IIIEVENING VISITORS
Rodneyhad said enough to Millie to make it plain that his mother was accustomed to go out to work and that she earned barely enough for them to live on. He may have been thinking of that, now, as he stared at his house.
“It’s a big avenue,” he said, “but mother’s got to sell one of our lots to pay off the taxes and assessments for having it done. I don’t care if the city does pay for What land they take. It’s hard on mother.—She’ll be awful tired, but supper’s ready. Good one, too. Don’t I Wish I could find something to do, now I’m out of school? I’ve tried in dozens of places. Guess there are too many boys.—Hullo!”
“Me b’ye,” came at that moment in a deep, good-humored voice, behind him, “what yewant is a dure, where the small windy is. I can put wan in, chape.”
“That’s what we want, Pat,” said Rodney.
“It’s a dure was in a building we tore down,” said Pat, “and it’s a good big wan. All it wants is puttin’ in, and a dure step to the walk, wid a good rail, and ye’ll be as well aff as iver ye was, wid a foine front on the aveny.”
“I’ll tell mother,” said Rodney, with a keen and hopeful survey of the place where the door was to be.
“’Twon’t cost her much,” added Pat, “and the likes of her don’t want to be climbin’ in and out o’ windies.”
Away he went and Rodney was still considering the matter when he was again spoken to.
“O Rodney! This is dreadful! Seems to me as if they were taking away everything.”
“Mother!” exclaimed Rodney. “We’llhave a door, there, instead of a window——” and he rapidly explained Pat’s offer.
“Tell him to go ahead!” said Mrs. Nelson. “No matter what it is, so long as it’s a door. But somebody’s neck’ll be broken, yet, tumbling down that wall, into our garden.”
She said that as she was getting in at the window, after Rodney had taken away a bundle she had carried.
“I’ll take it downstairs,” he said, as he followed her. “The parlor’s got to come up here, but we can leave the dining-room where it is, and the kitchen. Billy’s been walking around, all day, at the foot of the wall, trying to find a place to climb out, but there isn’t any.”
At that very moment, a bearded, contented looking face, appeared at the bay window.
“Ba-a-beh!” it remarked.
“Mother!” exclaimed Rodney. “How on earth did that fellow get out? Even a goat can’t climb up and down a wall.”
“I don’t care how he got out,” she replied,wearily. “I must have my supper.—O, dear! What are we to do! I feel clean discouraged.”
Downstairs they went and both of them seemed to be carrying heavier burdens than the bundle, whatever it was. Rodney had evidently been both housekeeper and cook and a little table was set in the kitchen, handy to the stove and the teapot, but Mrs. Nelson walked straight on and out at the back door.
“How high those walls are!” she said. “Yes, I suppose the Kirbys would let us get out through their place, but I’d rather have a door of my own.”
“So would I,” said Rodney. “I’ll tell Pat to go ahead and put one in, as soon as I can see him, to-morrow.”
“Ba-a-beh!” came, just then, in a tone of strong approval, from a friend whose left horn was almost under Rodney’s elbow.
“I say, mother,” exclaimed Rodney, “how did he get down here again. Guess there’s a weak spot in that wall, somewhere.”
That might be, but Mrs. Nelson was too tired to be interested in goats and walls, and she went into the house. It was a great mystery to her son, however, for he had inspected the entire enclosure, that day, accompanied by Billy, and had decided that no fellow could get out unless he used a ladder.
“He’s about the smartest goat there is,” remarked Rodney, “but I’d better watch him and see how he does it.”
Supper time came and went, everywhere, and after that the evening shadows began to settle down over the city. Then anybody looking in that direction from a distance would have seen a kind of glow in the sky above it, coming up from all the lights that were burning along all the hundreds of streets. There was no moon to speak of but there were lights, in front windows of dwellings and business places, and the stars helped also, so that it seemed a pleasant kind of evening.
