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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..df1f1a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #61344 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61344) diff --git a/old/61344-8.txt b/old/61344-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 15a35d1..0000000 --- a/old/61344-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14824 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Happy Isles, by Basil King - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Happy Isles - - -Author: Basil King - - - -Release Date: February 8, 2020 [eBook #61344] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY ISLES*** - - -E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images -generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustrations. - See 61344-h.htm or 61344-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61344/61344-h/61344-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61344/61344-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/happyisles00king_0 - - - - -THE HAPPY ISLES - - -[Illustration] - - - * * * * * * - -_BOOKS BY BASIL KING_ - - - _The Happy Isles_ - _The Dust Flower_ - _The Thread of Flame_ - _The City of Comrades_ - _Abraham's Bosom_ - _The Empty Sack_ - _Going West_ - _The Side of the Angels_ - - - _Harper & Brothers - Publishers_ - - * * * * * * - - -[Illustration: "THEY'LL SAY I STOLE HIM. IT'LL BE TWENTY YEARS FOR ME"] - - -THE HAPPY ISLES - -by - -BASIL KING - -Author of -"The Empty Sack," "The Inner Shrine," -"The Dust Flower," etc. - -With Illustrations by John Alonzo Williams - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -Publishers -Harper & Brothers -New York and London -MCMXXIII - -THE HAPPY ISLES - -Copyright, 1923 -By Harper & Brothers -Printed in the U.S.A. - -First Edition - -K-X - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - - "They'll Say I Stole Him. It'll Be Twenty Years for Me" _Frontispiece_ - - "That's a Terr'ble Big Wad for a Boy Like You to Wear" _Facing p._ 158 - - "Get Up, I Tell You" " 298 - - Mrs. Ansley Took Him as an Affliction " 362 - - - - -THE HAPPY ISLES - - - - -The Happy Isles - - Many a green isle needs must be - In the deep wide sea of misery, - Or the mariner, worn and wan, - Never thus could voyage on, - Day and night, and night and day.... - - --Shelley. - - - - -I - - -At eight months of age his only experience of life had been one of -well-being. He was fed when hungry; he slept when sleepy; he woke when -he had slept enough. When bored or annoyed or uneasy he could cry. If -crying brought him attentions it was that much to the good; if the -effort was thrown away it did no one any harm. Even when least fertile -of results it was a change from the crowing and gurgling which were all -he had to distract him when left to his own company. - -Though his mind worked in co-operation with the subconscious more than -with the conscious, it worked actively. In waking minutes there was -everything to observe and register. - -His intimate needs being met, there were the phenomena of light and -darkness. He knew not only the difference between them, but in a -general way when to expect the turn of each. He knew that light brought -certain formalities, chiefly connected with his person, and that -darkness brought certain others. The reasons remained obscure, but the -variety was pleasing. - -Then there was the room, or rather the spectacular surroundings of his -universe. The nursery was his earth, his atmosphere, his firmament, the -ether in which his heavenly bodies went rolling away into the infinite. -And, just as with grown-up people, the nearness and distance of Mars -or Sirius or Betelgueuse have gone through experimental stages of -guesswork first and calculation afterwards, so the exact location of -the wardrobe, the table, or the mantelpiece, was a subject for endless -wonderment. At times they were apparently so close that he would put -out his hand to touch them from his crib; but at once they receded, -fixing themselves against the light-blue walls, home of a menagerie of -birds and animals, with something between him and them which he was -learning to recognize as space. - -There was also motion. Certain things remained in place; other things -could move. He himself could move, but that was so near the fundamental -necessities as hardly to call for notice. True, there were discoveries -even here. The day when he learned that once his legs were freed he -could lie on his back and kick was one of emancipation. In finding that -he could catch his foot with his hands and put it in his mouth he made -his first advance in skill. But there was motion superior to this. -There were beings who walked about the room, who entered it and left -it. Merely to watch their goings and comings sent spasms through his -feet. - -Little by little he had come to discern in these creatures a difference -in function and personality. Enormous in size, irresistible in -strength, they were nevertheless his satellites. One of them supplied -his wants; another worshipped him; the third lifted him up, carried -him about, tickled him deliciously with his mustache or his bushy -outstanding eyebrows, and otherwise entertained him. For the first his -tongue essayed the syllables, Na-Na; for the second his lips rose and -fell with an explosive Ma-Ma; the last sent his tongue clicking toward -the roof of his mouth in the harsher sound of Da-Da; and yet between -these efforts and the accomplishment there was still some lack of -correspondence. - -Of his many enthralling interests speech was the most magical. In his -analysis of life it came to him early that these coughings and barkings -and gruntings were meant to express thought. He himself had thoughts. -What he lacked was the connection of the sounds with the ideas, and of -this he was not unaware. They supposed him a little animal who could -only eat and sleep, when all the while he was listening, recording, -distinguishing, defining, correlating the syllable with the thing that -was evidently meant, so that later he should astonish his circle by -uttering a word. It was a stimulating game and in it his daily progress -was not far short of marvelous. - -If the nursery was his universe, his crib was his private domain, -cushioned and soft, and as spotless as an ermine's nest. It was a joy -to wake up in it, and equally a joy to go to sleep. Joy, Tenderness, -and Comfort, were the only elements in life with which he was -acquainted. Thriving on them as he throve on the carefully prepared -formulas of his food, he grew in the spirit without obstacles to -struggle with, as his body grew in the sunlight and the air. - -By the time he had reached the May morning on which his story begins he -had come to take Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, as life's essentials. -Never having known anything else, he had no suspicion that anything -else would lurk within the possible. The ritual that attended his going -out was as much a matter of course to him as a red carpet to tread on -is to a queen. He took it for granted that, when he had been renewed -by bottle and bath, she for whom he tried to say Na-Na would be in a -flutter of preparation, while she whose sweet smile forced the Ma-Ma to -his lips would put a little coat on his back, a little cap on his head, -little mittens on his hands, and smother him with adoration all the -time she was doing it. - -On this particular morning these things had been done. Nestled into a -canopied crib on wheels, he was ready for the two gigantic ministrants -whom he could not yet distinguish as the first and second footmen. -These colossi lifted his vehicle down the steps, to set it on the -pavement of Fifth Avenue, where for the time being dramatic episodes -were at an end. The town didn't interest him. Moreover, a filmy -curtain, to protect him against flies as well as against too much sun, -having shut him in from the vastness of the scene, he had nothing to do -but let himself be lulled to his customary slumber. - - - - -II - - -Miss Nash, the baby carriage in front of her, furrowed a way through -the traffic of the avenue, relatively scant in those days, and reaching -the safety of the other side passed within the Park. She was a trained -child's-nurse, and wore a uniform. England being at that time the only -source of this specialty, examples in New York were limited to the -heirs-apparent of the noble families. Between a nursemaid and a trained -child's-nurse you will notice the same distinction as between a lady's -maid and a princess's lady-in-waiting. - -Having entered the Park, Miss Nash stopped the carriage to lift the -veil protecting her charge. He was already beyond the noises and -distractions of the planet in his rosy, heavenly sleep. Miss Nash -smiled wistfully, because it was the only way in which she could smile -at all. A superior woman by nature, she clung to that refinement -which best expresses itself in something melancholic. Daughter of a -solicitor's clerk and niece to a curate, she felt her status as a lady -most fittingly preserved in an atmosphere delicate, subdued, and rather -sad. - -And yet when she looked on her little boy asleep she was no longer -superior, and scarcely so much as a lady. She was only a woman -enraptured before one of those babies so compact of sweetness, -affection, and intelligence that they tug at the heartstrings. She was -on her guard as to loving her children overmuch, since it made it so -hard to give them up when the minute for doing so arrived; but with -this little fellow no guard had been effective. Whether he crowed, or -cried, or kicked, or snuggled in her arms to croon with her in baby -tunelessness, she found him adorable. But when he was asleep, chubby, -seraphic, so awesomely undefiled, she was sure that his spirit had -withdrawn from her for a little while to commune with the angels. - -"No," she confessed one day to her friend, Miss Etta Messenger, the -only other uniformed child's nurse among her acquaintance in New York, -"it won't do. I must break myself. I shall have to leave him some day. -But I do envy the mother who will have him always." - -"It don't pay you," Miss Messenger declared, as one who has had -experience. "Anyone, I always say, can hire my services; but my -affections remain my own. Now this little girl I'm with while I'm in -New York, I could leave her to-morrow without a pang if--but then I've -got something to leave her _for_." - -"And what does he say to things now?" Miss Nash inquired, with selfless -interest in her friend's drama. - -Miss Messenger answered, judicially, "I've put it to him straight. I've -told him he must simply fix a date to marry me, or give me up. As I -know he simply won't give me up--you never knew a fellow so wild about -a girl as he is about me...." - -The fortnight which had intervened between that conversation and the -morning when our little boy's story opens had given time for Miss -Messenger's affairs to take another turn. In the hope of learning -the details of this turn Miss Nash sought a corner of the Park, not -much frequented by nursemaids, where she and Miss Messenger often -met, but Etta was not there. Drawing the carriage within the shade of -a miniature grove of lilacs in perfumed flower, Miss Nash once more -lifted the veil, wiped the precious mouth, and adjusted the coverlet -outside which lay the mittened baby hands. Since there was no more to -be done, she sat down on a convenient bench to her reading of _Juliet -Allingham's Sin_. - -In the scene where the lover drowns she became so absorbed as not to -notice that on a bench on the other side of a lilac bush Miss Messenger -came and installed herself and her baby carriage in the shade of a -near-by fan-shaped elm, bronze-green in its young leafage. Miss Nash -looked up only when, her emotions having grown so poignant, she could -read no more. She was drying her eyes when, through the branches of the -lilac, the flutter of a nurse's cape told her that her friend must have -arrived. - -"Why, Etta!" - -On going round the barrier she found herself greeted by what she had -come to call Etta's fighting eyes. They were fine flashing black eyes, -set in a face which Miss Nash was further accustomed to describe as -"high-complexioned." Miss Messenger spoke listlessly, and yet as one -who knew her mind. - -"I saw you. I thought I wouldn't interrupt. I haven't very good news." - -Miss Nash glided to a seat beside her friend, seizing both her hands. -"Oh, my dear, he hasn't----?" - -"That's just what he has." Etta nodded, drily. "Bring your baby round -here and I'll tell you." - -But Miss Nash couldn't wait. "He's all right there. He's sound asleep. -I'll hear him if he stirs. Do tell me what's happened." - -"Well, he simply says that if that's the way I feel perhaps we'd better -call it off." - -"And are you going to?" - -Etta's eyes blazed with their black flames. "Call it off? Me? Not much, -I won't." - -"Still if he won't fix a date...." - -"He'll jolly well fix a date--or meet me in the court." - -"Oh, but, Etta, you wouldn't...." - -"I don't say I would for choice. There are two or three other things I -could do, and I think I'll try them first." - -"What sort of things?" - -In the answer to that question Miss Nash was even more absorbed than in -Juliet Allingham's sin. Juliet Allingham was after all but a creature -of the brain; whereas Etta Messenger's adventures might conceivably -be her own. It was not merely some one else's love story that held -her imagination in thrall; it was the possibility that one of these -days she, Milly Nash, might have a man playing fast and loose with her -heart's purest offering.... - - - - -III - - -Anyone closely watching the strange woman would have said that her -first care was not to seem distraught; but then, no one was closely -watching her. On a rapturous May morning, with the lilac scenting the -air, and the tulip beds in only the passing of their glory, there were -so many things better worth doing than observing a respectably dressed -young woman, probably the wife of an artisan, that she went unobserved. -As there were at that very minute some two or three hundred more or -less like her also pushing babies in the Park, the eye that singled her -out for attention would have had more than the gift of sight. - -What she did that was noticeable--again had there been anyone to -notice her--was to approach first one little group and then another, -quickly sheering away. One would have said that she sheered away from -some queer motive of strategy. Her movements might have been called -erratic, not because they were aimless, but because she didn't know or -didn't find the object of her search. Even if that were so, she neither -advanced nor receded, nor drifted hither or yon, more like a lost thing -than many another nursemaid giving her charge the air or killing time. - -There was nothing sinister about her, unless it was sinister to have -moments of seeming dazed or of muttering to herself. She muttered to -herself only when sure that there was no one to overhear, and with -similar self-command she indulged in looking dazed only when she -knew that no eye could light on her. As if aware of abnormality, she -schooled herself to a semblance of sanity. Otherwise she was some -thirty years of age, neatly if cheaply clad, and too commonplace and -unimportant for the most observant to remember her a second after she -had passed. - -At sight of a little hooded vehicle, standing unguarded where the lilac -bushes made a shrine for it, she paused. Again, the pause was natural. -She might have been tired. Pushing a baby carriage in a park is -always futile work, with futile starts and stops and turnings in this -direction or in that. If she stood to reconnoiter or to make her plans -there was no power in the land to interfere with her. - -Her further methods were simple. Behind the bench on which Miss Nash -and Miss Messenger were by this time entering on an orgy of romantic -confidence there rose a gentle eminence. To the top of this hill the -strange woman made her way. She made it with precautions, sauntering, -dawdling, simulating all the movements of the perfect nurse. When -two women, wheeling young laddies strapped into go-carts, crossed -her path she walked slowly till they were out of sight. When a park -attendant with a lawnmower clicked his machine along to cut a distant -portion of the greensward, she waited till he too had disappeared. A -few pedestrians were scattered here and there, but so distant as not -to count. A few riders galloped up or down the bridle-path near Fifth -Avenue, but these too she could disregard. Except for Miss Nash and -Miss Messenger, turned towards each other, and with their backs to her, -she had the world to herself. Softly she crept down the hill; softly -she stole in among the lilacs. - -"My little Gracie! my little Gracie!" she kept muttering, but only -between closed lips. "My little Gracie!" - - * * * * * - -"Oh, don't think, Milly," Miss Messenger was saying, "that I shan't -give him the chance to come across honorable. I shall. You say that an -action for breach doesn't seem to you delicate, and I don't say but -what I shrink from it. But when you've a trunkful of letters simply -burning with passion, simply _burning_ with it, what good are they to -you if you don't?... And he's worth fifty thousand dollars if he's -worth a penny. Don't talk to me! A fishmonger, right in the heart of -East Eighty-eighth Street, the very best district.... If I sue for -twenty-five thousand dollars I'd be pretty sure of getting five ... and -with a sympathetic jury, possibly six or eight ... and with all that -money I could set up a little nursing home in London ... say in the -Portland Place neighborhood ... with a specialty in children's diseases -... and put you in charge of it as matron. You and me together...." - -"Oh, but, Etta, I couldn't leave my little boy, not till he's able to -do without me. By that time there may be other children for me to take -care of, so that I could keep near him. I've thought of that. He being -the first, and his father and mother such a fine healthy young couple, -with everything to support a big family...." - -During the minutes which marked his transfer from one destiny to -another, Miss Nash's little boy remained in the sweet, blest country -to which little babies go in dreams. When a swift hand raised the -veil, lifting him with deft gentleness, he knew nothing of what was -happening. While the cap was peeled from his head and pulled over that -of a big, featureless rag doll shaped to the outlines of a baby's -limbs, he was still on the lap of Miss Nash's angels. On the lap of -these angels he stayed during the rest of the exchange. The strange -woman's hand was tender. Lightly it drew over the little boy's head -the soiled, cheap bonnet worn by the big rag doll; lightly it laid the -little warm body into its new bed. Where he had nestled the big rag -doll with his cap on its head gave a fair imitation of his form, unless -inspected closely. By the time the veils were lowered on the two little -carriages there was nothing for the most suspicious eye to wonder at. A -respectable woman of the humbler classes was trundling her baby back to -its home. The infant rested quietly. - -The rag doll, too, rested quietly when Miss Nash returned to her -charge, as Miss Messenger to hers. Miss Nash had heard so much within -an hour that she was not quite mistress of herself. Nothing was so -rare with her as to neglect the due examination of her child, but this -time she neglected it. Etta had given her so much to think of that for -the minute her mind was over-taxed. Because the love theme had become -involved with the compelling dictates of self-interest, which even a -sweet creature like Miss Nash couldn't overlook, she laid her hands -absently on the push-bar, beginning to make her way homeward. There was -no question as to Etta's worldly wisdom. The choice lay between worldly -wisdom and the warm, glowing, human thing we call affection. In Milly -Nash's experience it was the first time such a choice had been put up -to her. - -"Don't talk to me!" Miss Etta pursued, as they sauntered along side by -side. "I simply love my children up to every penny I'm paid for it, -not a farthing more; and if you'll take my advice, Milly Nash, you'll -follow my example." - -Miss Nash felt humble, rebuked. Through fear of disturbing her little -boy, she pushed as gently as a zephyr blows. - -"I'm not sure that I could measure it out, not with this little fellow." - -"This little fellow, fiddlesticks! He's just like any other little -fellow." - -"Oh, no, he isn't. There's character in babies just as there is -in grown-up people. This child's got it strong, all sweetness and -loveliness, and so much sense--you'd never believe it! Why, he -knows--there's nothing that he doesn't know, in his own dear little -way. I tell you, Etta, that if you had him you'd feel just like me." - -"Just like you and be out of your heart's job--your heart's job, mind -you--as soon as he's four years old, and they want to put him with a -French girl to learn French. Oh, I know them, these aristocrats! When -I get my alimony, or whatever it is, I'm simply going to provide for -the future, and you'll be a goose, Milly Nash, if you simply don't come -with me, and do the same." - -While Miss Nash was shaking her head with her gentle perplexed smile, -the strange woman was crossing Fifth Avenue. Having accomplished -this feat, she entered one of the streets running from that great -thoroughfare toward the East River. Squalor being so much the rule in -New York, the wealthier classes find it hard to pre-empt to themselves -more than a long thin streak, relatively trim, bearing to the general -disorder the proportion of a brook to the meadow through which it runs. -The strange woman had left Fifth Avenue but a few hundred yards away -before she and her baby were swallowed up in that kind of human swarm -in which individuals lose their identity. Afraid of betraying some -frenzy she knew to be within her by mumbling to herself, she kept her -lips shut with a fierce, determined tightness. She was a little woman, -and when you looked at her closely you saw that she had once possessed -a wild dark prettiness. Even now, as she pushed her way between uncouth -men and women, or screaming children at play, her wild dark eyes blazed -with sudden anger or swam with unshed tears by fits and turns. - -The house at which she stopped was hardly to be distinguished from -thousands of others in which a brief brownstone dignity had fallen, -first to the boarding-house stage, and then to that of tenements. From -the top of a flight of brownstone steps a frowzy, buxom, motherly -woman came lumbering down to lend a hand with the baby carriage. - -"So you've brought your baby, Mrs. Coburn. Now you'll be able to get -settled." - -The reply came as if it had been learned by rote. "Yes, now I'll be -able to get settled. I've got her crib ready, though all my other -things is strewed about just as when I moved in. Still, the crib's -ready, which is the main thing. She's a fretful baby by nature, so -you mustn't think it funny if you hear her cry. Some people thought -I'd never raise her, so that if you ever hear say that my little girl -died...." - -"I'll know it's not true," the buxom woman laughed. "She couldn't die, -and you have her here, now could she? Do let me have a peep." - -By this time they had lifted the carriage over the steps and into the -little passageway. Seeing that there was no help for this inspection, -the strange woman trembled but resigned herself. The neighbor lifted -the veil, and peered under it. - -"My, what a love! And she don't look sick, not a little mite." - -"Not her face, she don't. Her poor little body's some wasted, but then -so long as I've got her...." - -"I believe as it'd be too much lime-water in her milk. She's -bottle-fed, ain't she? Well, them bottle-fed babies--I've had two of -'em out of my five--you got to try and try, and ten to one you'll find -as it's that nasty lime-water that upsets 'em." - -Having unlocked her door, which was on the left of the passageway, -the strange woman pulled her treasure into a room stuffy with closed -windows, and dim with drawn blinds. Turning the key behind her, she -was alone at last. - -She fell on her knees, throwing the veil back with a fierceness that -almost tore it off. She strained forward. Her breath came in racking, -panting sobs. - -"My Gracie! my Gracie! God didn't take you! God wouldn't be so mean! I -just dreamed it, and now I've waked up." - -Suddenly she changed. Drawing backward, she put her hands to her brow -and pressed them down the whole length of her face. Her eyes filled -with horror. Her face turned sallow. Her lips fell apart. - -"I'll get twenty years for this. Perhaps it'll be more. I don't think -they hang for it, but it'll be twenty years anyhow, if they find it -out." She sprang up, still muttering in broken, only partly articulated -phrases. "But they'll never find it out. What's there to find? It's -my baby! My precious only baby!" She was on her knees again, dragging -herself forward by the sides of the little carriage, her eyes strained -toward the infant face. "My little Gracie! I've missed you all the time -you've been away. My heart was near broke. Now you've come back to me. -You're mine--mine--mine!" - -He opened his eyes. It was his usual hour for waking up. For the first -time in his history amazement gave an expression to his face which it -was often to wear afterward. Instead of being in his own nest, downy, -clean, and scentless, he was in a humpy little hole unpleasant to -his senses. Instead of the Na-Na with her tender smile, or the Ma-Ma -with her love, he saw this terrifying woman's stormy eyes, rousing -the sensation he was later to know as fear. Instead of his nursery, -spotless and gay, he was dumped amid the forlorn disarray of furniture -that has just been moved into an empty tenement. Without getting these -impressions in detail, he got them at once. He got them not as separate -facts, but as facts in a single quintessence, distilled and distilled -again, till no one element can be told from any other element, and held -to his lips in a poisoned draught. - -All he could do was to wail, but he wailed with a note of anguish which -was new to him. It was anguish the more bitter because of the lack of -explanation. His only awareness hitherto had been that of power. He -had been a baby sovereign, obeyed without having to command. Now he -had been born again as a baby serf, into conditions against which his -will, imperious in its baby way, would beat in vain. Once more, he knew -this, not by reasoned argument, of course, but by heartbroken instinct. -It was not merely the distress of the present that was in his cry, but -dread of the future. There was something else in the world besides -Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, and he had touched it. Without knowing -what it was he shrank back from the contact and sobbed. - -And yet such is the need for love in any young thing's heart, that when -the strange woman had lifted him up, and cradled him on her bosom, he -was partly soothed. He was not soothed easily. Though she held him -closely, and sang to him softly, seated in the low rocking-chair in -which she had rocked her baby-girl, he went on sobbing. He sobbed, -not as he had sobbed in his old nursery, for the sport or the mischief -of the thing, but because his inner being had been bruised. But his -capacity for sobbing wore itself out. Little by little the convulsions -grew calmer, the agony less desperate. Love held him. It was not -the love of the Ma-Ma or the Na-Na, but it was love. It had love's -embrace, love's lullaby. Arms were about him, he was on a breast. -The shipwrecked sailor may be only on a raft, but he is not sinking. -Little by little he turned his face into this only available refuge. A -dangling embroidery adorned it, and in his struggle not to go down his -little hands clutched at that. - - - - -IV - - -His first conscious recollection was of sitting on a high chair drawn -up to a table at which he was having a meal. He could never recall -whether this was in Harlem, Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey City, or the -Bronx. Because they moved so often he had little more memory of places -than he had of clouds. Tenements, streets, and suburbs of New York -melted into one big sense of squalor. It was not squalor to him because -he was used to it. It only obscured the difference between one dwelling -and another, as monotony always obscures remembrance. Wherever their -wanderings carried them, the background was the same, crowded, dirty, -seething, a breeding place rather than a home. - -What marked this occasion was a question he asked and the answer he got -back. - -"Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?" - -The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about the kitchen. "What do -you want to know for?" - -The question was difficult. He knew what he wanted to know for, and yet -it wasn't easy to explain. The nearest he could get to it in language -was to say: "I'm a little boy, ain't I?" - -"Yes, you're a little boy, but you should have been a little girl. It -was a little girl I wanted." - -"But you want me, don't you, mudda?" - -She dropped whatever she was doing to press his head fiercely against -her side. "Yes, I want _you_! I want _you_! I want _you_!" - -He remembered this paroxysm of affection not because it was special -but because it was connected with his gropings after his identity. -Paroxysms were what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or of -something which frightened him and yet was nameless. He thrummed to -himself, beating time on the table with his spoon, while he worked on -to another point. - -"Wadn't there never no Gracie, mudda?" - -She wheeled round from the gas-stove. "For goodness' sake, what's -putting this into your head? Of course there was a Gracie. You're her. -You don't suppose I stole you, do you?" - -He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on the table with his spoon. -The mystery of being grew still more baffling. - -"Mudda!" - -"What's it now?" - -"If I wad Gracie I'd be a little girl, wouldn't I?" - -She stamped her foot. "Stop it! If you ask me another thing I'll slap -you." - -He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being slapped. Accustomed -to that he had learned to discount its ferocity. A sharp stinging -smart, it passed if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing -had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. If for the -minute he asked no more questions it was in order not to vex his mudda. -She was easily vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily -repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It was so violent, so -overwhelming. He loved love; he loved caressing; he loved to sit in her -lap and sing with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed him. - -As she washed the dishes or switched about the kitchen, he watched -her with that trepidation which makes the children of the poor -sharp-witted. Though under five years of age, he was already developing -a sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity of a wholly -straightforward little face, which had the even tan of a healthy -fairness, in keeping with his crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment -had come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle himself against -her petticoats. - -"Mudda, sing!" - -"I can't sing now. Don't you see I'm busy! Look out, or this hot -dish-water'll scald you." - -Nevertheless, a few minutes later they were settled in the rocking -chair, he on her knee, with his cheek against her shoulder. She was not -as ungracious as her words would have made her seem, a fact of which he -was aware. - -"What'll I sing, Troublesome?" - -"Sing 'Three Cups of Cold Poison.'" - -So she sang in a sweet, true voice, the sort of childish voice which -children love, her little boy joining in with her whenever he knew the -words, but with only a hit-or-miss venture at the tune. - - "Where have you been dining, Lord Ronald, my son? - Where have you been dining, my handsome young man?" - "I've been dining with my true love, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "And what did she give you, Lord Ronald, my son? - And what did she give you, my handsome young man?" - "Three cups of cold poison, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "What'll you will to your mither, Lord Ronald, my son? - What'll you will to your mither, my handsome young man?" - "My gowd and my silver, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "What'll you will to your brither, Lord Ronald, my son? - What'll you will to your brither, my handsome young man?" - "My coach and six horses, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "What'll you will to your truelove, Lord Ronald, my son? - What'll you will to your truelove, my handsome young man?" - "A rope for to hang her, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - -His next conscious memory was more dramatic. He had been playing in -the street, in what town he could never remember. They had recently -moved, but they had always recently moved. A month in one set of rooms, -and his mother was eager to be off. Rarely did they ever stay anywhere -for more than the time of moving in, giving the necessary notice, and -moving out again. When they stayed long enough for him to know a few -children he sometimes played with them. - -In this way the thing happened. The boy's name was Frankie Bell, a -detail which remained long after the larger facts had escaped him. -Frankie Bell and he had been engaged in scraping the dust and offal of -the street into neat little piles, with the object of building what -they called a "dirt-house." The task was engrossing, and to it little -Tom Coburn gave himself with good will. Suddenly, as each bent over his -pile, Frankie Bell threw off the observation, casually uttered: - -"My mother says your mother's crazy." - -Tom Coburn raised himself from his stooping posture, standing straight, -and looking straight. The expression in his dark blue eyes, over which -the eyebrows even now stood out bushily, was of pain, and yet of pain -that left him the more dauntless. Though knowing but vaguely what the -word crazy meant, he knew it was insulting. - -"She ain't." - -Frankie Bell, a stout young man, lifted himself slowly. "Yes, she is. -My mother says so." - -"Well, your mudda id a liar." - -One rush and Frankie Bell lay sprawling with his head in the cushioned -softness of his own dirt-heap. The attack had taken him so much by -surprise that he went down before he could bellow. Before he could -bellow his enemy was upon him, filling his mouth with the materials -collected for architectural purposes. Victor in the fray, Tom Coburn -ran homeward blinded with his tears. - -He found his mother at the stove, stirring something with a tablespoon. - -"Mudda, you're _not_ crazy, _are_ you?" - -His reply was a blow on the head with the spoon. The woman was beside -herself. - -"Who said that?" - -Rubbing his head, he told her. - -"Don't you ever let them say no such thing again. If you do I'll kill -you." She threw back her head, her arms outstretched, the spoon in her -right hand. "God! God! What'll they say next? They'll say I stole him. -It'll be twenty years for me; it'll be forty; it may be life. I won't -live to begin it. I know what'll end it before they can...." - -He was terrified now, terrified as he had never been in all his -terrifying moments. Throwing himself upon her, he clutched at her -skirts. - -"Don't, mudda, don't! I'm your little boy! You didn't steal me. Don't -cry, mudda! Oh, don't cry! don't cry!" - -When, in one of her sudden reactions, she sank sobbing to the floor, he -sank with her, petting her, coaxing her, wiping away her tears, forcing -himself to laugh so that she should laugh with him; but a few days -afterward they moved. - - - - -V - - -"Mudda, can I have a book and learn to read?" - -The ambition had been inspired in the street, where he had seen a -little boy who actually had a book, and was spelling out the words. Tom -Coburn was now nominally six years old, though it was in the nature of -things that of his age no exact record could be kept. His mother had -changed his birthday so many times that he observed it whenever she -said it had come round. - -Bursting into the room with his eager question, he found her sitting by -a window looking out at a blank wall. Given her feverish restlessness, -the attitude called attention to itself. The apartment was poorer and -dingier than any they had lived in hitherto, while it had not escaped -his observation that she was living on the ragged edge of her nerves. -This made him the more sorry for her, and the more loving. He put his -hand on her shoulder, tenderly. - -"What's the matter, mudda?" - -It was one of the minutes when a touch made her frantic. "Get away!" - -He got away, not through fear, but because she pushed him. He didn't -mind that, though the rejection hurt him inside. He stood in the middle -of the floor, pity in his young countenance, wondering what he could do -for her, when she spoke again. - -"I've got hardly any money left. I don't know what to do." - -It was the first time his attention had been called to finance. He knew -there was such a thing as money; he knew it had purchasing value; but -he had not known its relation to himself. - -"Why don't you get money where you got it before?" - -"Because I ain't got a husband to die and leave me another five -thousand dollars of insurance." - -"And did you have, mudda?" - -"Of course I had. What did you think?" - -The question voiced his inner difficulty. He had not known what to -think. Having observed that a fundamental social unit was formed of -husbands and wives, he had also understood that husbands and wives -could, in the terms which were the last to hang over from the lingo -of his babyhood, be translated into faddas and muddas. They in turn -implied children. The methods were mysterious, but the unit was so -composed. The exception to this rule seemed to be himself. Though he -had a mudda, he could not remember ever to have heard of a fadda. He -had pondered on this deficiency more times than anyone suspected. The -effort to link himself up with the human family was far more important -to him now than the ways and means of getting cash. Standing pensive, -he peered into the blinding light, or the unfathomable darkness, -whichever it may be, out of which comes human life. - -"Mudda, did Gracie have a fadda?" - -She snapped peevishly, her gaze again turned outward to the stone wall. -"Of course she did." - -He came nearer to his point. "Did I?" - -"I--I suppose so." - -He approached still nearer. "Did I have the same fadda what Gracie had?" - -"No, you hadn't." She caught herself up hurriedly, rounding on him in -one of her fits of wrath. "Yes, you had." - -The inconsistency was evident. "Well, which was it, mudda?" - -She jumped to her feet, threateningly. "Now you quit! The next thing -you'll be saying is that your name is Whitelaw, and that I stole you. -Take that, you nasty little brat!" - -A smack on the cheek brought the color to his face, and the tears to -his eyes. "No, I won't, mudda. I won't say you stole me, or that my -name is--" oddly enough he had caught it--"or that my name is Whitelaw. -My name is Tom Coburn, and I'm your little boy." - -Rushing at her in the big outpouring of his love, he threw his arms -about her and cried against her waist. He cried so seldom that -his grief drove her to one of her paroxysms of repentance. Her -self-reproaches abating, all she could do to comfort him was to promise -him a book, and begin to teach him to read. - -The book was procured two days later, and by a method new to him. -Doubtless some other means could have been adopted, but the necessity -for sparing pennies had become imperative. Moreover, she had never -willingly looked at print since the day when she opened a paper to find -that, without knowing who she was, all the forces of the country had -been organized against her. - -They went out together. After traversing a series of streets he had -never been in before they stopped in front of a little shop, in the -window of which stationery, ink, wallpaper, rubber bands, and books -were arranged in artistic confusion. The impression on the fancy of a -little boy already groping toward the treasures of the mind was like -that made on the tourist in Dresden by the heaped up riches of the -Grüne Gewölbe. - -The geography of the shop was explained to him before entering. The -stationery counter was on the right as soon as you passed the door. -The children's books were opposite, on the left. Books forming a cheap -circulating library were back of that, and opposite these, where the -shop was dark, were the wallpapers, in small, tight rolls on shelves. -She was going to inspect wallpapers. The woman in the shop would -exhibit them. He would remain alone in the front part of the shop, and -close to the counter with the children's books. He was to keep alert -and attentive, waiting for a sign which she would give him. When she -turned round in the dark part of the shop, and called out, "Are you all -right, darling?" he was to understand it as permissible to slip from -the counter any small work on which he could lay his hands, and button -it up inside his overcoat. He was to do it quickly, keeping his booty -out of sight, and above all saying nothing about it. The plan was -exciting, with a savor of adventure and manly incentive to skill. - -If in the Grüne Gewölbe you were told you could take anything you -pleased you would have some of Tom Coburn's sense of enchantment as -he stood by the book counter, waiting for the sign. He could see his -mother dimly. More dimly still he could follow the movements of the -shop-woman eager for a sale. Sample after sample, the wallpapers -were unrolled, and hung on an easel where their flowers lighted the -obscurity. Even at a distance he could do justice to their beauty, but -more captivating than their glories were the wonders at his hand. Pages -in which children and animals disported in colors far beyond those of -nature were piled in neat little rows, and so tempting that he ached -for the signal. He couldn't choose; there was too much to choose from. -He would put out his hand without looking, guided by fate. - -"Are you all right, darling?" - -Curiously to the little boy, the question came just when he himself -could perceive that the shop-woman had dived beneath the counter for -another example of her wares. All the conditions were propitious. No -one was entering the shop; no one was looking through the window. -Without knowing the moralities of his act, he understood the need for -secrecy. He stretched forth his arm. His fingers touched paper. In the -fraction of a fraction of a second the object was within his overcoat, -and pressed to his pounding heart. - -A few minutes later his mother came smiling and chatting down toward -the exit, giving her address, which the shop-woman jotted in a -notebook. "I think it will have to be the pale-green background with -the roses. The room is darkish, and it would light it up. But I'll -decide by to-morrow, and let you know. Yes, that's right. Mrs. F.H. -Grover, 321 Blaisdel Avenue. So much obliged to you. Good morning." - -Having bowed themselves out they went some yards up the street before -the little boy dared to express his new wonderment. - -"Mudda, what did you say you was Mrs. F.H. Grover for? And we don't -live on Blaisdel Avenue. We live on Orange Street." - -"You mind your own business. Did you get your book? Well, that's what -we went for, isn't it?" - -The expedition having proved successful, it was tried on other planes. -Now it was in the line of groceries; now in that of hardware; now in -that of drygoods; now in that of fruit. Needed things could be used; -useless things could be sold, especially after they had moved to -distant neighborhoods. While the procedure didn't supply an income, it -eked out very helpfully such income as remained. - -It furnished, moreover, a motive in life, which was what they had -lacked hitherto. There was something to which to give themselves. It -was like devotion to an art, or even a religion. They could pursue it -for its own sake. For her especially this outside interest appeased -the wild something which wasted her within. She grew calmer, more -reasonable. She slept and ate better. She had fewer fits of frenzy. - -With but faint pangs of misgiving the little boy enjoyed himself. -He enjoyed his finesse; he enjoyed the pride his mother took in him. -In proportion as they grew more expert they enlarged their field, -often reversing their rôles. There were times when he created the -distraction, while she secreted any object within reach. They did this -the more frequently after she became recognized as his superior in -selection. - -For a superior in selection the great department stores naturally -offered the widest field for operation. They approached them, however, -cautiously, going in and out and out and in for a good many days before -they ventured on anything. When they did this at last it was amid the -crowding and pushing of a bargain day. - -The system evolved had the masterly note of simplicity. The little -boy carried a satchel, of the kind in which school-boys sometimes -carry books. He stood near his mudda, or farther away, according to -the dictates of the moment's strategy. On the first occasion he kept -close to her, sincerely admiring a display of colored silk scarves -conspicuously marked down to the price at which it was intended, even -before their importation, that they should be sold. Women thronged -about the counter, the little boy and his mudda having much ado to edge -themselves into the front to where these products of the loom could be -handled. - -The picking and choosing done, the mother still showed some indecision. - -"I'll just ask my sister to step over here," she confided to the -saleswoman. "Her judgment is so much better than mine. Run over, dear, -to your Aunt Mary," she begged of the boy, "and ask her to come and -speak to me." Holding the scarf noticeably in her hands, she smiled at -the saleswoman affably. "I'll just make room for this lady, who seems -to be in a hurry." - -She did not step back; she merely allowed herself to be crowded out. -From the front row she receded to the second, from the second to the -third. Keeping in sight of the saleswoman, she looked this way and -that, plainly for Aunt Mary to appear. At times she made little dashes, -as Aunt Mary seemed to come within sight. From these she did not fail -to return, but on each occasion to a point more distant from that of -her departure. With sufficient time the poor saleswoman, who had fifty -other customers to attend to, would be likely to forget her, for a few -minutes if no more. - -The moment seemed to have come. With the scarf thrown jauntily over -her arm where anyone could see it, the mother forced her way amid -the crowds in search of her little boy. If intercepted she had her -explanation. He had gone on an errand, and had not come back. When she -had found him she would return and pay for the scarf, or decide not to -take it. Her story couldn't help being plausible. - -"Aunt Mary" was a spot agreed upon near one of the side doors, and far -from the center of interest in silk scarves. Agreed upon was also a -little bit of comedy, for the benefit of possible lookers-on. - -"Oh, my dear, I've kept you waiting so long. I'm so sorry. Tell your -mother this is the best I could do for her. I knew you were waiting, so -I didn't let the lady wrap it up. Open your bag, and I'll put it in." - -The bag closed, the little boy went out through one door, and his -mother through another. The point where she was to rejoin him was not -so far away but that he could walk to it alone. - - - - -VI - - -"It's all right, mudda, isn't it?" - -He asked this after their campaign had been carried on for a good part -of a year, and when they were nearing Christmas. He was now supposed -to be seven. For reasons he could not explain the great game lost its -zest. In as far as he understood himself he hated the sneaking and the -secrecy. He hated the lying too, but lying was so much a part of their -everyday life that he might as well have hated bread. - -"Of course it's all right," his mother snapped. "Haven't I said so time -and again? We get away with it, don't we? And if it wasn't all right we -shouldn't be able to do that." - -Silenced by this reasoning, even if something in his heart was not -convinced by it, he prepared for the harvest of the festival. Christmas -was an exciting time, even to Tom Coburn. Perhaps it was more exciting -to him than to other boys, since he had so much to do with shops. As -long ago as the middle of November he had noted the first stirrings -of new energy. After that he had watched the degrees through which -they had ripened to a splendor in which toys, books, skis, skates, -sleds, and all the paraphernalia of young joyousness, made a bright -thing of the world. Where there was so much, the profusion went beyond -desire. One of these objects at a time, or two, or three, might have -found him envious; but he couldn't cope with such abundance. He could -concentrate, therefore, all the more on the pair of fur-lined mittens -which his mother promised him, if, as she expressed it, they could haul -it off. - -By Christmas Eve they had not done so. They had hauled off other -things--a purse, a lady's shopping bag, several towels, a selection of -pen-trays, some pairs of stockings, a bottle of shoe-polish, a baby's -collapsible rubber bathtub, a hair-brush, an electric toaster, with -other articles of no great interest to a little boy. Moreover, only -some of these things were for personal use; the rest would be sold -discreetly after the next moving. It was in the nature of the case that -such grist as came to their mill should be more or less as it happened. -They could pick, but they couldn't choose, at least to no more than a -limited degree. Fur-lined mittens didn't come their way. - -The little boy's heart began to ache with a great fear. Perhaps he -shouldn't get them. Unless he got them by Christmas Day the spell of -the occasion would be gone. To get them a week later wouldn't be the -same thing. It would not be Christmas. He couldn't remember having kept -a Christmas hitherto. He couldn't remember ever having longed for what -might be called an article of luxury. The yearning was new to him, and -because new, it consumed him. Whenever he thought that the happiness -might after all elude him he had to grind his teeth to keep back a sob, -but he could not prevent the filling of his eyes with tears. - -It was not only Christmas Eve but late in the day before the mother -found her opportunity. At half-past five the counter where fur-lined -mittens were displayed was crowded with poor women who hadn't had -the money or the time to make their purchases earlier. In among them -pressed Tom Coburn's mother, making her selection, and asking the price. - -"Now where's that boy? His hands grow so quick that I can't be sure of -anything without trying them on." - -With a despairing smile at the saleswoman, she followed her usual -tactics of being elbowed from the counter, while she looked about -vainly for the boy. At the right moment she slipped into the pushing, -struggling mass of tired women, where she could count on being no -more remarked than a single crow in a flock. The mittens were in the -muff which was the prize of an earlier expedition. At a side door the -boy was waiting where she had left him. Without pausing for words she -whispered commandingly. - -"Come along quick." - -He went along quick, but also happily, projecting himself into the -"surprise" to which he would wake on Christmas morning. - -They had reached the sidewalk when a hand was laid on the mother's -shoulder. - -"Will you come back a minute, please?" - -The words were so polite that for the first few seconds the boy was not -alarmed. A lady was speaking, a lady like any other lady, unless it was -that her manner was quieter, more forceful, more sure of itself, than -he was accustomed to among women. But what he never forgot during all -the rest of his life was the look on his mother's face. As he came to -analyze it later it was one of inner surrender. She had come to the -point which she had long foreseen as her objective. She had reached the -end. But in spite of surrender, and though she grew bloodlessly pale, -she was still determined to show fight. - -"What do you want me for?" - -"If you'll step this way I'll tell you." - -"I don't know that I care to do that. I'm going home." - -"You'd better come quietly. You won't gain anything by making a fuss." - -A second lady, also forceful and sure of herself, having joined them -they pushed their way back through the throng. At the glove counter a -place was made for them. The saleswoman was beckoned to. The woman who -had stopped them at the door continued to take the lead. - -"Now, will you show us what you've got in your muff?" - -She produced the mittens. "Yes, I have got these. I bought and paid for -them." - -The saleswoman gave her account of the incident. Women shoppers -gathered round. Floorwalkers came up. - -"It's a lie; it's a lie!" the boy heard his mother cry out, as the girl -behind the counter told her tale. "If I didn't pay for them it was -because I forgot. Here's the money. I'll pay for them now. What do you -take me for?" - -"No; you won't pay for them now. That's not the way we do business. -Just come along this way." - -"I'm not going nowheres else. If you won't take the money you can go -without it. Leave me alone, and let me take my little boy home." - -Her voice had the screaming helplessness of women in the grasp of -forces without pity. A floorwalker laid his hand on her shoulder, -compelling her to turn round. - -"Don't you touch me," she shouted. "If I've got to go anywheres I can -go without your tearing the clothes off my back, can't I?" - -For the little boy it was the last touch of humiliation. Rushing at the -floorwalker, he kicked him in the shins. - -"Don't you hit my mudda. I won't let you." - -A second floorwalker held the youngster back. Some of the crowd -laughed. Others declared it a monstrous thing that women of the sort -should have such fine-looking children. - -Presently they were surging through the crowd again, toward a back -region of the premises. The boy, not crying but panting as if spent by -a long race, held his mother by the skirt; on the other side one of the -forceful women had her by the arm. He saw that his mother's hat had -been knocked to one side, and that a mesh of her dark hair had broken -loose. He remembered this picture, and how the shoppers, wherever they -passed, made a lane for them, shocked by the sight of their disgrace. - -They came to an office, where their party, his mother, himself, the two -forceful women, and two floorwalkers, were shut in with an elderly man -who sat behind a desk. It was still the first of the forceful women who -took the lead. - -"Mr. Corning, we've caught this woman shop-lifting." - -"I haven't been," the boy heard his mother deny. "Honest to God, I -haven't been." - -"We've been watching her for some time past," the forceful woman -continued, "but we never managed before to get her with the goods." - -The elderly man was gray, pale-eyed, and mild-mannered. He listened -while the story was given him in detail. - -"I'm afraid we must give you in charge," he said, gently, when the -facts were in. - -"No, don't do that, don't do that," she implored, tearfully. "I've got -my little boy. He can't do without me." - -"He hasn't done very well with you, has he?" the elderly man reasoned. -"A woman who's taught a boy of that age to steal...." - -He was interrupted by the coming in of a policeman, summoned by -telephone. At sight of him the unhappy woman gave a loud inarticulate -gasp of terror. All that for seven years she had dreaded seemed now -about to come true. The boy felt terror too, but the knowledge that his -mother needed him nerved him to be a man. - -"Don't you be afraid, mudda. If they put you in jail I'll go to jail -too. I won't let them take me away from you." - -"You'd better come with me, missus," the policeman said, with gruff -kindliness, when the situation was explained to him. "The kid can come -too. 'Twon't be so bad. Lots of these cases. You'll live through it all -right, and it'll learn you to keep straight. One of these days you may -be glad that it happened." - -They went out through a dimly lighted passageway, clogged with parcels -and packing-cases which men were loading into drays. It was dark by -this time, the streets being lighted as at night. The police-station -was not far away, and to it they were led through a series of byways -in which there were few foot-passengers. The policeman allowed them -to walk in front of him, so that the connection was not too obvious. -The boy held his mother's hand, which clutched at his with a nervous -loosening and tightening of the fingers. As the situation was beyond -words they made no attempt to speak. - -"This way." - -Within the police-station the officer turned them to the right, where -they entered a small bare room. Brilliantly lighted with unshaded -electrics, its glare was fierce upon the eyes. At a plain oak desk a -man in uniform was seated with a ledger in front of him. Another man in -uniform standing near the door picked his teeth to kill time. - -"Shoplifting case," was the simple introduction of the party. - -They stood before the man at the desk, who dipped his pen in the ink, -and barely glanced at them. What to the boy and his mother was as the -end of the world was to him all in the day's work. - -"Name?" - -She gave her name distinctly, and less to the lad's surprise than if -she hadn't often used pseudonyms. "Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw." - -"Address?" - -She gave the address correctly. - -"Boy's name?" - -She spoke carefully, as one who had prepared her statements. "He's been -known as Thomas Coburn. He's really Thomas Whitelaw. His father was my -second husband." - -"If he's your second husband's child why is he called by your first -husband's name?" - -She was prepared here too. "Because I'd given up using my second -husband's name. I was unhappily married." - -"Is he dead?" - -"Yes, he is." - -Never having heard before so much of his private history, the boy -registered it all. It was exactly the sort of detail for which he had -been eager. It explained too that name of Whitelaw, allusions to which -had puzzled him. He was so engrossed by the fact that he was not Tom -Coburn but Tom Whitelaw as hardly to listen while it was explained -to his mother that she would spend the night in the Female House of -Detention, and be brought before the magistrate in the morning. If the -boy had no friends to whom to send him he would be well taken care of -elsewhere. - -The phlegm to which she had for a few minutes schooled herself broke -down. "Oh, can't I keep him with me? He'll cry his eyes out without me." - -She was given to understand that no child above the nursing age could -be put in prison even for its mother's sake. From his reverie as to Tom -Whitelaw he waked to what was passing. - -"But I won't leave my mudda," he wailed, loudly. "I want to go to jail." - -The kindly policeman put his arm about the boy's shoulder. - -"You'll go to jail, sonny, when your time comes, if you set the right -way to work. Your momma's only going to spend the night, and I'll see -to it that you----" - -In a side of the room a door opened noiselessly. A woman, wearing a -uniform, with a bunch of keys hanging at her side, stood there like -a Fate. She was a grave woman, strongly built, and with something -inexorable in her eyes. Even the boy guessed who she was, throwing -himself against her, and crying out, "Go 'way! go 'way! You won't take -my mudda away from me." - -But the folly of resistance became evident. The mother herself -understood it so. Walking up to the woman with the keys, she said in an -undertone: - -"For God's sake get me out of this. I can't look on while he breaks his -little heart. He's always been an angel." - -That was all. She gave no backward look. Before the boy knew what was -about to happen, she had passed into a corridor, and the door had -closed behind her. - -She was gone. He was left with these strange men. The need for being -brave was not unknown to him. Not unknown to him was the power of -calling to his aid a secret strength which had already carried him -through tight places. He could only express it to himself in the words -that he mustn't cry. Crying had come to stand for everything cowardly -and babyish. He was so prone to do it that the struggle against it -was the hardest he had to make. He struggled against it now; but he -struggled vainly. He was all alone. Even the three policemen were -talking together, while he stood deserted, and futile. His lips -quivered in spite of himself. The tears gathered. Disgraced as he was -anyhow, this weakness disgraced him more. - -The room had an empty corner. Straight into it he walked, and turned -his back, his face within the angle. The head with an old cap on it -was bowed. The sturdy shoulders, muffled in a cheap top-coat, heaved -up and down. But the legs in their knickerbockers were both straight -and strong, and the feet firmly planted on the floor. Except for an -occasional strangled sound which he couldn't control, he betrayed -himself by nothing audible. - -The three policemen, all of them fathers, glanced at him, but forbore -to glance at one another. One of them tried to say, "Poor kid!" but the -words stuck in his throat. It was the kindly fellow who had brought the -lad and the woman there who recovered himself first. - -"All right, then, boys. The Swindon Street Home. One of you can 'phone -that we're on the way." He went over and laid his hand on the child's -shoulder. "Say, sonny, I'm goin' to take you out to see the Christmas -Tree." - -The thought was a happy one. Tom Coburn had never seen any Christmas -Trees, though he had often heard of them. He had specially heard of the -community Christmas Tree which was new that year in that particular -city. It was to be a splendid sight, and against the fascination of -splendor even grief was not wholly proof. He looked shyly round, an -incredible wonder in his tear-stained, upturned face. - -In the street they walked hand in hand, pausing now and then to admire -some brightly lighted window. The boy was in fairyland, but in spite of -fairyland long deep sighs welled up from the springs of his loneliness -and sorrow. To distract him the policeman took him into a druggist's -and bought him a cone of ice-cream. The boy licked it gratefully, as -they made their way to the open space consecrated to the Tree. - -The night was brisk and frosty; the sky clear. In the streets there was -movement, light, gayety. At a spot on a bit of pavement a vendor was -showing a dancing toy, round which some scores of idlers were gathered. -The dancing was so droll that the little boy laughed. The policeman -bought him one. - -When they came to the Christmas Tree the lad was in ecstasy. Nothing he -had ever dreamed of equalled these fruits of many-colored fires. A band -was playing, and suddenly the multitude broke into song. - - O come, all ye faithful, - Joyful and triumphant, - O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem! - -Even the policeman joined in, humming the refrain in Latin. - - Venite, adoremus; - Venite, adoremus; - Venite, adoremus, - Dominum. - -Passing thus through marvels they came to the Swindon Street Home. -The night-nurse, warned by telephone, was expecting them. She was a -motherly woman who had once had a child, and knew well this precise -situation. - -"Oh, come in, you poor little boy! Have you had your supper?" - -He hadn't had his supper, though the cone of ice-cream had stilled the -worst pangs of hunger. - -"Then you shall have some; and after that I'll put you in a nice comfy -bed." - -"He's a fine kid," the policeman commended, before going away, "and -won't give you no trouble, will you, sonny?" - -The boy caught him by the hand, looking up pleadingly into his face, as -if he would have kept him. But the policeman had children of his own, -and this was Christmas Eve. - -"See you again, sonny," he said, cheerily, as he went out, "and a merry -Christmas!" - -The night matron knew by experience all the sufferings of little boys -homesick for mothers who have got into trouble. She had dealt with them -by the hundred. - -"Now, dear, while Mrs. Lamson is getting your supper we'll go to the -washroom and you'll wash your face and hands. Then you'll feel more -like eating, won't you?" - -Deprived of his policeman, despair would have settled on him again, -had it not been for the night matron's hearty voice. The deeper his -woe, and it was very deep, the less he could resist friendliness. Just -as in that first agony, when he was only eight months old, he had -turned to the only love available, so now he yielded again. He was -not reconciled; he was not even comforted; he was only responsive and -grateful, thus getting the strength to go on. - -Going on was only in letting the night matron scrub his face and hands, -and submitting patiently. As they went from the washroom to the dining -room he held her by the hand. He did this first because he couldn't -let her go, and then because the halls were big and bare and dark. -Never had he been in any place so vast, or so impersonal. He was used -to strangeness, as they moved so often, but not to strangeness on so -immense a scale. It was a relief to him, because it brought in a note -of hominess, to hear from an upper floor a forlorn little baby cry. - -His supper toned him up. He could speak of his great sorrow. While the -night matron sat with him and helped him to porridge he asked, suddenly: - -"Will they let me go to jail and stay with my mudda to-morrow?" - -"You see, dear, your mother may not be in jail to-morrow. Perhaps -she'll be let out, and then you can go home with her." - -"They didn't ought to put her in. I'm big. I could work for her, and -then she wouldn't have to take things no more." - -"But bless you, darling, you'll be able to work for her as it is. They -won't keep her very long--not so very long--and I'll look after you -till she comes out. After that...." - -"What's your name?" he asked, solemnly, as if he wished to nail her to -the bargain. - -"Mrs. Crewdson's my name. I'm a widow. I like little boys. I like you -especially. I think we're going to be friends." - -As a proof of this she took him to her own room, instead of to a -dormitory, where she gave him a bath, found a clean night-shirt which, -being too big, descended to his feet, and put him to sleep in a cot she -kept on purpose for homeless little children in danger of being too -lonely. - -"You see, dear," she explained to him, "I don't go to bed all night. I -stay up to look after all the little children--there are a lot of them -in this house--who may want something. So you needn't be afraid. I'll -leave a light burning, and I'll be in and out all the time. If you wake -up and hear a noise, you'll know that that'll be me going about in the -rooms, but mostly I'll be in this room. Now, don't you want to say your -prayers?" - -He didn't want to say his prayers because he had never said any. She -suggested, therefore, that he should kneel on the bed, put his hands -together, and repeat the words she told him to say, as she sat on the -edge of the cot. - -"Dear God"--"Dear God"--"take care of me to-night"--"take care -of me to-night"--"and take care of my dear mother"--"and take -care of my dear mudda"--"and make us happy again"--"and make -us happy again"--"for Jesus Christ's sake"--"for Jesus Christ's -sake"--"Amen"--"Amen." - -"God's up in the sky, isn't He?" he asked, as he hugged his dancing toy -to him and let her cover him up. - -"God's everywhere where there's love, it seems to me, dear. I bring a -little bit of God to you, and you bring a little bit of God to me; and -so we have Him right here. That's a good thought to go to sleep on, -isn't it? So good-night, dear." - -She kissed him as she supposed his mother would have done. He threw his -arms about her neck, drawing her face close to his. "Good night, dear," -he whispered back, and almost before she rose from the bedside she knew -he was asleep. - -Somewhere toward morning she came into the room and found him sitting -up in his cot. - -"Will it soon be daytime, Mrs. Crewdson?" - -"Yes, dear; not so very long now." - -"And when daytime comes could I go to the jail?" - -"Not too early, dear. They wouldn't let you in." - -"Oh, but I don't want to go in. I only want to stand outside. Then if -my mudda looks out of the window, she'll see her little boy." - -Throwing herself on her knees, she clasped him in her arms. "Oh, you -darling! How I wish God had given me a little son like you! I did have -one--he would have been just your age--only I--I lost him." - -Touched by this tribute to himself, as well as by his friend's -bereavement, he brought out a fine manly phrase he had long been -saving for an adequate occasion. - -"The hell you did, Mrs. Crewdson!" - -Having thus expressed his sympathy, he nestled down to sleep again, -hugging his dancing toy. - - - - -VII - - -He woke to his first Christmas. That is, he woke to find a chair drawn -up beside his cot and stocked with little presents. He had never had -presents before. It had not been his mother's custom to make them. -Since she gave him what she could afford, and they shared everything in -common, presents would have seemed to her superfluous. - -But here were half a dozen parcels done up in white paper and tied with -red ribbon, and on them he could read his name. At least, he could read -Tom, while he guessed from the length of the word and initial _W_ that -the other name was Whitelaw. So he was to be Tom Whitelaw now! The fact -seemed to make a change in his identity. He stowed it away in the back -of his mind for later meditation, in order to feast his soul on the -mystic bounty of Santa Claus. - -He knew who Santa Claus was. He had often seen him in the windows of -the big stores, surrounded by tempting packages, and driving reindeer -harnessed to a sleigh. He knew that he drove over the roofs of houses, -down chimneys, and out through grates. Somewhere, too, he harbored the -suspicion that this was only childish talk, and that the real Santa -Claus must be a father or a mother, or in this case Mrs. Crewdson; only -both childish talk and fact simmered without conflict in his brain. It -was easier to think that a supernatural goodwill had brought him this -profusion than that commonplace hands, which had never done much for -him hitherto, should all of a sudden be busy on his behalf. - -Raising himself on his elbow, his first thought came with the bubbling -of a sob. "My mudda is in jail!" His second was in the nature of a -corollary, "But she'll like it when I tell her that Santa Claus took -care of her little boy." The deduction gave him permission to enjoy -himself. - -At first he only gazed in a rapture that hardly guessed at what was -beneath these snowy coverings. What he was to get was secondary to the -fact that he was getting something. For the first time in his life he -was taken into that vast family of boys and girls for whom Christmas -has significance. Up to this morning he had stood outside of it -wistfully--yearning, hoping, and yet condemned to stand aloof. Now, if -his mudda hadn't been in jail.... - -The parcels were larger and smaller. Beginning with the smallest, he -arranged them according to size. Merely to touch them sent a thrill -through his frame. The smallest was round like an orange and yet -yielded to pressure. He was almost sure it was a rubber ball. He could -have been quite sure, only that he preferred the condition of suspense. - -It was long before he could bring himself to untie the first red ribbon -bow, his surprise on finding a rubber ball being no less keen than if -he hadn't known it was a rubber ball on first taking it between his -fingers. A handkerchief laid out flat, making the second parcel seem -bigger than it was, sent him up in the scale of social promotion. By -way of candies, nuts, a toothbrush with tooth paste, he came to the -largest of all, a History of Mankind, written in words of one syllable, -and garnished with highly-colored pictures of various racial types. If -only his mother hadn't been in jail.... - -That his mother was no longer in jail was a fact he learned later in -the day. It was a day of extremes, of quick rushes of rapture out of -which he would fall suddenly, to go away somewhere and moan. When he -begged, as he begged every hour or two, to be taken to the jail, he -could be distracted by rompings with the other children, most of them -in some such case as his own, or by some novelty in the life. To eat -turkey and plum pudding at the head of one of three long tables, each -seating twelve or fourteen, was to be raised to a point of social -eminence beyond which it seemed there could be nothing more to reach. -But in the midst of this pride the hard facts would recur to him, and -turkey and plum pudding choke him. - -That something had happened he began to infer when his beloved -policeman appeared at the home in the afternoon. Having seen him enter, -the boy ran up to him. - -"Oh, mister, are you going to take me to the jail?" - -Mister patted him on the head, though he answered, absently, "Not just -now, sonny. You know you're goin' to have a Christmas Tree. I've come -to see Miss Honiton." - -Miss Honiton, one of the day matrons, having appeared at the end of the -hall, the policeman turned him about by the shoulders. - -"Now be off with you and play. This has got to be private." - -He took himself off but only to the end of the hall, where they didn't -notice that he lingered. He lingered because he knew that, whatever the -mystery, it had something to do with him. - -He caught, however, no more than words which he couldn't understand. -Cyanide of potassium! Only his quick ear and retentive memory enabled -him to lay hold of syllables so difficult. His mother had taken -something or hadn't taken something, he couldn't make out which. All he -saw was that both of his friends looked grave, Miss Honiton summing up -their consultation, - -"I'll let him enjoy the Christmas Tree before saying anything about it." - -The policeman answered, regretfully: "Do you think you must?" - -"I know I must. He ought to be told. He has a right to know. He might -resent it later if we didn't tell him now." - -"Very well, sister. I leave it to you." - -The door having closed on this friend, Tom Whitelaw, so to call him -henceforth, made his way into the room where the Christmas Tree was -presently to be lighted up. But he had no heart for the spectacle. -There was something new. In the grip of the forces which controlled his -life he felt helpless, small. Even his companions in misfortune, as -all these children were, could be relatively light-hearted. They could -clap their hands when the Tree began to burn with magic fires, and take -pleasure in the presents handed out to them. He could not. He was -waiting for something to be told to him--something he had a right to -know. - -One by one, the presents were cut from the Tree; one by one the -children went up to receive this addition to what Santa Claus had -brought them in the morning. His own name was among the last. When it -was called he went forward perfunctorily at first, and then with a -sudden inspiration. - -His package was handed him, not by one of the matrons but by a beaming -young lady from outside. As she bent to deliver it he had his question -ready. - -"Please, miss, what's cyanide of potassium?" - -He had repeated the words to himself so often during the half hour -since first hearing them that he pronounced them distinctly. The young -lady laughed. - -"Why, I think it's a deadly poison." She turned to the matron nearest -her. "What is cyanide of potassium? This dear little boy wants to know." - -But the dear little boy had already walked soberly back to his seat. -While the other children made merry with their presents he sat with his -on his lap, and reflected. Poison was something that killed people. He -knew that. In one of the houses where they had lived a woman had taken -poison, and two days later he had seen her carried out in a long black -box. The impression had remained with him poignantly. - -He had no inclination to cry. Tears could bring little relief in this -kind of cosmic catastrophe. If his mother had taken poison and was to -be carried out in a long black box, everything that had made up his -world would have collapsed. He could only wait submissively till the -thing he ought to know was told to him. - -It was told when the giving of the presents was over, and the children -flocked out of the room to get ready for their Christmas supper. Miss -Honiton was waiting near the door. - -"Come into my office, dear. I want to ask you a few questions." - -Miss Honiton's office was a mixture of office and sitting room, in that -it had business furniture offset by photographs and knicknacks. Sitting -at her desk, she turned to the lad, who stood as if to attention, a -long thin sympathetic face, stamped with practical acumen. - -"I wanted to ask you if besides your mother you have any relations." - -His dark blue eyes, deep set beneath his bushy brows, she thought the -most serious and earnest she had ever seen in any of the hundreds of -homeless little boys she had had to deal with. - -"No, miss." - -"No brothers or sisters, no uncles or aunts?" - -"No, miss." - -"Didn't your mother ever take you to see anyone?" - -"No, miss." - -"Well, then, didn't anyone ever come to see her?" - -"No, miss." - -To the point she was trying to reach she went round by another way. -Where did they live? How long had they lived there? Where had they -lived before that? How long had they lived in that place? He answered -to the best of his recollection, but when it came to their flittings -from tenement to tenement, and from town to town, his recollection -didn't take him very far. Miss Honiton soon understood that she might -as well question a bird as to its migrations. - -For a minute she said nothing, turning over in her mind the various -ways of breaking her painful news, when he himself asked, suddenly: - -"Is my mudda dead?" - -The question was so direct that she felt it deserved a direct answer. - -"Yes, dear." - -"Did she"--he pulled himself together for the big words--"did she take -cyanide of potassium?" - -"Yes, dear; so I understand." - -"Will they take her away in a long black box?" - -"She'll be buried, dear, of course. There'll have to be a funeral -somewhere." - -"Can I go to it?" - -"Yes, dear, certainly. I'll go with you myself." - -He said nothing more, and Miss Honiton felt the futility of trying to -comfort him. There was no opening for comfort in that stony little -face. All she could suggest to break the tension was to ask if he -wouldn't like his supper. - -He went to his supper and ate it. He ate it ruminantly, speechlessly. -What had happened to him he could not measure; what was before him he -could not probe. All he knew of himself was that he had become a clod -of misery, with almost nothing to temper his desolation. - -Two big tears rolled down his cheeks without his being aware of it. -They did not, however, escape the eyes of a little girl who sat near -him. - -"Who's a cry-baby?" she shrieked, to the entertainment of the -lookers-on. She pointed at him with her spoon. "A grea' big boy like -that cryin' for his momma!" - -He accepted the scorn as a tonic. "A grea' big boy like that cryin' for -his momma," were the words with which he kept many a pang during the -next few days from being more than a tearless anguish. - -Miss Honiton was as good as her word as to going with him to the rooms -which housed the long black box. This he understood to be all that -now represented his mudda. She had tried to explain the place as an -"undertaker's parlor," but the words were outside his vocabulary. In -the same way the why and the wherefore of the ceremony were outside his -intelligence. He and Miss Honiton went into the dim room, and stood -near the thing he heard mentioned as "the body." After some mumbled -reading they went out again, and back to the Swindon Street Home. - -Back in the Swindon Street Home he was still without a wherefore or a -why. He got up, he washed, he dressed, he ate, he went to bed again. He -was in a dormitory now with three other little boys, all of them too -deep in the problems of parents in jail or in parts unknown to offer -him much fellowship. They cried when they were left alone in bed, or -they cried in their sleep; but they cried. It was his own pride, and in -no small measure his strength, that he didn't cry, unless he cried in -dreams. - -Everyone was good to him, Mrs. Crewdson and Miss Honiton especially, -but no one could give him the clue to life which instinctively he -clutched for. That one didn't stay forever in the Swindon Street Home -he could see from observation. The children he had found there went -away; other children came. Some of these stayed but a night or two. -None of them stayed much longer. By those sixth and seventh senses -which children develop when they are in trouble he divined that -conferences were taking place on his behalf. Now and then he detected -glances shot toward him by the matrons in discussion which told him -that he was being talked about. It was easy to deduce that he was in -the Swindon Street Home longer than was the custom because they didn't -know what to do with him. He inferred that they didn't know what to do -with him from the many questions which many people asked. Sometimes it -was a man, more times it was a woman, but the questions were always -along the lines of those of Miss Honiton as he came out from the -children's Christmas Tree. Had he any relatives? Had he any friends? -If he had they ought to look after him. It was hard for these kindly -people to believe that he had no claim whatever on any member of the -human race. - -He began to hear the words, a State ward. Though they meant nothing -to him at first, he strove, as he always did, with new words and -expressions, to find their application. Then one evening, as Mrs. -Crewdson was putting him to bed, she told him that that was what he had -become. - -"You see, darling, now that your father and mother are both dead, the -whole country is going to adopt you. Isn't that nice? And it isn't -everything. You're going to have a home--not a home like this--what we -call an institution--but a real home--with a real father and mother in -it, and real brothers and sisters." - -He took this stolidly. He was not to be moved now by anything that -could happen. A waif on the world, the world had the right to pitch him -in any direction that it chose. All he could do with his own desires -was to beat them into submission. He mustn't cry! His fears and his -griefs alike focussed themselves into that resolve. It was the only way -in which he could translate his stout-hearted will to endure. - - - - -VIII - - -To conduct him to his new home, Mrs. Crewdson gave up the whole of -the morning she was supposed to spend in sleep after her all-night -vigil. The home was in a little town a short distance up the Hudson. -Though the railway journey was not long, it was the longest he had ever -taken, and, once the river came within view, it was not without its -excitements. His spirits began to rise with a sense of new adventure. -There were things to look at, bridges, steamers, a man-o'-war at -anchor, lumber yards, coal sheds, an open-air exhibit of mortuary -monuments, and high overhead the clear cold blue of a January sky. -On the other side of the river the wooded heights made a bold brown -bastion, flecked here and there with snow. - -As he had not asked where they were going, or the composition of the -family with whom the Guardian of State Wards was placing him, his -protectress permitted him to make his own discoveries. New faces, new -contacts, new necessities, would help him to forget the old. - -They got out at the station of Harfrey. Mrs. Crewdson carried the -suitcase containing the wardrobe rescued when they had searched the -rooms which he and his mother had occupied last. In front of the -station they got on a ramshackle street car, which zigzagged up the -face of the bank, rising steeply from the river, so reaching the -little town. They turned sharply at the top of the ridge to run through -the one long street. It was a mean-looking street of drab wooden -dwellings and drab wooden shops, occupied mostly by people dependent -on the grand seigneurs of the neighboring big "places." An ugly -schoolhouse, an ugly engine house, two or three ugly churches, further -defied that beauty of which God had been so generous. - -Having got out at a corner at which the car stopped, they walked to a -small wooden house with a mansard roof, standing back from the street. -It was a putty-colored house, with window and door frames in flecked, -anæmic yellow. Perched on the edge of the ridge, it had three stories -at the back and but two in front. What had once been an orchard had -dwindled now to three or four apple trees, the rest of the ground being -utilized as a chicken run. As the day was sunny, a few Plymouth Rocks -were scratching and pecking in the yard. - -Having turned in here, they found themselves expected, the front -door opening before they reached the cement slab in front of it. The -greetings were all for Mrs. Crewdson, who was plainly an old friend. -The boy went in only because Mrs. Crewdson went in, and in the same way -proceeded to a cheery, shabby sitting room. Here there were books and -magazines about, while a canary in a cage began to sing as soon as he -heard voices. To a homeless little boy the haven was so sweet that he -forgot to take off his cap. - -The first few minutes were consumed in questions as to this one -and that one, relatives apparently, together with data given and -received as to certain recognized maladies. Mrs. Crewdson was getting -better of her headaches, but Mrs. Tollivant still suffered from her -varicose veins. Only when these preliminaries were out of the way and -Mrs. Crewdson had thrown off her outer wraps, was the introduction -accomplished. - -"So I've brought you the boy! Tom, dear, this is Mrs. Tollivant who's -going to take care of you. Your cap, Tom! I imagine," she continued, -with an apologetic smile, "you'll find manners very rudimentary." - -Obliged to take an early train back to New York, Mrs. Crewdson talked -with veiled, confidential frankness. A boy of seven could not be -supposed to seize the drift of her cautious phraseology, even if he -heard some of it. - -"So you know the main features of the case.... I told them it wouldn't -be fair to you to let you assume so much responsibility without your -knowing the whole.... With children of your own to think of, you -couldn't expose them to a harmful influence unless you were put in -a position to take every precaution against.... Not that we've seen -anything ourselves.... But, of course, after such a bringing up there -can't but be traces.... And such good material there.... I'm sure -you'll find it so.... Personally, I haven't seen a human being in -a long time to whom my heart has gone.... Only there it is.... An -inheritance which can't but be...." - -He didn't feel betrayed. He had nothing to resent. Mrs. Crewdson had -proved herself his friend, and he trusted her. Without knowing all the -words she used, he caught easily enough the nature of the sentiments -they stood for. These he accepted meekly. He was a bad boy. His mother -and he had been engaged in wicked practices. Dimly, in unallayed mental -discomfort, he had been convinced of this himself; and now it was clear -to everyone. If they hadn't known what to do with him it was because a -bad boy couldn't fit rightly into a world where everyone else was good. -A young evildoer, he had no rôle left but that of humility. - -He was the more keenly aware of this after Mrs. Crewdson had bidden him -farewell, and he was face to face with his new foster mother. A wiry -little woman, quick in action and sharp in tongue, she would be kind -to him, with a nervous, nagging kindness. He got this impression, as -he got an odor or a taste, without having to define or analyze. Later -in life, when he had come to observe something of the stamp which -professions leave on personalities, he was not surprised that she -should have worn herself out in school-teaching before marrying Andrew -Tollivant, a book-keeper. As he sat now, just as Mrs. Crewdson had left -him, his overcoat still on his back, his cap in his hand, his feet -dangling because the chair was too high for him, she treated him as if -he were a class. - -"Now, little boy, before we go any farther, you and I had better -understand each other." - -With this brisk call to his attention, she sat down in front of him, -frightening him to begin with. - -"You know that this is now to be your home, and I intend to do my duty -by you to the best of my ability. Mr. Tollivant will do the same. If -you take the children in the right way I'm sure you'll find them -friendly. They were very nice to the last little boy the Board of -Guardians sent to us." - -Staring in fascinated awe at the starry brightness of her eyes, and the -wrinkles of worry around them, he waited in silence for more. - -"But one or two things I hope you'll remember on your side. Perhaps -you haven't heard that the Board has found it hard to get anyone to -take you. You're old enough to know that where there are children in a -family people are shy of a boy who's had just your history. But I've -run the risk. It's a great risk, I admit, and may be dangerous to my -own. Do you understand what I mean?" - -"No, ma'am," he said, blankly. - -"Then I'll tell you. There are two things children must learn as soon -as they're able to learn anything. One is to be honest; the other is to -tell the truth. You know what telling the truth is, don't you?" - -He did know, but paralyzed by her earnestness, he denied the fact. "No, -ma'am." - -"So there you are! And I don't suppose you've been taught anything -about honesty." - -"No, ma'am." - -"Then you must begin to learn." - -He began to learn that minute. Still treating him as a class, she -delivered a little lecture, such as a child of tender years could -understand, on the two basic virtues of which he had pleaded ignorance. -He listened as in a trance, his eyes fixed on her vacantly. Though -seizing a disconnected word or two, fear kept him from getting the -gist of it all, as he generally did. - -"It's your influence on the children that I want you to beware of. -Arthur is older than you, but he's only ten; and a boy with your -experience could easily teach him a good deal of harm. Cilly is eight, -and Bertie only five. You'll be careful with them, won't you? Do you -know that if we lead others astray God will call us to account for it?" - -"No, ma'am." - -"Well, He will; and I want you to remember it, and be afraid. Unless -you're afraid of God you'll never grow into the good boy I hope we're -going to make of you." - -The homily finished, he was instructed in the ways of the upper floor, -where, in the sloping space under the eaves, he was to have his room. -After this he came back to the sitting room, not knowing what else to -do. He was in a daze. It was as if he had dropped on another planet -where nothing was familiar. Whether to stand up or sit down he didn't -know. He didn't know what to think, or what to think about. Cut loose -from his bearings, he floated in mental space. - -As standing seemed to commit him to least that was wrong, he stood. -Standing implied looking out of the window, and looking out of the -window showed him, about half past twelve, a well-built boy, rosy with -the cold, noisy from exuberance of spirit, swinging in at the gate and -brandishing a hockey stick. From her preparation of the dinner his -mother ran to meet him at the door. She spoke in a loud whisper that -easily reached the sitting room. - -"Now be careful, Arthur. He's come. He's in there." - -Arthur responded with noisy indifference. "Who? The crook?" - -"Sh-h-h, dear! You mustn't call him that. We must help him to forget -it, and to grow into being like ourselves." - -Arthur grunted noncommittally. Presently he strolled into the sitting -room, whistling a tune. With hands in his pockets, his bearing was that -of an overlord. He made a circuit of the room, eying the new guest, as -the new guest eyed him back. - -"Hello?" the overlord said at last, with a faint note of interrogation. - -Still whistling and still with his hands in his pockets, he strolled -out again. - -Tom Whitelaw's nerves had become so many runlets for shame. He was -the crook! He knew the word as one which crooks themselves use -contemptuously. If he should hear it again.... But happily Mrs. -Tollivant had put her veto on its use. - -The gate clicked again. Coming up the pathway, he saw a girl of about -his own age, with a boy much younger who swung himself on crutches. All -his movements were twisted and grotesque. His head was sunk into his -shoulders as if he had no neck. His feet and legs wore metal braces. -His face had the uncannily aged look produced by suffering. Without -actually helping him, the little girl kept by his side maternally. She -was a dainty little girl, very fair, with shiny yellow hair hanging -down her back, like a fairy princess in a picture book. The boy looking -out of the window fell in love with her at sight. He was sure that in -her he would find a friend. - -On entering she called out in a whiny voice, very musical to Tom -Whitelaw's ear: - -"Ma! Bertie's been a naughty boy. He wouldn't sing 'Pretty Birdling' -for Miss Smallbones. I told him you'd punish him, and you will, won't -you, ma?" - -As there was no response to this, the young ones came to the door of -the sitting room and looked in. They stared at the stranger, and the -stranger stared at them, with the unabashed frankness of young animals. -Having stared their fill, the son and daughter of the house went off to -ask about dinner. - -To Tom that dinner was another new experience. For the first time in -his life he sat down to what is known as a family meal. Attempts had -sometimes been made by well-meaning women in the tenements to rope -him to their tables, but his mother had never permitted him to yield -to them. Now he sat down with those of his own age, to be served like -them, and on some sort of footing of equality. The honor was so great -that he could hardly swallow. Second helpings were beyond him. - -The afternoon was blank again. "You'll begin to go to school on -Monday," Mrs. Tollivant had explained; but in the meantime he had the -hours to himself. They were long. He was lonely. Having been given -permission to go into the yard, he stood studying the Plymouth Rocks. -Presently he was conscious of a light step behind him. Before he had -time to turn around he also heard a voice. It was a whiny voice, yet -sharp and peremptory. - -"You stop looking at our hens." - -The fairy princess had not come up to him; she had paused some two -or three yards away. Her expression was so haughty that it hurt him. -It hurt him more from her than from anybody else because of his -admiration. He looked at her beseechingly, not for permission to go on -studying the Plymouth Rocks, but for some shade of relenting. He got -none. The sharp little face was as glittering and cold as one of the -icicles hanging from the roof behind her. Heavy at heart, he turned to -go into the house by the back door. - -He had climbed most of the hill when the clear, whiny voice arrested -him. - -"Who's a crook?" - -At this stab in the back he leaped round, fury in his dark blue eyes. -But the fairy princess was used to fury in dark blue eyes, and knew -how best to defy it. The tip of the tongue she thrust out at him added -insolence to insult. He turned again, and, wounded in all his being, -went on into the house. - -Near the back door there was a sun parlor, and in it he saw Bertie, -squatting in a small-wheeled chair built for his convenience. Bertie -called to him invitingly. - -"I've got a book." - -"I've got a book, too," he returned, in Bertie's own spirit. - -"You show me your book, and I'll show you mine." - -The proposal being fair, he went in search of his History of Mankind. -In a few minutes he was seated on the floor beside Bertie's chair, -exchanging literary criticisms. He liked Bertie. He had a premonition -that Bertie was going to like him. After the disdain of the fairy -princess, and the superciliousness of the overlord, this was -comforting. Moreover, he could return Bertie's friendliness by doing -things for him which no one else had time to do. He could push his -wheeled chair; he could run his errands; he could fetch and carry; he -would like doing it. - -"I've got infantile paralysis." - -"I've got a rubber ball." - -"I've got a train." - -"I've got a funny little man what dances." - -Coming into the house, Cilly found them the best of friends, in the -best of spirits. Without entering the sun-parlor, she spoke through the -doorway, coldly. - -"Bertie, I don't think momma would like you to act like that. I'll go -and ask her." - -Mrs. Tollivant hurried from the kitchen, scouring a saucepan as she -looked in on them. Seeing nothing amiss, she went away again. Then as -if distrusting her own vision, she came back. She came back more than -once, anxiously, suspiciously. Bertie was enjoying himself with this -boy picked out of the gutter. That the boy had been picked out of the -gutter was not what troubled her, but that Bertie should enjoy himself -in the lad's society. Wise enough not to put notions into Bertie's -head, she stopped her ward later in the day, when she had the chance to -speak to him alone. - -"I saw you playing with Bertie. Well, that's all right. Only you'll -remember your promise, won't you? You won't teach him anything harmful?" - -"No, ma'am," the boy answered, humbly, as one who has a large selection -of harmful things to impart. - - - - -IX - - -He had looked forward to Monday and school. After four days in the -Tollivant household he was eager for relief from it. Except for Cilly's -occasional, and always private, taunts, they were not unkind to him; -they only treated him as an outcast whom they had been obliged to -succor because no one else would do so. He had the same food and drink -as they; his room was good enough; of whatever was material he had no -complaint to make. There was only the distrust which rendered his bread -bitter and the bed hard to lie upon. They didn't take him in as one of -them. They kept him outside, an alien, an intruder. - -It was again a new experience in that for the first time in his life he -was doing without love. When he was Tom Coburn he had had plenty of it -at the worst of times. The Swindon Street Home was full of it. In the -Tollivant house it was the only thing weighed and measured and stinted. -He couldn't, of course, make this analysis. He only knew that something -on which his life depended was not given him. - -He hoped to find it in the school. In any case the school would admit -him to the larger life. It would bind him to that human family which he -had so long craved to enter. In addition to that, it was at school you -learned things. - -He was the more eager to learn things for the reason that Mrs. -Tollivant had declared him backward. In the primary school Cilly was in -the second grade; he must go into the first. He would be with children -a year younger than himself. But the humiliation would be an incentive -to ambition. He had already decided that only by "knowing things" -should he be able to lift himself out of his despised estate. - -The school session was all he had hoped for. Miss Pollard, the teacher, -put in touch with his story by Mrs. Tollivant, kept him near to her, -and watched over him. He learned to discriminate between _his_, _has_, -and _had_, as matters of orthography, as well as between _cat_, -_car_, and _can_. That twice two made four and twice four made eight -added much to his understanding of numbers. He sang _Roving the Old -Homeland_, while Miss Pollard pointed on the map to the places as they -were named. - - From Plymouth town to Plymouth town - The Pilgrims made their way; - The Puritans settled Salem, - And Boston on the Bay. - -The air had a rhythm and a lilt which allowed for the inclusion of any -reasonable number of redundant syllables. - - The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam, - Where the blue waters fork; - The English came and conquered it, - And turned it into New York. - -A little history, a little geography, being taught by the simple method -of doggerel, much pleasure was evoked by the exercise of healthy -lungs. Listening to her new pupil, Miss Pollard discovered a sweet -treble that had never before been aware of itself, with a linnet's joy -in piping. A linnet's joy was his joy throughout the whole morning, -with no more than a slight flaw in his ecstasy in the thought of two -hours in the Tollivant home before he came back for the afternoon. - -As Cilly called for Bertie at the kindergarten, he walked homeward -by himself. Happy with a happiness never experienced before, he had -not noticed that his school-mates hung away from him, tittering as -he passed. To well-dressed little boys and girls his worn old cap, -his frayed knickerbockers, and above all his cheap gray overcoat with -a stringy sheepskin collar, naturally marked him for derision. They -would have marked him for derision even had his story not been known to -everyone. - -He went singing on his way, stepping manfully to the measure. - - The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam, - Where the blue waters fork; - The English came and conquered it, - And turned it into New York. - -They massed themselves behind him, convulsed by his lack of -self-consciousness. The little girls giggled; the boys attempted to -make snowballs from snow too powdery to hold together. One lad found -a frozen potato which he hurled in such a way as to skim close to the -singing figure while just missing it. Tom Whitelaw, unsuspicious of -ill-will, turned round in curiosity. He was greeted by a hoot from the -crowd, but from whom he couldn't tell. - -"Who's the boy what his mother was put in jail?" - -The hoot became a chorus of jeers. By one after another the insult was -taken up. - -"Who's the boy what his mother was put in jaaa-il?" - -As far as he was able to distinguish, the voices of the little girls -were the louder. In their merriment they screamed piercingly. - -"Gutter-snipe! Gutter-rat! Crook! Crook! Crook! Who's the boy what his -mother was put in ja-aa-ail?" - -Crimson, with clenched fists, with gnashing teeth, with tears of rage -in his eyes, he stood his ground while they came on. They swept toward -him in a semicircle of which he made the center. Very well! So much the -better! He could spring on at least one of them, and dash his brains -out on the ground. There was no ferocity he would not enjoy putting -into execution. - -He sprang, but amid the yells of the crowd his prey dodged and escaped -him. The semicircle broke. Instead of advancing in massed formation, it -danced round him now as forty or fifty imps. The imps bewildered him, -as _banderilleros_ bewilder a bull in the ring. He didn't know which to -attack. When he lunged at one, the charge was diverted by another, so -that he struck at the air wildly. Shrieks of mockery at these failures -maddened him, with the heartbreaking madness of a loving thing goaded -out of all semblance to itself. He panted, he groaned, he dashed about -foolishly, he stumbled, he fell. When pelted with pebbles or scraps of -ice, he was hardly aware of the rain upon his head. - -But the mob swept on, leaving him behind. At gates and corners the boy -baiters disappeared, hungry for their dinners. Most of them forgot him -as soon as they had turned their backs. It was easy for them to stop -for awhile since they could begin again. - -He was alone on the gritty, icy slope surrounding the schoolhouse. -There was no comfort for him in the world. Faintly he remembered as a -satisfaction that he hadn't cried, but even this consolation was cold. -He wondered if he couldn't kill himself. - -He did not kill himself, though he pondered ways and means of doing -it. He came to the conclusion that it would be foolish to kill himself -before killing some of his tormentors. He prayed about it that night, -his first prayer, except for the one taught him on Christmas Eve by -Mrs. Crewdson. - -To the family devotions, for which all were assembled about eight -o'clock, before the younger children went to bed, Mr. Tollivant had -begun to add a new petition. - -"And, O Heavenly Father, take pity on the little stranger within our -gates, even as we have welcomed him into our home. Blot out his past -from Thy book. Give him a new heart. Make him truthful and honest -especially. Help him to be gentle, obedient...." - -But savagely the boy intervened on his own behalf. "O Heavenly Father, -don't! Don't give me a new heart, or make me gentle and obedient, till -I kill some of them fellows that called me a crook, for Jesus Christ's -sake, Amen." - - - - -X - - -He killed none of the fellows who called him a crook, though during the -first two years of his schooling he was called a crook pretty often. -Whatever grade he was in, he was always that boy who differs from -other boys, and is therefore the black swan in a flock of white ones. -Whatever his progress, he made it to the tune of his own history. He -was a gutter-snipe. His mother had killed herself in jail! Before she -had killed herself both he and she had been arrested for thieving in -a shop! There was not a house in Harfrey where the tale was not told. -There was never a boy or girl in the school who hadn't learned it -before making his acquaintance. - -Besides, they said of him, he would have been "different" anyhow. Being -"different" was an offense less easily pardoned than being criminal. -Dressed more poorly than they, and with no claims of a social kind, he -carried himself with that bearing which they could only describe as -putting on airs. It was Cilly Tollivant who first brought this charge -home to him. - -"But I don't, Cilly," he protested, earnestly. "I don't know how to be -any other way." - -Cilly was by this time growing sisterly. She couldn't live in the house -with him and not feel her heart relenting, and though she disdained him -in public, as her own interests compelled her to do, in private she -tried to help him. - -"Don't know how to be any other way!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "Tom -Whitelaw, you make me sick. Don't you know even how to _talk_ right?" - -"Yes, but...." - -"There you go," she interrupted, bitterly. "Why can't you say _Yep_, -like anybody else?" - -He took the suggestion humbly. He would try. His only explanation of -his eccentricity was that _Yep_ and _Nope_ didn't suit his tongue. - -But adopting Yep and Nope, as he might have adopted words from a -foreign language, adopting much else that was crude and crass and -vulgar and noisy and swaggering and standardized, according to -schoolboy notions of the standard, he still found himself "different." -For one thing, he looked different. Debase his language as he might, or -coarsen his manners, or stultify his impulses, he couldn't keep himself -from shooting up tall and straight, with a carriage of the head which -was in itself an offense to those who knew themselves inferior. It -made nothing easier for him that his teachers liked and respected him. -"Teacher's pet" was a term of reproach hardly less painful than crook -or gutter-snipe. But he couldn't help learning easily; he couldn't -help answering politely when politely spoken to; he couldn't help the -rapture of his smile when a friendly word came his way. All this told -against him. He was guyed, teased, worried, tortured. If there was a -cap to be snatched it was his. If there was one of a pair of rubber -shoes to be stolen or hidden it was his. If there was an exercise -book to be grabbed and thrown up into a tree where the owner could be -pelted while he clambered after it, it was his. Because he was poor, -friendless, defenseless, and yet with damnable pride written all over -him, it became a recognized law of the school that any meanness done to -him would be legitimate. - -But in his third year at the Tollivants the persecution waned, and in -the fourth it stopped. His school-mates grew. Growing, they developed -other instincts. Fair play was one of them; admiration for pluck was -another. - -"You've got to hand it to that kid," Arthur Tollivant, now fourteen, -had been heard to say in a circle of his friends. "He's stood -everything and never squealed a yelp. Some young tough, believe me!" - -This good opinion was reflected among the lads of Tom Whitelaw's own -age. They had never been cruel; they had only been primitive. Having -passed beyond that stage, they forgot to no small degree what they had -done while in it. The boy who at seven was the crook was at eleven -Whitey the Sprinter. He walked to and from school with the best of -them. With the best of them he played and fought and swore privately. -If he put on airs it was the airs of being a much sadder dog than he -was, daring to smoke a cigarette and go home with the smell of the -wickedness on his breath. - -So, outwardly, Tom Whitelaw came in for two full years of good-natured -toleration. If it did not go further than toleration it was because -he was a State ward. On the baseball or the football team he might be -welcomed as an equal; in homes there was discrimination. He was not -invited to parties, and among the young people of Harfrey parties -were not few. Girls who met him at the Tollivants' didn't speak to him -outside. When Cilly, now being known as Cecilia, had her friends to -celebrate her birthday, he remained in his room with no protest from -the family at not joining them. None the less, it was a relief to be -free from jeering in the streets, as well as from being reminded every -day at school of his mother's tragedy. It was a relief to him; but it -was no more. - -For more than that the wound had gone too deep. Outwardly, he accepted -their approaches; in his heart he rejected them, biding his time. He -was biding his time, not with longings for revenge--he was too sensible -now for that--but in the hope of passing on and forgetting them. By the -time he was twelve he was already aware of his impulse toward growth. - -It was in his soul as a secret conviction, the seed's knowledge of its -own capacity to germinate. Most of the boys and girls around him he -could judge, not by a precocious worldly wisdom, but by his gift for -intuitive sizing up. Their range was so far and no farther, and they -themselves were aware of it. They would become clerks and plumbers and -carpenters and school-teachers and shoe dealers and provision men, and -whatever else could reach its fulfillment in a small country town. He -himself felt no limit. Life was big. He knew he could expand in it. -To nurse resentments would be small, and would keep him small. All he -asked was to forget them, to forget, too, those who called them forth; -but to that end he must be far away. - - - - -XI - - -The road to this Far-away began in the summer vacation of the year when -he was supposed to be twelve. It was the year when he first went to -work, though the work was meant to last for no more than a few weeks. - -Mr. Quidmore, a market gardener at Bere, in Connecticut, some seven -or eight miles eastward toward the Sound, had come over to ask Mr. -Tollivant for a few hours' work in straightening out his accounts. -Straightening out accounts for men who were but amateurs at bookkeeping -was a means by which Mr. Tollivant eked out his none-too-generous -salary. - -It was a Sunday afternoon in June. They were in the yard, looking at -the Plymouth Rocks behind their defenses of chicken-wire. That is, Mr. -Quidmore was looking at the Plymouth Rocks, but Tom was looking at Mr. -Quidmore. Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant were giving their guest information as -to how they raised their hens and marketed their eggs. - -It was a family affair. Mrs. Tollivant prepared the food; Cecilia fed -the birds; Art hunted for the eggs; Bertie and Tom packed them. Mr. -Quidmore was moved to say: - -"I wish I had a fine boy like your Art to help me with the -berrypicking. Good money in it. Three a week and his keep for as long -as the strawberries hold out." - -Tom saw Mrs. Tollivant shake her head at her husband behind Mr. -Quidmore's back. This meant disapproval. Disapproval could not be -disapproval of the work, but of Mr. Quidmore. Art already gave his -holiday services to a dairy for a dollar less than Mr. Quidmore's -offer, and no keep. It was the employer, then, and not the employment -that Mrs. Tollivant distrusted. - -And yet Mr. Quidmore fascinated Tom. He had never before seen anyone -whose joints had the looseness of one of those toys which you worked -with a string. He was so slim, too, that you got little or no -impression of a body beneath his flapping clothes. Nervously restless, -he walked with a shuffle of which the object seemed the keeping of his -shoes from falling off. When he talked or laughed one side of his long -thin face was screwed up as if by some early injury or paralysis. The -right portion of his lips could smile, while the left trembled into -a rictus. This made his speech slower and more drawling than Tom was -accustomed to hear; but his voice was naturally soft, with a quality in -it like cream. It was the voice that Tom liked especially. - -In reply to the suggestion about Art, Mr. Tollivant replied, as one who -sees only a well-meant business proposal, - -"We'd like nothing better, Brother Quidmore; but the fact is Art has -about as much as he can do for the rest of his vacation." He waved his -hand toward Tom. "What do you say to this boy?" - -At the glorious suggestion Tom's heart began to fail for fear. He was -not a fine boy like Arthur Tollivant. The possibility of earning -three dollars a week, to say nothing of his board, was too much like -the opening up of an Aladdin's palace for the hope to be more than -deceptive. It was part of his daily humiliation never to have had -any money of his own. The paternity of the State paid for his food, -shelter, and education; but it never supplied him with cash, or with -any cash that he ever saw. To have three dollars a week jingling in -his pocket would not only lift him out of his impotent dependence, but -would make him a man. While Mr. Quidmore walked round him, inspecting -him as if he were a dog or pig or other small animal for sale, he held -himself with straightness, dignity, and strength. If he was for sale he -would do his best to be worthy of his price. - -Mr. Quidmore nodded toward Mr. Tollivant. "State ward, ain't he?" - -Mr. Tollivant admitted that he was. - -"Youngster whose moth--" - -Mrs. Tollivant interrupted kindly. "You needn't be afraid of that. He's -been with us for five years. I think I may say that all traces of the -past have been outlived. We can really give him a good character." - -Tom was grateful. Mr. Quidmore examined him again. At last he shuffled -up to him, throwing his arm across his shoulder, and drawing him close -to himself. - -"What about it, young fellow? Want to come?" - -Entirely won by this display of kindliness, the boy smiled up into the -twisted face. "Yes, sir." - -"Then that's settled. Put your duds together, and we'll go along. I -guess," he added to Mr. Tollivant, "that you can stretch a point to let -him come, and get your permit from the Guardians to-morrow." - -Mr. Tollivant agreeing that after five years' care he could venture as -much as this, they drove over to Bere in Mr. Quidmore's dilapidated -motor car. Mrs. Quidmore met them at the door. Her husband called to -her: - -"Hello, there! Got a new hand to help you with the strawberries." - -She answered, dejectedly. "If he's as good as some of the other new -hands you've picked up lately--" - -"Oh, rats! Give us a rest! If I brought the angel Gabriel to pick the -berries you'd see something to find fault with." - -That there was a rift within the lute of this couple's happiness was -clear to Tom before he had climbed out of the machine. - -"Where's he to sleep?" Mrs. Quidmore asked in her tone of discontent. - -"I suppose he can sleep in the barn, can't he?" - -"I wouldn't put a dog to sleep in that barn, nasty, smelly, rotten -place." - -"Well, put him to sleep where you like. He'll get three a week and -his keep while he's here, and that's all I'm responsible for." Mrs. -Quidmore turned and went into the house. Her husband winked at Tom as -man to man. "Can you beat it? Always like that. God! I don't know how I -stand it. Get in." - -Tom got in, finding an interior as slack as Mrs. Quidmore herself. The -Tollivant house, with four children in it, was often belittered, but -with a little tidying it became spick and span. Here the housekeeping -wore an air of hopelessness. Whoever did it did it without heart. - -"God! I hate to come into this place," its master confided to Tom, as -they stood in the hall, of which the rug lay askew, while a mirror hung -crooked on the wall. "You and me could keep the shack looking dandier -than this if she wasn't here at all. I wish to the Lord...." - -But before the week was out the boy had won over Mrs. Quidmore, and -begun to make her fond of him. Because he was eager to be useful, he -helped her in the house, showing solicitude, too, on her personal -account. A low-keyed, sad-eyed woman who did nothing to make herself -attractive, she blamed her husband for perceiving the loss of her -attractiveness. - -"He's bound to me," she would complain, tearfully, to the boy, as he -dried the dishes she had washed. "It's his duty to be fond of me. But -he ain't. There's fifty women he likes better than he does me." - -This note of married infelicity was new to Tom, especially as it -reached him from both parties to the contract. - -"God, how she gets my goat! Sometimes I think how much I'd enjoy seeing -her stretched out with a bullet through her head. I tell you that the -fellow who'd do that for me wouldn't be sorry in the end...." - -To the boy these words were meaningless. The creamy drawl with which -they were uttered robbed them of the vicious or ferocious, making them -mere humorous explosions. He could laugh at them, and yet he laughed -with a feeling of discomfort. - -The discomfort was the greater because in kindness to him lay the -one point as to which the couple were agreed. Making no attempt to -reconcile elements so discordant, all he could do was to soften the -conditions which each found distasteful. He kept the house tidier -for the man; he did for the woman a few of the things her husband -overlooked. - -"It's him that ought to do that," she would point out, in dull -rebellion. "He's doing it for some other woman I'll be bound. Who _is_ -that woman that he meets?" - -Conjugal betrayal was also new to Tom, and not easily comprehensible. -That a man with a wife should also be "going with a girl" was a -possibility that had never come within his experience while living with -the Tollivants. He had heard a good many things from Art, as also from -some other boys, but this event seemed to have escaped even their wide -observation. It would have escaped his own had not Mrs. Quidmore harped -on it. - -"I do believe he'd like to see me in my grave. I'm in their way, and -they'd like to get me out of it. Oh, you needn't tell me! Couldn't you -keep an eye on him, and tell me what she's like?" - -For Mrs. Quidmore's sake he watched Mr. Quidmore, but as he didn't know -what he was watching him for the results were not helpful. And he liked -them both. He might have said that he loved them both, since loving -came to him so easily. Mrs. Quidmore washed and mended his clothes, -and whenever she went to Harfrey or some other town she added to his -wardrobe. Mr. Quidmore was forever dropping into his ear some gentle, -honeyed confidence of which Mrs. Quidmore was the butt. Neither of them -ever scolded him, or overworked him. He was in the house almost as a -son. And then one day he learned that he was to be there altogether as -a son. - - - - -XII - - -He never knew how and when the question as to his adoption had been -raised, or whether the husband or the wife had raised it first. Here, -too, the steps were taken with that kind of mystification which -shrouded so much of his destiny. He himself was not consulted till, -apparently, all the principal parties but himself had decided on the -matter. One of the Guardians, or a representative, asked him the formal -question as to whether or not he should like it, and being answered -with a Yes, had gone away. The next thing he knew he had legally become -the son of Martin and Anna Quidmore, and was to be henceforth called by -their name. - -The outward changes were not many. He had won so much freedom in the -house that when he became its son and heir there was, for the minute, -little more to give him. His new mother grew more openly affectionate; -his new father drove him round in the dilapidated car and showed him to -the neighbors as his boy. As far as Tom could judge, there was general -approval. Martin Quidmore had taken a poor outcast lad and given him a -home and a status in the world. All good people must rejoice in this -sort of generosity. The new father rejoiced in it himself, smiling with -a twisted smile that was like a leer, the only thing about him which -the new son was afraid of. - -It was August now. The picking of the strawberries having long been -over, the boy had been kept on for other jobs. He still worked at them. -He dug potatoes; he picked peas and beans; he pulled carrots, parsnips, -and beets; he culled cucumbers. The hired hands did the heaviest work, -but he shared in it to the limit of his strength. Sometimes he went -off early in the morning on the great lorry, loaded with garden-truck, -which his father drove to the big markets. - -On these journeys the new father grew most confidential and lovable. -His mellifluous voice, which was sad and at the same time not quite -serious, was lovable in itself. - -"God, how I'd like to give you a better home than you've got! But it's -no use, not as long as she's there. She'll never be anything different. -She'd not make things brighter or cleaner or jollier, not even if she -was to try." - -"Well, she _is_ trying," the boy declared, in her defense; but the only -answer was a melancholy laugh. - -And yet now that he had the duties, of a son, he set to work to improve -the family relationships. He petted the mother, he cajoled the father. -He found small ruses of affection in which, as it seemed to him, he -gained both the one and the other, insensibly to either. His proof of -this came one morning as once more they were driving to one of the big -markets. - -"Say, boy, I'm beginning to be worried about her. I don't think she -can be well. She's never been sick much; but gosh! now I'll be hanged -if I don't think I'll go and see a doctor and ask him to give her some -medicine." - -As this thoughtfulness, in spite of all indications to the contrary, -implied a fundamental tenderness, the boy was glad of it. He was the -more glad of it when, on a morning some days later, and in the same -situation, the father drawled, in his casual way: - -"Say, I've seen that doctor, and he's given me something he wants her -to take. Thinks it will put her all right in no time." - -"And did you give it to her?" he asked, eagerly. - -The honeyed voice grew sweeter. "Well, no; that's the trouble. You -can't get her to take doctor's stuff, if she knows she's taking it. Got -to get her on the sly. Once when she needed a tonic I used to watch -round and put it in her tea. Bucked her up fine." - -"And is that what you're going to do now?" - -"Well, I would, only she'd be afraid of me. Watches me like a cat, -don't you see she does? What I was thinking of was this. You know she -makes a cup of tea for herself every day in the middle of the afternoon -while we're out at work. Well, now, if you could make an excuse to -slip into the kitchen, and put one of these powders in her teapot--" -he tapped the packet in his waistcoat pocket--"she'd never suspect -nothing. She'd take it--and be cured." - -The boy was silent. - -"You don't want to do it, hey?" - -"Oh, I don't say that. I was--I was--just wondering." - -"Wondering what?" - -"Whether it's fair play to anyone to give them medicine when they don't -know they're taking it." - -"But if it's to do them good?" - -"But ought we to do good to people against their wills?" - -"Why, sure! What you thinking of? Still if you don't want to...." - -The tone hurt him. "Oh, but I will." - -"Say I will, _father_. Why don't you call me that? Don't I call you -son?" - -He braced himself to an effort. "All right, father; I will." - -"Good! Then here's the powder." He drew one from the packet. "Don't -let none of it fall. You'll steal into the kitchen this afternoon--she -generally lays down after she's washed the dinner things--and just -empty the paper into the little brown teapot she always makes her tea -in. Then burn the paper in the stove--there's sure to be a fire on--so -that she won't find nothing lying around to make her suspicious. You -understand, don't you?" - -He said he understood, though in his heart of hearts he wished that he -hadn't been charged with the duty. - - - - -XIII - - -If you had asked the boy who was now legally Tom Quidmore why he was -reluctant to give his mother a powder that would do her good he would -have been unable to explain his hesitation. Reason, in the main, was -in favor of his doing it. In the first place, he had promised, and he -had always responded to those exhortations of his teachers which laid -stress on keeping his word. Not to keep his word had come to seem an -offense of the nature of personal defilement. - -Then the whole matter had been thought out and decreed by an authority -higher than himself. The child mind, like the childish mind at all -times, is under the weight of authority. The source of the authority -is a matter of little moment so long as it speaks decidedly enough. It -is always a means by which to get rid of the bother of using private -judgment, which as often as not is a bore to the person with the right -to it. - -In the case of a boy of twelve, private judgment is hampered by a -knowledge of his insufficiency. The man who provides food, clothing, -shelter, is invested with the right to speak. The child mind is -logical, orderly, respectful, and prenatally disposed to discipline. -Except on severe provocation it does not rebel. Tom Quidmore felt no -impulse to rebellion, even though his sense of right and wrong was, -for the moment, mystified. - -He lacked data. Such data as came to his hearing, and less often to -his sight, lay morally outside his range. Like those scientifically -minded men who during the childhood of our race registered the -phenomena of electricity without going further, he had no power of -making deductions from what eyes and ears could record. He knew that -there was in life such an element as sexual love; but that was all -he knew. It entered into the relations of married people, and in -some puzzling way contributed to the birth of children; but of its -wanderings and aberrations he had never heard. That man and wife should -reach a breaking point was no part of his conception of the things that -happened. There was nothing of the kind between the Tollivants, nor -among the parents of the lads with whom he had grown up at Harfrey. -That which at Harfrey had been clear unrelenting daylight was at -Bere a gloaming haunted by strange shapes which perplexed and rather -frightened him. - -Not until he was fourteen or fifteen years of age, and the Quidmore -episode behind him, like an island passed at sea, did the significance -of these queer doings and sayings really occur to him. All that for the -present his mind and experience were equal to was listening, observing, -and wondering. He knew already what it was to have things which he -hadn't understood at the time of their happening become clear as he -grew older. - -An illustration of this came from the small events of that very -afternoon. On going back from his midday dinner to work in the carrot -patch he fixed on half past two as the hour at which he would make -the attempt to force on his mother the prescribed medicine. That time -having arrived, he rose, brushed the earth from his knees, dusted his -hands against each other, and started slowly for the house. A faraway -memory which had been in the back of his mind ever since his father had -made the odd request now began to assert itself, like the throb of an -old pain. - -He was a little boy again. In the dim hall of the Swindon Street Home -he was listening to the friendly policeman talking to Miss Honiton. He -recaptured his own emotions, the dumb distress of the young creature -lost in the dark, and ignorant of everything but its helplessness. His -mother had taken something, or had not taken something, he wasn't sure -which. The beaming young lady handed him his present from the Christmas -Tree, and told him that cyanide of potassium--the words were still -branded on his brain--was a deadly poison. Then he stood once more, as -in memory he had stood so many times, in the half-darkened room where -words were mumbled over the long black box which they spoke of as "the -body." - -Now that it was all in far perspective he knew what it had meant. That -is, he knew the type of woman his mother had been; he knew the kind -of soil he had sprung from. The events of five years back to a boy of -twelve are a very long distance away. So his mother seemed to Tom. -So did the sneaking through shops, and the flights from tenement to -tenement. So did the awful Christmas Eve when he had lost her. He could -think of her tenderly now because he understood that her mind had been -unhinged. What hurt him with a pain which never fell into perspective -was that in trying to create in his boyish way some faint tradition of -self-respect, he worked back always to this origin in shame. - -While seeing no connection between such far-off things and the task -put upon him by his father, he found them jostling each other in his -mind. You took something--and there was disaster. It was as far as his -thought carried him. After that came the fact that, his respect for -authority being strong, he dared not disobey. - -He could only dawdle. A delay of five minutes would be five minutes to -the good. Besides, dawdling on a hot, windless summer afternoon, on -which the butterflies, bees, and humming-birds were the only nonhuman -living things not taking a siesta, eased the muscles cramped with long -crouching in the carrot beds. There being two ways of getting to the -house, he took the longer one. - -The longer one led him round the duck pond, whence the heat had driven -ashore all the ducks and geese with the exception of one gander. For -no particular reason the gander's name was Ernest. Between Ernest and -Gimlets, the wire-haired terrier pup, one of those battles such as -might take place between Bolivia and Switzerland was in full swing of -rage. Gimlets fought from the bank; Ernest from the pond. When Ernest -paddled forward, with neck outstretched and nostrils hissing, Gimlets -scampered to the top of the shelving shore, where he could stand and -bark defiantly. When Ernest swung himself round and made for the -open sea, Gimlets galloped bravely down to the water's edge, yelping -out challenges. This bloody fray gave the boy a further excuse for -lingering. Three or four times had Ernest, stung by the taunts to which -he had tried to seem indifferent, wheeled round on his enemy. Three or -four times had Gimlets scrambled up the bank and down again. But he, -too, recognized authority, and a call that he couldn't disobey. A long -whistle, and the battle was at an end! Gimlets trotted off. - -The whistle came from the grove of pines climbing the little bluff on -the side of the duck pond remote from the house. It struck the boy as -odd that his father should be there at a time when he was supposed -to be cutting New Zealand spinach for the morrow's market. Not to be -caught idling, the boy slipped down the bank to creep undetected below -the pinewood bluff. Neither seeing nor being seen, he nevertheless -heard voices, catching but a single word. The word was Bertha, and it -was spoken by his father. The only Bertha in the place was a certain -beautiful young widow living in Bere. That his father should be talking -to her in the pinewood was another of those details difficult to -explain. - -More difficult to explain he found a little scene he caught on looking -backward. Having now passed the bluff, he was about to round the corner -of the pond where the path led through a plantation of blue spruces -which hid the house. His glancing back was an accident, but it made him -witness of an incident pastoral in its charm. - -Bertha, being indeed the beautiful young widow, the boy was astonished -to see his father steal a kiss from her. Bertha responded with such a -slap as nymphs give to shepherds, running playfully away. His father -shambled after her, as shepherds after nymphs, catching her in his arms. - -Tom plunged into the blue spruce plantation where he could be out of -sight. Hot as he was already, he grew hotter still. What he had seen -was so silly, so stupid, so undignified! He wished he hadn't seen it. -Having seen it, he wished he could forget it. He couldn't forget it -because, unpleasant as he found it, he was somehow aware that it had -bearings beyond unpleasantness. What they were he had nothing to tell -him. He could only run through the plantation as if he would leave the -thing as quickly as possible behind him; and all at once the house came -into sight. - -With the house in sight he remembered again what he had come to do. He -stopped running. His steps again began to lag. Feeling for the powder -in his waistcoat pocket, he reminded himself that it would do his -mother good. The house lay sleeping and silent in the heat. He crept up -to the back door. - -And there at the open window stood his mother rolling dough on a table. -She rolled languidly, as she did everything. Her head drooped a little -to one side; her expression was full of that tremulous protest against -life which might with a word break into a rain of tears. - -Relieved and delighted, he stole round the house, to enter by another -way. She was now lifting a cover of the stove, so that she didn't hear -his approach. Before she knew that anyone was there he had slipped his -arm around her, and smacked a big kiss on her cheek. She turned slowly, -the lifter in her hand. A new life seemed to dawn in her, brightening -her eyes and flushing her sallowness. - -"You bad little boy! What did you come home for?" - -He replied as was true, that he had come for a drink of water. He had -meant to take a drink of water after putting her powder in the teapot. -"I thought," he ended, "you'd be lying down asleep." - -"I was lying down, but something made me get up." - -He was curious. "Something--like what?" - -"Well, I just couldn't sleep. And then I remembered that it was a long -time since I'd made him any of them silver cookies he used to be so -fond of." - -He liked the name. "Is that what you're baking?" - -"Yes; and you'll ..." she went back to the table, picking up the -cutter--"you'll have some for supper if you'll--if you'll call me ma." - -"But I do." - -Her smile had the slow timidity that might have been born of disuse. -"Yes, when I ask you. But I want you to do it all the time, and -natural." - -"All right then; I will--ma." - -While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, cup of water, she -began on the memories dear to her, but which few now would listen -to. She had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also had -been born. His father worked in a powder factory in that city. It was -owing to an explosion when he was a lad that Martin's frame had been -partially paralyzed. - -"He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got a shock. He was awful -delicate, and used to have fits till he grew out of them. I think the -crook in his face makes him look aristocratic, don't you?" - -The boy having said that he didn't know but what it did, she continued -plaintively, cutting out her cookies with a heart-shaped cutter. - -"I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined I wouldn't hardly -do a thing for my mother in the house, or carry the tiniest little -parcel across the street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin -and I were married he let me have a girl for the first two years to do -everything. All he ever expected of me was to get up and dress, and -look stylish; and now...." - -As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob, the boy took the -opportunity to speak of getting back to work. - -"I think I must beat it, ma. I've got all those carrots--" - -"Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a few minutes, can't he? -Anyhow, nothing you can do'll save him from going bankrupt. This place -don't pay. He'll never make it pay. His work was to run a hat store. -That's what he did when he married me, and he made swell money at it, -too." - -The family history interested the boy, as all tales did which accounted -for the personal. He knew now how Martin Quidmore's health had broken -down, and the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy. -Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an uncle hadn't died -and left him fifteen thousand dollars. - -"Enough to live on quite genteel for life," his wife complained, "but -nothing would do but that he should think himself a market-gardener, -him that couldn't tell a turnip from a spade. Blew in the whole thing -on this place, away from everywheres, and making me a drudge that -hardly knew so much as to wash a dish. Even that I could have stood if -he'd only gone on loving me as his marriage vows made it his duty to -do, but--" - -"I'll love you, ma," the boy declared, tenderly. "You don't have to cry -because there's no one to love you, not while I'm around." - -The new life in her eyes was as much of incredulity as of joy. "Don't -say that, dearie, if you don't mean it. You don't have to love me just -because I'm trying to be a mother to you, and look after your clothes." - -"But, ma, I want to. I do." - -They gazed at each other, she with the cutter in her hand, he with the -cup. What he saw was not a feeble, slatternly woman, but some one who -wanted him. He had not been wanted by anyone since the night when his -mudda--he still used the word in his deep silences--had gone away with -the wardress who looked like a Fate. In the five intervening years he -had suffered less from unkindness than from being shut out of hearts. -Here was a heart that had need of him, so that he had need of it. The -type of heart didn't matter. If it made any difference it was only that -where there was weakness the appeal to him was the greater. With this -poor thing he would have something on which to spend his treasure. - -"You'll see, ma! I'll bring in the water for you, and split the -kindlings, and get up in the morning and light the fire, and milk the -cow, and everything." - -Straight and sturdy, he looked at her with the level gaze of eyes that -seemed the calmer and more competent because they were hidden so far -beneath his bushy, horizontal eyebrows. The uniform tan from working in -the sun heightened his air of manliness. Even the earth on his clothes, -and a smudge of it across his forehead where a dirty hand had been put -up to push back his crisp ashen hair, hinted at his capacity to share -in the world's work. To the helpless woman whose prop had failed her, -the coming of this young strength to her aid was little short of a -miracle. - -In the struggle between tears and laughter she was almost hysterical. -"Oh, you darling boy!" she was beginning, advancing to clasp him in her -arms. But with old, old memories in his heart he dreaded the paroxysm -of affection. - -"All right, ma!" he laughed, dodging her and slipping out. "I've got -to beat it, or fath--" he stumbled on the word because he found it -difficult to use--"or father will wonder where I am." But once in the -yard, he called back consolingly, though keeping to the practical, -"Don't you bother about Geraldine. I'll go round by the pasture and -drive her home as I come back from work. I'll milk her, too." - -"God bless you, dearie!" - -Standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand, her limp -figure seemed braced to a new power, as she watched him till he -disappeared within the plantation of blue spruces. - - - - -XIV - - -When a whistle blew at five o'clock the hired men on the Quidmore place -stopped working. As a son of the house, Tom Quidmore paid to the signal -only enough attention to pile his carrots into a wheelbarrow and convey -them to the spot where they would help to furnish the market lorry in -the morning. In fulfillment of his promise to his adopted mother, he -then went in search of Geraldine. - -Of all the tasks that he liked at Bere he liked most going to the -pasture. It was not his regular work. As regular work it belonged to -old Diggory; but old Diggory was as willing to be relieved of it as -Mrs. Quidmore of the milking. Brushing himself down, and washing his -hands at the tap in the garage after a fashion that didn't clean them, -he marched off, whistling. He whistled because his heart was light. His -heart was light because his mother having been in the kitchen, he had -escaped the necessity for giving her the medicine as to which he felt -his odd reluctance. - -Leaving the garage behind him, he threaded a tiny path running through -the beet-field. The turnip-field came next, after which he entered -a strip of fine old timber, coming out from that on the main road -to Bere. Along this road, for some five hundred yards, he tramped -merrily, kicking up the dust. He liked this road. Not only was it -open, free, and straight, but along its old stone walls raspberries -and blackberries grew ripe in a tangle of wild spirea, meadow-rue, -jewel weed, and Queen Anne's lace. He loved this luxuriance, this -summer sense of abundance. To the boy who had never known anything but -poverty, Nature at least, in this lush Connecticut countryside, seemed -generous. - -The pasture was on the edge of a scrubby woodland in which the twenty -acres of the Quidmore property trailed away into the unkempt. Eighty or -a hundred years earlier, it had been the center of a farm now cut up -into small holdings, chiefly among market gardeners. In the traces of -the old farmhouse, the old garden, the old orchard, the boy found his -imagination touched by the pathos of a vanished human past. - -The land sloped from the hillside, till in the bottom of the hollow -it became a little brambly wood such as in England would be called a -spinney. Through the spinney trickled a stream which somewhere fell -into Horseneck Brook, which somewhere fell into one of those shallow -inlets that the Sound thrusts in on the coastline. Halfway between -the road and the streamlet, was the old home-place, deserted so long -ago that the cellar was choked with blackberry vines, and the brick -of the foundation bulging out of plumb. A clump of lilac which had -once snuggled lovingly against a south wall was now a big solitary -bush. What used to be a bed of pansies had reverted to a scattering of -cheery little heartsease faces, brightening the grass. The low-growing, -pale-rose mallow of old gardens still kept up its vigor of bloom, -throwing out a musky scent. There was something wistful in the spot, -especially now that the sun was westering, and the birds skimmed low, -making for their nests. - -In going for Geraldine Tom always stole a few minutes to linger among -these memories of old joys and sorrows, old labors and rewards, of -which nothing now remained but these few flowers, a few wind-beaten -apple trees, and this dint in the ground which served best as a shelter -for chipmunks. It was the part of the property farthest from the house. -It was far, too, from any other habitation, securing him the privilege -of solitude. The privilege was new to him. At Harfrey he had never -known it. About the gardens, even at Bere, there were always the owner, -the hired men, the customers, the neighbors who came and went. But in -Geraldine's pasture he found only herself, the crows, the robins, the -thrushes singing in the spinney, and the small wild life darting from -one covert to another, or along the crumbling stone wall hung with its -loopings of wild grape. - -He was not lonely on these excursions. Companionship had never in the -Harfrey schools been such a pleasure that he missed anything in having -to do without it. Rather, he enjoyed the freedom to be himself, to wear -no mask, to have no part to play. It was only when alone like this that -he understood how much of his thought and effort was spent in dancing -to other people's tunes. In the Tollivant home he could never, like the -other children, speak or act without a second thought. As a State ward -it was his duty to commend himself. To commend himself he was obliged -to think twice even before venturing on trifles. He had formed a habit -of thinking twice, of rarely being spontaneous. By himself in this -homey pasture he felt the relief of one who has been balancing on a -tight rope at walking on the ground. - -When he had climbed the bars Geraldine, who was down the hill and near -the spinney, had lifted her head and swung her tail in recognition. -Not being impatient, she went on with her browsing, leaving him a few -minutes' liberty. Among the heartsease and the mallows he flung himself -down, partly because he was tired and partly that he might think. With -so much to think about thought came without sequence. It centered soon -on what he was to be. - -Of one thing he was certain; he didn't want to be a market gardener. -Not but that he enjoyed the open-air life and the novelty of closeness -to the soil. Like the whole Quidmore connection, it was good enough -for the time. All the same, it was only for the time, and one day he -would break away from it. How, he didn't ask. He merely knew by his -intuitions that it would be so. - -He was going to be something big. That, too, was intuitive conviction. -What he meant by big he was unable to define, beyond the fact that -knowledge and money would enter into it. He was interested in money, -not so much for what it gave you as for what it was. It was a queer -thing when you came to think of it. A dollar bill in itself had no more -value than any other scrap of paper; and yet it would buy a dollar's -worth of anything. He turned that over in his mind till he worked -out the reason why. He worked out the principle of payment by check, -which at first was as blank a mystery as marital relations. When -newspapers came his way he studied the reports of the stock exchange, -much as a savage who cannot read scans the unmeaning hieroglyphs which -to wiser people are words. He did make out that railways and other -great utilities must be owned by a lot of people who combined to put -their money into them; but daily fluctuations in value he couldn't -understand. When he asked his adopted father he was told that he -couldn't understand it, though he knew he could. - -Long accustomed to this answer as to the bewilderments of life, he -rarely now asked anything. If he was puzzled he waited for more data. -Even for little boys things cleared themselves up if you kept them -in your mind, and applied the explanation when it came your way. The -point, he concluded, was not to be in a hurry. There were the spiders. -He was fond of watching them. They would sit for hours as still as -metal things, their little eyes fixed like jewels in a ring. Then when -they saw what they wanted one swift dart was enough for them. So it -must be with little boys. You got one thing to-day, and another thing -to-morrow; but you got everything in time if you waited and kept alert. - -By waiting and keeping alert he would find out what he was to be. He -had reached his point when he saw Geraldine pacing up the hill toward -the pasture bars. She was giving him the hint that certain acknowledged -rites were no longer to be put off. - -He had lowered the bars, over which she was stepping delicately, when -he saw his father come tearing down the road, going toward Bere, with -all the speed his shuffling gait could put on. Used by this time -to erratic actions on Quidmore's part, he was hardly surprised; he -was only curious. He was more curious still when, on drawing nearer, -the man seemed in a panic. "Looks as if he was running away from -something," was the lad's first thought, though he couldn't imagine -from what. - -"Is anything the matter?" - -From panic the indications changed to those of surprise, though the -voice was as velvety as ever. - -"Oh, so it's you! I thought it was Diggory. What did you--what did -you--do with that powder?" - -The boy began putting up the bars while Geraldine plodded homeward. - -"I couldn't give it to her. She was in the kitchen baking." He thought -it wise to add: "She was making silver cookies for you. You'll have -them for supper." - -There followed more odd phenomena, of which the boy, waiting and -keeping alert, only got the explanation later. Quidmore threw himself -face downward on the wayside grass. With his forehead resting on his -arm, he lay as still as one of those drunken men Tom had occasionally -seen like logs beside some country road. Geraldine turned her head to -ask why she was not followed, but the boy stood waiting for a further -sign. He wondered whether all grown-up men had minutes like this, or -whether it was part of the epilepsy he had heard about. - -But when Quidmore got up he was calm, the traces of panic having -disappeared. To a more experienced person the symptoms would have been -of relief; but to the lad of twelve they said nothing. - -"I'll go back with you," was Quidmore's only comment, as together they -set out to follow Geraldine. - -Having reached the barn where the milking was to be done, Quidmore was -proceeding to the house. In the hope of a negative, Tom asked if he -should try again to-morrow. - -Quidmore half turned. "I'll leave that to you." - -"I'll do whatever you say," Tom pleaded, desperate at this -responsibility. - -Quidmore went on his way, calling back, in his creamy drawl, over his -shoulder: "I'll leave it entirely to you." - - - - -XV - - -Left to him, Tom saw nothing in the duty but to do it. He was confirmed -in this resolution by Quidmore's gentleness throughout the evening. -It was a new thing in Tom's experience of the house. As always with -those in the habit of inflicting pain, merely to stop inflicting it -seemed kindness. Supper passed without a single incident that made Mrs. -Quidmore wince. On her part she played up with an almost brilliant -vivacity in making none of her impotent complaints. Anything he could -do to further this accord the boy felt he ought to do. - -He hung back only from the deed. That made him shudder. He was clear on -the point that it made him shudder because of its association in his -mind with the thing which had happened years before; and that, he knew, -was foolish. If it would please his father he should make the attempt. -He should make it perhaps the more heartily since he was free not to -make it if he chose. - -It was the freedom that troubled him. So long as he did only what he -was told he had nothing on his conscience. Now he must be sure that he -was right; and he was not sure. Once more he didn't question the fact -that the medicine would do his mother good. The right and wrong in his -judgment centered round doing her good against her own will. With -no finespun theories concerning the rights of the individual, he was -pretty certain as to what they were. - -A divine beauty came over the evening when, after he had gone to -bed about half-past eight, his mother, in the new blossoming of her -affection, came to tuck him in, and kiss him good night. No such -thing had happened to him since Mrs. Crewdson had last done it. Mrs. -Tollivant went through this endearing rite with all her own children; -but him she left out. Many a time, when from his bed beneath the eaves -he heard her making her rounds at night, he had pressed his face into -the pillow to control the trembling of his lips. True, he had come to -regard the attention as too babyish for a man of twelve; but now that -it was shown him he was touched by it. - -It brought to his memory something Mrs. Crewdson had said, and which -he had never forgotten. "God's wherever there's love, it seems to me, -dear. I bring a little bit of God to you, and you bring a little bit of -God to me, and so we have Him right here." Mrs. Quidmore, too, brought -a little bit of God to him, and he brought a little bit of God to Mrs. -Quidmore. They showed God to each other, as if without each other they -were not quite able to see Him. The fact suggested the thought that in -the matter of the secret administration of the medicine he might pray. - -One thing he had learned with some thoroughness while in the Tollivant -family, and that was religion. Both in Sunday school and in domestic -instruction he had studied it conscientiously, and conscientiously -accepted it. If he sometimes admitted to Bertie Tollivant, the -cripple, that he "didn't see much sense in it," the confession applied -to his personal inabilities. Bertie was the cynic and unbeliever -in the Tollivant household. "There's about as much sense in it," -he would declare secretly to Tom, "as there is in those old yarns -about Pilgrim's Progress and Jack and the Beanstalk. Only don't say -that to ma or pop, because the poor dears wouldn't get you." On Tom -this skepticism only made the impression that he and Bertie didn't -understand religion any more than they understood sex, which was also a -theme of discussion. They would grow to it in time, by keeping ears and -eyes open. - -Now that he was away from the Tollivants, in a world where religion was -never spoken of, he dismissed it from his mind. That is, he dismissed -its intricacies, its complicated doctrines, its galloping through -prayers you were too sleepy to think of at night, and too hurried in -the morning. Here he was admittedly influenced by Bertie. "If God loves -you, and knows what you want, what's the good of all this Now I lay -me? It'd be a funny kind of God that wouldn't look after you anyhow." -Tom had given up saying Now I lay me, partly because that, too, seemed -babyish, but mainly on account of Bertie's reasoning. "It's more of -a compliment to God," was his way of explaining it to himself, "to -know that He'll do right of His own accord, than to suppose He'll do -it just because I pester Him." So every night when he got into bed he -took a minute to say to himself that God was taking care of him, making -this confidence serve in place of more explicit petition. When he had -anything special to pray about, he said, he would begin again. - -And now something special had arisen. He got out of bed. He didn't -kneel down because, being anxious not to mislead God by giving Him -wrong information, he had first to consider what he ought to say. -Stealing softly across the floor, lest the creaking of the boards -should betray the fact that he was up, he went to the open window, and -looked out. - -It was one of those mystic nights which, to a soul inclined to the -mystical, seem to hold a spiritual secret. The air, scented by millions -of growing things, though chiefly with the acrid perfume of the blue -spruces on which he looked down, had a pungent, heavenly odor such as -he never caught in the daytime. There was a tang of salt in it, too, as -from the direction of the Sound came the faintest rustle of a breeze. -The rustle was so faint as not to break a stillness, which was more of -the nature of a holy suspense because of the myriads of stars. - -Seeking a formula in which to couch his prayer, he found a phrase of -Mr. Tollivant's often used in domestic intercession. "And, O Heavenly -Father, we beseech thee to act wisely in the matter of our needs." -What constituted wisdom in the matter of their needs would then be -pointed out by Mr. Tollivant according to the day's or the season's -requirements. Accepting this language as that of high inspiration, and -forgetting to kneel down, the boy began as he stood, looking out on the -sanctified darkness: - -"And, O Heavenly Father, I beseech thee to act wisely in the matter of -my needs." Hung up there for lack of archaic grandiloquence, he found -himself ending lamely: "And don't let me give it to her if I oughtn't -to, for Jesus Christ's sake, Amen." - -With his effort he was disappointed. Not only had the choice of words -not taken from Mr. Tollivant been ludicrously insufficient, but he had -forgotten to kneel down. He had probably vitiated the whole prayer. -He thought of revision, of constructing a sentence that would balance -Mr. Tollivant's, and beginning again with the proper ceremonial. But -Bertie's way of reasoning came to him again. "I guess He knows what -I mean anyhow." He recoiled at that, however, shocked at his own -irreverence. The thought was a blasphemous liberty taken with the -watchful and easily offended deity of whom Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant had -begged him always to be afraid. He was wondering if by approaching this -God at all he hadn't made his plight worse, when the rising of the wind -diverted his attention. - -It rose suddenly, in a great soft sob, but not of pain. Rather, it was -of exultation, of cosmic joyousness. Coming from the farthest reaches -of the world, from the Atlantic, from Africa, from remote islands and -mountain tops, it blew in at the boy's window with a strong, and yet -gentle, cosmic force. - -"And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty -wind." - -Tom Quidmore had but one source of quotation, but he had that at his -tongue's end. The learning by heart of long passages from the Bible had -been part of his education at the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant. -Rightly or wrongly, he quoted the Scriptures, and rightly oftener than -not. He quoted them now because, all at once, his room seemed full of -the creative breath. He didn't say so, of course; but, confusedly, he -felt it. All round the world there was wind. It was the single element -in Nature which you couldn't see, but of which you received the living -invigoration. It cooled, it cleansed, it strengthened. Wherever it -passed there was an answer. The sea rose; the snows drifted; the trees -bent; men and women strove to use and conquer it. A rushing mighty -wind! A sound from heaven! That it might be an answer to his prayer he -couldn't stop to consider because he was listening to the way it rose -and fell, and sighed and soughed and swelled triumphantly through the -plantation of blue spruces. - -By morning it was a gale. The tall things on the property, the bush -peas, the scarlet runners, the sweet corn, were all being knocked -about. In spots they lay on the earth; in other spots they staggered -from the perpendicular. All hands, in the words of old Diggory, had -their work cut out for them. Tom's job was to rescue as many as -possible of the ears of sweet corn, in any case ready for picking, -before they were damaged. - -But at half-past two he dragged himself out of the corn patch to -fulfill the dreaded duty. Nothing had answered his prayer. He had not -so much as seen his father throughout the day, as the latter had gone -to the markets and had not returned. The gale was still raging, and he -might be waiting for it to go down. - -Since the scene by the roadside on the previous afternoon he had taken -a measure of his father not very far from accurate. He, Quidmore, -wanted something of which he was afraid. He was too much afraid of it -to press for it urgently; and yet he wanted it so fiercely that he -couldn't give it up. What it was the boy could not discover, except -that it had something to do with them all. When he said with them all -he included the elusive Bertha; though why he included her he once more -didn't know. - -In God he was disappointed; that he did not deny. In spite of the -shortcomings of his prayer, he had clung to the hope that they might -be overlooked. He argued a little from what he himself would have done -had anyone come with a request inadequately phrased. He wouldn't think -of the manners or the words in his eagerness to do what lay within his -power. With God apparently it was not so. - -There was, of course, the other effect of his prayer. He had only asked -to be stopped if the thing was not to be done. If he was not stopped -the inference was obvious. He was to go ahead. It was in order to go -ahead that he left the corn patch. - -The kitchen when he got to it was empty. Both the windows, that in the -south wall and that in the west, were open to let the wind sweep out -the smell of cooking. Creeping halfway up the stairs, he saw that his -mother had closed her bedroom door, a sign that she was really lying -down. There was no help now for what he had to do. - -He stole back to the kitchen again. On the dresser he saw the brown -teapot in which she would presently make her tea. He would only have -to take it down, and spill the powder into it. The powder was in his -waistcoat pocket. He drew it out. It was small and flat, in a neatly -folded paper. Opening the paper, he saw something innocent and white, -not unlike the sugar you spread on strawberries. Laying it in readiness -on the table by the west window, at which his mother baked, he turned -to take down the teapot. - -The gale grew fiercer. It was almost a tornado. With the teapot in his -two hands he paused to look out of the south window at the swaying -of the blue spruces. They moaned, they sobbed, they rocked wildly. -You might have fancied them living creatures seized by a madness of -despair. The fury of the wind, even in the kitchen, blew down a dipper -hanging on the wall. - -There was now no time to lose. The noise of the falling dipper might -have disturbed his mother, so that at any minute she might come -downstairs. With the teapot again in his hands he turned to the table -where he had left the thing which was to do her good. - -It was not there. - -Dismayed, startled, he looked for it on the floor; but it was not -there. It was not anywhere in the kitchen. He searched and searched. - -Going outside, he found the paper caught in a rosebush under the -window, but the something innocent and white had been blown to the four -corners of the world. - -The rushing mighty wind had done its work; and yet it was not till two -or three years later, when the Quidmores had passed from his life, that -he wondered if after all his prayer had not been answered. - - - - -XVI - - -Of helping his mother against her will he never heard any more. When -his father returned that evening he had the same look of panic as on -the previous day, followed by the same expression of relief at seeing -the domestic life going on as usual. But he asked no questions, nor -did he ever bring the subject up again. When a day or two later Tom -explained to him that the powder had been blown away he merely nodded, -letting the matter rest. - -Autumn came on and Tom went to school at Bere. He liked the school. No -longer a State ward, but the son of a man supposed to be of substance, -he passed the tests inflicted by the savage snobbery of children. His -quickness at sports helped him to a popularity justified by his good -nature. With the teachers he was often forced to seem less intelligent -than he was, so as to escape the odious soubriquet of "teacher's pet." - -On the whole, the winter was the happiest he had so far known. It could -have been altogether happy had it not been for the tragic situation of -the Quidmores. After the brief improvement that had followed on his -coming they had reacted to a mutual animosity even more intense. Each -made him a confidant. - -"God! it's all I can do to keep my hands off her," the soft drawl -confessed. "If she was just to die of a sickness, and me have nothing -to do with it, I don't believe I'd be satis--" He held the sentence -there as a matter of precaution. "What do you think of a woman who all -the years you've known her has never done anything but whine, whine, -whine, because you ain't givin' her what you promised?" - -"And are you?" Tom asked, innocently. - -"I give her what I can. She don't tempt me to do anything extra. Say, -now, would she tempt you?" - -Tom did his best to take the grown-up, man-to-man tone in which he was -addressed. "I think she's awful tempting, if you take her the right -way." - -To take her the right way, to take him also the right way, was the -boy's chief concern throughout the winter. To get them to take each -other the right way was beyond him. - -"So long as he goes outside his home," Mrs. Quidmore declared, with an -euphemism of which the boy did not get the significance, "I'll make him -suffer for it." - -"But, ma, he can't stay home all the time." - -"Oh, don't tell me that you don't know what I mean! If you wasn't on -his side you'd have found out for me long ago who the woman is. Just -tell me that--" - -"And what would you do?" - -"I'd kill her, I think, if I got the chance." - -"Oh, but ma!" - -She brandished the knife with which she was cutting cold ham for the -supper. "I would! I would!" - -"But you wouldn't if I asked you not to, would you, ma?" - -The knife fell with a despairing movement of the hand. "Oh, I don't -suppose I should do it at all. But he ought to love me." - -"Can he make himself love you, ma?" - -The ingenuous question went so close to the point that she could only -dodge it. "Why shouldn't he? I'm his wife, ain't I?" - -The challenge brought out another of the mysteries which surrounded -marriage, as a penumbra fringes the moon on a cloudy night. When his -father next reverted to the theme, while driving back from market, the -penumbra became denser. - -"Say, boy, don't you go to thinking that the first time you fall in -love with a pretty face it's goin' to be for life. That's where the -devil sets his snare for men. Eight or ten years from now you'll see -some girl, and then the devil'll be after you. He'll try to make you -think that if you don't marry that girl your one and only chance'll -come and go. And when he does, my boy, just think o' me." - -"Think of you--what about?" - -The sweetness of the tone took from the answer anything like -bitterness. "Think how I got pinched. Gosh, when I look back and -remember that I was as crazy to get her as a pup to catch a squir'l -I can't believe it was me. But don't forget what I'm tellin' you. No -fellow ought to think of bein' married till he's over thirty. He can't -be expected to know what he'll love permanent till then." - -It was the perpetual enigma. "But you always love your wife when you're -married to her, don't you?" - -The answer was in loud satirical laughter, with the observation that -Tom was the limit for innocence. - -Quite as disturbing as questions of love and marriage were those -relating to the fact that the man who had done very well as a hatter -was a failure as a market gardener. - -"A hell of a business, this is! Rothschild and Rockefeller together -couldn't make it pay. Gosh, how I hate it! Hate everything about it, -and home worst of all. Know a little woman that if she'd light out with -me...." - -In different keys and conjunctions these confidences were made to -the boy all through the winter. If they did not distress him more it -was because they were over his head. The disputes of the gods affect -mortals only indirectly. When Jupiter and Juno disagree men feel that -they can leave it to Olympus to manage its own affairs. So to a boy -of twelve the cares of his elders pass in spheres to which he has -little or no access. In spite of his knowledge that their situation was -desperate, the couple who had adopted him were mighty beings to Tom -Quidmore, with resources to meet all needs. To be so went with being -grown up and, in a general way, with being independent. - -Their unbosomings worried him; they did not do more. When they were -over he could dismiss them from his mind. His own concerns, his -lessons, his games, his friends and enemies in school, and the vague -objective of becoming "something big," were his matters of importance. -Martin and Anna Quidmore cared for him so much, though each with a -dash of selfishness, that his inner detachment from them both would -have caused them pain. - -And yet it was because of this detachment that he was able, in some -sense, to get through the winter happily. Whatever might have hurt him -most passed on the kind of Mount Olympus where grown-up people had -their incredible interests. Told, as he always was, that he couldn't -understand them, he was willing to drop them at that till they were -forced on him again. As spring was passing into summer they were forced -on him less persistently; and then one day, quite unexpectedly, he -struck the beginning of the end. - -It was a Saturday. As there was no school that day he had driven in -on the truck with his father, to market a load of lettuce and early -spinach. On returning through Bere in the latter part of the forenoon, -Quidmore stopped at the druggist's. - -"Jump down and have an ice cream soda. I'll leave the lorry here, and -come back to you. Errand to do in the village." - -The words had been repeated so often that for these excursions they -had come to be a formula. By this time Tom knew the errand to be at -Bertha's house, which was indirectly opposite. Seated at a table in the -window, absorbing his cool, flavored drink through a pair of straws, -he could see his father run up the steps and enter, running down again -when he came out. Further than the fact that there was something -regrettable in the visit, something to be concealed when he went home, -the boy's mind did not work. - -The tragedy of that morning was that, as he was enjoying himself -thus, the runabout, driven by one of the hired men, glided up to the -door, and Mrs. Quidmore, dressed for shopping, and very alert, sprang -out. As she rarely came into Bere, and almost never in the morning -when she had her work to do, Tom's surprise was tinged at once with -fear. Recognizing the lorry, Mrs. Quidmore rushed into the drug store. -Except for the young man, wearing a white coat, who tended it, the -long narrow slit was empty. As he peeped above his glass, with the two -straws between his lips, Tom saw the wrath of the wronged when close -on the track of the wrong-doer. Wheeling round, she caught him looking -conscious and guilty. - -"Oh! So you're here? Where is he?" - -Tom answered truthfully. "He said he had an errand to do. He didn't -tell me what it was." - -"And is he coming back for you here?" - -"He said he would." - -"Then I'll wait." - -To wait she sat down at Tom's side, having Bertha's house within range. -Whether she suspected anything or not Tom couldn't tell, since he -hardly suspected anything himself. That there was danger in the air he -knew by the violence with which she rejected his proposal to refresh -herself with ice cream. - -"There he is!" - -They watched him while he came down the steps, hesitated a minute, -and turned in the direction away from where they were waiting. Tom -understood this move. - -"He's going to Jenkins's about that new tire." - -As she jumped to her feet her movements had a fierceness of activity he -had never before seen in her. - -"That's all I want. I'm goin' back. Don't you say you seen me, or that -I've been over here at all." - -Hurrying to the street and springing into the car, she bade the hired -man turn round again for home. - -What happened between that Saturday and the next Tom never knew -exactly. A few years later, when his powers of deduction had developed, -he was able to surmise; but beyond his own experience he had no -accurate information. That there were bitter quarrels he inferred -from the sullenness they left behind; but he never witnessed them. -Not having witnessed them, he had little or no sense of a strain more -serious than usual. - -On the next Saturday afternoon he was crouched in the potato field, -picking off the ugly reddish bugs and killing them. Suddenly he heard -himself called. On rising and looking round he found the runabout car -stopped in the road, and Billy Peet, one of the hired men, beckoning -him to approach. Brushing his hands against each other, he stepped -carefully over the rows of young potatoes, and was soon in the roadway. - -"Get in," Billy Peet ordered, briefly. "The boss sent me over to fetch -you." - -"Sent you over to fetch me--in the machine? What's up?" His eye fell on -a small straw suitcase in the back of the car. "What's that for?" - -"Get in, and I'll tell you as we go along." Tom clambered in beside the -driver. "Mis' Quidmore's sick." - -"What's the matter with her?" - -"I'd'n know. Awful sick, they say." - -When they passed the Quidmore entrance without turning in Tom began to -be startled. "Say! Where we going?" - -"You're not going home. Doctor don't want you there. Boss telephoned -over to Mrs. Tollivant, and she's goin' to keep you till Mis' -Quidmore's better--or somethin'." - -The boy was not often resentful, but he did resent being trundled about -like a package. If his mother was sick his place was at home. He could -light the fire, bring in the water from the well, and do the score of -little things for which a small boy can be useful. To be shunted off -like this, as if he could only be an additional care, was an indignity -to the thirteen years he was now supposed to have attained to. But what -could he do? Protest was useless. There was nothing for it but to go -where he was driven, like Geraldine or the dilapidated car. - -And yet at Harfrey he settled down among the Tollivants naturally. -No State ward having succeeded him, his room under the eaves was -still vacant. Once within its familiar shelter, he soon began to -feel as if he had never been away. The family welcomed him with the -shades of warmth which went with their ages and characters--Mr. and -Mrs. Tollivant overcoming their repugnance to a born waif with that -Christian charity which doubtless is all the nobler for being visibly -against the grain; Art, now a swaggering fellow of sixteen, with -patronizing good nature; Cilly, who affected baby-blue ribbons on a -blond pigtail, with airs and condescension; Bertie, the cripple, -with satiric cordiality. If it was not exactly a home-coming, it was -at least as good as a visit to old friends. He was touched by being -included almost as a member of the family in Mr. Tollivant's evening -prayer. - -"And, O Heavenly Father, take this young wanderer as Thy child, even -as we offer him a shelter. Visit not Thine anger upon him, lest he be -tempted overmuch." - -At the thought of being tempted overmuch Tom felt a pleasing sense of -importance. It offered, too, a loophole for excuse in case he should -fall. If God didn't intervene on his behalf, easing temptation up, then -God would be responsible. And yet, such was the lack of fairness he was -bidden to see in God, He would knock a fellow down and then punish him -when he tumbled. - -In the midst of these reflections a thought of the Quidmore household -choked him with unexpected homesickness. The people who had been kind -to him were in trouble, and he was not there! He wondered what they -would do without him. He could sometimes catch the man's cruelties and -turn them into pleasantries before they reached the wife. He could -sometimes forestall the wife's complaints and twist them into little -mollifying compliments. Would there be anyone to do that now? Would -they keep the peace? He wished Mr. Tollivant would pray for them. He -tried to pray for them himself, but, as with his effort of the previous -year, the right kind of words would not come. If only God could be -addressed without so much Thee and Thou! If only He could read a -little boy's heart without calling for fine language! For lack of fine -language he had to remain dumb, leaving God, who might possibly have -helped Martin and Anna Quidmore, with no information about them. - -Nevertheless, with the facile emotions of youth, a half hour later he -was playing checkers with Bertie, in full enjoyment of the game. He -slept soundly that night, and on Sunday fell into the old routine of -church and Sunday school. Monday and Tuesday bored him, because for -most of the day school claimed the children; but when they came home, -and played and squabbled as usual, life took on its old zest. Only now -and then did the thought of the sick woman and the lonely man sweep -across him in a spasm of pain; after which he could forget them and be -cheerful. - -But on Wednesday forenoon, as he was turning away from watching the -Plymouth Rocks pecking at their feed, his father arrived in the old -runabout. Dashing up the hill, Tom reached the back door in time to see -him enter by the front. - -"How's ma?" - -He got no answer, because Quidmore followed Mrs. Tollivant into the -front parlor, where they shut the door. In anticipation of being taken -home, the boy ran up to his room and packed his bag. - -"How's ma?" - -He called out the question from halfway down the stairs. Quidmore, -emerging from the parlor with Mrs. Tollivant, ignored it again. Bidding -good-by to his hostess and thanking her for taking in the boy, he went -through these courtesies with a nervous anxiety almost amounting to -anguish to convince her of the truth of something he had said. - -"How's ma?" - -They were in the car at last so that he could no longer be denied. - -"She's--she's--not there." - -All the events of the past year focussed themselves into the question -that now burst on Tom's lips. "Is she--dead?" - -The lisping voice was sorrowful. "She was buried yesterday." - -With his habit of thinking twice, the boy asked nothing more. Having -asked nothing at the minute, he felt less inclined to ask anything as -they drove onward. Something within him rejected the burden of knowing. -While he would not hold himself aloof, he would not involve himself -more than events involved him according as they fell out. His reasoning -was obscure, but his instincts, grown self-protective from necessity, -were positive. Whatever had happened, whatever was to be right and -wrong to other people, his own motive must be loyalty. - -"I've got to stick to him," he was saying to himself. "He's been awful -good to me. In a kind of a way he's my father. I must stand by him, and -see him through, just as if I was his son." - -It was his first grown-up resolution. - - - - -XVII - - -Grown-up life began at once. His chief care hitherto had been as to -what others would do for him; now he was preoccupied with what he could -do for some one else. It was a matter of watching, planning, cheering, -comforting, and as he expressed it to himself, of bucking up. Of -bucking up especially he was prodigal. The man had become as limp as on -the day when he had thrown himself face downward in the grass. Mad once -with desire to act, he was terrified now at what he had done. Though, -as far as Tom could judge, no one blamed or suspected him, there was -hardly a minute in the day in which he did not betray himself. He -betrayed himself to the boy even if to no one else, though betraying -himself in such a way that there was nothing definite to take hold of. -"I'm sure--and yet I'm not sure," was Tom's own summing up. He stressed -the fact that he was not sure, and in this he was helped by the common -opinion of the countryside. - -Toward the bereaved husband and his adopted son this was sympathetic. -The woman had always been neurasthenic, slipshod, and impossible. With -a wife to help him, Martin Quidmore could have been a success as a -market gardener as easily as anybody else. As it was, he would get over -the shock of this tragedy and find a woman who would be the right kind -of mother to a growing boy. Here, the mention of Bertha was with no -more than the usual spice of village scandal, tolerant and unresentful. - -Of all this Tom was aware chiefly through the observations of Blanche, -the colored woman who came in by the day to do the housework. - -"Law, Mr. Tom, yo' pappa don't need to feel so bad. Nobody in this -yere town what blame him, not a little mite. Po' Mis' Quidmo', nobody -couldn't please her nohow. Don't I know? Ain't I wash her, and iron -her, and do her housecleanin', ever since she come to this yere -community, and Mr. Quidmo' he buy this yere lot off old Aaron Bidbury? -No, suh! Nobody can't tell me! Them there giddy things what nobody -can't please 'em they can't please theirselves, and some day they go to -work and do somefin' despe'ate, just like po' Mis' Quidmo'. A little -cup o' tea, she take. No mo'n that. See, boy! I keep that there brown -teapot, what look as innocent as a baby, all the time incriminated to -her memo'y." - -Nevertheless, Tom found his father obsessed by fear, with nothing to be -afraid of. The obsession had shown itself as soon as they entered the -house on their return from Harfrey. He was afraid of the house, afraid -of the kitchen especially. When Gimlets barked he jumped, cursing the -dog for its noise. When a buggy drove up to the door he peeped out at -the occupant before showing himself to the neighbor coming to offer his -condolences. If the telephone rang Tom hastened to answer it, knowing -that it set his father shivering. - -As evening deepened on that first Wednesday, they kept out of doors as -late as possible, the boy chattering to the best of his ability. When -obliged to go in, Quidmore tried to say with solicitude on Tom's behalf: - -"Expect you'll be lonesome now with only the two of us in the house. -Better come and sleep in the other bed in my room." - -The boy was about to reply that he was not lonesome, and preferred his -own bed, when he caught the dread behind the invitation. - -"All right, dad, I'll come. Sleep there every night. Then I won't be -scared." - -About two in the morning Tom was wakened by a shout. "Hell! Hell! Hell!" - -Jumping from his own bed, he ran to the other. "Wake up, dad! Wake up!" - -Ouidmore woke, confused and trembling. "Wha' matter?" His senses -returning, he spoke more distinctly. "Must have had a nightmare. God! -Turn on the light. Hate bein' in the dark. Now get back to bed. All -right again." - -The next day both were picking strawberries. It was not Quidmore's -custom to pick strawberries, but he seemed to prefer a task at which he -could crouch, and be more or less out of sight. Happening to glance up, -he saw a stranger coming round the duck pond. - -"Who's that?" he snapped, in terror. - -Tom ran to the stranger, interviewed him, and ran back again. "It's an -agent for a new kind of fertilizer." - -"Tell him I don't want it and to get to hell out of this." - -"You'd better see him. He'll think it queer if you don't." - -It was the spur he needed. He couldn't afford to be thought queer. He -saw the agent, Tom acting as go-between and interpreter. - -To act as go-between and interpreter became in a measure the boy's job. -Being so near the holidays, he did not return to school, and freed from -school, he could give all his time to helping the frightened creature -to seem competent in the eyes of his customers and hired men. Not that -he succeeded. None knew better than the hired men that the place was, -as they put it, all in the soup; none were so quick to fall away as -customers who were not getting what they wanted. When the house was -tumbling about their heads one little boy's shoulder could not do much -as a prop; but what it could do he offered. - -He offered it with a gravity at which the men laughed good-naturedly -behind his back. They took his orders solemnly, and thought no more -about them. For a whole week nothing went to market. The dealers whom -they supplied complained by telephone. Billy Peet and himself got a -load of "truck" into town, only to be told that their man had made -other arrangements. To meet these conditions Quidmore had spurts of -energy, from which he backed down gibbering. - -Taking his courage in both hands, the boy went to see Bertha. Never -having been face to face with her before, he found her of the type of -beauty best appreciated where the taste is for the highly blown. She -received him with haughty surprise and wonder, not asking him to sit -down. Having prepared his words, he recited them, though her attitude -frightened him out of the man-of-the-world tone he had meant to adopt. -Humbly and haltingly, he asked if she wouldn't come out and help to -stiffen the old man. - -"So he's sent you, has he? Well, you can go back and say that I've no -reply except the one I've given him. All is over between us. Tell him -that if he thinks that _that_ was the way to win me he's very gravely -mistook. I know what's happened as positive as if I was a jury, and I -shall never pardon it. Silence I shall keep, but that is all he can -ask of me. He's made me talked about when he shouldn't ought to ov, -ignoring that a woman, and especially a widow--" her voice broke--"has -nothing but her reputation. Go back and tell him that if he tries to -force my door he'll find it double-barred against him." - -Tom went back but said nothing. There was no need for him to say -anything, since his life began at once to take another turn. - -School holidays having begun, he was free in fact as well as in name. -It was on a Thursday that his father came to him with the kind of -proposal which always excites a small boy. - -"Say, boy, what you think of a little trip down to Wilmington, -Delaware, you and me? Go off to-morrow and get back by Tuesday. I'd see -my sister, and it'd do me good." - -The prospect seemed to have done him good already. A new life had come -to him. He went about the place giving orders for the few days of his -absence, with particular instructions to Diggory and Blanche as to -Geraldine, and the disposal of the milk. They started on their journey -in the morning. - -It was one of those mornings in June when every blessed and beautiful -thing seems poured on the earth at once. As between five and six Billy -Peet drove them over to take the train at Harfrey, light, birds, trees, -flowers, meadows, dew, would have thrilled them to ecstasy if they had -not been used to them. For the first time in weeks Tom saw his father -smile. It was a smile of relief rather than of pleasure, but it was -better than his look of woe. - -The journey wakened memories. Not since Mrs. Crewdson had brought -him out to place him as a State ward with Mrs. Tollivant had he gone -into the city by this route. He had gone in by the motor truck often -enough; but this line that followed the river was haunted still by the -things he had outlived. He was not sorry to have known them, though -glad that they were gone. He was hardly sorry even for the present, -though doubtful as to how it was going to turn out. Vaguely and not -introspectively, he was shocked at himself, that he should be sitting -there with a man who had done what he felt pretty sure this man had -done, and that he should feel no horror. But he felt none. He assured -himself of that. He could sleep with him by night, and work and eat -with him by day, with no impulse but to shield a poor wretch who had -made his own life such a misery. - -"I've got to do it," he said to himself, in a kind of self-defense. "I -don't _know_ he did it--not for sure, I don't. And if nobody else tries -to find out, why should I, when he's been so awful nice to me?" - -He watched a steamer plowing her way southward in the middle of the -stream. He liked her air of quiet self-possession and of power. He -wondered whence she was coming, whither she was going, and what she was -doing it for. He couldn't guess. - -"That'd be like me," he said, silently, "sailing from I don't know -where--sailing _to_ I don't know where----" - -Ten years later he finished this thought, repeating exactly the same -words. Just now he couldn't finish anything, because there was so much -to see. Little towns perched above little harbors. Fishermen angled -from little piers. A group of naked boys, shameless as young mermen, -played in the water. On a rock a few yards from the shore a flock of -gulls jostled each other for standing room. A motor boat puffed. Yachts -rode sleepily at anchor. The car which, when they took it at Harfrey -had been almost empty, was beginning to fill with the earlier hordes of -commuters. Soon it was quite full. Soon there were cheery young people, -most of them chewing gum, standing in the passageway. Having rounded -the curve at Spuyten Duyvil, they saw the city looming up, white, -spiritual, tremulous, through the morning mist. - -Up to this minute he had not thought of plans; now he began to wonder -what they should do on reaching the Grand Central, where they would -arrive in another quarter of an hour. - -"Do we go straight across to the Pennsylvania Station, to take the -train for Wilmington, or do we have to wait?" - -"I'll--I'll see." - -The answer was unsatisfactory. He looked at his father inquiringly. -Looking at him, he was hurt to observe that his confidence was -departing, that he was again like something with a broken spring. - -"Well, we're going to Wilmington to-day, aren't we?" - -"I'll--I'll see." - -"But," the boy cried in alarm, "where can we go, if we don't?" - -"I--I know a place." - -It was disappointing. The choking sensation which, when he was younger, -used to precede tears, began to gather in his throat. Having heard so -much from Mrs. Quidmore of the glories of Wilmington, Delaware, he -saw it as a city of palaces, of exquisite, ladylike maidens, of noble -youths, of aristocratic joyousness. Moreover, he had been told that -to get there you went under the river, through a tunnel so deep down -in the earth that you felt a distressful throbbing in the head. The -postponement of these experiences even for a day was hard to submit to. - -In the Grand Central his father was in a mood he had never before seen. -It was a dark mood, at once decided and secretive. - -"Come this way." - -This way was out into Forty-second Street. With their suitcases in -their hands, they climbed into a street car going westward. Westward -they went, changing to another car going southward, under the thunder -of the elevated, in Ninth Avenue. At Fourteenth Street they got out -again. Tom recognized the neighborhood because of its nearness to -the great markets to which they sometimes brought supplies. But they -avoided the markets, making their way between drays, round buildings in -course of demolition, through gangs of children wooing disaster as they -played in the streets. In the end they turned out of the tumult to find -themselves in a placid little backwater of the "old New York" of the -early nineteenth century. Reading the sign at the corner Tom saw that -it was Jane Street. - -Jane Street dates from a period earlier than the development of that -civic taste which gives to all New York north of Fourteenth Street -the picturesqueness of a sum in simple arithmetic. Jane Street has -atmosphere, period, chic. You know at a glance that the people who -built these trim little red-brick houses still felt that impulse which -first came to Manhattan from The Hague, to be fostered later by William -and Mary, and finally merged in the Georgian tradition. Jane Street is -Dutch. It has Dutch quaintness, and, as far as New York will permit it, -Dutch cleanliness. It might be a byway in Amsterdam. Instead of cutting -straight from the Hudson River Docks to Greenwich Avenue, it might run -from a canal with barges on it to a field of hyacinths in bloom. - -But Tom Quidmore saw not what you and I would have seen, a relief from -the noise and fetidness of a hot summer's morning in a neighborhood -reeking with garbage. When his heart had been fixed on that dream-city, -Wilmington, Delaware, he found himself in a dingy little alley. Not -often querulous, he became so now. - -"What are we doing down here?" - -The reply startled him. "I'm--I'm sick." - -Looking again at the man who shuffled along beside him, he saw that his -face had grown ashy, while his eyes, which earlier in the day had had -life in them, were lusterless. The boy would have been frightened had -it not been for the impulse of affection. - -"Let's go back to Bere. Then you can have the doctor. I'll get a cab -and steer the whole business." - -Without answering, Quidmore stopped at a brown door, level with the -pavement, in a big, dim-windowed building, with fire escapes zigzagging -down the front. Jane Street is not exclusively clean and trim and -Dutch. It has lapses--here a warehouse, there a dwelling tumbling to -decay, elsewhere a nondescript structure like this. It looked like a -lodging house for sailors and dock laborers. In the basement was a -restaurant to which you went down by steps, and bearing the legend -Pappa's Chop Saloon. - -While Quidmore stood in doubt as to whether to ring the bell or to push -the door which already stood a little open, two men came out of the -Chop Saloon and began to mount the steps. In faded blue overalls the -worse for wear, they had plainly broken a day's work, possibly begun -at five o'clock, for a late breakfast. The one in advance, a sturdy, -well-knit fellow of forty or forty-five, got a sinister expression from -a black patch over his left eye. His companion was older, smaller, more -worn by a bitter life. All the twists in his figure, all the soured -betrayals in his crafty face, showed you the habitual criminal. - -None of these details was visible to Quidmore, because his imagination -could see only the bed for which he was craving. To the boy, who -trusted everyone, they were no more than the common type of workman he -was used to meeting in the markets. The fellow with the patch on his -eye, making an estimate of the strangers as he mounted the steps, spoke -cheerily. - -"I say, mate, what can I do for yer?" - -The voice with a vaguely English ring was not ungenial. Not ungenial, -when you looked at it, was the strongly-boned face, with a ruddiness -burnt to a coarse tan. The single gray-blue eye had the sympathetic -gleam which often helps roguery to make itself excusable to people with -a sense of fun. - -Quidmore muttered something about wanting to see Mrs. Pappa. - -"Right you are! Come along o' me. I'll dig the old gal out for yer. -Expects you wants a room for yerself and the kid. Hi, Pappa!" - -Pappa came out of a dim, musty parlor as the witch who foretells bad -weather appears in a mechanical barometer. She was like a witch, but -a dark, classic witch, with an immemorial tradition behind her. Her -ancestors might have fought at Marathon, or sacrificed to Neptune in -the temple on Sunium. In Jane Street she was archaic, a survival from -antiquity. Her thoughts must have been with the nymphs at Delphi, or -following the triremes carrying the warriors from Argolis to Troy, as -silent, mysterious, fateful, she led the way upstairs. - -They followed in procession, all four of them. The doorstep -acquaintances displayed a solicitude not less than brotherly. The -hall was without furniture, the stairs without carpet. The softwood -floors, like the treads of the stairs, were splintered with the usage -of many heavy heels. Where the walls bulged, through the pressure of -jerry-built stories overhead, the marbled paper swelled into bosses. -Tom found it impressive, with something of strange stateliness. - -"Yer'll be from the country," the one-eyed fellow observed, as they -climbed upward. - -"Yes, sir," Tom answered, civilly. "We're on our way to Wilmington, -Delaware, but my father felt a little sick." - -"Well, he's struck a good place to lay up in. I say, Pappa," he called -ahead, "seems to me as the big room with two beds'd be what'd suit the -gent. It's next door to the barthroom, and he'll find that convenient. -Mate," he explained further, when they stood within the room with two -beds, "this'll set ye' back a dollar a day in advance. That right, -Pappa, ain't it?" - -Pappa assenting with some antique sign, Quidmore drew out his -pocketbook to extract the dollar. With no ceremonious scruples the -smaller comrade craned his neck to appraise, as far as possible, the -contents of the wallet. - -"Wad," Tom heard him squirt out of the corner of his mouth, in the -whisper of a ventriloquist. - -His friend seemed to wink behind the patch on his left eye. Tom took -the exchange of confidence as a token of respect. He and his father -were considered rich, the effect being seen in the attentions accorded -them. This was further borne out when the genial one of the two -rogues turned on the threshold, as his colleague was following Pappa -downstairs. - -"Anythink I can do for yer, mate, command me. Name of Honeybun--Lemuel -Honeybun. Honey Lem some of the guys calls me. I answers to it, not -takin' no offense like." He pointed to the figure stumping down the -stairs. "My friend, Mr. Goodsir. Him and me been pals this two year. We -lives on the ground floor. Room back of Pappa." - -The door closed, Tom looked round him in an interest which eclipsed -his hopes of the tunnel. This was adventure. It was nearly romance. -Never before had he stayed in a hotel. The place was not luxurious, -but never, in the life he could remember, having known anything but -necessity, necessity was enough. Moreover, the room contained a work of -art that touched his imagination. On the bare drab mantelpiece stood -the head of a Red Indian, in plaster painted in bronze, not unlike the -mummified head of Rameses the Great. The boy couldn't take his eye -away from it. This was what you got by visiting strange cities more -intimately than by trucking to and from the markets. - -Quidmore threw himself on his bed, his face buried in the meager -pillow. He was suffering apparently not from pain, but from some more -subtle form of distress. Being told that there was nothing he could -do for the invalid, Tom sat silent and still on one of the two small -chairs which helped out the furnishings. It was not boring for him to -do this, because he swam in novelty. He recalled the steamer he had -seen that morning, sailing from he didn't know where, sailing _to_ -he didn't know where, but on the way. He, too, was on the way. He was -on the way to something different from Wilmington, Delaware. It would -be different from Bere. He began to wonder if he should ever go back -to Bere. If he didn't go back to Bere ... but at this point in Tom's -dreams Quidmore dragged himself off the bed. - -"Let's go down to the chop saloon, and eat." - - - - -XVIII - - -He was not too ill to eat, but too ill when not eating to stay anywhere -but on his bed. He went back to it again, lying with his face buried -in the pillow as before. The boy resumed his patient sitting. He would -have been bored with it now, had he not had his dreams. - -All the same, it was a relief when about four o'clock, just as the -westering sun was beginning to wake the Red Indian to an horrific life, -Mr. Honeybun, pushing the door ajar softly, peeped in with his good eye. - -"I say, mate!" he whispered, "wouldn't you like me to take the young -gent for a bit of a walk like? Do him good, and him a-mopin' here all -by hisself." - -The walk meant Tom's initiation into the life of cities as that life -is led. Not that it went very far, but as far as it went it was a -revelation. It took him from one end of Jane Street to the other, along -the docks of the Cunard and other great lines, and as far as Eighth -Avenue in the broad, exciting thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street. New -York as he had seen it hitherto, from the front seat of a motor truck, -had been little more entertaining than a map. Besides, he was only -developing a taste for this sort of entertainment. Games, school, -scraps with other boys, had been enough for him. Now he was waking -to an interest in places as places, in men as men, in differences of -attitude to the drama known as life. In Mr. Honeybun's attitude he grew -interested especially. - -"I don't believe that nothink don't belong to no one," Tom's guide -observed, as the wealth of the city spread itself more splendidly. -"Things is common proputty. Yer takes what yer can put yer 'and on." - -"But wouldn't you be arrested?" - -"Yer'd be arrested if yer didn't look out; but what's bein' arrested? -No more'n the measures what a lot of poor, frightened, silly boobs'll -take agin the strong man what makes 'em tremble. At least," he added, -as an afterthought, "not when yer conscience is clear, it ain't." - -Fascinated by this bold facing of society, Tom ventured on a question. -"Have you ever been arrested, Mr. Honeybun?" - -Mr. Honeybun straightened himself to the martyr's pose. "Oh, if yer -puts it that way, I've suffered for my opinions. That much I'll admit. -I'm--" he brought out the statement proudly--"I'm one o' them there -socialists. You know what a socialist is, don't yer?" - -Tom was not sure that he did. - -"A socialist is one o' them fellers who whatever he sees knows it -belongs to him if he can get ahold of it. It's gettin' ahold of it -what counts. Now if you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in -yer 'ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as I could take -it--why, then it'd be mine. That's the law o' Gord, I believes; and I -tries to live up to it." - -Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, Tom was nevertheless -perplexed by it. "But wouldn't that be something like burglary?" - -"Burglary is what them may call it what ain't socialists; but it don't -do to hang a dog because yer've give him a bad name. A lot o' good -people's been condemned that way. When I'm in court I always appeals to -justice." - -"And do you get it?" - -"I get men's. I don't get Gord's. You see that apple?" They stopped -before a window in Horatio Street where apples were displayed. "Now, -do yer suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in partic'lar? -No! That apple didn't know nothink about men's laws when it blossomed -on a apple tree. It just give itself generallike to the human race. If -you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git away with it, -it'd be yours. Stands to reason it'd be. Gord's law! But if that there -policeman, a-squintin' his ugly eye at us this minute--he knows Honey -Lem, he does!--was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty days. Man's -law! And I'll leave it to you which is best worth sufferin' for." - -In this philosophy of life there was something Tom found reasonable, -and something in which he felt a flaw without being able to detect it. -He chased it round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the long -dull hours with his father. It passed the time; it helped him to the -habit of thinking things out for himself. His mind being clear, and his -intuitions acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond his -years. When, on the morrow, they walked in the cool of the day down -the length of Hudson Street till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought -the subject up from another point of view. - -"But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took something from you? What then?" - -"He'd git it in the nut," the socialist answered, tersely. "Not if -there'd be two of 'em," he added, in amendment. "If there's two I don't -contend. I ain't a communist." - -"Is that what a communist is, a fellow who'll contend with two?" - -"A communist is a socialist what'll use weepons. If there's somethink -what he thinks is his in anybody's 'ouse, he'll go armed, and use -vi'lence. They never got that on me. I never 'urt nobody, except onst -I hits a footman, what was goin' to grab me, a wee little knock on the -'ead with a silver soup ladle I 'ad in me 'and and lays 'im out flat. -Didn't do him no 'arm, not 'ardly any. That was in England. But them -days is over, since I lost my eye. Makes yer awful easy spotted when -yer've lost a eye." - -"How did you lose it, Mr. Honeybun?" - -"I lost it a-savin' of the life of a beautiful young lady. 'Twas quite -a tale." The boy looked up expectantly while his friend thought out the -details. "I was footin' it onst from New Haven to New York, and I'd got -to a pretty little town as they call Old Lyme. Yer see, I'd been doin' -a bit o' time at New Haven--awful 'ard on socialists they was in New -Haven in them days--and when I gits out I was a bit stoney-broke till -I'd picked up somethink else. Well there I was, trampin' it through Old -Lyme, and I'd got near to the bridge what crosses the river they've -got there--the Connecticut I think it is--and what should I see but a -'orse what a young lady was drivin' come over the bridge like mad. The -young lady she was tuggin' at the reins and a-hollerin' like blazes for -some one to save her life. I ain't no 'ero, kid. Don't go for to think -that I'm a-sayin' that I am. But what's a man to do when he sees a -beautiful young lady in danger o' bein' killed?" He paused to take the -bodily postures with which he stopped the runaway. "And the tip of the -shaft," he ended, "it took me right in the eye, and put it out. But, -Lord, what's a eye, even to a Socialist, when yer can do somethink for -a feller creeter?" - -Tom gaped in admiration. "I suppose it hurt awful." - -"Was in 'orspital three months," the hero said, quietly. "Young lady, -she visits me reg'lar, calls me her life-saver, and every name like -that, and kind o' clings to me. But, Lord, marriage ain't never been -much of a fancy to me. Ties a man up, and I likes to be free, except -when I'm sufferin' for socialism. Besides, if I was to marry every -woman what I've saved their lives I'd be one o' them Normans by this -time. When yer wants company a good pal'll be faithfuller than a wife, -and nag yer a lot less." - -"Mr. Goodsir's your pal, ain't he, Mr. Honeybun?" - -"Yes, and I'm sick of him. He don't develop. He ain't got no -eddication. Yer can see for yerself he don't talk correct. That's what -I've took to in yer gov'nor and you, yer gentleman way o' speakin'. -Only yer needn't go for to tell yer old man all what I've been -a-gassin' of to you. I can see he's what they call conservative. He -wouldn't understand. You're the younger generation, mind more open -like. You and me'd make a great team if we was ever to work together." - -With memories of his mother in his mind, Tom answered sturdily, "I -wouldn't be a socialist, not for anything you could offer me." - -They left it at that. Mr. Honeybun was content to point out the -historic sites known to him as they turned homeward. There was the -house where a murder had been committed; the store where a big break -had been pulled off; a private detective's residence. - -"Might go out agin some day, if yer pop don't mind it," he suggested, -when they had reached their own hallway. "I gits the time in the late -afternoon. Yer see, our job at the market begins early and ends early, -and lately--" there was a wistful note--"well, I feels kind o' fed -up with the low company Goodsir keeps. Every kind o' joint and dive -and--and--Chinamen--and--" Out of respect for the boy he held up the -description. "You'd 'ardly believe it, but an innercent little walk -like what we've just took, why, it'll do me as much good as a swig o' -water when you wake up about three in the mornin', with yer tongue -'angin' out like a leather strap, after a three-days' spree." - -Unable to get the full force of this figure, Tom thanked his guide -politely, and was bounding up the stairs two steps at a time, when the -man who stood watching him spoke again. - -"If I'd ever a-thought that I'd 'a had a kid like you, it'd 'a' been -pretty near worth gittin' married for." - -Tom could only turn with one of those grins which showed his teeth, -making his eyes twinkle with a clear blue light, when adequate words -for kindness wouldn't come to him. - - - - -XIX - - -The days settled into a routine. When they rose in the morning a -colored woman "did" their room while they went down to the chop saloon -for breakfast. Returning, Quidmore threw himself on his bed again. He -did this after each meal, poking his nose deep into the limp pillow. -Hardly ever speaking, he now and then uttered a low moan. - -Tom watched patiently, ready to tell him the time or bring him a drink -of water. When the day grew too hot he fanned him with an old newspaper. - -"Why don't we go home, dad?" he asked anxiously on the third day. "I -could get you there as easy as anything." - -"I'm not well enough." - -"You don't seem very sick to me. You don't have any pain and you can -eat all right." - -"It isn't that kind of bein' sick. It's--" he sought for a name--"it's -like nervous prostration." - -More nearly than he knew he had named his malady. In his own words, he -was all in; and he was all in to the end of the letter of the term. Of -that moral force which is most of what any man has to live upon some -experience had drained him. He had spent his gift of vitality. All in -was precisely the phrase to apply to him. He had cashed the last cent -of whatever he had inherited or saved in the way of inner strength, and -now he could not go on. - -"What's the good of it anyhow?" he asked of Tom in the night. "There's -nothin' to it, not when you come to think of it. You run after -something as if you couldn't live without it; and then when you get it -you curse your God that you ever run." - -Tom shuddered in his bed, but he was used to doing that. There was -hardly a night when he was not wakened by a nightmare. If it was not by -a nightmare, it was by the soft complaining voice. - -"Are you awake, Tom?" - -"Yes, dad. Can I get you anything?" - -"No; I only wanted to know if you was awake." - -Tom kept awake as long as he could, because he knew the poor wretch was -afraid of lying sleepless in the dark. To keep him awake, perhaps for -less selfish reasons, too, the soft voice would take this opportunity -of giving him advice. - -"Don't you ever go to wanting anything too much, boy. That's what's -done for me. You can want things if you like; but one of the tricks in -the game is to know how to be disappointed. I never did know, not even -when I was a little chap. If I cried for the moon I wouldn't stop till -I got it. When I was about as old as you, not gettin' what I wanted -made me throw a fit. If I couldn't get things by fair means I had to -get 'em by foul; but I got 'em. It don't do you no good, boy. If I -could go back again over the last six months...." - -For fear of a confession Tom stopped his ears, but no confession ever -came. The tortured soul could dribble its betrayals, but it couldn't -face itself squarely. - -"Look out for women," he said, gently, on another night. "You're old -enough now to know how they'll play the Dutch with you. When I was your -age there was nothing I didn't understand, and I guess it's the same -with you. Don't ever let 'em get you. They got me before I was--well, I -don't hardly know what age I was, but it was pretty young. Look out for -'em, boy. If you ever damn your soul for one of 'em, she'll do you dirt -in the end. If it hadn't been for her...." - -To keep this from going further, the boy broke in with the first -subject he could think of. "I wonder if they'll remember to pick the -new peas. They'll be ready by this time. Do you suppose they'll ...?" - -"I don't care a hang what they do." After a brief silence he continued: -"I'd 'a left the place to you, boy, only my brother-in-law, my sister's -husband, has a mortgage on the place that'd eat up most of the value, -so I've left it to her. That'll fix 'em both. I wish I could 'a done -more for you." - -"You've done a lot for me, as it is." - -"You don't know." - -There was another silence. It might have lasted ten minutes. The boy -was falling once more into a doze when the soft voice lisped again, - -"Tom." - -He did his best to drag himself back from sleep. "Yes, dad? Do you want -to know what time it is? I'll get up and look." - -"No, stay where you are. There's somethin' I want to say. I've been a -skunk to you." - -"Oh, cut it, dad...." - -"I won't cut it. I want to say it out. When I--when I first took you, -it wasn't--it wasn't so much that I'd took a fancy to you...." - -"I know it wasn't, dad. You wanted a boy to pick the berries. Let's -drop it there." - -But the fevered conscience couldn't drop it there. "Yes; at first. -And then--and then it come into my mind that you might be--might be -the one that'd do somethin' I didn't want to do myself. I thought--I -thought that if you done it we might get by on it. We got by on it all -right--or up to now we've got by--but I didn't get real fond of you -till--till...." - -"Oh, dad, let's go to sleep." - -"All right. Let's. I just wanted to say that much. I was glad afterward -that...." - -The boy breathed heavily, pretending that he was asleep. He was soon -asleep in earnest, and for the rest of the night was undisturbed. In -the morning his father didn't get up, and Tom went down to the chop -saloon to bring up something that would serve as breakfast. He did the -same at midday, and the same in the evening. It was a summer's evening, -with a long twilight. As it began to grow dark Quidmore seemed to rouse -himself. He needed tooth paste, shaving cream, other small necessities. -Sitting up on the bed, he made out a list of things, giving Tom the -money with which to pay for them. If he went to the pharmacy in Hudson -Street he would be back in half an hour. - -"All right, dad. I know the way. I'm an old hand in New York by this -time." - -He was at the door when Quidmore called him back. - -"Say, boy. Give us a kiss." - -Tom was stupefied. He had kissed his adopted mother often enough, but -he had never been asked to do this. Quidmore laughed, pulling him close. - -"Ah, come along! I don't ask you often. You're a fine boy, Tom. You -must know as well as I do what's been...." - -The words were suspended by a hug; but once he was free Tom fled away -like a small young wild thing, released from human hands. Having -reached the street, he began to feel frightened, prescient, awed. -Something was going to happen, he could not imagine what. He made his -purchases hurriedly, and then delayed his return. He could be tender -with the man; he could be loving; but he couldn't share his secrets. - -But he had to go back. In the dim upper hall outside the door he paused -to pump up courage to go in. He was not afraid in the common way of -fear; he was only overcome with apprehension at having a knowledge he -rejected forced on him. - -The first thing he noticed was that no light came through the crack -beneath the door. The room was apparently dark. That was strange -because his father dreaded darkness, except when he was there to keep -him company. He crept to the door and listened. There was no sound. He -pushed the door open. The lights were out. In panic at what he might -discover, he switched on the electricity. - -But he only found the room empty. That was so far a relief. His father -had gone out, and would be back again. Closing the door behind him, he -advanced into the room. - -It seemed more than empty. It felt abandoned, as if something had gone -which would not return. He remembered that sensation afterward. He -stood still to wonder, to conjecture. The Red Indian gleamed with his -bronze leer. - -The next thing the boy noticed was an odd little pile on the table. It -was money--notes. On top of the notes there was silver and copper. He -stooped over them, touching them with his forefinger, pushing them. He -pushed them as he might have pushed an insect to see whether or not it -was alive. - -Lastly he noticed a paper, on which the money had been placed. There -was something scribbled on it with a pencil. He held it under the dim -lamp. "For Tom--with a real love." - -The tears gushed to his eyes, as they always did when people showed -that they loved him. But he didn't actually cry; he only stood still -and wondered. He couldn't make it out. That his father should have gone -out and forgotten all his money was unusual enough, but that he should -have left these penciled words was puzzling. It was easy to count the -money. There were seven fifty-dollar bills, with twenty-eight dollars -and fifty-four cents in smaller bills and change. He seemed to remember -that his father had drawn four hundred dollars for the Wilmington -expenses, with a margin for purchases. - -He stood wondering. He could never recall how long he stood wondering. -The rest of the night became more or less a blank to him; for, to the -best of the boy's knowledge, the man who had adopted him was never seen -again. - - - - -XX - - -To the best of the boy's knowledge the man who had adopted him was -never seen again; but it took some time to assume the fact that he was -dead. Visitors to New York often dived below the surface, to come up -again a week or ten days later. Their experience in these absences they -were not always eager to discuss. - -"Why, I've knowed 'em to stay away that long as yer'd swear they'd -been kidnapped," Mr. Honeybun informed the boy. "He's on a little -time; that's all. Nothink but nat'rel to a man of his age--and a -widower--livin' in the country--when he gits a bit of freedom in the -city." - -"Yes, but what'll he do for money?" - -There was this point of view, to be sure. Mr. Goodsir suggested that -Quidmore had had more money still, that he had only left this sum to -cover Tom's expenses while he was away. - -"And listen, son," he continued, kindly, "that's a terr'ble big wad -for a boy like you to wear on his person. Why, there's guys that -free-quents this very house that'd rob and murder you for half as much, -and never drop a tear. Now here I am, an old trusty man, accustomed to -handle funds, and not sneak nothin' for myself. If I could be of any -use to you in takin' charge of it like...." - -"Me and you'll talk this over, later," Mr. Honeybun intervened, -tactfully. "The kid don't need no one to take care of his cash when his -father may skin home again before to-night. Let's wait a bit. If he's -goin' to trust anybody it'll be us, his next of kin in this 'ere 'ouse, -of course. That'd be so, kiddy, wouldn't it?" - -Tom replied that it would be so, giving them to understand that he -counted on their good offices. For the present he was keeping himself -in the non-committal attitude natural to suspense. - -"You see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging -candor, "I can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back -again, at any rate, not for a spell." - -The worthies going to their work, the interview ended. At least, Mr. -Goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was -back in Tom's room again. - -"Say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and. -I can't stop now; but when I blow in to eat at noon I'll tell yer what -I'd do with 'em, if you was me. Keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside -pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help -till I come back and git you. Yer never knows who's on the same floor -with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe." - -Out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting -the line of docks especially. He liked them. On the façades of the -low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into -syllables--New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma. -He had always been fond of geography. It opened up the world. It -told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in -the meantime he could dream about. Over the low roofs of the dock -buildings he could see the tops of funnels. Here and there was the long -black flank of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from -one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and -out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly -shunting up and down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep sound, -the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he -himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would -suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled -his mind to his desolation. - -He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious -populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of -his loneliness smote him to a standstill. He would wonder where he -was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing -about the steamer on the Hudson. Like her, he seemed to be afloat. -She, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world -to tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that was always -sailing--sailing--sailing--sailing--with never a port to have come out -of, and never a port in view, - -_The Church of the Sea!_ - -He read the words on the corner of a big white building where Jane -Street flows toward the docks. He read them again. He read them because -he liked their suggestions--immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and -God! - -[Illustration: "THAT'S A TERR'BLE BIG WAD FOR A BOY LIKE YOU TO WEAR"] - -It was queer to think of God being out there, where there were only -waves and ships and sailors, but chiefly waves and a few seabirds. It -recalled the religion of crippled Bertie Tollivant, the cynic. To the -instructed like himself, God was in the churches that had steeples and -pews and strawberry sociables, or in the parlors where they held family -prayers. They told you that He was everywhere; but that only meant -that you couldn't do wrong, you couldn't swear, or smoke a cigarette, -or upset some householder's ash-barrels, without His spotting you. -Tom Quidmore did not believe that Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant would have -sanctioned this Church of the Sea, where God was as free as wind, -and over you like the sky, and beyond any human power to monopolize -or give away. It made Him too close at hand, too easy to find, and -probably much too tender toward sailors, who were often drunk, and -homeless little boys. He turned away from the Church of the Sea, -secretly envying Bertie Tollivant his graceless creed, but not daring -to question the wisdom of adult men and women. - -By the steps of the chop saloon he waited for Mr. Honeybun, who came -swinging along, a strong and supple figure, a little after the whistle -blew at twelve. To the boy's imagination, now that he had been informed -as to his friend's status, he looked like what had been defined to -him as a socialist. That is, he had the sort of sinuosity that could -slip through half-open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glide -noiselessly up and down staircases. It was ridiculous to say it of one -so bony and powerful, but the spring of his step was spiritlike. - -"Good for you, lad, to be waitin'! We'll go right along and do it, and -then it'll be off our minds." - -What "it" was to be, Tom had no idea. But then he had no suspicions. In -spite of his hard childhood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men -would do him wrong. He had no fear of Mr. Honeybun, and no mistrust, -not any more than a baby in arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse. - -"And there's another thing," Mr. Honeybun brought up, as they went -along. "It don't seem to me no good for a husky boy like you to be just -doin' nothink, even while he's waitin' for his pop. I'd git a job, if -you was me." - -The boy said that he would gladly have a job, but didn't know how to -get one. - -"I've got one for yer if yer'll take it. Work not too 'ard, and 'll -bring you in a dollar and a 'alf a day." - -But "it" was the matter in hand, and presently its nature became -evident. At the corner of Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue Mr. -Honeybun pointed across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very -solidity inspired confidence. Tom could read for himself that it was a -savings bank. - -"Now what I'd do if it was my wad is this. I'd put three hundred -and twenty-five of it in that there bank, which'd leave yer more'n -twenty-five for yer eddication. But yer principal, no one won't be -able to touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer'll be gettin' yer -interest piled up on top of it." - -Tom's heart leaped. He had long meditated on savings banks. They had -been part of his queer vision. To become "something big" he would have -to begin by opening some such account as this. With Mr. Honeybun's -proposal he felt as if he had suddenly grown taller by some inches, and -older by some years. - -"You'll come over with me, won't you?" - -Mr. Honeybun demurred. "Well, yer see, kid, I'm a pretty remarkable -character in this neighborhood. There's lots knows Honey Lem; and -if they was to see me go in with you they might think as yer hadn't -come by your dough quite hon--I mean, accordin' to yer conscience--or -they might be bad enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between -us. When I puts a few dollars into my own savings bank--I'm a savin' -bird, I am--I goes right over to Brooklyn, where there ain't no wicked -mind to suspeck me. So go in by yerself, and say yer wants to open a -account. If anyone asks yer, tell him just how the money come to yer, -and I don't believe as yer'll run no chanst of no one not believin' -yer." - -So it was done. Tom came out of the building with his bank book -buttoned into his breast pocket, and a conscious enhancement of life. - -"And now," Mr. Honeybun suggested, "we'll make tracks for Pappa's and -eat." - -The "check," like the meal, was light, and Mr. Honeybun paid it. Tom -protested, since he had money of his own, but his host took the -situation gracefully. - -"Lord love yer, kid, ain't I yer next o' kin, as long as yer guv'nor's -away? Who sh'd buy yer a lunch if it wasn't me?" - -Childhood is naturally receptive. As Romulus and Remus took their food -from a wolf when there was no one else to give it them, so Tom Quidmore -found it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, and then by -a thief. It became amazing, a few years later, on looking back on it; -but for the moment murderer and thief were not the terms in which he -thought of those who had been kind to him. - -Not that he didn't try. He tried that very afternoon. When his next o' -kin had gone back to his job of lifting and heaving in the Gansevoort -Market, he returned to the empty room. It was his first return to -it alone. When he had gone up from his breakfast in the chop saloon -both Goodsir and Honeybun had accompanied him. Now the emptiness was -awesome, and a little sinister. - -He had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully that is, waking -every half hour to listen for the shuffling footstep. He heard other -footsteps, dragging, thumping, staggering, but they always passed on -to the story above, whence would come a few minutes later the sound -of heavy boots thrown on the floor. Now and then there were curses, -or male voices raised in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song. -During the earlier nights he had slept through these signals of Pappa's -hospitality, or if he had waked, he knew that a grown-up man lay in the -other bed, so that he was safe. Now he could only lie and shudder, -till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. He did his best -to keep awake, so as to unlock the door the instant he heard a knock; -but in spite of his efforts he slept. - -This return after luncheon brought him for the first time face to face -with his state as a reality. There was no one there. It was no use -going back to Bere, because there would be no one there. Rather than -become again a State ward with the Tollivants, he would sell himself to -slavery. What was he to do? - -The first thing his eye fell upon was his father's suitcase, lying -open on the floor beside the bed, its contents in disorder. It was the -way Quidmore kept it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed -one. The futility of this clothing was what struck the boy now. The -peculiar grief of handling the things intimately used by those who -will never use them again was new to him. He had never supposed that -so much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. Stooping over -the suitcase, he had accidentally picked one up, and burst into sudden -tears. They were the first he had actually shed since he used to creep -away to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the Tollivants. - -It occurred to him now that he had not cried when his adopted mother -disappeared. He had not especially mourned for her. While she had -been there, and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved her -in the way in which he loved so easily when anyone opened the heart -to him; but she had been no part of his inner life. She was the cloud -and sunshine of a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of -the morrow. Of the two, he grieved more for the man; and the man was a -murderer, and probably a suicide. - -Sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words in the attempt -to work up a fortifying moral indignation. It was then, too, that he -called Mr. Honeybun a thief. He must react against these criminal -associations. He must stand on his own feet. He was not afraid of -earning his own living. He had heard of boys who had done it at an -age even earlier than thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires. -They had always, however, so far as he knew, had some sort of ties -to connect them with the body politic. They had had the support of -families, sympathies, and backgrounds. They hadn't been adrift, like -that haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but the God of -the Sea to keep her from foundering. He could have believed in this -God of the Sea. He wished there had been such a God. But the God that -was, the God who was shut up in churches and used only on Sundays, was -not of much help to him. Any help he got he must find for himself; and -the first thing he must do would be to break away from these low-down -companionships. - -And just as, after two or three hours of meditation, he had reached -this conclusion, a tap at the door made him start. Quidmore had come -back! But before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed open, -and he saw the patch over the left eye. - -"Got away early, son. Now, seems to me, we ought to be out after them -overalls." - -The boy stood blank. "What overalls?" - -"Why, for yer job to-morrow. Yer can't work in them good clo'es. Yer'd -sile 'em." - -In a second-hand shop, known to Honey Lem, in Charles Street, they -found a suit of boy's overalls not too much the worse for wear. Honey -Lem pulled out a roll of bills and paid for them. - -"But I've got my own money, Mr. Honeybun." - -"Dooty o' next o' kin, boy. I ain't doin' it for me own pleasure. -Yer'll need yer money for yer eddication. Yer mustn't forgit that." - -The overalls bound him more closely to the criminal from whom he was -trying to cut loose. More closely still he found himself tied by the -scraps of talk he overheard between the former pals that evening. They -were on the lowest of the steps leading up from the chop saloon, where -all three of them had dined. Tom, who had preceded them, stood on the -sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within earshot. - -"I tell yer I can't, Goody," Mr. Honeybun was saying, "not as long as -I'm next o' kin to this 'ere kid. 'Twouldn't be fair to a young boy for -me to keep no such company." - -Mr. Goodsir made some observation the nature of which Tom could only -infer from Mr. Honeybun's response. - -"Well, don't yer suppose it's a damn sight 'arder for me to be out'n a -good thing than it is for you to see me out'n it? I don't go in for no -renounciation. But when yer've got a fatherless kid on yer 'ands ye' -must cut out a lot o' nice stuff that'll go all right when yer've only -yerself to think about. Ain't yer a Christian, Goody?" - -Once more Mr. Goodsir's response was to Tom a matter of surmise. - -"Well, then, Goody, if yer don't like it yer can go to E and double L. -What's more, I ain't a-goin' to sleep in our own room to-night, nor -any night till that guy comes back. I'm goin' to sleep in the kid's -room, and keep him company. 'Tain't right to leave a young boy all by -hisself in a 'ouse like this, as full o' toughs as a ward'll be full o' -politicians." - -Tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the knowledge that -the other bed in his room would not remain so creepily vacant was -consciously a relief. He slept dreamlessly that night, because of -his feeling of security. In the morning, not long after four, he was -wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to and fro. - -"Come, little shaver! Time to git up! Got to be on yer job at five." - -The job was in a market that was not exactly a market since it supplied -only the hotels. Together with the Gansevoort and West Washington -Markets, it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food on the -continent of America. Railways and steamers brought it from ranches -and farms, from plantations and orchards, from rivers and seas, from -slaughter-stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north and -the south and the west, from the tropics and farther than the tropics, -to feed the vast digestive machine which is the basis of New York's -energies. Tom's job was not hard, but it was incessant. His was the -duty of collecting and arranging the empty cases, crates, baskets, -and coops, which were dumped on the raised platform surrounding the -building on the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. Trucks -and vans took them away full on one day, and brought them back empty on -another. It was all a boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order, -according to sizes and shapes. The sizes in the main were small; the -shapes were squares and oblongs and diminishing churnlike cylinders. -Nimbleness, neatness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and -all three of them the boy supplied. - -Fatigue that night made him wakeful. His companion in the other bed -was wakeful too. In talking from bed to bed Tom found it a comfort to -be dealing with an easy conscience. Mr. Honeybun had nothing on his -mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. Speculation on the subject of -Quidmore's disappearance, and possible fate, turned round and round on -itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses. - -"And there's another thing," came from Mr. Honeybun. "If he don't come -back, why, you'll come in for a good bit o' proputty, won't yer? Didn't -he own that market-garden place, out there on the edge of Connecticut?" - -"He left it to his sister. He told me that the other night. You see, I -wasn't his real son. I wasn't his son at all till about a year ago." - -This statement coming to Mr. Honeybun as something of a shock, Tom was -obliged to tell the story of his life to the extent that he knew it. -The only details that he touched on lightly were those which bore on -the manner in which he had lost his "mudda." Even now it was difficult -to name her in any other way, because in no other way had he ever named -her. Obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollections, which -in themselves were clear enough, his tale was brief. - -"So yer real name is Whitelaw," Mr. Honeybun commented, with interest. -"I never hear that name but once. That was the Whitelaw baby. Ye'll -have heard tell o' that?" - -Since Tom had never heard tell of the Whitelaw baby, the lack in his -education was supplied. The Whitelaw baby had been taken out to the -Park on a morning in May, and had vanished from its carriage. In the -place where it had lain was found a waxen image so true in likeness to -the child himself that only when it came time to feed him did the nurse -make the discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. The mystery -had been the source of nation-wide excitement for the best part of two -years. It was talked of even now. It couldn't have been more than three -or four years earlier that Mr. Honeybun had seen a daily paper, bearing -the headlines that Harry Whitelaw had been found, selling like hotcakes -to the women shopping in Twenty-third Street. - -"And was he?" Tom asked, beginning at last to be sleepy. - -"No more'n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer'd blowed it in the air. -The father, a rich banker--a young chap he was, too, I believe--he -offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as'd put him on the -track o' the gang what had kidnapped the young 'un; and every son of a -gun what thought he was a socialist was out to win the money. This 'ere -Goody, he had a scheme. Tried to work me in on it, and I don't know but -what I might a took a 'and if a chum o' mine hadn't got five year for -throwin' the same 'ook without no bait on it. They 'auled in another -chap I knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do with it, and -tried to make him squeal; but--" A long breath from Tom interrupted -this flow of narrative. "Say, kiddy, yer ain't asleep, are yer? and me -tellin' yer about the Whitelaw baby?" - -"I am nearly," the boy yawned. "Good night--Honey! Wake me in time in -the morning." - -"That's a good name for yer to call me," the next o' kin commended. -"I'll always be Honey to you, and you'll be Kiddy to me; and so we'll -be pals. Buddies they call it over here." - -Echoes of a street brawl reached them through the window. Had he been -alone, the country lad of thirteen would have shivered, even though the -night was hot. But the knowledge of this brawny companion, lying but -a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a puppy, and fall asleep -trustfully. - - - - -XXI - - -The next two or three nights were occasions for the interchange of -confidence. During the days the new pals saw little of each other, and -sometimes nothing at all. With the late afternoon they could "clean -themselves," and take a little relaxation. For this there was no great -range of opportunity. Relaxation for Lemuel Honeybun had hitherto run -in directions from which he now felt himself cut off. He knew of no -others, while the boy knew of none of any kind. - -"I tell yer, Goody," Tom overheard, through the open door of the room -back of Pappa's, one day while he was climbing the stairs, "I ain't -a-goin' to go while I've got this job on me hands. The Lord knows I -didn't seek it. It's just one of them things that's give yer as a -dooty, and I'm goin' to put it through. When Quidmore's come back, and -it's all over, I'll be right on the job with the old gang again; but -till he does it's nix. Yer can't mean to think that I don't miss the -old bunch. Why, I'd give me other eye...." - -Tom heard no more; but the tone of regret worried him. True, if he -wanted to break the bond this might be his chance. On the other hand, -the thought of being again without a friend appalled him. While waiting -in the hope that Quidmore might come back, the present arrangement -was at least a cosy one. Nevertheless, he felt it due to his spirit of -independence to show that he could stand alone. He waited till they -were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and the air through the open -window was cool enough to allow of their being comfortable, before he -felt able to take an offhand, man-to-man tone. - -"You know, Honey, if you want to beat it back to your old crowd, I can -get along all right. Don't hang round here on my account." - -"Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice meself. If I'm to be -yer next o' kin, I'll be it and be damned. Done 'arder things than this -in me life, and pulled 'em off, too. I'll stick to yer, kid, as long as -yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my life, and never -see another quart bottle." - -The pathos of the life for which he might be letting himself in turned -his thoughts backward over his career. - -"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might -still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born. -True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell -it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I -'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other -day--steward on one of the Cunarders he was--said he wouldn't 'a -knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges. -Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon -parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But -it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought me where I am, and I -don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I -wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings -bank in Brooklyn. Friends as 'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by -them. And if I hadn't lost me eye--but how was I to know that that -low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and 'd -let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball -cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York -right atop o' me." - -Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young -lady's life." - -Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for -finding the right words. - -"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that -there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both -sides to onst, now can I?" - -He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son -of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at -the age of seventeen. - -"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what -it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit -I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to -seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by -somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and -me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll -inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I did inherit -somethink--inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his -seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was -mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes -later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and -havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's -easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and -that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was. -Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and -get a move on--and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail. -You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?" - -Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released -from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America. - -"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and -find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been -landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it -is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid. -Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for -nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've -worked for--or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a -injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of -fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for -yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?" - -A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his -position. - -"I've been thinkin', Kiddy, that since yer used to be a State ward, -yer'll have to be a State ward agin, if the State knows you're knockin' -round loose." - -The boy cried out in alarm. "Oh, but I won't be. I'll kill myself -first." - -He could not understand this antipathy, this horror. In a mechanical -way the State had been good to him. The Tollivants had been good to -him, too, in the sense that they had not been unkind. But he could -not return to the status. It was the status that dismayed him. In -Harfrey it had made him the single low-caste individual in a prim -and high-caste world, giving everyone the right to disdain him. They -couldn't help disdaining him. They knew as well as he did that in -principle he was a boy like any other; but by all the customs of their -life he was a little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it was -still possible to respect himself; but to go back and hang on to the -outer fringe of the organized life of a Christian society would have -ravaged him within. He said so to Honeybun energetically. - -"That's the way I figured that yer'd feel. So long as you're on'y -waitin'--or yer can say that you're on'y waitin'--till yer pop comes -back, it won't matter much. It'll be when school begins that it'll go -agin yer. There's sure to be some pious woman sneepin' round that'll -tell someone as you're not in school when you're o' school age, and -then, me lad, yer'll be back as a State ward on some down-homer's farm." - -Tom lashed the bed in the darkness. "I won't go! I won't go!" - -"That's what I used to say the first few times they pinched me; but -yer'll jolly well have to go if they send yer. Now what I was thinkin' -is this. It's in New York State that yer'd be a State ward. If you -was out o' this State there'd be all kinds o' laws that couldn't git -yer back again. Onst when I'd been doin' a bit o' socializin' in New -Jersey, and slipped back to Manhattan--well, you wouldn't believe the -fuss it took to git me across the river when the p'lice got wind it was -me. Never got me back at all! Thing died out before they was able to -fix up all the coulds and couldn'ts of the lor." - -He allowed the boy to think this over before going on with his -suggestion. - -"Now if you and me was to light out together to another State, they -wouldn't notice that we'd gone before we was safe beyond their -clutches. If we was to go to Boston, say! Boston's a good town. I -worked Boston onst, me and a chap named...." - -The boy felt called on to speak. "I wouldn't be a socialist, not if it -gave me all Boston for my own." - -The statement, coming as it did, had the vigor of an ultimatum. -Though but a repetition of what he had said a few days before, it was -a repetition with more force. It was also with more significance, -fundamentally laying down a condition which need not be discussed again. - -After long silence Mr. Honeybun spoke somewhat wistfully. "Well, I -dunno as I'd count that agin yer. I sometimes thinks as I'll quit bein' -a socialist meself. Seems to me as if I'd like to git back with the old -gang, and be what they calls a orthodock. You know what a orthodock is, -don't yer?" - -"It's a kind of religion, isn't it?" - -"It ain't so much a kind of religion as it's a kind o' way o' thinkin'. -You're a orthodock when you don't think at all. Them what ain't got no -mind of their own, what just believes and talks and votes and lives the -way they're told to, they're the orthodocks. It don't matter whether -it's religion or politics or lor or livin', the people who don't know -nothink but just obeys other people what don't know nothink, is the -kind that gits into the least trouble." - -"Yes, but what do you want to be like that for? You _have_ got a mind -of your own." - -"Well, there's a good deal to be said, Kiddy. First there's you." - -"Oh, if it's only me...." - -"Yes, but when I'm yer next o' kin it isn't on'y you; it's you first -and last. I got to bring you up an orthodock, if I'm going to bring you -up at all. Yer can't think for yerself yet. You're too young. Stands to -reason. Why, I was twenty, and very near a trained gasfitter, before -I'd begun thinkin' on me own. What yer does when yer're growed up'll be -no concern o' mine. But till you _are_ growed up...." - -Tom had heard of quicksands, and often dreamed that he was being -engulfed in one. He had the sensation now. Circumstances having pushed -him where he would not have ventured of his own accord, the treacherous -ground was swallowing him up. He couldn't help liking Honey Lem, since -he liked everyone in the world who was good to him; he was glad of his -society in these lonely nights, and of the sense of his comradeship -in the background even in the day; but between this gratitude and a -lifelong partnership he found a difference. There were so many reasons -why he didn't want permanent association with this fairy godfather, and -so many others why he couldn't find the heart to tell him so! He was -casting about for a method of escape when the fairy godfather continued. - -"This 'ere socialism is ahead of its time. People don't understand -it. It don't do to be ahead o' yer time, not too far ahead, it don't. -Now I figure out that if I was to go back a bit, and git in among -them orthodocks, I might do 'em good like. Could explain to 'em. I -ain't sure but what I've took the wrong way, showin' 'em first, and -explainin' to 'em afterwards. Now if I was to stop showin' 'em at all, -and just explain to 'em, why, there'd be folks what when I told 'em -that nothink don't belong to nobody they'd git the 'ang of it. Begins -to seem to me as if I'd done me bit o' sufferin' for the cause. Seen -the inside o' pretty near every old jug round New York. It's aged me. -But if I was to sackerfice me opinions, and make them orthodocks feel -as I was one of 'em, I might give 'em a pull along like." - -The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the morning. In the -afternoon Honey Lem had a new idea. Without saying what it was, he -took the boy to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached -Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an electric bus going -northward, and Tom had a new experience. Except for having crossed -it in the market lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this -stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him. - -Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when shops were shut, residences -closed, and saunterers relatively few, it added a new concept to those -already in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. These -ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these pictures, jewels, -flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more than appeal to his eye. They -set free a function of his being that had hitherto been sealed. The -first atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware was consciously -in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in some life before he was born, rich -and beautiful things had been his accessories. He had been used to -them. They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a matter of -course. To see them was not so much a discovery as it was a return to -what he had been accustomed to. He was thinking of this, with an inward -grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when Honey went back to the -topic of the night before. - -"The reason I said Boston is because they've got that great big college -there. If I'm to bring yer up, I'll have to send yer to college." - -The opening was obvious. "But, Honey, you don't have to bring me up." - -"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like -you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and -I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o' -sendin' yer to college, mind that now." - -There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go -to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one -means he must go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some -sort, he might be obliged to depend on him. - -The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue -borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the -neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner." - -Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning -the houses opposite. - -"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the -façade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps, -and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live." - -Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He -listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage -had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was -wheeled away by the nurse. - -"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was -standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. -Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to -see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money. -We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the -Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at -the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else." - -They went into the Park by the same little opening through which -the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective -reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash -had taken, almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. -Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped -elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a -clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in -its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if -he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had -stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby -beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he -was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the -baby, which remained a mystery. - -"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That -one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had -a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums -is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and -the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's -shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be -'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me -not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if -you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your -age." - -Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had read -_Juliet Allingham's Sin_, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because -his name was Harry, and mine's Tom." - -"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim." - -"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do -you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...." - -The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there -was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom -knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman -have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion? -A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the -roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself. -He sprang to his feet. - -"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find -them." - -To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his mother and stolen -babies as they went off to the Zoo. - - - - -XXII - - -The move to Boston was made during August, so that they might be -settled in time for the opening of the schools. The flitting was with -the ease of the obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel -changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore became again Tom -Whitelaw. There were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of -both. - -"Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of Lemuel, and if any -old sneeper was to look me up.... Not but what Lemuel isn't a more -aristocraticker name than George; but there's times when somethink what -no one won't notice'll suit you best. So I'll be George Honeybun, a pal -o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed." - -The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and -prudential. In the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was -something to the boy to know that he had had a father. His father had -been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had been a Whitelaw; there was a whole -line of Whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be -known by names. A slim link with a past, at least it was a link. The -Quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. -It signified the ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he had -sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to -him. - -It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. In the -unlikely event of the State of New York busying itself with the fate -of its former ward, the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A -well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending -school in Boston according to the law, would have the best chance of -going unmolested. - -They found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, on that northern -slope of Beacon Hill which within living memory has more than once -changed hands with the silent advance and recession of a tide coming -in and going out. There are still old people who can remember when -some of the worthiest of the sons of the Puritans had their windows, -in these steep and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the -setting sun. Then, with an almost ghostly furtiveness, they retired as -the negro came and routed them. The negro seemed fixed in possession -when the Hebrew stole on silently, and routed him. At the time when -George Honeybun and Tom Whitelaw came looking for a home, the ancient -inhabitant of the land was beginning to creep back again, and the -Hebrew taking flight. In a red-brick house of forbidding expression in -Grove Street they found a room with two beds. - -Within a few days Honey, whose strength was his skill, was working as -a stevedore on the Charlestown docks. Tom was picking up small jobs -about the markets. By September he had passed his examinations and had -entered the Latin School. A new life had begun. From the old life no -pursuit or interference ever followed them. - -The boy shot up. In the course of a year he had grown out of most of -his clothes. To the best of his modest ability, Honey was generous -with new ones. He was generous with everything. That Tom should lack -nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed to have none but the -most elemental. Of his "nice times" in New York nothing had followed -him to Boston but a love of spirits and tobacco. Of the two, the -spirits went completely. When Tom's needs were pressing the supply of -tobacco diminished till it sometimes disappeared. If on Sundays he -could venture over the hill, to listen to the band on the Common, or -stroll with the boy in the Public Gardens, it was because the Sunday -suit, bought in the days when he had no one to provide for but himself, -was sponged and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous -devotion. The motive of so much self-denial puzzled Tom, since, so far -as he could judge, it was not affection. - -He was old enough now to perceive that affection had inspired most -of his good fortune. People were disposed to like him for himself. -There was rarely a teacher who did not approve of him. By the market -men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars on Saturdays and in -vacations, he was always welcomed heartily. In school he never failed -to hold his own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, or -something, was a stevedore, after which he was ignored. Girls regarded -him with a hostile interest, while toward them he had no sentiments -of any kind. He could go through a street and scarcely notice that -there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn't leave him alone. They -bothered him with overtures of friendship to which he did not respond, -or tossed their heads at him, or called him names. But in general the -principle was established that he could be liked. - -But Honey was an enigma. Love was apparently not the driving power -urging him to these unexpected fulfillments. If it was, it had none -of the harmless dog-and-puppy ways which Tom had grown accustomed to. -Honey never pawed him, as the masters often pawed the boys, and the -boys pawed one another. He never threw an arm across his shoulder, -or called him by a more endearing name than Kiddy. Apart from an -eagle-eyed solicitude, he never manifested tenderness, nor asked for -it. That Tom would ever owe him anything he didn't so much as hint -at. "Dooty o' next o' kin" was the blanket explanation with which he -covered everything. - -"But you're not my next of kin," Tom, to whom schooling had revealed -the meaning of the term, was bold enough to object. "Next of kin means -that you'd be my nearest blood relation; and we're not relations at -all." - -Honey was undisturbed in his Olympian detachment. "Do yer suppose I -dunno that? But I believes as Gord sees we're kin lots o' times when -men don't take no notice. You was give to me. You was put into my 'ands -to bring up. And up I'm goin' to bring yer, if it breaks me." - -It was a close Sunday evening in September, the last of the summer -holidays. Tom would celebrate next day by entering on a higher grade -at school. He had had new boots and clothes. For the first time he -was worried by the source of this beneficence. As night closed down -they sat for a breath of fresh air on the steps of the house in Grove -Street. Grove Street held the reeking smell of cooking, garbage, and -children, which only a strong wind ever blows away from the crowded -quarters of the cities, and there had been no strong wind for a week. -Used to that, they didn't mind it. They didn't mind the screeching -chatter or the raucous laughter that rose from doorways all up and down -the hill, nor the yelling of the youngsters playing in the roadway. -Somewhere round a corner a group of Salvationists, supported by a -blurting cornet, sang with much gusto: - - Oh, how I love Jesus! - Oh, how I love Jesus! - Oh, how I love Jesus! - Because He first loved me. - -They didn't mind it when Mrs. Danker, their landlady, a wiry New -England woman, sitting in the dark of the hall behind them, joined in, -in her cracked voice, with the Salvationists, nor when Mrs. Gribbens, -a stout old party who picked up a living scrubbing railway cars, -joined in with Mrs. Danker. From neighboring steps mothers called out -to their children in Yiddish, and the children answered in strident -American. But to Honey and Tom all this was the friendly give-and-take -of promiscuity which they would have missed had it not been there. - -Each was so concentrated on his own ruling purpose that nothing -external was of moment. Honey was to give, and Tom was to receive, an -education. That the recipient's heart should be fixed on it, Tom found -natural enough; but that the giver's should be equally intense seemed -to have nothing to account for it. - -He glanced at the quiet figure, upright and muscular, his hands on his -knees, like a stone Pharaoh on the Nile. - -"Why don't you smoke?" - -"I don't want to drop no ashes on this 'ere suit." - -"Have you got any tobacco?" - -"I didn't think to lay in none when I come 'ome yesterday." - -"Is that because there was so much to be spent on me?" - -"Oh, I dunno about that." - -Tom gathered all his ambitions together and offered them up. "Well, -I guess this can be the last year. After I've got through it I'll be -ready to go to work." - -"And not go to college!" The tone was one of consternation. "Lord love -yer, Kiddy, what's bitin' yer now?" - -"It's biting me that you've got to work so hard." - -"If it don't bite me none, why not let it go at that?" - -"Because I don't seem able to. I've taken so much from you." - -"Well, I've had it to 'and out, ain't I?" - -"But I don't see why you do it." - -"A young boy like you don't have to see. There's lots o' things I -didn't understand at your age." - -"You don't seem specially--" he sought for words less direct, but -without finding them--"you don't seem--specially fond of me." - -"I never was one to be fond o' people, except it was a dog. Always had -a 'ankerin' for a dog; but a free life don't let yer keep one. A dog'll -never go back on yer." - -"Well, do you think I would?" - -"I don't think nothink about it, Kid. When the time comes that you can -do without me...." - -"That time'll never come, Honey, after all you've done for me." - -"I don't want yer to feel yerself bound by that." - -"I don't feel myself bound by it; but--dash it all, Honey!