Kitabı oku: «To Him That Hath», sayfa 12

CHAPTER VII
HOPE AND DEJECTION

A week or two later Rogers cut out all qualifying words and said from his heart, "I'm glad you know!" He and David quickly became comrades; and many an hour they sat in the room behind the office talking of life, of philosophy, of books. David now learned that Rogers had done a large part of his really wide reading while in prison; and he now understood Rogers's frequent mispronunciation – Rogers had acquired his less common words entirely from reading, and never having heard them spoken, and lacking such fundamentals of education as rules of pronunciation, he had for fifteen years been pronouncing his new words as seemed to him proper.

David was surprised to find that Rogers, for all his occasional bitter flashes, was an optimist. He often marvelled how Rogers had retained this hopefulness for the world's future; he could explain it only by a great natural soundness in the man. Rogers believed the world was marching forward, and he often said, his eyes illumined with belief: "The time is coming, Aldrich – I shall not see it, and you may not, but it's coming – when there will be no human waste, when the world will have learned the economy of men!"

Frequently they discussed society's treatment of the criminal, and David learned that Rogers burned with an indignation as great as his own. If ever Rogers's obsessing fear should be fulfilled, if he should be found out, then his one desire, a desire always with him, was to speak out his bitter accusation in the world's face.

One warm, exuberant Sunday toward the end of February, they walked northward through Riverside Park, the broad, glinting Hudson at their left. When they reached the height crowned by Grant's tomb, Rogers, who had been silent for several minutes, now and then slipping meditative glances at David, laid a hand on David's arm and brought him to a pause.

"Look across yonder," he whispered, pointing to the Palisades that lifted their mighty shoulders from the Hudson's farther edge.

"Wonderful, aren't they," said David, letting his eyes travel northward along the giant wall till it dimmed away.

"Yes – but I didn't mean the view."

Rogers drew nearer, and went on in a whisper, while the crowd of Sunday promenaders sauntered by their backs:

"I told you I saw many big business opportunities, and that I had to let them all pass. Over there is one I did not let pass. Several years ago I saw that some of the people who were being crowded off Manhattan island would in the future live over there. The land was cheap then; I saw it would some day be immensely valuable. After a great deal of manœuvring, in which Mr. Hoffman helped me, I secured an option for four years on five pieces of ground that lie together. A few months ago I renewed the option for three more years; each time I paid the owners a thousand dollars for the option. Under its terms, I guarantee them a big price, and they are bound to sell the land only through me. So you see I am, in effect, the head of a small land syndicate. Over there is my big venture – my big hope."

"And has the development you expected come?"

"It is coming. I have learned that a big company is buying all the land over there it can get hold of. They're going to establish a new suburb. They're buying secretly and through several agents; they want to keep the different holders from guessing what's up, so they can get the land at their own price. Well, for my land they'll have to pay me my price!"

That evening they called on Kate Morgan. Once, shortly after that first dinner together in the Pan-American Café, when David had dropped in to see her he had found Rogers there, and he had discovered on Rogers's controlled face a look he thought might betoken more than a commonplace interest. Since then Rogers had often called, and that which David had at first seen as a possibility he now saw developing toward a fact.

Old Jimmie was sleeping off the effects of a "loan" in a back room, so they had Kate and the little parlour to themselves. Kate was in the depth of the blues. David asked her what was the matter.

"Soap!" she cried fiercely. "My life's nothing but soap. It's 'That kind's nine cents for a box of three cakes, ma'am. Three boxes? Twenty-seven cents, please.' Or it's 'this variety is thirteen cents a box – regular value twenty-five.' That's all. It's just that, and only that, nine hours a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year – soap! – soap! – soap! Oh, I'm going soap-mad! I can't stand it! I won't stand it!"

She gazed rebelliously at the two men.

"You must try something new," said David.

"And please, sir, what'll that be?" she demanded, sarcastically.

"Something that will use your energy and intelligence. How would you like to be a stenographer? A few months in a business school would fit you for a position. You would develop and advance rapidly, and soon have a responsible place."

"I'd like that," she said, decidedly. "I've thought of it – I know I could do the work. But how about the months while I study? I did have a little money on hand, but I couldn't live and keep my father on that soap-counter's five dollars, so I've had to use some of it every week. It's all gone. I must live – and I'm broke. No, I've got to stick to the soap!"

