But the human life? The human soul?
In his wild rage David rose, turned his back upon the dark river, and shook his fist at the great indifferent city.
At one o'clock David, still aflame with bitterness, was entering his room when a door across the hall opened and Kate Morgan looked out. "Come into my house!" she snapped in a whisper.
David could not see her face, but her voice told him she was angry. He followed her. Actresses' photographs on the walls, a rug of glaring design, cheap red-and-green upholstered furniture that overcrowded the little room—such was Kate Morgan's parlour. She closed the door, then turned, her eyes blazing, and swore at him.
"A nice time to be getting home! I've been waiting two hours for you!"
For a moment he looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Oh, you're thinking of that robbery. You needn't have waited. I told you I'd have nothing to do with it."
"Drop that bluffing! You know you're in it!"
He started toward the door.
"Where you going?" she demanded.
"To bed."
She seized his arm, stepped between him and the door and stared wrathfully up at him. She now saw how pale and drawn his face was. Her wrath slowly left her. "You're tired—blue," she said, abruptly, but softly.
He nodded. "So I'm going to bed."
"Let's chat a minute first," she said, and drew him to the largest of the chairs, and pushed him down into it. "And we'll have something to eat, just you and me. I've made dad go to bed. It's all ready. I'll bring it in here."
She moved a little table before him and went out. Could David have seen the look she held upon him through the door, he would have been puzzled, perhaps startled. After she had made three trips into the rear of the flat there were upon the table a plate of sandwiches, a dish of olives, a pie, and two cups of coffee, all served with a neatness that, after the Bowery restaurants, was astonishing to David.
"Now, we'll begin," she said, and sat down on the opposite side of the little table. The food had a wonderful taste to David, and the coffee—it was real coffee—warmed his chilled body. For several minutes they both ate in silence, then Kate pushed back her chair, lighted a cigarette, and sat regarding him with eyes that grew very soft.
When he had finished she leaned suddenly forward and laid a hand on one of his.
"I don't like it for you to look this way, David," she said.
He started at the touch and at the "David." She saw the start and drew her hand away. "Why shouldn't I call you David? We're good pals, ain't we? I'm tired of this miss and mister business. Call me Kate."
He was still too surprised to make an immediate answer, and she went on softly, "You look very bad!"
The remark brought flooding back to him all his misery and hopelessness, all his rebellion, and he forgot his wonder at her overture. "Why shouldn't I?" he asked bitterly.
She nodded. "I understand," she said. "The world's got no use for a man that's been a crook. He's got no chance. I've seen a lot of boys come back, and swear they'd never touch another job. They tried—some of 'em hard, but none as hard as you. But nobody wanted 'em. What way was open? Only one—to go back to cracking cribs. They all went back." She paused, then added: "Now I want to ask you one square question: what's the use trying?"
David was remembering his four months' futile struggle when he involuntarily echoed, "What's the use!"
"Yes, what?" she continued quickly. "The world may not owe you a living, but it owes you the right to live. It owes you that much. If it won't let you live by working, why, you've got to live by stealing. There's no other way. You've tried the first—"
She went on, but David heard no more. His bitterness, his resentment, were making a fiercer plea. Yes, he had tried! Could any man try harder? And what had he gained? Rebuff—insult—uttermost poverty. There was no use in trying further—none whatever. There was left only the second way—the one road that is always open, that always welcomes the repentant thief whom the world refuses.
Why should he not enter this only road? He had no single friend who would be pained. He had no faintest hope of a future. All that could be lost was lost. The thief's trade promised him the necessities of life. He had offered to pay the world in work for these necessities, but the world had refused his payment. What could he do, then, but take them?—Besides, would it not be just treatment of the world—of the world that had destroyed him, of the world that cared more for dollars than for souls—if some of its all-precious wealth were taken from it?
He looked up; his face was tight-set, vindictive; his eyes glittered.
Kate's gaze was fixed upon him, waiting. "It's time we were starting," she said. "It's almost two."
He breathed deeply, almost convulsively.
"Come on," he said.
She reached across and seized his hand. "I knew you'd come in!" she cried triumphantly. "We'll turn a lot of tricks together, you and me!"
He gripped her hand so hard that she gave a little gasp, but he did not answer. For a minute or more they looked silently into each other's face.
"Come, we must go," she said.... "You have your diagram of the house?"
"No. I tore it up."
She drew some sheets from the front of her flannel waist. "Here's another, then. You may need it."
From beneath the red-and-green sofa she took a suit-case, which she threw open. In it were a full set of burglar's tools. "We really don't need 'em, for I've got keys to almost everything. But we'll take 'em along and twist the locks a bit, so they'll never suspect the job may have been done by someone who'd been in the inside—that is, by me. We'll bring the swag back in the suit-case."
She looked at David, as at a superior artist, for commendation of her plan; but he silently regarded the strange instruments in the bag. She slipped on a pair of rubbers, fastened on a little hat, and had David help her into a short jacket which had large pockets in the lining. David drew on his overcoat, picked up the suit-case, and together they crept down the black stairways and out into the street. She chattered softly all the while, as though fearing David, if left to his own thoughts, might withdraw from the adventure.
Shortly before three o'clock Kate paused, in one of the Seventies near Fifth Avenue, before a flight of broad steps leading up to a broad stoop and a broad entrance. "Here we are," she whispered.
They searched the street in both directions with quick glances. Not a soul was in sight. Then they slipped to the shadowed servants' entrance beneath the stoop, and in less than a minute Kate had unlocked a door of iron grating and a second door of wood, and they were standing in a dark hallway. She opened the grip, handed David a lantern, took one for herself, tied a handkerchief over his face so that all below the eyes was hidden, and masked herself likewise. Then with a jimmy and a wrench she hurried away.
Two minutes later she reappeared. She was inspired with the desire to impress David with her skill as a thief, as another woman might be inspired to attract male attention by the display of her beauty. "I just opened a back window and broke the latch," she whispered. "We'll lock these doors when we go out, and they'll think we got in through the window. Now, come on. But hadn't you better take off your shoes? They're pretty heavy."
David sat down upon a chair, and she turned her lantern's bar of light upon his feet, so that he could better manage the laces. When the shoes came off, there were his heels and toes gleaming whitely. In the confusion of strange sensations that had begun to flow in upon him, he had forgotten that his stockings were only tops. He quickly shifted his feet out of the embarrassing rays.
"That's all right," said Kate. "There'll be plenty of new ones to-morrow."
They went up a narrow stairway, then a broad one, stealthily following the guidance of the lantern's white finger, pausing breathless at every three or four steps to reach forth with their ears for any possible stir of life—Kate tense and alert with excitement, David giddied by a choking, throbbing, unshaped emotion. After a dozen of these pauses, when to David the rubadub of his heart seemed to resound through the house, Kate led him across deep rugs and through a broad doorway hung with tapestries.
