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Across the way stood a boy, near the size of the largest children in the crowd. He wore a red sweater, and his hands were thrust into the pockets of baggy trousers voluminously rolled up at the bottom. He was watching the nervous group, with curiosity and a species of crafty meditation in his gleaming, black-browed eyes. It was Tom. Had David seen him there, he might have thought the boy had paused for a moment while out on an errand for his employer; but if Tom was on an errand it was evidently not one of driving importance, for he remained standing in his place minute after minute.
Presently he crossed the street and drew up to a be-shawled girl whose black stockings were patched with white skin. He gave her a light jab with his elbow. "Hey, sister – what's de row?" he asked.
She turned to him a thin face that ordinarily must have been listless, but that was now quickened by excitement. "It's the children's Thanksgiving party," she explained.
"What you wearin' out de pavement for? Why don't you go in?"
"It ain't time for the doors to open yet."
Tom fell back and stood in the outskirts of the crowd, occasionally sliding the tip of his tongue through the long groove of his mouth, the same meditative look upon his watchful face. Soon the door swung open and the crowd surged forward, to be halted by a low, ringing voice: "Come, children! – please let's all get into line first, and march in orderly."
Two middle-aged women, enclosed in a subdued air of wealth, appeared through the door, and marched down the three steps and among the children. The boy's eyes closed to bright slits, his lips drew back from his teeth. The next instant a third woman appeared at the top of the steps – young, tall, fresh-looking, gracefully dignified.
"Ain't she a queen!" Tom ejaculated to himself.
She paused a moment and bent over to speak to a child, and the boy discovered that the rich, low-pitched voice he had heard was hers. As she stood so, the front of her tailored coat swung open, and the boy caught a glimpse of a silver-mounted bag, hooked with a silver clasp to her belt. A brighter gleam sprang into his eyes.
She came down the steps, pushed in among the children, and with the two other women began to form the group into a double line. Tom, with quick-squirming movements, edged through to the inner circle of the excited crowd, in which she was tightly buried up to her shoulders. At intervals he gave sharp upward glances at her face; she was entirely absorbed in making ordered lines of this entanglement. The rest of the time his eyes were fastened on her belt. Presently the children were thrown turbulently about her by one of those waves of motion that sweep through crowds, and he managed to be pressed against her, the left side of his coat held open to shield off possible eyes. His right hand crept deftly forward under her coat – found the bag – loosened it.
But suddenly a child's shoulder was jammed against his closed hand, driving it against the young woman's side, and for an instant holding it captive. She glanced down and saw Tom's arm. Instantly her firm grasp closed about the wrist and jerked out the hand, which dropped the bag. Like a flash Tom delivered a blow upon her wrist. She gave a sharp cry of pain, but her grip did not break. As he struck again she caught him about the wrist with her free hand. He jerked and twisted violently, but her hands had a firm, out-of-doors strength. He was prisoner.
Startled cries of "Pick-pocket!" and "Get a cop!" sprang up in the shrill voices of the children. The young woman, very pale but composed, looked sternly down at Tom.
"So, young man, I've caught you in the very act," she said slowly.
He looked sullenly at the pavement.
"What shall I do with you?"
Tom raised his shoulders. "Dat's your biz," he answered gruffly.
"Arrest him!" "They've gone for a policeman!" shouted the childish voices.
At this the boy sent up a quick glance at the young woman. Despite its severity, kindness was in her face. He dropped his head, the sullenness seemed to go out of him, and his body began to tremble. The next instant his sleeve was against his face and he was blubbering.
"I couldn't help it!" he sobbed.
"You couldn't help it!" she exclaimed.
"No! It was because o' me brudder. I've never stole before. Honest, lady. But me poor brudder's been sick for t'ree mont's. I tried to find a job. I can't find none. Our money's all gone, an' dere ain't no one but me. What can I do, lady?"
The young woman looked at him questioningly. One of Tom's sharp eyes peeped up at her, and saw sympathy struggling with unbelief. His blubbering increased. "It's de God's trut', lady! You can send me to hell, if it ain't. Me brudder's sick – dere's nuttin' to eat, an' no medicine, an' nobody'd gimme work. So help me God!"