"Can't you and your father take two cheap rooms, sell most of your furniture, and live on the proceeds while you study?" David persisted.

"Everything here was bought on instalment. It's about half paid for. If sold, it'd bring about enough to pay off the balance. I might as well just give it back to the dealer."

Rogers, who thus far had been silent, now said quietly: "You leave the settling with the instalment dealer to me. I'll guarantee to get enough out of him to keep you going till you're through school."

She laughed. "You'll be the first that ever got anything out of an instalment dealer!"

"I'll get it," he assured her. "If I don't get quite enough from him, I'll borrow the rest for you."

She looked at him sharply. "That means you'd loan it all. You're mighty kind. But I could never pay it back – to take it would be the same as stealing. I've never stolen from friends, and I'm not going to begin now."

But in the end Rogers prevailed; and when they left it had been settled that Kate was immediately to enter a business school.

Two days before – after Tom had gratefully refused a second better-paying job – David had had a conference with the Mayor. "I been doin' my best talkin' to get him to go," the Mayor said despairingly, "but he says I was good to him when he needed a job and now he's never goin' to leave me. Say, if I don't get rid o' him pretty soon, I got to start my own dish factory. And here's an interestin' point for you, friend: since he's had them better offers he's been hintin' at a raise."

When David entered his room, after telling Rogers good night, he found Tom, who had avoided him the night before and all the day, sitting far down in the rocking-chair, wrapped in dejection. He understood the boy's gloom, for he had suggested a plan to the Mayor.

Tom dropped his eyes when David came in, and answered David's "Hello there," with only a mumble. But at length he looked guiltily up.

"Is dat job you was tellin' me about took yet?" he asked.

David tried to wear an innocent face. "Why? What's the matter?"

"De boss told me yesterday he was losin' money, dat he'd have to cut down his force, an' dat he'd have to let me go."

"Yes?"

"I told him he'd been a friend to me when I was hard up, an' I was goin' to stick by him now't he was up agin it. I said I was goin' to work for him for nuttin'."

"Oh!" said David.

"But he wouldn't let me. So I'm fired. How about dat odder job?"

"I'm afraid it's taken, Tom."

David pulled a chair before the boy and for ten minutes spoke his best persuasion in favour of entering school.

"Yes, de Mayor handed me out de same line o' talk. He told me what a lot you'd done for me. He was right, too. An' he told me how much you wanted me to go to school."

He looked steadily, silently, at David. "D'you really want me to go as much as all dat, pard?"

"There's nothing I'd rather have you do."

"An' you won't miss de t'ree a week I been fetchin' in?"

"I don't think we'll miss it much."

There was an inward struggle. "Dere's nuttin' I'd not sooner do, pard," he said, huskily. "But since you want me to – all right."

The next morning he started to school. At the end of the day he informed David that he was in a class "wid kids knee-high to a milk-bottle," that his teacher was "one o' dem t'inks-she-is beauts dat steps along dainty so she won't break de eart'," and "de whole biz gives me de bellyache." He was miserable for weeks – and so was his teacher – and so were his class-mates. But he gradually became adjusted to school life, and when some of the rudiments were fixed in his head, he began to make rapid progress. He had become great friends with Helen Chambers, whom he often saw at the Mission, and his desire to please her was another incentive to succeed in school.

One day David had a note from Dr. Franklin inviting him to call at the Mission, and a day or two later Helen explained the invitation. Dr. Franklin had learned that David was living in the neighbourhood; knowing that Helen had once been friends with him, he had spoken of David to her; she had told of David's struggle and his purpose – and the invitation was the consequence. Helen advised David to accept, and one evening he called. The gray old man received him in such a spirit of unobtrusive forgiveness, referred only vaguely and hastily to the theft, praised him so sincerely for his struggle, and spoke so hopefully of the future, that David could take none of it amiss. He had to like the man, and be glad that such a one was Morton's successor.

When he left he gazed long at the glowing memorial window, which was now restored. What resentment there continued in his heart was for the moment swept out. He was glad that Morton's memory was clear – glad it was his dishonour that kept the memory so.