"The drawing-room," she whispered, and slowly sweeping it with her lantern she revealed to him its gorgeous fittings. Then her lantern sought out a curio cabinet, of glass sides and gilded frame, standing in a corner. "That's what we want in here," she said. At her order David set down the suit-case he had carried, and they tiptoed to the cabinet over rugs worth hundreds of dollars a step.
"You get the good things in there, I'll go upstairs after the old lady's sparklers, and then we'll both go down and get the silver," she whispered, as she unlocked the cabinet with one of her keys. "I'll meet you here in a little while."
A sudden fear of being alone leaped up in David. He clutched Kate's arm and threw the lantern's light into her face. Of the face he saw only a narrow slit between her handkerchief and hat-brim, amid which her eyes gleamed like black diamonds.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "You're trembling."
"It must be—my nerves are gone," he whispered, with an effort.
"Oh, you'll be all right when you've been fed up and done another job or two."
He watched her little figure glide out of the room behind its headlight, then he turned to the contemplation of the miniature portraits in gem-set frames, the old hand-painted fans, the heavy old-fashioned lockets and earrings and bracelets, that lay upon the glass shelves of the cabinet.
He had no distinct thought toward the articles—there was no thought, not even a vague one, in his mind. His throat and lips were dry, his eyes were wide and fixed. His dizzy, unpowering emotion had so increased that he would not have been surprised had he slipped to the floor and spread out like a boneless sea creature. He was mental and emotional incoherence.
The intention to steal had brought him here. That intention was over an hour old, but since it had been neither fulfilled nor countermanded, it was stored energy; and presently it began to move his will-less members, as the stored energy of a coiled spring sets an automaton at its appointed task. He took from the floor the plunder-bag Kate had given him, and holding the lantern and the edge of the bag's mouth in his left hand, he swung open the plate-glass door of the cabinet. His eyes selected a golden bracelet, and his hand moved slowly forward and took it up.
Then suddenly his fingers unclosed, the bracelet clicked back upon the glass shelf, and his hand withdrew from the cabinet. The coiled spring of his intention had snapped. The touch of what was another man's had readjusted his confused senses. His blurred feelings became definite, his dumb brain articulate. He saw what he was doing, saw it clearly, as a bare act, unjustified by the arguments his bitterness had urged upon him an hour before—saw that he was committing a theft!
A chill swept through him and he sat stiffly upright in his chair and stared at the bracelet he had dropped. In the mood he had been in an hour or two hours before David would not have drawn back from theft, any more than any other normal starving man, could it have been committed quickly, upon impulse. But the hour that had passed, the deliberation which was surrounding the theft, had given opportunity to his moral being to overthrow the impulse and assert itself.
He rose, forgetting even to take the cabinet key. He would leave the house at once.
But as he passed out of the drawing-room it came to him that he could not go away without telling Kate of his purpose. Before him he saw a flight of stairs; she was somewhere above. He stealthily mounted, passed through a doorway and found himself in a library. He stood a moment with strained ears, but got no sound of her. He must go through the floor, and perhaps through the floor above; but before proceeding further he must get the lay of the house.
He moved noiselessly toward the library table, drawing out the plan Kate had given him. He set the lantern on the table beside a telephone, spread out the sheets and was sitting down when cautious footfalls sounded without. The next instant a blade of light stabbed the room's darkness.
"Kate?" he whispered.
"Yes."
They came toward each other and each threw his light into the other's masked face.
"I've got the old lady's twinklers," she said. "Where's your swag?"
"I didn't take it," he whispered. "I've changed my mind. I'm leaving."
"What!"
"I'm not going to take anything. I'm going away. I came to tell you that."
She drew a step nearer and for a space her black eyes gazed up into his in amazement. The deep night silence of the great house flooded over them.
"You mean it?" she demanded.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I cannot. It was a mistake, my coming."
Her eyes suddenly gleamed like knife points, she trembled with passion, and she plunged her whispered words in up to the hilt.
"So that's the kind of nerve you've got! Oh, my God!... What a damned coward you are!... Well, get out! I don't want you!"
She brushed him wrathfully by, and tensely erect, her free hand clenched, walked out of the room behind the shaft of light.
He stood motionless where she had left him, alone amid the great hush. Her words had pierced to the seat of life. He quivered with the pain—deserved pain, he realised, for it was not a noble part to leave a comrade at such a time. But he had made a mistake in coming, and the only way to correct it was to go. He wished she would go with him, but he knew the result of asking her. She would stab him again, and walk away in contempt.
He sighed, set his lantern on the table, and folded and pocketed the plans of the house. As he laid hold of his lantern to start away he saw on the table, in the lantern's ribbon of light, three or four letters that had evidently been written during the evening and left to be mailed in the morning. He started, sank to a chair, and gazed fixedly at one of the envelopes. The name on it was "Miss Helen Chambers."
Amid all the sensations that swirled within him, his mind instantly made one deduction: Kate Morgan had, after all, secured a place through Helen Chambers, and they were now in the home of one of her friends.
For a minute or more he sat staring at the envelope. It was almost as if Helen herself had surprised him in his guilty presence here. Then, across the darkness of the room, there came the faintest of sounds.
He thought it was Kate. "Is that you?" he whispered.
There was no answer; only dead quiet. In sudden fear he sprang up and directed the lantern's pointer of light toward whence the sound had come. The white spot fell upon the skirt of a dressing-gown. He jerked the pointer upward. The luminous circle enframed the square-jawed, clean-shaven face of a man—of the man he had seen with Helen Chambers—of Mr. Allen.
Instantly the room was filled with a blinding glare, and David saw Mr. Allen standing in the doorway, his left hand still on the electric-light key, his right holding out a revolver.
"Yes, it's I," said Mr. Allen in a quiet, grim voice. "Suppose you remove your mask and give me the equal pleasure of seeing whom I'm meeting."
There was no disobeying, with a revolver's muzzle staring coldly at him. David drew the handkerchief down and let it fall about his neck.
Mr. Allen gazed a moment at David's face, thin, haggard, yet rare in its fineness. "H'm. A new variety." His gaze shifted till its edge took in the telephone on the table, and there it rested reflectively. Then he remarked, as though completing his thought aloud, "I guess it will be safer for you to do the telephoning. Will you please call up Central and ask her to give you Police Headquarters?"
Wild, contrary impulses tugged at David, but man's primal instinct, self-preservation, controlled him the first moment.
"I have been near starvation," he said, forcing his words to calmness. "I came here to steal—yes; but when I tried to steal, I could not. I—I did not steal!"
His plea snapped off harshly. The world had driven him here, and with a rush he realised the world would not forgive him for being here. Bitterness swept into him in a great wave, and the recklessness that feels that all is lost. Besides, he could not ask mercy of Helen Chambers's lover.
Mr. Allen gave an ironic laugh. "I've been hearing that sort of story for fifteen years. There never was a guilty man.—Call up Central."
The natural animal hatred of a rival flared up. David looked Mr. Allen defiantly in the face. "If you want Central, call her yourself!" he said slowly.