At this instant the cry rose, "Here's the policeman!" and almost at once the officer, pressing through the alley that opened among the children, had his hand on Tom's collar. "So you was caught with the goods on," he cried, giving the boy a rough shake. "Well, you chase along with me! Come along, lady. It's only two blocks to the station."
He jerked Tom forward and started away. But the young woman, who still held one of Tom's wrists, did not move. "Will you wait, please?" she said quietly, a flash in her brown eyes. "What right have you to touch this boy?"
"Why, didn't he nab your pocket-book?"
"I'm not saying," she said, looking at him very steadily. "You can arrest him only on complaint. I am the only one who can make a complaint. And I make none. Please let go!"
The policeman stared, but his hand dropped from Tom's collar.
"Thank you," she said.
She called one of the women to her side. "You can easily get on without me, Mrs. Hartwell," she said in a low voice. "The most important thing for me is to look into this boy's case. I'm going to have him take me to his brother – if there is a brother."
Tom overheard the last sentence. His face paled. "Please don't take me to me brudder," he begged, a new ring in his voice. "He t'inks I'm honest. He'll t'row me out when you tell him! Don't take me. What's de use? I told you de trut'."
"If there is a brother, I want to talk with him," she answered. She requested the policeman to follow at a distance, and then asked Tom to lead them to his home.
"An' see that you take us to the right place, too," said the officer, with a warning look. "An' don't try to get away, for I'll be watchin' you."
They started off. The young woman did not take Tom's arm, for the same reason that she asked the policeman to follow several yards behind – that there might be no apparent capture, and no curious trailing crowd.
Tom's body palpitated with the dread of facing David – of what David would say to him, of the way David would look at him, but most of all of the change in David's attitude toward him, when these accusers should make plain to David that for two weeks he had been lying and stealing. He thought of escape – to get away from this young woman would be an easy matter; but a glance at the officer behind assured him that to try would mean merely the exchange of a kind captor for a harsh one. He preferred his chances with the young woman. So he led them on, his dread swelling with every step that brought them nearer to David.
The policeman was left waiting at the tenement entrance. Tom guided the young woman to his door, paused chokingly there, then led her into the little, dingy room, which was filled with a deeper hue of the coming twilight. David was lying in a doze, his face turned upward.
She glanced at the bed, saw only that a man was sleeping there, then glanced about. The poverty of the room and the sick figure confirmed Tom's story. She put a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "Please waken your brother," she whispered.
She stepped nearer the bed, but Tom hung fearfully back. And now she saw for the first time David's face with some distinctness. She started – bent over him – stared down at the face on the pillow. She trembled backward a pace. One hand reached out and caught a chair.
Tom, seeing his chance to escape, slipped out and took refuge in the Morgan's flat. The closing door roused David from his light sleep. He slowly opened his eyes – opened them upon the white face looking down upon him. The face seemed unreal, merely the face in a frequent dream. He closed his eyes, then opened them. The face was still there… A great, wild, dizzy thrill went through him.
Slowly his haggard face rose from the pillow and he rested upon his elbow. "Miss Chambers!" he whispered, at length.
For moments she could only stare back at him – the friend once admired, who by his own confession had stolen the money of tenement children, had gambled it away, had counted on the guilt falling upon Morton. Then her voice, straining at steadiness, came out, and haltingly spoke the nearest thing that did not require thought – an explanation of her presence.
Her words hardly reached his mind. There was only one thing, the dizzy, impossible fact – she was before him! His body was chill, fire; his mind was chaos.
"You have been sick long?" she asked.
He took control of himself by a supreme effort. "For two weeks. It's nothing – just the grip."
"The boy told me for three months."
"That's just an invention of Tom's." He was conscious that, at his words, a look of doubt flitted across her face.
She had wondered, as he had done, what her attitude toward him should be, if chance ever brought them together – what it should be if he were striving to live honorably – what, if he had slipped down and were living by thievery. At this moment, without conscious thought, her attitude was established. But, though decision was against him, he was helpless, in need.