--whatever -you feel or don't feel about me, I'm fond of _you_." - -He was still imperturbable. "Well, Kid, you wouldn't be the first, not -by a lot." - -"But if I can never be anything _for_ you, or _do_ anything for you...." - -"There's one thing you could do." - -"What is it? I don't care how hard it is." - -"Well, when you're one o' them big lawyers, or bankers, or -somethink--drorin' yer fifty dollars a week--you can have a shy at this -'ere lor o' proputty. It don't seem right to me that some people should -have all the beef to chaw, and others not so much as the bones; but I -can't git the 'ang of it. If nothink don't belong to nobody, then what -about all your dough in the New York savin's bank, and mine in the one -in Brooklyn? We're keepin' it agin yer goin' to college, ain't we? And -don't that belong to us? Yes, by George, it do! So there you are. But -if when yer gits yer larnin' yer can steddy it out...." - - - - -XXIII - - -The boy was adolescent, sentimental, and lonely. Mere human -companionship, such as that which Honey gave him, was no longer enough -for him. He was seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He began to wish -he had some one with whom to share his unformulated hopes, his crude -and burning opinions. He looked at fellows who were friends going two -and two, pouring out their foolish young hearts to each other, and -envied them. The lads of his own age liked him well enough. Now and -then one of them would approach him with shy or awkward signals, making -for closer acquaintance; but when they learned that he lived in Grove -Street with a stevedore they drew away. None of them ever transcended -the law of caste, to stand by him in spite of his humble conditions. -Boys whose families were down wanted nothing to hamper them in climbing -up. Boys whose families were up wanted nothing that might loosen their -position and pull them down. The sense of social insecurity which was -the atmosphere of homes reacted on well-meaning striplings of fifteen, -sixteen, and seventeen, turning them into snobs and cads before they -had outgrown callowness. - -But during the winter of the year in which he became sixteen there were -two, you might have said three, who broke in upon this solitude. - -In walking to the Latin School from Grove Street he was in the habit of -going through Louisburg Square. If you know Boston you know Louisburg -Square as that quaint red-brick rectangle, like many in the more -Georgian parts of London, which commemorates the gallant dash of the -New England colonists on the French fortress of Louisburg in Cape -Breton. It is the heart of that conservative old Boston, which is now -shrinking in size and importance before the onset of the foreigner till -it has become like a small beleaguered citadel. Here the descendants -of the Puritans barricade themselves behind their financial walls, as -their ancestors within their stockades, while their city is handed -over to the Irishman and the Italian as an undefended town. The Boston -of tradition is a Boston of tradition only. Like the survivors of -Noah's deluge clinging to the top of a rock, they to whom the Boston -of tradition was bequeathed are driven back on Beacon Hill as a final -refuge from the billows rising round them. A high-bred, cultivated, -sympathetic people, they have so given away their heritage as to be -but a negligible factor in the State, in the country, of which their -fathers and grandfathers may be said once to have kept the conscience. - -But to Tom Whitelaw Louisburg Square meant only the dignified fronts -and portals behind which lived the rich people who had no point of -contact with himself. They couldn't have ignored him more completely -than he ignored them. He thought of them as little as the lion cub in a -circus parade thinks of the people of the city through which he passes -in processions. Then, one day, one of these strangers spoke to him. - -It was a youth of about his own age. More than once, as Tom went by, -and the stout boy stood on the sidewalk in front of his own house, they -had looked each other up and down with unabashed mutual appraisal. -Tom saw a lad too short for his width, and unhealthily flabby. He had -puffy hands, and puffy cheeks, with eyes seeming smaller than they were -because the puffy eyelids covered them. The mouth had those appealing -curves comically troubled in repose, but fulfilling their purpose in -giggling. On the first occasion when Tom passed by the lips were set -to the serious task of inspection. They said nothing; they betrayed -nothing. Tom himself thought nothing, except that the boy was fat. - -They had looked at each other some two or three times a week, for -perhaps a month, when one day the fat boy said, "Hullo!" Tom also said, -"Hullo!" continuing on his way. A day or two later they repeated these -salutations, though neither forsook his attitude of reserve. The fat -boy did this first, speaking when they had hullo'ed each other for the -third or fourth time. His voice was high and girlish, and yet with a -male crack in it. - -"What school do you go to?" - -Tom stopped. "I go to the Latin School. What school do you go to?" - -"I go to Doolittle and Pray's." - -"That's the big private school in Marlborough Street, isn't it?" - -The fat boy made the inarticulate grunt which with most Americans -means "Yes." "I was put down for Groton, only mother wouldn't let me -leave home. I'm going to Harvard." - -"I'm going to Harvard, too. What class do you expect to be in?" - -The fat boy replied that he expected to be in the class of -nineteen-nineteen. - -Tom said he expected to be in that class himself. - -"Now I've got to beat it to the Latin School. So long!" - -"So long!" - -Tom carried to his school in the Fenway an unusual feeling of elation. -With friendly intent someone had approached him from the world outside. -It was not the first time it had ever happened, but it was the first -time it had ever happened in just this way. He could see already that -the fat boy was not one of those he would have chosen for a friend; but -he was so lonely that he welcomed anyone. Moreover, he divined that -the fat boy was lonely, too. Boys of that type, the Miss Nancy and -the mother's darling type, were often consumed by loneliness, and no -one ever pitied them. Few went to their aid when other boys "picked" -on them, but of those few Tom Whitelaw was always one. He found them, -once you had accepted their mannerisms, as well worth knowing as other -boys, while they spared him a scrap of admiration. It was possible that -in this fat boy he might find the long-sought fellow who would not -"turn him down" on discovering that he lived in Grove Street. Being -turned down in this way had made him sick at heart so often that he -had decided never any more to make or trust advances. In suffering -temptation again he assured himself that it would be for the last time -in his life. - -On returning from school he looked for the boy in Louisburg Square, but -he was not there. A few hundred yards farther, however, he came in for -another adventure. - -The January morning had been mild, with melting snow. By midday the -wind had shifted to the north, with a falling thermometer. By late -afternoon the streets were coated with a glaze of ice. Tom could -swagger down the slope of Grove Street easily enough in the security of -rubber soles. - -But not so a girl, whose slippers and high French heels made her -helpless on the steep glare. Having ventured over the brow of the hill, -she found herself held. A step into the air would have been as easy as -another on this slippery descent. The best she could do was to sway in -the keen wind, keeping her balance with the grace of one of the blue -spruces which used to be blown about at Bere. Her outstretched arms -waved up and down, as a blue spruce waves its branches. Coming abreast -of her, Tom found her laughing to herself, but on seeing him she -laughed frankly and aloud. - -"Oh, catch me! I'm going to tumble! Ow-w-w!" - -Tom snatched at one hand, while she caught him by the shoulder with the -other. - -"Saved! Wasn't it lucky that you came along? You're the Whitelaw boy, -aren't you?" - -Tom admitted that he was, though his new sensations, with this -exquisite creature clinging to him like a drowning man to his rescuer, -choked the monosyllable in his throat. Though he had often in a -scrimmage protected little boys, he had never before been thrown into -this comic, laughing tussle with a girl. It had the excuse for itself -that she couldn't stand unless he held her up. He held her firmly, -looking into her dancing eyes with his first emotional consciousness of -a girl's prettiness. - -His arm supporting her, she ventured on a step. "I'm Maisie Danker," -she explained, while taking it. "I see you going in and out the house." - -"I've never seen you." - -"Perhaps you've seen me and not noticed me." - -"I couldn't," he declared, with vehemence. "I've never seen you before -in my life. If I had...." - -Her high heels so nearly slipped from under her that they were -compelled to hold each other as if in an embrace. "If you had--what?" - -He knew what, but the words in which to say it needed a higher mode of -utterance. The red lips, the glowing cheeks, had the vitality of the -lively eyes. A red tam-o'-shanter, a red knitted thing like a heavenly -translation of his own earthly sweater, were bewitchingly diabolic when -worn with a black skirt, black stockings, and black shoes. - -As he did not respond to her challenge, she went on with her -self-introduction. "I guess you haven't seen me, because I only arrived -three days ago. I'm Mrs. Danker's niece. Live in Nashua. Worked in the -woolen mills there. Now I've come to visit my aunt for the winter." - -For the sake of hearing her speak, he asked if she was going to work in -Boston. - -"I don't know. Maybe I'll take singing lessons. Got a swell voice." - -If again he was dumb it was because of the failure of his faculties. -Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the give-and-take of -a badinage in which the surface meanings were the less important. -Foolish and helpless, unable to show his manly superiority except in -the strength with which he held her up, he got a lesson in the new art -there and then. - -"Ever dance?" - -"I'm never asked." - -"Oh, it's you that ought to do the asking." - -"I mean that I'm never asked where there's dancing going on." - -"Gee, you don't have to be. You just find a girl--and go." - -"But I don't know how to dance." - -"I'll teach you." - -Slipping and sliding, with cries of alarm on her part, and stalwart -assurances on his, they approached their own doorstep. - -"Ow-w-w! Hold me! I'm going!" - -"No you're not--not while I've got you." - -"But I don't want to grab you so hard." - -"That's all right. I can stand it." - -"But I can't. I'm not used to it." - -"Then it's a very good time to begin." - -"What's the use of beginning if there's nothing to go on with?" - -"How do you know there won't be?" - -"Well, what can there be?" - -Had Miss Danker always waited for answers to her questions Tom would -have been more nonplussed than he was. But the game which he didn't -know at all she knew thoroughly, according to her lights. She never -left him at a loss for more than a few seconds at a time. Her method -being that of touch-and-go, reserving to herself the right of coming -back again, she carried his education one step farther still. - -"Don't you ever go to the movies?" - -He replied that he had gone once or twice with Honey, but not often. -To be on the same breezy level as herself, he added in explanation: -"Haven't got the dough." - -"But the movies don't take dough, not hardly any." - -"They take more than I've got." - -"More than you've got? Gee! Then you can't have anything at all." - -It was not so much a taunt as it was a statement, and yet it was a -statement with a little taunt in it. For once driven to bravado, he -gave away a secret. - -"Well, I haven't--except what's in the bank." - -"Oh, you've got money in the bank, have you?" - -"Sure! But I'm keeping it to go to college." - -She stared at him as if he had been a duck-billed rabbit, or some -variety of fauna hitherto unknown. - -"Gee! I should think a fellow who had money in the bank would want to -blow some of it on having a good time--a fellow with any jazz." - -Once more she spared him discomfiture. Slipping into the hallway, she -said over her shoulder as he followed her: "How old are you?" - -"Sixteen." - -She flashed round at him. "Sixteen! Gee! I thought you was my age if -you was a day. Honest I did. I'm eighteen, an old lady compared with -you." - -"Oh, but boys are always older than girls, for their age." - -"You are, sure. Anyways, you saved me on that slippery hill, and I -think you ought to have a kiss for it. Come, baby, kiss your poor old -ma." - -Though the hallway was dark, the kiss had to be given and taken -furtively. Whatever it was to Maisie Danker, to Tom Whitelaw it was -the entrance to a higher and an increased life. The pressure of her -lips on his sent through his frame a dynamic glow he had not supposed -to be among nature's possibilities. Moreover, it threw light on that -experience as to which he had mused ever since he had first talked -confidentially to Bertie Tollivant. Though instinct had taught him -something in the intervening years, he had up to this minute gained -nothing in the way of practical discovery. Now an horizon that had been -dark was lifting to disclose a wonderland. - -With her light laugh Maisie had run into her aunt's apartment, and -shut the door. Tom began heavily, pensively, to climb the stairs. But -halfway up he paused to mark off another stage in his perceptions. - -"So that's what it's like! That's why they all think so much about -it--and try to hush it up!" - - - - -XXIV - - -He himself found something to hush up when he recounted the incident -to Honey in the evening. He told of meeting Mrs. Danker's niece on the -ice-coated hill, and helping her down to the door. Of his sensations as -she clung to him he said nothing. He said nothing of the kiss in the -dark hallway. During the rest of the evening, and after he had gone to -bed, he wondered why. They all hushed these things up, and he did as -the rest; but what was the basic reason? - -As his first emotional encounter the subject was sufficiently in his -mind next day to make him duller than usual at school. On his way home -from school it so preoccupied his thought that he forgot to look for -the fat boy. It was the fat boy who first saw him, hailing him as he -approached. There was already between them that acceptance of each -other which is the first stage of friendship. - -"What's your name?" - -"Tom Whitelaw. What's yours?" - -"Guy Ansley. How old are you?" - -"Sixteen. How old are you?" - -"I'm sixteen, too. What's your father do?" - -"I haven't got a father. I live with--" it was difficult to -explain--"with a man who kind o' takes care of me." - -"A guardian?" - -"Something like that. What does your father do?" - -"He's a corporation lawyer. Makes big money, too." As Tom began to move -along the fat boy went with him, keeping step. "What's your guardian -do?" - -"He does anything that'll give him a job. Mostly he's a stevedore." - -"What's a stevedore? Sounds as if it had something to do with -bull-fighting." - -"It's a longshoreman. He loads and unloads ships." - -They stopped at the corner of Pinckney Street The puffy countenance -fell. Tom could follow his companion's progression of bewilderments. - -"Where do you live?" - -"I live in Grove Street." - -It was the minute of suspense. All had been confessed. The countenance -that had fallen went absolutely blank. To himself the tall, proud, -sensitive lad was saying that his future life was staked on the -response the fat boy chose to make. If he showed signs of wriggling -out of an embarrassing situation he, Tom Whitelaw, would range himself -forever with the enemies of the rich. - -The fat boy spoke at last. - -"So you're that kind of fellow." - -"Yes, I'm that kind of fellow." - -This was mere marking time. The decision was still to come. It came -with an air on the fat boy's part of heroic resolution. - -"Well, I don't care." - -Tom breathed again, breathed with bravado. "Neither do I." - -In the stress of so much big-heartedness the girlish voice became a -croak. "I know guys who think that if another guy isn't rich they -must treat him as so much dirt. I'm not that sort. I'm democratic. I -wouldn't turn down a fellow just because he lived in Grove Street. If -I liked him I'd stick to him. I'm not snobbish. How do you know you -couldn't give him a peg up, and he'd be grateful to you all his life?" - -Thinking this over afterward, Tom found it hard to disengage the bitter -from the sweet; but he had not much chance to think it over. Any spare -minute he found pre-empted by Maisie Danker, who seemed to camp in -the dark hallway. If she was not there when he entered, she appeared -before he could go upstairs. The ice having melted in the street, she -had other needs of protection, an errand to do in the crowded region -of Bowdoin Square, a shop to visit across the Common which was so wide -and lonesome in winter twilights, a dance hall to locate in case they -ever made up their minds to visit it. She was always timid, clinging, -laughing, adorable. The embodiment of gayety, she made him gay, which -was again a new sensation. Never before had he felt young as he felt -young with her. The minutes they spent swamped in the throngs of the -lighted streets, between five and seven on a winter's afternoon, were -his first minutes of escape from a world of care. Care had been his -companion since he could remember anything; and now his companion was -this exquisite thing, all lightsomeness and joy. - -He was later than usual in returning from school one afternoon, because -a teacher had given him a commission to carry out which took some two -hours of his time. As it had sent him toward the south end of the -city, he had the Common to traverse on his way home. Snow had recently -fallen; but through the main avenues under the trees the paths had been -cleared. On the Frog Pond the drifts had been swept up, so that there -could be a little skating. As Tom passed by he could hear the scraping -and grinding of skates, and the hoarse shouts of hobbledehoys. At any -other time he would have stopped, either to look on peacefully, or to -take part in some bit of free-for-all, rough-and-tumble skylarking in -the snow. But Maisie might be waiting. She might even have given up -waiting, which would take all his pleasure from the afternoon. - -To reach home more quickly he followed a short cut, scarcely shoveled -out, on the slope of the Common below Beacon Hill. Here there were no -foot passengers but himself. Neither, for some little distance, were -there any trees. There was only the white shroud of the snow, freezing -to a crust. A misty moon drifted through a tempest of scudding clouds, -while wherever in the offing there was a group of elms the electric -lights danced through their tossing branches as if they were wind-blown -lanterns. - -In spite of his hurry, the boy came to a standstill. It was a minute -at which to fancy himself lost in Moosonee or Labrador. His _voyageur_ -guides had failed him; his dog team had run away; his pemmican--he -supposed it would be pemmican--had given out. He was homeless, -starving, abandoned, alone but for the polar bears. - -It was not a polar bear that he saw come floundering down the hillside, -but it might have been a black one. It was certainly black; its nature -was certainly animal. It rolled and tumbled and panted and grunted, and -now and then it moaned. For a few minutes it remained stationary, with -internal undulations; then it scrambled a few paces, as an elephant -might scramble whose feet had been sawn off. A dying mammoth would also -have emitted just these raucous groans. - -Suddenly it squealed. The squeal was like that of a pig when the knife -is thrust into its throat. It was girlish, piercing, and yet had a -masculine shriek in it. Tom Whitelaw knew what was happening. It had -happened to himself so often in the days when he was different from -other boys that his fists seemed to clench and his feet to spring -before his mind had given the command. In clearing the fifty odd yards -of snow between him and the wallowing monster, he chose a form of words -which young hooligans would understand as those of authority. - -"What in hell are yez doin' to that kid? Are yez puttin' a knife in -him? Leave him be, or I'll knock the brains out of every one of yez." - -He was in among them, laying about him before they knew what had landed -in their midst. They were not brutal youngsters; they were only jocose -in the manner of their kind. Having spied the fat boy coming down to -watch the skating, it was as natural for them to jump on him as it -would be for a pack of dogs who chanced to see a sloth. With the -courage of the mob, and also with its rapidity of thought-transfer, -they had closed in silently and rushed him. He was on his back in -a second. In a second they were clambering all over him. When he -staggered to his feet they let him run, only to catch him and pull him -down again. So staggering, so running, so coming down like a lump of -jelly in the snow, he had reached the top of the hill, his tormentors -hanging to him as if their teeth were in his flesh, at the minute when -Tom first perceived the black mass. - -The fat boy had not lacked courage. He had fought. That is, he had -kicked and bitten and scratched, with the fury of vicious helplessness. -He had not cried for mercy. He had not cried out at all. He had -struggled for breath; he had nearly strangled; but his pantings and -gruntings were only for breath just as were theirs. Strong in spite of -his unwieldiness, he was not without the moral spunk which can perish -at a pinch, but will not give in. - -None of them had struck him. That would have been thought cowardly. -They had only plastered him with snow, in his mouth, in his ears, in -his eyes, and down below his collar. This he could have suffered, still -without a plea, had not their play become fiercer. They began to tear -open his clothing, to wrench it off the buttons. They stuffed snow -inside his waistcoat, inside his shirt, inside his trousers. He was -naked to the cold. And yet it was not the cold that drew from him that -piglike squeal; it was the indignity. He was Guy Ansley, a rich man's -son, in his native sanctified old Boston a young lordling; but these -muckers had mauled the last rag of honor out of him. - -They were good-natured little demons, with no more notion of his -tragedy than if he had been a snowman. As soon as the strapping young -giant had leaped in among them, they ran off with screams of laughter. -Most of them were tired of the fun in any case; a few lingered at a -distance to "call names," but even they soon disappeared. Tom could -only help the lumbering body to its feet. - -Cleaning him of snow was more difficult, and since it was melting next -his skin, it had to be done at once. The shirt and underclothing being -wet, and a keen wind blowing, his teeth were soon chattering. Even when -buttoned tightly in his outer clothes he was dank and clammy within. -It helped him a little that Tom should strip off his own overcoat and -exchange with him; but nothing could really warm him till he got into -his own bed. - -They would have run all of the short distance to Louisburg Square only -that young Ansley was not a runner at any time, and at this time was -exhausted. Tom could only drag him along as a dead weight. Except for -the brief observations necessary to what they had to do, they hardly -spoke a word. Speech was nearly impossible. The only aim of importance -was covering the ground. - -The old manservant who admitted them in Louisburg Square went dumb with -dismay. Having brought his charge into the hall, Tom was obliged to -take the lead. - -"He's been tumbling in the snow. He's got wet. He may have caught a -chill. Better call his mother." - -The fat boy spoke. "Mother's in New York. So's father. Here, Pilcher, -help me up to my room." - -As the two went up the stairs, Tom was left standing in the hall. A -voice at the head of the stairs arrested his attention because it was -a girl's. Since knowing Maisie Danker, all girls' voices had begun -to interest him. This voice was clear, silvery, peremptory, a little -sharp, like the note of a crystal bell. Pilcher explained something, -whereupon the owner of the voice ran down. On the red carpet of the -stairs, with red-damasked paper as a background, her white figure was -spiritlike beneath a dim oriental hall light. - -"I'm Hildred Ansley," she said, with a cool air of self-possession. "I -see my brother's had an accident. Pilcher is putting him to bed. I'm -sure we're very much obliged to you." - -She was only a child, perhaps fourteen, but a competent child, who -knew what to say. Not pretty, as Maisie was, she had presence and -personality. In this she was helped by her height, since she was -tall, and would be taller, and more by her intelligence. It was the -first time he had ever had occasion to observe that some faces were -intelligent, though it was not quite easy to say why. "Little Miss -Ansley knows what's what," he commented silently, but aloud he said -that if he were in her place he would send for a doctor. Though her -brother had had no bones broken, he might easily have caught a bad cold. - -"Thank you! I'll do it at once." - -She made her way to a table, somewhat belittered with caps and gloves, -behind the stairs, at the back of the hall. Taking up the receiver, she -called a number, politely and yet with a ring of command. While she was -speaking he noticed his surroundings. - -If to him they seemed baronial it was because his experience had been -cramped. Louisburg Square is not baronial; it is only dignified. For -the early nineteenth century its houses were spacious; for the early -twentieth they are a little narrow, a little steep, a little lacking -in imaginative outlet. But to Tom Whitelaw, with memories that went -back to the tenements of New York, to whom the homes of the Tollivants -and the Quidmores had meant reasonable comfort, who found the sharing -of one room with George Honeybun endurable, these walls with their red -paper, these stairs with their red carpet, this lofty gloom, this sense -of wealth, were all that he dreamed of as palatial. - -When Miss Ansley returned from the telephone, he asked if he might -have his overcoat. Her brother had worn it upstairs on going to his -room. "That's his," he explained, pointing to the soggy Burberry he had -thrown down on a carved settle. - -"Oh, certainly! I'll run up and get it. I won't ask you to go upstairs -to the drawing-room; but if you don't mind taking a seat in here...." - -Throwing open the door of the dining room, which was on the ground -floor, she switched on the light. Tom entered and stood still. So this -was the sort of place in which rich people took their meals! - -It was a glow of rich gleaming lights, lights from mahogany, lights -from silver, lights from porcelain. In the center of the table lay -a round piece of lace, on which stood a silver dish with nothing in -it. He knew without being told, though he had never thought of it -before, that it needed nothing in it. There were things so beautiful -as to fulfil their purpose merely in being beautiful. From above a -black-marble mantelpiece a man looked down at him with jovial eyes, a -man in a high collar and huge black neckerchief, who might have been -the grandfather or great-grandfather of Guy and Hildred Ansley. He had -the fat good humor of the one and the bright intelligence of the other, -the source in his genial self of types so widely different. - -Young Miss Ansley tripped in with the coat across her arm. "I'm sure -my father and mother will want to thank you when they come back. Guy's -been very naughty. He's always forbidden to leave the Square when he -goes out of doors. He wouldn't have done it if papa and mamma hadn't -been away. I can't make him mind _me_. But you must come back when -everybody's here, so that you can be thanked properly. I suppose you -live somewhere near us?" - -Tom found it easiest to answer indirectly. "Your brother knows -everything about me. I've seen him once or twice in the Square, and -I've told him who I am." - -"That'll be very nice." - -She held out her hand, and he accepted his dismissal. But before having -closed the door behind him, he turned round to her as she stood under -the oriental lamp. - -"I hope your brother will soon be all right again. I think they ought -to give him a hot drink. He's--he's got big stuff in him when you come -to find it out. He'll make his way." - -The transformation in her was electric. She ceased to be starched and -competent, with a manner that put a thousand miles between him and her. -The intelligence he had already noted in her face was aflame with a -radiance beyond beauty. - -"Oh, I'm so glad you can say that! No one outside the family has ever -said it before. He's a _lamb_!--and hardly anybody knows it." - -She held out her hand again. As he took it he saw that her eyes, which -he thought must be dark, were shining with a mist of tears. - -Going down the hill he repeated the two names: Maisie Danker! Hildred -Ansley! They called up concepts so different that it was hard to think -them of a common flesh. Though Maisie Danker was a woman and Hildred -Ansley but a child, there were points at which you could compare -them. In the comparison the advantages lay so richly with the girl -in Louisburg Square that he fell back on the fact, stressing it with -emphasis, that Maisie was the prettier. "After all," he reflected, with -comfort in the judgment, "that's all that matters--to a man." - - - - -XXV - - -A few days after his rescue of Guy Ansley from the snow Tom Whitelaw -found himself addressed by that young gentleman's sister, aged -fourteen. She had plainly been watching for him as he went through -Louisburg Square on his way from school. He had almost passed the -Ansley steps before the tall, slight girl ran down them. - -"Oh, Mr. Whitelaw!" - -As it was the first time he had ever been honored with this prefix, he -felt shocked and slightly foolish. - -"Yes, Miss Ansley?" - -A little breathless, she was, as he had noticed during their previous -meeting, oddly grown up for her age, as one who takes responsibilities -because there is no one else to bear them. She had the manner and -selection of words of a woman of thirty. - -"I hope you won't mind my waylaying you like this, but my brother would -so much like to see you. You've been so awfully kind that I hope you'll -come up. He's in bed, you know." - -"When does he want me to come?" - -"Well, now, if it isn't troubling you too much. You see, my father and -mother are coming home to-night, and he'd like to have a word with you -before then. He won't keep you more than a few minutes." - -What Tom obscurely felt as an honor to himself she put as a favor he -was doing them. It was an honor in that it admitted him a little -farther into privacies which to him seemed tapestried with privilege -and tradition. His one brief glimpse of their way of living had not -made him discontented; it had only appealed to his faculty for awe. - -Awe was what he was aware of in following his young guide up the two -red staircases to the room where the fat boy lay in bed. It was a -mother's-darling's room, amusingly out of keeping with the pudgy, -fleshy being whom it housed. Flowered paper on the walls, flowered -hangings at the windows, flowered cretonnes on thickly upholstered -armchairs, flowered silk on the duvet, garlands of flowers on the -headboard and footboard of the virginal white bedstead, made the piggy -eyes and piggy cheeks, bolstered up by pillows of which some were -trimmed with lace, the more funnily grotesque. Tom Whitelaw saw neither -the fun nor the grotesqueness. All he could take in was the fact that -beauty could gild the lily of this luxury. He knew nothing of beauty in -his own denuded life. The room with two beds which he still shared with -Honey at Mrs. Danker's was not so much a sanctuary as a lair. - -The fat boy's giggles were those of welcome, and also those of -embarrassment. - -"After the scrap the other night got sick. Bronchitis. Sit down." - -Tom looked round to see what Miss Ansley was doing, but slipping away, -she shut the door behind her. He sank into the flowered armchair -nearest to the bed. The cracked girlish voice, which now had a wheeze -in it, went on. - -"They've wired for dad and mother, and they're coming home to-night. -Thought that before they got here I'd put you wise to something I want -you to do." - -Waiting for more, Tom sat silent, while the poor piggy face screwed -itself up as if it meant to cry. - -"Dad and mother think that because I'm so fat I'm not a sport. But -they're dead wrong, see? I _am_ a sport; only--only--" he was almost -bursting into tears--"only the damn fat won't let me get it out, see?" - -"Yes, I see. I now you're a sport all right, old chap. Of course!" - -"Well, then, don't let them think the other thing, if they were to ask -you." - -"Ask me what?" - -"Ask you what the row was about the other afternoon. If they do that -tell 'em we were only playing nigger-in-the-henhouse, or any other snow -game. Don't say I was knocked down by a lot of kids. Make 'em think I -was having the devil's own good time." - -Tom Whitelaw knew this kind of humiliation. If he had not been through -Guy Ansley's special phase of it he had been through others. - -"I'll tell them what I saw. You and a lot of other fellows were -skylarking in the snow, and I went by and got you to knock off. As I -had to pass your door we came home together; but when I found you were -wet to the skin I advised Miss Ansley to see that you hit the hay. -That's all there was to it." - -In the version of the incident the strain of truth was sufficiently -clear to allow the fat boy to approve of it. He didn't want to tell a -lie, or to get Tom Whitelaw to tell a lie; but sport having been the -object with which he had stolen away on that winter's afternoon, it was -easy to persuade himself that he had got it. Before Tom went away Guy -Ansley understood that he would figure to his parents not as a victim -but as something of a tough. - -"Gee, I wish I was you," he grinned at Tom, who stood with his hands on -the doorknob. - -"Me!" Tom was never so astonished in his life. His eyes rolled round -the room. "How do you think I live?" - -"Oh, live! That's nothing. What I'd like to do is to rough it. If -they'd let me do that I shouldn't be--I shouldn't be wrapped up in fat -like a mummy in--in whatever it is they're wrapped up in. _You_ can get -away with anything on looks." - -Sincere as was this tribute, it meant nothing to Tom Whitelaw, -looks being no part of his preoccupations. What, for the minute, he -was thinking about was that nobody in the world seemed to be quite -satisfied. Here he was envying Guy Ansley his down quilt and his -comfortable chairs, while Guy was envying him the rough-and-tumble of -privation. - -"I shouldn't look after him too much," he said to the young sister -whom, on coming downstairs, he found waiting at the front door. -"There's nothing wrong with him, except that he's a little stout. He's -got lots of pluck." - -Her face glowed. The glow brought out its intelligence. The -intelligence set into action a demure, mysterious charm, almost -oriental. - -"That's just what I always say, and no one ever believes me. Mother -makes a baby of him." - -"If he could only fight his own way a little more...." - -"Oh, I do hope you'll say that if they speak to you about him." - -"I will if I ever get the chance, but...." - -"Oh, you must get the chance. I'll make it. You see, you're the only -boy Guy's ever taken a fancy to who didn't treat him as a joke." - -Tom assured her that her brother was not the only fellow who had a hard -fight to put up during boyhood. He had seen them by the dozen who, -just because of some trifling oddity, or unusual taste, were teased, -worried, tormented, till school became a hell; but that didn't keep -them from turning out in the end to be the best sports among them all. -Very likely the guying did them good. He thought it might. He, Tom -Whitelaw, had been through a lot of it, and now that he was sixteen he -wasn't sorry for himself a bit. He used to be sorry for himself, but.... - -Seeing her for the second time, and in daylight, her features grew more -distinct to him. He mused on them while continuing his way homeward. To -say she was not pretty, as he had said the other night, was to use a -form of words calling for amplification. It was the first time he had -had occasion to observe that there are faces to which beauty is not -important. - -"It's the way she looks at you," was his form of summing up; and yet -for the way she looked at you he had no sufficient phraseology. - -That her eyes were long, narrow, and yellow-brown, ever so slightly -Mongolian, he could see easily enough. That her nose was short, with a -little tilt to it, was also a fact he had no difficulty in stating. As -for her coloring, it was like that of a russet apple when the brown has -a little gold in it and the red the brightness of carmine. Her hair was -saved from being ugly by running to the quaint. Straight, black--black -with a bluish gloss--it was worn not in the pigtail with which he -was most familiar, but in two big plaits curved behind the ears, and -secured he didn't know how. She reminded him of a colored picture he -had seen of a Cambodian girl, a resemblance enhanced by the dark blue -dress she wore, straight and formless down the length of her immature, -boylike figure, and marked at the waistline by a circle of gold braid. - -But all these details were subordinate to something he had no power of -defining. It was also something of which he was jealous as an injustice -to Maisie Danker. If this girl had what poor Maisie had not it was -because money gave her an advantage. It was the kind of advantage that -wasn't fair. Because it wasn't fair, he felt it a challenge to his -loyalty. - -Nevertheless, he could not accept Maisie's offhand judgments when -between five and six that afternoon he told her of the incident. - -This was at The Cherry Tree, one of those bowers of refreshment and -dancing recently opened on their own slope of Beacon Hill. Bower -was the word. What had once been the basement-kitchen and coal -cellar of a small brick dwelling had been artfully converted into a -long oval orchard of cherry trees, in paper luxuriance of foliage -and blossom. Within the boskage, and under Chinese lanterns, there -were tables; out in the open was a center oval cleared for dancing. -Somewhere out of sight a cracked fiddle and a flat piano rasped out -the tango or some shred of "rag." With the briefest intervals for -breath, this performance was continuous. The guests, who at that hour -in the afternoon numbered no more than ten or twelve, forsook their -refreshments to take the floor, or forsook the floor to return to their -refreshments, just as the impulse moved them. They were chiefly working -girls, young men at leisure because out of jobs, or sailors on shore. -Except for an occasional hoarse or screechy laugh, the decorum was -proper to solemnity. - -It was the fourth or fifth time Tom and Maisie had come to this -retreat, nominally that Tom should learn to dance, but really that they -should commune together. To him the occasions were blissful for the -reason that he had no one else in the world to commune with. To talk, -to talk eagerly, to pour out the torrent of opinions boiling within -him, meant more than that Maisie should understand him. Maisie didn't -understand him. She only laughed and joked with pretty inanity; but -she let him talk. He talked about the books he liked and didn't like, -about the advantages college men possessed over those who weren't -college men, about what he knew of the banking system, about the good -you conferred on the world and yourself when you saved your money and -invested it. In none of these subjects was she interested; but now and -then she could get a turn to talk of the movies, the new dances, and -love. That these subjects made him uneasy was not, from Maisie's point -of view, a reason for avoiding them. - -Each was concerned with the other, but beyond the other each was -concerned most of all with the mystery called Life. To live was what -they were after, to live strongly and deeply and vividly and hotly, and -to do it with the pinched means and narrow opportunities which were all -they could command. In his secret heart Tom Whitelaw knew that Maisie -Danker was not the girl out of all the world he would have sought of -his own accord, while Maisie Danker was equally aware that this boy -two years younger than herself couldn't be the generous provider she -was looking for. They were only like shipwrecked passengers thrown -together on an island. They must make the best of each other. No other -girl, hardly any other human being except Honey, had entered the social -isolation in which he was marooned, and as for her.... - -She was so cheery and game that she never referred to her home -experiences otherwise than allusively. From allusions he gathered that -she was not with her aunt, Mrs. Danker, merely for pleasure or from -pressure of affection. Her father was living; her stepmother was living -too. There was a whole step-family of little brothers and sisters. Her -father drank; her stepmother hated her; there was no room for her at -home. All her life she had been knocked about. Even when she worked in -the woolen mills she couldn't keep her wages. She had had fellows, but -none of them was ever any good. The best of them was a French Canadian -who made big money, but he wouldn't marry her unless she "turned -Catholic." "If he couldn't give up his church for me I couldn't give up -mine for him; so there it was!" There was another fellow.... But as to -him she said little. In speaking of him at all her face grew somber, -which it did rarely. Either because he had failed her, or to get her -out of his clutches, Tom was not sure which, her aunt had offered her a -home for the winter. "Gee, it makes me laff," was her own sole comment -on her miseries. - -As Tom had dropped into the habit of telling her the small happenings -of his uneventful life, he gave her, across the ice-cream sodas, an -account of what had just occurred between himself and Guy and Hildred -Ansley. - -She listened with what for her was gravity. "You've got to give some of -them society girls the cold glassy eye," she informed him, judicially. -"If you don't you'll get it yourself, perhaps when you ain't expecting -it." - -"Oh, but this is only a little girl, not more than fourteen. She just -_seems_ grown up. That's the funny part of it." - -"Not more than fourteen! Just _seems_ grown up! Why, any of that bunch -is forwarder at ten than I'd be at twenty. That's one thing I'd never -be, not if men was scarcer than blue raspberries--forward. And yet some -of them society buds'll be brassier than a knocker on a door." - -"Oh, but this little Miss Ansley isn't that sort." - -"You wouldn't know, not if she was running up and down your throat. -Any girl can get hold of a man if she makes him think she needs him bad -enough." - -"It wasn't she who needed me; it was her brother." - -"A brother'll do. A grandmother'd do. If you can't bait your hook with -a feather fly, you can take a bit of worm. But once a fella like you -begins to take a shine to one of them...." - -"Shine to one of them! Me?" - -"Well, I suppose you'll be taking a shine to _some_ girl _some_ day. -Why shouldn't you?" - -"If I was going to do that...." - -The point at which he suspended his sentence was that which piqued her -especially. Her eyes were provocative; her bright face alert. - -"Well, if you were going to do that--what of it?" - -The minute was one he was trying to evade. As clearly as if he were -fifty, he knew the folly of getting himself involved in an emotional -entanglement. Though he looked a young man, he was only a big boy. The -most serious part of his preparation for life lay just ahead of him. If -he didn't go to college.... - -And even more pressing than that consideration was the fact that in -bringing Maisie to The Cherry Tree that afternoon he had come down to -his last fifteen cents. At the beginning of their acquaintance he had -had seven dollars and a half, hoarded preciously for needs connected -with his education. Maisie had stampeded the whole treasure. To expect -a man to spend money on her was as instinctive to Maisie as it is to -a flower to expect the heavens to send rain. She knew that at each -mention of the movies or The Cherry Tree Tom squirmed in the anguish -of financial disability, and that from the very hint of love he bolted -like a colt from the bridle; but when it came to what she considered as -her due she was pitiless. - -No epic has yet been written on the woes of the young man trying, on -twenty-five dollars a week, let us say, to play up to the American -girl's taste for spending money. His self-denials, his sordid shifts, -his mortifications, his sense at times that his most unselfish efforts -have been scorned, might inspire a series of episodes as tensely -dramatic as those of Spoon River. - -Tom had had one such experience on Maisie's birthday. She had talked so -much of her birthday that a present became indispensable. To meet this -necessity the extreme of his expenditure could be no more than fifty -cents. To find for fifty cents something worthy of a lady already a -connoisseur he ransacked Boston. Somewhere he had heard that a present -might be modest so long as it was the best thing of its kind. The best -thing of its kind he discovered was a toothbrush. It was not a common -toothbrush except for the part that brushed the teeth. The handle -was of mother-of-pearl, with an inlay in red enamel. The price was -forty-five cents. - -Maisie laughed till she cried. "A toothbrush! A _tooth_brush! For a -present that's something new! Gee, how the girls'll laff when I go back -to Nashua and tell them that that's what a guy give me in Boston!" - -The humiliation of straitened means was the more galling to Tom -Whitelaw, first because he was a giver, and then because he knew the -value of money. With the value of money his mind was always playing, -not from miserly motives, but from those of social economy. Each time -he "blew in," as he called it, a dollar on the girl he said to himself: -"If I could have invested that dollar, it would have helped to run a -factory, and have brought me in six or seven cents a year for all the -rest of my life." He made this calculation to mark the wastage he was -strewing along his path in the wild pace he was running. - -There was something about Maisie which obliged you to play up to her. -She was that sort of girl. If you didn't play up, the mere laughter in -her eye made you feel your lack of the manly qualities. It was not her -scorn she brought into play; it was her sense of fun; but to the boy of -sixteen her sense of fun was terrible. - -It was terrible, and yet it put him on his guard. He couldn't wholly -give in to her. If she could make moves he could make them too, and -perhaps as adroitly. Her tantalizing question was ringing in his ears: -If he was going to take a shine to any girl--what of it? - -"Oh, if I was going to do that," he tossed off, "it would be to you." - -"So that you haven't taken a shine to me--yet?" - -"It depends on what you mean by a shine." - -"What do you mean by it yourself?" - -"I never have time to think." This was a happy sentiment, and a -safeguard. "It takes all I can do to remember that I've got to go to -college." - -"Damn college!" - -He was so unsophisticated that the expression startled him. He hadn't -supposed young ladies used it, not any more than they sneaked into -barns or under bridges to smoke cigarettes. - -"What's the use of damning college, when I've got to go?" - -"You haven't got to go. A great strong fella like you ought to be -earning his twenty per by this time. If you've got money in the bank, -as you say you have...." - -He trembled already for his treasure. "I haven't got it here. It's in a -savings bank in New York." - -"Oh, that's nothing! If you got it _any_wheres you can get at it with -a check. Gee, if I had a few hundreds I'd have ten in my pocket at a -time, I'll be hanged if I wouldn't. I don't believe you've got it, see. -I know a lot o' guys that loves to put that sort of fluff over on a -girl. Makes 'em feel big. But if they only knew what the girl thinks -of them...." She jumped to her feet, allowing herself a little more -vulgarity than she generally showed. "All right, old son, c'me awn! -Let's have another twist. And for Gawd's sake don't bring down that -hoof of yours till I get a chance to pull my Cinderella-slipper out of -your way." - - - - -XXVI - - -It was after he had spent the first ten dollars he drew from his fund -in New York that Tom felt the impulse to tell Honey of the way in -which he was becoming involved with Maisie Danker. The ten dollars had -melted. In signing the formalities for drawing the amount, he expected -to have enough to carry him along till spring, when Maisie's visit was -to end. He dreaded its ending, and yet it would have this element of -relief in it; he would be able to keep his money. At a pinch he could -spare ten dollars, though he couldn't spare them very well. More than -ten dollars.... - -And before he knew it the ten dollars had vanished as if into air. -Once Maisie knew what he had done her caprices multiplied. To her as -to him ten dollars to "blow in"--she used the airy expression too--was -a small fortune. It was only their instincts that were different. His -was to let it go slowly, since the spending of a penny was against the -protests of his conscience; hers to make away with it. If Tom could -"draw the juice" for a first ten, he could draw it for a second, and -for a third and a fourth after that. It was not extravagance that -whipped her on; it was joy of life. - -Tom's impulse to tell Honey was not acted on. It was not acted on -after he drew the second ten; nor after he drew the third. After he -had drawn the fourth his unhappiness became so great that he sought a -confidant. - -And yet his unhappiness was not absolute; it was rather a poisoned -bliss. Had Maisie been content with what he could afford, the winter -would have been like one in Paradise. But almost before he himself -was aware of the promptings of thrift, she vanquished them with her -ridicule. - -"There's nothing I hate so much as anything cheap. If a fella can't -give me what I like, he can keep away." - -Time and time again Tom swore he would keep away. He did keep away, for -a day, for two or three days in succession. Then she would meet him -in the dark hallway, and, twining her arms around his neck without a -word, would give him one of those kisses on the lips which thrilled him -into subjection. He would be guilty of any folly for her then, because -he couldn't help himself. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty dollars, all the -hoarded inheritance from the Martin Quidmore who was already a dim -memory, would be well thrown away if only she would kiss him once again. - -He lost the healthy diversion which might have reached him through the -Ansleys because they had taken the fat boy to Florida. Tom learned -that from little Miss Ansley a few days after the return of the father -and mother from New York. One afternoon as both were coming from their -schools they had met on their way toward Louisburg Square. Even in her -outdoor dress, she was quaintly grown-up and Cambodian. A rough brown -tweed had a little gold and a little red in it; a brown turban not -unlike a fez bore on the left a small red wing tipped with a golden -line. Maisie would have emphasized the red; she would have been vivid, -eager to be noticed. This girl didn't need that kind of advertisement. - -Seeing her before she saw him, he wondered whether she would give -him any sign of recognition. At Harfrey the girls whom he saw at the -Tollivants, and who proclaimed themselves "exclusive," always forgot -him when they met him on the street. This had hurt him. He waited in -some trepidation now, fearing to be hurt again. But when she saw him -she nodded and smiled. - -"Guy's better," she said, without greeting, "and we're all going off -to Florida to-morrow. Guy and I don't want to go a bit; but mother's -afraid of his catching cold, and father has to be in Washington, -anyhow. So we're off." - -Though he walked by her side for no more than a few yards, Tom was -touched by her friendliness. She was the first girl of that section of -the world for which he had only the term "society" who had not been -ashamed to be seen with him in a street. Little Miss Ansley even paused -for a minute at the foot of her steps while they exchanged remarks -about their schools. She went to Miss Winslow's. She liked her school. -She was sorry to be going away as it would give her such a lot of back -work to make up. She might go to Radcliffe when Guy went to Harvard, -but so far her mother was opposed to it. In these casual observations -she seemed to Tom to lose something of her air of being a woman of the -world. On his own side he lost a little of his awe of her. - -The snuffing out of this interest threw him back on the easing of -his heart by confidence. It was not confidence alone; it was also -confession. He was deceiving Honey, and to go on deceiving Honey began -to seem to him baser than dishonor. Had Honey been his father, it would -have been different. Fathers worked for their sons as a matter of -course, and almost as a matter of course expected that their sons would -play them false. There was no reason why Honey should work for him; and -since Honey did work for him, there was every reason why he who reaped -the benefit should be loyal. He was not loyal. He had even reached the -point, and he cursed himself for reaching it, at which Honey was an Old -Man of the Sea fastened on his back. - -He told himself that this was the damnedest ingratitude; and yet he -couldn't tell himself that it wasn't so. It was. There were days when -Honey's way of speaking, Honey's way of eating, the smell of Honey's -person, and the black patch on his eye, revolted him. Here he was, -a great lump of a fellow sixteen years of age, and dependent for -everything, for _everything_, on a rough dock laborer who had been a -burglar and a convict. It was preposterous. Had he jumped into this -situation he would not have borne it for a week. But he had not jumped -into it; it had grown. It had grown round him. It held him now as if -with tentacles. He couldn't break away from it. - -And yet Honey and he were bound to grow apart. It was in the nature of -the case that it should be so. Always of a texture finer than Honey's, -schooling, association, and habits of mind were working together to -refine the grain, while Honey was growing coarser. His work, Tom -reasoned, kept him not only in a rut but in a brutalizing rut. Loading -and unloading, unloading and re-loading, he had less use for his mind -than in the days of his freebooting. Then a wild ass of the desert, -he was now harnessed to a dray with no relief from hauling it. From -morning to night he hauled; from night to morning he was stupefied with -weariness. In on this stupefaction Tom found it more and more difficult -to break. He was agog with interests and ideas; for neither interests -nor ideas had Honey any room. - -Nor had he, so far as Tom could judge, any room for affection. On the -contrary, he repelled it. "Don't you go for to think that I've give up -bein' a socialist because I got a soft side. No, sir! That wouldn't be -it at all. What reely made me do it was because it didn't pay. I'd make -big money now and then; but once I'd fixed the police, the lawyers, -and nine times out o' ten the judge, I wouldn't have hardly nothink -for meself. If out o' every hundred dollars I was able to pocket -twenty-five it'd be as much as ever. This 'ere job don't pay as well to -start with; but then it haven't no expenses." - -Self-interest and a vague sense of responsibility were all he ever -admitted as a key to his benevolence. "It's along o' my bein' an -Englishman. You can't get an Englishman 'ardly ever to be satisfied -a'mindin' of his own business. Ten to one he'll do that and mind -somebody else's at the same time. A kind o' curse that's on 'em, I -often thinks. Once when I was doin' a bit--might 'a been at Sing -Sing--a guy come along to entertain us. Recited poetry at us. And I -recolleck he chewed to beat the band over a piece he called, 'The White -Man's Burden.' Well, that's what you are, Kid. You're my White Man's -Burden. I can't chuck yer, nor nothink. I just got to carry yer till -yer can git along without me; and then I'll quit. The old bunch'll be -as glad to see me back as I'll be to go. There's just one thing I want -yer to remember, Kid, that when yer've got yer eddication there won't -be nothink to bind me to you, nor--" he held himself very straight, -bringing out his words with a brutal firmness--"_nor you to me_. Yer'll -know I'll be as glad to go the one way as you'll be to go the t'other, -so there won't be no 'ard feelin' on both sides." - - * * * * * - -It was a Sunday night. Tom had taken his troubles to bed with him, -because he had nowhere else to take them. In bed you struck a truce -with life. You suspended operations, at least for a few hours. You -could sleep; you could postpone. He slept as a rule so soundly, and so -straight through the night, that, hunted as he was by care, he had once -in the twenty-four hours a refuge in which the fiendish thing couldn't -overtake him. - -It had been a trying Sunday because Maisie had tempted him to a wilder -than usual extravagance. There was enough snow on the ground for -sleighing. She had been used to sleighing in Nashua. The singing of -runners and the jingling of bells, as a sleigh slid joyously past her, -awakened her longing for the sport. By coaxing, by teasing, by crying a -little, and, worst of all, by making game of him, she had induced him -to find a place where he could hire a sleigh and take her for a ride. - -Snow having turned to rain, and rain to frost, the landscape through -which they drove was made of crystal. Every tree was as a tree of -glass, sparkling in the sun. A deep blue sky, a keen dry wind, a little -horse which enjoyed the outing as briskly as Maisie herself, made the -two hours vibrant with the ecstasy of cold. All Tom's nerves were taut -with the pleasure of the motion, of the air, of the skill, acquired -chiefly at Bere, with which he managed the spirited young nag. The -knowledge of what it was costing him he was able to thrust aside. He -would enjoy the moment, and face the reckoning afterward. When he did -face the reckoning, he found that of his fourth ten dollars he had -spent six dollars and fifty-seven cents. Only three days earlier he had -had the crisp clean bill unbroken in his hand.... - -He had been hardly able to eat his supper, and after supper the usual -two hours of study to which he gave himself on Sunday nights were as -time thrown away. Luckily, Honey's consideration left him the room -to himself. Honey was like that. If Tom had to work, Honey effaced -himself, in summer by sitting on the doorstep, in winter by going to -bed. Much of Tom's wrestling with Virgil was carried on to the tune of -Honey's snores. - -This being Sunday evening, and Honey less tired than on the days on -which he worked, he had gone to "chew the rag," as he phrased it, -with a little Jew tailor, who lived next door to Mrs. Danker. Tom was -aware that behind this the motive was not love for the Jew tailor, but -zeal that he, Tom, should be interfered with as little as possible in -his eddication. Tom's eddication was as much an obsession to Honey -as it was to Tom himself. It was an overmastering compulsion, like -that which sent Peary to find the North Pole, Scott to find the South -one, and Livingstone and Stanley to cross Africa. What he had to -gain by it had no place in his calculation. A machine wound up, and -going automatically, could not be more set on its purpose than Lemuel -Honeybun on his. - -But to-night his absenting of himself was of no help to Tom in giving -his mind to the translation from English into Latin on which he was -engaged. When he found himself rendering the expression "in the -meantime" by the words _in turpe tempore_, he pushed books and paper -away from him, with a bitter, emphatic, "Damn!" - -Though it was only nine, there was nothing for it but to go to bed. In -bed he would sleep and forget. He always did. Putting out the gas, and -pulling the bedclothes up around his ears, he mentally waved the white -flag to his carking enemy. - -But the carking enemy didn't heed the white flag; he came on just the -same. For the first time in his life Tom Whitelaw couldn't sleep. -Rolling from side to side, he groaned and swore at the refusal of -relief to come to him. He was still wide awake when about half past -ten Honey came in and re-lit the gas, surprised to see the boy already -with his face turned to the wall. Not to disturb him, Honey moved round -the room on tiptoe. - -Tom lay still, his eyes closed. He loathed this proximity, this sharing -of one room. In the two previous years he hadn't minded it. But he was -older now, almost a man, able to take care of himself. Not only was he -growing more fastidious, but the self-consciousness we know as modesty -was bringing to the over-intimate a new kind of discomfort. Long -meaning to propose two small separate rooms as not much dearer than the -larger one, he had not yet come to it, partly through unwillingness -to add anything to their expenses, and partly through fear of hurting -Honey's feelings. But to-night the lack of privacy gave the outlet of -exasperation to his less tangible discontents. - -He rolled over on his back. One gas jet spluttered in the antiquated -chandelier. Under it a small deal table was heaped with his books and -strewn with his papers. Beside it stood an old armchair stained with -the stains of many lodgers' use, the entrails of the seat protruding -horribly between the legs. Two small chairs of the kitchen type, a -wash-stand, a chest of drawers with a mirror hung above it, two or -three flimsy rugs, and the iron cots on which they slept, made a -setting for Honey, who sat beneath the gaslight, sewing a button on -his undershirt. Turned in profile toward Tom, and wearing nothing but -his drawers and socks, he bent above his work with the patience of -a concentrated mind. He was really a fine figure of a man, brawny, -hairy, spare, muscled like an athlete, a Rodin's Thinker all but the -thought, yet irritating Tom as the embodiment of this penury. - -So not from an impulse of confession, but to ease the suffering of his -nerves, Tom told something about Maisie Danker. It was only something. -He told of the friendship, of the dancing lessons, of the movies, of -the sleigh-ride that afternoon, of the forty dollars drawn from the -bank. He said nothing of their kisses, nor of the frenzy which he -thought might be love. Honey pulled his needle up through the hole, and -pushed it back again, neither asking questions nor looking up. - -"I guess we'll move," was his only comment, when the boy had finished -the halting tale. - -This quietness excited Tom the more. "What do you want to move for?" - -"Because there's dangers what the on'y thing you can do to fight 'em is -to run away." - -"Who said anything about danger? Do you suppose ...?" - -In sticking in his needle Honey handled the implement as if it were an -awl. "Do I suppose she's playin' the dooce with yer? No, Kid. She don't -have to. You're playin' the dooce with yerself. It's yer age. Sixteen -is a terr'ble imagination age." - -"Oh, if you think I'm framing the whole thing...." - -"No, I don't. Yer believes it all right. On'y it ain't quite so bad as -what yer think. It don't do to be too delikit with women. Got to bat -'em away as if they was flies, when they bother yer too much. Once let -a woman in on yer game and yer 'and can be queered for good." - -"Did I say anything about letting a woman in on my game?" - -"No, yer on'y said she'd slipped in. It's too late now to keep her out. -She's made the diff'rence." - -"What difference?" - -Honey threaded his needle laboriously, held up the end of the thread -to moisten it with his lips, and tied a knot in it. "The diff'rence in -you. Yer ain't the same young feller what yer was six months ago. You -and me has been like one," he went on, placidly. "Now we're two. Been -two this spell back. Couldn't make it out, no more'n Billy-be-damned; -and now I see. The first girl." - -Tom lashed about the bed. - -"It was bound to come; and that's why--yer've arsked me about it onst -or twice, so I may as well tell yer--that's why I never lets meself get -fond o' yer. Could'a did it just as easy as not. When a man gits to -my age a young boy what's next o' kin to him--why, he'll seem like as -if 'twould be his son. But I wouldn't be ketched. 'Honey,' I says to -meself, 'the first girl and you'll be dished.'" - -"Oh, go to blazes!" - -Having finished his button, Honey made it doubly secure by winding the -thread around it. "Not that I blame yer, Kiddy. I ain't never led no -celebrant life meself, not till I had to take you on, and cut out all -low company what wouldn't 'a been good for you. But I figured it out -that we might 'a got yer through college before yer fell for it. Well, -we ain't. Maybe now we'll not git yer to college at all. But we'll -make a shy at it. We'll move." - -"If you think that by moving you'll keep me from seeing her again...." - -"No, son, not no more'n I could keep yer from cuttin' yer throat by -lockin' up yer razor. Yer could git another razor. I know that. All -the same, it'd be up to me, wouldn't it, not to leave no razors layin' -round the room, where yer could put yer 'and on 'em?" - -This settling of his destiny over his head angered Tom especially. - -"I can save you the trouble of having me on your mind any more. -To-morrow I'll be out on my own. I'm going to be a man." - -"Sure, you're going to be a man--in time. But yer ain't a man yet." - -"I'm sixteen. I can do what any other fellow of sixteen can do." - -"No fella of sixteen can do much." - -"He can earn a living." - -"He can earn part of a livin'. How many boys of sixteen did yer ever -know that could swing clear of home and friends and everythink, and -feed and clothe and launder theirselves on what they made out'n their -job?" - -"Well, I can try, can't I?" - -"Oh, yes, yer can try, Kid. But if you was me, I wouldn't cut loose -from nobody, not till I'd got me 'and in." - -Tom raised himself on his elbow, his eyes, beneath their protruding -horizontal eyebrows, aglitter with the wrath which puts life and the -world out of focus. - -"I _am_ going to cut loose. I'm going to be my own master." - -"Are you, Kid? How much of yer own master do yer expect to be, on the -ten or twelve per yer'll git to begin with--_if_ yer gits that?" - -"Even if it was only five or six per, I'd be making it myself." - -"And what about college?" - -"College--hell!" - -The boy fell back on his pillow. Feeling he had delivered his -ultimatum, he waited for a reply. But Honey only stowed away his sewing -materials in a little black box, after which he pulled off the articles -of clothing he continued to wear, and set about his toilet for the -night. At the sound of his splashing water on his face Tom muttered to -himself: "God, another night of this will kill me." - -Honey spoke through the muffling of the towel, while he dried his face. -"Isn't all this fuss what I'm tellin' yer? The minute a girl gits in on -a young feller's life there's hell to pay. That's why I'd like yer to -steer clear of 'em as long as yer can hold out." - -Tom shut his eyes, buried his face in the pillow, and affected not to -hear. - -"They don't mean to do no harm; they're just naterally troublesome. -Seems as if they was born that way, and couldn't 'elp theirselves. -There's a lot of 'em as is never satisfied till they've got a man like -a jumpin'-jack, what all they need to do is to pull the string to make -him jig. This girl is one o' them kind." - -Tom continued to hold his peace. - -"I've saw her. Pretty little thing she is all right. But give her two -or three years. Lord love you, Kid, she'll be as washed out then as one -of her own ribbons after a hard rain. And yet them is the kind that -most young fellers'll run after, like a pup'll run after a squirrel." - -Tom was startled. The figure of speech had been used to him before. He -could hear it drawled in a tired voice, soft and velvety. It was queer -what conclusions about women these grown men came to! Quidmore had -thought them as dangerous as Honey, and warned him against them much -as Honey was doing now. Mrs. Quidmore had once been what Maisie was at -that minute, and yet as he, Tom, remembered her.... But Honey was going -on again, spluttering his words as he brushed his teeth. - -"It can be awful easy to git mixed up with a girl, and awful hard to -git unmixed. She'll put a man in a hole where he can't help doin' -somethink foolish, and then make out as what she've got a claim on -him. There's a lot o' talk about women bein' the prey o' men; but for -one woman as I've ever saw that way I've saw a hundred men as was the -prey o' women. Now when a girl of eighteen gits a young boy like you to -spend the money as he's saved for his eddication...." - -The boy sprang up in bed, hammering the bedclothes. "Don't you say -anything against her. I won't listen to it." - -With that supple tread which always made Tom think of one who could -easily slip through windows, Honey walked to the closet where he kept -his night-shirt. "'Tain't nothink agin her, Kid. Was on'y goin' to say -that a girl what'll git a young boy to do that shows what she is. And -yer did spend the money a-takin' her about, now didn't yer?" - -Tom fell back upon his pillow. Putting out the gas, Honey threw himself -on his creaking cot. - -"You're a free boy, Kiddy," he went on, while arranging the sheet and -blanket as he liked them. "If yer wants to beat it to-morrer, beat it -away. Don't stop because yer'll be afraid I'll miss yer. Wasn't never -no hand for missin' no one, and don't mean to begin. What I'd 'a liked -have been to fill yer up with eddication so that yer could jaw to beat -the best of 'em, if yer turned out to be the Whitelaw baby." - -Tom had almost forgotten who the Whitelaw baby was. Not since that -Sunday afternoon nearly three years ago had Honey ever mentioned -him. The memory having come back, he made an inarticulate sound of -impatience, finally snuggling to sleep. - -He tried to think of Maisie, to conjure up the rose in her cheeks, the -laughter in her eyes; but all he saw, as he drifted into dreams, was -the quaint Cambodian face of little Hildred Ansley. Only once did Honey -speak again, muttering, as he too fell asleep: - -"We'll move." - - - - -XXVII - - -They did not move for the reason that Maisie did. Not for forty-eight -hours did Tom learn of her departure. As Mrs. Danker kept not a -boarding house but a rooming house, and her guests went days at a time -without seeing their landlady, he had no sources of information when -Maisie, as she sometimes did, kept herself out of sight. Watching for -her on the Monday and the Tuesday following his Sunday night talk with -Honey, he thought it strange that she never appeared in the hallway, -though he had no cause to be alarmed. He was going to leave Honey, get -a job, and be independent. When he had added a little more to his fund -in New York, he would propose to Maisie, and marry her if she would -take him. He would be eighteen, perhaps nineteen by the time he was -able to do this, an early, but not an impossible, age at which to be a -husband. - -On both these days he had gone to school from force of habit, but on -the Wednesday he was surprised by a letter. Though he had never seen -Maisie's writing, the postmark said Nashua. Before tearing the envelope -he had a premonition of her flight. - -A telegram on Monday morning had bidden her come home at once, as her -stepmother was dying. She had died. Till her father married again, -which she supposed would be soon, she would have to care for the four -little brothers and sisters. That was all. On paper Maisie was laconic. - -Since his mother's death no revolution in his inner life had upset the -boy like this. The Tollivant experience had only left him a little hard -and skeptical; that with the Quidmores had passed like the rain and -the snow, scarcely affecting him. With Honey his need for affection -had always been unfed, and for reasons he could not fathom. Maisie had -made the give and take of life easy, natural. She had her limitations, -her crude, and sometimes her cruel, insistences; but she liked him. He -loved her. He was ready to say it now, because of the blank her loss -had hollowed in his life. For the unformed, growing hot-blooded human -thing to have nothing on which to spend itself is anguish. Sitting -down at his deal table, he wrote to her out of a heart fuller and more -passionate than poor Maisie could ever have understood. - -All he had been planning in rebellion against fate he poured out now as -devotion. He had meant to cut loose, to go to work, to live on nothing, -to save his money, and be ready to marry her in a year or two. And yet, -on second thoughts, if he went through college, their position in the -end would be so much better that perhaps the original plan was the best -one. He thought only of her, and of what would make her happiest. He -loved her--loved her--loved her. - -Maisie wrote back that she saw no harm in their being engaged, and -she wouldn't press him for a ring till he felt himself able to give -her one. For herself she didn't care, but if she told the girls she -was engaged to a fellow, and had no ring to corroborate her word, she -wouldn't be believed. In case he ever felt equal to the purchase she -was sending him the size in the circlet of thread inclosed. - -Tom was heroic. He had never thought of a ring, and a ring would mean -more money. Be it so! He would spend more money. He would spend more -money if he mortgaged his whole future to procure it. Maisie should not -be shamed among her friends in Nashua. - -Giving all his free hours to wandering about and pricing rings, he -found them less expensive than he feared. Maisie having once confided -to him her longing for a diamond, a diamond he meant to make it if it -cost him fifty dollars. But he found one for twenty, as big as a small -pea, and flashing in the sunshine like a lighthouse. The young Jew who -sold it assured him that it would have cost a hundred, except for a -tiny flaw which only an expert could detect. On its reception Maisie -was delighted. He felt himself almost a married man. - -The rest of the winter went by peaceably. With Honey he declared a -truce of God. He would go to college, and live up to all that had been -planned; but Honey must look on his own self-sacrifice as of the nature -of a loan which would be repaid. Honey was ready to promise anything, -while, in the hope of getting through college in three years instead of -four, Tom worked with increased zeal. Then, one day, when spring had -come round, he stumbled on Guy and Hildred Ansley. - -It was in Louisburg Square, as usual. Having arrived from the south -the night before, they were sailing soon for Europe. - -"Rotten luck!" the fat boy complained. "Got to trail a tutor along too, -so that I shan't fall down on the Harvard exam when it comes. Wish I -was you." - -"If you were Mr. Whitelaw, Guy," his sister reminded him, "you'd find -something else to worry you. We all have our troubles, haven't we, Mr. -Whitelaw?" - -"She's got nothing to worry her," the brother protested. "If she was -me, with mother scared all the time that I'll be too hot or too cold or -too tired or too hungry, or that some damn thing or other'll make me -sick...." - -"All the same," Tom broke in, "it's something to have a mother to make -a fuss." - -The girl looked sympathetic. "You haven't, have you?" - -"Oh, I get along." - -"Guy says you live with a guardian." - -"You may call him a guardian if you like, but the word is too big. You -only have a guardian when you've something to guard, and I haven't -anything." - -"Yes, but how did you ever ...?" - -Once more Tom said to himself, "It's the way she looks at you." He knew -what she was trying to ask him, and in order to be open and aboveboard, -he gave her the few main facts of his life. He did it briefly, -hurriedly, throwing emphasis only on the point that, to keep him from -becoming a State ward the second time, his stevedore friend had brought -him to Boston and sent him to school. - -"He must be an awfully good man!" - -He was going to tell her that he was when the brother gave the talk -another twist. - -"What are you going to do in your holidays?" - -"Work, if I can find a job." - -"What kind of job?" - -He explained that for the last two summers he had worked round the -Quincy and Faneuil Hall markets, but that he had outgrown them. A -two-fisted, he-man's job was what he would look for now, and had no -doubt that he would get it. - -"After you've left Harvard what are you going to be?" - -"Banking's what I'd like best, but most likely I'll have to make it -barbering. What are you going to be yourself?" - -"Oh, I've got to be a corporation lawyer. My luck! Just because dad'll -have the business to take me into." - -"But what would you like better?" - -The piggy face broke into one of its captivating grins. "Hanged if _I_ -know, unless it'd be an orphan and an only child." - -The meeting was important because of what it led to. A few days later -Tom heard the wheezy girlish voice calling behind him in the street: -"Tom! Tom!" - -He turned and walked back. During the winter the fat boy had expanded, -not so much in height as in girth and jelliness. He came up, puffing -from his run. - -"Can you drive a car?" - -Tom hesitated. "I don't know that you'd call it driving a car. I can -drive--after a fashion. Mr. Quidmore used to let me run his Ford, when -we were alone in it, and no one was looking. Since then I've sometimes -driven the market delivery teams for a block or two, nothing much, just -to see what it was like. I know I could pick it up with a few lessons. -I'm a natural driver--a horse or anything. Why?" - -"Because my old man said that if you could drive, he might help you get -your summer's job." - -"Where? What kind of job?" - -"I don't know. He said that if you wanted to talk it over to come round -to our house this evening at nine o'clock." - -At nine that evening Tom was shown up into another of those rooms -which marked the gulf between his own way of living and that of people -like the Ansleys, and at the same time woke the atavistic pang. His -impression was only a blurred one of comfort, color, shaded lights, -and richness. From the many books he judged that it was what they -would call the library, but any judgment was subconscious because the -human presences came first. A man wearing a dinner jacket and scanning -an evening paper was sunk into one deep armchair; in another a lady, -demi-décolletée, was reading a book. It was his first intimation that -people ever wore what he called "dress-clothes" when dining only with -their families. - -He was announced by Pilcher, who had led him upstairs. "This is the -young man, sir." - -Having reached something like friendly terms with the son and -daughter, Tom had expected from the parents the kind of courtesy shown -to strangers when you shake hands with them and ask them to sit down. -Mr. Ansley only let the paper drop to his knees with an "Oh!" in -response to the butler, and looked up. - -"You're the young fellow my son has spoken of. He tells me you can -drive a car." - -Repeating what he had already said to Guy as to his experience with -cars, Tom expressed confidence in his ability to obtain a license, if -it should become worth his while. - -"It wouldn't be difficult driving such as you get in the crowded parts -of a city. It would be chiefly station work, over country roads." - -He explained himself further. In the New Hampshire summer colony where -the Ansleys had their place, the residents were turning a large country -house into an inn which would be like a club, or a club which would be -like an inn. It would not be open to ordinary travelers, since ordinary -travelers would bring in people whom they didn't want. The guests would -be their own friends, duly invited or introduced. He, Mr. Ansley, was -chairman of the motor-car committee, but as he was going to Europe he -was taking up the matter in advance. On general grounds he would have -preferred an older man and one with more experience, but the inn-club -was a new undertaking and not too well financed. More experienced men -would cost more money. For the station work they could afford but -eighty dollars a month, with a room in the garage, and board. Moreover, -the jobs they could offer being only for the summer, the promoters -hoped that a few young men and women working for their own education -might take advantage of the scheme. - -Eighty dollars a month, with a room to himself, even if it had only -been in a stable, and board in addition, glittered before Tom's eyes -like Aladdin's treasure house. Having thanked Mr. Ansley for the kind -suggestion, he assured him he could give satisfaction if taken on. All -the chauffeurs who had let him have a few minutes at the steering-wheel -had told him that he possessed the eye, the nerve, and the quickness -which make a good driver, in addition to which he knew that he did -himself. - -"How old are you?" - -It was a question Tom always found difficult to answer. He could -remember when his birthday had been on the fifth of March; but his -mother had told him that that had been Gracie's birthday, and had -changed his own to September. Later she had shifted to May, to a day, -so she told him, when all the nurses had had their children in the -Park, and the lilacs had been in bloom. He had never asked her the -year, not having come to reckoning in years before she was taken from -him. Though latterly he had been putting his birthday in May, he now -shifted back to March, so as to make himself older. - -"I'm seventeen, sir." - -Mrs. Ansley spoke for the first time. "He looks more than that, doesn't -he?" - -Tom turned to the lady who filled a large armchair with a person -suggesting the quaking, flabby consistency of cornstarch pudding. "I -suppose that's because I've knocked about so much." - -"The hard school does give you experience, doesn't it, but it's a cruel -school." - -He remembered his promise to Guy, if ever he got the opportunity. "Boys -can stand a good deal of cruelty, ma'am. Nine times out of ten it does -them good." - -"Still there's always a tenth case." - -He smiled. "I think I ought to have made it ten times out of ten. I -never saw the boy yet who wasn't all the better for fighting his way -along." - -Mrs. Ansley's mouth screwed itself up like Guy's when it looked as if -he were going to cry. "Fight? Why, I think fighting's something horrid. -Why _can't_ boys treat each other like gentlemen?" - -"I suppose, ma'am, because they're not gentlemen." - -The cornstarch pudding stiffened to the firmness of ice-cream. "Excuse -me! My boy couldn't be anything but a gentleman." - -"He couldn't be anything but a sport. He _is_ a fighter, ma'am--when he -gets the chance." - -"Then I hope he won't often get it." - -"But, Sunshine," Mr. Ansley intervened, "you don't make any allowance -for differences in standards. You're a woman of forty-five. Guy's a boy -of sixteen--he's practically seventeen, like Whitelaw here--your name -is Whitelaw, isn't it?--and yet you want him to have the same tastes -and ways as yourself." - -"I don't want him to have brutal tastes and ways." - -"It's a pretty brutal world, ma'am, and if he's going to take his -place he'll have to get used to being hammered and hammering back." - -"Which is what I object to. If you train boys to be courteous with each -other from the start...." - -"They'll be quite ladylike when they get into the stock exchange or the -prize ring. Look here, Sunshine! The country's over feminized as it -is. It's run by women, or by men who think as women, or by men who're -afraid of women. Congress is full of them; the courts are full of them; -the churches--the churches above all!--are full of them; and you'd make -it worse. If Guy hadn't the stuff in him that he has...." - -Mrs. Ansley was more than ever like a cornstarch pudding, quivering and -undulating, when she rose. "You make it very hard for me, Philip. I was -going to ask Whitelaw, here, if when he's anywhere where Guy is--I know -Guy will have to go among young men, of course--he'd keep an eye on -him, and protect him." - -"He doesn't need protection, ma'am. He can take his own part as easily -as I can take mine. If there's a row he likes to be in it; and if he's -licked he doesn't mind it. If he only had a chance...." - -She raised her left hand palm outward, in a gesture of protest. "Thank -you! I'm not asking advice as to my own son." - -Sailing from the room with the circumambient dignity of ladies when -they wore the crinoline, she left Tom with the crestfallen sense of -presumption. Half expecting to be ordered from the room, he turned -toward his host, who, however, simply reverted to the subject of the -summer. He told Tom where he could have lessons in driving, adding that -he would charge them to club expenses, as he would the uniform Tom -would have to wear. When Mr. Ansley picked up his paper the young man -knew the interview was over. With a half-articulate, "Good-night, sir," -to which there was no response, he turned and left the room. - - * * * * * - -The occasion left him with much to think of, chiefly on his own -account. It marked his status more clearly than anything that had -happened to him yet. He had not been shaken hands with; he had not -been asked to sit down. He had not been greeted on arriving; his -"good-night" had not been acknowledged when he went away. Mr. Ansley -had called him Whitelaw, which was all very well; but when Mrs. Ansley -did it, the use of the name was significant. This must be the way in -which rich people treated their servants. - -Here he had to reason with himself as to what he had been looking for. -It was not for recognition on a footing of equality. Of course not! -He had no objection to being a servant, since he needed the money. -He objected to ... and yet it was not quite tangible. He didn't mind -standing up; he didn't mind the absence of a greeting; he didn't mind -any one thing in itself. He minded the combination of assumptions, all -fusing into one big assumption that he was in essence their inferior. -Having this assumption so strongly in their minds, they couldn't but -betray it when they spoke to him. - -With his tendency to think things out, he mulled for the next few days -over the question of inferiority. Why was one man inferior to another? -What made him so? Did nature send him into the world as an inferior, or -did the world turn him into an inferior after he had come into it? Did -God have any part in it? Was it God's will that there should be a class -system among mankind, with class animosities, class warfares? - -Of the latter he was hearing a good deal. In Grove Street, with its -squirming litters of idealistic Jews and Slavs, class warfare was much -talked about. Sometimes Tom heard the talk himself; sometimes Honey -brought in reports of it. It was a rare day, especially a rare night, -when some wild-eyed apostle was not going up or down the hill with a -gospel which would have made old Boston, only a few hundred yards away, -shiver in its bed on hearing it. To a sturdy American like Tom, and -a sturdy Englishman like Honey, these whispered prophecies and plans -were no more than the twitter of sparrows going to roost. But now that -the boy was working toward man's estate, and had always, within his -recollection, been treated as an inferior, he found himself wondering -on what principle the treatment had been based. He would listen more -attentively when the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker began again, -as he had so often, to set forth his arguments in favor of dragging -the upper classes down. He would listen when Honey cursed the lor of -proputty. He had long been asking himself if in some obscure depth of -Honey's obscure intelligence there might not be a glimmer of a great -big thing that was Right. - -He had reached the age, which generally comes a little before the -twenties, when the Right and Wrong of things puzzled and disturbed him. -No longer able to accept Rights and Wrongs on somebody else's verdict, -he was without a test or a standard of his own. He began to wander -among churches. Here, he had heard, all these questions had been long -ago threshed out, and the answers reduced to formulæ. - -His range was wide, Hebrew, Catholic, Protestant. For the most part the -services bewildered him. He couldn't make out why they were services, -or what they were serving. The sermons he found platitudinous. -They told him what in the main he knew already, and said little or -nothing of the great fundamental things with which his mind had been -intermittently busy ever since the days when he used to talk them over -with Bertie Tollivant. - -But one new interest he drew from them. The fragments of the gospels -he heard read from altar or lectern or pulpit roused his curiosity. -Passages were familiar from having learned them at the knee, so to -speak, of Mrs. Tollivant. But they had been incoherent, without -introduction or sequence. He was surprised to find how little he knew -of the most dominant character in history. - -On his way home one day he passed a shop given to the sale of Bibles. -Deciding to buy a cheap New Testament, he was advised by the salesman -to take a modern translation. That night, after he had finished his -lessons, and Honey was asleep, he opened it. - -It opened at a page of St. Luke. Turning to the beginning of that -gospel, he started to read it through. He read avidly, charmed, -amazed, appeased, and pacified. When he came to an incident bearing on -himself he stopped. - -"Now one of the Pharisees repeatedly invited Him to a meal at his -house. So He entered the house and reclined at the table. And there -was a woman in the town who was a notorious sinner. Having learnt that -Jesus was at table in the Pharisee's house she brought a flask of -perfume, and standing behind, close to His feet, weeping, began to wet -His feet with her tears; and with her hair she wiped the tears away -again, while she lovingly kissed His feet, and poured the perfume over -them. - -"Noticing this the Pharisee, His host, said to himself: - -"'This man, if He were really a prophet, would know who and what sort -of person this is who is touching Him, for she is an immoral woman.' - -"In answer to his thoughts Jesus said to him: 'Simon, I have a word to -say to you.' - -"'Rabbi, say on,' he replied. - -"'Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You gave me no water -for my feet; but she has made my feet wet with her tears, and then -wiped the tears away with her hair. No kiss did you give me; but she, -from the moment I came in, has not left off tenderly kissing my feet. -No oil did you pour even on my head; but she has poured perfume on -my feet. This is the reason why I tell you that her sins--her _many_ -sins--are forgiven--because she has loved much." - -He shut the book with something of a bang. "So they used to do that -sort of thing even then!... The water for the feet, and the kiss, and -the oil, must have corresponded to our shaking hands and asking people -to sit down.... And they wouldn't show Him the courtesy.... He was -their inferior.... I wonder if He minded it.... It looks as if He did -because of the way He had it in His mind, and referred to it.... If the -woman hadn't turned up He would probably not have referred to it at -all.... He would have kept it to Himself ... without resentment.... The -little disdains of little people were too petty for Him to resent.... -He could only be hurt by them ... but on their account." - -He sat late into the night, thinking, thinking. Suddenly he thumped -the table, and sprang up. "I _won't_ resent it. They're good people -in their way. They don't mean any unkindness. It's only that they -think like everybody else. Honey would call them orthodocks. They're -courteous among themselves; they only don't know how far courtesy can -be made to go. They're--they're little. I'll be big--like Him." - - - - -XXVIII - - -The resolution helped him through the summer. It was a pleasant summer, -and yet a trying one. It was the first time he had ever done work of -which the essence lay in satisfying individuals. In his market jobs the -job had been the thing. Even if done at somebody's order, it was judged -by its success, or by its lack of it. His work at the inn-club brought -him hourly into contact with men and women to whom it was his duty to -be specially, and outwardly deferential. He sprang to open the door -for them when they entered or left the car; he touched his hat to them -whenever they gave him an order. His bearing, his manner of address, -formed a part of his equipment only second to his capacity to drive. - -To this he had no objection. It only seemed odd that while it was his -business to be courteous to others it was nobody's business to be -courteous to him. Some people were. They used toward him those little -formalities of "Please" and "Thank you" which were a matter of course -toward one another. They didn't command; they requested. Others, on the -contrary, never requested. If their nerves or their digestions were not -in good order, they felt at liberty to call him a damn fool, or if they -were ladies, to find fault foolishly. Whatever the injustice, it was -his part to keep himself schooled to the apologetic attitude, ready to -be held in the wrong when he knew he was in the right. Though he had -never heard of the English principle that you may be rude if you choose -to your equals, but never rude to those in a position lower than your -own, he felt its force instinctively. His humble place in the world's -economy entitled him to a courtesy which few people thought it worth -their while to show. - -Apart from this he had nothing to complain of. He made good money, as -the phrase went, his wages augmented by his tips. He took his tips -without shame, since he did much to please his clients beyond what he -was paid for. His relation with them being personal, he could see well -enough that only in tips could they make him any recognition. With the -staff in the house he got on very well, especially with the waitresses, -all six of them girls working their way through Radcliffe, Wellesley, -or Vassar. They chaffed him in an easy-going way, one of them calling -him her Hercules, another her Charlemagne because of his height, while -to a third he was her Siegfried. When he had no work in the evenings, -and their dining-room duties were over, he took them for drives among -the mountains. Writing to Honey, he said that what with the air, the -food, the fun, and the outdoor life, he was never before in such -splendid shape. - -Honey was his one anxiety, though an anxiety which troubled him only -now and then. - -"Go to it, lad," had been his response when Tom had told him of Mr. -Ansley's proposition. "With eighty dollars a month for all summer, and -yer keep throwed in, yer ought to save two hundred." - -"You're sure you won't be lonesome, Honey?" - -Honey made a scornful exclamation. "Lord love yer, Kid, if I was ever -goin' to be lonesome I'd 'a begun before now. Lonesome! Me! That's a -good 'un!" - -And yet on the Sunday of his departure Tom noticed a forced strain in -Honey's gayety. It was a Sunday because Tom was to drive the car up to -New Hampshire in the afternoon to begin his first week on the Monday. -Honey was in clamorous spirits, right up to an hour before the boy left. - -Then he seemed to go flat. Pump up his humor as he would, it had no -zest in it. When it came to the last handshake he grinned feebly, but -couldn't, or didn't, speak. Tom drove away with a question in his mind -as to whether or not, in Honey's professions of a steeled heart, there -was not some bravado. - -In driving through Nashua he saw Maisie. It had been agreed that she -should meet him by the roadside, at the end of the town toward Lowell, -and go on with him till he struck the country again. They not only did -this, but got out at a druggist's to spend a half hour over ice-cream -sodas. - -Picking up the dropped threads of intercourse was not so easy as they -had expected. It was hard for Tom to make himself believe that in this -pretty little thing, all in white with pink roses in her hat, he was -talking to his future wife. Since the fervor of his first love letter -there had been a slight shift in his point of view. Without being able -to locate the change, he felt that the new interests--the car, the -inn-club, the variety of experience--had to some small degree crowded -Maisie out. She was not quite so essential as she had seemed on the -afternoon when he had learned of her departure. Neither was she quite -so pretty. He thought with a pang that Honey's predictions might be -coming true. Because they might be coming true, his pity was so great -that he told her she was looking lovelier than ever. - -"Gee, that's something," Maisie accepted, complacently. "With -four brats to look after, and all the cooking and washing, and -everything--if my father don't marry again soon I'll pass away." She -glanced at his chauffeur's uniform. "You look swell." - -He felt swell, and told her so. He told her of his wages, of the -economies he hoped to make. - -"Gee, and you talk of goin' to college, a fellow that can pull in all -that money just by bein' a shofer. Why, if you were to go on bein' a -shofer we could get married as soon as I got the family off my hands." - -He explained to her that it was not the present, but the future for -which he was working. A chauffeur had only a chauffeur's possibilities, -whereas a man with an education.... - -"Just my luck to get engaged to a nut," Maisie commented, with forced -resignation. "Gee, I got to laff." - -Some half dozen times that summer, when errands took him to Boston, -they met in the same way. Growing more accustomed to their new relation -to each other, he also grew more tender as he realized her limitations -and domestic cares. With his first month's wages in his hand, he could -bring her little presents on each return from Boston, so helping out -her never-failing joy in the flash of her big diamond. That at least -she had, when every other blessing was put off to a vague future. - - * * * * * - -In August, the Ansleys came flying back, driven by the war. It had -caught them at Munich, where their French chauffeur, Pierre, had been -interned as a prisoner. While taking driving lessons Tom had made -Pierre's acquaintance, and that he should now be a prisoner in Germany -made the war a reality. For the first few weeks it had been like a -battle among giants in the clouds; now it came down to earth as a -convulsion among men. - -The Ansleys had come to the inn-club because their own house was -closed. With Guy and Hildred Tom found his relations changed by the -fact that he was a chauffeur. Guy talked to him freely enough, as one -young fellow to another, but Hildred had plainly received a hint to -mark the distance between them. If she passed him in the grounds, or if -he opened the car door for her, she gave him a faint, self-conscious -smile, but never spoke to him. Mrs. Ansley freely used the car and him, -always calling him Whitelaw. - -Philip Ansley was much preoccupied by the international situation. A -small, dry man of slightly Mongolian features, and a skin which looked -like a parchment lampshade tinted with a little rose, he had made a -specialty of international law as it affected the great corporations. -New York and Washington both had need of him. When he couldn't go -there, those who wished his opinion came to him. Not a little of -Tom's work lay in driving him to Keene, the station for New York, to -meet the important men seeking his advice. Thus it happened that Tom -brought over from Keene, so late one night that he got no more than a -dim glimpse of the visitor, the man who was to leave on him the most -disturbing impression of the summer. - -Having delivered his charge at the inn-club door, he drove his car to -the garage, climbed the stairs to his room, and turned into bed. Before -six next morning he was up for a plunge in the lake, this being the -only hour he could count on as his own. - -It was one of those windless mornings late in summer which bring the -first hint of fall. The lake was so still that each throw of his arms -was like the smashing of a vast metallic mirror. Only a metallic -mirror could have had this shining dullness, faintly iridescent, -hardly catching the rays of the newly risen sun. Not leaden enough for -night, nor silvery enough for day, it kept the aloofness from man, as -well as from Nature's smaller blandishments, of its mighty companion, -Monadnock. It was an awesome lake, beautiful, withdrawn, because it -gave back the mountain's awesomeness, beauty, and remoteness. - -Tom's thrust, as he paddled the water behind him, broke for no more -than a few seconds that which at once reformed itself. You would have -said that the darting of his body, straight as a fish's, clave the -water as a bird cleaves the air. After he had gone there was hardly a -ripple to tell that he had passed. Built to be a swimmer, loose limbed, -loose muscled, and not too bonily spare, he breathed as a swimmer, -deeply, gently, without spluttering or loss of his control. In the -limpid medium through which another might have sunk like a stone he -had that sense of natural support which helps man to his dominion. Now -on his right side, now on his left, he could skim like an arrow to its -mark for the simple reason that he knew he could. - -He turned over on his back and floated. The quiet was that of a world -which might never have known the velocity of wind, the ferocity of -war. Above him the inviolate sky; around him the mountains nearly as -inviolate! And everywhere the living stillness, vibrating, dramatic, -with which Nature alone can quicken a dead calm! - -Turning over again, he was abandoning the crawl for the forearm stroke, -to make his way back to the bathing cabins, when over the water came a -long "Ahoy!" Nearer the shore, and a little abeam, there was another -man swimming toward him. Tom gave back an "Ahoy!" and made in the -direction of the stranger. It was perhaps another chauffeur. Even if -it were a resident, or some resident's guest, the informality of sport -would put them on a level. - -The newcomer had the sun behind him; Tom had it on his face. His -features were, therefore, the first to become visible. A strong voice -called out, in a tone of astonishment: - -"Why, Tad! What are _you_ doing up here in New Hampshire?" - -Tom laughed. "Tad--nothing! I'm Tom!" - -The other came nearer. "Tom, are you? Excuse me! Took you for my son." - -"Sorry I'm not," Tom laughed again. "Somebody else's." - -Coming abreast, they headed toward shore. Each face was turned toward -the other. Adopting his companion's stroke, Tom adjusted himself to his -pace. Though conversation was not easy, the one found it possible to -ask questions, the other to answer them. - -"Look like my son. What's your name?" - -"Whitelaw." - -A light came into the eyes, and went out again. "Where do you live?" - -"Boston." - -"Lived there all your life?" - -"Only for the last three years or so." - -"Where'd you live before that?" - -"New York some of the time." - -"Where were you born?" - -"The Bronx." - -"What was your father's name?" - -"Theodore Whitelaw." - -There was again that spark in the eyes, flashing and then dying out. -"How did he get that name?" - -"Don't know. Just a name. Suppose his mother gave it to him." - -"Lots of Theodore Whitelaws. Have come across two or three. Like the -Colin Campbells and Howard Smiths you run into everywhere. What did -your father do?" - -"Never heard. Died when I was a kid." Tom felt entitled to ask a -question on his own side. "What do you want to know for?" - -The other seemed on his guard. "Oh, nothing! Was just--was just struck -by the resemblance to--to my boy." - -The swerve which took them away from each other was as slight as that -which a ship gets from her rudder. Tom continued to play round in the -water till he saw the older man reach the bathing cabins, dress, and go -away. - -That afternoon he was told to drive back to Keene both Mr. Ansley and -the guest whom he, Tom, had brought over on the previous evening. As -the latter came out to enter the car it was easy to recognize the -swimmer of the morning. - -Tom held the door open, his hand to his cap. The gentleman gave him a -swift, keen look. - -"Oh, so this is what you do!" - -"Yes, sir; this is what I do. Mr. Ansley got me the job." - -"Young fellow whom Guy has befriended," Mr. Ansley explained, as he -took his place beside his friend. - -But in the Pullman, when Tom had carried in the gentleman's valise, -there was another minute in which they were alone. The car was nearly -empty; there were still some five minutes before the departure of the -train. While the colored porter took the suitcase the traveler turned -to Tom. He was a tall man, straight and flexible like Tom himself, but -a little heavier. - -"How old are you?" - -"Seventeen, sir." - -A shadow flew across the face. "Tad is seventeen, too. That settles -any--" Without stating what was settled by this coincidence of ages, -he went on with his quick, peremptory questions. "What do you do when -you leave here?" - -"I go back for my last year in the Latin School in Boston." - -"And then?" - -"I go to Harvard." - -"Putting yourself through?" - -"Only partly, sir." - -"Friends?" - -"Yes, sir." - -The questions ceased. The face, which even a boy like Tom could see to -be that of a strong man who must have suffered terribly, grew pensive. -When the eyes were bent toward the floor Tom took note of a pair of -bushy, outstanding, horizontal eyebrows, oddly like his own. - -The reverie ended abruptly. Some thought seemed to be dismissed. It -seemed to be dismissed with both decision and relief. But the man held -out his hand. - -"Good-by." - -"Good-by, sir." - -It was not the questions, nor the interest, it was the last little act -of farewell that gave Tom a glowing feeling in the heart as he went -back to his car and Mr. Ansley. - - - - -XXIX - - -It was late that evening before Tom found an opportunity to ask Miss -Padley, who kept what the inn-club knew as the office, the name of the -guest who had questioned him so closely. Miss Padley was a red-haired, -freckled girl, putting herself through Radcliffe. Unused to clerical -work, she was tired. When Tom put his query she gazed up at him -vacantly, before she could collect her wits. - -"The name of the gentleman who left this afternoon?" She called to -Ella, one of the waitresses, in her second year at Wellesley. "What was -it, Ella? I forget." - -As the house was closing for the night some informality was possible. -Ella sauntered up. - -"What was what?" - -Tom's question was repeated. - -"Oh, that was the great Henry T. Whitelaw. Big banker. Partner in Meek -and Brokenshire's. They say that he and a few other bankers could stop -the war if they liked, by holding back the cash. Don't believe it. -War's too big. And, say! He was the father of that Whitelaw baby there -used to be all the talk about." - -Miss Padley looked up, her cheek resting on her hand. "You don't say! -Gee, I wish I'd known that. I'd 'a looked at him a little closer." She -turned her tired greenish eyes toward Tom. "Your name is Whitelaw, -too, isn't it?" - -He grinned nervously. "My name is Whitelaw, too, only, like the lady's -maid whose name was Shakespeare but was no relation to the play-actor -of that name, I don't belong to the banking branch of the family." - -Ella exclaimed, as one who makes a discovery. "But, Siegfried, you look -as if you did. Doesn't he, Blanche? Look at his eyebrows. They're just -like the banker man's." - -"Oh, I've looked at them often enough," Miss Padley returned, wearily. -"Got his mustaches stuck on in the wrong place. I'm off." - -Yawning, she shut her ledger, closed an open drawer, and rose. But -Ella, a dark little thing, kept her snappy black eyes on Tom. - -"You do look like him, Siegfried. I'd put in a claim if I were you. I'm -single, you know, and I've always admired you. Think of the romance -it would make if the Whitelaw baby took home as his bride a poor but -honest working girl!" - -Dodging Ella's chaff, Tom escaped to the garage. It was queer how the -Whitelaw baby haunted him. Honey!--Ella!--and the Whitelaw baby's own -father! - -But the haunting stopped. Neither Ella nor Miss Padley took it as more -than a passing pleasantry, forgotten with the morning. The tall man who -had asked him questions never came back again. The rest of the summer -went by with but one little incident to remain in his memory. - -It was a very little incident. Walking one day in the road that ran -round the lake he came face to face with Hildred Ansley. She had -grown since the previous winter, a little in height, and more in an -indefinable development. She was fifteen now; but, always older than -her age, she was more like seventeen or eighteen. Her formal manner, -her decided mind, her "grown-up" choice of words, made her already -something of that finished entity for which we have only the word lady. -Ella had said of her that at twenty she would look like forty, and at -forty continue to look like twenty. Tom thought that this might be -true--an early fullness of womanhood, but a long one. - -She had been playing tennis, and swung her racket as she came along. He -was sorry for this direct encounter, since she might find it awkward; -but when she waved her racket to him, it was clear that she did not. -She felt perhaps the more independent, released from her mother's -supervision and the inn. Her smile, something in her way of pausing in -the road, an ease of manner beyond analysis, put them both on the plane -on which their acquaintance had begun. The slanting yellowish-brown -eyes together with the faint glimmer of a smile heightened that air of -mystery which had always made her different from other girls. - -"How have you been getting along?" - -He said he had been doing very well. - -"How have you liked the job?" - -"Fine! Everybody's been nice to me--" - -"Everybody likes you. All the same, I hope, if they ask you to come -back next year, that--you won't." - -"Why not?" - -"Oh, just--because!" - -Slipping away, she left him with the summer's second memory. She hoped -he wouldn't take the place again--_because_! Because--what? Could she -have meant what he thought she must have meant? Was it possible that -she didn't like to see him in a situation something like a servant's? -Though he never again, during all the rest of the summer, had so much -speech with her alone, it gave him a hint to turn over in his mind. - -Driving the car back to Boston, after the inn-club had closed, he saw -Maisie for the last time that year. Uncertain of his hours, he had been -unable to arrange to have her meet him, and so looked her up in her -home. A small wooden house, once stained a dark red, weather-worn now -to a reddish-dun, it stood on the outskirts of the town. In a weedy -back-yard, redeemed from ugliness by the flaming of a maple tree, -Maisie was pinning newly washed clothes to a clothes-line stretched -between the back door and a post. Two children, a boy of six and a girl -of eight, were tumbling about with a pup. At sound of the stopping -of the car in the roadway in front of the house Maisie turned, a -clothes-pin held lengthwise in her mouth. Even with her sleeves rolled -up and her hair in wisps, she couldn't be anything but pretty. - -She came and sat beside him in the car, the children and the pup -staring up at them in wonder. - -"Gee, I wish he'd get married; but I daresay he won't for ever so long. -Married to the bottle, that's what he is. It was six years after my -mother died before he took on the last one. That's what makes me so -much older than the four kids. All the same I'd beat it if you'd take -a shofer's job and settle down. I'm not bound to stay here and make -myself a slave." - -It was the burden of all Maisie's reasoning, and he had to admit -its justice. He was asking her to wait a long four years before he -could give her a home. It would have been more preposterous than it -was if among poor people, among poor young people especially, a long -courtship, with marriage as a vague fulfillment, was not general. Any -such man as she was likely to get would have to toil and save, and save -and toil, before he could pay for the few sticks of furniture they -would need to set up housekeeping. Never having thought of anything -else, she was the more patient now; but patient with a strain of -rebellion against Tom's whim for education. - -She cried when he left her; he almost cried himself, from a sense of -his impotence to take her at once from a life of drudgery. The degree -to which he loved her seemed to be secondary now to her helpless need -of him. True, he could get a job as chauffeur and make a hundred -dollars a month to begin with. To Maisie that would be riches; but -a hundred and fifty a month would then become his lifelong limit -and ambition. Even to save Maisie now he couldn't bring himself to -sacrifice not merely his future but her own. Once he was "through -college," it seemed to him that the treasures of the world would lie -open. - -Arrived in Grove Street, he found one new condition which made his -return easier. Honey, who, for the sake of economy, had occupied a -hall-bedroom through the summer, had reserved another, on the floor -above, for Tom. The relief from the sharing of one big room amounted to -a sense of luxury. - -On the other hand, Honey, for the first time since Tom had known him, -was moody and tired. He was not ill; he was only less cast-iron than -he used to be. He found it harder to go to work in the morning; he was -more spent when he came back at night, as if some inner impulse of -virility was wearing itself out. The war worried him. The fact that old -England had met a foe whom she couldn't walk over at once disturbed his -ideas as to the way in which the foundations of the world had been laid. - -"Anything can happen now, kid," he declared, in discussing the English -retreat from Mons. "Haven't felt so bad since the bloody cop give me -the whack with his club what put out me eye. If Englishmen has to turn -tail before Germans, well, what next?" - -But to Tom's suggestions that he should go to Canada and enlist in -the British army Honey was as stone. "You're too young. Y'ain't -got yer growth. I don't care what no one says. War is for men. Yer -first business, and yer last business, and yer only business, is yer -eddication." - -It must be admitted that Tom agreed with him. He had no longing to go -to war. Europe was far away while life was near. Education, Maisie, the -future, had the first claim on him. It began to occur to him that even -Honey had a claim on him, now that he was not so vigorous as he used to -be. - -There were other interests to make war remote. On returning to town, -after a summer amid the spaciousness, beauty, and comfort which the -few could give themselves, he was oppressed by the privations of the -many. Never before had he thought of them. He had taken Grove Street -for granted. He had taken it for granted that life was hard and crowded -and bitter and cold and ugly, and couldn't be anything else. Now he had -seen for himself that it could be easy and beautiful and healthy. True, -he had always known that there were rich people as well as poor people; -but never before had he been close enough to the rich to see their -luxuries in detail. The contrasts in the human scheme of things having -thus come home to him he was moved to a distressed wondering. - -What brought these differences about? If all the rich were industrious -and good, while all the poor were idle and extravagant, he could -have understood it better. But it wasn't so. The rich were often -idle and extravagant, and didn't suffer. The poor were nearly always -industrious--they couldn't be anything else--and were as good as they -had leisure to be, but suffered from something all the time. How could -this injustice be endured? What was to be done about it? Wasn't it -everybody's duty to try to right such a wrong? - -Because he had only now become aware of it he supposed that nobody -but the Slav and Jewish agitators had been aware of it before. -Louisburg Square, and all that element in the world which Louisburg -Square represented, could never have thought of it. If it had, it -couldn't have slept at night in its bed. That it should lie snug -and soft and warm while all the rest of the world--at least a good -three-fourths--lay cold and hard and hungry, must be out of the -question. If the rich people only knew! It was strange that someone -hadn't told them. What were the newspapers and the governments and the -churches doing that they weren't ringing with protests against this -fundamental evil? - -More than ever Honey's rebellion against the lor of proputty seemed to -him based on some principle he couldn't trace. Honey was doubtless all -wrong; and yet the other thing was just as wrong as Honey. He started -him talking on the subject as they strolled to their dinner that -evening. - -"Seems as if this 'ere old human race didn't have no spunk. Yer can -put anything over on them, and they'll 'ardly lift a kick. It's like -as if they was hypnertized. Them as has got everything is hypnertized -into thinkin' they've a right to it; and them as have got nothink'll -let theirselves believe as nothink is all that belongs to 'em. Comes o' -most o' the world bein' orthodocks. Lord love yer, I'd rather think for -meself if it landed me ten months out'n every twelve in jail, than have -two thousand a year and yet be an old tabby-orthodock what never had a -mind." - -They were seated at the table in Mrs. Turtle's basement dining-room, -when, looking up and down the double row of guests, Honey whispered, -"Tabby-orthodocks--all of 'em." - -At his sixteen or eighteen fellow-mealers Tom looked with a new vision. -With the aid of Honey's epithet he could class them. Mostly men, they -sat bowed, silent, futile, gulping down their coarse food with no -pretense at softening the animal processes of eating. These, too, he -had hitherto taken for granted. In all the months they had "mealed" at -Mrs. Turtle's--in the years they had "mealed" at similar establishments -in Grove Street--he had looked on them, and on others of their kind, -as the norm of humanity. Now he saw something wrong in them, without -knowing what it was. - -"What's the matter with them?" he asked of Honey, as they went back -across Grove Street to Mrs. Danker's. - -Honey's reply was standardized. "Bein' orthodocks. Not thinkin' for -theirselves. Not usin' the mind as Gord give 'em. Believin' what other -blokes told 'em, and stoppin' at that. I say, Kiddy! Don't yer never go -for to forget that yer'll get farther in the world by bein' wrong the -way yer thinks yerself than by bein' right the way some other feller -tells yer." - -Having reached their own house they stood, each with a foot on the -doorstep, while Tom smoked a cigarette and Honey enlarged on his -philosophy. - -"I don't believe as Gord put us into this world to be right not 'arf so -much as what He done it so as we'd find out for ourselves what's right -and what's wrong. One right thing as yer've found out for yerself'll -make yer more of a man than fifty as yer've took on trust. Look at 'em -in there!" He nodded backward toward Mrs. Turtle's. "They've all took -everythink on trust, and see what it's made of 'em. Whoever says, 'I'm -an orthodock, and I'm goin' to live and die an orthodock,' is like the -guy in the Bible as was bound 'and and foot with grave-clothes. My -genius was always for thinkin' things out for meself; and look at me -to-day!" - -It was another discovery to Tom that Honey felt proud and happy in his -accomplishment. Honey to Tom was a machine for doing heavy work. He -was a drudge, and a dray-horse. He was shut out from the higher, the -more spiritual activities. But here was Honey himself content, and in a -measure exultant. - -"Been wrong in a lot o' things I have; but I've found it out for -meself. I ain't sorry for what I've did. It's learned me. There ain't a -old jug I've been in, in England or the State o' New York, that didn't -learn me somethink. I see now that I was wrong. But I see, too, that -them as tried and sentenced me wasn't right. When they repents of the -sins what their lors and gover'ments and churches has committed against -this old world, I'll repent o' the sins I've committed against them." - -This ability to stand alone, mentally at least, against all religion -and society, was, as Tom saw it, the secret of Honey's independence. He -might have been a rogue, a burglar, a convict; and yet he was a man, -as the orthodocks at Mrs. Turtle's were not, and never had been, men. -Having allowed themselves to be hammered into subjection by what Honey -called lors, gover'ments, and churches, in subjection they had been -trapped, and never could get out again. There was something about Honey -that was strong and free. - - - - -XXX - - -To make himself strong and free was Tom Whitelaw's ruling motive -through the winter which preceded his going to Harvard. He must be -a man, not merely in physical vigor, but in mental independence. -Convinced that he was in what he called a rotten world, a world of -rotten customs built on a rotten foundation, he saw it as a task to -learn to pick his way amid the rottenness. To rebel, but keep his -rebellion as steam with which to drive his engine, not as something to -let off in futile raging against established convictions, was a hint of -Honey's by which he profited. - -"It don't do yer no good to kick so as they can ketch and jump on you. -I've tried that. And it ain't no good to jaw. Tried that too. If the -uninherited was anythink but a bunch o' simps you might be able to -rouse 'em. But they ain't. All yer can do is to shut yer mouth and -live. Yer'll live harder and surer with yer mouth shut. Yer'll live -truer too, just as yer'll shoot straighter when yer ain't talkin' and -fidgitin' about. Don't believe what no judge or gov'nor or bishop says -to yer just because he says it; but don't let 'em know as yer don't -believe it, because they'll hoodoo you with their whim-whams. Awful -glad they'll be, both Church and State, to ruin the man what don't -believe the way they tell him to." - -On the eve of manhood Tom thought more highly of Honey than he had -when a few years younger. Having judged him drugged by work, he -found that he had ideas of his own, however mistaken they might be. -However mistaken they might be, they had at least produced one guiding -principle: to keep your mouth shut and live! Taking his notes about -life, as he did through the following winter, he made them according to -this counsel. - -The outstanding feature of the season was the development of something -like a real friendship with Guy Ansley. Hitherto the two young men had -backed and filled; but in proportion as Tom grew more sure of himself -the weaker fellow clung to him. He clung in his own way; but he clung. -He was the patron. Tom was the fine young chap he had taken a fancy to -and was helping along. - -"I'm awful democratic that way. Whole lot of fellows'll think they've -just got to go with their own gang. Doolittle and Pray's is full of -that sort of bunk. The Doolittle and Pray spirit they call it. I call -it fluff. If I like a fellow I stick by him, no matter what he is. I'd -just as soon go round with you as with the stylishest fellow on the -Back Bay. Social position don't mean anything to me. Of course I know -it's very nice to have it; but if a fellow hasn't got it, why, I don't -care, not so long as he's a sport." - -"Keep your mouth shut and live," Tom reminded himself. He liked Guy -Ansley well enough. He was at least a fellow of his own age, with whom -he could be franker than had been possible with Maisie, and who would -understand him in ways in which Honey never could. With the difference -made by ten years in his point of view, he discussed with Guy the same -sort of subjects, sex, religion, profession, vices, politics, that he -had talked over with Bertie Tollivant. Merely to hear their own voices -on these themes eased the adolescent turmoil in their brains. - -Hildred Ansley, having entered Miss Winslow's school as a boarder, was -immured as in a convent. Her absence made it the easier for Tom to run -in and out of the Ansley house on the missions, secret and important, -which boys create among themselves. Guy had a set of maps by which you -could follow the ebb and flow on the battlefront. Guy had a wireless -installation with which you could listen in on messages not meant for -you. Guy had skis, and bought another pair for Tom so that they could -tramp together on the Fenway. Guy had a runabout which Tom taught him -to drive. Guy had tickets for any play or concert he chose to attend, -and invited Tom to go along with him. - -Doubtful at first, Mrs. Ansley came round to view the acquaintance -almost without misgiving. - -"I think you're a steady boy, aren't you?" she asked of Tom one day, -when finding him alone. - -Tom smiled. "I don't get much chance, ma'am, to be anything else." - -Lacking a sense of humor, Mrs. Ansley was literal. - -"I don't like you to say that. It sounds as if when you do get the -chance--But perhaps you'll know better by that time. It's something I -hope Guy will help you to see in return for all the--well, the physical -protection you give him." - -"Oh, but, ma'am, I--" - -"That'll do. I know my boy is brave. But I know too that he's not very -strong, and to have a great fellow like you, used to roughing it--It -reminds me of the big Cossack who always goes round with the little -Tsarevitch. Not that Guy is as young as that, but he's been tenderly -brought up." - -"Oh, mother, give us a rest!" Guy had rushed into his flowered room -from whatever errand had taken him away. "If I _have_ been tenderly -brought up, I'm as tough to-day as any mucker down where Tom lives." - -"The dear boy!" - -She smiled at Tom, as at one who like herself understood this -extravagance, moving away with the stately lilt that made her skirts -flounce up and down. - -"It's Hildred that's sicking the old lady on to her little song -and dance in your favor," Guy declared, when they had the room to -themselves again. "Hildred likes you. Always has. She's democratic, -too, just like me. Once let a fellow be a sport and Hildred wouldn't -care what he was socially." - -"Keep your mouth shut and live," became Tom's daily self-adjuration. -That Guy sincerely liked him he was sure, and this in itself meant much -to him. The patronage could be smiled away. If he and his mother failed -in tact they gave him much in compensation. In their house he was -getting accustomed to certain small usages which at first had overawed -him. Space didn't dwarf him any more, nor beauty strike him spellbound. -He was so courteous to Pilcher that Pilcher, returning deference for -deference, had once or twice called him "sir." The plays to which -Guy took him were a long step in his education; the music they heard -together released a whole new range in his emotions. - -He discovered that Guy was what is commonly called musical. He played -the piano not badly; he knew something of the classics, of the great -romanticists, of the moderns. Back of the library was a music room, and -when other occupations palled, there Guy would play and explain, while -Tom sat listening and enjoying. Guy liked explaining; it showed his -superiority. Tom liked to learn. To know the difference between Mozart -and Beethoven was a stage in progress. To have the cabalistic names of -Wagner and Debussy, which he had often seen in newspapers, spring to -significance was an initiation into mysteries. - -So with work, with sports, with amusements, the winter sped by, -bringing a sense of an expanding life. He had one main care: Maisie -was more unhappy. Her appeals to him to throw up college, to become a -chauffeur and marry her, increased in urgency. - -He had come to the point of seeing that his engagement to Maisie was -a bit of folly. If Honey were to learn of it, or the Ansleys ... but -he hoped to keep it secret till he won a position in which he could be -free of censure. Once with an income to support a wife, his mistakes -and sufferings would be his own business. In proportion as life opened -up it was easy for him to face trouble cheerfully. - -May had come round, and by keeping his birthday on the fifth of March, -he was now more than eighteen. On a Saturday morning when there was no -school to attend he and Guy had lingered on the roof of the Ansley -house after their task with the wireless apparatus was over. Looking -across the river toward Cambridge, where one big tower marked the site -of Harvard, they were speculating on the new step in manhood they would -take in the following October. - -Pilcher's old head appeared through the skylight to inform Mr. Guy that -lunch was waiting. Madam wished him to come down. - -"Where is she?" - -"She's in the dining room, Mr. Guy." - -"Get along, Tom. I'll be ready with the runabout at two. You won't be -late, will you?" - -Tom said he would not be late, following Pilcher through the skylight -and down the several flights of stairs. He was eager to slip out the -front door without encountering Mrs. Ansley. Mrs. Ansley was eager not -to encounter him. With lunch on the table, it would be awkward not to -ask him to sit down; and to ask him to sit down would be out of the -question. It would be just like Guy.... - -And then Guy did what was just like him. "Mother," he called out, -puffing down the last of the staircases, "why can't Tom have lunch with -us? He's got to be back here at two anyway. He's coming out with me in -the runabout." - -Tom was doing his best to turn the knob of the front door. "Couldn't, -Guy," he whispered back, shaking his head violently. "Got to beat it." - -In reality he was running away. To sit at the table with Mrs. Ansley, -and be served by Pilcher, required a knowledge of etiquette he did not -possess. - -"Mother, grab him," Guy insisted. "He might as well stay, mightn't he?" - -Reluctantly Mrs. Ansley appeared in the doorway. In so far as she could -ever be vexed with Guy, she was vexed. "If Whitelaw's got to go, dear--" - -"He hasn't got to go, have you, Tom? He don't have a home to toe the -line at. He just picks up his grub wherever he can get it." - -To such an appeal it was impossible to be wholly deaf. "Oh, then, if -Whitelaw chooses to stay with us--" - -"Oh, I couldn't, ma'am," Tom cried, hurriedly. "I've got to--" - -But Guy, who had now reached the floor of the hall, caught him by the -arm. "Oh, come along in. It can't hurt us. The old lady's just as -democratic as Hildred and me." - -Mrs. Ansley was overborne; she couldn't help herself. Tom also was -overborne, finding it easier to yield than to rebel. There being but -three places laid at the table, one of which was reserved for Mr. -Ansley in case he came home for luncheon, Pilcher set a fourth. - -"Will you sit there, Whitelaw?" - -"Oh, mother, call him Tom. He isn't a chauffeur, not when he's in town -here." - -If anyone but Guy had put her in this situation Mrs. Ansley would -have deemed it due to herself to sail from the room. As it was, she -endeavored to humor the boy, to keep Tom in his place, and to rescue -the dignity which had never yet sat down at table with a servant. - -"I'm sure there's no harm in being a chauffeur. I'm the last person in -the world to say so, dependent on chauffeurs as I am. Besides, we knew, -of course, that some of the young people helping us at the inn-club -were studying in colleges, and that they didn't mean to stay in those -positions permanently." She grew arch. "But I'm not democratic, Mr. -Whitelaw. Guy knows I'm not. It's his way of teasing me. He's perfectly -aware that I consider democracy a failure. There never was a greater -fallacy than that all men were born free and equal. As to freedom I'm -indifferent; but I've never pretended that any Tom, Dick, or Harry was -my equal, and I never shall." - -"You don't mean this Tom, do you, old lady?" - -"Now, Guy! Isn't he a tease, Mr. Whitelaw? But I do believe in equality -of opportunity. That seems to me one of the glories of our country. So -many of our great men have come from the very humblest origin. And if -we can do anything to help them along--with Guy that's an obsession. -If it's a fault I say it's a good fault. Better to err on that side, I -always think, than to see some one achieve the big thing, and know that -you had no share in it when you might have had. That's shepherd's pie, -Mr. Whitelaw. We have very simple lunches because Mr. Ansley doesn't -always come home, and in any case his meal is his dinner." - -She rambled on because Guy was too busy with his food to help her, and -Tom too terrified. He was sorry not merely for himself, but for her. -Compelled to admit him to breaking bread with her, she must feel as if -he had been forced on her in her dressing room. As a matter of fact, -he admired the way in which she was carrying it off. Long ago, having -divined her as taking her inherited position in Boston as a kind of -sanctifying aura, shrinking from unauthorized approach like a sensitive -plant from a touch, she reminded him of an anecdote he had somewhere -read of Queen Victoria. The Queen was holding a council. Present at it -among others was a statesman sitting for the first time as a member of -the cabinet. Obliged at a given moment to carry a paper from one side -of the table to the other, this gentleman passed back of the Queen's -chair, accidentally grazing it with his hand. The Queen shuddered -and shrank away. The touching merely of the chair was a violation of -majesty. "He won't do," she whispered to the prime minister. He didn't -do. He passed not only into political but into social oblivion. Tom -recalled the incident as he tried to choke down his shepherd's pie. -He was the unhappy statesman. He wouldn't do. Amiable as Mrs. Ansley -tried to make herself, he knew how she was suffering. He was suffering -himself. - -And in on his suffering, to make it worse, bustled Mr. Ansley. Throwing -his hat and gloves on a settle in the hall, he shot into the dining -room at once. He was a man who shot, sharply, directly, rather than one -who walked. Tom stood up. - -"Sorry I'm so late, Sunshine--" His eye fell on Tom. "Oh, how-d'ye-do? -Seen you before, haven't I? Oh! Oh!" The exclamations were of surprise -and a little pain. "Why, you're the young fellow who ran the station -car for us." - -Mrs. Ansley intervened as one who pacifies. "He's going out with Guy at -two o'clock, to help him run the runabout." - -"_Help_ me run it! Why, mother, you talk as if--" - -"And Guy couldn't let him go off without anything to eat." - -"Quite so! quite so!" Mr. Ansley agreed. "Glad to see you. Sit down." -He helped himself to the shepherd's pie which Pilcher passed again. -"Let me see! What was it your name was?" - -Tom sat down again. "Whitelaw, sir." - -"Oh, yes; so it was. You're the same Whitelaw who's been running -about this winter and spring with Guy. Quite so! quite so! Oh, and by -the way, Sunshine, speaking of Whitelaw, Henry looked in on me this -morning. Ran over from New York about some business cropped up since -the sinking of the _Lusitania_." - -"How is he?" - -"Seems rather worried. Lost several intimate friends on the ship, -besides which the old question seems to be popping up again." - -Mrs. Ansley sighed. "Oh, dear! I hope they'll not be dragged through -all that with another of their foolish clues. I thought it was over." - -"It's over for Eleonora. But you know how Henry feels about it. Got it -on the brain. Pity, I call it, after--how many years is it?" - -Mrs. Ansley computed. "It was while we were on our honeymoon. Don't you -remember? We read it in the paper at Montreal, after we'd come from -Niagara Falls. That was the fifteenth of May, and Harry had been stolen -on the tenth." - -Tom felt a queer sick sinking of the heart. The tenth of May was the -last of the three dates his mother had fixed as his birthday. She had -told him, too, that the day when he was born was one on which the -nursemaids were in the Park, and the lilacs had been in bloom. Why this -specification? If, as she had informed him at other times, he was born -in the Bronx, where Gracie also had been born, why the reference to the -Park and nursemaids, five miles away? He listened avidly. - -"How old would that make him if he were living now?" - -Again Mrs. Ansley reckoned. "Something over nineteen. I've forgotten -just how many months he was when he disappeared." - -Tom was reassured. He was only eighteen; he was positive of that. He -couldn't have been nineteen without ever suspecting it. Mr. Ansley -continued. - -"Seems to me a great mistake to bring him back now, even if they found -him. A lumbering fellow of nineteen, practically a man, with probably -the lowest associations." - -"That's what Onora feels. She's told me so. She couldn't go through it. -Even if he isn't dead in fact he's dead to them." - -"Henry feels that, of course. He doesn't deny it. He doesn't want him -back--not now. At the same time when any new will o' the wisp starts up -he can't help feeling--" - -Tom was back in his little hall bedroom, after the run in the car with -Guy, before he had time to think these scraps of conversation over. -The details for which he had to render an account were, first, his -sickening sense of dread on learning that the Whitelaw baby had been -stolen on the tenth of May, and, then, his relief that the child, -if now alive, would be nineteen years of age. These sensations or -emotions, whatever they might be called, had been independent of his -will. What did they portend? Why was he frightened in the one case, and -in the other comforted? - -He didn't know. That he didn't know was the only decision he could -reach. Were the impossible ever to come true, were the parents of the -Whitelaw baby ever, no matter how unwillingly, to claim him as their -son, the advantages to him would be obvious. Why then did he hate the -idea? What was it in him that cried out, and pleaded not to be forsaken? - -He didn't know. - - - - -XXXI - - -Luckily the questions raised that day died out like a false alarm. With -no further mention of the Whitelaw baby, he graduated from the Latin -School, passed his exams at Harvard, and spent the summer as second -in command of a boys' camp in a part of New Hampshire remote from the -inn-club and the Ansleys. October found him a freshman. The new life -was beginning. - -He had slept his first night in his bedroom in Gore Hall, where his -quarters had been appointed. He had met the three fellow-freshmen with -whom he was to share a sitting room. The sitting room was on the ground -floor in a corner, looking out on the Embankment and the Charles. Never -having had, since he left the Quidmores, a place in which to work -better than the narrow squalid room at the end of a narrow squalid -hall, his joy in this new decency of living was naïve to the point of -childishness. He spent in that retreat, during the first twenty-four -hours, every minute not occupied with duties. Because he was glad -of the task, his colleagues had left to him as much of the job of -arranging the furniture as he would assume. - -On the second day of his residence he was on his knees, behind his -desk, pulling at a rug that had been wrinkled up. His zeal could bear -nothing not neat, straight, adjusted. The desk was heavy, the rug -stubborn. When a rap sounded on the door he called out, "Come in!" -looking up above the edge of the desk only when the door had been -opened and closed. - -A lady, dignified, a little portly, was stepping into the room, with -the brisk air of one who had a right there. As she had been motoring, -she was wreathed in a dark green veil, which partially hid her -features. Peeling off a gauntlet, she glanced round the room, after a -first glance at Tom. - -"I'm sorry to be late, Tad. That stupid Patterson lost his way. He's -a very good driver, but he's no sense of direction. Why, where's the -picture? You said you had had it hung." - -Her tone was crisp and staccato. In her breath there was the syncopated -halt which he afterward came to associate with the actress, Mrs. Fiske. -She might be nervous; or she might suffer from the heart. - -For the first few seconds he was too agitated to know exactly what to -do. He had been looked at and called Tad again, this time probably by -Tad's mother. He rose to his height of six feet two. The lady started -back. - -"Why, what have you been doing to yourself? What are you standing on? -What makes you so tall?" - -"I'm afraid there's some mistake, ma'am." - -She broke in with a kind of petulance. "Oh, Tad, no nonsense! I'm -tired. I'm not in the mood for it." - -Both gauntlets peeled off, she flung them on the desk. With a motion as -rapid as her speech she stepped toward a window and looked out over the -Embankment. - -"It's going to be noisy and dusty for you here. The stream of cars is -incessant." - -Being now beyond the desk, she caught the fullness of his stature. Her -left hand went up with a startled movement. She gave a little gasp. - -"Oh! You frightened me. You're not standing on anything." - -"No, ma'am, I...." - -"I asked for Mr. Whitelaw's room. They told me to come to number -twenty-eight." - -Making her way out, she kept looking back at him in terror. When he -hurried to open the door for her, she waved him away. Everything she -did and said was rapid, staccato, and peremptory. - -"You've forgotten your gloves, ma'am." - -He reached them with a stretch of his arm. Taking them from him, she -still kept her eyes on his face. - -"No! You don't look like him. I thought you did. I was wrong. It's only -the--the eyes--and the eyebrows." - -She was gone. He closed the door upon her. Dropping into an armchair -by the window, he stared out on a wide low landscape, with a double -procession of motor cars in the foreground, and a river in the middle -distance. - -So this was the woman who had lived through the agony of a stolen -child! He tried to recall what Honey had told him of the tragedy. He -remembered the house which five years earlier Honey had taken him to -see; he remembered the dell with the benches and the lilacs. This -woman's child had been wheeled out there one morning--and had vanished. -She had had to bear being told of the fact. She had gone through the -minutes when the mind couldn't credit it. She had known fear, frenzy, -hope, suspense, disappointment, discouragement, despair, and lassitude. -In self-defense, in sheer inability of the human spirit to endure more -than it has endured, she had thrown round her a hard little shell of -refusal to hear of it again. She resented the reminder. She was pricked -to a frantic excitement by a mere chance resemblance to the image of -what the lost little boy might have become. - -A chance resemblance! He underscored the words. It was all there was. -He himself was the son of Theodore and Lucy Whitelaw. At least he -thought her name was Lucy. Not till he had been required to give the -names of his parents for some school record did it occur to him that he -didn't positively know. She had always been "Mudda." He hadn't needed -another name. After she had gone there had been no one to supply him -with the facts he had not learned before. Even the Theodore would have -escaped him had it not been for that last poignant scene, when she -stood before the officer and gave a name--Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw! Why -not? There were more Whitelaws than one. There was no monopoly of the -name in the family that had lost the child. - -He didn't often consciously think of her nowadays. The memory was -not merely too painful; it was too destructive of the things he was -trying to cherish. He had impulses rather than ideals, in that impulses -form themselves more spontaneously; and all his impulses were toward -rectitude. It was not a chosen standard; neither was it imposed upon -him from without, unless it was in some vague general direction of the -spirit received while at the Tollivants. He didn't really think of it. -He took it as a matter of course. He couldn't be anything but what he -was, and there was an end of it. But all his attempts to get a working -concept of himself led him back to this beginning, where the fountain -of life was befouled. - -So he rarely went back that far. He would go back to the Quidmores, -to the Tollivants, to Mrs. Crewdson; but he stopped there. There he -hung up a great curtain, soft and dim and pitiful, the veil of an -immense tenderness. Rarely, very rarely, did he go behind it. He would -not have done it on this afternoon had not the woman who had just -gone out--dressed, as anyone could see, with the expensive easy-going -roughness which only rich women can afford--neurotic, imperious, -unhappy--had not this woman sent him there. She was a great lady whose -tragic story haunted him; but she turned his mind backward, as it -hardly ever turned, to the foolish and misguided soul who had loved -him. No one since that time, no one whatever in the life he could -remember, had loved him at all, unless it were Honey, and Honey denied -that he did. How could he forsake ...? And then it came to him what it -was that pleaded within him not to be forsaken. - - * * * * * - -The lecture was over. It was one of the first Tom had attended. -The men, some hundred odd in number, were shuffling their papers, -preparatory to getting up. Seated in an amphitheater, they filled -the first seven or eight semicircles outward from the stage. The -arrangement being alphabetical, Tom, as a _W_, was in the most distant -row. - -The lecturer, who was also putting his papers together as they lay on a -table beside him, looked up casually to call out, - -"If Mr. Whitelaw is here I should like to speak to him." - -Tom shot from his seat and stood up. The man on his left did the same. -Occupied with taking notes on the little table attached to the right -arm--the only arm--of his chair, Tom had not turned to the left at all. -He was surprised now at the ripple of laughter that ran among the men -beginning to get up from their seats or to file out into the corridor. -The professor smiled too. - -"You're brothers?" - -Tom looked at his neighbor; his neighbor looked at Tom. Except for the -difference in height the resemblance was startling or amusing, as you -chose to take it. To the men going by it was amusing. - -It was the neighbor, however, who called out, in a shocked voice: "Oh, -no, no! No connection." - -"Then it's to Mr. Theodore Whitelaw that I wish to speak." - -Mr. Theodore Whitelaw made his way toward the platform, taking no -further notice of Tom. - -For this lack of the friendly freemasonry general among young men, -general among freshmen especially, Tom thought he saw a reason. The -outward appearance which enabled him to "place" Tad would enable Tad -to "place" him. On the one there was the stamp of wealth; on the other -there must be that of poverty. He might have met Tad Whitelaw anywhere -in the world, and he would have known him at a glance as a fellow -nursed on money since he first lay in a cradle. It wasn't merely a -matter of dress, though dress counted for something. It was a matter -of the personality. It was in the eyes, in the skin, in the look, in -the carriage, in the voice. It was not in refinement, or cultivation, -or cleverness, or use of opportunity; it was in something subtler -than these, a cast of mind, a habit of thought, an acceptance, a -self-confidence, which seeped through every outlet of expression. Tad -Whitelaw embodied wealth, position, the easy use of whatever was best -in whatever was material. You couldn't help seeing it. - -On the other hand, he, Tom Whitelaw, probably bore the other kind -of stamp. He had not thought of that before. In as far as he had -thought of it, it was to suppose that the stamp could be rubbed off, -or covered up. Clothes would do something toward that, and in clothes -he had been extravagant. He had come to Harvard with two new suits, -made to his order by the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker's. But in -contrast with the young New Yorker his extravagance had been futile. -He found for himself the most opprobrious word in all the American -language--cheap. - -Very well! He probably couldn't help looking cheap. But if cheap he -would be big. He wouldn't resent. He would keep his mouth shut and -live. Things would right themselves by and by. - -They righted themselves soon. The three men with whom he shared the -sitting room, having passed him as "a good scout," admitted him to full -and easy comradeship. In the common-room, in the classroom, he held -his own, and made a few friends. Guy Ansley, urged in part by a real -liking, and in part by the glory of having this big handsome fellow in -tow, was generous of recognition. He was standing one day with a group -of his peers from Doolittle and Pray's when Tom chanced to pass at a -distance. Guy called out to him. - -"Hello, you old sinner! Where you been this ever so long?" With a word -to his friends, he puffed after Tom, and dragged him toward the group. -"This is the guy they call the Whitelaw Baby. See how much he looks -like Tad?" - -"Tad'll give you Whitelaw Baby," came from one of the group. "Hates the -name of it. Don't blame him, do you, when he's heard everyone gassing -about the kid all through his life?" - -But that he was going in Harvard by this nickname disturbed Tom not -a little. Considering the legend in the Whitelaw family, and the -resemblance between himself and Tad, it was natural enough. But should -Tad hear of it.... - -With Tad he had no acquaintance. As the weeks passed by he came to -understand that with certain freshmen acquaintance would be difficult. -They themselves didn't want it. It was a discovery to Tom that it -didn't follow that you knew a man, or that a man knew you, because you -had been introduced to him. Guy Ansley had introduced him that day to -the little group from Doolittle and Pray's; but when he ran into them -again none of them remembered him. - -So Tad Whitelaw did not remember him after having met him accidentally -at Guy's. The meeting had been casual, hurried, but it was a meeting. -The two had been named to each other. Each had made an inarticulate -grunt. But when later that same afternoon they passed in a corridor Tad -went by as if he had never seen him. - -He continued to live and keep his mouth shut. If he was hurt there was -nothing to be gained by saying so. Then an incident occurred which -threw them together in a manner which couldn't be ignored inwardly, -even if outward conditions remained the same. - -Little by little the Harvard student, following the general sobering -down which makes it harder for people in the twentieth century to -laugh than it was to those who lived fifty years ago, was becoming -less frolicsome. Pranks were still played, especially by freshmen, but -neither so many nor so wild. The humor had gone out of them. - -But in every large company of young men there are a few whose high -spirits carry them away. Where they have money to spend and no cares as -to the future on their minds, the new sense of freedom naturally runs -to roistering. In passing Tad Whitelaw's rooms, which were also in Gore -Hall, Tom often heard the banging of the piano, and those shouts of -song and laughter which are likely to disturb the proctor. Guy, who was -often the one at the piano, now and then gave him a report of a party, -telling him who was at it, and what they had had to drink. - -In the course of the winter his relations with Guy took on a somewhat -different tinge. In Guy's circle, commonly called a gang or a bunch, -he was Guy's eccentricity. The Doolittle and Pray spirit allowed of an -eccentricity, if it wasn't paraded too much. Guy knew, too, that it -helped to make him popular, which was not an easy task, to be known as -loyal to a boyhood's chum, when he might be expected to desert him. - -But behind this patronage the fat boy found in Tom what he had always -found, a source of strength. Not much more than at school did he escape -at Harvard his destiny as a butt. - -"Same old spiel, damn it," he lamented to Tom, "just because I'm fat. -What difference does that make, when you're a sport all right? Doesn't -keep me from going with the gang, not any more than Tad Whitelaw's big -eyebrows, or Spit Castle's long nose." - -On occasions when he was left out of "good things" which he would -gladly have been in he made Tom come round to his room in the evening -for confidence and comfort. Tom never made game of him. There was no -one else to whom he could turn with the certainty of being understood. -Having an apartment to himself, he could be free in his complaints -without fear of interruption. - -It was late at night. The two young men had been "yarning," as they -called it, and smoking for the past two hours. Tom was getting up to -go back to his room, when a sound of running along the corridor caught -their attention. - -"What in blazes is that?" - -By the time the footsteps reached Guy's door smothered explosions of -laughter could be heard outside. With a first preliminary pound on the -panels the door was flung open, Spit Castle and Tad Whitelaw hurling -themselves in. Though they would have passed as sober, some of their -excess of merriment might have been due to a few drinks. - -Tad carried a big iron door-key which he threw with a rattle on the -table. His hat had been knocked to the back of his head; his necktie -was an inch off-center; his person in general disordered by flight. -Spit Castle, a weedy youth with a nose like a tapir's, was in much the -same state. Neither could tell what the joke was, because the joke -choked them. Guy, flattered that they should come first of all to him, -stood in the middle of the floor, grinning expectantly. Tom, quietly -smoking, kept in the background, sitting on the arm of the chair from -which he had just been getting up. As each of the newcomers tried to -tell the tale he was broken in on by the other. - -"Came out from town by subway...." - -"Walking through Brattle Square...." - -"Not so much as a damn cat about...." - -"Saw little old johnny come abreast of little old bootstore...." - -"Took out a key--opened the door--went into the shop in the dark--left -the key in the keyhole to lock up when he comes outside again--just in -for something he'd forgot." - -"And damned if Tad didn't turn the key--quick as that--and lock the old -beggar in." - -"Last we heard of him he was poundin' and squealin' to beat all blazes." - -Yellin', 'Pull-_ice_!--pull-_ice_!'--whacking his leg, Spit gave an -imitation of the prisoner--"and he's in there yet." - -To Guy the situation was as droll as it was to his two friends. An old -fellow trapped in his own shop! He was a Dago, Spit thought, which made -the situation funnier. They laughed till, wearied with laughter, they -threw themselves into armchairs, and lit their cigarettes. - -Tom, who had laughed a little not at their joke but at them, felt -obliged, in his own phrase, to butt in. He waited till a few puffs of -tobacco had soothed them. - -"Say, boys, don't you think the fun's gone far enough?" - -The two guests turned and stared as if he had been a talking piece of -furniture. Tad took his cigarette from his lips. - -"What the hell business is it of yours?" - -Tom kept his seat on the arm of the chair, speaking peaceably. "I -suppose it isn't my business--except for the old man." - -"What have you got to do with him? Is he your father?" - -"He's probably somebody's father, and somebody's husband. You can't -leave him there all night." - -Spit challenged this. "Why can't we?" - -"Because you can't. Fellows like you don't do that sort of thing." - -It looked as if Tad Whitelaw had some special animosity against him, -when he sprang from his chair to say insolently, "And fellows like you -don't hang round where they're not wanted." - -"Oh, Tom didn't mean anything--" Guy began to interpose. - -"Then let him keep his mouth shut, or--" he nodded toward the door--"or -get out." - -Tom kept his temper, waiting till Tad dropped back into his chair -again. "You see, it's this way. The old chap has a home, and if he -doesn't come back to it in the course of, let us say, half an hour his -family'll get scared. If they hunt him up at the shop, and find he's -been locked in, they'll make a row at the police station just across -the street. If the police get in on the business they're sure to find -out who did it." - -"Well, it won't be you, will it?" Tad sneered again. - -"No, it won't be me, but even you don't want to be...." - -Tad turned languidly to Guy. "Say, Guy! Awful pity isn't it about -little Jennie Halligan! Cutest little dancer in the show, and she's -fallen and broken her leg." - -Tom got up, walked quietly to the table, picked up the key, and at the -same even pace was making for the door, when Tad sprang in front of him. - -"Damn you! Where do you think you're going?" - -"I'm going to let the old fellow out." - -"Drop that key." - -"Get out of my way." - -"Like hell I'll get out of your way." - -"Don't let us make a row here." - -"Drop that key. Do you hear me?" - -The rage in Tad's face was at being disobeyed. He was not afraid of -this fellow two inches taller than himself. He hated him. Ever since -coming to Harvard the swine had had the impertinence to be called by -the same name, and to look like him. He knew as well as anyone else the -nickname by which the bounder was going, and knew that he, the bounder, -encouraged it. It advertised him. It made him feel big. He, the brother -of the Whitelaw Baby, had been longing to get at the fellow and give -him a whack on the jaw. He would never have a better opportunity. - -The lift of his hand and the grasp with which Tom caught the wrist -were simultaneous. Slipping the key into his pocket, Tom brought his -other hand into play, throwing the lighter-built fellow out of his path -with a toss which sent him back against the desk. Maddened by this -insult to his person, Tad picked up the inkstand on the desk, hurling -it at Tom's head. The inkstand grazed his ear, but went smash against -the wall, spattering the new wallpaper with a great blob of ink. Guy -groaned, with some wild objurgation. To escape from the room Tom had -turned his back, when a blow from an uplifted chair caught him between -the shoulders. Wheeling, he wrenched the chair from the hands of Spit -Castle, chucked it aside and dealt the young man a stinger that brought -the blood from the tapir nose. All blind rage by this time, he caught -the weedy youth's head under his right arm, pounding the face with -his left fist till he felt the body sagging from his hold. He let it -go. Spit fell on the sofa, which was spattered with blood, as the -wallpaper with ink. Startled at the sight of the limp form, he stood -for a second looking down at it, when his skull seemed crashed from -behind. Staggering back, he thought he was going to faint, but the -sight of Tad aiming another thump at him, straight between the eyes, -revived him to berserker fury. He sprang like a lion on an antelope. - -Strong and agile on his side, Tad was stiff to resistance. Before the -sheer weight of Tom's body he yielded an inch or two, but not more. -Freeing his left hand, as he bent backward, he dealt Tom a bruising -blow on the temple. Tom disregarded it, pinning Tad's left arm as he -had already pinned the right. His object now was to get the boy down, -to force him to his knees. It was a contest of brutal strength. When it -came to brutal strength the advantage was with the bigger frame, the -muscles toughened by work. The fight was silent now, nearly motionless. -Slowly, slowly, as iron gives way to the man with the force to bend it, -Tad was coming down. His feet were twisted under him, with no power to -right themselves. Two pairs of eyes, strangely alike, glared at each -other, like the eyes of frenzied wild animals. Tad gave a quick little -groan. - -"O God, my leg's breaking." - -Tom was not touched. "Damn you, let it break!" - -Pressed, pressed, pressed downward, Tad was sinking by a fraction of -an inch each minute. The strength above him was pitiless. Except for -the running of water in the bathroom, where Guy had dragged Spit Castle -to wash his nose, there was no sound in the room but the long hard -pantings, now from Tad's side, now from Tom's. In the intervals -neither seemed to breathe. - -[Illustration: "GET UP, I TELL YOU"] - -Suddenly Tad collapsed, and went down. Tom came on top of him. The -heavier having the lighter fastened by arms and legs, the two lay -like two stones. The faces were so near together that they could have -kissed. Their long protruding eyebrows brushed each other's foreheads. -The weight of Tom's bulk squeezed the breath from his foe, as a bear -squeezes it with a hug. Nothing was left to Tad but resistance of the -will. Of that, too, Tom meant to get the better. - -The words were whispered from one mouth into the other. "Do you know -what I'm going to do with you?" - -There was no answer. - -"I'm going to take you back with me to let that old man out of his -shop." - -There was still no answer. Tom sprang suddenly off Tad's body, but with -his fingers under the collar. - -"Get up!" - -He pulled with all his might. The collar gave way. Tad fell back. -"Damned if I will," was all he could say by way of defiance. - -Tom gave him a kick. "Get up, I tell you. If you don't I'll kick the -stuffing out of you." - -The kick hurt nothing but Tad's pride; but it hurt that badly. It hurt -it so badly that he got up, with no further show of opposition. He -dusted his clothes mechanically with his hands; he tried to adjust his -torn collar. His tone was almost commonplace. - -"This has got to be settled some other time. What do you want me to do?" - -Tom pointed to the door. "What I want you to do is to march. Keep ahead -of me. And mind you if you try to bolt I'll wring your neck as if you -were a cur. You--you--" He sought a word which would hit where blows -had not carried--"you--coward!" - -The flash of Tad's eyes was like that of Tom's own. "We'll see." - -He went out the door, Tom close behind him. - -It was a March night, with snow on the ground, but thawing. They were -without overcoats, and bare-headed. A few motor cars were passing, but -not many pedestrians. - -"Run," Tom commanded. - -He ran. They both ran. The distance being short, they were soon in -Brattle Square. Tad stopped at a little shop, showing a faint light. -There was too much in the way of window display to allow of the -passer-by, who didn't give himself some trouble, to see anything within. - -At first they heard nothing. Then came a whimpering, like that of a -little dog, shut in and lonely, tired out with yelping. Putting his -ear to the door, Tom heard a desolate, "Tam! Tam!" It was the only -utterance. - -"Here's the key! Unlock the door." - -Tad did as he was bidden. Inside the "Tam! Tam!" ceased. - -"Now go in, and say you're sorry." - -As Tad hesitated Tom gave him a push. The door being now ajar the -culprit went sprawling into the presence of his victim. - -There was a spring like that of a cat. There was also a snarl like a -cat's snarl. "You tam Harvard student!" - -Feeling he had done and said enough, Tom took to his heels; but as -someone else was taking to his heels, and running close behind him, he -judged that Tad had escaped. - -Back in his room, Tom felt spent. In his bed he was in emotional revolt -against his victory. He loathed it. He loathed everything that had led -up to it. The eyes that had stared into his, when the two had lain -together on the floor, were like those of something he had murdered. -What was it? What was the thing that deep down within him, rooted -in the primal impulses that must have been there before there was a -world--what was the thing that had been devastated, outraged? Once -more, he didn't know. - - - - -XXXII - - -Life resumed itself next day as if there had been no dramatic -interlude. Proud of the scrap, as he named it, which had taken place -in his room, Guy made the best of it for all concerned. His version -was tactful, hurting nobody's feelings. The trick on the old man was -a merry one, and after a fight about its humor Tad Whitelaw and the -Whitelaw Baby had run off together to let the old fellow out. Spit -Castle's tapir nose had got badly hurt in the scrimmage, and bled all -over the sofa. The splash of ink on the wall was further evidence that -Guy's room was a rendezvous of sports. But sports being sports the -honors had been even on the whole, and no hard feeling left behind. Tad -and the Whitelaw Baby would now, Guy predicted, be better friends. - -But of that there was no sign. There was no sign of anything at all. -When the Whitelaw Baby met the Whitelaw Baby's brother they passed in -exactly the same way as heretofore. You would not have said that the -one was any more conscious of the other than two strangers who pass in -Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue. In Tad there was no show of resentment; in -Tom there was none of pride. As far as Tom was concerned, there was -only a humiliated sense of regret. - -And then, in April, life again took another turn. Coming back one day -to his rooms, Tom found a message requesting him to call a number -which he knew to be Mrs. Danker's. His first thought was of Maisie, -with whom his letters had begun to be infrequent. Mrs. Danker told him, -however, that Honey had had an accident. It was a bad accident, how bad -she didn't know. Giving him the name of the hospital to which he had -been taken, she begged him to go to him at once. After all the years -they had lived with Mrs. Danker she considered them almost as relatives. - -The hospital, near the foot of Grove Street, preserved the air of the -sedate old Boston of the middle nineteenth century. Its low dome, its -pillared façade, its grounds, its fine old trees, had been familiar to -Tom ever since he had lived on Beacon Hill. In less than an hour after -ringing up Mrs. Danker he was in the office asking for news. - -News was scanty. Expecting everyone to understand what he meant to -Honey and Honey meant to him, he had looked for the reception which -friends in trouble and excitement give to the friend who brings his -anxiety to mix with theirs. It would be, "Oh, come in. Poor fellow, -he's suffering terribly. It happened thus and so." But to the interne -in the office, a young man wearing a white jacket, Honey was not so -much as a name. His case was but one among other cases. A good many -came in a day. In a week, or a month, or a year, there was no keeping -account of them, except as they were registered. Individual suffering -was lost sight of in the immense amount of it. But the interne was -polite, and said that if Tom would sit down he would find out. - -Among the hardest minutes Tom had ever gone through were those in the -little reception room. Not only was there suspense; there was remorse. -He had treated Honey like a cad. He had never been decent to him. He -had never really been grateful. There had never been a minute, in the -whole of the nearly six years they had lived together, in which he had -not been sorry, either consciously or subconsciously, at being mixed up -with an ex-convict. It was the ex-convict he had always seen before he -had seen the friend. - -A second interne wearing a white jacket came to question him, to ask -him who he was, and the nature of his business with the patient. If he -was only a friend he could hardly expect to see him. The man was under -opiates, he needed to be kept quiet. - -"What's happened? What's the matter with him? I can't find out." - -The interne didn't know exactly. He had been crushed. He was injured -internally. The cause of the accident he hadn't heard. - -"Could I see his nurse?" - -There was more difficulty about that, but in the end he was taken -upstairs, where the nurse came out to the corridor to speak to him. -She was a competent, businesslike woman, with none of the emotion -at contact with pain which Tom thought must be part of a nurse's -equipment. But she could tell him nothing definite. Not having been on -duty when the case had been brought in, she had heard no more than the -facts essential to what she had to do. - -"Do you think he'll die?" - -"You'd have to ask the doctor that. He's not dead now. That's about as -much as I can say." At sight of the big handsome fellow's distress she -partly relented. "You may come in and look at him. You mustn't try to -speak to him." - -He followed her into a long ward, with an odor of disinfectant. -White beds, mostly occupied, lined each wall. Here and there was one -surrounded by a set of screens, partially secluding a sufferer. At one -such set they stopped. Through an opening between two screens Tom was -allowed to look at Honey who lay with face upturned, and no sign of -pain on the features. He slept as Tom had seen him sleep hundreds of -times when he expected to get up again next morning. The difference was -in the expectation of getting up. Blinded by tears, Tom tiptoed away. - -When he came next day the effect of the opiate had worn off, and yet -not wholly. Honey turned his head at his approach and smiled. Sitting -beside the bed, Tom took the big, calloused hand lying outside the -coverlet, and held it in his own relatively tender one. More than -ever it was borne in on him at whose cost that tenderness had been -maintained. Honey liked to have his hand held. A part of the wall of -aloofness with which he had kept himself surrounded seemed to have -broken down. - -A little incoherently he told what had happened. He had been stowing -packing-cases in the hold of a big ship. The packing-cases were lowered -by a crane. The crane as a rule was a good old thing, slow paced, -gentle, safe. But this time something seemed to have gone wrong with -her. Though his back was turned, Honey knew by the shadow above him -that she was at her work. When he had got into its niche the case with -which he was busy he would swing round and seize the new one. And then -he heard a shout. It was a shout from the dock, and didn't disturb him. -He was about to turn when something fell. It struck him in the back. It -was all he knew. He thought he remembered the blow, but was not certain -whether he did or not. When he "came to" he had already been moved to -the shed, and was waiting for the ambulance. He seemed not to have a -body any more. He was only a head, like one of them there angels in a -picture, with wings beneath their chins. - -He laughed at that, and with the laugh the nurse took Tom away; but -when he came back on the following day Honey's mind was clearer. - -"I've made me will long ago," he said, when Tom had given him such bits -of news as he asked for. "It's all legal and reg'lar. Had a lawyer fix -it up. Never told yer nothink about it. Everythink left to you." - -"Oh, Honey, don't let us talk about that. You'll be up and around in a -week or so." - -"Sure I'll be up and around. Yer don't think a little thing like this -is goin' to bust me. Why, I don't feel 'ardly nothink, not below the -neck. All the same, it can't do no harm for you to know what's likely -to be what. If I was to croak, which I don't intend to, yer'd have -about sixteen hundred dollars what I've saved to finish yer eddication -on. The will is in the bottom of me trunk at Danker's." - -On another day he said, "If anyone was to pop up and say I owed 'em -that money, because I took it from 'em...." - -He held the sentence there, leaving Tom to wonder if he had thoughts of -restitution, or possibly of repentance. - -"I don't owe 'em nothink," he ended. "Belonged to me just as much as it -belonged to them. Nothink don't belong to nobody. I never was able to -figger it out just the way I wanted to, because I ain't never had no -eddication; but Gord's lor I believes it is. Never could get the 'ang -o' the lor o' man, not nohow." - -To comfort him, Tom suggested that perhaps when he got through college -he might be able to take the subject up. - -"I wouldn't bind yer to it, Kiddy. Tough job! Why, when I give up -socializin' to try and win over some o' them orthodocks I thought as -they'd jump to 'ear me. Not a bit of it! The more I told 'em that -nothink didn't belong to nobody the more they said I was a nut." - -Having lain silent for a minute he continued, with that light in his -face which corresponded to a wink of the blind eye: "I don't bind yer -to nothink, Kiddy. That's what I've always wanted yer to feel. You're a -free boy. When I'm up and around again, and yer've got yer eddication, -and have gone out on yer own, yer won't have me a-'angin' on yer 'ands. -No, sir! I'll be off--free as a bird--back with the old gang again--and -yer needn't be worried a-thinkin' I'll miss you--nor nothink!" - -It was a few days after this that the businesslike nurse who had first -admitted him hinted that, if she were Tom, Honey would have a clergyman -come to visit him. A few days more and it might be too late. - -Honey with a clergyman! It was something Tom had never thought of. -The incongruous combination made him smile. Nevertheless, it was -what people who were dying had--a clergyman come to visit them. If a -clergyman could do Honey any good.... - -"Honey," he suggested, artfully, next day, "now that you're pinned -to bed for awhile, and have got the time, wouldn't you like to see a -clergyman sometimes, and talk things over?" - -There was again that light in the face which took the place of a wink. -"What things?" - -Tom was nonplussed. "Well, I suppose, things about your soul." - -"What'd a clergyman know about _my_ soul? He might know about his own, -but I know all about mine that I've got to know. 'Tain't much--but it's -enough." - -Tom was relieved. He didn't want to disturb Honey by bringing in a -stranger nor was he more sure than Honey that any good could be done by -it. He was more relieved still when Honey explained himself further. - -"Do yer suppose I've come to where I am now without thinkin' them -things out, when Gord give me a genius for doin' it? I don't say I've -did it as well as them as has had more eddication; but Gord takes -us with the eddication what we've got. Eddication's a fine thing; I -don't say contrairy; but I don't believe as it makes no diff'rence -to Gord. If you and me was before Him--me not knowin' 'ardly nothink, -and you stuffed as you are with learnin' till you're bustin' out -with it--I don't believe as Gord'd say as there was a pinch o' snuff -between us--not to him there wouldn't be." A little wearily he made his -confession of faith. "Gord made me; Gord knows me; Gord'll take me just -the way I am and make the best o' me, without no one else buttin' in." - - * * * * * - -It was the middle of an afternoon. If anything, Honey was better. All -spring was blowing in at the windows, while the trees were in April -green, and the birds jubilant with the ecstasy of mating. - -"Beats everythink the way I dream," Honey confided, in a puzzled tone. -"Always dreamin' o' my mother. Haven't 'ardly thought of her these -years and years. Didn't 'ardly know her. Died when I was a little kid; -and yet...." - -He lay still, smiling into the air. Tom was glad to find him cheerful, -reminiscent. Never in all the years he had known him had Honey talked -so much of his early life as within the last few days. - -"Used to take us children into the country to see a sister she had -livin' there.... Little village in Cheshire called King's Clavering.... -See that little cottage now.... Thatched it was.... Set a few yards -back from the lane.... Had flowers in the garden ... musk ... and -poppies ... and London pride ... and Canterbury bells ... and old -man's love ... and cherry pie ... and raggedy Jack ... and sailor's -sweetheart ... funny how all them names comes back to me...." - -Again he lay smiling. Tom also smiled. It was the first day he had had -any hope. It was difficult not to have hope when Honey was so free from -pain, and so easy in his mind. As to pain he had not had much since -the accident had benumbed him; but there had always been something he -seemed to want to say. To-day he had apparently said everything, and so -could spend the half-hour of Tom's visit on memories of no importance. - -"Always had custard for tea, my mother's sister had. Lord, how us young -ones'd...." - -The recollection brought a happy look. Tom was glad. With pleasant -thoughts Honey would not have the wistful yearning in his eyes which he -had turned on him lately whenever he went away. - -"There was a hunt in Cheshire. Onst I saw a lord--a dook, I think he -was--ridin' to 'ounds. Sat his 'orse as if he was part of him, he -did...." - -This too died away without sequence, though the happy look remained. -The smile grew rapt, distant perhaps, as memory took him back to long -forgotten trifles. Just outside the window a robin fluted in a tree. - -Honey turned his head slightly to say: "Have I been asleep, Kid?" - -"No; you haven't had your eyes shut." - -"Oh, but I must have. Couldn't dream if I was wide awake. I -saw ma--just as plain as--" He recovered himself with a light -laugh--"Wouldn't it bust yer braces to 'ear me sayin' ma? But that's -what us childern used to call...." - -Once more he turned in profile, lying still, silent, radiant, occupied. -The robin sang on. Tom looked at his watch. It was time for him to be -stealing away. Now that Honey was better, he didn't mind going without -a farewell, because he could explain himself next time. He was glancing -about for the nurse when Honey said, softly, casually, as if greeting -an acquaintance: - -"Hello--ma!" - -He lifted both hands, but they dropped back, heavily. Tom, who had half -risen, fell on his knees by the bedside, seizing the hand nearest him -in both his own. - -"Honey! Honey! Speak to me!" - -But Honey's good eye closed gently, while the head sagged a little to -one side. The robin was still singing. - - * * * * * - -Two letters received within a few days gave Tom the feeling of not -being quite left alone. - - _Dear Mr. Whitelaw_ - - In telling you how deeply we feel for you in your great bereavement - I wish I could make you understand how sincerely we are all your - friends. I want to say this specially, as I know you have no family. - Family counts for much; but friends count for something too. It is - George Sand who says: "Our relations are the friends given us by - nature; our friends are the relations given us by God." Will you not - think of us in this way?--especially of Guy and me. Whenever you are - lonely I wish you would turn to us, in thought at least, when it - can't be in any other way. When it can be--our hearts will always be - open. - - Very sincerely yours, - - Hildred Ansley. - -The other letter ran: - - _Dear Tom_ - - Now that you have got this great big incubous off your hands I should - think you would try to do your duty by me and what you owe me. It - seems to me I've been patient long enough. It is not as if you were - the only peanut in the bag. There are others. I do not say this - purposely. It is rung from me. I have done all I mean to do here, and - will beat it whenever I get a good chance. I should think you would be - educated by now. I graduated from high school at sixteen, and I guess - I know as much as the next one. I've got a gentleman friend here, a - swell fellow too, a travelling salesman, and he makes big money, and - he says that if a fellow isn't hitting the world by fifteen he'll - always be a quitter. Think this over and let me know. With passionate - love. - - Maisie. - - - - -XXXIII - - -The day after Honey was buried Tom went to Mrs. Danker's to pay what -was owing on the room rent, and take away his effects. The effects went -into one small trunk which Mrs. Danker packed, while Tom sat on the -edge of the bed and listened to her comments. A little wiry woman, prim -in the old New England way, she was tireless in work and conversation. - -"He was a fine man, Mr. Honeybun was, and my land! he was fond of you. -He'd try to hide it; but half an eye could see that he was that proud -of you! He'd be awful up-and-coming while you was here, and make out -that it didn't matter to him whether you was here or not; but once -you was away--my land! He'd be that down you'd think he'd never come -up again. And one thing I could see as plain as plain; he was real -determined that when you'd got up in the world he wasn't going to be -a drag on you. He'd keep saying that you wasn't beholding to him for -anything; and that he'd be glad when you could do without him so that -he could get back again to his friends; but my land! half an eye could -see." - -During these first days Tom found the memory of a love as big as -Honey's too poignant to dwell upon. He would dwell upon it later, when -the self-reproach which so largely composed his grief had softened -down. All he could do as yet was to curse himself for the obtuseness -which had taken Honey at the bluff of his words, when the tenderness -behind his deeds should have been evident to anyone not a fool. - -He couldn't bear to think of it. Not to think of it, he asked Mrs. -Danker for news of Maisie. He had often wondered whether Maisie might -not have told her aunt in confidence of her engagement to himself; and -now he learned that she had not. - -"I hardly ever hear from her; but another aunt of Maisie's writes to -me now and then. Says that that drummer fellow is back again. I hope -he'll keep away from her. He don't mean no good by her, and she goes -daft over him every time he turns up. My land! how do we know he hasn't -a wife somewheres else, when he goes off a year and more at a time, on -his long business trips? This time he's been to Australia. It was to -get her away from him that I asked her to spend that winter in Boston; -but now that he's back--well, I'm sure I don't know." - -Tom had not supposed that at the suggestion of a rival he would have -felt a pang; and yet he felt one. - -"Of course, there's some one; we know that. It must be some one too -who's got plenty of money, because he's given her a di'mond ring that -must be worth five hundred dollars, her other aunt tells me, if it's -worth a cent. We know he makes big money, because he's got a fine -position, and his family is one of the most high thought of in Nashua. -That's part of the trouble. They're very religious and toney, so they -wouldn't think Maisie a good enough match for him. Still, if he'd only -do one thing or the other, keep away from her, or ask her right out -and out to marry him...." - -Tom was no longer listening. The mention of Maisie's diamond had made -him one hot lump of shame. He knew more of the cost of jewels now than -when he had purchased the engagement ring, and even if he didn't know -much he knew enough. - -A few days later he was in Nashua. He went, partly because he had the -day to spare before he took up college work again, partly because of a -desire to learn what was truly in Maisie's heart, partly to make her -some amends for his long neglect of her, and mostly because he needed -to pour out his confession as to the diamond ring. Having been warned -of his coming, Maisie, who had got rid of the children for an hour or -two, awaited him in the parlor. - -A little powder, a little unnecessary rouge, a sweater of imitation -cherry-colored silk, gave her the vividness of a well-made artificial -flower. Even Tom could see that, with her neat short skirt and -high-heeled shoes, she was dressed beyond the note of the shabby little -room; but if she would only twine her arms around his neck, and give -him one of the kisses that used to be so sweet, he could overlook -everything else. - -Her eyes on the big square cardboard box he carried in his hand, she -received him somberly. Having allowed him to kiss her, she sat down at -the end of a table drawn up beside the window, while he put the box in -front of her. - -"What's this?" - -He placed himself at the other end of the table, having its length -between them. Because of his waning love, because of the ring above -all, he had done one of those reckless things which sometimes render -men exultant. From his slender means he had filched a hundred dollars -for a set of furs. He watched Maisie's face as she untied knots and -lifted the cover of the band-box. - -On discovering the contents her expression became critical. She -fingered the fur without taking either of the articles from the box. -Turning over an edge of the boa, she looked at the lining. It was a -minute or two before she took out the muff and held it in her hands. -She examined it as if she were buying it in a shop. - -"That's a last year's style," was her first observation. "It'll be -regular old-fashioned by next winter, and, of course, I shouldn't want -a muff before then. The girls'll think I got them second-hand when -they're as out of date as all that. They're awful particular in Nashua, -more like New York than Boston." She shook out the boa. "Those little -tails are sweet, but they don't wear them now. How much did you give?" - -He told her. - -"They're not worth it. It's the marked-down season too. Some one's put -it over on you. I could have got them for half the price--and younger. -These are an old woman's furs. The girls'll say my aunt in Boston's -died, and left them to me in her will." - -Brushing them aside, she faced him with her resentful eyes. Her hands -were clasped in front of her, the diamond flashing on the finger -resting on a table-scarf of thin brown silk embroidered in magenta -ferns. - -"Well, Tom, what's your answer to my letter?" - -At any other minute he would have replied gently, placatingly; but just -now his heart was hot. A hundred dollars had meant much to him. It -would have to be paid back in paring down on all his necessities, in -food, in carfares, even in the washing of his clothes. He too clasped -his hands on the table, facing her as she faced him. He remembered -afterward how blue her eyes had been, blue as lapis lazuli. All he -could see in them now was demand, and further demand, and demand again -after that. - -"Have I got to give you an answer, Maisie? If so, it's only the one -I've given you before. We'll be married when I get through college, and -have found work." - -"And when'll that be?" - -"I'm sorry to say it won't be for another two years, at the earliest." - -"Another two years, and I've waited three already!" - -"I know you have. But listen, Maisie! When we got engaged I was only -sixteen. You were only eighteen. Even now I'm only nineteen, and you're -only twenty-one. We've got lots of time. It would be foolish for us to -be married...." - -She broke in, drily. "So I see." - -"You see what, Maisie?" - -"What you want me to see. If you think I'm dying to marry you...." - -"No, I'm not such an idiot as that. But if we're in love with each -other, as we used to be...." - -"As you used to be." - -"As I used to be of course; and you too, I suppose." - -"Oh, you needn't kill yourself supposing." - -He drew back. "What do you mean by that, Maisie?" - -"What do you think I mean?" - -"Well, I don't know. It sounds as if you were trying to tell me that -you'd never cared anything about me." - -"How much did you ever care about me?" - -"I used to think I couldn't live without you." - -"And you've found out that you can." - -"I've had to, for one thing; and for another, I'm older now, and I know -that nobody is really essential to anybody else. All the same--" - -"Yes, Tom; all the same--what?" - -"If you'd be willing to take what I can offer you--" - -"Take what you can offer me! You're not offering me anything." - -He explained his ambitions, for her as well as for himself. Life was -big; it was full of opportunity; his origin didn't chain any man who -knew how to burst its bonds. He did know. He didn't know how he knew, -but he did. He just had it in him. When you knew you had it in you, -you didn't depend on anyone to tell you; you yourself became your own -corroboration. - -But in order to fulfil this conviction of inner power you needed to -know things. You needed the experience, the standing, the rubbing up -against other men, which you got in college in a way that you didn't -get anywhere else. You got some of it by going into business, but only -some of it. In any case, it was no more than a chance in business. -You might get it or you might not. With the best will in the world on -your part, it might slip by you. In college it couldn't slip by you, -if you had any intelligence at all. All the past experience of mankind -was gathered up there for you to profit by. You could only absorb a -little of it, of course. But you acquired the habit of absorbing. It -was not so much what you learned that gave college its value; it was -the learning of a habit of learning. You got an attitude of mind. Your -attitude of mind was what made you, what determined your place in the -world. With a closed mind you got nowhere; with an open mind the world -was as the sea driving all its fish into your net. College opened the -mind; it was the easiest method by which it could be done. If she would -only be patient till he had got through the preliminary training and -had found the job for which he would be fitted.... - -"But what's the use of waiting when you can get a job for which you'd -be fitted right off the bat? There's a family up here on the hill that -wants a shofer. They give a hundred and twenty-five a month. Why go to -all that trouble about opening your mind when here's the job handed out -to you? The gentleman-friend I told you about says that business has -got college skinned. He says colleges are punk. He says lots of men in -business won't take a man if he's been to college. They'd want a fellow -with some get-up-and-get to him." - -He began to understand her as he had never done before. Maisie had -the closed mind. She was Honey's "orthodock," the type which accepts -the limitations other people fix for it. He registered the thought, -long forming in his mind subconsciously, that among American types the -orthodock is the commonest. It was not true, as so often assumed, that -the average American is keen to forge ahead and become something bigger -than he is. That was one of the many self-flattering American ideals -that had no relation to life. Mrs. Ansley's equality of opportunity was -another. People passed these phrases on, and took for granted they were -true, when in everyday practice they were false. - -There could be no breaking forth into a larger life so long as the -national spirit made for repression, suppression, restriction, and -denial. Maisie was but one of the hundred and sixteen millions of -Americans out of a possible hundred and seventeen on whom all the -pressure of social, industrial, educational, and religious life had -been brought to bear to keep her mind shut, her tastes puerile, and -her impulses to expansion thwarted. With a great show of helping and -blessing the less fortunate, American life, he was coming to believe, -was organized to force them back, and beat them into subjection. The -hundred and seventeenth million loved to believe that it wasn't so; it -was not according to their consciences that it should be so; but the -result could be seen in the hundred and sixteen million minds drilled -to disability, as Maisie's was. - -A young man not yet hardened to life's injustices, he saw himself -rushing to Maisie's aid, to make the best of her. Experience would -help her as it had helped him. The shriveled bud of her mind would -unfold in warmth and sunshine. This would be in their future together. -In the meantime he must clear the ground of the present by getting rid -of pretence. - -"There's one thing I want to tell you, Maisie, something I'm rather -ashamed of." - -The lapis lazuli eyes widened in a look of wonder. He might be going to -tell her of another girl. - -"You know, as I've just said, that when we got engaged I was only -sixteen. I didn't know anything about anything. I thought I did, of -course; but then all fellows of sixteen think that. I'd never had -anyone to teach me, or show me the right hang of things. You saw for -yourself how I lived with Honey; and before that, as you know, I'd been -a State ward. Further back than that--but I can't talk about it yet. -Some day when we're married, and know each other better--" - -"I'm not asking you. I don't care." - -"No, I know you don't care, and that you're not asking me; but I want -you to understand how it was that I was so ignorant, so much more -ignorant than I suppose any other fellow would have been. When I went -out to buy that ring you've got on--" - -He knew by the horror in her face that she divined what he had to tell -her. He knew too that she had already been afraid of it. - -"You're not going to say that it isn't a real diamond?" - -To nerve himself he had to look at her steadily. Confessing a murder -would have been easier. - -"No, Maisie, it isn't a real diamond. At the time I bought it I didn't -know what a real diamond was. I'm not sure that I know now--" - -He stopped because, without taking her eyes from his, she was slipping -the ring from her finger. She was slipping, too, an illusion from her -mind. He knew now that to be trifled with in love, to be betrayed in a -great trust, would be small things to Maisie as compared to this kind -of deception. Her wrath and contempt were the more scathing to behold -because of her cherry-colored prettiness. - -The ring lay on the table. Drawing in the second finger of her right -hand, she made of it a spring against her thumb. She loosed the spring -suddenly. The faked diamond sped across the table hitting against his -hand. He picked it up, putting it out of sight in his waistcoat pocket. -For a fellow of nineteen, eager to be something big, no lower depth of -humiliation could ever be imagined. - -Maisie stood up. "You cheap skate!" - -He bowed his head as a criminal sometimes does when sentenced. He -had no protest to make. A cheap skate was what he was. He sat there -crushed. Skirting round him as if he were defiled, she went out into -the little entry. - -He was still sitting crushed when she came back. She did not pause. -She merely flung his hat on the table as she went by. It was a cheap -skate's hat, a brown soft felt, shapeless, weather-stained, three years -out of style. With no further words, she opened the door into the -adjoining room, passed through it, and closed it noiselessly behind -her. - - - - -XXXIV - - -For probating Honey's will he asked leave to come and consult Mr. -Ansley. An appointment was made for an evening when that gentleman was -to be at home. - -Tom, who had some gift for character, was beginning to understand -him. Understanding him, it seemed to him that he understood all that -old Boston which had once been a national institution, a force in the -country's history, and now, like a man retired from business, sat -resting on its hill. - -Old Boston was more significant, however, than a man retired from -business, in that it was to a great degree a man retired from the -pushing of ideals. Generous once with the hot generosity of youth, -keen to throw itself into the fight against wrongs, ready to be -slaughtered in the van rather than compromise on principles, old -Boston had now reached the age of mellowness. It had grown weary in -well-doing. It had done enough. Contending with national evils had -proved to be futile. National evils had grown too big, too many, too -insurgent. Better make the best of life as your people mean to live -it. Keep quiet; take it easy; save money; let the country gang its own -gait. A big turbulent country, with no more respect for old Boston -than for the prophet Jeremiah, it wallowed in prosperous vulgarity. -Let it wallow! With solid investments in cotton and copper old Boston -could save its own soul. It withdrew from its country; it withdrew -from its state; it withdrew from its own city. Where its ancestors -had made the laws and administered them, it became, like those proud -old groups of Spaniards still to be found in California, a remnant of -a former time, making no further stand against the invader. With a -little art, a little literature, a little music, a little education, a -little religion, a little mild beneficence, and a great deal of astute -financial and professional ability, it could pass its time and keep its -high-mindedness intact. - -To Tom's summing up this was Philip Ansley. He was able, -public-spirited, and generous; but he was disillusioned. The United -States of his forefathers, of which he kept the ideal in his soul, had -turned into such a hodgepodge of mankind, that he had neither hope -nor sentiment with regard to it. In his heart he believed that its -governments were in the hands of what he called a bunch of crooks. -With congresses, state legislatures, and civic councils elected by -what to him were hordes of ignoramuses, with laws dictated by cranks -and fanatics, with the old-time liberties stampeded by the tyranny of -majorities lacking a sense of responsibility, he deemed it prudent to -follow the line of least resistance and give himself to making money. -Apart from casting his vote for the Republican ticket on election days, -he left city, state, and country to the demagogues and looters. He was -sorry to do this, yet with the world as it was, he saw no help for it. - -But he served as director on the boards of a good many companies; he -was an Overseer of Harvard, a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, -the treasurer of several hospitals, a subscriber to every important -philanthropic fund. His club was the Somerset; his church was Trinity. -For old Boston these two facts when taken together placed him in that -sacred shrine which in England consecrates dowager duchesses. - -When Tom was shown up he found his host in the room where two years -earlier they had talked over the place as chauffeur, but he was no -longer awed by it. Neither was he awed by finding Ansley wearing a -dinner-jacket simply because it was evening. The conventions and -amenities of civilized life were becoming a matter of course to him. - -"How d'ye do? Come in. Sit down. What's the weather like outside? Still -pretty cold for April, isn't it?" - -Though he offered his hand only from his armchair, where he sat reading -the evening paper, he offered it. It was also a tribute to Tom's -progress that he was asked to take a seat. A still further sign of -his having reached a position remotely on a footing of equality with -the Ansleys was an invitation to help himself from a silver box of -cigarettes. - -Having respectfully declined this honor, as Ansley himself was not -smoking, he stated his errand. If Mr. Ansley would introduce him to -some young inexpensive lawyer, who would tell him what to do in the -probating of Honey's will.... - -The business was soon settled. In possession of Ansley's card with a -scribbled line on it, Tom rose to take his leave. Ansley rose also, -but moved toward the fireplace, where a few sticks were smoldering, as -if he had something more to say. - -"Wait a minute. Sit down again. Have a cigarette." - -As Ansley himself lighted a cigar, Tom took a cigarette from the silver -box, and leaned against the back of the big chair from which he had -just risen. Once more he was struck by the resemblance between the -shrewd close-lipped face, dropping into its meditative cast, and the -lampshade just below it, parchment with a touch of rose, and an inner -light. Ansley puffed for a minute or two pensively. - -"You've no family, I believe. You haven't got the complications of a -lot of relatives." - -Tom was surprised by the new topic. "No, sir. I wish I had, but--" - -"Oh, well, for a young fellow like you, bound to get on--" He dropped -this line to take up another. "I'm thinking about Guy. Occurred to me -the other day that while he'd been dragged about Europe a good many -times he didn't know anything of his own country. Never been west of -the Hudson." - -Tom smoked and wondered. - -"I've suggested to him to take his summer's vacation and wander -about. Get the lay of the land. Could cover a good deal of ground in -three months. Zigzag up and down--Niagara--Colorado--Chicago--Grand -Canyon--California--Seattle--back if he liked by the Canadian Pacific. -What would you think?" - -"I think it would be great." - -"Would you go with him?" - -It seemed to Tom that his brain was spinning round. Not only was he too -dazed to find words, but the question of money came first. How could he -afford ...? - -But Ansley went on again. "It's a choice between you and a tutor. -My wife would like a tutor. Guy wants you. So do I. You'd have your -traveling expenses, of course--do everything the same as Guy--and, let -us say, five hundred dollars for your time. Would that suit you?" - -He didn't know how to answer. Excitement, gratitude, and a sense -of insufficiency churned together and choked him. It was only by -spluttering and stammering that he could say at last: - -"If--if Mrs. Ansley--d-doesn't w-want me--" - -"Oh, she'd give in. Simply feels that Guy'd get more good out of it if -he had some one to point out moral lessons as he went along. I don't. -Two young fellows together, if they're at all the right kind, 'll do -each other more good than all the law and the prophets." - -"But would you mind telling me, sir, something of what you'd expect -from me?" - -"Oh, nothing! Just play round with him, and have a good time. You seem -to chum up with him all right." - -Tom was distressed. "Yes, sir, but if I'm to be--to be paid for -chumming up with him I should have to--" - -"Forget it. I want Guy to take the trip. It's not the kind of trip -anyone wants to take alone, and you're the fellow he'd like to have -with him. I'd like it too. You understand him." - -He turned round to knock the ash from his cigar into the dying fire. - -"Trouble with Guy is that he has no sense of values. Thing he needs to -learn is what's worth while and what's not. I don't want you to teach -him. I just want him to _see_. What do you say?" - -Tom hung his head, not from humility but to think out a point that -troubled him. - -"You know, sir"--he looked up again--"that when Guy and I get together -we talk about things that--well, that you mightn't like." - -"I don't care a hang what you talk about." - -"Yes, sir; but this is something particular." - -"Well, then, keep it to yourself." - -"I can't keep it to myself because--because some day you might think -that I'd had a bad ... as long as we've just been chums ... and I -wasn't paid--" - -Ansley moved away from the fireplace, striding up and down in front of -it. - -"Look here, my boy! I know what young fellows are. I know you talk -about things you wouldn't bring up before Mrs. Ansley and me. I don't -care. It's what I expect. Do you both good. You're not specially -vicious, either of you, and even if you were--" - -"It's not a matter of morals, sir; it's one of opinions." - -He dismissed this lightly. "Oh, opinions!" - -"But this is a special kind of opinion. You see, sir, I've always been -poor. I've lived among poor people. I've seen how much they have to go -without. And I begin to see all that rich people have more than they -need--more than they can ever use." - -"Oh, quite so! I see! I see! And you both get a bit revolutionary. -Go to it, boy! Fellows of your age who're not boiling over with -rebellion against social conditions as they are'll never be worth their -salt. Don't say anything about it before Mrs. Ansley, but between -yourselves.... Why, when I was an undergraduate.... You'll live through -it, though.... The poor people don't want any champions.... They don't -want to be helped.... You get sick of it in the long run.... But while -you're young boil away.... If that's all that bothers you...." - -Tom explained that it was all that bothered him, and the bargain was -struck. He had expressed his thanks, shaken hands, and reached the -threshold on the way out when Ansley spoke again. - -"Guy tells me that out at Cambridge they call you the Whitelaw Baby. I -suppose you know all about yourself--your people--where you began--that -sort of thing?" - -He decided to be positive, laconic, to do what he could to squelch the -idea in Ansley's mind. - -"Yes, sir; I do." - -"Then that settles that." - - - - -XXXV - - -Between the end of the college year and the departure on the journey -westward there was to be an interval of three weeks. Mrs. Ansley had -insisted on that. She was a mother. For eight or nine months she had -seen almost nothing of her boy. Now if he was to be taken from her for -the summer, and for another college year after that, she might as well -not have a son at all. - -Tom was considering where he should pass the intervening time when the -following note unnerved him. - - _Dear Mr. Whitelaw_ - - Mother wants to know if when college closes, and Guy joins us in New - Hampshire, you will not come with him for the three weeks before you - start on your trip. Please do. I shall have got there by that time, - and I haven't seen you now for nearly two years. We must have a lot of - notes to compare, and ought to be busy comparing them. Do come then, - for our sakes if not for your own. You will give us a great deal of - pleasure. - - Yours very sincerely, - - Hildred Ansley. - -His heart failed him. It failed him because of the details as to -customs, etiquette, and dress he didn't know anything about. He should -be called on to speak fluently in a language of which he was only -beginning to spell out the little words. It seemed to him at first that -he couldn't accept the invitation. - -Then, not to accept it began to look like cowardice. He would never -get anywhere if he funked what he didn't know. When you didn't know -you went to work and found out. You couldn't find out unless you put -yourself in the way of seeing what other people did. After twenty-four -hours of reflection he penned the simplest form of note. Thanking -Hildred for her mother's kind invitation, he accepted it. Before -putting his letter in the post, however, he dropped in to call on Guy. -Guy, who was strumming the Love-Death of Isolde, tossed his comments -over his shoulder as he thumped out the passion. - -"That's Hildred. She's made mother do it. Nutty on that sort of thing." - -Tom's heart failed him again. "Nutty on what sort of thing?" - -Isolde's anguish mounted and mounted till it seemed as if it couldn't -mount any higher, and yet went on mounting. "Oh, well! She's toted it -up that you haven't got a home--that for three weeks after college -closes you'll be on the town--and so on." - -"I see." - -"All the same, come along. I'd just as soon. Dad won't be there hardly. -The old lady'll be booming about, but you needn't mind her. You'll have -your room and grub for those three weeks, and that's all you've got to -think about. Anyhow, it's bats in the attic with Hildred the minute it -comes to a lame dog." - -While Guy's fat figure swayed over the piano, Isolde's great heart -broke. Tom went back to his room and wrote a second answer, regretting -that owing to the pressure of his engagements he would be unable.... - -And then there came another reaction. What did it matter if Hildred -Ansley _was_ opening the door out of pity? Pity was one of the -loveliest traits of character. Only a cad would resent it. He sent his -first reply. - -Having done this, he felt it right to go and call on Mrs. Ansley. He -was sure she didn't want him in New Hampshire, but by taking it for -granted that she did he would discount some of her embarrassment. - -As Mrs. Ansley was not at home Pilcher held out a little silver tray. -Tom understood that he should have had a card to put in it. A card was -something of which he had never hitherto felt the need. He said so to -Pilcher frankly. - -Pilcher's stony medieval face, the face of a saint on the portal of -some primitive cathedral, smiled rarely, but when it did it smiled -engagingly. - -"You'll find a visitin' card very 'andy, Mr. Tom, now that you're so -big. Mr. Guy has had one this long spell back." - -It was a lead. In shy unobtrusive ways Pilcher had often shown himself -his friend. Tom confessed his yearning for a card if only he knew how -to order one. - -"I'll show you one of Mr. Guy's. He always has the right thing. I'll -find out too where he gets them done. If you'll step in, Mr. Tom...." - -As he waited in the dining room, with the good-natured Ansley ancestor -smiling down at him, there floated through Tom's mind a phrase from -the Bible as taught by Mrs. Tollivant. "The Lord sent His angel." -Wasn't that what He was doing now, and wasn't the angel taking -Pilcher's guise? When the heavenly messenger came back with the card -Tom went straight to his point. - -"Pilcher, I wonder if you'd mind helping me?" - -"I'd do it and welcome, Mr. Tom." - -Mr. Tom told of his invitation to New Hampshire, and of his ignorance -of what to do and wear. If Pilcher would only give him a hint.... - -He could not have found a better guide. Pilcher explained that a few -little things had to be as second nature. A few other little things -were uncertain points as to which it was always permissible to ask. In -the way of second nature Tom would find sporting flannels and tennis -shoes an essential. So he would find a dinner-jacket suit, with the -right kind of shirt, collar, tie, shoes, and socks to wear with it. As -to things permissible to ask about, Pilcher could more easily explain -them when they were both in the same house. Occasions would crop up, -but could not be foreseen. - -"The real gentry is ever afraid of showin' that they don't know. They -takes not knowin' as a joke. Many's the time when I've been waitin' at -table I've 'eard a born gentleman ask the born lady sittin' next to 'im -which'd be the right fork to use, and she'd say that she didn't know -but was lookin' round to see what other people done. That's what they -calls hease of manner, Mr. Tom." - -Under the Ansley roof he would meet none but the gentry born. Any -one of them would respect him more for asking when he didn't know. -It was only the second class that bothered about being so terribly -correct, and they were not invited by Mrs. Ansley. In addition to -these consoling facts Tom could always fall back on him, Pilcher, as a -referee. - -Being a guest in a community in which two years earlier he had been a -chauffeur Tom found easier than he had expected because he worked out a -formula. He framed his formula before going to New Hampshire. - -"Servants are servants and masters are masters because they divide -themselves into classes. The one is above, and is recognized as being -above; the other is below, and is recognized as being below. I shall -be neither below nor above; or I shall be both. I will _not_ go into a -class. As far as I know how I'll be everybody's equal." - -He had, however, to find another formula for this. - -"You're everybody's equal when you know you are. Whatever you know -will go of itself. The trouble I see with the bumptious American, who -claims that he's as good as anybody else, is that he thinks only of -forcing himself to the level of the highest; he doesn't begin at the -bottom, and cover all the ground between the bottom and the top. I'm -going to do that. I shall be at home among the lot of them. To be at -home I must _feel_ at home. I mustn't condescend to the boys of two -years ago who'll still be driving cars, and I mustn't put on airs to -be fit for Mrs. Ansley's drawing-room. I must be myself. I mustn't -be ashamed because I've been in a humble position; and I mustn't be -swanky because I've been put in a better one. I must be natural; I must -be big. That'll give me the ease of manner Pilcher talks about." - -With these principles as a basis of behavior, his embarrassments sprang -from another source. They began at the station in Keene. He knew he was -to be met; and he supposed it would be by Guy. - -"Oh, here you are!" - -She came on him suddenly in the crowd, tall, free in her movements, -always a little older than her age. If in the nearly two years since -their last meeting changes had come to him, more had apparently come -to her. She was a woman, while he was not yet a man. She was easy, -independent, taking the lead with natural authority. From the first -instant of shaking hands he felt in her something solicitous and -protective. - -It showed itself in the little things as to which awkwardness or -diffidence on his part might have been presumed. So as not to leave him -in doubt of what he ought to do, she took the initiative with an air of -quiet, competent command. She led the way to the car; she told him to -throw his handbags and coat into the back part of it; she made him sit -beside her as she drove. - -"No, I'm going to drive," she insisted, when he had offered to take the -wheel. "I want you to see how well I can do it. I like showing off. -This is my own car. I drove it all last summer." - -They talked about cars and their makes because the topic was an easy -one. - -Speeding out of Keene, they left behind them the meadows of the -Ashuelot to climb into a country with which Nature had been busy ever -since her first flaming forces had cooled down to form a world. Cooling -down and flinging up, she had tossed into the azoic age a tumble of -mountains higher doubtless than Andes or Alps. Barren, stupendous, -appalling, they would not have been easy for man, when he came, to live -with in comfort, had not the great Earth-Mother gone to some pains to -polish them down. Taking her leisure through eons of years, she brought -from the north her implement, the ice. Without haste, without rest, a -few inches in a century, she pushed it against the barrier she meant to -mold and penetrate. - -As a dyke before the pressure of a flood, the barrier broke here, broke -there, and yet as a whole maintained itself. Heights were cut off -from heights. Valleys were carved between them. What was sharp became -rounded; what was jagged was worn smooth. The highest pinnacles crashed -down. When after thousands of years the glacial mass receded, only the -stumps were left of what had once been terrific primordial elevations. - -Dense forests began to cover them. Lakes formed in the hollows. Little -rivers drained them, to be drained themselves by a nameless stream -which fell into a nameless sea. Through ages and ages the thrushes -sang, the wild bees hummed, and the bear, the deer, the fox, the lynx -ranged freely. - -Man came. He came stealthily, unnoted, leaving so light a trace that -nothing remains to tell of his first passage but a few mysterious -syllables. The river once nameless became the Connecticut; the base of -a mighty primeval mountain bears the Nipmuck name Monadnock. - -In this angle of New Hampshire thrust in between Massachusetts -and Vermont names are a living record. The Nipmuck disappeared in -proportion as the restless English colonists pushed farther and farther -from the sea. They came in little companies, generally urged by some -religious disagreement with those they had left behind. To escape -the "Congregational way" they fled into the mountains. There they -were free to follow the "Episcoparian way." As "Episcoparians" they -printed the map with names which enshrined their old-home memories. -Clustering within sight of the blue mass of Monadnock are neat white -towns--Marlborough, Richmond, Chesterfield, Walpole, Peterborough, -Fitzwilliam, Winchester--rich with "Episcoparian" suggestion. - -In the early eighteenth century there came in another strain. Driven -by famine, a thousand pilgrims arrived in these relatively empty lands -from the North of Ireland, sturdy, strong-minded, Protestant. Grouping -themselves into three communities, they named them with Irish names, -Antrim, Hillsborough, Dublin. It was to Dublin that Tom and Hildred -were on the way. - -The subject of cars exhausted, she swung to something else. - -"You like the idea of going with Guy?" - -"It's great." - -"I like it too. I'd rather he was with you than with anybody. You -never make game of him, and yet you never humor him." - -"What do you mean by that, that I never humor him?" - -"Oh, well! Guy's standards aren't very high. We know that. But you -never lower yours." - -"How do you know I don't?" - -"Because Guy says so. Don't imagine for a minute that he doesn't see. -He likes you so much because he respects you." - -"He respects a lot of other fellows too." - -A little "H'm!" through pursed-up lips was a sign of dissent. "I -wonder. He goes with them, I know, and rather envies them, which is -what I mean by his standards not being very high; but--" - -"Oh, Guy's all right. The fellows you speak of are sometimes a little -fresh; but he knows where to draw the line. He'll go to a certain -point; but you won't get him beyond it." - -"And he owes that to you." - -"Oh, no, he doesn't, not in the least." - -"Well, _I_--" she held the personal pronoun for emphasis--"think he -does." - -In this good opinion she was able to be firm because she seemed older -than he. In reality she was two years younger, but life in a larger -society had given her something of the tone of a woman of the world. -This development on her part disconcerted him. So long as she had been -the slip of a thing he remembered, prim, sedate, old-fashioned as the -term is applied to children, she had not been a factor in his relations -with the Ansley family. Now, suddenly, he saw her as the most -important factor of all. The emergence of personality troubled him. -Since she was obliged to keep her eyes on the turnings of the road, he -was able to study her in profile. - -It was the first time he had really looked at a woman since he had -summed up Maisie in Nashua. That had been two months earlier. The -place which Maisie had so long held in his heart had been empty for -those two months, except for a great bitterness. It was the bitterness -of disillusion, of futility. Rage and pain were in it, with more of -mortification than there was of either. He would never again hear of -a cheap skate without thinking of the figure he had cut in the eyes -of the girl whom he thought he was honoring merely in being true. All -girls had been hateful to him since that day, just as all boys will be -to a dog who has been stoned by one of them. Yet here he was already -looking at a girl with something like fascination. - -That was because fascination was the emotion she evoked. She was -strange; she was arresting. You wondered what she was like. You watched -her when she moved; you listened to her when she talked. Once you had -heard her voice, bell-like and crystalline, you would always be able to -recall it. - -He noticed the way she was dressed because her knitted silk sweater was -of a pattern he had never seen before. It ran in horizontal dog-toothed -bands, shading from green to blue, and from blue to a dull red. Green -was the predominating color, grass-green, jade-green, sea-green, -sage-green, but toned to sobriety by this red of old brick, this -blue of indigo. Indigo was the short plain skirt, and the stockings -below it. An indigo tam-o'-shanter was pinned to her smooth, glossy, -bluish-black hair with a big carnelian pin. He remembered that he used -to think her Cambodian. He thought so again. - -Having arrived at the house, they found no one but Pilcher to receive -them. Mrs. Ansley had gone out to tea; Mr. Guy had left word for Miss -Hildred to bring Mr. Tom to the club, where he was playing tennis. - -"Do you care to go?" - -Knowing that he couldn't spend three weeks in Dublin without facing -this invitation, he had decided in advance to accept it the first time -it came. - -"If you go." - -"All right; let's. But you'd like first to go to your room, wouldn't -you? Pilcher, take Mr. Whitelaw up. I'll wait here with the car. We'll -start as soon as you come down." Running up the stairs, he wondered -whether it would be the proper thing for him to change to his new white -flannels, when, as if divining his perplexity, she called after him. -"Come just as you are. Don't stop to put on other things. I'll go as I -am too." - -This maternal foresight was again on guard as they turned from the road -into the driveway to the club. - -"Do you want to come and be introduced to a lot of people, or would you -rather browse about by yourself? You can do whichever you like." - -He replied with a suggestion. As a good many cars would be parked in -the narrow space of the club avenues, he thought she had better jump -out at the club steps, leaving him to find a space where the car could -stand. He would hang around there till Guy's game was over and the -party was ready to go home. - -Having parked the car, he was in with the chauffeurs, some of whom -were old acquaintances. True to his formula, he went about among them, -shaking hands, and asking for their news. They were oddly alike, not -only in their dustcoats and chauffeurs' caps, but in features and cast -of mind. - -"You got a job?" he was asked in his turn. - -"Been taken on to travel with young Ansley. We stay here for three -weeks, and then go out west." - -"Loot pretty good?" - -"Oh, just about the same, and, of course, I get my expenses." - -"Pretty soft, what?" came from an Englishman. - -"Yes, but then it's only for the summer." - -These duties done, he felt free to stroll off till he found a -convenient rock on which to sit by the lakeside. Lighting a cigarette, -he was glad of a half hour to himself in which to enjoy the scene. It -was a reposeful scene, because all that was human and sporting in it -was lost in the living spirit of the background. - -It was what he had always felt in this particular landscape, and had -never been able to define till now--its quality of life. It was life of -another order from physical life, and on another plane. You might have -said that it reached you out of some phase of creation different from -that of Earth. These hills were living hills; this lake was a living -lake. Through them, as in the serene sky, a Presence shone and smiled -on you. He had often noticed, during the summer at the inn-club, that -you could sit idle and silent with that Presence, and not be bored. You -looked and looked; you thought and thought; you were bathed about in -tranquillity. People might be running around, and calling or shouting, -as they were doing now in the tennis courts on a ledge of the hillside -above him, not five hundred yards away, but they disturbed you no more -than the birds or the butterflies. The Presence was too immense, too -positive, to allow little things to trouble it. Rather, it took them -and absorbed them, as if the Supreme Activity, which for millions of -years before there was a man had been working to transform this spot -into a cup of overflowing loveliness, could use anything that came Its -way. - -So he sat and smoked and thought and felt soothed. It was early enough -in the summer for the birds to be singing from all the wooded terraces -and the fringe of lakeside trees. Calls from the tennis courts, cries -from young people climbing on the raft in the lake or diving from the -spring-board, came to him softened and sweet. It was living peace, -invigorating, restful. - - - - -XXXVI - - -A woman passed along the driveway, and looked at him. He looked at her. -The rock on which he sat being no more than a dozen yards from where -she walked, they could see each other plainly. It seemed to him that -as she went by she relaxed her pace to study him. She was a little -woman, pretty, sad-faced, neatly dressed and perhaps fifty years of -age. Having passed once, she turned on her steps and passed again. -She passed a third time and a fourth. Each time she passed she gave -him the same long scrutinizing look, without self-consciousness or -embarrassment. He thought she might be a lady's maid or a chauffeur's -wife. - -He turned to watch a young man taking a swan dive from the -spring-board. Having run the few steps which was all the spring-board -allowed of, he stood poised on the edge, feet together, his arms at his -thighs. With the leap forward his arms went out at right angles. When -he turned toward the water they bent back behind his head, his palms -twisted upward. Nearing the surface they pointed downward, cleaving the -lake with a clean, splashless penetration. The whole movement had been -lithe and graceful, the curve of a swan's neck, the spring of a flying -fish. - -Not till she was close beside him did he notice that the little woman -had left the roadway, crossed the intervening patch of blueberry -scrub, and seated herself on a low bowlder close to his own. - -Her self-possession was that of a woman with a single dominating -motive. "You've just arrived with Miss Ansley, haven't you?" - -The voice, like the manner, was intense and purposeful. In assenting, -he had the feeling of touching something elemental, like hunger or -fire, which wouldn't be denied. - -"And you're at Harvard." - -He assented to this also. - -"At Harvard they call you the Whitelaw Baby, don't they?" - -"I've heard so. Why do you ask?" - -"Because I'm the nurse from whom the Whitelaw baby was stolen nearly -twenty years ago. My name is Nash." - -A memory came to him of something far away. He could hear Honey saying -he had seen her, a pretty little Englishwoman, and that Nash was her -name. Looking at her now, he saw that she was more than a pretty little -Englishwoman; she was a soul in torture, with a flame eating at the -heart. He felt sorry for her, but not so sorry as to be free from -impatience at the dogging with which the Whitelaw baby followed him. - -"Why do you say this to me?" - -"Because of what I've heard from the family. They've spoken of you. -They think it--queer." - -"They think what queer?" - -"That your name is Whitelaw--that your father's name was Theodore--that -you look so much like the rest of them. Mr. Whitelaw's name is Henry -Theodore--" - -"And my father's name was only Theodore. My mother's name was Lucy. I -was born in The Bronx. I'm exactly nineteen years of age. I've heard -that Mr. Whitelaw's son if he were living now would be twenty." - -Large gray eyes with silky drooping lids rested on his with a look of -long, slow searching. "You're sure of all that?" - -He tried to laugh. "As sure as you can be of what's not within your own -recollection. I've been told it. I've reason to believe it." - -"I'd no reason to believe that I should ever find my boy again; but I -know I shall." - -"That must be a comfort to you in the trial you've had to face." - -"It hasn't been a trial exactly, because you bear a trial and live -through it. This has been spending every day and every night in the -lake of fire and brimstone. I wonder if you've any idea of what it's -like." - -"I don't suppose I have." - -"If you did have--" He thought she was going to say that if he did have -he would allow himself to become the Whitelaw baby in order to relieve -her anguish, but she struck another note. "I hadn't the least suspicion -of what had been done to me till the two footmen had lifted the little -carriage up over the steps and into the hall. Then I raised the veil to -take my baby out, and I--I fell in a dead swoon." - -He waited for her to go on again. - -"Try to imagine what it is to find in place of the living child you've -laid in its bed with all the tenderness in your soul--to find in place -of that a dirty, ugly, stuffed thing, about a baby's size.... For days -after that I was just as if I was drugged. If I came to for a few -minutes I prayed that I mightn't live. I didn't want to look the mother -and father in the face." - -"But hadn't you told them anything about it?" - -"There was nothing to tell. The baby had vanished. I'd seen nothing; -I'd heard nothing. Neither had my friend who was with me, and who's -married now, in England. If an evil spirit had done it, it couldn't -have been silenter, or more secret. It was a mystery then; it's been a -mystery ever since." - -"But you raised an alarm? You made a search?" - -"The whole country raised the alarm. There wasn't a corner, or a -suspicious character, that wasn't searched. We knew it had been -done for ransom, and the ransom was ready if ever the baby had been -returned. The father and mother were that frantic they'd have done -anything. There never was a baby in the world more loved, or more -lovable. All three of us--the father, the mother, and myself--would -have died for him." - -He grew interested in the story for its own sake. "And did you never -get any idea at all?" - -"Nothing that ever led to anything. For a good five years Mr. Whitelaw -never rested. Mrs. Whitelaw--but it's no use trying to tell you. It -can't be told; it can't be so much as imagined. Even when you've lived -through it you wonder how you ever did. You wonder how you go on -living day by day. It's almost as if you were condemned to eternal -punishment. The clues were the worst." - -"You mean that--?" - -"If we could have known that the child was dead--well, you make up your -mind to that. After a while you can take up life again. But not to know -anything! Just to be left wondering! Asking yourself what they're doing -with him!--whether they're giving him the right kind of food!--whether -they're giving him _any_ kind of food!--whether they're going to kill -him, and how they're going to kill him, and who's to do the killing! To -go over these questions morning, noon, and night--to eat with them, and -sleep with them, and wake with them--and then the clues!" - -"You said they were the worst." - -"Because they always made you hope. No matter how often you'd been -taken in you were ready to be taken in again. Each time they said -there was a chance you couldn't help thinking that there _might_ be a -chance. It didn't matter how much you told yourself it wasn't likely. -You couldn't make yourself believe it. You felt that he'd _have_ to -be found, that he couldn't help being found. The whole thing was so -impossible that you'd have to go to his room and look at his little -empty crib to persuade yourself that he wasn't there." - -To divert her from going over the ground she must have gone over -thousands of times already, he broke in with a new line of thought. - -"But I've heard that they don't want to find him now--a grown-up man." - -She stared at him fiercely. "_I_ do. _I_ want to find him. They were -not to blame. I was. It makes the difference." - -"Still he was their son." - -"He was their son, and they've suffered; but they can rest in spite -of their suffering. I can't. They can afford to give up hope because -they've nothing with which to reproach themselves. If they were me--" - -He began to understand. "I see. If you could find him and bring him -back, even if they didn't want him--" - -"I should have done _that_ much. It would be something. It's why I -pleaded with them to let me stay with them when I suppose the very -sight of me must have tortured them. I swore that I'd give my life to -trying to--" - -"But what could you do when even the child's father, with all his -money, couldn't--?" - -"I could pray. They couldn't. They're not like that. Praying's all I've -ever done which wasn't done by somebody else. I've prayed as I don't -think many people have ever prayed; and now I've come to where--" - -"Where what?" - -The light in her eyes was lambent, leaping and licking like a flame. - -"Where I'm quieter." She made her statement slowly. "I seem to know -that he'll be given back to me because the Bible says that when we pray -believing that we _have_ what we ask for we shall receive it. Latterly -I've believed that. I haven't forced myself to believe it. It's just -come of its own accord--something like a certainty." - -The claim in the look which without wavering fixed itself upon him -prompted another question. "And has that certainty got anything to do -with me?" - -"I wonder if it hasn't." - -"But I don't see how it can have, when you never saw me in your life -till twenty minutes ago." - -"I never saw you; but I'd heard of you. I meant to see you as soon as I -got a chance. I never got it till to-day." - -"But how did you know?" - -"That it was you? This way. You see I'm here with Miss Lily. She's -staying for a few nights at the inn-club before going to make some -visits." - -"Who's Miss Lily?" - -"She was the second of the two children born after my little boy was -taken. First there was Mr. Tad. Then there was a little girl. She knows -Miss Ansley. Miss Ansley told her you were coming up, that you'd very -likely be here this afternoon, so I came and waited. Even if I hadn't -seen you drive up with her--if we'd met in the heart of Africa--I'd -have known.... You've been taken for Mr. Tad already. You know that, -don't you?" - -"I know there's a resemblance." - -"It's more than a resemblance. It's--it's the whole story. Mr. Whitelaw -himself saw it first. When he came back after meeting you, in this very -place, nearly two years ago, he was--well, he was terribly upset. If it -hadn't been for Mr. Tad and Miss Lily--" - -"And their mother too." - -"Yes, I suppose; and their mother too. But that's not what we're -considering. Whether they want you or not, if you _are_ the boy--" - -He tried to speak very gently. "But you see, I couldn't be. I had a -mother. I don't remember much about her because I was only six or seven -when she died. But two things I recall--the way she loved me, and the -way I loved her. If I thought there was any truth in what you--in what -you suspect--I couldn't love her any more." - -"I don't see why." - -"Because I should be charging her with a crime. Would you do that--to -your own mother--after she was dead?" - -"If she was dead it wouldn't matter." - -"Not to her. But it would to me." - -"It couldn't do you any harm." - -"I'm the only judge of that." - -There was exasperation in the eyes which seemed unable to tear -themselves from his face. - -"But most people would like to have it proved that they'd been--" - -"Been born rich men's sons. That's what you were going to say, isn't -it? I daresay I should have liked it, if.... But what's the use? We -don't gain anything by discussing it. You want to find some one who'll -pass for the lost boy. I understand that; and I understand how much it -would lessen all the grief--" - -She interrupted quickly. "Yes, but I wouldn't try to foist an imposter -on them, not if it would take me out of hell. If I didn't believe--" - -"But you don't believe now; you can't believe. What I've told you about -myself must make believing impossible." - -"Oh, if I hadn't believed when believing was impossible I shouldn't -have the little bit of mind I've got now. Believing when it was -impossible was all that kept me sane." - -"But you won't go on doing it, not as far as I'm concerned?" - -She rose, with dignity. "Why not? I shan't be hurting you, shall I? In -a way we all believe it--even the Whitelaw family--even Miss Ansley." - -He jumped up, startled. "Did she tell you so?" - -"She didn't tell me so exactly. We were talking about it--we've all -talked of it more than you suppose--and Miss Ansley said that you -couldn't be what you are unless you were--_somebody_." - -He tried to take this jocosely. "No, of course I couldn't." - -"Oh, but I know what she meant." She moved away from him, speaking over -her shoulder as she crossed the blueberry scrub, "It was more than -what's in the words." - - - - -XXXVII - - -Except for a passing glimpse in Dublin, Tom never saw Lily Whitelaw -till in December he met her at the ball at which Hildred Ansley came -out. As to going to this ball he had his usual fit of funk, but Hildred -had insisted. - -"But, Tom, you must. You're the one I care most about." - -"I shouldn't know what to do." - -"I'll see to that. You'll only have to do what I tell you." - -"And I haven't got an evening coat with tails." - -"Well, get one. If you look as well in it as you do in your -dinner-jacket outfit--and you'd better have a white waistcoat, a silk -hat, and a pair of white gloves. What'll happen to you when you get -there you can leave to me. Now that I know you look so well, and dance -so well, you'll give me no trouble at all." - -Her kindness humbled him. He felt the necessity of taking it as -kindness and nothing more. Knowing too that he must school his own -emotions to a sense of gratitude, he imagined that he so schooled them. - -With the five hundred dollars he had earned through the summer added -to what remained of Honey's legacy, he had enough for his current year -at Harvard, with a margin over. The tailed evening coat, the white -waistcoat, the silk hat, the gloves, he looked upon as an investment. -He went to the ball. - -It was given at the Shawmut, the new hotel with a specialty in this -sort of entertainment. The ballroom had been specially designed so as -to afford a spectacle. A circular cup, surrounded by a pillared gallery -for chaperons and couples preferring to "sit out," you descended into -it by one of four broad shallow staircases, whence the _coup d'oeil_ -was superb. - -By being more or less passive, he got through the evening better than -he had expected. Knowing scarcely anyone, he fell back on his formula. - -"I mustn't be conscious of it. I must take not knowing anyone for -granted, as I should if I were in a crowd at a theater, or the lobby of -this hotel. If I feel like a stray cat I shall look like a stray cat. -If I feel at ease I shall look at ease." - -In this he was supported by the knowledge of wearing the right thing. -Even Guy, whom he had met for a minute in the cloakroom, had been -surprised into a compliment. - -"Gee whiz! Who do you think you are? The old lady's been afraid you'd -look like an outsider. Now she'll be struck silly. Lot of girls here -that you'll put their eye out." - -When he had shaken hands Hildred found a minute in which to whisper, -"Tom, you're the Greek god you read about in novels. Don't feel shy. -All you need do is to stand around and be ornamental. Your rôle is the -romantic unknown." She returned after the next bout of "receiving." -"You and I will have the supper dance. I've insisted on that, and -mother's given in. Don't get too far out of reach, so that I can put my -hand on you when I want you." - -He danced a little, chiefly with girls whom no one else would dance -with and to whom some member of the Ansley family introduced him. -When not dancing he returned to the gallery, where he leaned against -a convenient pillar and looked on. It was what he best liked doing. -Liking it, he did it well. He could hear people ask who he was. He -could hear some Harvard fellow answer that he was the Whitelaw Baby. -Once he heard a lady say, as she passed behind his back, "Well, he does -look like the Whitelaws, doesn't he?" - -The New York papers had recalled the Whitelaw baby to the public mind -in connection with the ball given a few weeks earlier to "bring out" -Lily Whitelaw. Once in so often the whole story was rehearsed, making -the younger Whitelaws sick of it, and their parents suffer again. The -fact that Tad and Lily Whitelaw were there that night gave piquancy to -the presence of the romantic stranger. His stature, his good looks, his -natural dignity, together with the mystery as to who he was, made him -in a measure the figure of the evening. - -From where he stood by his pillar in the gallery he recognized Lily in -the swirl below, a slim, sinuous creature in shimmering green. All her -motions were serpentine. She might have been Salome; she might also -have been a shop girl, self-conscious and eager to be noticed. Whatever -was outrageous in the dances of that autumn she did for the benefit of -her elders. - -When she turned toward him he could see that she had an insolent kind -of beauty. It was a dark, spoiled beauty that seemed lowering because -of her heavy Whitelaw eyebrows, and possibly a little tragic. In -thought he could hear Hildred singing, as she had sung when he stayed -with them at Dublin in the spring, "Is she kind as she is fair? For -beauty lives by kindness." Lily's beauty would not. It was an imperious -beauty, willful and inconsiderate. - -He saw Hildred dancing too. She danced as if dancing were an incident -and not an occupation. She had left more important things to do it; -she would go back to more important things again. While she was at it -she took it gayly, gracefully, as all in the evening's work, but as -something of no consequence. She was in tissue of gold like an oriental -princess, a gold gleam in her oriental eyes. An ermine stole as a -protection against draughts was sometimes thrown over her shoulders, -but more often across her arm. - -He noticed the poise of her head. No other head in the world could -have been so nobly held, so superbly independent. Its character was -in its simplicity. Fashion did not exist for it. The glossy dark -hair was brushed back from forehead and temples into a knot which -made neatness a distinction. Distinction was the chief beauty in the -profile, with its rounded chin, its firm, small, well-curved lips, and -a nose deliciously snub. Decision, freedom, unconsciousness of self, -were betrayed in all her attitudes and movements. Merely to watch her -roused in him a dull, aching jealousy for Lily. He surprised himself by -regretting that Lily hadn't been like this. - -Imperious, willful, and inconsiderate Lily seemed to him again as she -drank champagne and smoked cigarettes at supper. The party at her -table, which was near the one at which he sat with Hildred, was jovial -and noisy. Lily's partner, a fellow whom he knew by sight at Harvard, -drank freely, laughed loudly, and now and then slapped the table. Lily -too slapped the table, though she did it with her fan. - -In the early morning--it might have been two o'clock--Tom found himself -accidentally near her when Hildred happened to be passing. - -"Oh, Lily! I want to introduce Mr. Whitelaw. He's got the same name as -yours, hasn't he? Tom, do ask her to dance." - -With her easy touch-and-go she left them to each other. Without a -glance at him, Lily said, tonelessly, - -"I'm not going to dance any more. I'm going to look for my brother and -go home." - -A whoop from the other side of the ballroom, where a rowdy note had -come over the company, gave an indication of Tad's whereabouts. Tom -suggested that he might find him and bring him up. Lily walked away -without answering. - -Hildred hurried back. "I'm sorry. I saw what she did. Try not to mind -it." - -"Oh, I don't. I decided long ago that one couldn't afford to be done -down by that sort of thing. It pays in the end to forget it." - -"One of these days she'll be sorry she did it. Your innings will come -then." - -"I'm not crazy for an innings. But time does avenge one, doesn't it?" -He nodded toward the ballroom floor, where Lily, with a stalking, -tip-toeing tread was pushing a man backward as if she would have pushed -him down had he not recovered his balance and begun pushing her. "It -avenges one even for that. Two minutes ago she said she wasn't going to -dance any more." - -"Well, she's changed her mind. That's all. Come and take a turn with -me." - -The affectionate solicitude in her tone was not precisely new to him, -but for the first time he dared to wonder if it could be significant. -By all the canons of life and destiny she was outside his range. She -could take this intimate, sisterly way with him, he had reasoned -hitherto, because she was so far above him. She was the Queen; he was -only Ruy Blas, a low-born fellow in disguise. If he found himself -loving her, if there was something so sterling and womanly in her -nature that he couldn't help loving her, that would be his own -look-out. He had made up his mind to that before the end of his three -weeks in Dublin in the spring. Her tactful camaraderie then had carried -him over all the places which in the nature of things he might have -found difficult, doing it with a sweet assumption that they had an aim -in common. Only they had no aim in common! Between him and her there -could be nothing but pity and kindness on the one side, with humility -and devotion on the other. - -He had felt that till to-night. He had felt it to-night up to the -minute of hearing those words, "Come and take a turn with me." The -difference was in her voice. It had tones of comfort and encouragement. -More than that, it had tones of comprehension and concern. She entered -into his feelings, his struggles, his sympathies, his defeats. In -the very way in which she put one hand on his shoulder and placed -the other within his own he thought there might be more than the -conventional gesture of the dance. - -"You don't know how much I appreciate your coming to-night," she said, -when she found an opportunity. "If you hadn't come I should have felt -it as much as if father, or mother, or Guy hadn't come. More, I think, -because--well, I don't know why--_because_. I only believe that I -should have. It's been an awful bore to you, too." - -"No, it hasn't. I've seen a lot. I like to get the hang of--of this -sort of thing. I don't often get a chance." - -"I thought of that. It seemed to me that the experience would be -something. Everything's grist that comes to your mill, so that the more -you see of things the better." - -That was all they said, but when he left her she held his hand, she let -him hold hers, till their arms were stretched out to full length. Even -then her eyes smiled at him, and his smiled down into hers. - -Having seen other people go, he decided to slip away himself. But in -the cloakroom he found Tad, white and sodden in a chair, his hands -thrust into his trousers' pockets, his legs stretched wide apart in -front of him. No one was there but the cloakroom attendant who winked -at Tom, as one who would understand the effect of too much champagne. - -"Too young a head. Ought to be got home." - -"I'll take him. Know where he lives. Going his way. Ask some one to -call us a taxi." - -Tad made no remonstrance as they helped him into his overcoat, and -rammed his hat on his head. He knew what they were doing. "Home!" he -muttered. "Home bes' place! Bed! God, I cou' go to sleep right now." - -He did go to sleep in the taxi, his head on Tom's shoulder. Tom held -him up, with his arm around his waist. Once more he had the feeling -that had stirred in him before, of something deeper than the common -human depths, primitive, pre-social, antedating languages and laws. -"He's not my brother," he declared to himself, "but if he were...." He -couldn't end that sentence. He could only feel glad that, since the boy -_had_ to be taken home, the task should have fallen to him. - -At Westmorley Court, where Tad now had his quarters, there was no -difficulty of admittance. In his own room he submitted quietly to being -undressed. Tom even found a suit of pajamas, stuffing the limp form -into it. He got him into bed; he covered him up. Winding his watch, he -put it on the night-table. All being done, he stooped over the bed to -lift the arm that had flung aside the bedclothes, and put it under them -again. - -He staggered back. There flashed through his mind some of the stories -by which Honey had accounted for the loss of his eye. His own left eye -felt smashed in and shattered. He was sick; he was faint. He could -hardly stand. He could hardly think. The room, the world, were flying -into splinters. - -"You damn sucker! Get out of this!" - -By the time Tom had recovered himself Tad was settling to sleep. - - - - -XXXVIII - - -Nothing but the knowledge that the boy was drunk had kept him from -striking back there and then. His temper was a hot one. It came in -fierce gusts, which stormed off quickly. The quickness saved him now. -Before he was home in bed he had reconciled himself to bearing this -thing too. It was bigger to bear it, more masculine, more civilized. He -would never forget his racking remorse after the last fight. - -He didn't lose his eye, but he was obliged to see an oculist. The -oculist pronounced it a close shave. - -"Where in thunder did you get that?" Guy demanded, a day or two after -the occurrence. - -Tom thought it an opportunity to learn whether or not the boy had been -conscious of what he did. "Ask Tad Whitelaw." - -"_What?_ You don't mean to say you've had another row with him! Gee -whiz!" - -"No, I haven't had another row with him; but all the same, ask him." - -Guy asked him, with no information but that the mucker would get -another if he didn't keep out of the way. It was all Tom needed to -know. He had not been too drunk to strike with deliberate intention, -and to remember that he had struck. - -Guy must have told Hildred, because she wrote begging Tom to come to -see her. He wasn't to mind his black eye, because she knew all about -it. She was tender, consoling. - -"I don't believe he's a cad any more than I believe that of Lily," she -said, while giving him a cup of tea, "but they're both spoiled with -money and a sense of self-importance. You see, losing the other child -has made their mother foolish about them. She's lavished everything on -them, more than anyone, not a born saint, could stand. It would have -been a great deal better if they'd had to fight their way--some of -their way at any rate--like you." - -"Oh, I'm another breed." - -"Another figurative breed--yes. As to the breed in your blood--" - -"Oh, but, Hildred, you don't believe that poppy-cock." - -Her eyes were on the teapot from which she was pouring. "I don't -believe it exactly because I don't know. It only strikes me as being -very queer." - -"Queer in what way?" - -"Oh, in every way. They think so too." - -"Then why do they seem to hate me so?" - -"I shouldn't say they did that. They're afraid of you. You disturb -them. They're--what do they call it in the Bible?--kicking against the -pricks. That's all there is to it. When they'd buried the whole thing -you come along and make them dig it up again. They don't want to do -that. They feel it's too late. You can see for yourself that for Tad -and Lily it would be awkward. When you've been the only two children, -and such spoiled ones at that, to have an elder brother you didn't -know anything about suddenly hoisted over you--" - -"Of course! I understand that." - -"Mr. Whitelaw feels the same, only he feels it differently. _He'd_ -accept him, however hard it was." - -"And Mrs. Whitelaw?" - -"Oh, poor dear, she's suffered so much that all she asks is not to be -made to suffer any more. I don't believe it matters to her now whether -he's found or not, so long as she isn't tortured." - -"And does she think I'd torture her?" - -"They haven't come to that. It isn't what you _may_ do, but what they -themselves _ought_ to do that troubles them." - -"I wish if you get a chance you'd tell them that they needn't do -anything." - -"They wouldn't take my word for it, or yours either. It rests with -themselves and their own consciences." - -"A good deal of it rests with me." - -"Yes, if you were willing to take the first step; but since you're -not--" - -[Illustration: MRS. ANSLEY TOOK HIM AS AN AFFLICTION] - -They dropped it at that because Mrs. Ansley lilted in, greeting Tom -with that outward welcome and inward repugnance he had had to learn to -swallow. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She took him as an -affliction. Affliction could visit the best families and ignore the -highest merits. Guy, dear boy, was extravagant, and this was the proof -of his extravagance. He was infatuated with this young man, who had -neither means, antecedents, nor connections. She had heard the Whitelaw -Baby theory, of course; but so long as the Whitelaws themselves -rejected it, she rejected it too. The best she could do was to be -philanthropic. Philip, Guy, Hildred, were all convinced that this young -man was to make his mark. Very well! It was in her tradition, it was in -the whole tradition of old Boston, to help those who were likely to get -on. It was part of what you owed to your standing in the world, a kind -of public duty. You couldn't slight it any more than royalty can slight -the opening of bazaars. An aunt of her own had helped a poor girl to -take singing lessons; and the girl became one of the great prima donnas -of the world. Whenever she sang in opera in Boston it was always a -satisfaction to the family to exhibit her as their protégée. So it -might one day be with this young man. She hoped so, she was sure. She -didn't like him; she thought the fuss made over him by Hildred and Guy, -more or less abetted by their father, an absurdity; but since she was -obliged to play up to the family standard of beneficence, up to it she -would play. She bore with Tom, therefore, wisely and patiently, never -snubbing him except when they chanced to be alone, and hurting him only -as a jellyfish hurts a swimmer, by clamminess of contact. - -Clamminess of contact being in itself a weapon of offense, Tom ran away -from it, but only to fall into contact of another kind. - -It was a cloudy afternoon with Christmas in the near future. All -over town there were notes of Christmas, in the shop windows, in -the Christmas trees exposed for sale, in the way people ran about -with parcels. He never approached this season without going back to -that fatal Christmas Eve when he and his mother had been caught -shop-lifting. He could still feel as he felt at the minute when he -turned his face to the angle of the police-station wall, and wept -silently. He wondered what Hildred would think of him if he were to -tell her that tale. He wondered if he ever should. - -Partly for the exercise, partly to find space to breathe and to think, -he followed the Boston embankment of the Charles, making his way to -the Harvard Bridge, and so toward Cambridge. In big quietly dropping -flakes it had begun to snow. Presently it was snowing faster. The few -pedestrians fled from the esplanade. He tramped on alone, enjoying the -solitude. - -The embankment lamps had been lit when he noticed, coming toward him, -two young men, their collars turned up about their ears. They were -laughing and smoking cigarettes. Drawing nearer, he recognized them as -Tad Whitelaw and the fellow who had slapped the table at the dance. It -was not hard to guess that they were on their way to see Hildred. He -hoped that under cover of the darkness and the snow he might slip by -unobserved. - -But Tad stopped squarely in front of him. "Let's look at your eye." - -The tone was so easy and friendly that Tom thought he might be going to -apologize. He let him look. - -"Well, you got that," Tad went on. "Another time you'll get worse. By -God, if you don't keep away from me I'll shoot you." - -Tom was surprised, but it was the sort of situation in which he could -be cool. He smiled into the arrogant young face turned up toward his. - -"What's the good of that line of talk? You know you wouldn't shoot me; -you wouldn't have the nerve. Besides, you haven't anything to shoot me -_for_. I'll leave it to this fellow." He turned to Tad's companion, who -stood as a spectator, slightly to one side. "I found him dead drunk the -other night. I took him home in a taxi, and put him to bed. That's no -more than the common freemasonry among men. Any man would do the same -at a pinch for any other man." - -The companion played up nobly. "That's the straight dope, Tad. Take it -and gulp it down. This guy is a good guy or he wouldn't have--" - -"Go to hell," Tad interrupted, insolently. "I'm only warning him. If he -hangs round me any more--" - -Tom kept his temper by main force, addressing himself still to the -companion. - -"I've never hung round him. He knows I haven't. Two or three times I've -run into him, as I've done to-day. Twice I've stepped in, to keep him -from getting the gate, this time as a drunk, the other time as a damn -fool. I'd do that for anyone. I'd do it for him, if I found him in the -same mess again." - -"That's fair enough, Tad," the referee approved. "You can't kick -against it." - -Tad tried to speak, but Tom went on with quiet authority. - -"So that since he likes warnings he can take that one. I shan't let him -be chucked out of Harvard if I can help it." - -Tad sprang. "The devil you won't!" - -Tom continued to speak only to the third party. "No, the devil I won't! -I don't know why I feel that way about him, but that's the way I feel. -And anyhow, now he knows." - -Still addressing the companion only, he uttered a curt "Good-night." -The companion responded civilly with "Good-night" on his side. - -He neither looked at Tad, nor flung a word at him. Wheeling to face -what had now blown into a snowstorm, he walked off into its teeth. But -as he went he repeated the question he had put to Hildred Ansley. - -"Why do they seem to hate me so?" - -He thought of Lily, slippery, snake-like, perverted; he thought of -the mother as he had seen her on that one day, in that one glimpse, -a quivering bundle of agony; he thought of the father, human, -sympathetic, with the iron in his soul. - -Then he saw them with their heaped up money, their luxuries, their -pride, their domineering self-importance. He knew just enough of the -lives they led, the exemptions they enjoyed, to feel Honey's protest on -behalf of the dispossessed. - -Near an arc-light he stopped abruptly. The snow made a tabernacle for -him, so that he was all alone. As he looked upward and outward millions -and millions of sweet soft white things flew silently across the light. -Out of his heart, up to his lips, there tore the kind of prayer which -in times of temptation the Tollivant habit sometimes wrung from him: - -"O God, keep me from ever wanting to be one of them!" - - - - -XXXIX - - -In January, 1917, it began to occur to Tom Whitelaw that he might have -to go and fight. He might possibly be killed. Worse than that, he might -be crippled or blinded or otherwise rendered helpless. - -He had followed the war hitherto as one who looks on at tragedies -which have nothing to do with himself. Europe was to him no more -than a geographical term. Intense where his own aims and duties were -concerned, but lacking the imaginative faculty, he had never been able -to take England, France, and Germany as realities. The horrors of which -he read in newspapers moved him less than a big human story on the -stage. That the struggle might suck him into itself, smashing him as -a tornado smashes a tree, came home to him first at a Sunday evening -supper with the Ansleys. - -"If it does come," Philip Ansley said, complacently, "a lot of you -young fellows will have to go and be shot up." - -"I'm on," Guy announced readily. "If it hadn't been for the family I'd -have enlisted in Canada long ago." - -His mother took this seriously. "Well that, thank God, can't happen to -us. Darling, with your--" - -"Oh, yes, with my fat! Same old bunk! But, mother, I'm losing weight -like a snowbank in April. It's _running_ away. I'm exercising; I'm -taking Turkish baths; I don't hardly eat a damn thing. I weighed -two-fifty-three six weeks ago, and now I'm down to two-forty-nine." - -"Don't worry," his father assured him. "You'll get there. You'll make a -fine target for Big Bertha. Couldn't miss you any more than she would a -whole platoon." - -"Philip, how can you!" - -"Oh, they're all crazy to go." He looked toward Tom. "Suppose you are -too. Exactly the big husky type they like to blow into hash." - -Turning to help himself from the dish Pilcher happened to be passing, -Tom's eyes encountered Hildred's. Seated beside him, she had veered -round on hearing her father's words. The alarm in her face was a -confession. - -"Oh, I can wait," he tried to laugh. "If I've got to go I will, but I'm -not tumbling over myself to get there." - -A half hour later Mrs. Ansley and the three younger members of the -party were in the music room, where Guy was at the piano. The mother -sat on a gilded French canapé, making an excuse for keeping Hildred -beside her. Tom had already begun to guess that the friendship between -Hildred and himself was making Mrs. Ansley uneasy. For all these -years she had taken him as Guy's protégé with whom "anything of that -kind" was impossible. But lately she had so maneuvered as not to -leave Hildred and himself alone. Whether Hildred noticed it or not -he couldn't tell, since she never made a counter-move. If she was not -unconscious of her mother's strategy she let it appear as if she was. - -All the while Guy chimed out the _Carillon de Cythère_ of Couperin -le Grand Mrs. Ansley patted Hildred's hand, and rejoiced in her two -children. Guy's touch was velvety because it was Guy's; Couperin le -Grand was a noble composer because Guy played him. Her amorphous person -quivered to the measure, with a tremor here and a dilation there, like -the contraction and expansion of a medusa floating in the sea. - -But when Guy had tinkled out the final notes she bubbled to her feet. - -"Darling, I don't think I ever heard you play as well as you're doing -this winter. I think if you were to give a private recital...." - -In the general movement Tom lost the rest of this suggestion, but -caught on again at a whisper which he overheard. - -"Hildred, I simply must go and take my corsets off. I've had them on -ever since I dressed for church. It's Nellie's evening out. I'll have -to ask you to come and help me." - -But as her mother was kissing Guy good-night Hildred managed to say -beneath her breath, "Don't go away. I'll try to come back. There's -something I want to speak about." - -Left to themselves, the two young men exchanged bits of college gossip -while Guy twirled on the piano stool. They had the more to say to each -other since they met less often than in their year at Gore Hall. Guy -was now in Westmorley Court, and Tom in one of the cheaper residential -halls in the Yard. Their associations would have tended to put them -apart, had not Guy's need of moral strengthening, to say nothing of a -dog-like loyalty, driven him back at irregular intervals upon his old -friend. Now and then, too, when his mother insisted on his coming home -for the Sunday evening meal, Hildred suggested that he bring Tom. - -"Let's hike it in by the Embankment," was Guy's way of extending this -invitation. "I don't mind if you come along, and Hildred likes it. Dad -don't care one way or another. He isn't democratic like Hildred and me; -but he's only a snob when it comes to his position as one of the grand -panjandrums of Boston. Mother kicks, of course; but then she'd accept -the devil himself if I was to tote him behind me." - -Long usage had enabled Tom to translate these sentiments into terms of -eagerness. Guy really wanted him. He was Guy's haven of refuge as truly -as when they had been growing boys. Every few weeks Guy turned from his -"bunch of sports," or his "bunch of sports" left him in the lurch, so -that he came back like a homing pigeon to its roost. Tom was fond of -him, was sorry for him, bore with him. Moreover, beyond these tactless -invitations there was Hildred. - -They fell to talking of Tad Whitelaw. Guy swung round to the piano, -beating out a few bars of throbbing, deep-seated grief. - -"One more little song and dance and Tad'll get this. Know what it is?" - -Confessing that he didn't know, Tom learned that it was Händel's Dead -March in "Saul." - -"Played at all the British military funerals, to make people who feel -bad enough already feel a damn sight worse. Be our morning and evening -hymn when we get into the trenches." - -Tom was anxious. "You mean that Tad's on probation?" - -"I don't know what he's on. Hear the Dean's been giving him a dose of -kill-or-cure. That's all." He pounded out the heartbreaking chords, -with the deep bass note that sounded like a drum. "Ever see a fellow -named Thorne Carstairs?" - -"Seen him, yes. Don't know him. Yale chap, isn't he?" - -"Was." The drumbeat struck sorrow to the soul. "Kicked out. Hanging -round Tad till he gets him kicked out too. Lives at Tuxedo. Stacks of -dough, just like Tad himself." There was some personal injury in Guy's -tone, as he added, "Like to give him the toe of my boot." - -It was perhaps this feat of energy that sent him into the martial -phrases of the Chopin polonaise in A major, making the room ring with -joyous bravery. - -Having dropped into Mrs. Ansley's corner of the gilded canapé, Tom -found Hildred silently slipping into a seat beside him. - -"No, don't get up." She put her hand on his arm in a way she had never -done before. "I can only stay a few minutes. There's something I want -to say." - -Guy was passing to the D major movement. His back was turned to them. -They sat gazing at each other. They sat gazing at each other in a -new kind of avowal. All the things he dared not say and she dared not -listen to were poured from the one to the other through their eyes. She -spoke hurriedly, breathlessly. - -"I want you to know that if we enter the war, and you're sent over -there, I'll find a way to go too." - -He began some kind of protest, but she silenced him. - -"I know how I could do it. There's a woman in Paris who'd take me on to -work with her. You see, I'm used to Europe. You're not. I can't bear to -think of you--with no family--so far away from everyone--and all alone. -I'll go." - -Before he could seize anything like the full import of what she -was telling him she had slipped away again. Guy was still playing, -martially and majestically. - -Tom sat wrapt in a sudden amazed tranquillity. Now that she had told -him, told him more, far more, than was in her words, he was not -surprised; he was only reassured. He realized that it was what he had -expected. He had not expected it in the mind, nor precisely with the -heart. If the heart has reasons which the reason doesn't know, it was -something beyond even these. The nearest he could come to it, now that -he tried to express it by the processes of thought, was that between -him and her there existed a community of life which they had only to -take for granted. She was taking it for granted. To find out if she -loved him he would never have to ask her; she would never have to ask -him. _They knew!