Mr. Allen was surprised, but his surprise passed immediately under his control. "Of course you are aware," he said quietly, "that you have the choice between calling up and being shot."
"And you are aware," David returned, "that you have the choice between calling up and shooting."
Mr. Allen was silent a moment. "The killing of a man who enters your house is justified by law," he warned grimly.
"Well—why don't you shoot?"
"Are you going to call up?"
"So then—you're afraid to shoot!" taunted David.
Mr. Allen remained silent. He gazed at David over the pistol barrel, and David gazed back at the pistol and at Mr. Allen. Their wills had locked horns, stood braced.
"I'm getting very tired," said David, throwing a leg over a corner of the table. "If you don't shoot soon I'll have to go."
At this instant David saw in the doorway behind Mr. Allen the small figure of Kate Morgan. In her right hand there shone a little pistol, in her left she held a heavy walking-stick.
Mr. Allen broke his silence. "If you make a move toward your pocket while I cross the floor, it'll be your last move."
David's will had conquered, but his exultation did not speak. He was watching Kate Morgan, fascinated. Her pistol rose, then fell, and the pistol and walking-stick exchanged hands. Mr. Allen took the first step toward the telephone. The stick came up, whizzed down upon Mr. Allen's pistol hand. The weapon went flying upon the rug, and Mr. Allen let out a sharp cry and started to whirl around. As the stick struck flesh David sprang forward, and with the skill of his old boxing-days, with all his strength and weight focussed in the blow, he drove his fist against Mr. Allen's unguarded chin. Mr. Allen fell limply upon the deep carpet.
"Come on! Out of here!" cried David, seizing Kate's arm.
She jerked away and stood tensely erect, glaring at him. "Go, you coward! I stay here!"
"But you'll get caught!"
"That's my business!" she blazed. "Get out!—I'm going to finish the job."
She whirled about, jerked the handkerchief from her face, thrust it into Allen's mouth, and tied this gag securely in place with a handkerchief which she took from the pocket of Allen's dressing-gown. Then she tied his feet with the dressing-gown's rope girdle, and his hands with one of the silken ropes that held back the hangings in the broad doorway. This done, she sprang to the electric-light key, and the room filled with blackness.
She flashed her lantern on David, who had stood watching her rapid actions in amazement. "Why don't you go? Get out!"
"See here, it's crazy to stay here. You know it. You've got to come with me."
His lantern, which he had taken up, showed a face that darted scorn and rage. "Go with you?—I'll die first!" she returned in a low, fierce whisper. And then she added, each slow word edged with infinite contempt:
"Oh, what a poor damned coward!"
He quivered, but he said quietly, "If you won't go, I'll stay with you."
"Stay with me? You'll not! I won't have you!"
She turned abruptly and left the room. He stood thinking for a space; then he went out and crept down the stairway. As he passed the drawing-room door he saw Kate bending in front of the open curio cabinet. He crept down another flight to the first floor and hid himself behind a palm in an angle of the great hall. He strained his ears for trouble, ready to rush upstairs at the first sound. After a time a wand of light was thrust down the stairway. Then came Kate, the suit-case in one hand, feeling her way with the wand like a blind man with a cane. For a moment the searching light pierced through the palm into his face, and David thought he was discovered; but she glided on and down the basement stairs. He let several minutes pass; then he too slipped out into the street.
Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was the direction of the subconscious, that led David in his circuitous homeward journey, past St. Christopher's Mission. He was walking slowly along, the caution of the first part of his flight forgotten in the mixture of despair and shame that now possessed him, when he waded into pools of coloured light that lay upon the sidewalk and the street. He looked up. There, aglow with its inspiration, was the window to the memory of Philip Morton. He involuntarily stepped back a pace or two, and leaning against a stack of bricks designed for repairs in the Mission's basement, alone in the deserted street, he gazed steadfastly at the luminous words.
He had often looked at that tribute, as he had upon the whole Mission, with a sense of thankfulness that his life was counting. But now there was no thankfulness within him. Anger began to burn, revolt to rise. That sainted man there was the cause of all his misery, all his degradation. The shame of his trial, the loss of his four prison years, the refusal of work, his insults, his lost strength, his lost character, his ragged clothes, his starving, his uttermost poverty, his uttermost despair—all these rushed upon him in one hot turbulent flood of rebellion. Of all these inflictions that man was directly the cause! And more—that man had made him a thief! And yet that man was worshipped as a saint—while he, he was a starving outcast!
His resentment culminated in a wild impulse. His right hand clutched one of the bricks on which it rested, and he took a quick step forward. The brick crashed through Morton's glowing name.
Three or four blocks east of the Bowery and lying north of the Jewish quarter is a little region somewhat less crowded, somewhat quieter, somewhat more clean, than the rest of the tenement country that lies about it. It is held by Germans—Americanised Germans. But Poles and Magyars, Jews of Roumania, Hungary and Russia, are edging their way into it; such frequent signs as "Gyogyszertár," which, evil as it strikes the eye, signifies nothing more malignant than "drugstore," announce this invasion even to casual passers-by. Some day the region will know the children of Germany no more; it will be a Babel of the tongues of central Europe. But as yet, if you walk along its four avenues, A, B, C and D, all lined with little shops, or lounge about its shady Tompkin's Square, you will see many a face that will carry your memory back to Berlin and Cologne and the beer-gardens and Sunday promenades of their work-people and petty bourgeois.
It was the evening after David's adventure with Kate Morgan. From the snowy air of broad Avenue A a good-natured crowd was turning into a gilded entrance, over which incandescent lights pricked the words "Liberty Assembly Hall." The crowd was chiefly German, but in it were many of the newer peoples of the neighbourhood. There were broad husbands and broad wives; children led by hand, babies carried in arms; young people in couples and in hilarious groups; solitary and furtive men and women. Most were in their finest, and some of the finery would not have made the opera ashamed; but many were dressed in shabbiness—though they, too, wore their best.
David, who had wandered into Avenue A, as he often did in his aimless night walks, paused momentarily and listlessly watched the in-going stream of people. A New Year's ball, he decided; but the word "Mayor" recurred so often in the bits of conversation he overheard that his inert curiosity prompted him to draw near a friendly-looking man who stood without the entrance.
"What's going on in there?" he asked.
"Installing the Mayor of Avenue A," the man returned.
David had vaguely heard of the "Mayors" who exercise an unofficial authority in several districts of New York. "How's the Mayor chosen?" he asked. "By election?"
"No. Carl Hoffman's the most popular man on the Avenue; he's got coin and influence; we all want him. That's how it is."
"What does he do?"
"If you need a dollar, and ain't got it, you go to Carl. If a poor woman ain't got any coal, she lets Carl know and she's got it. If you're dispossessed or in trouble with the police, Carl fixes you up. If you can't get work, you go see Carl. He's the poor man's friend—everybody's friend."
For several moments David was silent. Then he asked abruptly, "Is this a private ceremony?"
"Oh, no; go on in, if you want to."