There was one street, on the eastern side of the city, which projected nearly a hundred feet out into the East River in the form of a wooden pier. Only one solitary street-lamp was burning on the pier and beyond it all was a gloomy glimmer of rippling, rushing water. A swift tide was rushing out and a brisk wind was blowing.
The one lamp was on the left side of the pier, at the head of a flight of wooden steps, leading down to a float, and by the float was moored a small but serviceable steam tugboat. In that light, all that could be seen of her was a stumpy, sheetiron engine chimney; a lot of small windows, lighted up inside; some steam from a puffing pipe; and the rest of the boat had to be taken for granted. There were puffs and coughs of steam because the boat was at that moment casting loose her hawser and setting out upon a voyage.
She did not go directly across, but in a slanting, southerly course, out of which shewas quickly compelled to veer, yet more to starboard, that is, to her right, by a vast blaze of glitter and puff and a warning hoot of a steam whistle which came swiftly up from the southward. The glittering ranges of windows and the two huge, black pipes that towered above them, belonged to one of the largest “Sound Steamers.” She was so large, indeed, that when the tug had passed her and steered into her wake, the swell it was rocked in called out an exclamation of:
“O!—Well!—I declare!” from one of two gentlemen who were sitting in the little cabin.
The next words he uttered, as he once more squared himself in the seat he had been so suddenly pitched out of, were:
“What a swell!—But what I was saying about Jim is this:—He isn’t so bad a boy——”
“Not bad at all, I think,” said the other.
“But then I can’t get at him. I’ve tried again and again——”
“So have I. He’s a complete puzzle.”
“And he isn’t sullen, either, and he isn’t exactly rebellious, but you can’t make any impression on him.”
“He says he was unjustly convicted and it works on him worse and worse, all the time. We can’t help it, though——”
“Of course we can’t, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt him, all his life——”
“To be sure it will, but we must do our duty. Some of the boys are turning out splendidly. I’ve been hearing good news from several of mine.”
“So have I, but I don’t mean to give up Jim. There’s the making of a man in that boy.”
“He is doing well in the school.”
“He is the best type-setter in the printing office.”
“I wish he was out. There are a dozen more that ought never to have been sent there. I don’t mean that none of them did wrong, but it hurts some boys, worse than others, to be shut up. They feel a sting——”
“Here we are——”
They had talked pretty steadily all the way, but the tug was now at her wharf on Randall’s Island, and these were two of the managers of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. The boys were “in prison and they visited them.” They were men of wealth, education, unusual intelligence. There were others like them who came and worked as they did, and it was curious how strong a hold the youngsters seemed to have upon them. Of course the boys liked their friendly, sympathizing visitors, but probably none of them ever knew, at least while on the Island, what a study and worry they were to such men as these, as well as to the exceedingly capable and faithful officers who were all the while in charge of them. Many learned more after going out into the world and finding that even then these friends of theirs did not let go of them but followed them with help and hope and sympathy.
So this great school, with its high, stone walls and its rigid discipline and its likeness to a prison, was after all a splendid token of the love that goes out after even the very bad boys whom some people are willing to give up and to throw away. The other name of that Love is very sacred and beautiful.
Jim was not a bad boy, but he felt like one, that night. He felt bad, all over, and angry, and rebellious, and almost hopeless, for he was all the while thinking of the wall and of how high it was, and of all the great world of life and liberty that lay beyond it.
So far as he could see, there were to be long years of House of Refuge life, during which he was to know little and see nothing at all of that wide, bright world, and the thought was very terrible. He thought a great deal and imagined a great deal, but not among any of his imaginings did there come any idea that he had an interest in another boy, over in New York City,—a boy whose house and garden had been walled in by newstreets. Jim knew nothing of Rodney; nor of his mother; nor of Billy the goat; nor of Millie Kirby. He could not have guessed that they were ever to be of any importance to him, over on the Island, listening and waiting for the rap of the drum that was shortly to tell him and all the rest that it was bedtime.