_ He wondered if the knowledge brought to her the -peace it brought to him. He felt that he knew that too. - -Having ended his polonaise, Guy let his fingers run restlessly up and -down the keys. He had not turned round; he had heard nothing; he hadn't -guessed that Hildred had come and gone. That was their secret. They -would keep it as a secret. One of them at least had no wish to make it -known. - -He had no wish that it should go farther, even between him and her, -till the future had so shaped itself that he could be justified. That -it should remain as it was, unspoken but understood, would for a long, -long time to come be joy and peace for them both. - -Suddenly Guy broke into a strain enraptured and exultant. It flung -itself up on the air as easily as a bird's note. It was lyric gladness, -welling from a heart that couldn't tire. - -Caught by his own jubilance, Guy took up the melody in a tenor growing -liquid and strong after the years of cracked girlishness. - -"Guy, for heaven's sake, what's that?" - -The singer cut into his song long enough to call back over his shoulder: - -"Schumann! 'To the Beloved'!" - -He began singing again, his head thrown back, his big body swaying. All -the longing for love of a fellow on the edge of twenty, but for him -made shamefaced by his fat, found voice in that joyousness. - -Tom had not supposed that in the whole round of the universe there was -such expression for his nameless ecstasies. It was not Guy whom he -heard, nor the piano; it was the morning stars singing together; it -was the sons of God shouting for joy; it was all the larks and all the -thrushes and all the nightingales that in all the ages had ever trilled -to the sun and moon. - -"Don't stop," he shouted, when the song had mounted to its close. -"Let's have it all over again." - -So they had it all over again, the one in his wordless, mumbled tenor, -and the other singing in his heart. - - - - -XL - - -During the next week or ten days Tom worried over Tad Whitelaw. He -wondered whether or not he ought to go to see the boy. If he didn't, -Tad's Harvard career might end suddenly. If he did, he would probably -have humiliation for his pains. He wouldn't mind the humiliation if he -could do any good; but would he? - -One thing that he could do was to take himself to task for thinking -about the fellow in one way or the other. It was the fight he put up -from day to day. What was Tad Whitelaw to him? Nothing! And yet he was -much. It was beyond reasoning about. - -He was a responsibility, a care. Tom couldn't help caring; he couldn't -help feeling responsible. If Tad went to the bad something in himself -would have gone to the bad. He might argue against this instinct every -minute of the day, yet he couldn't argue it down. - -He remembered that Tad went often to see Hildred. He had been on his -way to see her that afternoon before Christmas when they had met on the -esplanade. She might be able to get at him more easily than anybody -else. He rang her up. - -Her life as a débutante was so crowded that she found it hard to give -him a half hour. "I'm dead beat," she confessed on the wire. "If it -weren't for mother I'd call it all off." She made him a suggestion. -She was driving that morning to lunch with a girl who lived in one of -the big places beyond Jamaica Pond. If he could be at a certain corner -she could pick him up. He could drive out with her, and come back by -the trolley car. Then they could talk. That this proposal didn't meet -the wishes of some one near the telephone he could judge by the aside -which also passed over the wire. "He wants to see me about Tad, mother. -I can't possibly refuse." - -Getting into the car beside her, he had another of those impressions, -now beginning to be rare, of the difference between her way of living -and all that he was used to. Much as he knew about cars, it was the -first time he had actually driven in a rich woman's limousine. The ease -of motion, the cushioned softness, the beaver rug, the blue-book, the -little feminine appointments, the sprig of artificial flowers, subdued -him so that he once more found it hard to believe that she took him on -a footing of equality. - -But she did. Her indifference to the details which overpowered him -was part of the wonder of the privilege. Having everything to bestow, -she seemed unaware of bestowing anything. She took for granted their -community of life. She did it simply and without self-consciousness. -Had they been brother and sister she could not have been easier or more -matter-of-course in all that she assumed. - -Except for the coming-out ball it was the first time, too, that he had -seen her as what he called "dressed up." Her costume now was a warm -brown velvet of a shade which toned in with the gold-brown of her -eyes and the nut-brown of her complexion. She wore long slender jade -earrings, with a string of jade beads visible beneath her loosened -furs. The furs themselves might have been sables, though he was too -inexperienced to give them a name. Except for the jade, she wore, as -far as he could see, nothing else that was green but a twist of green -velvet forming the edge of her brown velvet toque. Her neat proud head -lent itself to toques as being simple and distinguished. - -He himself was self-conscious and shy. He could hardly remember for -what purpose she had been willing to pick him up. A queen to her -subjects is always a queen, a little overwhelming by her presence, no -matter how human her personality. Now that he was before her in his old -Harvard clothes, and the marks of the common world all over him, he -could hardly believe, he could _not_ believe, that she had uttered the -words she had used on Sunday night. - -All the ease of manner was on her side. She went straight to the point, -competent, businesslike. - -"The thing, it seems to me, that will possibly save Tad is that he's -got to keep himself fit in case war breaks out." - -That was her main suggestion. Tad couldn't afford to throw himself away -when his country might, within a few weeks, have urgent need of him. -He couldn't, by over indulgence let himself run down physically, as he -couldn't by neglecting his work put himself mentally at a disadvantage. -He must be fit. She liked the word--fit for his business as a soldier. - -"That's just what would appeal to him when nothing else might," Tom -commended. "I wish you'd take it up with him." - -"I will; but you must too." - -"If I get a chance; but I daresay I shan't get one." - -She had a way of asking a leading question without emphasis. Any -emphasis it got it drew from the long oblique regard which gave her the -air of a woman with more experience than was possible to her years. - -"Why do you care?" - -He had to hedge. "Oh, I don't know. He's just a fellow. I don't want to -see him turn out a rotter." - -"If he turned out a rotter would you care more than if it was anybody -else?" - -"M-m-m! Perhaps so! I wouldn't swear to it." - -"I would. I know you'd care more. And I know why." - -He tried to turn this with a laugh. "You can't know more about me than -I do myself." - -"Oh, can't I? If I didn't know more about you than you do yourself...." - -He decided to come to close quarters. "You mean that you do think I'm -the lost Whitelaw baby?" - -"I know you are." - -"How do you know?" - -"Miss Nash told me so, for one thing." - -"And for another?" - -"For another, I just know it." - -"On what grounds?" - -"On no grounds; on all grounds. I don't care anything about the -grounds. A woman doesn't have to have grounds--when she knows." - -"Well, what about my grounds when I know to the contrary?" - -"But you don't. You only know your history back to a certain point." - -"I've only _told_ you my history back to a certain point. I know it -farther back than that." - -"How far back?" - -"As far back as anyone can go, from his own knowledge." - -"Oh, from his own knowledge! But some of the most important things come -before you can have any knowledge. You've got to take them on trust." - -"Well, I take them on trust." - -"From whom?" - -"From my mother." - -She was surprised. "You remember your mother?" - -"Very clearly." - -"I didn't know that. What do you remember about her?" - -"I remember a good many things--how she looked--the way she talked--the -things she did." - -"What sort of things were they?" - -"That's what I want to tell you about. It's what I think you ought to -know." - -She allowed her eyes to rest on his calmly. "If you think knowing would -make any difference to me--" - -"I think it might. It's what I want to find out." - -"Then I can tell you now that it wouldn't." - -"Oh, but you haven't heard." - -"I don't want to hear, unless you'd rather--" - -"That you did. That's just what I do. I don't think we can go any -farther--I mean with our--" the word was difficult to find--"I mean -with our--friendship--unless you do hear." - -"Oh, very well! I want you to do what's easiest for you, and if it does -make a difference I'll tell you honestly." - -"Thank you." For a second, not more, he laid his hand on her muff, the -nearest he had ever come to touching her. "We were talking about the -things my mother did. Well, they weren't good things. The only excuse -for her was that she did them for me, because she was fond of me." - -"And you were fond of her?" - -"Very; I'm fond of her still. It's one of the reasons--but I must tell -you the whole story." - -He told as much of the story as he thought she needed to know. -Beginning with the stealing of the book from which he had learned to -read, he touched only the points essential to bringing him to the -Christmas Eve which saw the end; but he touched on enough. - -"Oh, you poor darling little boy! My heart aches for you--all the way -back from now." - -"So you see why I became a State ward. There was nothing else to do -with me. I hadn't anybody." - -"Of course you hadn't anybody if...." - -"If my mother stole me. But you see she didn't. I was her son. I don't -want to be anybody else's." - -"Only--" she smiled faintly--"you can't always choose whose son you -want to be." - -"I can choose whose son I don't want to be. That's as far as I go." - -"Oh, but still--" She dismissed what she was going to say so as not -to drive him to decisions. "At any rate we know what to do about Tad, -don't we? And you must work as well as I." - -"I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he won't." - -And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no later than that very -afternoon. - -He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy a hand with some work he -was doing for his mid-years. On coming out again, a little scene before -the main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows of the hall. - -Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a touring car that had -seen service. In spite of his residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy -had called his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with the -marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, insisting on being taken -somewhere in the car. Spit Castle being on the spot as a witness to a -refusal accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, Tad waxed -into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew nothing of the cause of the breach, -it was clear that a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the -car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made spurts at driving away. -Before he could swing the wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses -and maulings were exchanged without actual blows, when a shove from -Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. Before he could recover himself -to rush the car again its owner had got off. - -There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well as some hoots from -spectators who had viewed the scuffle from their windows. Tad's -self-esteem was hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to -do what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a good part of -Westmorley Court. - -He turned to Spit, his face purple. "By God, I'll make that piker pay -for this before the afternoon's out." - -Hatless as he was, without waiting for comment, he started off on the -run. Where he was running nobody knew, and Tom least of all. By the -time he had reached the street Tad was nowhere to be seen. - -For the rest of the day the incident had no sequel. Tom had almost -dismissed it from his mind, when on the next day, while crossing the -Yard, he ran into Guy Ansley. - -Guy was brimming over. "Heard the row, haven't you?" - -Tom admitted that he had not. Guy gave him the version he had heard, -which proved to be the correct one. He gave it between fits of laughter -and that kind of sympathetic clapping on the back which can never be -withheld from the harum-scarum dare-devil playing his maddest prank. - -When Tad had run from the door of Westmorley Court he had run to the -police station. There he had laid a charge against an unknown car-thief -of running off with his machine. He could be caught by telephoning -the traffic cops on the long street leading from Cambridge to Boston. -He gave the number of the car which was registered in the State of -New York. His own name, he said, was Thorne Carstairs; his residence, -Tuxedo Park; his address in Boston, the Hotel Shawmut, where he was -known and could be found. Having lodged this complaint, and put all -the forces of the law into operation, he had dodged back to Westmorley -Court, had his dinner sent in from a restaurant, locked his door -against all comers, and turned into bed. - -In the morning, according to Guy, there had been the devil to pay. As -far as Tad was concerned, the statement was literally true. Thorne -Carstairs had been locked in the station all night. Not only had he -been caught red-handed with a stolen car, but his lack of the license -he had neglected to carry on his person, as well as of registration -papers of any kind, confirmed the belief in the theft. His look of a -cheap sport, together with his tendency to use elementary epithets, had -also told against him. Where another young fellow in his plight might -have won some sympathy he roused resentment by his howlings and his -oaths. - -"We know you," he was assured. "Been on the look-out for you this -spell back. You're the guy what pinched Dr. Pritchard's car last week, -and him with a dyin' woman. Just fit the description--slab-sided, -cock-eyed, twisted-nosed fella we was told to look for, and now we've -got our claw on you. Sure your father's a gintleman! Sure you live at -the Hotel Shawmut! But a few months in a hotel of another sort'll give -you a pleasant change." - -In the morning Thorne had been brought before the magistrate, where two -officials of the Shawmut had identified him as their guest. Piece by -piece, to everyone's dismay, the fact leaked out that the law of the -land, the zeal of the police, and the dignity of the court had been -hoaxed. Thorne himself gave the clue to the culprit who had so outraged -authority, and Tad was paying the devil. Guy didn't know what precisely -had happened, or if anything definite had happened as yet at all; he -was only sure that poor Tad was getting it where the chicken got the -ax. He deserved it, true; and yet, hang it all! only a genuine sport -could have pulled off anything so audacious. - -With this Tom agreed. There were spots in Guy's narrative over which -he laughed heartily. He condemned Tad chiefly for going too far. It -was his weakness that he didn't know when he had had enough of a good -thing. Anyone in his senses might know that to hoax a policeman was -a crime. A policeman's great asset was the respect inspired by his -uniform. Under his uniform he was a man like any other, with the same -frailties, the same sneaking sympathy with sinners; but dress him up in -a blue suit with brass buttons on his breast, and you had a figure to -awe you. If you weren't awed the fault was yours. Yours, too, must be -the penalty. The saving element was that beneath the brass buttons the -heart was kindly, as a rule, and humorous, patient, generous. Tom had -never got over the belief, which dated from the night when his mother -was arrested, of the goodness of policemen. He trusted to it now. - -He was not long in making up his mind. Leaving Guy, he cut a lecture -to go to see the Dean. He went to the Dean's own house, finding him at -home. The Dean remembered him as one of two or three young fellows -who in the previous year had adjusted a bit of friction between the -freshmen and the faculty without calling on the higher authorities to -impose their will. He was cordial, therefore, in his welcome. - -He was a big, broad-shouldered Dean, human and comprehending, with a -twinkle of humor behind his round glasses. There was no severity in -the tone in which he discussed Tad's escapade; there was only reason -and justice. Tad had given him a great deal of trouble in the eighteen -months in which he had been at Harvard. He had written to his father -more than once about the boy, had advised his being given less money -to spend, and a stricter calling to account at home. The father was -distressed, had done what he could, but the mischief had gone too far. -Tad was the typical rich man's son, spoiled by too easy a time. He had -been so much considered that he never considered anybody else. He was -swaggering and conscienceless. The Dean was of the opinion now that -nothing but harsh treatment would do him any good. - -Tom put in his plea. The matter, as he saw it, was bigger than one -fellow's destiny; it involved bigger issues. It was his belief that the -country would soon be at war. If the country was at war, Tad Whitelaw's -father would be one of the first of the bankers the President would -consult. The Dean knew, of course, that the bankers would have to -swing as much of the war as the army and navy. Henry T. Whitelaw was a -man, as everyone knew, already terribly tried by domestic tragedy. You -wouldn't want to add to that now, just at the time when he needed to -have a mind as free as possible. This boy was the apple of his eye; -and if disgrace overtook him.... - -But that was only one thing. Should the country go to war, it would -call for just such young fellows as Tad Whitelaw; fellows of spirit, of -daring, of physical health and strength. Didn't the Dean think that it -might be well to nurse him along for a few weeks--it wasn't likely to -be many--so that he could answer to the country's call with at least a -nominal honorable record, instead of being under a cloud? If the Dean -did think so, he, Tom, would undertake to keep the fellow straight till -he was wanted. He wasn't vicious; he was only foolish and headstrong. -Though he didn't make a good student, he had in him the very stuff to -make a soldier. Tom would answer for him. He would be his surety. - -In the long run the Dean allowed himself to be won by Tom's own -earnestness. He would do what he could. At the same time Tom must -remember that if the college authorities stayed their hand the civil -authorities might not. The indignation at police headquarters was -unusually bitter. Unless this righteous wrath were pacified.... - -Having thanked the Dean, Tom ran straight to the police station. The -Chief of Police received him, though not with the Dean's cordiality. -He too was a big, broad-shouldered man, but frigid and stern through -long administration of law, discipline, and order. He impressed Tom -as a mechanical contrivance which operates as it is built to operate, -and with no power of showing mercy or making exceptions to a rule. -Outwardly at least he was grave and obdurate. - -The victory lay once more with Tom's earnestness. The Chief of Police -made no secret of the fact that they were already considering the -grounds on which "the crazy fool" could most effectively be prosecuted. -The law was not, however, wholly without a heart, and if in the present -instance the country could be served, even in the smallest detail, by -giving the blamed idiot the benefit of clemency it could be done. Tom -must understand that the nonsense had not been overlooked; it was only -left in abeyance. If his protégé got into trouble again he would be the -more severely dealt with because of the present lenity. - -Tom ran now to Westmorley Court, where he knocked at Tad's door. To a -growling invitation he went in. The room was a cloud of tobacco smoke, -through which the shapes of half a dozen fellows loomed dimly in the -deepening winter twilight. Tad tilted back in the revolving chair -before the belittered desk which held the center of the room. His coat -was off, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his feet on the edge of the desk. A -cigar traveled back and forth from corner to corner of the handsome, -disdainful mouth. - -Tom marched straight to the desk, speaking hurriedly. "Can I have a -word with you in private?" - -The owner of the room neither moved nor took the cigar from his lips. -"No, you can't." He nodded toward the door. "You can sprint it out -again." - -"I shall sprint it out when I'm ready. If I can't speak in private I -shall speak in public. You've got to hear." - -The insolent immobility was maintained. "Didn't I tell you the last -time I saw you that if you ever interfered with me again--?" - -"That you'd shoot me, yes. Well, get up and shoot. If you can't, or if -you don't mean to, why make the threat? But I've come to talk reason. -You've got to listen to reason. If you don't I'll appeal to these chaps -to make you. They don't want to see you a comic valentine any more than -I do. Now climb down from your high horse and let's get to business." - -It was Guy Ansley who cleared the room. "Say, fellows--" With a -stealthy movement, which their host was too preoccupied to observe, -they slipped out. He knew, however, when he and his enemy were alone, -and still without lifting his feet from the desk or taking the cigar -from his mouth, made the concession of speaking. - -"Well, if business has brought you here, cough it up." - -"I will. I come first from the Dean, and then from the Chief of Police." - -"Oh, you do, do you? So you're to be the hangman." - -"No; there's not to be a hangman. They've given you a reprieve--because -I've begged you off." - -The feet came off the desk. The cigar was taken from the lips. Tad -leaned forward in his chair, tense and incredulous. - -"You've done--_what_?" - -Tom maintained his sang-froid. "I've begged you off. I went and talked -to them both. I said I'd answer for you, that you'd stop being a crazy -loon, and try to be a man." - -Incredulity passed into angry amazement. "And who in hell gave you -authority to do that?" - -"Nobody. I did it on my own. When a fellow gets his life as a gift he -takes it. He doesn't kick up a row as to who's given it. For the Lord's -sake, try to have a little sense." - -"What's it to you whether I've got sense or not?" - -"Nothing." - -"Then why in thunder do you keep butting in--?" - -"Because I choose to. I'll give you no other answer than that, and no -other explanation. What you've got to do is to knuckle under and show -that you're worth your keep. You're not a _born_ fool; you're only a -made fool. You're good for something better than to be a laughing-stock -as you are to everyone in college. Buck up! Be a fellow! After being a -jackass for a year and a half, I should think you'd begin to see that -there was nothing to it by this time." - -Never in his life had Tad Whitelaw been so hammered without gloves. -It was why Tom chose to hammer him. Nothing but thrashing, verbal -or otherwise, would startle him out of the conviction of his -self-importance. Already it was shaking the foundations of his -arrogance. In his tone as he retorted there was more than a hint of -feebleness. - -"What I see and what I don't see is my own affair." - -"Oh, no, it isn't. It's a class affair. There's such a thing as _esprit -de corps_. We can't afford to have rotters, now especially." - -Tad grew still feebler. "I'm not the only rotter in the bunch. Why do -you pick on me?" - -"I've told you already. Because I choose to. You might as well give in -to me first as last, because you'll not get rid of me any more than you -will of your own conscience." - -Tad sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, in a new outburst. "I'll be -damned if I'll give in to you." - -"And I'll be damned if you don't. If I can't bring you round by -persuasion I'll do it as I did it once before. I'll wale the guts out -of you. I'm not going to have you a disgrace." - -"Ah!" Tad started back. "Now I've got you. A disgrace! You talk as if -you were a member of the family. That's what you're after. That's what -you've been scheming for ever since--" - -"Look here," Tom interrupted, forcefully. "Let's understand each other -about this business once and for all." Looking from under his eyelids -he measured Tad up and down. "I wouldn't be a member of the family that -has produced _you_ for anything the world could give me." - -Tad bounded, changing his note foolishly. "Oh, you wouldn't wouldn't -you! How do you know that you won't damn well have to be?" - -Walking up to him, Tom laid a hand on his shoulder, paternally. "Don't -let us talk rot. We both know the nickname the fellows have stuck on me -in Harvard. But what's that to us? You don't want me. I don't want you. -At least I don't want you that way. I'll tell you straight. I've got a -use for you. That's why I keep after you. But it's got nothing to do -with your family affairs." - -They confronted each other, Tad gasping. "You've got a use for me? -Greatly obliged. But get this. I've no use for you. Don't make any -mistake--" - -Withdrawing his hand, Tom gave him a little shove. "Oh, choke it back. -Piffle won't get you anywhere. I'm going to make something of you of -which your father and mother can be proud." - -It was almost a scream of fury. "Make something of _me_--?" - -"Yes, a soldier." - -The word came like a douche of cold water on hysteria, calming the boy -suddenly. He tapped his forehead. "Say, are you balmy up here?" - -"Possibly; but whether I'm balmy or not, a soldier is what you'll have -to be. Don't you read the papers? Don't you hear people talking? Why, -man alive, two or three months from now every fellow of your age and -mine will be marching behind a drum." - -The boy's haggard face went blank from the sheer shock of it. The idea -was not brand new, but it was incredible. Tad Whitelaw was not one of -those who took much interest in public affairs or kept pace with them. - -"Oh, rot!" - -"It isn't rot. Can't you see it for yourself? If this country pitches -in--" - -"Oh, but it won't." - -"Ask anyone. Ask your own father. That's my point. If we do pitch in -your father will be one of the big men of the two continents. You're -his only son. You'll _have_ to play up to him." - -Tom watched the hardened, dissipated young face contract with a queer -kind of gravity. The teeth gritted, the lips grew set. It gave him the -chance to go on. - -"There aren't a half dozen men in the country who'd be able to swing -what your father'll be swinging. Listen! I know something about -banking. Been studying it for years. When it comes to war the banker -has to chalk-line every foot of the lot. They can't do anything without -him. They can't have an army or a navy or any international teamwork. -You'll see. The minute war is declared, _before_ war is declared, the -President'll be sending for your father to talk over ways and means. -Now then, are you to put a spoke in the country's wheel? You can. -You're doing it. The more you worry him the less good he'll be. Get -chucked out of college, as you would have been in a day or two, if I -hadn't stepped in, and begged to have you put in my charge--" - -Once more Tad revolted. "Put in your charge! The devil I'll be put in -your charge!" - -"All right! It's the one condition on which you stay at Harvard. Jump -your bail, and you'll see your father pay for it. He'll have his big -international job, and he won't be able to swing it because he'll be -thinking of you. You'll see the whole country pay for it. I daresay we -shan't know where we pay and how we pay; but we'll be paying. Say, is -it worth your while? What do you gain by being the rotten spot in the -beam that may bring the whole shack about our ears? Everybody knows -that your father has lost one son. Can't you try to give him another of -whom he won't have to be ashamed?" - -Tad stood sulkily, his hands in his trousers' pockets, as he tipped on -his toes and reflected. Since he made no answer, Tom went on with his -appeal. - -"And that's not the only thing. There's yourself. You're not a bad -sort. You've got the makings of a decent chap, even if you aren't one. -You could be one easily enough. All you've got to do is to drop some of -your fool acquaintances, cut out drinking, cut out women, and make a -show of doing what you've been sent to Harvard to do, even if it's only -a show. You won't have to keep it up for more than a few weeks." - -The furrow in the forehead when the eyebrows were lifted was also a -mark of dissipation. "More than a few weeks? Why not?" - -Tom pounded with emphasis. "Because, I tell you, we'll be in the war. -_You'll_ be in the war. We fellows of the class of 1919 are not going -to walk up on Commencement Day and take our degrees. We'll get them -before that. We'll get them in batteries and trenches and graves. I -heard a girl say, in speaking of you a day or two ago, that she hoped, -when the time came for that, you'd be fit. She said she liked the -word--fit for the job that'd be given you. You couldn't be fit if you -went on--" - -His curiosity was touched. "Who was that?" - -"I'm not going to tell you. I'll only say that she likes you, and -that--" - -"Was it Hildred Ansley?" - -"Well, if you're bound to know, it was. If you want to talk to someone -who wishes you well, go and--" - -"Did she put you up to this?" - -"No, she didn't. You put me up to it yourself. I tell you again, I'm -going to see you go straight till I see you go straight into the army. -You ought to go in with a commission. But if you're fired out of -Harvard they'll be shy of enlisting you as a private. If you won't play -the game of your own accord, I'll make you." - -With hands thrust into his trousers' pockets, Tad began to pace the -room, doing a kind of goose-step. His compressed lips made little -grimaces like those of a man forcing himself to decisions hard to -swallow. For a good four or five minutes Tom watched the struggle -between his top-loftiness and his common-sense. While common-sense -insisted on his climbing down, top-loftiness told him that he must -save his face. When he spoke at last his voice was hoarse, his throat -constricted. - -"If it's going to be war I'll be in it with both feet. But I'll do it -on my own. See? You mind your business, and I'll mind mine." - -Tom was reasonable. "That'll be all right--if you mind it." - -"And if you think I'm giving in to you--" - -"I don't care a hang whether you're giving in to me or not so long as -you--_keep fit_." - -"I'll be the judge of that." - -"And I'll help you." - -"You can go to hell." - -Tad used these words because he had no others. They were fine free -manly words which begged all the questions and helped him to a little -dignity. If he was surrendering he would do it, in his own phrase, -with bells on. The mucker shouldn't have the satisfaction of thinking -he had done anything. It saved the whole situation to tell him in this -offhand way the place that he could go to. - -But a little thing betrayed him, possibly before he saw its -significance. His points being won for the minute, Tom had reached -the door. Beside the door stood a low bookcase, on which was open a -package of cigarettes. Tad's goose-step brought him within reach of -it. He picked it up and held it toward Tom. He did it carelessly, -ungraciously, unthinkingly, and yet with all sorts of buried -implications in the little act. - -"Have one?" - -Tom was careful to preserve a casual, negligent air as he drew one out. -Tad struck a match. - -As the one held the thing to his lips and the other put the flame to -it, the hands of the brothers, for the first time except in a fight, -touched lightly. - - - - -XLI - - -"I can't see," Hildred reasoned, "why you should find the idea so -terrible." - -"And I can't see," Tom returned, "what it matters how I find the idea, -so long as nobody is serious about it." - -"Oh, but they will be. It's what I told you before. They'd made up -their minds they didn't want to find him; and now it's hard to unmake -them again. But they're coming to it." - -"I hope they're not taking the trouble on my account." - -"They're taking it on their own. Tad as much as said so. He said they'd -stuck it out as long as they could; but they couldn't stick it out -forever." - -"Stick it out against what?" - -"Against what's staring them in the face, I suppose." - -"Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing would induce me to -belong to the family that had produced him?" - -She laughed. "Oh, yes. He told me the whole thing, how you'd come into -his room, how Guy had got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle -between you." - -"And did he say how it had ended?" - -"He said--if you want to know exactly I'll tell you exactly--he said -that when it came to talking about the war and the part he would have -to play in it, you weren't as big a damn fool as he had thought you." - -"And did he say how big a damn fool he was himself?" - -"He admitted he had been one; but with his father on his hands, and the -war, and all that, he'd have to put the brakes on himself, and pretend -to be a good boy." - -Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to the blaze of the -fire. Hildred had sent for him because Mrs. Ansley was out of the way -at her Mothers' Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since she -would not conceal the fact accomplished. It avoided only a preliminary -struggle. If she needed an excuse, the necessities of their good -intentions toward Tad would offer it. - -Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of embroidery, had taken up a -piece of work. Like many women, she found it easier to be daring in an -incidental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from having to look -at Tom as she reverted to the phase of the subject from which they had -drifted away. - -"The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. They may even be -called distinguished. I don't see what it is you've got against them." - -"I've got nothing against them. They rather--" he sought for a word -that would express the queer primordial attraction they possessed for -him--"they rather cast a spell on me. But I don't want to belong to -them." - -"But why not, if it was proved that--?" - -"For one reason, it couldn't be proved; and for another, it's too late." - -The ring in his voice was strange; it made her look up at him. "Too -late? Why do you say that?" - -"Because it is. You told me some time ago that it was what they thought -themselves. Even if it _were_ proved, it would still be--too late." - -"I don't understand you." - -"I'm not sure that I understand myself. I only know that the life I've -lived would make it impossible for me to go and live their life." - -"Oh, nonsense! Their life is just the same as our life." - -"Well, I'm not sure that I could live yours. I could conform to it on -the outside. I could talk your way and eat your way; but I couldn't -think your way." - -"When you say _my_ way--" - -"I mean the way of all your class. Mind you, I'm not against it. I only -feel that somehow--in things I can't explain and wouldn't know how to -remedy--it's wrong." - -"Oh, but, Tom--" - -"It seems to be necessary that a great many people shall go without -anything in order that a very few people may enjoy everything. That's -as far as I go. I don't draw any conclusions; and I'm certainly not -going in for any radical theories. Only I can't think it right. I want -to be a banker; but even if I _am_ a banker--" - -"I see what you mean," she interrupted, pensively. "I often feel that -way myself. But, oh, Tom, what can we do about it that--that wouldn't -seem quite mad?" - -He smiled ruefully. "I don't know. But if you live long enough--and -work hard enough--and think straight enough--and don't do anything to -put you off your nut--why, some day you may find a way out that will be -sane." - -"Yes, but couldn't you do that and be Harry Whitelaw--if you _are_ -Harry Whitelaw--at the same time?" - -"Suppose we wait till the question arises? As far as I know, no one who -belonged to Harry Whitelaw, or to whom Harry Whitelaw belonged, has -ever brought it up." - -But only a few weeks later this very thing seemed about to come to pass. - -It was toward the end of March. On returning to his room one morning -Tom was startled by a telegram. Telegrams were so rare in his life -that merely to see one lying on his table gave him a thrill, partly of -wonder, partly of fear. Opening it, he was still more surprised to find -it from Philip Ansley. Would Tom be in Louisburg Square for reasons of -importance at four that afternoon? - -That something had betrayed himself and Hildred would have been his -only surmise; only that there was nothing to betray. Except for the -few hurried words Hildred had spoken on that Sunday night, anything -they had said they had said in looks, and even their looks had been -guarded and discreet. The things most essential to them both were in -what they were taking for granted. They had exchanged no letters; their -intercourse was always of the kind that anyone might overhear. Without -recourse to explanation each recognized the fact that it would be years -before either of them would be free to speak or to take a step. In the -meantime their only crime was their confidence in each other; and you -couldn't betray that. - -Nevertheless, it was with uneasiness that he rang at the door, and -asked Pilcher if Mr. Ansley were at home. Pilcher was mysterious. Mr. -Ansley was not at home, but if Mr. Tom would come in he would find -himself expected. Tea being served in the library, Mr. Tom was shown -upstairs. - -It was a gloomy afternoon outside; the room was dim. All Tom saw at -first was a tall man standing on the hearth rug, where the fire behind -him had almost gone out. He had taken a step forward and held out his -hand before Tom recognized the distinguished stranger who had first -hailed him in the New Hampshire lake nearly three years earlier. - -"Do you remember me?" - -"Yes, sir." - -They stood with hands clasped, each gazing into the other's face. Tom -would have withdrawn his hand, would have receded, but the other held -him with a grasp both tense and tenacious. The eyes, deep-set like -Tom's own, and overhung with bushy outstanding eyebrows, studied him -with eager penetration. Not till that look was satisfied did the tall -figure swing to someone who was sitting in the shadow. - -"This is the boy, Onora. Look at him." - -She was sitting out of direct range in a corner of the library darkened -by buildings standing higher on the Hill. The man turned Tom slightly -in her direction, where the daylight fell on him. The degree to which -the woman shrank from seeing him was further marked by the fact that -she partly hid her face behind a big black-feather fan for which there -was no other use than concealment. She said nothing at all; but even in -the obscurity Tom could perceive the light of two feverish eyes. - -It was the man who took the lead. - -"Won't you sit down?" - -He placed a chair where the woman could observe its occupant, without -being drawn of necessity into anything that might be said. The man -himself drew up another chair, on which he sat sidewise in an easy -posture close to Tom. Tom liked him. He liked his face, his voice, his -manner, the something friendly and sympathetic he recalled from the -earlier meetings. Whether this were his father or not, he would have -no difficulty in meeting him at any time on intimate and confidential -terms. - -"My wife and I wanted to see you," he began, simply, "in order to thank -you for what you've done for Tad." - -Tom was embarrassed. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I just happened--" - -"The Dean has told me all about it. He says that Tad has given him no -trouble since. Before that he'd given a good deal. I wish I could tell -you how grateful we are, especially as things are turning out, with a -war hanging over us." - -Tom saw an opportunity of speaking without sentiment. "That's what I -thought. It seemed to me a pity that good fighting stuff should be -lost just through--through too much skylarking." - -"Yes, it would have been. Tad _has_ good fighting stuff." - -There was a catch of the woman's breath. Tom recalled the staccato -nervousness of their first brief meeting in Gore Hall. He wished they -hadn't brought him there. They were strangers to him; he was a stranger -to them. Whatever link might have been between him and them in the -past, there was no link now. It would be a mistake to try to forge one. - -But in on this thought the man broke gently. - -"I wonder if you'd mind telling us all about yourself that you know? I -presume that you understand why I'm asking you." - -"Yes, sir, I do; but I don't think I can help you much." - -The woman's voice, vibrating and tragic, startled him. It was as if she -were speaking to herself, as if something were being wrung from her in -spite of her efforts to keep it back. "The likeness is extraordinary!" - -Taking no notice of this, the man began to question him, "Where were -you born?" - -"In the Bronx." - -He made a note of this answer in a little notebook. "And when?" - -"In 1897." - -"What date?" - -It was the crucial question, but since he meant to tell everything he -knew, Tom had no choice but to be exact. - -"I'm not very sure of the date, because my mother changed it at three -different times. At first my birthday used to be on the fifth of March; -but afterward she said that that had been the birthday of a little -half-sister of mine who died before I was born." - -"What was her name?" - -"Grace Coburn." - -"And her parents' names?" - -"Thomas and Lucy Coburn." - -"And after your birthday was changed from the fifth of March--?" - -"It was shifted to September, but not for very long. Later my mother -told me I was born on the tenth of May, and we always kept to that." - -From the woman there was something like a smothered cry, but the man -only took his notes. - -"The tenth of May, 1897. Did she ever tell you why she selected that -date?" - -"No, sir." - -"Did she ever say anything about it, about what kind of day it was, or -anything at all that you can remember?" - -Tom hesitated. The reflection that the wisest course was to make a -clean breast of everything impelled him to go on. - -"She only said that it was a day when all the nursemaids had had their -babies in the Park, and the lilacs were in bloom." - -There followed the question of which he was most afraid, because he -often put it to himself. - -"Why should she have said that, when, if you were born in the Bronx, -she and her baby were miles away?" - -"I don't know, sir." - -"What was your mother's maiden name?" - -"I don't know, sir." - -"She was married to Thomas Coburn before she was married to Theodore -Whitelaw, your father?" - -"Yes, sir." - -"Where were she and your father married?" - -"I don't know, sir." - -"What _do_ you know about your father?" - -"Nothing at all. I never heard his name till she gave it at the police -station, the night before she died." - -"Oh, at the police station! Why there?" - -Tom told the whole story, keeping nothing back. - -The man's only comment was to say, "And you never heard the name of -Whitelaw in connection with yourself till you heard it on that evening?" - -"Yes, sir, I'd heard it before that." - -"When and how?" - -"Always when my mother was in a--in a state of nerves. You mustn't -forget that she wasn't exactly in her right mind. That was the excuse -for what she--she did in shops. So, once in so often, she'd say that I -was never to think that my name was Whitelaw, or that she'd stolen me." - -There was again from the woman a little moaning gasp, but the man was -outwardly self-possessed. - -"So she said that?" - -"Yes, sir." - -"And have you any explanation why?" - -"I didn't have then; I've worked one out. You see, my name really -being Whitelaw, and her mind a little unbalanced, she was afraid -she might be suspected of--your little boy's case had got so much -publicity--and she a friendless woman, with no husband or relations--" - -"So that you don't think she did--steal you?" - -He answered firmly. "No, sir. I don't" - -"Why don't you?" - -"For one thing, I don't want to." - -"Oh!" - -It was the woman again. The sound was rather queer. You could not have -told whether it meant relief or indignation. - -The man's sad penetrating eyes were bent on him sympathetically. "When -you say that you don't want to, exactly what do you mean?" - -"I'm not sure that I can say. She was my mother. She was good to -me. I was fond of her. I never knew any other mother. I don't think -I could--" he looked over at the woman in the shadow, letting -his words fall with a certain significant spacing--"know--any -other--mother--now--and so--" - -Rising, she took a step toward him. He too rose so that as she stood -looking up at him he stood looking down at her. There and then her face -was imprinted on his memory, a face of suffering, but of suffering that -had not made her strong. The quivering victim of self-pity, she begged -to be allowed to forget. She had suffered to her limit. She couldn't -suffer any more. Everything in her that was raked with the harrow -protested against this bringing up again of an outlived agony. - -Her beautiful eyes, brimming with unspilled tears, gazed at him -reproachfully. As plainly as eyes could tell him anything, they told -him that now, when life and time had dug between them such a gulf, she -didn't want him as her son. She might have to accept him, since so many -things pointed that way, but it would be hard for her. Taking back a -little boy would have been one thing; taking back a grown man, none of -whose habits or traditions were the same as theirs, would be another. -She would do it if it were forced on her, but it couldn't recompense -her now for past unhappiness. It would be only a new torture, a torture -which, if he hadn't drifted in among them, she might have escaped. - -When swiftly and silently she had left the room the man put his hand on -Tom's arm. - -"Sit down again. You mustn't think that my wife doesn't feel all this. -She does. It's because she does that she's so overwrought." - -Tom sat down. "Yes, sir, of course!" - -"She's been through it so often. For a good ten years after our child -was lost boys used to be brought to us to look at every few months. And -every time it meant a draining of her vitality." - -"I understand that, sir; and I hope Mrs. Whitelaw doesn't think I've -come of my own accord." - -"No, she knows you haven't. We've asked you to come because--but I must -go back. When my wife had been through so much--so many times--and all -to no purpose--she made me promise--the doctors made me promise--that -she shouldn't be called on to face it again. Whenever she had to -interview one of these claimants--" - -"_I'm_ not a claimant," Tom put in, hastily. - -"I know you're not. That's just it. It's what makes the difference. But -whenever she had to do it--and decide whether a particular lad was or -was not her son--it nearly killed her." - -Tom made an inarticulate murmur of sympathy. - -"The worst times came after we'd turned down some boy of whom we hadn't -been quite sure. That was as hard for me as it was for her--the fear -that our little fellow had come back, and we'd sent him away. It got to -be so impossible to judge. You imagined resemblances even when there -were none, and any child who could speak could be drilled about the -facts, as we were so well known. It was hell." - -"It must have been." - -"Then there were our two other children. It wasn't easy for them. They -grew up in an atmosphere of expecting the older brother to come back. -At first it gave them a bit of excitement. But as they grew older they -resented it. You can understand that. A stranger wouldn't have been -welcome. Whenever a new clue had to be abandoned they were glad. If -the boy had been found they'd have given him an awful time. That was -another worry to my wife." - -"Yes, it would be." - -"So at last we made up our minds that he was dead. It was the only -thing to do. Self-protection required it. My wife took up her social -life again, the life she's fond of and is fitted for. Things went -better. She didn't forget, but she grew more normal. In spite of the -past there were a few things she could still enjoy. She'd begun to feel -safe; and then--in that lake in New Hampshire--I happened to see you." - -"If I were you, sir, I shouldn't let that disturb me." - -"It does disturb me. When I went back that year to our house at Old -Westbury and spoke to my wife and children about it, they all implored -me not to go into the thing again." - -"If I could implore you, too--" - -He shook his head. "It wouldn't do any good. I've come to the point -where I've got to see it through. I have all the data you've given -me--as well as some other things. If you're not--not my son--" He -rose striding to the fireplace, where he stood pensively, his back to -the smouldering fire--"if you're not my son, at least we can find out -pretty certainly whose son you are." - -Tom also rose, so that they stood face to face. "And if you can't find -out pretty certainly whose son I am--?" - -"I shall be driven to the conclusion that--" - -He didn't finish this sentence. Tom didn't press for it. During the -silence that followed it occurred to him that if there was a war the -question might be shelved. It was what, he thought, he would work for. - -The same idea might have come to the older man, for looking up out of -his reverie, he said, with no context: - -"What do you mean to be?" - -"I've always hoped, sir, to go into a bank. It's what I seem best -fitted for." - -There came into the eyes that same sudden light, like the switching on -of electricity, which Tom remembered from their meeting in the water. - -"I could help you there." - -"Oh, but it would only be in a small way, sir. I'd have to begin as -something--" - -"All the same I could help you. I want you to promise me this, that -when you're free--either after Harvard, or after the war--you'll come -to me before you do anything else. Is that a bargain?" - -To Tom it was the easiest way out. "Yes sir, if you like." - -"Then our hands on it!" - -Their right hands clasped. Once more Tom found himself held. The man's -left hand came up and rested on his shoulder. The eyes searched him, -searched him hungrily, with longing. Whether they found what they -sought or merely gave up seeking Tom could hardly tell. He was only -pushed away with a little weary gesture, while the tall man turned once -more toward the dying fire. - - - - -XLII - - -In the April of 1920, nearly eighteen months after the signing of -the Armistice, Tom Whitelaw came back to Boston, demobilized. He had -crossed a good part of Europe almost in a straight line--Brest, Paris, -Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Fère-en-Tardennois, Reims, Luxembourg, -Coblenz--and more or less in the same way had come back again. Now, if -he had been able to forget it all, he would gladly have forgotten it. -Since it couldn't be forgotten it inspired him with an aim in life. - -More exactly, perhaps, it made definite the aim he had been vaguely -conscious of already. What he felt was not new; it was only more fixed -and clear. He knew what he meant to do, even though he didn't see how -he was to do it. He might never accomplish anything; very likely he -never would; but at least he had a state of mind, and he was not going -to be in a hurry. If for the ills he saw he was to work out a cure, -or help to work out a cure, or even dream of working out a cure, he -must first diagnose the disease; and diagnosis would take a good part -of his lifetime. He was twenty-three, according to his count, but, -again according to his count he had the seriousness of forty. With the -advantage of a varied experience and an early maturity, he had also -that of age. - -His achievements in the war had given him the kind of importance -interesting to newspapers. They had begun writing him up from the -days of the action at Belleau Wood. His picture had appeared in their -Sunday editions as on the staff of General Pershing during his visit to -the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. To Tom himself the only satisfaction -in this was the possible diminishing of the distance between him and -Hildred Ansley. It would not have been the first time in history when -war had helped a lover out of his obscurity to put him on the level -of the loved one. To Hildred herself it would make no difference; but -by her father and mother, especially by her mother, a son-in-law who -had worn with some credit his country's uniform might be pardoned his -presumption. - -Public approval also brought him one other consideration that meant -much to him. The man who thought he might be his father wrote to him. -He wrote to him often. He wrote to him partly as a friend might write, -partly as a father might write to his son. Between the lines it was not -difficult to read a yearning and sense of comfort. The yearning was -plainly for assurance; just as plainly the sense of comfort lay in the -knowledge that somewhere in the world there was a heart that beat to -the measure of his own. It was as if he had written the words: "My two -acknowledged children are of no help to me; my wife is crushed by her -sorrow; you and I, even if there is no drop of common blood between us, -understand each other. Whether or not we are father and son, we could -work together as if we were." - -The letters were full of a fatherly affection strange in view of the -slight degree of their acquaintanceship. The man's heart cleared that -obstacle with a bound. Tom's heart cleared it with an equal ease. To be -needed was the call to which, with his strong infusion of the feminine, -he never failed to answer instantaneously. As readily as the banker -divined him, he divined the banker. If there was no fatherhood or -sonship in fact there was both sonship and fatherhood in essence. - -Whitelaw wrote as if he had been writing to his boy for years, with a -matter-of-course solicitude, with offers of money, with scraps of news. -He talked freely of the family, as if Tom would care to hear of them. A -few words in one of his letters showed that he knew more than Tom had -hitherto supposed. - -"If Tad and Lily have been uncivil to you it was not because of -personal dislike. In their situation some hostility toward the -outsider, as they would call him, whom they might be forced to -acknowledge as their older brother must be forgiven as not unnatural." - -During all the three years of Tom's soldiering this was the only -reference to the question that had been left suspended by the war. -Whether or not it would ever be taken up again Tom had no idea. He -hoped it would not be. For him an undetermined situation was enough. - -Though during this period Henry Whitelaw was frequently in London and -Paris they never met. When the one proposed that he should use his -influence to get the other leave, Tom thought it wiser to stay, as he -expressed it, on the job. Only once did he ask permission to run up for -forty-eight hours to Paris, and that was to see Hildred. - -She was then helping to nurse Guy, who, while working with the -Y.M.C.A., had come down with typhoid fever. Convalescent by this time, -he would sail for America in a month or two, Hildred going with him. -Tom himself being on the eve of marching into Germany, the moment was -one to be seized. - -They dined in a little restaurant near the Madeleine. With the table -between them they scanned each other's faces for the traces left by -nearly two years of separation. Except that she was tired Tom found -little change in her. Always lacking in temporary, girlish prettiness, -her distinction of line and poise was that which the years affect but -slowly, and experience enhances. He could only say of her that she was -less the young girl he had last seen in Boston, and more the woman of -the world who, having seen the things that happen as they happen most -brutally, has grown a little heartsick, and more than a little weary. - -"It's all so futile, Tom. It's such waste. It should never have been -asked of the people of the world." - -His lips had the dim disillusioned smile which had taken the place of -the radiance of even a year or two earlier. - -"What about the war to end war? What about making the world safe for -democracy?" - -She put up a hand in protest. "Oh, don't! I hate that clap-trap. The -salt which was good enough to put on birds' tails is sickening when you -see the poor creatures lying with their necks wrung. Oh, Tom, what can -we do about it if we ever get home?" - -"Do about what?" - -"About the whole thing, about this poor pitiful, pitiable human race -that's got itself into such an awful mess?" - -"The human race is a pretty big problem to handle." - -"Yes, but you don't think the bigness ought to stop us, do you?" - -"Stop us from--?" - -"From trying to keep the world from going on with its frightful policy -of destruction. Isn't there anyone to show us that you can't destroy -one without by that much destroying all; that you can't make it easier -for one without by that much making it easier for everyone? Are we -never going to be anything but fools?" - -His dim smile came and went again. "We'll talk about that when I get -home. We can't do it now. Even if we could it's no us trying to reason -with a world that's gone insane. We must let it have time to recover. I -want to hear about you." - -She threw herself back in her chair, nervously crumbling a bit of -bread. "Oh, I'm all right. Never better, as far as that goes. I've only -grown an awful coward. Now that the fighting's over I seem to be more -afraid than when it was going on. As far as pep goes I'm a rag." - -"It'll do you good to get home." - -"Oh, I want to get farther away than home. I want to get somewhere--to -a desert island perhaps--where there won't be any people--" - -"None?" - -"Oh, well, dad and mother and Guy and--" - -"And nobody else?" - -"Yes, and you. I see you want me to say it, so I might as well. I want -you there--and _then_ nobody else--not a soul--not the shadow of a -soul--except servants, of course--" - -He grew daring as he had never been before. "Perhaps before many years -we may find that island--with the servants all the time--but with your -father and mother and Guy as visitors--very frequent visitors--but--" - -"Oh, don't talk about it. It's too heavenly for a world like this." She -looked him in the eyes, despairingly. "Do you suppose it _ever_ could -come true?" - -"Stranger things have." - -"But better things haven't." - -He put down his knife and fork to gaze at her. "Hildred, do you really -feel like that?" - -"Well, don't you?" Her tone was a little indignant. "If you don't for -pity's sake tell me, so that I shan't go on giving myself away." - -"Of course, I feel that way, only it seems to me queer that you should." - -"Why queer?" - -"Because you're you, and I'm only me." - -"You can't reason in that way. You can't really reason about the thing -at all. The most freakish thing in the world is whom people'll fall in -love with." - -"It must be," he said humbly. - -"Oh, cheer up; it isn't as bad as all that. There's no disgrace in my -being in love with you. If you'll just be in love with me I'll take -care of myself." - -They laughed like children. To neither was it strange to have taken -their love for granted, since they had done it for so long. It was -as if it had grown with them, as if it had been born with them. Its -flowers had opened because it was their springtime; there was nothing -else for it to do. It was a stormy springtime, with only the rarest -bursts of sunshine; but for that very reason they must make the most of -such sunshine as there was. They had not met for two years; it might -be two years more before they met again. They could only throw their -hearts wide open. - -She talked of her work. In her mood of reaction it seemed to her now -a stupid, foolish work, not because it hadn't done good, but because -it had done good for such useless purposes. A New York woman whom -she knew, whose son had been killed fighting with the British in the -earlier part of the war, had opened a sort of club for the cheering up -of young fellows passing through Paris, or there for a short leave. - -"We bucked them up so that they'd be willing to go back again, and be -blown to bits. It was like giving the good breakfast and the cigarette -to the man going out to the electric chair. My God, what a nerve we -had, we girls! We'd laugh and dance with those poor young chaps, who a -few days later would be in their graves, if the shells left anything to -bury. We didn't think much about it then. It's only now that it comes -over me. I feel as if I'd been their executioner." - -"You're tired. You need a rest." - -"Rest won't reconcile me to belonging to a race of wild beasts. Oh, -Tom, couldn't we make a little life for ourselves away from everyone, -and from all this cheap vindictiveness? I shouldn't care how humble or -obscure it was." - -He laughed, quietly. "There are a good many hurdles to take before we -come even to the humble and obscure." - -"Hurdles? What kind of hurdles?" - -"Your father and mother for one." - -She admitted the importance of this. "But you won't find that hurdle -hard to take if you're Harry Whitelaw." - -"But if I'm not?" - -"I'm sure from what mother writes that you can be." - -"And I'm sure from what I feel that I can't." - -"Oh, but you haven't tried." She hurried on from this to give him the -gist of her mother's letters on the subject. "She and Mr. Whitelaw have -the most tremendous confabs about you, every time he comes to Boston. -The fact that he can't talk to Mrs. Whitelaw--she's all nerves the -minute you're mentioned--throws him back on mother. That flatters the -dear old lady like anything. She begins to think now she adopted you in -infancy. You were her discovery. She gave you your first leg-up. And -after all, you know, we've got to admit that during the whole of these -seven years she might have been a great deal worse." - -He agreed with her gratefully. - -"As a matter of fact," she went on, in her judicial tone, "you must -hand it to us Boston people that, while we can be the most awful snobs, -we're not such snobs that we don't know a good thing when we see it. -It's only the second-cut among us, those who don't really _belong_, -who are supercilious. Once you concede that we're as superior as we -think ourselves, we can be pretty generous. If you've got it in you to -climb up we not only won't kick you down, but we'll put out our hands -and pull you. That's Boston; that's dad and mother. When you've made -all the fun of them you like, the poor dears still have that much left -which you can't take away from them." - -Something of this Tom was to test by the time he and Hildred met again. -It was not another two years before they did that, but it was a year. -Demobilized in Washington, he traveled straight to Boston. He had made -his plans. Before seeing Hildred again he would see her father. "It's -the only straight thing to do," he told himself. After all the years -in which they had been good to him he couldn't begin again to go in -and out of their house while they were ignorant of what he hoped for. -Hildred might have told them something; he didn't know; but the details -of most importance were those which only he himself could give them. - -Having written for a very private appointment, Ansley had told him to -come to his office immediately on his arrival in Boston. He reached -that city by half-past three; he was at the office by a little after -four. - -It was a large office, covering most of a floor of an imposing office -building. On a glass door were the names of the partners, that of -Philip Ansley standing first on the list and in bigger letters than -the rest. In the anteroom an impersonal young lady reading a magazine -said, by telephone, "Mr. Whitelaw to see Mr. Ansley." - -The business of the day was over. As Tom passed through a corridor from -which most of the private offices opened he saw that they were empty. -The only one still occupied was at the most distant end, and there -he found Philip Ansley. He found also his wife. The purpose of Tom's -visit having been made clear by letter, both of Hildred's parents were -concerned in it. - -They welcomed him cordially, making the comments permissible to old -friends on his improved personal appearance. They asked for his news; -they gave their own. Guy was back at Harvard at the Law School; Hildred -was at home, somewhat at loose ends. Like most girls who had worked in -France, she found a life of leisure tedious. - -"Eating her head off," Ansley complained. "Can't settle down again." - -Mrs. Ansley was more heroic. "We accept it. It's part of what we -offered up to the Great Cause. We gave our all, and though all was not -taken from us we should not have murmured if it had been." - -Taking advantage of this turn of the talk, Tom launched into his -appeal. For the last time in his life, as he hoped, he told the story -of his mother. As he had told it to Hildred and to Henry Whitelaw so -now he gave it to Philip and Sunshine Ansley. Hating the task, he was -upheld in carrying it through by the knowledge that everyone who had a -right to know it knew it now. - -He finished with the minute at which Guy first spoke to him. From that -point onward they had been able to follow the course of his life for -themselves. They had in a measure entered into it, and helped him to -his opportunities. He thanked them; but before he could accept their -goodwill again he wanted them to know exactly what he had sprung from. -Hildred did know. She had known it for several years. It had made no -difference to her; he hoped so to make good in the future that it would -make no difference to them. - -They listened attentively, with no sign of being shocked. Now and -then, at such points as the stealing of the first little book, or the -final arrest, one or the other would murmur a "Dear me!" but sympathy -and pity were plainly their sentiments. They didn't condemn him; they -didn't even blame him. He had been an unfortunate child. There was -nothing to be thought of him but that. - -After he had finished there was a silence that seemed long. Ansley sat -at his desk, leaning back in his revolving chair. Mrs. Ansley was near -a window, where she could to some extent shield herself by looking out. -She left to her husband the duty of speaking the first word. - -"It all depends, my dear fellow, on your being accepted by Henry -Whitelaw as his son." - -There was another silence. "Is that final, sir?" - -"I'm afraid it is." - -"Is there no way by which I can be taken as myself?" - -Mrs. Ansley turned from her contemplation of the Lion and the Unicorn -on the Old State House. "No one is ever taken as himself. We all have -to be taken with the circumstances that surround us." - -Ansley enlarged on this, leaning forward and toying with a paperweight. -"My wife is quite right. Nobody in the world is just a human being pure -and simple. He's a human being plus the conditions which go to make him -up. You can't separate the conditions from the man, nor the man from -the conditions. If you're Henry Whitelaw's son, stolen and brought up -in circumstances no matter how poor and criminal, you're one person; if -you're the son of this--this woman, whom I shan't condemn any more than -I can help, you're another. You see that, don't you?" - -"Can't I be--what I've made myself?" - -"You can't make yourself anything but what you've been from the -beginning. You can correct and improve and modify; but you can't -change." - -"So that if I'm the son of--of this woman, you wouldn't want me. Is -that it?" - -"How could we?" came from Mrs. Ansley. "But I know from Mr. Whitelaw -himself that--" - -Ansley smiled, paternally. "Suppose we leave it there. After all, the -last word rests with him." - -"I don't think so, sir. It rests with me." - -This could be dismissed as of no importance. "Oh, with you, of course, -in a certain sense. They can't force you. But if they're satisfied that -you're--" - -"And if I'm not satisfied?" - -"Oh, but, my dear fellow, you wouldn't make yourself difficult on that -score." - -"It's not a question of being difficult; it's one of what I can do." - -They got no farther than that. Tom's reluctance to deny the woman he -had always regarded as his mother was not only hard for them to seize, -it was hard for him to explain. He couldn't make them see that the -creature who for them was only a common shoplifter was for him the -source of tender and sacred memories. To accuse her of a greater crime -than theft would be to desecrate the shrine which he himself had built -of love and pity; but he was unable to put it into words, as they were -unable to understand it. He himself worded it as plainly as he could -when, rising, he said: - -"So that I must renounce my mother or renounce Hildred." - -Ansley also rose. "That's not quite the way to express it. If she _was_ -your mother, there can be no question of your renouncing her. But then, -too, there can be no question of--of Hildred. I'm sure you must see." - -"And if I see, would Hildred also see?" - -Leaving her window, Mrs. Ansley, bulbous and quivering, lilted forward. -"We must leave that to your sense of honor. In a way we're in your -hands. It's within your power to make us suffer." - -"I should never do that," he assured her, hastily. "Hildred wouldn't -want me to. After all you've done for me neither she nor I--" - -"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so." Ansley held out his hand. "We -trust you both. But the situation is clear, I think. If you come back -to us as Harry Whitelaw, you'll find us eager to welcome you. If you -don't, or if you can't--" - -A wave of the hand, a shrug of the shoulders, expressing the rest, Tom -could only bow himself out. - - - - -XLIII - - -On the part of Philip and Sunshine Ansley the confidence was such that -Hildred was permitted to take a walk with Tom before his departure for -New York. - -"We're not engaged," Hildred reported as part of her mother's -conditions, "and we can't be engaged unless you're proved to be Harry -Whitelaw. Mother thinks you're going to be. So apparently the question -in the long run will be as to whether or not you want me." - -"It won't be that. I'm crazy about you, Hildred, more than any fellow -ever was before." - -"And that's the way I feel about you, Tom. I don't care a bit about the -things dad and mother think so important. You're you; you're not your -father or your mother, whoever they may have been. I shouldn't love you -any the better if you became the son of Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. It would -only make it easier." - -It was a windy afternoon in April, with the trees in new leaf. All -along the Fenway the bridal-veil made cascades of whiteness whiter than -the hawthorns. Pansies, tulips, and forget-me-nots brightened all the -foot-paths. The two tall, supple figures bent and laughed in the teeth -of the lusty wind. - -Rather it was she who laughed, since she had the confidence in life, -while he knew only life's problems. He had always known life's -problems, and though there had never been a time when he was free from -them, he never had had one to solve so difficult as this. - -"But that's where the shoe pinches," he declared, "that I'm myself, so -much more myself than many fellows are; and yet, unless I turn into -some one else, I shall lose you." - -She threw back her answer with a kind of radiant honesty. "You couldn't -lose me, Tom. I couldn't lose you. We've grown together. Nothing can -cut us asunder. One can't win out against two people who're as willing -to wait as we are." - -He was not comforted. "Oh, wait! I don't want to wait." - -"Neither do I; but we'd both rather wait than give each other up." - -"Wait--for how long?" - -"How can I tell how long? As long as we have to." - -"Till your father and mother die?" - -"Oh, gracious, no! I'm not killing the poor lambs. Till they come -round. They'll _come_ round." - -"How do you know?" - -"Because fathers and mothers always do. Once they see how sad I'll be--" - -"Oh, you're going to play that game." - -She was indignant. "I shan't play a game. I shall _be_ sad. I'm all -right now while you're here; but once you're gone--well, if dad and -mother want a martyr on their hands they'll have one. I shan't be -putting it on either. I'll not be able to help myself." - -"I'd rather they came around for some other reason than to save your -life." - -"I'm not particular about the reason so long as they come round. But -you see I'm talking as if the worse were coming to the worst. As a -matter of fact, I believe the better is coming to the best." - -"Which means that you think the Whitelaws...." - -"I know they will." - -"And that I...." - -"Oh, Tom, you'll be reasonable, won't you?" - -He was silent. Even Hildred couldn't see what his past had meant to -him. A wretched, miserable past from some points of view, at least it -was his own. It had entered into him and made him. It was as hard to -take it now as a hideous mistake as it would have been to take his -breathing or the circulation of his blood. - -The farther it drifted behind him the more content he was to have known -it. Each phase had given him something he recognized as an asset. -Honey, the Quidmores, the Tollivants, Mrs. Crewdson, the "mudda," -had all left behind them experiences which time was beginning to -consecrate. Hildred couldn't understand any more than anybody else what -it cost him to disclaim them. He often wondered whether, had he been -born the son of Henry and Eleonora Whitelaw, and never been stolen away -from them, he would have grown to be another Tad. He thought it very -likely. - -Not that Tad hadn't justified himself. He had. His record in the war -had gone far to redeem him. He had come through with sacrifice and -honor. Having fought without a scratch for a year and a half, he had, -on the very morning of the day when the Armistice was signed, received -a wound which, because of the infection in his blood, had resulted -in the loss of his right arm. This maiming, which the chance of a -few hours would have saved him, he took, according to Hildred, with -splendid pluck, though also with an inclination to be peevish. Lily, -so Tom's letters from Henry Whitelaw had long ago informed him, had -married a man named Greenshields, had had a baby, had been divorced, -and again lived at home with her parents. - -Tom pondered on the advantages they, Tad and Lily, were assumed to -have enjoyed and which he himself had been denied. Everyone, Hildred -included, took it for granted that ease and indulgence were blessings, -and that he had suffered from the loss of them. Perhaps he had; but he -hadn't suffered more than Tad and Lily on whom they had been lavished. -Tad with his maimed body, Lily with her maimed life, were not of -necessity the product of wealth and luxury; but neither did a blasted -soul or character come of necessity from poverty and hardship, or even -from an origin in crime. - -He couldn't explain this to Hildred, partly because she didn't care, -partly because he had not the words, and mostly because her assumptions -were those of her society. She would love him just the same whether -he were the son of a woman who had killed herself in jail, or that -of a banker known throughout the world; but the advantages of being -the latter were to her beyond argument. So they were to him, except -that.... - -Thus with Hildred he came to no conclusions any more than with her -parents. With her as with them it was an object to keep him from making -any statement that might seem too decisive. If they left it to Henry -Whitelaw and himself the scales could but dip in one direction. - -And yet when actually face to face with the banker, Tom doubted if the -subject was going to be raised. He had written, reminding Whitelaw -of the promise he himself had exacted, that on looking for work, Tom -should apply first of all to him. Like Ansley, the banker had made an -appointment at his office. - -The office was in the ponderous and somewhat forbidding structure which -bore the name of Meek and Brokenshire in Wall Street. The room into -which Tom was shown was shabby and unpretentious. Square, low-ceiled, -lighted by two windows looking into yards or courts, its one bit of -color lay in the green and red of a Turkey rug, threadbare in spots, -and scuffed into wrinkles. Against the walls were heavily carved walnut -bookcases, housing books of reference. A few worn leather armchairs -made a rough circle about a wide flat-topped desk, which stood in the -center of the room. On the desk were some valuable knickknacks, paper -weights, paper cutters, pen trays, and other odds and ends, evidently -gifts. A white-marble mantelpiece clumsily sculptured in the style of -1840 was adorned above by the lithographed head of the first J. Howard -Brokenshire, also of 1840, and one of the founders of the firm. - -For the first few minutes the room was empty. Tom stood timidly close -to the door through which he had come in. The banker entered from a -room adjoining. - -"Ah, here you are!" - -He crossed the floor rapidly. For a long minute Tom found himself held -as he had been held before, the man's right hand grasping his, the left -hand resting on his shoulder. There was also the same searching with -the eyes, and the same little weary push when the eyes had searched -enough. - -"Sit down." - -Tom took the armchair nearest him; the man drew up another. He drew it -close, with hungry eagerness. Tom was apologetic. - -"I must beg your pardon, sir, for asking you to see me--" - -"Oh, no, my dear boy. I should have been hurt if you hadn't. I've been -expecting you ever since I read that you'd landed. What made you go to -Boston before coming here?" - -There was confession in Tom's smile. "I had to see some one." - -"Was it Hildred Ansley?" - -Tom found himself coloring, and without an answer. - -"Oh, you needn't tell me. I didn't mean to embarrass you. The Ansleys -are very good friends of mine. Known them well for years. If it hadn't -been for them you and I might never have got together. Now give me some -account of yourself. It must be nearly two months since I last heard -from you." - -Tom gave such scraps of information as he hadn't told in letters, and -thought might be of interest. With some use of inner force he nerved -himself to ask after Mrs. Whitelaw, and "the other members of the -family," a phrase which evaded the use of names. - -The banker talked more freely than he had written. He talked as to -one with whom he could open his heart, and not as to an outsider. -Mrs. Whitelaw was stronger and calmer, less subject to the paralyzing -terrors which had beset her for so long. Tad was doing with himself -the best he could, but the best in the case of a fellow of his age and -tastes who had lost his right arm was not very good. He could ride a -little, guiding his horse with his left hand, but he couldn't drive -a car, or hunt, or play polo, or use his hand for writing. He could -hardly dress himself; he fed himself only when everything was cut -up for him. In the course of time he would probably do better, but -as yet he couldn't do much. Lily had made a mess of things. It was -worse than what he had told Tom in his letters. She had eloped with a -worthless fellow, whom he, her father, had forbidden her to know, and -who wanted nothing but her money. It was a sad affair, and had stunned -or bewildered her. He didn't like to talk of it, but Tom would see for -himself. - -He reverted to Tom's own concerns. "You wrote to me about a job." - -"Yes, sir; but I'm afraid it's bothering you too much." - -"Don't think that. I've got the job." - -The young man tried to speak, but the other hurried on. - -"I hope you'll take it, because I've been keeping it for you ever since -I saw you last." - -Tom's eyes opened wide. "Over three years?" - -"Oh, there was no hurry. Easy enough to save it. I want you to be one -of the assistants to my own confidential secretary. This will keep you -close to myself, which is where I want to have you for the first year -at least. You'll get the hang of a lot of things there, and anything -you don't understand I can explain to you. Later, if you want to go -into the study of banking more scientifically--well, I shall be able to -direct you." - -He sat dazzled, speechless. It was the -future!--Hildred!--happiness!--honor!--the big life!--the conquest of -the world! He could have them all by sitting still, by saying nothing, -by letting it be implied that he renounced his loyalties, by being -passive in the hand of this goodwill. He would be a fool, he told -himself, not to yield to it. Everyone in his senses would consider him -a fool. The father of the Whitelaw baby believed that he had found his -child. Why not let him believe it? How did he, Tom Whitelaw, know that -he wasn't his child? The woman who had told him he was never to think -so was dead and in her grave. Judged by all reasonable standards, he -owed her nothing but a training in wicked ways. He would give her up. -He would admit, tacitly anyhow, even if not in words, that she had -stolen him. He would be grateful to this man--and profit by his mistake. - -He began to speak. "I hardly know how to thank you, sir, for so much -kindness. I only hope--" He was trying to find the words in which -to express his ambition to prove worthy of this trust, but he found -himself saying something else--"I only hope that you're not doing all -this for me because you think I'm--I'm your son." - -Leaning toward him, the banker put his hand on his knee. "Suppose we -don't bring that up just yet? Suppose we just--go on? As a matter of -fact--I'm talking to you quite frankly--more frankly than I could speak -to anyone else in the world--but as a matter of fact I--I want some -one who'll--who'll be like a son to me--whether he's my son or not. I -wonder if you're old enough to understand." - -"I think I am, sir." - -"I'm rather a lonely man. I've got great cares, great responsibilities. -I can swing them all right. There are my partners, fine fellows all -of them; there are as many friends as I can ask for. But I've nobody -who comes--who comes very close to me--as a son could come. I've -thought--I've thought it for some time past--that--whoever you are--you -might do that." - -As he leaned with his hand on Tom's knee his eyes were lower than Tom's -own. Tom looked down into them. It was strange to him that this man who -held so much of the world in his grasp should be speaking to him almost -pleadingly. His memories filed by him with the speed and distinctness -of lightning. He was the little boy moving from tenement to tenement; -he was in the big shop on that Christmas Eve; he was walking with his -mother in front of the policeman; he was watching her go away with the -woman who was like a Fate; he was staring at the Christmas Tree; he was -being pelted on his first day at school; he was picking strawberries -for the Quidmores; he was sleeping in the same room with Honey; he -was acting as chauffeur at the inn-club in Dublin, New Hampshire, and -picking up this very man at Keene. And here they were together, the -instinct of the father calling to the son, while the instinct of the -son was scarcely, if at all, articulate. - -The struggle was between his future and his past. "I must be his son," -he cried to himself. But another voice cried, "And yet I can't be." -Aloud he said, modestly, "I'm not sure, sir, that I could fill the bill -for you." - -"That would be up to me. It isn't what you can do but what I'm looking -for that matters in a case like this." He stood up. "I'm sorry I must -go back to a conference inside, but I shall see you soon again. What's -your address in New York?" - -Tom gave him the name of the hotel at which he was putting up. Whitelaw -had never heard of it. - -"Can't you do better than that?" - -"Oh, it isn't bad, sir. I'm not used to luxury, and I manage very well. -I'm quite all right." - -"Is it money?" - -"Only in the sense that everything is money. I've a little saved--not -much--and I like to keep on the weather side of it. The man who did -more for me than anybody else--the ex-burglar I told you about--always -taught me to be economical." - -"All the same I don't like to have you staying in a place like that. -You must let me--" - -"Oh, no, sir! I'd a great deal rather not." He spoke in some alarm. -"I've got to be on my own. I _must_ be." - -"Oh, very well!" - -The tone was not precisely cold; it was that of a man whose good -intentions were sensitive. Tom did something which he never had -supposed he would have dared to do. He went up to this man, and laid -his hand gently on his arm. Instantly the man's free hand was laid on -the one which touched him, welcoming the caress. Tom tried to explain -himself. - -"It isn't that I'm not grateful, sir. I hope you don't think that. -But--but I'm myself, you see. I've got to stand on my own feet. I know -how to do it. I've learned. I--I hope you don't mind." - -"I want you to do whatever you think best yourself. You're the only -judge." They had separated now, and the banker held out his hand. "Oh, -and by the way," he continued, clinging to Tom's hand in the way he had -done on earlier occasions. "My wife wants to see you. She told me to -ask you if you couldn't go and lunch with her to-morrow." - -Since there was no escape Tom could only brace himself. - -"Very well, sir. It's kind of Mrs. Whitelaw. I'll go with pleasure. At -one o'clock?" - -"At one o'clock." He picked up a card from the desk. "This is our -address. You'll find Mrs. Whitelaw less--less emotional than when you -saw her last and more--more used to the idea." - -Without explaining the idea to which she was more used, the banker -released Tom's hand with his customary little push, as if he had had -enough of him, hurrying out by the door through which he had come in. - - - - -XLIV - - -Before turning into bed that night Tom had fought to a finish his -battle with himself. The victory rested, he hoped, with common sense. -He could no longer doubt that before very long an extraordinary offer -would be made to him. To repulse it would be insane. - -"As far as my personal preferences go," he wrote to Hildred, "I would -rather remain as I am. Remaining as I am would be easier. I'm free; -I've no one to consider; I know my own way of life, and can follow it -pretty surely. But I'm not adaptable. You yourself must often have -noticed that my mind works stiffly, and that I find it hard to see the -other fellow's point of view. I'm narrow, solitary, concentrated, and -self-willed. But as long as I've no one to consult I can get along. - -"To enter a family of which I know nothing of the ways or traditions -or points of view is going to be a tough job. It will be much tougher -than if I merely married into it. In that case I should be only an -adjunct to it, whereas in what may happen now I shall have to become an -integral part of it. I must be as a leg instead of as a crutch. I don't -know how I shall manage it. - -"I'm not easily intimate with anyone. Perhaps that's the reason why, -as you say, I haven't enough of the lover in me. I'm not naturally a -lover. I'm not naturally a friend. I'm a solitary. A solitude _à deux_, -with the servants, as you always like to stipulate, is my conception of -an earthly paradise. - -"To you the normal of life is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister. -To me it isn't. To have a father seems abnormal to me, or to have a -sister or a brother. If I can see myself with a mother it's because of -a poignant experience of the kind that burns itself into the memory. -But I can't see myself with _another_ mother, and that's what I've -got to do. Mind you, it isn't a stepmother I must see, nor an adopted -mother, nor a mother-in-law; it's a real mother of my own flesh and -blood. I must see a real brother, a real sister. They think that all -they have to do is to fling their doors open, and that it will be a -simple thing for me to walk in. But I must fling open something more -tightly sealed than any door ever was--my life, my affections, my point -of view. They are four, and need only make room for one. I'm only one, -and must make room for four. - -"But I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for a number of reasons -which I shall try to give you in their order. - -"First, for your sake. You want it. For me that is enough. I see your -reasons too. It will help us with your father and mother, and all our -future life. So that settles that. - -"Then, I want to conform to what those who care anything about me -would expect. I don't want to seem a fool. It's what I should seem if -I turned such an offer down. Nobody would understand my emotional and -sentimental reasons but myself; and when it comes to the emotional and -sentimental there is a pro side as well as a con to the whole situation. - -"Because if I _must_ have a father there's no one whom I could so -easily accept as a father as this very man. He seems to me like my -father; I think I seem to him like his son. More than that, he looks -like my father, and I must look like the kind of son he would naturally -have. I'm sure he likes me, and I know I like him. If I was choosing a -father he's the very one I should pick out. - -"Next, and you may be surprised to hear me say it, I could do very well -with Tad as a brother. That he couldn't do with me is another thing; -but there's something about the chap which has bewitched me from the -day I first laid eyes on him. I haven't liked him exactly; I've only -felt for him a kind of responsibility. I've tried to ignore it, to -laugh at it, to argue it down; but the thing wouldn't let me kill it. -If there's such a thing as an instinct between those of the same flesh -and blood I should say that this was it. I've no doubt that if we come -to living in one menagerie we shall be the same sort of friends as a -lion and a tiger--but there it is. - -"The women appall me. I can't express it otherwise. With the father I -could be a son as affectionate as if I'd never left the family. With -Tad I could establish--I've established already--a sort of fighting -fraternity. To neither the mother nor the daughter could I ever be -anything, so far as I can see now. They wouldn't let me. They wouldn't -want me. If they yield to the extent of admitting me into the family -they'll always bar me from their hearts. The limit of my hope is -that, since I generally get along with those I have to live with, the -hostility won't be too obvious. I also have the prospect that when you -and I are married--and that's my motive in the whole business--I shall -get a measure of release." - -He purchased next morning a pair of gloves and an inexpensive walking -stick so as to look as nearly as might be like the smart young men -he saw on the pavements of Fifth Avenue. It was not his object to be -smart; it was to be up to the standard of the house at which he was to -lunch. - -To reach that house he went on the top of a bus like the one on -which he had ridden with Honey nearly ten years earlier. He did this -with intention, to make the commemoration. Honey's suspicions and -predictions had then seemed absurd; and here they were on the eve of -being verified. - -He got off at the corner at which, as he remembered, Honey and he had -got off on that August Sunday afternoon. He crossed the road to see -if he could recognize the home of the Whitelaw baby as it had been -pointed out to him. Recognition came easily enough because in the whole -line of buildings it was the only one which stood detached, with a bit -of lawn on all sides of it. A spacious brownstone house, it had the -cheery, homey aspect which comes from generous proportions, and masses -of spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, banked in the -bow-windows. - -Being a little ahead of his time, he walked up the street, trying -to compose himself and recapture his nerve. The story, first told -to him by Honey, and repeated in scraps by many others, returned to -him. Too far away to be noticed by anyone who chanced to be looking -out, he stood and gazed back at the house. If he was really Harry -Whitelaw he had been born there. The last time he had come forth from -it he had been carried down those steps by two footmen. He had been -wheeled across the street and into the Park by a nurse in uniform. -Within the glades of the Park a change had somehow been wrought in his -destiny, after which there was a blank. He emerged from that blank into -consciousness sitting on a high chair in a kitchen, beating on the -table with a spoon, and asking the question: "Mudda, id my name Gracie, -or id it Tom?" The memory was both vague and vivid. It was vague -because it came out from nowhere and vanished into nowhere. It was -vivid because it linked up with that bewilderment as to his identity -which haunted his early childhood. The discovery that he was a little -boy forced on a woman craving for a little girl was the one with which -he first became aware of himself as a living entity. - -To his present renunciation of that woman he tried to shut his mind. -There was no help for it. He had long kept a veil before this sad holy -of holies; he would simply hang it up again. He would nail it up, he -would never loosen it, and still less go behind it. What was there -would now forever be hidden from any sight, even from his own. - -At a minute before one he recrossed the avenue, and went down the -little slope. In the rôle of Harry Whitelaw which he was trying -to assume going up the steps was significant. The long, devious, -apparently senseless odyssey had brought him back again. It was only to -himself that the odyssey seemed straight and with a purpose. - -The middle-aged man who opened the door raised his eyebrows and opened -his eyes wide in a flash of perturbation. It was only for an instant; -in the half of a second he was once more the proper stiffened image -of decorum. And yet as he took from the visitor the hat, stick, and -gloves, Tom could see that the eyes were scanning his face furtively. - -It was a big dim hall, impressive with a few bits of ancient massive -furniture, and a stairway in an alcove, partially hidden by a screen -which might have been torn from some French cathedral. Tom, who -had risen to the modest standard of the Ansleys, again felt his -insufficiency. - -Following the butler, he went down the length of the hall toward a door -on the right. But a door on the left opened stealthily, and stealthily -a little figure darted forth. - -"So you've come! I knew you would! I knew I shouldn't go down to my -grave without seeing you back in the home from which twenty-three years -ago you were carried out. I've said so to Dadd times without number, -haven't I, Dadd?" - -"You have indeed, Miss Nash," Dadd corroborated, "and none of us didn't -believe you." - -"Dadd was the second footman," Miss Nash explained further. "He was one -of the two who lifted you down that morning. Now he's the butler; but -he's never had my faith." - -She glided away again. Dadd threw open a door. Tom found himself in a -large sunny room, of which the bow-window was filled with flowers. - -There was no one there, which was so far a relief. It gave him time to -collect himself. Except for apartments in museums, or in some château -he had visited in France, he had never been in a room so stately or so -full of costly beauty. He knew the beauty was costly in spite of his -lack of experience. - -On the wall opposite the bow-window stretched a blue-green Flemish -tapestry, with sad-eyed, elongated figures crowding on one another -within an intricate frame of flowers, foliage, and fruits. A -white-marble mantelpiece, bearing in shallow relief three garlanded -groups of dancing Cupids, supported a clock and a pair of candelabra in -_biscuit de Sèvres_ mounted in ormolu. Above this hung a full-length -eighteenth-century lady--Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough--he was only -guessing--looking graciously down on a cabinet of European porcelains, -on another of miniatures, and another of old fans. Bronzes were -scattered here and there, with bits of iridescent Spanish luster, and -two or three plaques of Limoges enamel intense in color. Since there -was room for everything, the profusion was without excess, and not too -carefully thought out. A work-basket filled with sewing materials and -knitting stood on a table strewn with recent magazines and books. - -He was so long alone that he was growing nervous when Lily dropped into -the room as if she had happened there accidentally. She sauntered up to -him, however, offering her hand with a long, serpentine lifting of the -arm, casual and negligent. - -"How-d'ye-do? Mamma's late. I don't know whether she's in the house or -not. Perhaps she's forgotten. She often does." She picked up a silver -box of cigarettes. "Have one?" - -On his declining she lighted one for herself, dropping into a big -upright chair and crossing her legs. It was the year when young ladies -liked to display their ankles and calves nearly up to the knee. Lily, -whose skirt was of unrelieved black, wore violet silk stockings, -with black slippers which had bright red buckles set in paste. Over -her shoulders a violet scarf, with bright red bars, hung loosely. In -sitting, her sinuous figure drooped a little forward, the elbow of the -hand which held the cigarette supported on her knee. - -Though she hadn't asked him to sit down, he took a chair of his own -accord, waiting for her to speak again. When she did so, after an -interval of puffing out tiny rings of blue smoke, her voice was languid -and monotonous, and yet with overtones of passionate self-will. - -"You've been in the army, haven't you?" - -He said he had been. - -"Did you like it?" - -"I never had time to think as to whether I did or not. I just had to -stick it out." - -"Did you ever see Tad over there?" - -"No, I never did." - -As she was laconic he too would be laconic. She didn't look at him, or -show an interest in his personality. If she thought him the brother -who after long disappearance was coming home again she betrayed no hint -of the possibility. He might have been a chance stranger whom she would -never see again. Lapses of silence did not embarrass her. She sat and -smoked. - -He decided to assume the right to ask questions on his own side. -"You've been married since I saw you last, haven't you?" - -"Yes." She didn't resent this, apparently, and after a long two minutes -of silence, added: "and divorced." There was still a noticeable passage -of time before she continued, in her toneless voice: "I've a baby too." - -"Do you like him?" - -A flicker of a smile passed over a profile heavy-browed, handsome, -and disdainful. "He's an ugly little monster so far." She had a way -of stringing out her sentences as after-thoughts. "I daresay he's all -right." - -There followed a pause so long and deep that in it you could hear -the ticking of the clock. He was determined to be as apathetic as -herself. She had no air of thinking. She scarcely so much as moved. -Her stillness suggested the torrid, brooding calm before volcanic or -seismic convulsion. Without a turning of the head or a change in her -languid intonation, she said, casually: - -"You're our lost brother, aren't you?" - -The emotion from which she was so free almost strangled him. He could -barely breathe the words, "Would you care if I were?" - -"What would be the use of my caring if papa was satisfied?" - -"Still, I should think, that one way or the other, you might care." - -To this challenge she made no response. She was not hostile in -any active sense; he was sure of that. She impressed him rather -as exhausted after terrific scenes of passion, waywardness, and -disillusion. A little rest, and she would be ready for the same again, -with himself perhaps to take the consequence. - -Mrs. Whitelaw came in with the rapid step and breathless, syncopated -utterance he remembered. - -"So sorry to be late. I'd been for a long drive. I wanted to think. I -had no idea what time it was. I suppose you must be hungry." - -She gave him her hand without looking him in the face, helped over the -effort of the meeting by the phrases of excuse. - -"So this is my mother!" - -It was his single thought. In the attempt to realize the fact he had -ceased to be troubled or embarrassed. He could only look. He could only -wonder if he would ever be able to make himself believe that which he -did not believe. He repeated to himself what he had already written to -Hildred: he could believe the man to be his father; but that this woman -was his mother he rejected as an impossibility. - -Not that there was anything about her displeasing or unsympathetic. -On the contrary, she had been beautiful, and still had a lovely -distinction. Features that must always have been soft and appealing had -gained by the pathos of her tragedy, while a skin that could never -have been anything but delicate and exquisite was kept exquisite and -delicate by massage and cosmetics. Veils protected it from the sun and -air; gauntlets, easy to pull on and off, preserved the tenderness of -hands wearing many jeweled rings, but a little too dimpling and pudgy. -The eyes, limpid, large, and gray with the lucent gray of moonstones, -had lids of the texture of white rose petals just beginning to shrivel -up and show little _bistré_ stains. The lashes were long, dark, and -curling like those of a young girl. Tom couldn't see the color of her -hair because she wore a motoring hat, with a sweeping brown veil draped -over it and hanging down the back. Heather-brown, with a purplish -mixture, was the Harris tweed of her coat and skirt. The blouse of -a silky stuff, was brown, with blue and rose lights in it when she -moved. A row of great pearls went round her neck, while the rest of the -string, which was probably long, disappeared within the corsage. - -Dadd appeared on the threshold, announcing lunch. - -"Come on," Mrs. Whitelaw commanded, and Lily rose listlessly. "Is Tad -to be at home?" - -Lily dragged her frail person in the wake of her mother. "I don't know -anything about him." - -Tom followed Lily, since it seemed the only thing to do, crossing the -hall and passing through the door by which Miss Nash had darted out to -speak to him. - -The dining room, on the north side of the house, was vast, sunless, and -somber. Tom was vaguely aware of the gleam of rich pieces of silver, of -the carving of high-backed chairs as majestic as thrones. One of these -thrones Dadd drew out for Mrs. Whitelaw; a footman drew out a second -for Lily; another footman a third for himself. - -"Sit there, will you?" Mrs. Whitelaw said, in her offhand, breathless -way, as if speaking caused her pain. "This room is chilly." - -She pulled her coat about her, though the room had the temperature -suited to the great plant of Cattleya, on which there might have been -thirty blooms, which stood in the center of the table. With rapid, -nervous movements she picked up a spoon and tasted the grapefruit -before her. A taste, and she pushed it away, nervously, rapidly. -Nervously, rapidly, she glanced at Tom, glancing off somewhere else as -if the sight of him hurt her eyes. - -"How long have you been back?" - -He gave her the dates and places connected with his recent movements. - -"Did you like it over there?" - -He made the reply he had given to Lily. - -"Were you ever wounded?" - -He said he had once received a bad cut on the shoulder which had kept -him a month in hospital, but otherwise he had not suffered. - -"Tad's lost his right arm. Did you know that?" - -He had first got this news from Guy Ansley. He was very sorry. At the -same time, when others had been so horribly mangled, it was something -to escape with only the loss of a right arm. - -She gave him another of her hurried, unwilling glances. "How did you -come to know the Ansleys so well?" - -He told the story of his early meetings with the fat boy on the -sidewalk of Louisburg Square. - -"Wasn't it awful living with that burglar?" - -Tom smiled. "No. It seemed natural enough. He was a very kind burglar. -I owe him everything." - -To Tom's big appetite the lunch was frugal, but it was ceremonious. He -was oppressed by it. That three strong men should be needed to bring -them the little they had to eat and drink struck him as ridiculous. And -this was his father's house. This was what he should come to take as -a matter of course. He would get up every morning to eat a breakfast -served with this magnificence. He would sit every day on one of these -thrones, like an apostle in the Apocalypse. He thought of breakfasts in -the tenements, at the Tollivants', at the Quidmores', or with Honey in -the grimy eating-places where they took their meals, and knew for the -first time in many years a pang something like that of homesickness. - -It was not altogether the ceremony against which he was rebellious. It -had elements of beauty which couldn't be decried. What he felt was the -old ache on behalf of the millions of people who had to go without, in -order that the few might possess so much. It was the world's big wrong, -and he didn't know what caused it. His economic studies, taken with a -view to helping him in the banking profession, had convinced him that -nobody knew what caused it, and that the cures proposed were worse than -the disease. Without thinking much of it actively, it was always in -the back of his mind that he must work to eliminate this fundamental -ill. Sitting and eating commonplace food in this useless solemn -stateliness, the conviction forced itself home. Somewhere and somehow -the world must find a means between too much and too little, or mankind -would be driven to commit suicide. - -During the meal, which was brief, Lily scarcely spoke. As they -recrossed the hall to go back to the big sunny room, she sloped away -to some other part of the house. Tom and his mother sat down together, -embarrassed if not distressed. - -Pointing to the box of cigarettes, she said, tersely, "Smoke, if you -like." - -In the hope of feeling more at ease he smoked. Still wearing her hat -and coat, she drew her chair close to the fire, which had been lighted -while they were at lunch, holding her hands to the blaze. - -"Do you think you're our son?" - -The question was shot out in the toneless voice common to Lily and -herself, except that with the mother there was the staccato catch of -breathlessness between the words. - -Tom was on his guard. "Do you?" - -Turning slightly she glanced at him, quickly glancing away. "You look -as if you were." - -"But looks can be an accident." - -"Then there's the name." - -"That doesn't prove anything." - -"And my husband knows a lot of other things. He'll tell you himself -what they are." - -He repeated the question he had put to Lily, "Would you care if I were -your son?" - -Making no immediate response, she evaded the question when she spoke. -"If you were, you'd have to make your home here." - -"Couldn't I be your son--and make my home somewhere else?" - -"I don't see how that would help." - -"It might help me." - -The large gray eyes stole round toward him. "Do you mean that you -wouldn't want to live with us?" - -"I mean that I'm not used to your way of living." - -"Oh, well!" She dismissed this, continuing to spread her jeweled -fingers to the blaze. "You said once--a long time ago--when I saw you -in Boston--that you couldn't get accustomed to another--to another -mother--now--or something like that. Do you remember?" - -He said he remembered, but he said no more. - -"Well, what about it?" - -Since it was precisely to another mother that he was now making up his -mind, he found the question difficult. "It was three years ago that I -said that. Things change." - -"What's changed?" - -"Perhaps not things so much as people. I've changed myself." - -"Changed toward us--toward me?" - -"I've changed toward the whole question--chiefly because Mr. Whitelaw's -been so kind to me." - -"I don't suppose his kindness makes any difference in the facts. If -you're our son you're our son whether he's kind to you or not." - -"His kindness may not make any difference in the facts, but it does -make a difference in my attitude." - -"Mine can't be influenced so easily." - -Though he wondered what she meant by that he decided to find out -indirectly. "No, I suppose not. After all, you're the one to whom it's -all more vital than to anybody else." - -"Because I'm the mother? I don't see that. They talk about -mother-instinct as if it was so sure; but--" She swung round on him -with sudden, unexpected flame--"but if they'd been put to as many tests -as I've been they'd find out. Why, almost any child can seem as if he -might have been the baby you haven't seen for a few years. You forget. -You lose the power either to recognize or to be sure that you don't -recognize. If anyone tries hard enough to persuade you...." - -"Has anyone tried to persuade you--about me?" - -He began to see from whence Tad and Lily had drawn the stormy elements -in their natures. "Not in so many words perhaps; but when some one very -close to you is convinced...." - -"And you yourself not convinced...." - -She rose to her feet tragically. "How _can_ I be convinced? What is -there to convince me? Resemblances--a name--a few records--a few -guesses--a few hopes--but I don't _know_. Who can prove a case of this -kind--after nearly twenty-three years?" - -In his eagerness to reassure her he stepped near to where she stood. -"I hope you understand that I'm not trying to prove anything. I never -began this." - -"I know you didn't. I feel as if a false position would be as hard on -you as it would be on ourselves." - -"Then you think the position would be a false one?" - -"I'm not saying so. I'm only trying to make you see how impossible it -is for me to say I'm sure you're my boy--_when I don't know_. I'm not a -cold-hearted woman. I'm only a tired and frightened one." - -"Would it be of any help if I were to withdraw?" - -"It wouldn't be of help to my husband." - -"Oh, I see! We must consider him." - -"I don't see that you need consider anyone but yourself. We've dragged -you into this. You've a right to do exactly as you please." - -"Oh, if I were to do that...." - -"What I don't want you to do is to misjudge me. Not that it would -matter whether you misjudged me or not, unless--later--we were -compelled to see ourselves as--as son and mother." - -"I shouldn't like to have either of us do that--under compulsion." - -Restlessly, rapidly, she began to move about, touching now this object -and now that. Her hands were as active as if they had an independent -life. They were more expressive than her tone when they tossed -themselves wildly apart, as she cried: - -"What else could it be for me--but compulsion?" He was about to speak, -but she stopped him. "Do me justice. Put yourself in my place. My boy -would now be twenty-four. They bring me a man who looks like thirty. -Yes, yes; I daresay you're not thirty, but you look like it. It's just -as hard for me as if you _were_ thirty. I'm only forty-four myself. -They want me to think that this man--so big--so grave--so _old_--is my -little boy. How _can_ I? He may be. I don't deny that. But for me to -_think_ it ...!" - -He watched her as she moved from table to table, from chair to chair, -her eyes on him reproachfully, her hands like things in agony. - -"It's as hard for me to think it as it is for you." - -The words arrested her. Her frenzied motions ceased. Only her eyes kept -themselves on him, with their sorrowful, fixed stare. - -"What do you mean by that?" - -He tried to explain. "My only conception of a mother is of some one -poor--and hard-worked--and knocked about--and loving--and driven -from pillar to post--whereas you're so beautiful--and young--young -almost--and--and expensive--and--" A flip of his hand included the -room--"with all this as your setting--and everything else--I can't -credit it." - -She came up to him excitedly. "Well, then--what?" - -"The only thing we can do, it seems to me, is to try to make it easier -for each other. May I ask one question?" - -She nodded, mutely. - -"Would you rather that your little boy was found?--or that he wasn't -found?" - -She wheeled away, speaking only after a minute's thought, and from the -other side of the room. "I'd rather that he was found--of course--if I -could be sure that he _was_ found." - -"How would you know when you were sure?" - -She tapped her heart. "I ought to know it here." - -"That's the way I'd know it too." - -"And you don't?" - -In a long silence he looked at her. She looked at him. Each strove -after the mystery which warps the child to the mother, the mother to -the child. Where was it? What was it? How could you tell it when you -saw it? And if you saw it, could you miss it and pass it by? He sought -it in her eyes; she sought it in his. They sought it by all the avenues -of intuitive, spiritual sight. - -She tapped her heart again. Her utterance was imperious, insistent, and -yet soft. - -"And you _don't_--feel it there?" - -He too spoke softly. "No, I don't." - -In reluctant dismissal he turned away from her. With her quick little -gasp of a sob she turned away from him. - - - - -XLV - - -To Tom Whitelaw this was the conclusion of the whole matter. A son must -have a mother as well as a father. If there was no mother there was no -son. The inference brought him a relief in which there were two strains -of regret. - -He would be farther away from Hildred. They would have more trials to -meet, more bridges to cross. Very well! He was not accustomed to having -things made easy. For whatever he possessed, which was not much, he had -longed and worked and worked and longed till he got it. But he got it -in the end. In the end he would get Hildred. Better win her so than to -have her drop as a present in his arms. If not wholly content, he was -sure. - -In the matter of his second regret he was only sorry. It began to grow -clear to him that a father needs a son more than a son needs a father. -Of this kind of need he himself knew nothing. He was what he was, -detached, independent, assured. He never asked for sympathy, and if he -craved for love, he had learned to stifle the craving, or direct it -into the one narrow channel which flowed toward Hildred. The paternal -and filial instinct, having had no function in his life, seemed to have -shriveled up. - -But the instinct of response to the slightest movement of goodwill, to -the faintest plea for help, was active with daily use. It leaped forth -eagerly; if it couldn't leap forth something within him fretted and -cried like a hound when the scent leads to earth. As Paul the Apostle, -he could be all things to all men, if by any means he might help some. -If Henry Whitelaw needed a son, he could be a son to him. The tie of -blood was in no small measure a matter of indifference. His impulse was -like Honey's "next o' kin." He remembered, as he had learned in school, -that kin and kind were words with a common origin. Whitelaw's truest -kinship with himself was in his kindness. His kinship with Whitelaw -could as truly be in his devotion. Devotion was what he could offer -most spontaneously. - -If only that could satisfy the father yearning for his son! It could -do it up to a point, since the banker identified kindness and kinship -much as he did himself. But beyond that point there was the cry of the -middle-aged man for some one who was part of himself on whom he could -lean now that his strength was beginning to decline. That his two -acknowledged children were nothing but a care sent him groping all the -more eagerly for the son who might be a support to him. The son who was -not a son might be better than no one, as he himself confessed; and yet -nothing on earth could satisfy his empty soul but his own _son_. Not to -be that son made Tom sorry; but without a mother, how could he be? - -Otherwise, to remain as what life had made him was unalloyed relief. -He was himself. In his own phrase, he was more himself than most men. -But to enter the Whitelaw family, _and belong to it_, would turn him -into some one else. He might have a right there; an accident such as -happens every day might easily make him the head of it; and yet he -would have to put forth affections and develop points of view which -could only come from a man with another kind of past. To be the son of -that mother, and the brother of that sister, sorry for them as he was, -would mean the kind of metamorphosis, the change in the whole nature, -of which he had read in ancient mythology. He would make the attempt if -he was called to it; but he shrank from the call. - -Nevertheless, he took up his job as assistant to the great man's -confidential secretary. This was a Mr. Phips whom Tom didn't like, but -with whom he got on easily. He easily got on with him because Mr. Phips -himself made a point of it. - -A rubicund, smiling man, he had to be seen twice before you gave him -credit for his unctuous ability. There was in him that mingling of -honesty and craft which go to make the henchman, and sometimes the -ecclesiastic. While he couldn't originate anything, he could be an -instrument accurate and sharp. Always ready to act boldly, it was with -a boldness of which some one else must assume the responsibility. He -could be the power behind the throne, but never the power sitting on it -publicly. With an almost telepathic gift for reading Whitelaw's mind, -he could carry out its wishes before they were expressed. From sheer -induction he could, in a secondary way, direct affairs from which he -never took a penny of the profits over and above his salary. - -Again like the ecclesiastic and the henchman, he had neither will -nor conscience beyond the cause he served. A born factotum, with no -office but to carry out, he accepted Tom without questioning. Without -questioning he set him to those duties which, as a beginner, would be -within his grasp. He didn't need to be told that when a message or a -document was to be sent to the most private of all offices, it should -be through the person of this particular young man. Without having -invented for Tom the soubriquet of the Whitelaw Baby, he didn't frown -at it on hearing it pass round the office, as it did within a few days. - -Tom found Whitelaw welcoming, considerate, but at first a little -distant. He might have been conscious of the anomalies in the -situation; he might have been anxious not to rush things; he might even -have been shy. Except to ask him, toward the end of each day, how he -was getting along, he didn't speak to him alone. - -Then, on the fourth morning, Whitelaw sent for him. As Tom entered he -was standing up, a packet in his hand. - -"I want you to take a taxi and go up to my house. Ask for my wife, and -give her this." He made the nature of the errand clearer. "It's the -anniversary of our wedding. She thinks I've forgotten it. I've only -been waiting to send this--by you." - -The significance of the mission came to Tom while he was on the way. -The thing in the packet, probably a jewel, was the token of a marriage -of which he was the eldest born. It was to mark his position in the -husband's mind that he was made the bearer of the gift. He had no -opinion as to this, except that in the appeal to the wife there was an -element of futility. - -In the big dim hall he met the second born. To answer the door Dadd had -left the task of helping the one-armed fellow into his spring overcoat. -As Tom came in the poor left arm was struggling with the garment -viciously. Tad broke into a greeting vigorous, but non-committal. - -"Hello, by Gad!" - -Tom went straight to his business. "Your father has sent me with a -message to Mrs. Whitelaw. I understand she's at home." - -"So you've got here! I knew you'd work it some day." - -"You were very perspicacious." - -"I was. And there's another thing I'll tell you. You've got round the -old man. Well, I'm not going to stand for it. See?" - -"I see; but it's got nothing to do with me. Your father's given me a -job. If you don't want him to do it you ought to tackle him." - -Whatever war had done for Tad it had not ennobled him. The face was old -and seamed and stained with a dark red flush. It was scowling too, with -the helpless scowl of impotence. Tom was sorrier for him than he had -ever been before. - -Having taken his hat and stick, Tad strode off, turning only on the -doorstep. "But there's one thing I'll say right now. If you've got a -job at Meek and Brokenshire's I'll damn well have a better one. I'm -going to keep my eye on you." - -Tom laughed, good-naturedly. "That's the very best thing you could do. -Nothing would please your father half so well. You'd buck him up, and -at the same time get your knife into me." - -As the door closed behind Tad Miss Nash came forward from somewhere in -the obscurity. She was in that tremulous ecstasy which the mere sight -of Tom always roused in her. She was so very sorry, but Mrs. Whitelaw -wasn't able to receive him. If Tom would leave his package with her she -would see that it was delivered. - -On the next afternoon as Tom was leaving the office Whitelaw offered -him a lift uptown. In the seclusion of the limousine the father spoke -of Tad. - -"He's a great care to me, but somehow I feel that you might do him -good." - -"He wouldn't let me. I can't get near him, except by force." - -"But force is what he respects. In the bottom of his heart he respects -you." - -"What he needs is a job--the smallest job you could offer him in the -bank. If you could put it to him as a sporting proposition that he was -to get ahead of me...." - -"That's what I'll try to do." - -In the course of a few days the lift uptown had become a custom. -Though he had never received instructions to that effect, Mr. Phips so -shaped Tom's duties that he found himself leaving the office at the -same moment as the banker. Once or twice when things did not so happen -Whitelaw came into the room where Tom was at work to look for him. If -no one else saw it Mr. Phips did, that the lift uptown was the big -minute of the banker's day. - -"I've got a son," the secretary pondered to himself, "but I'll be -hanged if I feel about him like that. I suppose it's because I never -lost him." - -"Tad's applied to me for a job," the father informed Tom in the -limousine one day. "The next thing will be to make him stick to it." - -"I believe I could manage that, once we get him there," Tom said -confidently. "I can't always make him drink, but I can hold his head to -the water. I did that at college more than once." - -"I know you did. I can't tell you...." - -A tremor of the voice cut short this sentence, but Tom knew what would -have been said: "I can't tell you what it means to me now to have some -one to fall back upon. The children have given me a good deal of worry -which their mother couldn't share because of her unhappiness. But -now--I've got you." Tom was glad, however, that it had not been put -into words. - - - - -XLVI - - -They came into May, the joyous, exciting, stimulating May of New York, -with its laughing promise of adventure. To Tom Whitelaw that sense of -adventure was in the happy sunlight, in the blue sky, in the scudding -clouds, in winds that were warm and yet with the tang of salt and ice -in them, in the flowers in the Park, in the gay dresses in the Avenue, -in the tall young men already beginning to look summery, in the shop -windows with their flowers, fruit, jewels, porcelains, and brocades, -in the opulent crush of vehicles, and in his own heart most of all. -Never before had he known such ecstasy of life. It was more than vigor -of limb or the strong coursing of the blood. It was youth and love and -expectation, with their call to the daring, the reckless, and the new. - -They reached a Saturday. Business was taking Whitelaw to Boston. Tom -went with him to the station, to carry his brief-case, to hand him his -ticket, to check his bags, and perform the other small services of a -clerk for the man of importance. - -"I shall come back on Wednesday," the banker explained to him, before -entering the train. "On Thursday I shall not be at the office. It's a -day on which I never leave my wife. Though I often have to go abroad -and leave her behind, I always manage it so that we may have that -particular day together. I shall see you then on Friday." - -He saw him, however, on Thursday, since Mr. Phips willed it so. At -least, it was Mr. Phips who willed it, as far as Tom ever knew. About -three on that day he came to Tom with a brief-case stuffed with -documents. - -"The Chief may want to run his eyes over these before he comes to the -office to-morrow. Ask for himself. Don't leave them with anybody else." - -To the best of Tom's belief there was no staging of what happened next -beyond that which was set by Phips's intuitions. - -By the time he rang at the house in Fifth Avenue it was a little after -four. Admitted to the big dim hall, he heard a hum of voices coming -from the sitting room. In Dadd's manner there was some constraint. - -"Will you step in here, sir, and I'll tell the master that you've come?" - -The library was on the same side of the house as the dining room, -but it got the afternoon sun. The sun woke its colors to a burnished -softness in which red and blue and green and gold melted into each -other lovingly. A still, well-ordered room, little used by anyone, it -gave the impression of a place of rest for ancient beauty and high -thought. Rich and reposeful, there was nothing in it that was not a -masterpiece, but a masterpiece which there was no one but some chance -visitor to care anything about. In the four who made up the Whitelaw -family there were too many aching human cares for knowledge or art to -comfort. - -Tom's eyes studied absently the profile of a woman on an easel. She -might have been a Botticelli; he didn't know. She only reminded him -of Hildred--neatly piled dark hair, long slanting eyes, a small snub -nose, and lips deliciously _moqueur_. The colors she wore were also -Hildred's, subdued and yet ardent, umber round the shoulders, with a -chain of emeralds that almost sparkled in the westering light. - -Whitelaw entered with his quick and eager tread, his quick and eager -seizing of the young man's hand. Again the left hand rested on his -shoulder; again there was the deep and earnest searching of the eyes, -as if a lost secret had not yet been found; again there was the little -weary push. - -"Come." - -Taking the brief-case into his own hands, he left Tom nothing to do but -follow him. Diagonally crossing the hall, Tom noticed that the hum of -voices had died down. Without knowing why he nerved himself for a test. - -The test came at once. Whitelaw, having preceded him into the room, -had carried his brief-case to a table, and at once went to work on -the contents. Perhaps he did this purposely, to throw Tom on his own -resources. In any case, it was on his own resources that he felt -himself thrown the instant he appeared on the threshold. He judged -from the face of anguish and protest which Mrs. Whitelaw turned on him -that he was not expected. Dimly he perceived that Tad and Lily were in -the room, and some one else whom as yet he hadn't time to see. All his -powers were focused on the meeting of the woman who was not his mother, -and didn't want him there. - -He thought quickly. He would be on the safest side. He had come there -as a clerk; as a clerk shown in among the family he would conduct -himself. He bowed to Mrs. Whitelaw, who let him take her hand, though -that too seemed to suffer at his touch; he bowed to Lily; he nodded -respectfully to Tad. He turned to salute distantly the other person in -the room, and found her coming towards him. - -He knew her free swinging motion before he had time to see her face. - -"Oh, Tom!" - -"Why, Hildred!" - -Her manner was the protecting one he had often seen in other years, -when she thought he might be hurt, or be ignorant of small usages. She -was subtle, tactful, and ready, all at once. - -"Come over here." She drew him to a seat on a sofa, beside herself. -"Mrs. Whitelaw won't mind, will you, Mrs. Whitelaw? You know, Tom and I -are the greatest friends--have been for years." - -He forgot everyone else who was present in the joy and surprise of -seeing her. "When did you come? Why didn't you let me know?" - -"I didn't know myself till late last night, did I, Mrs. Whitelaw? Mrs. -Whitelaw only wired to invite me after Mr. Whitelaw came back from -Boston. Of course I wasn't going to miss a chance like that. I don't -see New York oftener than once in two years or so. Then there was the -chance of seeing you. I was ready in an hour. I took the ten o'clock -train this morning, and have just this minute arrived." - -Only when these first few bits of information had been given and -received did Tom feel the return of his embarrassment. He was in a -room where three of the five others were troubled by his presence. He -wasn't there of his own free will, and since he was a clerk he couldn't -leave till he was dismissed. He would not have known what to do if -Hildred hadn't kept a small conversation going, drawing into it first -one and then another, till presently all were discussing the weather or -something of equal importance. In spite of her emotion Mrs. Whitelaw -did her best to sustain her rôle of hostess, Tad and Lily speaking only -when they were spoken to. At a given minute Tad got up, sauntering -toward the door. - -He was stopped by his father. "Don't go, Tad. Tea will be here in a -minute." The voice grew pleading. "Stay with us to-day." - -Lighting a cigarette, Tad sank back into his chair, doing it rather -sulkily. Whitelaw continued to draw papers from the brief-case, -arranging them before him on the table. - -When Dadd appeared with the tea-tray Tom made a push for escape. "If -you've nothing else for me to do, sir...." - -Whitelaw merely glanced up at him. "Wait a minute. Sit down again." - -Tom went back to his seat beside Hildred, where he watched Mrs. -Whitelaw as she poured the tea. It was the first time he had seen her -in indoor dress, all lace and soft lavender, her pearls twisted once -around her neck and descending to her waist, a great jewel on her -breast. It was the first time, too, that he had seen her hair, which -was fair and crinkly, like his own. Except for a slight portliness, she -was too young to seem like the mother of Lily and Tad, while she was -still less like his. That she should be his mother, this woman who had -never known anything but what love and money could enrich her with, was -too incongruous with everything else in life to call for so much as -denial. - -And as for the hundredth time he was saying this to himself Whitelaw -spoke. He spoke without looking up from his papers except to take a sip -of tea from the cup on the table beside him. He spoke casually, too, as -if broaching something not of much importance. - -"Now that we're all here I think that perhaps it's as good a time as -any to go over the matter we've talked about separately--and settle it." - -There was no one in the room who didn't know what he meant. Tad smoked -listlessly; Lily set down her cup and lighted a cigarette; Mrs. -Whitelaw's jeweled fingers played among the tea-things, as if she must -find something for her hands to do or shriek aloud. Tom's heart seemed -turned to stone, to have no power of emotion. Hildred was the only one -who said anything. - -"Hadn't I better go, Mr. Whitelaw? I haven't been up to my room yet." - -"No, Hildred. I'd rather that you stayed, if you don't mind. It's the -reason we've asked you to come." - -He looked at no one. His face was a little white, though he was master -of himself. - -"This is the tenth of May. It's twenty-three years ago to-day since -we lost our little boy. I want to ask the family, now that we're all -together, what they think of the chances of our having found him again." - -Though he knew it was an anniversary in the family, it was Tom's first -recollection of the date. In as far as it was his birthday, birthdays -had been meaningless to him, except as he remembered that they had come -and gone, and made him a year older. - -"Personally," Whitelaw went on, "I've fought this off so long that I -can't do it any longer. It will be five years this summer since I first -saw him, at Dublin, New Hampshire, and was struck with his looks and -his name, as well as with the little I learned of his history." - -"Why didn't you do something about it then," Tad put in, peevishly, "if -you were going to do anything at all?" - -"You're quite right, Tad. It's what I should have done. I was dissuaded -by the rest of you. I must confess, too, that I was afraid to take it -up myself. We'd followed so many clues that led to nothing! But perhaps -it's just as well, as it's given me time to make all the investigation -that, it seems to me, has been possible." - -Apart from the motion of Tad's and Lily's hands as they put their -cigarettes to their lips, everyone sat motionless and tense. Even Mrs. -Whitelaw tamed her feverish activity to a more feverish stillness. -Hildred put her hand lightly on Tom's sleeve to remind him that she was -there, but the power of feeling anything had gone out of him. While -Whitelaw told his facts he listened as if the case had nothing to do -with himself. - -His agents, so the banker said, had probably unearthed every detail in -the story that was now to be known. - -On August 5, 1895, Thomas Coburn had been married in The Bronx, to -Lucy Speight. Coburn was a carpenter who had fallen from a roof in the -following October, and had died a few days later of his injuries. Their -child, Grace Coburn, had been born in The Bronx on March 5, 1896, and -had died on April 21, 1897. After that all trace of the mother had been -lost, though a woman who killed herself by poisoning in the Female -House of Detention in the suburb of New Rotterdam, after having been -arrested for shop-lifting, on December 24, 1904, might be considered as -the same person. This woman had been known to such neighbors as could -remember her as Mrs. Lucy Coburn, though at the time of her arrest she -had claimed to be the widow of Theodore Whitelaw, after having married -Thomas Coburn as her first husband. The wardress who had talked to -her on taking her to a cell recalled that she had been incoherent and -contradictory in all her statements about herself, her husband, and her -child. - -As a matter of fact, the early history of Lucy Speight had been traced. -She was the daughter of a laboring man at Chatham, in the neighborhood -of Albany. Her mental inheritance had been poor. Her father had been -the victim of drink, her mother had died insane. One of her sisters -had died insane, and a brother had been put at an early age in a home -for the feeble-minded. A brother and two sisters still lived either -at Chatham or at Pittsfield. He had in his hand photographs of all -the living members of the family, and copies of photographs of those -deceased, including two of Lucy Speight as she was as a young girl. - -He turned toward Tom. "Would you like to look at them?" - -The power of emotion came back to him with a rush. He remembered his -mother, vividly in two or three attitudes or incidents, but otherwise -faintly. A flush that stained his cheek with the same dark red which -dissipation stamped on Tad's made the brothers look more than ever -alike as he crossed the room to take the pictures from his father's -hand. - -There were a dozen or fourteen of them, all of poor rustic boys and -girls, or men and women, feebleness in the cast of their faces, the -hang of their lips, the vacancy of their eyes. Standing to sort them -out, he put aside quickly the two of Lucy Speight. One of them must -have dated from 1894, or thereabouts, because of the big sleeves; -the other, with skin-tight shoulders, was that of a girl perhaps in -1889. In their faded simper there was almost nothing of the wild dark -prettiness with which he saw her in memory, and yet he could recreate -it. - -He stood and gazed long, all eyes fixed on him. Moving to the table -where Mrs. Whitelaw sat behind the tray, he held the two pictures -before her. - -"That's my mother." - -Though he said this without thought of its significance, and only -from the habit of thinking of Lucy Speight as really his mother, he -saw her shrink. With a glance at the photographs, she glanced up at -him, piteously, begging to be spared. Even such contact as this, -remote, pictorial only, with people of a world she had never so much as -touched, hurt her fastidiousness. That the son of this poor half-witted -creature, this Lucy Speight, should also be her son ... but the only -protest she could make was in her eyes. - -Tom did not sit down again as Whitelaw continued with his facts; he -stood at the end of the mantelpiece, with its candelabra in _biscuit de -Sèvres_. Leaning with his elbow on the white marble edge, he had all -the others facing him, as all the others had him. The attitude seemed -best to accord with the position in which he felt himself, that of a -prisoner at the bar. - -"We've found no record in any State in the Union," Whitelaw went -on, "or in any Province in Canada, of a marriage between a Theodore -Whitelaw and a Lucy Coburn or Speight. The search has been pretty -thorough. Moreover, we find no birth recorded in The Bronx of any -Thomas Whitelaw during all the decade between 1890 and 1900. No such -birth is recorded in any other suburb of New York, or in Manhattan. In -years past I've been on the track of three men of the name of Theodore -Whitelaw, one in Portland, Maine, one in New Orleans, and one in -Vancouver; but there's reason for thinking that all three were one and -the same man. He was a Scotch sailor, who died on the Pacific coast, -and was never known to be in or about New York longer than the two or -three days in which his ship was in port." - -He came to the circumstances, largely gathered from Tom himself, of -the association of the woman with the child. She had harped on the -statements, first, that she had not stolen him; secondly, that he was -not to think that his name was Whitelaw. And yet on the night before -her death she had not only given him that very name, but claimed it as -legally her own. The boy--the man, as he was now--could remember that -at different times she had called herself by different names, chiefly -to escape detection for her thefts; but never before that night had she -taken that of Whitelaw. - -Those who had worked on the case, the most skilful investigators in the -country, were driven to a theory. It was a theory based only on the -circumstantial, but so broadly based that the one unproven point, that -which absolutely showed identity, seemed to prove itself. - -Lucy Coburn, feeble in mind from birth, half demented by the death -first of her husband and then of her child, had prowled about the Park, -looking for a baby that would satisfy her thwarted mother-love. Any -baby would have done this, though she preferred a girl. - -"My son, Henry Elphinstone Whitelaw, was born on September 24, 1896. -He was eight months old when on May 10, 1897, he was wheeled into the -Park by Miss Nash, who is still with us. What happened after, as she -supposed, she wheeled him back, we all know about." - -But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss Nash's attention -was diverted, the prowling woman got possession of the child, through -means which were still a matter of speculation. She had money, since -it was known that five thousand dollars had been paid to her by a -life-insurance company on her husband's death, and, therefore, the -power of flitting about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that -she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the first name she -could think of, which was that of her late husband. She could easily -have learned from the papers that the child she had stolen was the son -of Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may or may not have -remained in a memory probably not retentive at its best. But on the -night of her arrest, knowing that she was about to forsake the child -for whom she had come to feel a passionate affection, she had made one -last wild effort to connect him with his true inheritance. Why she -had done this but partially was again a matter of conjecture. She may -have given all of the name she remembered; she may have been kept from -giving the full name through fear. It was impossible to tell. But she -gave the name--with some errors, it was true--but still the name. The -name taken with the extraordinary family resemblance--everyone would -admit that--was one of the main points in the reconstruction of the -history. - -He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the half-proofs, asking at -last, timidly, and as if afraid of the family verdict: - -"Well, what does everyone say?" - -The silence was oppressive. The only movement on anyone's part came -when Lily stretched out her hand to a tray and with her little finger -knocked off the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if none of -them would speak, as if he himself must speak first. - -"I vote we take him in." This was Tad. "Since we all know you want him, -father--well, that settles it. As far as I'm concerned I'll--I'll crawl -down." - -Lily shrugged her slim shoulders. "I don't care one way or another. -I've got my own affairs to think of. If he doesn't interfere with me -I won't interfere with him." Again she knocked off the ash of her -cigarette. "Have him, if you want to." - -It was Mrs. Whitelaw's turn. She sat still, pensive. The clock could be -heard ticking. Her husband gazed at her as if his life would depend on -what she had to say. Tom himself went numb again. She spoke at last. - -"If you're satisfied, Henry, I'm satisfied. All I ask in the world is -that you--" she gasped her little sob--"is that you shall be happy." -Rising she walked straight up to Tom. "I want to kiss you." - -When he had bent his head she kissed him on the forehead, formally, -sacramentally. She went back to her seat. - -Without moving from his place at the table, Whitelaw smiled across the -room at Tom, a smile of relief and tenderness. - -"Well, what do you say?" - -Tom looked down at Hildred, noting her strange expression. It was not a -satisfied expression; rather it was challenging, defiant of something, -he didn't know of what. But he couldn't now consider Hildred; he -couldn't consider anyone but himself. He did not change his position, -leaning on the white marble mantelpiece; nor was his tone other than -conversational. - -"I'm awfully sorry, sir--I'm sorry to say it to you especially--but -it's--it's not good enough." - -With the slightest possible movement of the head Hildred made him a -sign of proud approval. Whitelaw's smile went out. - -"What's not good enough?" - -"The--the welcome--home." - -Tad spluttered, indignantly. "What the devil do you want? Do you expect -us to put up an arch?" - -"No; I don't expect anything. I should only like you to understand that -though it isn't easy for you, it's easier for you than for me." - -Tad turned to his father. "Now you're getting it! I could have told you -beforehand, if you'd consulted me." - -"You see," Tom continued, paying no attention to the interruption, -"you're all different from me. You're used to different things, to -different standards and ways of thinking. If I were to come in among -you the only phrase that would describe me is the homely one of the -fish out of water. I should be gasping for breath. I couldn't live in -your atmosphere." - -Tad was again the only one to voice a comment. "Well, I'll be damned!" - -Tom's legs which had quaked at first, began to be surer under him. -"Please don't think I'm venturing to criticize anyone or anything. -This is your life, and it suits you. It wouldn't suit me because it -isn't mine. The past makes me as it makes you, and it's too late now -to unmake us. It's possible that I may be Harry Whitelaw. When I hear -the evidence that can be produced I can almost think I am. But if I -_am_ Harry Whitelaw by birth, I'm _not_ Harry Whitelaw by life and -experience. I can't go back and be made over. I'm myself as I stand." -Still having in his hand the pictures of Lucy Speight, he held them -out. "To all intents and purposes this is--my mother." - -"And I kissed you!" - -Tom smiled. "Yes, but you don't know how she kissed me. I do. She loved -me. I loved her. I've tried--I've tried my very best--to turn my back -on her--to call her a thief--and any other name that would blacken -her--and--and I can't do it." - -The sleeping lioness in the mother was roused suddenly. Leaving her -place behind the tea-table, she advanced near enough to him to point to -the two photographs. - -"Do you mean to say that--having the choice between--that--and me--you -choose--that?" - -"I don't choose. I can't do anything else. It isn't what you think that -rules your life; it's what you love. I'm one of the people to whom love -means more than anything else. I daresay it's a weakness--especially in -a man--but that's the way it is." - -"If your first stipulation is love...." - -"Wouldn't it be yours, Onora?" - -"I'd try to be reasonable--when so many concessions have been made." - -"Yes," Tom hastened to say, "but that's just my point. I'm not asking -for concessions. The minute they must be made--well, I'm not there. I -couldn't come into your family--on concessions." - -Whitelaw spoke up again. "I don't blame you." - -Tom tried to make his position clearer. "It's a little like this. A -long time ago I was coming along by the Hudson in the train. I was on -my way to New York with the man who had adopted me, after I'd been a -State ward. There was a steamer on the river, and I watched her--coming -_from_ I didn't know where--going _to_ I didn't know where. And it -came to me then that she was something like myself. I didn't know what -port I'd sailed from; nor what port I was making for. But now that I'm -twenty-three--if that's my age--I see this: that once in so often I -touched at some happy isle, where the people took me in and were good -to me. It was what carried me along." - -The mother broke in, reproachfully. "Happy isles--full of convicts and -murderers!" - -"Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and murderers were kind. A -homeless boy doesn't question the moral righteousness of the people who -give him food and shelter and clothes, and, what's more, all their best -affection. What it comes to is this, that having lived in those happy -isles--awhile in one, awhile in another--I don't want to go ashore at -an unhappy one, even though I was born there." - -Springing to his feet, Tad bore down on him. "Do you know what I call -you? I call you an ass." - -"Very likely. I'm only trying to explain to you why I can't be your -brother--even if I am--your brother." - -"It's because you don't want to be--and you damn well know it." - -"That may be another way of putting it; but I'm not putting it that -way." - -Lily rose languidly, throwing out her words to nobody in particular. "I -think he's a good sport, if you ask me. I wouldn't come into a family -like us--not the way we are." - -"Wait, Lily," Whitelaw cried, as she was sauntering out. He too got -to his feet. "You've all spoken. You've done the best you could. I'm -not blaming anyone. Now I want you all to understand--" He indicated -Tom--"that this is _my son_. I know he's my son. I claim him as my son. -Not even what he says himself can make any difference to me." - -Tom strode across the room, grasping the other's hand. "Yes, sir; and -you're my father. I know that too, and I claim you on my side. But -we'll stop right there. It's as far as we can go. I'll be your son in -every sense but that of--" He looked round about on them all--"but -that of being your heir or a member of your family. I can't do that; -but--between you and me--everything is understood." - -He got out of the room with dignity. Passing Tad, he nodded, and said, -"Thanks!" To Lily he said, "Thank you too. It was bully, what you -said." Reaching the mother whom he didn't know and who didn't know him, -he bowed low. Sitting again behind the tea-table, she lifted her hand -for him to take it. He took it and kissed it. Her little soblike gasp -followed him as he passed into the big dim hall. - -He had taken no leave of Hildred, because he knew she would do what -actually she did; but he didn't know that she would speak the words he -heard spoken. - -"I'm going with him, dear Mrs. Whitelaw; but I shan't be long. I just -don't want him to go away alone because--because I mean to marry him." - - - - -XLVII - - -As they went down the steps she took his arm. "Tom, darling, I'm proud -of you. Now they know where we stand, both of us." - -"It was splendid of you, Hildred, to play up like that. It backs me -tremendously that you're not afraid to own me. But, you know, what I've -just said will put us farther apart." - -"Oh, I don't know about that. Father said we couldn't be engaged unless -you were acknowledged as Mr. Whitelaw's son; and you have been. He -never said anything about your being Mrs. Whitelaw's son. This is a -case in which it's the father that counts specially." - -"But I couldn't take any of his money beyond what I earned." - -"Oh, but that wouldn't make any difference." - -They crossed the Avenue and entered the Park. They entered the Park -because it was the obvious place in which to look for a little privacy. -All the gay sweet life of the May afternoon was at its brightest. -Riders were cantering up and down the bridle-path; friends were -strolling; children were playing; birds were flying with bits of string -or straw for the building of their nests. To Tom and Hildred the -gladness was thrown out by the deeper gladness in themselves. - -"But you don't know how poor we'll be." - -"Oh, don't I? Where do you think I keep my eyes? Why, I expect to be -poor when I marry--for a while at any rate. I expect to do my own -housework, like most of the young married women I know." - -"Oh, but you've always talked so much about servants." - -"Yes, dear Tom, but that was to be on a desert island where we were to -be all alone. We shan't find that island except in our hearts." - -"But even without the island, I always supposed that when a girl like -you got married she...." - -"She began with an establishment on the scale of ours in Louisburg -Square, at the least. Yes, that used to be the way, twenty or thirty -years ago. But I'm sorry to say it isn't so any longer. Talk about -revolution! We've got revolution as it is. With rents and wages as they -are, and all the other expenses, why, a young couple must begin with -the simple life, or stay single. I'd rather begin with the simple life, -and I know more about it than you think." - -He laughed. "So I see." - -"Oh, I can cook and sew and make beds and wash dishes...." - -They sauntered on, without noticing where they were going, till they -came to a dell, where in the shade of an elm there was a seat, and -another near a heart-shaped clump of lilacs, all in bloom. They sat in -the shade of the elm. They were practical young lovers, and yet they -were young lovers. They were lovers for whom there had never been any -lovers but themselves. The wonderful thing was that each felt what the -other felt; the discoveries by which they had come to the knowledge of -this fact were the first that had ever been made. - -"Oh, Tom, do you feel like that? Why, that's just the way I feel." - -"Is it, Hildred? Well, it shows we were made for each other, doesn't -it, because I never thought that anyone felt like that but me?" - -"Well, no one ever did but me. Only Tom, dear, tell me when it was that -you first began to fall in love with me." - -"It was the night--a winter's night--five, six, seven years ago--when I -found Guy in a mix-up with a lot of hoodlums in the snow." - -"And you brought him home. That was the first time you ever saw me." - -"Yes, it was the first time I ever saw you that I began...." - -"And I began then, too. Since that evening, there's never been anybody -else. Oh, Tom, was there ever anybody else with you?" - -Tom thought of Maisie. "Not--not really." - -"Well, unreally then?" - -As he made his confession she listened eagerly. "Yes, that _was_ -unreally. And you never heard anything more about her?" - -"Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I went to see her aunt. -She told me that Maisie had been married for the last two years to a -traveling salesman she'd been in love with for a long time, and that -she had a baby." - -The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of Honey; and the -thought of Honey woke him to the fact that he had been on this spot -before. - -"Why--why, Hildred! This is the very bench on which Miss Nash and the -other nurse were sitting--" - -"When you were stolen?" - -"When somebody was stolen." He looked round him. "And there's Miss Nash -over there!" - -On the bench near the lilacs Miss Nash was seated with a book. - -"We ought to go and speak to her," Hildred suggested. - -Miss Nash received them with her beatific look. "I saw you leave the -house. I thought you'd come here. I followed you. I had something -to do, something I swore to God I'd do the day my little boy came -back. I'd--" She held up a novel of which the open pages were already -yellowing--"I'd finish this. _Juliet Allingham's Sin_ is the name of -it. I was just at the scene where the lover drowns when my little boy -was taken. I've never opened the book since; but I've kept it by me." -She rose, weeping. "Now I can finish it--but I'll go home." - -Sitting down on the seat she had left free for them, they began to talk -of the scene of the afternoon, which as yet they had avoided. - -"I hope I didn't hurt their feelings." - -"They didn't mind hurting yours." - -"They didn't mean to. They thought they were generous." - -"Which only shows...." - -"But _he's_ all right. Hildred, he's a big man." - -"And you really think he's your father, Tom?" - -"I know he is. Everything makes me sure of it." - -"Well, then, if he's your father, she must be your mother." - -"Yes, but I don't go that far. It isn't what must be that I think -about; it's what _is_." - -She persisted in her logic. "And Tad and Lily must be your brother and -sister." - -"They can be what they like. I don't care anything about them." - -"It's only your mother that you don't...." - -He got up, restlessly. It was easier to reconstruct the scene which -Honey had described to him than to let her bring what she was saying -too sharply to a point. - -"It was over here that the baby carriage stood, right in the heart of -this little clump." She followed him into it. "Miss Nash and the other -nurse were over there, where we were sitting first. And right here, -just where I'm standing, the queer thing must have happened." - -"Are you sorry it happened, Tom?" - -"You mean, if it actually happened to me. Why, no; and yet--yes. I -can't tell. I'm sorry not to have grown up with--with my father. And -yet if I had, I should have missed--all the other things--Honey--and -perhaps you." - -"Oh, you couldn't have missed me, I couldn't have missed you. We might -not have met in the way we did meet, but we'd have met." - -He hardly heard her last words, because he was staring off along the -path by which they themselves had come down. His tone was puzzled, -scarcely more than a whisper. - -"Hildred, look!" - -"Why, it's Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. She's changed her dress. How young -she looks with that kind of flowered hat. I remember now. They always -come here on the tenth of May. They've been here already this morning. -Lily told me so. I know what it is. They're looking for you. Miss Nash -has told them where we are. I'm going to run." - -"Don't run far," he begged of her. "I can't imagine what's up." - -He stood where he was, watching their advance. It was not his place to -go forward, since he wasn't sure that he was wanted. He only thought -he must be when, as they reached the bench beneath the elm, Whitelaw -pointed him out and let his wife go on alone. - -She came on in the hurried way in which she did everything, her great -eyes brimming, as they often were, with unshed tears. At the entrance -among the lilacs she held out both her hands, their diamonds upward, as -if he was to kiss them. He took the hands, but lightly, barely touching -them, keeping on his guard. - -"Harry!" The staccato sentences came out as little breathless cries -torn from a heart that tried to keep them back. "Harry! You--you -needn't--love me--or be my son--or live with us--unless--unless you -like--but I want you to--to let me kiss you--just once--the way--the -way your other--mother--used to." - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY ISLES*** - - -******* This file should be named 61344-8.txt or 61344-8.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/1/3/4/61344 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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- border-color: #000000; - clear: both; } - </style> -</head> -<body> -<h1 class="pgx" title="header title">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Happy Isles, by Basil King</h1> -<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States -and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no -restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: The Happy Isles</p> -<p>Author: Basil King</p> -<p>Release Date: February 8, 2020 [eBook #61344]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY ISLES***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4 class="pgx" title="credit">E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth,<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/happyisles00king_0"> - https://archive.org/details/happyisles00king_0</a> - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p class="ph1">THE HAPPY ISLES</p> - -<div class="hidehand"> -<p class="center"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover" /> -</p></div> - - - -<p class="ph4"><i>BOOKS BY BASIL KING</i></p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>The Happy Isles</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>The Dust Flower</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>The Thread of Flame</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>The City of Comrades</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Abraham's Bosom</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>The Empty Sack</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>Going West</i></span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>The Side of the Angels</i></span><br /> -</p> - - - -<p class="ph5" style="margin-top: 10em;"><i>Harper & Brothers<br /> -Publishers</i></p> - -<p class="center"> -<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt="Evening Devotions" /> -<a id="illus1" name="illus1"></a> -</p> - -<p class="caption">"THEY'LL SAY I STOLE HIM. IT'LL BE TWENTY YEARS FOR ME"</p> - - - - - -<p class="ph2" style="margin-top: 10em;">THE<br /> -HAPPY ISLES</p> - -<p class="ph3"><i>By</i> BASIL KING</p> - -<p class="ph6"><i>Author of</i></p> - -<p class="ph5">"THE EMPTY SACK," "THE INNER SHRINE,"<br /> -"THE DUST FLOWER," ETC.</p> - -<p class="ph5" style="margin-top: 5em;"><i>With Illustrations by</i></p> -<p class="ph4">JOHN ALONZO WILLIAMS</p> - - - -<p class="ph5"><i>Publishers</i></p> - -<p class="ph4">Harper & Brothers</p> - -<p class="ph4">New York and London</p> - -<p class="ph5"><i>MCMXXIII</i></p> - - - - - - -<p class="ph4" style="margin-top: 10em;">THE HAPPY ISLES</p> - -<p class="ph5">Copyright, 1923 -By Harper & Brothers -Printed in the U.S.A.</p> - -<p class="ph6"><i>First Edition</i></p> - -<p class="ph6">K-X</p> - - - - - -<p class="ph4">ILLUSTRATIONS</p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 25%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="#illus1">They'll Say I Stole Him. It'll Be Twenty -Years for Me</a></span></span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="#illus2">That's a Terr'ble Big Wad for a Boy Like You -to Wear</a></span>"</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="#illus3">Get Up, I Tell You</a></span></span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><span class="smcap"><a href="#illus4">Mrs. Ansley Took Him as an Affliction</a></span></span><br /> -</p> - - - - - - - - - - - -<p class="ph2" style="margin-top: 10em;">The Happy Isles</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 37%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Many a green isle needs must be</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In the deep wide sea of misery,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Or the mariner, worn and wan,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Never thus could voyage on,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Day and night, and night and day....</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 55%;">—<span class="smcap">Shelley.</span></span><br /> -</p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">I</p> - - -<p class="drop">A<span class="uppercase">t</span> eight months of age his only experience of life had been one of -well-being. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>He was fed when hungry; he slept when sleepy; he woke when -he had slept enough. When bored or annoyed or uneasy he could cry. If -crying brought him attentions it was that much to the good; if the -effort was thrown away it did no one any harm. Even when least fertile -of results it was a change from the crowing and gurgling which were all -he had to distract him when left to his own company.</p> - -<p>Though his mind worked in co-operation with the subconscious more than -with the conscious, it worked actively. In waking minutes there was -everything to observe and register.</p> - -<p>His intimate needs being met, there were the phenomena of light and -darkness. He knew not only the difference between them, but in a -general way when to expect the turn of each. He knew that light brought -certain formalities, chiefly connected with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> person, and that -darkness brought certain others. The reasons remained obscure, but the -variety was pleasing.</p> - -<p>Then there was the room, or rather the spectacular surroundings of his -universe. The nursery was his earth, his atmosphere, his firmament, the -ether in which his heavenly bodies went rolling away into the infinite. -And, just as with grown-up people, the nearness and distance of Mars -or Sirius or Betelgueuse have gone through experimental stages of -guesswork first and calculation afterwards, so the exact location of -the wardrobe, the table, or the mantelpiece, was a subject for endless -wonderment. At times they were apparently so close that he would put -out his hand to touch them from his crib; but at once they receded, -fixing themselves against the light-blue walls, home of a menagerie of -birds and animals, with something between him and them which he was -learning to recognize as space.</p> - -<p>There was also motion. Certain things remained in place; other things -could move. He himself could move, but that was so near the fundamental -necessities as hardly to call for notice. True, there were discoveries -even here. The day when he learned that once his legs were freed he -could lie on his back and kick was one of emancipation. In finding that -he could catch his foot with his hands and put it in his mouth he made -his first advance in skill. But there was motion superior to this. -There were beings who walked about the room, who entered it and left -it. Merely to watch their goings and comings sent spasms through his -feet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> - -<p>Little by little he had come to discern in these creatures a difference -in function and personality. Enormous in size, irresistible in -strength, they were nevertheless his satellites. One of them supplied -his wants; another worshipped him; the third lifted him up, carried -him about, tickled him deliciously with his mustache or his bushy -outstanding eyebrows, and otherwise entertained him. For the first his -tongue essayed the syllables, Na-Na; for the second his lips rose and -fell with an explosive Ma-Ma; the last sent his tongue clicking toward -the roof of his mouth in the harsher sound of Da-Da; and yet between -these efforts and the accomplishment there was still some lack of -correspondence.</p> - -<p>Of his many enthralling interests speech was the most magical. In his -analysis of life it came to him early that these coughings and barkings -and gruntings were meant to express thought. He himself had thoughts. -What he lacked was the connection of the sounds with the ideas, and of -this he was not unaware. They supposed him a little animal who could -only eat and sleep, when all the while he was listening, recording, -distinguishing, defining, correlating the syllable with the thing that -was evidently meant, so that later he should astonish his circle by -uttering a word. It was a stimulating game and in it his daily progress -was not far short of marvelous.</p> - -<p>If the nursery was his universe, his crib was his private domain, -cushioned and soft, and as spotless as an ermine's nest. It was a joy -to wake up in it, and equally a joy to go to sleep. Joy, Tenderness, -and Comfort, were the only elements in life with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> which he was -acquainted. Thriving on them as he throve on the carefully prepared -formulas of his food, he grew in the spirit without obstacles to -struggle with, as his body grew in the sunlight and the air.</p> - -<p>By the time he had reached the May morning on which his story begins he -had come to take Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, as life's essentials. -Never having known anything else, he had no suspicion that anything -else would lurk within the possible. The ritual that attended his going -out was as much a matter of course to him as a red carpet to tread on -is to a queen. He took it for granted that, when he had been renewed -by bottle and bath, she for whom he tried to say Na-Na would be in a -flutter of preparation, while she whose sweet smile forced the Ma-Ma to -his lips would put a little coat on his back, a little cap on his head, -little mittens on his hands, and smother him with adoration all the -time she was doing it.</p> - -<p>On this particular morning these things had been done. Nestled into a -canopied crib on wheels, he was ready for the two gigantic ministrants -whom he could not yet distinguish as the first and second footmen. -These colossi lifted his vehicle down the steps, to set it on the -pavement of Fifth Avenue, where for the time being dramatic episodes -were at an end. The town didn't interest him. Moreover, a filmy -curtain, to protect him against flies as well as against too much sun, -having shut him in from the vastness of the scene, he had nothing to do -but let himself be lulled to his customary slumber.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">II</p> - - -<p class="drop">M<span class="uppercase">iss Nash</span>, the baby carriage in front of her, furrowed a way through -the traffic of the avenue, relatively scant in those days, and reaching -the safety of the other side passed within the Park. She was a trained -child's-nurse, and wore a uniform. England being at that time the only -source of this specialty, examples in New York were limited to the -heirs-apparent of the noble families. Between a nursemaid and a trained -child's-nurse you will notice the same distinction as between a lady's -maid and a princess's lady-in-waiting.</p> - -<p>Having entered the Park, Miss Nash stopped the carriage to lift the -veil protecting her charge. He was already beyond the noises and -distractions of the planet in his rosy, heavenly sleep. Miss Nash -smiled wistfully, because it was the only way in which she could smile -at all. A superior woman by nature, she clung to that refinement -which best expresses itself in something melancholic. Daughter of a -solicitor's clerk and niece to a curate, she felt her status as a lady -most fittingly preserved in an atmosphere delicate, subdued, and rather -sad.</p> - -<p>And yet when she looked on her little boy asleep she was no longer -superior, and scarcely so much as a lady. She was only a woman -enraptured before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> one of those babies so compact of sweetness, -affection, and intelligence that they tug at the heartstrings. She was -on her guard as to loving her children overmuch, since it made it so -hard to give them up when the minute for doing so arrived; but with -this little fellow no guard had been effective. Whether he crowed, or -cried, or kicked, or snuggled in her arms to croon with her in baby -tunelessness, she found him adorable. But when he was asleep, chubby, -seraphic, so awesomely undefiled, she was sure that his spirit had -withdrawn from her for a little while to commune with the angels.</p> - -<p>"No," she confessed one day to her friend, Miss Etta Messenger, the -only other uniformed child's nurse among her acquaintance in New York, -"it won't do. I must break myself. I shall have to leave him some day. -But I do envy the mother who will have him always."</p> - -<p>"It don't pay you," Miss Messenger declared, as one who has had -experience. "Anyone, I always say, can hire my services; but my -affections remain my own. Now this little girl I'm with while I'm in -New York, I could leave her to-morrow without a pang if—but then I've -got something to leave her <i>for</i>."</p> - -<p>"And what does he say to things now?" Miss Nash inquired, with selfless -interest in her friend's drama.</p> - -<p>Miss Messenger answered, judicially, "I've put it to him straight. I've -told him he must simply fix a date to marry me, or give me up. As I -know he simply won't give me up—you never knew a fellow so wild about -a girl as he is about me...."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> - -<p>The fortnight which had intervened between that conversation and the -morning when our little boy's story opens had given time for Miss -Messenger's affairs to take another turn. In the hope of learning -the details of this turn Miss Nash sought a corner of the Park, not -much frequented by nursemaids, where she and Miss Messenger often -met, but Etta was not there. Drawing the carriage within the shade of -a miniature grove of lilacs in perfumed flower, Miss Nash once more -lifted the veil, wiped the precious mouth, and adjusted the coverlet -outside which lay the mittened baby hands. Since there was no more to -be done, she sat down on a convenient bench to her reading of <i>Juliet -Allingham's Sin</i>.</p> - -<p>In the scene where the lover drowns she became so absorbed as not to -notice that on a bench on the other side of a lilac bush Miss Messenger -came and installed herself and her baby carriage in the shade of a -near-by fan-shaped elm, bronze-green in its young leafage. Miss Nash -looked up only when, her emotions having grown so poignant, she could -read no more. She was drying her eyes when, through the branches of the -lilac, the flutter of a nurse's cape told her that her friend must have -arrived.</p> - -<p>"Why, Etta!"</p> - -<p>On going round the barrier she found herself greeted by what she had -come to call Etta's fighting eyes. They were fine flashing black eyes, -set in a face which Miss Nash was further accustomed to describe as -"high-complexioned." Miss Messenger spoke listlessly, and yet as one -who knew her mind.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I saw you. I thought I wouldn't interrupt. I haven't very good news."</p> - -<p>Miss Nash glided to a seat beside her friend, seizing both her hands. -"Oh, my dear, he hasn't——?"</p> - -<p>"That's just what he has." Etta nodded, drily. "Bring your baby round -here and I'll tell you."</p> - -<p>But Miss Nash couldn't wait. "He's all right there. He's sound asleep. -I'll hear him if he stirs. Do tell me what's happened."</p> - -<p>"Well, he simply says that if that's the way I feel perhaps we'd better -call it off."</p> - -<p>"And are you going to?"</p> - -<p>Etta's eyes blazed with their black flames. "Call it off? Me? Not much, -I won't."</p> - -<p>"Still if he won't fix a date...."</p> - -<p>"He'll jolly well fix a date—or meet me in the court."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but, Etta, you wouldn't...."</p> - -<p>"I don't say I would for choice. There are two or three other things I -could do, and I think I'll try them first."</p> - -<p>"What sort of things?"</p> - -<p>In the answer to that question Miss Nash was even more absorbed than in -Juliet Allingham's sin. Juliet Allingham was after all but a creature -of the brain; whereas Etta Messenger's adventures might conceivably -be her own. It was not merely some one else's love story that held -her imagination in thrall; it was the possibility that one of these -days she, Milly Nash, might have a man playing fast and loose with her -heart's purest offering....</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">III</p> - - -<p class="drop">A<span class="uppercase">nyone</span> closely watching the strange woman would have said that her -first care was not to seem distraught; but then, no one was closely -watching her. On a rapturous May morning, with the lilac scenting the -air, and the tulip beds in only the passing of their glory, there were -so many things better worth doing than observing a respectably dressed -young woman, probably the wife of an artisan, that she went unobserved. -As there were at that very minute some two or three hundred more or -less like her also pushing babies in the Park, the eye that singled her -out for attention would have had more than the gift of sight.</p> - -<p>What she did that was noticeable—again had there been anyone to -notice her—was to approach first one little group and then another, -quickly sheering away. One would have said that she sheered away from -some queer motive of strategy. Her movements might have been called -erratic, not because they were aimless, but because she didn't know or -didn't find the object of her search. Even if that were so, she neither -advanced nor receded, nor drifted hither or yon, more like a lost thing -than many another nursemaid giving her charge the air or killing time.</p> - -<p>There was nothing sinister about her, unless it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> sinister to have -moments of seeming dazed or of muttering to herself. She muttered to -herself only when sure that there was no one to overhear, and with -similar self-command she indulged in looking dazed only when she -knew that no eye could light on her. As if aware of abnormality, she -schooled herself to a semblance of sanity. Otherwise she was some -thirty years of age, neatly if cheaply clad, and too commonplace and -unimportant for the most observant to remember her a second after she -had passed.</p> - -<p>At sight of a little hooded vehicle, standing unguarded where the lilac -bushes made a shrine for it, she paused. Again, the pause was natural. -She might have been tired. Pushing a baby carriage in a park is -always futile work, with futile starts and stops and turnings in this -direction or in that. If she stood to reconnoiter or to make her plans -there was no power in the land to interfere with her.</p> - -<p>Her further methods were simple. Behind the bench on which Miss Nash -and Miss Messenger were by this time entering on an orgy of romantic -confidence there rose a gentle eminence. To the top of this hill the -strange woman made her way. She made it with precautions, sauntering, -dawdling, simulating all the movements of the perfect nurse. When -two women, wheeling young laddies strapped into go-carts, crossed -her path she walked slowly till they were out of sight. When a park -attendant with a lawnmower clicked his machine along to cut a distant -portion of the greensward, she waited till he too had disappeared. A -few pedestrians were scattered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> here and there, but so distant as not -to count. A few riders galloped up or down the bridle-path near Fifth -Avenue, but these too she could disregard. Except for Miss Nash and -Miss Messenger, turned towards each other, and with their backs to her, -she had the world to herself. Softly she crept down the hill; softly -she stole in among the lilacs.</p> - -<p>"My little Gracie! my little Gracie!" she kept muttering, but only -between closed lips. "My little Gracie!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Oh, don't think, Milly," Miss Messenger was saying, "that I shan't -give him the chance to come across honorable. I shall. You say that an -action for breach doesn't seem to you delicate, and I don't say but -what I shrink from it. But when you've a trunkful of letters simply -burning with passion, simply <i>burning</i> with it, what good are they to -you if you don't?... And he's worth fifty thousand dollars if he's -worth a penny. Don't talk to me! A fishmonger, right in the heart of -East Eighty-eighth Street, the very best district.... If I sue for -twenty-five thousand dollars I'd be pretty sure of getting five ... and -with a sympathetic jury, possibly six or eight ... and with all that -money I could set up a little nursing home in London ... say in the -Portland Place neighborhood ... with a specialty in children's diseases -... and put you in charge of it as matron. You and me together...."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but, Etta, I couldn't leave my little boy, not till he's able to -do without me. By that time there may be other children for me to take -care of, so that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> I could keep near him. I've thought of that. He being -the first, and his father and mother such a fine healthy young couple, -with everything to support a big family...."</p> - -<p>During the minutes which marked his transfer from one destiny to -another, Miss Nash's little boy remained in the sweet, blest country -to which little babies go in dreams. When a swift hand raised the -veil, lifting him with deft gentleness, he knew nothing of what was -happening. While the cap was peeled from his head and pulled over that -of a big, featureless rag doll shaped to the outlines of a baby's -limbs, he was still on the lap of Miss Nash's angels. On the lap of -these angels he stayed during the rest of the exchange. The strange -woman's hand was tender. Lightly it drew over the little boy's head -the soiled, cheap bonnet worn by the big rag doll; lightly it laid the -little warm body into its new bed. Where he had nestled the big rag -doll with his cap on its head gave a fair imitation of his form, unless -inspected closely. By the time the veils were lowered on the two little -carriages there was nothing for the most suspicious eye to wonder at. A -respectable woman of the humbler classes was trundling her baby back to -its home. The infant rested quietly.</p> - -<p>The rag doll, too, rested quietly when Miss Nash returned to her -charge, as Miss Messenger to hers. Miss Nash had heard so much within -an hour that she was not quite mistress of herself. Nothing was so -rare with her as to neglect the due examination of her child, but this -time she neglected it. Etta had given her so much to think of that for -the minute her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> mind was over-taxed. Because the love theme had become -involved with the compelling dictates of self-interest, which even a -sweet creature like Miss Nash couldn't overlook, she laid her hands -absently on the push-bar, beginning to make her way homeward. There was -no question as to Etta's worldly wisdom. The choice lay between worldly -wisdom and the warm, glowing, human thing we call affection. In Milly -Nash's experience it was the first time such a choice had been put up -to her.</p> - -<p>"Don't talk to me!" Miss Etta pursued, as they sauntered along side by -side. "I simply love my children up to every penny I'm paid for it, -not a farthing more; and if you'll take my advice, Milly Nash, you'll -follow my example."</p> - -<p>Miss Nash felt humble, rebuked. Through fear of disturbing her little -boy, she pushed as gently as a zephyr blows.</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure that I could measure it out, not with this little fellow."</p> - -<p>"This little fellow, fiddlesticks! He's just like any other little -fellow."</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, he isn't. There's character in babies just as there is -in grown-up people. This child's got it strong, all sweetness and -loveliness, and so much sense—you'd never believe it! Why, he -knows—there's nothing that he doesn't know, in his own dear little -way. I tell you, Etta, that if you had him you'd feel just like me."</p> - -<p>"Just like you and be out of your heart's job—your heart's job, mind -you—as soon as he's four years old, and they want to put him with a -French<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> girl to learn French. Oh, I know them, these aristocrats! When -I get my alimony, or whatever it is, I'm simply going to provide for -the future, and you'll be a goose, Milly Nash, if you simply don't come -with me, and do the same."</p> - -<p>While Miss Nash was shaking her head with her gentle perplexed smile, -the strange woman was crossing Fifth Avenue. Having accomplished -this feat, she entered one of the streets running from that great -thoroughfare toward the East River. Squalor being so much the rule in -New York, the wealthier classes find it hard to pre-empt to themselves -more than a long thin streak, relatively trim, bearing to the general -disorder the proportion of a brook to the meadow through which it runs. -The strange woman had left Fifth Avenue but a few hundred yards away -before she and her baby were swallowed up in that kind of human swarm -in which individuals lose their identity. Afraid of betraying some -frenzy she knew to be within her by mumbling to herself, she kept her -lips shut with a fierce, determined tightness. She was a little woman, -and when you looked at her closely you saw that she had once possessed -a wild dark prettiness. Even now, as she pushed her way between uncouth -men and women, or screaming children at play, her wild dark eyes blazed -with sudden anger or swam with unshed tears by fits and turns.</p> - -<p>The house at which she stopped was hardly to be distinguished from -thousands of others in which a brief brownstone dignity had fallen, -first to the boarding-house stage, and then to that of tenements. From -the top of a flight of brownstone steps a frowzy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> buxom, motherly -woman came lumbering down to lend a hand with the baby carriage.</p> - -<p>"So you've brought your baby, Mrs. Coburn. Now you'll be able to get -settled."</p> - -<p>The reply came as if it had been learned by rote. "Yes, now I'll be -able to get settled. I've got her crib ready, though all my other -things is strewed about just as when I moved in. Still, the crib's -ready, which is the main thing. She's a fretful baby by nature, so -you mustn't think it funny if you hear her cry. Some people thought -I'd never raise her, so that if you ever hear say that my little girl -died...."</p> - -<p>"I'll know it's not true," the buxom woman laughed. "She couldn't die, -and you have her here, now could she? Do let me have a peep."</p> - -<p>By this time they had lifted the carriage over the steps and into the -little passageway. Seeing that there was no help for this inspection, -the strange woman trembled but resigned herself. The neighbor lifted -the veil, and peered under it.</p> - -<p>"My, what a love! And she don't look sick, not a little mite."</p> - -<p>"Not her face, she don't. Her poor little body's some wasted, but then -so long as I've got her...."</p> - -<p>"I believe as it'd be too much lime-water in her milk. She's -bottle-fed, ain't she? Well, them bottle-fed babies—I've had two of -'em out of my five—you got to try and try, and ten to one you'll find -as it's that nasty lime-water that upsets 'em."</p> - -<p>Having unlocked her door, which was on the left of the passageway, -the strange woman pulled her treasure into a room stuffy with closed -windows, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> dim with drawn blinds. Turning the key behind her, she -was alone at last.</p> - -<p>She fell on her knees, throwing the veil back with a fierceness that -almost tore it off. She strained forward. Her breath came in racking, -panting sobs.</p> - -<p>"My Gracie! my Gracie! God didn't take you! God wouldn't be so mean! I -just dreamed it, and now I've waked up."</p> - -<p>Suddenly she changed. Drawing backward, she put her hands to her brow -and pressed them down the whole length of her face. Her eyes filled -with horror. Her face turned sallow. Her lips fell apart.</p> - -<p>"I'll get twenty years for this. Perhaps it'll be more. I don't think -they hang for it, but it'll be twenty years anyhow, if they find it -out." She sprang up, still muttering in broken, only partly articulated -phrases. "But they'll never find it out. What's there to find? It's -my baby! My precious only baby!" She was on her knees again, dragging -herself forward by the sides of the little carriage, her eyes strained -toward the infant face. "My little Gracie! I've missed you all the time -you've been away. My heart was near broke. Now you've come back to me. -You're mine—mine—mine!"</p> - -<p>He opened his eyes. It was his usual hour for waking up. For the first -time in his history amazement gave an expression to his face which it -was often to wear afterward. Instead of being in his own nest, downy, -clean, and scentless, he was in a humpy little hole unpleasant to -his senses. Instead of the Na-Na with her tender smile, or the Ma-Ma -with her love, he saw this terrifying woman's stormy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> eyes, rousing -the sensation he was later to know as fear. Instead of his nursery, -spotless and gay, he was dumped amid the forlorn disarray of furniture -that has just been moved into an empty tenement. Without getting these -impressions in detail, he got them at once. He got them not as separate -facts, but as facts in a single quintessence, distilled and distilled -again, till no one element can be told from any other element, and held -to his lips in a poisoned draught.</p> - -<p>All he could do was to wail, but he wailed with a note of anguish which -was new to him. It was anguish the more bitter because of the lack of -explanation. His only awareness hitherto had been that of power. He -had been a baby sovereign, obeyed without having to command. Now he -had been born again as a baby serf, into conditions against which his -will, imperious in its baby way, would beat in vain. Once more, he knew -this, not by reasoned argument, of course, but by heartbroken instinct. -It was not merely the distress of the present that was in his cry, but -dread of the future. There was something else in the world besides -Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, and he had touched it. Without knowing -what it was he shrank back from the contact and sobbed.</p> - -<p>And yet such is the need for love in any young thing's heart, that when -the strange woman had lifted him up, and cradled him on her bosom, he -was partly soothed. He was not soothed easily. Though she held him -closely, and sang to him softly, seated in the low rocking-chair in -which she had rocked her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> baby-girl, he went on sobbing. He sobbed, -not as he had sobbed in his old nursery, for the sport or the mischief -of the thing, but because his inner being had been bruised. But his -capacity for sobbing wore itself out. Little by little the convulsions -grew calmer, the agony less desperate. Love held him. It was not -the love of the Ma-Ma or the Na-Na, but it was love. It had love's -embrace, love's lullaby. Arms were about him, he was on a breast. -The shipwrecked sailor may be only on a raft, but he is not sinking. -Little by little he turned his face into this only available refuge. A -dangling embroidery adorned it, and in his struggle not to go down his -little hands clutched at that.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">IV</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">is</span> first conscious recollection was of sitting on a high chair drawn -up to a table at which he was having a meal. He could never recall -whether this was in Harlem, Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey City, or the -Bronx. Because they moved so often he had little more memory of places -than he had of clouds. Tenements, streets, and suburbs of New York -melted into one big sense of squalor. It was not squalor to him because -he was used to it. It only obscured the difference between one dwelling -and another, as monotony always obscures remembrance. Wherever their -wanderings carried them, the background was the same, crowded, dirty, -seething, a breeding place rather than a home.</p> - -<p>What marked this occasion was a question he asked and the answer he got -back.</p> - -<p>"Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?"</p> - -<p>The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about the kitchen. "What do -you want to know for?"</p> - -<p>The question was difficult. He knew what he wanted to know for, and yet -it wasn't easy to explain. The nearest he could get to it in language -was to say: "I'm a little boy, ain't I?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, you're a little boy, but you should have been a little girl. It -was a little girl I wanted."</p> - -<p>"But you want me, don't you, mudda?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> - -<p>She dropped whatever she was doing to press his head fiercely against -her side. "Yes, I want <i>you</i>! I want <i>you</i>! I want <i>you</i>!"</p> - -<p>He remembered this paroxysm of affection not because it was special -but because it was connected with his gropings after his identity. -Paroxysms were what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or of -something which frightened him and yet was nameless. He thrummed to -himself, beating time on the table with his spoon, while he worked on -to another point.</p> - -<p>"Wadn't there never no Gracie, mudda?"</p> - -<p>She wheeled round from the gas-stove. "For goodness' sake, what's -putting this into your head? Of course there was a Gracie. You're her. -You don't suppose I stole you, do you?"</p> - -<p>He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on the table with his spoon. -The mystery of being grew still more baffling.</p> - -<p>"Mudda!"</p> - -<p>"What's it now?"</p> - -<p>"If I wad Gracie I'd be a little girl, wouldn't I?"</p> - -<p>She stamped her foot. "Stop it! If you ask me another thing I'll slap -you."</p> - -<p>He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being slapped. Accustomed -to that he had learned to discount its ferocity. A sharp stinging -smart, it passed if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing -had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. If for the -minute he asked no more questions it was in order not to vex his mudda. -She was easily vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> -repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It was so violent, so -overwhelming. He loved love; he loved caressing; he loved to sit in her -lap and sing with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed him.</p> - -<p>As she washed the dishes or switched about the kitchen, he watched -her with that trepidation which makes the children of the poor -sharp-witted. Though under five years of age, he was already developing -a sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity of a wholly -straightforward little face, which had the even tan of a healthy -fairness, in keeping with his crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment -had come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle himself against -her petticoats.</p> - -<p>"Mudda, sing!"</p> - -<p>"I can't sing now. Don't you see I'm busy! Look out, or this hot -dish-water'll scald you."</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, a few minutes later they were settled in the rocking -chair, he on her knee, with his cheek against her shoulder. She was not -as ungracious as her words would have made her seem, a fact of which he -was aware.</p> - -<p>"What'll I sing, Troublesome?"</p> - -<p>"Sing 'Three Cups of Cold Poison.'"</p> - -<p>So she sang in a sweet, true voice, the sort of childish voice which -children love, her little boy joining in with her whenever he knew the -words, but with only a hit-or-miss venture at the tune.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 5%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"Where have you been dining, Lord Ronald, my son?</span><br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where have you been dining, my handsome young man?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"I've been dining with my true love, mither, make my bed soon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"And what did she give you, Lord Ronald, my son?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And what did she give you, my handsome young man?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"Three cups of cold poison, mither, make my bed soon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"What'll you will to your mither, Lord Ronald, my son?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What'll you will to your mither, my handsome young man?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"My gowd and my silver, mither, make my bed soon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"What'll you will to your brither, Lord Ronald, my son?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What'll you will to your brither, my handsome young man?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"My coach and six horses, mither, make my bed soon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"What'll you will to your truelove, Lord Ronald, my son?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What'll you will to your truelove, my handsome young man?"</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"A rope for to hang her, mither, make my bed soon,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>His next conscious memory was more dramatic. He had been playing in -the street, in what town he could never remember. They had recently -moved, but they had always recently moved. A month in one set of rooms, -and his mother was eager to be off. Rarely did they ever stay anywhere -for more than the time of moving in, giving the necessary notice, and -moving out again. When they stayed long enough for him to know a few -children he sometimes played with them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> - -<p>In this way the thing happened. The boy's name was Frankie Bell, a -detail which remained long after the larger facts had escaped him. -Frankie Bell and he had been engaged in scraping the dust and offal of -the street into neat little piles, with the object of building what -they called a "dirt-house." The task was engrossing, and to it little -Tom Coburn gave himself with good will. Suddenly, as each bent over his -pile, Frankie Bell threw off the observation, casually uttered:</p> - -<p>"My mother says your mother's crazy."</p> - -<p>Tom Coburn raised himself from his stooping posture, standing straight, -and looking straight. The expression in his dark blue eyes, over which -the eyebrows even now stood out bushily, was of pain, and yet of pain -that left him the more dauntless. Though knowing but vaguely what the -word crazy meant, he knew it was insulting.</p> - -<p>"She ain't."</p> - -<p>Frankie Bell, a stout young man, lifted himself slowly. "Yes, she is. -My mother says so."</p> - -<p>"Well, your mudda id a liar."</p> - -<p>One rush and Frankie Bell lay sprawling with his head in the cushioned -softness of his own dirt-heap. The attack had taken him so much by -surprise that he went down before he could bellow. Before he could -bellow his enemy was upon him, filling his mouth with the materials -collected for architectural purposes. Victor in the fray, Tom Coburn -ran homeward blinded with his tears.</p> - -<p>He found his mother at the stove, stirring something with a tablespoon.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Mudda, you're <i>not</i> crazy, <i>are</i> you?"</p> - -<p>His reply was a blow on the head with the spoon. The woman was beside -herself.</p> - -<p>"Who said that?"</p> - -<p>Rubbing his head, he told her.</p> - -<p>"Don't you ever let them say no such thing again. If you do I'll kill -you." She threw back her head, her arms outstretched, the spoon in her -right hand. "God! God! What'll they say next? They'll say I stole him. -It'll be twenty years for me; it'll be forty; it may be life. I won't -live to begin it. I know what'll end it before they can...."</p> - -<p>He was terrified now, terrified as he had never been in all his -terrifying moments. Throwing himself upon her, he clutched at her -skirts.</p> - -<p>"Don't, mudda, don't! I'm your little boy! You didn't steal me. Don't -cry, mudda! Oh, don't cry! don't cry!"</p> - -<p>When, in one of her sudden reactions, she sank sobbing to the floor, he -sank with her, petting her, coaxing her, wiping away her tears, forcing -himself to laugh so that she should laugh with him; but a few days -afterward they moved.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">V</p> - - -<p class="drop">M<span class="uppercase">udda</span>, can I have a book and learn to read?"</p> - -<p>The ambition had been inspired in the street, where he had seen a -little boy who actually had a book, and was spelling out the words. Tom -Coburn was now nominally six years old, though it was in the nature of -things that of his age no exact record could be kept. His mother had -changed his birthday so many times that he observed it whenever she -said it had come round.</p> - -<p>Bursting into the room with his eager question, he found her sitting by -a window looking out at a blank wall. Given her feverish restlessness, -the attitude called attention to itself. The apartment was poorer and -dingier than any they had lived in hitherto, while it had not escaped -his observation that she was living on the ragged edge of her nerves. -This made him the more sorry for her, and the more loving. He put his -hand on her shoulder, tenderly.</p> - -<p>"What's the matter, mudda?"</p> - -<p>It was one of the minutes when a touch made her frantic. "Get away!"</p> - -<p>He got away, not through fear, but because she pushed him. He didn't -mind that, though the rejection hurt him inside. He stood in the middle -of the floor, pity in his young countenance, wondering what he could do -for her, when she spoke again.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I've got hardly any money left. I don't know what to do."</p> - -<p>It was the first time his attention had been called to finance. He knew -there was such a thing as money; he knew it had purchasing value; but -he had not known its relation to himself.</p> - -<p>"Why don't you get money where you got it before?"</p> - -<p>"Because I ain't got a husband to die and leave me another five -thousand dollars of insurance."</p> - -<p>"And did you have, mudda?"</p> - -<p>"Of course I had. What did you think?"</p> - -<p>The question voiced his inner difficulty. He had not known what to -think. Having observed that a fundamental social unit was formed of -husbands and wives, he had also understood that husbands and wives -could, in the terms which were the last to hang over from the lingo -of his babyhood, be translated into faddas and muddas. They in turn -implied children. The methods were mysterious, but the unit was so -composed. The exception to this rule seemed to be himself. Though he -had a mudda, he could not remember ever to have heard of a fadda. He -had pondered on this deficiency more times than anyone suspected. The -effort to link himself up with the human family was far more important -to him now than the ways and means of getting cash. Standing pensive, -he peered into the blinding light, or the unfathomable darkness, -whichever it may be, out of which comes human life.</p> - -<p>"Mudda, did Gracie have a fadda?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> - -<p>She snapped peevishly, her gaze again turned outward to the stone wall. -"Of course she did."</p> - -<p>He came nearer to his point. "Did I?"</p> - -<p>"I—I suppose so."</p> - -<p>He approached still nearer. "Did I have the same fadda what Gracie had?"</p> - -<p>"No, you hadn't." She caught herself up hurriedly, rounding on him in -one of her fits of wrath. "Yes, you had."</p> - -<p>The inconsistency was evident. "Well, which was it, mudda?"</p> - -<p>She jumped to her feet, threateningly. "Now you quit! The next thing -you'll be saying is that your name is Whitelaw, and that I stole you. -Take that, you nasty little brat!"</p> - -<p>A smack on the cheek brought the color to his face, and the tears to -his eyes. "No, I won't, mudda. I won't say you stole me, or that my -name is—" oddly enough he had caught it—"or that my name is Whitelaw. -My name is Tom Coburn, and I'm your little boy."</p> - -<p>Rushing at her in the big outpouring of his love, he threw his arms -about her and cried against her waist. He cried so seldom that -his grief drove her to one of her paroxysms of repentance. Her -self-reproaches abating, all she could do to comfort him was to promise -him a book, and begin to teach him to read.</p> - -<p>The book was procured two days later, and by a method new to him. -Doubtless some other means could have been adopted, but the necessity -for sparing pennies had become imperative. Moreover, she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> never -willingly looked at print since the day when she opened a paper to find -that, without knowing who she was, all the forces of the country had -been organized against her.</p> - -<p>They went out together. After traversing a series of streets he had -never been in before they stopped in front of a little shop, in the -window of which stationery, ink, wallpaper, rubber bands, and books -were arranged in artistic confusion. The impression on the fancy of a -little boy already groping toward the treasures of the mind was like -that made on the tourist in Dresden by the heaped up riches of the -Grüne Gewölbe.</p> - -<p>The geography of the shop was explained to him before entering. The -stationery counter was on the right as soon as you passed the door. -The children's books were opposite, on the left. Books forming a cheap -circulating library were back of that, and opposite these, where the -shop was dark, were the wallpapers, in small, tight rolls on shelves. -She was going to inspect wallpapers. The woman in the shop would -exhibit them. He would remain alone in the front part of the shop, and -close to the counter with the children's books. He was to keep alert -and attentive, waiting for a sign which she would give him. When she -turned round in the dark part of the shop, and called out, "Are you all -right, darling?" he was to understand it as permissible to slip from -the counter any small work on which he could lay his hands, and button -it up inside his overcoat. He was to do it quickly, keeping his booty -out of sight, and above all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> saying nothing about it. The plan was -exciting, with a savor of adventure and manly incentive to skill.</p> - -<p>If in the Grüne Gewölbe you were told you could take anything you -pleased you would have some of Tom Coburn's sense of enchantment as -he stood by the book counter, waiting for the sign. He could see his -mother dimly. More dimly still he could follow the movements of the -shop-woman eager for a sale. Sample after sample, the wallpapers -were unrolled, and hung on an easel where their flowers lighted the -obscurity. Even at a distance he could do justice to their beauty, but -more captivating than their glories were the wonders at his hand. Pages -in which children and animals disported in colors far beyond those of -nature were piled in neat little rows, and so tempting that he ached -for the signal. He couldn't choose; there was too much to choose from. -He would put out his hand without looking, guided by fate.</p> - -<p>"Are you all right, darling?"</p> - -<p>Curiously to the little boy, the question came just when he himself -could perceive that the shop-woman had dived beneath the counter for -another example of her wares. All the conditions were propitious. No -one was entering the shop; no one was looking through the window. -Without knowing the moralities of his act, he understood the need for -secrecy. He stretched forth his arm. His fingers touched paper. In the -fraction of a fraction of a second the object was within his overcoat, -and pressed to his pounding heart.</p> - -<p>A few minutes later his mother came smiling and chatting down toward -the exit, giving her address,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> which the shop-woman jotted in a -notebook. "I think it will have to be the pale-green background with -the roses. The room is darkish, and it would light it up. But I'll -decide by to-morrow, and let you know. Yes, that's right. Mrs. F.H. -Grover, 321 Blaisdel Avenue. So much obliged to you. Good morning."</p> - -<p>Having bowed themselves out they went some yards up the street before -the little boy dared to express his new wonderment.</p> - -<p>"Mudda, what did you say you was Mrs. F.H. Grover for? And we don't -live on Blaisdel Avenue. We live on Orange Street."</p> - -<p>"You mind your own business. Did you get your book? Well, that's what -we went for, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>The expedition having proved successful, it was tried on other planes. -Now it was in the line of groceries; now in that of hardware; now in -that of drygoods; now in that of fruit. Needed things could be used; -useless things could be sold, especially after they had moved to -distant neighborhoods. While the procedure didn't supply an income, it -eked out very helpfully such income as remained.</p> - -<p>It furnished, moreover, a motive in life, which was what they had -lacked hitherto. There was something to which to give themselves. It -was like devotion to an art, or even a religion. They could pursue it -for its own sake. For her especially this outside interest appeased -the wild something which wasted her within. She grew calmer, more -reasonable. She slept and ate better. She had fewer fits of frenzy.</p> - -<p>With but faint pangs of misgiving the little boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> enjoyed himself. -He enjoyed his finesse; he enjoyed the pride his mother took in him. -In proportion as they grew more expert they enlarged their field, -often reversing their rôles. There were times when he created the -distraction, while she secreted any object within reach. They did this -the more frequently after she became recognized as his superior in -selection.</p> - -<p>For a superior in selection the great department stores naturally -offered the widest field for operation. They approached them, however, -cautiously, going in and out and out and in for a good many days before -they ventured on anything. When they did this at last it was amid the -crowding and pushing of a bargain day.</p> - -<p>The system evolved had the masterly note of simplicity. The little -boy carried a satchel, of the kind in which school-boys sometimes -carry books. He stood near his mudda, or farther away, according to -the dictates of the moment's strategy. On the first occasion he kept -close to her, sincerely admiring a display of colored silk scarves -conspicuously marked down to the price at which it was intended, even -before their importation, that they should be sold. Women thronged -about the counter, the little boy and his mudda having much ado to edge -themselves into the front to where these products of the loom could be -handled.</p> - -<p>The picking and choosing done, the mother still showed some indecision.</p> - -<p>"I'll just ask my sister to step over here," she confided to the -saleswoman. "Her judgment is so much better than mine. Run over, dear, -to your Aunt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> Mary," she begged of the boy, "and ask her to come and -speak to me." Holding the scarf noticeably in her hands, she smiled at -the saleswoman affably. "I'll just make room for this lady, who seems -to be in a hurry."</p> - -<p>She did not step back; she merely allowed herself to be crowded out. -From the front row she receded to the second, from the second to the -third. Keeping in sight of the saleswoman, she looked this way and -that, plainly for Aunt Mary to appear. At times she made little dashes, -as Aunt Mary seemed to come within sight. From these she did not fail -to return, but on each occasion to a point more distant from that of -her departure. With sufficient time the poor saleswoman, who had fifty -other customers to attend to, would be likely to forget her, for a few -minutes if no more.</p> - -<p>The moment seemed to have come. With the scarf thrown jauntily over -her arm where anyone could see it, the mother forced her way amid -the crowds in search of her little boy. If intercepted she had her -explanation. He had gone on an errand, and had not come back. When she -had found him she would return and pay for the scarf, or decide not to -take it. Her story couldn't help being plausible.</p> - -<p>"Aunt Mary" was a spot agreed upon near one of the side doors, and far -from the center of interest in silk scarves. Agreed upon was also a -little bit of comedy, for the benefit of possible lookers-on.</p> - -<p>"Oh, my dear, I've kept you waiting so long. I'm so sorry. Tell your -mother this is the best I could do for her. I knew you were waiting, so -I didn't let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> the lady wrap it up. Open your bag, and I'll put it in."</p> - -<p>The bag closed, the little boy went out through one door, and his -mother through another. The point where she was to rejoin him was not -so far away but that he could walk to it alone.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">VI</p> - - -<p class="drop">I<span class="uppercase">t's</span> all right, mudda, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>He asked this after their campaign had been carried on for a good part -of a year, and when they were nearing Christmas. He was now supposed -to be seven. For reasons he could not explain the great game lost its -zest. In as far as he understood himself he hated the sneaking and the -secrecy. He hated the lying too, but lying was so much a part of their -everyday life that he might as well have hated bread.</p> - -<p>"Of course it's all right," his mother snapped. "Haven't I said so time -and again? We get away with it, don't we? And if it wasn't all right we -shouldn't be able to do that."</p> - -<p>Silenced by this reasoning, even if something in his heart was not -convinced by it, he prepared for the harvest of the festival. Christmas -was an exciting time, even to Tom Coburn. Perhaps it was more exciting -to him than to other boys, since he had so much to do with shops. As -long ago as the middle of November he had noted the first stirrings -of new energy. After that he had watched the degrees through which -they had ripened to a splendor in which toys, books, skis, skates, -sleds, and all the paraphernalia of young joyousness, made a bright -thing of the world. Where there was so much, the profusion went beyond -desire. One of these objects<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> at a time, or two, or three, might have -found him envious; but he couldn't cope with such abundance. He could -concentrate, therefore, all the more on the pair of fur-lined mittens -which his mother promised him, if, as she expressed it, they could haul -it off.</p> - -<p>By Christmas Eve they had not done so. They had hauled off other -things—a purse, a lady's shopping bag, several towels, a selection of -pen-trays, some pairs of stockings, a bottle of shoe-polish, a baby's -collapsible rubber bathtub, a hair-brush, an electric toaster, with -other articles of no great interest to a little boy. Moreover, only -some of these things were for personal use; the rest would be sold -discreetly after the next moving. It was in the nature of the case that -such grist as came to their mill should be more or less as it happened. -They could pick, but they couldn't choose, at least to no more than a -limited degree. Fur-lined mittens didn't come their way.</p> - -<p>The little boy's heart began to ache with a great fear. Perhaps he -shouldn't get them. Unless he got them by Christmas Day the spell of -the occasion would be gone. To get them a week later wouldn't be the -same thing. It would not be Christmas. He couldn't remember having kept -a Christmas hitherto. He couldn't remember ever having longed for what -might be called an article of luxury. The yearning was new to him, and -because new, it consumed him. Whenever he thought that the happiness -might after all elude him he had to grind his teeth to keep back a sob, -but he could not prevent the filling of his eyes with tears.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was not only Christmas Eve but late in the day before the mother -found her opportunity. At half-past five the counter where fur-lined -mittens were displayed was crowded with poor women who hadn't had -the money or the time to make their purchases earlier. In among them -pressed Tom Coburn's mother, making her selection, and asking the price.</p> - -<p>"Now where's that boy? His hands grow so quick that I can't be sure of -anything without trying them on."</p> - -<p>With a despairing smile at the saleswoman, she followed her usual -tactics of being elbowed from the counter, while she looked about -vainly for the boy. At the right moment she slipped into the pushing, -struggling mass of tired women, where she could count on being no -more remarked than a single crow in a flock. The mittens were in the -muff which was the prize of an earlier expedition. At a side door the -boy was waiting where she had left him. Without pausing for words she -whispered commandingly.</p> - -<p>"Come along quick."</p> - -<p>He went along quick, but also happily, projecting himself into the -"surprise" to which he would wake on Christmas morning.</p> - -<p>They had reached the sidewalk when a hand was laid on the mother's -shoulder.</p> - -<p>"Will you come back a minute, please?"</p> - -<p>The words were so polite that for the first few seconds the boy was not -alarmed. A lady was speaking, a lady like any other lady, unless it was -that her manner was quieter, more forceful, more sure of itself, than -he was accustomed to among women. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> what he never forgot during all -the rest of his life was the look on his mother's face. As he came to -analyze it later it was one of inner surrender. She had come to the -point which she had long foreseen as her objective. She had reached the -end. But in spite of surrender, and though she grew bloodlessly pale, -she was still determined to show fight.</p> - -<p>"What do you want me for?"</p> - -<p>"If you'll step this way I'll tell you."</p> - -<p>"I don't know that I care to do that. I'm going home."</p> - -<p>"You'd better come quietly. You won't gain anything by making a fuss."</p> - -<p>A second lady, also forceful and sure of herself, having joined them -they pushed their way back through the throng. At the glove counter a -place was made for them. The saleswoman was beckoned to. The woman who -had stopped them at the door continued to take the lead.</p> - -<p>"Now, will you show us what you've got in your muff?"</p> - -<p>She produced the mittens. "Yes, I have got these. I bought and paid for -them."</p> - -<p>The saleswoman gave her account of the incident. Women shoppers -gathered round. Floorwalkers came up.</p> - -<p>"It's a lie; it's a lie!" the boy heard his mother cry out, as the girl -behind the counter told her tale. "If I didn't pay for them it was -because I forgot. Here's the money. I'll pay for them now. What do you -take me for?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> - -<p>"No; you won't pay for them now. That's not the way we do business. -Just come along this way."</p> - -<p>"I'm not going nowheres else. If you won't take the money you can go -without it. Leave me alone, and let me take my little boy home."</p> - -<p>Her voice had the screaming helplessness of women in the grasp of -forces without pity. A floorwalker laid his hand on her shoulder, -compelling her to turn round.</p> - -<p>"Don't you touch me," she shouted. "If I've got to go anywheres I can -go without your tearing the clothes off my back, can't I?"</p> - -<p>For the little boy it was the last touch of humiliation. Rushing at the -floorwalker, he kicked him in the shins.</p> - -<p>"Don't you hit my mudda. I won't let you."</p> - -<p>A second floorwalker held the youngster back. Some of the crowd -laughed. Others declared it a monstrous thing that women of the sort -should have such fine-looking children.</p> - -<p>Presently they were surging through the crowd again, toward a back -region of the premises. The boy, not crying but panting as if spent by -a long race, held his mother by the skirt; on the other side one of the -forceful women had her by the arm. He saw that his mother's hat had -been knocked to one side, and that a mesh of her dark hair had broken -loose. He remembered this picture, and how the shoppers, wherever they -passed, made a lane for them, shocked by the sight of their disgrace.</p> - -<p>They came to an office, where their party, his mother, himself, the two -forceful women, and two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> floorwalkers, were shut in with an elderly man -who sat behind a desk. It was still the first of the forceful women who -took the lead.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Corning, we've caught this woman shop-lifting."</p> - -<p>"I haven't been," the boy heard his mother deny. "Honest to God, I -haven't been."</p> - -<p>"We've been watching her for some time past," the forceful woman -continued, "but we never managed before to get her with the goods."</p> - -<p>The elderly man was gray, pale-eyed, and mild-mannered. He listened -while the story was given him in detail.</p> - -<p>"I'm afraid we must give you in charge," he said, gently, when the -facts were in.</p> - -<p>"No, don't do that, don't do that," she implored, tearfully. "I've got -my little boy. He can't do without me."</p> - -<p>"He hasn't done very well with you, has he?" the elderly man reasoned. -"A woman who's taught a boy of that age to steal...."</p> - -<p>He was interrupted by the coming in of a policeman, summoned by -telephone. At sight of him the unhappy woman gave a loud inarticulate -gasp of terror. All that for seven years she had dreaded seemed now -about to come true. The boy felt terror too, but the knowledge that his -mother needed him nerved him to be a man.</p> - -<p>"Don't you be afraid, mudda. If they put you in jail I'll go to jail -too. I won't let them take me away from you."</p> - -<p>"You'd better come with me, missus," the police<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>man said, with gruff -kindliness, when the situation was explained to him. "The kid can come -too. 'Twon't be so bad. Lots of these cases. You'll live through it all -right, and it'll learn you to keep straight. One of these days you may -be glad that it happened."</p> - -<p>They went out through a dimly lighted passageway, clogged with parcels -and packing-cases which men were loading into drays. It was dark by -this time, the streets being lighted as at night. The police-station -was not far away, and to it they were led through a series of byways -in which there were few foot-passengers. The policeman allowed them -to walk in front of him, so that the connection was not too obvious. -The boy held his mother's hand, which clutched at his with a nervous -loosening and tightening of the fingers. As the situation was beyond -words they made no attempt to speak.</p> - -<p>"This way."</p> - -<p>Within the police-station the officer turned them to the right, where -they entered a small bare room. Brilliantly lighted with unshaded -electrics, its glare was fierce upon the eyes. At a plain oak desk a -man in uniform was seated with a ledger in front of him. Another man in -uniform standing near the door picked his teeth to kill time.</p> - -<p>"Shoplifting case," was the simple introduction of the party.</p> - -<p>They stood before the man at the desk, who dipped his pen in the ink, -and barely glanced at them. What to the boy and his mother was as the -end of the world was to him all in the day's work.</p> - -<p>"Name?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> - -<p>She gave her name distinctly, and less to the lad's surprise than if -she hadn't often used pseudonyms. "Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw."</p> - -<p>"Address?"</p> - -<p>She gave the address correctly.</p> - -<p>"Boy's name?"</p> - -<p>She spoke carefully, as one who had prepared her statements. "He's been -known as Thomas Coburn. He's really Thomas Whitelaw. His father was my -second husband."</p> - -<p>"If he's your second husband's child why is he called by your first -husband's name?"</p> - -<p>She was prepared here too. "Because I'd given up using my second -husband's name. I was unhappily married."</p> - -<p>"Is he dead?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, he is."</p> - -<p>Never having heard before so much of his private history, the boy -registered it all. It was exactly the sort of detail for which he had -been eager. It explained too that name of Whitelaw, allusions to which -had puzzled him. He was so engrossed by the fact that he was not Tom -Coburn but Tom Whitelaw as hardly to listen while it was explained -to his mother that she would spend the night in the Female House of -Detention, and be brought before the magistrate in the morning. If the -boy had no friends to whom to send him he would be well taken care of -elsewhere.</p> - -<p>The phlegm to which she had for a few minutes schooled herself broke -down. "Oh, can't I keep him with me? He'll cry his eyes out without me."</p> - -<p>She was given to understand that no child above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> the nursing age could -be put in prison even for its mother's sake. From his reverie as to Tom -Whitelaw he waked to what was passing.</p> - -<p>"But I won't leave my mudda," he wailed, loudly. "I want to go to jail."</p> - -<p>The kindly policeman put his arm about the boy's shoulder.</p> - -<p>"You'll go to jail, sonny, when your time comes, if you set the right -way to work. Your momma's only going to spend the night, and I'll see -to it that you——"</p> - -<p>In a side of the room a door opened noiselessly. A woman, wearing a -uniform, with a bunch of keys hanging at her side, stood there like -a Fate. She was a grave woman, strongly built, and with something -inexorable in her eyes. Even the boy guessed who she was, throwing -himself against her, and crying out, "Go 'way! go 'way! You won't take -my mudda away from me."</p> - -<p>But the folly of resistance became evident. The mother herself -understood it so. Walking up to the woman with the keys, she said in an -undertone:</p> - -<p>"For God's sake get me out of this. I can't look on while he breaks his -little heart. He's always been an angel."</p> - -<p>That was all. She gave no backward look. Before the boy knew what was -about to happen, she had passed into a corridor, and the door had -closed behind her.</p> - -<p>She was gone. He was left with these strange men. The need for being -brave was not unknown to him. Not unknown to him was the power of -calling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> to his aid a secret strength which had already carried him -through tight places. He could only express it to himself in the words -that he mustn't cry. Crying had come to stand for everything cowardly -and babyish. He was so prone to do it that the struggle against it -was the hardest he had to make. He struggled against it now; but he -struggled vainly. He was all alone. Even the three policemen were -talking together, while he stood deserted, and futile. His lips -quivered in spite of himself. The tears gathered. Disgraced as he was -anyhow, this weakness disgraced him more.</p> - -<p>The room had an empty corner. Straight into it he walked, and turned -his back, his face within the angle. The head with an old cap on it -was bowed. The sturdy shoulders, muffled in a cheap top-coat, heaved -up and down. But the legs in their knickerbockers were both straight -and strong, and the feet firmly planted on the floor. Except for an -occasional strangled sound which he couldn't control, he betrayed -himself by nothing audible.</p> - -<p>The three policemen, all of them fathers, glanced at him, but forbore -to glance at one another. One of them tried to say, "Poor kid!" but the -words stuck in his throat. It was the kindly fellow who had brought the -lad and the woman there who recovered himself first.</p> - -<p>"All right, then, boys. The Swindon Street Home. One of you can 'phone -that we're on the way." He went over and laid his hand on the child's -shoulder. "Say, sonny, I'm goin' to take you out to see the Christmas -Tree."</p> - -<p>The thought was a happy one. Tom Coburn had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> never seen any Christmas -Trees, though he had often heard of them. He had specially heard of the -community Christmas Tree which was new that year in that particular -city. It was to be a splendid sight, and against the fascination of -splendor even grief was not wholly proof. He looked shyly round, an -incredible wonder in his tear-stained, upturned face.</p> - -<p>In the street they walked hand in hand, pausing now and then to admire -some brightly lighted window. The boy was in fairyland, but in spite of -fairyland long deep sighs welled up from the springs of his loneliness -and sorrow. To distract him the policeman took him into a druggist's -and bought him a cone of ice-cream. The boy licked it gratefully, as -they made their way to the open space consecrated to the Tree.</p> - -<p>The night was brisk and frosty; the sky clear. In the streets there was -movement, light, gayety. At a spot on a bit of pavement a vendor was -showing a dancing toy, round which some scores of idlers were gathered. -The dancing was so droll that the little boy laughed. The policeman -bought him one.</p> - -<p>When they came to the Christmas Tree the lad was in ecstasy. Nothing he -had ever dreamed of equalled these fruits of many-colored fires. A band -was playing, and suddenly the multitude broke into song.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 5%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O come, all ye faithful,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Joyful and triumphant,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem!</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Even the policeman joined in, humming the refrain in Latin.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> - -<p style="margin-left: 5%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Venite, adoremus;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Venite, adoremus;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Venite, adoremus,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Dominum.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Passing thus through marvels they came to the Swindon Street Home. -The night-nurse, warned by telephone, was expecting them. She was a -motherly woman who had once had a child, and knew well this precise -situation.</p> - -<p>"Oh, come in, you poor little boy! Have you had your supper?"</p> - -<p>He hadn't had his supper, though the cone of ice-cream had stilled the -worst pangs of hunger.</p> - -<p>"Then you shall have some; and after that I'll put you in a nice comfy -bed."</p> - -<p>"He's a fine kid," the policeman commended, before going away, "and -won't give you no trouble, will you, sonny?"</p> - -<p>The boy caught him by the hand, looking up pleadingly into his face, as -if he would have kept him. But the policeman had children of his own, -and this was Christmas Eve.</p> - -<p>"See you again, sonny," he said, cheerily, as he went out, "and a merry -Christmas!"</p> - -<p>The night matron knew by experience all the sufferings of little boys -homesick for mothers who have got into trouble. She had dealt with them -by the hundred.</p> - -<p>"Now, dear, while Mrs. Lamson is getting your supper we'll go to the -washroom and you'll wash your face and hands. Then you'll feel more -like eating, won't you?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> - -<p>Deprived of his policeman, despair would have settled on him again, -had it not been for the night matron's hearty voice. The deeper his -woe, and it was very deep, the less he could resist friendliness. Just -as in that first agony, when he was only eight months old, he had -turned to the only love available, so now he yielded again. He was -not reconciled; he was not even comforted; he was only responsive and -grateful, thus getting the strength to go on.</p> - -<p>Going on was only in letting the night matron scrub his face and hands, -and submitting patiently. As they went from the washroom to the dining -room he held her by the hand. He did this first because he couldn't -let her go, and then because the halls were big and bare and dark. -Never had he been in any place so vast, or so impersonal. He was used -to strangeness, as they moved so often, but not to strangeness on so -immense a scale. It was a relief to him, because it brought in a note -of hominess, to hear from an upper floor a forlorn little baby cry.</p> - -<p>His supper toned him up. He could speak of his great sorrow. While the -night matron sat with him and helped him to porridge he asked, suddenly:</p> - -<p>"Will they let me go to jail and stay with my mudda to-morrow?"</p> - -<p>"You see, dear, your mother may not be in jail to-morrow. Perhaps -she'll be let out, and then you can go home with her."</p> - -<p>"They didn't ought to put her in. I'm big. I could work for her, and -then she wouldn't have to take things no more."</p> - -<p>"But bless you, darling, you'll be able to work for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> her as it is. They -won't keep her very long—not so very long—and I'll look after you -till she comes out. After that...."</p> - -<p>"What's your name?" he asked, solemnly, as if he wished to nail her to -the bargain.</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Crewdson's my name. I'm a widow. I like little boys. I like you -especially. I think we're going to be friends."</p> - -<p>As a proof of this she took him to her own room, instead of to a -dormitory, where she gave him a bath, found a clean night-shirt which, -being too big, descended to his feet, and put him to sleep in a cot she -kept on purpose for homeless little children in danger of being too -lonely.</p> - -<p>"You see, dear," she explained to him, "I don't go to bed all night. I -stay up to look after all the little children—there are a lot of them -in this house—who may want something. So you needn't be afraid. I'll -leave a light burning, and I'll be in and out all the time. If you wake -up and hear a noise, you'll know that that'll be me going about in the -rooms, but mostly I'll be in this room. Now, don't you want to say your -prayers?"</p> - -<p>He didn't want to say his prayers because he had never said any. She -suggested, therefore, that he should kneel on the bed, put his hands -together, and repeat the words she told him to say, as she sat on the -edge of the cot.</p> - -<p>"Dear God"—"Dear God"—"take care of me to-night"—"take care -of me to-night"—"and take care of my dear mother"—"and take -care of my dear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> mudda"—"and make us happy again"—"and make -us happy again"—"for Jesus Christ's sake"—"for Jesus Christ's -sake"—"Amen"—"Amen."</p> - -<p>"God's up in the sky, isn't He?" he asked, as he hugged his dancing toy -to him and let her cover him up.</p> - -<p>"God's everywhere where there's love, it seems to me, dear. I bring a -little bit of God to you, and you bring a little bit of God to me; and -so we have Him right here. That's a good thought to go to sleep on, -isn't it? So good-night, dear."</p> - -<p>She kissed him as she supposed his mother would have done. He threw his -arms about her neck, drawing her face close to his. "Good night, dear," -he whispered back, and almost before she rose from the bedside she knew -he was asleep.</p> - -<p>Somewhere toward morning she came into the room and found him sitting -up in his cot.</p> - -<p>"Will it soon be daytime, Mrs. Crewdson?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, dear; not so very long now."</p> - -<p>"And when daytime comes could I go to the jail?"</p> - -<p>"Not too early, dear. They wouldn't let you in."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but I don't want to go in. I only want to stand outside. Then if -my mudda looks out of the window, she'll see her little boy."</p> - -<p>Throwing herself on her knees, she clasped him in her arms. "Oh, you -darling! How I wish God had given me a little son like you! I did have -one—he would have been just your age—only I—I lost him."</p> - -<p>Touched by this tribute to himself, as well as by his friend's -bereavement, he brought out a fine manly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> phrase he had long been -saving for an adequate occasion.</p> - -<p>"The hell you did, Mrs. Crewdson!"</p> - -<p>Having thus expressed his sympathy, he nestled down to sleep again, -hugging his dancing toy.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">VII</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">e</span> woke to his first Christmas. That is, he woke to find a chair drawn -up beside his cot and stocked with little presents. He had never had -presents before. It had not been his mother's custom to make them. -Since she gave him what she could afford, and they shared everything in -common, presents would have seemed to her superfluous.</p> - -<p>But here were half a dozen parcels done up in white paper and tied with -red ribbon, and on them he could read his name. At least, he could read -Tom, while he guessed from the length of the word and initial <i>W</i> that -the other name was Whitelaw. So he was to be Tom Whitelaw now! The fact -seemed to make a change in his identity. He stowed it away in the back -of his mind for later meditation, in order to feast his soul on the -mystic bounty of Santa Claus.</p> - -<p>He knew who Santa Claus was. He had often seen him in the windows of -the big stores, surrounded by tempting packages, and driving reindeer -harnessed to a sleigh. He knew that he drove over the roofs of houses, -down chimneys, and out through grates. Somewhere, too, he harbored the -suspicion that this was only childish talk, and that the real Santa -Claus must be a father or a mother, or in this case Mrs. Crewdson; only -both childish talk and fact simmered without conflict in his brain. It -was easier to think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> that a supernatural goodwill had brought him this -profusion than that commonplace hands, which had never done much for -him hitherto, should all of a sudden be busy on his behalf.</p> - -<p>Raising himself on his elbow, his first thought came with the bubbling -of a sob. "My mudda is in jail!" His second was in the nature of a -corollary, "But she'll like it when I tell her that Santa Claus took -care of her little boy." The deduction gave him permission to enjoy -himself.</p> - -<p>At first he only gazed in a rapture that hardly guessed at what was -beneath these snowy coverings. What he was to get was secondary to the -fact that he was getting something. For the first time in his life he -was taken into that vast family of boys and girls for whom Christmas -has significance. Up to this morning he had stood outside of it -wistfully—yearning, hoping, and yet condemned to stand aloof. Now, if -his mudda hadn't been in jail....</p> - -<p>The parcels were larger and smaller. Beginning with the smallest, he -arranged them according to size. Merely to touch them sent a thrill -through his frame. The smallest was round like an orange and yet -yielded to pressure. He was almost sure it was a rubber ball. He could -have been quite sure, only that he preferred the condition of suspense.</p> - -<p>It was long before he could bring himself to untie the first red ribbon -bow, his surprise on finding a rubber ball being no less keen than if -he hadn't known it was a rubber ball on first taking it between his -fingers. A handkerchief laid out flat, making the second parcel seem -bigger than it was, sent him up in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> the scale of social promotion. By -way of candies, nuts, a toothbrush with tooth paste, he came to the -largest of all, a History of Mankind, written in words of one syllable, -and garnished with highly-colored pictures of various racial types. If -only his mother hadn't been in jail....</p> - -<p>That his mother was no longer in jail was a fact he learned later in -the day. It was a day of extremes, of quick rushes of rapture out of -which he would fall suddenly, to go away somewhere and moan. When he -begged, as he begged every hour or two, to be taken to the jail, he -could be distracted by rompings with the other children, most of them -in some such case as his own, or by some novelty in the life. To eat -turkey and plum pudding at the head of one of three long tables, each -seating twelve or fourteen, was to be raised to a point of social -eminence beyond which it seemed there could be nothing more to reach. -But in the midst of this pride the hard facts would recur to him, and -turkey and plum pudding choke him.</p> - -<p>That something had happened he began to infer when his beloved -policeman appeared at the home in the afternoon. Having seen him enter, -the boy ran up to him.</p> - -<p>"Oh, mister, are you going to take me to the jail?"</p> - -<p>Mister patted him on the head, though he answered, absently, "Not just -now, sonny. You know you're goin' to have a Christmas Tree. I've come -to see Miss Honiton."</p> - -<p>Miss Honiton, one of the day matrons, having appeared at the end of the -hall, the policeman turned him about by the shoulders.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Now be off with you and play. This has got to be private."</p> - -<p>He took himself off but only to the end of the hall, where they didn't -notice that he lingered. He lingered because he knew that, whatever the -mystery, it had something to do with him.</p> - -<p>He caught, however, no more than words which he couldn't understand. -Cyanide of potassium! Only his quick ear and retentive memory enabled -him to lay hold of syllables so difficult. His mother had taken -something or hadn't taken something, he couldn't make out which. All he -saw was that both of his friends looked grave, Miss Honiton summing up -their consultation,</p> - -<p>"I'll let him enjoy the Christmas Tree before saying anything about it."</p> - -<p>The policeman answered, regretfully: "Do you think you must?"</p> - -<p>"I know I must. He ought to be told. He has a right to know. He might -resent it later if we didn't tell him now."</p> - -<p>"Very well, sister. I leave it to you."</p> - -<p>The door having closed on this friend, Tom Whitelaw, so to call him -henceforth, made his way into the room where the Christmas Tree was -presently to be lighted up. But he had no heart for the spectacle. -There was something new. In the grip of the forces which controlled his -life he felt helpless, small. Even his companions in misfortune, as -all these children were, could be relatively light-hearted. They could -clap their hands when the Tree began to burn with magic fires, and take -pleasure in the presents handed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> out to them. He could not. He was -waiting for something to be told to him—something he had a right to -know.</p> - -<p>One by one, the presents were cut from the Tree; one by one the -children went up to receive this addition to what Santa Claus had -brought them in the morning. His own name was among the last. When it -was called he went forward perfunctorily at first, and then with a -sudden inspiration.</p> - -<p>His package was handed him, not by one of the matrons but by a beaming -young lady from outside. As she bent to deliver it he had his question -ready.</p> - -<p>"Please, miss, what's cyanide of potassium?"</p> - -<p>He had repeated the words to himself so often during the half hour -since first hearing them that he pronounced them distinctly. The young -lady laughed.</p> - -<p>"Why, I think it's a deadly poison." She turned to the matron nearest -her. "What is cyanide of potassium? This dear little boy wants to know."</p> - -<p>But the dear little boy had already walked soberly back to his seat. -While the other children made merry with their presents he sat with his -on his lap, and reflected. Poison was something that killed people. He -knew that. In one of the houses where they had lived a woman had taken -poison, and two days later he had seen her carried out in a long black -box. The impression had remained with him poignantly.</p> - -<p>He had no inclination to cry. Tears could bring little relief in this -kind of cosmic catastrophe. If his mother had taken poison and was to -be carried out in a long black box, everything that had made up his -world would have collapsed. He could only wait sub<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>missively till the -thing he ought to know was told to him.</p> - -<p>It was told when the giving of the presents was over, and the children -flocked out of the room to get ready for their Christmas supper. Miss -Honiton was waiting near the door.</p> - -<p>"Come into my office, dear. I want to ask you a few questions."</p> - -<p>Miss Honiton's office was a mixture of office and sitting room, in that -it had business furniture offset by photographs and knicknacks. Sitting -at her desk, she turned to the lad, who stood as if to attention, a -long thin sympathetic face, stamped with practical acumen.</p> - -<p>"I wanted to ask you if besides your mother you have any relations."</p> - -<p>His dark blue eyes, deep set beneath his bushy brows, she thought the -most serious and earnest she had ever seen in any of the hundreds of -homeless little boys she had had to deal with.</p> - -<p>"No, miss."</p> - -<p>"No brothers or sisters, no uncles or aunts?"</p> - -<p>"No, miss."</p> - -<p>"Didn't your mother ever take you to see anyone?"</p> - -<p>"No, miss."</p> - -<p>"Well, then, didn't anyone ever come to see her?"</p> - -<p>"No, miss."</p> - -<p>To the point she was trying to reach she went round by another way. -Where did they live? How long had they lived there? Where had they -lived before that? How long had they lived in that place? He answered -to the best of his recollection, but when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> it came to their flittings -from tenement to tenement, and from town to town, his recollection -didn't take him very far. Miss Honiton soon understood that she might -as well question a bird as to its migrations.</p> - -<p>For a minute she said nothing, turning over in her mind the various -ways of breaking her painful news, when he himself asked, suddenly:</p> - -<p>"Is my mudda dead?"</p> - -<p>The question was so direct that she felt it deserved a direct answer.</p> - -<p>"Yes, dear."</p> - -<p>"Did she"—he pulled himself together for the big words—"did she take -cyanide of potassium?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, dear; so I understand."</p> - -<p>"Will they take her away in a long black box?"</p> - -<p>"She'll be buried, dear, of course. There'll have to be a funeral -somewhere."</p> - -<p>"Can I go to it?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, dear, certainly. I'll go with you myself."</p> - -<p>He said nothing more, and Miss Honiton felt the futility of trying to -comfort him. There was no opening for comfort in that stony little -face. All she could suggest to break the tension was to ask if he -wouldn't like his supper.</p> - -<p>He went to his supper and ate it. He ate it ruminantly, speechlessly. -What had happened to him he could not measure; what was before him he -could not probe. All he knew of himself was that he had become a clod -of misery, with almost nothing to temper his desolation.</p> - -<p>Two big tears rolled down his cheeks without his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> being aware of it. -They did not, however, escape the eyes of a little girl who sat near -him.</p> - -<p>"Who's a cry-baby?" she shrieked, to the entertainment of the -lookers-on. She pointed at him with her spoon. "A grea' big boy like -that cryin' for his momma!"</p> - -<p>He accepted the scorn as a tonic. "A grea' big boy like that cryin' for -his momma," were the words with which he kept many a pang during the -next few days from being more than a tearless anguish.</p> - -<p>Miss Honiton was as good as her word as to going with him to the rooms -which housed the long black box. This he understood to be all that -now represented his mudda. She had tried to explain the place as an -"undertaker's parlor," but the words were outside his vocabulary. In -the same way the why and the wherefore of the ceremony were outside his -intelligence. He and Miss Honiton went into the dim room, and stood -near the thing he heard mentioned as "the body." After some mumbled -reading they went out again, and back to the Swindon Street Home.</p> - -<p>Back in the Swindon Street Home he was still without a wherefore or a -why. He got up, he washed, he dressed, he ate, he went to bed again. He -was in a dormitory now with three other little boys, all of them too -deep in the problems of parents in jail or in parts unknown to offer -him much fellowship. They cried when they were left alone in bed, or -they cried in their sleep; but they cried. It was his own pride, and in -no small measure his strength, that he didn't cry, unless he cried in -dreams.</p> - -<p>Everyone was good to him, Mrs. Crewdson and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> Miss Honiton especially, -but no one could give him the clue to life which instinctively he -clutched for. That one didn't stay forever in the Swindon Street Home -he could see from observation. The children he had found there went -away; other children came. Some of these stayed but a night or two. -None of them stayed much longer. By those sixth and seventh senses -which children develop when they are in trouble he divined that -conferences were taking place on his behalf. Now and then he detected -glances shot toward him by the matrons in discussion which told him -that he was being talked about. It was easy to deduce that he was in -the Swindon Street Home longer than was the custom because they didn't -know what to do with him. He inferred that they didn't know what to do -with him from the many questions which many people asked. Sometimes it -was a man, more times it was a woman, but the questions were always -along the lines of those of Miss Honiton as he came out from the -children's Christmas Tree. Had he any relatives? Had he any friends? -If he had they ought to look after him. It was hard for these kindly -people to believe that he had no claim whatever on any member of the -human race.</p> - -<p>He began to hear the words, a State ward. Though they meant nothing -to him at first, he strove, as he always did, with new words and -expressions, to find their application. Then one evening, as Mrs. -Crewdson was putting him to bed, she told him that that was what he had -become.</p> - -<p>"You see, darling, now that your father and mother are both dead, the -whole country is going to adopt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> you. Isn't that nice? And it isn't -everything. You're going to have a home—not a home like this—what we -call an institution—but a real home—with a real father and mother in -it, and real brothers and sisters."</p> - -<p>He took this stolidly. He was not to be moved now by anything that -could happen. A waif on the world, the world had the right to pitch him -in any direction that it chose. All he could do with his own desires -was to beat them into submission. He mustn't cry! His fears and his -griefs alike focussed themselves into that resolve. It was the only way -in which he could translate his stout-hearted will to endure.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">VIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">o</span> conduct him to his new home, Mrs. Crewdson gave up the whole of -the morning she was supposed to spend in sleep after her all-night -vigil. The home was in a little town a short distance up the Hudson. -Though the railway journey was not long, it was the longest he had ever -taken, and, once the river came within view, it was not without its -excitements. His spirits began to rise with a sense of new adventure. -There were things to look at, bridges, steamers, a man-o'-war at -anchor, lumber yards, coal sheds, an open-air exhibit of mortuary -monuments, and high overhead the clear cold blue of a January sky. -On the other side of the river the wooded heights made a bold brown -bastion, flecked here and there with snow.</p> - -<p>As he had not asked where they were going, or the composition of the -family with whom the Guardian of State Wards was placing him, his -protectress permitted him to make his own discoveries. New faces, new -contacts, new necessities, would help him to forget the old.</p> - -<p>They got out at the station of Harfrey. Mrs. Crewdson carried the -suitcase containing the wardrobe rescued when they had searched the -rooms which he and his mother had occupied last. In front of the -station they got on a ramshackle street car, which zigzagged up the -face of the bank, rising steeply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> from the river, so reaching the -little town. They turned sharply at the top of the ridge to run through -the one long street. It was a mean-looking street of drab wooden -dwellings and drab wooden shops, occupied mostly by people dependent -on the grand seigneurs of the neighboring big "places." An ugly -schoolhouse, an ugly engine house, two or three ugly churches, further -defied that beauty of which God had been so generous.</p> - -<p>Having got out at a corner at which the car stopped, they walked to a -small wooden house with a mansard roof, standing back from the street. -It was a putty-colored house, with window and door frames in flecked, -anæmic yellow. Perched on the edge of the ridge, it had three stories -at the back and but two in front. What had once been an orchard had -dwindled now to three or four apple trees, the rest of the ground being -utilized as a chicken run. As the day was sunny, a few Plymouth Rocks -were scratching and pecking in the yard.</p> - -<p>Having turned in here, they found themselves expected, the front -door opening before they reached the cement slab in front of it. The -greetings were all for Mrs. Crewdson, who was plainly an old friend. -The boy went in only because Mrs. Crewdson went in, and in the same way -proceeded to a cheery, shabby sitting room. Here there were books and -magazines about, while a canary in a cage began to sing as soon as he -heard voices. To a homeless little boy the haven was so sweet that he -forgot to take off his cap.</p> - -<p>The first few minutes were consumed in questions as to this one -and that one, relatives apparently, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>gether with data given and -received as to certain recognized maladies. Mrs. Crewdson was getting -better of her headaches, but Mrs. Tollivant still suffered from her -varicose veins. Only when these preliminaries were out of the way and -Mrs. Crewdson had thrown off her outer wraps, was the introduction -accomplished.</p> - -<p>"So I've brought you the boy! Tom, dear, this is Mrs. Tollivant who's -going to take care of you. Your cap, Tom! I imagine," she continued, -with an apologetic smile, "you'll find manners very rudimentary."</p> - -<p>Obliged to take an early train back to New York, Mrs. Crewdson talked -with veiled, confidential frankness. A boy of seven could not be -supposed to seize the drift of her cautious phraseology, even if he -heard some of it.</p> - -<p>"So you know the main features of the case.... I told them it wouldn't -be fair to you to let you assume so much responsibility without your -knowing the whole.... With children of your own to think of, you -couldn't expose them to a harmful influence unless you were put in -a position to take every precaution against.... Not that we've seen -anything ourselves.... But, of course, after such a bringing up there -can't but be traces.... And such good material there.... I'm sure -you'll find it so.... Personally, I haven't seen a human being in -a long time to whom my heart has gone.... Only there it is.... An -inheritance which can't but be...."</p> - -<p>He didn't feel betrayed. He had nothing to resent. Mrs. Crewdson had -proved herself his friend, and he trusted her. Without knowing all the -words she used,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> he caught easily enough the nature of the sentiments -they stood for. These he accepted meekly. He was a bad boy. His mother -and he had been engaged in wicked practices. Dimly, in unallayed mental -discomfort, he had been convinced of this himself; and now it was clear -to everyone. If they hadn't known what to do with him it was because a -bad boy couldn't fit rightly into a world where everyone else was good. -A young evildoer, he had no rôle left but that of humility.</p> - -<p>He was the more keenly aware of this after Mrs. Crewdson had bidden him -farewell, and he was face to face with his new foster mother. A wiry -little woman, quick in action and sharp in tongue, she would be kind -to him, with a nervous, nagging kindness. He got this impression, as -he got an odor or a taste, without having to define or analyze. Later -in life, when he had come to observe something of the stamp which -professions leave on personalities, he was not surprised that she -should have worn herself out in school-teaching before marrying Andrew -Tollivant, a book-keeper. As he sat now, just as Mrs. Crewdson had left -him, his overcoat still on his back, his cap in his hand, his feet -dangling because the chair was too high for him, she treated him as if -he were a class.</p> - -<p>"Now, little boy, before we go any farther, you and I had better -understand each other."</p> - -<p>With this brisk call to his attention, she sat down in front of him, -frightening him to begin with.</p> - -<p>"You know that this is now to be your home, and I intend to do my duty -by you to the best of my ability. Mr. Tollivant will do the same. If -you take the chil<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>dren in the right way I'm sure you'll find them -friendly. They were very nice to the last little boy the Board of -Guardians sent to us."</p> - -<p>Staring in fascinated awe at the starry brightness of her eyes, and the -wrinkles of worry around them, he waited in silence for more.</p> - -<p>"But one or two things I hope you'll remember on your side. Perhaps -you haven't heard that the Board has found it hard to get anyone to -take you. You're old enough to know that where there are children in a -family people are shy of a boy who's had just your history. But I've -run the risk. It's a great risk, I admit, and may be dangerous to my -own. Do you understand what I mean?"</p> - -<p>"No, ma'am," he said, blankly.</p> - -<p>"Then I'll tell you. There are two things children must learn as soon -as they're able to learn anything. One is to be honest; the other is to -tell the truth. You know what telling the truth is, don't you?"</p> - -<p>He did know, but paralyzed by her earnestness, he denied the fact. "No, -ma'am."</p> - -<p>"So there you are! And I don't suppose you've been taught anything -about honesty."</p> - -<p>"No, ma'am."</p> - -<p>"Then you must begin to learn."</p> - -<p>He began to learn that minute. Still treating him as a class, she -delivered a little lecture, such as a child of tender years could -understand, on the two basic virtues of which he had pleaded ignorance. -He listened as in a trance, his eyes fixed on her vacantly. Though -seizing a disconnected word or two, fear kept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> him from getting the -gist of it all, as he generally did.</p> - -<p>"It's your influence on the children that I want you to beware of. -Arthur is older than you, but he's only ten; and a boy with your -experience could easily teach him a good deal of harm. Cilly is eight, -and Bertie only five. You'll be careful with them, won't you? Do you -know that if we lead others astray God will call us to account for it?"</p> - -<p>"No, ma'am."</p> - -<p>"Well, He will; and I want you to remember it, and be afraid. Unless -you're afraid of God you'll never grow into the good boy I hope we're -going to make of you."</p> - -<p>The homily finished, he was instructed in the ways of the upper floor, -where, in the sloping space under the eaves, he was to have his room. -After this he came back to the sitting room, not knowing what else to -do. He was in a daze. It was as if he had dropped on another planet -where nothing was familiar. Whether to stand up or sit down he didn't -know. He didn't know what to think, or what to think about. Cut loose -from his bearings, he floated in mental space.</p> - -<p>As standing seemed to commit him to least that was wrong, he stood. -Standing implied looking out of the window, and looking out of the -window showed him, about half past twelve, a well-built boy, rosy with -the cold, noisy from exuberance of spirit, swinging in at the gate and -brandishing a hockey stick. From her preparation of the dinner his -mother ran to meet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> him at the door. She spoke in a loud whisper that -easily reached the sitting room.</p> - -<p>"Now be careful, Arthur. He's come. He's in there."</p> - -<p>Arthur responded with noisy indifference. "Who? The crook?"</p> - -<p>"Sh-h-h, dear! You mustn't call him that. We must help him to forget -it, and to grow into being like ourselves."</p> - -<p>Arthur grunted noncommittally. Presently he strolled into the sitting -room, whistling a tune. With hands in his pockets, his bearing was that -of an overlord. He made a circuit of the room, eying the new guest, as -the new guest eyed him back.</p> - -<p>"Hello?" the overlord said at last, with a faint note of interrogation.</p> - -<p>Still whistling and still with his hands in his pockets, he strolled -out again.</p> - -<p>Tom Whitelaw's nerves had become so many runlets for shame. He was -the crook! He knew the word as one which crooks themselves use -contemptuously. If he should hear it again.... But happily Mrs. -Tollivant had put her veto on its use.</p> - -<p>The gate clicked again. Coming up the pathway, he saw a girl of about -his own age, with a boy much younger who swung himself on crutches. All -his movements were twisted and grotesque. His head was sunk into his -shoulders as if he had no neck. His feet and legs wore metal braces. -His face had the uncannily aged look produced by suffering. Without -actually helping him, the little girl kept by his side maternally. She -was a dainty little girl, very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> fair, with shiny yellow hair hanging -down her back, like a fairy princess in a picture book. The boy looking -out of the window fell in love with her at sight. He was sure that in -her he would find a friend.</p> - -<p>On entering she called out in a whiny voice, very musical to Tom -Whitelaw's ear:</p> - -<p>"Ma! Bertie's been a naughty boy. He wouldn't sing 'Pretty Birdling' -for Miss Smallbones. I told him you'd punish him, and you will, won't -you, ma?"</p> - -<p>As there was no response to this, the young ones came to the door of -the sitting room and looked in. They stared at the stranger, and the -stranger stared at them, with the unabashed frankness of young animals. -Having stared their fill, the son and daughter of the house went off to -ask about dinner.</p> - -<p>To Tom that dinner was another new experience. For the first time in -his life he sat down to what is known as a family meal. Attempts had -sometimes been made by well-meaning women in the tenements to rope -him to their tables, but his mother had never permitted him to yield -to them. Now he sat down with those of his own age, to be served like -them, and on some sort of footing of equality. The honor was so great -that he could hardly swallow. Second helpings were beyond him.</p> - -<p>The afternoon was blank again. "You'll begin to go to school on -Monday," Mrs. Tollivant had explained; but in the meantime he had the -hours to himself. They were long. He was lonely. Having been given -permission to go into the yard, he stood studying the Plymouth Rocks. -Presently he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> conscious of a light step behind him. Before he had -time to turn around he also heard a voice. It was a whiny voice, yet -sharp and peremptory.</p> - -<p>"You stop looking at our hens."</p> - -<p>The fairy princess had not come up to him; she had paused some two -or three yards away. Her expression was so haughty that it hurt him. -It hurt him more from her than from anybody else because of his -admiration. He looked at her beseechingly, not for permission to go on -studying the Plymouth Rocks, but for some shade of relenting. He got -none. The sharp little face was as glittering and cold as one of the -icicles hanging from the roof behind her. Heavy at heart, he turned to -go into the house by the back door.</p> - -<p>He had climbed most of the hill when the clear, whiny voice arrested -him.</p> - -<p>"Who's a crook?"</p> - -<p>At this stab in the back he leaped round, fury in his dark blue eyes. -But the fairy princess was used to fury in dark blue eyes, and knew -how best to defy it. The tip of the tongue she thrust out at him added -insolence to insult. He turned again, and, wounded in all his being, -went on into the house.</p> - -<p>Near the back door there was a sun parlor, and in it he saw Bertie, -squatting in a small-wheeled chair built for his convenience. Bertie -called to him invitingly.</p> - -<p>"I've got a book."</p> - -<p>"I've got a book, too," he returned, in Bertie's own spirit.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You show me your book, and I'll show you mine."</p> - -<p>The proposal being fair, he went in search of his History of Mankind. -In a few minutes he was seated on the floor beside Bertie's chair, -exchanging literary criticisms. He liked Bertie. He had a premonition -that Bertie was going to like him. After the disdain of the fairy -princess, and the superciliousness of the overlord, this was -comforting. Moreover, he could return Bertie's friendliness by doing -things for him which no one else had time to do. He could push his -wheeled chair; he could run his errands; he could fetch and carry; he -would like doing it.</p> - -<p>"I've got infantile paralysis."