David joined the entering crowd, mounted a broad flight of stairs, passed through a short hallway, and came into a large hall. Every chair was taken and people stood in the aisles and along the sides. Three electric-light chandeliers, wound in bunting and loaded with glass pendants, were each a glittering sun. The maroon walls were relieved by raised gold-and-white scroll work, and by alternate mirrors and oil-paintings set into the plastering. These paintings were Tyrolean scenes, cascades and moon-lit seas—such as the art-fostering department store supplies at a dollar or two, golden frame included.
At the further end of the hall was a stage, draped with American flags. At the stage's back a band, in purple and gold braid, was blowing out its brass instruments; and at the stage's front, beneath "OUR MAYOR" in evergreen letters that hung from the proscenium arch, sat four rotund men in a row.
David slipped into a corner at the rear, where his shabbiness saw more of its own kind. A moment later "The Watch on the Rhine" thundered from the stage and rolled among the Alps and the cascades and over the moon-lit seas. Then "The Star-Spangled Banner" sent forth its reverberations, and when its last echo had been lost far down an Alpine gorge, the most rotund of the four rotund men—they were the Mayors of Avenues A, B, C and D, a neighbour told David—stepped to a table and rapped for order. He assumed his most impressive attitude, gazed slowly over the polyglot audience, drew a deep breath, and began in a sonorous voice that, now swelling, now softening, was the perfect servant of his eloquence.
"It is not within the power of human speech to express how much I, as Mayor of Avenue B, feel the great honour of acting as master of ceremonies on this brilliant and distinguished occasion, graced by so much fairness of the softer sex, made by the Creator as the greatest reward and adornment of life, when your honourable Mayor is to be installed to serve his eleventh successive and successful term." But despite the impotence of speech, the Mayor of Avenue B filled ten minutes in an attempt to suggest faintly the contents of his prideful breast. Then he swept onward into a eulogy of the Mayor of Avenue A, ending with, "And now, Carl Hoffman, rise and receive the oath of office."
Cheers and hand-clapping echoed through the Alps. The tallest of the four Mayors stepped forward. The applause doubled and the band thundered into "Hail the Conquering Hero." The Mayor of Avenue A bowed and smiled and smiled and bowed, and swept his arm, now to this side, now to that, in magnificent salutation. His face was inflated with good feeding, and was as smooth as a child's balloon; a few hairs lay in pencil lines across his shiny head; from pocket to pocket athwart his snow-white vest hung a heavy golden chain—in lieu of a hoop, one could fancy, to hold fast the bulging flesh. It was well that his face was broad; a thin face would have cramped the wide, shining smile he held upon his uproaring constituency.
When the tumult had somewhat abated, the master of ceremonies, his portly dignity replaced by portly lightsomeness, caught the Mayor's arm. "Here he is, ladies and gents!" he shouted. "Look at him! The champion heavyweight, catch-as-catch-can philanthropist of New York. I am authorized to challenge any other philanthropist of his class in the city for a match, the gate receipts to the winner, and a thousand dollars side bet!"
The crowd again broke loose. A deep, gruff, joyous voice rose from the Mayor's interior. "Moxie, get your wife to sew a button on your mouth!"
The hall was one gleeful roar at this sally.
"Raise your right hand," said the Mayor of Avenue B, when there was partial quiet. "Now repeat after me: I, Carl Hoffman, do hereby promise to the best of my ability—"
"Why, sure!" approved the deep voice.
"To be a friend to any man, woman or child that needs a friend. So help me God!"
"Sure thing!" responded a hearty rumble.
The crowd once more applauded, and David noted that the hands which clapped longest were feminine.
The Mayor of Avenue A beamed upon the audience. "That's me," he said, with a grand upward sweep of his right arm. "I don't need to tell you what I'm goin' to do. I been doin' it for ten years. I guess my record'll do all the talkin' that's needed. But this much I'll say for myself: If anybody durin' this new year needs a friend and he don't chase himself around to the Pan-American Café and ask for Carl Hoffman—well, he deserves a lot more trouble than he's got!"
He went on and told how glad he was to see his friends, and how proud he was to be their Mayor, but through it all David was hearing only the oath of office and the Mayor's first few sentences; and when later the ushers began to clear away the chairs for dancing, and David slipped down to the street and walked homeward through the swirling snow, he still thought only of the Mayor's offer to the man who needed a friend.
The next day at eleven o'clock—he had figured the morning rush would be over by then—David approached the Pan-American Café. On the café's one side was a delicatessen store, displaying row on row of wurst to entice the Germans within, and on the other side a costumer's shop, its windows filled with suits of armour, night-mare masks, and gorgeous seventeenth-century court gowns of sateen, spangles and mosquito netting. The long glass front of the café was hung with holiday greens, among which appropriate signs informed the street that a Hungarian orchestra played nightly, that real German beer and indubitable Rhenish wine were purchasable within, and that a superlatively good dinner was to be had for only thirty cents.
David came to a pause at the café's storm-door. Doubts and fears that had been rising now stampeded him: the Mayor's talk was only platform talk; the Mayor was doubtless like all others who had refused him, insulted him. He walked up and down the avenue, passing and repassing the café and the narrow little shops that edged the sidewalk. Then he told himself that he had nothing to lose; another refusal would be merely another refusal. He summoned back his courage, delivered himself into its hands, and entered.
He found himself in a wide, long room, whose green walls were hung with signs of breweries and with placards announcing the balls of "The Carl Hoffman Association," "The Twin Brothers," "The Lady Orchids," and a dozen other social organisations of the neighbourhood. Six rows of tables, some marble-topped, some linen-covered, with chairs stacked upon them, stretched the length of the room. Among these black-jacketed waiters, armed with long mops, were scrubbing the linoleum-covered floor.
One of the waiters quickly cleared the chairs from a table and came forward to meet David. "Nothing to eat, thank you," David said. "I want to see Mr. Hoffman."
"Sorry—he's out. But he's likely to be in any minute. Just sit down. No, wait—there he is now."
David looked about. Coming in from the street was the ample form of the Mayor of Avenue A, his cheeks pink with the cold. "Got four discharged and paid two fines," the Mayor announced to the waiters who had all looked up expectantly. "And when I got 'em out o' the court-room I lined 'em up and gave 'em gentle hell. They'll keep sober for awhile—yes, sir!"
He turned to David. "Why some decent men ain't never sure the New Year's really begun till they've poured themselves neck-full o' whiskey—mebbe the God that made 'em understands, but Carl Hoffman certainly don't."
David admitted that no more did he, and then asked for a few minutes' talk—in private.
"Hey, John, take these things," and the Mayor burdened David's waiter with overcoat, muffler and hat; and David saw that a waistcoat of garlanded silk had replaced the white one of last night. "And, say, boys," he shouted to the others, "suppose you let the rest o' that scrubbin' go for a bit and get busy at somethin' out in the kitchen."
