talk shifted from books to life, and she forgot her despair. Here she was at home. She knew life, her impressions were distinct and decided, and her sentences seemed pieces of her own vivid personality. The presence of the two men inspired her. David, who thought he knew her, found himself being surprised at the quickness and keenness of her mind, and Rogers watched her little sparkling face with more and more interest. She was surprised at herself, too; talking on subjects of broader interest than personalities was a new experience to her, and she discovered in herself powers never before called out.
As they were sipping their coffee to the frenzied music of a gypsy waltz, Tom, who had spied them from the kitchen, darted in to their table. His appearance was much improved by a haircut and a complete new outfit which a small amount in David's cash, and a larger amount in the Mayor's credit, had enabled him to purchase on the instalment plan. He shook hands all around, unabashed by Rogers's habitual reserve.
"How'd you like de feed?" he demanded eagerly. "If anyt'ing's wrong, I'll fix it. Nuttin'? O' course not. Say, de grub here's swell, ain't it? T'irty cents is a lot for a dinner, but it's wort' it. We buys only de best, we cooks it right, an' we serves it proper, wid table-clot' an' napkins. D'you take notice o' dem? It ain't many places you gits table-clot' an' napkins!
"Was your waiter all right? Shall I call him down for anyt'ing? No. Well, I'm glad I don't have to say nuttin' to him, for he's a friend o' mine. Say, mebbe you t'ink it's easy to run a place like dis. T'ink again! First, dere's what're we goin' to have to-day, den dere's gettin' it ready, den dere's servin' it, an' de dishes, an' washin' 'em, an' everyt'ing. It's hustle, an' worry, an' t'ink from when you gets up till when you goes to bed."
And on he went, picturing the responsibility under which he tottered, till they told him goodnight and went out.
Kate was in a glow of spirits when David and Rogers left her at her door. She whispered appealingly to David as they parted, "Please talk with me this way again, David." It had been in his mind that, under the circumstances, it would be better for Kate if they should cease to meet; but he frankly realised he was the only link which held her to her new honesty, and to break their friendship would be to snap that link. And so he answered, "Yes—often;" and this was in fact the first of many such hours spent together, in which they were often joined by Rogers. It seemed to David that Kate's cynicism and sharpness were beginning slowly to wear away.
Since his talk with Helen David's hope of conquering the future had been constantly high. He did not underestimate the struggle before him, but strength and courage had been flowing into him since food and shelter had ceased to be worries, and he now felt that under Helen's inspiration he could do anything. One of his aims he had already achieved, Helen's respect, though how still seemed to him a miracle. His heart yearned even more eagerly than ever for something higher than friendship, but he knew this desire to be, as always, unattainable. He could not hope for a second miracle, and one that would sink the first to a commonplace.
Her suggestion that he should write a story of the man-making of a boy whom surroundings had forced toward destruction, laid immediate and powerful hold upon him. He saw, as she had said, that a story of the right kind might contribute in some degree to awakening the public's sympathy for, and responsibility toward, the hundreds of thousands of children that are going to waste. And he saw, too, that such a book might lift him toward the world's respect, where he would be happier, more effective. Selfishly, altruistically, the story was the thing for him to do.
During the days after their talk, all his spare time, and even while he went about his work, his imagination was impassionedly shaping characters and plot. He had a note from Helen saying she wanted to see him the following Friday, and he could hardly wait for it to come, he was that eager to ask her judgment on his story's outline. When Friday afternoon did finally arrive, he began to look for her an hour before she could be expected, excitedly pacing his room, and every minute glancing through his window up to the sidewalk.
When Helen, after leaving her club of schoolgirls that afternoon, entered the reception room on her way out, she found Mr. Allen waiting for her in the Flemish oak settle.
"You were not expecting me, but I hope you're not displeased," he said in his grave, pleasant voice, and with the ease of long-accustomed welcome.
She could not wholly restrain a little air of vexation as she gave him her hand. "Of course I'm glad. But I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you if you've come to go home with me. I've promised to make a call—in the neighbourhood. Of course you can walk with me there, if you like."