</p> - -<p>"I've got a rubber ball."</p> - -<p>"I've got a train."</p> - -<p>"I've got a funny little man what dances."</p> - -<p>Coming into the house, Cilly found them the best of friends, in the -best of spirits. Without entering the sun-parlor, she spoke through the -doorway, coldly.</p> - -<p>"Bertie, I don't think momma would like you to act like that. I'll go -and ask her."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tollivant hurried from the kitchen, scouring a saucepan as she -looked in on them. Seeing nothing amiss, she went away again. Then as -if distrusting her own vision, she came back. She came back more than -once, anxiously, suspiciously. Bertie was enjoying himself with this -boy picked out of the gutter. That the boy had been picked out of the -gutter was not what troubled her, but that Bertie should enjoy himself -in the lad's society. Wise enough not to put<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> notions into Bertie's -head, she stopped her ward later in the day, when she had the chance to -speak to him alone.</p> - -<p>"I saw you playing with Bertie. Well, that's all right. Only you'll -remember your promise, won't you? You won't teach him anything harmful?"</p> - -<p>"No, ma'am," the boy answered, humbly, as one who has a large selection -of harmful things to impart.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">IX</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">e</span> had looked forward to Monday and school. After four days in the -Tollivant household he was eager for relief from it. Except for Cilly's -occasional, and always private, taunts, they were not unkind to him; -they only treated him as an outcast whom they had been obliged to -succor because no one else would do so. He had the same food and drink -as they; his room was good enough; of whatever was material he had no -complaint to make. There was only the distrust which rendered his bread -bitter and the bed hard to lie upon. They didn't take him in as one of -them. They kept him outside, an alien, an intruder.</p> - -<p>It was again a new experience in that for the first time in his life he -was doing without love. When he was Tom Coburn he had had plenty of it -at the worst of times. The Swindon Street Home was full of it. In the -Tollivant house it was the only thing weighed and measured and stinted. -He couldn't, of course, make this analysis. He only knew that something -on which his life depended was not given him.</p> - -<p>He hoped to find it in the school. In any case the school would admit -him to the larger life. It would bind him to that human family which he -had so long craved to enter. In addition to that, it was at school you -learned things.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p> - -<p>He was the more eager to learn things for the reason that Mrs. -Tollivant had declared him backward. In the primary school Cilly was in -the second grade; he must go into the first. He would be with children -a year younger than himself. But the humiliation would be an incentive -to ambition. He had already decided that only by "knowing things" -should he be able to lift himself out of his despised estate.</p> - -<p>The school session was all he had hoped for. Miss Pollard, the teacher, -put in touch with his story by Mrs. Tollivant, kept him near to her, -and watched over him. He learned to discriminate between <i>his</i>, <i>has</i>, -and <i>had</i>, as matters of orthography, as well as between <i>cat</i>, -<i>car</i>, and <i>can</i>. That twice two made four and twice four made eight -added much to his understanding of numbers. He sang <i>Roving the Old -Homeland</i>, while Miss Pollard pointed on the map to the places as they -were named.</p> - -<p> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">From Plymouth town to Plymouth town</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Pilgrims made their way;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The Puritans settled Salem,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And Boston on the Bay.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>The air had a rhythm and a lilt which allowed for the inclusion of any -reasonable number of redundant syllables.</p> - -<p> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where the blue waters fork;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The English came and conquered it,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And turned it into New York.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>A little history, a little geography, being taught by the simple method -of doggerel, much pleasure was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> evoked by the exercise of healthy -lungs. Listening to her new pupil, Miss Pollard discovered a sweet -treble that had never before been aware of itself, with a linnet's joy -in piping. A linnet's joy was his joy throughout the whole morning, -with no more than a slight flaw in his ecstasy in the thought of two -hours in the Tollivant home before he came back for the afternoon.</p> - -<p>As Cilly called for Bertie at the kindergarten, he walked homeward -by himself. Happy with a happiness never experienced before, he had -not noticed that his school-mates hung away from him, tittering as -he passed. To well-dressed little boys and girls his worn old cap, -his frayed knickerbockers, and above all his cheap gray overcoat with -a stringy sheepskin collar, naturally marked him for derision. They -would have marked him for derision even had his story not been known to -everyone.</p> - -<p>He went singing on his way, stepping manfully to the measure.</p> - -<p> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where the blue waters fork;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The English came and conquered it,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And turned it into New York.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>They massed themselves behind him, convulsed by his lack of -self-consciousness. The little girls giggled; the boys attempted to -make snowballs from snow too powdery to hold together. One lad found -a frozen potato which he hurled in such a way as to skim close to the -singing figure while just missing it. Tom Whitelaw, unsuspicious of -ill-will, turned round in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> curiosity. He was greeted by a hoot from the -crowd, but from whom he couldn't tell.</p> - -<p>"Who's the boy what his mother was put in jail?"</p> - -<p>The hoot became a chorus of jeers. By one after another the insult was -taken up.</p> - -<p>"Who's the boy what his mother was put in jaaa-il?"</p> - -<p>As far as he was able to distinguish, the voices of the little girls -were the louder. In their merriment they screamed piercingly.</p> - -<p>"Gutter-snipe! Gutter-rat! Crook! Crook! Crook! Who's the boy what his -mother was put in ja-aa-ail?"</p> - -<p>Crimson, with clenched fists, with gnashing teeth, with tears of rage -in his eyes, he stood his ground while they came on. They swept toward -him in a semicircle of which he made the center. Very well! So much the -better! He could spring on at least one of them, and dash his brains -out on the ground. There was no ferocity he would not enjoy putting -into execution.</p> - -<p>He sprang, but amid the yells of the crowd his prey dodged and escaped -him. The semicircle broke. Instead of advancing in massed formation, it -danced round him now as forty or fifty imps. The imps bewildered him, -as <i>banderilleros</i> bewilder a bull in the ring. He didn't know which to -attack. When he lunged at one, the charge was diverted by another, so -that he struck at the air wildly. Shrieks of mockery at these failures -maddened him, with the heartbreaking madness of a loving thing goaded -out of all semblance to itself. He panted, he groaned, he dashed about -foolishly, he stumbled, he fell. When pelted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> with pebbles or scraps of -ice, he was hardly aware of the rain upon his head.</p> - -<p>But the mob swept on, leaving him behind. At gates and corners the boy -baiters disappeared, hungry for their dinners. Most of them forgot him -as soon as they had turned their backs. It was easy for them to stop -for awhile since they could begin again.</p> - -<p>He was alone on the gritty, icy slope surrounding the schoolhouse. -There was no comfort for him in the world. Faintly he remembered as a -satisfaction that he hadn't cried, but even this consolation was cold. -He wondered if he couldn't kill himself.</p> - -<p>He did not kill himself, though he pondered ways and means of doing -it. He came to the conclusion that it would be foolish to kill himself -before killing some of his tormentors. He prayed about it that night, -his first prayer, except for the one taught him on Christmas Eve by -Mrs. Crewdson.</p> - -<p>To the family devotions, for which all were assembled about eight -o'clock, before the younger children went to bed, Mr. Tollivant had -begun to add a new petition.</p> - -<p>"And, O Heavenly Father, take pity on the little stranger within our -gates, even as we have welcomed him into our home. Blot out his past -from Thy book. Give him a new heart. Make him truthful and honest -especially. Help him to be gentle, obedient...."</p> - -<p>But savagely the boy intervened on his own behalf. "O Heavenly Father, -don't! Don't give me a new heart, or make me gentle and obedient, till -I kill some of them fellows that called me a crook, for Jesus Christ's -sake, Amen."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">X</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">e</span> killed none of the fellows who called him a crook, though during the -first two years of his schooling he was called a crook pretty often. -Whatever grade he was in, he was always that boy who differs from -other boys, and is therefore the black swan in a flock of white ones. -Whatever his progress, he made it to the tune of his own history. He -was a gutter-snipe. His mother had killed herself in jail! Before she -had killed herself both he and she had been arrested for thieving in -a shop! There was not a house in Harfrey where the tale was not told. -There was never a boy or girl in the school who hadn't learned it -before making his acquaintance.</p> - -<p>Besides, they said of him, he would have been "different" anyhow. Being -"different" was an offense less easily pardoned than being criminal. -Dressed more poorly than they, and with no claims of a social kind, he -carried himself with that bearing which they could only describe as -putting on airs. It was Cilly Tollivant who first brought this charge -home to him.</p> - -<p>"But I don't, Cilly," he protested, earnestly. "I don't know how to be -any other way."</p> - -<p>Cilly was by this time growing sisterly. She couldn't live in the house -with him and not feel her heart relenting, and though she disdained him -in public, as her own interests compelled her to do, in private she -tried to help him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Don't know how to be any other way!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "Tom -Whitelaw, you make me sick. Don't you know even how to <i>talk</i> right?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, but...."</p> - -<p>"There you go," she interrupted, bitterly. "Why can't you say <i>Yep</i>, -like anybody else?"</p> - -<p>He took the suggestion humbly. He would try. His only explanation of -his eccentricity was that <i>Yep</i> and <i>Nope</i> didn't suit his tongue.</p> - -<p>But adopting Yep and Nope, as he might have adopted words from a -foreign language, adopting much else that was crude and crass and -vulgar and noisy and swaggering and standardized, according to -schoolboy notions of the standard, he still found himself "different." -For one thing, he looked different. Debase his language as he might, or -coarsen his manners, or stultify his impulses, he couldn't keep himself -from shooting up tall and straight, with a carriage of the head which -was in itself an offense to those who knew themselves inferior. It -made nothing easier for him that his teachers liked and respected him. -"Teacher's pet" was a term of reproach hardly less painful than crook -or gutter-snipe. But he couldn't help learning easily; he couldn't -help answering politely when politely spoken to; he couldn't help the -rapture of his smile when a friendly word came his way. All this told -against him. He was guyed, teased, worried, tortured. If there was a -cap to be snatched it was his. If there was one of a pair of rubber -shoes to be stolen or hidden it was his. If there was an exercise -book to be grabbed and thrown up into a tree where the owner could be -pelted while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> he clambered after it, it was his. Because he was poor, -friendless, defenseless, and yet with damnable pride written all over -him, it became a recognized law of the school that any meanness done to -him would be legitimate.</p> - -<p>But in his third year at the Tollivants the persecution waned, and in -the fourth it stopped. His school-mates grew. Growing, they developed -other instincts. Fair play was one of them; admiration for pluck was -another.</p> - -<p>"You've got to hand it to that kid," Arthur Tollivant, now fourteen, -had been heard to say in a circle of his friends. "He's stood -everything and never squealed a yelp. Some young tough, believe me!"</p> - -<p>This good opinion was reflected among the lads of Tom Whitelaw's own -age. They had never been cruel; they had only been primitive. Having -passed beyond that stage, they forgot to no small degree what they had -done while in it. The boy who at seven was the crook was at eleven -Whitey the Sprinter. He walked to and from school with the best of -them. With the best of them he played and fought and swore privately. -If he put on airs it was the airs of being a much sadder dog than he -was, daring to smoke a cigarette and go home with the smell of the -wickedness on his breath.</p> - -<p>So, outwardly, Tom Whitelaw came in for two full years of good-natured -toleration. If it did not go further than toleration it was because -he was a State ward. On the baseball or the football team he might be -welcomed as an equal; in homes there was discrimination. He was not -invited to parties, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> among the young people of Harfrey parties -were not few. Girls who met him at the Tollivants' didn't speak to him -outside. When Cilly, now being known as Cecilia, had her friends to -celebrate her birthday, he remained in his room with no protest from -the family at not joining them. None the less, it was a relief to be -free from jeering in the streets, as well as from being reminded every -day at school of his mother's tragedy. It was a relief to him; but it -was no more.</p> - -<p>For more than that the wound had gone too deep. Outwardly, he accepted -their approaches; in his heart he rejected them, biding his time. He -was biding his time, not with longings for revenge—he was too sensible -now for that—but in the hope of passing on and forgetting them. By the -time he was twelve he was already aware of his impulse toward growth.</p> - -<p>It was in his soul as a secret conviction, the seed's knowledge of its -own capacity to germinate. Most of the boys and girls around him he -could judge, not by a precocious worldly wisdom, but by his gift for -intuitive sizing up. Their range was so far and no farther, and they -themselves were aware of it. They would become clerks and plumbers and -carpenters and school-teachers and shoe dealers and provision men, and -whatever else could reach its fulfillment in a small country town. He -himself felt no limit. Life was big. He knew he could expand in it. -To nurse resentments would be small, and would keep him small. All he -asked was to forget them, to forget, too, those who called them forth; -but to that end he must be far away.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XI</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> road to this Far-away began in the summer vacation of the year when -he was supposed to be twelve. It was the year when he first went to -work, though the work was meant to last for no more than a few weeks.</p> - -<p>Mr. Quidmore, a market gardener at Bere, in Connecticut, some seven -or eight miles eastward toward the Sound, had come over to ask Mr. -Tollivant for a few hours' work in straightening out his accounts. -Straightening out accounts for men who were but amateurs at bookkeeping -was a means by which Mr. Tollivant eked out his none-too-generous -salary.</p> - -<p>It was a Sunday afternoon in June. They were in the yard, looking at -the Plymouth Rocks behind their defenses of chicken-wire. That is, Mr. -Quidmore was looking at the Plymouth Rocks, but Tom was looking at Mr. -Quidmore. Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant were giving their guest information as -to how they raised their hens and marketed their eggs.</p> - -<p>It was a family affair. Mrs. Tollivant prepared the food; Cecilia fed -the birds; Art hunted for the eggs; Bertie and Tom packed them. Mr. -Quidmore was moved to say:</p> - -<p>"I wish I had a fine boy like your Art to help me with the -berrypicking. Good money in it. Three a week and his keep for as long -as the strawberries hold out."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> - -<p>Tom saw Mrs. Tollivant shake her head at her husband behind Mr. -Quidmore's back. This meant disapproval. Disapproval could not be -disapproval of the work, but of Mr. Quidmore. Art already gave his -holiday services to a dairy for a dollar less than Mr. Quidmore's -offer, and no keep. It was the employer, then, and not the employment -that Mrs. Tollivant distrusted.</p> - -<p>And yet Mr. Quidmore fascinated Tom. He had never before seen anyone -whose joints had the looseness of one of those toys which you worked -with a string. He was so slim, too, that you got little or no -impression of a body beneath his flapping clothes. Nervously restless, -he walked with a shuffle of which the object seemed the keeping of his -shoes from falling off. When he talked or laughed one side of his long -thin face was screwed up as if by some early injury or paralysis. The -right portion of his lips could smile, while the left trembled into -a rictus. This made his speech slower and more drawling than Tom was -accustomed to hear; but his voice was naturally soft, with a quality in -it like cream. It was the voice that Tom liked especially.</p> - -<p>In reply to the suggestion about Art, Mr. Tollivant replied, as one who -sees only a well-meant business proposal,</p> - -<p>"We'd like nothing better, Brother Quidmore; but the fact is Art has -about as much as he can do for the rest of his vacation." He waved his -hand toward Tom. "What do you say to this boy?"</p> - -<p>At the glorious suggestion Tom's heart began to fail for fear. He was -not a fine boy like Arthur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> Tollivant. The possibility of earning -three dollars a week, to say nothing of his board, was too much like -the opening up of an Aladdin's palace for the hope to be more than -deceptive. It was part of his daily humiliation never to have had -any money of his own. The paternity of the State paid for his food, -shelter, and education; but it never supplied him with cash, or with -any cash that he ever saw. To have three dollars a week jingling in -his pocket would not only lift him out of his impotent dependence, but -would make him a man. While Mr. Quidmore walked round him, inspecting -him as if he were a dog or pig or other small animal for sale, he held -himself with straightness, dignity, and strength. If he was for sale he -would do his best to be worthy of his price.</p> - -<p>Mr. Quidmore nodded toward Mr. Tollivant. "State ward, ain't he?"</p> - -<p>Mr. Tollivant admitted that he was.</p> - -<p>"Youngster whose moth—"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tollivant interrupted kindly. "You needn't be afraid of that. He's -been with us for five years. I think I may say that all traces of the -past have been outlived. We can really give him a good character."</p> - -<p>Tom was grateful. Mr. Quidmore examined him again. At last he shuffled -up to him, throwing his arm across his shoulder, and drawing him close -to himself.</p> - -<p>"What about it, young fellow? Want to come?"</p> - -<p>Entirely won by this display of kindliness, the boy smiled up into the -twisted face. "Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>"Then that's settled. Put your duds together, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> we'll go along. I -guess," he added to Mr. Tollivant, "that you can stretch a point to let -him come, and get your permit from the Guardians to-morrow."</p> - -<p>Mr. Tollivant agreeing that after five years' care he could venture as -much as this, they drove over to Bere in Mr. Quidmore's dilapidated -motor car. Mrs. Quidmore met them at the door. Her husband called to -her:</p> - -<p>"Hello, there! Got a new hand to help you with the strawberries."</p> - -<p>She answered, dejectedly. "If he's as good as some of the other new -hands you've picked up lately—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, rats! Give us a rest! If I brought the angel Gabriel to pick the -berries you'd see something to find fault with."</p> - -<p>That there was a rift within the lute of this couple's happiness was -clear to Tom before he had climbed out of the machine.</p> - -<p>"Where's he to sleep?" Mrs. Quidmore asked in her tone of discontent.</p> - -<p>"I suppose he can sleep in the barn, can't he?"</p> - -<p>"I wouldn't put a dog to sleep in that barn, nasty, smelly, rotten -place."</p> - -<p>"Well, put him to sleep where you like. He'll get three a week and -his keep while he's here, and that's all I'm responsible for." Mrs. -Quidmore turned and went into the house. Her husband winked at Tom as -man to man. "Can you beat it? Always like that. God! I don't know how I -stand it. Get in."</p> - -<p>Tom got in, finding an interior as slack as Mrs. Quidmore herself. The -Tollivant house, with four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> children in it, was often belittered, but -with a little tidying it became spick and span. Here the housekeeping -wore an air of hopelessness. Whoever did it did it without heart.</p> - -<p>"God! I hate to come into this place," its master confided to Tom, as -they stood in the hall, of which the rug lay askew, while a mirror hung -crooked on the wall. "You and me could keep the shack looking dandier -than this if she wasn't here at all. I wish to the Lord...."</p> - -<p>But before the week was out the boy had won over Mrs. Quidmore, and -begun to make her fond of him. Because he was eager to be useful, he -helped her in the house, showing solicitude, too, on her personal -account. A low-keyed, sad-eyed woman who did nothing to make herself -attractive, she blamed her husband for perceiving the loss of her -attractiveness.</p> - -<p>"He's bound to me," she would complain, tearfully, to the boy, as he -dried the dishes she had washed. "It's his duty to be fond of me. But -he ain't. There's fifty women he likes better than he does me."</p> - -<p>This note of married infelicity was new to Tom, especially as it -reached him from both parties to the contract.</p> - -<p>"God, how she gets my goat! Sometimes I think how much I'd enjoy seeing -her stretched out with a bullet through her head. I tell you that the -fellow who'd do that for me wouldn't be sorry in the end...."</p> - -<p>To the boy these words were meaningless. The creamy drawl with which -they were uttered robbed them of the vicious or ferocious, making them -mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> humorous explosions. He could laugh at them, and yet he laughed -with a feeling of discomfort.</p> - -<p>The discomfort was the greater because in kindness to him lay the -one point as to which the couple were agreed. Making no attempt to -reconcile elements so discordant, all he could do was to soften the -conditions which each found distasteful. He kept the house tidier -for the man; he did for the woman a few of the things her husband -overlooked.</p> - -<p>"It's him that ought to do that," she would point out, in dull -rebellion. "He's doing it for some other woman I'll be bound. Who <i>is</i> -that woman that he meets?"</p> - -<p>Conjugal betrayal was also new to Tom, and not easily comprehensible. -That a man with a wife should also be "going with a girl" was a -possibility that had never come within his experience while living with -the Tollivants. He had heard a good many things from Art, as also from -some other boys, but this event seemed to have escaped even their wide -observation. It would have escaped his own had not Mrs. Quidmore harped -on it.</p> - -<p>"I do believe he'd like to see me in my grave. I'm in their way, and -they'd like to get me out of it. Oh, you needn't tell me! Couldn't you -keep an eye on him, and tell me what she's like?"</p> - -<p>For Mrs. Quidmore's sake he watched Mr. Quidmore, but as he didn't know -what he was watching him for the results were not helpful. And he liked -them both. He might have said that he loved them both, since loving -came to him so easily. Mrs. Quidmore washed and mended his clothes, -and whenever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> she went to Harfrey or some other town she added to his -wardrobe. Mr. Quidmore was forever dropping into his ear some gentle, -honeyed confidence of which Mrs. Quidmore was the butt. Neither of them -ever scolded him, or overworked him. He was in the house almost as a -son. And then one day he learned that he was to be there altogether as -a son.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XII</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">e</span> never knew how and when the question as to his adoption had been -raised, or whether the husband or the wife had raised it first. Here, -too, the steps were taken with that kind of mystification which -shrouded so much of his destiny. He himself was not consulted till, -apparently, all the principal parties but himself had decided on the -matter. One of the Guardians, or a representative, asked him the formal -question as to whether or not he should like it, and being answered -with a Yes, had gone away. The next thing he knew he had legally become -the son of Martin and Anna Quidmore, and was to be henceforth called by -their name.</p> - -<p>The outward changes were not many. He had won so much freedom in the -house that when he became its son and heir there was, for the minute, -little more to give him. His new mother grew more openly affectionate; -his new father drove him round in the dilapidated car and showed him to -the neighbors as his boy. As far as Tom could judge, there was general -approval. Martin Quidmore had taken a poor outcast lad and given him a -home and a status in the world. All good people must rejoice in this -sort of generosity. The new father rejoiced in it himself, smiling with -a twisted smile that was like a leer, the only thing about him which -the new son was afraid of.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was August now. The picking of the strawberries having long been -over, the boy had been kept on for other jobs. He still worked at them. -He dug potatoes; he picked peas and beans; he pulled carrots, parsnips, -and beets; he culled cucumbers. The hired hands did the heaviest work, -but he shared in it to the limit of his strength. Sometimes he went -off early in the morning on the great lorry, loaded with garden-truck, -which his father drove to the big markets.</p> - -<p>On these journeys the new father grew most confidential and lovable. -His mellifluous voice, which was sad and at the same time not quite -serious, was lovable in itself.</p> - -<p>"God, how I'd like to give you a better home than you've got! But it's -no use, not as long as she's there. She'll never be anything different. -She'd not make things brighter or cleaner or jollier, not even if she -was to try."</p> - -<p>"Well, she <i>is</i> trying," the boy declared, in her defense; but the only -answer was a melancholy laugh.</p> - -<p>And yet now that he had the duties, of a son, he set to work to improve -the family relationships. He petted the mother, he cajoled the father. -He found small ruses of affection in which, as it seemed to him, he -gained both the one and the other, insensibly to either. His proof of -this came one morning as once more they were driving to one of the big -markets.</p> - -<p>"Say, boy, I'm beginning to be worried about her. I don't think she -can be well. She's never been sick much; but gosh! now I'll be hanged -if I don't think I'll go and see a doctor and ask him to give her some -medicine."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> - -<p>As this thoughtfulness, in spite of all indications to the contrary, -implied a fundamental tenderness, the boy was glad of it. He was the -more glad of it when, on a morning some days later, and in the same -situation, the father drawled, in his casual way:</p> - -<p>"Say, I've seen that doctor, and he's given me something he wants her -to take. Thinks it will put her all right in no time."</p> - -<p>"And did you give it to her?" he asked, eagerly.</p> - -<p>The honeyed voice grew sweeter. "Well, no; that's the trouble. You -can't get her to take doctor's stuff, if she knows she's taking it. Got -to get her on the sly. Once when she needed a tonic I used to watch -round and put it in her tea. Bucked her up fine."</p> - -<p>"And is that what you're going to do now?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I would, only she'd be afraid of me. Watches me like a cat, -don't you see she does? What I was thinking of was this. You know she -makes a cup of tea for herself every day in the middle of the afternoon -while we're out at work. Well, now, if you could make an excuse to -slip into the kitchen, and put one of these powders in her teapot—" -he tapped the packet in his waistcoat pocket—"she'd never suspect -nothing. She'd take it—and be cured."</p> - -<p>The boy was silent.</p> - -<p>"You don't want to do it, hey?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I don't say that. I was—I was—just wondering."</p> - -<p>"Wondering what?"</p> - -<p>"Whether it's fair play to anyone to give them medicine when they don't -know they're taking it."</p> - -<p>"But if it's to do them good?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> - -<p>"But ought we to do good to people against their wills?"</p> - -<p>"Why, sure! What you thinking of? Still if you don't want to...."</p> - -<p>The tone hurt him. "Oh, but I will."</p> - -<p>"Say I will, <i>father</i>. Why don't you call me that? Don't I call you -son?"</p> - -<p>He braced himself to an effort. "All right, father; I will."</p> - -<p>"Good! Then here's the powder." He drew one from the packet. "Don't -let none of it fall. You'll steal into the kitchen this afternoon—she -generally lays down after she's washed the dinner things—and just -empty the paper into the little brown teapot she always makes her tea -in. Then burn the paper in the stove—there's sure to be a fire on—so -that she won't find nothing lying around to make her suspicious. You -understand, don't you?"</p> - -<p>He said he understood, though in his heart of hearts he wished that he -hadn't been charged with the duty.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">I<span class="uppercase">f</span> you had asked the boy who was now legally Tom Quidmore why he was -reluctant to give his mother a powder that would do her good he would -have been unable to explain his hesitation. Reason, in the main, was -in favor of his doing it. In the first place, he had promised, and he -had always responded to those exhortations of his teachers which laid -stress on keeping his word. Not to keep his word had come to seem an -offense of the nature of personal defilement.</p> - -<p>Then the whole matter had been thought out and decreed by an authority -higher than himself. The child mind, like the childish mind at all -times, is under the weight of authority. The source of the authority -is a matter of little moment so long as it speaks decidedly enough. It -is always a means by which to get rid of the bother of using private -judgment, which as often as not is a bore to the person with the right -to it.</p> - -<p>In the case of a boy of twelve, private judgment is hampered by a -knowledge of his insufficiency. The man who provides food, clothing, -shelter, is invested with the right to speak. The child mind is -logical, orderly, respectful, and prenatally disposed to discipline. -Except on severe provocation it does not rebel. Tom Quidmore felt no -impulse to rebellion,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> even though his sense of right and wrong was, -for the moment, mystified.</p> - -<p>He lacked data. Such data as came to his hearing, and less often to -his sight, lay morally outside his range. Like those scientifically -minded men who during the childhood of our race registered the -phenomena of electricity without going further, he had no power of -making deductions from what eyes and ears could record. He knew that -there was in life such an element as sexual love; but that was all -he knew. It entered into the relations of married people, and in -some puzzling way contributed to the birth of children; but of its -wanderings and aberrations he had never heard. That man and wife should -reach a breaking point was no part of his conception of the things that -happened. There was nothing of the kind between the Tollivants, nor -among the parents of the lads with whom he had grown up at Harfrey. -That which at Harfrey had been clear unrelenting daylight was at -Bere a gloaming haunted by strange shapes which perplexed and rather -frightened him.</p> - -<p>Not until he was fourteen or fifteen years of age, and the Quidmore -episode behind him, like an island passed at sea, did the significance -of these queer doings and sayings really occur to him. All that for the -present his mind and experience were equal to was listening, observing, -and wondering. He knew already what it was to have things which he -hadn't understood at the time of their happening become clear as he -grew older.</p> - -<p>An illustration of this came from the small events of that very -afternoon. On going back from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> midday dinner to work in the carrot -patch he fixed on half past two as the hour at which he would make -the attempt to force on his mother the prescribed medicine. That time -having arrived, he rose, brushed the earth from his knees, dusted his -hands against each other, and started slowly for the house. A faraway -memory which had been in the back of his mind ever since his father had -made the odd request now began to assert itself, like the throb of an -old pain.</p> - -<p>He was a little boy again. In the dim hall of the Swindon Street Home -he was listening to the friendly policeman talking to Miss Honiton. He -recaptured his own emotions, the dumb distress of the young creature -lost in the dark, and ignorant of everything but its helplessness. His -mother had taken something, or had not taken something, he wasn't sure -which. The beaming young lady handed him his present from the Christmas -Tree, and told him that cyanide of potassium—the words were still -branded on his brain—was a deadly poison. Then he stood once more, as -in memory he had stood so many times, in the half-darkened room where -words were mumbled over the long black box which they spoke of as "the -body."</p> - -<p>Now that it was all in far perspective he knew what it had meant. That -is, he knew the type of woman his mother had been; he knew the kind -of soil he had sprung from. The events of five years back to a boy of -twelve are a very long distance away. So his mother seemed to Tom. -So did the sneaking through shops, and the flights from tenement to -tenement. So did the awful Christmas Eve when he had lost her. He could -think of her tenderly now because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> he understood that her mind had been -unhinged. What hurt him with a pain which never fell into perspective -was that in trying to create in his boyish way some faint tradition of -self-respect, he worked back always to this origin in shame.</p> - -<p>While seeing no connection between such far-off things and the task -put upon him by his father, he found them jostling each other in his -mind. You took something—and there was disaster. It was as far as his -thought carried him. After that came the fact that, his respect for -authority being strong, he dared not disobey.</p> - -<p>He could only dawdle. A delay of five minutes would be five minutes to -the good. Besides, dawdling on a hot, windless summer afternoon, on -which the butterflies, bees, and humming-birds were the only nonhuman -living things not taking a siesta, eased the muscles cramped with long -crouching in the carrot beds. There being two ways of getting to the -house, he took the longer one.</p> - -<p>The longer one led him round the duck pond, whence the heat had driven -ashore all the ducks and geese with the exception of one gander. For -no particular reason the gander's name was Ernest. Between Ernest and -Gimlets, the wire-haired terrier pup, one of those battles such as -might take place between Bolivia and Switzerland was in full swing of -rage. Gimlets fought from the bank; Ernest from the pond. When Ernest -paddled forward, with neck outstretched and nostrils hissing, Gimlets -scampered to the top of the shelving shore, where he could stand and -bark defiantly. When Ernest swung himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> round and made for the -open sea, Gimlets galloped bravely down to the water's edge, yelping -out challenges. This bloody fray gave the boy a further excuse for -lingering. Three or four times had Ernest, stung by the taunts to which -he had tried to seem indifferent, wheeled round on his enemy. Three or -four times had Gimlets scrambled up the bank and down again. But he, -too, recognized authority, and a call that he couldn't disobey. A long -whistle, and the battle was at an end! Gimlets trotted off.</p> - -<p>The whistle came from the grove of pines climbing the little bluff on -the side of the duck pond remote from the house. It struck the boy as -odd that his father should be there at a time when he was supposed -to be cutting New Zealand spinach for the morrow's market. Not to be -caught idling, the boy slipped down the bank to creep undetected below -the pinewood bluff. Neither seeing nor being seen, he nevertheless -heard voices, catching but a single word. The word was Bertha, and it -was spoken by his father. The only Bertha in the place was a certain -beautiful young widow living in Bere. That his father should be talking -to her in the pinewood was another of those details difficult to -explain.</p> - -<p>More difficult to explain he found a little scene he caught on looking -backward. Having now passed the bluff, he was about to round the corner -of the pond where the path led through a plantation of blue spruces -which hid the house. His glancing back was an accident, but it made him -witness of an incident pastoral in its charm.</p> - -<p>Bertha, being indeed the beautiful young widow,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> the boy was astonished -to see his father steal a kiss from her. Bertha responded with such a -slap as nymphs give to shepherds, running playfully away. His father -shambled after her, as shepherds after nymphs, catching her in his arms.</p> - -<p>Tom plunged into the blue spruce plantation where he could be out of -sight. Hot as he was already, he grew hotter still. What he had seen -was so silly, so stupid, so undignified! He wished he hadn't seen it. -Having seen it, he wished he could forget it. He couldn't forget it -because, unpleasant as he found it, he was somehow aware that it had -bearings beyond unpleasantness. What they were he had nothing to tell -him. He could only run through the plantation as if he would leave the -thing as quickly as possible behind him; and all at once the house came -into sight.</p> - -<p>With the house in sight he remembered again what he had come to do. He -stopped running. His steps again began to lag. Feeling for the powder -in his waistcoat pocket, he reminded himself that it would do his -mother good. The house lay sleeping and silent in the heat. He crept up -to the back door.</p> - -<p>And there at the open window stood his mother rolling dough on a table. -She rolled languidly, as she did everything. Her head drooped a little -to one side; her expression was full of that tremulous protest against -life which might with a word break into a rain of tears.</p> - -<p>Relieved and delighted, he stole round the house, to enter by another -way. She was now lifting a cover of the stove, so that she didn't hear -his approach. Before she knew that anyone was there he had slipped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> his -arm around her, and smacked a big kiss on her cheek. She turned slowly, -the lifter in her hand. A new life seemed to dawn in her, brightening -her eyes and flushing her sallowness.</p> - -<p>"You bad little boy! What did you come home for?"</p> - -<p>He replied as was true, that he had come for a drink of water. He had -meant to take a drink of water after putting her powder in the teapot. -"I thought," he ended, "you'd be lying down asleep."</p> - -<p>"I was lying down, but something made me get up."</p> - -<p>He was curious. "Something—like what?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I just couldn't sleep. And then I remembered that it was a long -time since I'd made him any of them silver cookies he used to be so -fond of."</p> - -<p>He liked the name. "Is that what you're baking?"</p> - -<p>"Yes; and you'll ..." she went back to the table, picking up the -cutter—"you'll have some for supper if you'll—if you'll call me ma."</p> - -<p>"But I do."</p> - -<p>Her smile had the slow timidity that might have been born of disuse. -"Yes, when I ask you. But I want you to do it all the time, and -natural."</p> - -<p>"All right then; I will—ma."</p> - -<p>While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, cup of water, she -began on the memories dear to her, but which few now would listen -to. She had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also had -been born. His father worked in a powder factory in that city. It was -owing to an explosion when he was a lad that Martin's frame had been -partially paralyzed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> - -<p>"He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got a shock. He was awful -delicate, and used to have fits till he grew out of them. I think the -crook in his face makes him look aristocratic, don't you?"</p> - -<p>The boy having said that he didn't know but what it did, she continued -plaintively, cutting out her cookies with a heart-shaped cutter.</p> - -<p>"I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined I wouldn't hardly -do a thing for my mother in the house, or carry the tiniest little -parcel across the street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin -and I were married he let me have a girl for the first two years to do -everything. All he ever expected of me was to get up and dress, and -look stylish; and now...."</p> - -<p>As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob, the boy took the -opportunity to speak of getting back to work.</p> - -<p>"I think I must beat it, ma. I've got all those carrots—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a few minutes, can't he? -Anyhow, nothing you can do'll save him from going bankrupt. This place -don't pay. He'll never make it pay. His work was to run a hat store. -That's what he did when he married me, and he made swell money at it, -too."</p> - -<p>The family history interested the boy, as all tales did which accounted -for the personal. He knew now how Martin Quidmore's health had broken -down, and the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy. -Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> uncle hadn't died -and left him fifteen thousand dollars.</p> - -<p>"Enough to live on quite genteel for life," his wife complained, "but -nothing would do but that he should think himself a market-gardener, -him that couldn't tell a turnip from a spade. Blew in the whole thing -on this place, away from everywheres, and making me a drudge that -hardly knew so much as to wash a dish. Even that I could have stood if -he'd only gone on loving me as his marriage vows made it his duty to -do, but—"</p> - -<p>"I'll love you, ma," the boy declared, tenderly. "You don't have to cry -because there's no one to love you, not while I'm around."</p> - -<p>The new life in her eyes was as much of incredulity as of joy. "Don't -say that, dearie, if you don't mean it. You don't have to love me just -because I'm trying to be a mother to you, and look after your clothes."</p> - -<p>"But, ma, I want to. I do."</p> - -<p>They gazed at each other, she with the cutter in her hand, he with the -cup. What he saw was not a feeble, slatternly woman, but some one who -wanted him. He had not been wanted by anyone since the night when his -mudda—he still used the word in his deep silences—had gone away with -the wardress who looked like a Fate. In the five intervening years he -had suffered less from unkindness than from being shut out of hearts. -Here was a heart that had need of him, so that he had need of it. The -type of heart didn't matter. If it made any difference it was only that -where there was weakness the appeal to him was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> the greater. With this -poor thing he would have something on which to spend his treasure.</p> - -<p>"You'll see, ma! I'll bring in the water for you, and split the -kindlings, and get up in the morning and light the fire, and milk the -cow, and everything."</p> - -<p>Straight and sturdy, he looked at her with the level gaze of eyes that -seemed the calmer and more competent because they were hidden so far -beneath his bushy, horizontal eyebrows. The uniform tan from working in -the sun heightened his air of manliness. Even the earth on his clothes, -and a smudge of it across his forehead where a dirty hand had been put -up to push back his crisp ashen hair, hinted at his capacity to share -in the world's work. To the helpless woman whose prop had failed her, -the coming of this young strength to her aid was little short of a -miracle.</p> - -<p>In the struggle between tears and laughter she was almost hysterical. -"Oh, you darling boy!" she was beginning, advancing to clasp him in her -arms. But with old, old memories in his heart he dreaded the paroxysm -of affection.</p> - -<p>"All right, ma!" he laughed, dodging her and slipping out. "I've got -to beat it, or fath—" he stumbled on the word because he found it -difficult to use—"or father will wonder where I am." But once in the -yard, he called back consolingly, though keeping to the practical, -"Don't you bother about Geraldine. I'll go round by the pasture and -drive her home as I come back from work. I'll milk her, too."</p> - -<p>"God bless you, dearie!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> - -<p>Standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand, her limp -figure seemed braced to a new power, as she watched him till he -disappeared within the plantation of blue spruces.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XIV</p> - - -<p class="drop">W<span class="uppercase">hen</span> a whistle blew at five o'clock the hired men on the Quidmore place -stopped working. As a son of the house, Tom Quidmore paid to the signal -only enough attention to pile his carrots into a wheelbarrow and convey -them to the spot where they would help to furnish the market lorry in -the morning. In fulfillment of his promise to his adopted mother, he -then went in search of Geraldine.</p> - -<p>Of all the tasks that he liked at Bere he liked most going to the -pasture. It was not his regular work. As regular work it belonged to -old Diggory; but old Diggory was as willing to be relieved of it as -Mrs. Quidmore of the milking. Brushing himself down, and washing his -hands at the tap in the garage after a fashion that didn't clean them, -he marched off, whistling. He whistled because his heart was light. His -heart was light because his mother having been in the kitchen, he had -escaped the necessity for giving her the medicine as to which he felt -his odd reluctance.</p> - -<p>Leaving the garage behind him, he threaded a tiny path running through -the beet-field. The turnip-field came next, after which he entered -a strip of fine old timber, coming out from that on the main road -to Bere. Along this road, for some five hundred yards, he tramped -merrily, kicking up the dust. He liked this road. Not only was it -open, free, and straight, but along its old stone walls raspberries -and black<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>berries grew ripe in a tangle of wild spirea, meadow-rue, -jewel weed, and Queen Anne's lace. He loved this luxuriance, this -summer sense of abundance. To the boy who had never known anything but -poverty, Nature at least, in this lush Connecticut countryside, seemed -generous.</p> - -<p>The pasture was on the edge of a scrubby woodland in which the twenty -acres of the Quidmore property trailed away into the unkempt. Eighty or -a hundred years earlier, it had been the center of a farm now cut up -into small holdings, chiefly among market gardeners. In the traces of -the old farmhouse, the old garden, the old orchard, the boy found his -imagination touched by the pathos of a vanished human past.</p> - -<p>The land sloped from the hillside, till in the bottom of the hollow -it became a little brambly wood such as in England would be called a -spinney. Through the spinney trickled a stream which somewhere fell -into Horseneck Brook, which somewhere fell into one of those shallow -inlets that the Sound thrusts in on the coastline. Halfway between -the road and the streamlet, was the old home-place, deserted so long -ago that the cellar was choked with blackberry vines, and the brick -of the foundation bulging out of plumb. A clump of lilac which had -once snuggled lovingly against a south wall was now a big solitary -bush. What used to be a bed of pansies had reverted to a scattering of -cheery little heartsease faces, brightening the grass. The low-growing, -pale-rose mallow of old gardens still kept up its vigor of bloom, -throwing out a musky scent. There was something wistful in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> spot, -especially now that the sun was westering, and the birds skimmed low, -making for their nests.</p> - -<p>In going for Geraldine Tom always stole a few minutes to linger among -these memories of old joys and sorrows, old labors and rewards, of -which nothing now remained but these few flowers, a few wind-beaten -apple trees, and this dint in the ground which served best as a shelter -for chipmunks. It was the part of the property farthest from the house. -It was far, too, from any other habitation, securing him the privilege -of solitude. The privilege was new to him. At Harfrey he had never -known it. About the gardens, even at Bere, there were always the owner, -the hired men, the customers, the neighbors who came and went. But in -Geraldine's pasture he found only herself, the crows, the robins, the -thrushes singing in the spinney, and the small wild life darting from -one covert to another, or along the crumbling stone wall hung with its -loopings of wild grape.</p> - -<p>He was not lonely on these excursions. Companionship had never in the -Harfrey schools been such a pleasure that he missed anything in having -to do without it. Rather, he enjoyed the freedom to be himself, to wear -no mask, to have no part to play. It was only when alone like this that -he understood how much of his thought and effort was spent in dancing -to other people's tunes. In the Tollivant home he could never, like the -other children, speak or act without a second thought. As a State ward -it was his duty to commend himself. To commend himself he was obliged -to think twice even before venturing on trifles. He had formed a habit -of thinking twice, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> rarely being spontaneous. By himself in this -homey pasture he felt the relief of one who has been balancing on a -tight rope at walking on the ground.</p> - -<p>When he had climbed the bars Geraldine, who was down the hill and near -the spinney, had lifted her head and swung her tail in recognition. -Not being impatient, she went on with her browsing, leaving him a few -minutes' liberty. Among the heartsease and the mallows he flung himself -down, partly because he was tired and partly that he might think. With -so much to think about thought came without sequence. It centered soon -on what he was to be.</p> - -<p>Of one thing he was certain; he didn't want to be a market gardener. -Not but that he enjoyed the open-air life and the novelty of closeness -to the soil. Like the whole Quidmore connection, it was good enough -for the time. All the same, it was only for the time, and one day he -would break away from it. How, he didn't ask. He merely knew by his -intuitions that it would be so.</p> - -<p>He was going to be something big. That, too, was intuitive conviction. -What he meant by big he was unable to define, beyond the fact that -knowledge and money would enter into it. He was interested in money, -not so much for what it gave you as for what it was. It was a queer -thing when you came to think of it. A dollar bill in itself had no more -value than any other scrap of paper; and yet it would buy a dollar's -worth of anything. He turned that over in his mind till he worked -out the reason why. He worked out the principle of payment by check, -which at first was as blank a mystery as marital relations. When<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> -newspapers came his way he studied the reports of the stock exchange, -much as a savage who cannot read scans the unmeaning hieroglyphs which -to wiser people are words. He did make out that railways and other -great utilities must be owned by a lot of people who combined to put -their money into them; but daily fluctuations in value he couldn't -understand. When he asked his adopted father he was told that he -couldn't understand it, though he knew he could.</p> - -<p>Long accustomed to this answer as to the bewilderments of life, he -rarely now asked anything. If he was puzzled he waited for more data. -Even for little boys things cleared themselves up if you kept them -in your mind, and applied the explanation when it came your way. The -point, he concluded, was not to be in a hurry. There were the spiders. -He was fond of watching them. They would sit for hours as still as -metal things, their little eyes fixed like jewels in a ring. Then when -they saw what they wanted one swift dart was enough for them. So it -must be with little boys. You got one thing to-day, and another thing -to-morrow; but you got everything in time if you waited and kept alert.</p> - -<p>By waiting and keeping alert he would find out what he was to be. He -had reached his point when he saw Geraldine pacing up the hill toward -the pasture bars. She was giving him the hint that certain acknowledged -rites were no longer to be put off.</p> - -<p>He had lowered the bars, over which she was stepping delicately, when -he saw his father come tearing down the road, going toward Bere, with -all the speed his shuffling gait could put on. Used by this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> time -to erratic actions on Quidmore's part, he was hardly surprised; he -was only curious. He was more curious still when, on drawing nearer, -the man seemed in a panic. "Looks as if he was running away from -something," was the lad's first thought, though he couldn't imagine -from what.</p> - -<p>"Is anything the matter?"</p> - -<p>From panic the indications changed to those of surprise, though the -voice was as velvety as ever.</p> - -<p>"Oh, so it's you! I thought it was Diggory. What did you—what did -you—do with that powder?"</p> - -<p>The boy began putting up the bars while Geraldine plodded homeward.</p> - -<p>"I couldn't give it to her. She was in the kitchen baking." He thought -it wise to add: "She was making silver cookies for you. You'll have -them for supper."</p> - -<p>There followed more odd phenomena, of which the boy, waiting and -keeping alert, only got the explanation later. Quidmore threw himself -face downward on the wayside grass. With his forehead resting on his -arm, he lay as still as one of those drunken men Tom had occasionally -seen like logs beside some country road. Geraldine turned her head to -ask why she was not followed, but the boy stood waiting for a further -sign. He wondered whether all grown-up men had minutes like this, or -whether it was part of the epilepsy he had heard about.</p> - -<p>But when Quidmore got up he was calm, the traces of panic having -disappeared. To a more experienced person the symptoms would have been -of relief; but to the lad of twelve they said nothing.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'll go back with you," was Quidmore's only comment, as together they -set out to follow Geraldine.</p> - -<p>Having reached the barn where the milking was to be done, Quidmore was -proceeding to the house. In the hope of a negative, Tom asked if he -should try again to-morrow.</p> - -<p>Quidmore half turned. "I'll leave that to you."</p> - -<p>"I'll do whatever you say," Tom pleaded, desperate at this -responsibility.</p> - -<p>Quidmore went on his way, calling back, in his creamy drawl, over his -shoulder: "I'll leave it entirely to you."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XV</p> - - -<p class="drop">L<span class="uppercase">eft</span> to him, Tom saw nothing in the duty but to do it. He was confirmed -in this resolution by Quidmore's gentleness throughout the evening. -It was a new thing in Tom's experience of the house. As always with -those in the habit of inflicting pain, merely to stop inflicting it -seemed kindness. Supper passed without a single incident that made Mrs. -Quidmore wince. On her part she played up with an almost brilliant -vivacity in making none of her impotent complaints. Anything he could -do to further this accord the boy felt he ought to do.</p> - -<p>He hung back only from the deed. That made him shudder. He was clear on -the point that it made him shudder because of its association in his -mind with the thing which had happened years before; and that, he knew, -was foolish. If it would please his father he should make the attempt. -He should make it perhaps the more heartily since he was free not to -make it if he chose.</p> - -<p>It was the freedom that troubled him. So long as he did only what he -was told he had nothing on his conscience. Now he must be sure that he -was right; and he was not sure. Once more he didn't question the fact -that the medicine would do his mother good. The right and wrong in his -judgment centered round doing her good against her own will.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> With -no finespun theories concerning the rights of the individual, he was -pretty certain as to what they were.</p> - -<p>A divine beauty came over the evening when, after he had gone to -bed about half-past eight, his mother, in the new blossoming of her -affection, came to tuck him in, and kiss him good night. No such -thing had happened to him since Mrs. Crewdson had last done it. Mrs. -Tollivant went through this endearing rite with all her own children; -but him she left out. Many a time, when from his bed beneath the eaves -he heard her making her rounds at night, he had pressed his face into -the pillow to control the trembling of his lips. True, he had come to -regard the attention as too babyish for a man of twelve; but now that -it was shown him he was touched by it.</p> - -<p>It brought to his memory something Mrs. Crewdson had said, and which -he had never forgotten. "God's wherever there's love, it seems to me, -dear. I bring a little bit of God to you, and you bring a little bit of -God to me, and so we have Him right here." Mrs. Quidmore, too, brought -a little bit of God to him, and he brought a little bit of God to Mrs. -Quidmore. They showed God to each other, as if without each other they -were not quite able to see Him. The fact suggested the thought that in -the matter of the secret administration of the medicine he might pray.</p> - -<p>One thing he had learned with some thoroughness while in the Tollivant -family, and that was religion. Both in Sunday school and in domestic -instruction he had studied it conscientiously, and conscientiously -accepted it. If he sometimes admitted to Bertie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Tollivant, the -cripple, that he "didn't see much sense in it," the confession applied -to his personal inabilities. Bertie was the cynic and unbeliever -in the Tollivant household. "There's about as much sense in it," -he would declare secretly to Tom, "as there is in those old yarns -about Pilgrim's Progress and Jack and the Beanstalk. Only don't say -that to ma or pop, because the poor dears wouldn't get you." On Tom -this skepticism only made the impression that he and Bertie didn't -understand religion any more than they understood sex, which was also a -theme of discussion. They would grow to it in time, by keeping ears and -eyes open.</p> - -<p>Now that he was away from the Tollivants, in a world where religion was -never spoken of, he dismissed it from his mind. That is, he dismissed -its intricacies, its complicated doctrines, its galloping through -prayers you were too sleepy to think of at night, and too hurried in -the morning. Here he was admittedly influenced by Bertie. "If God loves -you, and knows what you want, what's the good of all this Now I lay -me? It'd be a funny kind of God that wouldn't look after you anyhow." -Tom had given up saying Now I lay me, partly because that, too, seemed -babyish, but mainly on account of Bertie's reasoning. "It's more of -a compliment to God," was his way of explaining it to himself, "to -know that He'll do right of His own accord, than to suppose He'll do -it just because I pester Him." So every night when he got into bed he -took a minute to say to himself that God was taking care of him, making -this confidence serve in place of more explicit peti<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>tion. When he had -anything special to pray about, he said, he would begin again.</p> - -<p>And now something special had arisen. He got out of bed. He didn't -kneel down because, being anxious not to mislead God by giving Him -wrong information, he had first to consider what he ought to say. -Stealing softly across the floor, lest the creaking of the boards -should betray the fact that he was up, he went to the open window, and -looked out.</p> - -<p>It was one of those mystic nights which, to a soul inclined to the -mystical, seem to hold a spiritual secret. The air, scented by millions -of growing things, though chiefly with the acrid perfume of the blue -spruces on which he looked down, had a pungent, heavenly odor such as -he never caught in the daytime. There was a tang of salt in it, too, as -from the direction of the Sound came the faintest rustle of a breeze. -The rustle was so faint as not to break a stillness, which was more of -the nature of a holy suspense because of the myriads of stars.</p> - -<p>Seeking a formula in which to couch his prayer, he found a phrase of -Mr. Tollivant's often used in domestic intercession. "And, O Heavenly -Father, we beseech thee to act wisely in the matter of our needs." -What constituted wisdom in the matter of their needs would then be -pointed out by Mr. Tollivant according to the day's or the season's -requirements. Accepting this language as that of high inspiration, and -forgetting to kneel down, the boy began as he stood, looking out on the -sanctified darkness:</p> - -<p>"And, O Heavenly Father, I beseech thee to act<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> wisely in the matter of -my needs." Hung up there for lack of archaic grandiloquence, he found -himself ending lamely: "And don't let me give it to her if I oughtn't -to, for Jesus Christ's sake, Amen."</p> - -<p>With his effort he was disappointed. Not only had the choice of words -not taken from Mr. Tollivant been ludicrously insufficient, but he had -forgotten to kneel down. He had probably vitiated the whole prayer. -He thought of revision, of constructing a sentence that would balance -Mr. Tollivant's, and beginning again with the proper ceremonial. But -Bertie's way of reasoning came to him again. "I guess He knows what -I mean anyhow." He recoiled at that, however, shocked at his own -irreverence. The thought was a blasphemous liberty taken with the -watchful and easily offended deity of whom Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant had -begged him always to be afraid. He was wondering if by approaching this -God at all he hadn't made his plight worse, when the rising of the wind -diverted his attention.</p> - -<p>It rose suddenly, in a great soft sob, but not of pain. Rather, it was -of exultation, of cosmic joyousness. Coming from the farthest reaches -of the world, from the Atlantic, from Africa, from remote islands and -mountain tops, it blew in at the boy's window with a strong, and yet -gentle, cosmic force.</p> - -<p>"And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty -wind."</p> - -<p>Tom Quidmore had but one source of quotation, but he had that at his -tongue's end. The learning by heart of long passages from the Bible had -been part of his education at the hands of Mr. and Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Tollivant. -Rightly or wrongly, he quoted the Scriptures, and rightly oftener than -not. He quoted them now because, all at once, his room seemed full of -the creative breath. He didn't say so, of course; but, confusedly, he -felt it. All round the world there was wind. It was the single element -in Nature which you couldn't see, but of which you received the living -invigoration. It cooled, it cleansed, it strengthened. Wherever it -passed there was an answer. The sea rose; the snows drifted; the trees -bent; men and women strove to use and conquer it. A rushing mighty -wind! A sound from heaven! That it might be an answer to his prayer he -couldn't stop to consider because he was listening to the way it rose -and fell, and sighed and soughed and swelled triumphantly through the -plantation of blue spruces.</p> - -<p>By morning it was a gale. The tall things on the property, the bush -peas, the scarlet runners, the sweet corn, were all being knocked -about. In spots they lay on the earth; in other spots they staggered -from the perpendicular. All hands, in the words of old Diggory, had -their work cut out for them. Tom's job was to rescue as many as -possible of the ears of sweet corn, in any case ready for picking, -before they were damaged.</p> - -<p>But at half-past two he dragged himself out of the corn patch to -fulfill the dreaded duty. Nothing had answered his prayer. He had not -so much as seen his father throughout the day, as the latter had gone -to the markets and had not returned. The gale was still raging, and he -might be waiting for it to go down.</p> - -<p>Since the scene by the roadside on the previous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> afternoon he had taken -a measure of his father not very far from accurate. He, Quidmore, -wanted something of which he was afraid. He was too much afraid of it -to press for it urgently; and yet he wanted it so fiercely that he -couldn't give it up. What it was the boy could not discover, except -that it had something to do with them all. When he said with them all -he included the elusive Bertha; though why he included her he once more -didn't know.</p> - -<p>In God he was disappointed; that he did not deny. In spite of the -shortcomings of his prayer, he had clung to the hope that they might -be overlooked. He argued a little from what he himself would have done -had anyone come with a request inadequately phrased. He wouldn't think -of the manners or the words in his eagerness to do what lay within his -power. With God apparently it was not so.</p> - -<p>There was, of course, the other effect of his prayer. He had only asked -to be stopped if the thing was not to be done. If he was not stopped -the inference was obvious. He was to go ahead. It was in order to go -ahead that he left the corn patch.</p> - -<p>The kitchen when he got to it was empty. Both the windows, that in the -south wall and that in the west, were open to let the wind sweep out -the smell of cooking. Creeping halfway up the stairs, he saw that his -mother had closed her bedroom door, a sign that she was really lying -down. There was no help now for what he had to do.</p> - -<p>He stole back to the kitchen again. On the dresser he saw the brown -teapot in which she would presently make her tea. He would only have -to take it down,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> and spill the powder into it. The powder was in his -waistcoat pocket. He drew it out. It was small and flat, in a neatly -folded paper. Opening the paper, he saw something innocent and white, -not unlike the sugar you spread on strawberries. Laying it in readiness -on the table by the west window, at which his mother baked, he turned -to take down the teapot.</p> - -<p>The gale grew fiercer. It was almost a tornado. With the teapot in his -two hands he paused to look out of the south window at the swaying -of the blue spruces. They moaned, they sobbed, they rocked wildly. -You might have fancied them living creatures seized by a madness of -despair. The fury of the wind, even in the kitchen, blew down a dipper -hanging on the wall.</p> - -<p>There was now no time to lose. The noise of the falling dipper might -have disturbed his mother, so that at any minute she might come -downstairs. With the teapot again in his hands he turned to the table -where he had left the thing which was to do her good.</p> - -<p>It was not there.</p> - -<p>Dismayed, startled, he looked for it on the floor; but it was not -there. It was not anywhere in the kitchen. He searched and searched.</p> - -<p>Going outside, he found the paper caught in a rosebush under the -window, but the something innocent and white had been blown to the four -corners of the world.</p> - -<p>The rushing mighty wind had done its work; and yet it was not till two -or three years later, when the Quidmores had passed from his life, that -he wondered if after all his prayer had not been answered.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XVI</p> - - -<p class="drop" >O<span class="uppercase">f</span> helping his mother against her will he never heard any more. When -his father returned that evening he had the same look of panic as on -the previous day, followed by the same expression of relief at seeing -the domestic life going on as usual. But he asked no questions, nor -did he ever bring the subject up again. When a day or two later Tom -explained to him that the powder had been blown away he merely nodded, -letting the matter rest.</p> - -<p>Autumn came on and Tom went to school at Bere. He liked the school. No -longer a State ward, but the son of a man supposed to be of substance, -he passed the tests inflicted by the savage snobbery of children. His -quickness at sports helped him to a popularity justified by his good -nature. With the teachers he was often forced to seem less intelligent -than he was, so as to escape the odious soubriquet of "teacher's pet."</p> - -<p>On the whole, the winter was the happiest he had so far known. It could -have been altogether happy had it not been for the tragic situation of -the Quidmores. After the brief improvement that had followed on his -coming they had reacted to a mutual animosity even more intense. Each -made him a confidant.</p> - -<p>"God! it's all I can do to keep my hands off her," the soft drawl -confessed. "If she was just to die of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> a sickness, and me have nothing -to do with it, I don't believe I'd be satis—" He held the sentence -there as a matter of precaution. "What do you think of a woman who all -the years you've known her has never done anything but whine, whine, -whine, because you ain't givin' her what you promised?"</p> - -<p>"And are you?" Tom asked, innocently.</p> - -<p>"I give her what I can. She don't tempt me to do anything extra. Say, -now, would she tempt you?"</p> - -<p>Tom did his best to take the grown-up, man-to-man tone in which he was -addressed. "I think she's awful tempting, if you take her the right -way."</p> - -<p>To take her the right way, to take him also the right way, was the -boy's chief concern throughout the winter. To get them to take each -other the right way was beyond him.</p> - -<p>"So long as he goes outside his home," Mrs. Quidmore declared, with an -euphemism of which the boy did not get the significance, "I'll make him -suffer for it."</p> - -<p>"But, ma, he can't stay home all the time."</p> - -<p>"Oh, don't tell me that you don't know what I mean! If you wasn't on -his side you'd have found out for me long ago who the woman is. Just -tell me that—"</p> - -<p>"And what would you do?"</p> - -<p>"I'd kill her, I think, if I got the chance."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but ma!"</p> - -<p>She brandished the knife with which she was cutting cold ham for the -supper. "I would! I would!"</p> - -<p>"But you wouldn't if I asked you not to, would you, ma?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> - -<p>The knife fell with a despairing movement of the hand. "Oh, I don't -suppose I should do it at all. But he ought to love me."</p> - -<p>"Can he make himself love you, ma?"</p> - -<p>The ingenuous question went so close to the point that she could only -dodge it. "Why shouldn't he? I'm his wife, ain't I?"</p> - -<p>The challenge brought out another of the mysteries which surrounded -marriage, as a penumbra fringes the moon on a cloudy night. When his -father next reverted to the theme, while driving back from market, the -penumbra became denser.</p> - -<p>"Say, boy, don't you go to thinking that the first time you fall in -love with a pretty face it's goin' to be for life. That's where the -devil sets his snare for men. Eight or ten years from now you'll see -some girl, and then the devil'll be after you. He'll try to make you -think that if you don't marry that girl your one and only chance'll -come and go. And when he does, my boy, just think o' me."</p> - -<p>"Think of you—what about?"</p> - -<p>The sweetness of the tone took from the answer anything like -bitterness. "Think how I got pinched. Gosh, when I look back and -remember that I was as crazy to get her as a pup to catch a squir'l -I can't believe it was me. But don't forget what I'm tellin' you. No -fellow ought to think of bein' married till he's over thirty. He can't -be expected to know what he'll love permanent till then."</p> - -<p>It was the perpetual enigma. "But you always love your wife when you're -married to her, don't you?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> - -<p>The answer was in loud satirical laughter, with the observation that -Tom was the limit for innocence.</p> - -<p>Quite as disturbing as questions of love and marriage were those -relating to the fact that the man who had done very well as a hatter -was a failure as a market gardener.</p> - -<p>"A hell of a business, this is! Rothschild and Rockefeller together -couldn't make it pay. Gosh, how I hate it! Hate everything about it, -and home worst of all. Know a little woman that if she'd light out with -me...."</p> - -<p>In different keys and conjunctions these confidences were made to -the boy all through the winter. If they did not distress him more it -was because they were over his head. The disputes of the gods affect -mortals only indirectly. When Jupiter and Juno disagree men feel that -they can leave it to Olympus to manage its own affairs. So to a boy -of twelve the cares of his elders pass in spheres to which he has -little or no access. In spite of his knowledge that their situation was -desperate, the couple who had adopted him were mighty beings to Tom -Quidmore, with resources to meet all needs. To be so went with being -grown up and, in a general way, with being independent.</p> - -<p>Their unbosomings worried him; they did not do more. When they were -over he could dismiss them from his mind. His own concerns, his -lessons, his games, his friends and enemies in school, and the vague -objective of becoming "something big," were his matters of importance. -Martin and Anna Quidmore cared for him so much, though each with a -dash<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> of selfishness, that his inner detachment from them both would -have caused them pain.</p> - -<p>And yet it was because of this detachment that he was able, in some -sense, to get through the winter happily. Whatever might have hurt him -most passed on the kind of Mount Olympus where grown-up people had -their incredible interests. Told, as he always was, that he couldn't -understand them, he was willing to drop them at that till they were -forced on him again. As spring was passing into summer they were forced -on him less persistently; and then one day, quite unexpectedly, he -struck the beginning of the end.</p> - -<p>It was a Saturday. As there was no school that day he had driven in -on the truck with his father, to market a load of lettuce and early -spinach. On returning through Bere in the latter part of the forenoon, -Quidmore stopped at the druggist's.</p> - -<p>"Jump down and have an ice cream soda. I'll leave the lorry here, and -come back to you. Errand to do in the village."</p> - -<p>The words had been repeated so often that for these excursions they -had come to be a formula. By this time Tom knew the errand to be at -Bertha's house, which was indirectly opposite. Seated at a table in the -window, absorbing his cool, flavored drink through a pair of straws, -he could see his father run up the steps and enter, running down again -when he came out. Further than the fact that there was something -regrettable in the visit, something to be concealed when he went home, -the boy's mind did not work.</p> - -<p>The tragedy of that morning was that, as he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> enjoying himself -thus, the runabout, driven by one of the hired men, glided up to the -door, and Mrs. Quidmore, dressed for shopping, and very alert, sprang -out. As she rarely came into Bere, and almost never in the morning -when she had her work to do, Tom's surprise was tinged at once with -fear. Recognizing the lorry, Mrs. Quidmore rushed into the drug store. -Except for the young man, wearing a white coat, who tended it, the -long narrow slit was empty. As he peeped above his glass, with the two -straws between his lips, Tom saw the wrath of the wronged when close -on the track of the wrong-doer. Wheeling round, she caught him looking -conscious and guilty.</p> - -<p>"Oh! So you're here? Where is he?"</p> - -<p>Tom answered truthfully. "He said he had an errand to do. He didn't -tell me what it was."</p> - -<p>"And is he coming back for you here?"</p> - -<p>"He said he would."</p> - -<p>"Then I'll wait."</p> - -<p>To wait she sat down at Tom's side, having Bertha's house within range. -Whether she suspected anything or not Tom couldn't tell, since he -hardly suspected anything himself. That there was danger in the air he -knew by the violence with which she rejected his proposal to refresh -herself with ice cream.</p> - -<p>"There he is!"</p> - -<p>They watched him while he came down the steps, hesitated a minute, -and turned in the direction away from where they were waiting. Tom -understood this move.</p> - -<p>"He's going to Jenkins's about that new tire."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> - -<p>As she jumped to her feet her movements had a fierceness of activity he -had never before seen in her.</p> - -<p>"That's all I want. I'm goin' back. Don't you say you seen me, or that -I've been over here at all."</p> - -<p>Hurrying to the street and springing into the car, she bade the hired -man turn round again for home.</p> - -<p>What happened between that Saturday and the next Tom never knew -exactly. A few years later, when his powers of deduction had developed, -he was able to surmise; but beyond his own experience he had no -accurate information. That there were bitter quarrels he inferred -from the sullenness they left behind; but he never witnessed them. -Not having witnessed them, he had little or no sense of a strain more -serious than usual.</p> - -<p>On the next Saturday afternoon he was crouched in the potato field, -picking off the ugly reddish bugs and killing them. Suddenly he heard -himself called. On rising and looking round he found the runabout car -stopped in the road, and Billy Peet, one of the hired men, beckoning -him to approach. Brushing his hands against each other, he stepped -carefully over the rows of young potatoes, and was soon in the roadway.</p> - -<p>"Get in," Billy Peet ordered, briefly. "The boss sent me over to fetch -you."</p> - -<p>"Sent you over to fetch me—in the machine? What's up?" His eye fell on -a small straw suitcase in the back of the car. "What's that for?"</p> - -<p>"Get in, and I'll tell you as we go along." Tom clambered in beside the -driver. "Mis' Quidmore's sick."</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with her?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'd'n know. Awful sick, they say."</p> - -<p>When they passed the Quidmore entrance without turning in Tom began to -be startled. "Say! Where we going?"</p> - -<p>"You're not going home. Doctor don't want you there. Boss telephoned -over to Mrs. Tollivant, and she's goin' to keep you till Mis' -Quidmore's better—or somethin'."</p> - -<p>The boy was not often resentful, but he did resent being trundled about -like a package. If his mother was sick his place was at home. He could -light the fire, bring in the water from the well, and do the score of -little things for which a small boy can be useful. To be shunted off -like this, as if he could only be an additional care, was an indignity -to the thirteen years he was now supposed to have attained to. But what -could he do? Protest was useless. There was nothing for it but to go -where he was driven, like Geraldine or the dilapidated car.</p> - -<p>And yet at Harfrey he settled down among the Tollivants naturally. -No State ward having succeeded him, his room under the eaves was -still vacant. Once within its familiar shelter, he soon began to -feel as if he had never been away. The family welcomed him with the -shades of warmth which went with their ages and characters—Mr. and -Mrs. Tollivant overcoming their repugnance to a born waif with that -Christian charity which doubtless is all the nobler for being visibly -against the grain; Art, now a swaggering fellow of sixteen, with -patronizing good nature; Cilly, who affected baby-blue ribbons on a -blond pigtail, with airs and condescension; Bertie, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> cripple, -with satiric cordiality. If it was not exactly a home-coming, it was -at least as good as a visit to old friends. He was touched by being -included almost as a member of the family in Mr. Tollivant's evening -prayer.</p> - -<p>"And, O Heavenly Father, take this young wanderer as Thy child, even -as we offer him a shelter. Visit not Thine anger upon him, lest he be -tempted overmuch."</p> - -<p>At the thought of being tempted overmuch Tom felt a pleasing sense of -importance. It offered, too, a loophole for excuse in case he should -fall. If God didn't intervene on his behalf, easing temptation up, then -God would be responsible. And yet, such was the lack of fairness he was -bidden to see in God, He would knock a fellow down and then punish him -when he tumbled.</p> - -<p>In the midst of these reflections a thought of the Quidmore household -choked him with unexpected homesickness. The people who had been kind -to him were in trouble, and he was not there! He wondered what they -would do without him. He could sometimes catch the man's cruelties and -turn them into pleasantries before they reached the wife. He could -sometimes forestall the wife's complaints and twist them into little -mollifying compliments. Would there be anyone to do that now? Would -they keep the peace? He wished Mr. Tollivant would pray for them. He -tried to pray for them himself, but, as with his effort of the previous -year, the right kind of words would not come. If only God could be -addressed without so much Thee and Thou! If only He could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> read a -little boy's heart without calling for fine language! For lack of fine -language he had to remain dumb, leaving God, who might possibly have -helped Martin and Anna Quidmore, with no information about them.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, with the facile emotions of youth, a half hour later he -was playing checkers with Bertie, in full enjoyment of the game. He -slept soundly that night, and on Sunday fell into the old routine of -church and Sunday school. Monday and Tuesday bored him, because for -most of the day school claimed the children; but when they came home, -and played and squabbled as usual, life took on its old zest. Only now -and then did the thought of the sick woman and the lonely man sweep -across him in a spasm of pain; after which he could forget them and be -cheerful.</p> - -<p>But on Wednesday forenoon, as he was turning away from watching the -Plymouth Rocks pecking at their feed, his father arrived in the old -runabout. Dashing up the hill, Tom reached the back door in time to see -him enter by the front.</p> - -<p>"How's ma?"</p> - -<p>He got no answer, because Quidmore followed Mrs. Tollivant into the -front parlor, where they shut the door. In anticipation of being taken -home, the boy ran up to his room and packed his bag.</p> - -<p>"How's ma?"</p> - -<p>He called out the question from halfway down the stairs. Quidmore, -emerging from the parlor with Mrs. Tollivant, ignored it again. Bidding -good-by to his hostess and thanking her for taking in the boy, he went -through these courtesies with a nervous anxiety<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> almost amounting to -anguish to convince her of the truth of something he had said.</p> - -<p>"How's ma?"</p> - -<p>They were in the car at last so that he could no longer be denied.</p> - -<p>"She's—she's—not there."</p> - -<p>All the events of the past year focussed themselves into the question -that now burst on Tom's lips. "Is she—dead?"</p> - -<p>The lisping voice was sorrowful. "She was buried yesterday."</p> - -<p>With his habit of thinking twice, the boy asked nothing more. Having -asked nothing at the minute, he felt less inclined to ask anything as -they drove onward. Something within him rejected the burden of knowing. -While he would not hold himself aloof, he would not involve himself -more than events involved him according as they fell out. His reasoning -was obscure, but his instincts, grown self-protective from necessity, -were positive. Whatever had happened, whatever was to be right and -wrong to other people, his own motive must be loyalty.</p> - -<p>"I've got to stick to him," he was saying to himself. "He's been awful -good to me. In a kind of a way he's my father. I must stand by him, and -see him through, just as if I was his son."</p> - -<p>It was his first grown-up resolution.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XVII</p> - - -<p class="drop">G<span class="uppercase">rown-up</span> life began at once. His chief care hitherto had been as to -what others would do for him; now he was preoccupied with what he could -do for some one else. It was a matter of watching, planning, cheering, -comforting, and as he expressed it to himself, of bucking up. Of -bucking up especially he was prodigal. The man had become as limp as on -the day when he had thrown himself face downward in the grass. Mad once -with desire to act, he was terrified now at what he had done. Though, -as far as Tom could judge, no one blamed or suspected him, there was -hardly a minute in the day in which he did not betray himself. He -betrayed himself to the boy even if to no one else, though betraying -himself in such a way that there was nothing definite to take hold of. -"I'm sure—and yet I'm not sure," was Tom's own summing up. He stressed -the fact that he was not sure, and in this he was helped by the common -opinion of the countryside.</p> - -<p>Toward the bereaved husband and his adopted son this was sympathetic. -The woman had always been neurasthenic, slipshod, and impossible. With -a wife to help him, Martin Quidmore could have been a success as a -market gardener as easily as anybody else. As it was, he would get over -the shock of this tragedy and find a woman who would be the right kind -of mother to a growing boy. Here, the mention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> of Bertha was with no -more than the usual spice of village scandal, tolerant and unresentful.</p> - -<p>Of all this Tom was aware chiefly through the observations of Blanche, -the colored woman who came in by the day to do the housework.</p> - -<p>"Law, Mr. Tom, yo' pappa don't need to feel so bad. Nobody in this -yere town what blame him, not a little mite. Po' Mis' Quidmo', nobody -couldn't please her nohow. Don't I know? Ain't I wash her, and iron -her, and do her housecleanin', ever since she come to this yere -community, and Mr. Quidmo' he buy this yere lot off old Aaron Bidbury? -No, suh! Nobody can't tell me! Them there giddy things what nobody -can't please 'em they can't please theirselves, and some day they go to -work and do somefin' despe'ate, just like po' Mis' Quidmo'. A little -cup o' tea, she take. No mo'n that. See, boy! I keep that there brown -teapot, what look as innocent as a baby, all the time incriminated to -her memo'y."</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, Tom found his father obsessed by fear, with nothing to be -afraid of. The obsession had shown itself as soon as they entered the -house on their return from Harfrey. He was afraid of the house, afraid -of the kitchen especially. When Gimlets barked he jumped, cursing the -dog for its noise. When a buggy drove up to the door he peeped out at -the occupant before showing himself to the neighbor coming to offer his -condolences. If the telephone rang Tom hastened to answer it, knowing -that it set his father shivering.</p> - -<p>As evening deepened on that first Wednesday, they kept out of doors as -late as possible, the boy chatter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>ing to the best of his ability. When -obliged to go in, Quidmore tried to say with solicitude on Tom's behalf:</p> - -<p>"Expect you'll be lonesome now with only the two of us in the house. -Better come and sleep in the other bed in my room."</p> - -<p>The boy was about to reply that he was not lonesome, and preferred his -own bed, when he caught the dread behind the invitation.</p> - -<p>"All right, dad, I'll come. Sleep there every night. Then I won't be -scared."</p> - -<p>About two in the morning Tom was wakened by a shout. "Hell! Hell! Hell!"</p> - -<p>Jumping from his own bed, he ran to the other. "Wake up, dad! Wake up!"</p> - -<p>Ouidmore woke, confused and trembling. "Wha' matter?" His senses -returning, he spoke more distinctly. "Must have had a nightmare. God! -Turn on the light. Hate bein' in the dark. Now get back to bed. All -right again."</p> - -<p>The next day both were picking strawberries. It was not Quidmore's -custom to pick strawberries, but he seemed to prefer a task at which he -could crouch, and be more or less out of sight. Happening to glance up, -he saw a stranger coming round the duck pond.</p> - -<p>"Who's that?" he snapped, in terror.</p> - -<p>Tom ran to the stranger, interviewed him, and ran back again. "It's an -agent for a new kind of fertilizer."</p> - -<p>"Tell him I don't want it and to get to hell out of this."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You'd better see him. He'll think it queer if you don't."</p> - -<p>It was the spur he needed. He couldn't afford to be thought queer. He -saw the agent, Tom acting as go-between and interpreter.</p> - -<p>To act as go-between and interpreter became in a measure the boy's job. -Being so near the holidays, he did not return to school, and freed from -school, he could give all his time to helping the frightened creature -to seem competent in the eyes of his customers and hired men. Not that -he succeeded. None knew better than the hired men that the place was, -as they put it, all in the soup; none were so quick to fall away as -customers who were not getting what they wanted. When the house was -tumbling about their heads one little boy's shoulder could not do much -as a prop; but what it could do he offered.</p> - -<p>He offered it with a gravity at which the men laughed good-naturedly -behind his back. They took his orders solemnly, and thought no more -about them. For a whole week nothing went to market. The dealers whom -they supplied complained by telephone. Billy Peet and himself got a -load of "truck" into town, only to be told that their man had made -other arrangements. To meet these conditions Quidmore had spurts of -energy, from which he backed down gibbering.</p> - -<p>Taking his courage in both hands, the boy went to see Bertha. Never -having been face to face with her before, he found her of the type of -beauty best appreciated where the taste is for the highly blown. She -received him with haughty surprise and wonder, not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> asking him to sit -down. Having prepared his words, he recited them, though her attitude -frightened him out of the man-of-the-world tone he had meant to adopt. -Humbly and haltingly, he asked if she wouldn't come out and help to -stiffen the old man.</p> - -<p>"So he's sent you, has he? Well, you can go back and say that I've no -reply except the one I've given him. All is over between us. Tell him -that if he thinks that <i>that</i> was the way to win me he's very gravely -mistook. I know what's happened as positive as if I was a jury, and I -shall never pardon it. Silence I shall keep, but that is all he can -ask of me. He's made me talked about when he shouldn't ought to ov, -ignoring that a woman, and especially a widow—" her voice broke—"has -nothing but her reputation. Go back and tell him that if he tries to -force my door he'll find it double-barred against him."</p> - -<p>Tom went back but said nothing. There was no need for him to say -anything, since his life began at once to take another turn.</p> - -<p>School holidays having begun, he was free in fact as well as in name. -It was on a Thursday that his father came to him with the kind of -proposal which always excites a small boy.</p> - -<p>"Say, boy, what you think of a little trip down to Wilmington, -Delaware, you and me? Go off to-morrow and get back by Tuesday. I'd see -my sister, and it'd do me good."</p> - -<p>The prospect seemed to have done him good already. A new life had come -to him. He went about the place giving orders for the few days of his -absence, with particular instructions to Diggory and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> Blanche as to -Geraldine, and the disposal of the milk. They started on their journey -in the morning.</p> - -<p>It was one of those mornings in June when every blessed and beautiful -thing seems poured on the earth at once. As between five and six Billy -Peet drove them over to take the train at Harfrey, light, birds, trees, -flowers, meadows, dew, would have thrilled them to ecstasy if they had -not been used to them. For the first time in weeks Tom saw his father -smile. It was a smile of relief rather than of pleasure, but it was -better than his look of woe.</p> - -<p>The journey wakened memories. Not since Mrs. Crewdson had brought -him out to place him as a State ward with Mrs. Tollivant had he gone -into the city by this route. He had gone in by the motor truck often -enough; but this line that followed the river was haunted still by the -things he had outlived. He was not sorry to have known them, though -glad that they were gone. He was hardly sorry even for the present, -though doubtful as to how it was going to turn out. Vaguely and not -introspectively, he was shocked at himself, that he should be sitting -there with a man who had done what he felt pretty sure this man had -done, and that he should feel no horror. But he felt none. He assured -himself of that. He could sleep with him by night, and work and eat -with him by day, with no impulse but to shield a poor wretch who had -made his own life such a misery.</p> - -<p>"I've got to do it," he said to himself, in a kind of self-defense. "I -don't <i>know</i> he did it—not for sure, I don't. And if nobody else tries -to find out, why should I, when he's been so awful nice to me?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> - -<p>He watched a steamer plowing her way southward in the middle of the -stream. He liked her air of quiet self-possession and of power. He -wondered whence she was coming, whither she was going, and what she was -doing it for. He couldn't guess.</p> - -<p>"That'd be like me," he said, silently, "sailing from I don't know -where—sailing <i>to</i> I don't know where——"</p> - -<p>Ten years later he finished this thought, repeating exactly the same -words. Just now he couldn't finish anything, because there was so much -to see. Little towns perched above little harbors. Fishermen angled -from little piers. A group of naked boys, shameless as young mermen, -played in the water. On a rock a few yards from the shore a flock of -gulls jostled each other for standing room. A motor boat puffed. Yachts -rode sleepily at anchor. The car which, when they took it at Harfrey -had been almost empty, was beginning to fill with the earlier hordes of -commuters. Soon it was quite full. Soon there were cheery young people, -most of them chewing gum, standing in the passageway. Having rounded -the curve at Spuyten Duyvil, they saw the city looming up, white, -spiritual, tremulous, through the morning mist.</p> - -<p>Up to this minute he had not thought of plans; now he began to wonder -what they should do on reaching the Grand Central, where they would -arrive in another quarter of an hour.</p> - -<p>"Do we go straight across to the Pennsylvania Station, to take the -train for Wilmington, or do we have to wait?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'll—I'll see."</p> - -<p>The answer was unsatisfactory. He looked at his father inquiringly. -Looking at him, he was hurt to observe that his confidence was -departing, that he was again like something with a broken spring.</p> - -<p>"Well, we're going to Wilmington to-day, aren't we?"</p> - -<p>"I'll—I'll see."</p> - -<p>"But," the boy cried in alarm, "where can we go, if we don't?"</p> - -<p>"I—I know a place."</p> - -<p>It was disappointing. The choking sensation which, when he was younger, -used to precede tears, began to gather in his throat. Having heard so -much from Mrs. Quidmore of the glories of Wilmington, Delaware, he -saw it as a city of palaces, of exquisite, ladylike maidens, of noble -youths, of aristocratic joyousness. Moreover, he had been told that -to get there you went under the river, through a tunnel so deep down -in the earth that you felt a distressful throbbing in the head. The -postponement of these experiences even for a day was hard to submit to.</p> - -<p>In the Grand Central his father was in a mood he had never before seen. -It was a dark mood, at once decided and secretive.</p> - -<p>"Come this way."</p> - -<p>This way was out into Forty-second Street. With their suitcases in -their hands, they climbed into a street car going westward. Westward -they went, changing to another car going southward, under the thunder -of the elevated, in Ninth Avenue. At Fourteenth Street they got out -again. Tom recognized the neighbor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>hood because of its nearness to -the great markets to which they sometimes brought supplies. But they -avoided the markets, making their way between drays, round buildings in -course of demolition, through gangs of children wooing disaster as they -played in the streets. In the end they turned out of the tumult to find -themselves in a placid little backwater of the "old New York" of the -early nineteenth century. Reading the sign at the corner Tom saw that -it was Jane Street.</p> - -<p>Jane Street dates from a period earlier than the development of that -civic taste which gives to all New York north of Fourteenth Street -the picturesqueness of a sum in simple arithmetic. Jane Street has -atmosphere, period, chic. You know at a glance that the people who -built these trim little red-brick houses still felt that impulse which -first came to Manhattan from The Hague, to be fostered later by William -and Mary, and finally merged in the Georgian tradition. Jane Street is -Dutch. It has Dutch quaintness, and, as far as New York will permit it, -Dutch cleanliness. It might be a byway in Amsterdam. Instead of cutting -straight from the Hudson River Docks to Greenwich Avenue, it might run -from a canal with barges on it to a field of hyacinths in bloom.</p> - -<p>But Tom Quidmore saw not what you and I would have seen, a relief from -the noise and fetidness of a hot summer's morning in a neighborhood -reeking with garbage. When his heart had been fixed on that dream-city, -Wilmington, Delaware, he found himself in a dingy little alley. Not -often querulous, he became so now.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p> - -<p>"What are we doing down here?"</p> - -<p>The reply startled him. "I'm—I'm sick."</p> - -<p>Looking again at the man who shuffled along beside him, he saw that his -face had grown ashy, while his eyes, which earlier in the day had had -life in them, were lusterless. The boy would have been frightened had -it not been for the impulse of affection.</p> - -<p>"Let's go back to Bere. Then you can have the doctor. I'll get a cab -and steer the whole business."</p> - -<p>Without answering, Quidmore stopped at a brown door, level with the -pavement, in a big, dim-windowed building, with fire escapes zigzagging -down the front. Jane Street is not exclusively clean and trim and -Dutch. It has lapses—here a warehouse, there a dwelling tumbling to -decay, elsewhere a nondescript structure like this. It looked like a -lodging house for sailors and dock laborers. In the basement was a -restaurant to which you went down by steps, and bearing the legend -Pappa's Chop Saloon.</p> - -<p>While Quidmore stood in doubt as to whether to ring the bell or to push -the door which already stood a little open, two men came out of the -Chop Saloon and began to mount the steps. In faded blue overalls the -worse for wear, they had plainly broken a day's work, possibly begun -at five o'clock, for a late breakfast. The one in advance, a sturdy, -well-knit fellow of forty or forty-five, got a sinister expression from -a black patch over his left eye. His companion was older, smaller, more -worn by a bitter life. All the twists in his figure, all the soured -betrayals in his crafty face, showed you the habitual criminal.</p> - -<p>None of these details was visible to Quidmore,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> because his imagination -could see only the bed for which he was craving. To the boy, who -trusted everyone, they were no more than the common type of workman he -was used to meeting in the markets. The fellow with the patch on his -eye, making an estimate of the strangers as he mounted the steps, spoke -cheerily.</p> - -<p>"I say, mate, what can I do for yer?"</p> - -<p>The voice with a vaguely English ring was not ungenial. Not ungenial, -when you looked at it, was the strongly-boned face, with a ruddiness -burnt to a coarse tan. The single gray-blue eye had the sympathetic -gleam which often helps roguery to make itself excusable to people with -a sense of fun.</p> - -<p>Quidmore muttered something about wanting to see Mrs. Pappa.</p> - -<p>"Right you are! Come along o' me. I'll dig the old gal out for yer. -Expects you wants a room for yerself and the kid. Hi, Pappa!"</p> - -<p>Pappa came out of a dim, musty parlor as the witch who foretells bad -weather appears in a mechanical barometer. She was like a witch, but -a dark, classic witch, with an immemorial tradition behind her. Her -ancestors might have fought at Marathon, or sacrificed to Neptune in -the temple on Sunium. In Jane Street she was archaic, a survival from -antiquity. Her thoughts must have been with the nymphs at Delphi, or -following the triremes carrying the warriors from Argolis to Troy, as -silent, mysterious, fateful, she led the way upstairs.</p> - -<p>They followed in procession, all four of them. The doorstep -acquaintances displayed a solicitude not less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> than brotherly. The -hall was without furniture, the stairs without carpet. The softwood -floors, like the treads of the stairs, were splintered with the usage -of many heavy heels. Where the walls bulged, through the pressure of -jerry-built stories overhead, the marbled paper swelled into bosses. -Tom found it impressive, with something of strange stateliness.</p> - -<p>"Yer'll be from the country," the one-eyed fellow observed, as they -climbed upward.</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir," Tom answered, civilly. "We're on our way to Wilmington, -Delaware, but my father felt a little sick."</p> - -<p>"Well, he's struck a good place to lay up in. I say, Pappa," he called -ahead, "seems to me as the big room with two beds'd be what'd suit the -gent. It's next door to the barthroom, and he'll find that convenient. -Mate," he explained further, when they stood within the room with two -beds, "this'll set ye' back a dollar a day in advance. That right, -Pappa, ain't it?"</p> - -<p>Pappa assenting with some antique sign, Quidmore drew out his -pocketbook to extract the dollar. With no ceremonious scruples the -smaller comrade craned his neck to appraise, as far as possible, the -contents of the wallet.</p> - -<p>"Wad," Tom heard him squirt out of the corner of his mouth, in the -whisper of a ventriloquist.</p> - -<p>His friend seemed to wink behind the patch on his left eye. Tom took -the exchange of confidence as a token of respect. He and his father -were considered rich, the effect being seen in the attentions accorded -them. This was further borne out when the genial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> one of the two -rogues turned on the threshold, as his colleague was following Pappa -downstairs.</p> - -<p>"Anythink I can do for yer, mate, command me. Name of Honeybun—Lemuel -Honeybun. Honey Lem some of the guys calls me. I answers to it, not -takin' no offense like." He pointed to the figure stumping down the -stairs. "My friend, Mr. Goodsir. Him and me been pals this two year. We -lives on the ground floor. Room back of Pappa."</p> - -<p>The door closed, Tom looked round him in an interest which eclipsed -his hopes of the tunnel. This was adventure. It was nearly romance. -Never before had he stayed in a hotel. The place was not luxurious, -but never, in the life he could remember, having known anything but -necessity, necessity was enough. Moreover, the room contained a work of -art that touched his imagination. On the bare drab mantelpiece stood -the head of a Red Indian, in plaster painted in bronze, not unlike the -mummified head of Rameses the Great. The boy couldn't take his eye -away from it. This was what you got by visiting strange cities more -intimately than by trucking to and from the markets.</p> - -<p>Quidmore threw himself on his bed, his face buried in the meager -pillow. He was suffering apparently not from pain, but from some more -subtle form of distress. Being told that there was nothing he could -do for the invalid, Tom sat silent and still on one of the two small -chairs which helped out the furnishings. It was not boring for him to -do this, because he swam in novelty. He recalled the steamer he had -seen that morning, sailing from he didn't know where,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> sailing <i>to</i> -he didn't know where, but on the way. He, too, was on the way. He was -on the way to something different from Wilmington, Delaware. It would -be different from Bere. He began to wonder if he should ever go back -to Bere. If he didn't go back to Bere ... but at this point in Tom's -dreams Quidmore dragged himself off the bed.</p> - -<p>"Let's go down to the chop saloon, and eat."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XVIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">e</span> was not too ill to eat, but too ill when not eating to stay anywhere -but on his bed. He went back to it again, lying with his face buried -in the pillow as before. The boy resumed his patient sitting. He would -have been bored with it now, had he not had his dreams.</p> - -<p>All the same, it was a relief when about four o'clock, just as the -westering sun was beginning to wake the Red Indian to an horrific life, -Mr. Honeybun, pushing the door ajar softly, peeped in with his good eye.</p> - -<p>"I say, mate!" he whispered, "wouldn't you like me to take the young -gent for a bit of a walk like? Do him good, and him a-mopin' here all -by hisself."</p> - -<p>The walk meant Tom's initiation into the life of cities as that life -is led. Not that it went very far, but as far as it went it was a -revelation. It took him from one end of Jane Street to the other, along -the docks of the Cunard and other great lines, and as far as Eighth -Avenue in the broad, exciting thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street. New -York as he had seen it hitherto, from the front seat of a motor truck, -had been little more entertaining than a map. Besides, he was only -developing a taste for this sort of entertainment. Games, school, -scraps with other boys, had been enough for him. Now he was waking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> -to an interest in places as places, in men as men, in differences of -attitude to the drama known as life. In Mr. Honeybun's attitude he grew -interested especially.</p> - -<p>"I don't believe that nothink don't belong to no one," Tom's guide -observed, as the wealth of the city spread itself more splendidly. -"Things is common proputty. Yer takes what yer can put yer 'and on."</p> - -<p>"But wouldn't you be arrested?"</p> - -<p>"Yer'd be arrested if yer didn't look out; but what's bein' arrested? -No more'n the measures what a lot of poor, frightened, silly boobs'll -take agin the strong man what makes 'em tremble. At least," he added, -as an afterthought, "not when yer conscience is clear, it ain't."</p> - -<p>Fascinated by this bold facing of society, Tom ventured on a question. -"Have you ever been arrested, Mr. Honeybun?"</p> - -<p>Mr. Honeybun straightened himself to the martyr's pose. "Oh, if yer -puts it that way, I've suffered for my opinions. That much I'll admit. -I'm—" he brought out the statement proudly—"I'm one o' them there -socialists. You know what a socialist is, don't yer?"</p> - -<p>Tom was not sure that he did.</p> - -<p>"A socialist is one o' them fellers who whatever he sees knows it -belongs to him if he can get ahold of it. It's gettin' ahold of it -what counts. Now if you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in -yer 'ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as I could take -it—why, then it'd be mine. That's the law o' Gord, I believes; and I -tries to live up to it."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p> - -<p>Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, Tom was nevertheless -perplexed by it. "But wouldn't that be something like burglary?"</p> - -<p>"Burglary is what them may call it what ain't socialists; but it don't -do to hang a dog because yer've give him a bad name. A lot o' good -people's been condemned that way. When I'm in court I always appeals to -justice."</p> - -<p>"And do you get it?"</p> - -<p>"I get men's. I don't get Gord's. You see that apple?" They stopped -before a window in Horatio Street where apples were displayed. "Now, -do yer suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in partic'lar? -No! That apple didn't know nothink about men's laws when it blossomed -on a apple tree. It just give itself generallike to the human race. If -you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git away with it, -it'd be yours. Stands to reason it'd be. Gord's law! But if that there -policeman, a-squintin' his ugly eye at us this minute—he knows Honey -Lem, he does!—was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty days. Man's -law! And I'll leave it to you which is best worth sufferin' for."</p> - -<p>In this philosophy of life there was something Tom found reasonable, -and something in which he felt a flaw without being able to detect it. -He chased it round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the long -dull hours with his father. It passed the time; it helped him to the -habit of thinking things out for himself. His mind being clear, and his -intuitions acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond his -years. When, on the morrow, they walked in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> cool of the day down -the length of Hudson Street till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought -the subject up from another point of view.</p> - -<p>"But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took something from you? What then?"</p> - -<p>"He'd git it in the nut," the socialist answered, tersely. "Not if -there'd be two of 'em," he added, in amendment. "If there's two I don't -contend. I ain't a communist."</p> - -<p>"Is that what a communist is, a fellow who'll contend with two?"</p> - -<p>"A communist is a socialist what'll use weepons. If there's somethink -what he thinks is his in anybody's 'ouse, he'll go armed, and use -vi'lence. They never got that on me. I never 'urt nobody, except onst -I hits a footman, what was goin' to grab me, a wee little knock on the -'ead with a silver soup ladle I 'ad in me 'and and lays 'im out flat. -Didn't do him no 'arm, not 'ardly any. That was in England. But them -days is over, since I lost my eye. Makes yer awful easy spotted when -yer've lost a eye."</p> - -<p>"How did you lose it, Mr. Honeybun?"</p> - -<p>"I lost it a-savin' of the life of a beautiful young lady. 'Twas quite -a tale." The boy looked up expectantly while his friend thought out the -details. "I was footin' it onst from New Haven to New York, and I'd got -to a pretty little town as they call Old Lyme. Yer see, I'd been doin' -a bit o' time at New Haven—awful 'ard on socialists they was in New -Haven in them days—and when I gits out I was a bit stoney-broke till -I'd picked up somethink else. Well there I was, trampin' it through Old -Lyme, and I'd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> got near to the bridge what crosses the river they've -got there—the Connecticut I think it is—and what should I see but a -'orse what a young lady was drivin' come over the bridge like mad. The -young lady she was tuggin' at the reins and a-hollerin' like blazes for -some one to save her life. I ain't no 'ero, kid. Don't go for to think -that I'm a-sayin' that I am. But what's a man to do when he sees a -beautiful young lady in danger o' bein' killed?" He paused to take the -bodily postures with which he stopped the runaway. "And the tip of the -shaft," he ended, "it took me right in the eye, and put it out. But, -Lord, what's a eye, even to a Socialist, when yer can do somethink for -a feller creeter?"</p> - -<p>Tom gaped in admiration. "I suppose it hurt awful."</p> - -<p>"Was in 'orspital three months," the hero said, quietly. "Young lady, -she visits me reg'lar, calls me her life-saver, and every name like -that, and kind o' clings to me. But, Lord, marriage ain't never been -much of a fancy to me. Ties a man up, and I likes to be free, except -when I'm sufferin' for socialism. Besides, if I was to marry every -woman what I've saved their lives I'd be one o' them Normans by this -time. When yer wants company a good pal'll be faithfuller than a wife, -and nag yer a lot less."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Goodsir's your pal, ain't he, Mr. Honeybun?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and I'm sick of him. He don't develop. He ain't got no -eddication. Yer can see for yerself he don't talk correct. That's what -I've took to in yer gov'nor and you, yer gentleman way o' speakin'. -Only yer needn't go for to tell yer old man all what I've<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> been -a-gassin' of to you. I can see he's what they call conservative. He -wouldn't understand. You're the younger generation, mind more open -like. You and me'd make a great team if we was ever to work together."</p> - -<p>With memories of his mother in his mind, Tom answered sturdily, "I -wouldn't be a socialist, not for anything you could offer me."</p> - -<p>They left it at that. Mr. Honeybun was content to point out the -historic sites known to him as they turned homeward. There was the -house where a murder had been committed; the store where a big break -had been pulled off; a private detective's residence.</p> - -<p>"Might go out agin some day, if yer pop don't mind it," he suggested, -when they had reached their own hallway. "I gits the time in the late -afternoon. Yer see, our job at the market begins early and ends early, -and lately—" there was a wistful note—"well, I feels kind o' fed -up with the low company Goodsir keeps. Every kind o' joint and dive -and—and—Chinamen—and—" Out of respect for the boy he held up the -description. "You'd 'ardly believe it, but an innercent little walk -like what we've just took, why, it'll do me as much good as a swig o' -water when you wake up about three in the mornin', with yer tongue -'angin' out like a leather strap, after a three-days' spree."</p> - -<p>Unable to get the full force of this figure, Tom thanked his guide -politely, and was bounding up the stairs two steps at a time, when the -man who stood watching him spoke again.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p> - -<p>"If I'd ever a-thought that I'd 'a had a kid like you, it'd 'a' been -pretty near worth gittin' married for."</p> - -<p>Tom could only turn with one of those grins which showed his teeth, -making his eyes twinkle with a clear blue light, when adequate words -for kindness wouldn't come to him.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XIX</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> days settled into a routine. When they rose in the morning a -colored woman "did" their room while they went down to the chop saloon -for breakfast. Returning, Quidmore threw himself on his bed again. He -did this after each meal, poking his nose deep into the limp pillow. -Hardly ever speaking, he now and then uttered a low moan.</p> - -<p>Tom watched patiently, ready to tell him the time or bring him a drink -of water. When the day grew too hot he fanned him with an old newspaper.</p> - -<p>"Why don't we go home, dad?" he asked anxiously on the third day. "I -could get you there as easy as anything."</p> - -<p>"I'm not well enough."</p> - -<p>"You don't seem very sick to me. You don't have any pain and you can -eat all right."</p> - -<p>"It isn't that kind of bein' sick. It's—" he sought for a name—"it's -like nervous prostration."</p> - -<p>More nearly than he knew he had named his malady. In his own words, he -was all in; and he was all in to the end of the letter of the term. Of -that moral force which is most of what any man has to live upon some -experience had drained him. He had spent his gift of vitality. All in -was precisely the phrase to apply to him. He had cashed the last cent -of whatever he had inherited or saved in the way of inner strength, and -now he could not go on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> - -<p>"What's the good of it anyhow?" he asked of Tom in the night. "There's -nothin' to it, not when you come to think of it. You run after -something as if you couldn't live without it; and then when you get it -you curse your God that you ever run."</p> - -<p>Tom shuddered in his bed, but he was used to doing that. There was -hardly a night when he was not wakened by a nightmare. If it was not by -a nightmare, it was by the soft complaining voice.</p> - -<p>"Are you awake, Tom?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, dad. Can I get you anything?"</p> - -<p>"No; I only wanted to know if you was awake."</p> - -<p>Tom kept awake as long as he could, because he knew the poor wretch was -afraid of lying sleepless in the dark. To keep him awake, perhaps for -less selfish reasons, too, the soft voice would take this opportunity -of giving him advice.</p> - -<p>"Don't you ever go to wanting anything too much, boy. That's what's -done for me. You can want things if you like; but one of the tricks in -the game is to know how to be disappointed. I never did know, not even -when I was a little chap. If I cried for the moon I wouldn't stop till -I got it. When I was about as old as you, not gettin' what I wanted -made me throw a fit. If I couldn't get things by fair means I had to -get 'em by foul; but I got 'em. It don't do you no good, boy. If I -could go back again over the last six months...."</p> - -<p>For fear of a confession Tom stopped his ears, but no confession ever -came. The tortured soul could dribble its betrayals, but it couldn't -face itself squarely.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Look out for women," he said, gently, on another night. "You're old -enough now to know how they'll play the Dutch with you. When I was your -age there was nothing I didn't understand, and I guess it's the same -with you. Don't ever let 'em get you. They got me before I was—well, I -don't hardly know what age I was, but it was pretty young. Look out for -'em, boy. If you ever damn your soul for one of 'em, she'll do you dirt -in the end. If it hadn't been for her...."</p> - -<p>To keep this from going further, the boy broke in with the first -subject he could think of. "I wonder if they'll remember to pick the -new peas. They'll be ready by this time. Do you suppose they'll ...?"</p> - -<p>"I don't care a hang what they do." After a brief silence he continued: -"I'd 'a left the place to you, boy, only my brother-in-law, my sister's -husband, has a mortgage on the place that'd eat up most of the value, -so I've left it to her. That'll fix 'em both. I wish I could 'a done -more for you."</p> - -<p>"You've done a lot for me, as it is."</p> - -<p>"You don't know."</p> - -<p>There was another silence. It might have lasted ten minutes. The boy -was falling once more into a doze when the soft voice lisped again,</p> - -<p>"Tom."</p> - -<p>He did his best to drag himself back from sleep. "Yes, dad? Do you want -to know what time it is? I'll get up and look."</p> - -<p>"No, stay where you are. There's somethin' I want to say. I've been a -skunk to you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, cut it, dad...."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I won't cut it. I want to say it out. When I—when I first took you, -it wasn't—it wasn't so much that I'd took a fancy to you...."</p> - -<p>"I know it wasn't, dad. You wanted a boy to pick the berries. Let's -drop it there."</p> - -<p>But the fevered conscience couldn't drop it there. "Yes; at first. -And then—and then it come into my mind that you might be—might be -the one that'd do somethin' I didn't want to do myself. I thought—I -thought that if you done it we might get by on it. We got by on it all -right—or up to now we've got by—but I didn't get real fond of you -till—till...."</p> - -<p>"Oh, dad, let's go to sleep."</p> - -<p>"All right. Let's. I just wanted to say that much. I was glad afterward -that...."</p> - -<p>The boy breathed heavily, pretending that he was asleep. He was soon -asleep in earnest, and for the rest of the night was undisturbed. In -the morning his father didn't get up, and Tom went down to the chop -saloon to bring up something that would serve as breakfast. He did the -same at midday, and the same in the evening. It was a summer's evening, -with a long twilight. As it began to grow dark Quidmore seemed to rouse -himself. He needed tooth paste, shaving cream, other small necessities. -Sitting up on the bed, he made out a list of things, giving Tom the -money with which to pay for them. If he went to the pharmacy in Hudson -Street he would be back in half an hour.</p> - -<p>"All right, dad. I know the way. I'm an old hand in New York by this -time."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> - -<p>He was at the door when Quidmore called him back.</p> - -<p>"Say, boy. Give us a kiss."</p> - -<p>Tom was stupefied. He had kissed his adopted mother often enough, but -he had never been asked to do this. Quidmore laughed, pulling him close.</p> - -<p>"Ah, come along! I don't ask you often. You're a fine boy, Tom. You -must know as well as I do what's been...."</p> - -<p>The words were suspended by a hug; but once he was free Tom fled away -like a small young wild thing, released from human hands. Having -reached the street, he began to feel frightened, prescient, awed. -Something was going to happen, he could not imagine what. He made his -purchases hurriedly, and then delayed his return. He could be tender -with the man; he could be loving; but he couldn't share his secrets.</p> - -<p>But he had to go back. In the dim upper hall outside the door he paused -to pump up courage to go in. He was not afraid in the common way of -fear; he was only overcome with apprehension at having a knowledge he -rejected forced on him.</p> - -<p>The first thing he noticed was that no light came through the crack -beneath the door. The room was apparently dark. That was strange -because his father dreaded darkness, except when he was there to keep -him company. He crept to the door and listened. There was no sound. He -pushed the door open. The lights were out. In panic at what he might -discover, he switched on the electricity.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p> - -<p>But he only found the room empty. That was so far a relief. His father -had gone out, and would be back again. Closing the door behind him, he -advanced into the room.</p> - -<p>It seemed more than empty. It felt abandoned, as if something had gone -which would not return. He remembered that sensation afterward. He -stood still to wonder, to conjecture. The Red Indian gleamed with his -bronze leer.</p> - -<p>The next thing the boy noticed was an odd little pile on the table. It -was money—notes. On top of the notes there was silver and copper. He -stooped over them, touching them with his forefinger, pushing them. He -pushed them as he might have pushed an insect to see whether or not it -was alive.</p> - -<p>Lastly he noticed a paper, on which the money had been placed. There -was something scribbled on it with a pencil. He held it under the dim -lamp. "For Tom—with a real love."</p> - -<p>The tears gushed to his eyes, as they always did when people showed -that they loved him. But he didn't actually cry; he only stood still -and wondered. He couldn't make it out. That his father should have gone -out and forgotten all his money was unusual enough, but that he should -have left these penciled words was puzzling. It was easy to count the -money. There were seven fifty-dollar bills, with twenty-eight dollars -and fifty-four cents in smaller bills and change. He seemed to remember -that his father had drawn four hundred dollars for the Wilmington -expenses, with a margin for purchases.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> - -<p>He stood wondering. He could never recall how long he stood wondering. -The rest of the night became more or less a blank to him; for, to the -best of the boy's knowledge, the man who had adopted him was never seen -again.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XX</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">o</span> the best of the boy's knowledge the man who had adopted him was -never seen again; but it took some time to assume the fact that he was -dead. Visitors to New York often dived below the surface, to come up -again a week or ten days later. Their experience in these absences they -were not always eager to discuss.</p> - -<p>"Why, I've knowed 'em to stay away that long as yer'd swear they'd -been kidnapped," Mr. Honeybun informed the boy. "He's on a little -time; that's all. Nothink but nat'rel to a man of his age—and a -widower—livin' in the country—when he gits a bit of freedom in the -city."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but what'll he do for money?"</p> - -<p>There was this point of view, to be sure. Mr. Goodsir suggested that -Quidmore had had more money still, that he had only left this sum to -cover Tom's expenses while he was away.</p> - -<p>"And listen, son," he continued, kindly, "that's a terr'ble big wad -for a boy like you to wear on his person. Why, there's guys that -free-quents this very house that'd rob and murder you for half as much, -and never drop a tear. Now here I am, an old trusty man, accustomed to -handle funds, and not sneak nothin' for myself. If I could be of any -use to you in takin' charge of it like...."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Me and you'll talk this over, later," Mr. Honeybun intervened, -tactfully. "The kid don't need no one to take care of his cash when his -father may skin home again before to-night. Let's wait a bit. If he's -goin' to trust anybody it'll be us, his next of kin in this 'ere 'ouse, -of course. That'd be so, kiddy, wouldn't it?"</p> - -<p>Tom replied that it would be so, giving them to understand that he -counted on their good offices. For the present he was keeping himself -in the non-committal attitude natural to suspense.</p> - -<p>"You see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging -candor, "I can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back -again, at any rate, not for a spell."</p> - -<p>The worthies going to their work, the interview ended. At least, Mr. -Goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was -back in Tom's room again.</p> - -<p>"Say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and. -I can't stop now; but when I blow in to eat at noon I'll tell yer what -I'd do with 'em, if you was me. Keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside -pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help -till I come back and git you. Yer never knows who's on the same floor -with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe."</p> - -<p>Out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting -the line of docks especially. He liked them. On the façades of the -low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into -syllables—New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> Arizona, Oklahoma. -He had always been fond of geography. It opened up the world. It -told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in -the meantime he could dream about. Over the low roofs of the dock -buildings he could see the tops of funnels. Here and there was the long -black flank of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from -one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and -out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly -shunting up and down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep sound, -the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he -himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would -suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled -his mind to his desolation.</p> - -<p>He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious -populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of -his loneliness smote him to a standstill. He would wonder where he -was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing -about the steamer on the Hudson. Like her, he seemed to be afloat. -She, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world -to tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that was always -sailing—sailing—sailing—sailing—with never a port to have come out -of, and never a port in view,</p> - -<p><i>The Church of the Sea!</i></p> - -<p>He read the words on the corner of a big white building where Jane -Street flows toward the docks. He read them again. He read them because -he liked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> their suggestions—immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and -God!</p> - -<p class="center"> -<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt="pic" /> -<a id="illus2" name="illus2"></a> -</p> -<p class="caption"> "THAT'S A TERR'BLE BIG WAD FOR A BOY LIKE YOU TO WEAR"</p> - -<p>It was queer to think of God being out there, where there were only -waves and ships and sailors, but chiefly waves and a few seabirds. It -recalled the religion of crippled Bertie Tollivant, the cynic. To the -instructed like himself, God was in the churches that had steeples and -pews and strawberry sociables, or in the parlors where they held family -prayers. They told you that He was everywhere; but that only meant -that you couldn't do wrong, you couldn't swear, or smoke a cigarette, -or upset some householder's ash-barrels, without His spotting you. -Tom Quidmore did not believe that Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant would have -sanctioned this Church of the Sea, where God was as free as wind, -and over you like the sky, and beyond any human power to monopolize -or give away. It made Him too close at hand, too easy to find, and -probably much too tender toward sailors, who were often drunk, and -homeless little boys. He turned away from the Church of the Sea, -secretly envying Bertie Tollivant his graceless creed, but not daring -to question the wisdom of adult men and women.</p> - -<p>By the steps of the chop saloon he waited for Mr. Honeybun, who came -swinging along, a strong and supple figure, a little after the whistle -blew at twelve. To the boy's imagination, now that he had been informed -as to his friend's status, he looked like what had been defined to -him as a socialist. That is, he had the sort of sinuosity that could -slip through half-open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> -noiselessly up and down staircases. It was ridiculous to say it of one -so bony and powerful, but the spring of his step was spiritlike.</p> - -<p>"Good for you, lad, to be waitin'! We'll go right along and do it, and -then it'll be off our minds."</p> - -<p>What "it" was to be, Tom had no idea. But then he had no suspicions. In -spite of his hard childhood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men -would do him wrong. He had no fear of Mr. Honeybun, and no mistrust, -not any more than a baby in arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse.</p> - -<p>"And there's another thing," Mr. Honeybun brought up, as they went -along. "It don't seem to me no good for a husky boy like you to be just -doin' nothink, even while he's waitin' for his pop. I'd git a job, if -you was me."</p> - -<p>The boy said that he would gladly have a job, but didn't know how to -get one.</p> - -<p>"I've got one for yer if yer'll take it. Work not too 'ard, and' ll -bring you in a dollar and a 'alf a day."</p> - -<p>But "it" was the matter in hand, and presently its nature became -evident. At the corner of Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue Mr. -Honeybun pointed across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very -solidity inspired confidence. Tom could read for himself that it was a -savings bank.</p> - -<p>"Now what I'd do if it was my wad is this. I'd put three hundred -and twenty-five of it in that there bank, which'd leave yer more'n -twenty-five for yer eddication. But yer principal, no one won't be -able<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> to touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer'll be gettin' yer -interest piled up on top of it."</p> - -<p>Tom's heart leaped. He had long meditated on savings banks. They had -been part of his queer vision. To become "something big" he would have -to begin by opening some such account as this. With Mr. Honeybun's -proposal he felt as if he had suddenly grown taller by some inches, and -older by some years.</p> - -<p>"You'll come over with me, won't you?"</p> - -<p>Mr. Honeybun demurred. "Well, yer see, kid, I'm a pretty remarkable -character in this neighborhood. There's lots knows Honey Lem; and -if they was to see me go in with you they might think as yer hadn't -come by your dough quite hon—I mean, accordin' to yer conscience—or -they might be bad enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between -us. When I puts a few dollars into my own savings bank—I'm a savin' -bird, I am—I goes right over to Brooklyn, where there ain't no wicked -mind to suspeck me. So go in by yerself, and say yer wants to open a -account. If anyone asks yer, tell him just how the money come to yer, -and I don't believe as yer'll run no chanst of no one not believin' -yer."</p> - -<p>So it was done. Tom came out of the building with his bank book -buttoned into his breast pocket, and a conscious enhancement of life.</p> - -<p>"And now," Mr. Honeybun suggested, "we'll make tracks for Pappa's and -eat."</p> - -<p>The "check," like the meal, was light, and Mr. Honeybun paid it. Tom -protested, since he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> money of his own, but his host took the -situation gracefully.</p> - -<p>"Lord love yer, kid, ain't I yer next o' kin, as long as yer guv'nor's -away? Who sh'd buy yer a lunch if it wasn't me?"</p> - -<p>Childhood is naturally receptive. As Romulus and Remus took their food -from a wolf when there was no one else to give it them, so Tom Quidmore -found it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, and then by -a thief. It became amazing, a few years later, on looking back on it; -but for the moment murderer and thief were not the terms in which he -thought of those who had been kind to him.</p> - -<p>Not that he didn't try. He tried that very afternoon. When his next o' -kin had gone back to his job of lifting and heaving in the Gansevoort -Market, he returned to the empty room. It was his first return to -it alone. When he had gone up from his breakfast in the chop saloon -both Goodsir and Honeybun had accompanied him. Now the emptiness was -awesome, and a little sinister.</p> - -<p>He had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully that is, waking -every half hour to listen for the shuffling footstep. He heard other -footsteps, dragging, thumping, staggering, but they always passed on -to the story above, whence would come a few minutes later the sound -of heavy boots thrown on the floor. Now and then there were curses, -or male voices raised in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song. -During the earlier nights he had slept through these signals of Pappa's -hospitality, or if he had waked, he knew that a grown-up man lay in the -other bed, so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> that he was safe. Now he could only lie and shudder, -till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. He did his best -to keep awake, so as to unlock the door the instant he heard a knock; -but in spite of his efforts he slept.</p> - -<p>This return after luncheon brought him for the first time face to face -with his state as a reality. There was no one there. It was no use -going back to Bere, because there would be no one there. Rather than -become again a State ward with the Tollivants, he would sell himself to -slavery. What was he to do?</p> - -<p>The first thing his eye fell upon was his father's suitcase, lying -open on the floor beside the bed, its contents in disorder. It was the -way Quidmore kept it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed -one. The futility of this clothing was what struck the boy now. The -peculiar grief of handling the things intimately used by those who -will never use them again was new to him. He had never supposed that -so much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. Stooping over -the suitcase, he had accidentally picked one up, and burst into sudden -tears. They were the first he had actually shed since he used to creep -away to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the Tollivants.</p> - -<p>It occurred to him now that he had not cried when his adopted mother -disappeared. He had not especially mourned for her. While she had -been there, and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved her -in the way in which he loved so easily when anyone opened the heart -to him; but she had been no part of his inner life. She was the cloud -and sunshine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> of a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of -the morrow. Of the two, he grieved more for the man; and the man was a -murderer, and probably a suicide.</p> - -<p>Sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words in the attempt -to work up a fortifying moral indignation. It was then, too, that he -called Mr. Honeybun a thief. He must react against these criminal -associations. He must stand on his own feet. He was not afraid of -earning his own living. He had heard of boys who had done it at an -age even earlier than thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires. -They had always, however, so far as he knew, had some sort of ties -to connect them with the body politic. They had had the support of -families, sympathies, and backgrounds. They hadn't been adrift, like -that haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but the God of -the Sea to keep her from foundering. He could have believed in this -God of the Sea. He wished there had been such a God. But the God that -was, the God who was shut up in churches and used only on Sundays, was -not of much help to him. Any help he got he must find for himself; and -the first thing he must do would be to break away from these low-down -companionships.</p> - -<p>And just as, after two or three hours of meditation, he had reached -this conclusion, a tap at the door made him start. Quidmore had come -back! But before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed open, -and he saw the patch over the left eye.</p> - -<p>"Got away early, son. Now, seems to me, we ought to be out after them -overalls."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p> - -<p>The boy stood blank. "What overalls?"</p> - -<p>"Why, for yer job to-morrow. Yer can't work in them good clo'es. Yer'd -sile 'em."</p> - -<p>In a second-hand shop, known to Honey Lem, in Charles Street, they -found a suit of boy's overalls not too much the worse for wear. Honey -Lem pulled out a roll of bills and paid for them.</p> - -<p>"But I've got my own money, Mr. Honeybun."</p> - -<p>"Dooty o' next o' kin, boy. I ain't doin' it for me own pleasure. -Yer'll need yer money for yer eddication. Yer mustn't forgit that."</p> - -<p>The overalls bound him more closely to the criminal from whom he was -trying to cut loose. More closely still he found himself tied by the -scraps of talk he overheard between the former pals that evening. They -were on the lowest of the steps leading up from the chop saloon, where -all three of them had dined. Tom, who had preceded them, stood on the -sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within earshot.</p> - -<p>"I tell yer I can't, Goody," Mr. Honeybun was saying, "not as long as -I'm next o' kin to this 'ere kid. 'Twouldn't be fair to a young boy for -me to keep no such company."</p> - -<p>Mr. Goodsir made some observation the nature of which Tom could only -infer from Mr. Honeybun's response.</p> - -<p>"Well, don't yer suppose it's a damn sight 'arder for me to be out'n a -good thing than it is for you to see me out'n it? I don't go in for no -renounciation. But when yer've got a fatherless kid on yer 'ands ye' -must cut out a lot o' nice stuff that'll go all right<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> when yer've only -yerself to think about. Ain't yer a Christian, Goody?"</p> - -<p>Once more Mr. Goodsir's response was to Tom a matter of surmise.</p> - -<p>"Well, then, Goody, if yer don't like it yer can go to E and double L. -What's more, I ain't a-goin' to sleep in our own room to-night, nor -any night till that guy comes back. I'm goin' to sleep in the kid's -room, and keep him company. 'Tain't right to leave a young boy all by -hisself in a 'ouse like this, as full o' toughs as a ward'll be full o' -politicians."</p> - -<p>Tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the knowledge that -the other bed in his room would not remain so creepily vacant was -consciously a relief. He slept dreamlessly that night, because of -his feeling of security. In the morning, not long after four, he was -wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to and fro.</p> - -<p>"Come, little shaver! Time to git up! Got to be on yer job at five."</p> - -<p>The job was in a market that was not exactly a market since it supplied -only the hotels. Together with the Gansevoort and West Washington -Markets, it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food on the -continent of America. Railways and steamers brought it from ranches -and farms, from plantations and orchards, from rivers and seas, from -slaughter-stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north and -the south and the west, from the tropics and farther than the tropics, -to feed the vast digestive machine which is the basis of New York's -energies. Tom's job was not hard, but it was incessant. His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> was the -duty of collecting and arranging the empty cases, crates, baskets, -and coops, which were dumped on the raised platform surrounding the -building on the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. Trucks -and vans took them away full on one day, and brought them back empty on -another. It was all a boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order, -according to sizes and shapes. The sizes in the main were small; the -shapes were squares and oblongs and diminishing churnlike cylinders. -Nimbleness, neatness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and -all three of them the boy supplied.</p> - -<p>Fatigue that night made him wakeful. His companion in the other bed -was wakeful too. In talking from bed to bed Tom found it a comfort to -be dealing with an easy conscience. Mr. Honeybun had nothing on his -mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. Speculation on the subject of -Quidmore's disappearance, and possible fate, turned round and round on -itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses.</p> - -<p>"And there's another thing," came from Mr. Honeybun. "If he don't come -back, why, you'll come in for a good bit o' proputty, won't yer? Didn't -he own that market-garden place, out there on the edge of Connecticut?"</p> - -<p>"He left it to his sister. He told me that the other night. You see, I -wasn't his real son. I wasn't his son at all till about a year ago."</p> - -<p>This statement coming to Mr. Honeybun as something of a shock, Tom was -obliged to tell the story of his life to the extent that he knew it. -The only details that he touched on lightly were those which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> bore on -the manner in which he had lost his "mudda." Even now it was difficult -to name her in any other way, because in no other way had he ever named -her. Obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollections, which -in themselves were clear enough, his tale was brief.</p> - -<p>"So yer real name is Whitelaw," Mr. Honeybun commented, with interest. -"I never hear that name but once. That was the Whitelaw baby. Ye'll -have heard tell o' that?"</p> - -<p>Since Tom had never heard tell of the Whitelaw baby, the lack in his -education was supplied. The Whitelaw baby had been taken out to the -Park on a morning in May, and had vanished from its carriage. In the -place where it had lain was found a waxen image so true in likeness to -the child himself that only when it came time to feed him did the nurse -make the discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. The mystery -had been the source of nation-wide excitement for the best part of two -years. It was talked of even now. It couldn't have been more than three -or four years earlier that Mr. Honeybun had seen a daily paper, bearing -the headlines that Harry Whitelaw had been found, selling like hotcakes -to the women shopping in Twenty-third Street.</p> - -<p>"And was he?" Tom asked, beginning at last to be sleepy.</p> - -<p>"No more'n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer'd blowed it in the air. -The father, a rich banker—a young chap he was, too, I believe—he -offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as'd put him on the -track o' the gang what had kidnapped the young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> 'un; and every son of a -gun what thought he was a socialist was out to win the money. This 'ere -Goody, he had a scheme. Tried to work me in on it, and I don't know but -what I might a took a 'and if a chum o' mine hadn't got five year for -throwin' the same 'ook without no bait on it. They 'auled in another -chap I knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do with it, and -tried to make him squeal; but—" A long breath from Tom interrupted -this flow of narrative. "Say, kiddy, yer ain't asleep, are yer? and me -tellin' yer about the Whitelaw baby?"</p> - -<p>"I am nearly," the boy yawned. "Good night—Honey! Wake me in time in -the morning."</p> - -<p>"That's a good name for yer to call me," the next o' kin commended. -"I'll always be Honey to you, and you'll be Kiddy to me; and so we'll -be pals. Buddies they call it over here."</p> - -<p>Echoes of a street brawl reached them through the window. Had he been -alone, the country lad of thirteen would have shivered, even though the -night was hot. But the knowledge of this brawny companion, lying but -a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a puppy, and fall asleep -trustfully.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXI</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> next two or three nights were occasions for the interchange of -confidence. During the days the new pals saw little of each other, and -sometimes nothing at all. With the late afternoon they could "clean -themselves," and take a little relaxation. For this there was no great -range of opportunity. Relaxation for Lemuel Honeybun had hitherto run -in directions from which he now felt himself cut off. He knew of no -others, while the boy knew of none of any kind.</p> - -<p>"I tell yer, Goody," Tom overheard, through the open door of the room -back of Pappa's, one day while he was climbing the stairs, "I ain't -a-goin' to go while I've got this job on me hands. The Lord knows I -didn't seek it. It's just one of them things that's give yer as a -dooty, and I'm goin' to put it through. When Quidmore's come back, and -it's all over, I'll be right on the job with the old gang again; but -till he does it's nix. Yer can't mean to think that I don't miss the -old bunch. Why, I'd give me other eye...."</p> - -<p>Tom heard no more; but the tone of regret worried him. True, if he -wanted to break the bond this might be his chance. On the other hand, -the thought of being again without a friend appalled him. While waiting -in the hope that Quidmore might come back,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> the present arrangement -was at least a cosy one. Nevertheless, he felt it due to his spirit of -independence to show that he could stand alone. He waited till they -were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and the air through the open -window was cool enough to allow of their being comfortable, before he -felt able to take an offhand, man-to-man tone.</p> - -<p>"You know, Honey, if you want to beat it back to your old crowd, I can -get along all right. Don't hang round here on my account."</p> - -<p>"Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice meself. If I'm to be -yer next o' kin, I'll be it and be damned. Done 'arder things than this -in me life, and pulled 'em off, too. I'll stick to yer, kid, as long as -yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my life, and never -see another quart bottle."</p> - -<p>The pathos of the life for which he might be letting himself in turned -his thoughts backward over his career.</p> - -<p>"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might -still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born. -True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell -it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I -'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other -day—steward on one of the Cunarders he was—said he wouldn't 'a -knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges. -Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon -parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But -it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> where I am, and I -don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I -wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings -bank in Brooklyn. Friends as'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by -them. And if I hadn't lost me eye—but how was I to know that that -low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and' d -let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball -cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York -right atop o' me."</p> - -<p>Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young -lady's life."</p> - -<p>Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for -finding the right words.</p> - -<p>"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that -there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both -sides to onst, now can I?"</p> - -<p>He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son -of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at -the age of seventeen.</p> - -<p>"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what -it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit -I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to -seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by -somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and -me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll -inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> inherit -somethink—inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his -seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was -mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes -later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and -havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's -easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and -that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was. -Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and -get a move on—and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail. -You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?"</p> - -<p>Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released -from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America.</p> - -<p>"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and -find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been -landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it -is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid. -Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for -nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've -worked for—or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a -injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of -fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for -yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?"</p> - -<p>A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his -position.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I've been thinkin', Kiddy, that since yer used to be a State ward, -yer'll have to be a State ward agin, if the State knows you're knockin' -round loose."</p> - -<p>The boy cried out in alarm. "Oh, but I won't be. I'll kill myself -first."</p> - -<p>He could not understand this antipathy, this horror. In a mechanical -way the State had been good to him. The Tollivants had been good to -him, too, in the sense that they had not been unkind. But he could -not return to the status. It was the status that dismayed him. In -Harfrey it had made him the single low-caste individual in a prim -and high-caste world, giving everyone the right to disdain him. They -couldn't help disdaining him. They knew as well as he did that in -principle he was a boy like any other; but by all the customs of their -life he was a little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it was -still possible to respect himself; but to go back and hang on to the -outer fringe of the organized life of a Christian society would have -ravaged him within. He said so to Honeybun energetically.</p> - -<p>"That's the way I figured that yer'd feel. So long as you're on'y -waitin'—or yer can say that you're on'y waitin'—till yer pop comes -back, it won't matter much. It'll be when school begins that it'll go -agin yer. There's sure to be some pious woman sneepin' round that'll -tell someone as you're not in school when you're o' school age, and -then, me lad, yer'll be back as a State ward on some down-homer's farm."</p> - -<p>Tom lashed the bed in the darkness. "I won't go! I won't go!"</p> - -<p>"That's what I used to say the first few times they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> pinched me; but -yer'll jolly well have to go if they send yer. Now what I was thinkin' -is this. It's in New York State that yer'd be a State ward. If you -was out o' this State there'd be all kinds o' laws that couldn't git -yer back again. Onst when I'd been doin' a bit o' socializin' in New -Jersey, and slipped back to Manhattan—well, you wouldn't believe the -fuss it took to git me across the river when the p'lice got wind it was -me. Never got me back at all! Thing died out before they was able to -fix up all the coulds and couldn'ts of the lor."</p> - -<p>He allowed the boy to think this over before going on with his -suggestion.</p> - -<p>"Now if you and me was to light out together to another State, they -wouldn't notice that we'd gone before we was safe beyond their -clutches. If we was to go to Boston, say! Boston's a good town. I -worked Boston onst, me and a chap named...."</p> - -<p>The boy felt called on to speak. "I wouldn't be a socialist, not if it -gave me all Boston for my own."</p> - -<p>The statement, coming as it did, had the vigor of an ultimatum. -Though but a repetition of what he had said a few days before, it was -a repetition with more force. It was also with more significance, -fundamentally laying down a condition which need not be discussed again.</p> - -<p>After long silence Mr. Honeybun spoke somewhat wistfully. "Well, I -dunno as I'd count that agin yer. I sometimes thinks as I'll quit bein' -a socialist meself. Seems to me as if I'd like to git back with the old -gang, and be what they calls a orthodock. You know what a orthodock is, -don't yer?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's a kind of religion, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"It ain't so much a kind of religion as it's a kind o' way o' thinkin'. -You're a orthodock when you don't think at all. Them what ain't got no -mind of their own, what just believes and talks and votes and lives the -way they're told to, they're the orthodocks. It don't matter whether -it's religion or politics or lor or livin', the people who don't know -nothink but just obeys other people what don't know nothink, is the -kind that gits into the least trouble."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but what do you want to be like that for? You <i>have</i> got a mind -of your own."</p> - -<p>"Well, there's a good deal to be said, Kiddy. First there's you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, if it's only me...."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but when I'm yer next o' kin it isn't on'y you; it's you first -and last. I got to bring you up an orthodock, if I'm going to bring you -up at all. Yer can't think for yerself yet. You're too young. Stands to -reason. Why, I was twenty, and very near a trained gasfitter, before -I'd begun thinkin' on me own. What yer does when yer're growed up'll be -no concern o' mine. But till you <i>are</i> growed up...."</p> - -<p>Tom had heard of quicksands, and often dreamed that he was being -engulfed in one. He had the sensation now. Circumstances having pushed -him where he would not have ventured of his own accord, the treacherous -ground was swallowing him up. He couldn't help liking Honey Lem, since -he liked everyone in the world who was good to him; he was glad of his -society in these lonely nights, and of the sense of his comradeship -in the background even in the day;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> but between this gratitude and a -lifelong partnership he found a difference. There were so many reasons -why he didn't want permanent association with this fairy godfather, and -so many others why he couldn't find the heart to tell him so! He was -casting about for a method of escape when the fairy godfather continued.</p> - -<p>"This 'ere socialism is ahead of its time. People don't understand -it. It don't do to be ahead o' yer time, not too far ahead, it don't. -Now I figure out that if I was to go back a bit, and git in among -them orthodocks, I might do 'em good like. Could explain to 'em. I -ain't sure but what I've took the wrong way, showin' 'em first, and -explainin' to 'em afterwards. Now if I was to stop showin' 'em at all, -and just explain to 'em, why, there'd be folks what when I told 'em -that nothink don't belong to nobody they'd git the 'ang of it. Begins -to seem to me as if I'd done me bit o' sufferin' for the cause. Seen -the inside o' pretty near every old jug round New York. It's aged me. -But if I was to sackerfice me opinions, and make them orthodocks feel -as I was one of 'em, I might give 'em a pull along like."</p> - -<p>The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the morning. In the -afternoon Honey Lem had a new idea. Without saying what it was, he -took the boy to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached -Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an electric bus going -northward, and Tom had a new experience. Except for having crossed -it in the market lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this -stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> - -<p>Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when shops were shut, residences -closed, and saunterers relatively few, it added a new concept to those -already in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. These -ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these pictures, jewels, -flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more than appeal to his eye. They -set free a function of his being that had hitherto been sealed. The -first atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware was consciously -in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in some life before he was born, rich -and beautiful things had been his accessories. He had been used to -them. They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a matter of -course. To see them was not so much a discovery as it was a return to -what he had been accustomed to. He was thinking of this, with an inward -grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when Honey went back to the -topic of the night before.</p> - -<p>"The reason I said Boston is because they've got that great big college -there. If I'm to bring yer up, I'll have to send yer to college."</p> - -<p>The opening was obvious. "But, Honey, you don't have to bring me up."</p> - -<p>"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like -you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and -I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o' -sendin' yer to college, mind that now."</p> - -<p>There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go -to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one -means he must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some -sort, he might be obliged to depend on him.</p> - -<p>The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue -borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the -neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner."</p> - -<p>Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning -the houses opposite.</p> - -<p>"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the -façade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps, -and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live."</p> - -<p>Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He -listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage -had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was -wheeled away by the nurse.</p> - -<p>"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was -standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. -Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to -see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money. -We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the -Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at -the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else."</p> - -<p>They went into the Park by the same little opening through which -the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective -reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash -had taken,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. -Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped -elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a -clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in -its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if -he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had -stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby -beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he -was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the -baby, which remained a mystery.</p> - -<p>"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That -one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had -a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums -is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and -the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's -shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be -'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me -not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if -you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your -age."</p> - -<p>Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had read -<i>Juliet Allingham's Sin</i>, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because -his name was Harry, and mine's Tom."</p> - -<p>"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> - -<p>"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do -you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...."</p> - -<p>The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there -was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom -knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman -have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion? -A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the -roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself. -He sprang to his feet.</p> - -<p>"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find -them."</p> - -<p>To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his mother and stolen -babies as they went off to the Zoo.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXII</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> move to Boston was made during August, so that they might be -settled in time for the opening of the schools. The flitting was with -the ease of the obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel -changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore became again Tom -Whitelaw. There were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of -both.</p> - -<p>"Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of Lemuel, and if any -old sneeper was to look me up.... Not but what Lemuel isn't a more -aristocraticker name than George; but there's times when somethink what -no one won't notice'll suit you best. So I'll be George Honeybun, a pal -o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed."</p> - -<p>The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and -prudential. In the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was -something to the boy to know that he had had a father. His father had -been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had been a Whitelaw; there was a whole -line of Whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be -known by names. A slim link with a past, at least it was a link. The -Quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. -It signified the ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he had -sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to -him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. In the -unlikely event of the State of New York busying itself with the fate -of its former ward, the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A -well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending -school in Boston according to the law, would have the best chance of -going unmolested.</p> - -<p>They found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, on that northern -slope of Beacon Hill which within living memory has more than once -changed hands with the silent advance and recession of a tide coming -in and going out. There are still old people who can remember when -some of the worthiest of the sons of the Puritans had their windows, -in these steep and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the -setting sun. Then, with an almost ghostly furtiveness, they retired as -the negro came and routed them. The negro seemed fixed in possession -when the Hebrew stole on silently, and routed him. At the time when -George Honeybun and Tom Whitelaw came looking for a home, the ancient -inhabitant of the land was beginning to creep back again, and the -Hebrew taking flight. In a red-brick house of forbidding expression in -Grove Street they found a room with two beds.</p> - -<p>Within a few days Honey, whose strength was his skill, was working as -a stevedore on the Charlestown docks. Tom was picking up small jobs -about the markets. By September he had passed his examinations and had -entered the Latin School. A new life had begun. From the old life no -pursuit or interference ever followed them.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p> - -<p>The boy shot up. In the course of a year he had grown out of most of -his clothes. To the best of his modest ability, Honey was generous -with new ones. He was generous with everything. That Tom should lack -nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed to have none but the -most elemental. Of his "nice times" in New York nothing had followed -him to Boston but a love of spirits and tobacco. Of the two, the -spirits went completely. When Tom's needs were pressing the supply of -tobacco diminished till it sometimes disappeared. If on Sundays he -could venture over the hill, to listen to the band on the Common, or -stroll with the boy in the Public Gardens, it was because the Sunday -suit, bought in the days when he had no one to provide for but himself, -was sponged and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous -devotion. The motive of so much self-denial puzzled Tom, since, so far -as he could judge, it was not affection.</p> - -<p>He was old enough now to perceive that affection had inspired most -of his good fortune. People were disposed to like him for himself. -There was rarely a teacher who did not approve of him. By the market -men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars on Saturdays and in -vacations, he was always welcomed heartily. In school he never failed -to hold his own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, or -something, was a stevedore, after which he was ignored. Girls regarded -him with a hostile interest, while toward them he had no sentiments -of any kind. He could go through a street and scarcely notice that -there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn't leave him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> alone. They -bothered him with overtures of friendship to which he did not respond, -or tossed their heads at him, or called him names. But in general the -principle was established that he could be liked.</p> - -<p>But Honey was an enigma. Love was apparently not the driving power -urging him to these unexpected fulfillments. If it was, it had none -of the harmless dog-and-puppy ways which Tom had grown accustomed to. -Honey never pawed him, as the masters often pawed the boys, and the -boys pawed one another. He never threw an arm across his shoulder, -or called him by a more endearing name than Kiddy. Apart from an -eagle-eyed solicitude, he never manifested tenderness, nor asked for -it. That Tom would ever owe him anything he didn't so much as hint -at. "Dooty o' next o' kin" was the blanket explanation with which he -covered everything.</p> - -<p>"But you're not my next of kin," Tom, to whom schooling had revealed -the meaning of the term, was bold enough to object. "Next of kin means -that you'd be my nearest blood relation; and we're not relations at -all."</p> - -<p>Honey was undisturbed in his Olympian detachment. "Do yer suppose I -dunno that? But I believes as Gord sees we're kin lots o' times when -men don't take no notice. You was give to me. You was put into my 'ands -to bring up. And up I'm goin' to bring yer, if it breaks me."</p> - -<p>It was a close Sunday evening in September, the last of the summer -holidays. Tom would celebrate next day by entering on a higher grade -at school. He had had new boots and clothes. For the first time he -was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> worried by the source of this beneficence. As night closed down -they sat for a breath of fresh air on the steps of the house in Grove -Street. Grove Street held the reeking smell of cooking, garbage, and -children, which only a strong wind ever blows away from the crowded -quarters of the cities, and there had been no strong wind for a week. -Used to that, they didn't mind it. They didn't mind the screeching -chatter or the raucous laughter that rose from doorways all up and down -the hill, nor the yelling of the youngsters playing in the roadway. -Somewhere round a corner a group of Salvationists, supported by a -blurting cornet, sang with much gusto:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 5%;"> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Oh, how I love Jesus!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Oh, how I love Jesus!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Oh, how I love Jesus!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Because He first loved me.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>They didn't mind it when Mrs. Danker, their landlady, a wiry New -England woman, sitting in the dark of the hall behind them, joined in, -in her cracked voice, with the Salvationists, nor when Mrs. Gribbens, -a stout old party who picked up a living scrubbing railway cars, -joined in with Mrs. Danker. From neighboring steps mothers called out -to their children in Yiddish, and the children answered in strident -American. But to Honey and Tom all this was the friendly give-and-take -of promiscuity which they would have missed had it not been there.</p> - -<p>Each was so concentrated on his own ruling purpose that nothing -external was of moment. Honey was to give, and Tom was to receive, an -education. That<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> the recipient's heart should be fixed on it, Tom found -natural enough; but that the giver's should be equally intense seemed -to have nothing to account for it.</p> - -<p>He glanced at the quiet figure, upright and muscular, his hands on his -knees, like a stone Pharaoh on the Nile.</p> - -<p>"Why don't you smoke?"</p> - -<p>"I don't want to drop no ashes on this 'ere suit."</p> - -<p>"Have you got any tobacco?"</p> - -<p>"I didn't think to lay in none when I come 'ome yesterday."</p> - -<p>"Is that because there was so much to be spent on me?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I dunno about that."</p> - -<p>Tom gathered all his ambitions together and offered them up. "Well, -I guess this can be the last year. After I've got through it I'll be -ready to go to work."</p> - -<p>"And not go to college!" The tone was one of consternation. "Lord love -yer, Kiddy, what's bitin' yer now?"</p> - -<p>"It's biting me that you've got to work so hard."</p> - -<p>"If it don't bite me none, why not let it go at that?"</p> - -<p>"Because I don't seem able to. I've taken so much from you."</p> - -<p>"Well, I've had it to 'and out, ain't I?"</p> - -<p>"But I don't see why you do it."</p> - -<p>"A young boy like you don't have to see. There's lots o' things I -didn't understand at your age."</p> - -<p>"You don't seem specially—" he sought for words less direct, but -without finding them—"you don't seem—specially fond of me."</p> - -<p>"I never was one to be fond o' people, except it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> a dog. Always had -a 'ankerin' for a dog; but a free life don't let yer keep one. A dog'll -never go back on yer."</p> - -<p>"Well, do you think I would?"</p> - -<p>"I don't think nothink about it, Kid. When the time comes that you can -do without me...."</p> - -<p>"That time'll never come, Honey, after all you've done for me."</p> - -<p>"I don't want yer to feel yerself bound by that."</p> - -<p>"I don't feel myself bound by it; but—dash it all, Honey!—whatever -you feel or don't feel about me, I'm fond of <i>you</i>."</p> - -<p>He was still imperturbable. "Well, Kid, you wouldn't be the first, not -by a lot."</p> - -<p>"But if I can never be anything <i>for</i> you, or <i>do</i> anything for you...."</p> - -<p>"There's one thing you could do."</p> - -<p>"What is it? I don't care how hard it is."</p> - -<p>"Well, when you're one o' them big lawyers, or bankers, or -somethink—drorin' yer fifty dollars a week—you can have a shy at this -'ere lor o' proputty. It don't seem right to me that some people should -have all the beef to chaw, and others not so much as the bones; but I -can't git the 'ang of it. If nothink don't belong to nobody, then what -about all your dough in the New York savin's bank, and mine in the one -in Brooklyn? We're keepin' it agin yer goin' to college, ain't we? And -don't that belong to us? Yes, by George, it do! So there you are. But -if when yer gits yer larnin' yer can steddy it out...."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> boy was adolescent, sentimental, and lonely. Mere human -companionship, such as that which Honey gave him, was no longer enough -for him. He was seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He began to wish -he had some one with whom to share his unformulated hopes, his crude -and burning opinions. He looked at fellows who were friends going two -and two, pouring out their foolish young hearts to each other, and -envied them. The lads of his own age liked him well enough. Now and -then one of them would approach him with shy or awkward signals, making -for closer acquaintance; but when they learned that he lived in Grove -Street with a stevedore they drew away. None of them ever transcended -the law of caste, to stand by him in spite of his humble conditions. -Boys whose families were down wanted nothing to hamper them in climbing -up. Boys whose families were up wanted nothing that might loosen their -position and pull them down. The sense of social insecurity which was -the atmosphere of homes reacted on well-meaning striplings of fifteen, -sixteen, and seventeen, turning them into snobs and cads before they -had outgrown callowness.</p> - -<p>But during the winter of the year in which he became sixteen there were -two, you might have said three, who broke in upon this solitude.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> - -<p>In walking to the Latin School from Grove Street he was in the habit of -going through Louisburg Square. If you know Boston you know Louisburg -Square as that quaint red-brick rectangle, like many in the more -Georgian parts of London, which commemorates the gallant dash of the -New England colonists on the French fortress of Louisburg in Cape -Breton. It is the heart of that conservative old Boston, which is now -shrinking in size and importance before the onset of the foreigner till -it has become like a small beleaguered citadel. Here the descendants -of the Puritans barricade themselves behind their financial walls, as -their ancestors within their stockades, while their city is handed -over to the Irishman and the Italian as an undefended town. The Boston -of tradition is a Boston of tradition only. Like the survivors of -Noah's deluge clinging to the top of a rock, they to whom the Boston -of tradition was bequeathed are driven back on Beacon Hill as a final -refuge from the billows rising round them. A high-bred, cultivated, -sympathetic people, they have so given away their heritage as to be -but a negligible factor in the State, in the country, of which their -fathers and grandfathers may be said once to have kept the conscience.</p> - -<p>But to Tom Whitelaw Louisburg Square meant only the dignified fronts -and portals behind which lived the rich people who had no point of -contact with himself. They couldn't have ignored him more completely -than he ignored them. He thought of them as little as the lion cub in a -circus parade thinks of the people of the city through which he passes -in proces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>sions. Then, one day, one of these strangers spoke to him.</p> - -<p>It was a youth of about his own age. More than once, as Tom went by, -and the stout boy stood on the sidewalk in front of his own house, they -had looked each other up and down with unabashed mutual appraisal. -Tom saw a lad too short for his width, and unhealthily flabby. He had -puffy hands, and puffy cheeks, with eyes seeming smaller than they were -because the puffy eyelids covered them. The mouth had those appealing -curves comically troubled in repose, but fulfilling their purpose in -giggling. On the first occasion when Tom passed by the lips were set -to the serious task of inspection. They said nothing; they betrayed -nothing. Tom himself thought nothing, except that the boy was fat.</p> - -<p>They had looked at each other some two or three times a week, for -perhaps a month, when one day the fat boy said, "Hullo!" Tom also said, -"Hullo!" continuing on his way. A day or two later they repeated these -salutations, though neither forsook his attitude of reserve. The fat -boy did this first, speaking when they had hullo'ed each other for the -third or fourth time. His voice was high and girlish, and yet with a -male crack in it.</p> - -<p>"What school do you go to?"</p> - -<p>Tom stopped. "I go to the Latin School. What school do you go to?"</p> - -<p>"I go to Doolittle and Pray's."</p> - -<p>"That's the big private school in Marlborough Street, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>The fat boy made the inarticulate grunt which with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> most Americans -means "Yes." "I was put down for Groton, only mother wouldn't let me -leave home. I'm going to Harvard."</p> - -<p>"I'm going to Harvard, too. What class do you expect to be in?"</p> - -<p>The fat boy replied that he expected to be in the class of -nineteen-nineteen.</p> - -<p>Tom said he expected to be in that class himself.</p> - -<p>"Now I've got to beat it to the Latin School. So long!"</p> - -<p>"So long!"</p> - -<p>Tom carried to his school in the Fenway an unusual feeling of elation. -With friendly intent someone had approached him from the world outside. -It was not the first time it had ever happened, but it was the first -time it had ever happened in just this way. He could see already that -the fat boy was not one of those he would have chosen for a friend; but -he was so lonely that he welcomed anyone. Moreover, he divined that -the fat boy was lonely, too. Boys of that type, the Miss Nancy and -the mother's darling type, were often consumed by loneliness, and no -one ever pitied them. Few went to their aid when other boys "picked" -on them, but of those few Tom Whitelaw was always one. He found them, -once you had accepted their mannerisms, as well worth knowing as other -boys, while they spared him a scrap of admiration. It was possible that -in this fat boy he might find the long-sought fellow who would not -"turn him down" on discovering that he lived in Grove Street. Being -turned down in this way had made him sick at heart so often that he -had decided never any more to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> make or trust advances. In suffering -temptation again he assured himself that it would be for the last time -in his life.</p> - -<p>On returning from school he looked for the boy in Louisburg Square, but -he was not there. A few hundred yards farther, however, he came in for -another adventure.</p> - -<p>The January morning had been mild, with melting snow. By midday the -wind had shifted to the north, with a falling thermometer. By late -afternoon the streets were coated with a glaze of ice. Tom could -swagger down the slope of Grove Street easily enough in the security of -rubber soles.</p> - -<p>But not so a girl, whose slippers and high French heels made her -helpless on the steep glare. Having ventured over the brow of the hill, -she found herself held. A step into the air would have been as easy as -another on this slippery descent. The best she could do was to sway in -the keen wind, keeping her balance with the grace of one of the blue -spruces which used to be blown about at Bere. Her outstretched arms -waved up and down, as a blue spruce waves its branches. Coming abreast -of her, Tom found her laughing to herself, but on seeing him she -laughed frankly and aloud.</p> - -<p>"Oh, catch me! I'm going to tumble! Ow-w-w!"</p> - -<p>Tom snatched at one hand, while she caught him by the shoulder with the -other.</p> - -<p>"Saved! Wasn't it lucky that you came along? You're the Whitelaw boy, -aren't you?"</p> - -<p>Tom admitted that he was, though his new sensations, with this -exquisite creature clinging to him like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> a drowning man to his rescuer, -choked the monosyllable in his throat. Though he had often in a -scrimmage protected little boys, he had never before been thrown into -this comic, laughing tussle with a girl. It had the excuse for itself -that she couldn't stand unless he held her up. He held her firmly, -looking into her dancing eyes with his first emotional consciousness of -a girl's prettiness.</p> - -<p>His arm supporting her, she ventured on a step. "I'm Maisie Danker," -she explained, while taking it. "I see you going in and out the house."</p> - -<p>"I've never seen you."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps you've seen me and not noticed me."</p> - -<p>"I couldn't," he declared, with vehemence. "I've never seen you before -in my life. If I had...."</p> - -<p>Her high heels so nearly slipped from under her that they were -compelled to hold each other as if in an embrace. "If you had—what?"</p> - -<p>He knew what, but the words in which to say it needed a higher mode of -utterance. The red lips, the glowing cheeks, had the vitality of the -lively eyes. A red tam-o'-shanter, a red knitted thing like a heavenly -translation of his own earthly sweater, were bewitchingly diabolic when -worn with a black skirt, black stockings, and black shoes.</p> - -<p>As he did not respond to her challenge, she went on with her -self-introduction. "I guess you haven't seen me, because I only arrived -three days ago. I'm Mrs. Danker's niece. Live in Nashua. Worked in the -woolen mills there. Now I've come to visit my aunt for the winter."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> - -<p>For the sake of hearing her speak, he asked if she was going to work in -Boston.</p> - -<p>"I don't know. Maybe I'll take singing lessons. Got a swell voice."</p> - -<p>If again he was dumb it was because of the failure of his faculties. -Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the give-and-take of -a badinage in which the surface meanings were the less important. -Foolish and helpless, unable to show his manly superiority except in -the strength with which he held her up, he got a lesson in the new art -there and then.</p> - -<p>"Ever dance?"</p> - -<p>"I'm never asked."</p> - -<p>"Oh, it's you that ought to do the asking."</p> - -<p>"I mean that I'm never asked where there's dancing going on."</p> - -<p>"Gee, you don't have to be. You just find a girl—and go."</p> - -<p>"But I don't know how to dance."</p> - -<p>"I'll teach you."</p> - -<p>Slipping and sliding, with cries of alarm on her part, and stalwart -assurances on his, they approached their own doorstep.</p> - -<p>"Ow-w-w! Hold me! I'm going!"</p> - -<p>"No you're not—not while I've got you."</p> - -<p>"But I don't want to grab you so hard."</p> - -<p>"That's all right. I can stand it."</p> - -<p>"But I can't. I'm not used to it."</p> - -<p>"Then it's a very good time to begin."</p> - -<p>"What's the use of beginning if there's nothing to go on with?"</p> - -<p>"How do you know there won't be?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Well, what can there be?"</p> - -<p>Had Miss Danker always waited for answers to her questions Tom would -have been more nonplussed than he was. But the game which he didn't -know at all she knew thoroughly, according to her lights. She never -left him at a loss for more than a few seconds at a time. Her method -being that of touch-and-go, reserving to herself the right of coming -back again, she carried his education one step farther still.</p> - -<p>"Don't you ever go to the movies?"</p> - -<p>He replied that he had gone once or twice with Honey, but not often. -To be on the same breezy level as herself, he added in explanation: -"Haven't got the dough."</p> - -<p>"But the movies don't take dough, not hardly any."</p> - -<p>"They take more than I've got."</p> - -<p>"More than you've got? Gee! Then you can't have anything at all."</p> - -<p>It was not so much a taunt as it was a statement, and yet it was a -statement with a little taunt in it. For once driven to bravado, he -gave away a secret.</p> - -<p>"Well, I haven't—except what's in the bank."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you've got money in the bank, have you?"</p> - -<p>"Sure! But I'm keeping it to go to college."</p> - -<p>She stared at him as if he had been a duck-billed rabbit, or some -variety of fauna hitherto unknown.</p> - -<p>"Gee! I should think a fellow who had money in the bank would want to -blow some of it on having a good time—a fellow with any jazz."</p> - -<p>Once more she spared him discomfiture. Slipping into the hallway, she -said over her shoulder as he followed her: "How old are you?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Sixteen."</p> - -<p>She flashed round at him. "Sixteen! Gee! I thought you was my age if -you was a day. Honest I did. I'm eighteen, an old lady compared with -you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but boys are always older than girls, for their age."</p> - -<p>"You are, sure. Anyways, you saved me on that slippery hill, and I -think you ought to have a kiss for it. Come, baby, kiss your poor old -ma."</p> - -<p>Though the hallway was dark, the kiss had to be given and taken -furtively. Whatever it was to Maisie Danker, to Tom Whitelaw it was -the entrance to a higher and an increased life. The pressure of her -lips on his sent through his frame a dynamic glow he had not supposed -to be among nature's possibilities. Moreover, it threw light on that -experience as to which he had mused ever since he had first talked -confidentially to Bertie Tollivant. Though instinct had taught him -something in the intervening years, he had up to this minute gained -nothing in the way of practical discovery. Now an horizon that had been -dark was lifting to disclose a wonderland.</p> - -<p>With her light laugh Maisie had run into her aunt's apartment, and -shut the door. Tom began heavily, pensively, to climb the stairs. But -halfway up he paused to mark off another stage in his perceptions.</p> - -<p>"So that's what it's like! That's why they all think so much about -it—and try to hush it up!"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXIV</p> - - -<p class="drop">H<span class="uppercase">e</span> himself found something to hush up when he recounted the incident -to Honey in the evening. He told of meeting Mrs. Danker's niece on the -ice-coated hill, and helping her down to the door. Of his sensations as -she clung to him he said nothing. He said nothing of the kiss in the -dark hallway. During the rest of the evening, and after he had gone to -bed, he wondered why. They all hushed these things up, and he did as -the rest; but what was the basic reason?</p> - -<p>As his first emotional encounter the subject was sufficiently in his -mind next day to make him duller than usual at school. On his way home -from school it so preoccupied his thought that he forgot to look for -the fat boy. It was the fat boy who first saw him, hailing him as he -approached. There was already between them that acceptance of each -other which is the first stage of friendship.</p> - -<p>"What's your name?"</p> - -<p>"Tom Whitelaw. What's yours?"</p> - -<p>"Guy Ansley. How old are you?"</p> - -<p>"Sixteen. How old are you?"</p> - -<p>"I'm sixteen, too. What's your father do?"</p> - -<p>"I haven't got a father. I live with—" it was difficult to -explain—"with a man who kind o' takes care of me."</p> - -<p>"A guardian?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Something like that. What does your father do?"</p> - -<p>"He's a corporation lawyer. Makes big money, too." As Tom began to move -along the fat boy went with him, keeping step. "What's your guardian -do?"</p> - -<p>"He does anything that'll give him a job. Mostly he's a stevedore."</p> - -<p>"What's a stevedore? Sounds as if it had something to do with -bull-fighting."</p> - -<p>"It's a longshoreman. He loads and unloads ships."</p> - -<p>They stopped at the corner of Pinckney Street The puffy countenance -fell. Tom could follow his companion's progression of bewilderments.</p> - -<p>"Where do you live?"</p> - -<p>"I live in Grove Street."</p> - -<p>It was the minute of suspense. All had been confessed. The countenance -that had fallen went absolutely blank. To himself the tall, proud, -sensitive lad was saying that his future life was staked on the -response the fat boy chose to make. If he showed signs of wriggling -out of an embarrassing situation he, Tom Whitelaw, would range himself -forever with the enemies of the rich.</p> - -<p>The fat boy spoke at last.</p> - -<p>"So you're that kind of fellow."</p> - -<p>"Yes, I'm that kind of fellow."</p> - -<p>This was mere marking time. The decision was still to come. It came -with an air on the fat boy's part of heroic resolution.</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't care."</p> - -<p>Tom breathed again, breathed with bravado. "Neither do I."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> - -<p>In the stress of so much big-heartedness the girlish voice became a -croak. "I know guys who think that if another guy isn't rich they -must treat him as so much dirt. I'm not that sort. I'm democratic. I -wouldn't turn down a fellow just because he lived in Grove Street. If -I liked him I'd stick to him. I'm not snobbish. How do you know you -couldn't give him a peg up, and he'd be grateful to you all his life?"</p> - -<p>Thinking this over afterward, Tom found it hard to disengage the bitter -from the sweet; but he had not much chance to think it over. Any spare -minute he found pre-empted by Maisie Danker, who seemed to camp in -the dark hallway. If she was not there when he entered, she appeared -before he could go upstairs. The ice having melted in the street, she -had other needs of protection, an errand to do in the crowded region -of Bowdoin Square, a shop to visit across the Common which was so wide -and lonesome in winter twilights, a dance hall to locate in case they -ever made up their minds to visit it. She was always timid, clinging, -laughing, adorable. The embodiment of gayety, she made him gay, which -was again a new sensation. Never before had he felt young as he felt -young with her. The minutes they spent swamped in the throngs of the -lighted streets, between five and seven on a winter's afternoon, were -his first minutes of escape from a world of care. Care had been his -companion since he could remember anything; and now his companion was -this exquisite thing, all lightsomeness and joy.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> - -<p>He was later than usual in returning from school one afternoon, because -a teacher had given him a commission to carry out which took some two -hours of his time. As it had sent him toward the south end of the -city, he had the Common to traverse on his way home. Snow had recently -fallen; but through the main avenues under the trees the paths had been -cleared. On the Frog Pond the drifts had been swept up, so that there -could be a little skating. As Tom passed by he could hear the scraping -and grinding of skates, and the hoarse shouts of hobbledehoys. At any -other time he would have stopped, either to look on peacefully, or to -take part in some bit of free-for-all, rough-and-tumble skylarking in -the snow. But Maisie might be waiting. She might even have given up -waiting, which would take all his pleasure from the afternoon.</p> - -<p>To reach home more quickly he followed a short cut, scarcely shoveled -out, on the slope of the Common below Beacon Hill. Here there were no -foot passengers but himself. Neither, for some little distance, were -there any trees. There was only the white shroud of the snow, freezing -to a crust. A misty moon drifted through a tempest of scudding clouds, -while wherever in the offing there was a group of elms the electric -lights danced through their tossing branches as if they were wind-blown -lanterns.</p> - -<p>In spite of his hurry, the boy came to a standstill. It was a minute -at which to fancy himself lost in Moosonee or Labrador. His <i>voyageur</i> -guides had failed him; his dog team had run away; his pemmican—he -supposed it would be pemmican—had given out. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> was homeless, -starving, abandoned, alone but for the polar bears.</p> - -<p>It was not a polar bear that he saw come floundering down the hillside, -but it might have been a black one. It was certainly black; its nature -was certainly animal. It rolled and tumbled and panted and grunted, and -now and then it moaned. For a few minutes it remained stationary, with -internal undulations; then it scrambled a few paces, as an elephant -might scramble whose feet had been sawn off. A dying mammoth would also -have emitted just these raucous groans.</p> - -<p>Suddenly it squealed. The squeal was like that of a pig when the knife -is thrust into its throat. It was girlish, piercing, and yet had a -masculine shriek in it. Tom Whitelaw knew what was happening. It had -happened to himself so often in the days when he was different from -other boys that his fists seemed to clench and his feet to spring -before his mind had given the command. In clearing the fifty odd yards -of snow between him and the wallowing monster, he chose a form of words -which young hooligans would understand as those of authority.</p> - -<p>"What in hell are yez doin' to that kid? Are yez puttin' a knife in -him? Leave him be, or I'll knock the brains out of every one of yez."</p> - -<p>He was in among them, laying about him before they knew what had landed -in their midst. They were not brutal youngsters; they were only jocose -in the manner of their kind. Having spied the fat boy coming down to -watch the skating, it was as natural for them to jump on him as it -would be for a pack of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> dogs who chanced to see a sloth. With the -courage of the mob, and also with its rapidity of thought-transfer, -they had closed in silently and rushed him. He was on his back in -a second. In a second they were clambering all over him. When he -staggered to his feet they let him run, only to catch him and pull him -down again. So staggering, so running, so coming down like a lump of -jelly in the snow, he had reached the top of the hill, his tormentors -hanging to him as if their teeth were in his flesh, at the minute when -Tom first perceived the black mass.</p> - -<p>The fat boy had not lacked courage. He had fought. That is, he had -kicked and bitten and scratched, with the fury of vicious helplessness. -He had not cried for mercy. He had not cried out at all. He had -struggled for breath; he had nearly strangled; but his pantings and -gruntings were only for breath just as were theirs. Strong in spite of -his unwieldiness, he was not without the moral spunk which can perish -at a pinch, but will not give in.</p> - -<p>None of them had struck him. That would have been thought cowardly. -They had only plastered him with snow, in his mouth, in his ears, in -his eyes, and down below his collar. This he could have suffered, still -without a plea, had not their play become fiercer. They began to tear -open his clothing, to wrench it off the buttons. They stuffed snow -inside his waistcoat, inside his shirt, inside his trousers. He was -naked to the cold. And yet it was not the cold that drew from him that -piglike squeal; it was the indignity. He was Guy Ansley, a rich man's -son, in his native sanctified<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> old Boston a young lordling; but these -muckers had mauled the last rag of honor out of him.</p> - -<p>They were good-natured little demons, with no more notion of his -tragedy than if he had been a snowman. As soon as the strapping young -giant had leaped in among them, they ran off with screams of laughter. -Most of them were tired of the fun in any case; a few lingered at a -distance to "call names," but even they soon disappeared. Tom could -only help the lumbering body to its feet.</p> - -<p>Cleaning him of snow was more difficult, and since it was melting next -his skin, it had to be done at once. The shirt and underclothing being -wet, and a keen wind blowing, his teeth were soon chattering. Even when -buttoned tightly in his outer clothes he was dank and clammy within. -It helped him a little that Tom should strip off his own overcoat and -exchange with him; but nothing could really warm him till he got into -his own bed.</p> - -<p>They would have run all of the short distance to Louisburg Square only -that young Ansley was not a runner at any time, and at this time was -exhausted. Tom could only drag him along as a dead weight. Except for -the brief observations necessary to what they had to do, they hardly -spoke a word. Speech was nearly impossible. The only aim of importance -was covering the ground.</p> - -<p>The old manservant who admitted them in Louisburg Square went dumb with -dismay. Having brought his charge into the hall, Tom was obliged to -take the lead.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p> - -<p>"He's been tumbling in the snow. He's got wet. He may have caught a -chill. Better call his mother."</p> - -<p>The fat boy spoke. "Mother's in New York. So's father. Here, Pilcher, -help me up to my room."</p> - -<p>As the two went up the stairs, Tom was left standing in the hall. A -voice at the head of the stairs arrested his attention because it was -a girl's. Since knowing Maisie Danker, all girls' voices had begun -to interest him. This voice was clear, silvery, peremptory, a little -sharp, like the note of a crystal bell. Pilcher explained something, -whereupon the owner of the voice ran down. On the red carpet of the -stairs, with red-damasked paper as a background, her white figure was -spiritlike beneath a dim oriental hall light.</p> - -<p>"I'm Hildred Ansley," she said, with a cool air of self-possession. "I -see my brother's had an accident. Pilcher is putting him to bed. I'm -sure we're very much obliged to you."</p> - -<p>She was only a child, perhaps fourteen, but a competent child, who -knew what to say. Not pretty, as Maisie was, she had presence and -personality. In this she was helped by her height, since she was -tall, and would be taller, and more by her intelligence. It was the -first time he had ever had occasion to observe that some faces were -intelligent, though it was not quite easy to say why. "Little Miss -Ansley knows what's what," he commented silently, but aloud he said -that if he were in her place he would send for a doctor. Though her -brother had had no bones broken, he might easily have caught a bad cold.</p> - -<p>"Thank you! I'll do it at once."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> - -<p>She made her way to a table, somewhat belittered with caps and gloves, -behind the stairs, at the back of the hall. Taking up the receiver, she -called a number, politely and yet with a ring of command. While she was -speaking he noticed his surroundings.</p> - -<p>If to him they seemed baronial it was because his experience had been -cramped. Louisburg Square is not baronial; it is only dignified. For -the early nineteenth century its houses were spacious; for the early -twentieth they are a little narrow, a little steep, a little lacking -in imaginative outlet. But to Tom Whitelaw, with memories that went -back to the tenements of New York, to whom the homes of the Tollivants -and the Quidmores had meant reasonable comfort, who found the sharing -of one room with George Honeybun endurable, these walls with their red -paper, these stairs with their red carpet, this lofty gloom, this sense -of wealth, were all that he dreamed of as palatial.</p> - -<p>When Miss Ansley returned from the telephone, he asked if he might -have his overcoat. Her brother had worn it upstairs on going to his -room. "That's his," he explained, pointing to the soggy Burberry he had -thrown down on a carved settle.</p> - -<p>"Oh, certainly! I'll run up and get it. I won't ask you to go upstairs -to the drawing-room; but if you don't mind taking a seat in here...."</p> - -<p>Throwing open the door of the dining room, which was on the ground -floor, she switched on the light. Tom entered and stood still. So this -was the sort of place in which rich people took their meals!</p> - -<p>It was a glow of rich gleaming lights, lights from mahogany, lights -from silver, lights from porcelain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> In the center of the table lay -a round piece of lace, on which stood a silver dish with nothing in -it. He knew without being told, though he had never thought of it -before, that it needed nothing in it. There were things so beautiful -as to fulfil their purpose merely in being beautiful. From above a -black-marble mantelpiece a man looked down at him with jovial eyes, a -man in a high collar and huge black neckerchief, who might have been -the grandfather or great-grandfather of Guy and Hildred Ansley. He had -the fat good humor of the one and the bright intelligence of the other, -the source in his genial self of types so widely different.</p> - -<p>Young Miss Ansley tripped in with the coat across her arm. "I'm sure -my father and mother will want to thank you when they come back. Guy's -been very naughty. He's always forbidden to leave the Square when he -goes out of doors. He wouldn't have done it if papa and mamma hadn't -been away. I can't make him mind <i>me</i>. But you must come back when -everybody's here, so that you can be thanked properly. I suppose you -live somewhere near us?"</p> - -<p>Tom found it easiest to answer indirectly. "Your brother knows -everything about me. I've seen him once or twice in the Square, and -I've told him who I am."</p> - -<p>"That'll be very nice."</p> - -<p>She held out her hand, and he accepted his dismissal. But before having -closed the door behind him, he turned round to her as she stood under -the oriental lamp.</p> - -<p>"I hope your brother will soon be all right again.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> I think they ought -to give him a hot drink. He's—he's got big stuff in him when you come -to find it out. He'll make his way."</p> - -<p>The transformation in her was electric. She ceased to be starched and -competent, with a manner that put a thousand miles between him and her. -The intelligence he had already noted in her face was aflame with a -radiance beyond beauty.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'm so glad you can say that! No one outside the family has ever -said it before. He's a <i>lamb</i>!—and hardly anybody knows it."</p> - -<p>She held out her hand again. As he took it he saw that her eyes, which -he thought must be dark, were shining with a mist of tears.</p> - -<p>Going down the hill he repeated the two names: Maisie Danker! Hildred -Ansley! They called up concepts so different that it was hard to think -them of a common flesh. Though Maisie Danker was a woman and Hildred -Ansley but a child, there were points at which you could compare -them. In the comparison the advantages lay so richly with the girl -in Louisburg Square that he fell back on the fact, stressing it with -emphasis, that Maisie was the prettier. "After all," he reflected, with -comfort in the judgment, "that's all that matters—to a man."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXV</p> - - -<p class="drop">A <span class="uppercase">few</span> days after his rescue of Guy Ansley from the snow Tom Whitelaw -found himself addressed by that young gentleman's sister, aged -fourteen. She had plainly been watching for him as he went through -Louisburg Square on his way from school. He had almost passed the -Ansley steps before the tall, slight girl ran down them.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Mr. Whitelaw!"</p> - -<p>As it was the first time he had ever been honored with this prefix, he -felt shocked and slightly foolish.</p> - -<p>"Yes, Miss Ansley?"</p> - -<p>A little breathless, she was, as he had noticed during their previous -meeting, oddly grown up for her age, as one who takes responsibilities -because there is no one else to bear them. She had the manner and -selection of words of a woman of thirty.</p> - -<p>"I hope you won't mind my waylaying you like this, but my brother would -so much like to see you. You've been so awfully kind that I hope you'll -come up. He's in bed, you know."</p> - -<p>"When does he want me to come?"</p> - -<p>"Well, now, if it isn't troubling you too much. You see, my father and -mother are coming home to-night, and he'd like to have a word with you -before then. He won't keep you more than a few minutes."</p> - -<p>What Tom obscurely felt as an honor to himself she put as a favor he -was doing them. It was an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> honor in that it admitted him a little -farther into privacies which to him seemed tapestried with privilege -and tradition. His one brief glimpse of their way of living had not -made him discontented; it had only appealed to his faculty for awe.</p> - -<p>Awe was what he was aware of in following his young guide up the two -red staircases to the room where the fat boy lay in bed. It was a -mother's-darling's room, amusingly out of keeping with the pudgy, -fleshy being whom it housed. Flowered paper on the walls, flowered -hangings at the windows, flowered cretonnes on thickly upholstered -armchairs, flowered silk on the duvet, garlands of flowers on the -headboard and footboard of the virginal white bedstead, made the piggy -eyes and piggy cheeks, bolstered up by pillows of which some were -trimmed with lace, the more funnily grotesque. Tom Whitelaw saw neither -the fun nor the grotesqueness. All he could take in was the fact that -beauty could gild the lily of this luxury. He knew nothing of beauty in -his own denuded life. The room with two beds which he still shared with -Honey at Mrs. Danker's was not so much a sanctuary as a lair.</p> - -<p>The fat boy's giggles were those of welcome, and also those of -embarrassment.</p> - -<p>"After the scrap the other night got sick. Bronchitis. Sit down."</p> - -<p>Tom looked round to see what Miss Ansley was doing, but slipping away, -she shut the door behind her. He sank into the flowered armchair -nearest to the bed. The cracked girlish voice, which now had a wheeze -in it, went on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p> - -<p>"They've wired for dad and mother, and they're coming home to-night. -Thought that before they got here I'd put you wise to something I want -you to do."</p> - -<p>Waiting for more, Tom sat silent, while the poor piggy face screwed -itself up as if it meant to cry.</p> - -<p>"Dad and mother think that because I'm so fat I'm not a sport. But -they're dead wrong, see? I <i>am</i> a sport; only—only—" he was almost -bursting into tears—"only the damn fat won't let me get it out, see?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, I see. I now you're a sport all right, old chap. Of course!"</p> - -<p>"Well, then, don't let them think the other thing, if they were to ask -you."</p> - -<p>"Ask me what?"</p> - -<p>"Ask you what the row was about the other afternoon. If they do that -tell 'em we were only playing nigger-in-the-henhouse, or any other snow -game. Don't say I was knocked down by a lot of kids. Make 'em think I -was having the devil's own good time."</p> - -<p>Tom Whitelaw knew this kind of humiliation. If he had not been through -Guy Ansley's special phase of it he had been through others.</p> - -<p>"I'll tell them what I saw. You and a lot of other fellows were -skylarking in the snow, and I went by and got you to knock off. As I -had to pass your door we came home together; but when I found you were -wet to the skin I advised Miss Ansley to see that you hit the hay. -That's all there was to it."</p> - -<p>In the version of the incident the strain of truth was sufficiently -clear to allow the fat boy to approve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> of it. He didn't want to tell a -lie, or to get Tom Whitelaw to tell a lie; but sport having been the -object with which he had stolen away on that winter's afternoon, it was -easy to persuade himself that he had got it. Before Tom went away Guy -Ansley understood that he would figure to his parents not as a victim -but as something of a tough.</p> - -<p>"Gee, I wish I was you," he grinned at Tom, who stood with his hands on -the doorknob.</p> - -<p>"Me!" Tom was never so astonished in his life. His eyes rolled round -the room. "How do you think I live?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, live! That's nothing. What I'd like to do is to rough it. If -they'd let me do that I shouldn't be—I shouldn't be wrapped up in fat -like a mummy in—in whatever it is they're wrapped up in. <i>You</i> can get -away with anything on looks."</p> - -<p>Sincere as was this tribute, it meant nothing to Tom Whitelaw, -looks being no part of his preoccupations. What, for the minute, he -was thinking about was that nobody in the world seemed to be quite -satisfied. Here he was envying Guy Ansley his down quilt and his -comfortable chairs, while Guy was envying him the rough-and-tumble of -privation.</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't look after him too much," he said to the young sister -whom, on coming downstairs, he found waiting at the front door. -"There's nothing wrong with him, except that he's a little stout. He's -got lots of pluck."</p> - -<p>Her face glowed. The glow brought out its intelligence. The -intelligence set into action a demure, mysterious charm, almost -oriental.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - -<p>"That's just what I always say, and no one ever believes me. Mother -makes a baby of him."</p> - -<p>"If he could only fight his own way a little more...."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I do hope you'll say that if they speak to you about him."</p> - -<p>"I will if I ever get the chance, but...."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you must get the chance. I'll make it. You see, you're the only -boy Guy's ever taken a fancy to who didn't treat him as a joke."</p> - -<p>Tom assured her that her brother was not the only fellow who had a hard -fight to put up during boyhood. He had seen them by the dozen who, -just because of some trifling oddity, or unusual taste, were teased, -worried, tormented, till school became a hell; but that didn't keep -them from turning out in the end to be the best sports among them all. -Very likely the guying did them good. He thought it might. He, Tom -Whitelaw, had been through a lot of it, and now that he was sixteen he -wasn't sorry for himself a bit. He used to be sorry for himself, but....</p> - -<p>Seeing her for the second time, and in daylight, her features grew more -distinct to him. He mused on them while continuing his way homeward. To -say she was not pretty, as he had said the other night, was to use a -form of words calling for amplification. It was the first time he had -had occasion to observe that there are faces to which beauty is not -important.</p> - -<p>"It's the way she looks at you," was his form of summing up; and yet -for the way she looked at you he had no sufficient phraseology.</p> - -<p>That her eyes were long, narrow, and yellow-brown,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> ever so slightly -Mongolian, he could see easily enough. That her nose was short, with a -little tilt to it, was also a fact he had no difficulty in stating. As -for her coloring, it was like that of a russet apple when the brown has -a little gold in it and the red the brightness of carmine. Her hair was -saved from being ugly by running to the quaint. Straight, black—black -with a bluish gloss—it was worn not in the pigtail with which he -was most familiar, but in two big plaits curved behind the ears, and -secured he didn't know how. She reminded him of a colored picture he -had seen of a Cambodian girl, a resemblance enhanced by the dark blue -dress she wore, straight and formless down the length of her immature, -boylike figure, and marked at the waistline by a circle of gold braid.</p> - -<p>But all these details were subordinate to something he had no power of -defining. It was also something of which he was jealous as an injustice -to Maisie Danker. If this girl had what poor Maisie had not it was -because money gave her an advantage. It was the kind of advantage that -wasn't fair. Because it wasn't fair, he felt it a challenge to his -loyalty.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, he could not accept Maisie's offhand judgments when -between five and six that afternoon he told her of the incident.</p> - -<p>This was at The Cherry Tree, one of those bowers of refreshment and -dancing recently opened on their own slope of Beacon Hill. Bower -was the word. What had once been the basement-kitchen and coal -cellar of a small brick dwelling had been artfully converted into a -long oval orchard of cherry trees, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> paper luxuriance of foliage -and blossom. Within the boskage, and under Chinese lanterns, there -were tables; out in the open was a center oval cleared for dancing. -Somewhere out of sight a cracked fiddle and a flat piano rasped out -the tango or some shred of "rag." With the briefest intervals for -breath, this performance was continuous. The guests, who at that hour -in the afternoon numbered no more than ten or twelve, forsook their -refreshments to take the floor, or forsook the floor to return to their -refreshments, just as the impulse moved them. They were chiefly working -girls, young men at leisure because out of jobs, or sailors on shore. -Except for an occasional hoarse or screechy laugh, the decorum was -proper to solemnity.</p> - -<p>It was the fourth or fifth time Tom and Maisie had come to this -retreat, nominally that Tom should learn to dance, but really that they -should commune together. To him the occasions were blissful for the -reason that he had no one else in the world to commune with. To talk, -to talk eagerly, to pour out the torrent of opinions boiling within -him, meant more than that Maisie should understand him. Maisie didn't -understand him. She only laughed and joked with pretty inanity; but -she let him talk. He talked about the books he liked and didn't like, -about the advantages college men possessed over those who weren't -college men, about what he knew of the banking system, about the good -you conferred on the world and yourself when you saved your money and -invested it. In none of these subjects was she interested; but now and -then she could get a turn to talk of the movies,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> the new dances, and -love. That these subjects made him uneasy was not, from Maisie's point -of view, a reason for avoiding them.</p> - -<p>Each was concerned with the other, but beyond the other each was -concerned most of all with the mystery called Life. To live was what -they were after, to live strongly and deeply and vividly and hotly, and -to do it with the pinched means and narrow opportunities which were all -they could command. In his secret heart Tom Whitelaw knew that Maisie -Danker was not the girl out of all the world he would have sought of -his own accord, while Maisie Danker was equally aware that this boy -two years younger than herself couldn't be the generous provider she -was looking for. They were only like shipwrecked passengers thrown -together on an island. They must make the best of each other. No other -girl, hardly any other human being except Honey, had entered the social -isolation in which he was marooned, and as for her....</p> - -<p>She was so cheery and game that she never referred to her home -experiences otherwise than allusively. From allusions he gathered that -she was not with her aunt, Mrs. Danker, merely for pleasure or from -pressure of affection. Her father was living; her stepmother was living -too. There was a whole step-family of little brothers and sisters. Her -father drank; her stepmother hated her; there was no room for her at -home. All her life she had been knocked about. Even when she worked in -the woolen mills she couldn't keep her wages. She had had fellows, but -none of them was ever any good. The best of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> them was a French Canadian -who made big money, but he wouldn't marry her unless she "turned -Catholic." "If he couldn't give up his church for me I couldn't give up -mine for him; so there it was!" There was another fellow.... But as to -him she said little. In speaking of him at all her face grew somber, -which it did rarely. Either because he had failed her, or to get her -out of his clutches, Tom was not sure which, her aunt had offered her a -home for the winter. "Gee, it makes me laff," was her own sole comment -on her miseries.</p> - -<p>As Tom had dropped into the habit of telling her the small happenings -of his uneventful life, he gave her, across the ice-cream sodas, an -account of what had just occurred between himself and Guy and Hildred -Ansley.</p> - -<p>She listened with what for her was gravity. "You've got to give some of -them society girls the cold glassy eye," she informed him, judicially. -"If you don't you'll get it yourself, perhaps when you ain't expecting -it."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but this is only a little girl, not more than fourteen. She just -<i>seems</i> grown up. That's the funny part of it."</p> - -<p>"Not more than fourteen! Just <i>seems</i> grown up! Why, any of that bunch -is forwarder at ten than I'd be at twenty. That's one thing I'd never -be, not if men was scarcer than blue raspberries—forward. And yet some -of them society buds'll be brassier than a knocker on a door."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but this little Miss Ansley isn't that sort."</p> - -<p>"You wouldn't know, not if she was running up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> and down your throat. -Any girl can get hold of a man if she makes him think she needs him bad -enough."</p> - -<p>"It wasn't she who needed me; it was her brother."</p> - -<p>"A brother'll do. A grandmother'd do. If you can't bait your hook with -a feather fly, you can take a bit of worm. But once a fella like you -begins to take a shine to one of them...."</p> - -<p>"Shine to one of them! Me?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I suppose you'll be taking a shine to <i>some</i> girl <i>some</i> day. -Why shouldn't you?"</p> - -<p>"If I was going to do that...."</p> - -<p>The point at which he suspended his sentence was that which piqued her -especially. Her eyes were provocative; her bright face alert.</p> - -<p>"Well, if you were going to do that—what of it?"</p> - -<p>The minute was one he was trying to evade. As clearly as if he were -fifty, he knew the folly of getting himself involved in an emotional -entanglement. Though he looked a young man, he was only a big boy. The -most serious part of his preparation for life lay just ahead of him. If -he didn't go to college....</p> - -<p>And even more pressing than that consideration was the fact that in -bringing Maisie to The Cherry Tree that afternoon he had come down to -his last fifteen cents. At the beginning of their acquaintance he had -had seven dollars and a half, hoarded preciously for needs connected -with his education. Maisie had stampeded the whole treasure. To expect -a man to spend money on her was as instinctive to Maisie as it is to -a flower to expect the heavens to send rain.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> She knew that at each -mention of the movies or The Cherry Tree Tom squirmed in the anguish -of financial disability, and that from the very hint of love he bolted -like a colt from the bridle; but when it came to what she considered as -her due she was pitiless.</p> - -<p>No epic has yet been written on the woes of the young man trying, on -twenty-five dollars a week, let us say, to play up to the American -girl's taste for spending money. His self-denials, his sordid shifts, -his mortifications, his sense at times that his most unselfish efforts -have been scorned, might inspire a series of episodes as tensely -dramatic as those of Spoon River.</p> - -<p>Tom had had one such experience on Maisie's birthday. She had talked so -much of her birthday that a present became indispensable. To meet this -necessity the extreme of his expenditure could be no more than fifty -cents. To find for fifty cents something worthy of a lady already a -connoisseur he ransacked Boston. Somewhere he had heard that a present -might be modest so long as it was the best thing of its kind. The best -thing of its kind he discovered was a toothbrush. It was not a common -toothbrush except for the part that brushed the teeth. The handle -was of mother-of-pearl, with an inlay in red enamel. The price was -forty-five cents.</p> - -<p>Maisie laughed till she cried. "A toothbrush! A <i>tooth</i>brush! For a -present that's something new! Gee, how the girls'll laff when I go back -to Nashua and tell them that that's what a guy give me in Boston!"</p> - -<p>The humiliation of straitened means was the more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> galling to Tom -Whitelaw, first because he was a giver, and then because he knew the -value of money. With the value of money his mind was always playing, -not from miserly motives, but from those of social economy. Each time -he "blew in," as he called it, a dollar on the girl he said to himself: -"If I could have invested that dollar, it would have helped to run a -factory, and have brought me in six or seven cents a year for all the -rest of my life." He made this calculation to mark the wastage he was -strewing along his path in the wild pace he was running.</p> - -<p>There was something about Maisie which obliged you to play up to her. -She was that sort of girl. If you didn't play up, the mere laughter in -her eye made you feel your lack of the manly qualities. It was not her -scorn she brought into play; it was her sense of fun; but to the boy of -sixteen her sense of fun was terrible.</p> - -<p>It was terrible, and yet it put him on his guard. He couldn't wholly -give in to her. If she could make moves he could make them too, and -perhaps as adroitly. Her tantalizing question was ringing in his ears: -If he was going to take a shine to any girl—what of it?</p> - -<p>"Oh, if I was going to do that," he tossed off, "it would be to you."</p> - -<p>"So that you haven't taken a shine to me—yet?"</p> - -<p>"It depends on what you mean by a shine."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean by it yourself?"</p> - -<p>"I never have time to think." This was a happy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> sentiment, and a -safeguard. "It takes all I can do to remember that I've got to go to -college."</p> - -<p>"Damn college!"</p> - -<p>He was so unsophisticated that the expression startled him. He hadn't -supposed young ladies used it, not any more than they sneaked into -barns or under bridges to smoke cigarettes.</p> - -<p>"What's the use of damning college, when I've got to go?"</p> - -<p>"You haven't got to go. A great strong fella like you ought to be -earning his twenty per by this time. If you've got money in the bank, -as you say you have...."</p> - -<p>He trembled already for his treasure. "I haven't got it here. It's in a -savings bank in New York."</p> - -<p>"Oh, that's nothing! If you got it <i>any</i>wheres you can get at it with -a check. Gee, if I had a few hundreds I'd have ten in my pocket at a -time, I'll be hanged if I wouldn't. I don't believe you've got it, see. -I know a lot o' guys that loves to put that sort of fluff over on a -girl. Makes 'em feel big. But if they only knew what the girl thinks -of them...." She jumped to her feet, allowing herself a little more -vulgarity than she generally showed. "All right, old son, c'me awn! -Let's have another twist. And for Gawd's sake don't bring down that -hoof of yours till I get a chance to pull my Cinderella-slipper out of -your way."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXVI</p> - - -<p class="drop">I<span class="uppercase">t</span> was after he had spent the first ten dollars he drew from his fund -in New York that Tom felt the impulse to tell Honey of the way in -which he was becoming involved with Maisie Danker. The ten dollars had -melted. In signing the formalities for drawing the amount, he expected -to have enough to carry him along till spring, when Maisie's visit was -to end. He dreaded its ending, and yet it would have this element of -relief in it; he would be able to keep his money. At a pinch he could -spare ten dollars, though he couldn't spare them very well. More than -ten dollars....</p> - -<p>And before he knew it the ten dollars had vanished as if into air. -Once Maisie knew what he had done her caprices multiplied. To her as -to him ten dollars to "blow in"—she used the airy expression too—was -a small fortune. It was only their instincts that were different. His -was to let it go slowly, since the spending of a penny was against the -protests of his conscience; hers to make away with it. If Tom could -"draw the juice" for a first ten, he could draw it for a second, and -for a third and a fourth after that. It was not extravagance that -whipped her on; it was joy of life.</p> - -<p>Tom's impulse to tell Honey was not acted on. It was not acted on -after he drew the second ten; nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> after he drew the third. After he -had drawn the fourth his unhappiness became so great that he sought a -confidant.</p> - -<p>And yet his unhappiness was not absolute; it was rather a poisoned -bliss. Had Maisie been content with what he could afford, the winter -would have been like one in Paradise. But almost before he himself -was aware of the promptings of thrift, she vanquished them with her -ridicule.</p> - -<p>"There's nothing I hate so much as anything cheap. If a fella can't -give me what I like, he can keep away."</p> - -<p>Time and time again Tom swore he would keep away. He did keep away, for -a day, for two or three days in succession. Then she would meet him -in the dark hallway, and, twining her arms around his neck without a -word, would give him one of those kisses on the lips which thrilled him -into subjection. He would be guilty of any folly for her then, because -he couldn't help himself. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty dollars, all the -hoarded inheritance from the Martin Quidmore who was already a dim -memory, would be well thrown away if only she would kiss him once again.</p> - -<p>He lost the healthy diversion which might have reached him through the -Ansleys because they had taken the fat boy to Florida. Tom learned -that from little Miss Ansley a few days after the return of the father -and mother from New York. One afternoon as both were coming from their -schools they had met on their way toward Louisburg Square. Even in her -outdoor dress, she was quaintly grown-up and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> Cambodian. A rough brown -tweed had a little gold and a little red in it; a brown turban not -unlike a fez bore on the left a small red wing tipped with a golden -line. Maisie would have emphasized the red; she would have been vivid, -eager to be noticed. This girl didn't need that kind of advertisement.</p> - -<p>Seeing her before she saw him, he wondered whether she would give -him any sign of recognition. At Harfrey the girls whom he saw at the -Tollivants, and who proclaimed themselves "exclusive," always forgot -him when they met him on the street. This had hurt him. He waited in -some trepidation now, fearing to be hurt again. But when she saw him -she nodded and smiled.</p> - -<p>"Guy's better," she said, without greeting, "and we're all going off -to Florida to-morrow. Guy and I don't want to go a bit; but mother's -afraid of his catching cold, and father has to be in Washington, -anyhow. So we're off."</p> - -<p>Though he walked by her side for no more than a few yards, Tom was -touched by her friendliness. She was the first girl of that section of -the world for which he had only the term "society" who had not been -ashamed to be seen with him in a street. Little Miss Ansley even paused -for a minute at the foot of her steps while they exchanged remarks -about their schools. She went to Miss Winslow's. She liked her school. -She was sorry to be going away as it would give her such a lot of back -work to make up. She might go to Radcliffe when Guy went to Harvard, -but so far her mother was opposed to it. In these casual observations -she seemed to Tom to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> lose something of her air of being a woman of the -world. On his own side he lost a little of his awe of her.</p> - -<p>The snuffing out of this interest threw him back on the easing of -his heart by confidence. It was not confidence alone; it was also -confession. He was deceiving Honey, and to go on deceiving Honey began -to seem to him baser than dishonor. Had Honey been his father, it would -have been different. Fathers worked for their sons as a matter of -course, and almost as a matter of course expected that their sons would -play them false. There was no reason why Honey should work for him; and -since Honey did work for him, there was every reason why he who reaped -the benefit should be loyal. He was not loyal. He had even reached the -point, and he cursed himself for reaching it, at which Honey was an Old -Man of the Sea fastened on his back.</p> - -<p>He told himself that this was the damnedest ingratitude; and yet he -couldn't tell himself that it wasn't so. It was. There were days when -Honey's way of speaking, Honey's way of eating, the smell of Honey's -person, and the black patch on his eye, revolted him. Here he was, -a great lump of a fellow sixteen years of age, and dependent for -everything, for <i>everything</i>, on a rough dock laborer who had been a -burglar and a convict. It was preposterous. Had he jumped into this -situation he would not have borne it for a week. But he had not jumped -into it; it had grown. It had grown round him. It held him now as if -with tentacles. He couldn't break away from it.</p> - -<p>And yet Honey and he were bound to grow apart.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> It was in the nature of -the case that it should be so. Always of a texture finer than Honey's, -schooling, association, and habits of mind were working together to -refine the grain, while Honey was growing coarser. His work, Tom -reasoned, kept him not only in a rut but in a brutalizing rut. Loading -and unloading, unloading and re-loading, he had less use for his mind -than in the days of his freebooting. Then a wild ass of the desert, -he was now harnessed to a dray with no relief from hauling it. From -morning to night he hauled; from night to morning he was stupefied with -weariness. In on this stupefaction Tom found it more and more difficult -to break. He was agog with interests and ideas; for neither interests -nor ideas had Honey any room.</p> - -<p>Nor had he, so far as Tom could judge, any room for affection. On the -contrary, he repelled it. "Don't you go for to think that I've give up -bein' a socialist because I got a soft side. No, sir! That wouldn't be -it at all. What reely made me do it was because it didn't pay. I'd make -big money now and then; but once I'd fixed the police, the lawyers, -and nine times out o' ten the judge, I wouldn't have hardly nothink -for meself. If out o' every hundred dollars I was able to pocket -twenty-five it'd be as much as ever. This 'ere job don't pay as well to -start with; but then it haven't no expenses."</p> - -<p>Self-interest and a vague sense of responsibility were all he ever -admitted as a key to his benevolence. "It's along o' my bein' an -Englishman. You can't get an Englishman 'ardly ever to be satisfied -a'mindin' of his own business. Ten to one he'll do that and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> mind -somebody else's at the same time. A kind o' curse that's on 'em, I -often thinks. Once when I was doin' a bit—might 'a been at Sing -Sing—a guy come along to entertain us. Recited poetry at us. And I -recolleck he chewed to beat the band over a piece he called, 'The White -Man's Burden.' Well, that's what you are, Kid. You're my White Man's -Burden. I can't chuck yer, nor nothink. I just got to carry yer till -yer can git along without me; and then I'll quit. The old bunch'll be -as glad to see me back as I'll be to go. There's just one thing I want -yer to remember, Kid, that when yer've got yer eddication there won't -be nothink to bind me to you, nor—" he held himself very straight, -bringing out his words with a brutal firmness—"<i>nor you to me</i>. Yer'll -know I'll be as glad to go the one way as you'll be to go the t'other, -so there won't be no 'ard feelin' on both sides."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was a Sunday night. Tom had taken his troubles to bed with him, -because he had nowhere else to take them. In bed you struck a truce -with life. You suspended operations, at least for a few hours. You -could sleep; you could postpone. He slept as a rule so soundly, and so -straight through the night, that, hunted as he was by care, he had once -in the twenty-four hours a refuge in which the fiendish thing couldn't -overtake him.</p> - -<p>It had been a trying Sunday because Maisie had tempted him to a wilder -than usual extravagance. There was enough snow on the ground for -sleighing. She had been used to sleighing in Nashua. The sing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>ing of -runners and the jingling of bells, as a sleigh slid joyously past her, -awakened her longing for the sport. By coaxing, by teasing, by crying a -little, and, worst of all, by making game of him, she had induced him -to find a place where he could hire a sleigh and take her for a ride.</p> - -<p>Snow having turned to rain, and rain to frost, the landscape through -which they drove was made of crystal. Every tree was as a tree of -glass, sparkling in the sun. A deep blue sky, a keen dry wind, a little -horse which enjoyed the outing as briskly as Maisie herself, made the -two hours vibrant with the ecstasy of cold. All Tom's nerves were taut -with the pleasure of the motion, of the air, of the skill, acquired -chiefly at Bere, with which he managed the spirited young nag. The -knowledge of what it was costing him he was able to thrust aside. He -would enjoy the moment, and face the reckoning afterward. When he did -face the reckoning, he found that of his fourth ten dollars he had -spent six dollars and fifty-seven cents. Only three days earlier he had -had the crisp clean bill unbroken in his hand....</p> - -<p>He had been hardly able to eat his supper, and after supper the usual -two hours of study to which he gave himself on Sunday nights were as -time thrown away. Luckily, Honey's consideration left him the room -to himself. Honey was like that. If Tom had to work, Honey effaced -himself, in summer by sitting on the doorstep, in winter by going to -bed. Much of Tom's wrestling with Virgil was carried on to the tune of -Honey's snores.</p> - -<p>This being Sunday evening, and Honey less tired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> than on the days on -which he worked, he had gone to "chew the rag," as he phrased it, -with a little Jew tailor, who lived next door to Mrs. Danker. Tom was -aware that behind this the motive was not love for the Jew tailor, but -zeal that he, Tom, should be interfered with as little as possible in -his eddication. Tom's eddication was as much an obsession to Honey -as it was to Tom himself. It was an overmastering compulsion, like -that which sent Peary to find the North Pole, Scott to find the South -one, and Livingstone and Stanley to cross Africa. What he had to -gain by it had no place in his calculation. A machine wound up, and -going automatically, could not be more set on its purpose than Lemuel -Honeybun on his.</p> - -<p>But to-night his absenting of himself was of no help to Tom in giving -his mind to the translation from English into Latin on which he was -engaged. When he found himself rendering the expression "in the -meantime" by the words <i>in turpe tempore</i>, he pushed books and paper -away from him, with a bitter, emphatic, "Damn!"</p> - -<p>Though it was only nine, there was nothing for it but to go to bed. In -bed he would sleep and forget. He always did. Putting out the gas, and -pulling the bedclothes up around his ears, he mentally waved the white -flag to his carking enemy.</p> - -<p>But the carking enemy didn't heed the white flag; he came on just the -same. For the first time in his life Tom Whitelaw couldn't sleep. -Rolling from side to side, he groaned and swore at the refusal of -relief to come to him. He was still wide awake when about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> half past -ten Honey came in and re-lit the gas, surprised to see the boy already -with his face turned to the wall. Not to disturb him, Honey moved round -the room on tiptoe.</p> - -<p>Tom lay still, his eyes closed. He loathed this proximity, this sharing -of one room. In the two previous years he hadn't minded it. But he was -older now, almost a man, able to take care of himself. Not only was he -growing more fastidious, but the self-consciousness we know as modesty -was bringing to the over-intimate a new kind of discomfort. Long -meaning to propose two small separate rooms as not much dearer than the -larger one, he had not yet come to it, partly through unwillingness -to add anything to their expenses, and partly through fear of hurting -Honey's feelings. But to-night the lack of privacy gave the outlet of -exasperation to his less tangible discontents.</p> - -<p>He rolled over on his back. One gas jet spluttered in the antiquated -chandelier. Under it a small deal table was heaped with his books and -strewn with his papers. Beside it stood an old armchair stained with -the stains of many lodgers' use, the entrails of the seat protruding -horribly between the legs. Two small chairs of the kitchen type, a -wash-stand, a chest of drawers with a mirror hung above it, two or -three flimsy rugs, and the iron cots on which they slept, made a -setting for Honey, who sat beneath the gaslight, sewing a button on -his undershirt. Turned in profile toward Tom, and wearing nothing but -his drawers and socks, he bent above his work with the patience of -a concentrated mind. He was really a fine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> figure of a man, brawny, -hairy, spare, muscled like an athlete, a Rodin's Thinker all but the -thought, yet irritating Tom as the embodiment of this penury.</p> - -<p>So not from an impulse of confession, but to ease the suffering of his -nerves, Tom told something about Maisie Danker. It was only something. -He told of the friendship, of the dancing lessons, of the movies, of -the sleigh-ride that afternoon, of the forty dollars drawn from the -bank. He said nothing of their kisses, nor of the frenzy which he -thought might be love. Honey pulled his needle up through the hole, and -pushed it back again, neither asking questions nor looking up.</p> - -<p>"I guess we'll move," was his only comment, when the boy had finished -the halting tale.</p> - -<p>This quietness excited Tom the more. "What do you want to move for?"</p> - -<p>"Because there's dangers what the on'y thing you can do to fight 'em is -to run away."</p> - -<p>"Who said anything about danger? Do you suppose ...?"</p> - -<p>In sticking in his needle Honey handled the implement as if it were an -awl. "Do I suppose she's playin' the dooce with yer? No, Kid. She don't -have to. You're playin' the dooce with yerself. It's yer age. Sixteen -is a terr'ble imagination age."</p> - -<p>"Oh, if you think I'm framing the whole thing...."</p> - -<p>"No, I don't. Yer believes it all right. On'y it ain't quite so bad as -what yer think. It don't do to be too delikit with women. Got to bat -'em away as if they was flies, when they bother yer too much.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> Once let -a woman in on yer game and yer 'and can be queered for good."</p> - -<p>"Did I say anything about letting a woman in on my game?"</p> - -<p>"No, yer on'y said she'd slipped in. It's too late now to keep her out. -She's made the diff'rence."</p> - -<p>"What difference?"</p> - -<p>Honey threaded his needle laboriously, held up the end of the thread -to moisten it with his lips, and tied a knot in it. "The diff'rence in -you. Yer ain't the same young feller what yer was six months ago. You -and me has been like one," he went on, placidly. "Now we're two. Been -two this spell back. Couldn't make it out, no more'n Billy-be-damned; -and now I see. The first girl."</p> - -<p>Tom lashed about the bed.</p> - -<p>"It was bound to come; and that's why—yer've arsked me about it onst -or twice, so I may as well tell yer—that's why I never lets meself get -fond o' yer. Could'a did it just as easy as not. When a man gits to -my age a young boy what's next o' kin to him—why, he'll seem like as -if 'twould be his son. But I wouldn't be ketched. 'Honey,' I says to -meself, 'the first girl and you'll be dished.'"</p> - -<p>"Oh, go to blazes!"</p> - -<p>Having finished his button, Honey made it doubly secure by winding the -thread around it. "Not that I blame yer, Kiddy. I ain't never led no -celebrant life meself, not till I had to take you on, and cut out all -low company what wouldn't 'a been good for you. But I figured it out -that we might 'a got yer through college before yer fell for it. Well, -we ain't. Maybe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> now we'll not git yer to college at all. But we'll -make a shy at it. We'll move."</p> - -<p>"If you think that by moving you'll keep me from seeing her again...."</p> - -<p>"No, son, not no more'n I could keep yer from cuttin' yer throat by -lockin' up yer razor. Yer could git another razor. I know that. All -the same, it'd be up to me, wouldn't it, not to leave no razors layin' -round the room, where yer could put yer 'and on 'em?"</p> - -<p>This settling of his destiny over his head angered Tom especially.</p> - -<p>"I can save you the trouble of having me on your mind any more. -To-morrow I'll be out on my own. I'm going to be a man."</p> - -<p>"Sure, you're going to be a man—in time. But yer ain't a man yet."</p> - -<p>"I'm sixteen. I can do what any other fellow of sixteen can do."</p> - -<p>"No fella of sixteen can do much."</p> - -<p>"He can earn a living."</p> - -<p>"He can earn part of a livin'. How many boys of sixteen did yer ever -know that could swing clear of home and friends and everythink, and -feed and clothe and launder theirselves on what they made out'n their -job?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I can try, can't I?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, yer can try, Kid. But if you was me, I wouldn't cut loose -from nobody, not till I'd got me 'and in."</p> - -<p>Tom raised himself on his elbow, his eyes, beneath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> their protruding -horizontal eyebrows, aglitter with the wrath which puts life and the -world out of focus.</p> - -<p>"I <i>am</i> going to cut loose. I'm going to be my own master."</p> - -<p>"Are you, Kid? How much of yer own master do yer expect to be, on the -ten or twelve per yer'll git to begin with—<i>if</i> yer gits that?"</p> - -<p>"Even if it was only five or six per, I'd be making it myself."</p> - -<p>"And what about college?"</p> - -<p>"College—hell!"</p> - -<p>The boy fell back on his pillow. Feeling he had delivered his -ultimatum, he waited for a reply. But Honey only stowed away his sewing -materials in a little black box, after which he pulled off the articles -of clothing he continued to wear, and set about his toilet for the -night. At the sound of his splashing water on his face Tom muttered to -himself: "God, another night of this will kill me."</p> - -<p>Honey spoke through the muffling of the towel, while he dried his face. -"Isn't all this fuss what I'm tellin' yer? The minute a girl gits in on -a young feller's life there's hell to pay. That's why I'd like yer to -steer clear of 'em as long as yer can hold out."</p> - -<p>Tom shut his eyes, buried his face in the pillow, and affected not to -hear.</p> - -<p>"They don't mean to do no harm; they're just naterally troublesome. -Seems as if they was born that way, and couldn't 'elp theirselves. -There's a lot of 'em as is never satisfied till they've got a man like -a jumpin'-jack, what all they need to do is to pull<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> the string to make -him jig. This girl is one o' them kind."</p> - -<p>Tom continued to hold his peace.</p> - -<p>"I've saw her. Pretty little thing she is all right. But give her two -or three years. Lord love you, Kid, she'll be as washed out then as one -of her own ribbons after a hard rain. And yet them is the kind that -most young fellers'll run after, like a pup'll run after a squirrel."</p> - -<p>Tom was startled. The figure of speech had been used to him before. He -could hear it drawled in a tired voice, soft and velvety. It was queer -what conclusions about women these grown men came to! Quidmore had -thought them as dangerous as Honey, and warned him against them much -as Honey was doing now. Mrs. Quidmore had once been what Maisie was at -that minute, and yet as he, Tom, remembered her.... But Honey was going -on again, spluttering his words as he brushed his teeth.</p> - -<p>"It can be awful easy to git mixed up with a girl, and awful hard to -git unmixed. She'll put a man in a hole where he can't help doin' -somethink foolish, and then make out as what she've got a claim on -him. There's a lot o' talk about women bein' the prey o' men; but for -one woman as I've ever saw that way I've saw a hundred men as was the -prey o' women. Now when a girl of eighteen gits a young boy like you to -spend the money as he's saved for his eddication...."</p> - -<p>The boy sprang up in bed, hammering the bedclothes. "Don't you say -anything against her. I won't listen to it."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> - -<p>With that supple tread which always made Tom think of one who could -easily slip through windows, Honey walked to the closet where he kept -his night-shirt. "'Tain't nothink agin her, Kid. Was on'y goin' to say -that a girl what'll git a young boy to do that shows what she is. And -yer did spend the money a-takin' her about, now didn't yer?"</p> - -<p>Tom fell back upon his pillow. Putting out the gas, Honey threw himself -on his creaking cot.</p> - -<p>"You're a free boy, Kiddy," he went on, while arranging the sheet and -blanket as he liked them. "If yer wants to beat it to-morrer, beat it -away. Don't stop because yer'll be afraid I'll miss yer. Wasn't never -no hand for missin' no one, and don't mean to begin. What I'd 'a liked -have been to fill yer up with eddication so that yer could jaw to -beat the best of 'em, if yer turned out to be the Whitelaw baby."</p> - -<p>Tom had almost forgotten who the Whitelaw baby was. Not since that -Sunday afternoon nearly three years ago had Honey ever mentioned -him. The memory having come back, he made an inarticulate sound of -impatience, finally snuggling to sleep.</p> - -<p>He tried to think of Maisie, to conjure up the rose in her cheeks, the -laughter in her eyes; but all he saw, as he drifted into dreams, was -the quaint Cambodian face of little Hildred Ansley. Only once did Honey -speak again, muttering, as he too fell asleep:</p> - -<p>"We'll move."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXVII</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">hey</span> did not move for the reason that Maisie did. Not for forty-eight -hours did Tom learn of her departure. As Mrs. Danker kept not a -boarding house but a rooming house, and her guests went days at a time -without seeing their landlady, he had no sources of information when -Maisie, as she sometimes did, kept herself out of sight. Watching for -her on the Monday and the Tuesday following his Sunday night talk with -Honey, he thought it strange that she never appeared in the hallway, -though he had no cause to be alarmed. He was going to leave Honey, get -a job, and be independent. When he had added a little more to his fund -in New York, he would propose to Maisie, and marry her if she would -take him. He would be eighteen, perhaps nineteen by the time he was -able to do this, an early, but not an impossible, age at which to be a -husband.</p> - -<p>On both these days he had gone to school from force of habit, but on -the Wednesday he was surprised by a letter. Though he had never seen -Maisie's writing, the postmark said Nashua. Before tearing the envelope -he had a premonition of her flight.</p> - -<p>A telegram on Monday morning had bidden her come home at once, as her -stepmother was dying. She had died. Till her father married again, -which she supposed would be soon, she would have to care for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the four -little brothers and sisters. That was all. On paper Maisie was laconic.</p> - -<p>Since his mother's death no revolution in his inner life had upset the -boy like this. The Tollivant experience had only left him a little hard -and skeptical; that with the Quidmores had passed like the rain and -the snow, scarcely affecting him. With Honey his need for affection -had always been unfed, and for reasons he could not fathom. Maisie had -made the give and take of life easy, natural. She had her limitations, -her crude, and sometimes her cruel, insistences; but she liked him. He -loved her. He was ready to say it now, because of the blank her loss -had hollowed in his life. For the unformed, growing hot-blooded human -thing to have nothing on which to spend itself is anguish. Sitting -down at his deal table, he wrote to her out of a heart fuller and more -passionate than poor Maisie could ever have understood.</p> - -<p>All he had been planning in rebellion against fate he poured out now as -devotion. He had meant to cut loose, to go to work, to live on nothing, -to save his money, and be ready to marry her in a year or two. And yet, -on second thoughts, if he went through college, their position in the -end would be so much better that perhaps the original plan was the best -one. He thought only of her, and of what would make her happiest. He -loved her—loved her—loved her.</p> - -<p>Maisie wrote back that she saw no harm in their being engaged, and -she wouldn't press him for a ring till he felt himself able to give -her one. For herself she didn't care, but if she told the girls she -was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> engaged to a fellow, and had no ring to corroborate her word, she -wouldn't be believed. In case he ever felt equal to the purchase she -was sending him the size in the circlet of thread inclosed.</p> - -<p>Tom was heroic. He had never thought of a ring, and a ring would mean -more money. Be it so! He would spend more money. He would spend more -money if he mortgaged his whole future to procure it. Maisie should not -be shamed among her friends in Nashua.</p> - -<p>Giving all his free hours to wandering about and pricing rings, he -found them less expensive than he feared. Maisie having once confided -to him her longing for a diamond, a diamond he meant to make it if it -cost him fifty dollars. But he found one for twenty, as big as a small -pea, and flashing in the sunshine like a lighthouse. The young Jew who -sold it assured him that it would have cost a hundred, except for a -tiny flaw which only an expert could detect. On its reception Maisie -was delighted. He felt himself almost a married man.</p> - -<p>The rest of the winter went by peaceably. With Honey he declared a -truce of God. He would go to college, and live up to all that had been -planned; but Honey must look on his own self-sacrifice as of the nature -of a loan which would be repaid. Honey was ready to promise anything, -while, in the hope of getting through college in three years instead of -four, Tom worked with increased zeal. Then, one day, when spring had -come round, he stumbled on Guy and Hildred Ansley.</p> - -<p>It was in Louisburg Square, as usual. Having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> arrived from the south -the night before, they were sailing soon for Europe.</p> - -<p>"Rotten luck!" the fat boy complained. "Got to trail a tutor along too, -so that I shan't fall down on the Harvard exam when it comes. Wish I -was you."</p> - -<p>"If you were Mr. Whitelaw, Guy," his sister reminded him, "you'd find -something else to worry you. We all have our troubles, haven't we, Mr. -Whitelaw?"</p> - -<p>"She's got nothing to worry her," the brother protested. "If she was -me, with mother scared all the time that I'll be too hot or too cold or -too tired or too hungry, or that some damn thing or other'll make me -sick...."</p> - -<p>"All the same," Tom broke in, "it's something to have a mother to make -a fuss."</p> - -<p>The girl looked sympathetic. "You haven't, have you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I get along."</p> - -<p>"Guy says you live with a guardian."</p> - -<p>"You may call him a guardian if you like, but the word is too big. You -only have a guardian when you've something to guard, and I haven't -anything."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but how did you ever ...?"</p> - -<p>Once more Tom said to himself, "It's the way she looks at you." He knew -what she was trying to ask him, and in order to be open and aboveboard, -he gave her the few main facts of his life. He did it briefly, -hurriedly, throwing emphasis only on the point that, to keep him from -becoming a State ward the second time, his stevedore friend had brought -him to Boston and sent him to school.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> - -<p>"He must be an awfully good man!"</p> - -<p>He was going to tell her that he was when the brother gave the talk -another twist.</p> - -<p>"What are you going to do in your holidays?"</p> - -<p>"Work, if I can find a job."</p> - -<p>"What kind of job?"</p> - -<p>He explained that for the last two summers he had worked round the -Quincy and Faneuil Hall markets, but that he had outgrown them. A -two-fisted, he-man's job was what he would look for now, and had no -doubt that he would get it.</p> - -<p>"After you've left Harvard what are you going to be?"</p> - -<p>"Banking's what I'd like best, but most likely I'll have to make it -barbering. What are you going to be yourself?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I've got to be a corporation lawyer. My luck! Just because dad'll -have the business to take me into."</p> - -<p>"But what would you like better?"</p> - -<p>The piggy face broke into one of its captivating grins. "Hanged if <i>I</i> -know, unless it'd be an orphan and an only child."</p> - -<p>The meeting was important because of what it led to. A few days later -Tom heard the wheezy girlish voice calling behind him in the street: -"Tom! Tom!"</p> - -<p>He turned and walked back. During the winter the fat boy had expanded, -not so much in height as in girth and jelliness. He came up, puffing -from his run.</p> - -<p>"Can you drive a car?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> - -<p>Tom hesitated. "I don't know that you'd call it driving a car. I can -drive—after a fashion. Mr. Quidmore used to let me run his Ford, when -we were alone in it, and no one was looking. Since then I've sometimes -driven the market delivery teams for a block or two, nothing much, just -to see what it was like. I know I could pick it up with a few lessons. -I'm a natural driver—a horse or anything. Why?"</p> - -<p>"Because my old man said that if you could drive, he might help you get -your summer's job."</p> - -<p>"Where? What kind of job?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know. He said that if you wanted to talk it over to come round -to our house this evening at nine o'clock."</p> - -<p>At nine that evening Tom was shown up into another of those rooms -which marked the gulf between his own way of living and that of people -like the Ansleys, and at the same time woke the atavistic pang. His -impression was only a blurred one of comfort, color, shaded lights, -and richness. From the many books he judged that it was what they -would call the library, but any judgment was subconscious because the -human presences came first. A man wearing a dinner jacket and scanning -an evening paper was sunk into one deep armchair; in another a lady, -demi-décolletée, was reading a book. It was his first intimation that -people ever wore what he called "dress-clothes" when dining only with -their families.</p> - -<p>He was announced by Pilcher, who had led him upstairs. "This is the -young man, sir."</p> - -<p>Having reached something like friendly terms with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> the son and -daughter, Tom had expected from the parents the kind of courtesy shown -to strangers when you shake hands with them and ask them to sit down. -Mr. Ansley only let the paper drop to his knees with an "Oh!" in -response to the butler, and looked up.</p> - -<p>"You're the young fellow my son has spoken of. He tells me you can -drive a car."