He led David to a rear corner where, enclosed by heavy red ropes, was the platform from which the Hungarian orchestra administered its nightly music. They lifted the chairs from a table and sat down facing each other.
"Well, now, what can I do for you?" the Mayor asked.
David did not give his courage time to escape. "I was at your inauguration last night," he began, quickly, "and I heard you say that if any man needed help—"
"The poor man's friend—that's me," broke in the Mayor with a quick nod, folding his plump hands, on one of which burnt a great diamond, upon the table.
"And the poor man—that's me," said David.
"Well, you've come to the right doctor. What's ailin' you?"
The Mayor's eyes became sharp, and his face became as stern as its pink fulness would permit. "But one word first. Some people think I'm an easy mark. I ain't. I've got two rules: never to give a nickel to a man that don't deserve it, and never to give the icy mitt to the man that deserves the warm hand. I guess I ain't never broke either rule. A grafter ain't got no more chance with me than a lump o' lard in a fryin' pan. I ain't sayin' these things to hurt your feelin's, friend. Only just to let you know that if you ain't all on the level you're wastin' your precious time. If you are on the level—fire away. I'm your man."
This was rather disconcerting. "I can only tell you the truth," said David.
"It wouldn't do you no good to tell nothin' else," the Mayor said dryly. "I can generally tell when the chicken in a chicken pie is corned beef."
David gathered his strength. "I shall tell you everything. To begin with, I've been a thief—"
"A thief!" the Mayor ejaculated. He stared. "Tales o' woe always begin with the best thing a fellow can say about himself. If you start off with bein' a thief, Lord man, what'll you be when you get through!"
"I'm beginning with the worst. I'm out of prison about four months. I was sent up for—for stealing money from a mission—from St. Christopher's Mission—four or five years ago."
Again the Mayor stared, and again his face took on its stern look. "So you're that man!" he said slowly. "I remember about it. The Mission ain't far from here. Well, friend, one o' my waiters'd fire me out o' here for disorderly conduct if I told you in plain English what I think o' that trick. But it was a dirty, low-down piece o' business, and what came to you is only a little part o' what you should 'a' got."
David rose. It was as he had expected—another refusal. "I see you care to do nothing for me. Good morning."
"Did I say so? Set down. You're talkin' the truth—that's somethin'. At least it don't sound much like one o' them fancy little lies a fellow makes up to make a good impression. Well, what d'you want from me?"
David sat down. He spoke quickly, desperately. "I came back from prison determined to live honestly. I've been trying for four months to get work. No one will have me. I won't tell you what I've been through. I must have work, if I'm to live at all. I've come to you because I thought you might help me get work—any kind of work."
For a minute or more the Mayor silently studied David's thin features. Then he said abruptly: "Excuse me for leavin' your troubles, but I been out in this cold air and I'm as empty as my hat. I've got to have a bite to eat, or I'll all cave in. And you'll have some with me. I don't like to eat alone.
"Oh, John!" the deep voice roared out. "Say, John, fetch us some eggs. How'll you have your eggs? Scrambled? Scrambled eggs, John, bacon, rolls and coffee for two.
"Now back to your troubles, friend." He shook his head slowly. "You're up against a stiff proposition. There ain't much of a demand for ex-crooks right now."
He once more began to scrutinise David's face. "Don't let this bother you, friend; I'm just seein' what's inside you," he said, and continued his stare.
One minute passed, two minutes, and that fixed gaze did not shift. David grew weak with suspense. He knew he was on trial, and that the next moment would hear his sentence.
Suddenly the Mayor thrust a big hand across the table and grasped David's. "It ain't the icy mitt for you. Jobs are scarce, but—let's see. What kind o' work have you done? I remember readin' about you; wasn't you a professor, or somethin' in that line o' business?"
David swam in a vertigo of vast relief; his hand instinctively clutched the edge of the table; the Mayor's face looked blurred, far away.... "I was a writer ... for magazines."
"My pull wouldn't help a lot with the literary push." The Mayor's eyes again became keen. "And I suppose you now want somethin' o' the same sort—somethin' fancy?"
The dizziness was subsiding. "Anything—so it's work!"
The Mayor meditated a moment. "Well, I only know o' one job just now, and you wouldn't have it."
"What is it?" demanded David, tensely.
"The agent o' the house where I live told me a couple o' days ago he wanted a new janitor."
"I'll take it!"
"Sweepin'—scrubbin'—sortin' rubbish—everybody cussin' you—twelve dollars a month."
The wages made David hesitate. He calculated. "I'll take it—if the agent will have me."
"He'll have you. Rogers's got a special interest in chaps that're makin' the fight you're makin'."
David half rose. "Hadn't I better see him at once?" he asked, anxiously. "The job may be taken any minute."
"Set down, young man. That job ain't goin' to run away. Here comes breakfast. I'll go with you when we're through. Gee, I could eat a house."
David made no boasts, but when he rose from his first meal since the midnight supper with Kate Morgan thirty-three hours before, he had effaced his share of the breakfast. He noted that the Mayor's portion had hardly been touched, and the Mayor saw he observed this. "I had a sudden turn o' the stomach," the Mayor explained. "I never know when it's goin' to let me eat, or when it's goin' to say there's nothin' doin'."
They walked away through a deep cross street of red tenements with fire-escapes climbing the walls like stark, grotesque vines. David was filled with dread lest he might find the position already occupied. He wanted to run. But despite his suspense he had to notice that the Mayor was smiling at all the women on both sides of the street, and that every pretty one who passed was followed by a look over the Mayor's shoulder.
At the end of five minutes they turned into a tenement of the better sort, on the large front window of whose first floor David read in gilt letters, "John Rogers—Real Estate."
"Here's where I live—on the floor above," said the Mayor. "You just wait here in the hall a minute or two while I have a chat with Rogers."
The Mayor entered the office, and David paced the narrow hallway. Would he get the job? No—this Rogers would never hire a thief. Anyhow, even if Rogers would, someone else had the job already. It couldn't be true that at last he was to gain a foothold—even so poor a foothold. No, this was to be merely one more rejection.
At length the Mayor came out, carefully smoothing the few hairs that lined his crown like a sheet of music paper. "Rogers is waitin' for you; go right in. See you soon. Good-bye." He shook hands and went out, cautiously replacing his hat.
David entered, palpitant. The office was bare, save for real estate maps on the walls, a few chairs and a desk. Mr. Rogers turned in his swivel chair and motioned David to a seat beside him. "Mr. Hoffman has told me about you," he said, briefly, and for a moment he silently looked David over; and David, for his part, did the same by the man whose "yes" or "no" was about to re-create or destroy him. Mr. Rogers was a slight, spectacled man with dingy brown hair and a reddish pointed beard; and his plain wrinkled clothes were instantly suggestive of mediocrity. His face had the yellowish pallor of old ivory, and its apparent stolidity would have confirmed the impression of his clothes, had there not gleamed behind his spectacles a pair of quick watchful eyes.