"Oh, the neighbourhood!" He gave a humorous groan of mock complaint, but down in his heart the complaint was very real. The neighbourhood was coming too often between her and his desire to be with her. "Very well. I'll take what I can get."
She threw her sable scarf about her throat and they stepped forth into the narrow street, paved with new snow that the day had trodden to a dirty glaze. He had talked with her before about his ambitions, for his future had been part of his offering when he had offered himself. He now told her that he had just been appointed chief counsel of the committee of the legislature for investigating impure foods. She knew how great a distinction this was, how great a token of the future, and she congratulated him warmly.
"If these good things you see really do come, you know I don't want to share them alone," he said in a low voice, when she had finished.
She shook her head slowly. "The more I think, the more I see how unsuited I am for you. Our ideas are so different. You face one pole, I another. We would never pull together; we could only achieve the deadlock of two joined forces that struggle in opposite directions."
"But you know my hope is that we shall not always face in opposite directions."
She turned upon him a smile that was touched with irony. "You mean you expect some day to look toward my pole?"
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You know I mean you will some day see the futility of such work as you are doing, and the wrongness of many of your ideas—and then you will turn to the true pole."
"Your pole? No. I do not believe, as you do, that only the fit should survive. I do not believe, as you do, that the hard conditions of life are necessary as a kind of sieve, or a kind of civil service examination, to separate the fit from the unfit. I do not believe, as you do, that the great mass who have failed to pass the meshes of this test, who are down, have by the mere fact of their being down proved their unfitness, shown that they are worthy to be neglected. Your belief, summed up, is that the world is made for the strong—for the rich man born to opportunities, and for the poor man born with the superior brains and energy to create them. To that belief I can never come. I believe the world is made also for the weak. Rather, I believe all should be made strong."
With a sweep of her hand she indicated the two rows of tenements whose dingy red walls stretched away and away till they and the narrow street disappeared into the wintry twilight.
"All these people here—they are weak because they have never had a chance to be otherwise. Give them a fair chance and they will become strong—or most of them. That is what I believe—a fair chance for all to become strong."
"And I believe the same. Only I believe that chance exists at present for all who are worthy. If there is good stuff in a man, he rises; if not, he belongs where he is. The struggle is selective, it develops. Make it easier and you lower the quality of your people."
"Ah, yes, I know you are an unalterable individualist," she sighed. "When I realise the great part you are going to have during the next twenty or thirty years in shaping the conditions under which we all must live, I wish you could be brought to a broader concept of the human relationship."
"If I am to play such a part, my own concept is quite broad enough."
"But in ways it is so hopeless! It consigns all these people to outer darkness. It holds no chance for the man whom circumstances are pressing down, no chance for any of those helpless people who are reaching vainly upward, or those who would be reaching upward if their consciousness were roused." They were drawing near to David's house, and the sight of it prompted a specific instance. "No chance for the man who has stolen, who repents, who struggles to reform."
"The repentant thief!" He gave a low laugh. "The one that repented on the cross is the eternal type of the thief that repents. If he repents, it's at the last minute—when he can steal no more!"
His words half angered her. "I wish you could talk with the one I'm going to see now!"
He looked at her in surprise. "That Aldrich fellow you were telling about!" he ejaculated.
He felt a further astonishment—that she should be calling upon a man, and evidently in his room. He did not put this into words, but she read it in his face. It angered her more, and she answered his look sharply:
"To have him call at my house or to see me at the Mission would be embarrassing to him. I feel that I can be of some service, and since I must choose between an uptown convention and helping save a man, I have decided to sacrifice convention. It seems strange, doesn't it?"
He did not reply to her sarcasm, but he still disapproved. There were so many things of which he disapproved that even had he been free to criticise he would have felt the futility of striking at any single fault. He prayed for the eradication of all this part of her life, and her restoration to normal views; first, because he honestly disbelieved in the work that interested her; second, because he reasoned that while she gave so much interest to the poor she was likely to have little interest left to give to his suit.
They paused before David's window. David, glancing out, saw Allen not ten feet away and heard Helen say, "I wish so much you would talk with Mr. Aldrich." For a moment his heart stood still. Then he sprang toward the door, intending to escape the back way, but it occurred to him that perhaps Allen might not come in, and that to avoid him by running away was also to miss Helen. He left the door ajar, to aid a quick flight if Allen started in, and peered through the window at the couple, as alert as a "set" runner waiting the pistol-shot.