</p> - -<p>Repeating what he had already said to Guy as to his experience with -cars, Tom expressed confidence in his ability to obtain a license, if -it should become worth his while.</p> - -<p>"It wouldn't be difficult driving such as you get in the crowded parts -of a city. It would be chiefly station work, over country roads."</p> - -<p>He explained himself further. In the New Hampshire summer colony where -the Ansleys had their place, the residents were turning a large country -house into an inn which would be like a club, or a club which would be -like an inn. It would not be open to ordinary travelers, since ordinary -travelers would bring in people whom they didn't want. The guests would -be their own friends, duly invited or introduced. He, Mr. Ansley, was -chairman of the motor-car committee, but as he was going to Europe he -was taking up the matter in advance. On general grounds he would have -preferred an older man and one with more experience, but the inn-club -was a new undertaking and not too well financed. More experienced men -would cost more money. For the station work they could afford but -eighty dollars a month, with a room in the garage, and board. Moreover, -the jobs they could offer being only for the summer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> the promoters -hoped that a few young men and women working for their own education -might take advantage of the scheme.</p> - -<p>Eighty dollars a month, with a room to himself, even if it had only -been in a stable, and board in addition, glittered before Tom's eyes -like Aladdin's treasure house. Having thanked Mr. Ansley for the kind -suggestion, he assured him he could give satisfaction if taken on. All -the chauffeurs who had let him have a few minutes at the steering-wheel -had told him that he possessed the eye, the nerve, and the quickness -which make a good driver, in addition to which he knew that he did -himself.</p> - -<p>"How old are you?"</p> - -<p>It was a question Tom always found difficult to answer. He could -remember when his birthday had been on the fifth of March; but his -mother had told him that that had been Gracie's birthday, and had -changed his own to September. Later she had shifted to May, to a day, -so she told him, when all the nurses had had their children in the -Park, and the lilacs had been in bloom. He had never asked her the -year, not having come to reckoning in years before she was taken from -him. Though latterly he had been putting his birthday in May, he now -shifted back to March, so as to make himself older.</p> - -<p>"I'm seventeen, sir."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley spoke for the first time. "He looks more than that, doesn't -he?"</p> - -<p>Tom turned to the lady who filled a large armchair with a person -suggesting the quaking, flabby<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> consistency of cornstarch pudding. "I -suppose that's because I've knocked about so much."</p> - -<p>"The hard school does give you experience, doesn't it, but it's a cruel -school."</p> - -<p>He remembered his promise to Guy, if ever he got the opportunity. "Boys -can stand a good deal of cruelty, ma'am. Nine times out of ten it does -them good."</p> - -<p>"Still there's always a tenth case."</p> - -<p>He smiled. "I think I ought to have made it ten times out of ten. I -never saw the boy yet who wasn't all the better for fighting his way -along."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley's mouth screwed itself up like Guy's when it looked as if -he were going to cry. "Fight? Why, I think fighting's something horrid. -Why <i>can't</i> boys treat each other like gentlemen?"</p> - -<p>"I suppose, ma'am, because they're not gentlemen."</p> - -<p>The cornstarch pudding stiffened to the firmness of ice-cream. "Excuse -me! My boy couldn't be anything but a gentleman."</p> - -<p>"He couldn't be anything but a sport. He <i>is</i> a fighter, ma'am—when he -gets the chance."</p> - -<p>"Then I hope he won't often get it."</p> - -<p>"But, Sunshine," Mr. Ansley intervened, "you don't make any allowance -for differences in standards. You're a woman of forty-five. Guy's a boy -of sixteen—he's practically seventeen, like Whitelaw here—your name -is Whitelaw, isn't it?—and yet you want him to have the same tastes -and ways as yourself."</p> - -<p>"I don't want him to have brutal tastes and ways."</p> - -<p>"It's a pretty brutal world, ma'am, and if he's going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> to take his -place he'll have to get used to being hammered and hammering back."</p> - -<p>"Which is what I object to. If you train boys to be courteous with each -other from the start...."</p> - -<p>"They'll be quite ladylike when they get into the stock exchange or the -prize ring. Look here, Sunshine! The country's over feminized as it -is. It's run by women, or by men who think as women, or by men who're -afraid of women. Congress is full of them; the courts are full of them; -the churches—the churches above all!—are full of them; and you'd make -it worse. If Guy hadn't the stuff in him that he has...."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley was more than ever like a cornstarch pudding, quivering and -undulating, when she rose. "You make it very hard for me, Philip. I was -going to ask Whitelaw, here, if when he's anywhere where Guy is—I know -Guy will have to go among young men, of course—he'd keep an eye on -him, and protect him."</p> - -<p>"He doesn't need protection, ma'am. He can take his own part as easily -as I can take mine. If there's a row he likes to be in it; and if he's -licked he doesn't mind it. If he only had a chance...."</p> - -<p>She raised her left hand palm outward, in a gesture of protest. "Thank -you! I'm not asking advice as to my own son."</p> - -<p>Sailing from the room with the circumambient dignity of ladies when -they wore the crinoline, she left Tom with the crestfallen sense of -presumption. Half expecting to be ordered from the room, he turned -toward his host, who, however, simply reverted to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> the subject of the -summer. He told Tom where he could have lessons in driving, adding that -he would charge them to club expenses, as he would the uniform Tom -would have to wear. When Mr. Ansley picked up his paper the young man -knew the interview was over. With a half-articulate, "Good-night, sir," -to which there was no response, he turned and left the room.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The occasion left him with much to think of, chiefly on his own -account. It marked his status more clearly than anything that had -happened to him yet. He had not been shaken hands with; he had not -been asked to sit down. He had not been greeted on arriving; his -"good-night" had not been acknowledged when he went away. Mr. Ansley -had called him Whitelaw, which was all very well; but when Mrs. Ansley -did it, the use of the name was significant. This must be the way in -which rich people treated their servants.</p> - -<p>Here he had to reason with himself as to what he had been looking for. -It was not for recognition on a footing of equality. Of course not! -He had no objection to being a servant, since he needed the money. -He objected to ... and yet it was not quite tangible. He didn't mind -standing up; he didn't mind the absence of a greeting; he didn't mind -any one thing in itself. He minded the combination of assumptions, all -fusing into one big assumption that he was in essence their inferior. -Having this assumption so strongly in their minds, they couldn't but -betray it when they spoke to him.</p> - -<p>With his tendency to think things out, he mulled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> for the next few days -over the question of inferiority. Why was one man inferior to another? -What made him so? Did nature send him into the world as an inferior, or -did the world turn him into an inferior after he had come into it? Did -God have any part in it? Was it God's will that there should be a class -system among mankind, with class animosities, class warfares?</p> - -<p>Of the latter he was hearing a good deal. In Grove Street, with its -squirming litters of idealistic Jews and Slavs, class warfare was much -talked about. Sometimes Tom heard the talk himself; sometimes Honey -brought in reports of it. It was a rare day, especially a rare night, -when some wild-eyed apostle was not going up or down the hill with a -gospel which would have made old Boston, only a few hundred yards away, -shiver in its bed on hearing it. To a sturdy American like Tom, and -a sturdy Englishman like Honey, these whispered prophecies and plans -were no more than the twitter of sparrows going to roost. But now that -the boy was working toward man's estate, and had always, within his -recollection, been treated as an inferior, he found himself wondering -on what principle the treatment had been based. He would listen more -attentively when the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker began again, -as he had so often, to set forth his arguments in favor of dragging -the upper classes down. He would listen when Honey cursed the lor of -proputty. He had long been asking himself if in some obscure depth of -Honey's obscure intelligence there might not be a glimmer of a great -big thing that was Right.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p> - -<p>He had reached the age, which generally comes a little before the -twenties, when the Right and Wrong of things puzzled and disturbed him. -No longer able to accept Rights and Wrongs on somebody else's verdict, -he was without a test or a standard of his own. He began to wander -among churches. Here, he had heard, all these questions had been long -ago threshed out, and the answers reduced to formulæ.</p> - -<p>His range was wide, Hebrew, Catholic, Protestant. For the most part the -services bewildered him. He couldn't make out why they were services, -or what they were serving. The sermons he found platitudinous. -They told him what in the main he knew already, and said little or -nothing of the great fundamental things with which his mind had been -intermittently busy ever since the days when he used to talk them over -with Bertie Tollivant.</p> - -<p>But one new interest he drew from them. The fragments of the gospels -he heard read from altar or lectern or pulpit roused his curiosity. -Passages were familiar from having learned them at the knee, so to -speak, of Mrs. Tollivant. But they had been incoherent, without -introduction or sequence. He was surprised to find how little he knew -of the most dominant character in history.</p> - -<p>On his way home one day he passed a shop given to the sale of Bibles. -Deciding to buy a cheap New Testament, he was advised by the salesman -to take a modern translation. That night, after he had finished his -lessons, and Honey was asleep, he opened it.</p> - -<p>It opened at a page of St. Luke. Turning to the beginning of that -gospel, he started to read it through.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> He read avidly, charmed, -amazed, appeased, and pacified. When he came to an incident bearing on -himself he stopped.</p> - -<p>"Now one of the Pharisees repeatedly invited Him to a meal at his -house. So He entered the house and reclined at the table. And there -was a woman in the town who was a notorious sinner. Having learnt that -Jesus was at table in the Pharisee's house she brought a flask of -perfume, and standing behind, close to His feet, weeping, began to wet -His feet with her tears; and with her hair she wiped the tears away -again, while she lovingly kissed His feet, and poured the perfume over -them.</p> - -<p>"Noticing this the Pharisee, His host, said to himself:</p> - -<p>"'This man, if He were really a prophet, would know who and what sort -of person this is who is touching Him, for she is an immoral woman.'</p> - -<p>"In answer to his thoughts Jesus said to him: 'Simon, I have a word to -say to you.'</p> - -<p>"'Rabbi, say on,' he replied.</p> - -<p>"'Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You gave me no water -for my feet; but she has made my feet wet with her tears, and then -wiped the tears away with her hair. No kiss did you give me; but she, -from the moment I came in, has not left off tenderly kissing my feet. -No oil did you pour even on my head; but she has poured perfume on -my feet. This is the reason why I tell you that her sins—her <i>many</i> -sins—are forgiven—because she has loved much."</p> - -<p>He shut the book with something of a bang. "So<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> they used to do that -sort of thing even then!... The water for the feet, and the kiss, and -the oil, must have corresponded to our shaking hands and asking people -to sit down.... And they wouldn't show Him the courtesy.... He was -their inferior.... I wonder if He minded it.... It looks as if He did -because of the way He had it in His mind, and referred to it.... If the -woman hadn't turned up He would probably not have referred to it at -all.... He would have kept it to Himself ... without resentment.... The -little disdains of little people were too petty for Him to resent.... -He could only be hurt by them ... but on their account."</p> - -<p>He sat late into the night, thinking, thinking. Suddenly he thumped -the table, and sprang up. "I <i>won't</i> resent it. They're good people -in their way. They don't mean any unkindness. It's only that they -think like everybody else. Honey would call them orthodocks. They're -courteous among themselves; they only don't know how far courtesy can -be made to go. They're—they're little. I'll be big—like Him."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXVIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> resolution helped him through the summer. It was a pleasant summer, -and yet a trying one. It was the first time he had ever done work of -which the essence lay in satisfying individuals. In his market jobs the -job had been the thing. Even if done at somebody's order, it was judged -by its success, or by its lack of it. His work at the inn-club brought -him hourly into contact with men and women to whom it was his duty to -be specially, and outwardly deferential. He sprang to open the door -for them when they entered or left the car; he touched his hat to them -whenever they gave him an order. His bearing, his manner of address, -formed a part of his equipment only second to his capacity to drive.</p> - -<p>To this he had no objection. It only seemed odd that while it was his -business to be courteous to others it was nobody's business to be -courteous to him. Some people were. They used toward him those little -formalities of "Please" and "Thank you" which were a matter of course -toward one another. They didn't command; they requested. Others, on the -contrary, never requested. If their nerves or their digestions were not -in good order, they felt at liberty to call him a damn fool, or if they -were ladies, to find fault foolishly. Whatever the injustice, it was -his part to keep himself schooled to the apologetic atti<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>tude, ready to -be held in the wrong when he knew he was in the right. Though he had -never heard of the English principle that you may be rude if you choose -to your equals, but never rude to those in a position lower than your -own, he felt its force instinctively. His humble place in the world's -economy entitled him to a courtesy which few people thought it worth -their while to show.</p> - -<p>Apart from this he had nothing to complain of. He made good money, as -the phrase went, his wages augmented by his tips. He took his tips -without shame, since he did much to please his clients beyond what he -was paid for. His relation with them being personal, he could see well -enough that only in tips could they make him any recognition. With the -staff in the house he got on very well, especially with the waitresses, -all six of them girls working their way through Radcliffe, Wellesley, -or Vassar. They chaffed him in an easy-going way, one of them calling -him her Hercules, another her Charlemagne because of his height, while -to a third he was her Siegfried. When he had no work in the evenings, -and their dining-room duties were over, he took them for drives among -the mountains. Writing to Honey, he said that what with the air, the -food, the fun, and the outdoor life, he was never before in such -splendid shape.</p> - -<p>Honey was his one anxiety, though an anxiety which troubled him only -now and then.</p> - -<p>"Go to it, lad," had been his response when Tom had told him of Mr. -Ansley's proposition. "With eighty dollars a month for all summer, and -yer keep throwed in, yer ought to save two hundred."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You're sure you won't be lonesome, Honey?"</p> - -<p>Honey made a scornful exclamation. "Lord love yer, Kid, if I was ever -goin' to be lonesome I'd 'a begun before now. Lonesome! Me! That's a -good 'un!"</p> - -<p>And yet on the Sunday of his departure Tom noticed a forced strain in -Honey's gayety. It was a Sunday because Tom was to drive the car up to -New Hampshire in the afternoon to begin his first week on the Monday. -Honey was in clamorous spirits, right up to an hour before the boy left.</p> - -<p>Then he seemed to go flat. Pump up his humor as he would, it had no -zest in it. When it came to the last handshake he grinned feebly, but -couldn't, or didn't, speak. Tom drove away with a question in his mind -as to whether or not, in Honey's professions of a steeled heart, there -was not some bravado.</p> - -<p>In driving through Nashua he saw Maisie. It had been agreed that she -should meet him by the roadside, at the end of the town toward Lowell, -and go on with him till he struck the country again. They not only did -this, but got out at a druggist's to spend a half hour over ice-cream -sodas.</p> - -<p>Picking up the dropped threads of intercourse was not so easy as they -had expected. It was hard for Tom to make himself believe that in this -pretty little thing, all in white with pink roses in her hat, he was -talking to his future wife. Since the fervor of his first love letter -there had been a slight shift in his point of view. Without being able -to locate the change, he felt that the new interests—the car, the -inn-club, the variety of experience—had to some small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> degree crowded -Maisie out. She was not quite so essential as she had seemed on the -afternoon when he had learned of her departure. Neither was she quite -so pretty. He thought with a pang that Honey's predictions might be -coming true. Because they might be coming true, his pity was so great -that he told her she was looking lovelier than ever.</p> - -<p>"Gee, that's something," Maisie accepted, complacently. "With -four brats to look after, and all the cooking and washing, and -everything—if my father don't marry again soon I'll pass away." She -glanced at his chauffeur's uniform. "You look swell."</p> - -<p>He felt swell, and told her so. He told her of his wages, of the -economies he hoped to make.</p> - -<p>"Gee, and you talk of goin' to college, a fellow that can pull in all -that money just by bein' a shofer. Why, if you were to go on bein' a -shofer we could get married as soon as I got the family off my hands."</p> - -<p>He explained to her that it was not the present, but the future for -which he was working. A chauffeur had only a chauffeur's possibilities, -whereas a man with an education....</p> - -<p>"Just my luck to get engaged to a nut," Maisie commented, with forced -resignation. "Gee, I got to laff."</p> - -<p>Some half dozen times that summer, when errands took him to Boston, -they met in the same way. Growing more accustomed to their new relation -to each other, he also grew more tender as he realized her limitations -and domestic cares. With his first month's wages in his hand, he could -bring her little presents on each return from Boston, so helping out -her never-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>failing joy in the flash of her big diamond. That at least -she had, when every other blessing was put off to a vague future.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In August, the Ansleys came flying back, driven by the war. It had -caught them at Munich, where their French chauffeur, Pierre, had been -interned as a prisoner. While taking driving lessons Tom had made -Pierre's acquaintance, and that he should now be a prisoner in Germany -made the war a reality. For the first few weeks it had been like a -battle among giants in the clouds; now it came down to earth as a -convulsion among men.</p> - -<p>The Ansleys had come to the inn-club because their own house was -closed. With Guy and Hildred Tom found his relations changed by the -fact that he was a chauffeur. Guy talked to him freely enough, as one -young fellow to another, but Hildred had plainly received a hint to -mark the distance between them. If she passed him in the grounds, or if -he opened the car door for her, she gave him a faint, self-conscious -smile, but never spoke to him. Mrs. Ansley freely used the car and him, -always calling him Whitelaw.</p> - -<p>Philip Ansley was much preoccupied by the international situation. A -small, dry man of slightly Mongolian features, and a skin which looked -like a parchment lampshade tinted with a little rose, he had made a -specialty of international law as it affected the great corporations. -New York and Washington both had need of him. When he couldn't go -there, those who wished his opinion came to him. Not a little of -Tom's work lay in driving him to Keene, the station<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> for New York, to -meet the important men seeking his advice. Thus it happened that Tom -brought over from Keene, so late one night that he got no more than a -dim glimpse of the visitor, the man who was to leave on him the most -disturbing impression of the summer.</p> - -<p>Having delivered his charge at the inn-club door, he drove his car to -the garage, climbed the stairs to his room, and turned into bed. Before -six next morning he was up for a plunge in the lake, this being the -only hour he could count on as his own.</p> - -<p>It was one of those windless mornings late in summer which bring the -first hint of fall. The lake was so still that each throw of his arms -was like the smashing of a vast metallic mirror. Only a metallic -mirror could have had this shining dullness, faintly iridescent, -hardly catching the rays of the newly risen sun. Not leaden enough for -night, nor silvery enough for day, it kept the aloofness from man, as -well as from Nature's smaller blandishments, of its mighty companion, -Monadnock. It was an awesome lake, beautiful, withdrawn, because it -gave back the mountain's awesomeness, beauty, and remoteness.</p> - -<p>Tom's thrust, as he paddled the water behind him, broke for no more -than a few seconds that which at once reformed itself. You would have -said that the darting of his body, straight as a fish's, clave the -water as a bird cleaves the air. After he had gone there was hardly a -ripple to tell that he had passed. Built to be a swimmer, loose limbed, -loose muscled, and not too bonily spare, he breathed as a swimmer, -deeply, gently, without spluttering or loss of his con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>trol. In the -limpid medium through which another might have sunk like a stone he -had that sense of natural support which helps man to his dominion. Now -on his right side, now on his left, he could skim like an arrow to its -mark for the simple reason that he knew he could.</p> - -<p>He turned over on his back and floated. The quiet was that of a world -which might never have known the velocity of wind, the ferocity of -war. Above him the inviolate sky; around him the mountains nearly as -inviolate! And everywhere the living stillness, vibrating, dramatic, -with which Nature alone can quicken a dead calm!</p> - -<p>Turning over again, he was abandoning the crawl for the forearm stroke, -to make his way back to the bathing cabins, when over the water came a -long "Ahoy!" Nearer the shore, and a little abeam, there was another -man swimming toward him. Tom gave back an "Ahoy!" and made in the -direction of the stranger. It was perhaps another chauffeur. Even if -it were a resident, or some resident's guest, the informality of sport -would put them on a level.</p> - -<p>The newcomer had the sun behind him; Tom had it on his face. His -features were, therefore, the first to become visible. A strong voice -called out, in a tone of astonishment:</p> - -<p>"Why, Tad! What are <i>you</i> doing up here in New Hampshire?"</p> - -<p>Tom laughed. "Tad—nothing! I'm Tom!"</p> - -<p>The other came nearer. "Tom, are you? Excuse me! Took you for my son."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Sorry I'm not," Tom laughed again. "Somebody else's."</p> - -<p>Coming abreast, they headed toward shore. Each face was turned toward -the other. Adopting his companion's stroke, Tom adjusted himself to his -pace. Though conversation was not easy, the one found it possible to -ask questions, the other to answer them.</p> - -<p>"Look like my son. What's your name?"</p> - -<p>"Whitelaw."</p> - -<p>A light came into the eyes, and went out again. "Where do you live?"</p> - -<p>"Boston."</p> - -<p>"Lived there all your life?"</p> - -<p>"Only for the last three years or so."</p> - -<p>"Where'd you live before that?"</p> - -<p>"New York some of the time."</p> - -<p>"Where were you born?"</p> - -<p>"The Bronx."</p> - -<p>"What was your father's name?"</p> - -<p>"Theodore Whitelaw."</p> - -<p>There was again that spark in the eyes, flashing and then dying out. -"How did he get that name?"</p> - -<p>"Don't know. Just a name. Suppose his mother gave it to him."</p> - -<p>"Lots of Theodore Whitelaws. Have come across two or three. Like the -Colin Campbells and Howard Smiths you run into everywhere. What did -your father do?"</p> - -<p>"Never heard. Died when I was a kid." Tom felt entitled to ask a -question on his own side. "What do you want to know for?"</p> - -<p>The other seemed on his guard. "Oh, nothing!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> Was just—was just struck -by the resemblance to—to my boy."</p> - -<p>The swerve which took them away from each other was as slight as that -which a ship gets from her rudder. Tom continued to play round in the -water till he saw the older man reach the bathing cabins, dress, and go -away.</p> - -<p>That afternoon he was told to drive back to Keene both Mr. Ansley and -the guest whom he, Tom, had brought over on the previous evening. As -the latter came out to enter the car it was easy to recognize the -swimmer of the morning.</p> - -<p>Tom held the door open, his hand to his cap. The gentleman gave him a -swift, keen look.</p> - -<p>"Oh, so this is what you do!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir; this is what I do. Mr. Ansley got me the job."</p> - -<p>"Young fellow whom Guy has befriended," Mr. Ansley explained, as he -took his place beside his friend.</p> - -<p>But in the Pullman, when Tom had carried in the gentleman's valise, -there was another minute in which they were alone. The car was nearly -empty; there were still some five minutes before the departure of the -train. While the colored porter took the suitcase the traveler turned -to Tom. He was a tall man, straight and flexible like Tom himself, but -a little heavier.</p> - -<p>"How old are you?"</p> - -<p>"Seventeen, sir."</p> - -<p>A shadow flew across the face. "Tad is seventeen, too. That settles -any—" Without stating what was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> settled by this coincidence of ages, -he went on with his quick, peremptory questions. "What do you do when -you leave here?"</p> - -<p>"I go back for my last year in the Latin School in Boston."</p> - -<p>"And then?"</p> - -<p>"I go to Harvard."</p> - -<p>"Putting yourself through?"</p> - -<p>"Only partly, sir."</p> - -<p>"Friends?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>The questions ceased. The face, which even a boy like Tom could see to -be that of a strong man who must have suffered terribly, grew pensive. -When the eyes were bent toward the floor Tom took note of a pair of -bushy, outstanding, horizontal eyebrows, oddly like his own.</p> - -<p>The reverie ended abruptly. Some thought seemed to be dismissed. It -seemed to be dismissed with both decision and relief. But the man held -out his hand.</p> - -<p>"Good-by."</p> - -<p>"Good-by, sir."</p> - -<p>It was not the questions, nor the interest, it was the last little act -of farewell that gave Tom a glowing feeling in the heart as he went -back to his car and Mr. Ansley.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXIX</p> - - -<p class="drop">I<span class="uppercase">t</span> was late that evening before Tom found an opportunity to ask Miss -Padley, who kept what the inn-club knew as the office, the name of the -guest who had questioned him so closely. Miss Padley was a red-haired, -freckled girl, putting herself through Radcliffe. Unused to clerical -work, she was tired. When Tom put his query she gazed up at him -vacantly, before she could collect her wits.</p> - -<p>"The name of the gentleman who left this afternoon?" She called to -Ella, one of the waitresses, in her second year at Wellesley. "What was -it, Ella? I forget."</p> - -<p>As the house was closing for the night some informality was possible. -Ella sauntered up.</p> - -<p>"What was what?"</p> - -<p>Tom's question was repeated.</p> - -<p>"Oh, that was the great Henry T. Whitelaw. Big banker. Partner in Meek -and Brokenshire's. They say that he and a few other bankers could stop -the war if they liked, by holding back the cash. Don't believe it. -War's too big. And, say! He was the father of that Whitelaw baby there -used to be all the talk about."</p> - -<p>Miss Padley looked up, her cheek resting on her hand. "You don't say! -Gee, I wish I'd known that. I'd 'a looked at him a little closer." She -turned her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> tired greenish eyes toward Tom. "Your name is Whitelaw, -too, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>He grinned nervously. "My name is Whitelaw, too, only, like the lady's -maid whose name was Shakespeare but was no relation to the play-actor -of that name, I don't belong to the banking branch of the family."</p> - -<p>Ella exclaimed, as one who makes a discovery. "But, Siegfried, you look -as if you did. Doesn't he, Blanche? Look at his eyebrows. They're just -like the banker man's."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I've looked at them often enough," Miss Padley returned, wearily. -"Got his mustaches stuck on in the wrong place. I'm off."</p> - -<p>Yawning, she shut her ledger, closed an open drawer, and rose. But -Ella, a dark little thing, kept her snappy black eyes on Tom.</p> - -<p>"You do look like him, Siegfried. I'd put in a claim if I were you. I'm -single, you know, and I've always admired you. Think of the romance -it would make if the Whitelaw baby took home as his bride a poor but -honest working girl!"</p> - -<p>Dodging Ella's chaff, Tom escaped to the garage. It was queer how the -Whitelaw baby haunted him. Honey!—Ella!—and the Whitelaw baby's own -father!</p> - -<p>But the haunting stopped. Neither Ella nor Miss Padley took it as more -than a passing pleasantry, forgotten with the morning. The tall man who -had asked him questions never came back again. The rest of the summer -went by with but one little incident to remain in his memory.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was a very little incident. Walking one day in the road that ran -round the lake he came face to face with Hildred Ansley. She had -grown since the previous winter, a little in height, and more in an -indefinable development. She was fifteen now; but, always older than -her age, she was more like seventeen or eighteen. Her formal manner, -her decided mind, her "grown-up" choice of words, made her already -something of that finished entity for which we have only the word lady. -Ella had said of her that at twenty she would look like forty, and at -forty continue to look like twenty. Tom thought that this might be -true—an early fullness of womanhood, but a long one.</p> - -<p>She had been playing tennis, and swung her racket as she came along. He -was sorry for this direct encounter, since she might find it awkward; -but when she waved her racket to him, it was clear that she did not. -She felt perhaps the more independent, released from her mother's -supervision and the inn. Her smile, something in her way of pausing in -the road, an ease of manner beyond analysis, put them both on the plane -on which their acquaintance had begun. The slanting yellowish-brown -eyes together with the faint glimmer of a smile heightened that air of -mystery which had always made her different from other girls.</p> - -<p>"How have you been getting along?"</p> - -<p>He said he had been doing very well.</p> - -<p>"How have you liked the job?"</p> - -<p>"Fine! Everybody's been nice to me—"</p> - -<p>"Everybody likes you. All the same, I hope, if they ask you to come -back next year, that—you won't."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Why not?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, just—because!"</p> - -<p>Slipping away, she left him with the summer's second memory. She hoped -he wouldn't take the place again—<i>because</i>! Because—what? Could she -have meant what he thought she must have meant? Was it possible that -she didn't like to see him in a situation something like a servant's? -Though he never again, during all the rest of the summer, had so much -speech with her alone, it gave him a hint to turn over in his mind.</p> - -<p>Driving the car back to Boston, after the inn-club had closed, he saw -Maisie for the last time that year. Uncertain of his hours, he had been -unable to arrange to have her meet him, and so looked her up in her -home. A small wooden house, once stained a dark red, weather-worn now -to a reddish-dun, it stood on the outskirts of the town. In a weedy -back-yard, redeemed from ugliness by the flaming of a maple tree, -Maisie was pinning newly washed clothes to a clothes-line stretched -between the back door and a post. Two children, a boy of six and a girl -of eight, were tumbling about with a pup. At sound of the stopping -of the car in the roadway in front of the house Maisie turned, a -clothes-pin held lengthwise in her mouth. Even with her sleeves rolled -up and her hair in wisps, she couldn't be anything but pretty.</p> - -<p>She came and sat beside him in the car, the children and the pup -staring up at them in wonder.</p> - -<p>"Gee, I wish he'd get married; but I daresay he won't for ever so long. -Married to the bottle, that's what he is. It was six years after my -mother died<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> before he took on the last one. That's what makes me so -much older than the four kids. All the same I'd beat it if you'd take -a shofer's job and settle down. I'm not bound to stay here and make -myself a slave."</p> - -<p>It was the burden of all Maisie's reasoning, and he had to admit -its justice. He was asking her to wait a long four years before he -could give her a home. It would have been more preposterous than it -was if among poor people, among poor young people especially, a long -courtship, with marriage as a vague fulfillment, was not general. Any -such man as she was likely to get would have to toil and save, and save -and toil, before he could pay for the few sticks of furniture they -would need to set up housekeeping. Never having thought of anything -else, she was the more patient now; but patient with a strain of -rebellion against Tom's whim for education.</p> - -<p>She cried when he left her; he almost cried himself, from a sense of -his impotence to take her at once from a life of drudgery. The degree -to which he loved her seemed to be secondary now to her helpless need -of him. True, he could get a job as chauffeur and make a hundred -dollars a month to begin with. To Maisie that would be riches; but -a hundred and fifty a month would then become his lifelong limit -and ambition. Even to save Maisie now he couldn't bring himself to -sacrifice not merely his future but her own. Once he was "through -college," it seemed to him that the treasures of the world would lie -open.</p> - -<p>Arrived in Grove Street, he found one new condition which made his -return easier. Honey, who, for the sake of economy, had occupied a -hall-bedroom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> through the summer, had reserved another, on the floor -above, for Tom. The relief from the sharing of one big room amounted to -a sense of luxury.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, Honey, for the first time since Tom had known him, -was moody and tired. He was not ill; he was only less cast-iron than -he used to be. He found it harder to go to work in the morning; he was -more spent when he came back at night, as if some inner impulse of -virility was wearing itself out. The war worried him. The fact that old -England had met a foe whom she couldn't walk over at once disturbed his -ideas as to the way in which the foundations of the world had been laid.</p> - -<p>"Anything can happen now, kid," he declared, in discussing the English -retreat from Mons. "Haven't felt so bad since the bloody cop give me -the whack with his club what put out me eye. If Englishmen has to turn -tail before Germans, well, what next?"</p> - -<p>But to Tom's suggestions that he should go to Canada and enlist in -the British army Honey was as stone. "You're too young. Y'ain't -got yer growth. I don't care what no one says. War is for men. Yer -first business, and yer last business, and yer only business, is yer -eddication."</p> - -<p>It must be admitted that Tom agreed with him. He had no longing to go -to war. Europe was far away while life was near. Education, Maisie, the -future, had the first claim on him. It began to occur to him that even -Honey had a claim on him, now that he was not so vigorous as he used to -be.</p> - -<p>There were other interests to make war remote. On returning to town, -after a summer amid the spa<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>ciousness, beauty, and comfort which the -few could give themselves, he was oppressed by the privations of the -many. Never before had he thought of them. He had taken Grove Street -for granted. He had taken it for granted that life was hard and crowded -and bitter and cold and ugly, and couldn't be anything else. Now he had -seen for himself that it could be easy and beautiful and healthy. True, -he had always known that there were rich people as well as poor people; -but never before had he been close enough to the rich to see their -luxuries in detail. The contrasts in the human scheme of things having -thus come home to him he was moved to a distressed wondering.</p> - -<p>What brought these differences about? If all the rich were industrious -and good, while all the poor were idle and extravagant, he could -have understood it better. But it wasn't so. The rich were often -idle and extravagant, and didn't suffer. The poor were nearly always -industrious—they couldn't be anything else—and were as good as they -had leisure to be, but suffered from something all the time. How could -this injustice be endured? What was to be done about it? Wasn't it -everybody's duty to try to right such a wrong?</p> - -<p>Because he had only now become aware of it he supposed that nobody -but the Slav and Jewish agitators had been aware of it before. -Louisburg Square, and all that element in the world which Louisburg -Square represented, could never have thought of it. If it had, it -couldn't have slept at night in its bed. That it should lie snug -and soft and warm while all the rest of the world—at least a good -three-fourths—<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>lay cold and hard and hungry, must be out of the -question. If the rich people only knew! It was strange that someone -hadn't told them. What were the newspapers and the governments and the -churches doing that they weren't ringing with protests against this -fundamental evil?</p> - -<p>More than ever Honey's rebellion against the lor of proputty seemed to -him based on some principle he couldn't trace. Honey was doubtless all -wrong; and yet the other thing was just as wrong as Honey. He started -him talking on the subject as they strolled to their dinner that -evening.</p> - -<p>"Seems as if this 'ere old human race didn't have no spunk. Yer can -put anything over on them, and they'll 'ardly lift a kick. It's like -as if they was hypnertized. Them as has got everything is hypnertized -into thinkin' they've a right to it; and them as have got nothink'll -let theirselves believe as nothink is all that belongs to 'em. Comes o' -most o' the world bein' orthodocks. Lord love yer, I'd rather think for -meself if it landed me ten months out'n every twelve in jail, than have -two thousand a year and yet be an old tabby-orthodock what never had a -mind."</p> - -<p>They were seated at the table in Mrs. Turtle's basement dining-room, -when, looking up and down the double row of guests, Honey whispered, -"Tabby-orthodocks—all of 'em."</p> - -<p>At his sixteen or eighteen fellow-mealers Tom looked with a new vision. -With the aid of Honey's epithet he could class them. Mostly men, they -sat bowed, silent, futile, gulping down their coarse food with no -pretense at softening the animal processes of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> eating. These, too, he -had hitherto taken for granted. In all the months they had "mealed" at -Mrs. Turtle's—in the years they had "mealed" at similar establishments -in Grove Street—he had looked on them, and on others of their kind, -as the norm of humanity. Now he saw something wrong in them, without -knowing what it was.</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with them?" he asked of Honey, as they went back -across Grove Street to Mrs. Danker's.</p> - -<p>Honey's reply was standardized. "Bein' orthodocks. Not thinkin' for -theirselves. Not usin' the mind as Gord give 'em. Believin' what other -blokes told 'em, and stoppin' at that. I say, Kiddy! Don't yer never go -for to forget that yer'll get farther in the world by bein' wrong the -way yer thinks yerself than by bein' right the way some other feller -tells yer."</p> - -<p>Having reached their own house they stood, each with a foot on the -doorstep, while Tom smoked a cigarette and Honey enlarged on his -philosophy.</p> - -<p>"I don't believe as Gord put us into this world to be right not 'arf so -much as what He done it so as we'd find out for ourselves what's right -and what's wrong. One right thing as yer've found out for yerself'll -make yer more of a man than fifty as yer've took on trust. Look at 'em -in there!" He nodded backward toward Mrs. Turtle's. "They've all took -everythink on trust, and see what it's made of 'em. Whoever says, 'I'm -an orthodock, and I'm goin' to live and die an orthodock,' is like the -guy in the Bible as was bound 'and and foot with grave-clothes. My<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> -genius was always for thinkin' things out for meself; and look at me -to-day!"</p> - -<p>It was another discovery to Tom that Honey felt proud and happy in his -accomplishment. Honey to Tom was a machine for doing heavy work. He -was a drudge, and a dray-horse. He was shut out from the higher, the -more spiritual activities. But here was Honey himself content, and in a -measure exultant.</p> - -<p>"Been wrong in a lot o' things I have; but I've found it out for -meself. I ain't sorry for what I've did. It's learned me. There ain't a -old jug I've been in, in England or the State o' New York, that didn't -learn me somethink. I see now that I was wrong. But I see, too, that -them as tried and sentenced me wasn't right. When they repents of the -sins what their lors and gover'ments and churches has committed against -this old world, I'll repent o' the sins I've committed against them."</p> - -<p>This ability to stand alone, mentally at least, against all religion -and society, was, as Tom saw it, the secret of Honey's independence. He -might have been a rogue, a burglar, a convict; and yet he was a man, -as the orthodocks at Mrs. Turtle's were not, and never had been, men. -Having allowed themselves to be hammered into subjection by what Honey -called lors, gover'ments, and churches, in subjection they had been -trapped, and never could get out again. There was something about Honey -that was strong and free.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXX</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">o</span> make himself strong and free was Tom Whitelaw's ruling motive -through the winter which preceded his going to Harvard. He must be -a man, not merely in physical vigor, but in mental independence. -Convinced that he was in what he called a rotten world, a world of -rotten customs built on a rotten foundation, he saw it as a task to -learn to pick his way amid the rottenness. To rebel, but keep his -rebellion as steam with which to drive his engine, not as something to -let off in futile raging against established convictions, was a hint of -Honey's by which he profited.</p> - -<p>"It don't do yer no good to kick so as they can ketch and jump on you. -I've tried that. And it ain't no good to jaw. Tried that too. If the -uninherited was anythink but a bunch o' simps you might be able to -rouse 'em. But they ain't. All yer can do is to shut yer mouth and -live. Yer'll live harder and surer with yer mouth shut. Yer'll live -truer too, just as yer'll shoot straighter when yer ain't talkin' and -fidgitin' about. Don't believe what no judge or gov'nor or bishop says -to yer just because he says it; but don't let 'em know as yer don't -believe it, because they'll hoodoo you with their whim-whams. Awful -glad they'll be, both Church and State, to ruin the man what don't -believe the way they tell him to."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> - -<p>On the eve of manhood Tom thought more highly of Honey than he had -when a few years younger. Having judged him drugged by work, he -found that he had ideas of his own, however mistaken they might be. -However mistaken they might be, they had at least produced one guiding -principle: to keep your mouth shut and live! Taking his notes about -life, as he did through the following winter, he made them according to -this counsel.</p> - -<p>The outstanding feature of the season was the development of something -like a real friendship with Guy Ansley. Hitherto the two young men had -backed and filled; but in proportion as Tom grew more sure of himself -the weaker fellow clung to him. He clung in his own way; but he clung. -He was the patron. Tom was the fine young chap he had taken a fancy to -and was helping along.</p> - -<p>"I'm awful democratic that way. Whole lot of fellows'll think they've -just got to go with their own gang. Doolittle and Pray's is full of -that sort of bunk. The Doolittle and Pray spirit they call it. I call -it fluff. If I like a fellow I stick by him, no matter what he is. I'd -just as soon go round with you as with the stylishest fellow on the -Back Bay. Social position don't mean anything to me. Of course I know -it's very nice to have it; but if a fellow hasn't got it, why, I don't -care, not so long as he's a sport."</p> - -<p>"Keep your mouth shut and live," Tom reminded himself. He liked Guy -Ansley well enough. He was at least a fellow of his own age, with whom -he could be franker than had been possible with Maisie, and who would -understand him in ways in which Honey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> never could. With the difference -made by ten years in his point of view, he discussed with Guy the same -sort of subjects, sex, religion, profession, vices, politics, that he -had talked over with Bertie Tollivant. Merely to hear their own voices -on these themes eased the adolescent turmoil in their brains.</p> - -<p>Hildred Ansley, having entered Miss Winslow's school as a boarder, was -immured as in a convent. Her absence made it the easier for Tom to run -in and out of the Ansley house on the missions, secret and important, -which boys create among themselves. Guy had a set of maps by which you -could follow the ebb and flow on the battlefront. Guy had a wireless -installation with which you could listen in on messages not meant for -you. Guy had skis, and bought another pair for Tom so that they could -tramp together on the Fenway. Guy had a runabout which Tom taught him -to drive. Guy had tickets for any play or concert he chose to attend, -and invited Tom to go along with him.</p> - -<p>Doubtful at first, Mrs. Ansley came round to view the acquaintance -almost without misgiving.</p> - -<p>"I think you're a steady boy, aren't you?" she asked of Tom one day, -when finding him alone.</p> - -<p>Tom smiled. "I don't get much chance, ma'am, to be anything else."</p> - -<p>Lacking a sense of humor, Mrs. Ansley was literal.</p> - -<p>"I don't like you to say that. It sounds as if when you do get the -chance—But perhaps you'll know better by that time. It's something I -hope Guy will help you to see in return for all the—well, the physical -protection you give him."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but, ma'am, I—"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> - -<p>"That'll do. I know my boy is brave. But I know too that he's not very -strong, and to have a great fellow like you, used to roughing it—It -reminds me of the big Cossack who always goes round with the little -Tsarevitch. Not that Guy is as young as that, but he's been tenderly -brought up."</p> - -<p>"Oh, mother, give us a rest!" Guy had rushed into his flowered room -from whatever errand had taken him away. "If I <i>have</i> been tenderly -brought up, I'm as tough to-day as any mucker down where Tom lives."</p> - -<p>"The dear boy!"</p> - -<p>She smiled at Tom, as at one who like herself understood this -extravagance, moving away with the stately lilt that made her skirts -flounce up and down.</p> - -<p>"It's Hildred that's sicking the old lady on to her little song -and dance in your favor," Guy declared, when they had the room to -themselves again. "Hildred likes you. Always has. She's democratic, -too, just like me. Once let a fellow be a sport and Hildred wouldn't -care what he was socially."</p> - -<p>"Keep your mouth shut and live," became Tom's daily self-adjuration. -That Guy sincerely liked him he was sure, and this in itself meant much -to him. The patronage could be smiled away. If he and his mother failed -in tact they gave him much in compensation. In their house he was -getting accustomed to certain small usages which at first had overawed -him. Space didn't dwarf him any more, nor beauty strike him spellbound. -He was so courteous to Pilcher that Pilcher, returning deference for -deference, had once or twice called him "sir." The plays to which -Guy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> took him were a long step in his education; the music they heard -together released a whole new range in his emotions.</p> - -<p>He discovered that Guy was what is commonly called musical. He played -the piano not badly; he knew something of the classics, of the great -romanticists, of the moderns. Back of the library was a music room, and -when other occupations palled, there Guy would play and explain, while -Tom sat listening and enjoying. Guy liked explaining; it showed his -superiority. Tom liked to learn. To know the difference between Mozart -and Beethoven was a stage in progress. To have the cabalistic names of -Wagner and Debussy, which he had often seen in newspapers, spring to -significance was an initiation into mysteries.</p> - -<p>So with work, with sports, with amusements, the winter sped by, -bringing a sense of an expanding life. He had one main care: Maisie -was more unhappy. Her appeals to him to throw up college, to become a -chauffeur and marry her, increased in urgency.</p> - -<p>He had come to the point of seeing that his engagement to Maisie was -a bit of folly. If Honey were to learn of it, or the Ansleys ... but -he hoped to keep it secret till he won a position in which he could be -free of censure. Once with an income to support a wife, his mistakes -and sufferings would be his own business. In proportion as life opened -up it was easy for him to face trouble cheerfully.</p> - -<p>May had come round, and by keeping his birthday on the fifth of March, -he was now more than eighteen. On a Saturday morning when there was no -school to attend he and Guy had lingered on the roof of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> Ansley -house after their task with the wireless apparatus was over. Looking -across the river toward Cambridge, where one big tower marked the site -of Harvard, they were speculating on the new step in manhood they would -take in the following October.</p> - -<p>Pilcher's old head appeared through the skylight to inform Mr. Guy that -lunch was waiting. Madam wished him to come down.</p> - -<p>"Where is she?"</p> - -<p>"She's in the dining room, Mr. Guy."</p> - -<p>"Get along, Tom. I'll be ready with the runabout at two. You won't be -late, will you?"</p> - -<p>Tom said he would not be late, following Pilcher through the skylight -and down the several flights of stairs. He was eager to slip out the -front door without encountering Mrs. Ansley. Mrs. Ansley was eager not -to encounter him. With lunch on the table, it would be awkward not to -ask him to sit down; and to ask him to sit down would be out of the -question. It would be just like Guy....</p> - -<p>And then Guy did what was just like him. "Mother," he called out, -puffing down the last of the staircases, "why can't Tom have lunch with -us? He's got to be back here at two anyway. He's coming out with me in -the runabout."</p> - -<p>Tom was doing his best to turn the knob of the front door. "Couldn't, -Guy," he whispered back, shaking his head violently. "Got to beat it."</p> - -<p>In reality he was running away. To sit at the table with Mrs. Ansley, -and be served by Pilcher, required a knowledge of etiquette he did not -possess.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Mother, grab him," Guy insisted. "He might as well stay, mightn't he?"</p> - -<p>Reluctantly Mrs. Ansley appeared in the doorway. In so far as she could -ever be vexed with Guy, she was vexed. "If Whitelaw's got to go, dear—"</p> - -<p>"He hasn't got to go, have you, Tom? He don't have a home to toe the -line at. He just picks up his grub wherever he can get it."</p> - -<p>To such an appeal it was impossible to be wholly deaf. "Oh, then, if -Whitelaw chooses to stay with us—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I couldn't, ma'am," Tom cried, hurriedly. "I've got to—"</p> - -<p>But Guy, who had now reached the floor of the hall, caught him by the -arm. "Oh, come along in. It can't hurt us. The old lady's just as -democratic as Hildred and me."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley was overborne; she couldn't help herself. Tom also was -overborne, finding it easier to yield than to rebel. There being but -three places laid at the table, one of which was reserved for Mr. -Ansley in case he came home for luncheon, Pilcher set a fourth.</p> - -<p>"Will you sit there, Whitelaw?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, mother, call him Tom. He isn't a chauffeur, not when he's in town -here."</p> - -<p>If anyone but Guy had put her in this situation Mrs. Ansley would -have deemed it due to herself to sail from the room. As it was, she -endeavored to humor the boy, to keep Tom in his place, and to rescue -the dignity which had never yet sat down at table with a servant.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'm sure there's no harm in being a chauffeur. I'm the last person in -the world to say so, dependent on chauffeurs as I am. Besides, we knew, -of course, that some of the young people helping us at the inn-club -were studying in colleges, and that they didn't mean to stay in those -positions permanently." She grew arch. "But I'm not democratic, Mr. -Whitelaw. Guy knows I'm not. It's his way of teasing me. He's perfectly -aware that I consider democracy a failure. There never was a greater -fallacy than that all men were born free and equal. As to freedom I'm -indifferent; but I've never pretended that any Tom, Dick, or Harry was -my equal, and I never shall."</p> - -<p>"You don't mean this Tom, do you, old lady?"</p> - -<p>"Now, Guy! Isn't he a tease, Mr. Whitelaw? But I do believe in equality -of opportunity. That seems to me one of the glories of our country. So -many of our great men have come from the very humblest origin. And if -we can do anything to help them along—with Guy that's an obsession. -If it's a fault I say it's a good fault. Better to err on that side, I -always think, than to see some one achieve the big thing, and know that -you had no share in it when you might have had. That's shepherd's pie, -Mr. Whitelaw. We have very simple lunches because Mr. Ansley doesn't -always come home, and in any case his meal is his dinner."</p> - -<p>She rambled on because Guy was too busy with his food to help her, and -Tom too terrified. He was sorry not merely for himself, but for her. -Compelled to admit him to breaking bread with her, she must feel as if -he had been forced on her in her dressing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> room. As a matter of fact, -he admired the way in which she was carrying it off. Long ago, having -divined her as taking her inherited position in Boston as a kind of -sanctifying aura, shrinking from unauthorized approach like a sensitive -plant from a touch, she reminded him of an anecdote he had somewhere -read of Queen Victoria. The Queen was holding a council. Present at it -among others was a statesman sitting for the first time as a member of -the cabinet. Obliged at a given moment to carry a paper from one side -of the table to the other, this gentleman passed back of the Queen's -chair, accidentally grazing it with his hand. The Queen shuddered -and shrank away. The touching merely of the chair was a violation of -majesty. "He won't do," she whispered to the prime minister. He didn't -do. He passed not only into political but into social oblivion. Tom -recalled the incident as he tried to choke down his shepherd's pie. -He was the unhappy statesman. He wouldn't do. Amiable as Mrs. Ansley -tried to make herself, he knew how she was suffering. He was suffering -himself.</p> - -<p>And in on his suffering, to make it worse, bustled Mr. Ansley. Throwing -his hat and gloves on a settle in the hall, he shot into the dining -room at once. He was a man who shot, sharply, directly, rather than one -who walked. Tom stood up.</p> - -<p>"Sorry I'm so late, Sunshine—" His eye fell on Tom. "Oh, how-d'ye-do? -Seen you before, haven't I? Oh! Oh!" The exclamations were of surprise -and a little pain. "Why, you're the young fellow who ran the station -car for us."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley intervened as one who pacifies. "He's going out with Guy at -two o'clock, to help him run the runabout."</p> - -<p>"<i>Help</i> me run it! Why, mother, you talk as if—"</p> - -<p>"And Guy couldn't let him go off without anything to eat."</p> - -<p>"Quite so! quite so!" Mr. Ansley agreed. "Glad to see you. Sit down." -He helped himself to the shepherd's pie which Pilcher passed again. -"Let me see! What was it your name was?"</p> - -<p>Tom sat down again. "Whitelaw, sir."</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes; so it was. You're the same Whitelaw who's been running -about this winter and spring with Guy. Quite so! quite so! Oh, and by -the way, Sunshine, speaking of Whitelaw, Henry looked in on me this -morning. Ran over from New York about some business cropped up since -the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>."</p> - -<p>"How is he?"</p> - -<p>"Seems rather worried. Lost several intimate friends on the ship, -besides which the old question seems to be popping up again."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley sighed. "Oh, dear! I hope they'll not be dragged through -all that with another of their foolish clues. I thought it was over."</p> - -<p>"It's over for Eleonora. But you know how Henry feels about it. Got it -on the brain. Pity, I call it, after—how many years is it?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley computed. "It was while we were on our honeymoon. Don't you -remember? We read it in the paper at Montreal, after we'd come from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> -Niagara Falls. That was the fifteenth of May, and Harry had been stolen -on the tenth."</p> - -<p>Tom felt a queer sick sinking of the heart. The tenth of May was the -last of the three dates his mother had fixed as his birthday. She had -told him, too, that the day when he was born was one on which the -nursemaids were in the Park, and the lilacs had been in bloom. Why this -specification? If, as she had informed him at other times, he was born -in the Bronx, where Gracie also had been born, why the reference to the -Park and nursemaids, five miles away? He listened avidly.</p> - -<p>"How old would that make him if he were living now?"</p> - -<p>Again Mrs. Ansley reckoned. "Something over nineteen. I've forgotten -just how many months he was when he disappeared."</p> - -<p>Tom was reassured. He was only eighteen; he was positive of that. He -couldn't have been nineteen without ever suspecting it. Mr. Ansley -continued.</p> - -<p>"Seems to me a great mistake to bring him back now, even if they found -him. A lumbering fellow of nineteen, practically a man, with probably -the lowest associations."</p> - -<p>"That's what Onora feels. She's told me so. She couldn't go through it. -Even if he isn't dead in fact he's dead to them."</p> - -<p>"Henry feels that, of course. He doesn't deny it. He doesn't want him -back—not now. At the same time when any new will o' the wisp starts up -he can't help feeling—"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p> - -<p>Tom was back in his little hall bedroom, after the run in the car with -Guy, before he had time to think these scraps of conversation over. -The details for which he had to render an account were, first, his -sickening sense of dread on learning that the Whitelaw baby had been -stolen on the tenth of May, and, then, his relief that the child, -if now alive, would be nineteen years of age. These sensations or -emotions, whatever they might be called, had been independent of his -will. What did they portend? Why was he frightened in the one case, and -in the other comforted?</p> - -<p>He didn't know. That he didn't know was the only decision he could -reach. Were the impossible ever to come true, were the parents of the -Whitelaw baby ever, no matter how unwillingly, to claim him as their -son, the advantages to him would be obvious. Why then did he hate the -idea? What was it in him that cried out, and pleaded not to be forsaken?</p> - -<p>He didn't know.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXI</p> - - -<p class="drop">L<span class="uppercase">uckily</span> the questions raised that day died out like a false alarm. With -no further mention of the Whitelaw baby, he graduated from the Latin -School, passed his exams at Harvard, and spent the summer as second -in command of a boys' camp in a part of New Hampshire remote from the -inn-club and the Ansleys. October found him a freshman. The new life -was beginning.</p> - -<p>He had slept his first night in his bedroom in Gore Hall, where his -quarters had been appointed. He had met the three fellow-freshmen with -whom he was to share a sitting room. The sitting room was on the ground -floor in a corner, looking out on the Embankment and the Charles. Never -having had, since he left the Quidmores, a place in which to work -better than the narrow squalid room at the end of a narrow squalid -hall, his joy in this new decency of living was naïve to the point of -childishness. He spent in that retreat, during the first twenty-four -hours, every minute not occupied with duties. Because he was glad -of the task, his colleagues had left to him as much of the job of -arranging the furniture as he would assume.</p> - -<p>On the second day of his residence he was on his knees, behind his -desk, pulling at a rug that had been wrinkled up. His zeal could bear -nothing not neat, straight, adjusted. The desk was heavy, the rug<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> -stubborn. When a rap sounded on the door he called out, "Come in!" -looking up above the edge of the desk only when the door had been -opened and closed.</p> - -<p>A lady, dignified, a little portly, was stepping into the room, with -the brisk air of one who had a right there. As she had been motoring, -she was wreathed in a dark green veil, which partially hid her -features. Peeling off a gauntlet, she glanced round the room, after a -first glance at Tom.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry to be late, Tad. That stupid Patterson lost his way. He's -a very good driver, but he's no sense of direction. Why, where's the -picture? You said you had had it hung."</p> - -<p>Her tone was crisp and staccato. In her breath there was the syncopated -halt which he afterward came to associate with the actress, Mrs. Fiske. -She might be nervous; or she might suffer from the heart.</p> - -<p>For the first few seconds he was too agitated to know exactly what to -do. He had been looked at and called Tad again, this time probably by -Tad's mother. He rose to his height of six feet two. The lady started -back.</p> - -<p>"Why, what have you been doing to yourself? What are you standing on? -What makes you so tall?"</p> - -<p>"I'm afraid there's some mistake, ma'am."</p> - -<p>She broke in with a kind of petulance. "Oh, Tad, no nonsense! I'm -tired. I'm not in the mood for it."</p> - -<p>Both gauntlets peeled off, she flung them on the desk. With a motion as -rapid as her speech she stepped toward a window and looked out over the -Embankment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's going to be noisy and dusty for you here. The stream of cars is -incessant."</p> - -<p>Being now beyond the desk, she caught the fullness of his stature. Her -left hand went up with a startled movement. She gave a little gasp.</p> - -<p>"Oh! You frightened me. You're not standing on anything."</p> - -<p>"No, ma'am, I...."</p> - -<p>"I asked for Mr. Whitelaw's room. They told me to come to number -twenty-eight."</p> - -<p>Making her way out, she kept looking back at him in terror. When he -hurried to open the door for her, she waved him away. Everything she -did and said was rapid, staccato, and peremptory.</p> - -<p>"You've forgotten your gloves, ma'am."</p> - -<p>He reached them with a stretch of his arm. Taking them from him, she -still kept her eyes on his face.</p> - -<p>"No! You don't look like him. I thought you did. I was wrong. It's only -the—the eyes—and the eyebrows."</p> - -<p>She was gone. He closed the door upon her. Dropping into an armchair -by the window, he stared out on a wide low landscape, with a double -procession of motor cars in the foreground, and a river in the middle -distance.</p> - -<p>So this was the woman who had lived through the agony of a stolen -child! He tried to recall what Honey had told him of the tragedy. He -remembered the house which five years earlier Honey had taken him to -see; he remembered the dell with the benches and the lilacs. This -woman's child had been wheeled out there one morning—and had vanished. -She had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> had to bear being told of the fact. She had gone through the -minutes when the mind couldn't credit it. She had known fear, frenzy, -hope, suspense, disappointment, discouragement, despair, and lassitude. -In self-defense, in sheer inability of the human spirit to endure more -than it has endured, she had thrown round her a hard little shell of -refusal to hear of it again. She resented the reminder. She was pricked -to a frantic excitement by a mere chance resemblance to the image of -what the lost little boy might have become.</p> - -<p>A chance resemblance! He underscored the words. It was all there was. -He himself was the son of Theodore and Lucy Whitelaw. At least he -thought her name was Lucy. Not till he had been required to give the -names of his parents for some school record did it occur to him that he -didn't positively know. She had always been "Mudda." He hadn't needed -another name. After she had gone there had been no one to supply him -with the facts he had not learned before. Even the Theodore would have -escaped him had it not been for that last poignant scene, when she -stood before the officer and gave a name—Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw! Why -not? There were more Whitelaws than one. There was no monopoly of the -name in the family that had lost the child.</p> - -<p>He didn't often consciously think of her nowadays. The memory was -not merely too painful; it was too destructive of the things he was -trying to cherish. He had impulses rather than ideals, in that impulses -form themselves more spontaneously; and all his im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>pulses were toward -rectitude. It was not a chosen standard; neither was it imposed upon -him from without, unless it was in some vague general direction of the -spirit received while at the Tollivants. He didn't really think of it. -He took it as a matter of course. He couldn't be anything but what he -was, and there was an end of it. But all his attempts to get a working -concept of himself led him back to this beginning, where the fountain -of life was befouled.</p> - -<p>So he rarely went back that far. He would go back to the Quidmores, -to the Tollivants, to Mrs. Crewdson; but he stopped there. There he -hung up a great curtain, soft and dim and pitiful, the veil of an -immense tenderness. Rarely, very rarely, did he go behind it. He would -not have done it on this afternoon had not the woman who had just -gone out—dressed, as anyone could see, with the expensive easy-going -roughness which only rich women can afford—neurotic, imperious, -unhappy—had not this woman sent him there. She was a great lady whose -tragic story haunted him; but she turned his mind backward, as it -hardly ever turned, to the foolish and misguided soul who had loved -him. No one since that time, no one whatever in the life he could -remember, had loved him at all, unless it were Honey, and Honey denied -that he did. How could he forsake ...? And then it came to him what it -was that pleaded within him not to be forsaken.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The lecture was over. It was one of the first Tom had attended. -The men, some hundred odd in number, were shuffling their papers, -preparatory to getting up.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> Seated in an amphitheater, they filled -the first seven or eight semicircles outward from the stage. The -arrangement being alphabetical, Tom, as a <i>W</i>, was in the most distant -row.</p> - -<p>The lecturer, who was also putting his papers together as they lay on a -table beside him, looked up casually to call out,</p> - -<p>"If Mr. Whitelaw is here I should like to speak to him."</p> - -<p>Tom shot from his seat and stood up. The man on his left did the same. -Occupied with taking notes on the little table attached to the right -arm—the only arm—of his chair, Tom had not turned to the left at all. -He was surprised now at the ripple of laughter that ran among the men -beginning to get up from their seats or to file out into the corridor. -The professor smiled too.</p> - -<p>"You're brothers?"</p> - -<p>Tom looked at his neighbor; his neighbor looked at Tom. Except for the -difference in height the resemblance was startling or amusing, as you -chose to take it. To the men going by it was amusing.</p> - -<p>It was the neighbor, however, who called out, in a shocked voice: "Oh, -no, no! No connection."</p> - -<p>"Then it's to Mr. Theodore Whitelaw that I wish to speak."</p> - -<p>Mr. Theodore Whitelaw made his way toward the platform, taking no -further notice of Tom.</p> - -<p>For this lack of the friendly freemasonry general among young men, -general among freshmen especially, Tom thought he saw a reason. The -outward appearance which enabled him to "place" Tad would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> enable Tad -to "place" him. On the one there was the stamp of wealth; on the other -there must be that of poverty. He might have met Tad Whitelaw anywhere -in the world, and he would have known him at a glance as a fellow -nursed on money since he first lay in a cradle. It wasn't merely a -matter of dress, though dress counted for something. It was a matter -of the personality. It was in the eyes, in the skin, in the look, in -the carriage, in the voice. It was not in refinement, or cultivation, -or cleverness, or use of opportunity; it was in something subtler -than these, a cast of mind, a habit of thought, an acceptance, a -self-confidence, which seeped through every outlet of expression. Tad -Whitelaw embodied wealth, position, the easy use of whatever was best -in whatever was material. You couldn't help seeing it.</p> - -<p>On the other hand, he, Tom Whitelaw, probably bore the other kind -of stamp. He had not thought of that before. In as far as he had -thought of it, it was to suppose that the stamp could be rubbed off, -or covered up. Clothes would do something toward that, and in clothes -he had been extravagant. He had come to Harvard with two new suits, -made to his order by the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker's. But in -contrast with the young New Yorker his extravagance had been futile. -He found for himself the most opprobrious word in all the American -language—cheap.</p> - -<p>Very well! He probably couldn't help looking cheap. But if cheap he -would be big. He wouldn't resent. He would keep his mouth shut and -live. Things would right themselves by and by.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> - -<p>They righted themselves soon. The three men with whom he shared the -sitting room, having passed him as "a good scout," admitted him to full -and easy comradeship. In the common-room, in the classroom, he held -his own, and made a few friends. Guy Ansley, urged in part by a real -liking, and in part by the glory of having this big handsome fellow in -tow, was generous of recognition. He was standing one day with a group -of his peers from Doolittle and Pray's when Tom chanced to pass at a -distance. Guy called out to him.</p> - -<p>"Hello, you old sinner! Where you been this ever so long?" With a word -to his friends, he puffed after Tom, and dragged him toward the group. -"This is the guy they call the Whitelaw Baby. See how much he looks -like Tad?"</p> - -<p>"Tad'll give you Whitelaw Baby," came from one of the group. "Hates the -name of it. Don't blame him, do you, when he's heard everyone gassing -about the kid all through his life?"</p> - -<p>But that he was going in Harvard by this nickname disturbed Tom not -a little. Considering the legend in the Whitelaw family, and the -resemblance between himself and Tad, it was natural enough. But should -Tad hear of it....</p> - -<p>With Tad he had no acquaintance. As the weeks passed by he came to -understand that with certain freshmen acquaintance would be difficult. -They themselves didn't want it. It was a discovery to Tom that it -didn't follow that you knew a man, or that a man knew you, because you -had been introduced to him. Guy Ansley had introduced him that day to -the little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> group from Doolittle and Pray's; but when he ran into them -again none of them remembered him.</p> - -<p>So Tad Whitelaw did not remember him after having met him accidentally -at Guy's. The meeting had been casual, hurried, but it was a meeting. -The two had been named to each other. Each had made an inarticulate -grunt. But when later that same afternoon they passed in a corridor Tad -went by as if he had never seen him.</p> - -<p>He continued to live and keep his mouth shut. If he was hurt there was -nothing to be gained by saying so. Then an incident occurred which -threw them together in a manner which couldn't be ignored inwardly, -even if outward conditions remained the same.</p> - -<p>Little by little the Harvard student, following the general sobering -down which makes it harder for people in the twentieth century to -laugh than it was to those who lived fifty years ago, was becoming -less frolicsome. Pranks were still played, especially by freshmen, but -neither so many nor so wild. The humor had gone out of them.</p> - -<p>But in every large company of young men there are a few whose high -spirits carry them away. Where they have money to spend and no cares as -to the future on their minds, the new sense of freedom naturally runs -to roistering. In passing Tad Whitelaw's rooms, which were also in Gore -Hall, Tom often heard the banging of the piano, and those shouts of -song and laughter which are likely to disturb the proctor. Guy, who was -often the one at the piano, now and then gave him a report of a party, -telling him who was at it, and what they had had to drink.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> - -<p>In the course of the winter his relations with Guy took on a somewhat -different tinge. In Guy's circle, commonly called a gang or a bunch, -he was Guy's eccentricity. The Doolittle and Pray spirit allowed of an -eccentricity, if it wasn't paraded too much. Guy knew, too, that it -helped to make him popular, which was not an easy task, to be known as -loyal to a boyhood's chum, when he might be expected to desert him.</p> - -<p>But behind this patronage the fat boy found in Tom what he had always -found, a source of strength. Not much more than at school did he escape -at Harvard his destiny as a butt.</p> - -<p>"Same old spiel, damn it," he lamented to Tom, "just because I'm fat. -What difference does that make, when you're a sport all right? Doesn't -keep me from going with the gang, not any more than Tad Whitelaw's big -eyebrows, or Spit Castle's long nose."</p> - -<p>On occasions when he was left out of "good things" which he would -gladly have been in he made Tom come round to his room in the evening -for confidence and comfort. Tom never made game of him. There was no -one else to whom he could turn with the certainty of being understood. -Having an apartment to himself, he could be free in his complaints -without fear of interruption.</p> - -<p>It was late at night. The two young men had been "yarning," as they -called it, and smoking for the past two hours. Tom was getting up to -go back to his room, when a sound of running along the corridor caught -their attention.</p> - -<p>"What in blazes is that?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p> - -<p>By the time the footsteps reached Guy's door smothered explosions of -laughter could be heard outside. With a first preliminary pound on the -panels the door was flung open, Spit Castle and Tad Whitelaw hurling -themselves in. Though they would have passed as sober, some of their -excess of merriment might have been due to a few drinks.</p> - -<p>Tad carried a big iron door-key which he threw with a rattle on the -table. His hat had been knocked to the back of his head; his necktie -was an inch off-center; his person in general disordered by flight. -Spit Castle, a weedy youth with a nose like a tapir's, was in much the -same state. Neither could tell what the joke was, because the joke -choked them. Guy, flattered that they should come first of all to him, -stood in the middle of the floor, grinning expectantly. Tom, quietly -smoking, kept in the background, sitting on the arm of the chair from -which he had just been getting up. As each of the newcomers tried to -tell the tale he was broken in on by the other.</p> - -<p>"Came out from town by subway...."</p> - -<p>"Walking through Brattle Square...."</p> - -<p>"Not so much as a damn cat about...."</p> - -<p>"Saw little old johnny come abreast of little old bootstore...."</p> - -<p>"Took out a key—opened the door—went into the shop in the dark—left -the key in the keyhole to lock up when he comes outside again—just in -for something he'd forgot."</p> - -<p>"And damned if Tad didn't turn the key—quick as that—and lock the old -beggar in."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Last we heard of him he was poundin' and squealin' to beat all blazes."</p> - -<p>Yellin', 'Pull-<i>ice</i>!—pull-<i>ice</i>!'—whacking his leg, Spit gave an -imitation of the prisoner—"and he's in there yet."</p> - -<p>To Guy the situation was as droll as it was to his two friends. An old -fellow trapped in his own shop! He was a Dago, Spit thought, which made -the situation funnier. They laughed till, wearied with laughter, they -threw themselves into armchairs, and lit their cigarettes.</p> - -<p>Tom, who had laughed a little not at their joke but at them, felt -obliged, in his own phrase, to butt in. He waited till a few puffs of -tobacco had soothed them.</p> - -<p>"Say, boys, don't you think the fun's gone far enough?"</p> - -<p>The two guests turned and stared as if he had been a talking piece of -furniture. Tad took his cigarette from his lips.</p> - -<p>"What the hell business is it of yours?"</p> - -<p>Tom kept his seat on the arm of the chair, speaking peaceably. "I -suppose it isn't my business—except for the old man."</p> - -<p>"What have you got to do with him? Is he your father?"</p> - -<p>"He's probably somebody's father, and somebody's husband. You can't -leave him there all night."</p> - -<p>Spit challenged this. "Why can't we?"</p> - -<p>"Because you can't. Fellows like you don't do that sort of thing."</p> - -<p>It looked as if Tad Whitelaw had some special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> animosity against him, -when he sprang from his chair to say insolently, "And fellows like you -don't hang round where they're not wanted."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Tom didn't mean anything—" Guy began to interpose.</p> - -<p>"Then let him keep his mouth shut, or—" he nodded toward the door—"or -get out."</p> - -<p>Tom kept his temper, waiting till Tad dropped back into his chair -again. "You see, it's this way. The old chap has a home, and if he -doesn't come back to it in the course of, let us say, half an hour his -family'll get scared. If they hunt him up at the shop, and find he's -been locked in, they'll make a row at the police station just across -the street. If the police get in on the business they're sure to find -out who did it."</p> - -<p>"Well, it won't be you, will it?" Tad sneered again.</p> - -<p>"No, it won't be me, but even you don't want to be...."</p> - -<p>Tad turned languidly to Guy. "Say, Guy! Awful pity isn't it about -little Jennie Halligan! Cutest little dancer in the show, and she's -fallen and broken her leg."</p> - -<p>Tom got up, walked quietly to the table, picked up the key, and at the -same even pace was making for the door, when Tad sprang in front of him.</p> - -<p>"Damn you! Where do you think you're going?"</p> - -<p>"I'm going to let the old fellow out."</p> - -<p>"Drop that key."</p> - -<p>"Get out of my way."</p> - -<p>"Like hell I'll get out of your way."</p> - -<p>"Don't let us make a row here."</p> - -<p>"Drop that key. Do you hear me?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> - -<p>The rage in Tad's face was at being disobeyed. He was not afraid of -this fellow two inches taller than himself. He hated him. Ever since -coming to Harvard the swine had had the impertinence to be called by -the same name, and to look like him. He knew as well as anyone else the -nickname by which the bounder was going, and knew that he, the bounder, -encouraged it. It advertised him. It made him feel big. He, the brother -of the Whitelaw Baby, had been longing to get at the fellow and give -him a whack on the jaw. He would never have a better opportunity.</p> - -<p>The lift of his hand and the grasp with which Tom caught the wrist -were simultaneous. Slipping the key into his pocket, Tom brought his -other hand into play, throwing the lighter-built fellow out of his path -with a toss which sent him back against the desk. Maddened by this -insult to his person, Tad picked up the inkstand on the desk, hurling -it at Tom's head. The inkstand grazed his ear, but went smash against -the wall, spattering the new wallpaper with a great blob of ink. Guy -groaned, with some wild objurgation. To escape from the room Tom had -turned his back, when a blow from an uplifted chair caught him between -the shoulders. Wheeling, he wrenched the chair from the hands of Spit -Castle, chucked it aside and dealt the young man a stinger that brought -the blood from the tapir nose. All blind rage by this time, he caught -the weedy youth's head under his right arm, pounding the face with -his left fist till he felt the body sagging from his hold. He let it -go. Spit fell on the sofa, which was spattered with blood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> as the -wallpaper with ink. Startled at the sight of the limp form, he stood -for a second looking down at it, when his skull seemed crashed from -behind. Staggering back, he thought he was going to faint, but the -sight of Tad aiming another thump at him, straight between the eyes, -revived him to berserker fury. He sprang like a lion on an antelope.</p> - -<p>Strong and agile on his side, Tad was stiff to resistance. Before the -sheer weight of Tom's body he yielded an inch or two, but not more. -Freeing his left hand, as he bent backward, he dealt Tom a bruising -blow on the temple. Tom disregarded it, pinning Tad's left arm as he -had already pinned the right. His object now was to get the boy down, -to force him to his knees. It was a contest of brutal strength. When it -came to brutal strength the advantage was with the bigger frame, the -muscles toughened by work. The fight was silent now, nearly motionless. -Slowly, slowly, as iron gives way to the man with the force to bend it, -Tad was coming down. His feet were twisted under him, with no power to -right themselves. Two pairs of eyes, strangely alike, glared at each -other, like the eyes of frenzied wild animals. Tad gave a quick little -groan.</p> - -<p>"O God, my leg's breaking."</p> - -<p>Tom was not touched. "Damn you, let it break!"</p> - -<p>Pressed, pressed, pressed downward, Tad was sinking by a fraction of -an inch each minute. The strength above him was pitiless. Except for -the running of water in the bathroom, where Guy had dragged Spit Castle -to wash his nose, there was no sound in the room but the long hard -pantings, now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> from Tad's side, now from Tom's. In the intervals -neither seemed to breathe.</p> - -<p class="center"> -<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt="pic" /> -<a id="illus3" name="illus3"></a> -</p> -<p class="caption"> "GET UP, I TELL YOU"</p> - -<p>Suddenly Tad collapsed, and went down. Tom came on top of him. The -heavier having the lighter fastened by arms and legs, the two lay -like two stones. The faces were so near together that they could have -kissed. Their long protruding eyebrows brushed each other's foreheads. -The weight of Tom's bulk squeezed the breath from his foe, as a bear -squeezes it with a hug. Nothing was left to Tad but resistance of the -will. Of that, too, Tom meant to get the better.</p> - -<p>The words were whispered from one mouth into the other. "Do you know -what I'm going to do with you?"</p> - -<p>There was no answer.</p> - -<p>"I'm going to take you back with me to let that old man out of his -shop."</p> - -<p>There was still no answer. Tom sprang suddenly off Tad's body, but with -his fingers under the collar.</p> - -<p>"Get up!"</p> - -<p>He pulled with all his might. The collar gave way. Tad fell back. -"Damned if I will," was all he could say by way of defiance.</p> - -<p>Tom gave him a kick. "Get up, I tell you. If you don't I'll kick the -stuffing out of you."</p> - -<p>The kick hurt nothing but Tad's pride; but it hurt that badly. It hurt -it so badly that he got up, with no further show of opposition. He -dusted his clothes mechanically with his hands; he tried to adjust his -torn collar. His tone was almost commonplace.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> - -<p>"This has got to be settled some other time. What do you want me to do?"</p> - -<p>Tom pointed to the door. "What I want you to do is to march. Keep ahead -of me. And mind you if you try to bolt I'll wring your neck as if you -were a cur. You—you—" He sought a word which would hit where blows -had not carried—"you—coward!"</p> - -<p>The flash of Tad's eyes was like that of Tom's own. "We'll see."</p> - -<p>He went out the door, Tom close behind him.</p> - -<p>It was a March night, with snow on the ground, but thawing. They were -without overcoats, and bare-headed. A few motor cars were passing, but -not many pedestrians.</p> - -<p>"Run," Tom commanded.</p> - -<p>He ran. They both ran. The distance being short, they were soon in -Brattle Square. Tad stopped at a little shop, showing a faint light. -There was too much in the way of window display to allow of the -passer-by, who didn't give himself some trouble, to see anything within.</p> - -<p>At first they heard nothing. Then came a whimpering, like that of a -little dog, shut in and lonely, tired out with yelping. Putting his -ear to the door, Tom heard a desolate, "Tam! Tam!" It was the only -utterance.</p> - -<p>"Here's the key! Unlock the door."</p> - -<p>Tad did as he was bidden. Inside the "Tam! Tam!" ceased.</p> - -<p>"Now go in, and say you're sorry."</p> - -<p>As Tad hesitated Tom gave him a push. The door<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> being now ajar the -culprit went sprawling into the presence of his victim.</p> - -<p>There was a spring like that of a cat. There was also a snarl like a -cat's snarl. "You tam Harvard student!"</p> - -<p>Feeling he had done and said enough, Tom took to his heels; but as -someone else was taking to his heels, and running close behind him, he -judged that Tad had escaped.</p> - -<p>Back in his room, Tom felt spent. In his bed he was in emotional revolt -against his victory. He loathed it. He loathed everything that had led -up to it. The eyes that had stared into his, when the two had lain -together on the floor, were like those of something he had murdered. -What was it? What was the thing that deep down within him, rooted -in the primal impulses that must have been there before there was a -world—what was the thing that had been devastated, outraged? Once -more, he didn't know.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXII</p> - - -<p class="drop">L<span class="uppercase">ife</span> resumed itself next day as if there had been no dramatic -interlude. Proud of the scrap, as he named it, which had taken place -in his room, Guy made the best of it for all concerned. His version -was tactful, hurting nobody's feelings. The trick on the old man was -a merry one, and after a fight about its humor Tad Whitelaw and the -Whitelaw Baby had run off together to let the old fellow out. Spit -Castle's tapir nose had got badly hurt in the scrimmage, and bled all -over the sofa. The splash of ink on the wall was further evidence that -Guy's room was a rendezvous of sports. But sports being sports the -honors had been even on the whole, and no hard feeling left behind. Tad -and the Whitelaw Baby would now, Guy predicted, be better friends.</p> - -<p>But of that there was no sign. There was no sign of anything at all. -When the Whitelaw Baby met the Whitelaw Baby's brother they passed in -exactly the same way as heretofore. You would not have said that the -one was any more conscious of the other than two strangers who pass in -Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue. In Tad there was no show of resentment; in -Tom there was none of pride. As far as Tom was concerned, there was -only a humiliated sense of regret.</p> - -<p>And then, in April, life again took another turn. Coming back one day -to his rooms, Tom found a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> message requesting him to call a number -which he knew to be Mrs. Danker's. His first thought was of Maisie, -with whom his letters had begun to be infrequent. Mrs. Danker told him, -however, that Honey had had an accident. It was a bad accident, how bad -she didn't know. Giving him the name of the hospital to which he had -been taken, she begged him to go to him at once. After all the years -they had lived with Mrs. Danker she considered them almost as relatives.</p> - -<p>The hospital, near the foot of Grove Street, preserved the air of the -sedate old Boston of the middle nineteenth century. Its low dome, its -pillared façade, its grounds, its fine old trees, had been familiar to -Tom ever since he had lived on Beacon Hill. In less than an hour after -ringing up Mrs. Danker he was in the office asking for news.</p> - -<p>News was scanty. Expecting everyone to understand what he meant to -Honey and Honey meant to him, he had looked for the reception which -friends in trouble and excitement give to the friend who brings his -anxiety to mix with theirs. It would be, "Oh, come in. Poor fellow, -he's suffering terribly. It happened thus and so." But to the interne -in the office, a young man wearing a white jacket, Honey was not so -much as a name. His case was but one among other cases. A good many -came in a day. In a week, or a month, or a year, there was no keeping -account of them, except as they were registered. Individual suffering -was lost sight of in the immense amount of it. But the interne was -polite, and said that if Tom would sit down he would find out.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> - -<p>Among the hardest minutes Tom had ever gone through were those in the -little reception room. Not only was there suspense; there was remorse. -He had treated Honey like a cad. He had never been decent to him. He -had never really been grateful. There had never been a minute, in the -whole of the nearly six years they had lived together, in which he had -not been sorry, either consciously or subconsciously, at being mixed up -with an ex-convict. It was the ex-convict he had always seen before he -had seen the friend.</p> - -<p>A second interne wearing a white jacket came to question him, to ask -him who he was, and the nature of his business with the patient. If he -was only a friend he could hardly expect to see him. The man was under -opiates, he needed to be kept quiet.</p> - -<p>"What's happened? What's the matter with him? I can't find out."</p> - -<p>The interne didn't know exactly. He had been crushed. He was injured -internally. The cause of the accident he hadn't heard.</p> - -<p>"Could I see his nurse?"</p> - -<p>There was more difficulty about that, but in the end he was taken -upstairs, where the nurse came out to the corridor to speak to him. -She was a competent, businesslike woman, with none of the emotion -at contact with pain which Tom thought must be part of a nurse's -equipment. But she could tell him nothing definite. Not having been on -duty when the case had been brought in, she had heard no more than the -facts essential to what she had to do.</p> - -<p>"Do you think he'll die?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> - -<p>"You'd have to ask the doctor that. He's not dead now. That's about as -much as I can say." At sight of the big handsome fellow's distress she -partly relented. "You may come in and look at him. You mustn't try to -speak to him."</p> - -<p>He followed her into a long ward, with an odor of disinfectant. -White beds, mostly occupied, lined each wall. Here and there was one -surrounded by a set of screens, partially secluding a sufferer. At one -such set they stopped. Through an opening between two screens Tom was -allowed to look at Honey who lay with face upturned, and no sign of -pain on the features. He slept as Tom had seen him sleep hundreds of -times when he expected to get up again next morning. The difference was -in the expectation of getting up. Blinded by tears, Tom tiptoed away.</p> - -<p>When he came next day the effect of the opiate had worn off, and yet -not wholly. Honey turned his head at his approach and smiled. Sitting -beside the bed, Tom took the big, calloused hand lying outside the -coverlet, and held it in his own relatively tender one. More than -ever it was borne in on him at whose cost that tenderness had been -maintained. Honey liked to have his hand held. A part of the wall of -aloofness with which he had kept himself surrounded seemed to have -broken down.</p> - -<p>A little incoherently he told what had happened. He had been stowing -packing-cases in the hold of a big ship. The packing-cases were lowered -by a crane. The crane as a rule was a good old thing, slow paced, -gentle, safe. But this time something seemed to have gone wrong with -her. Though his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> back was turned, Honey knew by the shadow above him -that she was at her work. When he had got into its niche the case with -which he was busy he would swing round and seize the new one. And then -he heard a shout. It was a shout from the dock, and didn't disturb him. -He was about to turn when something fell. It struck him in the back. It -was all he knew. He thought he remembered the blow, but was not certain -whether he did or not. When he "came to" he had already been moved to -the shed, and was waiting for the ambulance. He seemed not to have a -body any more. He was only a head, like one of them there angels in a -picture, with wings beneath their chins.</p> - -<p>He laughed at that, and with the laugh the nurse took Tom away; but -when he came back on the following day Honey's mind was clearer.</p> - -<p>"I've made me will long ago," he said, when Tom had given him such bits -of news as he asked for. "It's all legal and reg'lar. Had a lawyer fix -it up. Never told yer nothink about it. Everythink left to you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Honey, don't let us talk about that. You'll be up and around in a -week or so."</p> - -<p>"Sure I'll be up and around. Yer don't think a little thing like this -is goin' to bust me. Why, I don't feel 'ardly nothink, not below the -neck. All the same, it can't do no harm for you to know what's likely -to be what. If I was to croak, which I don't intend to, yer'd have -about sixteen hundred dollars what I've saved to finish yer eddication -on. The will is in the bottom of me trunk at Danker's."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p> - -<p>On another day he said, "If anyone was to pop up and say I owed 'em -that money, because I took it from 'em...."</p> - -<p>He held the sentence there, leaving Tom to wonder if he had thoughts of -restitution, or possibly of repentance.</p> - -<p>"I don't owe 'em nothink," he ended. "Belonged to me just as much as it -belonged to them. Nothink don't belong to nobody. I never was able to -figger it out just the way I wanted to, because I ain't never had no -eddication; but Gord's lor I believes it is. Never could get the 'ang -o' the lor o' man, not nohow."</p> - -<p>To comfort him, Tom suggested that perhaps when he got through college -he might be able to take the subject up.</p> - -<p>"I wouldn't bind yer to it, Kiddy. Tough job! Why, when I give up -socializin' to try and win over some o' them orthodocks I thought as -they'd jump to 'ear me. Not a bit of it! The more I told 'em that -nothink didn't belong to nobody the more they said I was a nut."</p> - -<p>Having lain silent for a minute he continued, with that light in his -face which corresponded to a wink of the blind eye: "I don't bind yer -to nothink, Kiddy. That's what I've always wanted yer to feel. You're a -free boy. When I'm up and around again, and yer've got yer eddication, -and have gone out on yer own, yer won't have me a-'angin' on yer 'ands. -No, sir! I'll be off—free as a bird—back with the old gang again—and -yer needn't be worried a-thinkin' I'll miss you—nor nothink!"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was a few days after this that the businesslike nurse who had first -admitted him hinted that, if she were Tom, Honey would have a clergyman -come to visit him. A few days more and it might be too late.</p> - -<p>Honey with a clergyman! It was something Tom had never thought of. -The incongruous combination made him smile. Nevertheless, it was -what people who were dying had—a clergyman come to visit them. If a -clergyman could do Honey any good....</p> - -<p>"Honey," he suggested, artfully, next day, "now that you're pinned -to bed for awhile, and have got the time, wouldn't you like to see a -clergyman sometimes, and talk things over?"</p> - -<p>There was again that light in the face which took the place of a wink. -"What things?"</p> - -<p>Tom was nonplussed. "Well, I suppose, things about your soul."</p> - -<p>"What'd a clergyman know about <i>my</i> soul? He might know about his own, -but I know all about mine that I've got to know. 'Tain't much—but it's -enough."</p> - -<p>Tom was relieved. He didn't want to disturb Honey by bringing in a -stranger nor was he more sure than Honey that any good could be done by -it. He was more relieved still when Honey explained himself further.</p> - -<p>"Do yer suppose I've come to where I am now without thinkin' them -things out, when Gord give me a genius for doin' it? I don't say I've -did it as well as them as has had more eddication; but Gord takes -us with the eddication what we've got. Eddication's a fine thing; I -don't say contrairy; but I don't believe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> as it makes no diff'rence -to Gord. If you and me was before Him—me not knowin' 'ardly nothink, -and you stuffed as you are with learnin' till you're bustin' out -with it—I don't believe as Gord'd say as there was a pinch o' snuff -between us—not to him there wouldn't be." A little wearily he made his -confession of faith. "Gord made me; Gord knows me; Gord'll take me just -the way I am and make the best o' me, without no one else buttin' in."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was the middle of an afternoon. If anything, Honey was better. All -spring was blowing in at the windows, while the trees were in April -green, and the birds jubilant with the ecstasy of mating.</p> - -<p>"Beats everythink the way I dream," Honey confided, in a puzzled tone. -"Always dreamin' o' my mother. Haven't 'ardly thought of her these -years and years. Didn't 'ardly know her. Died when I was a little kid; -and yet...."</p> - -<p>He lay still, smiling into the air. Tom was glad to find him cheerful, -reminiscent. Never in all the years he had known him had Honey talked -so much of his early life as within the last few days.</p> - -<p>"Used to take us children into the country to see a sister she had -livin' there.... Little village in Cheshire called King's Clavering.... -See that little cottage now.... Thatched it was.... Set a few yards -back from the lane.... Had flowers in the garden ... musk ... and -poppies ... and London pride ... and Canterbury bells ... and old -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>man's love ... and cherry pie ... and raggedy Jack ... and sailor's -sweetheart ... funny how all them names comes back to me...."</p> - -<p>Again he lay smiling. Tom also smiled. It was the first day he had had -any hope. It was difficult not to have hope when Honey was so free from -pain, and so easy in his mind. As to pain he had not had much since -the accident had benumbed him; but there had always been something he -seemed to want to say. To-day he had apparently said everything, and so -could spend the half-hour of Tom's visit on memories of no importance.</p> - -<p>"Always had custard for tea, my mother's sister had. Lord, how us young -ones'd...."</p> - -<p>The recollection brought a happy look. Tom was glad. With pleasant -thoughts Honey would not have the wistful yearning in his eyes which he -had turned on him lately whenever he went away.</p> - -<p>"There was a hunt in Cheshire. Onst I saw a lord—a dook, I think he -was—ridin' to 'ounds. Sat his 'orse as if he was part of him, he -did...."</p> - -<p>This too died away without sequence, though the happy look remained. -The smile grew rapt, distant perhaps, as memory took him back to long -forgotten trifles. Just outside the window a robin fluted in a tree.</p> - -<p>Honey turned his head slightly to say: "Have I been asleep, Kid?"</p> - -<p>"No; you haven't had your eyes shut."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but I must have. Couldn't dream if I was wide awake. I -saw ma—just as plain as—" He recovered himself with a light -laugh—"Wouldn't it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> bust yer braces to 'ear me sayin' ma? But that's -what us childern used to call...."</p> - -<p>Once more he turned in profile, lying still, silent, radiant, occupied. -The robin sang on. Tom looked at his watch. It was time for him to be -stealing away. Now that Honey was better, he didn't mind going without -a farewell, because he could explain himself next time. He was glancing -about for the nurse when Honey said, softly, casually, as if greeting -an acquaintance:</p> - -<p>"Hello—ma!"</p> - -<p>He lifted both hands, but they dropped back, heavily. Tom, who had half -risen, fell on his knees by the bedside, seizing the hand nearest him -in both his own.</p> - -<p>"Honey! Honey! Speak to me!"</p> - -<p>But Honey's good eye closed gently, while the head sagged a little to -one side. The robin was still singing.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Two letters received within a few days gave Tom the feeling of not -being quite left alone.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p> - -<i>Dear Mr. Whitelaw</i><br /> -</p> - -<p>In telling you how deeply we feel for you in your great bereavement -I wish I could make you understand how sincerely we are all your -friends. I want to say this specially, as I know you have no family. -Family counts for much; but friends count for something too. It is -George Sand who says: "Our relations are the friends given us by -nature; our friends are the relations given us by God." Will you not -think of us in this way?—especially of Guy and me. Whenever you are -lonely I wish you would turn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> to us, in thought at least, when it -can't be in any other way. When it can be—our hearts will always be -open.</p> - -<p> -Very sincerely yours,</p> -<p style="margin-left: 45%;" > -<span class="smcap">Hildred Ansley</span>. -</p></blockquote> - -<p>The other letter ran:</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p> - -<i>Dear Tom</i><br /> -</p> - -<p>Now that you have got this great big incubous off your hands I should -think you would try to do your duty by me and what you owe me. It -seems to me I've been patient long enough. It is not as if you were -the only peanut in the bag. There are others. I do not say this -purposely. It is rung from me. I have done all I mean to do here, and -will beat it whenever I get a good chance. I should think you would be -educated by now. I graduated from high school at sixteen, and I guess -I know as much as the next one. I've got a gentleman friend here, a -swell fellow too, a travelling salesman, and he makes big money, and -he says that if a fellow isn't hitting the world by fifteen he'll -always be a quitter. Think this over and let me know. With passionate -love.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 45%;"> -<span class="smcap">Maisie.</span><br /> -</p></blockquote> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">he</span> day after Honey was buried Tom went to Mrs. Danker's to pay what -was owing on the room rent, and take away his effects. The effects went -into one small trunk which Mrs. Danker packed, while Tom sat on the -edge of the bed and listened to her comments. A little wiry woman, prim -in the old New England way, she was tireless in work and conversation.</p> - -<p>"He was a fine man, Mr. Honeybun was, and my land! he was fond of you. -He'd try to hide it; but half an eye could see that he was that proud -of you! He'd be awful up-and-coming while you was here, and make out -that it didn't matter to him whether you was here or not; but once -you was away—my land! He'd be that down you'd think he'd never come -up again. And one thing I could see as plain as plain; he was real -determined that when you'd got up in the world he wasn't going to be -a drag on you. He'd keep saying that you wasn't beholding to him for -anything; and that he'd be glad when you could do without him so that -he could get back again to his friends; but my land! half an eye could -see."</p> - -<p>During these first days Tom found the memory of a love as big as -Honey's too poignant to dwell upon. He would dwell upon it later, when -the self-reproach which so largely composed his grief had softened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> -down. All he could do as yet was to curse himself for the obtuseness -which had taken Honey at the bluff of his words, when the tenderness -behind his deeds should have been evident to anyone not a fool.</p> - -<p>He couldn't bear to think of it. Not to think of it, he asked Mrs. -Danker for news of Maisie. He had often wondered whether Maisie might -not have told her aunt in confidence of her engagement to himself; and -now he learned that she had not.</p> - -<p>"I hardly ever hear from her; but another aunt of Maisie's writes to -me now and then. Says that that drummer fellow is back again. I hope -he'll keep away from her. He don't mean no good by her, and she goes -daft over him every time he turns up. My land! how do we know he hasn't -a wife somewheres else, when he goes off a year and more at a time, on -his long business trips? This time he's been to Australia. It was to -get her away from him that I asked her to spend that winter in Boston; -but now that he's back—well, I'm sure I don't know."</p> - -<p>Tom had not supposed that at the suggestion of a rival he would have -felt a pang; and yet he felt one.</p> - -<p>"Of course, there's some one; we know that. It must be some one too -who's got plenty of money, because he's given her a di'mond ring that -must be worth five hundred dollars, her other aunt tells me, if it's -worth a cent. We know he makes big money, because he's got a fine -position, and his family is one of the most high thought of in Nashua. -That's part of the trouble. They're very religious and toney, so they -wouldn't think Maisie a good enough match for him. Still, if he'd only -do one thing or the other,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> keep away from her, or ask her right out -and out to marry him...."</p> - -<p>Tom was no longer listening. The mention of Maisie's diamond had made -him one hot lump of shame. He knew more of the cost of jewels now than -when he had purchased the engagement ring, and even if he didn't know -much he knew enough.</p> - -<p>A few days later he was in Nashua. He went, partly because he had the -day to spare before he took up college work again, partly because of a -desire to learn what was truly in Maisie's heart, partly to make her -some amends for his long neglect of her, and mostly because he needed -to pour out his confession as to the diamond ring. Having been warned -of his coming, Maisie, who had got rid of the children for an hour or -two, awaited him in the parlor.</p> - -<p>A little powder, a little unnecessary rouge, a sweater of imitation -cherry-colored silk, gave her the vividness of a well-made artificial -flower. Even Tom could see that, with her neat short skirt and -high-heeled shoes, she was dressed beyond the note of the shabby little -room; but if she would only twine her arms around his neck, and give -him one of the kisses that used to be so sweet, he could overlook -everything else.</p> - -<p>Her eyes on the big square cardboard box he carried in his hand, she -received him somberly. Having allowed him to kiss her, she sat down at -the end of a table drawn up beside the window, while he put the box in -front of her.</p> - -<p>"What's this?"</p> - -<p>He placed himself at the other end of the table,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> having its length -between them. Because of his waning love, because of the ring above -all, he had done one of those reckless things which sometimes render -men exultant. From his slender means he had filched a hundred dollars -for a set of furs. He watched Maisie's face as she untied knots and -lifted the cover of the band-box.</p> - -<p>On discovering the contents her expression became critical. She -fingered the fur without taking either of the articles from the box. -Turning over an edge of the boa, she looked at the lining. It was a -minute or two before she took out the muff and held it in her hands. -She examined it as if she were buying it in a shop.</p> - -<p>"That's a last year's style," was her first observation. "It'll be -regular old-fashioned by next winter, and, of course, I shouldn't want -a muff before then. The girls'll think I got them second-hand when -they're as out of date as all that. They're awful particular in Nashua, -more like New York than Boston." She shook out the boa. "Those little -tails are sweet, but they don't wear them now. How much did you give?"</p> - -<p>He told her.</p> - -<p>"They're not worth it. It's the marked-down season too. Some one's put -it over on you. I could have got them for half the price—and younger. -These are an old woman's furs. The girls'll say my aunt in Boston's -died, and left them to me in her will."</p> - -<p>Brushing them aside, she faced him with her resentful eyes. Her hands -were clasped in front of her, the diamond flashing on the finger -resting on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> table-scarf of thin brown silk embroidered in magenta -ferns.</p> - -<p>"Well, Tom, what's your answer to my letter?"</p> - -<p>At any other minute he would have replied gently, placatingly; but just -now his heart was hot. A hundred dollars had meant much to him. It -would have to be paid back in paring down on all his necessities, in -food, in carfares, even in the washing of his clothes. He too clasped -his hands on the table, facing her as she faced him. He remembered -afterward how blue her eyes had been, blue as lapis lazuli. All he -could see in them now was demand, and further demand, and demand again -after that.</p> - -<p>"Have I got to give you an answer, Maisie? If so, it's only the one -I've given you before. We'll be married when I get through college, and -have found work."</p> - -<p>"And when'll that be?"</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry to say it won't be for another two years, at the earliest."</p> - -<p>"Another two years, and I've waited three already!"</p> - -<p>"I know you have. But listen, Maisie! When we got engaged I was only -sixteen. You were only eighteen. Even now I'm only nineteen, and you're -only twenty-one. We've got lots of time. It would be foolish for us to -be married...."</p> - -<p>She broke in, drily. "So I see."</p> - -<p>"You see what, Maisie?"</p> - -<p>"What you want me to see. If you think I'm dying to marry you...."</p> - -<p>"No, I'm not such an idiot as that. But if we're in love with each -other, as we used to be...."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> - -<p>"As you used to be."</p> - -<p>"As I used to be of course; and you too, I suppose."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you needn't kill yourself supposing."</p> - -<p>He drew back. "What do you mean by that, Maisie?"</p> - -<p>"What do you think I mean?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know. It sounds as if you were trying to tell me that -you'd never cared anything about me."</p> - -<p>"How much did you ever care about me?"</p> - -<p>"I used to think I couldn't live without you."</p> - -<p>"And you've found out that you can."</p> - -<p>"I've had to, for one thing; and for another, I'm older now, and I know -that nobody is really essential to anybody else. All the same—"</p> - -<p>"Yes, Tom; all the same—what?"</p> - -<p>"If you'd be willing to take what I can offer you—"</p> - -<p>"Take what you can offer me! You're not offering me anything."</p> - -<p>He explained his ambitions, for her as well as for himself. Life was -big; it was full of opportunity; his origin didn't chain any man who -knew how to burst its bonds. He did know. He didn't know how he knew, -but he did. He just had it in him. When you knew you had it in you, -you didn't depend on anyone to tell you; you yourself became your own -corroboration.</p> - -<p>But in order to fulfil this conviction of inner power you needed to -know things. You needed the experience, the standing, the rubbing up -against other men, which you got in college in a way that you didn't -get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> anywhere else. You got some of it by going into business, but only -some of it. In any case, it was no more than a chance in business. -You might get it or you might not. With the best will in the world on -your part, it might slip by you. In college it couldn't slip by you, -if you had any intelligence at all. All the past experience of mankind -was gathered up there for you to profit by. You could only absorb a -little of it, of course. But you acquired the habit of absorbing. It -was not so much what you learned that gave college its value; it was -the learning of a habit of learning. You got an attitude of mind. Your -attitude of mind was what made you, what determined your place in the -world. With a closed mind you got nowhere; with an open mind the world -was as the sea driving all its fish into your net. College opened the -mind; it was the easiest method by which it could be done. If she would -only be patient till he had got through the preliminary training and -had found the job for which he would be fitted....</p> - -<p>"But what's the use of waiting when you can get a job for which you'd -be fitted right off the bat? There's a family up here on the hill that -wants a shofer. They give a hundred and twenty-five a month. Why go to -all that trouble about opening your mind when here's the job handed out -to you? The gentleman-friend I told you about says that business has -got college skinned. He says colleges are punk. He says lots of men in -business won't take a man if he's been to college. They'd want a fellow -with some get-up-and-get to him."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> - -<p>He began to understand her as he had never done before. Maisie had -the closed mind. She was Honey's "orthodock," the type which accepts -the limitations other people fix for it. He registered the thought, -long forming in his mind subconsciously, that among American types the -orthodock is the commonest. It was not true, as so often assumed, that -the average American is keen to forge ahead and become something bigger -than he is. That was one of the many self-flattering American ideals -that had no relation to life. Mrs. Ansley's equality of opportunity was -another. People passed these phrases on, and took for granted they were -true, when in everyday practice they were false.</p> - -<p>There could be no breaking forth into a larger life so long as the -national spirit made for repression, suppression, restriction, and -denial. Maisie was but one of the hundred and sixteen millions of -Americans out of a possible hundred and seventeen on whom all the -pressure of social, industrial, educational, and religious life had -been brought to bear to keep her mind shut, her tastes puerile, and -her impulses to expansion thwarted. With a great show of helping and -blessing the less fortunate, American life, he was coming to believe, -was organized to force them back, and beat them into subjection. The -hundred and seventeenth million loved to believe that it wasn't so; it -was not according to their consciences that it should be so; but the -result could be seen in the hundred and sixteen million minds drilled -to disability, as Maisie's was.</p> - -<p>A young man not yet hardened to life's injustices, he saw himself -rushing to Maisie's aid, to make the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> best of her. Experience would -help her as it had helped him. The shriveled bud of her mind would -unfold in warmth and sunshine. This would be in their future together. -In the meantime he must clear the ground of the present by getting rid -of pretence.</p> - -<p>"There's one thing I want to tell you, Maisie, something I'm rather -ashamed of."</p> - -<p>The lapis lazuli eyes widened in a look of wonder. He might be going to -tell her of another girl.</p> - -<p>"You know, as I've just said, that when we got engaged I was only -sixteen. I didn't know anything about anything. I thought I did, of -course; but then all fellows of sixteen think that. I'd never had -anyone to teach me, or show me the right hang of things. You saw for -yourself how I lived with Honey; and before that, as you know, I'd been -a State ward. Further back than that—but I can't talk about it yet. -Some day when we're married, and know each other better—"</p> - -<p>"I'm not asking you. I don't care."</p> - -<p>"No, I know you don't care, and that you're not asking me; but I want -you to understand how it was that I was so ignorant, so much more -ignorant than I suppose any other fellow would have been. When I went -out to buy that ring you've got on—"</p> - -<p>He knew by the horror in her face that she divined what he had to tell -her. He knew too that she had already been afraid of it.</p> - -<p>"You're not going to say that it isn't a real diamond?"</p> - -<p>To nerve himself he had to look at her steadily. Confessing a murder -would have been easier.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> - -<p>"No, Maisie, it isn't a real diamond. At the time I bought it I didn't -know what a real diamond was. I'm not sure that I know now—"</p> - -<p>He stopped because, without taking her eyes from his, she was slipping -the ring from her finger. She was slipping, too, an illusion from her -mind. He knew now that to be trifled with in love, to be betrayed in a -great trust, would be small things to Maisie as compared to this kind -of deception. Her wrath and contempt were the more scathing to behold -because of her cherry-colored prettiness.</p> - -<p>The ring lay on the table. Drawing in the second finger of her right -hand, she made of it a spring against her thumb. She loosed the spring -suddenly. The faked diamond sped across the table hitting against his -hand. He picked it up, putting it out of sight in his waistcoat pocket. -For a fellow of nineteen, eager to be something big, no lower depth of -humiliation could ever be imagined.</p> - -<p>Maisie stood up. "You cheap skate!"</p> - -<p>He bowed his head as a criminal sometimes does when sentenced. He -had no protest to make. A cheap skate was what he was. He sat there -crushed. Skirting round him as if he were defiled, she went out into -the little entry.</p> - -<p>He was still sitting crushed when she came back. She did not pause. -She merely flung his hat on the table as she went by. It was a cheap -skate's hat, a brown soft felt, shapeless, weather-stained, three years -out of style. With no further words, she opened the door into the -adjoining room, passed through it, and closed it noiselessly behind -her.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXIV</p> - - -<p class="drop">F<span class="uppercase">or</span> probating Honey's will he asked leave to come and consult Mr. -Ansley. An appointment was made for an evening when that gentleman was -to be at home.</p> - -<p>Tom, who had some gift for character, was beginning to understand -him. Understanding him, it seemed to him that he understood all that -old Boston which had once been a national institution, a force in the -country's history, and now, like a man retired from business, sat -resting on its hill.</p> - -<p>Old Boston was more significant, however, than a man retired from -business, in that it was to a great degree a man retired from the -pushing of ideals. Generous once with the hot generosity of youth, -keen to throw itself into the fight against wrongs, ready to be -slaughtered in the van rather than compromise on principles, old -Boston had now reached the age of mellowness. It had grown weary in -well-doing. It had done enough. Contending with national evils had -proved to be futile. National evils had grown too big, too many, too -insurgent. Better make the best of life as your people mean to live -it. Keep quiet; take it easy; save money; let the country gang its own -gait. A big turbulent country, with no more respect for old Boston -than for the prophet Jeremiah, it wallowed in prosperous vul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>garity. -Let it wallow! With solid investments in cotton and copper old Boston -could save its own soul. It withdrew from its country; it withdrew -from its state; it withdrew from its own city. Where its ancestors -had made the laws and administered them, it became, like those proud -old groups of Spaniards still to be found in California, a remnant of -a former time, making no further stand against the invader. With a -little art, a little literature, a little music, a little education, a -little religion, a little mild beneficence, and a great deal of astute -financial and professional ability, it could pass its time and keep its -high-mindedness intact.</p> - -<p>To Tom's summing up this was Philip Ansley. He was able, -public-spirited, and generous; but he was disillusioned. The United -States of his forefathers, of which he kept the ideal in his soul, had -turned into such a hodgepodge of mankind, that he had neither hope -nor sentiment with regard to it. In his heart he believed that its -governments were in the hands of what he called a bunch of crooks. -With congresses, state legislatures, and civic councils elected by -what to him were hordes of ignoramuses, with laws dictated by cranks -and fanatics, with the old-time liberties stampeded by the tyranny of -majorities lacking a sense of responsibility, he deemed it prudent to -follow the line of least resistance and give himself to making money. -Apart from casting his vote for the Republican ticket on election days, -he left city, state, and country to the demagogues and looters. He was -sorry to do this, yet with the world as it was, he saw no help for it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> - -<p>But he served as director on the boards of a good many companies; he -was an Overseer of Harvard, a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, -the treasurer of several hospitals, a subscriber to every important -philanthropic fund. His club was the Somerset; his church was Trinity. -For old Boston these two facts when taken together placed him in that -sacred shrine which in England consecrates dowager duchesses.</p> - -<p>When Tom was shown up he found his host in the room where two years -earlier they had talked over the place as chauffeur, but he was no -longer awed by it. Neither was he awed by finding Ansley wearing a -dinner-jacket simply because it was evening. The conventions and -amenities of civilized life were becoming a matter of course to him.</p> - -<p>"How d'ye do? Come in. Sit down. What's the weather like outside? Still -pretty cold for April, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>Though he offered his hand only from his armchair, where he sat reading -the evening paper, he offered it. It was also a tribute to Tom's -progress that he was asked to take a seat. A still further sign of -his having reached a position remotely on a footing of equality with -the Ansleys was an invitation to help himself from a silver box of -cigarettes.</p> - -<p>Having respectfully declined this honor, as Ansley himself was not -smoking, he stated his errand. If Mr. Ansley would introduce him to -some young inexpensive lawyer, who would tell him what to do in the -probating of Honey's will....</p> - -<p>The business was soon settled. In possession of Ansley's card with a -scribbled line on it, Tom rose to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> take his leave. Ansley rose also, -but moved toward the fireplace, where a few sticks were smoldering, as -if he had something more to say.</p> - -<p>"Wait a minute. Sit down again. Have a cigarette."</p> - -<p>As Ansley himself lighted a cigar, Tom took a cigarette from the silver -box, and leaned against the back of the big chair from which he had -just risen. Once more he was struck by the resemblance between the -shrewd close-lipped face, dropping into its meditative cast, and the -lampshade just below it, parchment with a touch of rose, and an inner -light. Ansley puffed for a minute or two pensively.</p> - -<p>"You've no family, I believe. You haven't got the complications of a -lot of relatives."</p> - -<p>Tom was surprised by the new topic. "No, sir. I wish I had, but—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, well, for a young fellow like you, bound to get on—" He dropped -this line to take up another. "I'm thinking about Guy. Occurred to me -the other day that while he'd been dragged about Europe a good many -times he didn't know anything of his own country. Never been west of -the Hudson."</p> - -<p>Tom smoked and wondered.</p> - -<p>"I've suggested to him to take his summer's vacation and wander -about. Get the lay of the land. Could cover a good deal of ground in -three months. Zigzag up and down—Niagara—Colorado—Chicago—Grand -Canyon—California—Seattle—back if he liked by the Canadian Pacific. -What would you think?"</p> - -<p>"I think it would be great."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Would you go with him?"</p> - -<p>It seemed to Tom that his brain was spinning round. Not only was he too -dazed to find words, but the question of money came first. How could he -afford ...?</p> - -<p>But Ansley went on again. "It's a choice between you and a tutor. -My wife would like a tutor. Guy wants you. So do I. You'd have your -traveling expenses, of course—do everything the same as Guy—and, let -us say, five hundred dollars for your time. Would that suit you?"</p> - -<p>He didn't know how to answer. Excitement, gratitude, and a sense -of insufficiency churned together and choked him. It was only by -spluttering and stammering that he could say at last:</p> - -<p>"If—if Mrs. Ansley—d-doesn't w-want me—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, she'd give in. Simply feels that Guy'd get more good out of it if -he had some one to point out moral lessons as he went along. I don't. -Two young fellows together, if they're at all the right kind, 'll do -each other more good than all the law and the prophets."</p> - -<p>"But would you mind telling me, sir, something of what you'd expect -from me?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, nothing! Just play round with him, and have a good time. You seem -to chum up with him all right."</p> - -<p>Tom was distressed. "Yes, sir, but if I'm to be—to be paid for -chumming up with him I should have to—"</p> - -<p>"Forget it. I want Guy to take the trip. It's not the kind of trip -anyone wants to take alone, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> you're the fellow he'd like to have -with him. I'd like it too. You understand him."</p> - -<p>He turned round to knock the ash from his cigar into the dying fire.</p> - -<p>"Trouble with Guy is that he has no sense of values. Thing he needs to -learn is what's worth while and what's not. I don't want you to teach -him. I just want him to <i>see</i>. What do you say?"</p> - -<p>Tom hung his head, not from humility but to think out a point that -troubled him.</p> - -<p>"You know, sir"—he looked up again—"that when Guy and I get together -we talk about things that—well, that you mightn't like."</p> - -<p>"I don't care a hang what you talk about."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir; but this is something particular."</p> - -<p>"Well, then, keep it to yourself."</p> - -<p>"I can't keep it to myself because—because some day you might think -that I'd had a bad ... as long as we've just been chums ... and I -wasn't paid—"</p> - -<p>Ansley moved away from the fireplace, striding up and down in front of -it.</p> - -<p>"Look here, my boy! I know what young fellows are. I know you talk -about things you wouldn't bring up before Mrs. Ansley and me. I don't -care. It's what I expect. Do you both good. You're not specially -vicious, either of you, and even if you were—"</p> - -<p>"It's not a matter of morals, sir; it's one of opinions."</p> - -<p>He dismissed this lightly. "Oh, opinions!"</p> - -<p>"But this is a special kind of opinion. You see, sir, I've always been -poor. I've lived among poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> people. I've seen how much they have to go -without. And I begin to see all that rich people have more than they -need—more than they can ever use."</p> - -<p>"Oh, quite so! I see! I see! And you both get a bit revolutionary. -Go to it, boy! Fellows of your age who're not boiling over with -rebellion against social conditions as they are'll never be worth their -salt. Don't say anything about it before Mrs. Ansley, but between -yourselves.... Why, when I was an undergraduate.... You'll live through -it, though.... The poor people don't want any champions.... They don't -want to be helped.... You get sick of it in the long run.... But while -you're young boil away.... If that's all that bothers you...."</p> - -<p>Tom explained that it was all that bothered him, and the bargain was -struck. He had expressed his thanks, shaken hands, and reached the -threshold on the way out when Ansley spoke again.</p> - -<p>"Guy tells me that out at Cambridge they call you the Whitelaw Baby. I -suppose you know all about yourself—your people—where you began—that -sort of thing?"</p> - -<p>He decided to be positive, laconic, to do what he could to squelch the -idea in Ansley's mind.</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir; I do."</p> - -<p>"Then that settles that."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXV</p> - - -<p class="drop">B<span class="uppercase">etween</span> the end of the college year and the departure on the journey -westward there was to be an interval of three weeks. Mrs. Ansley had -insisted on that. She was a mother. For eight or nine months she had -seen almost nothing of her boy. Now if he was to be taken from her for -the summer, and for another college year after that, she might as well -not have a son at all.</p> - -<p>Tom was considering where he should pass the intervening time when the -following note unnerved him.</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p> - -<i>Dear Mr. Whitelaw</i><br /> -</p> - -<p>Mother wants to know if when college closes, and Guy joins us in New -Hampshire, you will not come with him for the three weeks before you -start on your trip. Please do. I shall have got there by that time, -and I haven't seen you now for nearly two years. We must have a lot of -notes to compare, and ought to be busy comparing them. Do come then, -for our sakes if not for your own. You will give us a great deal of -pleasure.</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 5%;"> -Yours very sincerely,</p> -<p style="margin-left: 45%;"> -<span class="smcap">Hildred Ansley</span>.<br /> -</p></blockquote> - -<p>His heart failed him. It failed him because of the details as to -customs, etiquette, and dress he didn't know anything about. He should -be called on to speak fluently in a language of which he was only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> -beginning to spell out the little words. It seemed to him at first that -he couldn't accept the invitation.</p> - -<p>Then, not to accept it began to look like cowardice. He would never -get anywhere if he funked what he didn't know. When you didn't know -you went to work and found out. You couldn't find out unless you put -yourself in the way of seeing what other people did. After twenty-four -hours of reflection he penned the simplest form of note. Thanking -Hildred for her mother's kind invitation, he accepted it. Before -putting his letter in the post, however, he dropped in to call on Guy. -Guy, who was strumming the Love-Death of Isolde, tossed his comments -over his shoulder as he thumped out the passion.</p> - -<p>"That's Hildred. She's made mother do it. Nutty on that sort of thing."</p> - -<p>Tom's heart failed him again. "Nutty on what sort of thing?"</p> - -<p>Isolde's anguish mounted and mounted till it seemed as if it couldn't -mount any higher, and yet went on mounting. "Oh, well! She's toted it -up that you haven't got a home—that for three weeks after college -closes you'll be on the town—and so on."</p> - -<p>"I see."</p> - -<p>"All the same, come along. I'd just as soon. Dad won't be there hardly. -The old lady'll be booming about, but you needn't mind her. You'll have -your room and grub for those three weeks, and that's all you've got to -think about. Anyhow, it's bats in the attic with Hildred the minute it -comes to a lame dog."</p> - -<p>While Guy's fat figure swayed over the piano, Isolde's great heart -broke. Tom went back to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> room and wrote a second answer, regretting -that owing to the pressure of his engagements he would be unable....</p> - -<p>And then there came another reaction. What did it matter if Hildred -Ansley <i>was</i> opening the door out of pity? Pity was one of the -loveliest traits of character. Only a cad would resent it. He sent his -first reply.</p> - -<p>Having done this, he felt it right to go and call on Mrs. Ansley. He -was sure she didn't want him in New Hampshire, but by taking it for -granted that she did he would discount some of her embarrassment.</p> - -<p>As Mrs. Ansley was not at home Pilcher held out a little silver tray. -Tom understood that he should have had a card to put in it. A card was -something of which he had never hitherto felt the need. He said so to -Pilcher frankly.</p> - -<p>Pilcher's stony medieval face, the face of a saint on the portal of -some primitive cathedral, smiled rarely, but when it did it smiled -engagingly.</p> - -<p>"You'll find a visitin' card very 'andy, Mr. Tom, now that you're so -big. Mr. Guy has had one this long spell back."</p> - -<p>It was a lead. In shy unobtrusive ways Pilcher had often shown himself -his friend. Tom confessed his yearning for a card if only he knew how -to order one.</p> - -<p>"I'll show you one of Mr. Guy's. He always has the right thing. I'll -find out too where he gets them done. If you'll step in, Mr. Tom...."</p> - -<p>As he waited in the dining room, with the good-natured Ansley ancestor -smiling down at him, there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> floated through Tom's mind a phrase from -the Bible as taught by Mrs. Tollivant. "The Lord sent His angel." -Wasn't that what He was doing now, and wasn't the angel taking -Pilcher's guise? When the heavenly messenger came back with the card -Tom went straight to his point.</p> - -<p>"Pilcher, I wonder if you'd mind helping me?"</p> - -<p>"I'd do it and welcome, Mr. Tom."</p> - -<p>Mr. Tom told of his invitation to New Hampshire, and of his ignorance -of what to do and wear. If Pilcher would only give him a hint....</p> - -<p>He could not have found a better guide. Pilcher explained that a few -little things had to be as second nature. A few other little things -were uncertain points as to which it was always permissible to ask. In -the way of second nature Tom would find sporting flannels and tennis -shoes an essential. So he would find a dinner-jacket suit, with the -right kind of shirt, collar, tie, shoes, and socks to wear with it. As -to things permissible to ask about, Pilcher could more easily explain -them when they were both in the same house. Occasions would crop up, -but could not be foreseen.</p> - -<p>"The real gentry is ever afraid of showin' that they don't know. They -takes not knowin' as a joke. Many's the time when I've been waitin' at -table I've 'eard a born gentleman ask the born lady sittin' next to 'im -which'd be the right fork to use, and she'd say that she didn't know -but was lookin' round to see what other people done. That's what they -calls hease of manner, Mr. Tom."</p> - -<p>Under the Ansley roof he would meet none but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> gentry born. Any -one of them would respect him more for asking when he didn't know. -It was only the second class that bothered about being so terribly -correct, and they were not invited by Mrs. Ansley. In addition to -these consoling facts Tom could always fall back on him, Pilcher, as a -referee.</p> - -<p>Being a guest in a community in which two years earlier he had been a -chauffeur Tom found easier than he had expected because he worked out a -formula. He framed his formula before going to New Hampshire.</p> - -<p>"Servants are servants and masters are masters because they divide -themselves into classes. The one is above, and is recognized as being -above; the other is below, and is recognized as being below. I shall -be neither below nor above; or I shall be both. I will <i>not</i> go into a -class. As far as I know how I'll be everybody's equal."</p> - -<p>He had, however, to find another formula for this.</p> - -<p>"You're everybody's equal when you know you are. Whatever you know -will go of itself. The trouble I see with the bumptious American, who -claims that he's as good as anybody else, is that he thinks only of -forcing himself to the level of the highest; he doesn't begin at the -bottom, and cover all the ground between the bottom and the top. I'm -going to do that. I shall be at home among the lot of them. To be at -home I must <i>feel</i> at home. I mustn't condescend to the boys of two -years ago who'll still be driving cars, and I mustn't put on airs to -be fit for Mrs. Ansley's drawing-room. I must be myself. I mustn't -be ashamed because I've been in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> humble position; and I mustn't be -swanky because I've been put in a better one. I must be natural; I must -be big. That'll give me the ease of manner Pilcher talks about."</p> - -<p>With these principles as a basis of behavior, his embarrassments sprang -from another source. They began at the station in Keene. He knew he was -to be met; and he supposed it would be by Guy.</p> - -<p>"Oh, here you are!"</p> - -<p>She came on him suddenly in the crowd, tall, free in her movements, -always a little older than her age. If in the nearly two years since -their last meeting changes had come to him, more had apparently come -to her. She was a woman, while he was not yet a man. She was easy, -independent, taking the lead with natural authority. From the first -instant of shaking hands he felt in her something solicitous and -protective.</p> - -<p>It showed itself in the little things as to which awkwardness or -diffidence on his part might have been presumed. So as not to leave him -in doubt of what he ought to do, she took the initiative with an air of -quiet, competent command. She led the way to the car; she told him to -throw his handbags and coat into the back part of it; she made him sit -beside her as she drove.</p> - -<p>"No, I'm going to drive," she insisted, when he had offered to take the -wheel. "I want you to see how well I can do it. I like showing off. -This is my own car. I drove it all last summer."</p> - -<p>They talked about cars and their makes because the topic was an easy -one.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p> - -<p>Speeding out of Keene, they left behind them the meadows of the -Ashuelot to climb into a country with which Nature had been busy ever -since her first flaming forces had cooled down to form a world. Cooling -down and flinging up, she had tossed into the azoic age a tumble of -mountains higher doubtless than Andes or Alps. Barren, stupendous, -appalling, they would not have been easy for man, when he came, to live -with in comfort, had not the great Earth-Mother gone to some pains to -polish them down. Taking her leisure through eons of years, she brought -from the north her implement, the ice. Without haste, without rest, a -few inches in a century, she pushed it against the barrier she meant to -mold and penetrate.</p> - -<p>As a dyke before the pressure of a flood, the barrier broke here, broke -there, and yet as a whole maintained itself. Heights were cut off -from heights. Valleys were carved between them. What was sharp became -rounded; what was jagged was worn smooth. The highest pinnacles crashed -down. When after thousands of years the glacial mass receded, only the -stumps were left of what had once been terrific primordial elevations.</p> - -<p>Dense forests began to cover them. Lakes formed in the hollows. Little -rivers drained them, to be drained themselves by a nameless stream -which fell into a nameless sea. Through ages and ages the thrushes -sang, the wild bees hummed, and the bear, the deer, the fox, the lynx -ranged freely.</p> - -<p>Man came. He came stealthily, unnoted, leaving so light a trace that -nothing remains to tell of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> first passage but a few mysterious -syllables. The river once nameless became the Connecticut; the base of -a mighty primeval mountain bears the Nipmuck name Monadnock.</p> - -<p>In this angle of New Hampshire thrust in between Massachusetts -and Vermont names are a living record. The Nipmuck disappeared in -proportion as the restless English colonists pushed farther and farther -from the sea. They came in little companies, generally urged by some -religious disagreement with those they had left behind. To escape -the "Congregational way" they fled into the mountains. There they -were free to follow the "Episcoparian way." As "Episcoparians" they -printed the map with names which enshrined their old-home memories. -Clustering within sight of the blue mass of Monadnock are neat white -towns—Marlborough, Richmond, Chesterfield, Walpole, Peterborough, -Fitzwilliam, Winchester—rich with "Episcoparian" suggestion.</p> - -<p>In the early eighteenth century there came in another strain. Driven -by famine, a thousand pilgrims arrived in these relatively empty lands -from the North of Ireland, sturdy, strong-minded, Protestant. Grouping -themselves into three communities, they named them with Irish names, -Antrim, Hillsborough, Dublin. It was to Dublin that Tom and Hildred -were on the way.</p> - -<p>The subject of cars exhausted, she swung to something else.</p> - -<p>"You like the idea of going with Guy?"</p> - -<p>"It's great."</p> - -<p>"I like it too. I'd rather he was with you than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> with anybody. You -never make game of him, and yet you never humor him."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean by that, that I never humor him?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, well! Guy's standards aren't very high. We know that. But you -never lower yours."</p> - -<p>"How do you know I don't?"</p> - -<p>"Because Guy says so. Don't imagine for a minute that he doesn't see. -He likes you so much because he respects you."</p> - -<p>"He respects a lot of other fellows too."</p> - -<p>A little "H'm!" through pursed-up lips was a sign of dissent. "I -wonder. He goes with them, I know, and rather envies them, which is -what I mean by his standards not being very high; but—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, Guy's all right. The fellows you speak of are sometimes a little -fresh; but he knows where to draw the line. He'll go to a certain -point; but you won't get him beyond it."</p> - -<p>"And he owes that to you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, he doesn't, not in the least."</p> - -<p>"Well, <i>I</i>—" she held the personal pronoun for emphasis—"think he -does."</p> - -<p>In this good opinion she was able to be firm because she seemed older -than he. In reality she was two years younger, but life in a larger -society had given her something of the tone of a woman of the world. -This development on her part disconcerted him. So long as she had been -the slip of a thing he remembered, prim, sedate, old-fashioned as the -term is applied to children, she had not been a factor in his relations -with the Ansley family. Now, sud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>denly, he saw her as the most -important factor of all. The emergence of personality troubled him. -Since she was obliged to keep her eyes on the turnings of the road, he -was able to study her in profile.</p> - -<p>It was the first time he had really looked at a woman since he had -summed up Maisie in Nashua. That had been two months earlier. The -place which Maisie had so long held in his heart had been empty for -those two months, except for a great bitterness. It was the bitterness -of disillusion, of futility. Rage and pain were in it, with more of -mortification than there was of either. He would never again hear of -a cheap skate without thinking of the figure he had cut in the eyes -of the girl whom he thought he was honoring merely in being true. All -girls had been hateful to him since that day, just as all boys will be -to a dog who has been stoned by one of them. Yet here he was already -looking at a girl with something like fascination.</p> - -<p>That was because fascination was the emotion she evoked. She was -strange; she was arresting. You wondered what she was like. You watched -her when she moved; you listened to her when she talked. Once you had -heard her voice, bell-like and crystalline, you would always be able to -recall it.</p> - -<p>He noticed the way she was dressed because her knitted silk sweater was -of a pattern he had never seen before. It ran in horizontal dog-toothed -bands, shading from green to blue, and from blue to a dull red. Green -was the predominating color, grass-green, jade-green, sea-green, -sage-green, but toned to sobriety by this red of old brick, this -blue of indigo. Indigo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> was the short plain skirt, and the stockings -below it. An indigo tam-o'-shanter was pinned to her smooth, glossy, -bluish-black hair with a big carnelian pin. He remembered that he used -to think her Cambodian. He thought so again.</p> - -<p>Having arrived at the house, they found no one but Pilcher to receive -them. Mrs. Ansley had gone out to tea; Mr. Guy had left word for Miss -Hildred to bring Mr. Tom to the club, where he was playing tennis.</p> - -<p>"Do you care to go?"</p> - -<p>Knowing that he couldn't spend three weeks in Dublin without facing -this invitation, he had decided in advance to accept it the first time -it came.</p> - -<p>"If you go."</p> - -<p>"All right; let's. But you'd like first to go to your room, wouldn't -you? Pilcher, take Mr. Whitelaw up. I'll wait here with the car. We'll -start as soon as you come down." Running up the stairs, he wondered -whether it would be the proper thing for him to change to his new white -flannels, when, as if divining his perplexity, she called after him. -"Come just as you are. Don't stop to put on other things. I'll go as I -am too."</p> - -<p>This maternal foresight was again on guard as they turned from the road -into the driveway to the club.</p> - -<p>"Do you want to come and be introduced to a lot of people, or would you -rather browse about by yourself? You can do whichever you like."</p> - -<p>He replied with a suggestion. As a good many cars would be parked in -the narrow space of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> club avenues, he thought she had better jump -out at the club steps, leaving him to find a space where the car could -stand. He would hang around there till Guy's game was over and the -party was ready to go home.</p> - -<p>Having parked the car, he was in with the chauffeurs, some of whom -were old acquaintances. True to his formula, he went about among them, -shaking hands, and asking for their news. They were oddly alike, not -only in their dustcoats and chauffeurs' caps, but in features and cast -of mind.</p> - -<p>"You got a job?" he was asked in his turn.</p> - -<p>"Been taken on to travel with young Ansley. We stay here for three -weeks, and then go out west."</p> - -<p>"Loot pretty good?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, just about the same, and, of course, I get my expenses."</p> - -<p>"Pretty soft, what?" came from an Englishman.</p> - -<p>"Yes, but then it's only for the summer."</p> - -<p>These duties done, he felt free to stroll off till he found a -convenient rock on which to sit by the lakeside. Lighting a cigarette, -he was glad of a half hour to himself in which to enjoy the scene. It -was a reposeful scene, because all that was human and sporting in it -was lost in the living spirit of the background.</p> - -<p>It was what he had always felt in this particular landscape, and had -never been able to define till now—its quality of life. It was life of -another order from physical life, and on another plane. You might have -said that it reached you out of some phase of creation different from -that of Earth. These hills were living<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> hills; this lake was a living -lake. Through them, as in the serene sky, a Presence shone and smiled -on you. He had often noticed, during the summer at the inn-club, that -you could sit idle and silent with that Presence, and not be bored. You -looked and looked; you thought and thought; you were bathed about in -tranquillity. People might be running around, and calling or shouting, -as they were doing now in the tennis courts on a ledge of the hillside -above him, not five hundred yards away, but they disturbed you no more -than the birds or the butterflies. The Presence was too immense, too -positive, to allow little things to trouble it. Rather, it took them -and absorbed them, as if the Supreme Activity, which for millions of -years before there was a man had been working to transform this spot -into a cup of overflowing loveliness, could use anything that came Its -way.</p> - -<p>So he sat and smoked and thought and felt soothed. It was early enough -in the summer for the birds to be singing from all the wooded terraces -and the fringe of lakeside trees. Calls from the tennis courts, cries -from young people climbing on the raft in the lake or diving from the -spring-board, came to him softened and sweet. It was living peace, -invigorating, restful.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXVI</p> - - -<p class="drop">A <span class="uppercase">woman</span> passed along the driveway, and looked at him. He looked at her. -The rock on which he sat being no more than a dozen yards from where -she walked, they could see each other plainly. It seemed to him that -as she went by she relaxed her pace to study him. She was a little -woman, pretty, sad-faced, neatly dressed and perhaps fifty years of -age. Having passed once, she turned on her steps and passed again. -She passed a third time and a fourth. Each time she passed she gave -him the same long scrutinizing look, without self-consciousness or -embarrassment. He thought she might be a lady's maid or a chauffeur's -wife.</p> - -<p>He turned to watch a young man taking a swan dive from the -spring-board. Having run the few steps which was all the spring-board -allowed of, he stood poised on the edge, feet together, his arms at his -thighs. With the leap forward his arms went out at right angles. When -he turned toward the water they bent back behind his head, his palms -twisted upward. Nearing the surface they pointed downward, cleaving the -lake with a clean, splashless penetration. The whole movement had been -lithe and graceful, the curve of a swan's neck, the spring of a flying -fish.</p> - -<p>Not till she was close beside him did he notice that the little woman -had left the roadway, crossed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> intervening patch of blueberry -scrub, and seated herself on a low bowlder close to his own.</p> - -<p>Her self-possession was that of a woman with a single dominating -motive. "You've just arrived with Miss Ansley, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>The voice, like the manner, was intense and purposeful. In assenting, -he had the feeling of touching something elemental, like hunger or -fire, which wouldn't be denied.</p> - -<p>"And you're at Harvard."</p> - -<p>He assented to this also.</p> - -<p>"At Harvard they call you the Whitelaw Baby, don't they?"</p> - -<p>"I've heard so. Why do you ask?"</p> - -<p>"Because I'm the nurse from whom the Whitelaw baby was stolen nearly -twenty years ago. My name is Nash."</p> - -<p>A memory came to him of something far away. He could hear Honey saying -he had seen her, a pretty little Englishwoman, and that Nash was her -name. Looking at her now, he saw that she was more than a pretty little -Englishwoman; she was a soul in torture, with a flame eating at the -heart. He felt sorry for her, but not so sorry as to be free from -impatience at the dogging with which the Whitelaw baby followed him.</p> - -<p>"Why do you say this to me?"</p> - -<p>"Because of what I've heard from the family. They've spoken of you. -They think it—queer."</p> - -<p>"They think what queer?"</p> - -<p>"That your name is Whitelaw—that your father's name was Theodore—that -you look so much like the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> rest of them. Mr. Whitelaw's name is Henry -Theodore—"</p> - -<p>"And my father's name was only Theodore. My mother's name was Lucy. I -was born in The Bronx. I'm exactly nineteen years of age. I've heard -that Mr. Whitelaw's son if he were living now would be twenty."</p> - -<p>Large gray eyes with silky drooping lids rested on his with a look of -long, slow searching. "You're sure of all that?"</p> - -<p>He tried to laugh. "As sure as you can be of what's not within your own -recollection. I've been told it. I've reason to believe it."</p> - -<p>"I'd no reason to believe that I should ever find my boy again; but I -know I shall."</p> - -<p>"That must be a comfort to you in the trial you've had to face."</p> - -<p>"It hasn't been a trial exactly, because you bear a trial and live -through it. This has been spending every day and every night in the -lake of fire and brimstone. I wonder if you've any idea of what it's -like."</p> - -<p>"I don't suppose I have."</p> - -<p>"If you did have—" He thought she was going to say that if he did have -he would allow himself to become the Whitelaw baby in order to relieve -her anguish, but she struck another note. "I hadn't the least suspicion -of what had been done to me till the two footmen had lifted the little -carriage up over the steps and into the hall. Then I raised the veil to -take my baby out, and I—I fell in a dead swoon."</p> - -<p>He waited for her to go on again.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Try to imagine what it is to find in place of the living child you've -laid in its bed with all the tenderness in your soul—to find in place -of that a dirty, ugly, stuffed thing, about a baby's size.... For days -after that I was just as if I was drugged. If I came to for a few -minutes I prayed that I mightn't live. I didn't want to look the mother -and father in the face."</p> - -<p>"But hadn't you told them anything about it?"</p> - -<p>"There was nothing to tell. The baby had vanished. I'd seen nothing; -I'd heard nothing. Neither had my friend who was with me, and who's -married now, in England. If an evil spirit had done it, it couldn't -have been silenter, or more secret. It was a mystery then; it's been a -mystery ever since."</p> - -<p>"But you raised an alarm? You made a search?"</p> - -<p>"The whole country raised the alarm. There wasn't a corner, or a -suspicious character, that wasn't searched. We knew it had been -done for ransom, and the ransom was ready if ever the baby had been -returned. The father and mother were that frantic they'd have done -anything. There never was a baby in the world more loved, or more -lovable. All three of us—the father, the mother, and myself—would -have died for him."</p> - -<p>He grew interested in the story for its own sake. "And did you never -get any idea at all?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing that ever led to anything. For a good five years Mr. Whitelaw -never rested. Mrs. Whitelaw—but it's no use trying to tell you. It -can't be told; it can't be so much as imagined. Even when you've lived -through it you wonder how you ever did. You wonder how you go on -living day by day. It's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> almost as if you were condemned to eternal -punishment. The clues were the worst."</p> - -<p>"You mean that—?"</p> - -<p>"If we could have known that the child was dead—well, you make up your -mind to that. After a while you can take up life again. But not to know -anything! Just to be left wondering! Asking yourself what they're doing -with him!—whether they're giving him the right kind of food!—whether -they're giving him <i>any</i> kind of food!—whether they're going to kill -him, and how they're going to kill him, and who's to do the killing! To -go over these questions morning, noon, and night—to eat with them, and -sleep with them, and wake with them—and then the clues!"</p> - -<p>"You said they were the worst."</p> - -<p>"Because they always made you hope. No matter how often you'd been -taken in you were ready to be taken in again. Each time they said -there was a chance you couldn't help thinking that there <i>might</i> be a -chance. It didn't matter how much you told yourself it wasn't likely. -You couldn't make yourself believe it. You felt that he'd <i>have</i> to -be found, that he couldn't help being found. The whole thing was so -impossible that you'd have to go to his room and look at his little -empty crib to persuade yourself that he wasn't there."</p> - -<p>To divert her from going over the ground she must have gone over -thousands of times already, he broke in with a new line of thought.</p> - -<p>"But I've heard that they don't want to find him now—a grown-up man."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p> - -<p>She stared at him fiercely. "<i>I</i> do. <i>I</i> want to find him. They were -not to blame. I was. It makes the difference."</p> - -<p>"Still he was their son."</p> - -<p>"He was their son, and they've suffered; but they can rest in spite -of their suffering. I can't. They can afford to give up hope because -they've nothing with which to reproach themselves. If they were me—"</p> - -<p>He began to understand. "I see. If you could find him and bring him -back, even if they didn't want him—"</p> - -<p>"I should have done <i>that</i> much. It would be something. It's why I -pleaded with them to let me stay with them when I suppose the very -sight of me must have tortured them. I swore that I'd give my life to -trying to—"</p> - -<p>"But what could you do when even the child's father, with all his -money, couldn't—?"</p> - -<p>"I could pray. They couldn't. They're not like that. Praying's all I've -ever done which wasn't done by somebody else. I've prayed as I don't -think many people have ever prayed; and now I've come to where—"</p> - -<p>"Where what?"</p> - -<p>The light in her eyes was lambent, leaping and licking like a flame.</p> - -<p>"Where I'm quieter." She made her statement slowly. "I seem to know -that he'll be given back to me because the Bible says that when we pray -believing that we <i>have</i> what we ask for we shall receive it. Latterly -I've believed that. I haven't forced myself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> to believe it. It's just -come of its own accord—something like a certainty."</p> - -<p>The claim in the look which without wavering fixed itself upon him -prompted another question. "And has that certainty got anything to do -with me?"</p> - -<p>"I wonder if it hasn't."</p> - -<p>"But I don't see how it can have, when you never saw me in your life -till twenty minutes ago."</p> - -<p>"I never saw you; but I'd heard of you. I meant to see you as soon as I -got a chance. I never got it till to-day."</p> - -<p>"But how did you know?"</p> - -<p>"That it was you? This way. You see I'm here with Miss Lily. She's -staying for a few nights at the inn-club before going to make some -visits."</p> - -<p>"Who's Miss Lily?"</p> - -<p>"She was the second of the two children born after my little boy was -taken. First there was Mr. Tad. Then there was a little girl. She knows -Miss Ansley. Miss Ansley told her you were coming up, that you'd very -likely be here this afternoon, so I came and waited. Even if I hadn't -seen you drive up with her—if we'd met in the heart of Africa—I'd -have known.... You've been taken for Mr. Tad already. You know that, -don't you?"</p> - -<p>"I know there's a resemblance."</p> - -<p>"It's more than a resemblance. It's—it's the whole story. Mr. Whitelaw -himself saw it first. When he came back after meeting you, in this very -place, nearly two years ago, he was—well, he was terribly upset. If it -hadn't been for Mr. Tad and Miss Lily—"</p> - -<p>"And their mother too."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Yes, I suppose; and their mother too. But that's not what we're -considering. Whether they want you or not, if you <i>are</i> the boy—"</p> - -<p>He tried to speak very gently. "But you see, I couldn't be. I had a -mother. I don't remember much about her because I was only six or seven -when she died. But two things I recall—the way she loved me, and the -way I loved her. If I thought there was any truth in what you—in what -you suspect—I couldn't love her any more."</p> - -<p>"I don't see why."</p> - -<p>"Because I should be charging her with a crime. Would you do that—to -your own mother—after she was dead?"</p> - -<p>"If she was dead it wouldn't matter."</p> - -<p>"Not to her. But it would to me."</p> - -<p>"It couldn't do you any harm."</p> - -<p>"I'm the only judge of that."</p> - -<p>There was exasperation in the eyes which seemed unable to tear -themselves from his face.</p> - -<p>"But most people would like to have it proved that they'd been—"</p> - -<p>"Been born rich men's sons. That's what you were going to say, isn't -it? I daresay I should have liked it, if.... But what's the use? We -don't gain anything by discussing it. You want to find some one who'll -pass for the lost boy. I understand that; and I understand how much it -would lessen all the grief—"</p> - -<p>She interrupted quickly. "Yes, but I wouldn't try to foist an imposter -on them, not if it would take me out of hell. If I didn't believe—"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p> - -<p>"But you don't believe now; you can't believe. What I've told you about -myself must make believing impossible."</p> - -<p>"Oh, if I hadn't believed when believing was impossible I shouldn't -have the little bit of mind I've got now. Believing when it was -impossible was all that kept me sane."</p> - -<p>"But you won't go on doing it, not as far as I'm concerned?"</p> - -<p>She rose, with dignity. "Why not? I shan't be hurting you, shall I? In -a way we all believe it—even the Whitelaw family—even Miss Ansley."</p> - -<p>He jumped up, startled. "Did she tell you so?"</p> - -<p>"She didn't tell me so exactly. We were talking about it—we've all -talked of it more than you suppose—and Miss Ansley said that you -couldn't be what you are unless you were—<i>somebody</i>."</p> - -<p>He tried to take this jocosely. "No, of course I couldn't."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but I know what she meant." She moved away from him, speaking over -her shoulder as she crossed the blueberry scrub, "It was more than -what's in the words."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXVII</p> - - -<p class="drop">E<span class="uppercase">xcept</span> for a passing glimpse in Dublin, Tom never saw Lily Whitelaw -till in December he met her at the ball at which Hildred Ansley came -out. As to going to this ball he had his usual fit of funk, but Hildred -had insisted.</p> - -<p>"But, Tom, you must. You're the one I care most about."</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't know what to do."</p> - -<p>"I'll see to that. You'll only have to do what I tell you."</p> - -<p>"And I haven't got an evening coat with tails."</p> - -<p>"Well, get one. If you look as well in it as you do in your -dinner-jacket outfit—and you'd better have a white waistcoat, a silk -hat, and a pair of white gloves. What'll happen to you when you get -there you can leave to me. Now that I know you look so well, and dance -so well, you'll give me no trouble at all."</p> - -<p>Her kindness humbled him. He felt the necessity of taking it as -kindness and nothing more. Knowing too that he must school his own -emotions to a sense of gratitude, he imagined that he so schooled them.</p> - -<p>With the five hundred dollars he had earned through the summer added -to what remained of Honey's legacy, he had enough for his current year -at Harvard, with a margin over. The tailed evening coat, the white -waistcoat, the silk hat, the gloves, he looked upon as an investment. -He went to the ball.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was given at the Shawmut, the new hotel with a specialty in this -sort of entertainment. The ballroom had been specially designed so as -to afford a spectacle. A circular cup, surrounded by a pillared gallery -for chaperons and couples preferring to "sit out," you descended into -it by one of four broad shallow staircases, whence the <i>coup d'oeil</i> -was superb.</p> - -<p>By being more or less passive, he got through the evening better than -he had expected. Knowing scarcely anyone, he fell back on his formula.</p> - -<p>"I mustn't be conscious of it. I must take not knowing anyone for -granted, as I should if I were in a crowd at a theater, or the lobby of -this hotel. If I feel like a stray cat I shall look like a stray cat. -If I feel at ease I shall look at ease."</p> - -<p>In this he was supported by the knowledge of wearing the right thing. -Even Guy, whom he had met for a minute in the cloakroom, had been -surprised into a compliment.</p> - -<p>"Gee whiz! Who do you think you are? The old lady's been afraid you'd -look like an outsider. Now she'll be struck silly. Lot of girls here -that you'll put their eye out."</p> - -<p>When he had shaken hands Hildred found a minute in which to whisper, -"Tom, you're the Greek god you read about in novels. Don't feel shy. -All you need do is to stand around and be ornamental. Your rôle is the -romantic unknown." She returned after the next bout of "receiving." -"You and I will have the supper dance. I've insisted on that, and -mother's given in. Don't get too far out of reach, so that I can put my -hand on you when I want you."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p> - -<p>He danced a little, chiefly with girls whom no one else would dance -with and to whom some member of the Ansley family introduced him. -When not dancing he returned to the gallery, where he leaned against -a convenient pillar and looked on. It was what he best liked doing. -Liking it, he did it well. He could hear people ask who he was. He -could hear some Harvard fellow answer that he was the Whitelaw Baby. -Once he heard a lady say, as she passed behind his back, "Well, he does -look like the Whitelaws, doesn't he?"</p> - -<p>The New York papers had recalled the Whitelaw baby to the public mind -in connection with the ball given a few weeks earlier to "bring out" -Lily Whitelaw. Once in so often the whole story was rehearsed, making -the younger Whitelaws sick of it, and their parents suffer again. The -fact that Tad and Lily Whitelaw were there that night gave piquancy to -the presence of the romantic stranger. His stature, his good looks, his -natural dignity, together with the mystery as to who he was, made him -in a measure the figure of the evening.</p> - -<p>From where he stood by his pillar in the gallery he recognized Lily in -the swirl below, a slim, sinuous creature in shimmering green. All her -motions were serpentine. She might have been Salome; she might also -have been a shop girl, self-conscious and eager to be noticed. Whatever -was outrageous in the dances of that autumn she did for the benefit of -her elders.</p> - -<p>When she turned toward him he could see that she had an insolent kind -of beauty. It was a dark, spoiled beauty that seemed lowering because -of her heavy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> Whitelaw eyebrows, and possibly a little tragic. In -thought he could hear Hildred singing, as she had sung when he stayed -with them at Dublin in the spring, "Is she kind as she is fair? For -beauty lives by kindness." Lily's beauty would not. It was an imperious -beauty, willful and inconsiderate.</p> - -<p>He saw Hildred dancing too. She danced as if dancing were an incident -and not an occupation. She had left more important things to do it; -she would go back to more important things again. While she was at it -she took it gayly, gracefully, as all in the evening's work, but as -something of no consequence. She was in tissue of gold like an oriental -princess, a gold gleam in her oriental eyes. An ermine stole as a -protection against draughts was sometimes thrown over her shoulders, -but more often across her arm.</p> - -<p>He noticed the poise of her head. No other head in the world could -have been so nobly held, so superbly independent. Its character was -in its simplicity. Fashion did not exist for it. The glossy dark -hair was brushed back from forehead and temples into a knot which -made neatness a distinction. Distinction was the chief beauty in the -profile, with its rounded chin, its firm, small, well-curved lips, and -a nose deliciously snub. Decision, freedom, unconsciousness of self, -were betrayed in all her attitudes and movements. Merely to watch her -roused in him a dull, aching jealousy for Lily. He surprised himself by -regretting that Lily hadn't been like this.</p> - -<p>Imperious, willful, and inconsiderate Lily seemed to him again as she -drank champagne and smoked cigarettes at supper. The party at her -table, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> was near the one at which he sat with Hildred, was jovial -and noisy. Lily's partner, a fellow whom he knew by sight at Harvard, -drank freely, laughed loudly, and now and then slapped the table. Lily -too slapped the table, though she did it with her fan.</p> - -<p>In the early morning—it might have been two o'clock—Tom found himself -accidentally near her when Hildred happened to be passing.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Lily! I want to introduce Mr. Whitelaw. He's got the same name as -yours, hasn't he? Tom, do ask her to dance."</p> - -<p>With her easy touch-and-go she left them to each other. Without a -glance at him, Lily said, tonelessly,</p> - -<p>"I'm not going to dance any more. I'm going to look for my brother and -go home."</p> - -<p>A whoop from the other side of the ballroom, where a rowdy note had -come over the company, gave an indication of Tad's whereabouts. Tom -suggested that he might find him and bring him up. Lily walked away -without answering.</p> - -<p>Hildred hurried back. "I'm sorry. I saw what she did. Try not to mind -it."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I don't. I decided long ago that one couldn't afford to be done -down by that sort of thing. It pays in the end to forget it."</p> - -<p>"One of these days she'll be sorry she did it. Your innings will come -then."</p> - -<p>"I'm not crazy for an innings. But time does avenge one, doesn't it?" -He nodded toward the ballroom floor, where Lily, with a stalking, -tip-toeing tread was pushing a man backward as if she would have pushed -him down had he not recovered his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> balance and begun pushing her. "It -avenges one even for that. Two minutes ago she said she wasn't going to -dance any more."</p> - -<p>"Well, she's changed her mind. That's all. Come and take a turn with -me."</p> - -<p>The affectionate solicitude in her tone was not precisely new to him, -but for the first time he dared to wonder if it could be significant. -By all the canons of life and destiny she was outside his range. She -could take this intimate, sisterly way with him, he had reasoned -hitherto, because she was so far above him. She was the Queen; he was -only Ruy Blas, a low-born fellow in disguise. If he found himself -loving her, if there was something so sterling and womanly in her -nature that he couldn't help loving her, that would be his own -look-out. He had made up his mind to that before the end of his three -weeks in Dublin in the spring. Her tactful camaraderie then had carried -him over all the places which in the nature of things he might have -found difficult, doing it with a sweet assumption that they had an aim -in common. Only they had no aim in common! Between him and her there -could be nothing but pity and kindness on the one side, with humility -and devotion on the other.</p> - -<p>He had felt that till to-night. He had felt it to-night up to the -minute of hearing those words, "Come and take a turn with me." The -difference was in her voice. It had tones of comfort and encouragement. -More than that, it had tones of comprehension and concern. She entered -into his feelings, his struggles, his sympathies, his defeats. In -the very way in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> which she put one hand on his shoulder and placed -the other within his own he thought there might be more than the -conventional gesture of the dance.</p> - -<p>"You don't know how much I appreciate your coming to-night," she said, -when she found an opportunity. "If you hadn't come I should have felt -it as much as if father, or mother, or Guy hadn't come. More, I think, -because—well, I don't know why—<i>because</i>. I only believe that I -should have. It's been an awful bore to you, too."</p> - -<p>"No, it hasn't. I've seen a lot. I like to get the hang of—of this -sort of thing. I don't often get a chance."</p> - -<p>"I thought of that. It seemed to me that the experience would be -something. Everything's grist that comes to your mill, so that the more -you see of things the better."</p> - -<p>That was all they said, but when he left her she held his hand, she let -him hold hers, till their arms were stretched out to full length. Even -then her eyes smiled at him, and his smiled down into hers.</p> - -<p>Having seen other people go, he decided to slip away himself. But in -the cloakroom he found Tad, white and sodden in a chair, his hands -thrust into his trousers' pockets, his legs stretched wide apart in -front of him. No one was there but the cloakroom attendant who winked -at Tom, as one who would understand the effect of too much champagne.</p> - -<p>"Too young a head. Ought to be got home."</p> - -<p>"I'll take him. Know where he lives. Going his way. Ask some one to -call us a taxi."</p> - -<p>Tad made no remonstrance as they helped him into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> his overcoat, and -rammed his hat on his head. He knew what they were doing. "Home!" he -muttered. "Home bes' place! Bed! God, I cou' go to sleep right now."</p> - -<p>He did go to sleep in the taxi, his head on Tom's shoulder. Tom held -him up, with his arm around his waist. Once more he had the feeling -that had stirred in him before, of something deeper than the common -human depths, primitive, pre-social, antedating languages and laws. -"He's not my brother," he declared to himself, "but if he were...." He -couldn't end that sentence. He could only feel glad that, since the boy -<i>had</i> to be taken home, the task should have fallen to him.</p> - -<p>At Westmorley Court, where Tad now had his quarters, there was no -difficulty of admittance. In his own room he submitted quietly to being -undressed. Tom even found a suit of pajamas, stuffing the limp form -into it. He got him into bed; he covered him up. Winding his watch, he -put it on the night-table. All being done, he stooped over the bed to -lift the arm that had flung aside the bedclothes, and put it under them -again.</p> - -<p>He staggered back. There flashed through his mind some of the stories -by which Honey had accounted for the loss of his eye. His own left eye -felt smashed in and shattered. He was sick; he was faint. He could -hardly stand. He could hardly think. The room, the world, were flying -into splinters.</p> - -<p>"You damn sucker! Get out of this!"</p> - -<p>By the time Tom had recovered himself Tad was settling to sleep.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXVIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">N<span class="uppercase">othing</span> but the knowledge that the boy was drunk had kept him from -striking back there and then. His temper was a hot one. It came in -fierce gusts, which stormed off quickly. The quickness saved him now. -Before he was home in bed he had reconciled himself to bearing this -thing too. It was bigger to bear it, more masculine, more civilized. He -would never forget his racking remorse after the last fight.</p> - -<p>He didn't lose his eye, but he was obliged to see an oculist. The -oculist pronounced it a close shave.</p> - -<p>"Where in thunder did you get that?" Guy demanded, a day or two after -the occurrence.</p> - -<p>Tom thought it an opportunity to learn whether or not the boy had been -conscious of what he did. "Ask Tad Whitelaw."</p> - -<p>"<i>What?</i> You don't mean to say you've had another row with him! Gee -whiz!"</p> - -<p>"No, I haven't had another row with him; but all the same, ask him."</p> - -<p>Guy asked him, with no information but that the mucker would get -another if he didn't keep out of the way. It was all Tom needed to -know. He had not been too drunk to strike with deliberate intention, -and to remember that he had struck.</p> - -<p>Guy must have told Hildred, because she wrote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> begging Tom to come to -see her. He wasn't to mind his black eye, because she knew all about -it. She was tender, consoling.</p> - -<p>"I don't believe he's a cad any more than I believe that of Lily," she -said, while giving him a cup of tea, "but they're both spoiled with -money and a sense of self-importance. You see, losing the other child -has made their mother foolish about them. She's lavished everything on -them, more than anyone, not a born saint, could stand. It would have -been a great deal better if they'd had to fight their way—some of -their way at any rate—like you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'm another breed."</p> - -<p>"Another figurative breed—yes. As to the breed in your blood—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, but, Hildred, you don't believe that poppy-cock."</p> - -<p>Her eyes were on the teapot from which she was pouring. "I don't -believe it exactly because I don't know. It only strikes me as being -very queer."</p> - -<p>"Queer in what way?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, in every way. They think so too."</p> - -<p>"Then why do they seem to hate me so?"</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't say they did that. They're afraid of you. You disturb -them. They're—what do they call it in the Bible?—kicking against the -pricks. That's all there is to it. When they'd buried the whole thing -you come along and make them dig it up again. They don't want to do -that. They feel it's too late. You can see for yourself that for Tad -and Lily it would be awkward. When you've been the only two children, -and such spoiled ones at that, to have an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> elder brother you didn't -know anything about suddenly hoisted over you—"</p> - -<p>"Of course! I understand that."</p> - -<p>"Mr. Whitelaw feels the same, only he feels it differently. <i>He'd</i> -accept him, however hard it was."</p> - -<p>"And Mrs. Whitelaw?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, poor dear, she's suffered so much that all she asks is not to be -made to suffer any more. I don't believe it matters to her now whether -he's found or not, so long as she isn't tortured."</p> - -<p>"And does she think I'd torture her?"</p> - -<p>"They haven't come to that. It isn't what you <i>may</i> do, but what they -themselves <i>ought</i> to do that troubles them."</p> - -<p>"I wish if you get a chance you'd tell them that they needn't do -anything."</p> - -<p>"They wouldn't take my word for it, or yours either. It rests with -themselves and their own consciences."</p> - -<p>"A good deal of it rests with me."</p> - -<p>"Yes, if you were willing to take the first step; but since you're -not—"</p> - -<p class="center"> -<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt="pic" /> -<a id="illus4" name="illus4"></a> -</p> -<p class="caption">MRS. ANSLEY TOOK HIM AS AN AFFLICTION</p> - -<p>They dropped it at that because Mrs. Ansley lilted in, greeting Tom -with that outward welcome and inward repugnance he had had to learn to -swallow. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She took him as an -affliction. Affliction could visit the best families and ignore the -highest merits. Guy, dear boy, was extravagant, and this was the proof -of his extravagance. He was infatuated with this young man, who had -neither means, antecedents, nor connections. She had heard the Whitelaw -Baby theory, of course; but so long as the Whitelaws themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> -rejected it, she rejected it too. The best she could do was to be -philanthropic. Philip, Guy, Hildred, were all convinced that this young -man was to make his mark. Very well! It was in her tradition, it was in -the whole tradition of old Boston, to help those who were likely to get -on. It was part of what you owed to your standing in the world, a kind -of public duty. You couldn't slight it any more than royalty can slight -the opening of bazaars. An aunt of her own had helped a poor girl to -take singing lessons; and the girl became one of the great prima donnas -of the world. Whenever she sang in opera in Boston it was always a -satisfaction to the family to exhibit her as their protégée. So it -might one day be with this young man. She hoped so, she was sure. She -didn't like him; she thought the fuss made over him by Hildred and Guy, -more or less abetted by their father, an absurdity; but since she was -obliged to play up to the family standard of beneficence, up to it she -would play. She bore with Tom, therefore, wisely and patiently, never -snubbing him except when they chanced to be alone, and hurting him only -as a jellyfish hurts a swimmer, by clamminess of contact.</p> - -<p>Clamminess of contact being in itself a weapon of offense, Tom ran away -from it, but only to fall into contact of another kind.</p> - -<p>It was a cloudy afternoon with Christmas in the near future. All -over town there were notes of Christmas, in the shop windows, in -the Christmas trees exposed for sale, in the way people ran about -with parcels. He never approached this season without going back to -that fatal Christmas Eve when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> and his mother had been caught -shop-lifting. He could still feel as he felt at the minute when he -turned his face to the angle of the police-station wall, and wept -silently. He wondered what Hildred would think of him if he were to -tell her that tale. He wondered if he ever should.</p> - -<p>Partly for the exercise, partly to find space to breathe and to think, -he followed the Boston embankment of the Charles, making his way to -the Harvard Bridge, and so toward Cambridge. In big quietly dropping -flakes it had begun to snow. Presently it was snowing faster. The few -pedestrians fled from the esplanade. He tramped on alone, enjoying the -solitude.</p> - -<p>The embankment lamps had been lit when he noticed, coming toward him, -two young men, their collars turned up about their ears. They were -laughing and smoking cigarettes. Drawing nearer, he recognized them as -Tad Whitelaw and the fellow who had slapped the table at the dance. It -was not hard to guess that they were on their way to see Hildred. He -hoped that under cover of the darkness and the snow he might slip by -unobserved.</p> - -<p>But Tad stopped squarely in front of him. "Let's look at your eye."</p> - -<p>The tone was so easy and friendly that Tom thought he might be going to -apologize. He let him look.</p> - -<p>"Well, you got that," Tad went on. "Another time you'll get worse. By -God, if you don't keep away from me I'll shoot you."</p> - -<p>Tom was surprised, but it was the sort of situation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> in which he could -be cool. He smiled into the arrogant young face turned up toward his.</p> - -<p>"What's the good of that line of talk? You know you wouldn't shoot me; -you wouldn't have the nerve. Besides, you haven't anything to shoot me -<i>for</i>. I'll leave it to this fellow." He turned to Tad's companion, who -stood as a spectator, slightly to one side. "I found him dead drunk the -other night. I took him home in a taxi, and put him to bed. That's no -more than the common freemasonry among men. Any man would do the same -at a pinch for any other man."</p> - -<p>The companion played up nobly. "That's the straight dope, Tad. Take it -and gulp it down. This guy is a good guy or he wouldn't have—"</p> - -<p>"Go to hell," Tad interrupted, insolently. "I'm only warning him. If he -hangs round me any more—"</p> - -<p>Tom kept his temper by main force, addressing himself still to the -companion.</p> - -<p>"I've never hung round him. He knows I haven't. Two or three times I've -run into him, as I've done to-day. Twice I've stepped in, to keep him -from getting the gate, this time as a drunk, the other time as a damn -fool. I'd do that for anyone. I'd do it for him, if I found him in the -same mess again."</p> - -<p>"That's fair enough, Tad," the referee approved. "You can't kick -against it."</p> - -<p>Tad tried to speak, but Tom went on with quiet authority.</p> - -<p>"So that since he likes warnings he can take that one. I shan't let him -be chucked out of Harvard if I can help it."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p> - -<p>Tad sprang. "The devil you won't!"</p> - -<p>Tom continued to speak only to the third party. "No, the devil I won't! -I don't know why I feel that way about him, but that's the way I feel. -And anyhow, now he knows."</p> - -<p>Still addressing the companion only, he uttered a curt "Good-night." -The companion responded civilly with "Good-night" on his side.</p> - -<p>He neither looked at Tad, nor flung a word at him. Wheeling to face -what had now blown into a snowstorm, he walked off into its teeth. But -as he went he repeated the question he had put to Hildred Ansley.</p> - -<p>"Why do they seem to hate me so?"</p> - -<p>He thought of Lily, slippery, snake-like, perverted; he thought of -the mother as he had seen her on that one day, in that one glimpse, -a quivering bundle of agony; he thought of the father, human, -sympathetic, with the iron in his soul.</p> - -<p>Then he saw them with their heaped up money, their luxuries, their -pride, their domineering self-importance. He knew just enough of the -lives they led, the exemptions they enjoyed, to feel Honey's protest on -behalf of the dispossessed.</p> - -<p>Near an arc-light he stopped abruptly. The snow made a tabernacle for -him, so that he was all alone. As he looked upward and outward millions -and millions of sweet soft white things flew silently across the light. -Out of his heart, up to his lips, there tore the kind of prayer which -in times of temptation the Tollivant habit sometimes wrung from him:</p> - -<p>"O God, keep me from ever wanting to be one of them!"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XXXIX</p> - - -<p class="drop">I<span class="uppercase">n</span> January, 1917, it began to occur to Tom Whitelaw that he might have -to go and fight. He might possibly be killed. Worse than that, he might -be crippled or blinded or otherwise rendered helpless.</p> - -<p>He had followed the war hitherto as one who looks on at tragedies -which have nothing to do with himself. Europe was to him no more -than a geographical term. Intense where his own aims and duties were -concerned, but lacking the imaginative faculty, he had never been able -to take England, France, and Germany as realities. The horrors of which -he read in newspapers moved him less than a big human story on the -stage. That the struggle might suck him into itself, smashing him as -a tornado smashes a tree, came home to him first at a Sunday evening -supper with the Ansleys.</p> - -<p>"If it does come," Philip Ansley said, complacently, "a lot of you -young fellows will have to go and be shot up."</p> - -<p>"I'm on," Guy announced readily. "If it hadn't been for the family I'd -have enlisted in Canada long ago."</p> - -<p>His mother took this seriously. "Well that, thank God, can't happen to -us. Darling, with your—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, with my fat! Same old bunk! But,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> mother, I'm losing weight -like a snowbank in April. It's <i>running</i> away. I'm exercising; I'm -taking Turkish baths; I don't hardly eat a damn thing. I weighed -two-fifty-three six weeks ago, and now I'm down to two-forty-nine."</p> - -<p>"Don't worry," his father assured him. "You'll get there. You'll make a -fine target for Big Bertha. Couldn't miss you any more than she would a -whole platoon."</p> - -<p>"Philip, how can you!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, they're all crazy to go." He looked toward Tom. "Suppose you are -too. Exactly the big husky type they like to blow into hash."</p> - -<p>Turning to help himself from the dish Pilcher happened to be passing, -Tom's eyes encountered Hildred's. Seated beside him, she had veered -round on hearing her father's words. The alarm in her face was a -confession.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I can wait," he tried to laugh. "If I've got to go I will, but I'm -not tumbling over myself to get there."</p> - -<p>A half hour later Mrs. Ansley and the three younger members of the -party were in the music room, where Guy was at the piano. The mother -sat on a gilded French canapé, making an excuse for keeping Hildred -beside her. Tom had already begun to guess that the friendship between -Hildred and himself was making Mrs. Ansley uneasy. For all these -years she had taken him as Guy's protégé with whom "anything of that -kind" was impossible. But lately she had so maneuvered as not to -leave Hildred and himself alone. Whether Hildred noticed it or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> not -he couldn't tell, since she never made a counter-move. If she was not -unconscious of her mother's strategy she let it appear as if she was.</p> - -<p>All the while Guy chimed out the <i>Carillon de Cythère</i> of Couperin -le Grand Mrs. Ansley patted Hildred's hand, and rejoiced in her two -children. Guy's touch was velvety because it was Guy's; Couperin le -Grand was a noble composer because Guy played him. Her amorphous person -quivered to the measure, with a tremor here and a dilation there, like -the contraction and expansion of a medusa floating in the sea.</p> - -<p>But when Guy had tinkled out the final notes she bubbled to her feet.</p> - -<p>"Darling, I don't think I ever heard you play as well as you're doing -this winter. I think if you were to give a private recital...."</p> - -<p>In the general movement Tom lost the rest of this suggestion, but -caught on again at a whisper which he overheard.</p> - -<p>"Hildred, I simply must go and take my corsets off. I've had them on -ever since I dressed for church. It's Nellie's evening out. I'll have -to ask you to come and help me."</p> - -<p>But as her mother was kissing Guy good-night Hildred managed to say -beneath her breath, "Don't go away. I'll try to come back. There's -something I want to speak about."</p> - -<p>Left to themselves, the two young men exchanged bits of college gossip -while Guy twirled on the piano stool. They had the more to say to each -other since they met less often than in their year at Gore Hall.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> Guy -was now in Westmorley Court, and Tom in one of the cheaper residential -halls in the Yard. Their associations would have tended to put them -apart, had not Guy's need of moral strengthening, to say nothing of a -dog-like loyalty, driven him back at irregular intervals upon his old -friend. Now and then, too, when his mother insisted on his coming home -for the Sunday evening meal, Hildred suggested that he bring Tom.</p> - -<p>"Let's hike it in by the Embankment," was Guy's way of extending this -invitation. "I don't mind if you come along, and Hildred likes it. Dad -don't care one way or another. He isn't democratic like Hildred and me; -but he's only a snob when it comes to his position as one of the grand -panjandrums of Boston. Mother kicks, of course; but then she'd accept -the devil himself if I was to tote him behind me."</p> - -<p>Long usage had enabled Tom to translate these sentiments into terms of -eagerness. Guy really wanted him. He was Guy's haven of refuge as truly -as when they had been growing boys. Every few weeks Guy turned from his -"bunch of sports," or his "bunch of sports" left him in the lurch, so -that he came back like a homing pigeon to its roost. Tom was fond of -him, was sorry for him, bore with him. Moreover, beyond these tactless -invitations there was Hildred.</p> - -<p>They fell to talking of Tad Whitelaw. Guy swung round to the piano, -beating out a few bars of throbbing, deep-seated grief.</p> - -<p>"One more little song and dance and Tad'll get this. Know what it is?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p> - -<p>Confessing that he didn't know, Tom learned that it was Händel's Dead -March in "Saul."</p> - -<p>"Played at all the British military funerals, to make people who feel -bad enough already feel a damn sight worse. Be our morning and evening -hymn when we get into the trenches."</p> - -<p>Tom was anxious. "You mean that Tad's on probation?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know what he's on. Hear the Dean's been giving him a dose of -kill-or-cure. That's all." He pounded out the heartbreaking chords, -with the deep bass note that sounded like a drum. "Ever see a fellow -named Thorne Carstairs?"</p> - -<p>"Seen him, yes. Don't know him. Yale chap, isn't he?"</p> - -<p>"Was." The drumbeat struck sorrow to the soul. "Kicked out. Hanging -round Tad till he gets him kicked out too. Lives at Tuxedo. Stacks of -dough, just like Tad himself." There was some personal injury in Guy's -tone, as he added, "Like to give him the toe of my boot."</p> - -<p>It was perhaps this feat of energy that sent him into the martial -phrases of the Chopin polonaise in A major, making the room ring with -joyous bravery.</p> - -<p>Having dropped into Mrs. Ansley's corner of the gilded canapé, Tom -found Hildred silently slipping into a seat beside him.</p> - -<p>"No, don't get up." She put her hand on his arm in a way she had never -done before. "I can only stay a few minutes. There's something I want -to say."</p> - -<p>Guy was passing to the D major movement. His back was turned to them. -They sat gazing at each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> other. They sat gazing at each other in a -new kind of avowal. All the things he dared not say and she dared not -listen to were poured from the one to the other through their eyes. She -spoke hurriedly, breathlessly.</p> - -<p>"I want you to know that if we enter the war, and you're sent over -there, I'll find a way to go too."</p> - -<p>He began some kind of protest, but she silenced him.</p> - -<p>"I know how I could do it. There's a woman in Paris who'd take me on to -work with her. You see, I'm used to Europe. You're not. I can't bear to -think of you—with no family—so far away from everyone—and all alone. -I'll go."</p> - -<p>Before he could seize anything like the full import of what she -was telling him she had slipped away again. Guy was still playing, -martially and majestically.</p> - -<p>Tom sat wrapt in a sudden amazed tranquillity. Now that she had told -him, told him more, far more, than was in her words, he was not -surprised; he was only reassured. He realized that it was what he had -expected. He had not expected it in the mind, nor precisely with the -heart. If the heart has reasons which the reason doesn't know, it was -something beyond even these. The nearest he could come to it, now that -he tried to express it by the processes of thought, was that between -him and her there existed a community of life which they had only to -take for granted. She was taking it for granted. To find out if she -loved him he would never have to ask her; she would never have to ask -him. <i>They knew!</i> He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> wondered if the knowledge brought to her the -peace it brought to him. He felt that he knew that too.</p> - -<p>Having ended his polonaise, Guy let his fingers run restlessly up and -down the keys. He had not turned round; he had heard nothing; he hadn't -guessed that Hildred had come and gone. That was their secret. They -would keep it as a secret. One of them at least had no wish to make it -known.</p> - -<p>He had no wish that it should go farther, even between him and her, -till the future had so shaped itself that he could be justified. That -it should remain as it was, unspoken but understood, would for a long, -long time to come be joy and peace for them both.</p> - -<p>Suddenly Guy broke into a strain enraptured and exultant. It flung -itself up on the air as easily as a bird's note. It was lyric gladness, -welling from a heart that couldn't tire.</p> - -<p>Caught by his own jubilance, Guy took up the melody in a tenor growing -liquid and strong after the years of cracked girlishness.</p> - -<p>"Guy, for heaven's sake, what's that?"</p> - -<p>The singer cut into his song long enough to call back over his shoulder:</p> - -<p>"Schumann! 'To the Beloved'!"</p> - -<p>He began singing again, his head thrown back, his big body swaying. All -the longing for love of a fellow on the edge of twenty, but for him -made shamefaced by his fat, found voice in that joyousness.</p> - -<p>Tom had not supposed that in the whole round of the universe there was -such expression for his nameless ecstasies. It was not Guy whom he -heard, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> the piano; it was the morning stars singing together; it -was the sons of God shouting for joy; it was all the larks and all the -thrushes and all the nightingales that in all the ages had ever trilled -to the sun and moon.</p> - -<p>"Don't stop," he shouted, when the song had mounted to its close. -"Let's have it all over again."</p> - -<p>So they had it all over again, the one in his wordless, mumbled tenor, -and the other singing in his heart.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XL</p> - - -<p class="drop">D<span class="uppercase">uring</span> the next week or ten days Tom worried over Tad Whitelaw. He -wondered whether or not he ought to go to see the boy. If he didn't, -Tad's Harvard career might end suddenly. If he did, he would probably -have humiliation for his pains. He wouldn't mind the humiliation if he -could do any good; but would he?</p> - -<p>One thing that he could do was to take himself to task for thinking -about the fellow in one way or the other. It was the fight he put up -from day to day. What was Tad Whitelaw to him? Nothing! And yet he was -much. It was beyond reasoning about.</p> - -<p>He was a responsibility, a care. Tom couldn't help caring; he couldn't -help feeling responsible. If Tad went to the bad something in himself -would have gone to the bad. He might argue against this instinct every -minute of the day, yet he couldn't argue it down.</p> - -<p>He remembered that Tad went often to see Hildred. He had been on his -way to see her that afternoon before Christmas when they had met on the -esplanade. She might be able to get at him more easily than anybody -else. He rang her up.</p> - -<p>Her life as a débutante was so crowded that she found it hard to give -him a half hour. "I'm dead beat," she confessed on the wire. "If it -weren't for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> mother I'd call it all off." She made him a suggestion. -She was driving that morning to lunch with a girl who lived in one of -the big places beyond Jamaica Pond. If he could be at a certain corner -she could pick him up. He could drive out with her, and come back by -the trolley car. Then they could talk. That this proposal didn't meet -the wishes of some one near the telephone he could judge by the aside -which also passed over the wire. "He wants to see me about Tad, mother. -I can't possibly refuse."</p> - -<p>Getting into the car beside her, he had another of those impressions, -now beginning to be rare, of the difference between her way of living -and all that he was used to. Much as he knew about cars, it was the -first time he had actually driven in a rich woman's limousine. The ease -of motion, the cushioned softness, the beaver rug, the blue-book, the -little feminine appointments, the sprig of artificial flowers, subdued -him so that he once more found it hard to believe that she took him on -a footing of equality.</p> - -<p>But she did. Her indifference to the details which overpowered him -was part of the wonder of the privilege. Having everything to bestow, -she seemed unaware of bestowing anything. She took for granted their -community of life. She did it simply and without self-consciousness. -Had they been brother and sister she could not have been easier or more -matter-of-course in all that she assumed.</p> - -<p>Except for the coming-out ball it was the first time, too, that he had -seen her as what he called "dressed up." Her costume now was a warm -brown velvet of a shade which toned in with the gold-brown of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> -eyes and the nut-brown of her complexion. She wore long slender jade -earrings, with a string of jade beads visible beneath her loosened -furs. The furs themselves might have been sables, though he was too -inexperienced to give them a name. Except for the jade, she wore, as -far as he could see, nothing else that was green but a twist of green -velvet forming the edge of her brown velvet toque. Her neat proud head -lent itself to toques as being simple and distinguished.</p> - -<p>He himself was self-conscious and shy. He could hardly remember for -what purpose she had been willing to pick him up. A queen to her -subjects is always a queen, a little overwhelming by her presence, no -matter how human her personality. Now that he was before her in his old -Harvard clothes, and the marks of the common world all over him, he -could hardly believe, he could <i>not</i> believe, that she had uttered the -words she had used on Sunday night.</p> - -<p>All the ease of manner was on her side. She went straight to the point, -competent, businesslike.</p> - -<p>"The thing, it seems to me, that will possibly save Tad is that he's -got to keep himself fit in case war breaks out."</p> - -<p>That was her main suggestion. Tad couldn't afford to throw himself away -when his country might, within a few weeks, have urgent need of him. -He couldn't, by over indulgence let himself run down physically, as he -couldn't by neglecting his work put himself mentally at a disadvantage. -He must be fit. She liked the word—fit for his business as a soldier.</p> - -<p>"That's just what would appeal to him when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> nothing else might," Tom -commended. "I wish you'd take it up with him."</p> - -<p>"I will; but you must too."</p> - -<p>"If I get a chance; but I daresay I shan't get one."</p> - -<p>She had a way of asking a leading question without emphasis. Any -emphasis it got it drew from the long oblique regard which gave her the -air of a woman with more experience than was possible to her years.</p> - -<p>"Why do you care?"</p> - -<p>He had to hedge. "Oh, I don't know. He's just a fellow. I don't want to -see him turn out a rotter."</p> - -<p>"If he turned out a rotter would you care more than if it was anybody -else?"</p> - -<p>"M-m-m! Perhaps so! I wouldn't swear to it."</p> - -<p>"I would. I know you'd care more. And I know why."</p> - -<p>He tried to turn this with a laugh. "You can't know more about me than -I do myself."</p> - -<p>"Oh, can't I? If I didn't know more about you than you do yourself...."</p> - -<p>He decided to come to close quarters. "You mean that you do think I'm -the lost Whitelaw baby?"</p> - -<p>"I know you are."</p> - -<p>"How do you know?"</p> - -<p>"Miss Nash told me so, for one thing."</p> - -<p>"And for another?"</p> - -<p>"For another, I just know it."</p> - -<p>"On what grounds?"</p> - -<p>"On no grounds; on all grounds. I don't care anything about the -grounds. A woman doesn't have to have grounds—when she knows."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Well, what about my grounds when I know to the contrary?"</p> - -<p>"But you don't. You only know your history back to a certain point."</p> - -<p>"I've only <i>told</i> you my history back to a certain point. I know it -farther back than that."</p> - -<p>"How far back?"</p> - -<p>"As far back as anyone can go, from his own knowledge."</p> - -<p>"Oh, from his own knowledge! But some of the most important things come -before you can have any knowledge. You've got to take them on trust."</p> - -<p>"Well, I take them on trust."</p> - -<p>"From whom?"</p> - -<p>"From my mother."</p> - -<p>She was surprised. "You remember your mother?"</p> - -<p>"Very clearly."</p> - -<p>"I didn't know that. What do you remember about her?"</p> - -<p>"I remember a good many things—how she looked—the way she talked—the -things she did."</p> - -<p>"What sort of things were they?"</p> - -<p>"That's what I want to tell you about. It's what I think you ought to -know."</p> - -<p>She allowed her eyes to rest on his calmly. "If you think knowing would -make any difference to me—"</p> - -<p>"I think it might. It's what I want to find out."</p> - -<p>"Then I can tell you now that it wouldn't."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but you haven't heard."</p> - -<p>"I don't want to hear, unless you'd rather—"</p> - -<p>"That you did. That's just what I do. I don't think we can go any -farther—I mean with our—"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> the word was difficult to find—"I mean -with our—friendship—unless you do hear."</p> - -<p>"Oh, very well! I want you to do what's easiest for you, and if it does -make a difference I'll tell you honestly."</p> - -<p>"Thank you." For a second, not more, he laid his hand on her muff, the -nearest he had ever come to touching her. "We were talking about the -things my mother did. Well, they weren't good things. The only excuse -for her was that she did them for me, because she was fond of me."</p> - -<p>"And you were fond of her?"</p> - -<p>"Very; I'm fond of her still. It's one of the reasons—but I must tell -you the whole story."</p> - -<p>He told as much of the story as he thought she needed to know. -Beginning with the stealing of the book from which he had learned to -read, he touched only the points essential to bringing him to the -Christmas Eve which saw the end; but he touched on enough.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you poor darling little boy! My heart aches for you—all the way -back from now."</p> - -<p>"So you see why I became a State ward. There was nothing else to do -with me. I hadn't anybody."</p> - -<p>"Of course you hadn't anybody if...."</p> - -<p>"If my mother stole me. But you see she didn't. I was her son. I don't -want to be anybody else's."</p> - -<p>"Only—" she smiled faintly—"you can't always choose whose son you -want to be."</p> - -<p>"I can choose whose son I don't want to be. That's as far as I go."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but still—" She dismissed what she was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> going to say so as not -to drive him to decisions. "At any rate we know what to do about Tad, -don't we? And you must work as well as I."</p> - -<p>"I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he won't."</p> - -<p>And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no later than that very -afternoon.</p> - -<p>He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy a hand with some work he -was doing for his mid-years. On coming out again, a little scene before -the main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows of the hall.</p> - -<p>Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a touring car that had -seen service. In spite of his residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy -had called his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with the -marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, insisting on being taken -somewhere in the car. Spit Castle being on the spot as a witness to a -refusal accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, Tad waxed -into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew nothing of the cause of the breach, -it was clear that a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the -car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made spurts at driving away. -Before he could swing the wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses -and maulings were exchanged without actual blows, when a shove from -Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. Before he could recover himself -to rush the car again its owner had got off.</p> - -<p>There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well as some hoots from -spectators who had viewed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> scuffle from their windows. Tad's -self-esteem was hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to -do what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a good part of -Westmorley Court.</p> - -<p>He turned to Spit, his face purple. "By God, I'll make that piker pay -for this before the afternoon's out."</p> - -<p>Hatless as he was, without waiting for comment, he started off on the -run. Where he was running nobody knew, and Tom least of all. By the -time he had reached the street Tad was nowhere to be seen.</p> - -<p>For the rest of the day the incident had no sequel. Tom had almost -dismissed it from his mind, when on the next day, while crossing the -Yard, he ran into Guy Ansley.</p> - -<p>Guy was brimming over. "Heard the row, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>Tom admitted that he had not. Guy gave him the version he had heard, -which proved to be the correct one. He gave it between fits of laughter -and that kind of sympathetic clapping on the back which can never be -withheld from the harum-scarum dare-devil playing his maddest prank.</p> - -<p>When Tad had run from the door of Westmorley Court he had run to the -police station. There he had laid a charge against an unknown car-thief -of running off with his machine. He could be caught by telephoning -the traffic cops on the long street leading from Cambridge to Boston. -He gave the number of the car which was registered in the State of -New York. His own name, he said, was Thorne Carstairs; his residence, -Tuxedo Park; his address<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> in Boston, the Hotel Shawmut, where he was -known and could be found. Having lodged this complaint, and put all -the forces of the law into operation, he had dodged back to Westmorley -Court, had his dinner sent in from a restaurant, locked his door -against all comers, and turned into bed.</p> - -<p>In the morning, according to Guy, there had been the devil to pay. As -far as Tad was concerned, the statement was literally true. Thorne -Carstairs had been locked in the station all night. Not only had he -been caught red-handed with a stolen car, but his lack of the license -he had neglected to carry on his person, as well as of registration -papers of any kind, confirmed the belief in the theft. His look of a -cheap sport, together with his tendency to use elementary epithets, had -also told against him. Where another young fellow in his plight might -have won some sympathy he roused resentment by his howlings and his -oaths.</p> - -<p>"We know you," he was assured. "Been on the look-out for you this -spell back. You're the guy what pinched Dr. Pritchard's car last week, -and him with a dyin' woman. Just fit the description—slab-sided, -cock-eyed, twisted-nosed fella we was told to look for, and now we've -got our claw on you. Sure your father's a gintleman! Sure you live at -the Hotel Shawmut! But a few months in a hotel of another sort'll give -you a pleasant change."</p> - -<p>In the morning Thorne had been brought before the magistrate, where two -officials of the Shawmut had identified him as their guest. Piece by -piece, to everyone's dismay, the fact leaked out that the law<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> of the -land, the zeal of the police, and the dignity of the court had been -hoaxed. Thorne himself gave the clue to the culprit who had so outraged -authority, and Tad was paying the devil. Guy didn't know what precisely -had happened, or if anything definite had happened as yet at all; he -was only sure that poor Tad was getting it where the chicken got the -ax. He deserved it, true; and yet, hang it all! only a genuine sport -could have pulled off anything so audacious.</p> - -<p>With this Tom agreed. There were spots in Guy's narrative over which -he laughed heartily. He condemned Tad chiefly for going too far. It -was his weakness that he didn't know when he had had enough of a good -thing. Anyone in his senses might know that to hoax a policeman was -a crime. A policeman's great asset was the respect inspired by his -uniform. Under his uniform he was a man like any other, with the same -frailties, the same sneaking sympathy with sinners; but dress him up in -a blue suit with brass buttons on his breast, and you had a figure to -awe you. If you weren't awed the fault was yours. Yours, too, must be -the penalty. The saving element was that beneath the brass buttons the -heart was kindly, as a rule, and humorous, patient, generous. Tom had -never got over the belief, which dated from the night when his mother -was arrested, of the goodness of policemen. He trusted to it now.</p> - -<p>He was not long in making up his mind. Leaving Guy, he cut a lecture -to go to see the Dean. He went to the Dean's own house, finding him at -home. The Dean remembered him as one of two or three young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> fellows -who in the previous year had adjusted a bit of friction between the -freshmen and the faculty without calling on the higher authorities to -impose their will. He was cordial, therefore, in his welcome.</p> - -<p>He was a big, broad-shouldered Dean, human and comprehending, with a -twinkle of humor behind his round glasses. There was no severity in -the tone in which he discussed Tad's escapade; there was only reason -and justice. Tad had given him a great deal of trouble in the eighteen -months in which he had been at Harvard. He had written to his father -more than once about the boy, had advised his being given less money -to spend, and a stricter calling to account at home. The father was -distressed, had done what he could, but the mischief had gone too far. -Tad was the typical rich man's son, spoiled by too easy a time. He had -been so much considered that he never considered anybody else. He was -swaggering and conscienceless. The Dean was of the opinion now that -nothing but harsh treatment would do him any good.</p> - -<p>Tom put in his plea. The matter, as he saw it, was bigger than one -fellow's destiny; it involved bigger issues. It was his belief that the -country would soon be at war. If the country was at war, Tad Whitelaw's -father would be one of the first of the bankers the President would -consult. The Dean knew, of course, that the bankers would have to -swing as much of the war as the army and navy. Henry T. Whitelaw was a -man, as everyone knew, already terribly tried by domestic tragedy. You -wouldn't want to add to that now, just at the time when he needed to -have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> a mind as free as possible. This boy was the apple of his eye; -and if disgrace overtook him....</p> - -<p>But that was only one thing. Should the country go to war, it would -call for just such young fellows as Tad Whitelaw; fellows of spirit, of -daring, of physical health and strength. Didn't the Dean think that it -might be well to nurse him along for a few weeks—it wasn't likely to -be many—so that he could answer to the country's call with at least a -nominal honorable record, instead of being under a cloud? If the Dean -did think so, he, Tom, would undertake to keep the fellow straight till -he was wanted. He wasn't vicious; he was only foolish and headstrong. -Though he didn't make a good student, he had in him the very stuff to -make a soldier. Tom would answer for him. He would be his surety.</p> - -<p>In the long run the Dean allowed himself to be won by Tom's own -earnestness. He would do what he could. At the same time Tom must -remember that if the college authorities stayed their hand the civil -authorities might not. The indignation at police headquarters was -unusually bitter. Unless this righteous wrath were pacified....</p> - -<p>Having thanked the Dean, Tom ran straight to the police station. The -Chief of Police received him, though not with the Dean's cordiality. -He too was a big, broad-shouldered man, but frigid and stern through -long administration of law, discipline, and order. He impressed Tom -as a mechanical contrivance which operates as it is built to operate, -and with no power of showing mercy or making exceptions to a rule. -Outwardly at least he was grave and obdurate.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p> - -<p>The victory lay once more with Tom's earnestness. The Chief of Police -made no secret of the fact that they were already considering the -grounds on which "the crazy fool" could most effectively be prosecuted. -The law was not, however, wholly without a heart, and if in the present -instance the country could be served, even in the smallest detail, by -giving the blamed idiot the benefit of clemency it could be done. Tom -must understand that the nonsense had not been overlooked; it was only -left in abeyance. If his protégé got into trouble again he would be the -more severely dealt with because of the present lenity.</p> - -<p>Tom ran now to Westmorley Court, where he knocked at Tad's door. To a -growling invitation he went in. The room was a cloud of tobacco smoke, -through which the shapes of half a dozen fellows loomed dimly in the -deepening winter twilight. Tad tilted back in the revolving chair -before the belittered desk which held the center of the room. His coat -was off, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his feet on the edge of the desk. A -cigar traveled back and forth from corner to corner of the handsome, -disdainful mouth.</p> - -<p>Tom marched straight to the desk, speaking hurriedly. "Can I have a -word with you in private?"</p> - -<p>The owner of the room neither moved nor took the cigar from his lips. -"No, you can't." He nodded toward the door. "You can sprint it out -again."</p> - -<p>"I shall sprint it out when I'm ready. If I can't speak in private I -shall speak in public. You've got to hear."</p> - -<p>The insolent immobility was maintained. "Didn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> I tell you the last -time I saw you that if you ever interfered with me again—?"</p> - -<p>"That you'd shoot me, yes. Well, get up and shoot. If you can't, or if -you don't mean to, why make the threat? But I've come to talk reason. -You've got to listen to reason. If you don't I'll appeal to these chaps -to make you. They don't want to see you a comic valentine any more than -I do. Now climb down from your high horse and let's get to business."</p> - -<p>It was Guy Ansley who cleared the room. "Say, fellows—" With a -stealthy movement, which their host was too preoccupied to observe, -they slipped out. He knew, however, when he and his enemy were alone, -and still without lifting his feet from the desk or taking the cigar -from his mouth, made the concession of speaking.</p> - -<p>"Well, if business has brought you here, cough it up."</p> - -<p>"I will. I come first from the Dean, and then from the Chief of Police."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you do, do you? So you're to be the hangman."</p> - -<p>"No; there's not to be a hangman. They've given you a reprieve—because -I've begged you off."</p> - -<p>The feet came off the desk. The cigar was taken from the lips. Tad -leaned forward in his chair, tense and incredulous.</p> - -<p>"You've done—<i>what</i>?"</p> - -<p>Tom maintained his sang-froid. "I've begged you off. I went and talked -to them both. I said I'd answer for you, that you'd stop being a crazy -loon, and try to be a man."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p> - -<p>Incredulity passed into angry amazement. "And who in hell gave you -authority to do that?"</p> - -<p>"Nobody. I did it on my own. When a fellow gets his life as a gift he -takes it. He doesn't kick up a row as to who's given it. For the Lord's -sake, try to have a little sense."</p> - -<p>"What's it to you whether I've got sense or not?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing."</p> - -<p>"Then why in thunder do you keep butting in—?"</p> - -<p>"Because I choose to. I'll give you no other answer than that, and no -other explanation. What you've got to do is to knuckle under and show -that you're worth your keep. You're not a <i>born</i> fool; you're only a -made fool. You're good for something better than to be a laughing-stock -as you are to everyone in college. Buck up! Be a fellow! After being a -jackass for a year and a half, I should think you'd begin to see that -there was nothing to it by this time."</p> - -<p>Never in his life had Tad Whitelaw been so hammered without gloves. -It was why Tom chose to hammer him. Nothing but thrashing, verbal -or otherwise, would startle him out of the conviction of his -self-importance. Already it was shaking the foundations of his -arrogance. In his tone as he retorted there was more than a hint of -feebleness.</p> - -<p>"What I see and what I don't see is my own affair."</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, it isn't. It's a class affair. There's such a thing as <i>esprit -de corps</i>. We can't afford to have rotters, now especially."</p> - -<p>Tad grew still feebler. "I'm not the only rotter in the bunch. Why do -you pick on me?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I've told you already. Because I choose to. You might as well give in -to me first as last, because you'll not get rid of me any more than you -will of your own conscience."</p> - -<p>Tad sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, in a new outburst. "I'll be -damned if I'll give in to you."</p> - -<p>"And I'll be damned if you don't. If I can't bring you round by -persuasion I'll do it as I did it once before. I'll wale the guts out -of you. I'm not going to have you a disgrace."</p> - -<p>"Ah!" Tad started back. "Now I've got you. A disgrace! You talk as if -you were a member of the family. That's what you're after. That's what -you've been scheming for ever since—"</p> - -<p>"Look here," Tom interrupted, forcefully. "Let's understand each other -about this business once and for all." Looking from under his eyelids -he measured Tad up and down. "I wouldn't be a member of the family that -has produced <i>you</i> for anything the world could give me."</p> - -<p>Tad bounded, changing his note foolishly. "Oh, you wouldn't wouldn't -you! How do you know that you won't damn well have to be?"</p> - -<p>Walking up to him, Tom laid a hand on his shoulder, paternally. "Don't -let us talk rot. We both know the nickname the fellows have stuck on me -in Harvard. But what's that to us? You don't want me. I don't want you. -At least I don't want you that way. I'll tell you straight. I've got a -use for you. That's why I keep after you. But it's got nothing to do -with your family affairs."</p> - -<p>They confronted each other, Tad gasping. "You've<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> got a use for me? -Greatly obliged. But get this. I've no use for you. Don't make any -mistake—"</p> - -<p>Withdrawing his hand, Tom gave him a little shove. "Oh, choke it back. -Piffle won't get you anywhere. I'm going to make something of you of -which your father and mother can be proud."</p> - -<p>It was almost a scream of fury. "Make something of <i>me</i>—?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, a soldier."</p> - -<p>The word came like a douche of cold water on hysteria, calming the boy -suddenly. He tapped his forehead. "Say, are you balmy up here?"</p> - -<p>"Possibly; but whether I'm balmy or not, a soldier is what you'll have -to be. Don't you read the papers? Don't you hear people talking? Why, -man alive, two or three months from now every fellow of your age and -mine will be marching behind a drum."</p> - -<p>The boy's haggard face went blank from the sheer shock of it. The idea -was not brand new, but it was incredible. Tad Whitelaw was not one of -those who took much interest in public affairs or kept pace with them.</p> - -<p>"Oh, rot!"</p> - -<p>"It isn't rot. Can't you see it for yourself? If this country pitches -in—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, but it won't."</p> - -<p>"Ask anyone. Ask your own father. That's my point. If we do pitch in -your father will be one of the big men of the two continents. You're -his only son. You'll <i>have</i> to play up to him."</p> - -<p>Tom watched the hardened, dissipated young face contract with a queer -kind of gravity. The teeth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> gritted, the lips grew set. It gave him the -chance to go on.</p> - -<p>"There aren't a half dozen men in the country who'd be able to swing -what your father'll be swinging. Listen! I know something about -banking. Been studying it for years. When it comes to war the banker -has to chalk-line every foot of the lot. They can't do anything without -him. They can't have an army or a navy or any international teamwork. -You'll see. The minute war is declared, <i>before</i> war is declared, the -President'll be sending for your father to talk over ways and means. -Now then, are you to put a spoke in the country's wheel? You can. -You're doing it. The more you worry him the less good he'll be. Get -chucked out of college, as you would have been in a day or two, if I -hadn't stepped in, and begged to have you put in my charge—"</p> - -<p>Once more Tad revolted. "Put in your charge! The devil I'll be put in -your charge!"</p> - -<p>"All right! It's the one condition on which you stay at Harvard. Jump -your bail, and you'll see your father pay for it. He'll have his big -international job, and he won't be able to swing it because he'll be -thinking of you. You'll see the whole country pay for it. I daresay we -shan't know where we pay and how we pay; but we'll be paying. Say, is -it worth your while? What do you gain by being the rotten spot in the -beam that may bring the whole shack about our ears? Everybody knows -that your father has lost one son. Can't you try to give him another of -whom he won't have to be ashamed?"</p> - -<p>Tad stood sulkily, his hands in his trousers' pockets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> as he tipped on -his toes and reflected. Since he made no answer, Tom went on with his -appeal.</p> - -<p>"And that's not the only thing. There's yourself. You're not a bad -sort. You've got the makings of a decent chap, even if you aren't one. -You could be one easily enough. All you've got to do is to drop some of -your fool acquaintances, cut out drinking, cut out women, and make a -show of doing what you've been sent to Harvard to do, even if it's only -a show. You won't have to keep it up for more than a few weeks."</p> - -<p>The furrow in the forehead when the eyebrows were lifted was also a -mark of dissipation. "More than a few weeks? Why not?"</p> - -<p>Tom pounded with emphasis. "Because, I tell you, we'll be in the war. -<i>You'll</i> be in the war. We fellows of the class of 1919 are not going -to walk up on Commencement Day and take our degrees. We'll get them -before that. We'll get them in batteries and trenches and graves. I -heard a girl say, in speaking of you a day or two ago, that she hoped, -when the time came for that, you'd be fit. She said she liked the -word—fit for the job that'd be given you. You couldn't be fit if you -went on—"</p> - -<p>His curiosity was touched. "Who was that?"</p> - -<p>"I'm not going to tell you. I'll only say that she likes you, and -that—"</p> - -<p>"Was it Hildred Ansley?"</p> - -<p>"Well, if you're bound to know, it was. If you want to talk to someone -who wishes you well, go and—"</p> - -<p>"Did she put you up to this?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span></p> - -<p>"No, she didn't. You put me up to it yourself. I tell you again, I'm -going to see you go straight till I see you go straight into the army. -You ought to go in with a commission. But if you're fired out of -Harvard they'll be shy of enlisting you as a private. If you won't play -the game of your own accord, I'll make you."</p> - -<p>With hands thrust into his trousers' pockets, Tad began to pace the -room, doing a kind of goose-step. His compressed lips made little -grimaces like those of a man forcing himself to decisions hard to -swallow. For a good four or five minutes Tom watched the struggle -between his top-loftiness and his common-sense. While common-sense -insisted on his climbing down, top-loftiness told him that he must -save his face. When he spoke at last his voice was hoarse, his throat -constricted.</p> - -<p>"If it's going to be war I'll be in it with both feet. But I'll do it -on my own. See? You mind your business, and I'll mind mine."</p> - -<p>Tom was reasonable. "That'll be all right—if you mind it."</p> - -<p>"And if you think I'm giving in to you—"</p> - -<p>"I don't care a hang whether you're giving in to me or not so long as -you—<i>keep fit</i>."</p> - -<p>"I'll be the judge of that."</p> - -<p>"And I'll help you."</p> - -<p>"You can go to hell."</p> - -<p>Tad used these words because he had no others. They were fine free -manly words which begged all the questions and helped him to a little -dignity. If he was surrendering he would do it, in his own phrase,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> -with bells on. The mucker shouldn't have the satisfaction of thinking -he had done anything. It saved the whole situation to tell him in this -offhand way the place that he could go to.</p> - -<p>But a little thing betrayed him, possibly before he saw its -significance. His points being won for the minute, Tom had reached -the door. Beside the door stood a low bookcase, on which was open a -package of cigarettes. Tad's goose-step brought him within reach of -it. He picked it up and held it toward Tom. He did it carelessly, -ungraciously, unthinkingly, and yet with all sorts of buried -implications in the little act.</p> - -<p>"Have one?"</p> - -<p>Tom was careful to preserve a casual, negligent air as he drew one out. -Tad struck a match.</p> - -<p>As the one held the thing to his lips and the other put the flame to -it, the hands of the brothers, for the first time except in a fight, -touched lightly.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLI</p> - - -<p class="drop">I <span class="uppercase">can't</span> see," Hildred reasoned, "why you should find the idea so -terrible."</p> - -<p>"And I can't see," Tom returned, "what it matters how I find the idea, -so long as nobody is serious about it."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but they will be. It's what I told you before. They'd made up -their minds they didn't want to find him; and now it's hard to unmake -them again. But they're coming to it."</p> - -<p>"I hope they're not taking the trouble on my account."</p> - -<p>"They're taking it on their own. Tad as much as said so. He said they'd -stuck it out as long as they could; but they couldn't stick it out -forever."</p> - -<p>"Stick it out against what?"</p> - -<p>"Against what's staring them in the face, I suppose."</p> - -<p>"Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing would induce me to -belong to the family that had produced him?"</p> - -<p>She laughed. "Oh, yes. He told me the whole thing, how you'd come into -his room, how Guy had got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle -between you."</p> - -<p>"And did he say how it had ended?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span></p> - -<p>"He said—if you want to know exactly I'll tell you exactly—he said -that when it came to talking about the war and the part he would have -to play in it, you weren't as big a damn fool as he had thought you."</p> - -<p>"And did he say how big a damn fool he was himself?"</p> - -<p>"He admitted he had been one; but with his father on his hands, and the -war, and all that, he'd have to put the brakes on himself, and pretend -to be a good boy."</p> - -<p>Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to the blaze of the -fire. Hildred had sent for him because Mrs. Ansley was out of the way -at her Mothers' Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since she -would not conceal the fact accomplished. It avoided only a preliminary -struggle. If she needed an excuse, the necessities of their good -intentions toward Tad would offer it.</p> - -<p>Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of embroidery, had taken up a -piece of work. Like many women, she found it easier to be daring in an -incidental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from having to look -at Tom as she reverted to the phase of the subject from which they had -drifted away.</p> - -<p>"The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. They may even be -called distinguished. I don't see what it is you've got against them."</p> - -<p>"I've got nothing against them. They rather—" he sought for a word -that would express the queer primordial attraction they possessed for -him—"they rather cast a spell on me. But I don't want to belong to -them."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p> - -<p>"But why not, if it was proved that—?"</p> - -<p>"For one reason, it couldn't be proved; and for another, it's too late."</p> - -<p>The ring in his voice was strange; it made her look up at him. "Too -late? Why do you say that?"</p> - -<p>"Because it is. You told me some time ago that it was what they thought -themselves. Even if it <i>were</i> proved, it would still be—too late."</p> - -<p>"I don't understand you."</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure that I understand myself. I only know that the life I've -lived would make it impossible for me to go and live their life."</p> - -<p>"Oh, nonsense! Their life is just the same as our life."</p> - -<p>"Well, I'm not sure that I could live yours. I could conform to it on -the outside. I could talk your way and eat your way; but I couldn't -think your way."</p> - -<p>"When you say <i>my</i> way—"</p> - -<p>"I mean the way of all your class. Mind you, I'm not against it. I only -feel that somehow—in things I can't explain and wouldn't know how to -remedy—it's wrong."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but, Tom—"</p> - -<p>"It seems to be necessary that a great many people shall go without -anything in order that a very few people may enjoy everything. That's -as far as I go. I don't draw any conclusions; and I'm certainly not -going in for any radical theories. Only I can't think it right. I want -to be a banker; but even if I <i>am</i> a banker—"</p> - -<p>"I see what you mean," she interrupted, pensively. "I often feel that -way myself. But, oh, Tom, what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> can we do about it that—that wouldn't -seem quite mad?"</p> - -<p>He smiled ruefully. "I don't know. But if you live long enough—and -work hard enough—and think straight enough—and don't do anything to -put you off your nut—why, some day you may find a way out that will be -sane."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but couldn't you do that and be Harry Whitelaw—if you <i>are</i> -Harry Whitelaw—at the same time?"</p> - -<p>"Suppose we wait till the question arises? As far as I know, no one who -belonged to Harry Whitelaw, or to whom Harry Whitelaw belonged, has -ever brought it up."</p> - -<p>But only a few weeks later this very thing seemed about to come to pass.</p> - -<p>It was toward the end of March. On returning to his room one morning -Tom was startled by a telegram. Telegrams were so rare in his life -that merely to see one lying on his table gave him a thrill, partly of -wonder, partly of fear. Opening it, he was still more surprised to find -it from Philip Ansley. Would Tom be in Louisburg Square for reasons of -importance at four that afternoon?</p> - -<p>That something had betrayed himself and Hildred would have been his -only surmise; only that there was nothing to betray. Except for the -few hurried words Hildred had spoken on that Sunday night, anything -they had said they had said in looks, and even their looks had been -guarded and discreet. The things most essential to them both were in -what they were taking for granted. They had exchanged no letters; their -intercourse was always of the kind that anyone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> might overhear. Without -recourse to explanation each recognized the fact that it would be years -before either of them would be free to speak or to take a step. In the -meantime their only crime was their confidence in each other; and you -couldn't betray that.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, it was with uneasiness that he rang at the door, and -asked Pilcher if Mr. Ansley were at home. Pilcher was mysterious. Mr. -Ansley was not at home, but if Mr. Tom would come in he would find -himself expected. Tea being served in the library, Mr. Tom was shown -upstairs.</p> - -<p>It was a gloomy afternoon outside; the room was dim. All Tom saw at -first was a tall man standing on the hearth rug, where the fire behind -him had almost gone out. He had taken a step forward and held out his -hand before Tom recognized the distinguished stranger who had first -hailed him in the New Hampshire lake nearly three years earlier.</p> - -<p>"Do you remember me?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>They stood with hands clasped, each gazing into the other's face. Tom -would have withdrawn his hand, would have receded, but the other held -him with a grasp both tense and tenacious. The eyes, deep-set like -Tom's own, and overhung with bushy outstanding eyebrows, studied him -with eager penetration. Not till that look was satisfied did the tall -figure swing to someone who was sitting in the shadow.</p> - -<p>"This is the boy, Onora. Look at him."</p> - -<p>She was sitting out of direct range in a corner of the library darkened -by buildings standing higher on the Hill. The man turned Tom slightly -in her direc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>tion, where the daylight fell on him. The degree to which -the woman shrank from seeing him was further marked by the fact that -she partly hid her face behind a big black-feather fan for which there -was no other use than concealment. She said nothing at all; but even in -the obscurity Tom could perceive the light of two feverish eyes.</p> - -<p>It was the man who took the lead.</p> - -<p>"Won't you sit down?"</p> - -<p>He placed a chair where the woman could observe its occupant, without -being drawn of necessity into anything that might be said. The man -himself drew up another chair, on which he sat sidewise in an easy -posture close to Tom. Tom liked him. He liked his face, his voice, his -manner, the something friendly and sympathetic he recalled from the -earlier meetings. Whether this were his father or not, he would have -no difficulty in meeting him at any time on intimate and confidential -terms.</p> - -<p>"My wife and I wanted to see you," he began, simply, "in order to thank -you for what you've done for Tad."</p> - -<p>Tom was embarrassed. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I just happened—"</p> - -<p>"The Dean has told me all about it. He says that Tad has given him no -trouble since. Before that he'd given a good deal. I wish I could tell -you how grateful we are, especially as things are turning out, with a -war hanging over us."</p> - -<p>Tom saw an opportunity of speaking without sentiment. "That's what I -thought. It seemed to me a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> pity that good fighting stuff should be -lost just through—through too much skylarking."</p> - -<p>"Yes, it would have been. Tad <i>has</i> good fighting stuff."</p> - -<p>There was a catch of the woman's breath. Tom recalled the staccato -nervousness of their first brief meeting in Gore Hall. He wished they -hadn't brought him there. They were strangers to him; he was a stranger -to them. Whatever link might have been between him and them in the -past, there was no link now. It would be a mistake to try to forge one.</p> - -<p>But in on this thought the man broke gently.</p> - -<p>"I wonder if you'd mind telling us all about yourself that you know? I -presume that you understand why I'm asking you."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir, I do; but I don't think I can help you much."</p> - -<p>The woman's voice, vibrating and tragic, startled him. It was as if she -were speaking to herself, as if something were being wrung from her in -spite of her efforts to keep it back. "The likeness is extraordinary!"</p> - -<p>Taking no notice of this, the man began to question him, "Where were -you born?"</p> - -<p>"In the Bronx."</p> - -<p>He made a note of this answer in a little notebook. "And when?"</p> - -<p>"In 1897."</p> - -<p>"What date?"</p> - -<p>It was the crucial question, but since he meant to tell everything he -knew, Tom had no choice but to be exact.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'm not very sure of the date, because my mother changed it at three -different times. At first my birthday used to be on the fifth of March; -but afterward she said that that had been the birthday of a little -half-sister of mine who died before I was born."</p> - -<p>"What was her name?"</p> - -<p>"Grace Coburn."</p> - -<p>"And her parents' names?"</p> - -<p>"Thomas and Lucy Coburn."</p> - -<p>"And after your birthday was changed from the fifth of March—?"</p> - -<p>"It was shifted to September, but not for very long. Later my mother -told me I was born on the tenth of May, and we always kept to that."</p> - -<p>From the woman there was something like a smothered cry, but the man -only took his notes.</p> - -<p>"The tenth of May, 1897. Did she ever tell you why she selected that -date?"</p> - -<p>"No, sir."</p> - -<p>"Did she ever say anything about it, about what kind of day it was, or -anything at all that you can remember?"</p> - -<p>Tom hesitated. The reflection that the wisest course was to make a -clean breast of everything impelled him to go on.</p> - -<p>"She only said that it was a day when all the nursemaids had had their -babies in the Park, and the lilacs were in bloom."</p> - -<p>There followed the question of which he was most afraid, because he -often put it to himself.</p> - -<p>"Why should she have said that, when, if you were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> born in the Bronx, -she and her baby were miles away?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know, sir."</p> - -<p>"What was your mother's maiden name?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know, sir."</p> - -<p>"She was married to Thomas Coburn before she was married to Theodore -Whitelaw, your father?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>"Where were she and your father married?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know, sir."</p> - -<p>"What <i>do</i> you know about your father?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing at all. I never heard his name till she gave it at the police -station, the night before she died."</p> - -<p>"Oh, at the police station! Why there?"</p> - -<p>Tom told the whole story, keeping nothing back.</p> - -<p>The man's only comment was to say, "And you never heard the name of -Whitelaw in connection with yourself till you heard it on that evening?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir, I'd heard it before that."</p> - -<p>"When and how?"</p> - -<p>"Always when my mother was in a—in a state of nerves. You mustn't -forget that she wasn't exactly in her right mind. That was the excuse -for what she—she did in shops. So, once in so often, she'd say that I -was never to think that my name was Whitelaw, or that she'd stolen me."</p> - -<p>There was again from the woman a little moaning gasp, but the man was -outwardly self-possessed.</p> - -<p>"So she said that?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>"And have you any explanation why?"</p> - -<p>"I didn't have then; I've worked one out. You see,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> my name really -being Whitelaw, and her mind a little unbalanced, she was afraid -she might be suspected of—your little boy's case had got so much -publicity—and she a friendless woman, with no husband or relations—"</p> - -<p>"So that you don't think she did—steal you?"</p> - -<p>He answered firmly. "No, sir. I don't"</p> - -<p>"Why don't you?"</p> - -<p>"For one thing, I don't want to."</p> - -<p>"Oh!"</p> - -<p>It was the woman again. The sound was rather queer. You could not have -told whether it meant relief or indignation.</p> - -<p>The man's sad penetrating eyes were bent on him sympathetically. "When -you say that you don't want to, exactly what do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure that I can say. She was my mother. She was good to -me. I was fond of her. I never knew any other mother. I don't think -I could—" he looked over at the woman in the shadow, letting -his words fall with a certain significant spacing—"know—any -other—mother—now—and so—"</p> - -<p>Rising, she took a step toward him. He too rose so that as she stood -looking up at him he stood looking down at her. There and then her face -was imprinted on his memory, a face of suffering, but of suffering that -had not made her strong. The quivering victim of self-pity, she begged -to be allowed to forget. She had suffered to her limit. She couldn't -suffer any more. Everything in her that was raked with the harrow -protested against this bringing up again of an outlived agony.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p> - -<p>Her beautiful eyes, brimming with unspilled tears, gazed at him -reproachfully. As plainly as eyes could tell him anything, they told -him that now, when life and time had dug between them such a gulf, she -didn't want him as her son. She might have to accept him, since so many -things pointed that way, but it would be hard for her. Taking back a -little boy would have been one thing; taking back a grown man, none of -whose habits or traditions were the same as theirs, would be another. -She would do it if it were forced on her, but it couldn't recompense -her now for past unhappiness. It would be only a new torture, a torture -which, if he hadn't drifted in among them, she might have escaped.</p> - -<p>When swiftly and silently she had left the room the man put his hand on -Tom's arm.</p> - -<p>"Sit down again. You mustn't think that my wife doesn't feel all this. -She does. It's because she does that she's so overwrought."</p> - -<p>Tom sat down. "Yes, sir, of course!"</p> - -<p>"She's been through it so often. For a good ten years after our child -was lost boys used to be brought to us to look at every few months. And -every time it meant a draining of her vitality."</p> - -<p>"I understand that, sir; and I hope Mrs. Whitelaw doesn't think I've -come of my own accord."</p> - -<p>"No, she knows you haven't. We've asked you to come because—but I must -go back. When my wife had been through so much—so many times—and all -to no purpose—she made me promise—the doctors made me promise—that -she shouldn't be called on to face it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> again. Whenever she had to -interview one of these claimants—"</p> - -<p>"<i>I'm</i> not a claimant," Tom put in, hastily.</p> - -<p>"I know you're not. That's just it. It's what makes the difference. But -whenever she had to do it—and decide whether a particular lad was or -was not her son—it nearly killed her."</p> - -<p>Tom made an inarticulate murmur of sympathy.</p> - -<p>"The worst times came after we'd turned down some boy of whom we hadn't -been quite sure. That was as hard for me as it was for her—the fear -that our little fellow had come back, and we'd sent him away. It got to -be so impossible to judge. You imagined resemblances even when there -were none, and any child who could speak could be drilled about the -facts, as we were so well known. It was hell."</p> - -<p>"It must have been."</p> - -<p>"Then there were our two other children. It wasn't easy for them. They -grew up in an atmosphere of expecting the older brother to come back. -At first it gave them a bit of excitement. But as they grew older they -resented it. You can understand that. A stranger wouldn't have been -welcome. Whenever a new clue had to be abandoned they were glad. If -the boy had been found they'd have given him an awful time. That was -another worry to my wife."</p> - -<p>"Yes, it would be."</p> - -<p>"So at last we made up our minds that he was dead. It was the only -thing to do. Self-protection required it. My wife took up her social -life again, the life she's fond of and is fitted for. Things went -better.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> She didn't forget, but she grew more normal. In spite of the -past there were a few things she could still enjoy. She'd begun to feel -safe; and then—in that lake in New Hampshire—I happened to see you."</p> - -<p>"If I were you, sir, I shouldn't let that disturb me."</p> - -<p>"It does disturb me. When I went back that year to our house at Old -Westbury and spoke to my wife and children about it, they all implored -me not to go into the thing again."</p> - -<p>"If I could implore you, too—"</p> - -<p>He shook his head. "It wouldn't do any good. I've come to the point -where I've got to see it through. I have all the data you've given -me—as well as some other things. If you're not—not my son—" He -rose striding to the fireplace, where he stood pensively, his back to -the smouldering fire—"if you're not my son, at least we can find out -pretty certainly whose son you are."</p> - -<p>Tom also rose, so that they stood face to face. "And if you can't find -out pretty certainly whose son I am—?"</p> - -<p>"I shall be driven to the conclusion that—"</p> - -<p>He didn't finish this sentence. Tom didn't press for it. During the -silence that followed it occurred to him that if there was a war the -question might be shelved. It was what, he thought, he would work for.</p> - -<p>The same idea might have come to the older man, for looking up out of -his reverie, he said, with no context:</p> - -<p>"What do you mean to be?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I've always hoped, sir, to go into a bank. It's what I seem best -fitted for."</p> - -<p>There came into the eyes that same sudden light, like the switching on -of electricity, which Tom remembered from their meeting in the water.</p> - -<p>"I could help you there."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but it would only be in a small way, sir. I'd have to begin as -something—"</p> - -<p>"All the same I could help you. I want you to promise me this, that -when you're free—either after Harvard, or after the war—you'll come -to me before you do anything else. Is that a bargain?"</p> - -<p>To Tom it was the easiest way out. "Yes sir, if you like."</p> - -<p>"Then our hands on it!"</p> - -<p>Their right hands clasped. Once more Tom found himself held. The man's -left hand came up and rested on his shoulder. The eyes searched him, -searched him hungrily, with longing. Whether they found what they -sought or merely gave up seeking Tom could hardly tell. He was only -pushed away with a little weary gesture, while the tall man turned once -more toward the dying fire.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLII</p> - - -<p class="drop">I<span class="uppercase">n</span> the April of 1920, nearly eighteen months after the signing of -the Armistice, Tom Whitelaw came back to Boston, demobilized. He had -crossed a good part of Europe almost in a straight line—Brest, Paris, -Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Fère-en-Tardennois, Reims, Luxembourg, -Coblenz—and more or less in the same way had come back again. Now, if -he had been able to forget it all, he would gladly have forgotten it. -Since it couldn't be forgotten it inspired him with an aim in life.</p> - -<p>More exactly, perhaps, it made definite the aim he had been vaguely -conscious of already. What he felt was not new; it was only more fixed -and clear. He knew what he meant to do, even though he didn't see how -he was to do it. He might never accomplish anything; very likely he -never would; but at least he had a state of mind, and he was not going -to be in a hurry. If for the ills he saw he was to work out a cure, -or help to work out a cure, or even dream of working out a cure, he -must first diagnose the disease; and diagnosis would take a good part -of his lifetime. He was twenty-three, according to his count, but, -again according to his count he had the seriousness of forty. With the -advantage of a varied experience and an early maturity, he had also -that of age.</p> - -<p>His achievements in the war had given him the kind of importance -interesting to newspapers. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> had begun writing him up from the -days of the action at Belleau Wood. His picture had appeared in their -Sunday editions as on the staff of General Pershing during his visit to -the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. To Tom himself the only satisfaction -in this was the possible diminishing of the distance between him and -Hildred Ansley. It would not have been the first time in history when -war had helped a lover out of his obscurity to put him on the level -of the loved one. To Hildred herself it would make no difference; but -by her father and mother, especially by her mother, a son-in-law who -had worn with some credit his country's uniform might be pardoned his -presumption.</p> - -<p>Public approval also brought him one other consideration that meant -much to him. The man who thought he might be his father wrote to him. -He wrote to him often. He wrote to him partly as a friend might write, -partly as a father might write to his son. Between the lines it was not -difficult to read a yearning and sense of comfort. The yearning was -plainly for assurance; just as plainly the sense of comfort lay in the -knowledge that somewhere in the world there was a heart that beat to -the measure of his own. It was as if he had written the words: "My two -acknowledged children are of no help to me; my wife is crushed by her -sorrow; you and I, even if there is no drop of common blood between us, -understand each other. Whether or not we are father and son, we could -work together as if we were."</p> - -<p>The letters were full of a fatherly affection strange in view of the -slight degree of their acquaintanceship.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> The man's heart cleared that -obstacle with a bound. Tom's heart cleared it with an equal ease. To be -needed was the call to which, with his strong infusion of the feminine, -he never failed to answer instantaneously. As readily as the banker -divined him, he divined the banker. If there was no fatherhood or -sonship in fact there was both sonship and fatherhood in essence.</p> - -<p>Whitelaw wrote as if he had been writing to his boy for years, with a -matter-of-course solicitude, with offers of money, with scraps of news. -He talked freely of the family, as if Tom would care to hear of them. A -few words in one of his letters showed that he knew more than Tom had -hitherto supposed.</p> - -<p>"If Tad and Lily have been uncivil to you it was not because of -personal dislike. In their situation some hostility toward the -outsider, as they would call him, whom they might be forced to -acknowledge as their older brother must be forgiven as not unnatural."</p> - -<p>During all the three years of Tom's soldiering this was the only -reference to the question that had been left suspended by the war. -Whether or not it would ever be taken up again Tom had no idea. He -hoped it would not be. For him an undetermined situation was enough.</p> - -<p>Though during this period Henry Whitelaw was frequently in London and -Paris they never met. When the one proposed that he should use his -influence to get the other leave, Tom thought it wiser to stay, as he -expressed it, on the job. Only once did he ask permission to run up for -forty-eight hours to Paris, and that was to see Hildred.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span></p> - -<p>She was then helping to nurse Guy, who, while working with the -Y.M.C.A., had come down with typhoid fever. Convalescent by this time, -he would sail for America in a month or two, Hildred going with him. -Tom himself being on the eve of marching into Germany, the moment was -one to be seized.</p> - -<p>They dined in a little restaurant near the Madeleine. With the table -between them they scanned each other's faces for the traces left by -nearly two years of separation. Except that she was tired Tom found -little change in her. Always lacking in temporary, girlish prettiness, -her distinction of line and poise was that which the years affect but -slowly, and experience enhances. He could only say of her that she was -less the young girl he had last seen in Boston, and more the woman of -the world who, having seen the things that happen as they happen most -brutally, has grown a little heartsick, and more than a little weary.</p> - -<p>"It's all so futile, Tom. It's such waste. It should never have been -asked of the people of the world."</p> - -<p>His lips had the dim disillusioned smile which had taken the place of -the radiance of even a year or two earlier.</p> - -<p>"What about the war to end war? What about making the world safe for -democracy?"</p> - -<p>She put up a hand in protest. "Oh, don't! I hate that clap-trap. The -salt which was good enough to put on birds' tails is sickening when you -see the poor creatures lying with their necks wrung. Oh, Tom, what can -we do about it if we ever get home?"</p> - -<p>"Do about what?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p> - -<p>"About the whole thing, about this poor pitiful, pitiable human race -that's got itself into such an awful mess?"</p> - -<p>"The human race is a pretty big problem to handle."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but you don't think the bigness ought to stop us, do you?"</p> - -<p>"Stop us from—?"</p> - -<p>"From trying to keep the world from going on with its frightful policy -of destruction. Isn't there anyone to show us that you can't destroy -one without by that much destroying all; that you can't make it easier -for one without by that much making it easier for everyone? Are we -never going to be anything but fools?"</p> - -<p>His dim smile came and went again. "We'll talk about that when I get -home. We can't do it now. Even if we could it's no us trying to reason -with a world that's gone insane. We must let it have time to recover. I -want to hear about you."</p> - -<p>She threw herself back in her chair, nervously crumbling a bit of -bread. "Oh, I'm all right. Never better, as far as that goes. I've only -grown an awful coward. Now that the fighting's over I seem to be more -afraid than when it was going on. As far as pep goes I'm a rag."