"Do you mind if I ask you about yourself?" Mr. Rogers said, quietly.
"Ask anything you please."
"Mr. Hoffman has told me of your—unfortunate experience of the last four or five years. Since coming out you have made a real effort at finding work?"
David outlined the struggles of the past four months. Mr. Rogers heard him through without show of emotion other than an increased brightness of the eyes, then asked: "Have you not, under such hard circumstances, been tempted to steal again?"
David paled, and hesitated. A reformed thief who had attempted theft no later than yesterday, would certainly not be employed. He saw his chance, so near, fade suddenly away. But he had determined upon absolute frankness.
"Yes," he admitted in a low tone. Then his voice became tremulous with appeal: "But I yielded only once! I was in the act of stealing—but I stopped myself. I could not. I took nothing!—not a thing!"
David expected to see the yellow face harden, but it did not change. "You know the character of the work," Mr. Rogers resumed. "It is not pleasant."
David's hope rushed back. "That makes no difference to me!"
"And the pay is small—only twelve dollars a month and your rent."
"Yes! Yes! That's all right!"
"Then," concluded the low, even voice, "if it's convenient to you, I should like to have you begin at once."
David, in a kind of trance, followed Mr. Rogers over the six-story house, hardly hearing the agent's discourse upon his duties and the tenants. Twenty-four families and a considerable number of boarders lived in the tenement—in all, close to a hundred and a half souls. They were mostly Germans and Jews—tailors, furriers, jewellers, shop-keepers; people who were beginning to gain a fair footing in their adopted country. David's work was to be much as the Mayor had outlined. The halls were to be daily swept and frequently scrubbed, minor repairs to be executed, the furnace to be attended to, and ashes, waste-paper and kitchen-refuse to be separated and prepared for the city's ash and garbage wagons.
The tour of installation ended, David started for his old home to begin the removal, armload at a time, of his few belongings. As he walked among the school-hurrying children, over snow grimed by ten thousand feet, he felt dazed for fear that this world of hope he had entered might suddenly vanish. Failure had been his so constantly that this beginning of success seemed unreal. He dared allow himself to feel only a tentative exultation.
At the entrance of his old tenement he met Kate Morgan coming out. He had not seen her since she had glided past him through Mr. Allen's hall, suit-case in hand. He stopped, at a loss what to do or say, wondering how she would receive him.
"Good afternoon," he said, heavily.
She paled, looked him squarely in the face and passed without a word. With a pang he watched her walk stiffly away. Her friendship, save for Tom's, was the only friendship he had known since he had left prison. Now it was lost.
An hour later, as he was coming from his room with his last armload, he met her again. She sneered in his face. "Coward!" she snapped out and brushed him by. He called after her, but she marched on and into her door without looking back.
David had thought his "rent" would be a single room, but it had proved to be a five-room flat in the basement. In the front room of this, during the odd moments his afternoon's work allowed him, he arranged his belongings, to which Mr. Rogers had added a bed, a table and a couple of chairs. When all was in order he found the room looked bare, beyond his needs. After all, his "rent" might as well have been but a single room. Little good to him were the four rooms behind, locked and vacant.
Darkness had fallen and he was sitting in his room wondering how he would live through the month that must elapse before his salary would be due, when Mr. Rogers came in.
"It has occurred to me that perhaps you could use a little ready money," Mr. Rogers said in his low voice, and he laid several bills upon David's table. "There's one month's wages in advance." And before David had recovered from his surprise, Mr. Rogers was out of the room.
While David was still staring at this money, there was another knock. He opened the door upon the Mayor of Avenue A. The Mayor walked in and lowered himself into the one rocking-chair.
"Well, I see you've landed with Rogers," he called out, as though David were a block away. "You'll find Rogers quiet, but the real thing. He's got a heart that really beats."
He looked about. "Just usin' this one room, I see. What're you doin' with the others?"
"Nothing."
"Why don't you rent 'em?"
"D'you think I can?"
"Can? You can't help it. Why, only yesterday a family was askin' me to help 'em find a cheap flat. Le's see how much them four rooms would be worth. I pay thirty a month up on the second floor; this might fetch sixteen or eighteen. You've got the best room; take that off and say—well, say twelve a month. How'd that suit you?"
"If I could only get it!"
The Mayor drew out a fat wallet. "That fixes my family up, then. Here's your twelve."
"You're in earnest?" David asked, slowly.
"Sure. The family'll be in to-morrow."
"But I can't take the money in advance—and from you."
"It ain't my money. It's theirs. And advance!—nothin'! Rent's always in advance. And if I don't cinch the bargain now, somebody'll come along and offer you thirteen, and then where'll I be? Here, stick this in your pants and shut up!"
David took the money. "Mr. Hoffman, I don't know how I can ever thank you for your favours—"
"Oh, this ain't no favour. This's business. But if you think it's a favour—well, some day I may be on my uppers. Remember it then." A pillowy hand drew forth his watch, lit up with diamonds. "Well, by George, if I don't chase right over to my joint I won't even have any uppers. My blamed waiters's always forgettin' to water the soup!"
When he was alone David sat with eyes looking at his fortune, which he had heaped upon the table, and with mind looking at the situation in which he now found himself. Five years before he would have regarded this janitor's position much as a man on a green, sun-lit bank of a cliff-walled torrent would regard a little bare ledge below against which the water frothed in anger—as something not worth even a casual thought. But he had been in that stream, which sweeps its prey onward to destruction; his hands had slipped from its smooth walls; and just as he had been going down he had caught the little ledge and dragged himself upon it—and now this bare rock to him was the world. He did not think of the green fields and the sun above, toward which he must try to climb; he could only, as it were, lie gasping upon his back, and marvel at the miracle of his escape.
He was still sitting so when there was still another knock. He had asked his landlady to send Tom over when the boy returned, and as he crossed the room he hoped he would find Tom at the door. Sure enough, there stood the boy. He came in quietly, with hesitation, for during the past week and more the two had hardly spoken—they had merely been aware of one another's existence.
"What's all dis mean?" he asked slowly, looking round in amazement.
In a rush of spirits David clapped his hands on Tom's shoulders. "It means, my boy, that we're going to begin to live! See this room? The rent's paid for as long as we stay here. And look at the table!"
Tom looked instead at David's face. "Gee, pard, if you ain't got a grin!" he cried. Forthwith a grin appeared on his own face. He turned to the table—and stared.
"Say, look at de bank!" he gasped.
"That's something to eat, Tom. And new clothes. There's twenty-four dollars in that pile, and twenty-four coming in every month, with no rent to pay."
"Don't say nuttin, pard. If dis is a dream, just let me sleep. But what's de graft? How did you get next to all dis?"
David related his day's experience. When he had ended Tom did a few steps of a vaudeville dance, then seized David's hand.
"Well, ain't dis luck! It's like God woke up. But what you goin' to do wid all de coin?"
"Oh, buy railroads and such things!"