They were a splendid pair, David had to admit to himself—both tall, she with the grace of perfect womanhood, he with the poise and dignity of power and success. She was a woman to honour any man's life; he—David now knew of Allen's brilliant achievements and brilliant future—had a life worth any woman's honouring. Yes, they were a splendid pair.
Presently Allen bowed and went away, and the next moment David opened the door for Helen. He was grateful to the dusk for muffling his agitation; and doubly grateful to it when she said, after giving him a firm pressure from her hand:
"I've been trying to arrange with a friend—Mr. Allen—to have a talk with you some day. I hope you may soon meet."
"Thank you," said David.
She suggested that they walk, and a few minutes later, David reciting the outline of his story, they entered Second Avenue, the East Side's boulevard, always thronged with business folk, shoppers, promenaders, students. They forgot the crowds through which they wove their way, forgot even that they walked, and it was a surprise to both when they found themselves, just as David finished, before her home.
She looked at his erect figure, at his glowing, excited face. "I think it's going to be splendid!" she cried.
"I think so myself," he returned, with an exultant little laugh. "So a man always feels at first. But when the cold and clammy days have come, when your fires have all gone out and there's nothing but ashes left in your imagination——"
"Then," she broke in quickly, "you must just keep going.
'——tasks in hours of insight will'd,Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.'
'——tasks in hours of insight will'd,Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.'
That's worth remembering. But let's walk on for a few minutes. There's something I want to say."
She was silent for the greater part of a block. "One of our friends that we see much of is a publisher. He tells me that, though a novel may not sell enough to pay for the type-writing, it is pretty certain, if it has any merit, to yield several hundred dollars. If it has an active sale it may yield several thousand, and if it gets to the front of the big sellers it may yield a small fortune. I was thinking that if your book should go even moderately well, what a great deal it would help—toward—I mean what a great deal it would help you."
She looked at him expectantly. Her voice and her manner had had a background of constraint, and David vaguely felt that her meaning was not in her words, but was lurking behind them.
"Yes?" he said, wonderingly.
The constraint was more marked as she continued, with an effort: "Perhaps you might get—five thousand dollars for it."
"Yes?" he said, his wonderment rising.
The constraint and effort were even greater as she replied: "Well, that would do so much toward clearing your name!"
Her meaning leaped forth from its lurking place. For a moment he was completely stupefied.... She wanted him to repay the stolen money to St. Christopher's!
He felt her eyes upon him, waiting. "Yes—it would help," he said, mechanically.
They turned back. She saw he was far away. She did not speak. First came to him the absurdity of his trying to repay with his present earnings—fifty years of utmost saving. But he pressed down the bitter laugh that rose. She was right; if he was ever to clear his name he must refund the money to the Mission. Perhaps the book would repay it; perhaps years and years of work would be required. But repay it he must. There was no other way.
He looked up as they paused again before her house. "Yes—I will repay," he said.
She reached out her hand. Its grasp was warm, tight.
"I knew it," she said, with a directness, a simplicity, that thrilled him. "I'm so glad!"
David flung himself at the story as though it were a city to be taken by storm. He was full of power, of creative fury. His long-disused pen at first was stubborn, but gradually he re-broke it to work; and he wrote with an ease, a surety of touch, a fire, that he had never felt before. He had half-a-dozen separate incentives, and the sum of these was a vast energy that drove him conqueringly through obstacle after obstacle of the story.
These early days of the story were high days with him. He forgot, when writing, his basement room, his janitor's work, his dishonour. Infinity lay between the end of December and the end of January; in a month his spirits had risen from nadir to zenith. The world was his; nothing seemed beyond him. He even dared dream of passing Allen upon some mid-level and winning to the highest place in Helen Chambers's regard. The exhaustion of spirit at the end of each day's writing quenched this dream; but it was nevertheless enrapturing while it lasted, and at times David came near believing in it.