</p> - -<p>"It'll do you good to get home."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I want to get farther away than home. I want to get somewhere—to -a desert island perhaps—where there won't be any people—"</p> - -<p>"None?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, well, dad and mother and Guy and—"</p> - -<p>"And nobody else?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Yes, and you. I see you want me to say it, so I might as well. I want -you there—and <i>then</i> nobody else—not a soul—not the shadow of a -soul—except servants, of course—"</p> - -<p>He grew daring as he had never been before. "Perhaps before many years -we may find that island—with the servants all the time—but with your -father and mother and Guy as visitors—very frequent visitors—but—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, don't talk about it. It's too heavenly for a world like this." She -looked him in the eyes, despairingly. "Do you suppose it <i>ever</i> could -come true?"</p> - -<p>"Stranger things have."</p> - -<p>"But better things haven't."</p> - -<p>He put down his knife and fork to gaze at her. "Hildred, do you really -feel like that?"</p> - -<p>"Well, don't you?" Her tone was a little indignant. "If you don't for -pity's sake tell me, so that I shan't go on giving myself away."</p> - -<p>"Of course, I feel that way, only it seems to me queer that you should."</p> - -<p>"Why queer?"</p> - -<p>"Because you're you, and I'm only me."</p> - -<p>"You can't reason in that way. You can't really reason about the thing -at all. The most freakish thing in the world is whom people'll fall in -love with."</p> - -<p>"It must be," he said humbly.</p> - -<p>"Oh, cheer up; it isn't as bad as all that. There's no disgrace in my -being in love with you. If you'll just be in love with me I'll take -care of myself."</p> - -<p>They laughed like children. To neither was it strange to have taken -their love for granted, since<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> they had done it for so long. It was -as if it had grown with them, as if it had been born with them. Its -flowers had opened because it was their springtime; there was nothing -else for it to do. It was a stormy springtime, with only the rarest -bursts of sunshine; but for that very reason they must make the most of -such sunshine as there was. They had not met for two years; it might -be two years more before they met again. They could only throw their -hearts wide open.</p> - -<p>She talked of her work. In her mood of reaction it seemed to her now -a stupid, foolish work, not because it hadn't done good, but because -it had done good for such useless purposes. A New York woman whom -she knew, whose son had been killed fighting with the British in the -earlier part of the war, had opened a sort of club for the cheering up -of young fellows passing through Paris, or there for a short leave.</p> - -<p>"We bucked them up so that they'd be willing to go back again, and be -blown to bits. It was like giving the good breakfast and the cigarette -to the man going out to the electric chair. My God, what a nerve we -had, we girls! We'd laugh and dance with those poor young chaps, who a -few days later would be in their graves, if the shells left anything to -bury. We didn't think much about it then. It's only now that it comes -over me. I feel as if I'd been their executioner."</p> - -<p>"You're tired. You need a rest."</p> - -<p>"Rest won't reconcile me to belonging to a race of wild beasts. Oh, -Tom, couldn't we make a little life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> for ourselves away from everyone, -and from all this cheap vindictiveness? I shouldn't care how humble or -obscure it was."</p> - -<p>He laughed, quietly. "There are a good many hurdles to take before we -come even to the humble and obscure."</p> - -<p>"Hurdles? What kind of hurdles?"</p> - -<p>"Your father and mother for one."</p> - -<p>She admitted the importance of this. "But you won't find that hurdle -hard to take if you're Harry Whitelaw."</p> - -<p>"But if I'm not?"</p> - -<p>"I'm sure from what mother writes that you can be."</p> - -<p>"And I'm sure from what I feel that I can't."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but you haven't tried." She hurried on from this to give him the -gist of her mother's letters on the subject. "She and Mr. Whitelaw have -the most tremendous confabs about you, every time he comes to Boston. -The fact that he can't talk to Mrs. Whitelaw—she's all nerves the -minute you're mentioned—throws him back on mother. That flatters the -dear old lady like anything. She begins to think now she adopted you in -infancy. You were her discovery. She gave you your first leg-up. And -after all, you know, we've got to admit that during the whole of these -seven years she might have been a great deal worse."</p> - -<p>He agreed with her gratefully.</p> - -<p>"As a matter of fact," she went on, in her judicial tone, "you must -hand it to us Boston people that, while we can be the most awful snobs, -we're not such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> snobs that we don't know a good thing when we see it. -It's only the second-cut among us, those who don't really <i>belong</i>, -who are supercilious. Once you concede that we're as superior as we -think ourselves, we can be pretty generous. If you've got it in you to -climb up we not only won't kick you down, but we'll put out our hands -and pull you. That's Boston; that's dad and mother. When you've made -all the fun of them you like, the poor dears still have that much left -which you can't take away from them."</p> - -<p>Something of this Tom was to test by the time he and Hildred met again. -It was not another two years before they did that, but it was a year. -Demobilized in Washington, he traveled straight to Boston. He had made -his plans. Before seeing Hildred again he would see her father. "It's -the only straight thing to do," he told himself. After all the years -in which they had been good to him he couldn't begin again to go in -and out of their house while they were ignorant of what he hoped for. -Hildred might have told them something; he didn't know; but the details -of most importance were those which only he himself could give them.</p> - -<p>Having written for a very private appointment, Ansley had told him to -come to his office immediately on his arrival in Boston. He reached -that city by half-past three; he was at the office by a little after -four.</p> - -<p>It was a large office, covering most of a floor of an imposing office -building. On a glass door were the names of the partners, that of -Philip Ansley standing first on the list and in bigger letters than -the rest. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> the anteroom an impersonal young lady reading a magazine -said, by telephone, "Mr. Whitelaw to see Mr. Ansley."</p> - -<p>The business of the day was over. As Tom passed through a corridor from -which most of the private offices opened he saw that they were empty. -The only one still occupied was at the most distant end, and there -he found Philip Ansley. He found also his wife. The purpose of Tom's -visit having been made clear by letter, both of Hildred's parents were -concerned in it.</p> - -<p>They welcomed him cordially, making the comments permissible to old -friends on his improved personal appearance. They asked for his news; -they gave their own. Guy was back at Harvard at the Law School; Hildred -was at home, somewhat at loose ends. Like most girls who had worked in -France, she found a life of leisure tedious.</p> - -<p>"Eating her head off," Ansley complained. "Can't settle down again."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley was more heroic. "We accept it. It's part of what we -offered up to the Great Cause. We gave our all, and though all was not -taken from us we should not have murmured if it had been."</p> - -<p>Taking advantage of this turn of the talk, Tom launched into his -appeal. For the last time in his life, as he hoped, he told the story -of his mother. As he had told it to Hildred and to Henry Whitelaw so -now he gave it to Philip and Sunshine Ansley. Hating the task, he was -upheld in carrying it through by the knowledge that everyone who had a -right to know it knew it now.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span></p> - -<p>He finished with the minute at which Guy first spoke to him. From that -point onward they had been able to follow the course of his life for -themselves. They had in a measure entered into it, and helped him to -his opportunities. He thanked them; but before he could accept their -goodwill again he wanted them to know exactly what he had sprung from. -Hildred did know. She had known it for several years. It had made no -difference to her; he hoped so to make good in the future that it would -make no difference to them.</p> - -<p>They listened attentively, with no sign of being shocked. Now and -then, at such points as the stealing of the first little book, or the -final arrest, one or the other would murmur a "Dear me!" but sympathy -and pity were plainly their sentiments. They didn't condemn him; they -didn't even blame him. He had been an unfortunate child. There was -nothing to be thought of him but that.</p> - -<p>After he had finished there was a silence that seemed long. Ansley sat -at his desk, leaning back in his revolving chair. Mrs. Ansley was near -a window, where she could to some extent shield herself by looking out. -She left to her husband the duty of speaking the first word.</p> - -<p>"It all depends, my dear fellow, on your being accepted by Henry -Whitelaw as his son."</p> - -<p>There was another silence. "Is that final, sir?"</p> - -<p>"I'm afraid it is."</p> - -<p>"Is there no way by which I can be taken as myself?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ansley turned from her contemplation of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> Lion and the Unicorn -on the Old State House. "No one is ever taken as himself. We all have -to be taken with the circumstances that surround us."</p> - -<p>Ansley enlarged on this, leaning forward and toying with a paperweight. -"My wife is quite right. Nobody in the world is just a human being pure -and simple. He's a human being plus the conditions which go to make him -up. You can't separate the conditions from the man, nor the man from -the conditions. If you're Henry Whitelaw's son, stolen and brought up -in circumstances no matter how poor and criminal, you're one person; if -you're the son of this—this woman, whom I shan't condemn any more than -I can help, you're another. You see that, don't you?"</p> - -<p>"Can't I be—what I've made myself?"</p> - -<p>"You can't make yourself anything but what you've been from the -beginning. You can correct and improve and modify; but you can't -change."</p> - -<p>"So that if I'm the son of—of this woman, you wouldn't want me. Is -that it?"</p> - -<p>"How could we?" came from Mrs. Ansley. "But I know from Mr. Whitelaw -himself that—"</p> - -<p>Ansley smiled, paternally. "Suppose we leave it there. After all, the -last word rests with him."</p> - -<p>"I don't think so, sir. It rests with me."</p> - -<p>This could be dismissed as of no importance. "Oh, with you, of course, -in a certain sense. They can't force you. But if they're satisfied that -you're—"</p> - -<p>"And if I'm not satisfied?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, but, my dear fellow, you wouldn't make yourself difficult on that -score."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's not a question of being difficult; it's one of what I can do."</p> - -<p>They got no farther than that. Tom's reluctance to deny the woman he -had always regarded as his mother was not only hard for them to seize, -it was hard for him to explain. He couldn't make them see that the -creature who for them was only a common shoplifter was for him the -source of tender and sacred memories. To accuse her of a greater crime -than theft would be to desecrate the shrine which he himself had built -of love and pity; but he was unable to put it into words, as they were -unable to understand it. He himself worded it as plainly as he could -when, rising, he said:</p> - -<p>"So that I must renounce my mother or renounce Hildred."</p> - -<p>Ansley also rose. "That's not quite the way to express it. If she <i>was</i> -your mother, there can be no question of your renouncing her. But then, -too, there can be no question of—of Hildred. I'm sure you must see."</p> - -<p>"And if I see, would Hildred also see?"</p> - -<p>Leaving her window, Mrs. Ansley, bulbous and quivering, lilted forward. -"We must leave that to your sense of honor. In a way we're in your -hands. It's within your power to make us suffer."</p> - -<p>"I should never do that," he assured her, hastily. "Hildred wouldn't -want me to. After all you've done for me neither she nor I—"</p> - -<p>"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so." Ansley held out his hand. "We -trust you both. But the situation is clear, I think. If you come back -to us as Harry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> Whitelaw, you'll find us eager to welcome you. If you -don't, or if you can't—"</p> - -<p>A wave of the hand, a shrug of the shoulders, expressing the rest, Tom -could only bow himself out.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLIII</p> - - -<p class="drop">O<span class="uppercase">n</span> the part of Philip and Sunshine Ansley the confidence was such that -Hildred was permitted to take a walk with Tom before his departure for -New York.</p> - -<p>"We're not engaged," Hildred reported as part of her mother's -conditions, "and we can't be engaged unless you're proved to be Harry -Whitelaw. Mother thinks you're going to be. So apparently the question -in the long run will be as to whether or not you want me."</p> - -<p>"It won't be that. I'm crazy about you, Hildred, more than any fellow -ever was before."</p> - -<p>"And that's the way I feel about you, Tom. I don't care a bit about the -things dad and mother think so important. You're you; you're not your -father or your mother, whoever they may have been. I shouldn't love you -any the better if you became the son of Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. It would -only make it easier."</p> - -<p>It was a windy afternoon in April, with the trees in new leaf. All -along the Fenway the bridal-veil made cascades of whiteness whiter than -the hawthorns. Pansies, tulips, and forget-me-nots brightened all the -foot-paths. The two tall, supple figures bent and laughed in the teeth -of the lusty wind.</p> - -<p>Rather it was she who laughed, since she had the confidence in life, -while he knew only life's problems.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> He had always known life's -problems, and though there had never been a time when he was free from -them, he never had had one to solve so difficult as this.</p> - -<p>"But that's where the shoe pinches," he declared, "that I'm myself, so -much more myself than many fellows are; and yet, unless I turn into -some one else, I shall lose you."</p> - -<p>She threw back her answer with a kind of radiant honesty. "You couldn't -lose me, Tom. I couldn't lose you. We've grown together. Nothing can -cut us asunder. One can't win out against two people who're as willing -to wait as we are."</p> - -<p>He was not comforted. "Oh, wait! I don't want to wait."</p> - -<p>"Neither do I; but we'd both rather wait than give each other up."</p> - -<p>"Wait—for how long?"</p> - -<p>"How can I tell how long? As long as we have to."</p> - -<p>"Till your father and mother die?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, gracious, no! I'm not killing the poor lambs. Till they come -round. They'll <i>come</i> round."</p> - -<p>"How do you know?"</p> - -<p>"Because fathers and mothers always do. Once they see how sad I'll be—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, you're going to play that game."</p> - -<p>She was indignant. "I shan't play a game. I shall <i>be</i> sad. I'm all -right now while you're here; but once you're gone—well, if dad and -mother want a martyr on their hands they'll have one. I shan't be -putting it on either. I'll not be able to help myself."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'd rather they came around for some other reason than to save your -life."</p> - -<p>"I'm not particular about the reason so long as they come round. But -you see I'm talking as if the worse were coming to the worst. As a -matter of fact, I believe the better is coming to the best."</p> - -<p>"Which means that you think the Whitelaws...."</p> - -<p>"I know they will."</p> - -<p>"And that I...."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Tom, you'll be reasonable, won't you?"</p> - -<p>He was silent. Even Hildred couldn't see what his past had meant to -him. A wretched, miserable past from some points of view, at least it -was his own. It had entered into him and made him. It was as hard to -take it now as a hideous mistake as it would have been to take his -breathing or the circulation of his blood.</p> - -<p>The farther it drifted behind him the more content he was to have known -it. Each phase had given him something he recognized as an asset. -Honey, the Quidmores, the Tollivants, Mrs. Crewdson, the "mudda," -had all left behind them experiences which time was beginning to -consecrate. Hildred couldn't understand any more than anybody else what -it cost him to disclaim them. He often wondered whether, had he been -born the son of Henry and Eleonora Whitelaw, and never been stolen away -from them, he would have grown to be another Tad. He thought it very -likely.</p> - -<p>Not that Tad hadn't justified himself. He had. His record in the war -had gone far to redeem him. He had come through with sacrifice and -honor. Hav<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>ing fought without a scratch for a year and a half, he had, -on the very morning of the day when the Armistice was signed, received -a wound which, because of the infection in his blood, had resulted -in the loss of his right arm. This maiming, which the chance of a -few hours would have saved him, he took, according to Hildred, with -splendid pluck, though also with an inclination to be peevish. Lily, -so Tom's letters from Henry Whitelaw had long ago informed him, had -married a man named Greenshields, had had a baby, had been divorced, -and again lived at home with her parents.</p> - -<p>Tom pondered on the advantages they, Tad and Lily, were assumed to -have enjoyed and which he himself had been denied. Everyone, Hildred -included, took it for granted that ease and indulgence were blessings, -and that he had suffered from the loss of them. Perhaps he had; but he -hadn't suffered more than Tad and Lily on whom they had been lavished. -Tad with his maimed body, Lily with her maimed life, were not of -necessity the product of wealth and luxury; but neither did a blasted -soul or character come of necessity from poverty and hardship, or even -from an origin in crime.</p> - -<p>He couldn't explain this to Hildred, partly because she didn't care, -partly because he had not the words, and mostly because her assumptions -were those of her society. She would love him just the same whether -he were the son of a woman who had killed herself in jail, or that -of a banker known throughout the world; but the advantages of being -the latter were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> to her beyond argument. So they were to him, except -that....</p> - -<p>Thus with Hildred he came to no conclusions any more than with her -parents. With her as with them it was an object to keep him from making -any statement that might seem too decisive. If they left it to Henry -Whitelaw and himself the scales could but dip in one direction.</p> - -<p>And yet when actually face to face with the banker, Tom doubted if the -subject was going to be raised. He had written, reminding Whitelaw -of the promise he himself had exacted, that on looking for work, Tom -should apply first of all to him. Like Ansley, the banker had made an -appointment at his office.</p> - -<p>The office was in the ponderous and somewhat forbidding structure which -bore the name of Meek and Brokenshire in Wall Street. The room into -which Tom was shown was shabby and unpretentious. Square, low-ceiled, -lighted by two windows looking into yards or courts, its one bit of -color lay in the green and red of a Turkey rug, threadbare in spots, -and scuffed into wrinkles. Against the walls were heavily carved walnut -bookcases, housing books of reference. A few worn leather armchairs -made a rough circle about a wide flat-topped desk, which stood in the -center of the room. On the desk were some valuable knickknacks, paper -weights, paper cutters, pen trays, and other odds and ends, evidently -gifts. A white-marble mantelpiece clumsily sculptured in the style of -1840 was adorned above by the lithographed head of the first J. Howard -Brokenshire, also of 1840, and one of the founders of the firm.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p> - -<p>For the first few minutes the room was empty. Tom stood timidly close -to the door through which he had come in. The banker entered from a -room adjoining.</p> - -<p>"Ah, here you are!"</p> - -<p>He crossed the floor rapidly. For a long minute Tom found himself held -as he had been held before, the man's right hand grasping his, the left -hand resting on his shoulder. There was also the same searching with -the eyes, and the same little weary push when the eyes had searched -enough.</p> - -<p>"Sit down."</p> - -<p>Tom took the armchair nearest him; the man drew up another. He drew it -close, with hungry eagerness. Tom was apologetic.</p> - -<p>"I must beg your pardon, sir, for asking you to see me—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, my dear boy. I should have been hurt if you hadn't. I've been -expecting you ever since I read that you'd landed. What made you go to -Boston before coming here?"</p> - -<p>There was confession in Tom's smile. "I had to see some one."</p> - -<p>"Was it Hildred Ansley?"</p> - -<p>Tom found himself coloring, and without an answer.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you needn't tell me. I didn't mean to embarrass you. The Ansleys -are very good friends of mine. Known them well for years. If it hadn't -been for them you and I might never have got together. Now give me some -account of yourself. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> must be nearly two months since I last heard -from you."</p> - -<p>Tom gave such scraps of information as he hadn't told in letters, and -thought might be of interest. With some use of inner force he nerved -himself to ask after Mrs. Whitelaw, and "the other members of the -family," a phrase which evaded the use of names.</p> - -<p>The banker talked more freely than he had written. He talked as to -one with whom he could open his heart, and not as to an outsider. -Mrs. Whitelaw was stronger and calmer, less subject to the paralyzing -terrors which had beset her for so long. Tad was doing with himself -the best he could, but the best in the case of a fellow of his age and -tastes who had lost his right arm was not very good. He could ride a -little, guiding his horse with his left hand, but he couldn't drive -a car, or hunt, or play polo, or use his hand for writing. He could -hardly dress himself; he fed himself only when everything was cut -up for him. In the course of time he would probably do better, but -as yet he couldn't do much. Lily had made a mess of things. It was -worse than what he had told Tom in his letters. She had eloped with a -worthless fellow, whom he, her father, had forbidden her to know, and -who wanted nothing but her money. It was a sad affair, and had stunned -or bewildered her. He didn't like to talk of it, but Tom would see for -himself.</p> - -<p>He reverted to Tom's own concerns. "You wrote to me about a job."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir; but I'm afraid it's bothering you too much."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Don't think that. I've got the job."</p> - -<p>The young man tried to speak, but the other hurried on.</p> - -<p>"I hope you'll take it, because I've been keeping it for you ever since -I saw you last."</p> - -<p>Tom's eyes opened wide. "Over three years?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, there was no hurry. Easy enough to save it. I want you to be one -of the assistants to my own confidential secretary. This will keep you -close to myself, which is where I want to have you for the first year -at least. You'll get the hang of a lot of things there, and anything -you don't understand I can explain to you. Later, if you want to go -into the study of banking more scientifically—well, I shall be able to -direct you."</p> - -<p>He sat dazzled, speechless. It was the -future!—Hildred!—happiness!—honor!—the big life!—the conquest of -the world! He could have them all by sitting still, by saying nothing, -by letting it be implied that he renounced his loyalties, by being -passive in the hand of this goodwill. He would be a fool, he told -himself, not to yield to it. Everyone in his senses would consider him -a fool. The father of the Whitelaw baby believed that he had found his -child. Why not let him believe it? How did he, Tom Whitelaw, know that -he wasn't his child? The woman who had told him he was never to think -so was dead and in her grave. Judged by all reasonable standards, he -owed her nothing but a training in wicked ways. He would give her up. -He would admit, tacitly anyhow, even if not in words, that she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> had -stolen him. He would be grateful to this man—and profit by his mistake.</p> - -<p>He began to speak. "I hardly know how to thank you, sir, for so much -kindness. I only hope—" He was trying to find the words in which -to express his ambition to prove worthy of this trust, but he found -himself saying something else—"I only hope that you're not doing all -this for me because you think I'm—I'm your son."</p> - -<p>Leaning toward him, the banker put his hand on his knee. "Suppose we -don't bring that up just yet? Suppose we just—go on? As a matter of -fact—I'm talking to you quite frankly—more frankly than I could speak -to anyone else in the world—but as a matter of fact I—I want some -one who'll—who'll be like a son to me—whether he's my son or not. I -wonder if you're old enough to understand."</p> - -<p>"I think I am, sir."</p> - -<p>"I'm rather a lonely man. I've got great cares, great responsibilities. -I can swing them all right. There are my partners, fine fellows all -of them; there are as many friends as I can ask for. But I've nobody -who comes—who comes very close to me—as a son could come. I've -thought—I've thought it for some time past—that—whoever you are—you -might do that."</p> - -<p>As he leaned with his hand on Tom's knee his eyes were lower than Tom's -own. Tom looked down into them. It was strange to him that this man who -held so much of the world in his grasp should be speaking to him almost -pleadingly. His memories filed by him with the speed and distinctness -of lightning. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> was the little boy moving from tenement to tenement; -he was in the big shop on that Christmas Eve; he was walking with his -mother in front of the policeman; he was watching her go away with the -woman who was like a Fate; he was staring at the Christmas Tree; he was -being pelted on his first day at school; he was picking strawberries -for the Quidmores; he was sleeping in the same room with Honey; he -was acting as chauffeur at the inn-club in Dublin, New Hampshire, and -picking up this very man at Keene. And here they were together, the -instinct of the father calling to the son, while the instinct of the -son was scarcely, if at all, articulate.</p> - -<p>The struggle was between his future and his past. "I must be his son," -he cried to himself. But another voice cried, "And yet I can't be." -Aloud he said, modestly, "I'm not sure, sir, that I could fill the bill -for you."</p> - -<p>"That would be up to me. It isn't what you can do but what I'm looking -for that matters in a case like this." He stood up. "I'm sorry I must -go back to a conference inside, but I shall see you soon again. What's -your address in New York?"</p> - -<p>Tom gave him the name of the hotel at which he was putting up. Whitelaw -had never heard of it.</p> - -<p>"Can't you do better than that?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, it isn't bad, sir. I'm not used to luxury, and I manage very well. -I'm quite all right."</p> - -<p>"Is it money?"</p> - -<p>"Only in the sense that everything is money. I've a little saved—not -much—and I like to keep on the weather side of it. The man who did -more for me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> than anybody else—the ex-burglar I told you about—always -taught me to be economical."</p> - -<p>"All the same I don't like to have you staying in a place like that. -You must let me—"</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, sir! I'd a great deal rather not." He spoke in some alarm. -"I've got to be on my own. I <i>must</i> be."</p> - -<p>"Oh, very well!"</p> - -<p>The tone was not precisely cold; it was that of a man whose good -intentions were sensitive. Tom did something which he never had -supposed he would have dared to do. He went up to this man, and laid -his hand gently on his arm. Instantly the man's free hand was laid on -the one which touched him, welcoming the caress. Tom tried to explain -himself.</p> - -<p>"It isn't that I'm not grateful, sir. I hope you don't think that. -But—but I'm myself, you see. I've got to stand on my own feet. I know -how to do it. I've learned. I—I hope you don't mind."</p> - -<p>"I want you to do whatever you think best yourself. You're the only -judge." They had separated now, and the banker held out his hand. "Oh, -and by the way," he continued, clinging to Tom's hand in the way he had -done on earlier occasions. "My wife wants to see you. She told me to -ask you if you couldn't go and lunch with her to-morrow."</p> - -<p>Since there was no escape Tom could only brace himself.</p> - -<p>"Very well, sir. It's kind of Mrs. Whitelaw. I'll go with pleasure. At -one o'clock?"</p> - -<p>"At one o'clock." He picked up a card from the desk. "This is our -address. You'll find Mrs. White<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>law less—less emotional than when you -saw her last and more—more used to the idea."</p> - -<p>Without explaining the idea to which she was more used, the banker -released Tom's hand with his customary little push, as if he had had -enough of him, hurrying out by the door through which he had come in.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLIV</p> - - -<p class="drop">B<span class="uppercase">efore</span> turning into bed that night Tom had fought to a finish his -battle with himself. The victory rested, he hoped, with common sense. -He could no longer doubt that before very long an extraordinary offer -would be made to him. To repulse it would be insane.</p> - -<p>"As far as my personal preferences go," he wrote to Hildred, "I would -rather remain as I am. Remaining as I am would be easier. I'm free; -I've no one to consider; I know my own way of life, and can follow it -pretty surely. But I'm not adaptable. You yourself must often have -noticed that my mind works stiffly, and that I find it hard to see the -other fellow's point of view. I'm narrow, solitary, concentrated, and -self-willed. But as long as I've no one to consult I can get along.</p> - -<p>"To enter a family of which I know nothing of the ways or traditions -or points of view is going to be a tough job. It will be much tougher -than if I merely married into it. In that case I should be only an -adjunct to it, whereas in what may happen now I shall have to become an -integral part of it. I must be as a leg instead of as a crutch. I don't -know how I shall manage it.</p> - -<p>"I'm not easily intimate with anyone. Perhaps that's the reason why, -as you say, I haven't enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> of the lover in me. I'm not naturally a -lover. I'm not naturally a friend. I'm a solitary. A solitude <i>à deux</i>, -with the servants, as you always like to stipulate, is my conception of -an earthly paradise.</p> - -<p>"To you the normal of life is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister. -To me it isn't. To have a father seems abnormal to me, or to have a -sister or a brother. If I can see myself with a mother it's because of -a poignant experience of the kind that burns itself into the memory. -But I can't see myself with <i>another</i> mother, and that's what I've -got to do. Mind you, it isn't a stepmother I must see, nor an adopted -mother, nor a mother-in-law; it's a real mother of my own flesh and -blood. I must see a real brother, a real sister. They think that all -they have to do is to fling their doors open, and that it will be a -simple thing for me to walk in. But I must fling open something more -tightly sealed than any door ever was—my life, my affections, my point -of view. They are four, and need only make room for one. I'm only one, -and must make room for four.</p> - -<p>"But I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for a number of reasons -which I shall try to give you in their order.</p> - -<p>"First, for your sake. You want it. For me that is enough. I see your -reasons too. It will help us with your father and mother, and all our -future life. So that settles that.</p> - -<p>"Then, I want to conform to what those who care anything about me -would expect. I don't want to seem a fool. It's what I should seem if -I turned such an offer down. Nobody would understand my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> emotional and -sentimental reasons but myself; and when it comes to the emotional and -sentimental there is a pro side as well as a con to the whole situation.</p> - -<p>"Because if I <i>must</i> have a father there's no one whom I could so -easily accept as a father as this very man. He seems to me like my -father; I think I seem to him like his son. More than that, he looks -like my father, and I must look like the kind of son he would naturally -have. I'm sure he likes me, and I know I like him. If I was choosing a -father he's the very one I should pick out.</p> - -<p>"Next, and you may be surprised to hear me say it, I could do very well -with Tad as a brother. That he couldn't do with me is another thing; -but there's something about the chap which has bewitched me from the -day I first laid eyes on him. I haven't liked him exactly; I've only -felt for him a kind of responsibility. I've tried to ignore it, to -laugh at it, to argue it down; but the thing wouldn't let me kill it. -If there's such a thing as an instinct between those of the same flesh -and blood I should say that this was it. I've no doubt that if we come -to living in one menagerie we shall be the same sort of friends as a -lion and a tiger—but there it is.</p> - -<p>"The women appall me. I can't express it otherwise. With the father I -could be a son as affectionate as if I'd never left the family. With -Tad I could establish—I've established already—a sort of fighting -fraternity. To neither the mother nor the daughter could I ever be -anything, so far as I can see now. They wouldn't let me. They wouldn't -want me. If they yield to the extent of admitting me into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> family -they'll always bar me from their hearts. The limit of my hope is -that, since I generally get along with those I have to live with, the -hostility won't be too obvious. I also have the prospect that when you -and I are married—and that's my motive in the whole business—I shall -get a measure of release."</p> - -<p>He purchased next morning a pair of gloves and an inexpensive walking -stick so as to look as nearly as might be like the smart young men -he saw on the pavements of Fifth Avenue. It was not his object to be -smart; it was to be up to the standard of the house at which he was to -lunch.</p> - -<p>To reach that house he went on the top of a bus like the one on -which he had ridden with Honey nearly ten years earlier. He did this -with intention, to make the commemoration. Honey's suspicions and -predictions had then seemed absurd; and here they were on the eve of -being verified.</p> - -<p>He got off at the corner at which, as he remembered, Honey and he had -got off on that August Sunday afternoon. He crossed the road to see -if he could recognize the home of the Whitelaw baby as it had been -pointed out to him. Recognition came easily enough because in the whole -line of buildings it was the only one which stood detached, with a bit -of lawn on all sides of it. A spacious brownstone house, it had the -cheery, homey aspect which comes from generous proportions, and masses -of spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, banked in the -bow-windows.</p> - -<p>Being a little ahead of his time, he walked up the street, trying -to compose himself and recapture his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> nerve. The story, first told -to him by Honey, and repeated in scraps by many others, returned to -him. Too far away to be noticed by anyone who chanced to be looking -out, he stood and gazed back at the house. If he was really Harry -Whitelaw he had been born there. The last time he had come forth from -it he had been carried down those steps by two footmen. He had been -wheeled across the street and into the Park by a nurse in uniform. -Within the glades of the Park a change had somehow been wrought in his -destiny, after which there was a blank. He emerged from that blank into -consciousness sitting on a high chair in a kitchen, beating on the -table with a spoon, and asking the question: "Mudda, id my name Gracie, -or id it Tom?" The memory was both vague and vivid. It was vague -because it came out from nowhere and vanished into nowhere. It was -vivid because it linked up with that bewilderment as to his identity -which haunted his early childhood. The discovery that he was a little -boy forced on a woman craving for a little girl was the one with which -he first became aware of himself as a living entity.</p> - -<p>To his present renunciation of that woman he tried to shut his mind. -There was no help for it. He had long kept a veil before this sad holy -of holies; he would simply hang it up again. He would nail it up, he -would never loosen it, and still less go behind it. What was there -would now forever be hidden from any sight, even from his own.</p> - -<p>At a minute before one he recrossed the avenue, and went down the -little slope. In the rôle of Harry Whitelaw which he was trying -to assume going up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> steps was significant. The long, devious, -apparently senseless odyssey had brought him back again. It was only to -himself that the odyssey seemed straight and with a purpose.</p> - -<p>The middle-aged man who opened the door raised his eyebrows and opened -his eyes wide in a flash of perturbation. It was only for an instant; -in the half of a second he was once more the proper stiffened image -of decorum. And yet as he took from the visitor the hat, stick, and -gloves, Tom could see that the eyes were scanning his face furtively.</p> - -<p>It was a big dim hall, impressive with a few bits of ancient massive -furniture, and a stairway in an alcove, partially hidden by a screen -which might have been torn from some French cathedral. Tom, who -had risen to the modest standard of the Ansleys, again felt his -insufficiency.</p> - -<p>Following the butler, he went down the length of the hall toward a door -on the right. But a door on the left opened stealthily, and stealthily -a little figure darted forth.</p> - -<p>"So you've come! I knew you would! I knew I shouldn't go down to my -grave without seeing you back in the home from which twenty-three years -ago you were carried out. I've said so to Dadd times without number, -haven't I, Dadd?"</p> - -<p>"You have indeed, Miss Nash," Dadd corroborated, "and none of us didn't -believe you."</p> - -<p>"Dadd was the second footman," Miss Nash explained further. "He was one -of the two who lifted you down that morning. Now he's the butler; but -he's never had my faith."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span></p> - -<p>She glided away again. Dadd threw open a door. Tom found himself in a -large sunny room, of which the bow-window was filled with flowers.</p> - -<p>There was no one there, which was so far a relief. It gave him time to -collect himself. Except for apartments in museums, or in some château -he had visited in France, he had never been in a room so stately or so -full of costly beauty. He knew the beauty was costly in spite of his -lack of experience.</p> - -<p>On the wall opposite the bow-window stretched a blue-green Flemish -tapestry, with sad-eyed, elongated figures crowding on one another -within an intricate frame of flowers, foliage, and fruits. A -white-marble mantelpiece, bearing in shallow relief three garlanded -groups of dancing Cupids, supported a clock and a pair of candelabra in -<i>biscuit de Sèvres</i> mounted in ormolu. Above this hung a full-length -eighteenth-century lady—Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough—he was only -guessing—looking graciously down on a cabinet of European porcelains, -on another of miniatures, and another of old fans. Bronzes were -scattered here and there, with bits of iridescent Spanish luster, and -two or three plaques of Limoges enamel intense in color. Since there -was room for everything, the profusion was without excess, and not too -carefully thought out. A work-basket filled with sewing materials and -knitting stood on a table strewn with recent magazines and books.</p> - -<p>He was so long alone that he was growing nervous when Lily dropped into -the room as if she had happened there accidentally. She sauntered up to -him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> however, offering her hand with a long, serpentine lifting of the -arm, casual and negligent.</p> - -<p>"How-d'ye-do? Mamma's late. I don't know whether she's in the house or -not. Perhaps she's forgotten. She often does." She picked up a silver -box of cigarettes. "Have one?"</p> - -<p>On his declining she lighted one for herself, dropping into a big -upright chair and crossing her legs. It was the year when young ladies -liked to display their ankles and calves nearly up to the knee. Lily, -whose skirt was of unrelieved black, wore violet silk stockings, -with black slippers which had bright red buckles set in paste. Over -her shoulders a violet scarf, with bright red bars, hung loosely. In -sitting, her sinuous figure drooped a little forward, the elbow of the -hand which held the cigarette supported on her knee.</p> - -<p>Though she hadn't asked him to sit down, he took a chair of his own -accord, waiting for her to speak again. When she did so, after an -interval of puffing out tiny rings of blue smoke, her voice was languid -and monotonous, and yet with overtones of passionate self-will.</p> - -<p>"You've been in the army, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>He said he had been.</p> - -<p>"Did you like it?"</p> - -<p>"I never had time to think as to whether I did or not. I just had to -stick it out."</p> - -<p>"Did you ever see Tad over there?"</p> - -<p>"No, I never did."</p> - -<p>As she was laconic he too would be laconic. She didn't look at him, or -show an interest in his per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>sonality. If she thought him the brother -who after long disappearance was coming home again she betrayed no hint -of the possibility. He might have been a chance stranger whom she would -never see again. Lapses of silence did not embarrass her. She sat and -smoked.</p> - -<p>He decided to assume the right to ask questions on his own side. -"You've been married since I saw you last, haven't you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes." She didn't resent this, apparently, and after a long two minutes -of silence, added: "and divorced." There was still a noticeable passage -of time before she continued, in her toneless voice: "I've a baby too."</p> - -<p>"Do you like him?"</p> - -<p>A flicker of a smile passed over a profile heavy-browed, handsome, -and disdainful. "He's an ugly little monster so far." She had a way -of stringing out her sentences as after-thoughts. "I daresay he's all -right."</p> - -<p>There followed a pause so long and deep that in it you could hear -the ticking of the clock. He was determined to be as apathetic as -herself. She had no air of thinking. She scarcely so much as moved. -Her stillness suggested the torrid, brooding calm before volcanic or -seismic convulsion. Without a turning of the head or a change in her -languid intonation, she said, casually:</p> - -<p>"You're our lost brother, aren't you?"</p> - -<p>The emotion from which she was so free almost strangled him. He could -barely breathe the words, "Would you care if I were?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span></p> - -<p>"What would be the use of my caring if papa was satisfied?"</p> - -<p>"Still, I should think, that one way or the other, you might care."</p> - -<p>To this challenge she made no response. She was not hostile in -any active sense; he was sure of that. She impressed him rather -as exhausted after terrific scenes of passion, waywardness, and -disillusion. A little rest, and she would be ready for the same again, -with himself perhaps to take the consequence.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Whitelaw came in with the rapid step and breathless, syncopated -utterance he remembered.</p> - -<p>"So sorry to be late. I'd been for a long drive. I wanted to think. I -had no idea what time it was. I suppose you must be hungry."</p> - -<p>She gave him her hand without looking him in the face, helped over the -effort of the meeting by the phrases of excuse.</p> - -<p>"So this is my mother!"</p> - -<p>It was his single thought. In the attempt to realize the fact he had -ceased to be troubled or embarrassed. He could only look. He could only -wonder if he would ever be able to make himself believe that which he -did not believe. He repeated to himself what he had already written to -Hildred: he could believe the man to be his father; but that this woman -was his mother he rejected as an impossibility.</p> - -<p>Not that there was anything about her displeasing or unsympathetic. -On the contrary, she had been beautiful, and still had a lovely -distinction. Features that must always have been soft and appealing had -gained by the pathos of her tragedy, while a skin that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> could never -have been anything but delicate and exquisite was kept exquisite and -delicate by massage and cosmetics. Veils protected it from the sun and -air; gauntlets, easy to pull on and off, preserved the tenderness of -hands wearing many jeweled rings, but a little too dimpling and pudgy. -The eyes, limpid, large, and gray with the lucent gray of moonstones, -had lids of the texture of white rose petals just beginning to shrivel -up and show little <i>bistré</i> stains. The lashes were long, dark, and -curling like those of a young girl. Tom couldn't see the color of her -hair because she wore a motoring hat, with a sweeping brown veil draped -over it and hanging down the back. Heather-brown, with a purplish -mixture, was the Harris tweed of her coat and skirt. The blouse of -a silky stuff, was brown, with blue and rose lights in it when she -moved. A row of great pearls went round her neck, while the rest of the -string, which was probably long, disappeared within the corsage.</p> - -<p>Dadd appeared on the threshold, announcing lunch.</p> - -<p>"Come on," Mrs. Whitelaw commanded, and Lily rose listlessly. "Is Tad -to be at home?"</p> - -<p>Lily dragged her frail person in the wake of her mother. "I don't know -anything about him."</p> - -<p>Tom followed Lily, since it seemed the only thing to do, crossing the -hall and passing through the door by which Miss Nash had darted out to -speak to him.</p> - -<p>The dining room, on the north side of the house, was vast, sunless, and -somber. Tom was vaguely aware of the gleam of rich pieces of silver, of -the carving of high-backed chairs as majestic as thrones. One of these -thrones Dadd drew out for Mrs. White<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>law; a footman drew out a second -for Lily; another footman a third for himself.</p> - -<p>"Sit there, will you?" Mrs. Whitelaw said, in her offhand, breathless -way, as if speaking caused her pain. "This room is chilly."</p> - -<p>She pulled her coat about her, though the room had the temperature -suited to the great plant of Cattleya, on which there might have been -thirty blooms, which stood in the center of the table. With rapid, -nervous movements she picked up a spoon and tasted the grapefruit -before her. A taste, and she pushed it away, nervously, rapidly. -Nervously, rapidly, she glanced at Tom, glancing off somewhere else as -if the sight of him hurt her eyes.</p> - -<p>"How long have you been back?"</p> - -<p>He gave her the dates and places connected with his recent movements.</p> - -<p>"Did you like it over there?"</p> - -<p>He made the reply he had given to Lily.</p> - -<p>"Were you ever wounded?"</p> - -<p>He said he had once received a bad cut on the shoulder which had kept -him a month in hospital, but otherwise he had not suffered.</p> - -<p>"Tad's lost his right arm. Did you know that?"</p> - -<p>He had first got this news from Guy Ansley. He was very sorry. At the -same time, when others had been so horribly mangled, it was something -to escape with only the loss of a right arm.</p> - -<p>She gave him another of her hurried, unwilling glances. "How did you -come to know the Ansleys so well?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span></p> - -<p>He told the story of his early meetings with the fat boy on the -sidewalk of Louisburg Square.</p> - -<p>"Wasn't it awful living with that burglar?"</p> - -<p>Tom smiled. "No. It seemed natural enough. He was a very kind burglar. -I owe him everything."</p> - -<p>To Tom's big appetite the lunch was frugal, but it was ceremonious. He -was oppressed by it. That three strong men should be needed to bring -them the little they had to eat and drink struck him as ridiculous. And -this was his father's house. This was what he should come to take as -a matter of course. He would get up every morning to eat a breakfast -served with this magnificence. He would sit every day on one of these -thrones, like an apostle in the Apocalypse. He thought of breakfasts in -the tenements, at the Tollivants', at the Quidmores', or with Honey in -the grimy eating-places where they took their meals, and knew for the -first time in many years a pang something like that of homesickness.</p> - -<p>It was not altogether the ceremony against which he was rebellious. It -had elements of beauty which couldn't be decried. What he felt was the -old ache on behalf of the millions of people who had to go without, in -order that the few might possess so much. It was the world's big wrong, -and he didn't know what caused it. His economic studies, taken with a -view to helping him in the banking profession, had convinced him that -nobody knew what caused it, and that the cures proposed were worse than -the disease. Without thinking much of it actively, it was always in -the back of his mind that he must work to eliminate this fundamental -ill. Sitting and eating commonplace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> food in this useless solemn -stateliness, the conviction forced itself home. Somewhere and somehow -the world must find a means between too much and too little, or mankind -would be driven to commit suicide.</p> - -<p>During the meal, which was brief, Lily scarcely spoke. As they -recrossed the hall to go back to the big sunny room, she sloped away -to some other part of the house. Tom and his mother sat down together, -embarrassed if not distressed.</p> - -<p>Pointing to the box of cigarettes, she said, tersely, "Smoke, if you -like."</p> - -<p>In the hope of feeling more at ease he smoked. Still wearing her hat -and coat, she drew her chair close to the fire, which had been lighted -while they were at lunch, holding her hands to the blaze.</p> - -<p>"Do you think you're our son?"</p> - -<p>The question was shot out in the toneless voice common to Lily and -herself, except that with the mother there was the staccato catch of -breathlessness between the words.</p> - -<p>Tom was on his guard. "Do you?"</p> - -<p>Turning slightly she glanced at him, quickly glancing away. "You look -as if you were."</p> - -<p>"But looks can be an accident."</p> - -<p>"Then there's the name."</p> - -<p>"That doesn't prove anything."</p> - -<p>"And my husband knows a lot of other things. He'll tell you himself -what they are."</p> - -<p>He repeated the question he had put to Lily, "Would you care if I were -your son?"</p> - -<p>Making no immediate response, she evaded the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> question when she spoke. -"If you were, you'd have to make your home here."</p> - -<p>"Couldn't I be your son—and make my home somewhere else?"</p> - -<p>"I don't see how that would help."</p> - -<p>"It might help me."</p> - -<p>The large gray eyes stole round toward him. "Do you mean that you -wouldn't want to live with us?"</p> - -<p>"I mean that I'm not used to your way of living."</p> - -<p>"Oh, well!" She dismissed this, continuing to spread her jeweled -fingers to the blaze. "You said once—a long time ago—when I saw you -in Boston—that you couldn't get accustomed to another—to another -mother—now—or something like that. Do you remember?"</p> - -<p>He said he remembered, but he said no more.</p> - -<p>"Well, what about it?"</p> - -<p>Since it was precisely to another mother that he was now making up his -mind, he found the question difficult. "It was three years ago that I -said that. Things change."</p> - -<p>"What's changed?"</p> - -<p>"Perhaps not things so much as people. I've changed myself."</p> - -<p>"Changed toward us—toward me?"</p> - -<p>"I've changed toward the whole question—chiefly because Mr. Whitelaw's -been so kind to me."</p> - -<p>"I don't suppose his kindness makes any difference in the facts. If -you're our son you're our son whether he's kind to you or not."</p> - -<p>"His kindness may not make any difference in the facts, but it does -make a difference in my attitude."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Mine can't be influenced so easily."</p> - -<p>Though he wondered what she meant by that he decided to find out -indirectly. "No, I suppose not. After all, you're the one to whom it's -all more vital than to anybody else."</p> - -<p>"Because I'm the mother? I don't see that. They talk about -mother-instinct as if it was so sure; but—" She swung round on him -with sudden, unexpected flame—"but if they'd been put to as many tests -as I've been they'd find out. Why, almost any child can seem as if he -might have been the baby you haven't seen for a few years. You forget. -You lose the power either to recognize or to be sure that you don't -recognize. If anyone tries hard enough to persuade you...."</p> - -<p>"Has anyone tried to persuade you—about me?"</p> - -<p>He began to see from whence Tad and Lily had drawn the stormy elements -in their natures. "Not in so many words perhaps; but when some one very -close to you is convinced...."</p> - -<p>"And you yourself not convinced...."</p> - -<p>She rose to her feet tragically. "How <i>can</i> I be convinced? What is -there to convince me? Resemblances—a name—a few records—a few -guesses—a few hopes—but I don't <i>know</i>. Who can prove a case of this -kind—after nearly twenty-three years?"</p> - -<p>In his eagerness to reassure her he stepped near to where she stood. -"I hope you understand that I'm not trying to prove anything. I never -began this."</p> - -<p>"I know you didn't. I feel as if a false position would be as hard on -you as it would be on ourselves."</p> - -<p>"Then you think the position would be a false one?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I'm not saying so. I'm only trying to make you see how impossible it -is for me to say I'm sure you're my boy—<i>when I don't know</i>. I'm not a -cold-hearted woman. I'm only a tired and frightened one."</p> - -<p>"Would it be of any help if I were to withdraw?"</p> - -<p>"It wouldn't be of help to my husband."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I see! We must consider him."</p> - -<p>"I don't see that you need consider anyone but yourself. We've dragged -you into this. You've a right to do exactly as you please."</p> - -<p>"Oh, if I were to do that...."</p> - -<p>"What I don't want you to do is to misjudge me. Not that it would -matter whether you misjudged me or not, unless—later—we were -compelled to see ourselves as—as son and mother."</p> - -<p>"I shouldn't like to have either of us do that—under compulsion."</p> - -<p>Restlessly, rapidly, she began to move about, touching now this object -and now that. Her hands were as active as if they had an independent -life. They were more expressive than her tone when they tossed -themselves wildly apart, as she cried:</p> - -<p>"What else could it be for me—but compulsion?" He was about to speak, -but she stopped him. "Do me justice. Put yourself in my place. My boy -would now be twenty-four. They bring me a man who looks like thirty. -Yes, yes; I daresay you're not thirty, but you look like it. It's just -as hard for me as if you <i>were</i> thirty. I'm only forty-four myself. -They want me to think that this man—so big—so grave—so <i>old</i>—is my -little boy. How <i>can</i> I? He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> may be. I don't deny that. But for me to -<i>think</i> it ...!"</p> - -<p>He watched her as she moved from table to table, from chair to chair, -her eyes on him reproachfully, her hands like things in agony.</p> - -<p>"It's as hard for me to think it as it is for you."</p> - -<p>The words arrested her. Her frenzied motions ceased. Only her eyes kept -themselves on him, with their sorrowful, fixed stare.</p> - -<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p> - -<p>He tried to explain. "My only conception of a mother is of some one -poor—and hard-worked—and knocked about—and loving—and driven -from pillar to post—whereas you're so beautiful—and young—young -almost—and—and expensive—and—" A flip of his hand included the -room—"with all this as your setting—and everything else—I can't -credit it."</p> - -<p>She came up to him excitedly. "Well, then—what?"</p> - -<p>"The only thing we can do, it seems to me, is to try to make it easier -for each other. May I ask one question?"</p> - -<p>She nodded, mutely.</p> - -<p>"Would you rather that your little boy was found?—or that he wasn't -found?"</p> - -<p>She wheeled away, speaking only after a minute's thought, and from the -other side of the room. "I'd rather that he was found—of course—if I -could be sure that he <i>was</i> found."</p> - -<p>"How would you know when you were sure?"</p> - -<p>She tapped her heart. "I ought to know it here."</p> - -<p>"That's the way I'd know it too."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span></p> - -<p>"And you don't?"</p> - -<p>In a long silence he looked at her. She looked at him. Each strove -after the mystery which warps the child to the mother, the mother to -the child. Where was it? What was it? How could you tell it when you -saw it? And if you saw it, could you miss it and pass it by? He sought -it in her eyes; she sought it in his. They sought it by all the avenues -of intuitive, spiritual sight.</p> - -<p>She tapped her heart again. Her utterance was imperious, insistent, and -yet soft.</p> - -<p>"And you <i>don't</i>—feel it there?"</p> - -<p>He too spoke softly. "No, I don't."</p> - -<p>In reluctant dismissal he turned away from her. With her quick little -gasp of a sob she turned away from him.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLV</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">o</span> Tom Whitelaw this was the conclusion of the whole matter. A son must -have a mother as well as a father. If there was no mother there was no -son. The inference brought him a relief in which there were two strains -of regret.</p> - -<p>He would be farther away from Hildred. They would have more trials to -meet, more bridges to cross. Very well! He was not accustomed to having -things made easy. For whatever he possessed, which was not much, he had -longed and worked and worked and longed till he got it. But he got it -in the end. In the end he would get Hildred. Better win her so than to -have her drop as a present in his arms. If not wholly content, he was -sure.</p> - -<p>In the matter of his second regret he was only sorry. It began to grow -clear to him that a father needs a son more than a son needs a father. -Of this kind of need he himself knew nothing. He was what he was, -detached, independent, assured. He never asked for sympathy, and if he -craved for love, he had learned to stifle the craving, or direct it -into the one narrow channel which flowed toward Hildred. The paternal -and filial instinct, having had no function in his life, seemed to have -shriveled up.</p> - -<p>But the instinct of response to the slightest movement of goodwill, to -the faintest plea for help, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> active with daily use. It leaped forth -eagerly; if it couldn't leap forth something within him fretted and -cried like a hound when the scent leads to earth. As Paul the Apostle, -he could be all things to all men, if by any means he might help some. -If Henry Whitelaw needed a son, he could be a son to him. The tie of -blood was in no small measure a matter of indifference. His impulse was -like Honey's "next o' kin." He remembered, as he had learned in school, -that kin and kind were words with a common origin. Whitelaw's truest -kinship with himself was in his kindness. His kinship with Whitelaw -could as truly be in his devotion. Devotion was what he could offer -most spontaneously.</p> - -<p>If only that could satisfy the father yearning for his son! It could -do it up to a point, since the banker identified kindness and kinship -much as he did himself. But beyond that point there was the cry of the -middle-aged man for some one who was part of himself on whom he could -lean now that his strength was beginning to decline. That his two -acknowledged children were nothing but a care sent him groping all the -more eagerly for the son who might be a support to him. The son who was -not a son might be better than no one, as he himself confessed; and yet -nothing on earth could satisfy his empty soul but his own <i>son</i>. Not to -be that son made Tom sorry; but without a mother, how could he be?</p> - -<p>Otherwise, to remain as what life had made him was unalloyed relief. -He was himself. In his own phrase, he was more himself than most men. -But to enter the Whitelaw family, <i>and belong to it</i>, would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> turn him -into some one else. He might have a right there; an accident such as -happens every day might easily make him the head of it; and yet he -would have to put forth affections and develop points of view which -could only come from a man with another kind of past. To be the son of -that mother, and the brother of that sister, sorry for them as he was, -would mean the kind of metamorphosis, the change in the whole nature, -of which he had read in ancient mythology. He would make the attempt if -he was called to it; but he shrank from the call.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, he took up his job as assistant to the great man's -confidential secretary. This was a Mr. Phips whom Tom didn't like, but -with whom he got on easily. He easily got on with him because Mr. Phips -himself made a point of it.</p> - -<p>A rubicund, smiling man, he had to be seen twice before you gave him -credit for his unctuous ability. There was in him that mingling of -honesty and craft which go to make the henchman, and sometimes the -ecclesiastic. While he couldn't originate anything, he could be an -instrument accurate and sharp. Always ready to act boldly, it was with -a boldness of which some one else must assume the responsibility. He -could be the power behind the throne, but never the power sitting on it -publicly. With an almost telepathic gift for reading Whitelaw's mind, -he could carry out its wishes before they were expressed. From sheer -induction he could, in a secondary way, direct affairs from which he -never took a penny of the profits over and above his salary.</p> - -<p>Again like the ecclesiastic and the henchman, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> had neither will -nor conscience beyond the cause he served. A born factotum, with no -office but to carry out, he accepted Tom without questioning. Without -questioning he set him to those duties which, as a beginner, would be -within his grasp. He didn't need to be told that when a message or a -document was to be sent to the most private of all offices, it should -be through the person of this particular young man. Without having -invented for Tom the soubriquet of the Whitelaw Baby, he didn't frown -at it on hearing it pass round the office, as it did within a few days.</p> - -<p>Tom found Whitelaw welcoming, considerate, but at first a little -distant. He might have been conscious of the anomalies in the -situation; he might have been anxious not to rush things; he might even -have been shy. Except to ask him, toward the end of each day, how he -was getting along, he didn't speak to him alone.</p> - -<p>Then, on the fourth morning, Whitelaw sent for him. As Tom entered he -was standing up, a packet in his hand.</p> - -<p>"I want you to take a taxi and go up to my house. Ask for my wife, and -give her this." He made the nature of the errand clearer. "It's the -anniversary of our wedding. She thinks I've forgotten it. I've only -been waiting to send this—by you."</p> - -<p>The significance of the mission came to Tom while he was on the way. -The thing in the packet, probably a jewel, was the token of a marriage -of which he was the eldest born. It was to mark his position in the -husband's mind that he was made the bearer of the gift. He had no -opinion as to this, except that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> in the appeal to the wife there was an -element of futility.</p> - -<p>In the big dim hall he met the second born. To answer the door Dadd had -left the task of helping the one-armed fellow into his spring overcoat. -As Tom came in the poor left arm was struggling with the garment -viciously. Tad broke into a greeting vigorous, but non-committal.</p> - -<p>"Hello, by Gad!"</p> - -<p>Tom went straight to his business. "Your father has sent me with a -message to Mrs. Whitelaw. I understand she's at home."</p> - -<p>"So you've got here! I knew you'd work it some day."</p> - -<p>"You were very perspicacious."</p> - -<p>"I was. And there's another thing I'll tell you. You've got round the -old man. Well, I'm not going to stand for it. See?"</p> - -<p>"I see; but it's got nothing to do with me. Your father's given me a -job. If you don't want him to do it you ought to tackle him."</p> - -<p>Whatever war had done for Tad it had not ennobled him. The face was old -and seamed and stained with a dark red flush. It was scowling too, with -the helpless scowl of impotence. Tom was sorrier for him than he had -ever been before.</p> - -<p>Having taken his hat and stick, Tad strode off, turning only on the -doorstep. "But there's one thing I'll say right now. If you've got a -job at Meek and Brokenshire's I'll damn well have a better one. I'm -going to keep my eye on you."</p> - -<p>Tom laughed, good-naturedly. "That's the very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> best thing you could do. -Nothing would please your father half so well. You'd buck him up, and -at the same time get your knife into me."</p> - -<p>As the door closed behind Tad Miss Nash came forward from somewhere in -the obscurity. She was in that tremulous ecstasy which the mere sight -of Tom always roused in her. She was so very sorry, but Mrs. Whitelaw -wasn't able to receive him. If Tom would leave his package with her she -would see that it was delivered.</p> - -<p>On the next afternoon as Tom was leaving the office Whitelaw offered -him a lift uptown. In the seclusion of the limousine the father spoke -of Tad.</p> - -<p>"He's a great care to me, but somehow I feel that you might do him -good."</p> - -<p>"He wouldn't let me. I can't get near him, except by force."</p> - -<p>"But force is what he respects. In the bottom of his heart he respects -you."</p> - -<p>"What he needs is a job—the smallest job you could offer him in the -bank. If you could put it to him as a sporting proposition that he was -to get ahead of me...."</p> - -<p>"That's what I'll try to do."</p> - -<p>In the course of a few days the lift uptown had become a custom. -Though he had never received instructions to that effect, Mr. Phips so -shaped Tom's duties that he found himself leaving the office at the -same moment as the banker. Once or twice when things did not so happen -Whitelaw came into the room where Tom was at work to look for him. If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> -no one else saw it Mr. Phips did, that the lift uptown was the big -minute of the banker's day.</p> - -<p>"I've got a son," the secretary pondered to himself, "but I'll be -hanged if I feel about him like that. I suppose it's because I never -lost him."</p> - -<p>"Tad's applied to me for a job," the father informed Tom in the -limousine one day. "The next thing will be to make him stick to it."</p> - -<p>"I believe I could manage that, once we get him there," Tom said -confidently. "I can't always make him drink, but I can hold his head to -the water. I did that at college more than once."</p> - -<p>"I know you did. I can't tell you...."</p> - -<p>A tremor of the voice cut short this sentence, but Tom knew what would -have been said: "I can't tell you what it means to me now to have some -one to fall back upon. The children have given me a good deal of worry -which their mother couldn't share because of her unhappiness. But -now—I've got you." Tom was glad, however, that it had not been put -into words.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLVI</p> - - -<p class="drop">T<span class="uppercase">hey</span> came into May, the joyous, exciting, stimulating May of New York, -with its laughing promise of adventure. To Tom Whitelaw that sense of -adventure was in the happy sunlight, in the blue sky, in the scudding -clouds, in winds that were warm and yet with the tang of salt and ice -in them, in the flowers in the Park, in the gay dresses in the Avenue, -in the tall young men already beginning to look summery, in the shop -windows with their flowers, fruit, jewels, porcelains, and brocades, -in the opulent crush of vehicles, and in his own heart most of all. -Never before had he known such ecstasy of life. It was more than vigor -of limb or the strong coursing of the blood. It was youth and love and -expectation, with their call to the daring, the reckless, and the new.</p> - -<p>They reached a Saturday. Business was taking Whitelaw to Boston. Tom -went with him to the station, to carry his brief-case, to hand him his -ticket, to check his bags, and perform the other small services of a -clerk for the man of importance.</p> - -<p>"I shall come back on Wednesday," the banker explained to him, before -entering the train. "On Thursday I shall not be at the office. It's a -day on which I never leave my wife. Though I often have to go abroad -and leave her behind, I always manage it so that we may have that -particular day together. I shall see you then on Friday."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span></p> - -<p>He saw him, however, on Thursday, since Mr. Phips willed it so. At -least, it was Mr. Phips who willed it, as far as Tom ever knew. About -three on that day he came to Tom with a brief-case stuffed with -documents.</p> - -<p>"The Chief may want to run his eyes over these before he comes to the -office to-morrow. Ask for himself. Don't leave them with anybody else."</p> - -<p>To the best of Tom's belief there was no staging of what happened next -beyond that which was set by Phips's intuitions.</p> - -<p>By the time he rang at the house in Fifth Avenue it was a little after -four. Admitted to the big dim hall, he heard a hum of voices coming -from the sitting room. In Dadd's manner there was some constraint.</p> - -<p>"Will you step in here, sir, and I'll tell the master that you've come?"</p> - -<p>The library was on the same side of the house as the dining room, -but it got the afternoon sun. The sun woke its colors to a burnished -softness in which red and blue and green and gold melted into each -other lovingly. A still, well-ordered room, little used by anyone, it -gave the impression of a place of rest for ancient beauty and high -thought. Rich and reposeful, there was nothing in it that was not a -masterpiece, but a masterpiece which there was no one but some chance -visitor to care anything about. In the four who made up the Whitelaw -family there were too many aching human cares for knowledge or art to -comfort.</p> - -<p>Tom's eyes studied absently the profile of a woman on an easel. She -might have been a Botticelli; he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> didn't know. She only reminded him -of Hildred—neatly piled dark hair, long slanting eyes, a small snub -nose, and lips deliciously <i>moqueur</i>. The colors she wore were also -Hildred's, subdued and yet ardent, umber round the shoulders, with a -chain of emeralds that almost sparkled in the westering light.</p> - -<p>Whitelaw entered with his quick and eager tread, his quick and eager -seizing of the young man's hand. Again the left hand rested on his -shoulder; again there was the deep and earnest searching of the eyes, -as if a lost secret had not yet been found; again there was the little -weary push.</p> - -<p>"Come."</p> - -<p>Taking the brief-case into his own hands, he left Tom nothing to do but -follow him. Diagonally crossing the hall, Tom noticed that the hum of -voices had died down. Without knowing why he nerved himself for a test.</p> - -<p>The test came at once. Whitelaw, having preceded him into the room, -had carried his brief-case to a table, and at once went to work on -the contents. Perhaps he did this purposely, to throw Tom on his own -resources. In any case, it was on his own resources that he felt -himself thrown the instant he appeared on the threshold. He judged -from the face of anguish and protest which Mrs. Whitelaw turned on him -that he was not expected. Dimly he perceived that Tad and Lily were in -the room, and some one else whom as yet he hadn't time to see. All his -powers were focused on the meeting of the woman who was not his mother, -and didn't want him there.</p> - -<p>He thought quickly. He would be on the safest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> side. He had come there -as a clerk; as a clerk shown in among the family he would conduct -himself. He bowed to Mrs. Whitelaw, who let him take her hand, though -that too seemed to suffer at his touch; he bowed to Lily; he nodded -respectfully to Tad. He turned to salute distantly the other person in -the room, and found her coming towards him.</p> - -<p>He knew her free swinging motion before he had time to see her face.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Tom!"</p> - -<p>"Why, Hildred!"</p> - -<p>Her manner was the protecting one he had often seen in other years, -when she thought he might be hurt, or be ignorant of small usages. She -was subtle, tactful, and ready, all at once.</p> - -<p>"Come over here." She drew him to a seat on a sofa, beside herself. -"Mrs. Whitelaw won't mind, will you, Mrs. Whitelaw? You know, Tom and I -are the greatest friends—have been for years."</p> - -<p>He forgot everyone else who was present in the joy and surprise of -seeing her. "When did you come? Why didn't you let me know?"</p> - -<p>"I didn't know myself till late last night, did I, Mrs. Whitelaw? Mrs. -Whitelaw only wired to invite me after Mr. Whitelaw came back from -Boston. Of course I wasn't going to miss a chance like that. I don't -see New York oftener than once in two years or so. Then there was the -chance of seeing you. I was ready in an hour. I took the ten o'clock -train this morning, and have just this minute arrived."</p> - -<p>Only when these first few bits of information had been given and -received did Tom feel the return of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> embarrassment. He was in a -room where three of the five others were troubled by his presence. He -wasn't there of his own free will, and since he was a clerk he couldn't -leave till he was dismissed. He would not have known what to do if -Hildred hadn't kept a small conversation going, drawing into it first -one and then another, till presently all were discussing the weather or -something of equal importance. In spite of her emotion Mrs. Whitelaw -did her best to sustain her rôle of hostess, Tad and Lily speaking only -when they were spoken to. At a given minute Tad got up, sauntering -toward the door.</p> - -<p>He was stopped by his father. "Don't go, Tad. Tea will be here in a -minute." The voice grew pleading. "Stay with us to-day."</p> - -<p>Lighting a cigarette, Tad sank back into his chair, doing it rather -sulkily. Whitelaw continued to draw papers from the brief-case, -arranging them before him on the table.</p> - -<p>When Dadd appeared with the tea-tray Tom made a push for escape. "If -you've nothing else for me to do, sir...."</p> - -<p>Whitelaw merely glanced up at him. "Wait a minute. Sit down again."</p> - -<p>Tom went back to his seat beside Hildred, where he watched Mrs. -Whitelaw as she poured the tea. It was the first time he had seen her -in indoor dress, all lace and soft lavender, her pearls twisted once -around her neck and descending to her waist, a great jewel on her -breast. It was the first time, too, that he had seen her hair, which -was fair and crinkly, like his own. Except for a slight portliness, she -was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> too young to seem like the mother of Lily and Tad, while she was -still less like his. That she should be his mother, this woman who had -never known anything but what love and money could enrich her with, was -too incongruous with everything else in life to call for so much as -denial.</p> - -<p>And as for the hundredth time he was saying this to himself Whitelaw -spoke. He spoke without looking up from his papers except to take a sip -of tea from the cup on the table beside him. He spoke casually, too, as -if broaching something not of much importance.</p> - -<p>"Now that we're all here I think that perhaps it's as good a time as -any to go over the matter we've talked about separately—and settle it."</p> - -<p>There was no one in the room who didn't know what he meant. Tad smoked -listlessly; Lily set down her cup and lighted a cigarette; Mrs. -Whitelaw's jeweled fingers played among the tea-things, as if she must -find something for her hands to do or shriek aloud. Tom's heart seemed -turned to stone, to have no power of emotion. Hildred was the only one -who said anything.</p> - -<p>"Hadn't I better go, Mr. Whitelaw? I haven't been up to my room yet."</p> - -<p>"No, Hildred. I'd rather that you stayed, if you don't mind. It's the -reason we've asked you to come."</p> - -<p>He looked at no one. His face was a little white, though he was master -of himself.</p> - -<p>"This is the tenth of May. It's twenty-three years ago to-day since -we lost our little boy. I want to ask<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> the family, now that we're all -together, what they think of the chances of our having found him again."</p> - -<p>Though he knew it was an anniversary in the family, it was Tom's first -recollection of the date. In as far as it was his birthday, birthdays -had been meaningless to him, except as he remembered that they had come -and gone, and made him a year older.</p> - -<p>"Personally," Whitelaw went on, "I've fought this off so long that I -can't do it any longer. It will be five years this summer since I first -saw him, at Dublin, New Hampshire, and was struck with his looks and -his name, as well as with the little I learned of his history."</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you do something about it then," Tad put in, peevishly, "if -you were going to do anything at all?"</p> - -<p>"You're quite right, Tad. It's what I should have done. I was dissuaded -by the rest of you. I must confess, too, that I was afraid to take it -up myself. We'd followed so many clues that led to nothing! But perhaps -it's just as well, as it's given me time to make all the investigation -that, it seems to me, has been possible."</p> - -<p>Apart from the motion of Tad's and Lily's hands as they put their -cigarettes to their lips, everyone sat motionless and tense. Even Mrs. -Whitelaw tamed her feverish activity to a more feverish stillness. -Hildred put her hand lightly on Tom's sleeve to remind him that she was -there, but the power of feeling anything had gone out of him. While -Whitelaw told his facts he listened as if the case had nothing to do -with himself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span></p> - -<p>His agents, so the banker said, had probably unearthed every detail in -the story that was now to be known.</p> - -<p>On August 5, 1895, Thomas Coburn had been married in The Bronx, to -Lucy Speight. Coburn was a carpenter who had fallen from a roof in the -following October, and had died a few days later of his injuries. Their -child, Grace Coburn, had been born in The Bronx on March 5, 1896, and -had died on April 21, 1897. After that all trace of the mother had been -lost, though a woman who killed herself by poisoning in the Female -House of Detention in the suburb of New Rotterdam, after having been -arrested for shop-lifting, on December 24, 1904, might be considered as -the same person. This woman had been known to such neighbors as could -remember her as Mrs. Lucy Coburn, though at the time of her arrest she -had claimed to be the widow of Theodore Whitelaw, after having married -Thomas Coburn as her first husband. The wardress who had talked to -her on taking her to a cell recalled that she had been incoherent and -contradictory in all her statements about herself, her husband, and her -child.</p> - -<p>As a matter of fact, the early history of Lucy Speight had been traced. -She was the daughter of a laboring man at Chatham, in the neighborhood -of Albany. Her mental inheritance had been poor. Her father had been -the victim of drink, her mother had died insane. One of her sisters -had died insane, and a brother had been put at an early age in a home -for the feeble-minded. A brother and two sisters still lived either -at Chatham or at Pittsfield. He had in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span> hand photographs of all -the living members of the family, and copies of photographs of those -deceased, including two of Lucy Speight as she was as a young girl.</p> - -<p>He turned toward Tom. "Would you like to look at them?"</p> - -<p>The power of emotion came back to him with a rush. He remembered his -mother, vividly in two or three attitudes or incidents, but otherwise -faintly. A flush that stained his cheek with the same dark red which -dissipation stamped on Tad's made the brothers look more than ever -alike as he crossed the room to take the pictures from his father's -hand.</p> - -<p>There were a dozen or fourteen of them, all of poor rustic boys and -girls, or men and women, feebleness in the cast of their faces, the -hang of their lips, the vacancy of their eyes. Standing to sort them -out, he put aside quickly the two of Lucy Speight. One of them must -have dated from 1894, or thereabouts, because of the big sleeves; -the other, with skin-tight shoulders, was that of a girl perhaps in -1889. In their faded simper there was almost nothing of the wild dark -prettiness with which he saw her in memory, and yet he could recreate -it.</p> - -<p>He stood and gazed long, all eyes fixed on him. Moving to the table -where Mrs. Whitelaw sat behind the tray, he held the two pictures -before her.</p> - -<p>"That's my mother."</p> - -<p>Though he said this without thought of its significance, and only -from the habit of thinking of Lucy Speight as really his mother, he -saw her shrink. With a glance at the photographs, she glanced up at -him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> piteously, begging to be spared. Even such contact as this, -remote, pictorial only, with people of a world she had never so much as -touched, hurt her fastidiousness. That the son of this poor half-witted -creature, this Lucy Speight, should also be her son ... but the only -protest she could make was in her eyes.</p> - -<p>Tom did not sit down again as Whitelaw continued with his facts; he -stood at the end of the mantelpiece, with its candelabra in <i>biscuit de -Sèvres</i>. Leaning with his elbow on the white marble edge, he had all -the others facing him, as all the others had him. The attitude seemed -best to accord with the position in which he felt himself, that of a -prisoner at the bar.</p> - -<p>"We've found no record in any State in the Union," Whitelaw went -on, "or in any Province in Canada, of a marriage between a Theodore -Whitelaw and a Lucy Coburn or Speight. The search has been pretty -thorough. Moreover, we find no birth recorded in The Bronx of any -Thomas Whitelaw during all the decade between 1890 and 1900. No such -birth is recorded in any other suburb of New York, or in Manhattan. In -years past I've been on the track of three men of the name of Theodore -Whitelaw, one in Portland, Maine, one in New Orleans, and one in -Vancouver; but there's reason for thinking that all three were one and -the same man. He was a Scotch sailor, who died on the Pacific coast, -and was never known to be in or about New York longer than the two or -three days in which his ship was in port."</p> - -<p>He came to the circumstances, largely gathered from Tom himself, of -the association of the woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> with the child. She had harped on the -statements, first, that she had not stolen him; secondly, that he was -not to think that his name was Whitelaw. And yet on the night before -her death she had not only given him that very name, but claimed it as -legally her own. The boy—the man, as he was now—could remember that -at different times she had called herself by different names, chiefly -to escape detection for her thefts; but never before that night had she -taken that of Whitelaw.</p> - -<p>Those who had worked on the case, the most skilful investigators in the -country, were driven to a theory. It was a theory based only on the -circumstantial, but so broadly based that the one unproven point, that -which absolutely showed identity, seemed to prove itself.</p> - -<p>Lucy Coburn, feeble in mind from birth, half demented by the death -first of her husband and then of her child, had prowled about the Park, -looking for a baby that would satisfy her thwarted mother-love. Any -baby would have done this, though she preferred a girl.</p> - -<p>"My son, Henry Elphinstone Whitelaw, was born on September 24, 1896. -He was eight months old when on May 10, 1897, he was wheeled into the -Park by Miss Nash, who is still with us. What happened after, as she -supposed, she wheeled him back, we all know about."</p> - -<p>But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss Nash's attention -was diverted, the prowling woman got possession of the child, through -means which were still a matter of speculation. She had money,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span> since -it was known that five thousand dollars had been paid to her by a -life-insurance company on her husband's death, and, therefore, the -power of flitting about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that -she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the first name she -could think of, which was that of her late husband. She could easily -have learned from the papers that the child she had stolen was the son -of Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may or may not have -remained in a memory probably not retentive at its best. But on the -night of her arrest, knowing that she was about to forsake the child -for whom she had come to feel a passionate affection, she had made one -last wild effort to connect him with his true inheritance. Why she -had done this but partially was again a matter of conjecture. She may -have given all of the name she remembered; she may have been kept from -giving the full name through fear. It was impossible to tell. But she -gave the name—with some errors, it was true—but still the name. The -name taken with the extraordinary family resemblance—everyone would -admit that—was one of the main points in the reconstruction of the -history.</p> - -<p>He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the half-proofs, asking at -last, timidly, and as if afraid of the family verdict:</p> - -<p>"Well, what does everyone say?"</p> - -<p>The silence was oppressive. The only movement on anyone's part came -when Lily stretched out her hand to a tray and with her little finger -knocked off the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> none of -them would speak, as if he himself must speak first.</p> - -<p>"I vote we take him in." This was Tad. "Since we all know you want him, -father—well, that settles it. As far as I'm concerned I'll—I'll crawl -down."</p> - -<p>Lily shrugged her slim shoulders. "I don't care one way or another. -I've got my own affairs to think of. If he doesn't interfere with me -I won't interfere with him." Again she knocked off the ash of her -cigarette. "Have him, if you want to."</p> - -<p>It was Mrs. Whitelaw's turn. She sat still, pensive. The clock could be -heard ticking. Her husband gazed at her as if his life would depend on -what she had to say. Tom himself went numb again. She spoke at last.</p> - -<p>"If you're satisfied, Henry, I'm satisfied. All I ask in the world is -that you—" she gasped her little sob—"is that you shall be happy." -Rising she walked straight up to Tom. "I want to kiss you."</p> - -<p>When he had bent his head she kissed him on the forehead, formally, -sacramentally. She went back to her seat.</p> - -<p>Without moving from his place at the table, Whitelaw smiled across the -room at Tom, a smile of relief and tenderness.</p> - -<p>"Well, what do you say?"</p> - -<p>Tom looked down at Hildred, noting her strange expression. It was not a -satisfied expression; rather it was challenging, defiant of something, -he didn't know of what. But he couldn't now consider Hildred; he -couldn't consider anyone but himself. He did not change his position, -leaning on the white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span> marble mantelpiece; nor was his tone other than -conversational.</p> - -<p>"I'm awfully sorry, sir—I'm sorry to say it to you especially—but -it's—it's not good enough."</p> - -<p>With the slightest possible movement of the head Hildred made him a -sign of proud approval. Whitelaw's smile went out.</p> - -<p>"What's not good enough?"</p> - -<p>"The—the welcome—home."</p> - -<p>Tad spluttered, indignantly. "What the devil do you want? Do you expect -us to put up an arch?"</p> - -<p>"No; I don't expect anything. I should only like you to understand that -though it isn't easy for you, it's easier for you than for me."</p> - -<p>Tad turned to his father. "Now you're getting it! I could have told you -beforehand, if you'd consulted me."</p> - -<p>"You see," Tom continued, paying no attention to the interruption, -"you're all different from me. You're used to different things, to -different standards and ways of thinking. If I were to come in among -you the only phrase that would describe me is the homely one of the -fish out of water. I should be gasping for breath. I couldn't live in -your atmosphere."</p> - -<p>Tad was again the only one to voice a comment. "Well, I'll be damned!"</p> - -<p>Tom's legs which had quaked at first, began to be surer under him. -"Please don't think I'm venturing to criticize anyone or anything. -This is your life, and it suits you. It wouldn't suit me because it -isn't mine. The past makes me as it makes you, and it's too late now -to unmake us. It's possible that I may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> be Harry Whitelaw. When I hear -the evidence that can be produced I can almost think I am. But if I -<i>am</i> Harry Whitelaw by birth, I'm <i>not</i> Harry Whitelaw by life and -experience. I can't go back and be made over. I'm myself as I stand." -Still having in his hand the pictures of Lucy Speight, he held them -out. "To all intents and purposes this is—my mother."</p> - -<p>"And I kissed you!"</p> - -<p>Tom smiled. "Yes, but you don't know how she kissed me. I do. She loved -me. I loved her. I've tried—I've tried my very best—to turn my back -on her—to call her a thief—and any other name that would blacken -her—and—and I can't do it."</p> - -<p>The sleeping lioness in the mother was roused suddenly. Leaving her -place behind the tea-table, she advanced near enough to him to point to -the two photographs.</p> - -<p>"Do you mean to say that—having the choice between—that—and me—you -choose—that?"</p> - -<p>"I don't choose. I can't do anything else. It isn't what you think that -rules your life; it's what you love. I'm one of the people to whom love -means more than anything else. I daresay it's a weakness—especially in -a man—but that's the way it is."</p> - -<p>"If your first stipulation is love...."</p> - -<p>"Wouldn't it be yours, Onora?"</p> - -<p>"I'd try to be reasonable—when so many concessions have been made."</p> - -<p>"Yes," Tom hastened to say, "but that's just my point. I'm not asking -for concessions. The minute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span> they must be made—well, I'm not there. I -couldn't come into your family—on concessions."</p> - -<p>Whitelaw spoke up again. "I don't blame you."</p> - -<p>Tom tried to make his position clearer. "It's a little like this. A -long time ago I was coming along by the Hudson in the train. I was on -my way to New York with the man who had adopted me, after I'd been a -State ward. There was a steamer on the river, and I watched her—coming -<i>from</i> I didn't know where—going <i>to</i> I didn't know where. And it -came to me then that she was something like myself. I didn't know what -port I'd sailed from; nor what port I was making for. But now that I'm -twenty-three—if that's my age—I see this: that once in so often I -touched at some happy isle, where the people took me in and were good -to me. It was what carried me along."</p> - -<p>The mother broke in, reproachfully. "Happy isles—full of convicts and -murderers!"</p> - -<p>"Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and murderers were kind. A -homeless boy doesn't question the moral righteousness of the people who -give him food and shelter and clothes, and, what's more, all their best -affection. What it comes to is this, that having lived in those happy -isles—awhile in one, awhile in another—I don't want to go ashore at -an unhappy one, even though I was born there."</p> - -<p>Springing to his feet, Tad bore down on him. "Do you know what I call -you? I call you an ass."</p> - -<p>"Very likely. I'm only trying to explain to you why I can't be your -brother—even if I am—your brother."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span></p> - -<p>"It's because you don't want to be—and you damn well know it."</p> - -<p>"That may be another way of putting it; but I'm not putting it that -way."</p> - -<p>Lily rose languidly, throwing out her words to nobody in particular. "I -think he's a good sport, if you ask me. I wouldn't come into a family -like us—not the way we are."</p> - -<p>"Wait, Lily," Whitelaw cried, as she was sauntering out. He too got -to his feet. "You've all spoken. You've done the best you could. I'm -not blaming anyone. Now I want you all to understand—" He indicated -Tom—"that this is <i>my son</i>. I know he's my son. I claim him as my son. -Not even what he says himself can make any difference to me."</p> - -<p>Tom strode across the room, grasping the other's hand. "Yes, sir; and -you're my father. I know that too, and I claim you on my side. But -we'll stop right there. It's as far as we can go. I'll be your son in -every sense but that of—" He looked round about on them all—"but -that of being your heir or a member of your family. I can't do that; -but—between you and me—everything is understood."</p> - -<p>He got out of the room with dignity. Passing Tad, he nodded, and said, -"Thanks!" To Lily he said, "Thank you too. It was bully, what you -said." Reaching the mother whom he didn't know and who didn't know him, -he bowed low. Sitting again behind the tea-table, she lifted her hand -for him to take it. He took it and kissed it. Her little soblike gasp -followed him as he passed into the big dim hall.</p> - -<p>He had taken no leave of Hildred, because he knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span> she would do what -actually she did; but he didn't know that she would speak the words he -heard spoken.</p> - -<p>"I'm going with him, dear Mrs. Whitelaw; but I shan't be long. I just -don't want him to go away alone because—because I mean to marry him."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span></p> - - - - -<p class="ph2">XLVII</p> - - -<p class="drop">A<span class="uppercase">s</span> they went down the steps she took his arm. "Tom, darling, I'm proud -of you. Now they know where we stand, both of us."</p> - -<p>"It was splendid of you, Hildred, to play up like that. It backs me -tremendously that you're not afraid to own me. But, you know, what I've -just said will put us farther apart."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I don't know about that. Father said we couldn't be engaged unless -you were acknowledged as Mr. Whitelaw's son; and you have been. He -never said anything about your being Mrs. Whitelaw's son. This is a -case in which it's the father that counts specially."</p> - -<p>"But I couldn't take any of his money beyond what I earned."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but that wouldn't make any difference."</p> - -<p>They crossed the Avenue and entered the Park. They entered the Park -because it was the obvious place in which to look for a little privacy. -All the gay sweet life of the May afternoon was at its brightest. -Riders were cantering up and down the bridle-path; friends were -strolling; children were playing; birds were flying with bits of string -or straw for the building of their nests. To Tom and Hildred the -gladness was thrown out by the deeper gladness in themselves.</p> - -<p>"But you don't know how poor we'll be."</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Oh, don't I? Where do you think I keep my eyes? Why, I expect to be -poor when I marry—for a while at any rate. I expect to do my own -housework, like most of the young married women I know."</p> - -<p>"Oh, but you've always talked so much about servants."</p> - -<p>"Yes, dear Tom, but that was to be on a desert island where we were to -be all alone. We shan't find that island except in our hearts."</p> - -<p>"But even without the island, I always supposed that when a girl like -you got married she...."</p> - -<p>"She began with an establishment on the scale of ours in Louisburg -Square, at the least. Yes, that used to be the way, twenty or thirty -years ago. But I'm sorry to say it isn't so any longer. Talk about -revolution! We've got revolution as it is. With rents and wages as they -are, and all the other expenses, why, a young couple must begin with -the simple life, or stay single. I'd rather begin with the simple life, -and I know more about it than you think."</p> - -<p>He laughed. "So I see."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I can cook and sew and make beds and wash dishes...."</p> - -<p>They sauntered on, without noticing where they were going, till they -came to a dell, where in the shade of an elm there was a seat, and -another near a heart-shaped clump of lilacs, all in bloom. They sat in -the shade of the elm. They were practical young lovers, and yet they -were young lovers. They were lovers for whom there had never been any -lovers but themselves. The wonderful thing was that each felt what the -other felt; the discoveries by which they had come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span> to the knowledge of -this fact were the first that had ever been made.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Tom, do you feel like that? Why, that's just the way I feel."</p> - -<p>"Is it, Hildred? Well, it shows we were made for each other, doesn't -it, because I never thought that anyone felt like that but me?"</p> - -<p>"Well, no one ever did but me. Only Tom, dear, tell me when it was that -you first began to fall in love with me."</p> - -<p>"It was the night—a winter's night—five, six, seven years ago—when I -found Guy in a mix-up with a lot of hoodlums in the snow."</p> - -<p>"And you brought him home. That was the first time you ever saw me."</p> - -<p>"Yes, it was the first time I ever saw you that I began...."</p> - -<p>"And I began then, too. Since that evening, there's never been anybody -else. Oh, Tom, was there ever anybody else with you?"</p> - -<p>Tom thought of Maisie. "Not—not really."</p> - -<p>"Well, unreally then?"</p> - -<p>As he made his confession she listened eagerly. "Yes, that <i>was</i> -unreally. And you never heard anything more about her?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I went to see her aunt. -She told me that Maisie had been married for the last two years to a -traveling salesman she'd been in love with for a long time, and that -she had a baby."</p> - -<p>The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span> Honey; and the -thought of Honey woke him to the fact that he had been on this spot -before.</p> - -<p>"Why—why, Hildred! This is the very bench on which Miss Nash and the -other nurse were sitting—"</p> - -<p>"When you were stolen?"</p> - -<p>"When somebody was stolen." He looked round him. "And there's Miss Nash -over there!"</p> - -<p>On the bench near the lilacs Miss Nash was seated with a book.</p> - -<p>"We ought to go and speak to her," Hildred suggested.</p> - -<p>Miss Nash received them with her beatific look. "I saw you leave the -house. I thought you'd come here. I followed you. I had something -to do, something I swore to God I'd do the day my little boy came -back. I'd—" She held up a novel of which the open pages were already -yellowing—"I'd finish this. <i>Juliet Allingham's Sin</i> is the name of -it. I was just at the scene where the lover drowns when my little boy -was taken. I've never opened the book since; but I've kept it by me." -She rose, weeping. "Now I can finish it—but I'll go home."</p> - -<p>Sitting down on the seat she had left free for them, they began to talk -of the scene of the afternoon, which as yet they had avoided.</p> - -<p>"I hope I didn't hurt their feelings."</p> - -<p>"They didn't mind hurting yours."</p> - -<p>"They didn't mean to. They thought they were generous."</p> - -<p>"Which only shows...."</p> - -<p>"But <i>he's</i> all right. Hildred, he's a big man."</p> - -<p>"And you really think he's your father, Tom?"</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span></p> - -<p>"I know he is. Everything makes me sure of it."</p> - -<p>"Well, then, if he's your father, she must be your mother."</p> - -<p>"Yes, but I don't go that far. It isn't what must be that I think -about; it's what <i>is</i>."</p> - -<p>She persisted in her logic. "And Tad and Lily must be your brother and -sister."</p> - -<p>"They can be what they like. I don't care anything about them."</p> - -<p>"It's only your mother that you don't...."</p> - -<p>He got up, restlessly. It was easier to reconstruct the scene which -Honey had described to him than to let her bring what she was saying -too sharply to a point.</p> - -<p>"It was over here that the baby carriage stood, right in the heart of -this little clump." She followed him into it. "Miss Nash and the other -nurse were over there, where we were sitting first. And right here, -just where I'm standing, the queer thing must have happened."</p> - -<p>"Are you sorry it happened, Tom?"</p> - -<p>"You mean, if it actually happened to me. Why, no; and yet—yes. I -can't tell. I'm sorry not to have grown up with—with my father. And -yet if I had, I should have missed—all the other things—Honey—and -perhaps you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you couldn't have missed me, I couldn't have missed you. We might -not have met in the way we did meet, but we'd have met."</p> - -<p>He hardly heard her last words, because he was staring off along the -path by which they themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span> had come down. His tone was puzzled, -scarcely more than a whisper.</p> - -<p>"Hildred, look!"</p> - -<p>"Why, it's Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. She's changed her dress. How young -she looks with that kind of flowered hat. I remember now. They always -come here on the tenth of May. They've been here already this morning. -Lily told me so. I know what it is. They're looking for you. Miss Nash -has told them where we are. I'm going to run."</p> - -<p>"Don't run far," he begged of her. "I can't imagine what's up."</p> - -<p>He stood where he was, watching their advance. It was not his place to -go forward, since he wasn't sure that he was wanted. He only thought -he must be when, as they reached the bench beneath the elm, Whitelaw -pointed him out and let his wife go on alone.</p> - -<p>She came on in the hurried way in which she did everything, her great -eyes brimming, as they often were, with unshed tears. At the entrance -among the lilacs she held out both her hands, their diamonds upward, as -if he was to kiss them. He took the hands, but lightly, barely touching -them, keeping on his guard.</p> - -<p>"Harry!" The staccato sentences came out as little breathless cries -torn from a heart that tried to keep them back. "Harry! You—you -needn't—love me—or be my son—or live with us—unless—unless you -like—but I want you to—to let me kiss you—just once—the way—the -way your other—mother—used to."</p> - - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY ISLES***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 61344-h.htm or 61344-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/1/3/4/61344">http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/3/4/61344</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: The Happy Isles - - -Author: Basil King - - - -Release Date: February 8, 2020 [eBook #61344] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY ISLES*** - - -E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images -generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustrations. - See 61344-h.htm or 61344-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61344/61344-h/61344-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61344/61344-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/happyisles00king_0 - - - - -THE HAPPY ISLES - - -[Illustration] - - - * * * * * * - -_BOOKS BY BASIL KING_ - - - _The Happy Isles_ - _The Dust Flower_ - _The Thread of Flame_ - _The City of Comrades_ - _Abraham's Bosom_ - _The Empty Sack_ - _Going West_ - _The Side of the Angels_ - - - _Harper & Brothers - Publishers_ - - * * * * * * - - -[Illustration: "THEY'LL SAY I STOLE HIM. IT'LL BE TWENTY YEARS FOR ME"] - - -THE HAPPY ISLES - -by - -BASIL KING - -Author of -"The Empty Sack," "The Inner Shrine," -"The Dust Flower," etc. - -With Illustrations by John Alonzo Williams - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -Publishers -Harper & Brothers -New York and London -MCMXXIII - -THE HAPPY ISLES - -Copyright, 1923 -By Harper & Brothers -Printed in the U.S.A. - -First Edition - -K-X - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS - - - "They'll Say I Stole Him. It'll Be Twenty Years for Me" _Frontispiece_ - - "That's a Terr'ble Big Wad for a Boy Like You to Wear" _Facing p._ 158 - - "Get Up, I Tell You" " 298 - - Mrs. Ansley Took Him as an Affliction " 362 - - - - -THE HAPPY ISLES - - - - -The Happy Isles - - Many a green isle needs must be - In the deep wide sea of misery, - Or the mariner, worn and wan, - Never thus could voyage on, - Day and night, and night and day.... - - --Shelley. - - - - -I - - -At eight months of age his only experience of life had been one of -well-being. He was fed when hungry; he slept when sleepy; he woke when -he had slept enough. When bored or annoyed or uneasy he could cry. If -crying brought him attentions it was that much to the good; if the -effort was thrown away it did no one any harm. Even when least fertile -of results it was a change from the crowing and gurgling which were all -he had to distract him when left to his own company. - -Though his mind worked in co-operation with the subconscious more than -with the conscious, it worked actively. In waking minutes there was -everything to observe and register. - -His intimate needs being met, there were the phenomena of light and -darkness. He knew not only the difference between them, but in a -general way when to expect the turn of each. He knew that light brought -certain formalities, chiefly connected with his person, and that -darkness brought certain others. The reasons remained obscure, but the -variety was pleasing. - -Then there was the room, or rather the spectacular surroundings of his -universe. The nursery was his earth, his atmosphere, his firmament, the -ether in which his heavenly bodies went rolling away into the infinite. -And, just as with grown-up people, the nearness and distance of Mars -or Sirius or Betelgueuse have gone through experimental stages of -guesswork first and calculation afterwards, so the exact location of -the wardrobe, the table, or the mantelpiece, was a subject for endless -wonderment. At times they were apparently so close that he would put -out his hand to touch them from his crib; but at once they receded, -fixing themselves against the light-blue walls, home of a menagerie of -birds and animals, with something between him and them which he was -learning to recognize as space. - -There was also motion. Certain things remained in place; other things -could move. He himself could move, but that was so near the fundamental -necessities as hardly to call for notice. True, there were discoveries -even here. The day when he learned that once his legs were freed he -could lie on his back and kick was one of emancipation. In finding that -he could catch his foot with his hands and put it in his mouth he made -his first advance in skill. But there was motion superior to this. -There were beings who walked about the room, who entered it and left -it. Merely to watch their goings and comings sent spasms through his -feet. - -Little by little he had come to discern in these creatures a difference -in function and personality. Enormous in size, irresistible in -strength, they were nevertheless his satellites. One of them supplied -his wants; another worshipped him; the third lifted him up, carried -him about, tickled him deliciously with his mustache or his bushy -outstanding eyebrows, and otherwise entertained him. For the first his -tongue essayed the syllables, Na-Na; for the second his lips rose and -fell with an explosive Ma-Ma; the last sent his tongue clicking toward -the roof of his mouth in the harsher sound of Da-Da; and yet between -these efforts and the accomplishment there was still some lack of -correspondence. - -Of his many enthralling interests speech was the most magical. In his -analysis of life it came to him early that these coughings and barkings -and gruntings were meant to express thought. He himself had thoughts. -What he lacked was the connection of the sounds with the ideas, and of -this he was not unaware. They supposed him a little animal who could -only eat and sleep, when all the while he was listening, recording, -distinguishing, defining, correlating the syllable with the thing that -was evidently meant, so that later he should astonish his circle by -uttering a word. It was a stimulating game and in it his daily progress -was not far short of marvelous. - -If the nursery was his universe, his crib was his private domain, -cushioned and soft, and as spotless as an ermine's nest. It was a joy -to wake up in it, and equally a joy to go to sleep. Joy, Tenderness, -and Comfort, were the only elements in life with which he was -acquainted. Thriving on them as he throve on the carefully prepared -formulas of his food, he grew in the spirit without obstacles to -struggle with, as his body grew in the sunlight and the air. - -By the time he had reached the May morning on which his story begins he -had come to take Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, as life's essentials. -Never having known anything else, he had no suspicion that anything -else would lurk within the possible. The ritual that attended his going -out was as much a matter of course to him as a red carpet to tread on -is to a queen. He took it for granted that, when he had been renewed -by bottle and bath, she for whom he tried to say Na-Na would be in a -flutter of preparation, while she whose sweet smile forced the Ma-Ma to -his lips would put a little coat on his back, a little cap on his head, -little mittens on his hands, and smother him with adoration all the -time she was doing it. - -On this particular morning these things had been done. Nestled into a -canopied crib on wheels, he was ready for the two gigantic ministrants -whom he could not yet distinguish as the first and second footmen. -These colossi lifted his vehicle down the steps, to set it on the -pavement of Fifth Avenue, where for the time being dramatic episodes -were at an end. The town didn't interest him. Moreover, a filmy -curtain, to protect him against flies as well as against too much sun, -having shut him in from the vastness of the scene, he had nothing to do -but let himself be lulled to his customary slumber. - - - - -II - - -Miss Nash, the baby carriage in front of her, furrowed a way through -the traffic of the avenue, relatively scant in those days, and reaching -the safety of the other side passed within the Park. She was a trained -child's-nurse, and wore a uniform. England being at that time the only -source of this specialty, examples in New York were limited to the -heirs-apparent of the noble families. Between a nursemaid and a trained -child's-nurse you will notice the same distinction as between a lady's -maid and a princess's lady-in-waiting. - -Having entered the Park, Miss Nash stopped the carriage to lift the -veil protecting her charge. He was already beyond the noises and -distractions of the planet in his rosy, heavenly sleep. Miss Nash -smiled wistfully, because it was the only way in which she could smile -at all. A superior woman by nature, she clung to that refinement -which best expresses itself in something melancholic. Daughter of a -solicitor's clerk and niece to a curate, she felt her status as a lady -most fittingly preserved in an atmosphere delicate, subdued, and rather -sad. - -And yet when she looked on her little boy asleep she was no longer -superior, and scarcely so much as a lady. She was only a woman -enraptured before one of those babies so compact of sweetness, -affection, and intelligence that they tug at the heartstrings. She was -on her guard as to loving her children overmuch, since it made it so -hard to give them up when the minute for doing so arrived; but with -this little fellow no guard had been effective. Whether he crowed, or -cried, or kicked, or snuggled in her arms to croon with her in baby -tunelessness, she found him adorable. But when he was asleep, chubby, -seraphic, so awesomely undefiled, she was sure that his spirit had -withdrawn from her for a little while to commune with the angels. - -"No," she confessed one day to her friend, Miss Etta Messenger, the -only other uniformed child's nurse among her acquaintance in New York, -"it won't do. I must break myself. I shall have to leave him some day. -But I do envy the mother who will have him always." - -"It don't pay you," Miss Messenger declared, as one who has had -experience. "Anyone, I always say, can hire my services; but my -affections remain my own. Now this little girl I'm with while I'm in -New York, I could leave her to-morrow without a pang if--but then I've -got something to leave her _for_." - -"And what does he say to things now?" Miss Nash inquired, with selfless -interest in her friend's drama. - -Miss Messenger answered, judicially, "I've put it to him straight. I've -told him he must simply fix a date to marry me, or give me up. As I -know he simply won't give me up--you never knew a fellow so wild about -a girl as he is about me...." - -The fortnight which had intervened between that conversation and the -morning when our little boy's story opens had given time for Miss -Messenger's affairs to take another turn. In the hope of learning -the details of this turn Miss Nash sought a corner of the Park, not -much frequented by nursemaids, where she and Miss Messenger often -met, but Etta was not there. Drawing the carriage within the shade of -a miniature grove of lilacs in perfumed flower, Miss Nash once more -lifted the veil, wiped the precious mouth, and adjusted the coverlet -outside which lay the mittened baby hands. Since there was no more to -be done, she sat down on a convenient bench to her reading of _Juliet -Allingham's Sin_. - -In the scene where the lover drowns she became so absorbed as not to -notice that on a bench on the other side of a lilac bush Miss Messenger -came and installed herself and her baby carriage in the shade of a -near-by fan-shaped elm, bronze-green in its young leafage. Miss Nash -looked up only when, her emotions having grown so poignant, she could -read no more. She was drying her eyes when, through the branches of the -lilac, the flutter of a nurse's cape told her that her friend must have -arrived. - -"Why, Etta!" - -On going round the barrier she found herself greeted by what she had -come to call Etta's fighting eyes. They were fine flashing black eyes, -set in a face which Miss Nash was further accustomed to describe as -"high-complexioned." Miss Messenger spoke listlessly, and yet as one -who knew her mind. - -"I saw you. I thought I wouldn't interrupt. I haven't very good news." - -Miss Nash glided to a seat beside her friend, seizing both her hands. -"Oh, my dear, he hasn't----?" - -"That's just what he has." Etta nodded, drily. "Bring your baby round -here and I'll tell you." - -But Miss Nash couldn't wait. "He's all right there. He's sound asleep. -I'll hear him if he stirs. Do tell me what's happened." - -"Well, he simply says that if that's the way I feel perhaps we'd better -call it off." - -"And are you going to?" - -Etta's eyes blazed with their black flames. "Call it off? Me? Not much, -I won't." - -"Still if he won't fix a date...." - -"He'll jolly well fix a date--or meet me in the court." - -"Oh, but, Etta, you wouldn't...." - -"I don't say I would for choice. There are two or three other things I -could do, and I think I'll try them first." - -"What sort of things?" - -In the answer to that question Miss Nash was even more absorbed than in -Juliet Allingham's sin. Juliet Allingham was after all but a creature -of the brain; whereas Etta Messenger's adventures might conceivably -be her own. It was not merely some one else's love story that held -her imagination in thrall; it was the possibility that one of these -days she, Milly Nash, might have a man playing fast and loose with her -heart's purest offering.... - - - - -III - - -Anyone closely watching the strange woman would have said that her -first care was not to seem distraught; but then, no one was closely -watching her. On a rapturous May morning, with the lilac scenting the -air, and the tulip beds in only the passing of their glory, there were -so many things better worth doing than observing a respectably dressed -young woman, probably the wife of an artisan, that she went unobserved. -As there were at that very minute some two or three hundred more or -less like her also pushing babies in the Park, the eye that singled her -out for attention would have had more than the gift of sight. - -What she did that was noticeable--again had there been anyone to -notice her--was to approach first one little group and then another, -quickly sheering away. One would have said that she sheered away from -some queer motive of strategy. Her movements might have been called -erratic, not because they were aimless, but because she didn't know or -didn't find the object of her search. Even if that were so, she neither -advanced nor receded, nor drifted hither or yon, more like a lost thing -than many another nursemaid giving her charge the air or killing time. - -There was nothing sinister about her, unless it was sinister to have -moments of seeming dazed or of muttering to herself. She muttered to -herself only when sure that there was no one to overhear, and with -similar self-command she indulged in looking dazed only when she -knew that no eye could light on her. As if aware of abnormality, she -schooled herself to a semblance of sanity. Otherwise she was some -thirty years of age, neatly if cheaply clad, and too commonplace and -unimportant for the most observant to remember her a second after she -had passed. - -At sight of a little hooded vehicle, standing unguarded where the lilac -bushes made a shrine for it, she paused. Again, the pause was natural. -She might have been tired. Pushing a baby carriage in a park is -always futile work, with futile starts and stops and turnings in this -direction or in that. If she stood to reconnoiter or to make her plans -there was no power in the land to interfere with her. - -Her further methods were simple. Behind the bench on which Miss Nash -and Miss Messenger were by this time entering on an orgy of romantic -confidence there rose a gentle eminence. To the top of this hill the -strange woman made her way. She made it with precautions, sauntering, -dawdling, simulating all the movements of the perfect nurse. When -two women, wheeling young laddies strapped into go-carts, crossed -her path she walked slowly till they were out of sight. When a park -attendant with a lawnmower clicked his machine along to cut a distant -portion of the greensward, she waited till he too had disappeared. A -few pedestrians were scattered here and there, but so distant as not -to count. A few riders galloped up or down the bridle-path near Fifth -Avenue, but these too she could disregard. Except for Miss Nash and -Miss Messenger, turned towards each other, and with their backs to her, -she had the world to herself. Softly she crept down the hill; softly -she stole in among the lilacs. - -"My little Gracie! my little Gracie!" she kept muttering, but only -between closed lips. "My little Gracie!" - - * * * * * - -"Oh, don't think, Milly," Miss Messenger was saying, "that I shan't -give him the chance to come across honorable. I shall. You say that an -action for breach doesn't seem to you delicate, and I don't say but -what I shrink from it. But when you've a trunkful of letters simply -burning with passion, simply _burning_ with it, what good are they to -you if you don't?... And he's worth fifty thousand dollars if he's -worth a penny. Don't talk to me! A fishmonger, right in the heart of -East Eighty-eighth Street, the very best district.... If I sue for -twenty-five thousand dollars I'd be pretty sure of getting five ... and -with a sympathetic jury, possibly six or eight ... and with all that -money I could set up a little nursing home in London ... say in the -Portland Place neighborhood ... with a specialty in children's diseases -... and put you in charge of it as matron. You and me together...." - -"Oh, but, Etta, I couldn't leave my little boy, not till he's able to -do without me. By that time there may be other children for me to take -care of, so that I could keep near him. I've thought of that. He being -the first, and his father and mother such a fine healthy young couple, -with everything to support a big family...." - -During the minutes which marked his transfer from one destiny to -another, Miss Nash's little boy remained in the sweet, blest country -to which little babies go in dreams. When a swift hand raised the -veil, lifting him with deft gentleness, he knew nothing of what was -happening. While the cap was peeled from his head and pulled over that -of a big, featureless rag doll shaped to the outlines of a baby's -limbs, he was still on the lap of Miss Nash's angels. On the lap of -these angels he stayed during the rest of the exchange. The strange -woman's hand was tender. Lightly it drew over the little boy's head -the soiled, cheap bonnet worn by the big rag doll; lightly it laid the -little warm body into its new bed. Where he had nestled the big rag -doll with his cap on its head gave a fair imitation of his form, unless -inspected closely. By the time the veils were lowered on the two little -carriages there was nothing for the most suspicious eye to wonder at. A -respectable woman of the humbler classes was trundling her baby back to -its home. The infant rested quietly. - -The rag doll, too, rested quietly when Miss Nash returned to her -charge, as Miss Messenger to hers. Miss Nash had heard so much within -an hour that she was not quite mistress of herself. Nothing was so -rare with her as to neglect the due examination of her child, but this -time she neglected it. Etta had given her so much to think of that for -the minute her mind was over-taxed. Because the love theme had become -involved with the compelling dictates of self-interest, which even a -sweet creature like Miss Nash couldn't overlook, she laid her hands -absently on the push-bar, beginning to make her way homeward. There was -no question as to Etta's worldly wisdom. The choice lay between worldly -wisdom and the warm, glowing, human thing we call affection. In Milly -Nash's experience it was the first time such a choice had been put up -to her. - -"Don't talk to me!" Miss Etta pursued, as they sauntered along side by -side. "I simply love my children up to every penny I'm paid for it, -not a farthing more; and if you'll take my advice, Milly Nash, you'll -follow my example." - -Miss Nash felt humble, rebuked. Through fear of disturbing her little -boy, she pushed as gently as a zephyr blows. - -"I'm not sure that I could measure it out, not with this little fellow." - -"This little fellow, fiddlesticks! He's just like any other little -fellow." - -"Oh, no, he isn't. There's character in babies just as there is -in grown-up people. This child's got it strong, all sweetness and -loveliness, and so much sense--you'd never believe it! Why, he -knows--there's nothing that he doesn't know, in his own dear little -way. I tell you, Etta, that if you had him you'd feel just like me." - -"Just like you and be out of your heart's job--your heart's job, mind -you--as soon as he's four years old, and they want to put him with a -French girl to learn French. Oh, I know them, these aristocrats! When -I get my alimony, or whatever it is, I'm simply going to provide for -the future, and you'll be a goose, Milly Nash, if you simply don't come -with me, and do the same." - -While Miss Nash was shaking her head with her gentle perplexed smile, -the strange woman was crossing Fifth Avenue. Having accomplished -this feat, she entered one of the streets running from that great -thoroughfare toward the East River. Squalor being so much the rule in -New York, the wealthier classes find it hard to pre-empt to themselves -more than a long thin streak, relatively trim, bearing to the general -disorder the proportion of a brook to the meadow through which it runs. -The strange woman had left Fifth Avenue but a few hundred yards away -before she and her baby were swallowed up in that kind of human swarm -in which individuals lose their identity. Afraid of betraying some -frenzy she knew to be within her by mumbling to herself, she kept her -lips shut with a fierce, determined tightness. She was a little woman, -and when you looked at her closely you saw that she had once possessed -a wild dark prettiness. Even now, as she pushed her way between uncouth -men and women, or screaming children at play, her wild dark eyes blazed -with sudden anger or swam with unshed tears by fits and turns. - -The house at which she stopped was hardly to be distinguished from -thousands of others in which a brief brownstone dignity had fallen, -first to the boarding-house stage, and then to that of tenements. From -the top of a flight of brownstone steps a frowzy, buxom, motherly -woman came lumbering down to lend a hand with the baby carriage. - -"So you've brought your baby, Mrs. Coburn. Now you'll be able to get -settled." - -The reply came as if it had been learned by rote. "Yes, now I'll be -able to get settled. I've got her crib ready, though all my other -things is strewed about just as when I moved in. Still, the crib's -ready, which is the main thing. She's a fretful baby by nature, so -you mustn't think it funny if you hear her cry. Some people thought -I'd never raise her, so that if you ever hear say that my little girl -died...." - -"I'll know it's not true," the buxom woman laughed. "She couldn't die, -and you have her here, now could she? Do let me have a peep." - -By this time they had lifted the carriage over the steps and into the -little passageway. Seeing that there was no help for this inspection, -the strange woman trembled but resigned herself. The neighbor lifted -the veil, and peered under it. - -"My, what a love! And she don't look sick, not a little mite." - -"Not her face, she don't. Her poor little body's some wasted, but then -so long as I've got her...." - -"I believe as it'd be too much lime-water in her milk. She's -bottle-fed, ain't she? Well, them bottle-fed babies--I've had two of -'em out of my five--you got to try and try, and ten to one you'll find -as it's that nasty lime-water that upsets 'em." - -Having unlocked her door, which was on the left of the passageway, -the strange woman pulled her treasure into a room stuffy with closed -windows, and dim with drawn blinds. Turning the key behind her, she -was alone at last. - -She fell on her knees, throwing the veil back with a fierceness that -almost tore it off. She strained forward. Her breath came in racking, -panting sobs. - -"My Gracie! my Gracie! God didn't take you! God wouldn't be so mean! I -just dreamed it, and now I've waked up." - -Suddenly she changed. Drawing backward, she put her hands to her brow -and pressed them down the whole length of her face. Her eyes filled -with horror. Her face turned sallow. Her lips fell apart. - -"I'll get twenty years for this. Perhaps it'll be more. I don't think -they hang for it, but it'll be twenty years anyhow, if they find it -out." She sprang up, still muttering in broken, only partly articulated -phrases. "But they'll never find it out. What's there to find? It's -my baby! My precious only baby!" She was on her knees again, dragging -herself forward by the sides of the little carriage, her eyes strained -toward the infant face. "My little Gracie! I've missed you all the time -you've been away. My heart was near broke. Now you've come back to me. -You're mine--mine--mine!" - -He opened his eyes. It was his usual hour for waking up. For the first -time in his history amazement gave an expression to his face which it -was often to wear afterward. Instead of being in his own nest, downy, -clean, and scentless, he was in a humpy little hole unpleasant to -his senses. Instead of the Na-Na with her tender smile, or the Ma-Ma -with her love, he saw this terrifying woman's stormy eyes, rousing -the sensation he was later to know as fear. Instead of his nursery, -spotless and gay, he was dumped amid the forlorn disarray of furniture -that has just been moved into an empty tenement. Without getting these -impressions in detail, he got them at once. He got them not as separate -facts, but as facts in a single quintessence, distilled and distilled -again, till no one element can be told from any other element, and held -to his lips in a poisoned draught. - -All he could do was to wail, but he wailed with a note of anguish which -was new to him. It was anguish the more bitter because of the lack of -explanation. His only awareness hitherto had been that of power. He -had been a baby sovereign, obeyed without having to command. Now he -had been born again as a baby serf, into conditions against which his -will, imperious in its baby way, would beat in vain. Once more, he knew -this, not by reasoned argument, of course, but by heartbroken instinct. -It was not merely the distress of the present that was in his cry, but -dread of the future. There was something else in the world besides -Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, and he had touched it. Without knowing -what it was he shrank back from the contact and sobbed. - -And yet such is the need for love in any young thing's heart, that when -the strange woman had lifted him up, and cradled him on her bosom, he -was partly soothed. He was not soothed easily. Though she held him -closely, and sang to him softly, seated in the low rocking-chair in -which she had rocked her baby-girl, he went on sobbing. He sobbed, -not as he had sobbed in his old nursery, for the sport or the mischief -of the thing, but because his inner being had been bruised. But his -capacity for sobbing wore itself out. Little by little the convulsions -grew calmer, the agony less desperate. Love held him. It was not -the love of the Ma-Ma or the Na-Na, but it was love. It had love's -embrace, love's lullaby. Arms were about him, he was on a breast. -The shipwrecked sailor may be only on a raft, but he is not sinking. -Little by little he turned his face into this only available refuge. A -dangling embroidery adorned it, and in his struggle not to go down his -little hands clutched at that. - - - - -IV - - -His first conscious recollection was of sitting on a high chair drawn -up to a table at which he was having a meal. He could never recall -whether this was in Harlem, Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey City, or the -Bronx. Because they moved so often he had little more memory of places -than he had of clouds. Tenements, streets, and suburbs of New York -melted into one big sense of squalor. It was not squalor to him because -he was used to it. It only obscured the difference between one dwelling -and another, as monotony always obscures remembrance. Wherever their -wanderings carried them, the background was the same, crowded, dirty, -seething, a breeding place rather than a home. - -What marked this occasion was a question he asked and the answer he got -back. - -"Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?" - -The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about the kitchen. "What do -you want to know for?" - -The question was difficult. He knew what he wanted to know for, and yet -it wasn't easy to explain. The nearest he could get to it in language -was to say: "I'm a little boy, ain't I?" - -"Yes, you're a little boy, but you should have been a little girl. It -was a little girl I wanted." - -"But you want me, don't you, mudda?" - -She dropped whatever she was doing to press his head fiercely against -her side. "Yes, I want _you_! I want _you_! I want _you_!" - -He remembered this paroxysm of affection not because it was special -but because it was connected with his gropings after his identity. -Paroxysms were what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or of -something which frightened him and yet was nameless. He thrummed to -himself, beating time on the table with his spoon, while he worked on -to another point. - -"Wadn't there never no Gracie, mudda?" - -She wheeled round from the gas-stove. "For goodness' sake, what's -putting this into your head? Of course there was a Gracie. You're her. -You don't suppose I stole you, do you?" - -He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on the table with his spoon. -The mystery of being grew still more baffling. - -"Mudda!" - -"What's it now?" - -"If I wad Gracie I'd be a little girl, wouldn't I?" - -She stamped her foot. "Stop it! If you ask me another thing I'll slap -you." - -He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being slapped. Accustomed -to that he had learned to discount its ferocity. A sharp stinging -smart, it passed if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing -had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. If for the -minute he asked no more questions it was in order not to vex his mudda. -She was easily vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily -repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It was so violent, so -overwhelming. He loved love; he loved caressing; he loved to sit in her -lap and sing with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed him. - -As she washed the dishes or switched about the kitchen, he watched -her with that trepidation which makes the children of the poor -sharp-witted. Though under five years of age, he was already developing -a sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity of a wholly -straightforward little face, which had the even tan of a healthy -fairness, in keeping with his crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment -had come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle himself against -her petticoats. - -"Mudda, sing!" - -"I can't sing now. Don't you see I'm busy! Look out, or this hot -dish-water'll scald you." - -Nevertheless, a few minutes later they were settled in the rocking -chair, he on her knee, with his cheek against her shoulder. She was not -as ungracious as her words would have made her seem, a fact of which he -was aware. - -"What'll I sing, Troublesome?" - -"Sing 'Three Cups of Cold Poison.'" - -So she sang in a sweet, true voice, the sort of childish voice which -children love, her little boy joining in with her whenever he knew the -words, but with only a hit-or-miss venture at the tune. - - "Where have you been dining, Lord Ronald, my son? - Where have you been dining, my handsome young man?" - "I've been dining with my true love, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "And what did she give you, Lord Ronald, my son? - And what did she give you, my handsome young man?" - "Three cups of cold poison, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "What'll you will to your mither, Lord Ronald, my son? - What'll you will to your mither, my handsome young man?" - "My gowd and my silver, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "What'll you will to your brither, Lord Ronald, my son? - What'll you will to your brither, my handsome young man?" - "My coach and six horses, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - - "What'll you will to your truelove, Lord Ronald, my son? - What'll you will to your truelove, my handsome young man?" - "A rope for to hang her, mither, make my bed soon, - There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon." - -His next conscious memory was more dramatic. He had been playing in -the street, in what town he could never remember. They had recently -moved, but they had always recently moved. A month in one set of rooms, -and his mother was eager to be off. Rarely did they ever stay anywhere -for more than the time of moving in, giving the necessary notice, and -moving out again. When they stayed long enough for him to know a few -children he sometimes played with them. - -In this way the thing happened. The boy's name was Frankie Bell, a -detail which remained long after the larger facts had escaped him. -Frankie Bell and he had been engaged in scraping the dust and offal of -the street into neat little piles, with the object of building what -they called a "dirt-house." The task was engrossing, and to it little -Tom Coburn gave himself with good will. Suddenly, as each bent over his -pile, Frankie Bell threw off the observation, casually uttered: - -"My mother says your mother's crazy." - -Tom Coburn raised himself from his stooping posture, standing straight, -and looking straight. The expression in his dark blue eyes, over which -the eyebrows even now stood out bushily, was of pain, and yet of pain -that left him the more dauntless. Though knowing but vaguely what the -word crazy meant, he knew it was insulting. - -"She ain't." - -Frankie Bell, a stout young man, lifted himself slowly. "Yes, she is. -My mother says so." - -"Well, your mudda id a liar." - -One rush and Frankie Bell lay sprawling with his head in the cushioned -softness of his own dirt-heap. The attack had taken him so much by -surprise that he went down before he could bellow. Before he could -bellow his enemy was upon him, filling his mouth with the materials -collected for architectural purposes. Victor in the fray, Tom Coburn -ran homeward blinded with his tears. - -He found his mother at the stove, stirring something with a tablespoon. - -"Mudda, you're _not_ crazy, _are_ you?" - -His reply was a blow on the head with the spoon. The woman was beside -herself. - -"Who said that?" - -Rubbing his head, he told her. - -"Don't you ever let them say no such thing again. If you do I'll kill -you." She threw back her head, her arms outstretched, the spoon in her -right hand. "God! God! What'll they say next? They'll say I stole him. -It'll be twenty years for me; it'll be forty; it may be life. I won't -live to begin it. I know what'll end it before they can...." - -He was terrified now, terrified as he had never been in all his -terrifying moments. Throwing himself upon her, he clutched at her -skirts. - -"Don't, mudda, don't! I'm your little boy! You didn't steal me. Don't -cry, mudda! Oh, don't cry! don't cry!" - -When, in one of her sudden reactions, she sank sobbing to the floor, he -sank with her, petting her, coaxing her, wiping away her tears, forcing -himself to laugh so that she should laugh with him; but a few days -afterward they moved. - - - - -V - - -"Mudda, can I have a book and learn to read?" - -The ambition had been inspired in the street, where he had seen a -little boy who actually had a book, and was spelling out the words. Tom -Coburn was now nominally six years old, though it was in the nature of -things that of his age no exact record could be kept. His mother had -changed his birthday so many times that he observed it whenever she -said it had come round. - -Bursting into the room with his eager question, he found her sitting by -a window looking out at a blank wall. Given her feverish restlessness, -the attitude called attention to itself. The apartment was poorer and -dingier than any they had lived in hitherto, while it had not escaped -his observation that she was living on the ragged edge of her nerves. -This made him the more sorry for her, and the more loving. He put his -hand on her shoulder, tenderly. - -"What's the matter, mudda?" - -It was one of the minutes when a touch made her frantic. "Get away!" - -He got away, not through fear, but because she pushed him. He didn't -mind that, though the rejection hurt him inside. He stood in the middle -of the floor, pity in his young countenance, wondering what he could do -for her, when she spoke again. - -"I've got hardly any money left. I don't know what to do." - -It was the first time his attention had been called to finance. He knew -there was such a thing as money; he knew it had purchasing value; but -he had not known its relation to himself. - -"Why don't you get money where you got it before?" - -"Because I ain't got a husband to die and leave me another five -thousand dollars of insurance." - -"And did you have, mudda?" - -"Of course I had. What did you think?" - -The question voiced his inner difficulty. He had not known what to -think. Having observed that a fundamental social unit was formed of -husbands and wives, he had also understood that husbands and wives -could, in the terms which were the last to hang over from the lingo -of his babyhood, be translated into faddas and muddas. They in turn -implied children. The methods were mysterious, but the unit was so -composed. The exception to this rule seemed to be himself. Though he -had a mudda, he could not remember ever to have heard of a fadda. He -had pondered on this deficiency more times than anyone suspected. The -effort to link himself up with the human family was far more important -to him now than the ways and means of getting cash. Standing pensive, -he peered into the blinding light, or the unfathomable darkness, -whichever it may be, out of which comes human life. - -"Mudda, did Gracie have a fadda?" - -She snapped peevishly, her gaze again turned outward to the stone wall. -"Of course she did." - -He came nearer to his point. "Did I?" - -"I--I suppose so." - -He approached still nearer. "Did I have the same fadda what Gracie had?" - -"No, you hadn't." She caught herself up hurriedly, rounding on him in -one of her fits of wrath. "Yes, you had." - -The inconsistency was evident. "Well, which was it, mudda?" - -She jumped to her feet, threateningly. "Now you quit! The next thing -you'll be saying is that your name is Whitelaw, and that I stole you. -Take that, you nasty little brat!" - -A smack on the cheek brought the color to his face, and the tears to -his eyes. "No, I won't, mudda. I won't say you stole me, or that my -name is--" oddly enough he had caught it--"or that my name is Whitelaw. -My name is Tom Coburn, and I'm your little boy." - -Rushing at her in the big outpouring of his love, he threw his arms -about her and cried against her waist. He cried so seldom that -his grief drove her to one of her paroxysms of repentance. Her -self-reproaches abating, all she could do to comfort him was to promise -him a book, and begin to teach him to read. - -The book was procured two days later, and by a method new to him. -Doubtless some other means could have been adopted, but the necessity -for sparing pennies had become imperative. Moreover, she had never -willingly looked at print since the day when she opened a paper to find -that, without knowing who she was, all the forces of the country had -been organized against her. - -They went out together. After traversing a series of streets he had -never been in before they stopped in front of a little shop, in the -window of which stationery, ink, wallpaper, rubber bands, and books -were arranged in artistic confusion. The impression on the fancy of a -little boy already groping toward the treasures of the mind was like -that made on the tourist in Dresden by the heaped up riches of the -Gruene Gewoelbe. - -The geography of the shop was explained to him before entering. The -stationery counter was on the right as soon as you passed the door. -The children's books were opposite, on the left. Books forming a cheap -circulating library were back of that, and opposite these, where the -shop was dark, were the wallpapers, in small, tight rolls on shelves. -She was going to inspect wallpapers. The woman in the shop would -exhibit them. He would remain alone in the front part of the shop, and -close to the counter with the children's books. He was to keep alert -and attentive, waiting for a sign which she would give him. When she -turned round in the dark part of the shop, and called out, "Are you all -right, darling?" he was to understand it as permissible to slip from -the counter any small work on which he could lay his hands, and button -it up inside his overcoat. He was to do it quickly, keeping his booty -out of sight, and above all saying nothing about it. The plan was -exciting, with a savor of adventure and manly incentive to skill. - -If in the Gruene Gewoelbe you were told you could take anything you -pleased you would have some of Tom Coburn's sense of enchantment as -he stood by the book counter, waiting for the sign. He could see his -mother dimly. More dimly still he could follow the movements of the -shop-woman eager for a sale. Sample after sample, the wallpapers -were unrolled, and hung on an easel where their flowers lighted the -obscurity. Even at a distance he could do justice to their beauty, but -more captivating than their glories were the wonders at his hand. Pages -in which children and animals disported in colors far beyond those of -nature were piled in neat little rows, and so tempting that he ached -for the signal. He couldn't choose; there was too much to choose from. -He would put out his hand without looking, guided by fate. - -"Are you all right, darling?" - -Curiously to the little boy, the question came just when he himself -could perceive that the shop-woman had dived beneath the counter for -another example of her wares. All the conditions were propitious. No -one was entering the shop; no one was looking through the window. -Without knowing the moralities of his act, he understood the need for -secrecy. He stretched forth his arm. His fingers touched paper. In the -fraction of a fraction of a second the object was within his overcoat, -and pressed to his pounding heart. - -A few minutes later his mother came smiling and chatting down toward -the exit, giving her address, which the shop-woman jotted in a -notebook. "I think it will have to be the pale-green background with -the roses. The room is darkish, and it would light it up. But I'll -decide by to-morrow, and let you know. Yes, that's right. Mrs. F.H. -Grover, 321 Blaisdel Avenue. So much obliged to you. Good morning." - -Having bowed themselves out they went some yards up the street before -the little boy dared to express his new wonderment. - -"Mudda, what did you say you was Mrs. F.H. Grover for? And we don't -live on Blaisdel Avenue. We live on Orange Street." - -"You mind your own business. Did you get your book? Well, that's what -we went for, isn't it?" - -The expedition having proved successful, it was tried on other planes. -Now it was in the line of groceries; now in that of hardware; now in -that of drygoods; now in that of fruit. Needed things could be used; -useless things could be sold, especially after they had moved to -distant neighborhoods. While the procedure didn't supply an income, it -eked out very helpfully such income as remained. - -It furnished, moreover, a motive in life, which was what they had -lacked hitherto. There was something to which to give themselves. It -was like devotion to an art, or even a religion. They could pursue it -for its own sake. For her especially this outside interest appeased -the wild something which wasted her within. She grew calmer, more -reasonable. She slept and ate better. She had fewer fits of frenzy. - -With but faint pangs of misgiving the little boy enjoyed himself. -He enjoyed his finesse; he enjoyed the pride his mother took in him. -In proportion as they grew more expert they enlarged their field, -often reversing their roles. There were times when he created the -distraction, while she secreted any object within reach. They did this -the more frequently after she became recognized as his superior in -selection. - -For a superior in selection the great department stores naturally -offered the widest field for operation. They approached them, however, -cautiously, going in and out and out and in for a good many days before -they ventured on anything. When they did this at last it was amid the -crowding and pushing of a bargain day. - -The system evolved had the masterly note of simplicity. The little -boy carried a satchel, of the kind in which school-boys sometimes -carry books. He stood near his mudda, or farther away, according to -the dictates of the moment's strategy. On the first occasion he kept -close to her, sincerely admiring a display of colored silk scarves -conspicuously marked down to the price at which it was intended, even -before their importation, that they should be sold. Women thronged -about the counter, the little boy and his mudda having much ado to edge -themselves into the front to where these products of the loom could be -handled. - -The picking and choosing done, the mother still showed some indecision. - -"I'll just ask my sister to step over here," she confided to the -saleswoman. "Her judgment is so much better than mine. Run over, dear, -to your Aunt Mary," she begged of the boy, "and ask her to come and -speak to me." Holding the scarf noticeably in her hands, she smiled at -the saleswoman affably. "I'll just make room for this lady, who seems -to be in a hurry." - -She did not step back; she merely allowed herself to be crowded out. -From the front row she receded to the second, from the second to the -third. Keeping in sight of the saleswoman, she looked this way and -that, plainly for Aunt Mary to appear. At times she made little dashes, -as Aunt Mary seemed to come within sight. From these she did not fail -to return, but on each occasion to a point more distant from that of -her departure. With sufficient time the poor saleswoman, who had fifty -other customers to attend to, would be likely to forget her, for a few -minutes if no more. - -The moment seemed to have come. With the scarf thrown jauntily over -her arm where anyone could see it, the mother forced her way amid -the crowds in search of her little boy. If intercepted she had her -explanation. He had gone on an errand, and had not come back. When she -had found him she would return and pay for the scarf, or decide not to -take it. Her story couldn't help being plausible. - -"Aunt Mary" was a spot agreed upon near one of the side doors, and far -from the center of interest in silk scarves. Agreed upon was also a -little bit of comedy, for the benefit of possible lookers-on. - -"Oh, my dear, I've kept you waiting so long. I'm so sorry. Tell your -mother this is the best I could do for her. I knew you were waiting, so -I didn't let the lady wrap it up. Open your bag, and I'll put it in." - -The bag closed, the little boy went out through one door, and his -mother through another. The point where she was to rejoin him was not -so far away but that he could walk to it alone. - - - - -VI - - -"It's all right, mudda, isn't it?" - -He asked this after their campaign had been carried on for a good part -of a year, and when they were nearing Christmas. He was now supposed -to be seven. For reasons he could not explain the great game lost its -zest. In as far as he understood himself he hated the sneaking and the -secrecy. He hated the lying too, but lying was so much a part of their -everyday life that he might as well have hated bread. - -"Of course it's all right," his mother snapped. "Haven't I said so time -and again? We get away with it, don't we? And if it wasn't all right we -shouldn't be able to do that." - -Silenced by this reasoning, even if something in his heart was not -convinced by it, he prepared for the harvest of the festival. Christmas -was an exciting time, even to Tom Coburn. Perhaps it was more exciting -to him than to other boys, since he had so much to do with shops. As -long ago as the middle of November he had noted the first stirrings -of new energy. After that he had watched the degrees through which -they had ripened to a splendor in which toys, books, skis, skates, -sleds, and all the paraphernalia of young joyousness, made a bright -thing of the world. Where there was so much, the profusion went beyond -desire. One of these objects at a time, or two, or three, might have -found him envious; but he couldn't cope with such abundance. He could -concentrate, therefore, all the more on the pair of fur-lined mittens -which his mother promised him, if, as she expressed it, they could haul -it off. - -By Christmas Eve they had not done so. They had hauled off other -things--a purse, a lady's shopping bag, several towels, a selection of -pen-trays, some pairs of stockings, a bottle of shoe-polish, a baby's -collapsible rubber bathtub, a hair-brush, an electric toaster, with -other articles of no great interest to a little boy. Moreover, only -some of these things were for personal use; the rest would be sold -discreetly after the next moving. It was in the nature of the case that -such grist as came to their mill should be more or less as it happened. -They could pick, but they couldn't choose, at least to no more than a -limited degree. Fur-lined mittens didn't come their way. - -The little boy's heart began to ache with a great fear. Perhaps he -shouldn't get them. Unless he got them by Christmas Day the spell of -the occasion would be gone. To get them a week later wouldn't be the -same thing. It would not be Christmas. He couldn't remember having kept -a Christmas hitherto. He couldn't remember ever having longed for what -might be called an article of luxury. The yearning was new to him, and -because new, it consumed him. Whenever he thought that the happiness -might after all elude him he had to grind his teeth to keep back a sob, -but he could not prevent the filling of his eyes with tears. - -It was not only Christmas Eve but late in the day before the mother -found her opportunity. At half-past five the counter where fur-lined -mittens were displayed was crowded with poor women who hadn't had -the money or the time to make their purchases earlier. In among them -pressed Tom Coburn's mother, making her selection, and asking the price. - -"Now where's that boy? His hands grow so quick that I can't be sure of -anything without trying them on." - -With a despairing smile at the saleswoman, she followed her usual -tactics of being elbowed from the counter, while she looked about -vainly for the boy. At the right moment she slipped into the pushing, -struggling mass of tired women, where she could count on being no -more remarked than a single crow in a flock. The mittens were in the -muff which was the prize of an earlier expedition. At a side door the -boy was waiting where she had left him. Without pausing for words she -whispered commandingly. - -"Come along quick." - -He went along quick, but also happily, projecting himself into the -"surprise" to which he would wake on Christmas morning. - -They had reached the sidewalk when a hand was laid on the mother's -shoulder. - -"Will you come back a minute, please?" - -The words were so polite that for the first few seconds the boy was not -alarmed. A lady was speaking, a lady like any other lady, unless it was -that her manner was quieter, more forceful, more sure of itself, than -he was accustomed to among women. But what he never forgot during all -the rest of his life was the look on his mother's face. As he came to -analyze it later it was one of inner surrender. She had come to the -point which she had long foreseen as her objective. She had reached the -end. But in spite of surrender, and though she grew bloodlessly pale, -she was still determined to show fight. - -"What do you want me for?" - -"If you'll step this way I'll tell you." - -"I don't know that I care to do that. I'm going home." - -"You'd better come quietly. You won't gain anything by making a fuss." - -A second lady, also forceful and sure of herself, having joined them -they pushed their way back through the throng. At the glove counter a -place was made for them. The saleswoman was beckoned to. The woman who -had stopped them at the door continued to take the lead. - -"Now, will you show us what you've got in your muff?" - -She produced the mittens. "Yes, I have got these. I bought and paid for -them." - -The saleswoman gave her account of the incident. Women shoppers -gathered round. Floorwalkers came up. - -"It's a lie; it's a lie!" the boy heard his mother cry out, as the girl -behind the counter told her tale. "If I didn't pay for them it was -because I forgot. Here's the money. I'll pay for them now. What do you -take me for?" - -"No; you won't pay for them now. That's not the way we do business. -Just come along this way." - -"I'm not going nowheres else. If you won't take the money you can go -without it. Leave me alone, and let me take my little boy home." - -Her voice had the screaming helplessness of women in the grasp of -forces without pity. A floorwalker laid his hand on her shoulder, -compelling her to turn round. - -"Don't you touch me," she shouted. "If I've got to go anywheres I can -go without your tearing the clothes off my back, can't I?" - -For the little boy it was the last touch of humiliation. Rushing at the -floorwalker, he kicked him in the shins. - -"Don't you hit my mudda. I won't let you." - -A second floorwalker held the youngster back. Some of the crowd -laughed. Others declared it a monstrous thing that women of the sort -should have such fine-looking children. - -Presently they were surging through the crowd again, toward a back -region of the premises. The boy, not crying but panting as if spent by -a long race, held his mother by the skirt; on the other side one of the -forceful women had her by the arm. He saw that his mother's hat had -been knocked to one side, and that a mesh of her dark hair had broken -loose. He remembered this picture, and how the shoppers, wherever they -passed, made a lane for them, shocked by the sight of their disgrace. - -They came to an office, where their party, his mother, himself, the two -forceful women, and two floorwalkers, were shut in with an elderly man -who sat behind a desk. It was still the first of the forceful women who -took the lead. - -"Mr. Corning, we've caught this woman shop-lifting." - -"I haven't been," the boy heard his mother deny. "Honest to God, I -haven't been." - -"We've been watching her for some time past," the forceful woman -continued, "but we never managed before to get her with the goods." - -The elderly man was gray, pale-eyed, and mild-mannered. He listened -while the story was given him in detail. - -"I'm afraid we must give you in charge," he said, gently, when the -facts were in. - -"No, don't do that, don't do that," she implored, tearfully. "I've got -my little boy. He can't do without me." - -"He hasn't done very well with you, has he?" the elderly man reasoned. -"A woman who's taught a boy of that age to steal...." - -He was interrupted by the coming in of a policeman, summoned by -telephone. At sight of him the unhappy woman gave a loud inarticulate -gasp of terror. All that for seven years she had dreaded seemed now -about to come true. The boy felt terror too, but the knowledge that his -mother needed him nerved him to be a man. - -"Don't you be afraid, mudda. If they put you in jail I'll go to jail -too. I won't let them take me away from you." - -"You'd better come with me, missus," the policeman said, with gruff -kindliness, when the situation was explained to him. "The kid can come -too. 'Twon't be so bad. Lots of these cases. You'll live through it all -right, and it'll learn you to keep straight. One of these days you may -be glad that it happened." - -They went out through a dimly lighted passageway, clogged with parcels -and packing-cases which men were loading into drays. It was dark by -this time, the streets being lighted as at night. The police-station -was not far away, and to it they were led through a series of byways -in which there were few foot-passengers. The policeman allowed them -to walk in front of him, so that the connection was not too obvious. -The boy held his mother's hand, which clutched at his with a nervous -loosening and tightening of the fingers. As the situation was beyond -words they made no attempt to speak. - -"This way." - -Within the police-station the officer turned them to the right, where -they entered a small bare room. Brilliantly lighted with unshaded -electrics, its glare was fierce upon the eyes. At a plain oak desk a -man in uniform was seated with a ledger in front of him. Another man in -uniform standing near the door picked his teeth to kill time. - -"Shoplifting case," was the simple introduction of the party. - -They stood before the man at the desk, who dipped his pen in the ink, -and barely glanced at them. What to the boy and his mother was as the -end of the world was to him all in the day's work. - -"Name?" - -She gave her name distinctly, and less to the lad's surprise than if -she hadn't often used pseudonyms. "Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw." - -"Address?" - -She gave the address correctly. - -"Boy's name?" - -She spoke carefully, as one who had prepared her statements. "He's been -known as Thomas Coburn. He's really Thomas Whitelaw. His father was my -second husband." - -"If he's your second husband's child why is he called by your first -husband's name?" - -She was prepared here too. "Because I'd given up using my second -husband's name. I was unhappily married." - -"Is he dead?" - -"Yes, he is." - -Never having heard before so much of his private history, the boy -registered it all. It was exactly the sort of detail for which he had -been eager. It explained too that name of Whitelaw, allusions to which -had puzzled him. He was so engrossed by the fact that he was not Tom -Coburn but Tom Whitelaw as hardly to listen while it was explained -to his mother that she would spend the night in the Female House of -Detention, and be brought before the magistrate in the morning. If the -boy had no friends to whom to send him he would be well taken care of -elsewhere. - -The phlegm to which she had for a few minutes schooled herself broke -down. "Oh, can't I keep him with me? He'll cry his eyes out without me." - -She was given to understand that no child above the nursing age could -be put in prison even for its mother's sake. From his reverie as to Tom -Whitelaw he waked to what was passing. - -"But I won't leave my mudda," he wailed, loudly. "I want to go to jail." - -The kindly policeman put his arm about the boy's shoulder. - -"You'll go to jail, sonny, when your time comes, if you set the right -way to work. Your momma's only going to spend the night, and I'll see -to it that you----" - -In a side of the room a door opened noiselessly. A woman, wearing a -uniform, with a bunch of keys hanging at her side, stood there like -a Fate. She was a grave woman, strongly built, and with something -inexorable in her eyes. Even the boy guessed who she was, throwing -himself against her, and crying out, "Go 'way! go 'way! You won't take -my mudda away from me." - -But the folly of resistance became evident. The mother herself -understood it so. Walking up to the woman with the keys, she said in an -undertone: - -"For God's sake get me out of this. I can't look on while he breaks his -little heart. He's always been an angel." - -That was all. She gave no backward look. Before the boy knew what was -about to happen, she had passed into a corridor, and the door had -closed behind her. - -She was gone. He was left with these strange men. The need for being -brave was not unknown to him. Not unknown to him was the power of -calling to his aid a secret strength which had already carried him -through tight places. He could only express it to himself in the words -that he mustn't cry. Crying had come to stand for everything cowardly -and babyish. He was so prone to do it that the struggle against it -was the hardest he had to make. He struggled against it now; but he -struggled vainly. He was all alone. Even the three policemen were -talking together, while he stood deserted, and futile. His lips -quivered in spite of himself. The tears gathered. Disgraced as he was -anyhow, this weakness disgraced him more. - -The room had an empty corner. Straight into it he walked, and turned -his back, his face within the angle. The head with an old cap on it -was bowed. The sturdy shoulders, muffled in a cheap top-coat, heaved -up and down. But the legs in their knickerbockers were both straight -and strong, and the feet firmly planted on the floor. Except for an -occasional strangled sound which he couldn't control, he betrayed -himself by nothing audible. - -The three policemen, all of them fathers, glanced at him, but forbore -to glance at one another. One of them tried to say, "Poor kid!" but the -words stuck in his throat. It was the kindly fellow who had brought the -lad and the woman there who recovered himself first. - -"All right, then, boys. The Swindon Street Home. One of you can 'phone -that we're on the way." He went over and laid his hand on the child's -shoulder. "Say, sonny, I'm goin' to take you out to see the Christmas -Tree." - -The thought was a happy one. Tom Coburn had never seen any Christmas -Trees, though he had often heard of them. He had specially heard of the -community Christmas Tree which was new that year in that particular -city. It was to be a splendid sight, and against the fascination of -splendor even grief was not wholly proof. He looked shyly round, an -incredible wonder in his tear-stained, upturned face. - -In the street they walked hand in hand, pausing now and then to admire -some brightly lighted window. The boy was in fairyland, but in spite of -fairyland long deep sighs welled up from the springs of his loneliness -and sorrow. To distract him the policeman took him into a druggist's -and bought him a cone of ice-cream. The boy licked it gratefully, as -they made their way to the open space consecrated to the Tree. - -The night was brisk and frosty; the sky clear. In the streets there was -movement, light, gayety. At a spot on a bit of pavement a vendor was -showing a dancing toy, round which some scores of idlers were gathered. -The dancing was so droll that the little boy laughed. The policeman -bought him one. - -When they came to the Christmas Tree the lad was in ecstasy. Nothing he -had ever dreamed of equalled these fruits of many-colored fires. A band -was playing, and suddenly the multitude broke into song. - - O come, all ye faithful, - Joyful and triumphant, - O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem! - -Even the policeman joined in, humming the refrain in Latin. - - Venite, adoremus; - Venite, adoremus; - Venite, adoremus, - Dominum. - -Passing thus through marvels they came to the Swindon Street Home. -The night-nurse, warned by telephone, was expecting them. She was a -motherly woman who had once had a child, and knew well this precise -situation. - -"Oh, come in, you poor little boy! Have you had your supper?" - -He hadn't had his supper, though the cone of ice-cream had stilled the -worst pangs of hunger. - -"Then you shall have some; and after that I'll put you in a nice comfy -bed." - -"He's a fine kid," the policeman commended, before going away, "and -won't give you no trouble, will you, sonny?" - -The boy caught him by the hand, looking up pleadingly into his face, as -if he would have kept him. But the policeman had children of his own, -and this was Christmas Eve. - -"See you again, sonny," he said, cheerily, as he went out, "and a merry -Christmas!" - -The night matron knew by experience all the sufferings of little boys -homesick for mothers who have got into trouble. She had dealt with them -by the hundred. - -"Now, dear, while Mrs. Lamson is getting your supper we'll go to the -washroom and you'll wash your face and hands. Then you'll feel more -like eating, won't you?" - -Deprived of his policeman, despair would have settled on him again, -had it not been for the night matron's hearty voice. The deeper his -woe, and it was very deep, the less he could resist friendliness. Just -as in that first agony, when he was only eight months old, he had -turned to the only love available, so now he yielded again. He was -not reconciled; he was not even comforted; he was only responsive and -grateful, thus getting the strength to go on. - -Going on was only in letting the night matron scrub his face and hands, -and submitting patiently. As they went from the washroom to the dining -room he held her by the hand. He did this first because he couldn't -let her go, and then because the halls were big and bare and dark. -Never had he been in any place so vast, or so impersonal. He was used -to strangeness, as they moved so often, but not to strangeness on so -immense a scale. It was a relief to him, because it brought in a note -of hominess, to hear from an upper floor a forlorn little baby cry. - -His supper toned him up. He could speak of his great sorrow. While the -night matron sat with him and helped him to porridge he asked, suddenly: - -"Will they let me go to jail and stay with my mudda to-morrow?" - -"You see, dear, your mother may not be in jail to-morrow. Perhaps -she'll be let out, and then you can go home with her." - -"They didn't ought to put her in. I'm big. I could work for her, and -then she wouldn't have to take things no more." - -"But bless you, darling, you'll be able to work for her as it is. They -won't keep her very long--not so very long--and I'll look after you -till she comes out. After that...." - -"What's your name?" he asked, solemnly, as if he wished to nail her to -the bargain. - -"Mrs. Crewdson's my name. I'm a widow. I like little boys. I like you -especially. I think we're going to be friends." - -As a proof of this she took him to her own room, instead of to a -dormitory, where she gave him a bath, found a clean night-shirt which, -being too big, descended to his feet, and put him to sleep in a cot she -kept on purpose for homeless little children in danger of being too -lonely. - -"You see, dear," she explained to him, "I don't go to bed all night. I -stay up to look after all the little children--there are a lot of them -in this house--who may want something. So you needn't be afraid. I'll -leave a light burning, and I'll be in and out all the time. If you wake -up and hear a noise, you'll know that that'll be me going about in the -rooms, but mostly I'll be in this room. Now, don't you want to say your -prayers?" - -He didn't want to say his prayers because he had never said any. She -suggested, therefore, that he should kneel on the bed, put his hands -together, and repeat the words she told him to say, as she sat on the -edge of the cot. - -"Dear God"--"Dear God"--"take care of me to-night"--"take care -of me to-night"--"and take care of my dear mother"--"and take -care of my dear mudda"--"and make us happy again"--"and make -us happy again"--"for Jesus Christ's sake"--"for Jesus Christ's -sake"--"Amen"--"Amen." - -"God's up in the sky, isn't He?" he asked, as he hugged his dancing toy -to him and let her cover him up. - -"God's everywhere where there's love, it seems to me, dear. I bring a -little bit of God to you, and you bring a little bit of God to me; and -so we have Him right here. That's a good thought to go to sleep on, -isn't it? So good-night, dear." - -She kissed him as she supposed his mother would have done. He threw his -arms about her neck, drawing her face close to his. "Good night, dear," -he whispered back, and almost before she rose from the bedside she knew -he was asleep. - -Somewhere toward morning she came into the room and found him sitting -up in his cot. - -"Will it soon be daytime, Mrs. Crewdson?" - -"Yes, dear; not so very long now." - -"And when daytime comes could I go to the jail?" - -"Not too early, dear. They wouldn't let you in." - -"Oh, but I don't want to go in. I only want to stand outside. Then if -my mudda looks out of the window, she'll see her little boy." - -Throwing herself on her knees, she clasped him in her arms. "Oh, you -darling! How I wish God had given me a little son like you! I did have -one--he would have been just your age--only I--I lost him." - -Touched by this tribute to himself, as well as by his friend's -bereavement, he brought out a fine manly phrase he had long been -saving for an adequate occasion. - -"The hell you did, Mrs. Crewdson!" - -Having thus expressed his sympathy, he nestled down to sleep again, -hugging his dancing toy. - - - - -VII - - -He woke to his first Christmas. That is, he woke to find a chair drawn -up beside his cot and stocked with little presents. He had never had -presents before. It had not been his mother's custom to make them. -Since she gave him what she could afford, and they shared everything in -common, presents would have seemed to her superfluous. - -But here were half a dozen parcels done up in white paper and tied with -red ribbon, and on them he could read his name. At least, he could read -Tom, while he guessed from the length of the word and initial _W_ that -the other name was Whitelaw. So he was to be Tom Whitelaw now! The fact -seemed to make a change in his identity. He stowed it away in the back -of his mind for later meditation, in order to feast his soul on the -mystic bounty of Santa Claus. - -He knew who Santa Claus was. He had often seen him in the windows of -the big stores, surrounded by tempting packages, and driving reindeer -harnessed to a sleigh. He knew that he drove over the roofs of houses, -down chimneys, and out through grates. Somewhere, too, he harbored the -suspicion that this was only childish talk, and that the real Santa -Claus must be a father or a mother, or in this case Mrs. Crewdson; only -both childish talk and fact simmered without conflict in his brain. It -was easier to think that a supernatural goodwill had brought him this -profusion than that commonplace hands, which had never done much for -him hitherto, should all of a sudden be busy on his behalf. - -Raising himself on his elbow, his first thought came with the bubbling -of a sob. "My mudda is in jail!" His second was in the nature of a -corollary, "But she'll like it when I tell her that Santa Claus took -care of her little boy." The deduction gave him permission to enjoy -himself. - -At first he only gazed in a rapture that hardly guessed at what was -beneath these snowy coverings. What he was to get was secondary to the -fact that he was getting something. For the first time in his life he -was taken into that vast family of boys and girls for whom Christmas -has significance. Up to this morning he had stood outside of it -wistfully--yearning, hoping, and yet condemned to stand aloof. Now, if -his mudda hadn't been in jail.... - -The parcels were larger and smaller. Beginning with the smallest, he -arranged them according to size. Merely to touch them sent a thrill -through his frame. The smallest was round like an orange and yet -yielded to pressure. He was almost sure it was a rubber ball. He could -have been quite sure, only that he preferred the condition of suspense. - -It was long before he could bring himself to untie the first red ribbon -bow, his surprise on finding a rubber ball being no less keen than if -he hadn't known it was a rubber ball on first taking it between his -fingers. A handkerchief laid out flat, making the second parcel seem -bigger than it was, sent him up in the scale of social promotion. By -way of candies, nuts, a toothbrush with tooth paste, he came to the -largest of all, a History of Mankind, written in words of one syllable, -and garnished with highly-colored pictures of various racial types. If -only his mother hadn't been in jail.... - -That his mother was no longer in jail was a fact he learned later in -the day. It was a day of extremes, of quick rushes of rapture out of -which he would fall suddenly, to go away somewhere and moan. When he -begged, as he begged every hour or two, to be taken to the jail, he -could be distracted by rompings with the other children, most of them -in some such case as his own, or by some novelty in the life. To eat -turkey and plum pudding at the head of one of three long tables, each -seating twelve or fourteen, was to be raised to a point of social -eminence beyond which it seemed there could be nothing more to reach. -But in the midst of this pride the hard facts would recur to him, and -turkey and plum pudding choke him. - -That something had happened he began to infer when his beloved -policeman appeared at the home in the afternoon. Having seen him enter, -the boy ran up to him. - -"Oh, mister, are you going to take me to the jail?" - -Mister patted him on the head, though he answered, absently, "Not just -now, sonny. You know you're goin' to have a Christmas Tree. I've come -to see Miss Honiton." - -Miss Honiton, one of the day matrons, having appeared at the end of the -hall, the policeman turned him about by the shoulders. - -"Now be off with you and play. This has got to be private." - -He took himself off but only to the end of the hall, where they didn't -notice that he lingered. He lingered because he knew that, whatever the -mystery, it had something to do with him. - -He caught, however, no more than words which he couldn't understand. -Cyanide of potassium! Only his quick ear and retentive memory enabled -him to lay hold of syllables so difficult. His mother had taken -something or hadn't taken something, he couldn't make out which. All he -saw was that both of his friends looked grave, Miss Honiton summing up -their consultation, - -"I'll let him enjoy the Christmas Tree before saying anything about it." - -The policeman answered, regretfully: "Do you think you must?" - -"I know I must. He ought to be told. He has a right to know. He might -resent it later if we didn't tell him now." - -"Very well, sister. I leave it to you." - -The door having closed on this friend, Tom Whitelaw, so to call him -henceforth, made his way into the room where the Christmas Tree was -presently to be lighted up. But he had no heart for the spectacle. -There was something new. In the grip of the forces which controlled his -life he felt helpless, small. Even his companions in misfortune, as -all these children were, could be relatively light-hearted. They could -clap their hands when the Tree began to burn with magic fires, and take -pleasure in the presents handed out to them. He could not. He was -waiting for something to be told to him--something he had a right to -know. - -One by one, the presents were cut from the Tree; one by one the -children went up to receive this addition to what Santa Claus had -brought them in the morning. His own name was among the last. When it -was called he went forward perfunctorily at first, and then with a -sudden inspiration. - -His package was handed him, not by one of the matrons but by a beaming -young lady from outside. As she bent to deliver it he had his question -ready. - -"Please, miss, what's cyanide of potassium?" - -He had repeated the words to himself so often during the half hour -since first hearing them that he pronounced them distinctly. The young -lady laughed. - -"Why, I think it's a deadly poison." She turned to the matron nearest -her. "What is cyanide of potassium? This dear little boy wants to know." - -But the dear little boy had already walked soberly back to his seat. -While the other children made merry with their presents he sat with his -on his lap, and reflected. Poison was something that killed people. He -knew that. In one of the houses where they had lived a woman had taken -poison, and two days later he had seen her carried out in a long black -box. The impression had remained with him poignantly. - -He had no inclination to cry. Tears could bring little relief in this -kind of cosmic catastrophe. If his mother had taken poison and was to -be carried out in a long black box, everything that had made up his -world would have collapsed. He could only wait submissively till the -thing he ought to know was told to him. - -It was told when the giving of the presents was over, and the children -flocked out of the room to get ready for their Christmas supper. Miss -Honiton was waiting near the door. - -"Come into my office, dear. I want to ask you a few questions." - -Miss Honiton's office was a mixture of office and sitting room, in that -it had business furniture offset by photographs and knicknacks. Sitting -at her desk, she turned to the lad, who stood as if to attention, a -long thin sympathetic face, stamped with practical acumen. - -"I wanted to ask you if besides your mother you have any relations." - -His dark blue eyes, deep set beneath his bushy brows, she thought the -most serious and earnest she had ever seen in any of the hundreds of -homeless little boys she had had to deal with. - -"No, miss." - -"No brothers or sisters, no uncles or aunts?" - -"No, miss." - -"Didn't your mother ever take you to see anyone?" - -"No, miss." - -"Well, then, didn't anyone ever come to see her?" - -"No, miss." - -To the point she was trying to reach she went round by another way. -Where did they live? How long had they lived there? Where had they -lived before that? How long had they lived in that place? He answered -to the best of his recollection, but when it came to their flittings -from tenement to tenement, and from town to town, his recollection -didn't take him very far. Miss Honiton soon understood that she might -as well question a bird as to its migrations. - -For a minute she said nothing, turning over in her mind the various -ways of breaking her painful news, when he himself asked, suddenly: - -"Is my mudda dead?" - -The question was so direct that she felt it deserved a direct answer. - -"Yes, dear." - -"Did she"--he pulled himself together for the big words--"did she take -cyanide of potassium?" - -"Yes, dear; so I understand." - -"Will they take her away in a long black box?" - -"She'll be buried, dear, of course. There'll have to be a funeral -somewhere." - -"Can I go to it?" - -"Yes, dear, certainly. I'll go with you myself." - -He said nothing more, and Miss Honiton felt the futility of trying to -comfort him. There was no opening for comfort in that stony little -face. All she could suggest to break the tension was to ask if he -wouldn't like his supper. - -He went to his supper and ate it. He ate it ruminantly, speechlessly. -What had happened to him he could not measure; what was before him he -could not probe. All he knew of himself was that he had become a clod -of misery, with almost nothing to temper his desolation. - -Two big tears rolled down his cheeks without his being aware of it. -They did not, however, escape the eyes of a little girl who sat near -him. - -"Who's a cry-baby?" she shrieked, to the entertainment of the -lookers-on. She pointed at him with her spoon. "A grea' big boy like -that cryin' for his momma!" - -He accepted the scorn as a tonic. "A grea' big boy like that cryin' for -his momma," were the words with which he kept many a pang during the -next few days from being more than a tearless anguish. - -Miss Honiton was as good as her word as to going with him to the rooms -which housed the long black box. This he understood to be all that -now represented his mudda. She had tried to explain the place as an -"undertaker's parlor," but the words were outside his vocabulary. In -the same way the why and the wherefore of the ceremony were outside his -intelligence. He and Miss Honiton went into the dim room, and stood -near the thing he heard mentioned as "the body." After some mumbled -reading they went out again, and back to the Swindon Street Home. - -Back in the Swindon Street Home he was still without a wherefore or a -why. He got up, he washed, he dressed, he ate, he went to bed again. He -was in a dormitory now with three other little boys, all of them too -deep in the problems of parents in jail or in parts unknown to offer -him much fellowship. They cried when they were left alone in bed, or -they cried in their sleep; but they cried. It was his own pride, and in -no small measure his strength, that he didn't cry, unless he cried in -dreams. - -Everyone was good to him, Mrs. Crewdson and Miss Honiton especially, -but no one could give him the clue to life which instinctively he -clutched for. That one didn't stay forever in the Swindon Street Home -he could see from observation. The children he had found there went -away; other children came. Some of these stayed but a night or two. -None of them stayed much longer. By those sixth and seventh senses -which children develop when they are in trouble he divined that -conferences were taking place on his behalf. Now and then he detected -glances shot toward him by the matrons in discussion which told him -that he was being talked about. It was easy to deduce that he was in -the Swindon Street Home longer than was the custom because they didn't -know what to do with him. He inferred that they didn't know what to do -with him from the many questions which many people asked. Sometimes it -was a man, more times it was a woman, but the questions were always -along the lines of those of Miss Honiton as he came out from the -children's Christmas Tree. Had he any relatives? Had he any friends? -If he had they ought to look after him. It was hard for these kindly -people to believe that he had no claim whatever on any member of the -human race. - -He began to hear the words, a State ward. Though they meant nothing -to him at first, he strove, as he always did, with new words and -expressions, to find their application. Then one evening, as Mrs. -Crewdson was putting him to bed, she told him that that was what he had -become. - -"You see, darling, now that your father and mother are both dead, the -whole country is going to adopt you. Isn't that nice? And it isn't -everything. You're going to have a home--not a home like this--what we -call an institution--but a real home--with a real father and mother in -it, and real brothers and sisters." - -He took this stolidly. He was not to be moved now by anything that -could happen. A waif on the world, the world had the right to pitch him -in any direction that it chose. All he could do with his own desires -was to beat them into submission. He mustn't cry! His fears and his -griefs alike focussed themselves into that resolve. It was the only way -in which he could translate his stout-hearted will to endure. - - - - -VIII - - -To conduct him to his new home, Mrs. Crewdson gave up the whole of -the morning she was supposed to spend in sleep after her all-night -vigil. The home was in a little town a short distance up the Hudson. -Though the railway journey was not long, it was the longest he had ever -taken, and, once the river came within view, it was not without its -excitements. His spirits began to rise with a sense of new adventure. -There were things to look at, bridges, steamers, a man-o'-war at -anchor, lumber yards, coal sheds, an open-air exhibit of mortuary -monuments, and high overhead the clear cold blue of a January sky. -On the other side of the river the wooded heights made a bold brown -bastion, flecked here and there with snow. - -As he had not asked where they were going, or the composition of the -family with whom the Guardian of State Wards was placing him, his -protectress permitted him to make his own discoveries. New faces, new -contacts, new necessities, would help him to forget the old. - -They got out at the station of Harfrey. Mrs. Crewdson carried the -suitcase containing the wardrobe rescued when they had searched the -rooms which he and his mother had occupied last. In front of the -station they got on a ramshackle street car, which zigzagged up the -face of the bank, rising steeply from the river, so reaching the -little town. They turned sharply at the top of the ridge to run through -the one long street. It was a mean-looking street of drab wooden -dwellings and drab wooden shops, occupied mostly by people dependent -on the grand seigneurs of the neighboring big "places." An ugly -schoolhouse, an ugly engine house, two or three ugly churches, further -defied that beauty of which God had been so generous. - -Having got out at a corner at which the car stopped, they walked to a -small wooden house with a mansard roof, standing back from the street. -It was a putty-colored house, with window and door frames in flecked, -anaemic yellow. Perched on the edge of the ridge, it had three stories -at the back and but two in front. What had once been an orchard had -dwindled now to three or four apple trees, the rest of the ground being -utilized as a chicken run. As the day was sunny, a few Plymouth Rocks -were scratching and pecking in the yard. - -Having turned in here, they found themselves expected, the front -door opening before they reached the cement slab in front of it. The -greetings were all for Mrs. Crewdson, who was plainly an old friend. -The boy went in only because Mrs. Crewdson went in, and in the same way -proceeded to a cheery, shabby sitting room. Here there were books and -magazines about, while a canary in a cage began to sing as soon as he -heard voices. To a homeless little boy the haven was so sweet that he -forgot to take off his cap. - -The first few minutes were consumed in questions as to this one -and that one, relatives apparently, together with data given and -received as to certain recognized maladies. Mrs. Crewdson was getting -better of her headaches, but Mrs. Tollivant still suffered from her -varicose veins. Only when these preliminaries were out of the way and -Mrs. Crewdson had thrown off her outer wraps, was the introduction -accomplished. - -"So I've brought you the boy! Tom, dear, this is Mrs. Tollivant who's -going to take care of you. Your cap, Tom! I imagine," she continued, -with an apologetic smile, "you'll find manners very rudimentary." - -Obliged to take an early train back to New York, Mrs. Crewdson talked -with veiled, confidential frankness. A boy of seven could not be -supposed to seize the drift of her cautious phraseology, even if he -heard some of it. - -"So you know the main features of the case.... I told them it wouldn't -be fair to you to let you assume so much responsibility without your -knowing the whole.... With children of your own to think of, you -couldn't expose them to a harmful influence unless you were put in -a position to take every precaution against.... Not that we've seen -anything ourselves.... But, of course, after such a bringing up there -can't but be traces.... And such good material there.... I'm sure -you'll find it so.... Personally, I haven't seen a human being in -a long time to whom my heart has gone.... Only there it is.... An -inheritance which can't but be...." - -He didn't feel betrayed. He had nothing to resent. Mrs. Crewdson had -proved herself his friend, and he trusted her. Without knowing all the -words she used, he caught easily enough the nature of the sentiments -they stood for. These he accepted meekly. He was a bad boy. His mother -and he had been engaged in wicked practices. Dimly, in unallayed mental -discomfort, he had been convinced of this himself; and now it was clear -to everyone. If they hadn't known what to do with him it was because a -bad boy couldn't fit rightly into a world where everyone else was good. -A young evildoer, he had no role left but that of humility. - -He was the more keenly aware of this after Mrs. Crewdson had bidden him -farewell, and he was face to face with his new foster mother. A wiry -little woman, quick in action and sharp in tongue, she would be kind -to him, with a nervous, nagging kindness. He got this impression, as -he got an odor or a taste, without having to define or analyze. Later -in life, when he had come to observe something of the stamp which -professions leave on personalities, he was not surprised that she -should have worn herself out in school-teaching before marrying Andrew -Tollivant, a book-keeper. As he sat now, just as Mrs. Crewdson had left -him, his overcoat still on his back, his cap in his hand, his feet -dangling because the chair was too high for him, she treated him as if -he were a class. - -"Now, little boy, before we go any farther, you and I had better -understand each other." - -With this brisk call to his attention, she sat down in front of him, -frightening him to begin with. - -"You know that this is now to be your home, and I intend to do my duty -by you to the best of my ability. Mr. Tollivant will do the same. If -you take the children in the right way I'm sure you'll find them -friendly. They were very nice to the last little boy the Board of -Guardians sent to us." - -Staring in fascinated awe at the starry brightness of her eyes, and the -wrinkles of worry around them, he waited in silence for more. - -"But one or two things I hope you'll remember on your side. Perhaps -you haven't heard that the Board has found it hard to get anyone to -take you. You're old enough to know that where there are children in a -family people are shy of a boy who's had just your history. But I've -run the risk. It's a great risk, I admit, and may be dangerous to my -own. Do you understand what I mean?" - -"No, ma'am," he said, blankly. - -"Then I'll tell you. There are two things children must learn as soon -as they're able to learn anything. One is to be honest; the other is to -tell the truth. You know what telling the truth is, don't you?" - -He did know, but paralyzed by her earnestness, he denied the fact. "No, -ma'am." - -"So there you are! And I don't suppose you've been taught anything -about honesty." - -"No, ma'am." - -"Then you must begin to learn." - -He began to learn that minute. Still treating him as a class, she -delivered a little lecture, such as a child of tender years could -understand, on the two basic virtues of which he had pleaded ignorance. -He listened as in a trance, his eyes fixed on her vacantly. Though -seizing a disconnected word or two, fear kept him from getting the -gist of it all, as he generally did. - -"It's your influence on the children that I want you to beware of. -Arthur is older than you, but he's only ten; and a boy with your -experience could easily teach him a good deal of harm. Cilly is eight, -and Bertie only five. You'll be careful with them, won't you? Do you -know that if we lead others astray God will call us to account for it?" - -"No, ma'am." - -"Well, He will; and I want you to remember it, and be afraid. Unless -you're afraid of God you'll never grow into the good boy I hope we're -going to make of you." - -The homily finished, he was instructed in the ways of the upper floor, -where, in the sloping space under the eaves, he was to have his room. -After this he came back to the sitting room, not knowing what else to -do. He was in a daze. It was as if he had dropped on another planet -where nothing was familiar. Whether to stand up or sit down he didn't -know. He didn't know what to think, or what to think about. Cut loose -from his bearings, he floated in mental space. - -As standing seemed to commit him to least that was wrong, he stood. -Standing implied looking out of the window, and looking out of the -window showed him, about half past twelve, a well-built boy, rosy with -the cold, noisy from exuberance of spirit, swinging in at the gate and -brandishing a hockey stick. From her preparation of the dinner his -mother ran to meet him at the door. She spoke in a loud whisper that -easily reached the sitting room. - -"Now be careful, Arthur. He's come. He's in there." - -Arthur responded with noisy indifference. "Who? The crook?" - -"Sh-h-h, dear! You mustn't call him that. We must help him to forget -it, and to grow into being like ourselves." - -Arthur grunted noncommittally. Presently he strolled into the sitting -room, whistling a tune. With hands in his pockets, his bearing was that -of an overlord. He made a circuit of the room, eying the new guest, as -the new guest eyed him back. - -"Hello?" the overlord said at last, with a faint note of interrogation. - -Still whistling and still with his hands in his pockets, he strolled -out again. - -Tom Whitelaw's nerves had become so many runlets for shame. He was -the crook! He knew the word as one which crooks themselves use -contemptuously. If he should hear it again.... But happily Mrs. -Tollivant had put her veto on its use. - -The gate clicked again. Coming up the pathway, he saw a girl of about -his own age, with a boy much younger who swung himself on crutches. All -his movements were twisted and grotesque. His head was sunk into his -shoulders as if he had no neck. His feet and legs wore metal braces. -His face had the uncannily aged look produced by suffering. Without -actually helping him, the little girl kept by his side maternally. She -was a dainty little girl, very fair, with shiny yellow hair hanging -down her back, like a fairy princess in a picture book. The boy looking -out of the window fell in love with her at sight. He was sure that in -her he would find a friend. - -On entering she called out in a whiny voice, very musical to Tom -Whitelaw's ear: - -"Ma! Bertie's been a naughty boy. He wouldn't sing 'Pretty Birdling' -for Miss Smallbones. I told him you'd punish him, and you will, won't -you, ma?" - -As there was no response to this, the young ones came to the door of -the sitting room and looked in. They stared at the stranger, and the -stranger stared at them, with the unabashed frankness of young animals. -Having stared their fill, the son and daughter of the house went off to -ask about dinner. - -To Tom that dinner was another new experience. For the first time in -his life he sat down to what is known as a family meal. Attempts had -sometimes been made by well-meaning women in the tenements to rope -him to their tables, but his mother had never permitted him to yield -to them. Now he sat down with those of his own age, to be served like -them, and on some sort of footing of equality. The honor was so great -that he could hardly swallow. Second helpings were beyond him. - -The afternoon was blank again. "You'll begin to go to school on -Monday," Mrs. Tollivant had explained; but in the meantime he had the -hours to himself. They were long. He was lonely. Having been given -permission to go into the yard, he stood studying the Plymouth Rocks. -Presently he was conscious of a light step behind him. Before he had -time to turn around he also heard a voice. It was a whiny voice, yet -sharp and peremptory. - -"You stop looking at our hens." - -The fairy princess had not come up to him; she had paused some two -or three yards away. Her expression was so haughty that it hurt him. -It hurt him more from her than from anybody else because of his -admiration. He looked at her beseechingly, not for permission to go on -studying the Plymouth Rocks, but for some shade of relenting. He got -none. The sharp little face was as glittering and cold as one of the -icicles hanging from the roof behind her. Heavy at heart, he turned to -go into the house by the back door. - -He had climbed most of the hill when the clear, whiny voice arrested -him. - -"Who's a crook?" - -At this stab in the back he leaped round, fury in his dark blue eyes. -But the fairy princess was used to fury in dark blue eyes, and knew -how best to defy it. The tip of the tongue she thrust out at him added -insolence to insult. He turned again, and, wounded in all his being, -went on into the house. - -Near the back door there was a sun parlor, and in it he saw Bertie, -squatting in a small-wheeled chair built for his convenience. Bertie -called to him invitingly. - -"I've got a book." - -"I've got a book, too," he returned, in Bertie's own spirit. - -"You show me your book, and I'll show you mine." - -The proposal being fair, he went in search of his History of Mankind. -In a few minutes he was seated on the floor beside Bertie's chair, -exchanging literary criticisms. He liked Bertie. He had a premonition -that Bertie was going to like him. After the disdain of the fairy -princess, and the superciliousness of the overlord, this was -comforting. Moreover, he could return Bertie's friendliness by doing -things for him which no one else had time to do. He could push his -wheeled chair; he could run his errands; he could fetch and carry; he -would like doing it. - -"I've got infantile paralysis." - -"I've got a rubber ball." - -"I've got a train." - -"I've got a funny little man what dances." - -Coming into the house, Cilly found them the best of friends, in the -best of spirits. Without entering the sun-parlor, she spoke through the -doorway, coldly. - -"Bertie, I don't think momma would like you to act like that. I'll go -and ask her." - -Mrs. Tollivant hurried from the kitchen, scouring a saucepan as she -looked in on them. Seeing nothing amiss, she went away again. Then as -if distrusting her own vision, she came back. She came back more than -once, anxiously, suspiciously. Bertie was enjoying himself with this -boy picked out of the gutter. That the boy had been picked out of the -gutter was not what troubled her, but that Bertie should enjoy himself -in the lad's society. Wise enough not to put notions into Bertie's -head, she stopped her ward later in the day, when she had the chance to -speak to him alone. - -"I saw you playing with Bertie. Well, that's all right. Only you'll -remember your promise, won't you? You won't teach him anything harmful?" - -"No, ma'am," the boy answered, humbly, as one who has a large selection -of harmful things to impart. - - - - -IX - - -He had looked forward to Monday and school. After four days in the -Tollivant household he was eager for relief from it. Except for Cilly's -occasional, and always private, taunts, they were not unkind to him; -they only treated him as an outcast whom they had been obliged to -succor because no one else would do so. He had the same food and drink -as they; his room was good enough; of whatever was material he had no -complaint to make. There was only the distrust which rendered his bread -bitter and the bed hard to lie upon. They didn't take him in as one of -them. They kept him outside, an alien, an intruder. - -It was again a new experience in that for the first time in his life he -was doing without love. When he was Tom Coburn he had had plenty of it -at the worst of times. The Swindon Street Home was full of it. In the -Tollivant house it was the only thing weighed and measured and stinted. -He couldn't, of course, make this analysis. He only knew that something -on which his life depended was not given him. - -He hoped to find it in the school. In any case the school would admit -him to the larger life. It would bind him to that human family which he -had so long craved to enter. In addition to that, it was at school you -learned things. - -He was the more eager to learn things for the reason that Mrs. -Tollivant had declared him backward. In the primary school Cilly was in -the second grade; he must go into the first. He would be with children -a year younger than himself. But the humiliation would be an incentive -to ambition. He had already decided that only by "knowing things" -should he be able to lift himself out of his despised estate. - -The school session was all he had hoped for. Miss Pollard, the teacher, -put in touch with his story by Mrs. Tollivant, kept him near to her, -and watched over him. He learned to discriminate between _his_, _has_, -and _had_, as matters of orthography, as well as between _cat_, -_car_, and _can_. That twice two made four and twice four made eight -added much to his understanding of numbers. He sang _Roving the Old -Homeland_, while Miss Pollard pointed on the map to the places as they -were named. - - From Plymouth town to Plymouth town - The Pilgrims made their way; - The Puritans settled Salem, - And Boston on the Bay. - -The air had a rhythm and a lilt which allowed for the inclusion of any -reasonable number of redundant syllables. - - The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam, - Where the blue waters fork; - The English came and conquered it, - And turned it into New York. - -A little history, a little geography, being taught by the simple method -of doggerel, much pleasure was evoked by the exercise of healthy -lungs. Listening to her new pupil, Miss Pollard discovered a sweet -treble that had never before been aware of itself, with a linnet's joy -in piping. A linnet's joy was his joy throughout the whole morning, -with no more than a slight flaw in his ecstasy in the thought of two -hours in the Tollivant home before he came back for the afternoon. - -As Cilly called for Bertie at the kindergarten, he walked homeward -by himself. Happy with a happiness never experienced before, he had -not noticed that his school-mates hung away from him, tittering as -he passed. To well-dressed little boys and girls his worn old cap, -his frayed knickerbockers, and above all his cheap gray overcoat with -a stringy sheepskin collar, naturally marked him for derision. They -would have marked him for derision even had his story not been known to -everyone. - -He went singing on his way, stepping manfully to the measure. - - The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam, - Where the blue waters fork; - The English came and conquered it, - And turned it into New York. - -They massed themselves behind him, convulsed by his lack of -self-consciousness. The little girls giggled; the boys attempted to -make snowballs from snow too powdery to hold together. One lad found -a frozen potato which he hurled in such a way as to skim close to the -singing figure while just missing it. Tom Whitelaw, unsuspicious of -ill-will, turned round in curiosity. He was greeted by a hoot from the -crowd, but from whom he couldn't tell. - -"Who's the boy what his mother was put in jail?" - -The hoot became a chorus of jeers. By one after another the insult was -taken up. - -"Who's the boy what his mother was put in jaaa-il?" - -As far as he was able to distinguish, the voices of the little girls -were the louder. In their merriment they screamed piercingly. - -"Gutter-snipe! Gutter-rat! Crook! Crook! Crook! Who's the boy what his -mother was put in ja-aa-ail?" - -Crimson, with clenched fists, with gnashing teeth, with tears of rage -in his eyes, he stood his ground while they came on. They swept toward -him in a semicircle of which he made the center. Very well! So much the -better! He could spring on at least one of them, and dash his brains -out on the ground. There was no ferocity he would not enjoy putting -into execution. - -He sprang, but amid the yells of the crowd his prey dodged and escaped -him. The semicircle broke. Instead of advancing in massed formation, it -danced round him now as forty or fifty imps. The imps bewildered him, -as _banderilleros_ bewilder a bull in the ring. He didn't know which to -attack. When he lunged at one, the charge was diverted by another, so -that he struck at the air wildly. Shrieks of mockery at these failures -maddened him, with the heartbreaking madness of a loving thing goaded -out of all semblance to itself. He panted, he groaned, he dashed about -foolishly, he stumbled, he fell. When pelted with pebbles or scraps of -ice, he was hardly aware of the rain upon his head. - -But the mob swept on, leaving him behind. At gates and corners the boy -baiters disappeared, hungry for their dinners. Most of them forgot him -as soon as they had turned their backs. It was easy for them to stop -for awhile since they could begin again. - -He was alone on the gritty, icy slope surrounding the schoolhouse. -There was no comfort for him in the world. Faintly he remembered as a -satisfaction that he hadn't cried, but even this consolation was cold. -He wondered if he couldn't kill himself. - -He did not kill himself, though he pondered ways and means of doing -it. He came to the conclusion that it would be foolish to kill himself -before killing some of his tormentors. He prayed about it that night, -his first prayer, except for the one taught him on Christmas Eve by -Mrs. Crewdson. - -To the family devotions, for which all were assembled about eight -o'clock, before the younger children went to bed, Mr. Tollivant had -begun to add a new petition. - -"And, O Heavenly Father, take pity on the little stranger within our -gates, even as we have welcomed him into our home. Blot out his past -from Thy book. Give him a new heart. Make him truthful and honest -especially. Help him to be gentle, obedient...." - -But savagely the boy intervened on his own behalf. "O Heavenly Father, -don't! Don't give me a new heart, or make me gentle and obedient, till -I kill some of them fellows that called me a crook, for Jesus Christ's -sake, Amen." - - - - -X - - -He killed none of the fellows who called him a crook, though during the -first two years of his schooling he was called a crook pretty often. -Whatever grade he was in, he was always that boy who differs from -other boys, and is therefore the black swan in a flock of white ones. -Whatever his progress, he made it to the tune of his own history. He -was a gutter-snipe. His mother had killed herself in jail! Before she -had killed herself both he and she had been arrested for thieving in -a shop! There was not a house in Harfrey where the tale was not told. -There was never a boy or girl in the school who hadn't learned it -before making his acquaintance. - -Besides, they said of him, he would have been "different" anyhow. Being -"different" was an offense less easily pardoned than being criminal. -Dressed more poorly than they, and with no claims of a social kind, he -carried himself with that bearing which they could only describe as -putting on airs. It was Cilly Tollivant who first brought this charge -home to him. - -"But I don't, Cilly," he protested, earnestly. "I don't know how to be -any other way." - -Cilly was by this time growing sisterly. She couldn't live in the house -with him and not feel her heart relenting, and though she disdained him -in public, as her own interests compelled her to do, in private she -tried to help him. - -"Don't know how to be any other way!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "Tom -Whitelaw, you make me sick. Don't you know even how to _talk_ right?" - -"Yes, but...." - -"There you go," she interrupted, bitterly. "Why can't you say _Yep_, -like anybody else?" - -He took the suggestion humbly. He would try. His only explanation of -his eccentricity was that _Yep_ and _Nope_ didn't suit his tongue. - -But adopting Yep and Nope, as he might have adopted words from a -foreign language, adopting much else that was crude and crass and -vulgar and noisy and swaggering and standardized, according to -schoolboy notions of the standard, he still found himself "different." -For one thing, he looked different. Debase his language as he might, or -coarsen his manners, or stultify his impulses, he couldn't keep himself -from shooting up tall and straight, with a carriage of the head which -was in itself an offense to those who knew themselves inferior. It -made nothing easier for him that his teachers liked and respected him. -"Teacher's pet" was a term of reproach hardly less painful than crook -or gutter-snipe. But he couldn't help learning easily; he couldn't -help answering politely when politely spoken to; he couldn't help the -rapture of his smile when a friendly word came his way. All this told -against him. He was guyed, teased, worried, tortured. If there was a -cap to be snatched it was his. If there was one of a pair of rubber -shoes to be stolen or hidden it was his. If there was an exercise -book to be grabbed and thrown up into a tree where the owner could be -pelted while he clambered after it, it was his. Because he was poor, -friendless, defenseless, and yet with damnable pride written all over -him, it became a recognized law of the school that any meanness done to -him would be legitimate. - -But in his third year at the Tollivants the persecution waned, and in -the fourth it stopped. His school-mates grew. Growing, they developed -other instincts. Fair play was one of them; admiration for pluck was -another. - -"You've got to hand it to that kid," Arthur Tollivant, now fourteen, -had been heard to say in a circle of his friends. "He's stood -everything and never squealed a yelp. Some young tough, believe me!" - -This good opinion was reflected among the lads of Tom Whitelaw's own -age. They had never been cruel; they had only been primitive. Having -passed beyond that stage, they forgot to no small degree what they had -done while in it. The boy who at seven was the crook was at eleven -Whitey the Sprinter. He walked to and from school with the best of -them. With the best of them he played and fought and swore privately. -If he put on airs it was the airs of being a much sadder dog than he -was, daring to smoke a cigarette and go home with the smell of the -wickedness on his breath. - -So, outwardly, Tom Whitelaw came in for two full years of good-natured -toleration. If it did not go further than toleration it was because -he was a State ward. On the baseball or the football team he might be -welcomed as an equal; in homes there was discrimination. He was not -invited to parties, and among the young people of Harfrey parties -were not few. Girls who met him at the Tollivants' didn't speak to him -outside. When Cilly, now being known as Cecilia, had her friends to -celebrate her birthday, he remained in his room with no protest from -the family at not joining them. None the less, it was a relief to be -free from jeering in the streets, as well as from being reminded every -day at school of his mother's tragedy. It was a relief to him; but it -was no more. - -For more than that the wound had gone too deep. Outwardly, he accepted -their approaches; in his heart he rejected them, biding his time. He -was biding his time, not with longings for revenge--he was too sensible -now for that--but in the hope of passing on and forgetting them. By the -time he was twelve he was already aware of his impulse toward growth. - -It was in his soul as a secret conviction, the seed's knowledge of its -own capacity to germinate. Most of the boys and girls around him he -could judge, not by a precocious worldly wisdom, but by his gift for -intuitive sizing up. Their range was so far and no farther, and they -themselves were aware of it. They would become clerks and plumbers and -carpenters and school-teachers and shoe dealers and provision men, and -whatever else could reach its fulfillment in a small country town. He -himself felt no limit. Life was big. He knew he could expand in it. -To nurse resentments would be small, and would keep him small. All he -asked was to forget them, to forget, too, those who called them forth; -but to that end he must be far away. - - - - -XI - - -The road to this Far-away began in the summer vacation of the year when -he was supposed to be twelve. It was the year when he first went to -work, though the work was meant to last for no more than a few weeks. - -Mr. Quidmore, a market gardener at Bere, in Connecticut, some seven -or eight miles eastward toward the Sound, had come over to ask Mr. -Tollivant for a few hours' work in straightening out his accounts. -Straightening out accounts for men who were but amateurs at bookkeeping -was a means by which Mr. Tollivant eked out his none-too-generous -salary. - -It was a Sunday afternoon in June. They were in the yard, looking at -the Plymouth Rocks behind their defenses of chicken-wire. That is, Mr. -Quidmore was looking at the Plymouth Rocks, but Tom was looking at Mr. -Quidmore. Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant were giving their guest information as -to how they raised their hens and marketed their eggs. - -It was a family affair. Mrs. Tollivant prepared the food; Cecilia fed -the birds; Art hunted for the eggs; Bertie and Tom packed them. Mr. -Quidmore was moved to say: - -"I wish I had a fine boy like your Art to help me with the -berrypicking. Good money in it. Three a week and his keep for as long -as the strawberries hold out." - -Tom saw Mrs. Tollivant shake her head at her husband behind Mr. -Quidmore's back. This meant disapproval. Disapproval could not be -disapproval of the work, but of Mr. Quidmore. Art already gave his -holiday services to a dairy for a dollar less than Mr. Quidmore's -offer, and no keep. It was the employer, then, and not the employment -that Mrs. Tollivant distrusted. - -And yet Mr. Quidmore fascinated Tom. He had never before seen anyone -whose joints had the looseness of one of those toys which you worked -with a string. He was so slim, too, that you got little or no -impression of a body beneath his flapping clothes. Nervously restless, -he walked with a shuffle of which the object seemed the keeping of his -shoes from falling off. When he talked or laughed one side of his long -thin face was screwed up as if by some early injury or paralysis. The -right portion of his lips could smile, while the left trembled into -a rictus. This made his speech slower and more drawling than Tom was -accustomed to hear; but his voice was naturally soft, with a quality in -it like cream. It was the voice that Tom liked especially. - -In reply to the suggestion about Art, Mr. Tollivant replied, as one who -sees only a well-meant business proposal, - -"We'd like nothing better, Brother Quidmore; but the fact is Art has -about as much as he can do for the rest of his vacation." He waved his -hand toward Tom. "What do you say to this boy?" - -At the glorious suggestion Tom's heart began to fail for fear. He was -not a fine boy like Arthur Tollivant. The possibility of earning -three dollars a week, to say nothing of his board, was too much like -the opening up of an Aladdin's palace for the hope to be more than -deceptive. It was part of his daily humiliation never to have had -any money of his own. The paternity of the State paid for his food, -shelter, and education; but it never supplied him with cash, or with -any cash that he ever saw. To have three dollars a week jingling in -his pocket would not only lift him out of his impotent dependence, but -would make him a man. While Mr. Quidmore walked round him, inspecting -him as if he were a dog or pig or other small animal for sale, he held -himself with straightness, dignity, and strength. If he was for sale he -would do his best to be worthy of his price. - -Mr. Quidmore nodded toward Mr. Tollivant. "State ward, ain't he?" - -Mr. Tollivant admitted that he was. - -"Youngster whose moth--" - -Mrs. Tollivant interrupted kindly. "You needn't be afraid of that. He's -been with us for five years. I think I may say that all traces of the -past have been outlived. We can really give him a good character." - -Tom was grateful. Mr. Quidmore examined him again. At last he shuffled -up to him, throwing his arm across his shoulder, and drawing him close -to himself. - -"What about it, young fellow? Want to come?" - -Entirely won by this display of kindliness, the boy smiled up into the -twisted face. "Yes, sir." - -"Then that's settled. Put your duds together, and we'll go along. I -guess," he added to Mr. Tollivant, "that you can stretch a point to let -him come, and get your permit from the Guardians to-morrow." - -Mr. Tollivant agreeing that after five years' care he could venture as -much as this, they drove over to Bere in Mr. Quidmore's dilapidated -motor car. Mrs. Quidmore met them at the door. Her husband called to -her: - -"Hello, there! Got a new hand to help you with the strawberries." - -She answered, dejectedly. "If he's as good as some of the other new -hands you've picked up lately--" - -"Oh, rats! Give us a rest! If I brought the angel Gabriel to pick the -berries you'd see something to find fault with." - -That there was a rift within the lute of this couple's happiness was -clear to Tom before he had climbed out of the machine. - -"Where's he to sleep?" Mrs. Quidmore asked in her tone of discontent. - -"I suppose he can sleep in the barn, can't he?" - -"I wouldn't put a dog to sleep in that barn, nasty, smelly, rotten -place." - -"Well, put him to sleep where you like. He'll get three a week and -his keep while he's here, and that's all I'm responsible for." Mrs. -Quidmore turned and went into the house. Her husband winked at Tom as -man to man. "Can you beat it? Always like that. God! I don't know how I -stand it. Get in." - -Tom got in, finding an interior as slack as Mrs. Quidmore herself. The -Tollivant house, with four children in it, was often belittered, but -with a little tidying it became spick and span. Here the housekeeping -wore an air of hopelessness. Whoever did it did it without heart. - -"God! I hate to come into this place," its master confided to Tom, as -they stood in the hall, of which the rug lay askew, while a mirror hung -crooked on the wall. "You and me could keep the shack looking dandier -than this if she wasn't here at all. I wish to the Lord...." - -But before the week was out the boy had won over Mrs. Quidmore, and -begun to make her fond of him. Because he was eager to be useful, he -helped her in the house, showing solicitude, too, on her personal -account. A low-keyed, sad-eyed woman who did nothing to make herself -attractive, she blamed her husband for perceiving the loss of her -attractiveness. - -"He's bound to me," she would complain, tearfully, to the boy, as he -dried the dishes she had washed. "It's his duty to be fond of me. But -he ain't. There's fifty women he likes better than he does me." - -This note of married infelicity was new to Tom, especially as it -reached him from both parties to the contract. - -"God, how she gets my goat! Sometimes I think how much I'd enjoy seeing -her stretched out with a bullet through her head. I tell you that the -fellow who'd do that for me wouldn't be sorry in the end...." - -To the boy these words were meaningless. The creamy drawl with which -they were uttered robbed them of the vicious or ferocious, making them -mere humorous explosions. He could laugh at them, and yet he laughed -with a feeling of discomfort. - -The discomfort was the greater because in kindness to him lay the -one point as to which the couple were agreed. Making no attempt to -reconcile elements so discordant, all he could do was to soften the -conditions which each found distasteful. He kept the house tidier -for the man; he did for the woman a few of the things her husband -overlooked. - -"It's him that ought to do that," she would point out, in dull -rebellion. "He's doing it for some other woman I'll be bound. Who _is_ -that woman that he meets?" - -Conjugal betrayal was also new to Tom, and not easily comprehensible. -That a man with a wife should also be "going with a girl" was a -possibility that had never come within his experience while living with -the Tollivants. He had heard a good many things from Art, as also from -some other boys, but this event seemed to have escaped even their wide -observation. It would have escaped his own had not Mrs. Quidmore harped -on it. - -"I do believe he'd like to see me in my grave. I'm in their way, and -they'd like to get me out of it. Oh, you needn't tell me! Couldn't you -keep an eye on him, and tell me what she's like?" - -For Mrs. Quidmore's sake he watched Mr. Quidmore, but as he didn't know -what he was watching him for the results were not helpful. And he liked -them both. He might have said that he loved them both, since loving -came to him so easily. Mrs. Quidmore washed and mended his clothes, -and whenever she went to Harfrey or some other town she added to his -wardrobe. Mr. Quidmore was forever dropping into his ear some gentle, -honeyed confidence of which Mrs. Quidmore was the butt. Neither of them -ever scolded him, or overworked him. He was in the house almost as a -son. And then one day he learned that he was to be there altogether as -a son. - - - - -XII - - -He never knew how and when the question as to his adoption had been -raised, or whether the husband or the wife had raised it first. Here, -too, the steps were taken with that kind of mystification which -shrouded so much of his destiny. He himself was not consulted till, -apparently, all the principal parties but himself had decided on the -matter. One of the Guardians, or a representative, asked him the formal -question as to whether or not he should like it, and being answered -with a Yes, had gone away. The next thing he knew he had legally become -the son of Martin and Anna Quidmore, and was to be henceforth called by -their name. - -The outward changes were not many. He had won so much freedom in the -house that when he became its son and heir there was, for the minute, -little more to give him. His new mother grew more openly affectionate; -his new father drove him round in the dilapidated car and showed him to -the neighbors as his boy. As far as Tom could judge, there was general -approval. Martin Quidmore had taken a poor outcast lad and given him a -home and a status in the world. All good people must rejoice in this -sort of generosity. The new father rejoiced in it himself, smiling with -a twisted smile that was like a leer, the only thing about him which -the new son was afraid of. - -It was August now. The picking of the strawberries having long been -over, the boy had been kept on for other jobs. He still worked at them. -He dug potatoes; he picked peas and beans; he pulled carrots, parsnips, -and beets; he culled cucumbers. The hired hands did the heaviest work, -but he shared in it to the limit of his strength. Sometimes he went -off early in the morning on the great lorry, loaded with garden-truck, -which his father drove to the big markets. - -On these journeys the new father grew most confidential and lovable. -His mellifluous voice, which was sad and at the same time not quite -serious, was lovable in itself. - -"God, how I'd like to give you a better home than you've got! But it's -no use, not as long as she's there. She'll never be anything different. -She'd not make things brighter or cleaner or jollier, not even if she -was to try." - -"Well, she _is_ trying," the boy declared, in her defense; but the only -answer was a melancholy laugh. - -And yet now that he had the duties, of a son, he set to work to improve -the family relationships. He petted the mother, he cajoled the father. -He found small ruses of affection in which, as it seemed to him, he -gained both the one and the other, insensibly to either. His proof of -this came one morning as once more they were driving to one of the big -markets. - -"Say, boy, I'm beginning to be worried about her. I don't think she -can be well. She's never been sick much; but gosh! now I'll be hanged -if I don't think I'll go and see a doctor and ask him to give her some -medicine." - -As this thoughtfulness, in spite of all indications to the contrary, -implied a fundamental tenderness, the boy was glad of it. He was the -more glad of it when, on a morning some days later, and in the same -situation, the father drawled, in his casual way: - -"Say, I've seen that doctor, and he's given me something he wants her -to take. Thinks it will put her all right in no time." - -"And did you give it to her?" he asked, eagerly. - -The honeyed voice grew sweeter. "Well, no; that's the trouble. You -can't get her to take doctor's stuff, if she knows she's taking it. Got -to get her on the sly. Once when she needed a tonic I used to watch -round and put it in her tea. Bucked her up fine." - -"And is that what you're going to do now?" - -"Well, I would, only she'd be afraid of me. Watches me like a cat, -don't you see she does? What I was thinking of was this. You know she -makes a cup of tea for herself every day in the middle of the afternoon -while we're out at work. Well, now, if you could make an excuse to -slip into the kitchen, and put one of these powders in her teapot--" -he tapped the packet in his waistcoat pocket--"she'd never suspect -nothing. She'd take it--and be cured." - -The boy was silent. - -"You don't want to do it, hey?" - -"Oh, I don't say that. I was--I was--just wondering." - -"Wondering what?" - -"Whether it's fair play to anyone to give them medicine when they don't -know they're taking it." - -"But if it's to do them good?" - -"But ought we to do good to people against their wills?" - -"Why, sure! What you thinking of? Still if you don't want to...." - -The tone hurt him. "Oh, but I will." - -"Say I will, _father_. Why don't you call me that? Don't I call you -son?" - -He braced himself to an effort. "All right, father; I will." - -"Good! Then here's the powder." He drew one from the packet. "Don't -let none of it fall. You'll steal into the kitchen this afternoon--she -generally lays down after she's washed the dinner things--and just -empty the paper into the little brown teapot she always makes her tea -in. Then burn the paper in the stove--there's sure to be a fire on--so -that she won't find nothing lying around to make her suspicious. You -understand, don't you?" - -He said he understood, though in his heart of hearts he wished that he -hadn't been charged with the duty. - - - - -XIII - - -If you had asked the boy who was now legally Tom Quidmore why he was -reluctant to give his mother a powder that would do her good he would -have been unable to explain his hesitation. Reason, in the main, was -in favor of his doing it. In the first place, he had promised, and he -had always responded to those exhortations of his teachers which laid -stress on keeping his word. Not to keep his word had come to seem an -offense of the nature of personal defilement. - -Then the whole matter had been thought out and decreed by an authority -higher than himself. The child mind, like the childish mind at all -times, is under the weight of authority. The source of the authority -is a matter of little moment so long as it speaks decidedly enough. It -is always a means by which to get rid of the bother of using private -judgment, which as often as not is a bore to the person with the right -to it. - -In the case of a boy of twelve, private judgment is hampered by a -knowledge of his insufficiency. The man who provides food, clothing, -shelter, is invested with the right to speak. The child mind is -logical, orderly, respectful, and prenatally disposed to discipline. -Except on severe provocation it does not rebel. Tom Quidmore felt no -impulse to rebellion, even though his sense of right and wrong was, -for the moment, mystified. - -He lacked data. Such data as came to his hearing, and less often to -his sight, lay morally outside his range. Like those scientifically -minded men who during the childhood of our race registered the -phenomena of electricity without going further, he had no power of -making deductions from what eyes and ears could record. He knew that -there was in life such an element as sexual love; but that was all -he knew. It entered into the relations of married people, and in -some puzzling way contributed to the birth of children; but of its -wanderings and aberrations he had never heard. That man and wife should -reach a breaking point was no part of his conception of the things that -happened. There was nothing of the kind between the Tollivants, nor -among the parents of the lads with whom he had grown up at Harfrey. -That which at Harfrey had been clear unrelenting daylight was at -Bere a gloaming haunted by strange shapes which perplexed and rather -frightened him. - -Not until he was fourteen or fifteen years of age, and the Quidmore -episode behind him, like an island passed at sea, did the significance -of these queer doings and sayings really occur to him. All that for the -present his mind and experience were equal to was listening, observing, -and wondering. He knew already what it was to have things which he -hadn't understood at the time of their happening become clear as he -grew older. - -An illustration of this came from the small events of that very -afternoon. On going back from his midday dinner to work in the carrot -patch he fixed on half past two as the hour at which he would make -the attempt to force on his mother the prescribed medicine. That time -having arrived, he rose, brushed the earth from his knees, dusted his -hands against each other, and started slowly for the house. A faraway -memory which had been in the back of his mind ever since his father had -made the odd request now began to assert itself, like the throb of an -old pain. - -He was a little boy again. In the dim hall of the Swindon Street Home -he was listening to the friendly policeman talking to Miss Honiton. He -recaptured his own emotions, the dumb distress of the young creature -lost in the dark, and ignorant of everything but its helplessness. His -mother had taken something, or had not taken something, he wasn't sure -which. The beaming young lady handed him his present from the Christmas -Tree, and told him that cyanide of potassium--the words were still -branded on his brain--was a deadly poison. Then he stood once more, as -in memory he had stood so many times, in the half-darkened room where -words were mumbled over the long black box which they spoke of as "the -body." - -Now that it was all in far perspective he knew what it had meant. That -is, he knew the type of woman his mother had been; he knew the kind -of soil he had sprung from. The events of five years back to a boy of -twelve are a very long distance away. So his mother seemed to Tom. -So did the sneaking through shops, and the flights from tenement to -tenement. So did the awful Christmas Eve when he had lost her. He could -think of her tenderly now because he understood that her mind had been -unhinged. What hurt him with a pain which never fell into perspective -was that in trying to create in his boyish way some faint tradition of -self-respect, he worked back always to this origin in shame. - -While seeing no connection between such far-off things and the task -put upon him by his father, he found them jostling each other in his -mind. You took something--and there was disaster. It was as far as his -thought carried him. After that came the fact that, his respect for -authority being strong, he dared not disobey. - -He could only dawdle. A delay of five minutes would be five minutes to -the good. Besides, dawdling on a hot, windless summer afternoon, on -which the butterflies, bees, and humming-birds were the only nonhuman -living things not taking a siesta, eased the muscles cramped with long -crouching in the carrot beds. There being two ways of getting to the -house, he took the longer one. - -The longer one led him round the duck pond, whence the heat had driven -ashore all the ducks and geese with the exception of one gander. For -no particular reason the gander's name was Ernest. Between Ernest and -Gimlets, the wire-haired terrier pup, one of those battles such as -might take place between Bolivia and Switzerland was in full swing of -rage. Gimlets fought from the bank; Ernest from the pond. When Ernest -paddled forward, with neck outstretched and nostrils hissing, Gimlets -scampered to the top of the shelving shore, where he could stand and -bark defiantly. When Ernest swung himself round and made for the -open sea, Gimlets galloped bravely down to the water's edge, yelping -out challenges. This bloody fray gave the boy a further excuse for -lingering. Three or four times had Ernest, stung by the taunts to which -he had tried to seem indifferent, wheeled round on his enemy. Three or -four times had Gimlets scrambled up the bank and down again. But he, -too, recognized authority, and a call that he couldn't disobey. A long -whistle, and the battle was at an end! Gimlets trotted off. - -The whistle came from the grove of pines climbing the little bluff on -the side of the duck pond remote from the house. It struck the boy as -odd that his father should be there at a time when he was supposed -to be cutting New Zealand spinach for the morrow's market. Not to be -caught idling, the boy slipped down the bank to creep undetected below -the pinewood bluff. Neither seeing nor being seen, he nevertheless -heard voices, catching but a single word. The word was Bertha, and it -was spoken by his father. The only Bertha in the place was a certain -beautiful young widow living in Bere. That his father should be talking -to her in the pinewood was another of those details difficult to -explain. - -More difficult to explain he found a little scene he caught on looking -backward. Having now passed the bluff, he was about to round the corner -of the pond where the path led through a plantation of blue spruces -which hid the house. His glancing back was an accident, but it made him -witness of an incident pastoral in its charm. - -Bertha, being indeed the beautiful young widow, the boy was astonished -to see his father steal a kiss from her. Bertha responded with such a -slap as nymphs give to shepherds, running playfully away. His father -shambled after her, as shepherds after nymphs, catching her in his arms. - -Tom plunged into the blue spruce plantation where he could be out of -sight. Hot as he was already, he grew hotter still. What he had seen -was so silly, so stupid, so undignified! He wished he hadn't seen it. -Having seen it, he wished he could forget it. He couldn't forget it -because, unpleasant as he found it, he was somehow aware that it had -bearings beyond unpleasantness. What they were he had nothing to tell -him. He could only run through the plantation as if he would leave the -thing as quickly as possible behind him; and all at once the house came -into sight. - -With the house in sight he remembered again what he had come to do. He -stopped running. His steps again began to lag. Feeling for the powder -in his waistcoat pocket, he reminded himself that it would do his -mother good. The house lay sleeping and silent in the heat. He crept up -to the back door. - -And there at the open window stood his mother rolling dough on a table. -She rolled languidly, as she did everything. Her head drooped a little -to one side; her expression was full of that tremulous protest against -life which might with a word break into a rain of tears. - -Relieved and delighted, he stole round the house, to enter by another -way. She was now lifting a cover of the stove, so that she didn't hear -his approach. Before she knew that anyone was there he had slipped his -arm around her, and smacked a big kiss on her cheek. She turned slowly, -the lifter in her hand. A new life seemed to dawn in her, brightening -her eyes and flushing her sallowness. - -"You bad little boy! What did you come home for?" - -He replied as was true, that he had come for a drink of water. He had -meant to take a drink of water after putting her powder in the teapot. -"I thought," he ended, "you'd be lying down asleep." - -"I was lying down, but something made me get up." - -He was curious. "Something--like what?" - -"Well, I just couldn't sleep. And then I remembered that it was a long -time since I'd made him any of them silver cookies he used to be so -fond of." - -He liked the name. "Is that what you're baking?" - -"Yes; and you'll ..." she went back to the table, picking up the -cutter--"you'll have some for supper if you'll--if you'll call me ma." - -"But I do." - -Her smile had the slow timidity that might have been born of disuse. -"Yes, when I ask you. But I want you to do it all the time, and -natural." - -"All right then; I will--ma." - -While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, cup of water, she -began on the memories dear to her, but which few now would listen -to. She had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also had -been born. His father worked in a powder factory in that city. It was -owing to an explosion when he was a lad that Martin's frame had been -partially paralyzed. - -"He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got a shock. He was awful -delicate, and used to have fits till he grew out of them. I think the -crook in his face makes him look aristocratic, don't you?" - -The boy having said that he didn't know but what it did, she continued -plaintively, cutting out her cookies with a heart-shaped cutter. - -"I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined I wouldn't hardly -do a thing for my mother in the house, or carry the tiniest little -parcel across the street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin -and I were married he let me have a girl for the first two years to do -everything. All he ever expected of me was to get up and dress, and -look stylish; and now...." - -As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob, the boy took the -opportunity to speak of getting back to work. - -"I think I must beat it, ma. I've got all those carrots--" - -"Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a few minutes, can't he? -Anyhow, nothing you can do'll save him from going bankrupt. This place -don't pay. He'll never make it pay. His work was to run a hat store. -That's what he did when he married me, and he made swell money at it, -too." - -The family history interested the boy, as all tales did which accounted -for the personal. He knew now how Martin Quidmore's health had broken -down, and the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy. -Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an uncle hadn't died -and left him fifteen thousand dollars. - -"Enough to live on quite genteel for life," his wife complained, "but -nothing would do but that he should think himself a market-gardener, -him that couldn't tell a turnip from a spade. Blew in the whole thing -on this place, away from everywheres, and making me a drudge that -hardly knew so much as to wash a dish. Even that I could have stood if -he'd only gone on loving me as his marriage vows made it his duty to -do, but--" - -"I'll love you, ma," the boy declared, tenderly. "You don't have to cry -because there's no one to love you, not while I'm around." - -The new life in her eyes was as much of incredulity as of joy. "Don't -say that, dearie, if you don't mean it. You don't have to love me just -because I'm trying to be a mother to you, and look after your clothes." - -"But, ma, I want to. I do." - -They gazed at each other, she with the cutter in her hand, he with the -cup. What he saw was not a feeble, slatternly woman, but some one who -wanted him. He had not been wanted by anyone since the night when his -mudda--he still used the word in his deep silences--had gone away with -the wardress who looked like a Fate. In the five intervening years he -had suffered less from unkindness than from being shut out of hearts. -Here was a heart that had need of him, so that he had need of it. The -type of heart didn't matter. If it made any difference it was only that -where there was weakness the appeal to him was the greater. With this -poor thing he would have something on which to spend his treasure. - -"You'll see, ma! I'll bring in the water for you, and split the -kindlings, and get up in the morning and light the fire, and milk the -cow, and everything." - -Straight and sturdy, he looked at her with the level gaze of eyes that -seemed the calmer and more competent because they were hidden so far -beneath his bushy, horizontal eyebrows. The uniform tan from working in -the sun heightened his air of manliness. Even the earth on his clothes, -and a smudge of it across his forehead where a dirty hand had been put -up to push back his crisp ashen hair, hinted at his capacity to share -in the world's work. To the helpless woman whose prop had failed her, -the coming of this young strength to her aid was little short of a -miracle. - -In the struggle between tears and laughter she was almost hysterical. -"Oh, you darling boy!" she was beginning, advancing to clasp him in her -arms. But with old, old memories in his heart he dreaded the paroxysm -of affection. - -"All right, ma!" he laughed, dodging her and slipping out. "I've got -to beat it, or fath--" he stumbled on the word because he found it -difficult to use--"or father will wonder where I am." But once in the -yard, he called back consolingly, though keeping to the practical, -"Don't you bother about Geraldine. I'll go round by the pasture and -drive her home as I come back from work. I'll milk her, too." - -"God bless you, dearie!" - -Standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand, her limp -figure seemed braced to a new power, as she watched him till he -disappeared within the plantation of blue spruces. - - - - -XIV - - -When a whistle blew at five o'clock the hired men on the Quidmore place -stopped working. As a son of the house, Tom Quidmore paid to the signal -only enough attention to pile his carrots into a wheelbarrow and convey -them to the spot where they would help to furnish the market lorry in -the morning. In fulfillment of his promise to his adopted mother, he -then went in search of Geraldine. - -Of all the tasks that he liked at Bere he liked most going to the -pasture. It was not his regular work. As regular work it belonged to -old Diggory; but old Diggory was as willing to be relieved of it as -Mrs. Quidmore of the milking. Brushing himself down, and washing his -hands at the tap in the garage after a fashion that didn't clean them, -he marched off, whistling. He whistled because his heart was light. His -heart was light because his mother having been in the kitchen, he had -escaped the necessity for giving her the medicine as to which he felt -his odd reluctance. - -Leaving the garage behind him, he threaded a tiny path running through -the beet-field. The turnip-field came next, after which he entered -a strip of fine old timber, coming out from that on the main road -to Bere. Along this road, for some five hundred yards, he tramped -merrily, kicking up the dust. He liked this road. Not only was it -open, free, and straight, but along its old stone walls raspberries -and blackberries grew ripe in a tangle of wild spirea, meadow-rue, -jewel weed, and Queen Anne's lace. He loved this luxuriance, this -summer sense of abundance. To the boy who had never known anything but -poverty, Nature at least, in this lush Connecticut countryside, seemed -generous. - -The pasture was on the edge of a scrubby woodland in which the twenty -acres of the Quidmore property trailed away into the unkempt. Eighty or -a hundred years earlier, it had been the center of a farm now cut up -into small holdings, chiefly among market gardeners. In the traces of -the old farmhouse, the old garden, the old orchard, the boy found his -imagination touched by the pathos of a vanished human past. - -The land sloped from the hillside, till in the bottom of the hollow -it became a little brambly wood such as in England would be called a -spinney. Through the spinney trickled a stream which somewhere fell -into Horseneck Brook, which somewhere fell into one of those shallow -inlets that the Sound thrusts in on the coastline. Halfway between -the road and the streamlet, was the old home-place, deserted so long -ago that the cellar was choked with blackberry vines, and the brick -of the foundation bulging out of plumb. A clump of lilac which had -once snuggled lovingly against a south wall was now a big solitary -bush. What used to be a bed of pansies had reverted to a scattering of -cheery little heartsease faces, brightening the grass. The low-growing, -pale-rose mallow of old gardens still kept up its vigor of bloom, -throwing out a musky scent. There was something wistful in the spot, -especially now that the sun was westering, and the birds skimmed low, -making for their nests. - -In going for Geraldine Tom always stole a few minutes to linger among -these memories of old joys and sorrows, old labors and rewards, of -which nothing now remained but these few flowers, a few wind-beaten -apple trees, and this dint in the ground which served best as a shelter -for chipmunks. It was the part of the property farthest from the house. -It was far, too, from any other habitation, securing him the privilege -of solitude. The privilege was new to him. At Harfrey he had never -known it. About the gardens, even at Bere, there were always the owner, -the hired men, the customers, the neighbors who came and went. But in -Geraldine's pasture he found only herself, the crows, the robins, the -thrushes singing in the spinney, and the small wild life darting from -one covert to another, or along the crumbling stone wall hung with its -loopings of wild grape. - -He was not lonely on these excursions. Companionship had never in the -Harfrey schools been such a pleasure that he missed anything in having -to do without it. Rather, he enjoyed the freedom to be himself, to wear -no mask, to have no part to play. It was only when alone like this that -he understood how much of his thought and effort was spent in dancing -to other people's tunes. In the Tollivant home he could never, like the -other children, speak or act without a second thought. As a State ward -it was his duty to commend himself. To commend himself he was obliged -to think twice even before venturing on trifles. He had formed a habit -of thinking twice, of rarely being spontaneous. By himself in this -homey pasture he felt the relief of one who has been balancing on a -tight rope at walking on the ground. - -When he had climbed the bars Geraldine, who was down the hill and near -the spinney, had lifted her head and swung her tail in recognition. -Not being impatient, she went on with her browsing, leaving him a few -minutes' liberty. Among the heartsease and the mallows he flung himself -down, partly because he was tired and partly that he might think. With -so much to think about thought came without sequence. It centered soon -on what he was to be. - -Of one thing he was certain; he didn't want to be a market gardener. -Not but that he enjoyed the open-air life and the novelty of closeness -to the soil. Like the whole Quidmore connection, it was good enough -for the time. All the same, it was only for the time, and one day he -would break away from it. How, he didn't ask. He merely knew by his -intuitions that it would be so. - -He was going to be something big. That, too, was intuitive conviction. -What he meant by big he was unable to define, beyond the fact that -knowledge and money would enter into it. He was interested in money, -not so much for what it gave you as for what it was. It was a queer -thing when you came to think of it. A dollar bill in itself had no more -value than any other scrap of paper; and yet it would buy a dollar's -worth of anything. He turned that over in his mind till he worked -out the reason why. He worked out the principle of payment by check, -which at first was as blank a mystery as marital relations. When -newspapers came his way he studied the reports of the stock exchange, -much as a savage who cannot read scans the unmeaning hieroglyphs which -to wiser people are words. He did make out that railways and other -great utilities must be owned by a lot of people who combined to put -their money into them; but daily fluctuations in value he couldn't -understand. When he asked his adopted father he was told that he -couldn't understand it, though he knew he could. - -Long accustomed to this answer as to the bewilderments of life, he -rarely now asked anything. If he was puzzled he waited for more data. -Even for little boys things cleared themselves up if you kept them -in your mind, and applied the explanation when it came your way. The -point, he concluded, was not to be in a hurry. There were the spiders. -He was fond of watching them. They would sit for hours as still as -metal things, their little eyes fixed like jewels in a ring. Then when -they saw what they wanted one swift dart was enough for them. So it -must be with little boys. You got one thing to-day, and another thing -to-morrow; but you got everything in time if you waited and kept alert. - -By waiting and keeping alert he would find out what he was to be. He -had reached his point when he saw Geraldine pacing up the hill toward -the pasture bars. She was giving him the hint that certain acknowledged -rites were no longer to be put off. - -He had lowered the bars, over which she was stepping delicately, when -he saw his father come tearing down the road, going toward Bere, with -all the speed his shuffling gait could put on. Used by this time -to erratic actions on Quidmore's part, he was hardly surprised; he -was only curious. He was more curious still when, on drawing nearer, -the man seemed in a panic. "Looks as if he was running away from -something," was the lad's first thought, though he couldn't imagine -from what. - -"Is anything the matter?" - -From panic the indications changed to those of surprise, though the -voice was as velvety as ever. - -"Oh, so it's you! I thought it was Diggory. What did you--what did -you--do with that powder?" - -The boy began putting up the bars while Geraldine plodded homeward. - -"I couldn't give it to her. She was in the kitchen baking." He thought -it wise to add: "She was making silver cookies for you. You'll have -them for supper." - -There followed more odd phenomena, of which the boy, waiting and -keeping alert, only got the explanation later. Quidmore threw himself -face downward on the wayside grass. With his forehead resting on his -arm, he lay as still as one of those drunken men Tom had occasionally -seen like logs beside some country road. Geraldine turned her head to -ask why she was not followed, but the boy stood waiting for a further -sign. He wondered whether all grown-up men had minutes like this, or -whether it was part of the epilepsy he had heard about. - -But when Quidmore got up he was calm, the traces of panic having -disappeared. To a more experienced person the symptoms would have been -of relief; but to the lad of twelve they said nothing. - -"I'll go back with you," was Quidmore's only comment, as together they -set out to follow Geraldine. - -Having reached the barn where the milking was to be done, Quidmore was -proceeding to the house. In the hope of a negative, Tom asked if he -should try again to-morrow. - -Quidmore half turned. "I'll leave that to you." - -"I'll do whatever you say," Tom pleaded, desperate at this -responsibility. - -Quidmore went on his way, calling back, in his creamy drawl, over his -shoulder: "I'll leave it entirely to you." - - - - -XV - - -Left to him, Tom saw nothing in the duty but to do it. He was confirmed -in this resolution by Quidmore's gentleness throughout the evening. -It was a new thing in Tom's experience of the house. As always with -those in the habit of inflicting pain, merely to stop inflicting it -seemed kindness. Supper passed without a single incident that made Mrs. -Quidmore wince. On her part she played up with an almost brilliant -vivacity in making none of her impotent complaints. Anything he could -do to further this accord the boy felt he ought to do. - -He hung back only from the deed. That made him shudder. He was clear on -the point that it made him shudder because of its association in his -mind with the thing which had happened years before; and that, he knew, -was foolish. If it would please his father he should make the attempt. -He should make it perhaps the more heartily since he was free not to -make it if he chose. - -It was the freedom that troubled him. So long as he did only what he -was told he had nothing on his conscience. Now he must be sure that he -was right; and he was not sure. Once more he didn't question the fact -that the medicine would do his mother good. The right and wrong in his -judgment centered round doing her good against her own will. With -no finespun theories concerning the rights of the individual, he was -pretty certain as to what they were. - -A divine beauty came over the evening when, after he had gone to -bed about half-past eight, his mother, in the new blossoming of her -affection, came to tuck him in, and kiss him good night. No such -thing had happened to him since Mrs. Crewdson had last done it. Mrs. -Tollivant went through this endearing rite with all her own children; -but him she left out. Many a time, when from his bed beneath the eaves -he heard her making her rounds at night, he had pressed his face into -the pillow to control the trembling of his lips. True, he had come to -regard the attention as too babyish for a man of twelve; but now that -it was shown him he was touched by it. - -It brought to his memory something Mrs. Crewdson had said, and which -he had never forgotten. "God's wherever there's love, it seems to me, -dear. I bring a little bit of God to you, and you bring a little bit of -God to me, and so we have Him right here." Mrs. Quidmore, too, brought -a little bit of God to him, and he brought a little bit of God to Mrs. -Quidmore. They showed God to each other, as if without each other they -were not quite able to see Him. The fact suggested the thought that in -the matter of the secret administration of the medicine he might pray. - -One thing he had learned with some thoroughness while in the Tollivant -family, and that was religion. Both in Sunday school and in domestic -instruction he had studied it conscientiously, and conscientiously -accepted it. If he sometimes admitted to Bertie Tollivant, the -cripple, that he "didn't see much sense in it," the confession applied -to his personal inabilities. Bertie was the cynic and unbeliever -in the Tollivant household. "There's about as much sense in it," -he would declare secretly to Tom, "as there is in those old yarns -about Pilgrim's Progress and Jack and the Beanstalk. Only don't say -that to ma or pop, because the poor dears wouldn't get you." On Tom -this skepticism only made the impression that he and Bertie didn't -understand religion any more than they understood sex, which was also a -theme of discussion. They would grow to it in time, by keeping ears and -eyes open. - -Now that he was away from the Tollivants, in a world where religion was -never spoken of, he dismissed it from his mind. That is, he dismissed -its intricacies, its complicated doctrines, its galloping through -prayers you were too sleepy to think of at night, and too hurried in -the morning. Here he was admittedly influenced by Bertie. "If God loves -you, and knows what you want, what's the good of all this Now I lay -me? It'd be a funny kind of God that wouldn't look after you anyhow." -Tom had given up saying Now I lay me, partly because that, too, seemed -babyish, but mainly on account of Bertie's reasoning. "It's more of -a compliment to God," was his way of explaining it to himself, "to -know that He'll do right of His own accord, than to suppose He'll do -it just because I pester Him." So every night when he got into bed he -took a minute to say to himself that God was taking care of him, making -this confidence serve in place of more explicit petition. When he had -anything special to pray about, he said, he would begin again. - -And now something special had arisen. He got out of bed. He didn't -kneel down because, being anxious not to mislead God by giving Him -wrong information, he had first to consider what he ought to say. -Stealing softly across the floor, lest the creaking of the boards -should betray the fact that he was up, he went to the open window, and -looked out. - -It was one of those mystic nights which, to a soul inclined to the -mystical, seem to hold a spiritual secret. The air, scented by millions -of growing things, though chiefly with the acrid perfume of the blue -spruces on which he looked down, had a pungent, heavenly odor such as -he never caught in the daytime. There was a tang of salt in it, too, as -from the direction of the Sound came the faintest rustle of a breeze. -The rustle was so faint as not to break a stillness, which was more of -the nature of a holy suspense because of the myriads of stars. - -Seeking a formula in which to couch his prayer, he found a phrase of -Mr. Tollivant's often used in domestic intercession. "And, O Heavenly -Father, we beseech thee to act wisely in the matter of our needs." -What constituted wisdom in the matter of their needs would then be -pointed out by Mr. Tollivant according to the day's or the season's -requirements. Accepting this language as that of high inspiration, and -forgetting to kneel down, the boy began as he stood, looking out on the -sanctified darkness: - -"And, O Heavenly Father, I beseech thee to act wisely in the matter of -my needs." Hung up there for lack of archaic grandiloquence, he found -himself ending lamely: "And don't let me give it to her if I oughtn't -to, for Jesus Christ's sake, Amen." - -With his effort he was disappointed. Not only had the choice of words -not taken from Mr. Tollivant been ludicrously insufficient, but he had -forgotten to kneel down. He had probably vitiated the whole prayer. -He thought of revision, of constructing a sentence that would balance -Mr. Tollivant's, and beginning again with the proper ceremonial. But -Bertie's way of reasoning came to him again. "I guess He knows what -I mean anyhow." He recoiled at that, however, shocked at his own -irreverence. The thought was a blasphemous liberty taken with the -watchful and easily offended deity of whom Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant had -begged him always to be afraid. He was wondering if by approaching this -God at all he hadn't made his plight worse, when the rising of the wind -diverted his attention. - -It rose suddenly, in a great soft sob, but not of pain. Rather, it was -of exultation, of cosmic joyousness. Coming from the farthest reaches -of the world, from the Atlantic, from Africa, from remote islands