David held on to the hand the boy had given him and took the other. "Tom," he said gravely, looking down into the boy's face, "I've got an idea neither of us is very proud of all the things he's done lately. D'you think so?"
The boy's eyes fell to the floor.
"I shouldn't care to tell you all I've done. Should you care to tell me?"
The tangled head shook.
"Well, from now on we're going to be straight—all on the level. Aren't we?"
Tom looked up. "I guess we are, pard," he said in a low voice.
They looked steadily into each other's eyes for a moment. Then David gave Tom a quick push. "On with your hat, my boy! Let's see if the grocery man won't take some of this money."
After their dinner had been bought, eaten, and the dishes cleared away, David began to tack up prints. Tom meditatively watched him for several minutes, then suddenly announced:
"I seen her to-day."
David turned sharply. He knew the answer, but he asked, "Saw who?"
"You know. De lady what I fetched up. I seen her on de street."
David tried to appear unconcerned. "Did she say anything?"
"She asked how you was."
"What did you tell her?"
"I didn't know what to say. I was afraid o' queerin' somet'ing you might 'a' told her. I just said you was better."
David tacked up another print, during which time Tom again watched him thoughtfully. Then Tom asked, abruptly:
"She's a friend o' yourn, ain't she?"
"No."
"I t'ought she was!" His voice was disappointed. "Why ain't she?"
"Well—I guess she don't like me."
"Don't like you!" cried Tom indignantly. "Den she's had a bum steer!" He thought. "I wonder what's queered her agin' you?"
"Oh, several things," David answered vaguely. Then obeying an impulse, born of the universal craving for sympathy, he went on: "For one thing, she believes I put you up to stealing."
"She t'inks you knew anyt'ing about dat!" he cried, springing up excitedly.
"She believes you were stealing regularly, and that it was all done under my direction."
"Is dat de way she sizes up de facts? Well, ain't dat just like a woman! Wouldn't it just freeze your eyeballs, de way goils do t'ings!
"But see here, pard. Swell friends can do a guy a lot o' good. Why don't you hang on to her? Why don't you put her wise?"
"She wouldn't believe me. My boy—" the tone tried to be light—"when the world is certain to regard your truth as a lie, it's just as well to keep still."
David went on with his tacking, and a minute or more went by before Tom asked, quietly: "But wouldn't you like her to know de facts? Wouldn't you like her to be your friend?"
"Oh, yes—why not?" David responded in his voice of affected unconcern.
Tom gazed steadily at David's back, his thin face wrinkled with thought. At length his head nodded, and he said to himself in a whisper: "So she t'inks he put me up to it, does she?"
At the end of the afternoon, a few days later, a fierce battle was being waged in the basement room that was the Aldrich home, when a knock made David lower his defensive fists.
"Ah, don't stop, pard," Tom begged of his cornered enemy. "Let 'em pound. It's just somebody else kickin' about de heat."
"We'll only stop a second. Ask what they want, and say I'll attend to it at once."
Tom, grumbling fiercely, opened the door. "What's de matter?" he demanded. "Ain't you got no heat?"
But it was not an angry tenant who stepped in from the darkness of the hall. It was Helen Chambers. She was flushed, and excitement quivered in her eyes. She looked from one pillow-fisted belligerent to the other, and said, smiling tremulously:
"I had thought there was no heat, but after looking at you I've decided there's plenty. Is this the way you always receive complainants?"
Tom glanced guiltily at David, then darted behind Helen and through the door. David gazed at her, loose-jawed. Suddenly he remembered his shirt-sleeves.
"I beg your pardon," he said, and in his bewilderment he tried to thrust his huge fists into his coat.
"Perhaps you can do that"—again the tremulous smile—"but I really don't think you can."
"I should take the gloves off, of course," he stammered. He frantically unlaced them, slipped into his coat, and then looked at her, throbbing with wonderment as to why she had come.
She did not leave him in an instant's doubt. She stepped toward him with outstretched hand, her smile gone, on her face eager, appealing earnestness.
"I have come to ask your forgiveness," she said with her old, direct simplicity. "I believed that you and the boy were—pardon me!—were stealing together; that you were letting yourself slip downward. This afternoon the boy came to me at St. Christopher's and told me the real story. I could hardly wait till I was free so that I could hurry to you and ask you to forgive me."
"Forgive you!" David said slowly.
"Forgive me for my unjust judgment," she went on, a quaver in her voice. "I judged from mere appearance, mere guess-work. I was cold—horrid. I am ashamed. Forgive me."
Her never-expected coming, her never-expected words, rendered him for the moment speechless. He could only gaze into her fresh face, so full of earnestness, of appeal.
"You do not forgive me?" she asked.
David thrilled at the tremulous note in her voice. "I have nothing to forgive. You could not help judging as you did."
Her deep brown eyes, looking straight into his face, continued the appeal.
"I forgive you," he said in a low voice.
"Thank you," she said simply; and she pressed his hand.
"And I came for something else," she went on, "I came to assure you of my friendship, if it can mean anything to you—to tell you how much I admire your brave and bitter upward struggle. I'd be so happy if there was some way I could help you, and if you'd let me."
"You want to help me!" was all he could say.
"Yes. Won't you let me—please!"
He throbbed with exultation. "Then you believe I am now honest!"
"You have proved that you are—proved it by the way you have resisted temptation during these four terrible months."
His eyes suddenly sank from hers to the floor. Her words had brought back New Year's eve. She had come to him with friendship because she was certain of his unfallen determination to make his new life an honest life. If she knew of that night in Allen's house, would she be giving him this praise, this offer?
The temptation to say nothing rose, but he could not requite frankness and sincerity such as hers with the lie of silence—he could not accept her friendship under false pretenses. He looked up and gazed at her steadily.
"I am innocent where you thought me guilty, but"—he paused; the truth was hard—"but I am guilty where you think me innocent."
She paled. "What do you mean?" she asked in a fearing voice.
"I have not resisted temptation."
He saw that his words had hurt her, and there was a flash of wonder that a lapse of his should give her pain. An appeal, full of colour, of feeling, that would justify himself to her was rising to his lips, but before it passed them he suddenly felt himself so much the wronged that his confession came forth an abrupt outline of his acts, spoken with no shame.
"I had been starved, rebuffed, for over three months. I grew desperate. Temptation came. I yielded. I entered a house—entered it to steal. But I did not steal. I could not. I came away with nothing."
He paused. His guilt was out. He awaited her judgment, fearful of her condemnation, with resentment ready for it if it came.
"Is that all!" she cried.
Vast relief quivered through him. "You mean then that—" He hesitated.
"That you have been fiercely tempted, but you are not guilty."
"You see it so!"
"Yes. Had you conquered temptation on the outer side of the door, you would certainly have been guiltless. Since you conquered temptation on the inner side of the door, I cannot see that those few more steps are the difference between guilt and innocence."
They were both silent a moment.
"But don't you want to tell me something about yourself—about your plans?" she asked.
The friendship in her voice, in her frank face, warmed him through. "Certainly," he said. "But there's very little to tell."