David had asked both Rogers and the Mayor to aid him in securing Tom abona-fideposition, and after the boy had been running the Pan-American Café for a month, a place was found. Tom's wages had been a heavy drain upon David's meagre income, and it was with a feeling of relief that David announced the coming change one night as they were preparing for bed.
"I've got some great news for you, Tom," he began.
"What's dat?" asked the boy, dropping the shoe he had just taken off.
"A new job!" cried David, trying to infect Tom with enthusiasm. "Delivery-boy on a wagon. You're to get four dollars a week—a dollar more than you're getting. Think of that! You're in luck, my boy—you're getting rich!"
But David's enthusiasm did not take. There came no sparkle into the boy's eyes, no eagerness into his manner. He looked thoughtfully at David a moment, then shook his head.
"I don't t'ink I'll take it."
"What!" cried David. The possibility of refusal had not occurred to him. He plunged into a fervent portrayal of the advantages of the new place.
"Mebbe you're right," Tom said, when the picture had been painted. "But I'm gettin' used to t'ings at de Pan-American; I likes de boss an' I likes de woik. An' I don't need de extry dollar. No, I don't want no better job dan what I got. It suits me right up to de chin."
He walked, in one shoe and in one stocking, across to David and held out his hand. "But, pard"—a note of huskiness was in his voice—"pard, I appreciate dat you was tryin' to do de fine t'ing by me. Shake."
There was nothing more to be said. Tom went back to the Mayor, and David continued dropping in Saturdays an hour before pay-time.
One evening in early February, just after David had coaled the furnace and settled down to his story, he had a call from Bill Halpin, whom he had not seen since their first meeting. Halpin leaned against the door, after it had been closed, and silently regarded David, a sneering smile upon his face.
"Honest!" he shot out at length, with a short, dry laugh. It was his first word since entering.
David stared at the sarcastic, saturnine figure.
"What do you mean?"
"Honest! And I half believed you!" Again the short laugh. "You almost fooled Bill Halpin—which is sayin' you're pretty smooth." He jerked his head upward. "What's your game?—yours and this manRogers?"
"See here, Halpin, what are you talking about?"
"Oh, I suppose you'll say you don't know him. But since I met you on the Bowery I've been around here twice, and both times I saw you two with your noses together. You're a smooth pair. Come, what's your game?"
"I don't understand you!"
"Don't try to fool me, Aldrich," he drawled. "You can't. But don't tell me the game unless you want to. You know I wouldn't squeal if you did. All I want is for you to know you can't throw that honesty 'con' into me."
David strode forward and laid sharp hold of Halpin's shoulders.
"See here, Bill Halpin, what the devil do you mean?" he demanded.
Halpin looked cynical, good-humoured disbelief back into David's eyes, and again let out a dry cackle.
"Drop that actor business with me, Aldrich. I don't know what your game is—but I know there is a game. If you want to find out how much I know, come on. Let's go out and have a drink."
An hour later David stepped from the rear room of a Bowery saloon, and walked dazedly through the spattering slush back to his house. He paused before it, and looked irresolutely at Rogers's office window, whose shade was faintly aglow. He began to pace up and down the block, his eyes constantly turning to the window, his mind trying to determine his honourable course. At length he crossed the street, entered the house, and knocked at Rogers's door.
Rogers admitted him with a look of quiet surprise and led the way across his office into the living-room behind, whose one window opened upon the air shaft. In this room were two easy chairs, a couch on which Rogers slept, a table with a green-shaded reading-lamp, two or three prints—all utterly without taste. Everything was in keeping with the surface commonplaceness of the man except a row of shelves containing a couple of hundred well-selected books.
Rogers motioned David to a chair and he himself leaned against his table, his hands folded across the copy of "Père Goriot" he had been reading.
"I'm very glad you came in," he said, in his low, even voice.
David gazed at Rogers in his attitude of waiting ease, and he suddenly felt that to speak to this unsuspecting man was impossible. It did not occur to him that perhaps Rogers had caught his strained look, and that perhaps this ease might be the mask of an agitation as great as his own. He dropped his eyes. But it was his duty to speak—and, in a way, his desire. He forced himself to look up. Rogers had the same look and attitude of quiet waiting.