and -mountain tops, it blew in at the boy's window with a strong, and yet -gentle, cosmic force. - -"And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty -wind." - -Tom Quidmore had but one source of quotation, but he had that at his -tongue's end. The learning by heart of long passages from the Bible had -been part of his education at the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant. -Rightly or wrongly, he quoted the Scriptures, and rightly oftener than -not. He quoted them now because, all at once, his room seemed full of -the creative breath. He didn't say so, of course; but, confusedly, he -felt it. All round the world there was wind. It was the single element -in Nature which you couldn't see, but of which you received the living -invigoration. It cooled, it cleansed, it strengthened. Wherever it -passed there was an answer. The sea rose; the snows drifted; the trees -bent; men and women strove to use and conquer it. A rushing mighty -wind! A sound from heaven! That it might be an answer to his prayer he -couldn't stop to consider because he was listening to the way it rose -and fell, and sighed and soughed and swelled triumphantly through the -plantation of blue spruces. - -By morning it was a gale. The tall things on the property, the bush -peas, the scarlet runners, the sweet corn, were all being knocked -about. In spots they lay on the earth; in other spots they staggered -from the perpendicular. All hands, in the words of old Diggory, had -their work cut out for them. Tom's job was to rescue as many as -possible of the ears of sweet corn, in any case ready for picking, -before they were damaged. - -But at half-past two he dragged himself out of the corn patch to -fulfill the dreaded duty. Nothing had answered his prayer. He had not -so much as seen his father throughout the day, as the latter had gone -to the markets and had not returned. The gale was still raging, and he -might be waiting for it to go down. - -Since the scene by the roadside on the previous afternoon he had taken -a measure of his father not very far from accurate. He, Quidmore, -wanted something of which he was afraid. He was too much afraid of it -to press for it urgently; and yet he wanted it so fiercely that he -couldn't give it up. What it was the boy could not discover, except -that it had something to do with them all. When he said with them all -he included the elusive Bertha; though why he included her he once more -didn't know. - -In God he was disappointed; that he did not deny. In spite of the -shortcomings of his prayer, he had clung to the hope that they might -be overlooked. He argued a little from what he himself would have done -had anyone come with a request inadequately phrased. He wouldn't think -of the manners or the words in his eagerness to do what lay within his -power. With God apparently it was not so. - -There was, of course, the other effect of his prayer. He had only asked -to be stopped if the thing was not to be done. If he was not stopped -the inference was obvious. He was to go ahead. It was in order to go -ahead that he left the corn patch. - -The kitchen when he got to it was empty. Both the windows, that in the -south wall and that in the west, were open to let the wind sweep out -the smell of cooking. Creeping halfway up the stairs, he saw that his -mother had closed her bedroom door, a sign that she was really lying -down. There was no help now for what he had to do. - -He stole back to the kitchen again. On the dresser he saw the brown -teapot in which she would presently make her tea. He would only have -to take it down, and spill the powder into it. The powder was in his -waistcoat pocket. He drew it out. It was small and flat, in a neatly -folded paper. Opening the paper, he saw something innocent and white, -not unlike the sugar you spread on strawberries. Laying it in readiness -on the table by the west window, at which his mother baked, he turned -to take down the teapot. - -The gale grew fiercer. It was almost a tornado. With the teapot in his -two hands he paused to look out of the south window at the swaying -of the blue spruces. They moaned, they sobbed, they rocked wildly. -You might have fancied them living creatures seized by a madness of -despair. The fury of the wind, even in the kitchen, blew down a dipper -hanging on the wall. - -There was now no time to lose. The noise of the falling dipper might -have disturbed his mother, so that at any minute she might come -downstairs. With the teapot again in his hands he turned to the table -where he had left the thing which was to do her good. - -It was not there. - -Dismayed, startled, he looked for it on the floor; but it was not -there. It was not anywhere in the kitchen. He searched and searched. - -Going outside, he found the paper caught in a rosebush under the -window, but the something innocent and white had been blown to the four -corners of the world. - -The rushing mighty wind had done its work; and yet it was not till two -or three years later, when the Quidmores had passed from his life, that -he wondered if after all his prayer had not been answered. - - - - -XVI - - -Of helping his mother against her will he never heard any more. When -his father returned that evening he had the same look of panic as on -the previous day, followed by the same expression of relief at seeing -the domestic life going on as usual. But he asked no questions, nor -did he ever bring the subject up again. When a day or two later Tom -explained to him that the powder had been blown away he merely nodded, -letting the matter rest. - -Autumn came on and Tom went to school at Bere. He liked the school. No -longer a State ward, but the son of a man supposed to be of substance, -he passed the tests inflicted by the savage snobbery of children. His -quickness at sports helped him to a popularity justified by his good -nature. With the teachers he was often forced to seem less intelligent -than he was, so as to escape the odious soubriquet of "teacher's pet." - -On the whole, the winter was the happiest he had so far known. It could -have been altogether happy had it not been for the tragic situation of -the Quidmores. After the brief improvement that had followed on his -coming they had reacted to a mutual animosity even more intense. Each -made him a confidant. - -"God! it's all I can do to keep my hands off her," the soft drawl -confessed. "If she was just to die of a sickness, and me have nothing -to do with it, I don't believe I'd be satis--" He held the sentence -there as a matter of precaution. "What do you think of a woman who all -the years you've known her has never done anything but whine, whine, -whine, because you ain't givin' her what you promised?" - -"And are you?" Tom asked, innocently. - -"I give her what I can. She don't tempt me to do anything extra. Say, -now, would she tempt you?" - -Tom did his best to take the grown-up, man-to-man tone in which he was -addressed. "I think she's awful tempting, if you take her the right -way." - -To take her the right way, to take him also the right way, was the -boy's chief concern throughout the winter. To get them to take each -other the right way was beyond him. - -"So long as he goes outside his home," Mrs. Quidmore declared, with an -euphemism of which the boy did not get the significance, "I'll make him -suffer for it." - -"But, ma, he can't stay home all the time." - -"Oh, don't tell me that you don't know what I mean! If you wasn't on -his side you'd have found out for me long ago who the woman is. Just -tell me that--" - -"And what would you do?" - -"I'd kill her, I think, if I got the chance." - -"Oh, but ma!" - -She brandished the knife with which she was cutting cold ham for the -supper. "I would! I would!" - -"But you wouldn't if I asked you not to, would you, ma?" - -The knife fell with a despairing movement of the hand. "Oh, I don't -suppose I should do it at all. But he ought to love me." - -"Can he make himself love you, ma?" - -The ingenuous question went so close to the point that she could only -dodge it. "Why shouldn't he? I'm his wife, ain't I?" - -The challenge brought out another of the mysteries which surrounded -marriage, as a penumbra fringes the moon on a cloudy night. When his -father next reverted to the theme, while driving back from market, the -penumbra became denser. - -"Say, boy, don't you go to thinking that the first time you fall in -love with a pretty face it's goin' to be for life. That's where the -devil sets his snare for men. Eight or ten years from now you'll see -some girl, and then the devil'll be after you. He'll try to make you -think that if you don't marry that girl your one and only chance'll -come and go. And when he does, my boy, just think o' me." - -"Think of you--what about?" - -The sweetness of the tone took from the answer anything like -bitterness. "Think how I got pinched. Gosh, when I look back and -remember that I was as crazy to get her as a pup to catch a squir'l -I can't believe it was me. But don't forget what I'm tellin' you. No -fellow ought to think of bein' married till he's over thirty. He can't -be expected to know what he'll love permanent till then." - -It was the perpetual enigma. "But you always love your wife when you're -married to her, don't you?" - -The answer was in loud satirical laughter, with the observation that -Tom was the limit for innocence. - -Quite as disturbing as questions of love and marriage were those -relating to the fact that the man who had done very well as a hatter -was a failure as a market gardener. - -"A hell of a business, this is! Rothschild and Rockefeller together -couldn't make it pay. Gosh, how I hate it! Hate everything about it, -and home worst of all. Know a little woman that if she'd light out with -me...." - -In different keys and conjunctions these confidences were made to -the boy all through the winter. If they did not distress him more it -was because they were over his head. The disputes of the gods affect -mortals only indirectly. When Jupiter and Juno disagree men feel that -they can leave it to Olympus to manage its own affairs. So to a boy -of twelve the cares of his elders pass in spheres to which he has -little or no access. In spite of his knowledge that their situation was -desperate, the couple who had adopted him were mighty beings to Tom -Quidmore, with resources to meet all needs. To be so went with being -grown up and, in a general way, with being independent. - -Their unbosomings worried him; they did not do more. When they were -over he could dismiss them from his mind. His own concerns, his -lessons, his games, his friends and enemies in school, and the vague -objective of becoming "something big," were his matters of importance. -Martin and Anna Quidmore cared for him so much, though each with a -dash of selfishness, that his inner detachment from them both would -have caused them pain. - -And yet it was because of this detachment that he was able, in some -sense, to get through the winter happily. Whatever might have hurt him -most passed on the kind of Mount Olympus where grown-up people had -their incredible interests. Told, as he always was, that he couldn't -understand them, he was willing to drop them at that till they were -forced on him again. As spring was passing into summer they were forced -on him less persistently; and then one day, quite unexpectedly, he -struck the beginning of the end. - -It was a Saturday. As there was no school that day he had driven in -on the truck with his father, to market a load of lettuce and early -spinach. On returning through Bere in the latter part of the forenoon, -Quidmore stopped at the druggist's. - -"Jump down and have an ice cream soda. I'll leave the lorry here, and -come back to you. Errand to do in the village." - -The words had been repeated so often that for these excursions they -had come to be a formula. By this time Tom knew the errand to be at -Bertha's house, which was indirectly opposite. Seated at a table in the -window, absorbing his cool, flavored drink through a pair of straws, -he could see his father run up the steps and enter, running down again -when he came out. Further than the fact that there was something -regrettable in the visit, something to be concealed when he went home, -the boy's mind did not work. - -The tragedy of that morning was that, as he was enjoying himself -thus, the runabout, driven by one of the hired men, glided up to the -door, and Mrs. Quidmore, dressed for shopping, and very alert, sprang -out. As she rarely came into Bere, and almost never in the morning -when she had her work to do, Tom's surprise was tinged at once with -fear. Recognizing the lorry, Mrs. Quidmore rushed into the drug store. -Except for the young man, wearing a white coat, who tended it, the -long narrow slit was empty. As he peeped above his glass, with the two -straws between his lips, Tom saw the wrath of the wronged when close -on the track of the wrong-doer. Wheeling round, she caught him looking -conscious and guilty. - -"Oh! So you're here? Where is he?" - -Tom answered truthfully. "He said he had an errand to do. He didn't -tell me what it was." - -"And is he coming back for you here?" - -"He said he would." - -"Then I'll wait." - -To wait she sat down at Tom's side, having Bertha's house within range. -Whether she suspected anything or not Tom couldn't tell, since he -hardly suspected anything himself. That there was danger in the air he -knew by the violence with which she rejected his proposal to refresh -herself with ice cream. - -"There he is!" - -They watched him while he came down the steps, hesitated a minute, -and turned in the direction away from where they were waiting. Tom -understood this move. - -"He's going to Jenkins's about that new tire." - -As she jumped to her feet her movements had a fierceness of activity he -had never before seen in her. - -"That's all I want. I'm goin' back. Don't you say you seen me, or that -I've been over here at all." - -Hurrying to the street and springing into the car, she bade the hired -man turn round again for home. - -What happened between that Saturday and the next Tom never knew -exactly. A few years later, when his powers of deduction had developed, -he was able to surmise; but beyond his own experience he had no -accurate information. That there were bitter quarrels he inferred -from the sullenness they left behind; but he never witnessed them. -Not having witnessed them, he had little or no sense of a strain more -serious than usual. - -On the next Saturday afternoon he was crouched in the potato field, -picking off the ugly reddish bugs and killing them. Suddenly he heard -himself called. On rising and looking round he found the runabout car -stopped in the road, and Billy Peet, one of the hired men, beckoning -him to approach. Brushing his hands against each other, he stepped -carefully over the rows of young potatoes, and was soon in the roadway. - -"Get in," Billy Peet ordered, briefly. "The boss sent me over to fetch -you." - -"Sent you over to fetch me--in the machine? What's up?" His eye fell on -a small straw suitcase in the back of the car. "What's that for?" - -"Get in, and I'll tell you as we go along." Tom clambered in beside the -driver. "Mis' Quidmore's sick." - -"What's the matter with her?" - -"I'd'n know. Awful sick, they say." - -When they passed the Quidmore entrance without turning in Tom began to -be startled. "Say! Where we going?" - -"You're not going home. Doctor don't want you there. Boss telephoned -over to Mrs. Tollivant, and she's goin' to keep you till Mis' -Quidmore's better--or somethin'." - -The boy was not often resentful, but he did resent being trundled about -like a package. If his mother was sick his place was at home. He could -light the fire, bring in the water from the well, and do the score of -little things for which a small boy can be useful. To be shunted off -like this, as if he could only be an additional care, was an indignity -to the thirteen years he was now supposed to have attained to. But what -could he do? Protest was useless. There was nothing for it but to go -where he was driven, like Geraldine or the dilapidated car. - -And yet at Harfrey he settled down among the Tollivants naturally. -No State ward having succeeded him, his room under the eaves was -still vacant. Once within its familiar shelter, he soon began to -feel as if he had never been away. The family welcomed him with the -shades of warmth which went with their ages and characters--Mr. and -Mrs. Tollivant overcoming their repugnance to a born waif with that -Christian charity which doubtless is all the nobler for being visibly -against the grain; Art, now a swaggering fellow of sixteen, with -patronizing good nature; Cilly, who affected baby-blue ribbons on a -blond pigtail, with airs and condescension; Bertie, the cripple, -with satiric cordiality. If it was not exactly a home-coming, it was -at least as good as a visit to old friends. He was touched by being -included almost as a member of the family in Mr. Tollivant's evening -prayer. - -"And, O Heavenly Father, take this young wanderer as Thy child, even -as we offer him a shelter. Visit not Thine anger upon him, lest he be -tempted overmuch." - -At the thought of being tempted overmuch Tom felt a pleasing sense of -importance. It offered, too, a loophole for excuse in case he should -fall. If God didn't intervene on his behalf, easing temptation up, then -God would be responsible. And yet, such was the lack of fairness he was -bidden to see in God, He would knock a fellow down and then punish him -when he tumbled. - -In the midst of these reflections a thought of the Quidmore household -choked him with unexpected homesickness. The people who had been kind -to him were in trouble, and he was not there! He wondered what they -would do without him. He could sometimes catch the man's cruelties and -turn them into pleasantries before they reached the wife. He could -sometimes forestall the wife's complaints and twist them into little -mollifying compliments. Would there be anyone to do that now? Would -they keep the peace? He wished Mr. Tollivant would pray for them. He -tried to pray for them himself, but, as with his effort of the previous -year, the right kind of words would not come. If only God could be -addressed without so much Thee and Thou! If only He could read a -little boy's heart without calling for fine language! For lack of fine -language he had to remain dumb, leaving God, who might possibly have -helped Martin and Anna Quidmore, with no information about them. - -Nevertheless, with the facile emotions of youth, a half hour later he -was playing checkers with Bertie, in full enjoyment of the game. He -slept soundly that night, and on Sunday fell into the old routine of -church and Sunday school. Monday and Tuesday bored him, because for -most of the day school claimed the children; but when they came home, -and played and squabbled as usual, life took on its old zest. Only now -and then did the thought of the sick woman and the lonely man sweep -across him in a spasm of pain; after which he could forget them and be -cheerful. - -But on Wednesday forenoon, as he was turning away from watching the -Plymouth Rocks pecking at their feed, his father arrived in the old -runabout. Dashing up the hill, Tom reached the back door in time to see -him enter by the front. - -"How's ma?" - -He got no answer, because Quidmore followed Mrs. Tollivant into the -front parlor, where they shut the door. In anticipation of being taken -home, the boy ran up to his room and packed his bag. - -"How's ma?" - -He called out the question from halfway down the stairs. Quidmore, -emerging from the parlor with Mrs. Tollivant, ignored it again. Bidding -good-by to his hostess and thanking her for taking in the boy, he went -through these courtesies with a nervous anxiety almost amounting to -anguish to convince her of the truth of something he had said. - -"How's ma?" - -They were in the car at last so that he could no longer be denied. - -"She's--she's--not there." - -All the events of the past year focussed themselves into the question -that now burst on Tom's lips. "Is she--dead?" - -The lisping voice was sorrowful. "She was buried yesterday." - -With his habit of thinking twice, the boy asked nothing more. Having -asked nothing at the minute, he felt less inclined to ask anything as -they drove onward. Something within him rejected the burden of knowing. -While he would not hold himself aloof, he would not involve himself -more than events involved him according as they fell out. His reasoning -was obscure, but his instincts, grown self-protective from necessity, -were positive. Whatever had happened, whatever was to be right and -wrong to other people, his own motive must be loyalty. - -"I've got to stick to him," he was saying to himself. "He's been awful -good to me. In a kind of a way he's my father. I must stand by him, and -see him through, just as if I was his son." - -It was his first grown-up resolution. - - - - -XVII - - -Grown-up life began at once. His chief care hitherto had been as to -what others would do for him; now he was preoccupied with what he could -do for some one else. It was a matter of watching, planning, cheering, -comforting, and as he expressed it to himself, of bucking up. Of -bucking up especially he was prodigal. The man had become as limp as on -the day when he had thrown himself face downward in the grass. Mad once -with desire to act, he was terrified now at what he had done. Though, -as far as Tom could judge, no one blamed or suspected him, there was -hardly a minute in the day in which he did not betray himself. He -betrayed himself to the boy even if to no one else, though betraying -himself in such a way that there was nothing definite to take hold of. -"I'm sure--and yet I'm not sure," was Tom's own summing up. He stressed -the fact that he was not sure, and in this he was helped by the common -opinion of the countryside. - -Toward the bereaved husband and his adopted son this was sympathetic. -The woman had always been neurasthenic, slipshod, and impossible. With -a wife to help him, Martin Quidmore could have been a success as a -market gardener as easily as anybody else. As it was, he would get over -the shock of this tragedy and find a woman who would be the right kind -of mother to a growing boy. Here, the mention of Bertha was with no -more than the usual spice of village scandal, tolerant and unresentful. - -Of all this Tom was aware chiefly through the observations of Blanche, -the colored woman who came in by the day to do the housework. - -"Law, Mr. Tom, yo' pappa don't need to feel so bad. Nobody in this -yere town what blame him, not a little mite. Po' Mis' Quidmo', nobody -couldn't please her nohow. Don't I know? Ain't I wash her, and iron -her, and do her housecleanin', ever since she come to this yere -community, and Mr. Quidmo' he buy this yere lot off old Aaron Bidbury? -No, suh! Nobody can't tell me! Them there giddy things what nobody -can't please 'em they can't please theirselves, and some day they go to -work and do somefin' despe'ate, just like po' Mis' Quidmo'. A little -cup o' tea, she take. No mo'n that. See, boy! I keep that there brown -teapot, what look as innocent as a baby, all the time incriminated to -her memo'y." - -Nevertheless, Tom found his father obsessed by fear, with nothing to be -afraid of. The obsession had shown itself as soon as they entered the -house on their return from Harfrey. He was afraid of the house, afraid -of the kitchen especially. When Gimlets barked he jumped, cursing the -dog for its noise. When a buggy drove up to the door he peeped out at -the occupant before showing himself to the neighbor coming to offer his -condolences. If the telephone rang Tom hastened to answer it, knowing -that it set his father shivering. - -As evening deepened on that first Wednesday, they kept out of doors as -late as possible, the boy chattering to the best of his ability. When -obliged to go in, Quidmore tried to say with solicitude on Tom's behalf: - -"Expect you'll be lonesome now with only the two of us in the house. -Better come and sleep in the other bed in my room." - -The boy was about to reply that he was not lonesome, and preferred his -own bed, when he caught the dread behind the invitation. - -"All right, dad, I'll come. Sleep there every night. Then I won't be -scared." - -About two in the morning Tom was wakened by a shout. "Hell! Hell! Hell!" - -Jumping from his own bed, he ran to the other. "Wake up, dad! Wake up!" - -Ouidmore woke, confused and trembling. "Wha' matter?" His senses -returning, he spoke more distinctly. "Must have had a nightmare. God! -Turn on the light. Hate bein' in the dark. Now get back to bed. All -right again." - -The next day both were picking strawberries. It was not Quidmore's -custom to pick strawberries, but he seemed to prefer a task at which he -could crouch, and be more or less out of sight. Happening to glance up, -he saw a stranger coming round the duck pond. - -"Who's that?" he snapped, in terror. - -Tom ran to the stranger, interviewed him, and ran back again. "It's an -agent for a new kind of fertilizer." - -"Tell him I don't want it and to get to hell out of this." - -"You'd better see him. He'll think it queer if you don't." - -It was the spur he needed. He couldn't afford to be thought queer. He -saw the agent, Tom acting as go-between and interpreter. - -To act as go-between and interpreter became in a measure the boy's job. -Being so near the holidays, he did not return to school, and freed from -school, he could give all his time to helping the frightened creature -to seem competent in the eyes of his customers and hired men. Not that -he succeeded. None knew better than the hired men that the place was, -as they put it, all in the soup; none were so quick to fall away as -customers who were not getting what they wanted. When the house was -tumbling about their heads one little boy's shoulder could not do much -as a prop; but what it could do he offered. - -He offered it with a gravity at which the men laughed good-naturedly -behind his back. They took his orders solemnly, and thought no more -about them. For a whole week nothing went to market. The dealers whom -they supplied complained by telephone. Billy Peet and himself got a -load of "truck" into town, only to be told that their man had made -other arrangements. To meet these conditions Quidmore had spurts of -energy, from which he backed down gibbering. - -Taking his courage in both hands, the boy went to see Bertha. Never -having been face to face with her before, he found her of the type of -beauty best appreciated where the taste is for the highly blown. She -received him with haughty surprise and wonder, not asking him to sit -down. Having prepared his words, he recited them, though her attitude -frightened him out of the man-of-the-world tone he had meant to adopt. -Humbly and haltingly, he asked if she wouldn't come out and help to -stiffen the old man. - -"So he's sent you, has he? Well, you can go back and say that I've no -reply except the one I've given him. All is over between us. Tell him -that if he thinks that _that_ was the way to win me he's very gravely -mistook. I know what's happened as positive as if I was a jury, and I -shall never pardon it. Silence I shall keep, but that is all he can -ask of me. He's made me talked about when he shouldn't ought to ov, -ignoring that a woman, and especially a widow--" her voice broke--"has -nothing but her reputation. Go back and tell him that if he tries to -force my door he'll find it double-barred against him." - -Tom went back but said nothing. There was no need for him to say -anything, since his life began at once to take another turn. - -School holidays having begun, he was free in fact as well as in name. -It was on a Thursday that his father came to him with the kind of -proposal which always excites a small boy. - -"Say, boy, what you think of a little trip down to Wilmington, -Delaware, you and me? Go off to-morrow and get back by Tuesday. I'd see -my sister, and it'd do me good." - -The prospect seemed to have done him good already. A new life had come -to him. He went about the place giving orders for the few days of his -absence, with particular instructions to Diggory and Blanche as to -Geraldine, and the disposal of the milk. They started on their journey -in the morning. - -It was one of those mornings in June when every blessed and beautiful -thing seems poured on the earth at once. As between five and six Billy -Peet drove them over to take the train at Harfrey, light, birds, trees, -flowers, meadows, dew, would have thrilled them to ecstasy if they had -not been used to them. For the first time in weeks Tom saw his father -smile. It was a smile of relief rather than of pleasure, but it was -better than his look of woe. - -The journey wakened memories. Not since Mrs. Crewdson had brought -him out to place him as a State ward with Mrs. Tollivant had he gone -into the city by this route. He had gone in by the motor truck often -enough; but this line that followed the river was haunted still by the -things he had outlived. He was not sorry to have known them, though -glad that they were gone. He was hardly sorry even for the present, -though doubtful as to how it was going to turn out. Vaguely and not -introspectively, he was shocked at himself, that he should be sitting -there with a man who had done what he felt pretty sure this man had -done, and that he should feel no horror. But he felt none. He assured -himself of that. He could sleep with him by night, and work and eat -with him by day, with no impulse but to shield a poor wretch who had -made his own life such a misery. - -"I've got to do it," he said to himself, in a kind of self-defense. "I -don't _know_ he did it--not for sure, I don't. And if nobody else tries -to find out, why should I, when he's been so awful nice to me?" - -He watched a steamer plowing her way southward in the middle of the -stream. He liked her air of quiet self-possession and of power. He -wondered whence she was coming, whither she was going, and what she was -doing it for. He couldn't guess. - -"That'd be like me," he said, silently, "sailing from I don't know -where--sailing _to_ I don't know where----" - -Ten years later he finished this thought, repeating exactly the same -words. Just now he couldn't finish anything, because there was so much -to see. Little towns perched above little harbors. Fishermen angled -from little piers. A group of naked boys, shameless as young mermen, -played in the water. On a rock a few yards from the shore a flock of -gulls jostled each other for standing room. A motor boat puffed. Yachts -rode sleepily at anchor. The car which, when they took it at Harfrey -had been almost empty, was beginning to fill with the earlier hordes of -commuters. Soon it was quite full. Soon there were cheery young people, -most of them chewing gum, standing in the passageway. Having rounded -the curve at Spuyten Duyvil, they saw the city looming up, white, -spiritual, tremulous, through the morning mist. - -Up to this minute he had not thought of plans; now he began to wonder -what they should do on reaching the Grand Central, where they would -arrive in another quarter of an hour. - -"Do we go straight across to the Pennsylvania Station, to take the -train for Wilmington, or do we have to wait?" - -"I'll--I'll see." - -The answer was unsatisfactory. He looked at his father inquiringly. -Looking at him, he was hurt to observe that his confidence was -departing, that he was again like something with a broken spring. - -"Well, we're going to Wilmington to-day, aren't we?" - -"I'll--I'll see." - -"But," the boy cried in alarm, "where can we go, if we don't?" - -"I--I know a place." - -It was disappointing. The choking sensation which, when he was younger, -used to precede tears, began to gather in his throat. Having heard so -much from Mrs. Quidmore of the glories of Wilmington, Delaware, he -saw it as a city of palaces, of exquisite, ladylike maidens, of noble -youths, of aristocratic joyousness. Moreover, he had been told that -to get there you went under the river, through a tunnel so deep down -in the earth that you felt a distressful throbbing in the head. The -postponement of these experiences even for a day was hard to submit to. - -In the Grand Central his father was in a mood he had never before seen. -It was a dark mood, at once decided and secretive. - -"Come this way." - -This way was out into Forty-second Street. With their suitcases in -their hands, they climbed into a street car going westward. Westward -they went, changing to another car going southward, under the thunder -of the elevated, in Ninth Avenue. At Fourteenth Street they got out -again. Tom recognized the neighborhood because of its nearness to -the great markets to which they sometimes brought supplies. But they -avoided the markets, making their way between drays, round buildings in -course of demolition, through gangs of children wooing disaster as they -played in the streets. In the end they turned out of the tumult to find -themselves in a placid little backwater of the "old New York" of the -early nineteenth century. Reading the sign at the corner Tom saw that -it was Jane Street. - -Jane Street dates from a period earlier than the development of that -civic taste which gives to all New York north of Fourteenth Street -the picturesqueness of a sum in simple arithmetic. Jane Street has -atmosphere, period, chic. You know at a glance that the people who -built these trim little red-brick houses still felt that impulse which -first came to Manhattan from The Hague, to be fostered later by William -and Mary, and finally merged in the Georgian tradition. Jane Street is -Dutch. It has Dutch quaintness, and, as far as New York will permit it, -Dutch cleanliness. It might be a byway in Amsterdam. Instead of cutting -straight from the Hudson River Docks to Greenwich Avenue, it might run -from a canal with barges on it to a field of hyacinths in bloom. - -But Tom Quidmore saw not what you and I would have seen, a relief from -the noise and fetidness of a hot summer's morning in a neighborhood -reeking with garbage. When his heart had been fixed on that dream-city, -Wilmington, Delaware, he found himself in a dingy little alley. Not -often querulous, he became so now. - -"What are we doing down here?" - -The reply startled him. "I'm--I'm sick." - -Looking again at the man who shuffled along beside him, he saw that his -face had grown ashy, while his eyes, which earlier in the day had had -life in them, were lusterless. The boy would have been frightened had -it not been for the impulse of affection. - -"Let's go back to Bere. Then you can have the doctor. I'll get a cab -and steer the whole business." - -Without answering, Quidmore stopped at a brown door, level with the -pavement, in a big, dim-windowed building, with fire escapes zigzagging -down the front. Jane Street is not exclusively clean and trim and -Dutch. It has lapses--here a warehouse, there a dwelling tumbling to -decay, elsewhere a nondescript structure like this. It looked like a -lodging house for sailors and dock laborers. In the basement was a -restaurant to which you went down by steps, and bearing the legend -Pappa's Chop Saloon. - -While Quidmore stood in doubt as to whether to ring the bell or to push -the door which already stood a little open, two men came out of the -Chop Saloon and began to mount the steps. In faded blue overalls the -worse for wear, they had plainly broken a day's work, possibly begun -at five o'clock, for a late breakfast. The one in advance, a sturdy, -well-knit fellow of forty or forty-five, got a sinister expression from -a black patch over his left eye. His companion was older, smaller, more -worn by a bitter life. All the twists in his figure, all the soured -betrayals in his crafty face, showed you the habitual criminal. - -None of these details was visible to Quidmore, because his imagination -could see only the bed for which he was craving. To the boy, who -trusted everyone, they were no more than the common type of workman he -was used to meeting in the markets. The fellow with the patch on his -eye, making an estimate of the strangers as he mounted the steps, spoke -cheerily. - -"I say, mate, what can I do for yer?" - -The voice with a vaguely English ring was not ungenial. Not ungenial, -when you looked at it, was the strongly-boned face, with a ruddiness -burnt to a coarse tan. The single gray-blue eye had the sympathetic -gleam which often helps roguery to make itself excusable to people with -a sense of fun. - -Quidmore muttered something about wanting to see Mrs. Pappa. - -"Right you are! Come along o' me. I'll dig the old gal out for yer. -Expects you wants a room for yerself and the kid. Hi, Pappa!" - -Pappa came out of a dim, musty parlor as the witch who foretells bad -weather appears in a mechanical barometer. She was like a witch, but -a dark, classic witch, with an immemorial tradition behind her. Her -ancestors might have fought at Marathon, or sacrificed to Neptune in -the temple on Sunium. In Jane Street she was archaic, a survival from -antiquity. Her thoughts must have been with the nymphs at Delphi, or -following the triremes carrying the warriors from Argolis to Troy, as -silent, mysterious, fateful, she led the way upstairs. - -They followed in procession, all four of them. The doorstep -acquaintances displayed a solicitude not less than brotherly. The -hall was without furniture, the stairs without carpet. The softwood -floors, like the treads of the stairs, were splintered with the usage -of many heavy heels. Where the walls bulged, through the pressure of -jerry-built stories overhead, the marbled paper swelled into bosses. -Tom found it impressive, with something of strange stateliness. - -"Yer'll be from the country," the one-eyed fellow observed, as they -climbed upward. - -"Yes, sir," Tom answered, civilly. "We're on our way to Wilmington, -Delaware, but my father felt a little sick." - -"Well, he's struck a good place to lay up in. I say, Pappa," he called -ahead, "seems to me as the big room with two beds'd be what'd suit the -gent. It's next door to the barthroom, and he'll find that convenient. -Mate," he explained further, when they stood within the room with two -beds, "this'll set ye' back a dollar a day in advance. That right, -Pappa, ain't it?" - -Pappa assenting with some antique sign, Quidmore drew out his -pocketbook to extract the dollar. With no ceremonious scruples the -smaller comrade craned his neck to appraise, as far as possible, the -contents of the wallet. - -"Wad," Tom heard him squirt out of the corner of his mouth, in the -whisper of a ventriloquist. - -His friend seemed to wink behind the patch on his left eye. Tom took -the exchange of confidence as a token of respect. He and his father -were considered rich, the effect being seen in the attentions accorded -them. This was further borne out when the genial one of the two -rogues turned on the threshold, as his colleague was following Pappa -downstairs. - -"Anythink I can do for yer, mate, command me. Name of Honeybun--Lemuel -Honeybun. Honey Lem some of the guys calls me. I answers to it, not -takin' no offense like." He pointed to the figure stumping down the -stairs. "My friend, Mr. Goodsir. Him and me been pals this two year. We -lives on the ground floor. Room back of Pappa." - -The door closed, Tom looked round him in an interest which eclipsed -his hopes of the tunnel. This was adventure. It was nearly romance. -Never before had he stayed in a hotel. The place was not luxurious, -but never, in the life he could remember, having known anything but -necessity, necessity was enough. Moreover, the room contained a work of -art that touched his imagination. On the bare drab mantelpiece stood -the head of a Red Indian, in plaster painted in bronze, not unlike the -mummified head of Rameses the Great. The boy couldn't take his eye -away from it. This was what you got by visiting strange cities more -intimately than by trucking to and from the markets. - -Quidmore threw himself on his bed, his face buried in the meager -pillow. He was suffering apparently not from pain, but from some more -subtle form of distress. Being told that there was nothing he could -do for the invalid, Tom sat silent and still on one of the two small -chairs which helped out the furnishings. It was not boring for him to -do this, because he swam in novelty. He recalled the steamer he had -seen that morning, sailing from he didn't know where, sailing _to_ -he didn't know where, but on the way. He, too, was on the way. He was -on the way to something different from Wilmington, Delaware. It would -be different from Bere. He began to wonder if he should ever go back -to Bere. If he didn't go back to Bere ... but at this point in Tom's -dreams Quidmore dragged himself off the bed. - -"Let's go down to the chop saloon, and eat." - - - - -XVIII - - -He was not too ill to eat, but too ill when not eating to stay anywhere -but on his bed. He went back to it again, lying with his face buried -in the pillow as before. The boy resumed his patient sitting. He would -have been bored with it now, had he not had his dreams. - -All the same, it was a relief when about four o'clock, just as the -westering sun was beginning to wake the Red Indian to an horrific life, -Mr. Honeybun, pushing the door ajar softly, peeped in with his good eye. - -"I say, mate!" he whispered, "wouldn't you like me to take the young -gent for a bit of a walk like? Do him good, and him a-mopin' here all -by hisself." - -The walk meant Tom's initiation into the life of cities as that life -is led. Not that it went very far, but as far as it went it was a -revelation. It took him from one end of Jane Street to the other, along -the docks of the Cunard and other great lines, and as far as Eighth -Avenue in the broad, exciting thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street. New -York as he had seen it hitherto, from the front seat of a motor truck, -had been little more entertaining than a map. Besides, he was only -developing a taste for this sort of entertainment. Games, school, -scraps with other boys, had been enough for him. Now he was waking -to an interest in places as places, in men as men, in differences of -attitude to the drama known as life. In Mr. Honeybun's attitude he grew -interested especially. - -"I don't believe that nothink don't belong to no one," Tom's guide -observed, as the wealth of the city spread itself more splendidly. -"Things is common proputty. Yer takes what yer can put yer 'and on." - -"But wouldn't you be arrested?" - -"Yer'd be arrested if yer didn't look out; but what's bein' arrested? -No more'n the measures what a lot of poor, frightened, silly boobs'll -take agin the strong man what makes 'em tremble. At least," he added, -as an afterthought, "not when yer conscience is clear, it ain't." - -Fascinated by this bold facing of society, Tom ventured on a question. -"Have you ever been arrested, Mr. Honeybun?" - -Mr. Honeybun straightened himself to the martyr's pose. "Oh, if yer -puts it that way, I've suffered for my opinions. That much I'll admit. -I'm--" he brought out the statement proudly--"I'm one o' them there -socialists. You know what a socialist is, don't yer?" - -Tom was not sure that he did. - -"A socialist is one o' them fellers who whatever he sees knows it -belongs to him if he can get ahold of it. It's gettin' ahold of it -what counts. Now if you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in -yer 'ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as I could take -it--why, then it'd be mine. That's the law o' Gord, I believes; and I -tries to live up to it." - -Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, Tom was nevertheless -perplexed by it. "But wouldn't that be something like burglary?" - -"Burglary is what them may call it what ain't socialists; but it don't -do to hang a dog because yer've give him a bad name. A lot o' good -people's been condemned that way. When I'm in court I always appeals to -justice." - -"And do you get it?" - -"I get men's. I don't get Gord's. You see that apple?" They stopped -before a window in Horatio Street where apples were displayed. "Now, -do yer suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in partic'lar? -No! That apple didn't know nothink about men's laws when it blossomed -on a apple tree. It just give itself generallike to the human race. If -you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git away with it, -it'd be yours. Stands to reason it'd be. Gord's law! But if that there -policeman, a-squintin' his ugly eye at us this minute--he knows Honey -Lem, he does!--was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty days. Man's -law! And I'll leave it to you which is best worth sufferin' for." - -In this philosophy of life there was something Tom found reasonable, -and something in which he felt a flaw without being able to detect it. -He chased it round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the long -dull hours with his father. It passed the time; it helped him to the -habit of thinking things out for himself. His mind being clear, and his -intuitions acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond his -years. When, on the morrow, they walked in the cool of the day down -the length of Hudson Street till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought -the subject up from another point of view. - -"But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took something from you? What then?" - -"He'd git it in the nut," the socialist answered, tersely. "Not if -there'd be two of 'em," he added, in amendment. "If there's two I don't -contend. I ain't a communist." - -"Is that what a communist is, a fellow who'll contend with two?" - -"A communist is a socialist what'll use weepons. If there's somethink -what he thinks is his in anybody's 'ouse, he'll go armed, and use -vi'lence. They never got that on me. I never 'urt nobody, except onst -I hits a footman, what was goin' to grab me, a wee little knock on the -'ead with a silver soup ladle I 'ad in me 'and and lays 'im out flat. -Didn't do him no 'arm, not 'ardly any. That was in England. But them -days is over, since I lost my eye. Makes yer awful easy spotted when -yer've lost a eye." - -"How did you lose it, Mr. Honeybun?" - -"I lost it a-savin' of the life of a beautiful young lady. 'Twas quite -a tale." The boy looked up expectantly while his friend thought out the -details. "I was footin' it onst from New Haven to New York, and I'd got -to a pretty little town as they call Old Lyme. Yer see, I'd been doin' -a bit o' time at New Haven--awful 'ard on socialists they was in New -Haven in them days--and when I gits out I was a bit stoney-broke till -I'd picked up somethink else. Well there I was, trampin' it through Old -Lyme, and I'd got near to the bridge what crosses the river they've -got there--the Connecticut I think it is--and what should I see but a -'orse what a young lady was drivin' come over the bridge like mad. The -young lady she was tuggin' at the reins and a-hollerin' like blazes for -some one to save her life. I ain't no 'ero, kid. Don't go for to think -that I'm a-sayin' that I am. But what's a man to do when he sees a -beautiful young lady in danger o' bein' killed?" He paused to take the -bodily postures with which he stopped the runaway. "And the tip of the -shaft," he ended, "it took me right in the eye, and put it out. But, -Lord, what's a eye, even to a Socialist, when yer can do somethink for -a feller creeter?" - -Tom gaped in admiration. "I suppose it hurt awful." - -"Was in 'orspital three months," the hero said, quietly. "Young lady, -she visits me reg'lar, calls me her life-saver, and every name like -that, and kind o' clings to me. But, Lord, marriage ain't never been -much of a fancy to me. Ties a man up, and I likes to be free, except -when I'm sufferin' for socialism. Besides, if I was to marry every -woman what I've saved their lives I'd be one o' them Normans by this -time. When yer wants company a good pal'll be faithfuller than a wife, -and nag yer a lot less." - -"Mr. Goodsir's your pal, ain't he, Mr. Honeybun?" - -"Yes, and I'm sick of him. He don't develop. He ain't got no -eddication. Yer can see for yerself he don't talk correct. That's what -I've took to in yer gov'nor and you, yer gentleman way o' speakin'. -Only yer needn't go for to tell yer old man all what I've been -a-gassin' of to you. I can see he's what they call conservative. He -wouldn't understand. You're the younger generation, mind more open -like. You and me'd make a great team if we was ever to work together." - -With memories of his mother in his mind, Tom answered sturdily, "I -wouldn't be a socialist, not for anything you could offer me." - -They left it at that. Mr. Honeybun was content to point out the -historic sites known to him as they turned homeward. There was the -house where a murder had been committed; the store where a big break -had been pulled off; a private detective's residence. - -"Might go out agin some day, if yer pop don't mind it," he suggested, -when they had reached their own hallway. "I gits the time in the late -afternoon. Yer see, our job at the market begins early and ends early, -and lately--" there was a wistful note--"well, I feels kind o' fed -up with the low company Goodsir keeps. Every kind o' joint and dive -and--and--Chinamen--and--" Out of respect for the boy he held up the -description. "You'd 'ardly believe it, but an innercent little walk -like what we've just took, why, it'll do me as much good as a swig o' -water when you wake up about three in the mornin', with yer tongue -'angin' out like a leather strap, after a three-days' spree." - -Unable to get the full force of this figure, Tom thanked his guide -politely, and was bounding up the stairs two steps at a time, when the -man who stood watching him spoke again. - -"If I'd ever a-thought that I'd 'a had a kid like you, it'd 'a' been -pretty near worth gittin' married for." - -Tom could only turn with one of those grins which showed his teeth, -making his eyes twinkle with a clear blue light, when adequate words -for kindness wouldn't come to him. - - - - -XIX - - -The days settled into a routine. When they rose in the morning a -colored woman "did" their room while they went down to the chop saloon -for breakfast. Returning, Quidmore threw himself on his bed again. He -did this after each meal, poking his nose deep into the limp pillow. -Hardly ever speaking, he now and then uttered a low moan. - -Tom watched patiently, ready to tell him the time or bring him a drink -of water. When the day grew too hot he fanned him with an old newspaper. - -"Why don't we go home, dad?" he asked anxiously on the third day. "I -could get you there as easy as anything." - -"I'm not well enough." - -"You don't seem very sick to me. You don't have any pain and you can -eat all right." - -"It isn't that kind of bein' sick. It's--" he sought for a name--"it's -like nervous prostration." - -More nearly than he knew he had named his malady. In his own words, he -was all in; and he was all in to the end of the letter of the term. Of -that moral force which is most of what any man has to live upon some -experience had drained him. He had spent his gift of vitality. All in -was precisely the phrase to apply to him. He had cashed the last cent -of whatever he had inherited or saved in the way of inner strength, and -now he could not go on. - -"What's the good of it anyhow?" he asked of Tom in the night. "There's -nothin' to it, not when you come to think of it. You run after -something as if you couldn't live without it; and then when you get it -you curse your God that you ever run." - -Tom shuddered in his bed, but he was used to doing that. There was -hardly a night when he was not wakened by a nightmare. If it was not by -a nightmare, it was by the soft complaining voice. - -"Are you awake, Tom?" - -"Yes, dad. Can I get you anything?" - -"No; I only wanted to know if you was awake." - -Tom kept awake as long as he could, because he knew the poor wretch was -afraid of lying sleepless in the dark. To keep him awake, perhaps for -less selfish reasons, too, the soft voice would take this opportunity -of giving him advice. - -"Don't you ever go to wanting anything too much, boy. That's what's -done for me. You can want things if you like; but one of the tricks in -the game is to know how to be disappointed. I never did know, not even -when I was a little chap. If I cried for the moon I wouldn't stop till -I got it. When I was about as old as you, not gettin' what I wanted -made me throw a fit. If I couldn't get things by fair means I had to -get 'em by foul; but I got 'em. It don't do you no good, boy. If I -could go back again over the last six months...." - -For fear of a confession Tom stopped his ears, but no confession ever -came. The tortured soul could dribble its betrayals, but it couldn't -face itself squarely. - -"Look out for women," he said, gently, on another night. "You're old -enough now to know how they'll play the Dutch with you. When I was your -age there was nothing I didn't understand, and I guess it's the same -with you. Don't ever let 'em get you. They got me before I was--well, I -don't hardly know what age I was, but it was pretty young. Look out for -'em, boy. If you ever damn your soul for one of 'em, she'll do you dirt -in the end. If it hadn't been for her...." - -To keep this from going further, the boy broke in with the first -subject he could think of. "I wonder if they'll remember to pick the -new peas. They'll be ready by this time. Do you suppose they'll ...?" - -"I don't care a hang what they do." After a brief silence he continued: -"I'd 'a left the place to you, boy, only my brother-in-law, my sister's -husband, has a mortgage on the place that'd eat up most of the value, -so I've left it to her. That'll fix 'em both. I wish I could 'a done -more for you." - -"You've done a lot for me, as it is." - -"You don't know." - -There was another silence. It might have lasted ten minutes. The boy -was falling once more into a doze when the soft voice lisped again, - -"Tom." - -He did his best to drag himself back from sleep. "Yes, dad? Do you want -to know what time it is? I'll get up and look." - -"No, stay where you are. There's somethin' I want to say. I've been a -skunk to you." - -"Oh, cut it, dad...." - -"I won't cut it. I want to say it out. When I--when I first took you, -it wasn't--it wasn't so much that I'd took a fancy to you...." - -"I know it wasn't, dad. You wanted a boy to pick the berries. Let's -drop it there." - -But the fevered conscience couldn't drop it there. "Yes; at first. -And then--and then it come into my mind that you might be--might be -the one that'd do somethin' I didn't want to do myself. I thought--I -thought that if you done it we might get by on it. We got by on it all -right--or up to now we've got by--but I didn't get real fond of you -till--till...." - -"Oh, dad, let's go to sleep." - -"All right. Let's. I just wanted to say that much. I was glad afterward -that...." - -The boy breathed heavily, pretending that he was asleep. He was soon -asleep in earnest, and for the rest of the night was undisturbed. In -the morning his father didn't get up, and Tom went down to the chop -saloon to bring up something that would serve as breakfast. He did the -same at midday, and the same in the evening. It was a summer's evening, -with a long twilight. As it began to grow dark Quidmore seemed to rouse -himself. He needed tooth paste, shaving cream, other small necessities. -Sitting up on the bed, he made out a list of things, giving Tom the -money with which to pay for them. If he went to the pharmacy in Hudson -Street he would be back in half an hour. - -"All right, dad. I know the way. I'm an old hand in New York by this -time." - -He was at the door when Quidmore called him back. - -"Say, boy. Give us a kiss." - -Tom was stupefied. He had kissed his adopted mother often enough, but -he had never been asked to do this. Quidmore laughed, pulling him close. - -"Ah, come along! I don't ask you often. You're a fine boy, Tom. You -must know as well as I do what's been...." - -The words were suspended by a hug; but once he was free Tom fled away -like a small young wild thing, released from human hands. Having -reached the street, he began to feel frightened, prescient, awed. -Something was going to happen, he could not imagine what. He made his -purchases hurriedly, and then delayed his return. He could be tender -with the man; he could be loving; but he couldn't share his secrets. - -But he had to go back. In the dim upper hall outside the door he paused -to pump up courage to go in. He was not afraid in the common way of -fear; he was only overcome with apprehension at having a knowledge he -rejected forced on him. - -The first thing he noticed was that no light came through the crack -beneath the door. The room was apparently dark. That was strange -because his father dreaded darkness, except when he was there to keep -him company. He crept to the door and listened. There was no sound. He -pushed the door open. The lights were out. In panic at what he might -discover, he switched on the electricity. - -But he only found the room empty. That was so far a relief. His father -had gone out, and would be back again. Closing the door behind him, he -advanced into the room. - -It seemed more than empty. It felt abandoned, as if something had gone -which would not return. He remembered that sensation afterward. He -stood still to wonder, to conjecture. The Red Indian gleamed with his -bronze leer. - -The next thing the boy noticed was an odd little pile on the table. It -was money--notes. On top of the notes there was silver and copper. He -stooped over them, touching them with his forefinger, pushing them. He -pushed them as he might have pushed an insect to see whether or not it -was alive. - -Lastly he noticed a paper, on which the money had been placed. There -was something scribbled on it with a pencil. He held it under the dim -lamp. "For Tom--with a real love." - -The tears gushed to his eyes, as they always did when people showed -that they loved him. But he didn't actually cry; he only stood still -and wondered. He couldn't make it out. That his father should have gone -out and forgotten all his money was unusual enough, but that he should -have left these penciled words was puzzling. It was easy to count the -money. There were seven fifty-dollar bills, with twenty-eight dollars -and fifty-four cents in smaller bills and change. He seemed to remember -that his father had drawn four hundred dollars for the Wilmington -expenses, with a margin for purchases. - -He stood wondering. He could never recall how long he stood wondering. -The rest of the night became more or less a blank to him; for, to the -best of the boy's knowledge, the man who had adopted him was never seen -again. - - - - -XX - - -To the best of the boy's knowledge the man who had adopted him was -never seen again; but it took some time to assume the fact that he was -dead. Visitors to New York often dived below the surface, to come up -again a week or ten days later. Their experience in these absences they -were not always eager to discuss. - -"Why, I've knowed 'em to stay away that long as yer'd swear they'd -been kidnapped," Mr. Honeybun informed the boy. "He's on a little -time; that's all. Nothink but nat'rel to a man of his age--and a -widower--livin' in the country--when he gits a bit of freedom in the -city." - -"Yes, but what'll he do for money?" - -There was this point of view, to be sure. Mr. Goodsir suggested that -Quidmore had had more money still, that he had only left this sum to -cover Tom's expenses while he was away. - -"And listen, son," he continued, kindly, "that's a terr'ble big wad -for a boy like you to wear on his person. Why, there's guys that -free-quents this very house that'd rob and murder you for half as much, -and never drop a tear. Now here I am, an old trusty man, accustomed to -handle funds, and not sneak nothin' for myself. If I could be of any -use to you in takin' charge of it like...." - -"Me and you'll talk this over, later," Mr. Honeybun intervened, -tactfully. "The kid don't need no one to take care of his cash when his -father may skin home again before to-night. Let's wait a bit. If he's -goin' to trust anybody it'll be us, his next of kin in this 'ere 'ouse, -of course. That'd be so, kiddy, wouldn't it?" - -Tom replied that it would be so, giving them to understand that he -counted on their good offices. For the present he was keeping himself -in the non-committal attitude natural to suspense. - -"You see," he explained, looking from one to another, with his engaging -candor, "I can't do anything but just wait and see if he's coming back -again, at any rate, not for a spell." - -The worthies going to their work, the interview ended. At least, Mr. -Goodsir went to his work, though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was -back in Tom's room again. - -"Say, kid; don't you let them three hundred bucks out'n yer own 'and. -I can't stop now; but when I blow in to eat at noon I'll tell yer what -I'd do with 'em, if you was me. Keep 'em buttoned up in yer inside -pocket; and don't 'ang round in this old hut any more'n you can help -till I come back and git you. Yer never knows who's on the same floor -with yer; but out in the street yer'll be safe." - -Out in the street he kept to the more populous thoroughfares, coasting -the line of docks especially. He liked them. On the facades of the -low buildings he could read names which distilled romance into -syllables--New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma. -He had always been fond of geography. It opened up the world. It -told of countries and cities he would one day visit, and which in -the meantime he could dream about. Over the low roofs of the dock -buildings he could see the tops of funnels. Here and there was the long -black flank of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from -one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types slipped in and -out amid the crush of vehicles, or dodged the freight train aimlessly -shunting up and down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep sound, -the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the knowledge that he -himself was so insignificant a figure that no robber or murderer would -suspect that he had all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled -his mind to his desolation. - -He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem to a suspicious -populace that he was an errand boy; but now and then the sense of -his loneliness smote him to a standstill. He would wonder where he -was going, and what he was going for, as he wondered the same thing -about the steamer on the Hudson. Like her, he seemed to be afloat. -She, of course, had her destination; but he had nothing in the world -to tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that was always -sailing--sailing--sailing--sailing--with never a port to have come out -of, and never a port in view, - -_The Church of the Sea!_ - -He read the words on the corner of a big white building where Jane -Street flows toward the docks. He read them again. He read them because -he liked their suggestions--immensity, solitude, danger perhaps, and -God! - -[Illustration: "THAT'S A TERR'BLE BIG WAD FOR A BOY LIKE YOU TO WEAR"] - -It was queer to think of God being out there, where there were only -waves and ships and sailors, but chiefly waves and a few seabirds. It -recalled the religion of crippled Bertie Tollivant, the cynic. To the -instructed like himself, God was in the churches that had steeples and -pews and strawberry sociables, or in the parlors where they held family -prayers. They told you that He was everywhere; but that only meant -that you couldn't do wrong, you couldn't swear, or smoke a cigarette, -or upset some householder's ash-barrels, without His spotting you. -Tom Quidmore did not believe that Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant would have -sanctioned this Church of the Sea, where God was as free as wind, -and over you like the sky, and beyond any human power to monopolize -or give away. It made Him too close at hand, too easy to find, and -probably much too tender toward sailors, who were often drunk, and -homeless little boys. He turned away from the Church of the Sea, -secretly envying Bertie Tollivant his graceless creed, but not daring -to question the wisdom of adult men and women. - -By the steps of the chop saloon he waited for Mr. Honeybun, who came -swinging along, a strong and supple figure, a little after the whistle -blew at twelve. To the boy's imagination, now that he had been informed -as to his friend's status, he looked like what had been defined to -him as a socialist. That is, he had the sort of sinuosity that could -slip through half-open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glide -noiselessly up and down staircases. It was ridiculous to say it of one -so bony and powerful, but the spring of his step was spiritlike. - -"Good for you, lad, to be waitin'! We'll go right along and do it, and -then it'll be off our minds." - -What "it" was to be, Tom had no idea. But then he had no suspicions. In -spite of his hard childhood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men -would do him wrong. He had no fear of Mr. Honeybun, and no mistrust, -not any more than a baby in arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse. - -"And there's another thing," Mr. Honeybun brought up, as they went -along. "It don't seem to me no good for a husky boy like you to be just -doin' nothink, even while he's waitin' for his pop. I'd git a job, if -you was me." - -The boy said that he would gladly have a job, but didn't know how to -get one. - -"I've got one for yer if yer'll take it. Work not too 'ard, and 'll -bring you in a dollar and a 'alf a day." - -But "it" was the matter in hand, and presently its nature became -evident. At the corner of Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue Mr. -Honeybun pointed across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very -solidity inspired confidence. Tom could read for himself that it was a -savings bank. - -"Now what I'd do if it was my wad is this. I'd put three hundred -and twenty-five of it in that there bank, which'd leave yer more'n -twenty-five for yer eddication. But yer principal, no one won't be -able to touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer'll be gettin' yer -interest piled up on top of it." - -Tom's heart leaped. He had long meditated on savings banks. They had -been part of his queer vision. To become "something big" he would have -to begin by opening some such account as this. With Mr. Honeybun's -proposal he felt as if he had suddenly grown taller by some inches, and -older by some years. - -"You'll come over with me, won't you?" - -Mr. Honeybun demurred. "Well, yer see, kid, I'm a pretty remarkable -character in this neighborhood. There's lots knows Honey Lem; and -if they was to see me go in with you they might think as yer hadn't -come by your dough quite hon--I mean, accordin' to yer conscience--or -they might be bad enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between -us. When I puts a few dollars into my own savings bank--I'm a savin' -bird, I am--I goes right over to Brooklyn, where there ain't no wicked -mind to suspeck me. So go in by yerself, and say yer wants to open a -account. If anyone asks yer, tell him just how the money come to yer, -and I don't believe as yer'll run no chanst of no one not believin' -yer." - -So it was done. Tom came out of the building with his bank book -buttoned into his breast pocket, and a conscious enhancement of life. - -"And now," Mr. Honeybun suggested, "we'll make tracks for Pappa's and -eat." - -The "check," like the meal, was light, and Mr. Honeybun paid it. Tom -protested, since he had money of his own, but his host took the -situation gracefully. - -"Lord love yer, kid, ain't I yer next o' kin, as long as yer guv'nor's -away? Who sh'd buy yer a lunch if it wasn't me?" - -Childhood is naturally receptive. As Romulus and Remus took their food -from a wolf when there was no one else to give it them, so Tom Quidmore -found it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, and then by -a thief. It became amazing, a few years later, on looking back on it; -but for the moment murderer and thief were not the terms in which he -thought of those who had been kind to him. - -Not that he didn't try. He tried that very afternoon. When his next o' -kin had gone back to his job of lifting and heaving in the Gansevoort -Market, he returned to the empty room. It was his first return to -it alone. When he had gone up from his breakfast in the chop saloon -both Goodsir and Honeybun had accompanied him. Now the emptiness was -awesome, and a little sinister. - -He had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully that is, waking -every half hour to listen for the shuffling footstep. He heard other -footsteps, dragging, thumping, staggering, but they always passed on -to the story above, whence would come a few minutes later the sound -of heavy boots thrown on the floor. Now and then there were curses, -or male voices raised in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song. -During the earlier nights he had slept through these signals of Pappa's -hospitality, or if he had waked, he knew that a grown-up man lay in the -other bed, so that he was safe. Now he could only lie and shudder, -till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. He did his best -to keep awake, so as to unlock the door the instant he heard a knock; -but in spite of his efforts he slept. - -This return after luncheon brought him for the first time face to face -with his state as a reality. There was no one there. It was no use -going back to Bere, because there would be no one there. Rather than -become again a State ward with the Tollivants, he would sell himself to -slavery. What was he to do? - -The first thing his eye fell upon was his father's suitcase, lying -open on the floor beside the bed, its contents in disorder. It was the -way Quidmore kept it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed -one. The futility of this clothing was what struck the boy now. The -peculiar grief of handling the things intimately used by those who -will never use them again was new to him. He had never supposed that -so much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. Stooping over -the suitcase, he had accidentally picked one up, and burst into sudden -tears. They were the first he had actually shed since he used to creep -away to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the Tollivants. - -It occurred to him now that he had not cried when his adopted mother -disappeared. He had not especially mourned for her. While she had -been there, and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved her -in the way in which he loved so easily when anyone opened the heart -to him; but she had been no part of his inner life. She was the cloud -and sunshine of a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of -the morrow. Of the two, he grieved more for the man; and the man was a -murderer, and probably a suicide. - -Sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words in the attempt -to work up a fortifying moral indignation. It was then, too, that he -called Mr. Honeybun a thief. He must react against these criminal -associations. He must stand on his own feet. He was not afraid of -earning his own living. He had heard of boys who had done it at an -age even earlier than thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires. -They had always, however, so far as he knew, had some sort of ties -to connect them with the body politic. They had had the support of -families, sympathies, and backgrounds. They hadn't been adrift, like -that haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but the God of -the Sea to keep her from foundering. He could have believed in this -God of the Sea. He wished there had been such a God. But the God that -was, the God who was shut up in churches and used only on Sundays, was -not of much help to him. Any help he got he must find for himself; and -the first thing he must do would be to break away from these low-down -companionships. - -And just as, after two or three hours of meditation, he had reached -this conclusion, a tap at the door made him start. Quidmore had come -back! But before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed open, -and he saw the patch over the left eye. - -"Got away early, son. Now, seems to me, we ought to be out after them -overalls." - -The boy stood blank. "What overalls?" - -"Why, for yer job to-morrow. Yer can't work in them good clo'es. Yer'd -sile 'em." - -In a second-hand shop, known to Honey Lem, in Charles Street, they -found a suit of boy's overalls not too much the worse for wear. Honey -Lem pulled out a roll of bills and paid for them. - -"But I've got my own money, Mr. Honeybun." - -"Dooty o' next o' kin, boy. I ain't doin' it for me own pleasure. -Yer'll need yer money for yer eddication. Yer mustn't forgit that." - -The overalls bound him more closely to the criminal from whom he was -trying to cut loose. More closely still he found himself tied by the -scraps of talk he overheard between the former pals that evening. They -were on the lowest of the steps leading up from the chop saloon, where -all three of them had dined. Tom, who had preceded them, stood on the -sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within earshot. - -"I tell yer I can't, Goody," Mr. Honeybun was saying, "not as long as -I'm next o' kin to this 'ere kid. 'Twouldn't be fair to a young boy for -me to keep no such company." - -Mr. Goodsir made some observation the nature of which Tom could only -infer from Mr. Honeybun's response. - -"Well, don't yer suppose it's a damn sight 'arder for me to be out'n a -good thing than it is for you to see me out'n it? I don't go in for no -renounciation. But when yer've got a fatherless kid on yer 'ands ye' -must cut out a lot o' nice stuff that'll go all right when yer've only -yerself to think about. Ain't yer a Christian, Goody?" - -Once more Mr. Goodsir's response was to Tom a matter of surmise. - -"Well, then, Goody, if yer don't like it yer can go to E and double L. -What's more, I ain't a-goin' to sleep in our own room to-night, nor -any night till that guy comes back. I'm goin' to sleep in the kid's -room, and keep him company. 'Tain't right to leave a young boy all by -hisself in a 'ouse like this, as full o' toughs as a ward'll be full o' -politicians." - -Tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the knowledge that -the other bed in his room would not remain so creepily vacant was -consciously a relief. He slept dreamlessly that night, because of -his feeling of security. In the morning, not long after four, he was -wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to and fro. - -"Come, little shaver! Time to git up! Got to be on yer job at five." - -The job was in a market that was not exactly a market since it supplied -only the hotels. Together with the Gansevoort and West Washington -Markets, it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food on the -continent of America. Railways and steamers brought it from ranches -and farms, from plantations and orchards, from rivers and seas, from -slaughter-stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north and -the south and the west, from the tropics and farther than the tropics, -to feed the vast digestive machine which is the basis of New York's -energies. Tom's job was not hard, but it was incessant. His was the -duty of collecting and arranging the empty cases, crates, baskets, -and coops, which were dumped on the raised platform surrounding the -building on the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. Trucks -and vans took them away full on one day, and brought them back empty on -another. It was all a boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order, -according to sizes and shapes. The sizes in the main were small; the -shapes were squares and oblongs and diminishing churnlike cylinders. -Nimbleness, neatness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and -all three of them the boy supplied. - -Fatigue that night made him wakeful. His companion in the other bed -was wakeful too. In talking from bed to bed Tom found it a comfort to -be dealing with an easy conscience. Mr. Honeybun had nothing on his -mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. Speculation on the subject of -Quidmore's disappearance, and possible fate, turned round and round on -itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses. - -"And there's another thing," came from Mr. Honeybun. "If he don't come -back, why, you'll come in for a good bit o' proputty, won't yer? Didn't -he own that market-garden place, out there on the edge of Connecticut?" - -"He left it to his sister. He told me that the other night. You see, I -wasn't his real son. I wasn't his son at all till about a year ago." - -This statement coming to Mr. Honeybun as something of a shock, Tom was -obliged to tell the story of his life to the extent that he knew it. -The only details that he touched on lightly were those which bore on -the manner in which he had lost his "mudda." Even now it was difficult -to name her in any other way, because in no other way had he ever named -her. Obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollections, which -in themselves were clear enough, his tale was brief. - -"So yer real name is Whitelaw," Mr. Honeybun commented, with interest. -"I never hear that name but once. That was the Whitelaw baby. Ye'll -have heard tell o' that?" - -Since Tom had never heard tell of the Whitelaw baby, the lack in his -education was supplied. The Whitelaw baby had been taken out to the -Park on a morning in May, and had vanished from its carriage. In the -place where it had lain was found a waxen image so true in likeness to -the child himself that only when it came time to feed him did the nurse -make the discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. The mystery -had been the source of nation-wide excitement for the best part of two -years. It was talked of even now. It couldn't have been more than three -or four years earlier that Mr. Honeybun had seen a daily paper, bearing -the headlines that Harry Whitelaw had been found, selling like hotcakes -to the women shopping in Twenty-third Street. - -"And was he?" Tom asked, beginning at last to be sleepy. - -"No more'n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer'd blowed it in the air. -The father, a rich banker--a young chap he was, too, I believe--he -offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as'd put him on the -track o' the gang what had kidnapped the young 'un; and every son of a -gun what thought he was a socialist was out to win the money. This 'ere -Goody, he had a scheme. Tried to work me in on it, and I don't know but -what I might a took a 'and if a chum o' mine hadn't got five year for -throwin' the same 'ook without no bait on it. They 'auled in another -chap I knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do with it, and -tried to make him squeal; but--" A long breath from Tom interrupted -this flow of narrative. "Say, kiddy, yer ain't asleep, are yer? and me -tellin' yer about the Whitelaw baby?" - -"I am nearly," the boy yawned. "Good night--Honey! Wake me in time in -the morning." - -"That's a good name for yer to call me," the next o' kin commended. -"I'll always be Honey to you, and you'll be Kiddy to me; and so we'll -be pals. Buddies they call it over here." - -Echoes of a street brawl reached them through the window. Had he been -alone, the country lad of thirteen would have shivered, even though the -night was hot. But the knowledge of this brawny companion, lying but -a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a puppy, and fall asleep -trustfully. - - - - -XXI - - -The next two or three nights were occasions for the interchange of -confidence. During the days the new pals saw little of each other, and -sometimes nothing at all. With the late afternoon they could "clean -themselves," and take a little relaxation. For this there was no great -range of opportunity. Relaxation for Lemuel Honeybun had hitherto run -in directions from which he now felt himself cut off. He knew of no -others, while the boy knew of none of any kind. - -"I tell yer, Goody," Tom overheard, through the open door of the room -back of Pappa's, one day while he was climbing the stairs, "I ain't -a-goin' to go while I've got this job on me hands. The Lord knows I -didn't seek it. It's just one of them things that's give yer as a -dooty, and I'm goin' to put it through. When Quidmore's come back, and -it's all over, I'll be right on the job with the old gang again; but -till he does it's nix. Yer can't mean to think that I don't miss the -old bunch. Why, I'd give me other eye...." - -Tom heard no more; but the tone of regret worried him. True, if he -wanted to break the bond this might be his chance. On the other hand, -the thought of being again without a friend appalled him. While waiting -in the hope that Quidmore might come back, the present arrangement -was at least a cosy one. Nevertheless, he felt it due to his spirit of -independence to show that he could stand alone. He waited till they -were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and the air through the open -window was cool enough to allow of their being comfortable, before he -felt able to take an offhand, man-to-man tone. - -"You know, Honey, if you want to beat it back to your old crowd, I can -get along all right. Don't hang round here on my account." - -"Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice meself. If I'm to be -yer next o' kin, I'll be it and be damned. Done 'arder things than this -in me life, and pulled 'em off, too. I'll stick to yer, kid, as long as -yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my life, and never -see another quart bottle." - -The pathos of the life for which he might be letting himself in turned -his thoughts backward over his career. - -"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might -still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born. -True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell -it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I -'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other -day--steward on one of the Cunarders he was--said he wouldn't 'a -knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges. -Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon -parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But -it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought me where I am, and I -don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I -wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings -bank in Brooklyn. Friends as 'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by -them. And if I hadn't lost me eye--but how was I to know that that -low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and 'd -let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball -cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York -right atop o' me." - -Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young -lady's life." - -Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for -finding the right words. - -"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that -there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both -sides to onst, now can I?" - -He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son -of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at -the age of seventeen. - -"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what -it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit -I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to -seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by -somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and -me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll -inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I did inherit -somethink--inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his -seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was -mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes -later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and -havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's -easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and -that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was. -Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and -get a move on--and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail. -You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?" - -Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released -from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America. - -"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and -find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been -landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it -is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid. -Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for -nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've -worked for--or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a -injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of -fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for -yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?" - -A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his -position. - -"I've been thinkin', Kiddy, that since yer used to be a State ward, -yer'll have to be a State ward agin, if the State knows you're knockin' -round loose." - -The boy cried out in alarm. "Oh, but I won't be. I'll kill myself -first." - -He could not understand this antipathy, this horror. In a mechanical -way the State had been good to him. The Tollivants had been good to -him, too, in the sense that they had not been unkind. But he could -not return to the status. It was the status that dismayed him. In -Harfrey it had made him the single low-caste individual in a prim -and high-caste world, giving everyone the right to disdain him. They -couldn't help disdaining him. They knew as well as he did that in -principle he was a boy like any other; but by all the customs of their -life he was a little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it was -still possible to respect himself; but to go back and hang on to the -outer fringe of the organized life of a Christian society would have -ravaged him within. He said so to Honeybun energetically. - -"That's the way I figured that yer'd feel. So long as you're on'y -waitin'--or yer can say that you're on'y waitin'--till yer pop comes -back, it won't matter much. It'll be when school begins that it'll go -agin yer. There's sure to be some pious woman sneepin' round that'll -tell someone as you're not in school when you're o' school age, and -then, me lad, yer'll be back as a State ward on some down-homer's farm." - -Tom lashed the bed in the darkness. "I won't go! I won't go!" - -"That's what I used to say the first few times they pinched me; but -yer'll jolly well have to go if they send yer. Now what I was thinkin' -is this. It's in New York State that yer'd be a State ward. If you -was out o' this State there'd be all kinds o' laws that couldn't git -yer back again. Onst when I'd been doin' a bit o' socializin' in New -Jersey, and slipped back to Manhattan--well, you wouldn't believe the -fuss it took to git me across the river when the p'lice got wind it was -me. Never got me back at all! Thing died out before they was able to -fix up all the coulds and couldn'ts of the lor." - -He allowed the boy to think this over before going on with his -suggestion. - -"Now if you and me was to light out together to another State, they -wouldn't notice that we'd gone before we was safe beyond their -clutches. If we was to go to Boston, say! Boston's a good town. I -worked Boston onst, me and a chap named...." - -The boy felt called on to speak. "I wouldn't be a socialist, not if it -gave me all Boston for my own." - -The statement, coming as it did, had the vigor of an ultimatum. -Though but a repetition of what he had said a few days before, it was -a repetition with more force. It was also with more significance, -fundamentally laying down a condition which need not be discussed again. - -After long silence Mr. Honeybun spoke somewhat wistfully. "Well, I -dunno as I'd count that agin yer. I sometimes thinks as I'll quit bein' -a socialist meself. Seems to me as if I'd like to git back with the old -gang, and be what they calls a orthodock. You know what a orthodock is, -don't yer?" - -"It's a kind of religion, isn't it?" - -"It ain't so much a kind of religion as it's a kind o' way o' thinkin'. -You're a orthodock when you don't think at all. Them what ain't got no -mind of their own, what just believes and talks and votes and lives the -way they're told to, they're the orthodocks. It don't matter whether -it's religion or politics or lor or livin', the people who don't know -nothink but just obeys other people what don't know nothink, is the -kind that gits into the least trouble." - -"Yes, but what do you want to be like that for? You _have_ got a mind -of your own." - -"Well, there's a good deal to be said, Kiddy. First there's you." - -"Oh, if it's only me...." - -"Yes, but when I'm yer next o' kin it isn't on'y you; it's you first -and last. I got to bring you up an orthodock, if I'm going to bring you -up at all. Yer can't think for yerself yet. You're too young. Stands to -reason. Why, I was twenty, and very near a trained gasfitter, before -I'd begun thinkin' on me own. What yer does when yer're growed up'll be -no concern o' mine. But till you _are_ growed up...." - -Tom had heard of quicksands, and often dreamed that he was being -engulfed in one. He had the sensation now. Circumstances having pushed -him where he would not have ventured of his own accord, the treacherous -ground was swallowing him up. He couldn't help liking Honey Lem, since -he liked everyone in the world who was good to him; he was glad of his -society in these lonely nights, and of the sense of his comradeship -in the background even in the day; but between this gratitude and a -lifelong partnership he found a difference. There were so many reasons -why he didn't want permanent association with this fairy godfather, and -so many others why he couldn't find the heart to tell him so! He was -casting about for a method of escape when the fairy godfather continued. - -"This 'ere socialism is ahead of its time. People don't understand -it. It don't do to be ahead o' yer time, not too far ahead, it don't. -Now I figure out that if I was to go back a bit, and git in among -them orthodocks, I might do 'em good like. Could explain to 'em. I -ain't sure but what I've took the wrong way, showin' 'em first, and -explainin' to 'em afterwards. Now if I was to stop showin' 'em at all, -and just explain to 'em, why, there'd be folks what when I told 'em -that nothink don't belong to nobody they'd git the 'ang of it. Begins -to seem to me as if I'd done me bit o' sufferin' for the cause. Seen -the inside o' pretty near every old jug round New York. It's aged me. -But if I was to sackerfice me opinions, and make them orthodocks feel -as I was one of 'em, I might give 'em a pull along like." - -The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the morning. In the -afternoon Honey Lem had a new idea. Without saying what it was, he -took the boy to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached -Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an electric bus going -northward, and Tom had a new experience. Except for having crossed -it in the market lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this -stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him. - -Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when shops were shut, residences -closed, and saunterers relatively few, it added a new concept to those -already in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. These -ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these pictures, jewels, -flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more than appeal to his eye. They -set free a function of his being that had hitherto been sealed. The -first atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware was consciously -in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in some life before he was born, rich -and beautiful things had been his accessories. He had been used to -them. They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a matter of -course. To see them was not so much a discovery as it was a return to -what he had been accustomed to. He was thinking of this, with an inward -grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when Honey went back to the -topic of the night before. - -"The reason I said Boston is because they've got that great big college -there. If I'm to bring yer up, I'll have to send yer to college." - -The opening was obvious. "But, Honey, you don't have to bring me up." - -"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like -you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and -I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o' -sendin' yer to college, mind that now." - -There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go -to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one -means he must go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some -sort, he might be obliged to depend on him. - -The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue -borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the -neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner." - -Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning -the houses opposite. - -"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the -facade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps, -and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live." - -Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He -listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage -had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was -wheeled away by the nurse. - -"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was -standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. -Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to -see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money. -We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the -Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at -the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else." - -They went into the Park by the same little opening through which -the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective -reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash -had taken, almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. -Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped -elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a -clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in -its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if -he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had -stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby -beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he -was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the -baby, which remained a mystery. - -"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That -one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had -a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums -is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and -the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's -shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be -'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me -not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if -you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your -age." - -Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had read -_Juliet Allingham's Sin_, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because -his name was Harry, and mine's Tom." - -"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim." - -"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do -you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...." - -The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there -was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom -knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman -have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion? -A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the -roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself. -He sprang to his feet. - -"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find -them." - -To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his mother and stolen -babies as they went off to the Zoo. - - - - -XXII - - -The move to Boston was made during August, so that they might be -settled in time for the opening of the schools. The flitting was with -the ease of the obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel -changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore became again Tom -Whitelaw. There were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of -both. - -"Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of Lemuel, and if any -old sneeper was to look me up.... Not but what Lemuel isn't a more -aristocraticker name than George; but there's times when somethink what -no one won't notice'll suit you best. So I'll be George Honeybun, a pal -o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed." - -The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and -prudential. In the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was -something to the boy to know that he had had a father. His father had -been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had been a Whitelaw; there was a whole -line of Whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be -known by names. A slim link with a past, at least it was a link. The -Quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. -It signified the ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he had -sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to -him. - -It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. In the -unlikely event of the State of New York busying itself with the fate -of its former ward, the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A -well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending -school in Boston according to the law, would have the best chance of -going unmolested. - -They found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, on that northern -slope of Beacon Hill which within living memory has more than once -changed hands with the silent advance and recession of a tide coming -in and going out. There are still old people who can remember when -some of the worthiest of the sons of the Puritans had their windows, -in these steep and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the -setting sun. Then, with an almost ghostly furtiveness, they retired as -the negro came and routed them. The negro seemed fixed in possession -when the Hebrew stole on silently, and routed him. At the time when -George Honeybun and Tom Whitelaw came looking for a home, the ancient -inhabitant of the land was beginning to creep back again, and the -Hebrew taking flight. In a red-brick house of forbidding expression in -Grove Street they found a room with two beds. - -Within a few days Honey, whose strength was his skill, was working as -a stevedore on the Charlestown docks. Tom was picking up small jobs -about the markets. By September he had passed his examinations and had -entered the Latin School. A new life had begun. From the old life no -pursuit or interference ever followed them. - -The boy shot up. In the course of a year he had grown out of most of -his clothes. To the best of his modest ability, Honey was generous -with new ones. He was generous with everything. That Tom should lack -nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed to have none but the -most elemental. Of his "nice times" in New York nothing had followed -him to Boston but a love of spirits and tobacco. Of the two, the -spirits went completely. When Tom's needs were pressing the supply of -tobacco diminished till it sometimes disappeared. If on Sundays he -could venture over the hill, to listen to the band on the Common, or -stroll with the boy in the Public Gardens, it was because the Sunday -suit, bought in the days when he had no one to provide for but himself, -was sponged and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous -devotion. The motive of so much self-denial puzzled Tom, since, so far -as he could judge, it was not affection. - -He was old enough now to perceive that affection had inspired most -of his good fortune. People were disposed to like him for himself. -There was rarely a teacher who did not approve of him. By the market -men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars on Saturdays and in -vacations, he was always welcomed heartily. In school he never failed -to hold his own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, or -something, was a stevedore, after which he was ignored. Girls regarded -him with a hostile interest, while toward them he had no sentiments -of any kind. He could go through a street and scarcely notice that -there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn't leave him alone. They -bothered him with overtures of friendship to which he did not respond, -or tossed their heads at him, or called him names. But in general the -principle was established that he could be liked. - -But Honey was an enigma. Love was apparently not the driving power -urging him to these unexpected fulfillments. If it was, it had none -of the harmless dog-and-puppy ways which Tom had grown accustomed to. -Honey never pawed him, as the masters often pawed the boys, and the -boys pawed one another. He never threw an arm across his shoulder, -or called him by a more endearing name than Kiddy. Apart from an -eagle-eyed solicitude, he never manifested tenderness, nor asked for -it. That Tom would ever owe him anything he didn't so much as hint -at. "Dooty o' next o' kin" was the blanket explanation with which he -covered everything. - -"But you're not my next of kin," Tom, to whom schooling had revealed -the meaning of the term, was bold enough to object. "Next of kin means -that you'd be my nearest blood relation; and we're not relations at -all." - -Honey was undisturbed in his Olympian detachment. "Do yer suppose I -dunno that? But I believes as Gord sees we're kin lots o' times when -men don't take no notice. You was give to me. You was put into my 'ands -to bring up. And up I'm goin' to bring yer, if it breaks me." - -It was a close Sunday evening in September, the last of the summer -holidays. Tom would celebrate next day by entering on a higher grade -at school. He had had new boots and clothes. For the first time he -was worried by the source of this beneficence. As night closed down -they sat for a breath of fresh air on the steps of the house in Grove -Street. Grove Street held the reeking smell of cooking, garbage, and -children, which only a strong wind ever blows away from the crowded -quarters of the cities, and there had been no strong wind for a week. -Used to that, they didn't mind it. They didn't mind the screeching -chatter or the raucous laughter that rose from doorways all up and down -the hill, nor the yelling of the youngsters playing in the roadway. -Somewhere round a corner a group of Salvationists, supported by a -blurting cornet, sang with much gusto: - - Oh, how I love Jesus! - Oh, how I love Jesus! - Oh, how I love Jesus! - Because He first loved me. - -They didn't mind it when Mrs. Danker, their landlady, a wiry New -England woman, sitting in the dark of the hall behind them, joined in, -in her cracked voice, with the Salvationists, nor when Mrs. Gribbens, -a stout old party who picked up a living scrubbing railway cars, -joined in with Mrs. Danker. From neighboring steps mothers called out -to their children in Yiddish, and the children answered in strident -American. But to Honey and Tom all this was the friendly give-and-take -of promiscuity which they would have missed had it not been there. - -Each was so concentrated on his own ruling purpose that nothing -external was of moment. Honey was to give, and Tom was to receive, an -education. That the recipient's heart should be fixed on it, Tom found -natural enough; but that the giver's should be equally intense seemed -to have nothing to account for it. - -He glanced at the quiet figure, upright and muscular, his hands on his -knees, like a stone Pharaoh on the Nile. - -"Why don't you smoke?" - -"I don't want to drop no ashes on this 'ere suit." - -"Have you got any tobacco?" - -"I didn't think to lay in none when I come 'ome yesterday." - -"Is that because there was so much to be spent on me?" - -"Oh, I dunno about that." - -Tom gathered all his ambitions together and offered them up. "Well, -I guess this can be the last year. After I've got through it I'll be -ready to go to work." - -"And not go to college!" The tone was one of consternation. "Lord love -yer, Kiddy, what's bitin' yer now?" - -"It's biting me that you've got to work so hard." - -"If it don't bite me none, why not let it go at that?" - -"Because I don't seem able to. I've taken so much from you." - -"Well, I've had it to 'and out, ain't I?" - -"But I don't see why you do it." - -"A young boy like you don't have to see. There's lots o' things I -didn't understand at your age." - -"You don't seem specially--" he sought for words less direct, but -without finding them--"you don't seem--specially fond of me." - -"I never was one to be fond o' people, except it was a dog. Always had -a 'ankerin' for a dog; but a free life don't let yer keep one. A dog'll -never go back on yer." - -"Well, do you think I would?" - -"I don't think nothink about it, Kid. When the time comes that you can -do without me...." - -"That time'll never come, Honey, after all you've done for me." - -"I don't want yer to feel yerself bound by that." - -"I don't feel myself bound by it; but--dash it all, Honey!--whatever -you feel or don't feel about me, I'm fond of _you_." - -He was still imperturbable. "Well, Kid, you wouldn't be the first, not -by a lot." - -"But if I can never be anything _for_ you, or _do_ anything for you...." - -"There's one thing you could do." - -"What is it? I don't care how hard it is." - -"Well, when you're one o' them big lawyers, or bankers, or -somethink--drorin' yer fifty dollars a week--you can have a shy at this -'ere lor o' proputty. It don't seem right to me that some people should -have all the beef to chaw, and others not so much as the bones; but I -can't git the 'ang of it. If nothink don't belong to nobody, then what -about all your dough in the New York savin's bank, and mine in the one -in Brooklyn? We're keepin' it agin yer goin' to college, ain't we? And -don't that belong to us? Yes, by George, it do! So there you are. But -if when yer gits yer larnin' yer can steddy it out...." - - - - -XXIII - - -The boy was adolescent, sentimental, and lonely. Mere human -companionship, such as that which Honey gave him, was no longer enough -for him. He was seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He began to wish -he had some one with whom to share his unformulated hopes, his crude -and burning opinions. He looked at fellows who were friends going two -and two, pouring out their foolish young hearts to each other, and -envied them. The lads of his own age liked him well enough. Now and -then one of them would approach him with shy or awkward signals, making -for closer acquaintance; but when they learned that he lived in Grove -Street with a stevedore they drew away. None of them ever transcended -the law of caste, to stand by him in spite of his humble conditions. -Boys whose families were down wanted nothing to hamper them in climbing -up. Boys whose families were up wanted nothing that might loosen their -position and pull them down. The sense of social insecurity which was -the atmosphere of homes reacted on well-meaning striplings of fifteen, -sixteen, and seventeen, turning them into snobs and cads before they -had outgrown callowness. - -But during the winter of the year in which he became sixteen there were -two, you might have said three, who broke in upon this solitude. - -In walking to the Latin School from Grove Street he was in the habit of -going through Louisburg Square. If you know Boston you know Louisburg -Square as that quaint red-brick rectangle, like many in the more -Georgian parts of London, which commemorates the gallant dash of the -New England colonists on the French fortress of Louisburg in Cape -Breton. It is the heart of that conservative old Boston, which is now -shrinking in size and importance before the onset of the foreigner till -it has become like a small beleaguered citadel. Here the descendants -of the Puritans barricade themselves behind their financial walls, as -their ancestors within their stockades, while their city is handed -over to the Irishman and the Italian as an undefended town. The Boston -of tradition is a Boston of tradition only. Like the survivors of -Noah's deluge clinging to the top of a rock, they to whom the Boston -of tradition was bequeathed are driven back on Beacon Hill as a final -refuge from the billows rising round them. A high-bred, cultivated, -sympathetic people, they have so given away their heritage as to be -but a negligible factor in the State, in the country, of which their -fathers and grandfathers may be said once to have kept the conscience. - -But to Tom Whitelaw Louisburg Square meant only the dignified fronts -and portals behind which lived the rich people who had no point of -contact with himself. They couldn't have ignored him more completely -than he ignored them. He thought of them as little as the lion cub in a -circus parade thinks of the people of the city through which he passes -in processions. Then, one day, one of these strangers spoke to him. - -It was a youth of about his own age. More than once, as Tom went by, -and the stout boy stood on the sidewalk in front of his own house, they -had looked each other up and down with unabashed mutual appraisal. -Tom saw a lad too short for his width, and unhealthily flabby. He had -puffy hands, and puffy cheeks, with eyes seeming smaller than they were -because the puffy eyelids covered them. The mouth had those appealing -curves comically troubled in repose, but fulfilling their purpose in -giggling. On the first occasion when Tom passed by the lips were set -to the serious task of inspection. They said nothing; they betrayed -nothing. Tom himself thought nothing, except that the boy was fat. - -They had looked at each other some two or three times a week, for -perhaps a month, when one day the fat boy said, "Hullo!" Tom also said, -"Hullo!" continuing on his way. A day or two later they repeated these -salutations, though neither forsook his attitude of reserve. The fat -boy did this first, speaking when they had hullo'ed each other for the -third or fourth time. His voice was high and girlish, and yet with a -male crack in it. - -"What school do you go to?" - -Tom stopped. "I go to the Latin School. What school do you go to?" - -"I go to Doolittle and Pray's." - -"That's the big private school in Marlborough Street, isn't it?" - -The fat boy made the inarticulate grunt which with most Americans -means "Yes." "I was put down for Groton, only mother wouldn't let me -leave home. I'm going to Harvard." - -"I'm going to Harvard, too. What class do you expect to be in?" - -The fat boy replied that he expected to be in the class of -nineteen-nineteen. - -Tom said he expected to be in that class himself. - -"Now I've got to beat it to the Latin School. So long!" - -"So long!" - -Tom carried to his school in the Fenway an unusual feeling of elation. -With friendly intent someone had approached him from the world outside. -It was not the first time it had ever happened, but it was the first -time it had ever happened in just this way. He could see already that -the fat boy was not one of those he would have chosen for a friend; but -he was so lonely that he welcomed anyone. Moreover, he divined that -the fat boy was lonely, too. Boys of that type, the Miss Nancy and -the mother's darling type, were often consumed by loneliness, and no -one ever pitied them. Few went to their aid when other boys "picked" -on them, but of those few Tom Whitelaw was always one. He found them, -once you had accepted their mannerisms, as well worth knowing as other -boys, while they spared him a scrap of admiration. It was possible that -in this fat boy he might find the long-sought fellow who would not -"turn him down" on discovering that he lived in Grove Street. Being -turned down in this way had made him sick at heart so often that he -had decided never any more to make or trust advances. In suffering -temptation again he assured himself that it would be for the last time -in his life. - -On returning from school he looked for the boy in Louisburg Square, but -he was not there. A few hundred yards farther, however, he came in for -another adventure. - -The January morning had been mild, with melting snow. By midday the -wind had shifted to the north, with a falling thermometer. By late -afternoon the streets were coated with a glaze of ice. Tom could -swagger down the slope of Grove Street easily enough in the security of -rubber soles. - -But not so a girl, whose slippers and high French heels made her -helpless on the steep glare. Having ventured over the brow of the hill, -she found herself held. A step into the air would have been as easy as -another on this slippery descent. The best she could do was to sway in -the keen wind, keeping her balance with the grace of one of the blue -spruces which used to be blown about at Bere. Her outstretched arms -waved up and down, as a blue spruce waves its branches. Coming abreast -of her, Tom found her laughing to herself, but on seeing him she -laughed frankly and aloud. - -"Oh, catch me! I'm going to tumble! Ow-w-w!" - -Tom snatched at one hand, while she caught him by the shoulder with the -other. - -"Saved! Wasn't it lucky that you came along? You're the Whitelaw boy, -aren't you?" - -Tom admitted that he was, though his new sensations, with this -exquisite creature clinging to him like a drowning man to his rescuer, -choked the monosyllable in his throat. Though he had often in a -scrimmage protected little boys, he had never before been thrown into -this comic, laughing tussle with a girl. It had the excuse for itself -that she couldn't stand unless he held her up. He held her firmly, -looking into her dancing eyes with his first emotional consciousness of -a girl's prettiness. - -His arm supporting her, she ventured on a step. "I'm Maisie Danker," -she explained, while taking it. "I see you going in and out the house." - -"I've never seen you." - -"Perhaps you've seen me and not noticed me." - -"I couldn't," he declared, with vehemence. "I've never seen you before -in my life. If I had...." - -Her high heels so nearly slipped from under her that they were -compelled to hold each other as if in an embrace. "If you had--what?" - -He knew what, but the words in which to say it needed a higher mode of -utterance. The red lips, the glowing cheeks, had the vitality of the -lively eyes. A red tam-o'-shanter, a red knitted thing like a heavenly -translation of his own earthly sweater, were bewitchingly diabolic when -worn with a black skirt, black stockings, and black shoes. - -As he did not respond to her challenge, she went on with her -self-introduction. "I guess you haven't seen me, because I only arrived -three days ago. I'm Mrs. Danker's niece. Live in Nashua. Worked in the -woolen mills there. Now I've come to visit my aunt for the winter." - -For the sake of hearing her speak, he asked if she was going to work in -Boston. - -"I don't know. Maybe I'll take singing lessons. Got a swell voice." - -If again he was dumb it was because of the failure of his faculties. -Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the give-and-take of -a badinage in which the surface meanings were the less important. -Foolish and helpless, unable to show his manly superiority except in -the strength with which he held her up, he got a lesson in the new art -there and then. - -"Ever dance?" - -"I'm never asked." - -"Oh, it's you that ought to do the asking." - -"I mean that I'm never asked where there's dancing going on." - -"Gee, you don't have to be. You just find a girl--and go." - -"But I don't know how to dance." - -"I'll teach you." - -Slipping and sliding, with cries of alarm on her part, and stalwart -assurances on his, they approached their own doorstep. - -"Ow-w-w! Hold me! I'm going!" - -"No you're not--not while I've got you." - -"But I don't want to grab you so hard." - -"That's all right. I can stand it." - -"But I can't. I'm not used to it." - -"Then it's a very good time to begin." - -"What's the use of beginning if there's nothing to go on with?" - -"How do you know there won't be?" - -"Well, what can there be?" - -Had Miss Danker always waited for answers to her questions Tom would -have been more nonplussed than he was. But the game which he didn't -know at all she knew thoroughly, according to her lights. She never -left him at a loss for more than a few seconds at a time. Her method -being that of touch-and-go, reserving to herself the right of coming -back again, she carried his education one step farther still. - -"Don't you ever go to the movies?" - -He replied that he had gone once or twice with Honey, but not often. -To be on the same breezy level as herself, he added in explanation: -"Haven't got the dough." - -"But the movies don't take dough, not hardly any." - -"They take more than I've got." - -"More than you've got? Gee! Then you can't have anything at all." - -It was not so much a taunt as it was a statement, and yet it was a -statement with a little taunt in it. For once driven to bravado, he -gave away a secret. - -"Well, I haven't--except what's in the bank." - -"Oh, you've got money in the bank, have you?" - -"Sure! But I'm keeping it to go to college." - -She stared at him as if he had been a duck-billed rabbit, or some -variety of fauna hitherto unknown. - -"Gee! I should think a fellow who had money in the bank would want to -blow some of it on having a good time--a fellow with any jazz." - -Once more she spared him discomfiture. Slipping into the hallway, she -said over her shoulder as he followed her: "How old are you?" - -"Sixteen." - -She flashed round at him. "Sixteen! Gee! I thought you was my age if -you was a day. Honest I did. I'm eighteen, an old lady compared with -you." - -"Oh, but boys are always older than girls, for their age." - -"You are, sure. Anyways, you saved me on that slippery hill, and I -think you ought to have a kiss for it. Come, baby, kiss your poor old -ma." - -Though the hallway was dark, the kiss had to be given and taken -furtively. Whatever it was to Maisie Danker, to Tom Whitelaw it was -the entrance to a higher and an increased life. The pressure of her -lips on his sent through his frame a dynamic glow he had not supposed -to be among nature's possibilities. Moreover, it threw light on that -experience as to which he had mused ever since he had first talked -confidentially to Bertie Tollivant. Though instinct had taught him -something in the intervening years, he had up to this minute gained -nothing in the way of practical discovery. Now an horizon that had been -dark was lifting to disclose a wonderland. - -With her light laugh Maisie had run into her aunt's apartment, and -shut the door. Tom began heavily, pensively, to climb the stairs. But -halfway up he paused to mark off another stage in his perceptions. - -"So that's what it's like! That's why they all think so much about -it--and try to hush it up!" - - - - -XXIV - - -He himself found something to hush up when he recounted the incident -to Honey in the evening. He told of meeting Mrs. Danker's niece on the -ice-coated hill, and helping her down to the door. Of his sensations as -she clung to him he said nothing. He said nothing of the kiss in the -dark hallway. During the rest of the evening, and after he had gone to -bed, he wondered why. They all hushed these things up, and he did as -the rest; but what was the basic reason? - -As his first emotional encounter the subject was sufficiently in his -mind next day to make him duller than usual at school. On his way home -from school it so preoccupied his thought that he forgot to look for -the fat boy. It was the fat boy who first saw him, hailing him as he -approached. There was already between them that acceptance of each -other which is the first stage of friendship. - -"What's your name?" - -"Tom Whitelaw. What's yours?" - -"Guy Ansley. How old are you?" - -"Sixteen. How old are you?" - -"I'm sixteen, too. What's your father do?" - -"I haven't got a father. I live with--" it was difficult to -explain--"with a man who kind o' takes care of me." - -"A guardian?" - -"Something like that. What does your father do?" - -"He's a corporation lawyer. Makes big money, too." As Tom began to move -along the fat boy went with him, keeping step. "What's your guardian -do?" - -"He does anything that'll give him a job. Mostly he's a stevedore." - -"What's a stevedore? Sounds as if it had something to do with -bull-fighting." - -"It's a longshoreman. He loads and unloads ships." - -They stopped at the corner of Pinckney Street The puffy countenance -fell. Tom could follow his companion's progression of bewilderments. - -"Where do you live?" - -"I live in Grove Street." - -It was the minute of suspense. All had been confessed. The countenance -that had fallen went absolutely blank. To himself the tall, proud, -sensitive lad was saying that his future life was staked on the -response the fat boy chose to make. If he showed signs of wriggling -out of an embarrassing situation he, Tom Whitelaw, would range himself -forever with the enemies of the rich. - -The fat boy spoke at last. - -"So you're that kind of fellow." - -"Yes, I'm that kind of fellow." - -This was mere marking time. The decision was still to come. It came -with an air on the fat boy's part of heroic resolution. - -"Well, I don't care." - -Tom breathed again, breathed with bravado. "Neither do I." - -In the stress of so much big-heartedness the girlish voice became a -croak. "I know guys who think that if another guy isn't rich they -must treat him as so much dirt. I'm not that sort. I'm democratic. I -wouldn't turn down a fellow just because he lived in Grove Street. If -I liked him I'd stick to him. I'm not snobbish. How do you know you -couldn't give him a peg up, and he'd be grateful to you all his life?" - -Thinking this over afterward, Tom found it hard to disengage the bitter -from the sweet; but he had not much chance to think it over. Any spare -minute he found pre-empted by Maisie Danker, who seemed to camp in -the dark hallway. If she was not there when he entered, she appeared -before he could go upstairs. The ice having melted in the street, she -had other needs of protection, an errand to do in the crowded region -of Bowdoin Square, a shop to visit across the Common which was so wide -and lonesome in winter twilights, a dance hall to locate in case they -ever made up their minds to visit it. She was always timid, clinging, -laughing, adorable. The embodiment of gayety, she made him gay, which -was again a new sensation. Never before had he felt young as he felt -young with her. The minutes they spent swamped in the throngs of the -lighted streets, between five and seven on a winter's afternoon, were -his first minutes of escape from a world of care. Care had been his -companion since he could remember anything; and now his companion was -this exquisite thing, all lightsomeness and joy. - -He was later than usual in returning from school one afternoon, because -a teacher had given him a commission to carry out which took some two -hours of his time. As it had sent him toward the south end of the -city, he had the Common to traverse on his way home. Snow had recently -fallen; but through the main avenues under the trees the paths had been -cleared. On the Frog Pond the drifts had been swept up, so that there -could be a little skating. As Tom passed by he could hear the scraping -and grinding of skates, and the hoarse shouts of hobbledehoys. At any -other time he would have stopped, either to look on peacefully, or to -take part in some bit of free-for-all, rough-and-tumble skylarking in -the snow. But Maisie might be waiting. She might even have given up -waiting, which would take all his pleasure from the afternoon. - -To reach home more quickly he followed a short cut, scarcely shoveled -out, on the slope of the Common below Beacon Hill. Here there were no -foot passengers but himself. Neither, for some little distance, were -there any trees. There was only the white shroud of the snow, freezing -to a crust. A misty moon drifted through a tempest of scudding clouds, -while wherever in the offing there was a group of elms the electric -lights danced through their tossing branches as if they were wind-blown -lanterns. - -In spite of his hurry, the boy came to a standstill. It was a minute -at which to fancy himself lost in Moosonee or Labrador. His _voyageur_ -guides had failed him; his dog team had run away; his pemmican--he -supposed it would be pemmican--had given out. He was homeless, -starving, abandoned, alone but for the polar bears. - -It was not a polar bear that he saw come floundering down the hillside, -but it might have been a black one. It was certainly black; its nature -was certainly animal. It rolled and tumbled and panted and grunted, and -now and then it moaned. For a few minutes it remained stationary, with -internal undulations; then it scrambled a few paces, as an elephant -might scramble whose feet had been sawn off. A dying mammoth would also -have emitted just these raucous groans. - -Suddenly it squealed. The squeal was like that of a pig when the knife -is thrust into its throat. It was girlish, piercing, and yet had a -masculine shriek in it. Tom Whitelaw knew what was happening. It had -happened to himself so often in the days when he was different from -other boys that his fists seemed to clench and his feet to spring -before his mind had given the command. In clearing the fifty odd yards -of snow between him and the wallowing monster, he chose a form of words -which young hooligans would understand as those of authority. - -"What in hell are yez doin' to that kid? Are yez puttin' a knife in -him? Leave him be, or I'll knock the brains out of every one of yez." - -He was in among them, laying about him before they knew what had landed -in their midst. They were not brutal youngsters; they were only jocose -in the manner of their kind. Having spied the fat boy coming down to -watch the skating, it was as natural for them to jump on him as it -would be for a pack of dogs who chanced to see a sloth. With the -courage of the mob, and also with its rapidity of thought-transfer, -they had closed in silently and rushed him. He was on his back in -a second. In a second they were clambering all over him. When he -staggered to his feet they let him run, only to catch him and pull him -down again. So staggering, so running, so coming down like a lump of -jelly in the snow, he had reached the top of the hill, his tormentors -hanging to him as if their teeth were in his flesh, at the minute when -Tom first perceived the black mass. - -The fat boy had not lacked courage. He had fought. That is, he had -kicked and bitten and scratched, with the fury of vicious helplessness. -He had not cried for mercy. He had not cried out at all. He had -struggled for breath; he had nearly strangled; but his pantings and -gruntings were only for breath just as were theirs. Strong in spite of -his unwieldiness, he was not without the moral spunk which can perish -at a pinch, but will not give in. - -None of them had struck him. That would have been thought cowardly. -They had only plastered him with snow, in his mouth, in his ears, in -his eyes, and down below his collar. This he could have suffered, still -without a plea, had not their play become fiercer. They began to tear -open his clothing, to wrench it off the buttons. They stuffed snow -inside his waistcoat, inside his shirt, inside his trousers. He was -naked to the cold. And yet it was not the cold that drew from him that -piglike squeal; it was the indignity. He was Guy Ansley, a rich man's -son, in his native sanctified old Boston a young lordling; but these -muckers had mauled the last rag of honor out of him. - -They were good-natured little demons, with no more notion of his -tragedy than if he had been a snowman. As soon as the strapping young -giant had leaped in among them, they ran off with screams of laughter. -Most of them were tired of the fun in any case; a few lingered at a -distance to "call names," but even they soon disappeared. Tom could -only help the lumbering body to its feet. - -Cleaning him of snow was more difficult, and since it was melting next -his skin, it had to be done at once. The shirt and underclothing being -wet, and a keen wind blowing, his teeth were soon chattering. Even when -buttoned tightly in his outer clothes he was dank and clammy within. -It helped him a little that Tom should strip off his own overcoat and -exchange with him; but nothing could really warm him till he got into -his own bed. - -They would have run all of the short distance to Louisburg Square only -that young Ansley was not a runner at any time, and at this time was -exhausted. Tom could only drag him along as a dead weight. Except for -the brief observations necessary to what they had to do, they hardly -spoke a word. Speech was nearly impossible. The only aim of importance -was covering the ground. - -The old manservant who admitted them in Louisburg Square went dumb with -dismay. Having brought his charge into the hall, Tom was obliged to -take the lead. - -"He's been tumbling in the snow. He's got wet. He may have caught a -chill. Better call his mother." - -The fat boy spoke. "Mother's in New York. So's father. Here, Pilcher, -help me up to my room." - -As the two went up the stairs, Tom was left standing in the hall. A -voice at the head of the stairs arrested his attention because it was -a girl's. Since knowing Maisie Danker, all girls' voices had begun -to interest him. This voice was clear, silvery, peremptory, a little -sharp, like the note of a crystal bell. Pilcher explained something, -whereupon the owner of the voice ran down. On the red carpet of the -stairs, with red-damasked paper as a background, her white figure was -spiritlike beneath a dim oriental hall light. - -"I'm Hildred Ansley," she said, with a cool air of self-possession. "I -see my brother's had an accident. Pilcher is putting him to bed. I'm -sure we're very much obliged to you." - -She was only a child, perhaps fourteen, but a competent child, who -knew what to say. Not pretty, as Maisie was, she had presence and -personality. In this she was helped by her height, since she was -tall, and would be taller, and more by her intelligence. It was the -first time he had ever had occasion to observe that some faces were -intelligent, though it was not quite easy to say why. "Little Miss -Ansley knows what's what," he commented silently, but aloud he said -that if he were in her place he would send for a doctor. Though her -brother had had no bones broken, he might easily have caught a bad cold. - -"Thank you! I'll do it at once." - -She made her way to a table, somewhat belittered with caps and gloves, -behind the stairs, at the back of the hall. Taking up the receiver, she -called a number, politely and yet with a ring of command. While she was -speaking he noticed his surroundings. - -If to him they seemed baronial it was because his experience had been -cramped. Louisburg Square is not baronial; it is only dignified. For -the early nineteenth century its houses were spacious; for the early -twentieth they are a little narrow, a little steep, a little lacking -in imaginative outlet. But to Tom Whitelaw, with memories that went -back to the tenements of New York, to whom the homes of the Tollivants -and the Quidmores had meant reasonable comfort, who found the sharing -of one room with George Honeybun endurable, these walls with their red -paper, these stairs with their red carpet, this lofty gloom, this sense -of wealth, were all that he dreamed of as palatial. - -When Miss Ansley returned from the telephone, he asked if he might -have his overcoat. Her brother had worn it upstairs on going to his -room. "That's his," he explained, pointing to the soggy Burberry he had -thrown down on a carved settle. - -"Oh, certainly! I'll run up and get it. I won't ask you to go upstairs -to the drawing-room; but if you don't mind taking a seat in here...." - -Throwing open the door of the dining room, which was on the ground -floor, she switched on the light. Tom entered and stood still. So this -was the sort of place in which rich people took their meals! - -It was a glow of rich gleaming lights, lights from mahogany, lights -from silver, lights from porcelain. In the center of the table lay -a round piece of lace, on which stood a silver dish with nothing in -it. He knew without being told, though he had never thought of it -before, that it needed nothing in it. There were things so beautiful -as to fulfil their purpose merely in being beautiful. From above a -black-marble mantelpiece a man looked down at him with jovial eyes, a -man in a high collar and huge black neckerchief, who might have been -the grandfather or great-grandfather of Guy and Hildred Ansley. He had -the fat good humor of the one and the bright intelligence of the other, -the source in his genial self of types so widely different. - -Young Miss Ansley tripped in with the coat across her arm. "I'm sure -my father and mother will want to thank you when they come back. Guy's -been very naughty. He's always forbidden to leave the Square when he -goes out of doors. He wouldn't have done it if papa and mamma hadn't -been away. I can't make him mind _me_. But you must come back when -everybody's here, so that you can be thanked properly. I suppose you -live somewhere near us?" - -Tom found it easiest to answer indirectly. "Your brother knows -everything about me. I've seen him once or twice in the Square, and -I've told him who I am." - -"That'll be very nice." - -She held out her hand, and he accepted his dismissal. But before having -closed the door behind him, he turned round to her as she stood under -the oriental lamp. - -"I hope your brother will soon be all right again. I think they ought -to give him a hot drink. He's--he's got big stuff in him when you come -to find it out. He'll make his way." - -The transformation in her was electric. She ceased to be starched and -competent, with a manner that put a thousand miles between him and her. -The intelligence he had already noted in her face was aflame with a -radiance beyond beauty. - -"Oh, I'm so glad you can say that! No one outside the family has ever -said it before. He's a _lamb_!--and hardly anybody knows it." - -She held out her hand again. As he took it he saw that her eyes, which -he thought must be dark, were shining with a mist of tears. - -Going down the hill he repeated the two names: Maisie Danker! Hildred -Ansley! They called up concepts so different that it was hard to think -them of a common flesh. Though Maisie Danker was a woman and Hildred -Ansley but a child, there were points at which you could compare -them. In the comparison the advantages lay so richly with the girl -in Louisburg Square that he fell back on the fact, stressing it with -emphasis, that Maisie was the prettier. "After all," he reflected, with -comfort in the judgment, "that's all that matters--to a man." - - - - -XXV - - -A few days after his rescue of Guy Ansley from the snow Tom Whitelaw -found himself addressed by that young gentleman's sister, aged -fourteen. She had plainly been watching for him as he went through -Louisburg Square on his way from school. He had almost passed the -Ansley steps before the tall, slight girl ran down them. - -"Oh, Mr. Whitelaw!" - -As it was the first time he had ever been honored with this prefix, he -felt shocked and slightly foolish. - -"Yes, Miss Ansley?" - -A little breathless, she was, as he had noticed during their previous -meeting, oddly grown up for her age, as one who takes responsibilities -because there is no one else to bear them. She had the manner and -selection of words of a woman of thirty. - -"I hope you won't mind my waylaying you like this, but my brother would -so much like to see you. You've been so awfully kind that I hope you'll -come up. He's in bed, you know." - -"When does he want me to come?" - -"Well, now, if it isn't troubling you too much. You see, my father and -mother are coming home to-night, and he'd like to have a word with you -before then. He won't keep you more than a few minutes." - -What Tom obscurely felt as an honor to himself she put as a favor he -was doing them. It was an honor in that it admitted him a little -farther into privacies which to him seemed tapestried with privilege -and tradition. His one brief glimpse of their way of living had not -made him discontented; it had only appealed to his faculty for awe. - -Awe was what he was aware of in following his young guide up the two -red staircases to the room where the fat boy lay in bed. It was a -mother's-darling's room, amusingly out of keeping with the pudgy, -fleshy being whom it housed. Flowered paper on the walls, flowered -hangings at the windows, flowered cretonnes on thickly upholstered -armchairs, flowered silk on the duvet, garlands of flowers on the -headboard and footboard of the virginal white bedstead, made the piggy -eyes and piggy cheeks, bolstered up by pillows of which some were -trimmed with lace, the more funnily grotesque. Tom Whitelaw saw neither -the fun nor the grotesqueness. All he could take in was the fact that -beauty could gild the lily of this luxury. He knew nothing of beauty in -his own denuded life. The room with two beds which he still shared with -Honey at Mrs. Danker's was not so much a sanctuary as a lair. - -The fat boy's giggles were those of welcome, and also those of -embarrassment. - -"After the scrap the other night got sick. Bronchitis. Sit down." - -Tom looked round to see what Miss Ansley was doing, but slipping away, -she shut the door behind her. He sank into the flowered armchair -nearest to the bed. The cracked girlish voice, which now had a wheeze -in it, went on. - -"They've wired for dad and mother, and they're coming home to-night. -Thought that before they got here I'd put you wise to something I want -you to do." - -Waiting for more, Tom sat silent, while the poor piggy face screwed -itself up as if it meant to cry. - -"Dad and mother think that because I'm so fat I'm not a sport. But -they're dead wrong, see? I _am_ a sport; only--only--" he was almost -bursting into tears--"only the damn fat won't let me get it out, see?" - -"Yes, I see. I now you're a sport all right, old chap. Of course!" - -"Well, then, don't let them think the other thing, if they were to ask -you." - -"Ask me what?" - -"Ask you what the row was about the other afternoon. If they do that -tell 'em we were only playing nigger-in-the-henhouse, or any other snow -game. Don't say I was knocked down by a lot of kids. Make 'em think I -was having the devil's own good time." - -Tom Whitelaw knew this kind of humiliation. If he had not been through -Guy Ansley's special phase of it he had been through others. - -"I'll tell them what I saw. You and a lot of other fellows were -skylarking in the snow, and I went by and got you to knock off. As I -had to pass your door we came home together; but when I found you were -wet to the skin I advised Miss Ansley to see that you hit the hay. -That's all there was to it." - -In the version of the incident the strain of truth was sufficiently -clear to allow the fat boy to approve of it. He didn't want to tell a -lie, or to get Tom Whitelaw to tell a lie; but sport having been the -object with which he had stolen away on that winter's afternoon, it was -easy to persuade himself that he had got it. Before Tom went away Guy -Ansley understood that he would figure to his parents not as a victim -but as something of a tough. - -"Gee, I wish I was you," he grinned at Tom, who stood with his hands on -the doorknob. - -"Me!" Tom was never so astonished in his life. His eyes rolled round -the room. "How do you think I live?" - -"Oh, live! That's nothing. What I'd like to do is to rough it. If -they'd let me do that I shouldn't be--I shouldn't be wrapped up in fat -like a mummy in--in whatever it is they're wrapped up in. _You_ can get -away with anything on looks." - -Sincere as was this tribute, it meant nothing to Tom Whitelaw, -looks being no part of his preoccupations. What, for the minute, he -was thinking about was that nobody in the world seemed to be quite -satisfied. Here he was envying Guy Ansley his down quilt and his -comfortable chairs, while Guy was envying him the rough-and-tumble of -privation. - -"I shouldn't look after him too much," he said to the young sister -whom, on coming downstairs, he found waiting at the front door. -"There's nothing wrong with him, except that he's a little stout. He's -got lots of pluck." - -Her face glowed. The glow brought out its intelligence. The -intelligence set into action a demure, mysterious charm, almost -oriental. - -"That's just what I always say, and no one ever believes me. Mother -makes a baby of him." - -"If he could only fight his own way a little more...." - -"Oh, I do hope you'll say that if they speak to you about him." - -"I will if I ever get the chance, but...." - -"Oh, you must get the chance. I'll make it. You see, you're the only -boy Guy's ever taken a fancy to who didn't treat him as a joke." - -Tom assured her that her brother was not the only fellow who had a hard -fight to put up during boyhood. He had seen them by the dozen who, -just because of some trifling oddity, or unusual taste, were teased, -worried, tormented, till school became a hell; but that didn't keep -them from turning out in the end to be the best sports among them all. -Very likely the guying did them good. He thought it might. He, Tom -Whitelaw, had been through a lot of it, and now that he was sixteen he -wasn't sorry for himself a bit. He used to be sorry for himself, but.... - -Seeing her for the second time, and in daylight, her features grew more -distinct to him. He mused on them while continuing his way homeward. To -say she was not pretty, as he had said the other night, was to use a -form of words calling for amplification. It was the first time he had -had occasion to observe that there are faces to which beauty is not -important. - -"It's the way she looks at you," was his form of summing up; and yet -for the way she looked at you he had no sufficient phraseology. - -That her eyes were long, narrow, and yellow-brown, ever so slightly -Mongolian, he could see easily enough. That her nose was short, with a -little tilt to it, was also a fact he had no difficulty in stating. As -for her coloring, it was like that of a russet apple when the brown has -a little gold in it and the red the brightness of carmine. Her hair was -saved from being ugly by running to the quaint. Straight, black--black -with a bluish gloss--it was worn not in the pigtail with which he -was most familiar, but in two big plaits curved behind the ears, and -secured he didn't know how. She reminded him of a colored picture he -had seen of a Cambodian girl, a resemblance enhanced by the dark blue -dress she wore, straight and formless down the length of her immature, -boylike figure, and marked at the waistline by a circle of gold braid. - -But all these details were subordinate to something he had no power of -defining. It was also something of which he was jealous as an injustice -to Maisie Danker. If this girl had what poor Maisie had not it was -because money gave her an advantage. It was the kind of advantage that -wasn't fair. Because it wasn't fair, he felt it a challenge to his -loyalty. - -Nevertheless, he could not accept Maisie's offhand judgments when -between five and six that afternoon he told her of the incident. - -This was at The Cherry Tree, one of those bowers of refreshment and -dancing recently opened on their own slope of Beacon Hill. Bower -was the word. What had once been the basement-kitchen and coal -cellar of a small brick dwelling had been artfully converted into a -long oval orchard of cherry trees, in paper luxuriance of foliage -and blossom. Within the boskage, and under Chinese lanterns, there -were tables; out in the open was a center oval cleared for dancing. -Somewhere out of sight a cracked fiddle and a flat piano rasped out -the tango or some shred of "rag." With the briefest intervals for -breath, this performance was continuous. The guests, who at that hour -in the afternoon numbered no more than ten or twelve, forsook their -refreshments to take the floor, or forsook the floor to return to their -refreshments, just as the impulse moved them. They were chiefly working -girls, young men at leisure because out of jobs, or sailors on shore. -Except for an occasional hoarse or screechy laugh, the decorum was -proper to solemnity. - -It was the fourth or fifth time Tom and Maisie had come to this -retreat, nominally that Tom should learn to dance, but really that they -should commune together. To him the occasions were blissful for the -reason that he had no one else in the world to commune with. To talk, -to talk eagerly, to pour out the torrent of opinions boiling within -him, meant more than that Maisie should understand him. Maisie didn't -understand him. She only laughed and joked with pretty inanity; but -she let him talk. He talked about the books he liked and didn't like, -about the advantages college men possessed over those who weren't -college men, about what he knew of the banking system, about the good -you conferred on the world and yourself when you saved your money and -invested it. In none of these subjects was she interested; but now and -then she could get a turn to talk of the movies, the new dances, and -love. That these subjects made him uneasy was not, from Maisie's point -of view, a reason for avoiding them. - -Each was concerned with the other, but beyond the other each was -concerned most of all with the mystery called Life. To live was what -they were after, to live strongly and deeply and vividly and hotly, and -to do it with the pinched means and narrow opportunities which were all -they could command. In his secret heart Tom Whitelaw knew that Maisie -Danker was not the girl out of all the world he would have sought of -his own accord, while Maisie Danker was equally aware that this boy -two years younger than herself couldn't be the generous provider she -was looking for. They were only like shipwrecked passengers thrown -together on an island. They must make the best of each other. No other -girl, hardly any other human being except Honey, had entered the social -isolation in which he was marooned, and as for her.... - -She was so cheery and game that she never referred to her home -experiences otherwise than allusively. From allusions he gathered that -she was not with her aunt, Mrs. Danker, merely for pleasure or from -pressure of affection. Her father was living; her stepmother was living -too. There was a whole step-family of little brothers and sisters. Her -father drank; her stepmother hated her; there was no room for her at -home. All her life she had been knocked about. Even when she worked in -the woolen mills she couldn't keep her wages. She had had fellows, but -none of them was ever any good. The best of them was a French Canadian -who made big money, but he wouldn't marry her unless she "turned -Catholic." "If he couldn't give up his church for me I couldn't give up -mine for him; so there it was!" There was another fellow.... But as to -him she said little. In speaking of him at all her face grew somber, -which it did rarely. Either because he had failed her, or to get her -out of his clutches, Tom was not sure which, her aunt had offered her a -home for the winter. "Gee, it makes me laff," was her own sole comment -on her miseries. - -As Tom had dropped into the habit of telling her the small happenings -of his uneventful life, he gave her, across the ice-cream sodas, an -account of what had just occurred between himself and Guy and Hildred -Ansley. - -She listened with what for her was gravity. "You've got to give some of -them society girls the cold glassy eye," she informed him, judicially. -"If you don't you'll get it yourself, perhaps when you ain't expecting -it." - -"Oh, but this is only a little girl, not more than fourteen. She just -_seems_ grown up. That's the funny part of it." - -"Not more than fourteen! Just _seems_ grown up! Why, any of that bunch -is forwarder at ten than I'd be at twenty. That's one thing I'd never -be, not if men was scarcer than blue raspberries--forward. And yet some -of them society buds'll be brassier than a knocker on a door." - -"Oh, but this little Miss Ansley isn't that sort." - -"You wouldn't know, not if she was running up and down your throat. -Any girl can get hold of a man if she makes him think she needs him bad -enough." - -"It wasn't she who needed me; it was her brother." - -"A brother'll do. A grandmother'd do. If you can't bait your hook with -a feather fly, you can take a bit of worm. But once a fella like you -begins to take a shine to one of them...." - -"Shine to one of them! Me?" - -"Well, I suppose you'll be taking a shine to _some_ girl _some_ day. -Why shouldn't you?" - -"If I was going to do that...." - -The point at which he suspended his sentence was that which piqued her -especially. Her eyes were provocative; her bright face alert. - -"Well, if you were going to do that--what of it?" - -The minute was one he was trying to evade. As clearly as if he were -fifty, he knew the folly of getting himself involved in an emotional -entanglement. Though he looked a young man, he was only a big boy. The -most serious part of his preparation for life lay just ahead of him. If -he didn't go to college.... - -And even more pressing than that consideration was the fact that in -bringing Maisie to The Cherry Tree that afternoon he had come down to -his last fifteen cents. At the beginning of their acquaintance he had -had seven dollars and a half, hoarded preciously for needs connected -with his education. Maisie had stampeded the whole treasure. To expect -a man to spend money on her was as instinctive to Maisie as it is to -a flower to expect the heavens to send rain. She knew that at each -mention of the movies or The Cherry Tree Tom squirmed in the anguish -of financial disability, and that from the very hint of love he bolted -like a colt from the bridle; but when it came to what she considered as -her due she was pitiless. - -No epic has yet been written on the woes of the young man trying, on -twenty-five dollars a week, let us say, to play up to the American -girl's taste for spending money. His self-denials, his sordid shifts, -his mortifications, his sense at times that his most unselfish efforts -have been scorned, might inspire a series of episodes as tensely -dramatic as those of Spoon River. - -Tom had had one such experience on Maisie's birthday. She had talked so -much of her birthday that a present became indispensable. To meet this -necessity the extreme of his expenditure could be no more than fifty -cents. To find for fifty cents something worthy of a lady already a -connoisseur he ransacked Boston. Somewhere he had heard that a present -might be modest so long as it was the best thing of its kind. The best -thing of its kind he discovered was a toothbrush. It was not a common -toothbrush except for the part that brushed the teeth. The handle -was of mother-of-pearl, with an inlay in red enamel. The price was -forty-five cents. - -Maisie laughed till she cried. "A toothbrush! A _tooth_brush! For a -present that's something new! Gee, how the girls'll laff when I go back -to Nashua and tell them that that's what a guy give me in Boston!" - -The humiliation of straitened means was the more galling to Tom -Whitelaw, first because he was a giver, and then because he knew the -value of money. With the value of money his mind was always playing, -not from miserly motives, but from those of social economy. Each time -he "blew in," as he called it, a dollar on the girl he said to himself: -"If I could have invested that dollar, it would have helped to run a -factory, and have brought me in six or seven cents a year for all the -rest of my life." He made this calculation to mark the wastage he was -strewing along his path in the wild pace he was running. - -There was something about Maisie which obliged you to play up to her. -She was that sort of girl. If you didn't play up, the mere laughter in -her eye made you feel your lack of the manly qualities. It was not her -scorn she brought into play; it was her sense of fun; but to the boy of -sixteen her sense of fun was terrible. - -It was terrible, and yet it put him on his guard. He couldn't wholly -give in to her. If she could make moves he could make them too, and -perhaps as adroitly. Her tantalizing question was ringing in his ears: -If he was going to take a shine to any girl--what of it? - -"Oh, if I was going to do that," he tossed off, "it would be to you." - -"So that you haven't taken a shine to me--yet?" - -"It depends on what you mean by a shine." - -"What do you mean by it yourself?" - -"I never have time to think." This was a happy sentiment, and a -safeguard. "It takes all I can do to remember that I've got to go to -college." - -"Damn college!" - -He was so unsophisticated that the expression startled him. He hadn't -supposed young ladies used it, not any more than they sneaked into -barns or under bridges to smoke cigarettes. - -"What's the use of damning college, when I've got to go?" - -"You haven't got to go. A great strong fella like you ought to be -earning his twenty per by this time. If you've got money in the bank, -as you say you have...." - -He trembled already for his treasure. "I haven't got it here. It's in a -savings bank in New York." - -"Oh, that's nothing! If you got it _any_wheres you can get at it with -a check. Gee, if I had a few hundreds I'd have ten in my pocket at a -time, I'll be hanged if I wouldn't. I don't believe you've got it, see. -I know a lot o' guys that loves to put that sort of fluff over on a -girl. Makes 'em feel big. But if they only knew what the girl thinks -of them...." She jumped to her feet, allowing herself a little more -vulgarity than she generally showed. "All right, old son, c'me awn! -Let's have another twist. And for Gawd's sake don't bring down that -hoof of yours till I get a chance to pull my Cinderella-slipper out of -your way." - - - - -XXVI - - -It was after he had spent the first ten dollars he drew from his fund -in New York that Tom felt the impulse to tell Honey of the way in -which he was becoming involved with Maisie Danker. The ten dollars had -melted. In signing the formalities for drawing the amount, he expected -to have enough to carry him along till spring, when Maisie's visit was -to end. He dreaded its ending, and yet it would have this element of -relief in it; he would be able to keep his money. At a pinch he could -spare ten dollars, though he couldn't spare them very well. More than -ten dollars.... - -And before he knew it the ten dollars had vanished as if into air. -Once Maisie knew what he had done her caprices multiplied. To her as -to him ten dollars to "blow in"--she used the airy expression too--was -a small fortune. It was only their instincts that were different. His -was to let it go slowly, since the spending of a penny was against the -protests of his conscience; hers to make away with it. If Tom could -"draw the juice" for a first ten, he could draw it for a second, and -for a third and a fourth after that. It was not extravagance that -whipped her on; it was joy of life. - -Tom's impulse to tell Honey was not acted on. It was not acted on -after he drew the second ten; nor after he drew the third. After he -had drawn the fourth his unhappiness became so great that he sought a -confidant. - -And yet his unhappiness was not absolute; it was rather a poisoned -bliss. Had Maisie been content with what he could afford, the winter -would have been like one in Paradise. But almost before he himself -was aware of the promptings of thrift, she vanquished them with her -ridicule. - -"There's nothing I hate so much as anything cheap. If a fella can't -give me what I like, he can keep away." - -Time and time again Tom swore he would keep away. He did keep away, for -a day, for two or three days in succession. Then she would meet him -in the dark hallway, and, twining her arms around his neck without a -word, would give him one of those kisses on the lips which thrilled him -into subjection. He would be guilty of any folly for her then, because -he couldn't help himself. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty dollars, all the -hoarded inheritance from the Martin Quidmore who was already a dim -memory, would be well thrown away if only she would kiss him once again. - -He lost the healthy diversion which might have reached him through the -Ansleys because they had taken the fat boy to Florida. Tom learned -that from little Miss Ansley a few days after the return of the father -and mother from New York. One afternoon as both were coming from their -schools they had met on their way toward Louisburg Square. Even in her -outdoor dress, she was quaintly grown-up and Cambodian. A rough brown -tweed had a little gold and a little red in it; a brown turban not -unlike a fez bore on the left a small red wing tipped with a golden -line. Maisie would have emphasized the red; she would have been vivid, -eager to be noticed. This girl didn't need that kind of advertisement. - -Seeing her before she saw him, he wondered whether she would give -him any sign of recognition. At Harfrey the girls whom he saw at the -Tollivants, and who proclaimed themselves "exclusive," always forgot -him when they met him on the street. This had hurt him. He waited in -some trepidation now, fearing to be hurt again. But when she saw him -she nodded and smiled. - -"Guy's better," she said, without greeting, "and we're all going off -to Florida to-morrow. Guy and I don't want to go a bit; but mother's -afraid of his catching cold, and father has to be in Washington, -anyhow. So we're off." - -Though he walked by her side for no more than a few yards, Tom was -touched by her friendliness. She was the first girl of that section of -the world for which he had only the term "society" who had not been -ashamed to be seen with him in a street. Little Miss Ansley even paused -for a minute at the foot of her steps while they exchanged remarks -about their schools. She went to Miss Winslow's. She liked her school. -She was sorry to be going away as it would give her such a lot of back -work to make up. She might go to Radcliffe when Guy went to Harvard, -but so far her mother was opposed to it. In these casual observations -she seemed to Tom to lose something of her air of being a woman of the -world. On his own side he lost a little of his awe of her. - -The snuffing out of this interest threw him back on the easing of -his heart by confidence. It was not confidence alone; it was also -confession. He was deceiving Honey, and to go on deceiving Honey began -to seem to him baser than dishonor. Had Honey been his father, it would -have been different. Fathers worked for their sons as a matter of -course, and almost as a matter of course expected that their sons would -play them false. There was no reason why Honey should work for him; and -since Honey did work for him, there was every reason why he who reaped -the benefit should be loyal. He was not loyal. He had even reached the -point, and he cursed himself for reaching it, at which Honey was an Old -Man of the Sea fastened on his back. - -He told himself that this was the damnedest ingratitude; and yet he -couldn't tell himself that it wasn't so. It was. There were days when -Honey's way of speaking, Honey's way of eating, the smell of Honey's -person, and the black patch on his eye, revolted him. Here he was, -a great lump of a fellow sixteen years of age, and dependent for -everything, for _everything_, on a rough dock laborer who had been a -burglar and a convict. It was preposterous. Had he jumped into this -situation he would not have borne it for a week. But he had not jumped -into it; it had grown. It had grown round him. It held him now as if -with tentacles. He couldn't break away from it. - -And yet Honey and he were bound to grow apart. It was in the nature of -the case that it should be so. Always of a texture finer than Honey's, -schooling, association, and habits of mind were working together to -refine the grain, while Honey was growing coarser. His work, Tom -reasoned, kept him not only in a rut but in a brutalizing rut. Loading -and unloading, unloading and re-loading, he had less use for his mind -than in the days of his freebooting. Then a wild ass of the desert, -he was now harnessed to a dray with no relief from hauling it. From -morning to night he hauled; from night to morning he was stupefied with -weariness. In on this stupefaction Tom found it more and more difficult -to break. He was agog with interests and ideas; for neither interests -nor ideas had Honey any room. - -Nor had he, so far as Tom could judge, any room for affection. On the -contrary, he repelled it. "Don't you go for to think that I've give up -bein' a socialist because I got a soft side. No, sir! That wouldn't be -it at all. What reely made me do it was because it didn't pay. I'd make -big money now and then; but once I'd fixed the police, the lawyers, -and nine times out o' ten the judge, I wouldn't have hardly nothink -for meself. If out o' every hundred dollars I was able to pocket -twenty-five it'd be as much as ever. This 'ere job don't pay as well to -start with; but then it haven't no expenses." - -Self-interest and a vague sense of responsibility were all he ever -admitted as a key to his benevolence. "It's along o' my bein' an -Englishman. You can't get an Englishman 'ardly ever to be satisfied -a'mindin' of his own business. Ten to one he'll do that and mind -somebody else's at the same time. A kind o' curse that's on 'em, I -often thinks. Once when I was doin' a bit--might 'a been at Sing -Sing--a guy come along to entertain us. Recited poetry at us. And I -recolleck he chewed to beat the band over a piece he called, 'The White -Man's Burden.' Well, that's what you are, Kid. You're my White Man's -Burden. I can't chuck yer, nor nothink. I just got to carry yer till -yer can git along without me; and then I'll quit. The old bunch'll be -as glad to see me back as I'll be to go. There's just one thing I want -yer to remember, Kid, that when yer've got yer eddication there won't -be nothink to bind me to you, nor--" he held himself very straight, -bringing out his words with a brutal firmness--"_nor you to me_. Yer'll -know I'll be as glad to go the one way as you'll be to go the t'other, -so there won't be no 'ard feelin' on both sides." - - * * * * * - -It was a Sunday night. Tom had taken his troubles to bed with him, -because he had nowhere else to take them. In bed you struck a truce -with life. You suspended operations, at least for a few hours. You -could sleep; you could postpone. He slept as a rule so soundly, and so -straight through the night, that, hunted as he was by care, he had once -in the twenty-four hours a refuge in which the fiendish thing couldn't -overtake him. - -It had been a trying Sunday because Maisie had tempted him to a wilder -than usual extravagance. There was enough snow on the ground for -sleighing. She had been used to sleighing in Nashua. The singing of -runners and the jingling of bells, as a sleigh slid joyously past her, -awakened her longing for the sport. By coaxing, by teasing, by crying a -little, and, worst of all, by making game of him, she had induced him -to find a place where he could hire a sleigh and take her for a ride. - -Snow having turned to rain, and rain to frost, the landscape through -which they drove was made of crystal. Every tree was as a tree of -glass, sparkling in the sun. A deep blue sky, a keen dry wind, a little -horse which enjoyed the outing as briskly as Maisie herself, made the -two hours vibrant with the ecstasy of cold. All Tom's nerves were taut -with the pleasure of the motion, of the air, of the skill, acquired -chiefly at Bere, with which he managed the spirited young nag. The -knowledge of what it was costing him he was able to thrust aside. He -would enjoy the moment, and face the reckoning afterward. When he did -face the reckoning, he found that of his fourth ten dollars he had -spent six dollars and fifty-seven cents. Only three days earlier he had -had the crisp clean bill unbroken in his hand.... - -He had been hardly able to eat his supper, and after supper the usual -two hours of study to which he gave himself on Sunday nights were as -time thrown away. Luckily, Honey's consideration left him the room -to himself. Honey was like that. If Tom had to work, Honey effaced -himself, in summer by sitting on the doorstep, in winter by going to -bed. Much of Tom's wrestling with Virgil was carried on to the tune of -Honey's snores. - -This being Sunday evening, and Honey less tired than on the days on -which he worked, he had gone to "chew the rag," as he phrased it, -with a little Jew tailor, who lived next door to Mrs. Danker. Tom was -aware that behind this the motive was not love for the Jew tailor, but -zeal that he, Tom, should be interfered with as little as possible in -his eddication. Tom's eddication was as much an obsession to Honey -as it was to Tom himself. It was an overmastering compulsion, like -that which sent Peary to find the North Pole, Scott to find the South -one, and Livingstone and Stanley to cross Africa. What he had to -gain by it had no place in his calculation. A machine wound up, and -going automatically, could not be more set on its purpose than Lemuel -Honeybun on his. - -But to-night his absenting of himself was of no help to Tom in giving -his mind to the translation from English into Latin on which he was -engaged. When he found himself rendering the expression "in the -meantime" by the words _in turpe tempore_, he pushed books and paper -away from him, with a bitter, emphatic, "Damn!" - -Though it was only nine, there was nothing for it but to go to bed. In -bed he would sleep and forget. He always did. Putting out the gas, and -pulling the bedclothes up around his ears, he mentally waved the white -flag to his carking enemy. - -But the carking enemy didn't heed the white flag; he came on just the -same. For the first time in his life Tom Whitelaw couldn't sleep. -Rolling from side to side, he groaned and swore at the refusal of -relief to come to him. He was still wide awake when about half past -ten Honey came in and re-lit the gas, surprised to see the boy already -with his face turned to the wall. Not to disturb him, Honey moved round -the room on tiptoe. - -Tom lay still, his eyes closed. He loathed this proximity, this sharing -of one room. In the two previous years he hadn't minded it. But he was -older now, almost a man, able to take care of himself. Not only was he -growing more fastidious, but the self-consciousness we know as modesty -was bringing to the over-intimate a new kind of discomfort. Long -meaning to propose two small separate rooms as not much dearer than the -larger one, he had not yet come to it, partly through unwillingness -to add anything to their expenses, and partly through fear of hurting -Honey's feelings. But to-night the lack of privacy gave the outlet of -exasperation to his less tangible discontents. - -He rolled over on his back. One gas jet spluttered in the antiquated -chandelier. Under it a small deal table was heaped with his books and -strewn with his papers. Beside it stood an old armchair stained with -the stains of many lodgers' use, the entrails of the seat protruding -horribly between the legs. Two small chairs of the kitchen type, a -wash-stand, a chest of drawers with a mirror hung above it, two or -three flimsy rugs, and the iron cots on which they slept, made a -setting for Honey, who sat beneath the gaslight, sewing a button on -his undershirt. Turned in profile toward Tom, and wearing nothing but -his drawers and socks, he bent above his work with the patience of -a concentrated mind. He was really a fine figure of a man, brawny, -hairy, spare, muscled like an athlete, a Rodin's Thinker all but the -thought, yet irritating Tom as the embodiment of this penury. - -So not from an impulse of confession, but to ease the suffering of his -nerves, Tom told something about Maisie Danker. It was only something. -He told of the friendship, of the dancing lessons, of the movies, of -the sleigh-ride that afternoon, of the forty dollars drawn from the -bank. He said nothing of their kisses, nor of the frenzy which he -thought might be love. Honey pulled his needle up through the hole, and -pushed it back again, neither asking questions nor looking up. - -"I guess we'll move," was his only comment, when the boy had finished -the halting tale. - -This quietness excited Tom the more. "What do you want to move for?" - -"Because there's dangers what the on'y thing you can do to fight 'em is -to run away." - -"Who said anything about danger? Do you suppose ...?" - -In sticking in his needle Honey handled the implement as if it were an -awl. "Do I suppose she's playin' the dooce with yer? No, Kid. She don't -have to. You're playin' the dooce with yerself. It's yer age. Sixteen -is a terr'ble imagination age." - -"Oh, if you think I'm framing the whole thing...." - -"No, I don't. Yer believes it all right. On'y it ain't quite so bad as -what yer think. It don't do to be too delikit with women. Got to bat -'em away as if they was flies, when they bother yer too much. Once let -a woman in on yer game and yer 'and can be queered for good." - -"Did I say anything about letting a woman in on my game?" - -"No, yer on'y said she'd slipped in. It's too late now to keep her out. -She's made the diff'rence." - -"What difference?" - -Honey threaded his needle laboriously, held up the end of the thread -to moisten it with his lips, and tied a knot in it. "The diff'rence in -you. Yer ain't the same young feller what yer was six months ago. You -and me has been like one," he went on, placidly. "Now we're two. Been -two this spell back. Couldn't make it out, no more'n Billy-be-damned; -and now I see. The first girl." - -Tom lashed about the bed. - -"It was bound to come; and that's why--yer've arsked me about it onst -or twice, so I may as well tell yer--that's why I never lets meself get -fond o' yer. Could'a did it just as easy as not. When a man gits to -my age a young boy what's next o' kin to him--why, he'll seem like as -if 'twould be his son. But I wouldn't be ketched. 'Honey,' I says to -meself, 'the first girl and you'll be dished.'" - -"Oh, go to blazes!" - -Having finished his button, Honey made it doubly secure by winding the -thread around it. "Not that I blame yer, Kiddy. I ain't never led no -celebrant life meself, not till I had to take you on, and cut out all -low company what wouldn't 'a been good for you. But I figured it out -that we might 'a got yer through college before yer fell for it. Well, -we ain't. Maybe now we'll not git yer to college at all. But we'll -make a shy at it. We'll move." - -"If you think that by moving you'll keep me from seeing her again...." - -"No, son, not no more'n I could keep yer from cuttin' yer throat by -lockin' up yer razor. Yer could git another razor. I know that. All -the same, it'd be up to me, wouldn't it, not to leave no razors layin' -round the room, where yer could put yer 'and on 'em?" - -This settling of his destiny over his head angered Tom especially. - -"I can save you the trouble of having me on your mind any more. -To-morrow I'll be out on my own. I'm going to be a man." - -"Sure, you're going to be a man--in time. But yer ain't a man yet." - -"I'm sixteen. I can do what any other fellow of sixteen can do." - -"No fella of sixteen can do much." - -"He can earn a living." - -"He can earn part of a livin'. How many boys of sixteen did yer ever -know that could swing clear of home and friends and everythink, and -feed and clothe and launder theirselves on what they made out'n their -job?" - -"Well, I can try, can't I?" - -"Oh, yes, yer can try, Kid. But if you was me, I wouldn't cut loose -from nobody, not till I'd got me 'and in." - -Tom raised himself on his elbow, his eyes, beneath their protruding -horizontal eyebrows, aglitter with the wrath which puts life and the -world out of focus. - -"I _am_ going to cut loose. I'm going to be my own master." - -"Are you, Kid? How much of yer own master do yer expect to be, on the -ten or twelve per yer'll git to begin with--_if_ yer gits that?" - -"Even if it was only five or six per, I'd be making it myself." - -"And what about college?" - -"College--hell!" - -The boy fell back on his pillow. Feeling he had delivered his -ultimatum, he waited for a reply. But Honey only stowed away his sewing -materials in a little black box, after which he pulled off the articles -of clothing he continued to wear, and set about his toilet for the -night. At the sound of his splashing water on his face Tom muttered to -himself: "God, another night of this will kill me." - -Honey spoke through the muffling of the towel, while he dried his face. -"Isn't all this fuss what I'm tellin' yer? The minute a girl gits in on -a young feller's life there's hell to pay. That's why I'd like yer to -steer clear of 'em as long as yer can hold out." - -Tom shut his eyes, buried his face in the pillow, and affected not to -hear. - -"They don't mean to do no harm; they're just naterally troublesome. -Seems as if they was born that way, and couldn't 'elp theirselves. -There's a lot of 'em as is never satisfied till they've got a man like -a jumpin'-jack, what all they need to do is to pull the string to make -him jig. This girl is one o' them kind." - -Tom continued to hold his peace. - -"I've saw her. Pretty little thing she is all right. But give her two -or three years. Lord love you, Kid, she'll be as washed out then as one -of her own ribbons after a hard rain. And yet them is the kind that -most young fellers'll run after, like a pup'll run after a squirrel." - -Tom was startled. The figure of speech had been used to him before. He -could hear it drawled in a tired voice, soft and velvety. It was queer -what conclusions about women these grown men came to! Quidmore had -thought them as dangerous as Honey, and warned him against them much -as Honey was doing now. Mrs. Quidmore had once been what Maisie was at -that minute, and yet as he, Tom, remembered her.... But Honey was going -on again, spluttering his words as he brushed his teeth. - -"It can be awful easy to git mixed up with a girl, and awful hard to -git unmixed. She'll put a man in a hole where he can't help doin' -somethink foolish, and then make out as what she've got a claim on -him. There's a lot o' talk about women bein' the prey o' men; but for -one woman as I've ever saw that way I've saw a hundred men as was the -prey o' women. Now when a girl of eighteen gits a young boy like you to -spend the money as he's saved for his eddication...." - -The boy sprang up in bed, hammering the bedclothes. "Don't you say -anything against her. I won't listen to it." - -With that supple tread which always made Tom think of one who could -easily slip through windows, Honey walked to the closet where he kept -his night-shirt. "'Tain't nothink agin her, Kid. Was on'y goin' to say -that a girl what'll git a young boy to do that shows what she is. And -yer did spend the money a-takin' her about, now didn't yer?" - -Tom fell back upon his pillow. Putting out the gas, Honey threw himself -on his creaking cot. - -"You're a free boy, Kiddy," he went on, while arranging the sheet and -blanket as he liked them. "If yer wants to beat it to-morrer, beat it -away. Don't stop because yer'll be afraid I'll miss yer. Wasn't never -no hand for missin' no one, and don't mean to begin. What I'd 'a liked -have been to fill yer up with eddication so that yer could jaw to beat -the best of 'em, if yer turned out to be the Whitelaw baby." - -Tom had almost forgotten who the Whitelaw baby was. Not since that -Sunday afternoon nearly three years ago had Honey ever mentioned -him. The memory having come back, he made an inarticulate sound of -impatience, finally snuggling to sleep. - -He tried to think of Maisie, to conjure up the rose in her cheeks, the -laughter in her eyes; but all he saw, as he drifted into dreams, was -the quaint Cambodian face of little Hildred Ansley. Only once did Honey -speak again, muttering, as he too fell asleep: - -"We'll move." - - - - -XXVII - - -They did not move for the reason that Maisie did. Not for forty-eight -hours did Tom learn of her departure. As Mrs. Danker kept not a -boarding house but a rooming house, and her guests went days at a time -without seeing their landlady, he had no sources of information when -Maisie, as she sometimes did, kept herself out of sight. Watching for -her on the Monday and the Tuesday following his Sunday night talk with -Honey, he thought it strange that she never appeared in the hallway, -though he had no cause to be alarmed. He was going to leave Honey, get -a job, and be independent. When he had added a little more to his fund -in New York, he would propose to Maisie, and marry her if she would -take him. He would be eighteen, perhaps nineteen by the time he was -able to do this, an early, but not an impossible, age at which to be a -husband. - -On both these days he had gone to school from force of habit, but on -the Wednesday he was surprised by a letter. Though he had never seen -Maisie's writing, the postmark said Nashua. Before tearing the envelope -he had a premonition of her flight. - -A telegram on Monday morning had bidden her come home at once, as her -stepmother was dying. She had died. Till her father married again, -which she supposed would be soon, she would have to care for the four -little brothers and sisters. That was all. On paper Maisie was laconic. - -Since his mother's death no revolution in his inner life had upset the -boy like this. The Tollivant experience had only left him a little hard -and skeptical; that with the Quidmores had passed like the rain and -the snow, scarcely affecting him. With Honey his need for affection -had always been unfed, and for reasons he could not fathom. Maisie had -made the give and take of life easy, natural. She had her limitations, -her crude, and sometimes her cruel, insistences; but she liked him. He -loved her. He was ready to say it now, because of the blank her loss -had hollowed in his life. For the unformed, growing hot-blooded human -thing to have nothing on which to spend itself is anguish. Sitting -down at his deal table, he wrote to her out of a heart fuller and more -passionate than poor Maisie could ever have understood. - -All he had been planning in rebellion against fate he poured out now as -devotion. He had meant to cut loose, to go to work, to live on nothing, -to save his money, and be ready to marry her in a year or two. And yet, -on second thoughts, if he went through college, their position in the -end would be so much better that perhaps the original plan was the best -one. He thought only of her, and of what would make her happiest. He -loved her--loved her--loved her. - -Maisie wrote back that she saw no harm in their being engaged, and -she wouldn't press him for a ring till he felt himself able to give -her one. For herself she didn't care, but if she told the girls she -was engaged to a fellow, and had no ring to corroborate her word, she -wouldn't be believed. In case he ever felt equal to the purchase she -was sending him the size in the circlet of thread inclosed. - -Tom was heroic. He had never thought of a ring, and a ring would mean -more money. Be it so! He would spend more money. He would spend more -money if he mortgaged his whole future to procure it. Maisie should not -be shamed among her friends in Nashua. - -Giving all his free hours to wandering about and pricing rings, he -found them less expensive than he feared. Maisie having once confided -to him her longing for a diamond, a diamond he meant to make it if it -cost him fifty dollars. But he found one for twenty, as big as a small -pea, and flashing in the sunshine like a lighthouse. The young Jew who -sold it assured him that it would have cost a hundred, except for a -tiny flaw which only an expert could detect. On its reception Maisie -was delighted. He felt himself almost a married man. - -The rest of the winter went by peaceably. With Honey he declared a -truce of God. He would go to college, and live up to all that had been -planned; but Honey must look on his own self-sacrifice as of the nature -of a loan which would be repaid. Honey was ready to promise anything, -while, in the hope of getting through college in three years instead of -four, Tom worked with increased zeal. Then, one day, when spring had -come round, he stumbled on Guy and Hildred Ansley. - -It was in Louisburg Square, as usual. Having arrived from the south -the night before, they were sailing soon for Europe. - -"Rotten luck!" the fat boy complained. "Got to trail a tutor along too, -so that I shan't fall down on the Harvard exam when it comes. Wish I -was you." - -"If you were Mr. Whitelaw, Guy," his sister reminded him, "you'd find -something else to worry you. We all have our troubles, haven't we, Mr. -Whitelaw?" - -"She's got nothing to worry her," the brother protested. "If she was -me, with mother scared all the time that I'll be too hot or too cold or -too tired or too hungry, or that some damn thing or other'll make me -sick...." - -"All the same," Tom broke in, "it's something to have a mother to make -a fuss." - -The girl looked sympathetic. "You haven't, have you?" - -"Oh, I get along." - -"Guy says you live with a guardian." - -"You may call him a guardian if you like, but the word is too big. You -only have a guardian when you've something to guard, and I haven't -anything." - -"Yes, but how did you ever ...?" - -Once more Tom said to himself, "It's the way she looks at you." He knew -what she was trying to ask him, and in order to be open and aboveboard, -he gave her the few main facts of his life. He did it briefly, -hurriedly, throwing emphasis only on the point that, to keep him from -becoming a State ward the second time, his stevedore friend had brought -him to Boston and sent him to school. - -"He must be an awfully good man!" - -He was going to tell her that he was when the brother gave the talk -another twist. - -"What are you going to do in your holidays?" - -"Work, if I can find a job." - -"What kind of job?" - -He explained that for the last two summers he had worked round the -Quincy and Faneuil Hall markets, but that he had outgrown them. A -two-fisted, he-man's job was what he would look for now, and had no -doubt that he would get it. - -"After you've left Harvard what are you going to be?" - -"Banking's what I'd like best, but most likely I'll have to make it -barbering. What are you going to be yourself?" - -"Oh, I've got to be a corporation lawyer. My luck! Just because dad'll -have the business to take me into." - -"But what would you like better?" - -The piggy face broke into one of its captivating grins. "Hanged if _I_ -know, unless it'd be an orphan and an only child." - -The meeting was important because of what it led to. A few days later -Tom heard the wheezy girlish voice calling behind him in the street: -"Tom! Tom!" - -He turned and walked back. During the winter the fat boy had expanded, -not so much in height as in girth and jelliness. He came up, puffing -from his run. - -"Can you drive a car?" - -Tom hesitated. "I don't know that you'd call it driving a car. I can -drive--after a fashion. Mr. Quidmore used to let me run his Ford, when -we were alone in it, and no one was looking. Since then I've sometimes -driven the market delivery teams for a block or two, nothing much, just -to see what it was like. I know I could pick it up with a few lessons. -I'm a natural driver--a horse or anything. Why?" - -"Because my old man said that if you could drive, he might help you get -your summer's job." - -"Where? What kind of job?" - -"I don't know. He said that if you wanted to talk it over to come round -to our house this evening at nine o'clock." - -At nine that evening Tom was shown up into another of those rooms -which marked the gulf between his own way of living and that of people -like the Ansleys, and at the same time woke the atavistic pang. His -impression was only a blurred one of comfort, color, shaded lights, -and richness. From the many books he judged that it was what they -would call the library, but any judgment was subconscious because the -human presences came first. A man wearing a dinner jacket and scanning -an evening paper was sunk into one deep armchair; in another a lady, -demi-decolletee, was reading a book. It was his first intimation that -people ever wore what he called "dress-clothes" when dining only with -their families. - -He was announced by Pilcher, who had led him upstairs. "This is the -young man, sir." - -Having reached something like friendly terms with the son and -daughter, Tom had expected from the parents the kind of courtesy shown -to strangers when you shake hands with them and ask them to sit down. -Mr. Ansley only let the paper drop to his knees with an "Oh!" in -response to the butler, and looked up. - -"You're the young fellow my son has spoken of. He tells me you can -drive a car." - -Repeating what he had already said to Guy as to his experience with -cars, Tom expressed confidence in his ability to obtain a license, if -it should become worth his while. - -"It wouldn't be difficult driving such as you get in the crowded parts -of a city. It would be chiefly station work, over country roads." - -He explained himself further. In the New Hampshire summer colony where -the Ansleys had their place, the residents were turning a large country -house into an inn which would be like a club, or a club which would be -like an inn. It would not be open to ordinary travelers, since ordinary -travelers would bring in people whom they didn't want. The guests would -be their own friends, duly invited or introduced. He, Mr. Ansley, was -chairman of the motor-car committee, but as he was going to Europe he -was taking up the matter in advance. On general grounds he would have -preferred an older man and one with more experience, but the inn-club -was a new undertaking and not too well financed. More experienced men -would cost more money. For the station work they could afford but -eighty dollars a month, with a room in the garage, and board. Moreover, -the jobs they could offer being only for the summer, the promoters -hoped that a few young men and women working for their own education -might take advantage of the scheme. - -Eighty dollars a month, with a room to himself, even if it had only -been in a stable, and board in addition, glittered before Tom's eyes -like Aladdin's treasure house. Having thanked Mr. Ansley for the kind -suggestion, he assured him he could give satisfaction if taken on. All -the chauffeurs who had let him have a few minutes at the steering-wheel -had told him that he possessed the eye, the nerve, and the quickness -which make a good driver, in addition to which he knew that he did -himself. - -"How old are you?" - -It was a question Tom always found difficult to answer. He could -remember when his birthday had been on the fifth of March; but his -mother had told him that that had been Gracie's birthday, and had -changed his own to September. Later she had shifted to May, to a day, -so she told him, when all the nurses had had their children in the -Park, and the lilacs had been in bloom. He had never asked her the -year, not having come to reckoning in years before she was taken from -him. Though latterly he had been putting his birthday in May, he now -shifted back to March, so as to make himself older. - -"I'm seventeen, sir." - -Mrs. Ansley spoke for the first time. "He looks more than that, doesn't -he?" - -Tom turned to the lady who filled a large armchair with a person -suggesting the quaking, flabby consistency of cornstarch pudding. "I -suppose that's because I've knocked about so much." - -"The hard school does give you experience, doesn't it, but it's a cruel -school." - -He remembered his promise to Guy, if ever he got the opportunity. "Boys -can stand a good deal of cruelty, ma'am. Nine times out of ten it does -them good." - -"Still there's always a tenth case." - -He smiled. "I think I ought to have made it ten times out of ten. I -never saw the boy yet who wasn't all the better for fighting his way -along." - -Mrs. Ansley's mouth screwed itself up like Guy's when it looked as if -he were going to cry. "Fight? Why, I think fighting's something horrid. -Why _can't_ boys treat each other like gentlemen?" - -"I suppose, ma'am, because they're not gentlemen." - -The cornstarch pudding stiffened to the firmness of ice-cream. "Excuse -me! My boy couldn't be anything but a gentleman." - -"He couldn't be anything but a sport. He _is_ a fighter, ma'am--when he -gets the chance." - -"Then I hope he won't often get it." - -"But, Sunshine," Mr. Ansley intervened, "you don't make any allowance -for differences in standards. You're a woman of forty-five. Guy's a boy -of sixteen--he's practically seventeen, like Whitelaw here--your name -is Whitelaw, isn't it?--and yet you want him to have the same tastes -and ways as yourself." - -"I don't want him to have brutal tastes and ways." - -"It's a pretty brutal world, ma'am, and if he's going to take his -place he'll have to get used to being hammered and hammering back." - -"Which is what I object to. If you train boys to be courteous with each -other from the start...." - -"They'll be quite ladylike when they get into the stock exchange or the -prize ring. Look here, Sunshine! The country's over feminized as it -is. It's run by women, or by men who think as women, or by men who're -afraid of women. Congress is full of them; the courts are full of them; -the churches--the churches above all!--are full of them; and you'd make -it worse. If Guy hadn't the stuff in him that he has...." - -Mrs. Ansley was more than ever like a cornstarch pudding, quivering and -undulating, when she rose. "You make it very hard for me, Philip. I was -going to ask Whitelaw, here, if when he's anywhere where Guy is--I know -Guy will have to go among young men, of course--he'd keep an eye on -him, and protect him." - -"He doesn't need protection, ma'am. He can take his own part as easily -as I can take mine. If there's a row he likes to be in it; and if he's -licked he doesn't mind it. If he only had a chance...." - -She raised her left hand palm outward, in a gesture of protest. "Thank -you! I'm not asking advice as to my own son." - -Sailing from the room with the circumambient dignity of ladies when -they wore the crinoline, she left Tom with the crestfallen sense of -presumption. Half expecting to be ordered from the room, he turned -toward his host, who, however, simply reverted to the subject of the -summer. He told Tom where he could have lessons in driving, adding that -he would charge them to club expenses, as he would the uniform Tom -would have to wear. When Mr. Ansley picked up his paper the young man -knew the interview was over. With a half-articulate, "Good-night, sir," -to which there was no response, he turned and left the room. - - * * * * * - -The occasion left him with much to think of, chiefly on his own -account. It marked his status more clearly than anything that had -happened to him yet. He had not been shaken hands with; he had not -been asked to sit down. He had not been greeted on arriving; his -"good-night" had not been acknowledged when he went away. Mr. Ansley -had called him Whitelaw, which was all very well; but when Mrs. Ansley -did it, the use of the name was significant. This must be the way in -which rich people treated their servants. - -Here he had to reason with himself as to what he had been looking for. -It was not for recognition on a footing of equality. Of course not! -He had no objection to being a servant, since he needed the money. -He objected to ... and yet it was not quite tangible. He didn't mind -standing up; he didn't mind the absence of a greeting; he didn't mind -any one thing in itself. He minded the combination of assumptions, all -fusing into one big assumption that he was in essence their inferior. -Having this assumption so strongly in their minds, they couldn't but -betray it when they spoke to him. - -With his tendency to think things out, he mulled for the next few days -over the question of inferiority. Why was one man inferior to another? -What made him so? Did nature send him into the world as an inferior, or -did the world turn him into an inferior after he had come into it? Did -God have any part in it? Was it God's will that there should be a class -system among mankind, with class animosities, class warfares? - -Of the latter he was hearing a good deal. In Grove Street, with its -squirming litters of idealistic Jews and Slavs, class warfare was much -talked about. Sometimes Tom heard the talk himself; sometimes Honey -brought in reports of it. It was a rare day, especially a rare night, -when some wild-eyed apostle was not going up or down the hill with a -gospel which would have made old Boston, only a few hundred yards away, -shiver in its bed on hearing it. To a sturdy American like Tom, and -a sturdy Englishman like Honey, these whispered prophecies and plans -were no more than the twitter of sparrows going to roost. But now that -the boy was working toward man's estate, and had always, within his -recollection, been treated as an inferior, he found himself wondering -on what principle the treatment had been based. He would listen more -attentively when the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker began again, -as he had so often, to set forth his arguments in favor of dragging -the upper classes down. He would listen when Honey cursed the lor of -proputty. He had long been asking himself if in some obscure depth of -Honey's obscure intelligence there might not be a glimmer of a great -big thing that was Right. - -He had reached the age, which generally comes a little before the -twenties, when the Right and Wrong of things puzzled and disturbed him. -No longer able to accept Rights and Wrongs on somebody else's verdict, -he was without a test or a standard of his own. He began to wander -among churches. Here, he had heard, all these questions had been long -ago threshed out, and the answers reduced to formulae. - -His range was wide, Hebrew, Catholic, Protestant. For the most part the -services bewildered him. He couldn't make out why they were services, -or what they were serving. The sermons he found platitudinous. -They told him what in the main he knew already, and said little or -nothing of the great fundamental things with which his mind had been -intermittently busy ever since the days when he used to talk them over -with Bertie Tollivant. - -But one new interest he drew from them. The fragments of the gospels -he heard read from altar or lectern or pulpit roused his curiosity. -Passages were familiar from having learned them at the knee, so to -speak, of Mrs. Tollivant. But they had been incoherent, without -introduction or sequence. He was surprised to find how little he knew -of the most dominant character in history. - -On his way home one day he passed a shop given to the sale of Bibles. -Deciding to buy a cheap New Testament, he was advised by the salesman -to take a modern translation. That night, after he had finished his -lessons, and Honey was asleep, he opened it. - -It opened at a page of St. Luke. Turning to the beginning of that -gospel, he started to read it through. He read avidly, charmed, -amazed, appeased, and pacified. When he came to an incident bearing on -himself he stopped. - -"Now one of the Pharisees repeatedly invited Him to a meal at his -house. So He entered the house and reclined at the table. And there -was a woman in the town who was a notorious sinner. Having learnt that -Jesus was at table in the Pharisee's house she brought a flask of -perfume, and standing behind, close to His feet, weeping, began to wet -His feet with her tears; and with her hair she wiped the tears away -again, while she lovingly kissed His feet, and poured the perfume over -them. - -"Noticing this the Pharisee, His host, said to himself: - -"'This man, if He were really a prophet, would know who and what sort -of person this is who is touching Him, for she is an immoral woman.' - -"In answer to his thoughts Jesus said to him: 'Simon, I have a word to -say to you.' - -"'Rabbi, say on,' he replied. - -"'Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You gave me no water -for my feet; but she has made my feet wet with her tears, and then -wiped the tears away with her hair. No kiss did you give me; but she, -from the moment I came in, has not left off tenderly kissing my feet. -No oil did you pour even on my head; but she has poured perfume on -my feet. This is the reason why I tell you that her sins--her _many_ -sins--are forgiven--because she has loved much." - -He shut the book with something of a bang. "So they used to do that -sort of thing even then!... The water for the feet, and the kiss, and -the oil, must have corresponded to our shaking hands and asking people -to sit down.... And they wouldn't show Him the courtesy.... He was -their inferior.... I wonder if He minded it.... It looks as if He did -because of the way He had it in His mind, and referred to it.... If the -woman hadn't turned up He would probably not have referred to it at -all.... He would have kept it to Himself ... without resentment.... The -little disdains of little people were too petty for Him to resent.... -He could only be hurt by them ... but on their account." - -He sat late into the night, thinking, thinking. Suddenly he thumped -the table, and sprang up. "I _won't_ resent it. They're good people -in their way. They don't mean any unkindness. It's only that they -think like everybody else. Honey would call them orthodocks. They're -courteous among themselves; they only don't know how far courtesy can -be made to go. They're--they're little. I'll be big--like Him." - - - - -XXVIII - - -The resolution helped him through the summer. It was a pleasant summer, -and yet a trying one. It was the first time he had ever done work of -which the essence lay in satisfying individuals. In his market jobs the -job had been the thing. Even if done at somebody's order, it was judged -by its success, or by its lack of it. His work at the inn-club brought -him hourly into contact with men and women to whom it was his duty to -be specially, and outwardly deferential. He sprang to open the door -for them when they entered or left the car; he touched his hat to them -whenever they gave him an order. His bearing, his manner of address, -formed a part of his equipment only second to his capacity to drive. - -To this he had no objection. It only seemed odd that while it was his -business to be courteous to others it was nobody's business to be -courteous to him. Some people were. They used toward him those little -formalities of "Please" and "Thank you" which were a matter of course -toward one another. They didn't command; they requested. Others, on the -contrary, never requested. If their nerves or their digestions were not -in good order, they felt at liberty to call him a damn fool, or if they -were ladies, to find fault foolishly. Whatever the injustice, it was -his part to keep himself schooled to the apologetic attitude, ready to -be held in the wrong when he knew he was in the right. Though he had -never heard of the English principle that you may be rude if you choose -to your equals, but never rude to those in a position lower than your -own, he felt its force instinctively. His humble place in the world's -economy entitled him to a courtesy which few people thought it worth -their while to show. - -Apart from this he had nothing to complain of. He made good money, as -the phrase went, his wages augmented by his tips. He took his tips -without shame, since he did much to please his clients beyond what he -was paid for. His relation with them being personal, he could see well -enough that only in tips could they make him any recognition. With the -staff in the house he got on very well, especially with the waitresses, -all six of them girls working their way through Radcliffe, Wellesley, -or Vassar. They chaffed him in an easy-going way, one of them calling -him her Hercules, another her Charlemagne because of his height, while -to a third he was her Siegfried. When he had no work in the evenings, -and their dining-room duties were over, he took them for drives among -the mountains. Writing to Honey, he said that what with the air, the -food, the fun, and the outdoor life, he was never before in such -splendid shape. - -Honey was his one anxiety, though an anxiety which troubled him only -now and then. - -"Go to it, lad," had been his response when Tom had told him of Mr. -Ansley's proposition. "With eighty dollars a month for all summer, and -yer keep throwed in, yer ought to save two hundred." - -"You're sure you won't be lonesome, Honey?" - -Honey made a scornful exclamation. "Lord love yer, Kid, if I was ever -goin' to be lonesome I'd 'a begun before now. Lonesome! Me! That's a -good 'un!" - -And yet on the Sunday of his departure Tom noticed a forced strain in -Honey's gayety. It was a Sunday because Tom was to drive the car up to -New Hampshire in the afternoon to begin his first week on the Monday. -Honey was in clamorous spirits, right up to an hour before the boy left. - -Then he seemed to go flat. Pump up his humor as he would, it had no -zest in it. When it came to the last handshake he grinned feebly, but -couldn't, or didn't, speak. Tom drove away with a question in his mind -as to whether or not, in Honey's professions of a steeled heart, there -was not some bravado. - -In driving through Nashua he saw Maisie. It had been agreed that she -should meet him by the roadside, at the end of the town toward Lowell, -and go on with him till he struck the country again. They not only did -this, but got out at a druggist's to spend a half hour over ice-cream -sodas. - -Picking up the dropped threads of intercourse was not so easy as they -had expected. It was hard for Tom to make himself believe that in this -pretty little thing, all in white with pink roses in her hat, he was -talking to his future wife. Since the fervor of his first love letter -there had been a slight shift in his point of view. Without being able -to locate the change, he felt that the new interests--the car, the -inn-club, the variety of experience--had to some small degree crowded -Maisie out. She was not quite so essential as she had seemed on the -afternoon when he had learned of her departure. Neither was she quite -so pretty. He thought with a pang that Honey's predictions might be -coming true. Because they might be coming true, his pity was so great -that he told her she was looking lovelier than ever. - -"Gee, that's something," Maisie accepted, complacently. "With -four brats to look after, and all the cooking and washing, and -everything--if my father don't marry again soon I'll pass away." She -glanced at his chauffeur's uniform. "You look swell." - -He felt swell, and told her so. He told her of his wages, of the -economies he hoped to make. - -"Gee, and you talk of goin' to college, a fellow that can pull in all -that money just by bein' a shofer. Why, if you were to go on bein' a -shofer we could get married as soon as I got the family off my hands." - -He explained to her that it was not the present, but the future for -which he was working. A chauffeur had only a chauffeur's possibilities, -whereas a man with an education.... - -"Just my luck to get engaged to a nut," Maisie commented, with forced -resignation. "Gee, I got to laff." - -Some half dozen times that summer, when errands took him to Boston, -they met in the same way. Growing more accustomed to their new relation -to each other, he also grew more tender as he realized her limitations -and domestic cares. With his first month's wages in his hand, he could -bring her little presents on each return from Boston, so helping out -her never-failing joy in the flash of her big diamond. That at least -she had, when every other blessing was put off to a vague future. - - * * * * * - -In August, the Ansleys came flying back, driven by the war. It had -caught them at Munich, where their French chauffeur, Pierre, had been -interned as a prisoner. While taking driving lessons Tom had made -Pierre's acquaintance, and that he should now be a prisoner in Germany -made the war a reality. For the first few weeks it had been like a -battle among giants in the clouds; now it came down to earth as a -convulsion among men. - -The Ansleys had come to the inn-club because their own house was -closed. With Guy and Hildred Tom found his relations changed by the -fact that he was a chauffeur. Guy talked to him freely enough, as one -young fellow to another, but Hildred had plainly received a hint to -mark the distance between them. If she passed him in the grounds, or if -he opened the car door for her, she gave him a faint, self-conscious -smile, but never spoke to him. Mrs. Ansley freely used the car and him, -always calling him Whitelaw. - -Philip Ansley was much preoccupied by the international situation. A -small, dry man of slightly Mongolian features, and a skin which looked -like a parchment lampshade tinted with a little rose, he had made a -specialty of international law as it affected the great corporations. -New York and Washington both had need of him. When he couldn't go -there, those who wished his opinion came to him. Not a little of -Tom's work lay in driving him to Keene, the station for New York, to -meet the important men seeking his advice. Thus it happened that Tom -brought over from Keene, so late one night that he got no more than a -dim glimpse of the visitor, the man who was to leave on him the most -disturbing impression of the summer. - -Having delivered his charge at the inn-club door, he drove his car to -the garage, climbed the stairs to his room, and turned into bed. Before -six next morning he was up for a plunge in the lake, this being the -only hour he could count on as his own. - -It was one of those windless mornings late in summer which bring the -first hint of fall. The lake was so still that each throw of his arms -was like the smashing of a vast metallic mirror. Only a metallic -mirror could have had this shining dullness, faintly iridescent, -hardly catching the rays of the newly risen sun. Not leaden enough for -night, nor silvery enough for day, it kept the aloofness from man, as -well as from Nature's smaller blandishments, of its mighty companion, -Monadnock. It was an awesome lake, beautiful, withdrawn, because it -gave back the mountain's awesomeness, beauty, and remoteness. - -Tom's thrust, as he paddled the water behind him, broke for no more -than a few seconds that which at once reformed itself. You would have -said that the darting of his body, straight as a fish's, clave the -water as a bird cleaves the air. After he had gone there was hardly a -ripple to tell that he had passed. Built to be a swimmer, loose limbed, -loose muscled, and not too bonily spare, he breathed as a swimmer, -deeply, gently, without spluttering or loss of his control. In the -limpid medium through which another might have sunk like a stone he -had that sense of natural support which helps man to his dominion. Now -on his right side, now on his left, he could skim like an arrow to its -mark for the simple reason that he knew he could. - -He turned over on his back and floated. The quiet was that of a world -which might never have known the velocity of wind, the ferocity of -war. Above him the inviolate sky; around him the mountains nearly as -inviolate! And everywhere the living stillness, vibrating, dramatic, -with which Nature alone can quicken a dead calm! - -Turning over again, he was abandoning the crawl for the forearm stroke, -to make his way back to the bathing cabins, when over the water came a -long "Ahoy!" Nearer the shore, and a little abeam, there was another -man swimming toward him. Tom gave back an "Ahoy!" and made in the -direction of the stranger. It was perhaps another chauffeur. Even if -it were a resident, or some resident's guest, the informality of sport -would put them on a level. - -The newcomer had the sun behind him; Tom had it on his face. His -features were, therefore, the first to become visible. A strong voice -called out, in a tone of astonishment: - -"Why, Tad! What are _you_ doing up here in New Hampshire?" - -Tom laughed. "Tad--nothing! I'm Tom!" - -The other came nearer. "Tom, are you? Excuse me! Took you for my son." - -"Sorry I'm not," Tom laughed again. "Somebody else's." - -Coming abreast, they headed toward shore. Each face was turned toward -the other. Adopting his companion's stroke, Tom adjusted himself to his -pace. Though conversation was not easy, the one found it possible to -ask questions, the other to answer them. - -"Look like my son. What's your name?" - -"Whitelaw." - -A light came into the eyes, and went out again. "Where do you live?" - -"Boston." - -"Lived there all your life?" - -"Only for the last three years or so." - -"Where'd you live before that?" - -"New York some of the time." - -"Where were you born?" - -"The Bronx." - -"What was your father's name?" - -"Theodore Whitelaw." - -There was again that spark in the eyes, flashing and then dying out. -"How did he get that name?" - -"Don't know. Just a name. Suppose his mother gave it to him." - -"Lots of Theodore Whitelaws. Have come across two or three. Like the -Colin Campbells and Howard Smiths you run into everywhere. What did -your father do?" - -"Never heard. Died when I was a kid." Tom felt entitled to ask a -question on his own side. "What do you want to know for?" - -The other seemed on his guard. "Oh, nothing! Was just--was just struck -by the resemblance to--to my boy." - -The swerve which took them away from each other was as slight as that -which a ship gets from her rudder. Tom continued to play round in the -water till he saw the older man reach the bathing cabins, dress, and go -away. - -That afternoon he was told to drive back to Keene both Mr. Ansley and -the guest whom he, Tom, had brought over on the previous evening. As -the latter came out to enter the car it was easy to recognize the -swimmer of the morning. - -Tom held the door open, his hand to his cap. The gentleman gave him a -swift, keen look. - -"Oh, so this is what you do!" - -"Yes, sir; this is what I do. Mr. Ansley got me the job." - -"Young fellow whom Guy has befriended," Mr. Ansley explained, as he -took his place beside his friend. - -But in the Pullman, when Tom had carried in the gentleman's valise, -there was another minute in which they were alone. The car was nearly -empty; there were still some five minutes before the departure of the -train. While the colored porter took the suitcase the traveler turned -to Tom. He was a tall man, straight and flexible like Tom himself, but -a little heavier. - -"How old are you?" - -"Seventeen, sir." - -A shadow flew across the face. "Tad is seventeen, too. That settles -any--" Without stating what was settled by this coincidence of ages, -he went on with his quick, peremptory questions. "What do you do when -you leave here?" - -"I go back for my last year in the Latin School in Boston." - -"And then?" - -"I go to Harvard." - -"Putting yourself through?" - -"Only partly, sir." - -"Friends?" - -"Yes, sir." - -The questions ceased. The face, which even a boy like Tom could see to -be that of a strong man who must have suffered terribly, grew pensive. -When the eyes were bent toward the floor Tom took note of a pair of -bushy, outstanding, horizontal eyebrows, oddly like his own. - -The reverie ended abruptly. Some thought seemed to be dismissed. It -seemed to be dismissed with both decision and relief. But the man held -out his hand. - -"Good-by." - -"Good-by, sir." - -It was not the questions, nor the interest, it was the last little act -of farewell that gave Tom a glowing feeling in the heart as he went -back to his car and Mr. Ansley. - - - - -XXIX - - -It was late that evening before Tom found an opportunity to ask Miss -Padley, who kept what the inn-club knew as the office, the name of the -guest who had questioned him so closely. Miss Padley was a red-haired, -freckled girl, putting herself through Radcliffe. Unused to clerical -work, she was tired. When Tom put his query she gazed up at him -vacantly, before she could collect her wits. - -"The name of the gentleman who left this afternoon?" She called to -Ella, one of the waitresses, in her second year at Wellesley. "What was -it, Ella? I forget." - -As the house was closing for the night some informality was possible. -Ella sauntered up. - -"What was what?" - -Tom's question was repeated. - -"Oh, that was the great Henry T. Whitelaw. Big banker. Partner in Meek -and Brokenshire's. They say that he and a few other bankers could stop -the war if they liked, by holding back the cash. Don't believe it. -War's too big. And, say! He was the father of that Whitelaw baby there -used to be all the talk about." - -Miss Padley looked up, her cheek resting on her hand. "You don't say! -Gee, I wish I'd known that. I'd 'a looked at him a little closer." She -turned her tired greenish eyes toward Tom. "Your name is Whitelaw, -too, isn't it?" - -He grinned nervously. "My name is Whitelaw, too, only, like the lady's -maid whose name was Shakespeare but was no relation to the play-actor -of that name, I don't belong to the banking branch of the family." - -Ella exclaimed, as one who makes a discovery. "But, Siegfried, you look -as if you did. Doesn't he, Blanche? Look at his eyebrows. They're just -like the banker man's." - -"Oh, I've looked at them often enough," Miss Padley returned, wearily. -"Got his mustaches stuck on in the wrong place. I'm off." - -Yawning, she shut her ledger, closed an open drawer, and rose. But -Ella, a dark little thing, kept her snappy black eyes on Tom. - -"You do look like him, Siegfried. I'd put in a claim if I were you. I'm -single, you know, and I've always admired you. Think of the romance -it would make if the Whitelaw baby took home as his bride a poor but -honest working girl!" - -Dodging Ella's chaff, Tom escaped to the garage. It was queer how the -Whitelaw baby haunted him. Honey!--Ella!--and the Whitelaw baby's own -father! - -But the haunting stopped. Neither Ella nor Miss Padley took it as more -than a passing pleasantry, forgotten with the morning. The tall man who -had asked him questions never came back again. The rest of the summer -went by with but one little incident to remain in his memory. - -It was a very little incident. Walking one day in the road that ran -round the lake he came face to face with Hildred Ansley. She had -grown since the previous winter, a little in height, and more in an -indefinable development. She was fifteen now; but, always older than -her age, she was more like seventeen or eighteen. Her formal manner, -her decided mind, her "grown-up" choice of words, made her already -something of that finished entity for which we have only the word lady. -Ella had said of her that at twenty she would look like forty, and at -forty continue to look like twenty. Tom thought that this might be -true--an early fullness of womanhood, but a long one. - -She had been playing tennis, and swung her racket as she came along. He -was sorry for this direct encounter, since she might find it awkward; -but when she waved her racket to him, it was clear that she did not. -She felt perhaps the more independent, released from her mother's -supervision and the inn. Her smile, something in her way of pausing in -the road, an ease of manner beyond analysis, put them both on the plane -on which their acquaintance had begun. The slanting yellowish-brown -eyes together with the faint glimmer of a smile heightened that air of -mystery which had always made her different from other girls. - -"How have you been getting along?" - -He said he had been doing very well. - -"How have you liked the job?" - -"Fine! Everybody's been nice to me--" - -"Everybody likes you. All the same, I hope, if they ask you to come -back next year, that--you won't." - -"Why not?" - -"Oh, just--because!" - -Slipping away, she left him with the summer's second memory. She hoped -he wouldn't take the place again--_because_! Because--what? Could she -have meant what he thought she must have meant? Was it possible that -she didn't like to see him in a situation something like a servant's? -Though he never again, during all the rest of the summer, had so much -speech with her alone, it gave him a hint to turn over in his mind. - -Driving the car back to Boston, after the inn-club had closed, he saw -Maisie for the last time that year. Uncertain of his hours, he had been -unable to arrange to have her meet him, and so looked her up in her -home. A small wooden house, once stained a dark red, weather-worn now -to a reddish-dun, it stood on the outskirts of the town. In a weedy -back-yard, redeemed from ugliness by the flaming of a maple tree, -Maisie was pinning newly washed clothes to a clothes-line stretched -between the back door and a post. Two children, a boy of six and a girl -of eight, were tumbling about with a pup. At sound of the stopping -of the car in the roadway in front of the house Maisie turned, a -clothes-pin held lengthwise in her mouth. Even with her sleeves rolled -up and her hair in wisps, she couldn't be anything but pretty. - -She came and sat beside him in the car, the children and the pup -staring up at them in wonder. - -"Gee, I wish he'd get married; but I daresay he won't for ever so long. -Married to the bottle, that's what he is. It was six years after my -mother died before he took on the last one. That's what makes me so -much older than the four kids. All the same I'd beat it if you'd take -a shofer's job and settle down. I'm not bound to stay here and make -myself a slave." - -It was the burden of all Maisie's reasoning, and he had to admit -its justice. He was asking her to wait a long four years before he -could give her a home. It would have been more preposterous than it -was if among poor people, among poor young people especially, a long -courtship, with marriage as a vague fulfillment, was not general. Any -such man as she was likely to get would have to toil and save, and save -and toil, before he could pay for the few sticks of furniture they -would need to set up housekeeping. Never having thought of anything -else, she was the more patient now; but patient with a strain of -rebellion against Tom's whim for education. - -She cried when he left her; he almost cried himself, from a sense of -his impotence to take her at once from a life of drudgery. The degree -to which he loved her seemed to be secondary now to her helpless need -of him. True, he could get a job as chauffeur and make a hundred -dollars a month to begin with. To Maisie that would be riches; but -a hundred and fifty a month would then become his lifelong limit -and ambition. Even to save Maisie now he couldn't bring himself to -sacrifice not merely his future but her own. Once he was "through -college," it seemed to him that the treasures of the world would lie -open. - -Arrived in Grove Street, he found one new condition which made his -return easier. Honey, who, for the sake of economy, had occupied a -hall-bedroom through the summer, had reserved another, on the floor -above, for Tom. The relief from the sharing of one big room amounted to -a sense of luxury. - -On the other hand, Honey, for the first time since Tom had known him, -was moody and tired. He was not ill; he was only less cast-iron than -he used to be. He found it harder to go to work in the morning; he was -more spent when he came back at night, as if some inner impulse of -virility was wearing itself out. The war worried him. The fact that old -England had met a foe whom she couldn't walk over at once disturbed his -ideas as to the way in which the foundations of the world had been laid. - -"Anything can happen now, kid," he declared, in discussing the English -retreat from Mons. "Haven't felt so bad since the bloody cop give me -the whack with his club what put out me eye. If Englishmen has to turn -tail before Germans, well, what next?" - -But to Tom's suggestions that he should go to Canada and enlist in -the British army Honey was as stone. "You're too young. Y'ain't -got yer growth. I don't care what no one says. War is for men. Yer -first business, and yer last business, and yer only business, is yer -eddication." - -It must be admitted that Tom agreed with him. He had no longing to go -to war. Europe was far away while life was near. Education, Maisie, the -future, had the first claim on him. It began to occur to him that even -Honey had a claim on him, now that he was not so vigorous as he used to -be. - -There were other interests to make war remote. On returning to town, -after a summer amid the spaciousness, beauty, and comfort which the -few could give themselves, he was oppressed by the privations of the -many. Never before had he thought of them. He had taken Grove Street -for granted. He had taken it for granted that life was hard and crowded -and bitter and cold and ugly, and couldn't be anything else. Now he had -seen for himself that it could be easy and beautiful and healthy. True, -he had always known that there were rich people as well as poor people; -but never before had he been close enough to the rich to see their -luxuries in detail. The contrasts in the human scheme of things having -thus come home to him he was moved to a distressed wondering. - -What brought these differences about? If all the rich were industrious -and good, while all the poor were idle and extravagant, he could -have understood it better. But it wasn't so. The rich were often -idle and extravagant, and didn't suffer. The poor were nearly always -industrious--they couldn't be anything else--and were as good as they -had leisure to be, but suffered from something all the time. How could -this injustice be endured? What was to be done about it? Wasn't it -everybody's duty to try to right such a wrong? - -Because he had only now become aware of it he supposed that nobody -but the Slav and Jewish agitators had been aware of it before. -Louisburg Square, and all that element in the world which Louisburg -Square represented, could never have thought of it. If it had, it -couldn't have slept at night in its bed. That it should lie snug -and soft and warm while all the rest of the world--at least a good -three-fourths--lay cold and hard and hungry, must be out of the -question. If the rich people only knew! It was strange that someone -hadn't told them. What were the newspapers and the governments and the -churches doing that they weren't ringing with protests against this -fundamental evil? - -More than ever Honey's rebellion against the lor of proputty seemed to -him based on some principle he couldn't trace. Honey was doubtless all -wrong; and yet the other thing was just as wrong as Honey. He started -him talking on the subject as they strolled to their dinner that -evening. - -"Seems as if this 'ere old human race didn't have no spunk. Yer can -put anything over on them, and they'll 'ardly lift a kick. It's like -as if they was hypnertized. Them as has got everything is hypnertized -into thinkin' they've a right to it; and them as have got nothink'll -let theirselves believe as nothink is all that belongs to 'em. Comes o' -most o' the world bein' orthodocks. Lord love yer, I'd rather think for -meself if it landed me ten months out'n every twelve in jail, than have -two thousand a year and yet be an old tabby-orthodock what never had a -mind." - -They were seated at the table in Mrs. Turtle's basement dining-room, -when, looking up and down the double row of guests, Honey whispered, -"Tabby-orthodocks--all of 'em." - -At his sixteen or eighteen fellow-mealers Tom looked with a new vision. -With the aid of Honey's epithet he could class them. Mostly men, they -sat bowed, silent, futile, gulping down their coarse food with no -pretense at softening the animal processes of eating. These, too, he -had hitherto taken for granted. In all the months they had "mealed" at -Mrs. Turtle's--in the years they had "mealed" at similar establishments -in Grove Street--he had looked on them, and on others of their kind, -as the norm of humanity. Now he saw something wrong in them, without -knowing what it was. - -"What's the matter with them?" he asked of Honey, as they went back -across Grove Street to Mrs. Danker's. - -Honey's reply was standardized. "Bein' orthodocks. Not thinkin' for -theirselves. Not usin' the mind as Gord give 'em. Believin' what other -blokes told 'em, and stoppin' at that. I say, Kiddy! Don't yer never go -for to forget that yer'll get farther in the world by bein' wrong the -way yer thinks yerself than by bein' right the way some other feller -tells yer." - -Having reached their own house they stood, each with a foot on the -doorstep, while Tom smoked a cigarette and Honey enlarged on his -philosophy. - -"I don't believe as Gord put us into this world to be right not 'arf so -much as what He done it so as we'd find out for ourselves what's right -and what's wrong. One right thing as yer've found out for yerself'll -make yer more of a man than fifty as yer've took on trust. Look at 'em -in there!" He nodded backward toward Mrs. Turtle's. "They've all took -everythink on trust, and see what it's made of 'em. Whoever says, 'I'm -an orthodock, and I'm goin' to live and die an orthodock,' is like the -guy in the Bible as was bound 'and and foot with grave-clothes. My -genius was always for thinkin' things out for meself; and look at me -to-day!" - -It was another discovery to Tom that Honey felt proud and happy in his -accomplishment. Honey to Tom was a machine for doing heavy work. He -was a drudge, and a dray-horse. He was shut out from the higher, the -more spiritual activities. But here was Honey himself content, and in a -measure exultant. - -"Been wrong in a lot o' things I have; but I've found it out for -meself. I ain't sorry for what I've did. It's learned me. There ain't a -old jug I've been in, in England or the State o' New York, that didn't -learn me somethink. I see now that I was wrong. But I see, too, that -them as tried and sentenced me wasn't right. When they repents of the -sins what their lors and gover'ments and churches has committed against -this old world, I'll repent o' the sins I've committed against them." - -This ability to stand alone, mentally at least, against all religion -and society, was, as Tom saw it, the secret of Honey's independence. He -might have been a rogue, a burglar, a convict; and yet he was a man, -as the orthodocks at Mrs. Turtle's were not, and never had been, men. -Having allowed themselves to be hammered into subjection by what Honey -called lors, gover'ments, and churches, in subjection they had been -trapped, and never could get out again. There was something about Honey -that was strong and free. - - - - -XXX - - -To make himself strong and free was Tom Whitelaw's ruling motive -through the winter which preceded his going to Harvard. He must be -a man, not merely in physical vigor, but in mental independence. -Convinced that he was in what he called a rotten world, a world of -rotten customs built on a rotten foundation, he saw it as a task to -learn to pick his way amid the rottenness. To rebel, but keep his -rebellion as steam with which to drive his engine, not as something to -let off in futile raging against established convictions, was a hint of -Honey's by which he profited. - -"It don't do yer no good to kick so as they can ketch and jump on you. -I've tried that. And it ain't no good to jaw. Tried that too. If the -uninherited was anythink but a bunch o' simps you might be able to -rouse 'em. But they ain't. All yer can do is to shut yer mouth and -live. Yer'll live harder and surer with yer mouth shut. Yer'll live -truer too, just as yer'll shoot straighter when yer ain't talkin' and -fidgitin' about. Don't believe what no judge or gov'nor or bishop says -to yer just because he says it; but don't let 'em know as yer don't -believe it, because they'll hoodoo you with their whim-whams. Awful -glad they'll be, both Church and State, to ruin the man what don't -believe the way they tell him to." - -On the eve of manhood Tom thought more highly of Honey than he had -when a few years younger. Having judged him drugged by work, he -found that he had ideas of his own, however mistaken they might be. -However mistaken they might be, they had at least produced one guiding -principle: to keep your mouth shut and live! Taking his notes about -life, as he did through the following winter, he made them according to -this counsel. - -The outstanding feature of the season was the development of something -like a real friendship with Guy Ansley. Hitherto the two young men had -backed and filled; but in proportion as Tom grew more sure of himself -the weaker fellow clung to him. He clung in his own way; but he clung. -He was the patron. Tom was the fine young chap he had taken a fancy to -and was helping along. - -"I'm awful democratic that way. Whole lot of fellows'll think they've -just got to go with their own gang. Doolittle and Pray's is full of -that sort of bunk. The Doolittle and Pray spirit they call it. I call -it fluff. If I like a fellow I stick by him, no matter what he is. I'd -just as soon go round with you as with the stylishest fellow on the -Back Bay. Social position don't mean anything to me. Of course I know -it's very nice to have it; but if a fellow hasn't got it, why, I don't -care, not so long as he's a sport." - -"Keep your mouth shut and live," Tom reminded himself. He liked Guy -Ansley well enough. He was at least a fellow of his own age, with whom -he could be franker than had been possible with Maisie, and who would -understand him in ways in which Honey never could. With the difference -made by ten years in his point of view, he discussed with Guy the same -sort of subjects, sex, religion, profession, vices, politics, that he -had talked over with Bertie Tollivant. Merely to hear their own voices -on these themes eased the adolescent turmoil in their brains. - -Hildred Ansley, having entered Miss Winslow's school as a boarder, was -immured as in a convent. Her absence made it the easier for Tom to run -in and out of the Ansley house on the missions, secret and important, -which boys create among themselves. Guy had a set of maps by which you -could follow the ebb and flow on the battlefront. Guy had a wireless -installation with which you could listen in on messages not meant for -you. Guy had skis, and bought another pair for Tom so that they could -tramp together on the Fenway. Guy had a runabout which Tom taught him -to drive. Guy had tickets for any play or concert he chose to attend, -and invited Tom to go along with him. - -Doubtful at first, Mrs. Ansley came round to view the acquaintance -almost without misgiving. - -"I think you're a steady boy, aren't you?" she asked of Tom one day, -when finding him alone. - -Tom smiled. "I don't get much chance, ma'am, to be anything else." - -Lacking a sense of humor, Mrs. Ansley was literal. - -"I don't like you to say that. It sounds as if when you do get the -chance--But perhaps you'll know better by that time. It's something I -hope Guy will help you to see in return for all the--well, the physical -protection you give him." - -"Oh, but, ma'am, I--" - -"That'll do. I know my boy is brave. But I know too that he's not very -strong, and to have a great fellow like you, used to roughing it--It -reminds me of the big Cossack who always goes round with the little -Tsarevitch. Not that Guy is as young as that, but he's been tenderly -brought up." - -"Oh, mother, give us a rest!" Guy had rushed into his flowered room -from whatever errand had taken him away. "If I _have_ been tenderly -brought up, I'm as tough to-day as any mucker down where Tom lives." - -"The dear boy!" - -She smiled at Tom, as at one who like herself understood this -extravagance, moving away with the stately lilt that made her skirts -flounce up and down. - -"It's Hildred that's sicking the old lady on to her little song -and dance in your favor," Guy declared, when they had the room to -themselves again. "Hildred likes you. Always has. She's democratic, -too, just like me. Once let a fellow be a sport and Hildred wouldn't -care what he was socially." - -"Keep your mouth shut and live," became Tom's daily self-adjuration. -That Guy sincerely liked him he was sure, and this in itself meant much -to him. The patronage could be smiled away. If he and his mother failed -in tact they gave him much in compensation. In their house he was -getting accustomed to certain small usages which at first had overawed -him. Space didn't dwarf him any more, nor beauty strike him spellbound. -He was so courteous to Pilcher that Pilcher, returning deference for -deference, had once or twice called him "sir." The plays to which -Guy took him were a long step in his education; the music they heard -together released a whole new range in his emotions. - -He discovered that Guy was what is commonly called musical. He played -the piano not badly; he knew something of the classics, of the great -romanticists, of the moderns. Back of the library was a music room, and -when other occupations palled, there Guy would play and explain, while -Tom sat listening and enjoying. Guy liked explaining; it showed his -superiority. Tom liked to learn. To know the difference between Mozart -and Beethoven was a stage in progress. To have the cabalistic names of -Wagner and Debussy, which he had often seen in newspapers, spring to -significance was an initiation into mysteries. - -So with work, with sports, with amusements, the winter sped by, -bringing a sense of an expanding life. He had one main care: Maisie -was more unhappy. Her appeals to him to throw up college, to become a -chauffeur and marry her, increased in urgency. - -He had come to the point of seeing that his engagement to Maisie was -a bit of folly. If Honey were to learn of it, or the Ansleys ... but -he hoped to keep it secret till he won a position in which he could be -free of censure. Once with an income to support a wife, his mistakes -and sufferings would be his own business. In proportion as life opened -up it was easy for him to face trouble cheerfully. - -May had come round, and by keeping his birthday on the fifth of March, -he was now more than eighteen. On a Saturday morning when there was no -school to attend he and Guy had lingered on the roof of the Ansley -house after their task with the wireless apparatus was over. Looking -across the river toward Cambridge, where one big tower marked the site -of Harvard, they were speculating on the new step in manhood they would -take in the following October. - -Pilcher's old head appeared through the skylight to inform Mr. Guy that -lunch was waiting. Madam wished him to come down. - -"Where is she?" - -"She's in the dining room, Mr. Guy." - -"Get along, Tom. I'll be ready with the runabout at two. You won't be -late, will you?" - -Tom said he would not be late, following Pilcher through the skylight -and down the several flights of stairs. He was eager to slip out the -front door without encountering Mrs. Ansley. Mrs. Ansley was eager not -to encounter him. With lunch on the table, it would be awkward not to -ask him to sit down; and to ask him to sit down would be out of the -question. It would be just like Guy.... - -And then Guy did what was just like him. "Mother," he called out, -puffing down the last of the staircases, "why can't Tom have lunch with -us? He's got to be back here at two anyway. He's coming out with me in -the runabout." - -Tom was doing his best to turn the knob of the front door. "Couldn't, -Guy," he whispered back, shaking his head violently. "Got to beat it." - -In reality he was running away. To sit at the table with Mrs. Ansley, -and be served by Pilcher, required a knowledge of etiquette he did not -possess. - -"Mother, grab him," Guy insisted. "He might as well stay, mightn't he?" - -Reluctantly Mrs. Ansley appeared in the doorway. In so far as she could -ever be vexed with Guy, she was vexed. "If Whitelaw's got to go, dear--" - -"He hasn't got to go, have you, Tom? He don't have a home to toe the -line at. He just picks up his grub wherever he can get it." - -To such an appeal it was impossible to be wholly deaf. "Oh, then, if -Whitelaw chooses to stay with us--" - -"Oh, I couldn't, ma'am," Tom cried, hurriedly. "I've got to--" - -But Guy, who had now reached the floor of the hall, caught him by the -arm. "Oh, come along in. It can't hurt us. The old lady's just as -democratic as Hildred and me." - -Mrs. Ansley was overborne; she couldn't help herself. Tom also was -overborne, finding it easier to yield than to rebel. There being but -three places laid at the table, one of which was reserved for Mr. -Ansley in case he came home for luncheon, Pilcher set a fourth. - -"Will you sit there, Whitelaw?" - -"Oh, mother, call him Tom. He isn't a chauffeur, not when he's in town -here." - -If anyone but Guy had put her in this situation Mrs. Ansley would -have deemed it due to herself to sail from the room. As it was, she -endeavored to humor the boy, to keep Tom in his place, and to rescue -the dignity which had never yet sat down at table with a servant. - -"I'm sure there's no harm in being a chauffeur. I'm the last person in -the world to say so, dependent on chauffeurs as I am. Besides, we knew, -of course, that some of the young people helping us at the inn-club -were studying in colleges, and that they didn't mean to stay in those -positions permanently." She grew arch. "But I'm not democratic, Mr. -Whitelaw. Guy knows I'm not. It's his way of teasing me. He's perfectly -aware that I consider democracy a failure. There never was a greater -fallacy than that all men were born free and equal. As to freedom I'm -indifferent; but I've never pretended that any Tom, Dick, or Harry was -my equal, and I never shall." - -"You don't mean this Tom, do you, old lady?" - -"Now, Guy! Isn't he a tease, Mr. Whitelaw? But I do believe in equality -of opportunity. That seems to me one of the glories of our country. So -many of our great men have come from the very humblest origin. And if -we can do anything to help them along--with Guy that's an obsession. -If it's a fault I say it's a good fault. Better to err on that side, I -always think, than to see some one achieve the big thing, and know that -you had no share in it when you might have had. That's shepherd's pie, -Mr. Whitelaw. We have very simple lunches because Mr. Ansley doesn't -always come home, and in any case his meal is his dinner." - -She rambled on because Guy was too busy with his food to help her, and -Tom too terrified. He was sorry not merely for himself, but for her. -Compelled to admit him to breaking bread with her, she must feel as if -he had been forced on her in her dressing room. As a matter of fact, -he admired the way in which she was carrying it off. Long ago, having -divined her as taking her inherited position in Boston as a kind of -sanctifying aura, shrinking from unauthorized approach like a sensitive -plant from a touch, she reminded him of an anecdote he had somewhere -read of Queen Victoria. The Queen was holding a council. Present at it -among others was a statesman sitting for the first time as a member of -the cabinet. Obliged at a given moment to carry a paper from one side -of the table to the other, this gentleman passed back of the Queen's -chair, accidentally grazing it with his hand. The Queen shuddered -and shrank away. The touching merely of the chair was a violation of -majesty. "He won't do," she whispered to the prime minister. He didn't -do. He passed not only into political but into social oblivion. Tom -recalled the incident as he tried to choke down his shepherd's pie. -He was the unhappy statesman. He wouldn't do. Amiable as Mrs. Ansley -tried to make herself, he knew how she was suffering. He was suffering -himself. - -And in on his suffering, to make it worse, bustled Mr. Ansley. Throwing -his hat and gloves on a settle in the hall, he shot into the dining -room at once. He was a man who shot, sharply, directly, rather than one -who walked. Tom stood up. - -"Sorry I'm so late, Sunshine--" His eye fell on Tom. "Oh, how-d'ye-do? -Seen you before, haven't I? Oh! Oh!" The exclamations were of surprise -and a little pain. "Why, you're the young fellow who ran the station -car for us." - -Mrs. Ansley intervened as one who pacifies. "He's going out with Guy at -two o'clock, to help him run the runabout." - -"_Help_ me run it! Why, mother, you talk as if--" - -"And Guy couldn't let him go off without anything to eat." - -"Quite so! quite so!" Mr. Ansley agreed. "Glad to see you. Sit down." -He helped himself to the shepherd's pie which Pilcher passed again. -"Let me see! What was it your name was?" - -Tom sat down again. "Whitelaw, sir." - -"Oh, yes; so it was. You're the same Whitelaw who's been running -about this winter and spring with Guy. Quite so! quite so! Oh, and by -the way, Sunshine, speaking of Whitelaw, Henry looked in on me this -morning. Ran over from New York about some business cropped up since -the sinking of the _Lusitania_." - -"How is he?" - -"Seems rather worried. Lost several intimate friends on the ship, -besides which the old question seems to be popping up again." - -Mrs. Ansley sighed. "Oh, dear! I hope they'll not be dragged through -all that with another of their foolish clues. I thought it was over." - -"It's over for Eleonora. But you know how Henry feels about it. Got it -on the brain. Pity, I call it, after--how many years is it?" - -Mrs. Ansley computed. "It was while we were on our honeymoon. Don't you -remember? We read it in the paper at Montreal, after we'd come from -Niagara Falls. That was the fifteenth of May, and Harry had been stolen -on the tenth." - -Tom felt a queer sick sinking of the heart. The tenth of May was the -last of the three dates his mother had fixed as his birthday. She had -told him, too, that the day when he was born was one on which the -nursemaids were in the Park, and the lilacs had been in bloom. Why this -specification? If, as she had informed him at other times, he was born -in the Bronx, where Gracie also had been born, why the reference to the -Park and nursemaids, five miles away? He listened avidly. - -"How old would that make him if he were living now?" - -Again Mrs. Ansley reckoned. "Something over nineteen. I've forgotten -just how many months he was when he disappeared." - -Tom was reassured. He was only eighteen; he was positive of that. He -couldn't have been nineteen without ever suspecting it. Mr. Ansley -continued. - -"Seems to me a great mistake to bring him back now, even if they found -him. A lumbering fellow of nineteen, practically a man, with probably -the lowest associations." - -"That's what Onora feels. She's told me so. She couldn't go through it. -Even if he isn't dead in fact he's dead to them." - -"Henry feels that, of course. He doesn't deny it. He doesn't want him -back--not now. At the same time when any new will o' the wisp starts up -he can't help feeling--" - -Tom was back in his little hall bedroom, after the run in the car with -Guy, before he had time to think these scraps of conversation over. -The details for which he had to render an account were, first, his -sickening sense of dread on learning that the Whitelaw baby had been -stolen on the tenth of May, and, then, his relief that the child, -if now alive, would be nineteen years of age. These sensations or -emotions, whatever they might be called, had been independent of his -will. What did they portend? Why was he frightened in the one case, and -in the other comforted? - -He didn't know. That he didn't know was the only decision he could -reach. Were the impossible ever to come true, were the parents of the -Whitelaw baby ever, no matter how unwillingly, to claim him as their -son, the advantages to him would be obvious. Why then did he hate the -idea? What was it in him that cried out, and pleaded not to be forsaken? - -He didn't know. - - - - -XXXI - - -Luckily the questions raised that day died out like a false alarm. With -no further mention of the Whitelaw baby, he graduated from the Latin -School, passed his exams at Harvard, and spent the summer as second -in command of a boys' camp in a part of New Hampshire remote from the -inn-club and the Ansleys. October found him a freshman. The new life -was beginning. - -He had slept his first night in his bedroom in Gore Hall, where his -quarters had been appointed. He had met the three fellow-freshmen with -whom he was to share a sitting room. The sitting room was on the ground -floor in a corner, looking out on the Embankment and the Charles. Never -having had, since he left the Quidmores, a place in which to work -better than the narrow squalid room at the end of a narrow squalid -hall, his joy in this new decency of living was naive to the point of -childishness. He spent in that retreat, during the first twenty-four -hours, every minute not occupied with duties. Because he was glad -of the task, his colleagues had left to him as much of the job of -arranging the furniture as he would assume. - -On the second day of his residence he was on his knees, behind his -desk, pulling at a rug that had been wrinkled up. His zeal could bear -nothing not neat, straight, adjusted. The desk was heavy, the rug -stubborn. When a rap sounded on the door he called out, "Come in!" -looking up above the edge of the desk only when the door had been -opened and closed. - -A lady, dignified, a little portly, was stepping into the room, with -the brisk air of one who had a right there. As she had been motoring, -she was wreathed in a dark green veil, which partially hid her -features. Peeling off a gauntlet, she glanced round the room, after a -first glance at Tom. - -"I'm sorry to be late, Tad. That stupid Patterson lost his way. He's -a very good driver, but he's no sense of direction. Why, where's the -picture? You said you had had it hung." - -Her tone was crisp and staccato. In her breath there was the syncopated -halt which he afterward came to associate with the actress, Mrs. Fiske. -She might be nervous; or she might suffer from the heart. - -For the first few seconds he was too agitated to know exactly what to -do. He had been looked at and called Tad again, this time probably by -Tad's mother. He rose to his height of six feet two. The lady started -back. - -"Why, what have you been doing to yourself? What are you standing on? -What makes you so tall?" - -"I'm afraid there's some mistake, ma'am." - -She broke in with a kind of petulance. "Oh, Tad, no nonsense! I'm -tired. I'm not in the mood for it." - -Both gauntlets peeled off, she flung them on the desk. With a motion as -rapid as her speech she stepped toward a window and looked out over the -Embankment. - -"It's going to be noisy and dusty for you here. The stream of cars is -incessant." - -Being now beyond the desk, she caught the fullness of his stature. Her -left hand went up with a startled movement. She gave a little gasp. - -"Oh! You frightened me. You're not standing on anything." - -"No, ma'am, I...." - -"I asked for Mr. Whitelaw's room. They told me to come to number -twenty-eight." - -Making her way out, she kept looking back at him in terror. When he -hurried to open the door for her, she waved him away. Everything she -did and said was rapid, staccato, and peremptory. - -"You've forgotten your gloves, ma'am." - -He reached them with a stretch of his arm. Taking them from him, she -still kept her eyes on his face. - -"No! You don't look like him. I thought you did. I was wrong. It's only -the--the eyes--and the eyebrows." - -She was gone. He closed the door upon her. Dropping into an armchair -by the window, he stared out on a wide low landscape, with a double -procession of motor cars in the foreground, and a river in the middle -distance. - -So this was the woman who had lived through the agony of a stolen -child! He tried to recall what Honey had told him of the tragedy. He -remembered the house which five years earlier Honey had taken him to -see; he remembered the dell with the benches and the lilacs. This -woman's child had been wheeled out there one morning--and had vanished. -She had had to bear being told of the fact. She had gone through the -minutes when the mind couldn't credit it. She had known fear, frenzy, -hope, suspense, disappointment, discouragement, despair, and lassitude. -In self-defense, in sheer inability of the human spirit to endure more -than it has endured, she had thrown round her a hard little shell of -refusal to hear of it again. She resented the reminder. She was pricked -to a frantic excitement by a mere chance resemblance to the image of -what the lost little boy might have become. - -A chance resemblance! He underscored the words. It was all there was. -He himself was the son of Theodore and Lucy Whitelaw. At least he -thought her name was Lucy. Not till he had been required to give the -names of his parents for some school record did it occur to him that he -didn't positively know. She had always been "Mudda." He hadn't needed -another name. After she had gone there had been no one to supply him -with the facts he had not learned before. Even the Theodore would have -escaped him had it not been for that last poignant scene, when she -stood before the officer and gave a name--Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw! Why -not? There were more Whitelaws than one. There was no monopoly of the -name in the family that had lost the child. - -He didn't often consciously think of her nowadays. The memory was -not merely too painful; it was too destructive of the things he was -trying to cherish. He had impulses rather than ideals, in that impulses -form themselves more spontaneously; and all his impulses were toward -rectitude. It was not a chosen standard; neither was it imposed upon -him from without, unless it was in some vague general direction of the -spirit received while at the Tollivants. He didn't really think of it. -He took it as a matter of course. He couldn't be anything but what he -was, and there was an end of it. But all his attempts to get a working -concept of himself led him back to this beginning, where the fountain -of life was befouled. - -So he rarely went back that far. He would go back to the Quidmores, -to the Tollivants, to Mrs. Crewdson; but he stopped there. There he -hung up a great curtain, soft and dim and pitiful, the veil of an -immense tenderness. Rarely, very rarely, did he go behind it. He would -not have done it on this afternoon had not the woman who had just -gone out--dressed, as anyone could see, with the expensive easy-going -roughness which only rich women can afford--neurotic, imperious, -unhappy--had not this woman sent him there. She was a great lady whose -tragic story haunted him; but she turned his mind backward, as it -hardly ever turned, to the foolish and misguided soul who had loved -him. No one since that time, no one whatever in the life he could -remember, had loved him at all, unless it were Honey, and Honey denied -that he did. How could he forsake ...? And then it came to him what it -was that pleaded within him not to be forsaken. - - * * * * * - -The lecture was over. It was one of the first Tom had attended. -The men, some hundred odd in number, were shuffling their papers, -preparatory to getting up. Seated in an amphitheater, they filled -the first seven or eight semicircles outward from the stage. The -arrangement being alphabetical, Tom, as a _W_, was in the most distant -row. - -The lecturer, who was also putting his papers together as they lay on a -table beside him, looked up casually to call out, - -"If Mr. Whitelaw is here I should like to speak to him." - -Tom shot from his seat and stood up. The man on his left did the same. -Occupied with taking notes on the little table attached to the right -arm--the only arm--of his chair, Tom had not turned to the left at all. -He was surprised now at the ripple of laughter that ran among the men -beginning to get up from their seats or to file out into the corridor. -The professor smiled too. - -"You're brothers?" - -Tom looked at his neighbor; his neighbor looked at Tom. Except for the -difference in height the resemblance was startling or amusing, as you -chose to take it. To the men going by it was amusing. - -It was the neighbor, however, who called out, in a shocked voice: "Oh, -no, no! No connection." - -"Then it's to Mr. Theodore Whitelaw that I wish to speak." - -Mr. Theodore Whitelaw made his way toward the platform, taking no -further notice of Tom. - -For this lack of the friendly freemasonry general among young men, -general among freshmen especially, Tom thought he saw a reason. The -outward appearance which enabled him to "place" Tad would enable Tad -to "place" him. On the one there was the stamp of wealth; on the other -there must be that of poverty. He might have met Tad Whitelaw anywhere -in the world, and he would have known him at a glance as a fellow -nursed on money since he first lay in a cradle. It wasn't merely a -matter of dress, though dress counted for something. It was a matter -of the personality. It was in the eyes, in the skin, in the look, in -the carriage, in the voice. It was not in refinement, or cultivation, -or cleverness, or use of opportunity; it was in something subtler -than these, a cast of mind, a habit of thought, an acceptance, a -self-confidence, which seeped through every outlet of expression. Tad -Whitelaw embodied wealth, position, the easy use of whatever was best -in whatever was material. You couldn't help seeing it. - -On the other hand, he, Tom Whitelaw, probably bore the other kind -of stamp. He had not thought of that before. In as far as he had -thought of it, it was to suppose that the stamp could be rubbed off, -or covered up. Clothes would do something toward that, and in clothes -he had been extravagant. He had come to Harvard with two new suits, -made to his order by the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker's. But in -contrast with the young New Yorker his extravagance had been futile. -He found for himself the most opprobrious word in all the American -language--cheap. - -Very well! He probably couldn't help looking cheap. But if cheap he -would be big. He wouldn't resent. He would keep his mouth shut and -live. Things would right themselves by and by. - -They righted themselves soon. The three men with whom he shared the -sitting room, having passed him as "a good scout," admitted him to full -and easy comradeship. In the common-room, in the classroom, he held -his own, and made a few friends. Guy Ansley, urged in part by a real -liking, and in part by the glory of having this big handsome fellow in -tow, was generous of recognition. He was standing one day with a group -of his peers from Doolittle and Pray's when Tom chanced to pass at a -distance. Guy called out to him. - -"Hello, you old sinner! Where you been this ever so long?" With a word -to his friends, he puffed after Tom, and dragged him toward the group. -"This is the guy they call the Whitelaw Baby. See how much he looks -like Tad?" - -"Tad'll give you Whitelaw Baby," came from one of the group. "Hates the -name of it. Don't blame him, do you, when he's heard everyone gassing -about the kid all through his life?" - -But that he was going in Harvard by this nickname disturbed Tom not -a little. Considering the legend in the Whitelaw family, and the -resemblance between himself and Tad, it was natural enough. But should -Tad hear of it.... - -With Tad he had no acquaintance. As the weeks passed by he came to -understand that with certain freshmen acquaintance would be difficult. -They themselves didn't want it. It was a discovery to Tom that it -didn't follow that you knew a man, or that a man knew you, because you -had been introduced to him. Guy Ansley had introduced him that day to -the little group from Doolittle and Pray's; but when he ran into them -again none of them remembered him. - -So Tad Whitelaw did not remember him after having met him accidentally -at Guy's. The meeting had been casual, hurried, but it was a meeting. -The two had been named to each other. Each had made an inarticulate -grunt. But when later that same afternoon they passed in a corridor Tad -went by as if he had never seen him. - -He continued to live and keep his mouth shut. If he was hurt there was -nothing to be gained by saying so. Then an incident occurred which -threw them together in a manner which couldn't be ignored inwardly, -even if outward conditions remained the same. - -Little by little the Harvard student, following the general sobering -down which makes it harder for people in the twentieth century to -laugh than it was to those who lived fifty years ago, was becoming -less frolicsome. Pranks were still played, especially by freshmen, but -neither so many nor so wild. The humor had gone out of them. - -But in every large company of young men there are a few whose high -spirits carry them away. Where they have money to spend and no cares as -to the future on their minds, the new sense of freedom naturally runs -to roistering. In passing Tad Whitelaw's rooms, which were also in Gore -Hall, Tom often heard the banging of the piano, and those shouts of -song and laughter which are likely to disturb the proctor. Guy, who was -often the one at the piano, now and then gave him a report of a party, -telling him who was at it, and what they had had to drink. - -In the course of the winter his relations with Guy took on a somewhat -different tinge. In Guy's circle, commonly called a gang or a bunch, -he was Guy's eccentricity. The Doolittle and Pray spirit allowed of an -eccentricity, if it wasn't paraded too much. Guy knew, too, that it -helped to make him popular, which was not an easy task, to be known as -loyal to a boyhood's chum, when he might be expected to desert him. - -But behind this patronage the fat boy found in Tom what he had always -found, a source of strength. Not much more than at school did he escape -at Harvard his destiny as a butt. - -"Same old spiel, damn it," he lamented to Tom, "just because I'm fat. -What difference does that make, when you're a sport all right? Doesn't -keep me from going with the gang, not any more than Tad Whitelaw's big -eyebrows, or Spit Castle's long nose." - -On occasions when he was left out of "good things" which he would -gladly have been in he made Tom come round to his room in the evening -for confidence and comfort. Tom never made game of him. There was no -one else to whom he could turn with the certainty of being understood. -Having an apartment to himself, he could be free in his complaints -without fear of interruption. - -It was late at night. The two young men had been "yarning," as they -called it, and smoking for the past two hours. Tom was getting up to -go back to his room, when a sound of running along the corridor caught -their attention. - -"What in blazes is that?" - -By the time the footsteps reached Guy's door smothered explosions of -laughter could be heard outside. With a first preliminary pound on the -panels the door was flung open, Spit Castle and Tad Whitelaw hurling -themselves in. Though they would have passed as sober, some of their -excess of merriment might have been due to a few drinks. - -Tad carried a big iron door-key which he threw with a rattle on the -table. His hat had been knocked to the back of his head; his necktie -was an inch off-center; his person in general disordered by flight. -Spit Castle, a weedy youth with a nose like a tapir's, was in much the -same state. Neither could tell what the joke was, because the joke -choked them. Guy, flattered that they should come first of all to him, -stood in the middle of the floor, grinning expectantly. Tom, quietly -smoking, kept in the background, sitting on the arm of the chair from -which he had just been getting up. As each of the newcomers tried to -tell the tale he was broken in on by the other. - -"Came out from town by subway...." - -"Walking through Brattle Square...." - -"Not so much as a damn cat about...." - -"Saw little old johnny come abreast of little old bootstore...." - -"Took out a key--opened the door--went into the shop in the dark--left -the key in the keyhole to lock up when he comes outside again--just in -for something he'd forgot." - -"And damned if Tad didn't turn the key--quick as that--and lock the old -beggar in." - -"Last we heard of him he was poundin' and squealin' to beat all blazes." - -Yellin', 'Pull-_ice_!--pull-_ice_!'