He now became aware that all the while they had been standing. "Pardon my rudeness," he said, and set a chair for her beside the table, and himself took a chair opposite her.
"There is little to tell," he repeated. "I am what you see—the janitor of this house." As he spoke the word "janitor" it flashed upon him that there had been a time when, in his wild visions, he had thought of winning this woman to be his wife. He flushed.
"Yes, I know. But you have other plans—other ambitions."
"A week ago my ambition was to find work that would keep me alive," he returned, smiling. "I have just attained that ambition. I have hardly had time to dream new dreams."
"But you will dream them again," she said confidently.
"I had them when—when I came back, and I suppose they will return."
"Yes. Go on!"
He had thought, in his most hopeful moments, that some day she might regard him with a distant friendliness, but he had never expected such an interest as was shown in her eager, peremptory tone. "There were two dreams. One was this: I wondered, if I were honest, if I worked hard, if I were of service to those about me, could I, after several years, win back the respect of the world, or its semi-respect? You know the world is so thoughtless, so careless, so slow to forgive. And I wondered if perhaps, after several years, I could win back the respect of some of my old friends?"
"I was sure that was one dream, one plan," she said, quietly. "For myself——" She gave him her hand.
"Thank you!" he said, his voice low and threaded with a quaver.
"And though the world is thoughtless, and slow to forgive, and though the struggle will be hard, I'm certain that you are going to succeed." Her rich voice was filled with quiet belief. "And the other dream?"
"It's presumptuous in me to speak of the other dream, for to work for its fulfilment would require all the things I've lost and many things I never had—a fair name, influence, some money, a personality, ability of the right sort. Besides, the dream is vague, unshaped—only a dream. It is not new, and it is not even my own dream. Thousands have dreamt it, and many are striving to turn it into a fact, a condition. Yes, it would be presumptuous for me to speak of it."
"But I'd like very much to hear about it—if you don't mind."
"Even though it will sound absurd from me? Well, if you wish me to."
He paused a moment to gather his thoughts. "One thing the last four months have taught me," he began, "is that the discharged criminal has little chance ever to be anything but a criminal. Many come out hardened; perhaps the prison hardened them—I've seen many a young fellow, who had his good points when he entered, hardened to irreclaimable criminality by prison associates and prison methods. These have no desire to live useful lives. Some come out with moderately strong resolutions to live honestly, and some come out with a fierce determination. If these last two classes could find work a large proportion of them would develop into useful men. But instead of a world willing to stretch to them a helping hand, what do they find? They find a world that refuses them the slightest chance.
"What can they do? They persist as long as their resolution lasts. If it is weak, they may give up in a few days. Then, since the upward road is closed against them, they turn into the road that is always open, always calling—the road of their old ways, of their old friends. They are lost.
"A week ago I was all bitterness, all rebellion, against the world for its uncaring destruction of these men. I said the world pushed these men back into crime, destroyed them, because it feared to risk its worshipped dollars. I feel bitter still, but I think I can see the world's excuse. The world says, 'For any vacancy there are usually at least two applicants; I choose the better, and let the other go.' It is a natural rule. So long as man thinks first of his own interest that rule will stand. Against such a rule that closes the road of honesty, what chance does the discharged convict have? None!—absolutely none!
"Since the world will not receive back the thief, since there is no saving the thief once he has become a thief, the only chance whatever for him is to save him before he has turned to thievery—while he is a child.
"Have you ever thought, Miss Chambers, how saving we are of all material things, and what squanders, oh, what criminal squanderers! we are of human lives? How far more rapidly the handling of iron, and hogs, and cotton, has developed than the handling of men! The pig comes out meat and soap and buttons and what not, and the same rigid economy is observed with all other materials. Nothing is too small, too poor, to be saved. It is all too precious!
"There is no waste! But can we say the same about the far more important business of producing citizens? Look at the men in our prisons. Wasted material. Had they been treated, when they were the raw material of childhood, with even a part of the intelligence and care that is devoted to turning the pig into use, into profit, they would have been manufactured into good citizens. And these men in prisons are but a fraction of the great human waste. Think of the uncaught criminals, of the stunted children, of the human wreckage floating about the city, of the women who live by their shame!—all wasted human material. And all the time more children are growing up to take the places of these when they are gone. Why, if any business man should run his factory as we conduct our business of producing citizens, he'd be bankrupt in a year!
"This wastecanbe saved. I do not mean the men now in prison, nor the women in the street, nor those on whom ill conditions have fastened disease—though even they need not be wholly lost. I mean their successors, the growing children. If the production of citizens were a business run for profit—which in a sense it is, for each good citizen is worth thousands of dollars to the country—and were placed in the hands of a modern business man, then you would see! Had he been packer, steel manufacturer, goldsmith, not a bristle, not an ounce of steel, not the infinitesimal filings of gold, escaped him. Do you think that he would let millions of human beings, worth, to put a sordid money value upon their heads, ten thousand dollars apiece, be wasted? Never! He would find the great business leak and stop it. He would save all.
"And how save? I am a believer in heredity, yes; but I believe far more in the influence of surroundings. Let a child be cradled in the gutter and nursed by wickedness; let wickedness be its bedfellow, playfellow, workfellow, its teacher, its friend—and what do you get? The prisons tell you. Let the same child grow up surrounded by decency, and you have a decent child and later a decent man. Could the thousands and thousands of children who are developing towards criminality, towards profligacy, towards a stunted maturity, be set amid good conditions, the leak would be stopped, or almost—the great human waste would be brought to an end. They would be saved to themselves, and saved to their country.
"Nothing of all this is new to you, Miss Chambers. I have said so much because I wanted to make clear what has become my great dream—the great dream of so many. I should like to do my little part towards rousing the negligent, indifferent world to the awfulness of this waste—towards making it as economical of its people as it is of its pigs and its pig-iron. That is my dream."
He had begun quietly, but as his thought mastered him his face had flushed, his eyes had glowed, and he had stood up and his words had come out with all the passion of his soul. Helen's eyes had not for an instant shifted from his; her's too were aglow, and glow was in her cheeks.
For several moments after he had stopped she gazed at him with something that was very like awe; then she said, barely above a whisper: "You are going to do it!"
"No, no," David returned quickly, bitterly. "I have merely builded out of words the shape of an impossible dream. Look at what I dream; and then look at me, a janitor!—look at my record!"
"You are going to do it!" she repeated, her voice vibrant with belief. "The dream is not impossible. You are doing something towards its fulfilment now—the boy, you know. You are going to grow above your record, and above this position—far above! You are going to grow into great things. What you have been saying has been to me a prophecy of that."
He grew warmer and warmer under her words—under the gaze of her brown eyes glowing into his—under the disclosure made by her left hand, on which he had seen there was no engagement ring. Her praise, her sympathy, her belief, thrilled him; and his purpose, set free in words, had given him courage, had lifted him up. As from a swift, dizzy growth, he felt strong, big.