"Mr. Rogers," David began, with an effort, "I have just been told something that I think I am bound to tell you. You hired me, befriended me, in the belief that I knew nothing about you. I feel it would not be honourable in me to remain your employe, in a sense your friend, if I concealed from you that I know what may be your secret. And there is another reason why I want you to know that I know: if the story is true, I want to tell you how much I sympathise."
"Go on," said Rogers in his even voice.
"It's doubtless all a mistake," said David, hurriedly, feeling that it was not. "I've just had a talk with a man I knew in prison—Bill Halpin. He's called to see me several times. He happened to see you. Something about you struck him at once as familiar, but he could not recognise you. He saw you again, and he thought he placed you. He called here, had a talk with you, and on going away purposely shook hands. There was no grip in your little finger—you could only half bend it. He said he placed you by that."
Rogers still leaned against the table, his figure quiet as before—but David could see that the quiet was the quiet of a bow drawn to the arrow's head. The tendons of his hands, still holding the book, were like little tent-ridges, and his yellowish face was now like paper.
"And who did he say I am?" his low voice asked.
"He told me that fifteen years ago you and he were friends, pals—that you were a famous safe-breaker—that you were 'Red Thorpe.'"
Instantly Rogers was another man—tense, slightly crouching as though about to spring, his eyes blazing, on his face the fierce look of the haunted creature that knows it is cornered and that intends to fight to the last. A swift hand jerked open a drawer of the table, and stretched toward David. In it was a revolver.
David sprang to his feet and stepped back. Rogers glared at him for a moment, and for that moment David expected anything. Then suddenly Rogers said, "What a fool!—to be thinking of that!" and tossed the pistol into the open drawer.
Defiantly erect, he folded his arms, his fierce pallor suggestive of white heat, his eyes open furnace-doors of passion.
"Well, you've got me!" he said, with strange guttural harshness. "I've been expecting this minute for ten years. What're you going to do? Expose me, or blackmail me?"
David got back his breath. "I don't understand. Halpin told me he didn't think the police were after you."
"They're not. I don't owe the State a minute."
"Then why do you talk of exposure?"
"You understand—perfectly!" His words were a blast of furnace-hot ferocity. "You know what would happen if my clients learned I'm an ex-convict. They'd take every house from me—I'd again be an outcast. You know this; you know you've got your teeth in my throat. Well—I'll pay blood-money. I have paid it. A police captain found me out, and for five years sucked my blood—every cent I made—till he died. I'll pay again—I can't help myself. How much do you want?—blood-sucker!"
These hot words, filled with supremest rage and despair, thrilled David infinitely; he felt the long struggle, the tragedy, behind them.
"You mistake me," he cried. "I've told you what I have because I thought to tell was my duty to you. Betray you, or accept money for silence—I never could! Surely you know I never could!"
"For ten years I've touched no man's penny but my own," he said fiercely. "In money matters, I've been as honest as God!"
The rage was dying out of his face, and despair was growing—the despair that sees nothing but defeat, failure. He looked unbelief at David.
"But what difference does that make to you?" he asked bitterly. "Well—how much is it to be?"
The piercing brothership that had been surging up in David for this desperate, defiant, suspicious man, swept suddenly to the flood.
"Don't you see that we're making the same fight?" he cried with passionate earnestness. "I admire you! I honour you! Your secret is as safe with me as in your own heart."
David stretched out his hand. "I honour you!" he said.
For several moments Rogers's gaze searched David's soul. "You're speaking the truth—man?" he asked in a slow, harsh whisper.
"I am."
He continued staring at David's open face, flushed with its fervid kinship. "If you're lying to me—!" he whispered. Then he held out his hand, and his thin fingers gripped about David's hand like tight-drawn wires.
"During the month I've known you, you've seemed a white man. I think I believe you. But, man! don't play with me!" he burst out with sudden appeal. "If there's any trick in you, out with it now!"
"If there was, now would be my time, wouldn't it?"
They stood so for a moment, hands gripped, eyes pointed steadily into eyes.
"Yes, I believe you!" Rogers breathed, and sank into a chair and let his head fall into his hand. David also sat down.
Presently Rogers looked up.