--whacking his leg, Spit gave an -imitation of the prisoner--"and he's in there yet." - -To Guy the situation was as droll as it was to his two friends. An old -fellow trapped in his own shop! He was a Dago, Spit thought, which made -the situation funnier. They laughed till, wearied with laughter, they -threw themselves into armchairs, and lit their cigarettes. - -Tom, who had laughed a little not at their joke but at them, felt -obliged, in his own phrase, to butt in. He waited till a few puffs of -tobacco had soothed them. - -"Say, boys, don't you think the fun's gone far enough?" - -The two guests turned and stared as if he had been a talking piece of -furniture. Tad took his cigarette from his lips. - -"What the hell business is it of yours?" - -Tom kept his seat on the arm of the chair, speaking peaceably. "I -suppose it isn't my business--except for the old man." - -"What have you got to do with him? Is he your father?" - -"He's probably somebody's father, and somebody's husband. You can't -leave him there all night." - -Spit challenged this. "Why can't we?" - -"Because you can't. Fellows like you don't do that sort of thing." - -It looked as if Tad Whitelaw had some special animosity against him, -when he sprang from his chair to say insolently, "And fellows like you -don't hang round where they're not wanted." - -"Oh, Tom didn't mean anything--" Guy began to interpose. - -"Then let him keep his mouth shut, or--" he nodded toward the door--"or -get out." - -Tom kept his temper, waiting till Tad dropped back into his chair -again. "You see, it's this way. The old chap has a home, and if he -doesn't come back to it in the course of, let us say, half an hour his -family'll get scared. If they hunt him up at the shop, and find he's -been locked in, they'll make a row at the police station just across -the street. If the police get in on the business they're sure to find -out who did it." - -"Well, it won't be you, will it?" Tad sneered again. - -"No, it won't be me, but even you don't want to be...." - -Tad turned languidly to Guy. "Say, Guy! Awful pity isn't it about -little Jennie Halligan! Cutest little dancer in the show, and she's -fallen and broken her leg." - -Tom got up, walked quietly to the table, picked up the key, and at the -same even pace was making for the door, when Tad sprang in front of him. - -"Damn you! Where do you think you're going?" - -"I'm going to let the old fellow out." - -"Drop that key." - -"Get out of my way." - -"Like hell I'll get out of your way." - -"Don't let us make a row here." - -"Drop that key. Do you hear me?" - -The rage in Tad's face was at being disobeyed. He was not afraid of -this fellow two inches taller than himself. He hated him. Ever since -coming to Harvard the swine had had the impertinence to be called by -the same name, and to look like him. He knew as well as anyone else the -nickname by which the bounder was going, and knew that he, the bounder, -encouraged it. It advertised him. It made him feel big. He, the brother -of the Whitelaw Baby, had been longing to get at the fellow and give -him a whack on the jaw. He would never have a better opportunity. - -The lift of his hand and the grasp with which Tom caught the wrist -were simultaneous. Slipping the key into his pocket, Tom brought his -other hand into play, throwing the lighter-built fellow out of his path -with a toss which sent him back against the desk. Maddened by this -insult to his person, Tad picked up the inkstand on the desk, hurling -it at Tom's head. The inkstand grazed his ear, but went smash against -the wall, spattering the new wallpaper with a great blob of ink. Guy -groaned, with some wild objurgation. To escape from the room Tom had -turned his back, when a blow from an uplifted chair caught him between -the shoulders. Wheeling, he wrenched the chair from the hands of Spit -Castle, chucked it aside and dealt the young man a stinger that brought -the blood from the tapir nose. All blind rage by this time, he caught -the weedy youth's head under his right arm, pounding the face with -his left fist till he felt the body sagging from his hold. He let it -go. Spit fell on the sofa, which was spattered with blood, as the -wallpaper with ink. Startled at the sight of the limp form, he stood -for a second looking down at it, when his skull seemed crashed from -behind. Staggering back, he thought he was going to faint, but the -sight of Tad aiming another thump at him, straight between the eyes, -revived him to berserker fury. He sprang like a lion on an antelope. - -Strong and agile on his side, Tad was stiff to resistance. Before the -sheer weight of Tom's body he yielded an inch or two, but not more. -Freeing his left hand, as he bent backward, he dealt Tom a bruising -blow on the temple. Tom disregarded it, pinning Tad's left arm as he -had already pinned the right. His object now was to get the boy down, -to force him to his knees. It was a contest of brutal strength. When it -came to brutal strength the advantage was with the bigger frame, the -muscles toughened by work. The fight was silent now, nearly motionless. -Slowly, slowly, as iron gives way to the man with the force to bend it, -Tad was coming down. His feet were twisted under him, with no power to -right themselves. Two pairs of eyes, strangely alike, glared at each -other, like the eyes of frenzied wild animals. Tad gave a quick little -groan. - -"O God, my leg's breaking." - -Tom was not touched. "Damn you, let it break!" - -Pressed, pressed, pressed downward, Tad was sinking by a fraction of -an inch each minute. The strength above him was pitiless. Except for -the running of water in the bathroom, where Guy had dragged Spit Castle -to wash his nose, there was no sound in the room but the long hard -pantings, now from Tad's side, now from Tom's. In the intervals -neither seemed to breathe. - -[Illustration: "GET UP, I TELL YOU"] - -Suddenly Tad collapsed, and went down. Tom came on top of him. The -heavier having the lighter fastened by arms and legs, the two lay -like two stones. The faces were so near together that they could have -kissed. Their long protruding eyebrows brushed each other's foreheads. -The weight of Tom's bulk squeezed the breath from his foe, as a bear -squeezes it with a hug. Nothing was left to Tad but resistance of the -will. Of that, too, Tom meant to get the better. - -The words were whispered from one mouth into the other. "Do you know -what I'm going to do with you?" - -There was no answer. - -"I'm going to take you back with me to let that old man out of his -shop." - -There was still no answer. Tom sprang suddenly off Tad's body, but with -his fingers under the collar. - -"Get up!" - -He pulled with all his might. The collar gave way. Tad fell back. -"Damned if I will," was all he could say by way of defiance. - -Tom gave him a kick. "Get up, I tell you. If you don't I'll kick the -stuffing out of you." - -The kick hurt nothing but Tad's pride; but it hurt that badly. It hurt -it so badly that he got up, with no further show of opposition. He -dusted his clothes mechanically with his hands; he tried to adjust his -torn collar. His tone was almost commonplace. - -"This has got to be settled some other time. What do you want me to do?" - -Tom pointed to the door. "What I want you to do is to march. Keep ahead -of me. And mind you if you try to bolt I'll wring your neck as if you -were a cur. You--you--" He sought a word which would hit where blows -had not carried--"you--coward!" - -The flash of Tad's eyes was like that of Tom's own. "We'll see." - -He went out the door, Tom close behind him. - -It was a March night, with snow on the ground, but thawing. They were -without overcoats, and bare-headed. A few motor cars were passing, but -not many pedestrians. - -"Run," Tom commanded. - -He ran. They both ran. The distance being short, they were soon in -Brattle Square. Tad stopped at a little shop, showing a faint light. -There was too much in the way of window display to allow of the -passer-by, who didn't give himself some trouble, to see anything within. - -At first they heard nothing. Then came a whimpering, like that of a -little dog, shut in and lonely, tired out with yelping. Putting his -ear to the door, Tom heard a desolate, "Tam! Tam!" It was the only -utterance. - -"Here's the key! Unlock the door." - -Tad did as he was bidden. Inside the "Tam! Tam!" ceased. - -"Now go in, and say you're sorry." - -As Tad hesitated Tom gave him a push. The door being now ajar the -culprit went sprawling into the presence of his victim. - -There was a spring like that of a cat. There was also a snarl like a -cat's snarl. "You tam Harvard student!" - -Feeling he had done and said enough, Tom took to his heels; but as -someone else was taking to his heels, and running close behind him, he -judged that Tad had escaped. - -Back in his room, Tom felt spent. In his bed he was in emotional revolt -against his victory. He loathed it. He loathed everything that had led -up to it. The eyes that had stared into his, when the two had lain -together on the floor, were like those of something he had murdered. -What was it? What was the thing that deep down within him, rooted -in the primal impulses that must have been there before there was a -world--what was the thing that had been devastated, outraged? Once -more, he didn't know. - - - - -XXXII - - -Life resumed itself next day as if there had been no dramatic -interlude. Proud of the scrap, as he named it, which had taken place -in his room, Guy made the best of it for all concerned. His version -was tactful, hurting nobody's feelings. The trick on the old man was -a merry one, and after a fight about its humor Tad Whitelaw and the -Whitelaw Baby had run off together to let the old fellow out. Spit -Castle's tapir nose had got badly hurt in the scrimmage, and bled all -over the sofa. The splash of ink on the wall was further evidence that -Guy's room was a rendezvous of sports. But sports being sports the -honors had been even on the whole, and no hard feeling left behind. Tad -and the Whitelaw Baby would now, Guy predicted, be better friends. - -But of that there was no sign. There was no sign of anything at all. -When the Whitelaw Baby met the Whitelaw Baby's brother they passed in -exactly the same way as heretofore. You would not have said that the -one was any more conscious of the other than two strangers who pass in -Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue. In Tad there was no show of resentment; in -Tom there was none of pride. As far as Tom was concerned, there was -only a humiliated sense of regret. - -And then, in April, life again took another turn. Coming back one day -to his rooms, Tom found a message requesting him to call a number -which he knew to be Mrs. Danker's. His first thought was of Maisie, -with whom his letters had begun to be infrequent. Mrs. Danker told him, -however, that Honey had had an accident. It was a bad accident, how bad -she didn't know. Giving him the name of the hospital to which he had -been taken, she begged him to go to him at once. After all the years -they had lived with Mrs. Danker she considered them almost as relatives. - -The hospital, near the foot of Grove Street, preserved the air of the -sedate old Boston of the middle nineteenth century. Its low dome, its -pillared facade, its grounds, its fine old trees, had been familiar to -Tom ever since he had lived on Beacon Hill. In less than an hour after -ringing up Mrs. Danker he was in the office asking for news. - -News was scanty. Expecting everyone to understand what he meant to -Honey and Honey meant to him, he had looked for the reception which -friends in trouble and excitement give to the friend who brings his -anxiety to mix with theirs. It would be, "Oh, come in. Poor fellow, -he's suffering terribly. It happened thus and so." But to the interne -in the office, a young man wearing a white jacket, Honey was not so -much as a name. His case was but one among other cases. A good many -came in a day. In a week, or a month, or a year, there was no keeping -account of them, except as they were registered. Individual suffering -was lost sight of in the immense amount of it. But the interne was -polite, and said that if Tom would sit down he would find out. - -Among the hardest minutes Tom had ever gone through were those in the -little reception room. Not only was there suspense; there was remorse. -He had treated Honey like a cad. He had never been decent to him. He -had never really been grateful. There had never been a minute, in the -whole of the nearly six years they had lived together, in which he had -not been sorry, either consciously or subconsciously, at being mixed up -with an ex-convict. It was the ex-convict he had always seen before he -had seen the friend. - -A second interne wearing a white jacket came to question him, to ask -him who he was, and the nature of his business with the patient. If he -was only a friend he could hardly expect to see him. The man was under -opiates, he needed to be kept quiet. - -"What's happened? What's the matter with him? I can't find out." - -The interne didn't know exactly. He had been crushed. He was injured -internally. The cause of the accident he hadn't heard. - -"Could I see his nurse?" - -There was more difficulty about that, but in the end he was taken -upstairs, where the nurse came out to the corridor to speak to him. -She was a competent, businesslike woman, with none of the emotion -at contact with pain which Tom thought must be part of a nurse's -equipment. But she could tell him nothing definite. Not having been on -duty when the case had been brought in, she had heard no more than the -facts essential to what she had to do. - -"Do you think he'll die?" - -"You'd have to ask the doctor that. He's not dead now. That's about as -much as I can say." At sight of the big handsome fellow's distress she -partly relented. "You may come in and look at him. You mustn't try to -speak to him." - -He followed her into a long ward, with an odor of disinfectant. -White beds, mostly occupied, lined each wall. Here and there was one -surrounded by a set of screens, partially secluding a sufferer. At one -such set they stopped. Through an opening between two screens Tom was -allowed to look at Honey who lay with face upturned, and no sign of -pain on the features. He slept as Tom had seen him sleep hundreds of -times when he expected to get up again next morning. The difference was -in the expectation of getting up. Blinded by tears, Tom tiptoed away. - -When he came next day the effect of the opiate had worn off, and yet -not wholly. Honey turned his head at his approach and smiled. Sitting -beside the bed, Tom took the big, calloused hand lying outside the -coverlet, and held it in his own relatively tender one. More than -ever it was borne in on him at whose cost that tenderness had been -maintained. Honey liked to have his hand held. A part of the wall of -aloofness with which he had kept himself surrounded seemed to have -broken down. - -A little incoherently he told what had happened. He had been stowing -packing-cases in the hold of a big ship. The packing-cases were lowered -by a crane. The crane as a rule was a good old thing, slow paced, -gentle, safe. But this time something seemed to have gone wrong with -her. Though his back was turned, Honey knew by the shadow above him -that she was at her work. When he had got into its niche the case with -which he was busy he would swing round and seize the new one. And then -he heard a shout. It was a shout from the dock, and didn't disturb him. -He was about to turn when something fell. It struck him in the back. It -was all he knew. He thought he remembered the blow, but was not certain -whether he did or not. When he "came to" he had already been moved to -the shed, and was waiting for the ambulance. He seemed not to have a -body any more. He was only a head, like one of them there angels in a -picture, with wings beneath their chins. - -He laughed at that, and with the laugh the nurse took Tom away; but -when he came back on the following day Honey's mind was clearer. - -"I've made me will long ago," he said, when Tom had given him such bits -of news as he asked for. "It's all legal and reg'lar. Had a lawyer fix -it up. Never told yer nothink about it. Everythink left to you." - -"Oh, Honey, don't let us talk about that. You'll be up and around in a -week or so." - -"Sure I'll be up and around. Yer don't think a little thing like this -is goin' to bust me. Why, I don't feel 'ardly nothink, not below the -neck. All the same, it can't do no harm for you to know what's likely -to be what. If I was to croak, which I don't intend to, yer'd have -about sixteen hundred dollars what I've saved to finish yer eddication -on. The will is in the bottom of me trunk at Danker's." - -On another day he said, "If anyone was to pop up and say I owed 'em -that money, because I took it from 'em...." - -He held the sentence there, leaving Tom to wonder if he had thoughts of -restitution, or possibly of repentance. - -"I don't owe 'em nothink," he ended. "Belonged to me just as much as it -belonged to them. Nothink don't belong to nobody. I never was able to -figger it out just the way I wanted to, because I ain't never had no -eddication; but Gord's lor I believes it is. Never could get the 'ang -o' the lor o' man, not nohow." - -To comfort him, Tom suggested that perhaps when he got through college -he might be able to take the subject up. - -"I wouldn't bind yer to it, Kiddy. Tough job! Why, when I give up -socializin' to try and win over some o' them orthodocks I thought as -they'd jump to 'ear me. Not a bit of it! The more I told 'em that -nothink didn't belong to nobody the more they said I was a nut." - -Having lain silent for a minute he continued, with that light in his -face which corresponded to a wink of the blind eye: "I don't bind yer -to nothink, Kiddy. That's what I've always wanted yer to feel. You're a -free boy. When I'm up and around again, and yer've got yer eddication, -and have gone out on yer own, yer won't have me a-'angin' on yer 'ands. -No, sir! I'll be off--free as a bird--back with the old gang again--and -yer needn't be worried a-thinkin' I'll miss you--nor nothink!" - -It was a few days after this that the businesslike nurse who had first -admitted him hinted that, if she were Tom, Honey would have a clergyman -come to visit him. A few days more and it might be too late. - -Honey with a clergyman! It was something Tom had never thought of. -The incongruous combination made him smile. Nevertheless, it was -what people who were dying had--a clergyman come to visit them. If a -clergyman could do Honey any good.... - -"Honey," he suggested, artfully, next day, "now that you're pinned -to bed for awhile, and have got the time, wouldn't you like to see a -clergyman sometimes, and talk things over?" - -There was again that light in the face which took the place of a wink. -"What things?" - -Tom was nonplussed. "Well, I suppose, things about your soul." - -"What'd a clergyman know about _my_ soul? He might know about his own, -but I know all about mine that I've got to know. 'Tain't much--but it's -enough." - -Tom was relieved. He didn't want to disturb Honey by bringing in a -stranger nor was he more sure than Honey that any good could be done by -it. He was more relieved still when Honey explained himself further. - -"Do yer suppose I've come to where I am now without thinkin' them -things out, when Gord give me a genius for doin' it? I don't say I've -did it as well as them as has had more eddication; but Gord takes -us with the eddication what we've got. Eddication's a fine thing; I -don't say contrairy; but I don't believe as it makes no diff'rence -to Gord. If you and me was before Him--me not knowin' 'ardly nothink, -and you stuffed as you are with learnin' till you're bustin' out -with it--I don't believe as Gord'd say as there was a pinch o' snuff -between us--not to him there wouldn't be." A little wearily he made his -confession of faith. "Gord made me; Gord knows me; Gord'll take me just -the way I am and make the best o' me, without no one else buttin' in." - - * * * * * - -It was the middle of an afternoon. If anything, Honey was better. All -spring was blowing in at the windows, while the trees were in April -green, and the birds jubilant with the ecstasy of mating. - -"Beats everythink the way I dream," Honey confided, in a puzzled tone. -"Always dreamin' o' my mother. Haven't 'ardly thought of her these -years and years. Didn't 'ardly know her. Died when I was a little kid; -and yet...." - -He lay still, smiling into the air. Tom was glad to find him cheerful, -reminiscent. Never in all the years he had known him had Honey talked -so much of his early life as within the last few days. - -"Used to take us children into the country to see a sister she had -livin' there.... Little village in Cheshire called King's Clavering.... -See that little cottage now.... Thatched it was.... Set a few yards -back from the lane.... Had flowers in the garden ... musk ... and -poppies ... and London pride ... and Canterbury bells ... and old -man's love ... and cherry pie ... and raggedy Jack ... and sailor's -sweetheart ... funny how all them names comes back to me...." - -Again he lay smiling. Tom also smiled. It was the first day he had had -any hope. It was difficult not to have hope when Honey was so free from -pain, and so easy in his mind. As to pain he had not had much since -the accident had benumbed him; but there had always been something he -seemed to want to say. To-day he had apparently said everything, and so -could spend the half-hour of Tom's visit on memories of no importance. - -"Always had custard for tea, my mother's sister had. Lord, how us young -ones'd...." - -The recollection brought a happy look. Tom was glad. With pleasant -thoughts Honey would not have the wistful yearning in his eyes which he -had turned on him lately whenever he went away. - -"There was a hunt in Cheshire. Onst I saw a lord--a dook, I think he -was--ridin' to 'ounds. Sat his 'orse as if he was part of him, he -did...." - -This too died away without sequence, though the happy look remained. -The smile grew rapt, distant perhaps, as memory took him back to long -forgotten trifles. Just outside the window a robin fluted in a tree. - -Honey turned his head slightly to say: "Have I been asleep, Kid?" - -"No; you haven't had your eyes shut." - -"Oh, but I must have. Couldn't dream if I was wide awake. I -saw ma--just as plain as--" He recovered himself with a light -laugh--"Wouldn't it bust yer braces to 'ear me sayin' ma? But that's -what us childern used to call...." - -Once more he turned in profile, lying still, silent, radiant, occupied. -The robin sang on. Tom looked at his watch. It was time for him to be -stealing away. Now that Honey was better, he didn't mind going without -a farewell, because he could explain himself next time. He was glancing -about for the nurse when Honey said, softly, casually, as if greeting -an acquaintance: - -"Hello--ma!" - -He lifted both hands, but they dropped back, heavily. Tom, who had half -risen, fell on his knees by the bedside, seizing the hand nearest him -in both his own. - -"Honey! Honey! Speak to me!" - -But Honey's good eye closed gently, while the head sagged a little to -one side. The robin was still singing. - - * * * * * - -Two letters received within a few days gave Tom the feeling of not -being quite left alone. - - _Dear Mr. Whitelaw_ - - In telling you how deeply we feel for you in your great bereavement - I wish I could make you understand how sincerely we are all your - friends. I want to say this specially, as I know you have no family. - Family counts for much; but friends count for something too. It is - George Sand who says: "Our relations are the friends given us by - nature; our friends are the relations given us by God." Will you not - think of us in this way?--especially of Guy and me. Whenever you are - lonely I wish you would turn to us, in thought at least, when it - can't be in any other way. When it can be--our hearts will always be - open. - - Very sincerely yours, - - Hildred Ansley. - -The other letter ran: - - _Dear Tom_ - - Now that you have got this great big incubous off your hands I should - think you would try to do your duty by me and what you owe me. It - seems to me I've been patient long enough. It is not as if you were - the only peanut in the bag. There are others. I do not say this - purposely. It is rung from me. I have done all I mean to do here, and - will beat it whenever I get a good chance. I should think you would be - educated by now. I graduated from high school at sixteen, and I guess - I know as much as the next one. I've got a gentleman friend here, a - swell fellow too, a travelling salesman, and he makes big money, and - he says that if a fellow isn't hitting the world by fifteen he'll - always be a quitter. Think this over and let me know. With passionate - love. - - Maisie. - - - - -XXXIII - - -The day after Honey was buried Tom went to Mrs. Danker's to pay what -was owing on the room rent, and take away his effects. The effects went -into one small trunk which Mrs. Danker packed, while Tom sat on the -edge of the bed and listened to her comments. A little wiry woman, prim -in the old New England way, she was tireless in work and conversation. - -"He was a fine man, Mr. Honeybun was, and my land! he was fond of you. -He'd try to hide it; but half an eye could see that he was that proud -of you! He'd be awful up-and-coming while you was here, and make out -that it didn't matter to him whether you was here or not; but once -you was away--my land! He'd be that down you'd think he'd never come -up again. And one thing I could see as plain as plain; he was real -determined that when you'd got up in the world he wasn't going to be -a drag on you. He'd keep saying that you wasn't beholding to him for -anything; and that he'd be glad when you could do without him so that -he could get back again to his friends; but my land! half an eye could -see." - -During these first days Tom found the memory of a love as big as -Honey's too poignant to dwell upon. He would dwell upon it later, when -the self-reproach which so largely composed his grief had softened -down. All he could do as yet was to curse himself for the obtuseness -which had taken Honey at the bluff of his words, when the tenderness -behind his deeds should have been evident to anyone not a fool. - -He couldn't bear to think of it. Not to think of it, he asked Mrs. -Danker for news of Maisie. He had often wondered whether Maisie might -not have told her aunt in confidence of her engagement to himself; and -now he learned that she had not. - -"I hardly ever hear from her; but another aunt of Maisie's writes to -me now and then. Says that that drummer fellow is back again. I hope -he'll keep away from her. He don't mean no good by her, and she goes -daft over him every time he turns up. My land! how do we know he hasn't -a wife somewheres else, when he goes off a year and more at a time, on -his long business trips? This time he's been to Australia. It was to -get her away from him that I asked her to spend that winter in Boston; -but now that he's back--well, I'm sure I don't know." - -Tom had not supposed that at the suggestion of a rival he would have -felt a pang; and yet he felt one. - -"Of course, there's some one; we know that. It must be some one too -who's got plenty of money, because he's given her a di'mond ring that -must be worth five hundred dollars, her other aunt tells me, if it's -worth a cent. We know he makes big money, because he's got a fine -position, and his family is one of the most high thought of in Nashua. -That's part of the trouble. They're very religious and toney, so they -wouldn't think Maisie a good enough match for him. Still, if he'd only -do one thing or the other, keep away from her, or ask her right out -and out to marry him...." - -Tom was no longer listening. The mention of Maisie's diamond had made -him one hot lump of shame. He knew more of the cost of jewels now than -when he had purchased the engagement ring, and even if he didn't know -much he knew enough. - -A few days later he was in Nashua. He went, partly because he had the -day to spare before he took up college work again, partly because of a -desire to learn what was truly in Maisie's heart, partly to make her -some amends for his long neglect of her, and mostly because he needed -to pour out his confession as to the diamond ring. Having been warned -of his coming, Maisie, who had got rid of the children for an hour or -two, awaited him in the parlor. - -A little powder, a little unnecessary rouge, a sweater of imitation -cherry-colored silk, gave her the vividness of a well-made artificial -flower. Even Tom could see that, with her neat short skirt and -high-heeled shoes, she was dressed beyond the note of the shabby little -room; but if she would only twine her arms around his neck, and give -him one of the kisses that used to be so sweet, he could overlook -everything else. - -Her eyes on the big square cardboard box he carried in his hand, she -received him somberly. Having allowed him to kiss her, she sat down at -the end of a table drawn up beside the window, while he put the box in -front of her. - -"What's this?" - -He placed himself at the other end of the table, having its length -between them. Because of his waning love, because of the ring above -all, he had done one of those reckless things which sometimes render -men exultant. From his slender means he had filched a hundred dollars -for a set of furs. He watched Maisie's face as she untied knots and -lifted the cover of the band-box. - -On discovering the contents her expression became critical. She -fingered the fur without taking either of the articles from the box. -Turning over an edge of the boa, she looked at the lining. It was a -minute or two before she took out the muff and held it in her hands. -She examined it as if she were buying it in a shop. - -"That's a last year's style," was her first observation. "It'll be -regular old-fashioned by next winter, and, of course, I shouldn't want -a muff before then. The girls'll think I got them second-hand when -they're as out of date as all that. They're awful particular in Nashua, -more like New York than Boston." She shook out the boa. "Those little -tails are sweet, but they don't wear them now. How much did you give?" - -He told her. - -"They're not worth it. It's the marked-down season too. Some one's put -it over on you. I could have got them for half the price--and younger. -These are an old woman's furs. The girls'll say my aunt in Boston's -died, and left them to me in her will." - -Brushing them aside, she faced him with her resentful eyes. Her hands -were clasped in front of her, the diamond flashing on the finger -resting on a table-scarf of thin brown silk embroidered in magenta -ferns. - -"Well, Tom, what's your answer to my letter?" - -At any other minute he would have replied gently, placatingly; but just -now his heart was hot. A hundred dollars had meant much to him. It -would have to be paid back in paring down on all his necessities, in -food, in carfares, even in the washing of his clothes. He too clasped -his hands on the table, facing her as she faced him. He remembered -afterward how blue her eyes had been, blue as lapis lazuli. All he -could see in them now was demand, and further demand, and demand again -after that. - -"Have I got to give you an answer, Maisie? If so, it's only the one -I've given you before. We'll be married when I get through college, and -have found work." - -"And when'll that be?" - -"I'm sorry to say it won't be for another two years, at the earliest." - -"Another two years, and I've waited three already!" - -"I know you have. But listen, Maisie! When we got engaged I was only -sixteen. You were only eighteen. Even now I'm only nineteen, and you're -only twenty-one. We've got lots of time. It would be foolish for us to -be married...." - -She broke in, drily. "So I see." - -"You see what, Maisie?" - -"What you want me to see. If you think I'm dying to marry you...." - -"No, I'm not such an idiot as that. But if we're in love with each -other, as we used to be...." - -"As you used to be." - -"As I used to be of course; and you too, I suppose." - -"Oh, you needn't kill yourself supposing." - -He drew back. "What do you mean by that, Maisie?" - -"What do you think I mean?" - -"Well, I don't know. It sounds as if you were trying to tell me that -you'd never cared anything about me." - -"How much did you ever care about me?" - -"I used to think I couldn't live without you." - -"And you've found out that you can." - -"I've had to, for one thing; and for another, I'm older now, and I know -that nobody is really essential to anybody else. All the same--" - -"Yes, Tom; all the same--what?" - -"If you'd be willing to take what I can offer you--" - -"Take what you can offer me! You're not offering me anything." - -He explained his ambitions, for her as well as for himself. Life was -big; it was full of opportunity; his origin didn't chain any man who -knew how to burst its bonds. He did know. He didn't know how he knew, -but he did. He just had it in him. When you knew you had it in you, -you didn't depend on anyone to tell you; you yourself became your own -corroboration. - -But in order to fulfil this conviction of inner power you needed to -know things. You needed the experience, the standing, the rubbing up -against other men, which you got in college in a way that you didn't -get anywhere else. You got some of it by going into business, but only -some of it. In any case, it was no more than a chance in business. -You might get it or you might not. With the best will in the world on -your part, it might slip by you. In college it couldn't slip by you, -if you had any intelligence at all. All the past experience of mankind -was gathered up there for you to profit by. You could only absorb a -little of it, of course. But you acquired the habit of absorbing. It -was not so much what you learned that gave college its value; it was -the learning of a habit of learning. You got an attitude of mind. Your -attitude of mind was what made you, what determined your place in the -world. With a closed mind you got nowhere; with an open mind the world -was as the sea driving all its fish into your net. College opened the -mind; it was the easiest method by which it could be done. If she would -only be patient till he had got through the preliminary training and -had found the job for which he would be fitted.... - -"But what's the use of waiting when you can get a job for which you'd -be fitted right off the bat? There's a family up here on the hill that -wants a shofer. They give a hundred and twenty-five a month. Why go to -all that trouble about opening your mind when here's the job handed out -to you? The gentleman-friend I told you about says that business has -got college skinned. He says colleges are punk. He says lots of men in -business won't take a man if he's been to college. They'd want a fellow -with some get-up-and-get to him." - -He began to understand her as he had never done before. Maisie had -the closed mind. She was Honey's "orthodock," the type which accepts -the limitations other people fix for it. He registered the thought, -long forming in his mind subconsciously, that among American types the -orthodock is the commonest. It was not true, as so often assumed, that -the average American is keen to forge ahead and become something bigger -than he is. That was one of the many self-flattering American ideals -that had no relation to life. Mrs. Ansley's equality of opportunity was -another. People passed these phrases on, and took for granted they were -true, when in everyday practice they were false. - -There could be no breaking forth into a larger life so long as the -national spirit made for repression, suppression, restriction, and -denial. Maisie was but one of the hundred and sixteen millions of -Americans out of a possible hundred and seventeen on whom all the -pressure of social, industrial, educational, and religious life had -been brought to bear to keep her mind shut, her tastes puerile, and -her impulses to expansion thwarted. With a great show of helping and -blessing the less fortunate, American life, he was coming to believe, -was organized to force them back, and beat them into subjection. The -hundred and seventeenth million loved to believe that it wasn't so; it -was not according to their consciences that it should be so; but the -result could be seen in the hundred and sixteen million minds drilled -to disability, as Maisie's was. - -A young man not yet hardened to life's injustices, he saw himself -rushing to Maisie's aid, to make the best of her. Experience would -help her as it had helped him. The shriveled bud of her mind would -unfold in warmth and sunshine. This would be in their future together. -In the meantime he must clear the ground of the present by getting rid -of pretence. - -"There's one thing I want to tell you, Maisie, something I'm rather -ashamed of." - -The lapis lazuli eyes widened in a look of wonder. He might be going to -tell her of another girl. - -"You know, as I've just said, that when we got engaged I was only -sixteen. I didn't know anything about anything. I thought I did, of -course; but then all fellows of sixteen think that. I'd never had -anyone to teach me, or show me the right hang of things. You saw for -yourself how I lived with Honey; and before that, as you know, I'd been -a State ward. Further back than that--but I can't talk about it yet. -Some day when we're married, and know each other better--" - -"I'm not asking you. I don't care." - -"No, I know you don't care, and that you're not asking me; but I want -you to understand how it was that I was so ignorant, so much more -ignorant than I suppose any other fellow would have been. When I went -out to buy that ring you've got on--" - -He knew by the horror in her face that she divined what he had to tell -her. He knew too that she had already been afraid of it. - -"You're not going to say that it isn't a real diamond?" - -To nerve himself he had to look at her steadily. Confessing a murder -would have been easier. - -"No, Maisie, it isn't a real diamond. At the time I bought it I didn't -know what a real diamond was. I'm not sure that I know now--" - -He stopped because, without taking her eyes from his, she was slipping -the ring from her finger. She was slipping, too, an illusion from her -mind. He knew now that to be trifled with in love, to be betrayed in a -great trust, would be small things to Maisie as compared to this kind -of deception. Her wrath and contempt were the more scathing to behold -because of her cherry-colored prettiness. - -The ring lay on the table. Drawing in the second finger of her right -hand, she made of it a spring against her thumb. She loosed the spring -suddenly. The faked diamond sped across the table hitting against his -hand. He picked it up, putting it out of sight in his waistcoat pocket. -For a fellow of nineteen, eager to be something big, no lower depth of -humiliation could ever be imagined. - -Maisie stood up. "You cheap skate!" - -He bowed his head as a criminal sometimes does when sentenced. He -had no protest to make. A cheap skate was what he was. He sat there -crushed. Skirting round him as if he were defiled, she went out into -the little entry. - -He was still sitting crushed when she came back. She did not pause. -She merely flung his hat on the table as she went by. It was a cheap -skate's hat, a brown soft felt, shapeless, weather-stained, three years -out of style. With no further words, she opened the door into the -adjoining room, passed through it, and closed it noiselessly behind -her. - - - - -XXXIV - - -For probating Honey's will he asked leave to come and consult Mr. -Ansley. An appointment was made for an evening when that gentleman was -to be at home. - -Tom, who had some gift for character, was beginning to understand -him. Understanding him, it seemed to him that he understood all that -old Boston which had once been a national institution, a force in the -country's history, and now, like a man retired from business, sat -resting on its hill. - -Old Boston was more significant, however, than a man retired from -business, in that it was to a great degree a man retired from the -pushing of ideals. Generous once with the hot generosity of youth, -keen to throw itself into the fight against wrongs, ready to be -slaughtered in the van rather than compromise on principles, old -Boston had now reached the age of mellowness. It had grown weary in -well-doing. It had done enough. Contending with national evils had -proved to be futile. National evils had grown too big, too many, too -insurgent. Better make the best of life as your people mean to live -it. Keep quiet; take it easy; save money; let the country gang its own -gait. A big turbulent country, with no more respect for old Boston -than for the prophet Jeremiah, it wallowed in prosperous vulgarity. -Let it wallow! With solid investments in cotton and copper old Boston -could save its own soul. It withdrew from its country; it withdrew -from its state; it withdrew from its own city. Where its ancestors -had made the laws and administered them, it became, like those proud -old groups of Spaniards still to be found in California, a remnant of -a former time, making no further stand against the invader. With a -little art, a little literature, a little music, a little education, a -little religion, a little mild beneficence, and a great deal of astute -financial and professional ability, it could pass its time and keep its -high-mindedness intact. - -To Tom's summing up this was Philip Ansley. He was able, -public-spirited, and generous; but he was disillusioned. The United -States of his forefathers, of which he kept the ideal in his soul, had -turned into such a hodgepodge of mankind, that he had neither hope -nor sentiment with regard to it. In his heart he believed that its -governments were in the hands of what he called a bunch of crooks. -With congresses, state legislatures, and civic councils elected by -what to him were hordes of ignoramuses, with laws dictated by cranks -and fanatics, with the old-time liberties stampeded by the tyranny of -majorities lacking a sense of responsibility, he deemed it prudent to -follow the line of least resistance and give himself to making money. -Apart from casting his vote for the Republican ticket on election days, -he left city, state, and country to the demagogues and looters. He was -sorry to do this, yet with the world as it was, he saw no help for it. - -But he served as director on the boards of a good many companies; he -was an Overseer of Harvard, a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, -the treasurer of several hospitals, a subscriber to every important -philanthropic fund. His club was the Somerset; his church was Trinity. -For old Boston these two facts when taken together placed him in that -sacred shrine which in England consecrates dowager duchesses. - -When Tom was shown up he found his host in the room where two years -earlier they had talked over the place as chauffeur, but he was no -longer awed by it. Neither was he awed by finding Ansley wearing a -dinner-jacket simply because it was evening. The conventions and -amenities of civilized life were becoming a matter of course to him. - -"How d'ye do? Come in. Sit down. What's the weather like outside? Still -pretty cold for April, isn't it?" - -Though he offered his hand only from his armchair, where he sat reading -the evening paper, he offered it. It was also a tribute to Tom's -progress that he was asked to take a seat. A still further sign of -his having reached a position remotely on a footing of equality with -the Ansleys was an invitation to help himself from a silver box of -cigarettes. - -Having respectfully declined this honor, as Ansley himself was not -smoking, he stated his errand. If Mr. Ansley would introduce him to -some young inexpensive lawyer, who would tell him what to do in the -probating of Honey's will.... - -The business was soon settled. In possession of Ansley's card with a -scribbled line on it, Tom rose to take his leave. Ansley rose also, -but moved toward the fireplace, where a few sticks were smoldering, as -if he had something more to say. - -"Wait a minute. Sit down again. Have a cigarette." - -As Ansley himself lighted a cigar, Tom took a cigarette from the silver -box, and leaned against the back of the big chair from which he had -just risen. Once more he was struck by the resemblance between the -shrewd close-lipped face, dropping into its meditative cast, and the -lampshade just below it, parchment with a touch of rose, and an inner -light. Ansley puffed for a minute or two pensively. - -"You've no family, I believe. You haven't got the complications of a -lot of relatives." - -Tom was surprised by the new topic. "No, sir. I wish I had, but--" - -"Oh, well, for a young fellow like you, bound to get on--" He dropped -this line to take up another. "I'm thinking about Guy. Occurred to me -the other day that while he'd been dragged about Europe a good many -times he didn't know anything of his own country. Never been west of -the Hudson." - -Tom smoked and wondered. - -"I've suggested to him to take his summer's vacation and wander -about. Get the lay of the land. Could cover a good deal of ground in -three months. Zigzag up and down--Niagara--Colorado--Chicago--Grand -Canyon--California--Seattle--back if he liked by the Canadian Pacific. -What would you think?" - -"I think it would be great." - -"Would you go with him?" - -It seemed to Tom that his brain was spinning round. Not only was he too -dazed to find words, but the question of money came first. How could he -afford ...? - -But Ansley went on again. "It's a choice between you and a tutor. -My wife would like a tutor. Guy wants you. So do I. You'd have your -traveling expenses, of course--do everything the same as Guy--and, let -us say, five hundred dollars for your time. Would that suit you?" - -He didn't know how to answer. Excitement, gratitude, and a sense -of insufficiency churned together and choked him. It was only by -spluttering and stammering that he could say at last: - -"If--if Mrs. Ansley--d-doesn't w-want me--" - -"Oh, she'd give in. Simply feels that Guy'd get more good out of it if -he had some one to point out moral lessons as he went along. I don't. -Two young fellows together, if they're at all the right kind, 'll do -each other more good than all the law and the prophets." - -"But would you mind telling me, sir, something of what you'd expect -from me?" - -"Oh, nothing! Just play round with him, and have a good time. You seem -to chum up with him all right." - -Tom was distressed. "Yes, sir, but if I'm to be--to be paid for -chumming up with him I should have to--" - -"Forget it. I want Guy to take the trip. It's not the kind of trip -anyone wants to take alone, and you're the fellow he'd like to have -with him. I'd like it too. You understand him." - -He turned round to knock the ash from his cigar into the dying fire. - -"Trouble with Guy is that he has no sense of values. Thing he needs to -learn is what's worth while and what's not. I don't want you to teach -him. I just want him to _see_. What do you say?" - -Tom hung his head, not from humility but to think out a point that -troubled him. - -"You know, sir"--he looked up again--"that when Guy and I get together -we talk about things that--well, that you mightn't like." - -"I don't care a hang what you talk about." - -"Yes, sir; but this is something particular." - -"Well, then, keep it to yourself." - -"I can't keep it to myself because--because some day you might think -that I'd had a bad ... as long as we've just been chums ... and I -wasn't paid--" - -Ansley moved away from the fireplace, striding up and down in front of -it. - -"Look here, my boy! I know what young fellows are. I know you talk -about things you wouldn't bring up before Mrs. Ansley and me. I don't -care. It's what I expect. Do you both good. You're not specially -vicious, either of you, and even if you were--" - -"It's not a matter of morals, sir; it's one of opinions." - -He dismissed this lightly. "Oh, opinions!" - -"But this is a special kind of opinion. You see, sir, I've always been -poor. I've lived among poor people. I've seen how much they have to go -without. And I begin to see all that rich people have more than they -need--more than they can ever use." - -"Oh, quite so! I see! I see! And you both get a bit revolutionary. -Go to it, boy! Fellows of your age who're not boiling over with -rebellion against social conditions as they are'll never be worth their -salt. Don't say anything about it before Mrs. Ansley, but between -yourselves.... Why, when I was an undergraduate.... You'll live through -it, though.... The poor people don't want any champions.... They don't -want to be helped.... You get sick of it in the long run.... But while -you're young boil away.... If that's all that bothers you...." - -Tom explained that it was all that bothered him, and the bargain was -struck. He had expressed his thanks, shaken hands, and reached the -threshold on the way out when Ansley spoke again. - -"Guy tells me that out at Cambridge they call you the Whitelaw Baby. I -suppose you know all about yourself--your people--where you began--that -sort of thing?" - -He decided to be positive, laconic, to do what he could to squelch the -idea in Ansley's mind. - -"Yes, sir; I do." - -"Then that settles that." - - - - -XXXV - - -Between the end of the college year and the departure on the journey -westward there was to be an interval of three weeks. Mrs. Ansley had -insisted on that. She was a mother. For eight or nine months she had -seen almost nothing of her boy. Now if he was to be taken from her for -the summer, and for another college year after that, she might as well -not have a son at all. - -Tom was considering where he should pass the intervening time when the -following note unnerved him. - - _Dear Mr. Whitelaw_ - - Mother wants to know if when college closes, and Guy joins us in New - Hampshire, you will not come with him for the three weeks before you - start on your trip. Please do. I shall have got there by that time, - and I haven't seen you now for nearly two years. We must have a lot of - notes to compare, and ought to be busy comparing them. Do come then, - for our sakes if not for your own. You will give us a great deal of - pleasure. - - Yours very sincerely, - - Hildred Ansley. - -His heart failed him. It failed him because of the details as to -customs, etiquette, and dress he didn't know anything about. He should -be called on to speak fluently in a language of which he was only -beginning to spell out the little words. It seemed to him at first that -he couldn't accept the invitation. - -Then, not to accept it began to look like cowardice. He would never -get anywhere if he funked what he didn't know. When you didn't know -you went to work and found out. You couldn't find out unless you put -yourself in the way of seeing what other people did. After twenty-four -hours of reflection he penned the simplest form of note. Thanking -Hildred for her mother's kind invitation, he accepted it. Before -putting his letter in the post, however, he dropped in to call on Guy. -Guy, who was strumming the Love-Death of Isolde, tossed his comments -over his shoulder as he thumped out the passion. - -"That's Hildred. She's made mother do it. Nutty on that sort of thing." - -Tom's heart failed him again. "Nutty on what sort of thing?" - -Isolde's anguish mounted and mounted till it seemed as if it couldn't -mount any higher, and yet went on mounting. "Oh, well! She's toted it -up that you haven't got a home--that for three weeks after college -closes you'll be on the town--and so on." - -"I see." - -"All the same, come along. I'd just as soon. Dad won't be there hardly. -The old lady'll be booming about, but you needn't mind her. You'll have -your room and grub for those three weeks, and that's all you've got to -think about. Anyhow, it's bats in the attic with Hildred the minute it -comes to a lame dog." - -While Guy's fat figure swayed over the piano, Isolde's great heart -broke. Tom went back to his room and wrote a second answer, regretting -that owing to the pressure of his engagements he would be unable.... - -And then there came another reaction. What did it matter if Hildred -Ansley _was_ opening the door out of pity? Pity was one of the -loveliest traits of character. Only a cad would resent it. He sent his -first reply. - -Having done this, he felt it right to go and call on Mrs. Ansley. He -was sure she didn't want him in New Hampshire, but by taking it for -granted that she did he would discount some of her embarrassment. - -As Mrs. Ansley was not at home Pilcher held out a little silver tray. -Tom understood that he should have had a card to put in it. A card was -something of which he had never hitherto felt the need. He said so to -Pilcher frankly. - -Pilcher's stony medieval face, the face of a saint on the portal of -some primitive cathedral, smiled rarely, but when it did it smiled -engagingly. - -"You'll find a visitin' card very 'andy, Mr. Tom, now that you're so -big. Mr. Guy has had one this long spell back." - -It was a lead. In shy unobtrusive ways Pilcher had often shown himself -his friend. Tom confessed his yearning for a card if only he knew how -to order one. - -"I'll show you one of Mr. Guy's. He always has the right thing. I'll -find out too where he gets them done. If you'll step in, Mr. Tom...." - -As he waited in the dining room, with the good-natured Ansley ancestor -smiling down at him, there floated through Tom's mind a phrase from -the Bible as taught by Mrs. Tollivant. "The Lord sent His angel." -Wasn't that what He was doing now, and wasn't the angel taking -Pilcher's guise? When the heavenly messenger came back with the card -Tom went straight to his point. - -"Pilcher, I wonder if you'd mind helping me?" - -"I'd do it and welcome, Mr. Tom." - -Mr. Tom told of his invitation to New Hampshire, and of his ignorance -of what to do and wear. If Pilcher would only give him a hint.... - -He could not have found a better guide. Pilcher explained that a few -little things had to be as second nature. A few other little things -were uncertain points as to which it was always permissible to ask. In -the way of second nature Tom would find sporting flannels and tennis -shoes an essential. So he would find a dinner-jacket suit, with the -right kind of shirt, collar, tie, shoes, and socks to wear with it. As -to things permissible to ask about, Pilcher could more easily explain -them when they were both in the same house. Occasions would crop up, -but could not be foreseen. - -"The real gentry is ever afraid of showin' that they don't know. They -takes not knowin' as a joke. Many's the time when I've been waitin' at -table I've 'eard a born gentleman ask the born lady sittin' next to 'im -which'd be the right fork to use, and she'd say that she didn't know -but was lookin' round to see what other people done. That's what they -calls hease of manner, Mr. Tom." - -Under the Ansley roof he would meet none but the gentry born. Any -one of them would respect him more for asking when he didn't know. -It was only the second class that bothered about being so terribly -correct, and they were not invited by Mrs. Ansley. In addition to -these consoling facts Tom could always fall back on him, Pilcher, as a -referee. - -Being a guest in a community in which two years earlier he had been a -chauffeur Tom found easier than he had expected because he worked out a -formula. He framed his formula before going to New Hampshire. - -"Servants are servants and masters are masters because they divide -themselves into classes. The one is above, and is recognized as being -above; the other is below, and is recognized as being below. I shall -be neither below nor above; or I shall be both. I will _not_ go into a -class. As far as I know how I'll be everybody's equal." - -He had, however, to find another formula for this. - -"You're everybody's equal when you know you are. Whatever you know -will go of itself. The trouble I see with the bumptious American, who -claims that he's as good as anybody else, is that he thinks only of -forcing himself to the level of the highest; he doesn't begin at the -bottom, and cover all the ground between the bottom and the top. I'm -going to do that. I shall be at home among the lot of them. To be at -home I must _feel_ at home. I mustn't condescend to the boys of two -years ago who'll still be driving cars, and I mustn't put on airs to -be fit for Mrs. Ansley's drawing-room. I must be myself. I mustn't -be ashamed because I've been in a humble position; and I mustn't be -swanky because I've been put in a better one. I must be natural; I must -be big. That'll give me the ease of manner Pilcher talks about." - -With these principles as a basis of behavior, his embarrassments sprang -from another source. They began at the station in Keene. He knew he was -to be met; and he supposed it would be by Guy. - -"Oh, here you are!" - -She came on him suddenly in the crowd, tall, free in her movements, -always a little older than her age. If in the nearly two years since -their last meeting changes had come to him, more had apparently come -to her. She was a woman, while he was not yet a man. She was easy, -independent, taking the lead with natural authority. From the first -instant of shaking hands he felt in her something solicitous and -protective. - -It showed itself in the little things as to which awkwardness or -diffidence on his part might have been presumed. So as not to leave him -in doubt of what he ought to do, she took the initiative with an air of -quiet, competent command. She led the way to the car; she told him to -throw his handbags and coat into the back part of it; she made him sit -beside her as she drove. - -"No, I'm going to drive," she insisted, when he had offered to take the -wheel. "I want you to see how well I can do it. I like showing off. -This is my own car. I drove it all last summer." - -They talked about cars and their makes because the topic was an easy -one. - -Speeding out of Keene, they left behind them the meadows of the -Ashuelot to climb into a country with which Nature had been busy ever -since her first flaming forces had cooled down to form a world. Cooling -down and flinging up, she had tossed into the azoic age a tumble of -mountains higher doubtless than Andes or Alps. Barren, stupendous, -appalling, they would not have been easy for man, when he came, to live -with in comfort, had not the great Earth-Mother gone to some pains to -polish them down. Taking her leisure through eons of years, she brought -from the north her implement, the ice. Without haste, without rest, a -few inches in a century, she pushed it against the barrier she meant to -mold and penetrate. - -As a dyke before the pressure of a flood, the barrier broke here, broke -there, and yet as a whole maintained itself. Heights were cut off -from heights. Valleys were carved between them. What was sharp became -rounded; what was jagged was worn smooth. The highest pinnacles crashed -down. When after thousands of years the glacial mass receded, only the -stumps were left of what had once been terrific primordial elevations. - -Dense forests began to cover them. Lakes formed in the hollows. Little -rivers drained them, to be drained themselves by a nameless stream -which fell into a nameless sea. Through ages and ages the thrushes -sang, the wild bees hummed, and the bear, the deer, the fox, the lynx -ranged freely. - -Man came. He came stealthily, unnoted, leaving so light a trace that -nothing remains to tell of his first passage but a few mysterious -syllables. The river once nameless became the Connecticut; the base of -a mighty primeval mountain bears the Nipmuck name Monadnock. - -In this angle of New Hampshire thrust in between Massachusetts -and Vermont names are a living record. The Nipmuck disappeared in -proportion as the restless English colonists pushed farther and farther -from the sea. They came in little companies, generally urged by some -religious disagreement with those they had left behind. To escape -the "Congregational way" they fled into the mountains. There they -were free to follow the "Episcoparian way." As "Episcoparians" they -printed the map with names which enshrined their old-home memories. -Clustering within sight of the blue mass of Monadnock are neat white -towns--Marlborough, Richmond, Chesterfield, Walpole, Peterborough, -Fitzwilliam, Winchester--rich with "Episcoparian" suggestion. - -In the early eighteenth century there came in another strain. Driven -by famine, a thousand pilgrims arrived in these relatively empty lands -from the North of Ireland, sturdy, strong-minded, Protestant. Grouping -themselves into three communities, they named them with Irish names, -Antrim, Hillsborough, Dublin. It was to Dublin that Tom and Hildred -were on the way. - -The subject of cars exhausted, she swung to something else. - -"You like the idea of going with Guy?" - -"It's great." - -"I like it too. I'd rather he was with you than with anybody. You -never make game of him, and yet you never humor him." - -"What do you mean by that, that I never humor him?" - -"Oh, well! Guy's standards aren't very high. We know that. But you -never lower yours." - -"How do you know I don't?" - -"Because Guy says so. Don't imagine for a minute that he doesn't see. -He likes you so much because he respects you." - -"He respects a lot of other fellows too." - -A little "H'm!" through pursed-up lips was a sign of dissent. "I -wonder. He goes with them, I know, and rather envies them, which is -what I mean by his standards not being very high; but--" - -"Oh, Guy's all right. The fellows you speak of are sometimes a little -fresh; but he knows where to draw the line. He'll go to a certain -point; but you won't get him beyond it." - -"And he owes that to you." - -"Oh, no, he doesn't, not in the least." - -"Well, _I_--" she held the personal pronoun for emphasis--"think he -does." - -In this good opinion she was able to be firm because she seemed older -than he. In reality she was two years younger, but life in a larger -society had given her something of the tone of a woman of the world. -This development on her part disconcerted him. So long as she had been -the slip of a thing he remembered, prim, sedate, old-fashioned as the -term is applied to children, she had not been a factor in his relations -with the Ansley family. Now, suddenly, he saw her as the most -important factor of all. The emergence of personality troubled him. -Since she was obliged to keep her eyes on the turnings of the road, he -was able to study her in profile. - -It was the first time he had really looked at a woman since he had -summed up Maisie in Nashua. That had been two months earlier. The -place which Maisie had so long held in his heart had been empty for -those two months, except for a great bitterness. It was the bitterness -of disillusion, of futility. Rage and pain were in it, with more of -mortification than there was of either. He would never again hear of -a cheap skate without thinking of the figure he had cut in the eyes -of the girl whom he thought he was honoring merely in being true. All -girls had been hateful to him since that day, just as all boys will be -to a dog who has been stoned by one of them. Yet here he was already -looking at a girl with something like fascination. - -That was because fascination was the emotion she evoked. She was -strange; she was arresting. You wondered what she was like. You watched -her when she moved; you listened to her when she talked. Once you had -heard her voice, bell-like and crystalline, you would always be able to -recall it. - -He noticed the way she was dressed because her knitted silk sweater was -of a pattern he had never seen before. It ran in horizontal dog-toothed -bands, shading from green to blue, and from blue to a dull red. Green -was the predominating color, grass-green, jade-green, sea-green, -sage-green, but toned to sobriety by this red of old brick, this -blue of indigo. Indigo was the short plain skirt, and the stockings -below it. An indigo tam-o'-shanter was pinned to her smooth, glossy, -bluish-black hair with a big carnelian pin. He remembered that he used -to think her Cambodian. He thought so again. - -Having arrived at the house, they found no one but Pilcher to receive -them. Mrs. Ansley had gone out to tea; Mr. Guy had left word for Miss -Hildred to bring Mr. Tom to the club, where he was playing tennis. - -"Do you care to go?" - -Knowing that he couldn't spend three weeks in Dublin without facing -this invitation, he had decided in advance to accept it the first time -it came. - -"If you go." - -"All right; let's. But you'd like first to go to your room, wouldn't -you? Pilcher, take Mr. Whitelaw up. I'll wait here with the car. We'll -start as soon as you come down." Running up the stairs, he wondered -whether it would be the proper thing for him to change to his new white -flannels, when, as if divining his perplexity, she called after him. -"Come just as you are. Don't stop to put on other things. I'll go as I -am too." - -This maternal foresight was again on guard as they turned from the road -into the driveway to the club. - -"Do you want to come and be introduced to a lot of people, or would you -rather browse about by yourself? You can do whichever you like." - -He replied with a suggestion. As a good many cars would be parked in -the narrow space of the club avenues, he thought she had better jump -out at the club steps, leaving him to find a space where the car could -stand. He would hang around there till Guy's game was over and the -party was ready to go home. - -Having parked the car, he was in with the chauffeurs, some of whom -were old acquaintances. True to his formula, he went about among them, -shaking hands, and asking for their news. They were oddly alike, not -only in their dustcoats and chauffeurs' caps, but in features and cast -of mind. - -"You got a job?" he was asked in his turn. - -"Been taken on to travel with young Ansley. We stay here for three -weeks, and then go out west." - -"Loot pretty good?" - -"Oh, just about the same, and, of course, I get my expenses." - -"Pretty soft, what?" came from an Englishman. - -"Yes, but then it's only for the summer." - -These duties done, he felt free to stroll off till he found a -convenient rock on which to sit by the lakeside. Lighting a cigarette, -he was glad of a half hour to himself in which to enjoy the scene. It -was a reposeful scene, because all that was human and sporting in it -was lost in the living spirit of the background. - -It was what he had always felt in this particular landscape, and had -never been able to define till now--its quality of life. It was life of -another order from physical life, and on another plane. You might have -said that it reached you out of some phase of creation different from -that of Earth. These hills were living hills; this lake was a living -lake. Through them, as in the serene sky, a Presence shone and smiled -on you. He had often noticed, during the summer at the inn-club, that -you could sit idle and silent with that Presence, and not be bored. You -looked and looked; you thought and thought; you were bathed about in -tranquillity. People might be running around, and calling or shouting, -as they were doing now in the tennis courts on a ledge of the hillside -above him, not five hundred yards away, but they disturbed you no more -than the birds or the butterflies. The Presence was too immense, too -positive, to allow little things to trouble it. Rather, it took them -and absorbed them, as if the Supreme Activity, which for millions of -years before there was a man had been working to transform this spot -into a cup of overflowing loveliness, could use anything that came Its -way. - -So he sat and smoked and thought and felt soothed. It was early enough -in the summer for the birds to be singing from all the wooded terraces -and the fringe of lakeside trees. Calls from the tennis courts, cries -from young people climbing on the raft in the lake or diving from the -spring-board, came to him softened and sweet. It was living peace, -invigorating, restful. - - - - -XXXVI - - -A woman passed along the driveway, and looked at him. He looked at her. -The rock on which he sat being no more than a dozen yards from where -she walked, they could see each other plainly. It seemed to him that -as she went by she relaxed her pace to study him. She was a little -woman, pretty, sad-faced, neatly dressed and perhaps fifty years of -age. Having passed once, she turned on her steps and passed again. -She passed a third time and a fourth. Each time she passed she gave -him the same long scrutinizing look, without self-consciousness or -embarrassment. He thought she might be a lady's maid or a chauffeur's -wife. - -He turned to watch a young man taking a swan dive from the -spring-board. Having run the few steps which was all the spring-board -allowed of, he stood poised on the edge, feet together, his arms at his -thighs. With the leap forward his arms went out at right angles. When -he turned toward the water they bent back behind his head, his palms -twisted upward. Nearing the surface they pointed downward, cleaving the -lake with a clean, splashless penetration. The whole movement had been -lithe and graceful, the curve of a swan's neck, the spring of a flying -fish. - -Not till she was close beside him did he notice that the little woman -had left the roadway, crossed the intervening patch of blueberry -scrub, and seated herself on a low bowlder close to his own. - -Her self-possession was that of a woman with a single dominating -motive. "You've just arrived with Miss Ansley, haven't you?" - -The voice, like the manner, was intense and purposeful. In assenting, -he had the feeling of touching something elemental, like hunger or -fire, which wouldn't be denied. - -"And you're at Harvard." - -He assented to this also. - -"At Harvard they call you the Whitelaw Baby, don't they?" - -"I've heard so. Why do you ask?" - -"Because I'm the nurse from whom the Whitelaw baby was stolen nearly -twenty years ago. My name is Nash." - -A memory came to him of something far away. He could hear Honey saying -he had seen her, a pretty little Englishwoman, and that Nash was her -name. Looking at her now, he saw that she was more than a pretty little -Englishwoman; she was a soul in torture, with a flame eating at the -heart. He felt sorry for her, but not so sorry as to be free from -impatience at the dogging with which the Whitelaw baby followed him. - -"Why do you say this to me?" - -"Because of what I've heard from the family. They've spoken of you. -They think it--queer." - -"They think what queer?" - -"That your name is Whitelaw--that your father's name was Theodore--that -you look so much like the rest of them. Mr. Whitelaw's name is Henry -Theodore--" - -"And my father's name was only Theodore. My mother's name was Lucy. I -was born in The Bronx. I'm exactly nineteen years of age. I've heard -that Mr. Whitelaw's son if he were living now would be twenty." - -Large gray eyes with silky drooping lids rested on his with a look of -long, slow searching. "You're sure of all that?" - -He tried to laugh. "As sure as you can be of what's not within your own -recollection. I've been told it. I've reason to believe it." - -"I'd no reason to believe that I should ever find my boy again; but I -know I shall." - -"That must be a comfort to you in the trial you've had to face." - -"It hasn't been a trial exactly, because you bear a trial and live -through it. This has been spending every day and every night in the -lake of fire and brimstone. I wonder if you've any idea of what it's -like." - -"I don't suppose I have." - -"If you did have--" He thought she was going to say that if he did have -he would allow himself to become the Whitelaw baby in order to relieve -her anguish, but she struck another note. "I hadn't the least suspicion -of what had been done to me till the two footmen had lifted the little -carriage up over the steps and into the hall. Then I raised the veil to -take my baby out, and I--I fell in a dead swoon." - -He waited for her to go on again. - -"Try to imagine what it is to find in place of the living child you've -laid in its bed with all the tenderness in your soul--to find in place -of that a dirty, ugly, stuffed thing, about a baby's size.... For days -after that I was just as if I was drugged. If I came to for a few -minutes I prayed that I mightn't live. I didn't want to look the mother -and father in the face." - -"But hadn't you told them anything about it?" - -"There was nothing to tell. The baby had vanished. I'd seen nothing; -I'd heard nothing. Neither had my friend who was with me, and who's -married now, in England. If an evil spirit had done it, it couldn't -have been silenter, or more secret. It was a mystery then; it's been a -mystery ever since." - -"But you raised an alarm? You made a search?" - -"The whole country raised the alarm. There wasn't a corner, or a -suspicious character, that wasn't searched. We knew it had been -done for ransom, and the ransom was ready if ever the baby had been -returned. The father and mother were that frantic they'd have done -anything. There never was a baby in the world more loved, or more -lovable. All three of us--the father, the mother, and myself--would -have died for him." - -He grew interested in the story for its own sake. "And did you never -get any idea at all?" - -"Nothing that ever led to anything. For a good five years Mr. Whitelaw -never rested. Mrs. Whitelaw--but it's no use trying to tell you. It -can't be told; it can't be so much as imagined. Even when you've lived -through it you wonder how you ever did. You wonder how you go on -living day by day. It's almost as if you were condemned to eternal -punishment. The clues were the worst." - -"You mean that--?" - -"If we could have known that the child was dead--well, you make up your -mind to that. After a while you can take up life again. But not to know -anything! Just to be left wondering! Asking yourself what they're doing -with him!--whether they're giving him the right kind of food!--whether -they're giving him _any_ kind of food!--whether they're going to kill -him, and how they're going to kill him, and who's to do the killing! To -go over these questions morning, noon, and night--to eat with them, and -sleep with them, and wake with them--and then the clues!" - -"You said they were the worst." - -"Because they always made you hope. No matter how often you'd been -taken in you were ready to be taken in again. Each time they said -there was a chance you couldn't help thinking that there _might_ be a -chance. It didn't matter how much you told yourself it wasn't likely. -You couldn't make yourself believe it. You felt that he'd _have_ to -be found, that he couldn't help being found. The whole thing was so -impossible that you'd have to go to his room and look at his little -empty crib to persuade yourself that he wasn't there." - -To divert her from going over the ground she must have gone over -thousands of times already, he broke in with a new line of thought. - -"But I've heard that they don't want to find him now--a grown-up man." - -She stared at him fiercely. "_I_ do. _I_ want to find him. They were -not to blame. I was. It makes the difference." - -"Still he was their son." - -"He was their son, and they've suffered; but they can rest in spite -of their suffering. I can't. They can afford to give up hope because -they've nothing with which to reproach themselves. If they were me--" - -He began to understand. "I see. If you could find him and bring him -back, even if they didn't want him--" - -"I should have done _that_ much. It would be something. It's why I -pleaded with them to let me stay with them when I suppose the very -sight of me must have tortured them. I swore that I'd give my life to -trying to--" - -"But what could you do when even the child's father, with all his -money, couldn't--?" - -"I could pray. They couldn't. They're not like that. Praying's all I've -ever done which wasn't done by somebody else. I've prayed as I don't -think many people have ever prayed; and now I've come to where--" - -"Where what?" - -The light in her eyes was lambent, leaping and licking like a flame. - -"Where I'm quieter." She made her statement slowly. "I seem to know -that he'll be given back to me because the Bible says that when we pray -believing that we _have_ what we ask for we shall receive it. Latterly -I've believed that. I haven't forced myself to believe it. It's just -come of its own accord--something like a certainty." - -The claim in the look which without wavering fixed itself upon him -prompted another question. "And has that certainty got anything to do -with me?" - -"I wonder if it hasn't." - -"But I don't see how it can have, when you never saw me in your life -till twenty minutes ago." - -"I never saw you; but I'd heard of you. I meant to see you as soon as I -got a chance. I never got it till to-day." - -"But how did you know?" - -"That it was you? This way. You see I'm here with Miss Lily. She's -staying for a few nights at the inn-club before going to make some -visits." - -"Who's Miss Lily?" - -"She was the second of the two children born after my little boy was -taken. First there was Mr. Tad. Then there was a little girl. She knows -Miss Ansley. Miss Ansley told her you were coming up, that you'd very -likely be here this afternoon, so I came and waited. Even if I hadn't -seen you drive up with her--if we'd met in the heart of Africa--I'd -have known.... You've been taken for Mr. Tad already. You know that, -don't you?" - -"I know there's a resemblance." - -"It's more than a resemblance. It's--it's the whole story. Mr. Whitelaw -himself saw it first. When he came back after meeting you, in this very -place, nearly two years ago, he was--well, he was terribly upset. If it -hadn't been for Mr. Tad and Miss Lily--" - -"And their mother too." - -"Yes, I suppose; and their mother too. But that's not what we're -considering. Whether they want you or not, if you _are_ the boy--" - -He tried to speak very gently. "But you see, I couldn't be. I had a -mother. I don't remember much about her because I was only six or seven -when she died. But two things I recall--the way she loved me, and the -way I loved her. If I thought there was any truth in what you--in what -you suspect--I couldn't love her any more." - -"I don't see why." - -"Because I should be charging her with a crime. Would you do that--to -your own mother--after she was dead?" - -"If she was dead it wouldn't matter." - -"Not to her. But it would to me." - -"It couldn't do you any harm." - -"I'm the only judge of that." - -There was exasperation in the eyes which seemed unable to tear -themselves from his face. - -"But most people would like to have it proved that they'd been--" - -"Been born rich men's sons. That's what you were going to say, isn't -it? I daresay I should have liked it, if.... But what's the use? We -don't gain anything by discussing it. You want to find some one who'll -pass for the lost boy. I understand that; and I understand how much it -would lessen all the grief--" - -She interrupted quickly. "Yes, but I wouldn't try to foist an imposter -on them, not if it would take me out of hell. If I didn't believe--" - -"But you don't believe now; you can't believe. What I've told you about -myself must make believing impossible." - -"Oh, if I hadn't believed when believing was impossible I shouldn't -have the little bit of mind I've got now. Believing when it was -impossible was all that kept me sane." - -"But you won't go on doing it, not as far as I'm concerned?" - -She rose, with dignity. "Why not? I shan't be hurting you, shall I? In -a way we all believe it--even the Whitelaw family--even Miss Ansley." - -He jumped up, startled. "Did she tell you so?" - -"She didn't tell me so exactly. We were talking about it--we've all -talked of it more than you suppose--and Miss Ansley said that you -couldn't be what you are unless you were--_somebody_." - -He tried to take this jocosely. "No, of course I couldn't." - -"Oh, but I know what she meant." She moved away from him, speaking over -her shoulder as she crossed the blueberry scrub, "It was more than -what's in the words." - - - - -XXXVII - - -Except for a passing glimpse in Dublin, Tom never saw Lily Whitelaw -till in December he met her at the ball at which Hildred Ansley came -out. As to going to this ball he had his usual fit of funk, but Hildred -had insisted. - -"But, Tom, you must. You're the one I care most about." - -"I shouldn't know what to do." - -"I'll see to that. You'll only have to do what I tell you." - -"And I haven't got an evening coat with tails." - -"Well, get one. If you look as well in it as you do in your -dinner-jacket outfit--and you'd better have a white waistcoat, a silk -hat, and a pair of white gloves. What'll happen to you when you get -there you can leave to me. Now that I know you look so well, and dance -so well, you'll give me no trouble at all." - -Her kindness humbled him. He felt the necessity of taking it as -kindness and nothing more. Knowing too that he must school his own -emotions to a sense of gratitude, he imagined that he so schooled them. - -With the five hundred dollars he had earned through the summer added -to what remained of Honey's legacy, he had enough for his current year -at Harvard, with a margin over. The tailed evening coat, the white -waistcoat, the silk hat, the gloves, he looked upon as an investment. -He went to the ball. - -It was given at the Shawmut, the new hotel with a specialty in this -sort of entertainment. The ballroom had been specially designed so as -to afford a spectacle. A circular cup, surrounded by a pillared gallery -for chaperons and couples preferring to "sit out," you descended into -it by one of four broad shallow staircases, whence the _coup d'oeil_ -was superb. - -By being more or less passive, he got through the evening better than -he had expected. Knowing scarcely anyone, he fell back on his formula. - -"I mustn't be conscious of it. I must take not knowing anyone for -granted, as I should if I were in a crowd at a theater, or the lobby of -this hotel. If I feel like a stray cat I shall look like a stray cat. -If I feel at ease I shall look at ease." - -In this he was supported by the knowledge of wearing the right thing. -Even Guy, whom he had met for a minute in the cloakroom, had been -surprised into a compliment. - -"Gee whiz! Who do you think you are? The old lady's been afraid you'd -look like an outsider. Now she'll be struck silly. Lot of girls here -that you'll put their eye out." - -When he had shaken hands Hildred found a minute in which to whisper, -"Tom, you're the Greek god you read about in novels. Don't feel shy. -All you need do is to stand around and be ornamental. Your role is the -romantic unknown." She returned after the next bout of "receiving." -"You and I will have the supper dance. I've insisted on that, and -mother's given in. Don't get too far out of reach, so that I can put my -hand on you when I want you." - -He danced a little, chiefly with girls whom no one else would dance -with and to whom some member of the Ansley family introduced him. -When not dancing he returned to the gallery, where he leaned against -a convenient pillar and looked on. It was what he best liked doing. -Liking it, he did it well. He could hear people ask who he was. He -could hear some Harvard fellow answer that he was the Whitelaw Baby. -Once he heard a lady say, as she passed behind his back, "Well, he does -look like the Whitelaws, doesn't he?" - -The New York papers had recalled the Whitelaw baby to the public mind -in connection with the ball given a few weeks earlier to "bring out" -Lily Whitelaw. Once in so often the whole story was rehearsed, making -the younger Whitelaws sick of it, and their parents suffer again. The -fact that Tad and Lily Whitelaw were there that night gave piquancy to -the presence of the romantic stranger. His stature, his good looks, his -natural dignity, together with the mystery as to who he was, made him -in a measure the figure of the evening. - -From where he stood by his pillar in the gallery he recognized Lily in -the swirl below, a slim, sinuous creature in shimmering green. All her -motions were serpentine. She might have been Salome; she might also -have been a shop girl, self-conscious and eager to be noticed. Whatever -was outrageous in the dances of that autumn she did for the benefit of -her elders. - -When she turned toward him he could see that she had an insolent kind -of beauty. It was a dark, spoiled beauty that seemed lowering because -of her heavy Whitelaw eyebrows, and possibly a little tragic. In -thought he could hear Hildred singing, as she had sung when he stayed -with them at Dublin in the spring, "Is she kind as she is fair? For -beauty lives by kindness." Lily's beauty would not. It was an imperious -beauty, willful and inconsiderate. - -He saw Hildred dancing too. She danced as if dancing were an incident -and not an occupation. She had left more important things to do it; -she would go back to more important things again. While she was at it -she took it gayly, gracefully, as all in the evening's work, but as -something of no consequence. She was in tissue of gold like an oriental -princess, a gold gleam in her oriental eyes. An ermine stole as a -protection against draughts was sometimes thrown over her shoulders, -but more often across her arm. - -He noticed the poise of her head. No other head in the world could -have been so nobly held, so superbly independent. Its character was -in its simplicity. Fashion did not exist for it. The glossy dark -hair was brushed back from forehead and temples into a knot which -made neatness a distinction. Distinction was the chief beauty in the -profile, with its rounded chin, its firm, small, well-curved lips, and -a nose deliciously snub. Decision, freedom, unconsciousness of self, -were betrayed in all her attitudes and movements. Merely to watch her -roused in him a dull, aching jealousy for Lily. He surprised himself by -regretting that Lily hadn't been like this. - -Imperious, willful, and inconsiderate Lily seemed to him again as she -drank champagne and smoked cigarettes at supper. The party at her -table, which was near the one at which he sat with Hildred, was jovial -and noisy. Lily's partner, a fellow whom he knew by sight at Harvard, -drank freely, laughed loudly, and now and then slapped the table. Lily -too slapped the table, though she did it with her fan. - -In the early morning--it might have been two o'clock--Tom found himself -accidentally near her when Hildred happened to be passing. - -"Oh, Lily! I want to introduce Mr. Whitelaw. He's got the same name as -yours, hasn't he? Tom, do ask her to dance." - -With her easy touch-and-go she left them to each other. Without a -glance at him, Lily said, tonelessly, - -"I'm not going to dance any more. I'm going to look for my brother and -go home." - -A whoop from the other side of the ballroom, where a rowdy note had -come over the company, gave an indication of Tad's whereabouts. Tom -suggested that he might find him and bring him up. Lily walked away -without answering. - -Hildred hurried back. "I'm sorry. I saw what she did. Try not to mind -it." - -"Oh, I don't. I decided long ago that one couldn't afford to be done -down by that sort of thing. It pays in the end to forget it." - -"One of these days she'll be sorry she did it. Your innings will come -then." - -"I'm not crazy for an innings. But time does avenge one, doesn't it?" -He nodded toward the ballroom floor, where Lily, with a stalking, -tip-toeing tread was pushing a man backward as if she would have pushed -him down had he not recovered his balance and begun pushing her. "It -avenges one even for that. Two minutes ago she said she wasn't going to -dance any more." - -"Well, she's changed her mind. That's all. Come and take a turn with -me." - -The affectionate solicitude in her tone was not precisely new to him, -but for the first time he dared to wonder if it could be significant. -By all the canons of life and destiny she was outside his range. She -could take this intimate, sisterly way with him, he had reasoned -hitherto, because she was so far above him. She was the Queen; he was -only Ruy Blas, a low-born fellow in disguise. If he found himself -loving her, if there was something so sterling and womanly in her -nature that he couldn't help loving her, that would be his own -look-out. He had made up his mind to that before the end of his three -weeks in Dublin in the spring. Her tactful camaraderie then had carried -him over all the places which in the nature of things he might have -found difficult, doing it with a sweet assumption that they had an aim -in common. Only they had no aim in common! Between him and her there -could be nothing but pity and kindness on the one side, with humility -and devotion on the other. - -He had felt that till to-night. He had felt it to-night up to the -minute of hearing those words, "Come and take a turn with me." The -difference was in her voice. It had tones of comfort and encouragement. -More than that, it had tones of comprehension and concern. She entered -into his feelings, his struggles, his sympathies, his defeats. In -the very way in which she put one hand on his shoulder and placed -the other within his own he thought there might be more than the -conventional gesture of the dance. - -"You don't know how much I appreciate your coming to-night," she said, -when she found an opportunity. "If you hadn't come I should have felt -it as much as if father, or mother, or Guy hadn't come. More, I think, -because--well, I don't know why--_because_. I only believe that I -should have. It's been an awful bore to you, too." - -"No, it hasn't. I've seen a lot. I like to get the hang of--of this -sort of thing. I don't often get a chance." - -"I thought of that. It seemed to me that the experience would be -something. Everything's grist that comes to your mill, so that the more -you see of things the better." - -That was all they said, but when he left her she held his hand, she let -him hold hers, till their arms were stretched out to full length. Even -then her eyes smiled at him, and his smiled down into hers. - -Having seen other people go, he decided to slip away himself. But in -the cloakroom he found Tad, white and sodden in a chair, his hands -thrust into his trousers' pockets, his legs stretched wide apart in -front of him. No one was there but the cloakroom attendant who winked -at Tom, as one who would understand the effect of too much champagne. - -"Too young a head. Ought to be got home." - -"I'll take him. Know where he lives. Going his way. Ask some one to -call us a taxi." - -Tad made no remonstrance as they helped him into his overcoat, and -rammed his hat on his head. He knew what they were doing. "Home!" he -muttered. "Home bes' place! Bed! God, I cou' go to sleep right now." - -He did go to sleep in the taxi, his head on Tom's shoulder. Tom held -him up, with his arm around his waist. Once more he had the feeling -that had stirred in him before, of something deeper than the common -human depths, primitive, pre-social, antedating languages and laws. -"He's not my brother," he declared to himself, "but if he were...." He -couldn't end that sentence. He could only feel glad that, since the boy -_had_ to be taken home, the task should have fallen to him. - -At Westmorley Court, where Tad now had his quarters, there was no -difficulty of admittance. In his own room he submitted quietly to being -undressed. Tom even found a suit of pajamas, stuffing the limp form -into it. He got him into bed; he covered him up. Winding his watch, he -put it on the night-table. All being done, he stooped over the bed to -lift the arm that had flung aside the bedclothes, and put it under them -again. - -He staggered back. There flashed through his mind some of the stories -by which Honey had accounted for the loss of his eye. His own left eye -felt smashed in and shattered. He was sick; he was faint. He could -hardly stand. He could hardly think. The room, the world, were flying -into splinters. - -"You damn sucker! Get out of this!" - -By the time Tom had recovered himself Tad was settling to sleep. - - - - -XXXVIII - - -Nothing but the knowledge that the boy was drunk had kept him from -striking back there and then. His temper was a hot one. It came in -fierce gusts, which stormed off quickly. The quickness saved him now. -Before he was home in bed he had reconciled himself to bearing this -thing too. It was bigger to bear it, more masculine, more civilized. He -would never forget his racking remorse after the last fight. - -He didn't lose his eye, but he was obliged to see an oculist. The -oculist pronounced it a close shave. - -"Where in thunder did you get that?" Guy demanded, a day or two after -the occurrence. - -Tom thought it an opportunity to learn whether or not the boy had been -conscious of what he did. "Ask Tad Whitelaw." - -"_What?_ You don't mean to say you've had another row with him! Gee -whiz!" - -"No, I haven't had another row with him; but all the same, ask him." - -Guy asked him, with no information but that the mucker would get -another if he didn't keep out of the way. It was all Tom needed to -know. He had not been too drunk to strike with deliberate intention, -and to remember that he had struck. - -Guy must have told Hildred, because she wrote begging Tom to come to -see her. He wasn't to mind his black eye, because she knew all about -it. She was tender, consoling. - -"I don't believe he's a cad any more than I believe that of Lily," she -said, while giving him a cup of tea, "but they're both spoiled with -money and a sense of self-importance. You see, losing the other child -has made their mother foolish about them. She's lavished everything on -them, more than anyone, not a born saint, could stand. It would have -been a great deal better if they'd had to fight their way--some of -their way at any rate--like you." - -"Oh, I'm another breed." - -"Another figurative breed--yes. As to the breed in your blood--" - -"Oh, but, Hildred, you don't believe that poppy-cock." - -Her eyes were on the teapot from which she was pouring. "I don't -believe it exactly because I don't know. It only strikes me as being -very queer." - -"Queer in what way?" - -"Oh, in every way. They think so too." - -"Then why do they seem to hate me so?" - -"I shouldn't say they did that. They're afraid of you. You disturb -them. They're--what do they call it in the Bible?--kicking against the -pricks. That's all there is to it. When they'd buried the whole thing -you come along and make them dig it up again. They don't want to do -that. They feel it's too late. You can see for yourself that for Tad -and Lily it would be awkward. When you've been the only two children, -and such spoiled ones at that, to have an elder brother you didn't -know anything about suddenly hoisted over you--" - -"Of course! I understand that." - -"Mr. Whitelaw feels the same, only he feels it differently. _He'd_ -accept him, however hard it was." - -"And Mrs. Whitelaw?" - -"Oh, poor dear, she's suffered so much that all she asks is not to be -made to suffer any more. I don't believe it matters to her now whether -he's found or not, so long as she isn't tortured." - -"And does she think I'd torture her?" - -"They haven't come to that. It isn't what you _may_ do, but what they -themselves _ought_ to do that troubles them." - -"I wish if you get a chance you'd tell them that they needn't do -anything." - -"They wouldn't take my word for it, or yours either. It rests with -themselves and their own consciences." - -"A good deal of it rests with me." - -"Yes, if you were willing to take the first step; but since you're -not--" - -[Illustration: MRS. ANSLEY TOOK HIM AS AN AFFLICTION] - -They dropped it at that because Mrs. Ansley lilted in, greeting Tom -with that outward welcome and inward repugnance he had had to learn to -swallow. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She took him as an -affliction. Affliction could visit the best families and ignore the -highest merits. Guy, dear boy, was extravagant, and this was the proof -of his extravagance. He was infatuated with this young man, who had -neither means, antecedents, nor connections. She had heard the Whitelaw -Baby theory, of course; but so long as the Whitelaws themselves -rejected it, she rejected it too. The best she could do was to be -philanthropic. Philip, Guy, Hildred, were all convinced that this young -man was to make his mark. Very well! It was in her tradition, it was in -the whole tradition of old Boston, to help those who were likely to get -on. It was part of what you owed to your standing in the world, a kind -of public duty. You couldn't slight it any more than royalty can slight -the opening of bazaars. An aunt of her own had helped a poor girl to -take singing lessons; and the girl became one of the great prima donnas -of the world. Whenever she sang in opera in Boston it was always a -satisfaction to the family to exhibit her as their protegee. So it -might one day be with this young man. She hoped so, she was sure. She -didn't like him; she thought the fuss made over him by Hildred and Guy, -more or less abetted by their father, an absurdity; but since she was -obliged to play up to the family standard of beneficence, up to it she -would play. She bore with Tom, therefore, wisely and patiently, never -snubbing him except when they chanced to be alone, and hurting him only -as a jellyfish hurts a swimmer, by clamminess of contact. - -Clamminess of contact being in itself a weapon of offense, Tom ran away -from it, but only to fall into contact of another kind. - -It was a cloudy afternoon with Christmas in the near future. All -over town there were notes of Christmas, in the shop windows, in -the Christmas trees exposed for sale, in the way people ran about -with parcels. He never approached this season without going back to -that fatal Christmas Eve when he and his mother had been caught -shop-lifting. He could still feel as he felt at the minute when he -turned his face to the angle of the police-station wall, and wept -silently. He wondered what Hildred would think of him if he were to -tell her that tale. He wondered if he ever should. - -Partly for the exercise, partly to find space to breathe and to think, -he followed the Boston embankment of the Charles, making his way to -the Harvard Bridge, and so toward Cambridge. In big quietly dropping -flakes it had begun to snow. Presently it was snowing faster. The few -pedestrians fled from the esplanade. He tramped on alone, enjoying the -solitude. - -The embankment lamps had been lit when he noticed, coming toward him, -two young men, their collars turned up about their ears. They were -laughing and smoking cigarettes. Drawing nearer, he recognized them as -Tad Whitelaw and the fellow who had slapped the table at the dance. It -was not hard to guess that they were on their way to see Hildred. He -hoped that under cover of the darkness and the snow he might slip by -unobserved. - -But Tad stopped squarely in front of him. "Let's look at your eye." - -The tone was so easy and friendly that Tom thought he might be going to -apologize. He let him look. - -"Well, you got that," Tad went on. "Another time you'll get worse. By -God, if you don't keep away from me I'll shoot you." - -Tom was surprised, but it was the sort of situation in which he could -be cool. He smiled into the arrogant young face turned up toward his. - -"What's the good of that line of talk? You know you wouldn't shoot me; -you wouldn't have the nerve. Besides, you haven't anything to shoot me -_for_. I'll leave it to this fellow." He turned to Tad's companion, who -stood as a spectator, slightly to one side. "I found him dead drunk the -other night. I took him home in a taxi, and put him to bed. That's no -more than the common freemasonry among men. Any man would do the same -at a pinch for any other man." - -The companion played up nobly. "That's the straight dope, Tad. Take it -and gulp it down. This guy is a good guy or he wouldn't have--" - -"Go to hell," Tad interrupted, insolently. "I'm only warning him. If he -hangs round me any more--" - -Tom kept his temper by main force, addressing himself still to the -companion. - -"I've never hung round him. He knows I haven't. Two or three times I've -run into him, as I've done to-day. Twice I've stepped in, to keep him -from getting the gate, this time as a drunk, the other time as a damn -fool. I'd do that for anyone. I'd do it for him, if I found him in the -same mess again." - -"That's fair enough, Tad," the referee approved. "You can't kick -against it." - -Tad tried to speak, but Tom went on with quiet authority. - -"So that since he likes warnings he can take that one. I shan't let him -be chucked out of Harvard if I can help it." - -Tad sprang. "The devil you won't!" - -Tom continued to speak only to the third party. "No, the devil I won't! -I don't know why I feel that way about him, but that's the way I feel. -And anyhow, now he knows." - -Still addressing the companion only, he uttered a curt "Good-night." -The companion responded civilly with "Good-night" on his side. - -He neither looked at Tad, nor flung a word at him. Wheeling to face -what had now blown into a snowstorm, he walked off into its teeth. But -as he went he repeated the question he had put to Hildred Ansley. - -"Why do they seem to hate me so?" - -He thought of Lily, slippery, snake-like, perverted; he thought of -the mother as he had seen her on that one day, in that one glimpse, -a quivering bundle of agony; he thought of the father, human, -sympathetic, with the iron in his soul. - -Then he saw them with their heaped up money, their luxuries, their -pride, their domineering self-importance. He knew just enough of the -lives they led, the exemptions they enjoyed, to feel Honey's protest on -behalf of the dispossessed. - -Near an arc-light he stopped abruptly. The snow made a tabernacle for -him, so that he was all alone. As he looked upward and outward millions -and millions of sweet soft white things flew silently across the light. -Out of his heart, up to his lips, there tore the kind of prayer which -in times of temptation the Tollivant habit sometimes wrung from him: - -"O God, keep me from ever wanting to be one of them!" - - - - -XXXIX - - -In January, 1917, it began to occur to Tom Whitelaw that he might have -to go and fight. He might possibly be killed. Worse than that, he might -be crippled or blinded or otherwise rendered helpless. - -He had followed the war hitherto as one who looks on at tragedies -which have nothing to do with himself. Europe was to him no more -than a geographical term. Intense where his own aims and duties were -concerned, but lacking the imaginative faculty, he had never been able -to take England, France, and Germany as realities. The horrors of which -he read in newspapers moved him less than a big human story on the -stage. That the struggle might suck him into itself, smashing him as -a tornado smashes a tree, came home to him first at a Sunday evening -supper with the Ansleys. - -"If it does come," Philip Ansley said, complacently, "a lot of you -young fellows will have to go and be shot up." - -"I'm on," Guy announced readily. "If it hadn't been for the family I'd -have enlisted in Canada long ago." - -His mother took this seriously. "Well that, thank God, can't happen to -us. Darling, with your--" - -"Oh, yes, with my fat! Same old bunk! But, mother, I'm losing weight -like a snowbank in April. It's _running_ away. I'm exercising; I'm -taking Turkish baths; I don't hardly eat a damn thing. I weighed -two-fifty-three six weeks ago, and now I'm down to two-forty-nine." - -"Don't worry," his father assured him. "You'll get there. You'll make a -fine target for Big Bertha. Couldn't miss you any more than she would a -whole platoon." - -"Philip, how can you!" - -"Oh, they're all crazy to go." He looked toward Tom. "Suppose you are -too. Exactly the big husky type they like to blow into hash." - -Turning to help himself from the dish Pilcher happened to be passing, -Tom's eyes encountered Hildred's. Seated beside him, she had veered -round on hearing her father's words. The alarm in her face was a -confession. - -"Oh, I can wait," he tried to laugh. "If I've got to go I will, but I'm -not tumbling over myself to get there." - -A half hour later Mrs. Ansley and the three younger members of the -party were in the music room, where Guy was at the piano. The mother -sat on a gilded French canape, making an excuse for keeping Hildred -beside her. Tom had already begun to guess that the friendship between -Hildred and himself was making Mrs. Ansley uneasy. For all these -years she had taken him as Guy's protege with whom "anything of that -kind" was impossible. But lately she had so maneuvered as not to -leave Hildred and himself alone. Whether Hildred noticed it or not -he couldn't tell, since she never made a counter-move. If she was not -unconscious of her mother's strategy she let it appear as if she was. - -All the while Guy chimed out the _Carillon de Cythere_ of Couperin -le Grand Mrs. Ansley patted Hildred's hand, and rejoiced in her two -children. Guy's touch was velvety because it was Guy's; Couperin le -Grand was a noble composer because Guy played him. Her amorphous person -quivered to the measure, with a tremor here and a dilation there, like -the contraction and expansion of a medusa floating in the sea. - -But when Guy had tinkled out the final notes she bubbled to her feet. - -"Darling, I don't think I ever heard you play as well as you're doing -this winter. I think if you were to give a private recital...." - -In the general movement Tom lost the rest of this suggestion, but -caught on again at a whisper which he overheard. - -"Hildred, I simply must go and take my corsets off. I've had them on -ever since I dressed for church. It's Nellie's evening out. I'll have -to ask you to come and help me." - -But as her mother was kissing Guy good-night Hildred managed to say -beneath her breath, "Don't go away. I'll try to come back. There's -something I want to speak about." - -Left to themselves, the two young men exchanged bits of college gossip -while Guy twirled on the piano stool. They had the more to say to each -other since they met less often than in their year at Gore Hall. Guy -was now in Westmorley Court, and Tom in one of the cheaper residential -halls in the Yard. Their associations would have tended to put them -apart, had not Guy's need of moral strengthening, to say nothing of a -dog-like loyalty, driven him back at irregular intervals upon his old -friend. Now and then, too, when his mother insisted on his coming home -for the Sunday evening meal, Hildred suggested that he bring Tom. - -"Let's hike it in by the Embankment," was Guy's way of extending this -invitation. "I don't mind if you come along, and Hildred likes it. Dad -don't care one way or another. He isn't democratic like Hildred and me; -but he's only a snob when it comes to his position as one of the grand -panjandrums of Boston. Mother kicks, of course; but then she'd accept -the devil himself if I was to tote him behind me." - -Long usage had enabled Tom to translate these sentiments into terms of -eagerness. Guy really wanted him. He was Guy's haven of refuge as truly -as when they had been growing boys. Every few weeks Guy turned from his -"bunch of sports," or his "bunch of sports" left him in the lurch, so -that he came back like a homing pigeon to its roost. Tom was fond of -him, was sorry for him, bore with him. Moreover, beyond these tactless -invitations there was Hildred. - -They fell to talking of Tad Whitelaw. Guy swung round to the piano, -beating out a few bars of throbbing, deep-seated grief. - -"One more little song and dance and Tad'll get this. Know what it is?" - -Confessing that he didn't know, Tom learned that it was Haendel's Dead -March in "Saul." - -"Played at all the British military funerals, to make people who feel -bad enough already feel a damn sight worse. Be our morning and evening -hymn when we get into the trenches." - -Tom was anxious. "You mean that Tad's on probation?" - -"I don't know what he's on. Hear the Dean's been giving him a dose of -kill-or-cure. That's all." He pounded out the heartbreaking chords, -with the deep bass note that sounded like a drum. "Ever see a fellow -named Thorne Carstairs?" - -"Seen him, yes. Don't know him. Yale chap, isn't he?" - -"Was." The drumbeat struck sorrow to the soul. "Kicked out. Hanging -round Tad till he gets him kicked out too. Lives at Tuxedo. Stacks of -dough, just like Tad himself." There was some personal injury in Guy's -tone, as he added, "Like to give him the toe of my boot." - -It was perhaps this feat of energy that sent him into the martial -phrases of the Chopin polonaise in A major, making the room ring with -joyous bravery. - -Having dropped into Mrs. Ansley's corner of the gilded canape, Tom -found Hildred silently slipping into a seat beside him. - -"No, don't get up." She put her hand on his arm in a way she had never -done before. "I can only stay a few minutes. There's something I want -to say." - -Guy was passing to the D major movement. His back was turned to them. -They sat gazing at each other. They sat gazing at each other in a -new kind of avowal. All the things he dared not say and she dared not -listen to were poured from the one to the other through their eyes. She -spoke hurriedly, breathlessly. - -"I want you to know that if we enter the war, and you're sent over -there, I'll find a way to go too." - -He began some kind of protest, but she silenced him. - -"I know how I could do it. There's a woman in Paris who'd take me on to -work with her. You see, I'm used to Europe. You're not. I can't bear to -think of you--with no family--so far away from everyone--and all alone. -I'll go." - -Before he could seize anything like the full import of what she -was telling him she had slipped away again. Guy was still playing, -martially and majestically. - -Tom sat wrapt in a sudden amazed tranquillity. Now that she had told -him, told him more, far more, than was in her words, he was not -surprised; he was only reassured. He realized that it was what he had -expected. He had not expected it in the mind, nor precisely with the -heart. If the heart has reasons which the reason doesn't know, it was -something beyond even these. The nearest he could come to it, now that -he tried to express it by the processes of thought, was that between -him and her there existed a community of life which they had only to -take for granted. She was taking it for granted. To find out if she -loved him he would never have to ask her; she would never have to ask -him. _They knew!_ He wondered if the knowledge brought to her the -peace it brought to him. He felt that he knew that too. - -Having ended his polonaise, Guy let his fingers run restlessly up and -down the keys. He had not turned round; he had heard nothing; he hadn't -guessed that Hildred had come and gone. That was their secret. They -would keep it as a secret. One of them at least had no wish to make it -known. - -He had no wish that it should go farther, even between him and her, -till the future had so shaped itself that he could be justified. That -it should remain as it was, unspoken but understood, would for a long, -long time to come be joy and peace for them both. - -Suddenly Guy broke into a strain enraptured and exultant. It flung -itself up on the air as easily as a bird's note. It was lyric gladness, -welling from a heart that couldn't tire. - -Caught by his own jubilance, Guy took up the melody in a tenor growing -liquid and strong after the years of cracked girlishness. - -"Guy, for heaven's sake, what's that?" - -The singer cut into his song long enough to call back over his shoulder: - -"Schumann! 'To the Beloved'!" - -He began singing again, his head thrown back, his big body swaying. All -the longing for love of a fellow on the edge of twenty, but for him -made shamefaced by his fat, found voice in that joyousness. - -Tom had not supposed that in the whole round of the universe there was -such expression for his nameless ecstasies. It was not Guy whom he -heard, nor the piano; it was the morning stars singing together; it -was the sons of God shouting for joy; it was all the larks and all the -thrushes and all the nightingales that in all the ages had ever trilled -to the sun and moon. - -"Don't stop," he shouted, when the song had mounted to its close. -"Let's have it all over again." - -So they had it all over again, the one in his wordless, mumbled tenor, -and the other singing in his heart. - - - - -XL - - -During the next week or ten days Tom worried over Tad Whitelaw. He -wondered whether or not he ought to go to see the boy. If he didn't, -Tad's Harvard career might end suddenly. If he did, he would probably -have humiliation for his pains. He wouldn't mind the humiliation if he -could do any good; but would he? - -One thing that he could do was to take himself to task for thinking -about the fellow in one way or the other. It was the fight he put up -from day to day. What was Tad Whitelaw to him? Nothing! And yet he was -much. It was beyond reasoning about. - -He was a responsibility, a care. Tom couldn't help caring; he couldn't -help feeling responsible. If Tad went to the bad something in himself -would have gone to the bad. He might argue against this instinct every -minute of the day, yet he couldn't argue it down. - -He remembered that Tad went often to see Hildred. He had been on his -way to see her that afternoon before Christmas when they had met on the -esplanade. She might be able to get at him more easily than anybody -else. He rang her up. - -Her life as a debutante was so crowded that she found it hard to give -him a half hour. "I'm dead beat," she confessed on the wire. "If it -weren't for mother I'd call it all off." She made him a suggestion. -She was driving that morning to lunch with a girl who lived in one of -the big places beyond Jamaica Pond. If he could be at a certain corner -she could pick him up. He could drive out with her, and come back by -the trolley car. Then they could talk. That this proposal didn't meet -the wishes of some one near the telephone he could judge by the aside -which also passed over the wire. "He wants to see me about Tad, mother. -I can't possibly refuse." - -Getting into the car beside her, he had another of those impressions, -now beginning to be rare, of the difference between her way of living -and all that he was used to. Much as he knew about cars, it was the -first time he had actually driven in a rich woman's limousine. The ease -of motion, the cushioned softness, the beaver rug, the blue-book, the -little feminine appointments, the sprig of artificial flowers, subdued -him so that he once more found it hard to believe that she took him on -a footing of equality. - -But she did. Her indifference to the details which overpowered him -was part of the wonder of the privilege. Having everything to bestow, -she seemed unaware of bestowing anything. She took for granted their -community of life. She did it simply and without self-consciousness. -Had they been brother and sister she could not have been easier or more -matter-of-course in all that she assumed. - -Except for the coming-out ball it was the first time, too, that he had -seen her as what he called "dressed up." Her costume now was a warm -brown velvet of a shade which toned in with the gold-brown of her -eyes and the nut-brown of her complexion. She wore long slender jade -earrings, with a string of jade beads visible beneath her loosened -furs. The furs themselves might have been sables, though he was too -inexperienced to give them a name. Except for the jade, she wore, as -far as he could see, nothing else that was green but a twist of green -velvet forming the edge of her brown velvet toque. Her neat proud head -lent itself to toques as being simple and distinguished. - -He himself was self-conscious and shy. He could hardly remember for -what purpose she had been willing to pick him up. A queen to her -subjects is always a queen, a little overwhelming by her presence, no -matter how human her personality. Now that he was before her in his old -Harvard clothes, and the marks of the common world all over him, he -could hardly believe, he could _not_ believe, that she had uttered the -words she had used on Sunday night. - -All the ease of manner was on her side. She went straight to the point, -competent, businesslike. - -"The thing, it seems to me, that will possibly save Tad is that he's -got to keep himself fit in case war breaks out." - -That was her main suggestion. Tad couldn't afford to throw himself away -when his country might, within a few weeks, have urgent need of him. -He couldn't, by over indulgence let himself run down physically, as he -couldn't by neglecting his work put himself mentally at a disadvantage. -He must be fit. She liked the word--fit for his business as a soldier. - -"That's just what would appeal to him when nothing else might," Tom -commended. "I wish you'd take it up with him." - -"I will; but you must too." - -"If I get a chance; but I daresay I shan't get one." - -She had a way of asking a leading question without emphasis. Any -emphasis it got it drew from the long oblique regard which gave her the -air of a woman with more experience than was possible to her years. - -"Why do you care?" - -He had to hedge. "Oh, I don't know. He's just a fellow. I don't want to -see him turn out a rotter." - -"If he turned out a rotter would you care more than if it was anybody -else?" - -"M-m-m! Perhaps so! I wouldn't swear to it." - -"I would. I know you'd care more. And I know why." - -He tried to turn this with a laugh. "You can't know more about me than -I do myself." - -"Oh, can't I? If I didn't know more about you than you do yourself...." - -He decided to come to close quarters. "You mean that you do think I'm -the lost Whitelaw baby?" - -"I know you are." - -"How do you know?" - -"Miss Nash told me so, for one thing." - -"And for another?" - -"For another, I just know it." - -"On what grounds?" - -"On no grounds; on all grounds. I don't care anything about the -grounds. A woman doesn't have to have grounds--when she knows." - -"Well, what about my grounds when I know to the contrary?" - -"But you don't. You only know your history back to a certain point." - -"I've only _told_ you my history back to a certain point. I know it -farther back than that." - -"How far back?" - -"As far back as anyone can go, from his own knowledge." - -"Oh, from his own knowledge! But some of the most important things come -before you can have any knowledge. You've got to take them on trust." - -"Well, I take them on trust." - -"From whom?" - -"From my mother." - -She was surprised. "You remember your mother?" - -"Very clearly." - -"I didn't know that. What do you remember about her?" - -"I remember a good many things--how she looked--the way she talked--the -things she did." - -"What sort of things were they?" - -"That's what I want to tell you about. It's what I think you ought to -know." - -She allowed her eyes to rest on his calmly. "If you think knowing would -make any difference to me--" - -"I think it might. It's what I want to find out." - -"Then I can tell you now that it wouldn't." - -"Oh, but you haven't heard." - -"I don't want to hear, unless you'd rather--" - -"That you did. That's just what I do. I don't think we can go any -farther--I mean with our--" the word was difficult to find--"I mean -with our--friendship--unless you do hear." - -"Oh, very well! I want you to do what's easiest for you, and if it does -make a difference I'll tell you honestly." - -"Thank you." For a second, not more, he laid his hand on her muff, the -nearest he had ever come to touching her. "We were talking about the -things my mother did. Well, they weren't good things. The only excuse -for her was that she did them for me, because she was fond of me." - -"And you were fond of her?" - -"Very; I'm fond of her still. It's one of the reasons--but I must tell -you the whole story." - -He told as much of the story as he thought she needed to know. -Beginning with the stealing of the book from which he had learned to -read, he touched only the points essential to bringing him to the -Christmas Eve which saw the end; but he touched on enough. - -"Oh, you poor darling little boy! My heart aches for you--all the way -back from now." - -"So you see why I became a State ward. There was nothing else to do -with me. I hadn't anybody." - -"Of course you hadn't anybody if...." - -"If my mother stole me. But you see she didn't. I was her son. I don't -want to be anybody else's." - -"Only--" she smiled faintly--"you can't always choose whose son you -want to be." - -"I can choose whose son I don't want to be. That's as far as I go." - -"Oh, but still--" She dismissed what she was going to say so as not -to drive him to decisions. "At any rate we know what to do about Tad, -don't we? And you must work as well as I." - -"I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he won't." - -And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no later than that very -afternoon. - -He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy a hand with some work he -was doing for his mid-years. On coming out again, a little scene before -the main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows of the hall. - -Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a touring car that had -seen service. In spite of his residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy -had called his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with the -marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, insisting on being taken -somewhere in the car. Spit Castle being on the spot as a witness to a -refusal accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, Tad waxed -into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew nothing of the cause of the breach, -it was clear that a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the -car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made spurts at driving away. -Before he could swing the wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses -and maulings were exchanged without actual blows, when a shove from -Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. Before he could recover himself -to rush the car again its owner had got off. - -There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well as some hoots from -spectators who had viewed the scuffle from their windows. Tad's -self-esteem was hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to -do what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a good part of -Westmorley Court. - -He turned to Spit, his face purple. "By God, I'll make that piker pay -for this before the afternoon's out." - -Hatless as he was, without waiting for comment, he started off on the -run. Where he was running nobody knew, and Tom least of all. By the -time he had reached the street Tad was nowhere to be seen. - -For the rest of the day the incident had no sequel. Tom had almost -dismissed it from his mind, when on the next day, while crossing the -Yard, he ran into Guy Ansley. - -Guy was brimming over. "Heard the row, haven't you?" - -Tom admitted that he had not. Guy gave him the version he had heard, -which proved to be the correct one. He gave it between fits of laughter -and that kind of sympathetic clapping on the back which can never be -withheld from the harum-scarum dare-devil playing his maddest prank. - -When Tad had run from the door of Westmorley Court he had run to the -police station. There he had laid a charge against an unknown car-thief -of running off with his machine. He could be caught by telephoning -the traffic cops on the long street leading from Cambridge to Boston. -He gave the number of the car which was registered in the State of -New York. His own name, he said, was Thorne Carstairs; his residence, -Tuxedo Park; his address in Boston, the Hotel Shawmut, where he was -known and could be found. Having lodged this complaint, and put all -the forces of the law into operation, he had dodged back to Westmorley -Court, had his dinner sent in from a restaurant, locked his door -against all comers, and turned into bed. - -In the morning, according to Guy, there had been the devil to pay. As -far as Tad was concerned, the statement was literally true. Thorne -Carstairs had been locked in the station all night. Not only had he -been caught red-handed with a stolen car, but his lack of the license -he had neglected to carry on his person, as well as of registration -papers of any kind, confirmed the belief in the theft. His look of a -cheap sport, together with his tendency to use elementary epithets, had -also told against him. Where another young fellow in his plight might -have won some sympathy he roused resentment by his howlings and his -oaths. - -"We know you," he was assured. "Been on the look-out for you this -spell back. You're the guy what pinched Dr. Pritchard's car last week, -and him with a dyin' woman. Just fit the description--slab-sided, -cock-eyed, twisted-nosed fella we was told to look for, and now we've -got our claw on you. Sure your father's a gintleman! Sure you live at -the Hotel Shawmut! But a few months in a hotel of another sort'll give -you a pleasant change." - -In the morning Thorne had been brought before the magistrate, where two -officials of the Shawmut had identified him as their guest. Piece by -piece, to everyone's dismay, the fact leaked out that the law of the -land, the zeal of the police, and the dignity of the court had been -hoaxed. Thorne himself gave the clue to the culprit who had so outraged -authority, and Tad was paying the devil. Guy didn't know what precisely -had happened, or if anything definite had happened as yet at all; he -was only sure that poor Tad was getting it where the chicken got the -ax. He deserved it, true; and yet, hang it all! only a genuine sport -could have pulled off anything so audacious. - -With this Tom agreed. There were spots in Guy's narrative over which -he laughed heartily. He condemned Tad chiefly for going too far. It -was his weakness that he didn't know when he had had enough of a good -thing. Anyone in his senses might know that to hoax a policeman was -a crime. A policeman's great asset was the respect inspired by his -uniform. Under his uniform he was a man like any other, with the same -frailties, the same sneaking sympathy with sinners; but dress him up in -a blue suit with brass buttons on his breast, and you had a figure to -awe you. If you weren't awed the fault was yours. Yours, too, must be -the penalty. The saving element was that beneath the brass buttons the -heart was kindly, as a rule, and humorous, patient, generous. Tom had -never got over the belief, which dated from the night when his mother -was arrested, of the goodness of policemen. He trusted to it now. - -He was not long in making up his mind. Leaving Guy, he cut a lecture -to go to see the Dean. He went to the Dean's own house, finding him at -home. The Dean remembered him as one of two or three young fellows -who in the previous year had adjusted a bit of friction between the -freshmen and the faculty without calling on the higher authorities to -impose their will. He was cordial, therefore, in his welcome. - -He was a big, broad-shouldered Dean, human and comprehending, with a -twinkle of humor behind his round glasses. There was no severity in -the tone in which he discussed Tad's escapade; there was only reason -and justice. Tad had given him a great deal of trouble in the eighteen -months in which he had been at Harvard. He had written to his father -more than once about the boy, had advised his being given less money -to spend, and a stricter calling to account at home. The father was -distressed, had done what he could, but the mischief had gone too far. -Tad was the typical rich man's son, spoiled by too easy a time. He had -been so much considered that he never considered anybody else. He was -swaggering and conscienceless. The Dean was of the opinion now that -nothing but harsh treatment would do him any good. - -Tom put in his plea. The matter, as he saw it, was bigger than one -fellow's destiny; it involved bigger issues. It was his belief that the -country would soon be at war. If the country was at war, Tad Whitelaw's -father would be one of the first of the bankers the President would -consult. The Dean knew, of course, that the bankers would have to -swing as much of the war as the army and navy. Henry T. Whitelaw was a -man, as everyone knew, already terribly tried by domestic tragedy. You -wouldn't want to add to that now, just at the time when he needed to -have a mind as free as possible. This boy was the apple of his eye; -and if disgrace overtook him.... - -But that was only one thing. Should the country go to war, it would -call for just such young fellows as Tad Whitelaw; fellows of spirit, of -daring, of physical health and strength. Didn't the Dean think that it -might be well to nurse him along for a few weeks--it wasn't likely to -be many--so that he could answer to the country's call with at least a -nominal honorable record, instead of being under a cloud? If the Dean -did think so, he, Tom, would undertake to keep the fellow straight till -he was wanted. He wasn't vicious; he was only foolish and headstrong. -Though he didn't make a good student, he had in him the very stuff to -make a soldier. Tom would answer for him. He would be his surety. - -In the long run the Dean allowed himself to be won by Tom's own -earnestness. He would do what he could. At the same time Tom must -remember that if the college authorities stayed their hand the civil -authorities might not. The indignation at police headquarters was -unusually bitter. Unless this righteous wrath were pacified.... - -Having thanked the Dean, Tom ran straight to the police station. The -Chief of Police received him, though not with the Dean's cordiality. -He too was a big, broad-shouldered man, but frigid and stern through -long administration of law, discipline, and order. He impressed Tom -as a mechanical contrivance which operates as it is built to operate, -and with no power of showing mercy or making exceptions to a rule. -Outwardly at least he was grave and obdurate. - -The victory lay once more with Tom's earnestness. The Chief of Police -made no secret of the fact that they were already considering the -grounds on which "the crazy fool" could most effectively be prosecuted. -The law was not, however, wholly without a heart, and if in the present -instance the country could be served, even in the smallest detail, by -giving the blamed idiot the benefit of clemency it could be done. Tom -must understand that the nonsense had not been overlooked; it was only -left in abeyance. If his protege got into trouble again he would be the -more severely dealt with because of the present lenity. - -Tom ran now to Westmorley Court, where he knocked at Tad's door. To a -growling invitation he went in. The room was a cloud of tobacco smoke, -through which the shapes of half a dozen fellows loomed dimly in the -deepening winter twilight. Tad tilted back in the revolving chair -before the belittered desk which held the center of the room. His coat -was off, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his feet on the edge of the desk. A -cigar traveled back and forth from corner to corner of the handsome, -disdainful mouth. - -Tom marched straight to the desk, speaking hurriedly. "Can I have a -word with you in private?" - -The owner of the room neither moved nor took the cigar from his lips. -"No, you can't." He nodded toward the door. "You can sprint it out -again." - -"I shall sprint it out when I'm ready. If I can't speak in private I -shall speak in public. You've got to hear." - -The insolent immobility was maintained. "Didn't I tell you the last -time I saw you that if you ever interfered with me again--?" - -"That you'd shoot me, yes. Well, get up and shoot. If you can't, or if -you don't mean to, why make the threat? But I've come to talk reason. -You've got to listen to reason. If you don't I'll appeal to these chaps -to make you. They don't want to see you a comic valentine any more than -I do. Now climb down from your high horse and let's get to business." - -It was Guy Ansley who cleared the room. "Say, fellows--" With a -stealthy movement, which their host was too preoccupied to observe, -they slipped out. He knew, however, when he and his enemy were alone, -and still without lifting his feet from the desk or taking the cigar -from his mouth, made the concession of speaking. - -"Well, if business has brought you here, cough it up." - -"I will. I come first from the Dean, and then from the Chief of Police." - -"Oh, you do, do you? So you're to be the hangman." - -"No; there's not to be a hangman. They've given you a reprieve--because -I've begged you off." - -The feet came off the desk. The cigar was taken from the lips. Tad -leaned forward in his chair, tense and incredulous. - -"You've done--_what_?" - -Tom maintained his sang-froid. "I've begged you off. I went and talked -to them both. I said I'd answer for you, that you'd stop being a crazy -loon, and try to be a man." - -Incredulity passed into angry amazement. "And who in hell gave you -authority to do that?" - -"Nobody. I did it on my own. When a fellow gets his life as a gift he -takes it. He doesn't kick up a row as to who's given it. For the Lord's -sake, try to have a little sense." - -"What's it to you whether I've got sense or not?" - -"Nothing." - -"Then why in thunder do you keep butting in--?" - -"Because I choose to. I'll give you no other answer than that, and no -other explanation. What you've got to do is to knuckle under and show -that you're worth your keep. You're not a _born_ fool; you're only a -made fool. You're good for something better than to be a laughing-stock -as you are to everyone in college. Buck up! Be a fellow! After being a -jackass for a year and a half, I should think you'd begin to see that -there was nothing to it by this time." - -Never in his life had Tad Whitelaw been so hammered without gloves. -It was why Tom chose to hammer him. Nothing but thrashing, verbal -or otherwise, would startle him out of the conviction of his -self-importance. Already it was shaking the foundations of his -arrogance. In his tone as he retorted there was more than a hint of -feebleness. - -"What I see and what I don't see is my own affair." - -"Oh, no, it isn't. It's a class affair. There's such a thing as _esprit -de corps_. We can't afford to have rotters, now especially." - -Tad grew still feebler. "I'm not the only rotter in the bunch. Why do -you pick on me?" - -"I've told you already. Because I choose to. You might as well give in -to me first as last, because you'll not get rid of me any more than you -will of your own conscience." - -Tad sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, in a new outburst. "I'll be -damned if I'll give in to you." - -"And I'll be damned if you don't. If I can't bring you round by -persuasion I'll do it as I did it once before. I'll wale the guts out -of you. I'm not going to have you a disgrace." - -"Ah!" Tad started back. "Now I've got you. A disgrace! You talk as if -you were a member of the family. That's what you're after. That's what -you've been scheming for ever since--" - -"Look here," Tom interrupted, forcefully. "Let's understand each other -about this business once and for all." Looking from under his eyelids -he measured Tad up and down. "I wouldn't be a member of the family that -has produced _you_ for anything the world could give me." - -Tad bounded, changing his note foolishly. "Oh, you wouldn't wouldn't -you! How do you know that you won't damn well have to be?" - -Walking up to him, Tom laid a hand on his shoulder, paternally. "Don't -let us talk rot. We both know the nickname the fellows have stuck on me -in Harvard. But what's that to us? You don't want me. I don't want you. -At least I don't want you that way. I'll tell you straight. I've got a -use for you. That's why I keep after you. But it's got nothing to do -with your family affairs." - -They confronted each other, Tad gasping. "You've got a use for me? -Greatly obliged. But get this. I've no use for you. Don't make any -mistake--" - -Withdrawing his hand, Tom gave him a little shove. "Oh, choke it back. -Piffle won't get you anywhere. I'm going to make something of you of -which your father and mother can be proud." - -It was almost a scream of fury. "Make something of _me_--?" - -"Yes, a soldier." - -The word came like a douche of cold water on hysteria, calming the boy -suddenly. He tapped his forehead. "Say, are you balmy up here?" - -"Possibly; but whether I'm balmy or not, a soldier is what you'll have -to be. Don't you read the papers? Don't you hear people talking? Why, -man alive, two or three months from now every fellow of your age and -mine will be marching behind a drum." - -The boy's haggard face went blank from the sheer shock of it. The idea -was not brand new, but it was incredible. Tad Whitelaw was not one of -those who took much interest in public affairs or kept pace with them. - -"Oh, rot!" - -"It isn't rot. Can't you see it for yourself? If this country pitches -in--" - -"Oh, but it won't." - -"Ask anyone. Ask your own father. That's my point. If we do pitch in -your father will be one of the big men of the two continents. You're -his only son. You'll _have_ to play up to him." - -Tom watched the hardened, dissipated young face contract with a queer -kind of gravity. The teeth gritted, the lips grew set. It gave him the -chance to go on. - -"There aren't a half dozen men in the country who'd be able to swing -what your father'll be swinging. Listen! I know something about -banking. Been studying it for years. When it comes to war the banker -has to chalk-line every foot of the lot. They can't do anything without -him. They can't have an army or a navy or any international teamwork. -You'll see. The minute war is declared, _before_ war is declared, the -President'll be sending for your father to talk over ways and means. -Now then, are you to put a spoke in the country's wheel? You can. -You're doing it. The more you worry him the less good he'll be. Get -chucked out of college, as you would have been in a day or two, if I -hadn't stepped in, and begged to have you put in my charge--" - -Once more Tad revolted. "Put in your charge! The devil I'll be put in -your charge!" - -"All right! It's the one condition on which you stay at Harvard. Jump -your bail, and you'll see your father pay for it. He'll have his big -international job, and he won't be able to swing it because he'll be -thinking of you. You'll see the whole country pay for it. I daresay we -shan't know where we pay and how we pay; but we'll be paying. Say, is -it worth your while? What do you gain by being the rotten spot in the -beam that may bring the whole shack about our ears? Everybody knows -that your father has lost one son. Can't you try to give him another of -whom he won't have to be ashamed?" - -Tad stood sulkily, his hands in his trousers' pockets, as he tipped on -his toes and reflected. Since he made no answer, Tom went on with his -appeal. - -"And that's not the only thing. There's yourself. You're not a bad -sort. You've got the makings of a decent chap, even if you aren't one. -You could be one easily enough. All you've got to do is to drop some of -your fool acquaintances, cut out drinking, cut out women, and make a -show of doing what you've been sent to Harvard to do, even if it's only -a show. You won't have to keep it up for more than a few weeks." - -The furrow in the forehead when the eyebrows were lifted was also a -mark of dissipation. "More than a few weeks? Why not?" - -Tom pounded with emphasis. "Because, I tell you, we'll be in the war. -_You'll_ be in the war. We fellows of the class of 1919 are not going -to walk up on Commencement Day and take our degrees. We'll get them -before that. We'll get them in batteries and trenches and graves. I -heard a girl say, in speaking of you a day or two ago, that she hoped, -when the time came for that, you'd be fit. She said she liked the -word--fit for the job that'd be given you. You couldn't be fit if you -went on--" - -His curiosity was touched. "Who was that?" - -"I'm not going to tell you. I'll only say that she likes you, and -that--" - -"Was it Hildred Ansley?" - -"Well, if you're bound to know, it was. If you want to talk to someone -who wishes you well, go and--" - -"Did she put you up to this?" - -"No, she didn't. You put me up to it yourself. I tell you again, I'm -going to see you go straight till I see you go straight into the army. -You ought to go in with a commission. But if you're fired out of -Harvard they'll be shy of enlisting you as a private. If you won't play -the game of your own accord, I'll make you." - -With hands thrust into his trousers' pockets, Tad began to pace the -room, doing a kind of goose-step. His compressed lips made little -grimaces like those of a man forcing himself to decisions hard to -swallow. For a good four or five minutes Tom watched the struggle -between his top-loftiness and his common-sense. While common-sense -insisted on his climbing down, top-loftiness told him that he must -save his face. When he spoke at last his voice was hoarse, his throat -constricted. - -"If it's going to be war I'll be in it with both feet. But I'll do it -on my own. See? You mind your business, and I'll mind mine." - -Tom was reasonable. "That'll be all right--if you mind it." - -"And if you think I'm giving in to you--" - -"I don't care a hang whether you're giving in to me or not so long as -you--_keep fit_." - -"I'll be the judge of that." - -"And I'll help you." - -"You can go to hell." - -Tad used these words because he had no others. They were fine free -manly words which begged all the questions and helped him to a little -dignity. If he was surrendering he would do it, in his own phrase, -with bells on. The mucker shouldn't have the satisfaction of thinking -he had done anything. It saved the whole situation to tell him in this -offhand way the place that he could go to. - -But a little thing betrayed him, possibly before he saw its -significance. His points being won for the minute, Tom had reached -the door. Beside the door stood a low bookcase, on which was open a -package of cigarettes. Tad's goose-step brought him within reach of -it. He picked it up and held it toward Tom. He did it carelessly, -ungraciously, unthinkingly, and yet with all sorts of buried -implications in the little act. - -"Have one?" - -Tom was careful to preserve a casual, negligent air as he drew one out. -Tad struck a match. - -As the one held the thing to his lips and the other put the flame to -it, the hands of the brothers, for the first time except in a fight, -touched lightly. - - - - -XLI - - -"I can't see," Hildred reasoned, "why you should find the idea so -terrible." - -"And I can't see," Tom returned, "what it matters how I find the idea, -so long as nobody is serious about it." - -"Oh, but they will be. It's what I told you before. They'd made up -their minds they didn't want to find him; and now it's hard to unmake -them again. But they're coming to it." - -"I hope they're not taking the trouble on my account." - -"They're taking it on their own. Tad as much as said so. He said they'd -stuck it out as long as they could; but they couldn't stick it out -forever." - -"Stick it out against what?" - -"Against what's staring them in the face, I suppose." - -"Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing would induce me to -belong to the family that had produced him?" - -She laughed. "Oh, yes. He told me the whole thing, how you'd come into -his room, how Guy had got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle -between you." - -"And did he say how it had ended?" - -"He said--if you want to know exactly I'll tell you exactly--he said -that when it came to talking about the war and the part he would have -to play in it, you weren't as big a damn fool as he had thought you." - -"And did he say how big a damn fool he was himself?" - -"He admitted he had been one; but with his father on his hands, and the -war, and all that, he'd have to put the brakes on himself, and pretend -to be a good boy." - -Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to the blaze of the -fire. Hildred had sent for him because Mrs. Ansley was out of the way -at her Mothers' Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since she -would not conceal the fact accomplished. It avoided only a preliminary -struggle. If she needed an excuse, the necessities of their good -intentions toward Tad would offer it. - -Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of embroidery, had taken up a -piece of work. Like many women, she found it easier to be daring in an -incidental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from having to look -at Tom as she reverted to the phase of the subject from which they had -drifted away. - -"The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. They may even be -called distinguished. I don't see what it is you've got against them." - -"I've got nothing against them. They rather--" he sought for a word -that would express the queer primordial attraction they possessed for -him--"they rather cast a spell on me. But I don't want to belong to -them." - -"But why not, if it was proved that--?" - -"For one reason, it couldn't be proved; and for another, it's too late." - -The ring in his voice was strange; it made her look up at him. "Too -late? Why do you say that?" - -"Because it is. You told me some time ago that it was what they thought -themselves. Even if it _were_ proved, it would still be--too late." - -"I don't understand you." - -"I'm not sure that I understand myself. I only know that the life I've -lived would make it impossible for me to go and live their life." - -"Oh, nonsense! Their life is just the same as our life." - -"Well, I'm not sure that I could live yours. I could conform to it on -the outside. I could talk your way and eat your way; but I couldn't -think your way." - -"When you say _my_ way--" - -"I mean the way of all your class. Mind you, I'm not against it. I only -feel that somehow--in things I can't explain and wouldn't know how to -remedy--it's wrong." - -"Oh, but, Tom--" - -"It seems to be necessary that a great many people shall go without -anything in order that a very few people may enjoy everything. That's -as far as I go. I don't draw any conclusions; and I'm certainly not -going in for any radical theories. Only I can't think it right. I want -to be a banker; but even if I _am_ a banker--" - -"I see what you mean," she interrupted, pensively. "I often feel that -way myself. But, oh, Tom, what can we do about it that--that wouldn't -seem quite mad?" - -He smiled ruefully. "I don't know. But if you live long enough--and -work hard enough--and think straight enough--and don't do anything to -put you off your nut--why, some day you may find a way out that will be -sane." - -"Yes, but couldn't you do that and be Harry Whitelaw--if you _are_ -Harry Whitelaw--at the same time?" - -"Suppose we wait till the question arises? As far as I know, no one who -belonged to Harry Whitelaw, or to whom Harry Whitelaw belonged, has -ever brought it up." - -But only a few weeks later this very thing seemed about to come to pass. - -It was toward the end of March. On returning to his room one morning -Tom was startled by a telegram. Telegrams were so rare in his life -that merely to see one lying on his table gave him a thrill, partly of -wonder, partly of fear. Opening it, he was still more surprised to find -it from Philip Ansley. Would Tom be in Louisburg Square for reasons of -importance at four that afternoon? - -That something had betrayed himself and Hildred would have been his -only surmise; only that there was nothing to betray. Except for the -few hurried words Hildred had spoken on that Sunday night, anything -they had said they had said in looks, and even their looks had been -guarded and discreet. The things most essential to them both were in -what they were taking for granted. They had exchanged no letters; their -intercourse was always of the kind that anyone might overhear. Without -recourse to explanation each recognized the fact that it would be years -before either of them would be free to speak or to take a step. In the -meantime their only crime was their confidence in each other; and you -couldn't betray that. - -Nevertheless, it was with uneasiness that he rang at the door, and -asked Pilcher if Mr. Ansley were at home. Pilcher was mysterious. Mr. -Ansley was not at home, but if Mr. Tom would come in he would find -himself expected. Tea being served in the library, Mr. Tom was shown -upstairs. - -It was a gloomy afternoon outside; the room was dim. All Tom saw at -first was a tall man standing on the hearth rug, where the fire behind -him had almost gone out. He had taken a step forward and held out his -hand before Tom recognized the distinguished stranger who had first -hailed him in the New Hampshire lake nearly three years earlier. - -"Do you remember me?" - -"Yes, sir." - -They stood with hands clasped, each gazing into the other's face. Tom -would have withdrawn his hand, would have receded, but the other held -him with a grasp both tense and tenacious. The eyes, deep-set like -Tom's own, and overhung with bushy outstanding eyebrows, studied him -with eager penetration. Not till that look was satisfied did the tall -figure swing to someone who was sitting in the shadow. - -"This is the boy, Onora. Look at him." - -She was sitting out of direct range in a corner of the library darkened -by buildings standing higher on the Hill. The man turned Tom slightly -in her direction, where the daylight fell on him. The degree to which -the woman shrank from seeing him was further marked by the fact that -she partly hid her face behind a big black-feather fan for which there -was no other use than concealment. She said nothing at all; but even in -the obscurity Tom could perceive the light of two feverish eyes. - -It was the man who took the lead. - -"Won't you sit down?" - -He placed a chair where the woman could observe its occupant, without -being drawn of necessity into anything that might be said. The man -himself drew up another chair, on which he sat sidewise in an easy -posture close to Tom. Tom liked him. He liked his face, his voice, his -manner, the something friendly and sympathetic he recalled from the -earlier meetings. Whether this were his father or not, he would have -no difficulty in meeting him at any time on intimate and confidential -terms. - -"My wife and I wanted to see you," he began, simply, "in order to thank -you for what you've done for Tad." - -Tom was embarrassed. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I just happened--" - -"The Dean has told me all about it. He says that Tad has given him no -trouble since. Before that he'd given a good deal. I wish I could tell -you how grateful we are, especially as things are turning out, with a -war hanging over us." - -Tom saw an opportunity of speaking without sentiment. "That's what I -thought. It seemed to me a pity that good fighting stuff should be -lost just through--through too much skylarking." - -"Yes, it would have been. Tad _has_ good fighting stuff." - -There was a catch of the woman's breath. Tom recalled the staccato -nervousness of their first brief meeting in Gore Hall. He wished they -hadn't brought him there. They were strangers to him; he was a stranger -to them. Whatever link might have been between him and them in the -past, there was no link now. It would be a mistake to try to forge one. - -But in on this thought the man broke gently. - -"I wonder if you'd mind telling us all about yourself that you know? I -presume that you understand why I'm asking you." - -"Yes, sir, I do; but I don't think I can help you much." - -The woman's voice, vibrating and tragic, startled him. It was as if she -were speaking to herself, as if something were being wrung from her in -spite of her efforts to keep it back. "The likeness is extraordinary!" - -Taking no notice of this, the man began to question him, "Where were -you born?" - -"In the Bronx." - -He made a note of this answer in a little notebook. "And when?" - -"In 1897." - -"What date?" - -It was the crucial question, but since he meant to tell everything he -knew, Tom had no choice but to be exact. - -"I'm not very sure of the date, because my mother changed it at three -different times. At first my birthday used to be on the fifth of March; -but afterward she said that that had been the birthday of a little -half-sister of mine who died before I was born." - -"What was her name?" - -"Grace Coburn." - -"And her parents' names?" - -"Thomas and Lucy Coburn." - -"And after your birthday was changed from the fifth of March--?" - -"It was shifted to September, but not for very long. Later my mother -told me I was born on the tenth of May, and we always kept to that." - -From the woman there was something like a smothered cry, but the man -only took his notes. - -"The tenth of May, 1897. Did she ever tell you why she selected that -date?" - -"No, sir." - -"Did she ever say anything about it, about what kind of day it was, or -anything at all that you can remember?" - -Tom hesitated. The reflection that the wisest course was to make a -clean breast of everything impelled him to go on. - -"She only said that it was a day when all the nursemaids had had their -babies in the Park, and the lilacs were in bloom." - -There followed the question of which he was most afraid, because he -often put it to himself. - -"Why should she have said that, when, if you were born in the Bronx, -she and her baby were miles away?" - -"I don't know, sir." - -"What was your mother's maiden name?" - -"I don't know, sir." - -"She was married to Thomas Coburn before she was married to Theodore -Whitelaw, your father?" - -"Yes, sir." - -"Where were she and your father married?" - -"I don't know, sir." - -"What _do_ you know about your father?" - -"Nothing at all. I never heard his name till she gave it at the police -station, the night before she died." - -"Oh, at the police station! Why there?" - -Tom told the whole story, keeping nothing back. - -The man's only comment was to say, "And you never heard the name of -Whitelaw in connection with yourself till you heard it on that evening?" - -"Yes, sir, I'd heard it before that." - -"When and how?" - -"Always when my mother was in a--in a state of nerves. You mustn't -forget that she wasn't exactly in her right mind. That was the excuse -for what she--she did in shops. So, once in so often, she'd say that I -was never to think that my name was Whitelaw, or that she'd stolen me." - -There was again from the woman a little moaning gasp, but the man was -outwardly self-possessed. - -"So she said that?" - -"Yes, sir." - -"And have you any explanation why?" - -"I didn't have then; I've worked one out. You see, my name really -being Whitelaw, and her mind a little unbalanced, she was afraid -she might be suspected of--your little boy's case had got so much -publicity--and she a friendless woman, with no husband or relations--" - -"So that you don't think she did--steal you?" - -He answered firmly. "No, sir. I don't" - -"Why don't you?" - -"For one thing, I don't want to." - -"Oh!" - -It was the woman again. The sound was rather queer. You could not have -told whether it meant relief or indignation. - -The man's sad penetrating eyes were bent on him sympathetically. "When -you say that you don't want to, exactly what do you mean?" - -"I'm not sure that I can say. She was my mother. She was good to -me. I was fond of her. I never knew any other mother. I don't think -I could--" he looked over at the woman in the shadow, letting -his words fall with a certain significant spacing--"know--any -other--mother--now--and so--" - -Rising, she took a step toward him. He too rose so that as she stood -looking up at him he stood looking down at her. There and then her face -was imprinted on his memory, a face of suffering, but of suffering that -had not made her strong. The quivering victim of self-pity, she begged -to be allowed to forget. She had suffered to her limit. She couldn't -suffer any more. Everything in her that was raked with the harrow -protested against this bringing up again of an outlived agony. - -Her beautiful eyes, brimming with unspilled tears, gazed at him -reproachfully. As plainly as eyes could tell him anything, they told -him that now, when life and time had dug between them such a gulf, she -didn't want him as her son. She might have to accept him, since so many -things pointed that way, but it would be hard for her. Taking back a -little boy would have been one thing; taking back a grown man, none of -whose habits or traditions were the same as theirs, would be another. -She would do it if it were forced on her, but it couldn't recompense -her now for past unhappiness. It would be only a new torture, a torture -which, if he hadn't drifted in among them, she might have escaped. - -When swiftly and silently she had left the room the man put his hand on -Tom's arm. - -"Sit down again. You mustn't think that my wife doesn't feel all this. -She does. It's because she does that she's so overwrought." - -Tom sat down. "Yes, sir, of course!" - -"She's been through it so often. For a good ten years after our child -was lost boys used to be brought to us to look at every few months. And -every time it meant a draining of her vitality." - -"I understand that, sir; and I hope Mrs. Whitelaw doesn't think I've -come of my own accord." - -"No, she knows you haven't. We've asked you to come because--but I must -go back. When my wife had been through so much--so many times--and all -to no purpose--she made me promise--the doctors made me promise--that -she shouldn't be called on to face it again. Whenever she had to -interview one of these claimants--" - -"_I'm_ not a claimant," Tom put in, hastily. - -"I know you're not. That's just it. It's what makes the difference. But -whenever she had to do it--and decide whether a particular lad was or -was not her son--it nearly killed her." - -Tom made an inarticulate murmur of sympathy. - -"The worst times came after we'd turned down some boy of whom we hadn't -been quite sure. That was as hard for me as it was for her--the fear -that our little fellow had come back, and we'd sent him away. It got to -be so impossible to judge. You imagined resemblances even when there -were none, and any child who could speak could be drilled about the -facts, as we were so well known. It was hell." - -"It must have been." - -"Then there were our two other children. It wasn't easy for them. They -grew up in an atmosphere of expecting the older brother to come back. -At first it gave them a bit of excitement. But as they grew older they -resented it. You can understand that. A stranger wouldn't have been -welcome. Whenever a new clue had to be abandoned they were glad. If -the boy had been found they'd have given him an awful time. That was -another worry to my wife." - -"Yes, it would be." - -"So at last we made up our minds that he was dead. It was the only -thing to do. Self-protection required it. My wife took up her social -life again, the life she's fond of and is fitted for. Things went -better. She didn't forget, but she grew more normal. In spite of the -past there were a few things she could still enjoy. She'd begun to feel -safe; and then--in that lake in New Hampshire--I happened to see you." - -"If I were you, sir, I shouldn't let that disturb me." - -"It does disturb me. When I went back that year to our house at Old -Westbury and spoke to my wife and children about it, they all implored -me not to go into the thing again." - -"If I could implore you, too--" - -He shook his head. "It wouldn't do any good. I've come to the point -where I've got to see it through. I have all the data you've given -me--as well as some other things. If you're not--not my son--" He -rose striding to the fireplace, where he stood pensively, his back to -the smouldering fire--"if you're not my son, at least we can find out -pretty certainly whose son you are." - -Tom also rose, so that they stood face to face. "And if you can't find -out pretty certainly whose son I am--?" - -"I shall be driven to the conclusion that--" - -He didn't finish this sentence. Tom didn't press for it. During the -silence that followed it occurred to him that if there was a war the -question might be shelved. It was what, he thought, he would work for. - -The same idea might have come to the older man, for looking up out of -his reverie, he said, with no context: - -"What do you mean to be?" - -"I've always hoped, sir, to go into a bank. It's what I seem best -fitted for." - -There came into the eyes that same sudden light, like the switching on -of electricity, which Tom remembered from their meeting in the water. - -"I could help you there." - -"Oh, but it would only be in a small way, sir. I'd have to begin as -something--" - -"All the same I could help you. I want you to promise me this, that -when you're free--either after Harvard, or after the war--you'll come -to me before you do anything else. Is that a bargain?" - -To Tom it was the easiest way out. "Yes sir, if you like." - -"Then our hands on it!" - -Their right hands clasped. Once more Tom found himself held. The man's -left hand came up and rested on his shoulder. The eyes searched him, -searched him hungrily, with longing. Whether they found what they -sought or merely gave up seeking Tom could hardly tell. He was only -pushed away with a little weary gesture, while the tall man turned once -more toward the dying fire. - - - - -XLII - - -In the April of 1920, nearly eighteen months after the signing of -the Armistice, Tom Whitelaw came back to Boston, demobilized. He had -crossed a good part of Europe almost in a straight line--Brest, Paris, -Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Fere-en-Tardennois, Reims, Luxembourg, -Coblenz--and more or less in the same way had come back again. Now, if -he had been able to forget it all, he would gladly have forgotten it. -Since it couldn't be forgotten it inspired him with an aim in life. - -More exactly, perhaps, it made definite the aim he had been vaguely -conscious of already. What he felt was not new; it was only more fixed -and clear. He knew what he meant to do, even though he didn't see how -he was to do it. He might never accomplish anything; very likely he -never would; but at least he had a state of mind, and he was not going -to be in a hurry. If for the ills he saw he was to work out a cure, -or help to work out a cure, or even dream of working out a cure, he -must first diagnose the disease; and diagnosis would take a good part -of his lifetime. He was twenty-three, according to his count, but, -again according to his count he had the seriousness of forty. With the -advantage of a varied experience and an early maturity, he had also -that of age. - -His achievements in the war had given him the kind of importance -interesting to newspapers. They had begun writing him up from the -days of the action at Belleau Wood. His picture had appeared in their -Sunday editions as on the staff of General Pershing during his visit to -the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. To Tom himself the only satisfaction -in this was the possible diminishing of the distance between him and -Hildred Ansley. It would not have been the first time in history when -war had helped a lover out of his obscurity to put him on the level -of the loved one. To Hildred herself it would make no difference; but -by her father and mother, especially by her mother, a son-in-law who -had worn with some credit his country's uniform might be pardoned his -presumption. - -Public approval also brought him one other consideration that meant -much to him. The man who thought he might be his father wrote to him. -He wrote to him often. He wrote to him partly as a friend might write, -partly as a father might write to his son. Between the lines it was not -difficult to read a yearning and sense of comfort. The yearning was -plainly for assurance; just as plainly the sense of comfort lay in the -knowledge that somewhere in the world there was a heart that beat to -the measure of his own. It was as if he had written the words: "My two -acknowledged children are of no help to me; my wife is crushed by her -sorrow; you and I, even if there is no drop of common blood between us, -understand each other. Whether or not we are father and son, we could -work together as if we were." - -The letters were full of a fatherly affection strange in view of the -slight degree of their acquaintanceship. The man's heart cleared that -obstacle with a bound. Tom's heart cleared it with an equal ease. To be -needed was the call to which, with his strong infusion of the feminine, -he never failed to answer instantaneously. As readily as the banker -divined him, he divined the banker. If there was no fatherhood or -sonship in fact there was both sonship and fatherhood in essence. - -Whitelaw wrote as if he had been writing to his boy for years, with a -matter-of-course solicitude, with offers of money, with scraps of news. -He talked freely of the family, as if Tom would care to hear of them. A -few words in one of his letters showed that he knew more than Tom had -hitherto supposed. - -"If Tad and Lily have been uncivil to you it was not because of -personal dislike. In their situation some hostility toward the -outsider, as they would call him, whom they might be forced to -acknowledge as their older brother must be forgiven as not unnatural." - -During all the three years of Tom's soldiering this was the only -reference to the question that had been left suspended by the war. -Whether or not it would ever be taken up again Tom had no idea. He -hoped it would not be. For him an undetermined situation was enough. - -Though during this period Henry Whitelaw was frequently in London and -Paris they never met. When the one proposed that he should use his -influence to get the other leave, Tom thought it wiser to stay, as he -expressed it, on the job. Only once did he ask permission to run up for -forty-eight hours to Paris, and that was to see Hildred. - -She was then helping to nurse Guy, who, while working with the -Y.M.C.A., had come down with typhoid fever. Convalescent by this time, -he would sail for America in a month or two, Hildred going with him. -Tom himself being on the eve of marching into Germany, the moment was -one to be seized. - -They dined in a little restaurant near the Madeleine. With the table -between them they scanned each other's faces for the traces left by -nearly two years of separation. Except that she was tired Tom found -little change in her. Always lacking in temporary, girlish prettiness, -her distinction of line and poise was that which the years affect but -slowly, and experience enhances. He could only say of her that she was -less the young girl he had last seen in Boston, and more the woman of -the world who, having seen the things that happen as they happen most -brutally, has grown a little heartsick, and more than a little weary. - -"It's all so futile, Tom. It's such waste. It should never have been -asked of the people of the world." - -His lips had the dim disillusioned smile which had taken the place of -the radiance of even a year or two earlier. - -"What about the war to end war? What about making the world safe for -democracy?" - -She put up a hand in protest. "Oh, don't! I hate that clap-trap. The -salt which was good enough to put on birds' tails is sickening when you -see the poor creatures lying with their necks wrung. Oh, Tom, what can -we do about it if we ever get home?" - -"Do about what?" - -"About the whole thing, about this poor pitiful, pitiable human race -that's got itself into such an awful mess?" - -"The human race is a pretty big problem to handle." - -"Yes, but you don't think the bigness ought to stop us, do you?" - -"Stop us from--?" - -"From trying to keep the world from going on with its frightful policy -of destruction. Isn't there anyone to show us that you can't destroy -one without by that much destroying all; that you can't make it easier -for one without by that much making it easier for everyone? Are we -never going to be anything but fools?" - -His dim smile came and went again. "We'll talk about that when I get -home. We can't do it now. Even if we could it's no us trying to reason -with a world that's gone insane. We must let it have time to recover. I -want to hear about you." - -She threw herself back in her chair, nervously crumbling a bit of -bread. "Oh, I'm all right. Never better, as far as that goes. I've only -grown an awful coward. Now that the fighting's over I seem to be more -afraid than when it was going on. As far as pep goes I'm a rag." - -"It'll do you good to get home." - -"Oh, I want to get farther away than home. I want to get somewhere--to -a desert island perhaps--where there won't be any people--" - -"None?" - -"Oh, well, dad and mother and Guy and--" - -"And nobody else?" - -"Yes, and you. I see you want me to say it, so I might as well. I want -you there--and _then_ nobody else--not a soul--not the shadow of a -soul--except servants, of course--" - -He grew daring as he had never been before. "Perhaps before many years -we may find that island--with the servants all the time--but with your -father and mother and Guy as visitors--very frequent visitors--but--" - -"Oh, don't talk about it. It's too heavenly for a world like this." She -looked him in the eyes, despairingly. "Do you suppose it _ever_ could -come true?" - -"Stranger things have." - -"But better things haven't." - -He put down his knife and fork to gaze at her. "Hildred, do you really -feel like that?" - -"Well, don't you?" Her tone was a little indignant. "If you don't for -pity's sake tell me, so that I shan't go on giving myself away." - -"Of course, I feel that way, only it seems to me queer that you should." - -"Why queer?" - -"Because you're you, and I'm only me." - -"You can't reason in that way. You can't really reason about the thing -at all. The most freakish thing in the world is whom people'll fall in -love with." - -"It must be," he said humbly. - -"Oh, cheer up; it isn't as bad as all that. There's no disgrace in my -being in love with you. If you'll just be in love with me I'll take -care of myself." - -They laughed like children. To neither was it strange to have taken -their love for granted, since they had done it for so long. It was -as if it had grown with them, as if it had been born with them. Its -flowers had opened because it was their springtime; there was nothing -else for it to do. It was a stormy springtime, with only the rarest -bursts of sunshine; but for that very reason they must make the most of -such sunshine as there was. They had not met for two years; it might -be two years more before they met again. They could only throw their -hearts wide open. - -She talked of her work. In her mood of reaction it seemed to her now -a stupid, foolish work, not because it hadn't done good, but because -it had done good for such useless purposes. A New York woman whom -she knew, whose son had been killed fighting with the British in the -earlier part of the war, had opened a sort of club for the cheering up -of young fellows passing through Paris, or there for a short leave. - -"We bucked them up so that they'd be willing to go back again, and be -blown to bits. It was like giving the good breakfast and the cigarette -to the man going out to the electric chair. My God, what a nerve we -had, we girls! We'd laugh and dance with those poor young chaps, who a -few days later would be in their graves, if the shells left anything to -bury. We didn't think much about it then. It's only now that it comes -over me. I feel as if I'd been their executioner." - -"You're tired. You need a rest." - -"Rest won't reconcile me to belonging to a race of wild beasts. Oh, -Tom, couldn't we make a little life for ourselves away from everyone, -and from all this cheap vindictiveness? I shouldn't care how humble or -obscure it was." - -He laughed, quietly. "There are a good many hurdles to take before we -come even to the humble and obscure." - -"Hurdles? What kind of hurdles?" - -"Your father and mother for one." - -She admitted the importance of this. "But you won't find that hurdle -hard to take if you're Harry Whitelaw." - -"But if I'm not?" - -"I'm sure from what mother writes that you can be." - -"And I'm sure from what I feel that I can't." - -"Oh, but you haven't tried." She hurried on from this to give him the -gist of her mother's letters on the subject. "She and Mr. Whitelaw have -the most tremendous confabs about you, every time he comes to Boston. -The fact that he can't talk to Mrs. Whitelaw--she's all nerves the -minute you're mentioned--throws him back on mother. That flatters the -dear old lady like anything. She begins to think now she adopted you in -infancy. You were her discovery. She gave you your first leg-up. And -after all, you know, we've got to admit that during the whole of these -seven years she might have been a great deal worse." - -He agreed with her gratefully. - -"As a matter of fact," she went on, in her judicial tone, "you must -hand it to us Boston people that, while we can be the most awful snobs, -we're not such snobs that we don't know a good thing when we see it. -It's only the second-cut among us, those who don't really _belong_, -who are supercilious. Once you concede that we're as superior as we -think ourselves, we can be pretty generous. If you've got it in you to -climb up we not only won't kick you down, but we'll put out our hands -and pull you. That's Boston; that's dad and mother. When you've made -all the fun of them you like, the poor dears still have that much left -which you can't take away from them." - -Something of this Tom was to test by the time he and Hildred met again. -It was not another two years before they did that, but it was a year. -Demobilized in Washington, he traveled straight to Boston. He had made -his plans. Before seeing Hildred again he would see her father. "It's -the only straight thing to do," he told himself. After all the years -in which they had been good to him he couldn't begin again to go in -and out of their house while they were ignorant of what he hoped for. -Hildred might have told them something; he didn't know; but the details -of most importance were those which only he himself could give them. - -Having written for a very private appointment, Ansley had told him to -come to his office immediately on his arrival in Boston. He reached -that city by half-past three; he was at the office by a little after -four. - -It was a large office, covering most of a floor of an imposing office -building. On a glass door were the names of the partners, that of -Philip Ansley standing first on the list and in bigger letters than -the rest. In the anteroom an impersonal young lady reading a magazine -said, by telephone, "Mr. Whitelaw to see Mr. Ansley." - -The business of the day was over. As Tom passed through a corridor from -which most of the private offices opened he saw that they were empty. -The only one still occupied was at the most distant end, and there -he found Philip Ansley. He found also his wife. The purpose of Tom's -visit having been made clear by letter, both of Hildred's parents were -concerned in it. - -They welcomed him cordially, making the comments permissible to old -friends on his improved personal appearance. They asked for his news; -they gave their own. Guy was back at Harvard at the Law School; Hildred -was at home, somewhat at loose ends. Like most girls who had worked in -France, she found a life of leisure tedious. - -"Eating her head off," Ansley complained. "Can't settle down again." - -Mrs. Ansley was more heroic. "We accept it. It's part of what we -offered up to the Great Cause. We gave our all, and though all was not -taken from us we should not have murmured if it had been." - -Taking advantage of this turn of the talk, Tom launched into his -appeal. For the last time in his life, as he hoped, he told the story -of his mother. As he had told it to Hildred and to Henry Whitelaw so -now he gave it to Philip and Sunshine Ansley. Hating the task, he was -upheld in carrying it through by the knowledge that everyone who had a -right to know it knew it now. - -He finished with the minute at which Guy first spoke to him. From that -point onward they had been able to follow the course of his life for -themselves. They had in a measure entered into it, and helped him to -his opportunities. He thanked them; but before he could accept their -goodwill again he wanted them to know exactly what he had sprung from. -Hildred did know. She had known it for several years. It had made no -difference to her; he hoped so to make good in the future that it would -make no difference to them. - -They listened attentively, with no sign of being shocked. Now and -then, at such points as the stealing of the first little book, or the -final arrest, one or the other would murmur a "Dear me!" but sympathy -and pity were plainly their sentiments. They didn't condemn him; they -didn't even blame him. He had been an unfortunate child. There was -nothing to be thought of him but that. - -After he had finished there was a silence that seemed long. Ansley sat -at his desk, leaning back in his revolving chair. Mrs. Ansley was near -a window, where she could to some extent shield herself by looking out. -She left to her husband the duty of speaking the first word. - -"It all depends, my dear fellow, on your being accepted by Henry -Whitelaw as his son." - -There was another silence. "Is that final, sir?" - -"I'm afraid it is." - -"Is there no way by which I can be taken as myself?" - -Mrs. Ansley turned from her contemplation of the Lion and the Unicorn -on the Old State House. "No one is ever taken as himself. We all have -to be taken with the circumstances that surround us." - -Ansley enlarged on this, leaning forward and toying with a paperweight. -"My wife is quite right. Nobody in the world is just a human being pure -and simple. He's a human being plus the conditions which go to make him -up. You can't separate the conditions from the man, nor the man from -the conditions. If you're Henry Whitelaw's son, stolen and brought up -in circumstances no matter how poor and criminal, you're one person; if -you're the son of this--this woman, whom I shan't condemn any more than -I can help, you're another. You see that, don't you?" - -"Can't I be--what I've made myself?" - -"You can't make yourself anything but what you've been from the -beginning. You can correct and improve and modify; but you can't -change." - -"So that if I'm the son of--of this woman, you wouldn't want me. Is -that it?" - -"How could we?" came from Mrs. Ansley. "But I know from Mr. Whitelaw -himself that--" - -Ansley smiled, paternally. "Suppose we leave it there. After all, the -last word rests with him." - -"I don't think so, sir. It rests with me." - -This could be dismissed as of no importance. "Oh, with you, of course, -in a certain sense. They can't force you. But if they're satisfied that -you're--" - -"And if I'm not satisfied?" - -"Oh, but, my dear fellow, you wouldn't make yourself difficult on that -score." - -"It's not a question of being difficult; it's one of what I can do." - -They got no farther than that. Tom's reluctance to deny the woman he -had always regarded as his mother was not only hard for them to seize, -it was hard for him to explain. He couldn't make them see that the -creature who for them was only a common shoplifter was for him the -source of tender and sacred memories. To accuse her of a greater crime -than theft would be to desecrate the shrine which he himself had built -of love and pity; but he was unable to put it into words, as they were -unable to understand it. He himself worded it as plainly as he could -when, rising, he said: - -"So that I must renounce my mother or renounce Hildred." - -Ansley also rose. "That's not quite the way to express it. If she _was_ -your mother, there can be no question of your renouncing her. But then, -too, there can be no question of--of Hildred. I'm sure you must see." - -"And if I see, would Hildred also see?" - -Leaving her window, Mrs. Ansley, bulbous and quivering, lilted forward. -"We must leave that to your sense of honor. In a way we're in your -hands. It's within your power to make us suffer." - -"I should never do that," he assured her, hastily. "Hildred wouldn't -want me to. After all you've done for me neither she nor I--" - -"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so." Ansley held out his hand. "We -trust you both. But the situation is clear, I think. If you come back -to us as Harry Whitelaw, you'll find us eager to welcome you. If you -don't, or if you can't--" - -A wave of the hand, a shrug of the shoulders, expressing the rest, Tom -could only bow himself out. - - - - -XLIII - - -On the part of Philip and Sunshine Ansley the confidence was such that -Hildred was permitted to take a walk with Tom before his departure for -New York. - -"We're not engaged," Hildred reported as part of her mother's -conditions, "and we can't be engaged unless you're proved to be Harry -Whitelaw. Mother thinks you're going to be. So apparently the question -in the long run will be as to whether or not you want me." - -"It won't be that. I'm crazy about you, Hildred, more than any fellow -ever was before." - -"And that's the way I feel about you, Tom. I don't care a bit about the -things dad and mother think so important. You're you; you're not your -father or your mother, whoever they may have been. I shouldn't love you -any the better if you became the son of Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. It would -only make it easier." - -It was a windy afternoon in April, with the trees in new leaf. All -along the Fenway the bridal-veil made cascades of whiteness whiter than -the hawthorns. Pansies, tulips, and forget-me-nots brightened all the -foot-paths. The two tall, supple figures bent and laughed in the teeth -of the lusty wind. - -Rather it was she who laughed, since she had the confidence in life, -while he knew only life's problems. He had always known life's -problems, and though there had never been a time when he was free from -them, he never had had one to solve so difficult as this. - -"But that's where the shoe pinches," he declared, "that I'm myself, so -much more myself than many fellows are; and yet, unless I turn into -some one else, I shall lose you." - -She threw back her answer with a kind of radiant honesty. "You couldn't -lose me, Tom. I couldn't lose you. We've grown together. Nothing can -cut us asunder. One can't win out against two people who're as willing -to wait as we are." - -He was not comforted. "Oh, wait! I don't want to wait." - -"Neither do I; but we'd both rather wait than give each other up." - -"Wait--for how long?" - -"How can I tell how long? As long as we have to." - -"Till your father and mother die?" - -"Oh, gracious, no! I'm not killing the poor lambs. Till they come -round. They'll _come_ round." - -"How do you know?" - -"Because fathers and mothers always do. Once they see how sad I'll be--" - -"Oh, you're going to play that game." - -She was indignant. "I shan't play a game. I shall _be_ sad. I'm all -right now while you're here; but once you're gone--well, if dad and -mother want a martyr on their hands they'll have one. I shan't be -putting it on either. I'll not be able to help myself." - -"I'd rather they came around for some other reason than to save your -life." - -"I'm not particular about the reason so long as they come round. But -you see I'm talking as if the worse were coming to the worst. As a -matter of fact, I believe the better is coming to the best." - -"Which means that you think the Whitelaws...." - -"I know they will." - -"And that I...." - -"Oh, Tom, you'll be reasonable, won't you?" - -He was silent. Even Hildred couldn't see what his past had meant to -him. A wretched, miserable past from some points of view, at least it -was his own. It had entered into him and made him. It was as hard to -take it now as a hideous mistake as it would have been to take his -breathing or the circulation of his blood. - -The farther it drifted behind him the more content he was to have known -it. Each phase had given him something he recognized as an asset. -Honey, the Quidmores, the Tollivants, Mrs. Crewdson, the "mudda," -had all left behind them experiences which time was beginning to -consecrate. Hildred couldn't understand any more than anybody else what -it cost him to disclaim them. He often wondered whether, had he been -born the son of Henry and Eleonora Whitelaw, and never been stolen away -from them, he would have grown to be another Tad. He thought it very -likely. - -Not that Tad hadn't justified himself. He had. His record in the war -had gone far to redeem him. He had come through with sacrifice and -honor. Having fought without a scratch for a year and a half, he had, -on the very morning of the day when the Armistice was signed, received -a wound which, because of the infection in his blood, had resulted -in the loss of his right arm. This maiming, which the chance of a -few hours would have saved him, he took, according to Hildred, with -splendid pluck, though also with an inclination to be peevish. Lily, -so Tom's letters from Henry Whitelaw had long ago informed him, had -married a man named Greenshields, had had a baby, had been divorced, -and again lived at home with her parents. - -Tom pondered on the advantages they, Tad and Lily, were assumed to -have enjoyed and which he himself had been denied. Everyone, Hildred -included, took it for granted that ease and indulgence were blessings, -and that he had suffered from the loss of them. Perhaps he had; but he -hadn't suffered more than Tad and Lily on whom they had been lavished. -Tad with his maimed body, Lily with her maimed life, were not of -necessity the product of wealth and luxury; but neither did a blasted -soul or character come of necessity from poverty and hardship, or even -from an origin in crime. - -He couldn't explain this to Hildred, partly because she didn't care, -partly because he had not the words, and mostly because her assumptions -were those of her society. She would love him just the same whether -he were the son of a woman who had killed herself in jail, or that -of a banker known throughout the world; but the advantages of being -the latter were to her beyond argument. So they were to him, except -that.... - -Thus with Hildred he came to no conclusions any more than with her -parents. With her as with them it was an object to keep him from making -any statement that might seem too decisive. If they left it to Henry -Whitelaw and himself the scales could but dip in one direction. - -And yet when actually face to face with the banker, Tom doubted if the -subject was going to be raised. He had written, reminding Whitelaw -of the promise he himself had exacted, that on looking for work, Tom -should apply first of all to him. Like Ansley, the banker had made an -appointment at his office. - -The office was in the ponderous and somewhat forbidding structure which -bore the name of Meek and Brokenshire in Wall Street. The room into -which Tom was shown was shabby and unpretentious. Square, low-ceiled, -lighted by two windows looking into yards or courts, its one bit of -color lay in the green and red of a Turkey rug, threadbare in spots, -and scuffed into wrinkles. Against the walls were heavily carved walnut -bookcases, housing books of reference. A few worn leather armchairs -made a rough circle about a wide flat-topped desk, which stood in the -center of the room. On the desk were some valuable knickknacks, paper -weights, paper cutters, pen trays, and other odds and ends, evidently -gifts. A white-marble mantelpiece clumsily sculptured in the style of -1840 was adorned above by the lithographed head of the first J. Howard -Brokenshire, also of 1840, and one of the founders of the firm. - -For the first few minutes the room was empty. Tom stood timidly close -to the door through which he had come in. The banker entered from a -room adjoining. - -"Ah, here you are!" - -He crossed the floor rapidly. For a long minute Tom found himself held -as he had been held before, the man's right hand grasping his, the left -hand resting on his shoulder. There was also the same searching with -the eyes, and the same little weary push when the eyes had searched -enough. - -"Sit down." - -Tom took the armchair nearest him; the man drew up another. He drew it -close, with hungry eagerness. Tom was apologetic. - -"I must beg your pardon, sir, for asking you to see me--" - -"Oh, no, my dear boy. I should have been hurt if you hadn't. I've been -expecting you ever since I read that you'd landed. What made you go to -Boston before coming here?" - -There was confession in Tom's smile. "I had to see some one." - -"Was it Hildred Ansley?" - -Tom found himself coloring, and without an answer. - -"Oh, you needn't tell me. I didn't mean to embarrass you. The Ansleys -are very good friends of mine. Known them well for years. If it hadn't -been for them you and I might never have got together. Now give me some -account of yourself. It must be nearly two months since I last heard -from you." - -Tom gave such scraps of information as he hadn't told in letters, and -thought might be of interest. With some use of inner force he nerved -himself to ask after Mrs. Whitelaw, and "the other members of the -family," a phrase which evaded the use of names. - -The banker talked more freely than he had written. He talked as to -one with whom he could open his heart, and not as to an outsider. -Mrs. Whitelaw was stronger and calmer, less subject to the paralyzing -terrors which had beset her for so long. Tad was doing with himself -the best he could, but the best in the case of a fellow of his age and -tastes who had lost his right arm was not very good. He could ride a -little, guiding his horse with his left hand, but he couldn't drive -a car, or hunt, or play polo, or use his hand for writing. He could -hardly dress himself; he fed himself only when everything was cut -up for him. In the course of time he would probably do better, but -as yet he couldn't do much. Lily had made a mess of things. It was -worse than what he had told Tom in his letters. She had eloped with a -worthless fellow, whom he, her father, had forbidden her to know, and -who wanted nothing but her money. It was a sad affair, and had stunned -or bewildered her. He didn't like to talk of it, but Tom would see for -himself. - -He reverted to Tom's own concerns. "You wrote to me about a job." - -"Yes, sir; but I'm afraid it's bothering you too much." - -"Don't think that. I've got the job." - -The young man tried to speak, but the other hurried on. - -"I hope you'll take it, because I've been keeping it for you ever since -I saw you last." - -Tom's eyes opened wide. "Over three years?" - -"Oh, there was no hurry. Easy enough to save it. I want you to be one -of the assistants to my own confidential secretary. This will keep you -close to myself, which is where I want to have you for the first year -at least. You'll get the hang of a lot of things there, and anything -you don't understand I can explain to you. Later, if you want to go -into the study of banking more scientifically--well, I shall be able to -direct you." - -He sat dazzled, speechless. It was the -future!--Hildred!--happiness!--honor!--the big life!--the conquest of -the world! He could have them all by sitting still, by saying nothing, -by letting it be implied that he renounced his loyalties, by being -passive in the hand of this goodwill. He would be a fool, he told -himself, not to yield to it. Everyone in his senses would consider him -a fool. The father of the Whitelaw baby believed that he had found his -child. Why not let him believe it? How did he, Tom Whitelaw, know that -he wasn't his child? The woman who had told him he was never to think -so was dead and in her grave. Judged by all reasonable standards, he -owed her nothing but a training in wicked ways. He would give her up. -He would admit, tacitly anyhow, even if not in words, that she had -stolen him. He would be grateful to this man--and profit by his mistake. - -He began to speak. "I hardly know how to thank you, sir, for so much -kindness. I only hope--" He was trying to find the words in which -to express his ambition to prove worthy of this trust, but he found -himself saying something else--"I only hope that you're not doing all -this for me because you think I'm--I'm your son." - -Leaning toward him, the banker put his hand on his knee. "Suppose we -don't bring that up just yet? Suppose we just--go on? As a matter of -fact--I'm talking to you quite frankly--more frankly than I could speak -to anyone else in the world--but as a matter of fact I--I want some -one who'll--who'll be like a son to me--whether he's my son or not. I -wonder if you're old enough to understand." - -"I think I am, sir." - -"I'm rather a lonely man. I've got great cares, great responsibilities. -I can swing them all right. There are my partners, fine fellows all -of them; there are as many friends as I can ask for. But I've nobody -who comes--who comes very close to me--as a son could come. I've -thought--I've thought it for some time past--that--whoever you are--you -might do that." - -As he leaned with his hand on Tom's knee his eyes were lower than Tom's -own. Tom looked down into them. It was strange to him that this man who -held so much of the world in his grasp should be speaking to him almost -pleadingly. His memories filed by him with the speed and distinctness -of lightning. He was the little boy moving from tenement to tenement; -he was in the big shop on that Christmas Eve; he was walking with his -mother in front of the policeman; he was watching her go away with the -woman who was like a Fate; he was staring at the Christmas Tree; he was -being pelted on his first day at school; he was picking strawberries -for the Quidmores; he was sleeping in the same room with Honey; he -was acting as chauffeur at the inn-club in Dublin, New Hampshire, and -picking up this very man at Keene. And here they were together, the -instinct of the father calling to the son, while the instinct of the -son was scarcely, if at all, articulate. - -The struggle was between his future and his past. "I must be his son," -he cried to himself. But another voice cried, "And yet I can't be." -Aloud he said, modestly, "I'm not sure, sir, that I could fill the bill -for you." - -"That would be up to me. It isn't what you can do but what I'm looking -for that matters in a case like this." He stood up. "I'm sorry I must -go back to a conference inside, but I shall see you soon again. What's -your address in New York?" - -Tom gave him the name of the hotel at which he was putting up. Whitelaw -had never heard of it. - -"Can't you do better than that?" - -"Oh, it isn't bad, sir. I'm not used to luxury, and I manage very well. -I'm quite all right." - -"Is it money?" - -"Only in the sense that everything is money. I've a little saved--not -much--and I like to keep on the weather side of it. The man who did -more for me than anybody else--the ex-burglar I told you about--always -taught me to be economical." - -"All the same I don't like to have you staying in a place like that. -You must let me--" - -"Oh, no, sir! I'd a great deal rather not." He spoke in some alarm. -"I've got to be on my own. I _must_ be." - -"Oh, very well!" - -The tone was not precisely cold; it was that of a man whose good -intentions were sensitive. Tom did something which he never had -supposed he would have dared to do. He went up to this man, and laid -his hand gently on his arm. Instantly the man's free hand was laid on -the one which touched him, welcoming the caress. Tom tried to explain -himself. - -"It isn't that I'm not grateful, sir. I hope you don't think that. -But--but I'm myself, you see. I've got to stand on my own feet. I know -how to do it. I've learned. I--I hope you don't mind." - -"I want you to do whatever you think best yourself. You're the only -judge." They had separated now, and the banker held out his hand. "Oh, -and by the way," he continued, clinging to Tom's hand in the way he had -done on earlier occasions. "My wife wants to see you. She told me to -ask you if you couldn't go and lunch with her to-morrow." - -Since there was no escape Tom could only brace himself. - -"Very well, sir. It's kind of Mrs. Whitelaw. I'll go with pleasure. At -one o'clock?" - -"At one o'clock." He picked up a card from the desk. "This is our -address. You'll find Mrs. Whitelaw less--less emotional than when you -saw her last and more--more used to the idea." - -Without explaining the idea to which she was more used, the banker -released Tom's hand with his customary little push, as if he had had -enough of him, hurrying out by the door through which he had come in. - - - - -XLIV - - -Before turning into bed that night Tom had fought to a finish his -battle with himself. The victory rested, he hoped, with common sense. -He could no longer doubt that before very long an extraordinary offer -would be made to him. To repulse it would be insane. - -"As far as my personal preferences go," he wrote to Hildred, "I would -rather remain as I am. Remaining as I am would be easier. I'm free; -I've no one to consider; I know my own way of life, and can follow it -pretty surely. But I'm not adaptable. You yourself must often have -noticed that my mind works stiffly, and that I find it hard to see the -other fellow's point of view. I'm narrow, solitary, concentrated, and -self-willed. But as long as I've no one to consult I can get along. - -"To enter a family of which I know nothing of the ways or traditions -or points of view is going to be a tough job. It will be much tougher -than if I merely married into it. In that case I should be only an -adjunct to it, whereas in what may happen now I shall have to become an -integral part of it. I must be as a leg instead of as a crutch. I don't -know how I shall manage it. - -"I'm not easily intimate with anyone. Perhaps that's the reason why, -as you say, I haven't enough of the lover in me. I'm not naturally a -lover. I'm not naturally a friend. I'm a solitary. A solitude _a deux_, -with the servants, as you always like to stipulate, is my conception of -an earthly paradise. - -"To you the normal of life is a father, a mother, a brother, a sister. -To me it isn't. To have a father seems abnormal to me, or to have a -sister or a brother. If I can see myself with a mother it's because of -a poignant experience of the kind that burns itself into the memory. -But I can't see myself with _another_ mother, and that's what I've -got to do. Mind you, it isn't a stepmother I must see, nor an adopted -mother, nor a mother-in-law; it's a real mother of my own flesh and -blood. I must see a real brother, a real sister. They think that all -they have to do is to fling their doors open, and that it will be a -simple thing for me to walk in. But I must fling open something more -tightly sealed than any door ever was--my life, my affections, my point -of view. They are four, and need only make room for one. I'm only one, -and must make room for four. - -"But I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for a number of reasons -which I shall try to give you in their order. - -"First, for your sake. You want it. For me that is enough. I see your -reasons too. It will help us with your father and mother, and all our -future life. So that settles that. - -"Then, I want to conform to what those who care anything about me -would expect. I don't want to seem a fool. It's what I should seem if -I turned such an offer down. Nobody would understand my emotional and -sentimental reasons but myself; and when it comes to the emotional and -sentimental there is a pro side as well as a con to the whole situation. - -"Because if I _must_ have a father there's no one whom I could so -easily accept as a father as this very man. He seems to me like my -father; I think I seem to him like his son. More than that, he looks -like my father, and I must look like the kind of son he would naturally -have. I'm sure he likes me, and I know I like him. If I was choosing a -father he's the very one I should pick out. - -"Next, and you may be surprised to hear me say it, I could do very well -with Tad as a brother. That he couldn't do with me is another thing; -but there's something about the chap which has bewitched me from the -day I first laid eyes on him. I haven't liked him exactly; I've only -felt for him a kind of responsibility. I've tried to ignore it, to -laugh at it, to argue it down; but the thing wouldn't let me kill it. -If there's such a thing as an instinct between those of the same flesh -and blood I should say that this was it. I've no doubt that if we come -to living in one menagerie we shall be the same sort of friends as a -lion and a tiger--but there it is. - -"The women appall me. I can't express it otherwise. With the father I -could be a son as affectionate as if I'd never left the family. With -Tad I could establish--I've established already--a sort of fighting -fraternity. To neither the mother nor the daughter could I ever be -anything, so far as I can see now. They wouldn't let me. They wouldn't -want me. If they yield to the extent of admitting me into the family -they'll always bar me from their hearts. The limit of my hope is -that, since I generally get along with those I have to live with, the -hostility won't be too obvious. I also have the prospect that when you -and I are married--and that's my motive in the whole business--I shall -get a measure of release." - -He purchased next morning a pair of gloves and an inexpensive walking -stick so as to look as nearly as might be like the smart young men -he saw on the pavements of Fifth Avenue. It was not his object to be -smart; it was to be up to the standard of the house at which he was to -lunch. - -To reach that house he went on the top of a bus like the one on -which he had ridden with Honey nearly ten years earlier. He did this -with intention, to make the commemoration. Honey's suspicions and -predictions had then seemed absurd; and here they were on the eve of -being verified. - -He got off at the corner at which, as he remembered, Honey and he had -got off on that August Sunday afternoon. He crossed the road to see -if he could recognize the home of the Whitelaw baby as it had been -pointed out to him. Recognition came easily enough because in the whole -line of buildings it was the only one which stood detached, with a bit -of lawn on all sides of it. A spacious brownstone house, it had the -cheery, homey aspect which comes from generous proportions, and masses -of spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, banked in the -bow-windows. - -Being a little ahead of his time, he walked up the street, trying -to compose himself and recapture his nerve. The story, first told -to him by Honey, and repeated in scraps by many others, returned to -him. Too far away to be noticed by anyone who chanced to be looking -out, he stood and gazed back at the house. If he was really Harry -Whitelaw he had been born there. The last time he had come forth from -it he had been carried down those steps by two footmen. He had been -wheeled across the street and into the Park by a nurse in uniform. -Within the glades of the Park a change had somehow been wrought in his -destiny, after which there was a blank. He emerged from that blank into -consciousness sitting on a high chair in a kitchen, beating on the -table with a spoon, and asking the question: "Mudda, id my name Gracie, -or id it Tom?" The memory was both vague and vivid. It was vague -because it came out from nowhere and vanished into nowhere. It was -vivid because it linked up with that bewilderment as to his identity -which haunted his early childhood. The discovery that he was a little -boy forced on a woman craving for a little girl was the one with which -he first became aware of himself as a living entity. - -To his present renunciation of that woman he tried to shut his mind. -There was no help for it. He had long kept a veil before this sad holy -of holies; he would simply hang it up again. He would nail it up, he -would never loosen it, and still less go behind it. What was there -would now forever be hidden from any sight, even from his own. - -At a minute before one he recrossed the avenue, and went down the -little slope. In the role of Harry Whitelaw which he was trying -to assume going up the steps was significant. The long, devious, -apparently senseless odyssey had brought him back again. It was only to -himself that the odyssey seemed straight and with a purpose. - -The middle-aged man who opened the door raised his eyebrows and opened -his eyes wide in a flash of perturbation. It was only for an instant; -in the half of a second he was once more the proper stiffened image -of decorum. And yet as he took from the visitor the hat, stick, and -gloves, Tom could see that the eyes were scanning his face furtively. - -It was a big dim hall, impressive with a few bits of ancient massive -furniture, and a stairway in an alcove, partially hidden by a screen -which might have been torn from some French cathedral. Tom, who -had risen to the modest standard of the Ansleys, again felt his -insufficiency. - -Following the butler, he went down the length of the hall toward a door -on the right. But a door on the left opened stealthily, and stealthily -a little figure darted forth. - -"So you've come! I knew you would! I knew I shouldn't go down to my -grave without seeing you back in the home from which twenty-three years -ago you were carried out. I've said so to Dadd times without number, -haven't I, Dadd?" - -"You have indeed, Miss Nash," Dadd corroborated, "and none of us didn't -believe you." - -"Dadd was the second footman," Miss Nash explained further. "He was one -of the two who lifted you down that morning. Now he's the butler; but -he's never had my faith." - -She glided away again. Dadd threw open a door. Tom found himself in a -large sunny room, of which the bow-window was filled with flowers. - -There was no one there, which was so far a relief. It gave him time to -collect himself. Except for apartments in museums, or in some chateau -he had visited in France, he had never been in a room so stately or so -full of costly beauty. He knew the beauty was costly in spite of his -lack of experience. - -On the wall opposite the bow-window stretched a blue-green Flemish -tapestry, with sad-eyed, elongated figures crowding on one another -within an intricate frame of flowers, foliage, and fruits. A -white-marble mantelpiece, bearing in shallow relief three garlanded -groups of dancing Cupids, supported a clock and a pair of candelabra in -_biscuit de Sevres_ mounted in ormolu. Above this hung a full-length -eighteenth-century lady--Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough--he was only -guessing--looking graciously down on a cabinet of European porcelains, -on another of miniatures, and another of old fans. Bronzes were -scattered here and there, with bits of iridescent Spanish luster, and -two or three plaques of Limoges enamel intense in color. Since there -was room for everything, the profusion was without excess, and not too -carefully thought out. A work-basket filled with sewing materials and -knitting stood on a table strewn with recent magazines and books. - -He was so long alone that he was growing nervous when Lily dropped into -the room as if she had happened there accidentally. She sauntered up to -him, however, offering her hand with a long, serpentine lifting of the -arm, casual and negligent. - -"How-d'ye-do? Mamma's late. I don't know whether she's in the house or -not. Perhaps she's forgotten. She often does." She picked up a silver -box of cigarettes. "Have one?" - -On his declining she lighted one for herself, dropping into a big -upright chair and crossing her legs. It was the year when young ladies -liked to display their ankles and calves nearly up to the knee. Lily, -whose skirt was of unrelieved black, wore violet silk stockings, -with black slippers which had bright red buckles set in paste. Over -her shoulders a violet scarf, with bright red bars, hung loosely. In -sitting, her sinuous figure drooped a little forward, the elbow of the -hand which held the cigarette supported on her knee. - -Though she hadn't asked him to sit down, he took a chair of his own -accord, waiting for her to speak again. When she did so, after an -interval of puffing out tiny rings of blue smoke, her voice was languid -and monotonous, and yet with overtones of passionate self-will. - -"You've been in the army, haven't you?" - -He said he had been. - -"Did you like it?" - -"I never had time to think as to whether I did or not. I just had to -stick it out." - -"Did you ever see Tad over there?" - -"No, I never did." - -As she was laconic he too would be laconic. She didn't look at him, or -show an interest in his personality. If she thought him the brother -who after long disappearance was coming home again she betrayed no hint -of the possibility. He might have been a chance stranger whom she would -never see again. Lapses of silence did not embarrass her. She sat and -smoked. - -He decided to assume the right to ask questions on his own side. -"You've been married since I saw you last, haven't you?" - -"Yes." She didn't resent this, apparently, and after a long two minutes -of silence, added: "and divorced." There was still a noticeable passage -of time before she continued, in her toneless voice: "I've a baby too." - -"Do you like him?" - -A flicker of a smile passed over a profile heavy-browed, handsome, -and disdainful. "He's an ugly little monster so far." She had a way -of stringing out her sentences as after-thoughts. "I daresay he's all -right." - -There followed a pause so long and deep that in it you could hear -the ticking of the clock. He was determined to be as apathetic as -herself. She had no air of thinking. She scarcely so much as moved. -Her stillness suggested the torrid, brooding calm before volcanic or -seismic convulsion. Without a turning of the head or a change in her -languid intonation, she said, casually: - -"You're our lost brother, aren't you?" - -The emotion from which she was so free almost strangled him. He could -barely breathe the words, "Would you care if I were?" - -"What would be the use of my caring if papa was satisfied?" - -"Still, I should think, that one way or the other, you might care." - -To this challenge she made no response. She was not hostile in -any active sense; he was sure of that. She impressed him rather -as exhausted after terrific scenes of passion, waywardness, and -disillusion. A little rest, and she would be ready for the same again, -with himself perhaps to take the consequence. - -Mrs. Whitelaw came in with the rapid step and breathless, syncopated -utterance he remembered. - -"So sorry to be late. I'd been for a long drive. I wanted to think. I -had no idea what time it was. I suppose you must be hungry." - -She gave him her hand without looking him in the face, helped over the -effort of the meeting by the phrases of excuse. - -"So this is my mother!" - -It was his single thought. In the attempt to realize the fact he had -ceased to be troubled or embarrassed. He could only look. He could only -wonder if he would ever be able to make himself believe that which he -did not believe. He repeated to himself what he had already written to -Hildred: he could believe the man to be his father; but that this woman -was his mother he rejected as an impossibility. - -Not that there was anything about her displeasing or unsympathetic. -On the contrary, she had been beautiful, and still had a lovely -distinction. Features that must always have been soft and appealing had -gained by the pathos of her tragedy, while a skin that could never -have been anything but delicate and exquisite was kept exquisite and -delicate by massage and cosmetics. Veils protected it from the sun and -air; gauntlets, easy to pull on and off, preserved the tenderness of -hands wearing many jeweled rings, but a little too dimpling and pudgy. -The eyes, limpid, large, and gray with the lucent gray of moonstones, -had lids of the texture of white rose petals just beginning to shrivel -up and show little _bistre_ stains. The lashes were long, dark, and -curling like those of a young girl. Tom couldn't see the color of her -hair because she wore a motoring hat, with a sweeping brown veil draped -over it and hanging down the back. Heather-brown, with a purplish -mixture, was the Harris tweed of her coat and skirt. The blouse of -a silky stuff, was brown, with blue and rose lights in it when she -moved. A row of great pearls went round her neck, while the rest of the -string, which was probably long, disappeared within the corsage. - -Dadd appeared on the threshold, announcing lunch. - -"Come on," Mrs. Whitelaw commanded, and Lily rose listlessly. "Is Tad -to be at home?" - -Lily dragged her frail person in the wake of her mother. "I don't know -anything about him." - -Tom followed Lily, since it seemed the only thing to do, crossing the -hall and passing through the door by which Miss Nash had darted out to -speak to him. - -The dining room, on the north side of the house, was vast, sunless, and -somber. Tom was vaguely aware of the gleam of rich pieces of silver, of -the carving of high-backed chairs as majestic as thrones. One of these -thrones Dadd drew out for Mrs. Whitelaw; a footman drew out a second -for Lily; another footman a third for himself. - -"Sit there, will you?" Mrs. Whitelaw said, in her offhand, breathless -way, as if speaking caused her pain. "This room is chilly." - -She pulled her coat about her, though the room had the temperature -suited to the great plant of Cattleya, on which there might have been -thirty blooms, which stood in the center of the table. With rapid, -nervous movements she picked up a spoon and tasted the grapefruit -before her. A taste, and she pushed it away, nervously, rapidly. -Nervously, rapidly, she glanced at Tom, glancing off somewhere else as -if the sight of him hurt her eyes. - -"How long have you been back?" - -He gave her the dates and places connected with his recent movements. - -"Did you like it over there?" - -He made the reply he had given to Lily. - -"Were you ever wounded?" - -He said he had once received a bad cut on the shoulder which had kept -him a month in hospital, but otherwise he had not suffered. - -"Tad's lost his right arm. Did you know that?" - -He had first got this news from Guy Ansley. He was very sorry. At the -same time, when others had been so horribly mangled, it was something -to escape with only the loss of a right arm. - -She gave him another of her hurried, unwilling glances. "How did you -come to know the Ansleys so well?" - -He told the story of his early meetings with the fat boy on the -sidewalk of Louisburg Square. - -"Wasn't it awful living with that burglar?" - -Tom smiled. "No. It seemed natural enough. He was a very kind burglar. -I owe him everything." - -To Tom's big appetite the lunch was frugal, but it was ceremonious. He -was oppressed by it. That three strong men should be needed to bring -them the little they had to eat and drink struck him as ridiculous. And -this was his father's house. This was what he should come to take as -a matter of course. He would get up every morning to eat a breakfast -served with this magnificence. He would sit every day on one of these -thrones, like an apostle in the Apocalypse. He thought of breakfasts in -the tenements, at the Tollivants', at the Quidmores', or with Honey in -the grimy eating-places where they took their meals, and knew for the -first time in many years a pang something like that of homesickness. - -It was not altogether the ceremony against which he was rebellious. It -had elements of beauty which couldn't be decried. What he felt was the -old ache on behalf of the millions of people who had to go without, in -order that the few might possess so much. It was the world's big wrong, -and he didn't know what caused it. His economic studies, taken with a -view to helping him in the banking profession, had convinced him that -nobody knew what caused it, and that the cures proposed were worse than -the disease. Without thinking much of it actively, it was always in -the back of his mind that he must work to eliminate this fundamental -ill. Sitting and eating commonplace food in this useless solemn -stateliness, the conviction forced itself home. Somewhere and somehow -the world must find a means between too much and too little, or mankind -would be driven to commit suicide. - -During the meal, which was brief, Lily scarcely spoke. As they -recrossed the hall to go back to the big sunny room, she sloped away -to some other part of the house. Tom and his mother sat down together, -embarrassed if not distressed. - -Pointing to the box of cigarettes, she said, tersely, "Smoke, if you -like." - -In the hope of feeling more at ease he smoked. Still wearing her hat -and coat, she drew her chair close to the fire, which had been lighted -while they were at lunch, holding her hands to the blaze. - -"Do you think you're our son?" - -The question was shot out in the toneless voice common to Lily and -herself, except that with the mother there was the staccato catch of -breathlessness between the words. - -Tom was on his guard. "Do you?" - -Turning slightly she glanced at him, quickly glancing away. "You look -as if you were." - -"But looks can be an accident." - -"Then there's the name." - -"That doesn't prove anything." - -"And my husband knows a lot of other things. He'll tell you himself -what they are." - -He repeated the question he had put to Lily, "Would you care if I were -your son?" - -Making no immediate response, she evaded the question when she spoke. -"If you were, you'd have to make your home here." - -"Couldn't I be your son--and make my home somewhere else?" - -"I don't see how that would help." - -"It might help me." - -The large gray eyes stole round toward him. "Do you mean that you -wouldn't want to live with us?" - -"I mean that I'm not used to your way of living." - -"Oh, well!" She dismissed this, continuing to spread her jeweled -fingers to the blaze. "You said once--a long time ago--when I saw you -in Boston--that you couldn't get accustomed to another--to another -mother--now--or something like that. Do you remember?" - -He said he remembered, but he said no more. - -"Well, what about it?" - -Since it was precisely to another mother that he was now making up his -mind, he found the question difficult. "It was three years ago that I -said that. Things change." - -"What's changed?" - -"Perhaps not things so much as people. I've changed myself." - -"Changed toward us--toward me?" - -"I've changed toward the whole question--chiefly because Mr. Whitelaw's -been so kind to me." - -"I don't suppose his kindness makes any difference in the facts. If -you're our son you're our son whether he's kind to you or not." - -"His kindness may not make any difference in the facts, but it does -make a difference in my attitude." - -"Mine can't be influenced so easily." - -Though he wondered what she meant by that he decided to find out -indirectly. "No, I suppose not. After all, you're the one to whom it's -all more vital than to anybody else." - -"Because I'm the mother? I don't see that. They talk about -mother-instinct as if it was so sure; but--" She swung round on him -with sudden, unexpected flame--"but if they'd been put to as many tests -as I've been they'd find out. Why, almost any child can seem as if he -might have been the baby you haven't seen for a few years. You forget. -You lose the power either to recognize or to be sure that you don't -recognize. If anyone tries hard enough to persuade you...." - -"Has anyone tried to persuade you--about me?" - -He began to see from whence Tad and Lily had drawn the stormy elements -in their natures. "Not in so many words perhaps; but when some one very -close to you is convinced...." - -"And you yourself not convinced...." - -She rose to her feet tragically. "How _can_ I be convinced? What is -there to convince me? Resemblances--a name--a few records--a few -guesses--a few hopes--but I don't _know_. Who can prove a case of this -kind--after nearly twenty-three years?" - -In his eagerness to reassure her he stepped near to where she stood. -"I hope you understand that I'm not trying to prove anything. I never -began this." - -"I know you didn't. I feel as if a false position would be as hard on -you as it would be on ourselves." - -"Then you think the position would be a false one?" - -"I'm not saying so. I'm only trying to make you see how impossible it -is for me to say I'm sure you're my boy--_when I don't know_. I'm not a -cold-hearted woman. I'm only a tired and frightened one." - -"Would it be of any help if I were to withdraw?" - -"It wouldn't be of help to my husband." - -"Oh, I see! We must consider him." - -"I don't see that you need consider anyone but yourself. We've dragged -you into this. You've a right to do exactly as you please." - -"Oh, if I were to do that...." - -"What I don't want you to do is to misjudge me. Not that it would -matter whether you misjudged me or not, unless--later--we were -compelled to see ourselves as--as son and mother." - -"I shouldn't like to have either of us do that--under compulsion." - -Restlessly, rapidly, she began to move about, touching now this object -and now that. Her hands were as active as if they had an independent -life. They were more expressive than her tone when they tossed -themselves wildly apart, as she cried: - -"What else could it be for me--but compulsion?" He was about to speak, -but she stopped him. "Do me justice. Put yourself in my place. My boy -would now be twenty-four. They bring me a man who looks like thirty. -Yes, yes; I daresay you're not thirty, but you look like it. It's just -as hard for me as if you _were_ thirty. I'm only forty-four myself. -They want me to think that this man--so big--so grave--so _old_--is my -little boy. How _can_ I? He may be. I don't deny that. But for me to -_think_ it ...!" - -He watched her as she moved from table to table, from chair to chair, -her eyes on him reproachfully, her hands like things in agony. - -"It's as hard for me to think it as it is for you." - -The words arrested her. Her frenzied motions ceased. Only her eyes kept -themselves on him, with their sorrowful, fixed stare. - -"What do you mean by that?" - -He tried to explain. "My only conception of a mother is of some one -poor--and hard-worked--and knocked about--and loving--and driven -from pillar to post--whereas you're so beautiful--and young--young -almost--and--and expensive--and--" A flip of his hand included the -room--"with all this as your setting--and everything else--I can't -credit it." - -She came up to him excitedly. "Well, then--what?" - -"The only thing we can do, it seems to me, is to try to make it easier -for each other. May I ask one question?" - -She nodded, mutely. - -"Would you rather that your little boy was found?--or that he wasn't -found?" - -She wheeled away, speaking only after a minute's thought, and from the -other side of the room. "I'd rather that he was found--of course--if I -could be sure that he _was_ found." - -"How would you know when you were sure?" - -She tapped her heart. "I ought to know it here." - -"That's the way I'd know it too." - -"And you don't?" - -In a long silence he looked at her. She looked at him. Each strove -after the mystery which warps the child to the mother, the mother to -the child. Where was it? What was it? How could you tell it when you -saw it? And if you saw it, could you miss it and pass it by? He sought -it in her eyes; she sought it in his. They sought it by all the avenues -of intuitive, spiritual sight. - -She tapped her heart again. Her utterance was imperious, insistent, and -yet soft. - -"And you _don't_--feel it there?" - -He too spoke softly. "No, I don't." - -In reluctant dismissal he turned away from her. With her quick little -gasp of a sob she turned away from him. - - - - -XLV - - -To Tom Whitelaw this was the conclusion of the whole matter. A son must -have a mother as well as a father. If there was no mother there was no -son. The inference brought him a relief in which there were two strains -of regret. - -He would be farther away from Hildred. They would have more trials to -meet, more bridges to cross. Very well! He was not accustomed to having -things made easy. For whatever he possessed, which was not much, he had -longed and worked and worked and longed till he got it. But he got it -in the end. In the end he would get Hildred. Better win her so than to -have her drop as a present in his arms. If not wholly content, he was -sure. - -In the matter of his second regret he was only sorry. It began to grow -clear to him that a father needs a son more than a son needs a father. -Of this kind of need he himself knew nothing. He was what he was, -detached, independent, assured. He never asked for sympathy, and if he -craved for love, he had learned to stifle the craving, or direct it -into the one narrow channel which flowed toward Hildred. The paternal -and filial instinct, having had no function in his life, seemed to have -shriveled up. - -But the instinct of response to the slightest movement of goodwill, to -the faintest plea for help, was active with daily use. It leaped forth -eagerly; if it couldn't leap forth something within him fretted and -cried like a hound when the scent leads to earth. As Paul the Apostle, -he could be all things to all men, if by any means he might help some. -If Henry Whitelaw needed a son, he could be a son to him. The tie of -blood was in no small measure a matter of indifference. His impulse was -like Honey's "next o' kin." He remembered, as he had learned in school, -that kin and kind were words with a common origin. Whitelaw's truest -kinship with himself was in his kindness. His kinship with Whitelaw -could as truly be in his devotion. Devotion was what he could offer -most spontaneously. - -If only that could satisfy the father yearning for his son! It could -do it up to a point, since the banker identified kindness and kinship -much as he did himself. But beyond that point there was the cry of the -middle-aged man for some one who was part of himself on whom he could -lean now that his strength was beginning to decline. That his two -acknowledged children were nothing but a care sent him groping all the -more eagerly for the son who might be a support to him. The son who was -not a son might be better than no one, as he himself confessed; and yet -nothing on earth could satisfy his empty soul but his own _son_. Not to -be that son made Tom sorry; but without a mother, how could he be? - -Otherwise, to remain as what life had made him was unalloyed relief. -He was himself. In his own phrase, he was more himself than most men. -But to enter the Whitelaw family, _and belong to it_, would turn him -into some one else. He might have a right there; an accident such as -happens every day might easily make him the head of it; and yet he -would have to put forth affections and develop points of view which -could only come from a man with another kind of past. To be the son of -that mother, and the brother of that sister, sorry for them as he was, -would mean the kind of metamorphosis, the change in the whole nature, -of which he had read in ancient mythology. He would make the attempt if -he was called to it; but he shrank from the call. - -Nevertheless, he took up his job as assistant to the great man's -confidential secretary. This was a Mr. Phips whom Tom didn't like, but -with whom he got on easily. He easily got on with him because Mr. Phips -himself made a point of it. - -A rubicund, smiling man, he had to be seen twice before you gave him -credit for his unctuous ability. There was in him that mingling of -honesty and craft which go to make the henchman, and sometimes the -ecclesiastic. While he couldn't originate anything, he could be an -instrument accurate and sharp. Always ready to act boldly, it was with -a boldness of which some one else must assume the responsibility. He -could be the power behind the throne, but never the power sitting on it -publicly. With an almost telepathic gift for reading Whitelaw's mind, -he could carry out its wishes before they were expressed. From sheer -induction he could, in a secondary way, direct affairs from which he -never took a penny of the profits over and above his salary. - -Again like the ecclesiastic and the henchman, he had neither will -nor conscience beyond the cause he served. A born factotum, with no -office but to carry out, he accepted Tom without questioning. Without -questioning he set him to those duties which, as a beginner, would be -within his grasp. He didn't need to be told that when a message or a -document was to be sent to the most private of all offices, it should -be through the person of this particular young man. Without having -invented for Tom the soubriquet of the Whitelaw Baby, he didn't frown -at it on hearing it pass round the office, as it did within a few days. - -Tom found Whitelaw welcoming, considerate, but at first a little -distant. He might have been conscious of the anomalies in the -situation; he might have been anxious not to rush things; he might even -have been shy. Except to ask him, toward the end of each day, how he -was getting along, he didn't speak to him alone. - -Then, on the fourth morning, Whitelaw sent for him. As Tom entered he -was standing up, a packet in his hand. - -"I want you to take a taxi and go up to my house. Ask for my wife, and -give her this." He made the nature of the errand clearer. "It's the -anniversary of our wedding. She thinks I've forgotten it. I've only -been waiting to send this--by you." - -The significance of the mission came to Tom while he was on the way. -The thing in the packet, probably a jewel, was the token of a marriage -of which he was the eldest born. It was to mark his position in the -husband's mind that he was made the bearer of the gift. He had no -opinion as to this, except that in the appeal to the wife there was an -element of futility. - -In the big dim hall he met the second born. To answer the door Dadd had -left the task of helping the one-armed fellow into his spring overcoat. -As Tom came in the poor left arm was struggling with the garment -viciously. Tad broke into a greeting vigorous, but non-committal. - -"Hello, by Gad!" - -Tom went straight to his business. "Your father has sent me with a -message to Mrs. Whitelaw. I understand she's at home." - -"So you've got here! I knew you'd work it some day." - -"You were very perspicacious." - -"I was. And there's another thing I'll tell you. You've got round the -old man. Well, I'm not going to stand for it. See?" - -"I see; but it's got nothing to do with me. Your father's given me a -job. If you don't want him to do it you ought to tackle him." - -Whatever war had done for Tad it had not ennobled him. The face was old -and seamed and stained with a dark red flush. It was scowling too, with -the helpless scowl of impotence. Tom was sorrier for him than he had -ever been before. - -Having taken his hat and stick, Tad strode off, turning only on the -doorstep. "But there's one thing I'll say right now. If you've got a -job at Meek and Brokenshire's I'll damn well have a better one. I'm -going to keep my eye on you." - -Tom laughed, good-naturedly. "That's the very best thing you could do. -Nothing would please your father half so well. You'd buck him up, and -at the same time get your knife into me." - -As the door closed behind Tad Miss Nash came forward from somewhere in -the obscurity. She was in that tremulous ecstasy which the mere sight -of Tom always roused in her. She was so very sorry, but Mrs. Whitelaw -wasn't able to receive him. If Tom would leave his package with her she -would see that it was delivered. - -On the next afternoon as Tom was leaving the office Whitelaw offered -him a lift uptown. In the seclusion of the limousine the father spoke -of Tad. - -"He's a great care to me, but somehow I feel that you might do him -good." - -"He wouldn't let me. I can't get near him, except by force." - -"But force is what he respects. In the bottom of his heart he respects -you." - -"What he needs is a job--the smallest job you could offer him in the -bank. If you could put it to him as a sporting proposition that he was -to get ahead of me...." - -"That's what I'll try to do." - -In the course of a few days the lift uptown had become a custom. -Though he had never received instructions to that effect, Mr. Phips so -shaped Tom's duties that he found himself leaving the office at the -same moment as the banker. Once or twice when things did not so happen -Whitelaw came into the room where Tom was at work to look for him. If -no one else saw it Mr. Phips did, that the lift uptown was the big -minute of the banker's day. - -"I've got a son," the secretary pondered to himself, "but I'll be -hanged if I feel about him like that. I suppose it's because I never -lost him." - -"Tad's applied to me for a job," the father informed Tom in the -limousine one day. "The next thing will be to make him stick to it." - -"I believe I could manage that, once we get him there," Tom said -confidently. "I can't always make him drink, but I can hold his head to -the water. I did that at college more than once." - -"I know you did. I can't tell you...." - -A tremor of the voice cut short this sentence, but Tom knew what would -have been said: "I can't tell you what it means to me now to have some -one to fall back upon. The children have given me a good deal of worry -which their mother couldn't share because of her unhappiness. But -now--I've got you." Tom was glad, however, that it had not been put -into words. - - - - -XLVI - - -They came into May, the joyous, exciting, stimulating May of New York, -with its laughing promise of adventure. To Tom Whitelaw that sense of -adventure was in the happy sunlight, in the blue sky, in the scudding -clouds, in winds that were warm and yet with the tang of salt and ice -in them, in the flowers in the Park, in the gay dresses in the Avenue, -in the tall young men already beginning to look summery, in the shop -windows with their flowers, fruit, jewels, porcelains, and brocades, -in the opulent crush of vehicles, and in his own heart most of all. -Never before had he known such ecstasy of life. It was more than vigor -of limb or the strong coursing of the blood. It was youth and love and -expectation, with their call to the daring, the reckless, and the new. - -They reached a Saturday. Business was taking Whitelaw to Boston. Tom -went with him to the station, to carry his brief-case, to hand him his -ticket, to check his bags, and perform the other small services of a -clerk for the man of importance. - -"I shall come back on Wednesday," the banker explained to him, before -entering the train. "On Thursday I shall not be at the office. It's a -day on which I never leave my wife. Though I often have to go abroad -and leave her behind, I always manage it so that we may have that -particular day together. I shall see you then on Friday." - -He saw him, however, on Thursday, since Mr. Phips willed it so. At -least, it was Mr. Phips who willed it, as far as Tom ever knew. About -three on that day he came to Tom with a brief-case stuffed with -documents. - -"The Chief may want to run his eyes over these before he comes to the -office to-morrow. Ask for himself. Don't leave them with anybody else." - -To the best of Tom's belief there was no staging of what happened next -beyond that which was set by Phips's intuitions. - -By the time he rang at the house in Fifth Avenue it was a little after -four. Admitted to the big dim hall, he heard a hum of voices coming -from the sitting room. In Dadd's manner there was some constraint. - -"Will you step in here, sir, and I'll tell the master that you've come?" - -The library was on the same side of the house as the dining room, -but it got the afternoon sun. The sun woke its colors to a burnished -softness in which red and blue and green and gold melted into each -other lovingly. A still, well-ordered room, little used by anyone, it -gave the impression of a place of rest for ancient beauty and high -thought. Rich and reposeful, there was nothing in it that was not a -masterpiece, but a masterpiece which there was no one but some chance -visitor to care anything about. In the four who made up the Whitelaw -family there were too many aching human cares for knowledge or art to -comfort. - -Tom's eyes studied absently the profile of a woman on an easel. She -might have been a Botticelli; he didn't know. She only reminded him -of Hildred--neatly piled dark hair, long slanting eyes, a small snub -nose, and lips deliciously _moqueur_. The colors she wore were also -Hildred's, subdued and yet ardent, umber round the shoulders, with a -chain of emeralds that almost sparkled in the westering light. - -Whitelaw entered with his quick and eager tread, his quick and eager -seizing of the young man's hand. Again the left hand rested on his -shoulder; again there was the deep and earnest searching of the eyes, -as if a lost secret had not yet been found; again there was the little -weary push. - -"Come." - -Taking the brief-case into his own hands, he left Tom nothing to do but -follow him. Diagonally crossing the hall, Tom noticed that the hum of -voices had died down. Without knowing why he nerved himself for a test. - -The test came at once. Whitelaw, having preceded him into the room, -had carried his brief-case to a table, and at once went to work on -the contents. Perhaps he did this purposely, to throw Tom on his own -resources. In any case, it was on his own resources that he felt -himself thrown the instant he appeared on the threshold. He judged -from the face of anguish and protest which Mrs. Whitelaw turned on him -that he was not expected. Dimly he perceived that Tad and Lily were in -the room, and some one else whom as yet he hadn't time to see. All his -powers were focused on the meeting of the woman who was not his mother, -and didn't want him there. - -He thought quickly. He would be on the safest side. He had come there -as a clerk; as a clerk shown in among the family he would conduct -himself. He bowed to Mrs. Whitelaw, who let him take her hand, though -that too seemed to suffer at his touch; he bowed to Lily; he nodded -respectfully to Tad. He turned to salute distantly the other person in -the room, and found her coming towards him. - -He knew her free swinging motion before he had time to see her face. - -"Oh, Tom!" - -"Why, Hildred!" - -Her manner was the protecting one he had often seen in other years, -when she thought he might be hurt, or be ignorant of small usages. She -was subtle, tactful, and ready, all at once. - -"Come over here." She drew him to a seat on a sofa, beside herself. -"Mrs. Whitelaw won't mind, will you, Mrs. Whitelaw? You know, Tom and I -are the greatest friends--have been for years." - -He forgot everyone else who was present in the joy and surprise of -seeing her. "When did you come? Why didn't you let me know?" - -"I didn't know myself till late last night, did I, Mrs. Whitelaw? Mrs. -Whitelaw only wired to invite me after Mr. Whitelaw came back from -Boston. Of course I wasn't going to miss a chance like that. I don't -see New York oftener than once in two years or so. Then there was the -chance of seeing you. I was ready in an hour. I took the ten o'clock -train this morning, and have just this minute arrived." - -Only when these first few bits of information had been given and -received did Tom feel the return of his embarrassment. He was in a -room where three of the five others were troubled by his presence. He -wasn't there of his own free will, and since he was a clerk he couldn't -leave till he was dismissed. He would not have known what to do if -Hildred hadn't kept a small conversation going, drawing into it first -one and then another, till presently all were discussing the weather or -something of equal importance. In spite of her emotion Mrs. Whitelaw -did her best to sustain her role of hostess, Tad and Lily speaking only -when they were spoken to. At a given minute Tad got up, sauntering -toward the door. - -He was stopped by his father. "Don't go, Tad. Tea will be here in a -minute." The voice grew pleading. "Stay with us to-day." - -Lighting a cigarette, Tad sank back into his chair, doing it rather -sulkily. Whitelaw continued to draw papers from the brief-case, -arranging them before him on the table. - -When Dadd appeared with the tea-tray Tom made a push for escape. "If -you've nothing else for me to do, sir...." - -Whitelaw merely glanced up at him. "Wait a minute. Sit down again." - -Tom went back to his seat beside Hildred, where he watched Mrs. -Whitelaw as she poured the tea. It was the first time he had seen her -in indoor dress, all lace and soft lavender, her pearls twisted once -around her neck and descending to her waist, a great jewel on her -breast. It was the first time, too, that he had seen her hair, which -was fair and crinkly, like his own. Except for a slight portliness, she -was too young to seem like the mother of Lily and Tad, while she was -still less like his. That she should be his mother, this woman who had -never known anything but what love and money could enrich her with, was -too incongruous with everything else in life to call for so much as -denial. - -And as for the hundredth time he was saying this to himself Whitelaw -spoke. He spoke without looking up from his papers except to take a sip -of tea from the cup on the table beside him. He spoke casually, too, as -if broaching something not of much importance. - -"Now that we're all here I think that perhaps it's as good a time as -any to go over the matter we've talked about separately--and settle it." - -There was no one in the room who didn't know what he meant. Tad smoked -listlessly; Lily set down her cup and lighted a cigarette; Mrs. -Whitelaw's jeweled fingers played among the tea-things, as if she must -find something for her hands to do or shriek aloud. Tom's heart seemed -turned to stone, to have no power of emotion. Hildred was the only one -who said anything. - -"Hadn't I better go, Mr. Whitelaw? I haven't been up to my room yet." - -"No, Hildred. I'd rather that you stayed, if you don't mind. It's the -reason we've asked you to come." - -He looked at no one. His face was a little white, though he was master -of himself. - -"This is the tenth of May. It's twenty-three years ago to-day since -we lost our little boy. I want to ask the family, now that we're all -together, what they think of the chances of our having found him again." - -Though he knew it was an anniversary in the family, it was Tom's first -recollection of the date. In as far as it was his birthday, birthdays -had been meaningless to him, except as he remembered that they had come -and gone, and made him a year older. - -"Personally," Whitelaw went on, "I've fought this off so long that I -can't do it any longer. It will be five years this summer since I first -saw him, at Dublin, New Hampshire, and was struck with his looks and -his name, as well as with the little I learned of his history." - -"Why didn't you do something about it then," Tad put in, peevishly, "if -you were going to do anything at all?" - -"You're quite right, Tad. It's what I should have done. I was dissuaded -by the rest of you. I must confess, too, that I was afraid to take it -up myself. We'd followed so many clues that led to nothing! But perhaps -it's just as well, as it's given me time to make all the investigation -that, it seems to me, has been possible." - -Apart from the motion of Tad's and Lily's hands as they put their -cigarettes to their lips, everyone sat motionless and tense. Even Mrs. -Whitelaw tamed her feverish activity to a more feverish stillness. -Hildred put her hand lightly on Tom's sleeve to remind him that she was -there, but the power of feeling anything had gone out of him. While -Whitelaw told his facts he listened as if the case had nothing to do -with himself. - -His agents, so the banker said, had probably unearthed every detail in -the story that was now to be known. - -On August 5, 1895, Thomas Coburn had been married in The Bronx, to -Lucy Speight. Coburn was a carpenter who had fallen from a roof in the -following October, and had died a few days later of his injuries. Their -child, Grace Coburn, had been born in The Bronx on March 5, 1896, and -had died on April 21, 1897. After that all trace of the mother had been -lost, though a woman who killed herself by poisoning in the Female -House of Detention in the suburb of New Rotterdam, after having been -arrested for shop-lifting, on December 24, 1904, might be considered as -the same person. This woman had been known to such neighbors as could -remember her as Mrs. Lucy Coburn, though at the time of her arrest she -had claimed to be the widow of Theodore Whitelaw, after having married -Thomas Coburn as her first husband. The wardress who had talked to -her on taking her to a cell recalled that she had been incoherent and -contradictory in all her statements about herself, her husband, and her -child. - -As a matter of fact, the early history of Lucy Speight had been traced. -She was the daughter of a laboring man at Chatham, in the neighborhood -of Albany. Her mental inheritance had been poor. Her father had been -the victim of drink, her mother had died insane. One of her sisters -had died insane, and a brother had been put at an early age in a home -for the feeble-minded. A brother and two sisters still lived either -at Chatham or at Pittsfield. He had in his hand photographs of all -the living members of the family, and copies of photographs of those -deceased, including two of Lucy Speight as she was as a young girl. - -He turned toward Tom. "Would you like to look at them?" - -The power of emotion came back to him with a rush. He remembered his -mother, vividly in two or three attitudes or incidents, but otherwise -faintly. A flush that stained his cheek with the same dark red which -dissipation stamped on Tad's made the brothers look more than ever -alike as he crossed the room to take the pictures from his father's -hand. - -There were a dozen or fourteen of them, all of poor rustic boys and -girls, or men and women, feebleness in the cast of their faces, the -hang of their lips, the vacancy of their eyes. Standing to sort them -out, he put aside quickly the two of Lucy Speight. One of them must -have dated from 1894, or thereabouts, because of the big sleeves; -the other, with skin-tight shoulders, was that of a girl perhaps in -1889. In their faded simper there was almost nothing of the wild dark -prettiness with which he saw her in memory, and yet he could recreate -it. - -He stood and gazed long, all eyes fixed on him. Moving to the table -where Mrs. Whitelaw sat behind the tray, he held the two pictures -before her. - -"That's my mother." - -Though he said this without thought of its significance, and only -from the habit of thinking of Lucy Speight as really his mother, he -saw her shrink. With a glance at the photographs, she glanced up at -him, piteously, begging to be spared. Even such contact as this, -remote, pictorial only, with people of a world she had never so much as -touched, hurt her fastidiousness. That the son of this poor half-witted -creature, this Lucy Speight, should also be her son ... but the only -protest she could make was in her eyes. - -Tom did not sit down again as Whitelaw continued with his facts; he -stood at the end of the mantelpiece, with its candelabra in _biscuit de -Sevres_. Leaning with his elbow on the white marble edge, he had all -the others facing him, as all the others had him. The attitude seemed -best to accord with the position in which he felt himself, that of a -prisoner at the bar. - -"We've found no record in any State in the Union," Whitelaw went -on, "or in any Province in Canada, of a marriage between a Theodore -Whitelaw and a Lucy Coburn or Speight. The search has been pretty -thorough. Moreover, we find no birth recorded in The Bronx of any -Thomas Whitelaw during all the decade between 1890 and 1900. No such -birth is recorded in any other suburb of New York, or in Manhattan. In -years past I've been on the track of three men of the name of Theodore -Whitelaw, one in Portland, Maine, one in New Orleans, and one in -Vancouver; but there's reason for thinking that all three were one and -the same man. He was a Scotch sailor, who died on the Pacific coast, -and was never known to be in or about New York longer than the two or -three days in which his ship was in port." - -He came to the circumstances, largely gathered from Tom himself, of -the association of the woman with the child. She had harped on the -statements, first, that she had not stolen him; secondly, that he was -not to think that his name was Whitelaw. And yet on the night before -her death she had not only given him that very name, but claimed it as -legally her own. The boy--the man, as he was now--could remember that -at different times she had called herself by different names, chiefly -to escape detection for her thefts; but never before that night had she -taken that of Whitelaw. - -Those who had worked on the case, the most skilful investigators in the -country, were driven to a theory. It was a theory based only on the -circumstantial, but so broadly based that the one unproven point, that -which absolutely showed identity, seemed to prove itself. - -Lucy Coburn, feeble in mind from birth, half demented by the death -first of her husband and then of her child, had prowled about the Park, -looking for a baby that would satisfy her thwarted mother-love. Any -baby would have done this, though she preferred a girl. - -"My son, Henry Elphinstone Whitelaw, was born on September 24, 1896. -He was eight months old when on May 10, 1897, he was wheeled into the -Park by Miss Nash, who is still with us. What happened after, as she -supposed, she wheeled him back, we all know about." - -But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss Nash's attention -was diverted, the prowling woman got possession of the child, through -means which were still a matter of speculation. She had money, since -it was known that five thousand dollars had been paid to her by a -life-insurance company on her husband's death, and, therefore, the -power of flitting about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that -she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the first name she -could think of, which was that of her late husband. She could easily -have learned from the papers that the child she had stolen was the son -of Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may or may not have -remained in a memory probably not retentive at its best. But on the -night of her arrest, knowing that she was about to forsake the child -for whom she had come to feel a passionate affection, she had made one -last wild effort to connect him with his true inheritance. Why she -had done this but partially was again a matter of conjecture. She may -have given all of the name she remembered; she may have been kept from -giving the full name through fear. It was impossible to tell. But she -gave the name--with some errors, it was true--but still the name. The -name taken with the extraordinary family resemblance--everyone would -admit that--was one of the main points in the reconstruction of the -history. - -He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the half-proofs, asking at -last, timidly, and as if afraid of the family verdict: - -"Well, what does everyone say?" - -The silence was oppressive. The only movement on anyone's part came -when Lily stretched out her hand to a tray and with her little finger -knocked off the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if none of -them would speak, as if he himself must speak first. - -"I vote we take him in." This was Tad. "Since we all know you want him, -father--well, that settles it. As far as I'm concerned I'll--I'll crawl -down." - -Lily shrugged her slim shoulders. "I don't care one way or another. -I've got my own affairs to think of. If he doesn't interfere with me -I won't interfere with him." Again she knocked off the ash of her -cigarette. "Have him, if you want to." - -It was Mrs. Whitelaw's turn. She sat still, pensive. The clock could be -heard ticking. Her husband gazed at her as if his life would depend on -what she had to say. Tom himself went numb again. She spoke at last. - -"If you're satisfied, Henry, I'm satisfied. All I ask in the world is -that you--" she gasped her little sob--"is that you shall be happy." -Rising she walked straight up to Tom. "I want to kiss you." - -When he had bent his head she kissed him on the forehead, formally, -sacramentally. She went back to her seat. - -Without moving from his place at the table, Whitelaw smiled across the -room at Tom, a smile of relief and tenderness. - -"Well, what do you say?" - -Tom looked down at Hildred, noting her strange expression. It was not a -satisfied expression; rather it was challenging, defiant of something, -he didn't know of what. But he couldn't now consider Hildred; he -couldn't consider anyone but himself. He did not change his position, -leaning on the white marble mantelpiece; nor was his tone other than -conversational. - -"I'm awfully sorry, sir--I'm sorry to say it to you especially--but -it's--it's not good enough." - -With the slightest possible movement of the head Hildred made him a -sign of proud approval. Whitelaw's smile went out. - -"What's not good enough?" - -"The--the welcome--home." - -Tad spluttered, indignantly. "What the devil do you want? Do you expect -us to put up an arch?" - -"No; I don't expect anything. I should only like you to understand that -though it isn't easy for you, it's easier for you than for me." - -Tad turned to his father. "Now you're getting it! I could have told you -beforehand, if you'd consulted me." - -"You see," Tom continued, paying no attention to the interruption, -"you're all different from me. You're used to different things, to -different standards and ways of thinking. If I were to come in among -you the only phrase that would describe me is the homely one of the -fish out of water. I should be gasping for breath. I couldn't live in -your atmosphere." - -Tad was again the only one to voice a comment. "Well, I'll be damned!" - -Tom's legs which had quaked at first, began to be surer under him. -"Please don't think I'm venturing to criticize anyone or anything. -This is your life, and it suits you. It wouldn't suit me because it -isn't mine. The past makes me as it makes you, and it's too late now -to unmake us. It's possible that I may be Harry Whitelaw. When I hear -the evidence that can be produced I can almost think I am. But if I -_am_ Harry Whitelaw by birth, I'm _not_ Harry Whitelaw by life and -experience. I can't go back and be made over. I'm myself as I stand." -Still having in his hand the pictures of Lucy Speight, he held them -out. "To all intents and purposes this is--my mother." - -"And I kissed you!" - -Tom smiled. "Yes, but you don't know how she kissed me. I do. She loved -me. I loved her. I've tried--I've tried my very best--to turn my back -on her--to call her a thief--and any other name that would blacken -her--and--and I can't do it." - -The sleeping lioness in the mother was roused suddenly. Leaving her -place behind the tea-table, she advanced near enough to him to point to -the two photographs. - -"Do you mean to say that--having the choice between--that--and me--you -choose--that?" - -"I don't choose. I can't do anything else. It isn't what you think that -rules your life; it's what you love. I'm one of the people to whom love -means more than anything else. I daresay it's a weakness--especially in -a man--but that's the way it is." - -"If your first stipulation is love...." - -"Wouldn't it be yours, Onora?" - -"I'd try to be reasonable--when so many concessions have been made." - -"Yes," Tom hastened to say, "but that's just my point. I'm not asking -for concessions. The minute they must be made--well, I'm not there. I -couldn't come into your family--on concessions." - -Whitelaw spoke up again. "I don't blame you." - -Tom tried to make his position clearer. "It's a little like this. A -long time ago I was coming along by the Hudson in the train. I was on -my way to New York with the man who had adopted me, after I'd been a -State ward. There was a steamer on the river, and I watched her--coming -_from_ I didn't know where--going _to_ I didn't know where. And it -came to me then that she was something like myself. I didn't know what -port I'd sailed from; nor what port I was making for. But now that I'm -twenty-three--if that's my age--I see this: that once in so often I -touched at some happy isle, where the people took me in and were good -to me. It was what carried me along." - -The mother broke in, reproachfully. "Happy isles--full of convicts and -murderers!" - -"Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and murderers were kind. A -homeless boy doesn't question the moral righteousness of the people who -give him food and shelter and clothes, and, what's more, all their best -affection. What it comes to is this, that having lived in those happy -isles--awhile in one, awhile in another--I don't want to go ashore at -an unhappy one, even though I was born there." - -Springing to his feet, Tad bore down on him. "Do you know what I call -you? I call you an ass." - -"Very likely. I'm only trying to explain to you why I can't be your -brother--even if I am--your brother." - -"It's because you don't want to be--and you damn well know it." - -"That may be another way of putting it; but I'm not putting it that -way." - -Lily rose languidly, throwing out her words to nobody in particular. "I -think he's a good sport, if you ask me. I wouldn't come into a family -like us--not the way we are." - -"Wait, Lily," Whitelaw cried, as she was sauntering out. He too got -to his feet. "You've all spoken. You've done the best you could. I'm -not blaming anyone. Now I want you all to understand--" He indicated -Tom--"that this is _my son_. I know he's my son. I claim him as my son. -Not even what he says himself can make any difference to me." - -Tom strode across the room, grasping the other's hand. "Yes, sir; and -you're my father. I know that too, and I claim you on my side. But -we'll stop right there. It's as far as we can go. I'll be your son in -every sense but that of--" He looked round about on them all--"but -that of being your heir or a member of your family. I can't do that; -but--between you and me--everything is understood." - -He got out of the room with dignity. Passing Tad, he nodded, and said, -"Thanks!" To Lily he said, "Thank you too. It was bully, what you -said." Reaching the mother whom he didn't know and who didn't know him, -he bowed low. Sitting again behind the tea-table, she lifted her hand -for him to take it. He took it and kissed it. Her little soblike gasp -followed him as he passed into the big dim hall. - -He had taken no leave of Hildred, because he knew she would do what -actually she did; but he didn't know that she would speak the words he -heard spoken. - -"I'm going with him, dear Mrs. Whitelaw; but I shan't be long. I just -don't want him to go away alone because--because I mean to marry him." - - - - -XLVII - - -As they went down the steps she took his arm. "Tom, darling, I'm proud -of you. Now they know where we stand, both of us." - -"It was splendid of you, Hildred, to play up like that. It backs me -tremendously that you're not afraid to own me. But, you know, what I've -just said will put us farther apart." - -"Oh, I don't know about that. Father said we couldn't be engaged unless -you were acknowledged as Mr. Whitelaw's son; and you have been. He -never said anything about your being Mrs. Whitelaw's son. This is a -case in which it's the father that counts specially." - -"But I couldn't take any of his money beyond what I earned." - -"Oh, but that wouldn't make any difference." - -They crossed the Avenue and entered the Park. They entered the Park -because it was the obvious place in which to look for a little privacy. -All the gay sweet life of the May afternoon was at its brightest. -Riders were cantering up and down the bridle-path; friends were -strolling; children were playing; birds were flying with bits of string -or straw for the building of their nests. To Tom and Hildred the -gladness was thrown out by the deeper gladness in themselves. - -"But you don't know how poor we'll be." - -"Oh, don't I? Where do you think I keep my eyes? Why, I expect to be -poor when I marry--for a while at any rate. I expect to do my own -housework, like most of the young married women I know." - -"Oh, but you've always talked so much about servants." - -"Yes, dear Tom, but that was to be on a desert island where we were to -be all alone. We shan't find that island except in our hearts." - -"But even without the island, I always supposed that when a girl like -you got married she...." - -"She began with an establishment on the scale of ours in Louisburg -Square, at the least. Yes, that used to be the way, twenty or thirty -years ago. But I'm sorry to say it isn't so any longer. Talk about -revolution! We've got revolution as it is. With rents and wages as they -are, and all the other expenses, why, a young couple must begin with -the simple life, or stay single. I'd rather begin with the simple life, -and I know more about it than you think." - -He laughed. "So I see." - -"Oh, I can cook and sew and make beds and wash dishes...." - -They sauntered on, without noticing where they were going, till they -came to a dell, where in the shade of an elm there was a seat, and -another near a heart-shaped clump of lilacs, all in bloom. They sat in -the shade of the elm. They were practical young lovers, and yet they -were young lovers. They were lovers for whom there had never been any -lovers but themselves. The wonderful thing was that each felt what the -other felt; the discoveries by which they had come to the knowledge of -this fact were the first that had ever been made. - -"Oh, Tom, do you feel like that? Why, that's just the way I feel." - -"Is it, Hildred? Well, it shows we were made for each other, doesn't -it, because I never thought that anyone felt like that but me?" - -"Well, no one ever did but me. Only Tom, dear, tell me when it was that -you first began to fall in love with me." - -"It was the night--a winter's night--five, six, seven years ago--when I -found Guy in a mix-up with a lot of hoodlums in the snow." - -"And you brought him home. That was the first time you ever saw me." - -"Yes, it was the first time I ever saw you that I began...." - -"And I began then, too. Since that evening, there's never been anybody -else. Oh, Tom, was there ever anybody else with you?" - -Tom thought of Maisie. "Not--not really." - -"Well, unreally then?" - -As he made his confession she listened eagerly. "Yes, that _was_ -unreally. And you never heard anything more about her?" - -"Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I went to see her aunt. -She told me that Maisie had been married for the last two years to a -traveling salesman she'd been in love with for a long time, and that -she had a baby." - -The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of Honey; and the -thought of Honey woke him to the fact that he had been on this spot -before. - -"Why--why, Hildred! This is the very bench on which Miss Nash and the -other nurse were sitting--" - -"When you were stolen?" - -"When somebody was stolen." He looked round him. "And there's Miss Nash -over there!" - -On the bench near the lilacs Miss Nash was seated with a book. - -"We ought to go and speak to her," Hildred suggested. - -Miss Nash received them with her beatific look. "I saw you leave the -house. I thought you'd come here. I followed you. I had something -to do, something I swore to God I'd do the day my little boy came -back. I'd--" She held up a novel of which the open pages were already -yellowing--"I'd finish this. _Juliet Allingham's Sin_ is the name of -it. I was just at the scene where the lover drowns when my little boy -was taken. I've never opened the book since; but I've kept it by me." -She rose, weeping. "Now I can finish it--but I'll go home." - -Sitting down on the seat she had left free for them, they began to talk -of the scene of the afternoon, which as yet they had avoided. - -"I hope I didn't hurt their feelings." - -"They didn't mind hurting yours." - -"They didn't mean to. They thought they were generous." - -"Which only shows...." - -"But _he's_ all right. Hildred, he's a big man." - -"And you really think he's your father, Tom?" - -"I know he is. Everything makes me sure of it." - -"Well, then, if he's your father, she must be your mother." - -"Yes, but I don't go that far. It isn't what must be that I think -about; it's what _is_." - -She persisted in her logic. "And Tad and Lily must be your brother and -sister." - -"They can be what they like. I don't care anything about them." - -"It's only your mother that you don't...." - -He got up, restlessly. It was easier to reconstruct the scene which -Honey had described to him than to let her bring what she was saying -too sharply to a point. - -"It was over here that the baby carriage stood, right in the heart of -this little clump." She followed him into it. "Miss Nash and the other -nurse were over there, where we were sitting first. And right here, -just where I'm standing, the queer thing must have happened." - -"Are you sorry it happened, Tom?" - -"You mean, if it actually happened to me. Why, no; and yet--yes. I -can't tell. I'm sorry not to have grown up with--with my father. And -yet if I had, I should have missed--all the other things--Honey--and -perhaps you." - -"Oh, you couldn't have missed me, I couldn't have missed you. We might -not have met in the way we did meet, but we'd have met." - -He hardly heard her last words, because he was staring off along the -path by which they themselves had come down. His tone was puzzled, -scarcely more than a whisper. - -"Hildred, look!" - -"Why, it's Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. She's changed her dress. How young -she looks with that kind of flowered hat. I remember now. They always -come here on the tenth of May. They've been here already this morning. -Lily told me so. I know what it is. They're looking for you. Miss Nash -has told them where we are. I'm going to run." - -"Don't run far," he begged of her. "I can't imagine what's up." - -He stood where he was, watching their advance. It was not his place to -go forward, since he wasn't sure that he was wanted. He only thought -he must be when, as they reached the bench beneath the elm, Whitelaw -pointed him out and let his wife go on alone. - -She came on in the hurried way in which she did everything, her great -eyes brimming, as they often were, with unshed tears. At the entrance -among the lilacs she held out both her hands, their diamonds upward, as -if he was to kiss them. He took the hands, but lightly, barely touching -them, keeping on his guard. - -"Harry!" The staccato sentences came out as little breathless cries -torn from a heart that tried to keep them back. "Harry! You--you -needn't--love me--or be my son--or live with us--unless--unless you -like--but I want you to--to let me kiss you--just once--the way--the -way your other--mother--used to." - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY ISLES*** - - -******* This file should be named 61344.txt or 61344.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/1/3/4/61344 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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