"Is there anything at all that I can do for you?" she asked.
He shook his head. If there was one person above all others from whom he could not accept service, that person was the woman he loved and who, he was certain, beneath her courteous control, must despise him. He had always known she believed him guilty, yet he had not half fore-measured the pain the eye-knowledge of it would give him. He longed to tell her the truth, as he often had longed before, and as he often would again – but he dared not, for to tell one person was to endanger, perhaps destroy, all the good of his act. Besides, even if he were to tell, who would believe him? She? No. She would believe, as the rest of the world would believe, that his statement was a dastardly attempt to whiten himself by blackening the memory of his sainted friend.
"You are certain I can do nothing?"
"Nothing," he said.
"Pardon me for being insistent, but – " she hesitated, white with the stress of the situation, then forced herself to go on – "the boy said that – that you had – nothing. Are you sure I can not do some little thing for you?"
At this moment David forgot that he was penniless, forgot that he had no work for the time when he left his bed, and probably could find none; remembered only how he loved this woman, and how low he was in her eyes.
"The boy was not telling the truth," he said. "We have plenty. We need nothing – thank you."
She could not speak of the past; her delicacy forbade her. She could not query into his present intentions; her judgment on him, subconsciously rendered upon circumstantial evidence, and supported by his past, made that unnecessary. And, furthermore, the whirling confusion within her made speech on both impossible. The one surface fact her emotions could allow her speech upon, that she had spoken of. She felt she must get away as quickly as she could.
She rose. His wide, love-hungry eyes gathered in every one of her last motions and expressions. He did not know when, if ever, he would see her again.
There was a sharp knock at the door. She held out her hand to him. He was not expecting this, but he laid his wasted hand tremblingly within it.
"Good-bye," she said.
Impulsively his soul reached out for some shred of her regard. "I'm trying to live honest now!" he burst out, in subdued agony.
She regarded him an instant. "I'm glad of it," she said quietly.
The sharp knock sounded once more.
"Good-bye," she repeated.
"Good-bye," he said in a dry whisper.
She turned toward the door, his love-hungry eyes gathering in the last of her… Yes, he was utterly beyond the pale.
CHAPTER VII
A NEW ITEM IN THE BILL OF SCORN
But before Helen's hand reached the knob, the door opened gently, pushing her to one side. Kate Morgan's head slipped cautiously in, and was followed at once by the rest of her body when she saw that David was awake.
"I didn't hear an answer, so I thought you must be asleep," she said. "I looked in to see if I couldn't do something."
The same instant her eyes fell upon Helen. "Oh!" she said sharply, and her glance, as quick as a snap-shot camera, took in every detail of Helen's appearance, and besides read Helen's character and her approximate position in the world. "I thought you were alone," she said to David.
"Miss Chambers was just going," he returned. He heavily introduced the two. Kate acknowledged the introduction with a little bow and a "pleased to meet you," and turned upon David a rapid, suspicious look, which demanded, "How do you come to know a woman of this kind?"
"As Mr. Aldrich said, I was just going," Helen remarked, reaching again for the door-knob. "So I wish you good afternoon."
If David's wits had been about him, he would have seen the flash of sudden purpose in Kate's face. "You're sure I can't do anything?" she asked quickly.
"Nothing," he returned.
She turned to Helen, her manner hesitating, and in it a touch of humility – the manner of one who is presuming greatly and knows she is presumptuous. Had David been observant at this instant, he could have understood a thing over which he had often wondered – how this aggressive personality could hold positions where servility was the first requisite.
"I was just going out too," she said with a little appealing smile. "If you don't mind, I'll – I'll walk with you."
Helen could not do other than acquiesce, and Kate hurried from the room with, "I'll put on my hat and meet you in the hall in just a second."
Helen looked again upon David, and again he felt, beneath her perfect courtesy, an infinite, sorrowful disdain. "Good-bye once more," she said; and the next instant the door had closed upon her.