"I guess I was very harsh," he said weakly. "But you can't guess what I was going through. It was the moment I had feared for ten years. It seemed that the world had fallen from beneath me."
"I understand," said David.
"But you cannot understand the ten years of fear, of suspense—of fear and suspense that walk with you, eat with you, sleep with you."
He sat looking back into the years. After a space, the hunger for sympathy, the instinct to speak his decade of repressed bitterness, prompted him on.
"I was one of those thousands and thousands that never had a chance when boys. I had no very clear idea between right and wrong; there was no one to show me the difference. I was full of life and energy, and I had brains. I could easily have been turned into the right way—but there was no one. So I turned into the wrong. About that part of my life Halpin told you."
"He said you were the cleverest man in your line."
Rogers seemed not to hear the praise. "A man may begin to think while he is still a boy; if he has spirit and animal energy, he doesn't begin to think till later. I was twenty-seven. I had been two years in Sing Sing and had three more years to serve. It wasn't the warden's words that started me thinking, nor the chaplain's sermons. Chaplains!—bah!—frocked phonographs! It was two old men I happened to see there—mere cinders of men. The thought shot into me, 'There's what you're going to be at sixty-five!'
"I couldn't get away from that thought. My mind forced me to study my friends; there was not one old man among them who was living a peaceful, comfortable life. That burnt-out, hunted old age—I revolted from it! I did a lot of thinking. I decided that, when I got out, prison gates should never have reason to close on me again.
"Finally, I was discharged. I knew it was hard for an ex-convict to get work, but I thought it would be easy for me. I was willing, clever, adaptable. But—oh, God! you know what the fight is, Aldrich!"
"I do!" said David.
Rogers was on his feet now, his eyes once more glowing. He began to pace the floor excitedly.
"Your fight was easy to mine. But I'll skip it—you know what the fight's like. It's enough to say that I found the world would not receive me as my old self. I changed my name; I grew a beard; I began to wear glasses; I dyed my red hair brown; I smothered down my spirit. I became John Rogers.
"A friend of mine in a Chicago real estate office, in which I once worked for a couple of weeks as a clerk, sent me an envelope and a sheet of paper of the firm. On the paper I wrote a letter of recommendation from the firm. I had told my story to the Mayor of Avenue A—it was because he knew I would sympathise with you that he brought you to me—and he helped me. I got my first job.
"Think of that, Aldrich!" He held a trembling fist in David's face, and laughed harshly. "I had to become a disguise, I had to lie, I had to commit forgery, to get a chance to be honest! Oh, isn't this a sweet world we're living in!
"And ever since, my life has been one great lie! A lie for honesty! But the lie has done for me what truth could not do. I'm respected in a small way. I'm successful in a small way. But, man, how that smallness chafes me! How I am shackled! I should be respected, be successful, in a large way. I'm cleverer than most of the men in my line. I have brains. I see big business opportunities. But I dare not take them. I must always be pulling back at the reins. If I let myself out, I should become prominent. Men would begin to ask, 'Who is that fellow Rogers?' and pretty soon some one would be sure to find out. And down I'd go! I must keep myself so small that I'll not be noticed—that's my only safety!"
He paused. David could say nothing.
"And always the lie that saved me is threatening to destroy me," Rogers went on, in a lower voice. "God, how I've worked to get to this poor place! How I want to live peacefully, honestly! But some day someone will find out I'm an ex-convict. A breath, and this poor house of cards I've worked so hard to build and protect will go flat! And I cannot begin all over again. I cannot! I haven't the strength. This is going to happen—I feel it! And how I fear it! How I've feared it for ten long years! Man, man, how I fear it!"
He dropped exhausted into a chair, and almost at once a cough began to shake him by the shoulders.
"And this disease"—a hand pressed itself upon his chest—"it's another prison gift!" he gasped, bitterly.
There was not a word in David. He reached out and gathered one of Rogers's thin hands in both of his; gathered it in the clasp of his soul. The cough ceased its shaking and Rogers looked up. He gazed at the tears, at the quivering brothership, in David's face. Thus he sat, silent, gripping David's hands; then, slowly, his own tears started.
"Man, dear," he whispered brokenly, "I think I'm going to be glad you found me out!"
A week or two later Rogers cut out all qualifying words and said from his heart, "I'm glad you know!" He and David quickly became comrades; and many an hour they sat in the room behind the office talking of life, of philosophy, of books. David now learned that Rogers had done a large part of his really wide reading while in prison; and he now understood Rogers's frequent mispronunciation—Rogers had acquired his less common words entirely from reading, and never having heard them spoken, and lacking such fundamentals of education as rules of pronunciation, he had for fifteen years been pronouncing his new words as seemed to him proper.
David was surprised to find that Rogers, for all his occasional bitter flashes, was an optimist. He often marvelled how Rogers had retained this hopefulness for the world's future; he could explain it only by a great natural soundness in the man. Rogers believed the world was marching forward, and he often said, his eyes illumined with belief: "The time is coming, Aldrich—I shall not see it, and you may not, but it's coming—when there will be no human waste, when the world will have learned the economy of men!"
Frequently they discussed society's treatment of the criminal, and David learned that Rogers burned with an indignation as great as his own. If ever Rogers's obsessing fear should be fulfilled, if he should be found out, then his one desire, a desire always with him, was to speak out his bitter accusation in the world's face.
One warm, exuberant Sunday toward the end of February, they walked northward through Riverside Park, the broad, glinting Hudson at their left. When they reached the height crowned by Grant's tomb, Rogers, who had been silent for several minutes, now and then slipping meditative glances at David, laid a hand on David's arm and brought him to a pause.
"Look across yonder," he whispered, pointing to the Palisades that lifted their mighty shoulders from the Hudson's farther edge.
"Wonderful, aren't they," said David, letting his eyes travel northward along the giant wall till it dimmed away.
"Yes—but I didn't mean the view."
Rogers drew nearer, and went on in a whisper, while the crowd of Sunday promenaders sauntered by their backs:
"I told you I saw many big business opportunities, and that I had to let them all pass. Over there is one I did not let pass. Several years ago I saw that some of the people who were being crowded off Manhattan island would in the future live over there. The land was cheap then; I saw it would some day be immensely valuable. After a great deal of manœuvring, in which Mr. Hoffman helped me, I secured an option for four years on five pieces of ground that lie together. A few months ago I renewed the option for three more years; each time I paid the owners a thousand dollars for the option. Under its terms, I guarantee them a big price, and they are bound to sell the land only through me. So you see I am, in effect, the head of a small land syndicate. Over there is my big venture—my big hope."
"And has the development you expected come?"
"It is coming. I have learned that a big company is buying all the land over there it can get hold of. They're going to establish a new suburb. They're buying secretly and through several agents; they want to keep the different holders from guessing what's up, so they can get the land at their own price. Well, for my land they'll have to pay memyprice!"
That evening they called on Kate Morgan. Once, shortly after that first dinner together in the Pan-American Café, when David had dropped in to see her he had found Rogers there, and he had discovered on Rogers's controlled face a look he thought might betoken more than a commonplace interest. Since then Rogers had often called, and that which David had at first seen as a possibility he now saw developing toward a fact.
Old Jimmie was sleeping off the effects of a "loan" in a back room, so they had Kate and the little parlour to themselves. Kate was in the depth of the blues. David asked her what was the matter.
"Soap!" she cried fiercely. "My life's nothing but soap. It's 'That kind's nine cents for a box of three cakes, ma'am. Three boxes? Twenty-seven cents, please.' Or it's 'this variety is thirteen cents a box—regular value twenty-five.' That's all. It's just that, and only that, nine hours a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year—soap!—soap!—soap! Oh, I'm going soap-mad! I can't stand it! I won't stand it!"
She gazed rebelliously at the two men.
"You must try something new," said David.
"And please, sir, what'll that be?" she demanded, sarcastically.
"Something that will use your energy and intelligence. How would you like to be a stenographer? A few months in a business school would fit you for a position. You would develop and advance rapidly, and soon have a responsible place."
"I'd like that," she said, decidedly. "I've thought of it—I know I could do the work. But how about the months while I study? I did have a little money on hand, but I couldn't live and keep my father on that soap-counter's five dollars, so I've had to use some of it every week. It's all gone. I must live—and I'm broke. No, I've got to stick to the soap!"