David gazed at the door in wide-eyed stupor … and gazed … and gazed. He had hardly moved, when, half an hour later, Kate Morgan re-entered. The humble bearing of her exit was gone. She was her usual sharp, free-and-easy self, and she had a keen little air of success.
"That Miss Chambers is one of the swells, ain't she?" she asked, dropping into the chair and crossing her knees.
David admitted that she was.
"I sized her up that way the first second. I walked with her to a church-looking place, and told her a lot about myself – a maid, out of work and looking for a job, you know." She gave David a sly wink. "She didn't say much herself, and didn't seem to hear all I said. She's got some kind of a club over at that church place and she asked me to visit the club, and said perhaps later I might care to join. And she promised to see if some of her friends didn't need a maid."
Her keen little smile of triumph returned, and she added softly, "Jobs in swell houses ain't so easy to pick up."
"See here!" said David sharply, "are you planning a trick on one of Miss Chambers's friends?"
Instantly her face was guileless. "Oh, she'll forget all about me," she said easily. "But see here yourself! How do you happen to know a woman of her sort? She told me how Tom brought her up here" – she smiled at memory of the story – "but you must have known her before?"
David had foreseen the question, and his wits had made ready an answer – for to bare to Kate's inquisitive mind the truth of his one-time friendship with Helen, this for a score of reasons he could not do. "She's one of these philanthropic women. She's interested in all sorts of queer people. I'm one of them. She's tried to reform me."
If Kate discredited his explanation she did not show her unbelief. She went on to question him about Helen and his acquaintance with her, and it was a terrific strain on his invention to return plausible answers. He prayed that she would go, or stop, and when Tom crept fearfully in a few minutes later, his arms full of bundles, the boy's appearance was as an answer to his prayer. She turned upon Tom and began quizzing and joking him about his recent adventure, but the boy, hardly answering her, kept his eyes fixed upon David in guilty apprehension.
Presently, to the relief of David but not of Tom, she went out. Tom stared at David from near the window where he had stood all the while, pulsing with fear of the upbraiding, and perhaps something worse, that he knew was coming. David gazed back at him through narrow eyes that twitched at their corners.
"Tom," he said, "you lied to me about the job."
"Yes," the boy returned in a whisper.
"And you lied to me about Miss Morgan loaning you money?"
"Yes."
"And you've been stealing all this time."
"Yes. But – "
David's thin right hand stretched across the faded comforter. Tom came forward in slow wonderment and took it. David's other arm slipped about his shoulders and drew Tom down upon the bed.
"It was wrong – but, boy, what a heart you've got!" he said huskily.
A tremor ran through Tom's body, as though sobs were coming. Then the body stiffened, as though sobs were being fought down.
"Is dat all you're goin' to say?" asked a gruff, wondering whisper.
David's arm tightened. "What a heart you've got!"
The thin body quivered again, and again stiffened. But the eruption was not to be controlled. Sharp sobs exploded, then by a tense effort were subdued. Tom struggled up, and David saw a scowling face, tightly clenched against the emotion that makes you lose caste to show. The boy's look was a defiant declaration of his manhood.
Suddenly another sob broke forth. His emotion was out – his manhood gone. He turned abruptly. "A-a-h, hell, pard!" he whispered fiercely, tremulously, then snatched his hat and rushed out.
All the rest of the afternoon, and all during the time Tom, who slipped back a little later, was shamefacedly busy with the dinner, and all during the evening, David thought of but one thing – Helen Chambers. He was dizzily weak; collapse had quickly followed the climacteric excitement of being beside her, of speaking to her. Her visit had brought him no hope, no encouragement; if anything, an even blacker despair. Before, he had only guessed how thoroughly she must despise him – her disdain had been but a vague quantity of his imagination. Now her scorn had been before his own eyes. And he had seen its wideness, its deepness, even though the merest trifle of it showed upon the surface of her courtesy. A warm spring, though amid the serenity of overhanging leaves and of an embracing flower-set lawn, is full token of vast molten depths beneath the earth's controlled face. He did not feel resentful toward her. Knowing only what she knew, she could not regard him other than she did.