"Can't you and your father take two cheap rooms, sell most of your furniture, and live on the proceeds while you study?" David persisted.
"Everything here was bought on instalment. It's about half paid for. If sold, it'd bring about enough to pay off the balance. I might as well just give it back to the dealer."
Rogers, who thus far had been silent, now said quietly: "You leave the settling with the instalment dealer to me. I'll guarantee to get enough out of him to keep you going till you're through school."
She laughed. "You'll be the first that ever got anything out of an instalment dealer!"
"I'll get it," he assured her. "If I don't get quite enough from him, I'll borrow the rest for you."
She looked at him sharply. "That means you'd loan it all. You're mighty kind. But I could never pay it back—to take it would be the same as stealing. I've never stolen from friends, and I'm not going to begin now."
But in the end Rogers prevailed; and when they left it had been settled that Kate was immediately to enter a business school.
Two days before—after Tom had gratefully refused a second better-paying job—David had had a conference with the Mayor. "I been doin' my best talkin' to get him to go," the Mayor said despairingly, "but he says I was good to him when he needed a job and now he's never goin' to leave me. Say, if I don't get rid o' him pretty soon, I got to start my own dish factory. And here's an interestin' point for you, friend: since he's had them better offers he's been hintin' at a raise."
When David entered his room, after telling Rogers good night, he found Tom, who had avoided him the night before and all the day, sitting far down in the rocking-chair, wrapped in dejection. He understood the boy's gloom, for he had suggested a plan to the Mayor.
Tom dropped his eyes when David came in, and answered David's "Hello there," with only a mumble. But at length he looked guiltily up.
"Is dat job you was tellin' me about took yet?" he asked.
David tried to wear an innocent face. "Why? What's the matter?"
"De boss told me yesterday he was losin' money, dat he'd have to cut down his force, an' dat he'd have to let me go."
"Yes?"
"I told him he'd been a friend to me when I was hard up, an' I was goin' to stick by him now't he was up agin it. I said I was goin' to work for him for nuttin'."
"Oh!" said David.
"But he wouldn't let me. So I'm fired. How about dat odder job?"
"I'm afraid it's taken, Tom."
David pulled a chair before the boy and for ten minutes spoke his best persuasion in favour of entering school.
"Yes, de Mayor handed me out de same line o' talk. He told me what a lot you'd done for me. He was right, too. An' he told me how much you wanted me to go to school."
He looked steadily, silently, at David. "D'you really want me to go as much as all dat, pard?"
"There's nothing I'd rather have you do."
"An' you won't miss de t'ree a week I been fetchin' in?"
"I don't think we'll miss it much."
There was an inward struggle. "Dere's nuttin' I'd not sooner do, pard," he said, huskily. "But since you want me to—all right."
The next morning he started to school. At the end of the day he informed David that he was in a class "wid kids knee-high to a milk-bottle," that his teacher was "one o' dem t'inks-she-is beauts dat steps along dainty so she won't break de eart'," and "de whole biz gives me de bellyache." He was miserable for weeks—and so was his teacher—and so were his class-mates. But he gradually became adjusted to school life, and when some of the rudiments were fixed in his head, he began to make rapid progress. He had become great friends with Helen Chambers, whom he often saw at the Mission, and his desire to please her was another incentive to succeed in school.
One day David had a note from Dr. Franklin inviting him to call at the Mission, and a day or two later Helen explained the invitation. Dr. Franklin had learned that David was living in the neighbourhood; knowing that Helen had once been friends with him, he had spoken of David to her; she had told of David's struggle and his purpose—and the invitation was the consequence. Helen advised David to accept, and one evening he called. The gray old man received him in such a spirit of unobtrusive forgiveness, referred only vaguely and hastily to the theft, praised him so sincerely for his struggle, and spoke so hopefully of the future, that David could take none of it amiss. He had to like the man, and be glad that such a one was Morton's successor.
When he left he gazed long at the glowing memorial window, which was now restored. What resentment there continued in his heart was for the moment swept out. He was glad that Morton's memory was clear—glad it was his dishonour that kept the memory so.