Twice he had caught a look of doubt upon her face – once when he had spoken of his three months' illness as being an invention of Tom's, and again when he had declared to her that he was trying to live honestly. The looks now recurred to him. They puzzled him. He strained long at their meaning; and then it entered him like a plunging knife, and he gasped with the sudden pain.
She believed that the invention was his, that his honesty was a lie, that he was the master of Tom's thefts!
CHAPTER VIII
THE WORLD'S DENIAL
That night Tom confessed he had privately saved a few dollars; and from the Morgans' flat he brought David's overcoat and several of the other articles they had pawned. David's conscience demanded that the savings should not be used, and he wondered what right they had to their own property, redeemed with stolen money. But need conquered ethics. A day or two later the landlady demanded her rent, giving the choice between payment and the street; the money went to her. Hunger pressed them; the redeemed articles began to return one by one to the pawnshop.
In a few days the grip left David, and though still weak, he began to creep about the streets, looking for work. He believed success impossible – and immediately success came.
The great stores were enlisting armies of temporary employes for the holiday season, and as at this time there are not enough first-class men and women to fill the ranks, they were accepting the second-class and the third and the tenth, examining no one closely. David heard of this chance, and, quailing at heart and expecting nothing, joined the line of applicants at the big department store of Sumner & Co.
"What experience?" demanded the superintendent when David reached his desk.
"None," said David.
The superintendent glanced him over, saw that his face was good.
"Work for nine a week?"
"Yes."
He scratched on a slip of paper and handed it to David.
"Start in at once in the check-room."
David reeled away from the desk. That evening he and Tom celebrated the advent of the Impossible by eating twenty cents' worth of food; and his excited hope, fearful, daring, kept sleep from his eyes all night. He knew he was only a temporary man, but his hope reasoned that if he gave exceptional satisfaction he might be retained after the great post-Christmas discharge. If retained permanently, he might work his way up in the store; and if he could remain only a few months, at least he would then be able to say, when seeking a new place and asked for his record, "I worked last for Sumner and Company; I refer you to them." His hope told him this position might prove the foothold he sought – and he determined to exert all that was in him to make it so.
Toward the end of his fourth day here, a woman for whom he had just laid upon the counter several packages she had checked two or three hours before, declared that a small parcel containing gloves was missing. Weary and exasperated from her day among the jostling shoppers, she berated David in loud and angry voice. He suggested that possibly she had not checked the parcel, that she might have checked it in some other store, that perhaps she had ordered it delivered and had forgotten it, that possibly she had dropped it.
Nothing of the kind! She knew what she'd done with it! They'd been careless, and given it to some other woman!
David, still very courteous, suggested that possibly it had been picked up and taken to the lost-and-found desk. She might inquire there.
She would not! She had left it here! She had been robbed!
She was departing ragefully, but David followed her and by using his best persuasion secured her grudging consent to wait till he himself should inquire at the lost-and-found desk. A few minutes later he returned with the package. She could say nothing more, for on the wrapper was the stamp of the desk and the hour the parcel had been turned in. She made a curt apology – it came hard, but still it was an apology – and went out.
David had his reward. The superintendent over him, attracted by the woman's angry voice, had drawn near and looked on unseen. He now came forward. "That was well done, Aldrich," he said. "I couldn't have handled her better myself."
David grew warm. Yes, this place might prove his foothold!
A similar thought came to one of the other four men in the check-room. This man, a regular employe in the room, had recently been reproved several times for negligence and discourtesy, and he knew his hold on his place was precarious. The fear now struck him, at the great discharge might not he be sent away and this new man Aldrich be kept?
His wits set to work. He now remembered that David had evaded questions about his past. Perhaps in it there was something that would change his chief's opinion. That night he followed David, warmed by his strengthened hope, from the store, and made inquiries in the little grocery shop in David's tenement. Just a poor man who had been having a hard time – this was all he could learn. He hung around the tenement, and presently David came down and walked away. He followed. After several blocks David stopped before St. Christopher's and gazed across the street at it. The shadowing man wondered. Then it occurred to him that in there they might know something about this man Aldrich.