All this time David worked hard upon his story – becoming closer friends with Rogers, frequently seeing Kate, who was studying with all her energy, occasionally meeting Dr. Franklin, and now and then walking with Helen from the Mission to her car, or part of the way to her home. Most of the time his belief in the story was strong, and he worked with eagerness and with a sense that what he wrote had life and soul. But at intervals depression threw him into its black pit, and all his confidence, his strength of will, were required to drag himself out.

Several times Helen Chambers rescued him. Once she took him to visit her Uncle Henry, whom she had told of David's struggle. The old man's genial courtesy, and genuine interest in the book, were an inspiration for days. And once she forced him to come to her home and read to her a part of what he had written; and her eager praise lifted him again into the sunlight of enthusiasm.

So, working hard, the winter softened into spring, the spring warmed into summer, the summer sharpened into early autumn – and the book was done. He immediately sent it, as he had promised, to Helen, who was then at one of the family's country places. Three days afterward there came a note from her. It told how the story had gripped her, and how it had gripped her Uncle Henry, who was visiting them – how big it was just as a story – how splendid it was in purpose; it told what a great promise the book was for his future; and finally it told that she had sent the manuscript to her publisher friend.

But the flames of enthusiasm enkindled by this note sank and died away; and he was possessed by the soul-chilling reaction, the utter disbelief in what one has done, that so often follows the completion of a sustained imaginative task. His people were wooden, their talk wooden, their action wooden, and the wires that were their vital force were visible to the dullest eye. Helen, he told himself, had judged his work with the leniency of a friend for a friend. Hers was not a critical estimate. He knew that the publisher's answer, when it came after the lapse of a month or two months, would be the formal return of his manuscript. Success meant too much to him to be possible – his promotion to more pleasant work, a rise in the world's opinion, the partial repayment of his debt, a higher place in Helen's regard, the beginning of his dreamed-of part in saving the human waste.

No, these things were not for him. He had failed too often with his pen for success to come at last.

CHAPTER VIII
ROGERS MAKES AN OFFER

The October day was sinking to its close as David, who was walking southward through Broadway, came to a pause at Thirty-fourth Street to wait till a passage should break through the vortex of cabs, trucks, and street cars, created here by the crossing of three counter-currents of traffic.

As he stood waiting he saw a woman in disarranged dress, about whom there instantly seemed to be a vaguely familiar air, step from the crowd and walk unsteadily into the turbulence of vehicles. A policeman called a sharp warning to her, but she went on, and the next second the shoulder of a horse sent her to the pavement, and only the prompt backward jerking of the driver saved her from the horse's feet. The policeman dragged her out of danger, and David joined the curious group that ringed the pair.

"That'll be your finish some day if you don't leave the bottle alone," he heard the policeman say severely.

Her answer was a reckless, half-fearful laugh. Her voice roused again in David the sense of vague familiarity. Presently she turned her face. It was the face of Lillian Drew.

He stared at her a moment, then, careful to hide himself from her eyes, he hurried through the passage that had opened, and on down crowded Broadway. The sight of her had startled him deeply. His one meeting with her flashed back into his mind, and all the horrible business of his discovery of Morton's guilt, his own accusation, his trial, his sentence – and he lived them through again with sickening vividness.

Presently he began to study if there was any way in which Lillian Drew might affect the future. Morton she could not injure. Morton was too long dead; she had sunk to too low a level for her unsupported word to have belief, and the letters which were her only power had been ashes these five years. As for himself, him she could not touch. No, Lillian Drew was harmless.

And yet he could not wholly rid himself of a feeling of uneasiness.

When David reached home he found Tom waiting at the head of the little stairway that led down into the basement. The boy had grown much in the last nine months, and the pinched look had given place to a healthy fulness. But he was still the same boy: his cow-lick still was like a curling wave; his clothes would not stay in order, nor his hands clean, despite his desire to please David and Helen Chambers; and the vernacular of the street, notwithstanding his efforts to "talk schoolroom," still mastered his tongue.

He stopped David with an air of subdued excitement. "Say," he whispered, "de owner o' de house here, he's downstairs waitin' for you. And say! – but ain't he mad!"

The owner of the tenement, who had recently moved into another house he owned in the neighbourhood, had before shown an irascible disposition to interfere in the tenement's management, so Tom's news was no surprise to David.

"What's he want?"

"I dunno. But he's swearin' like he'd like to eat you alive."

The owner, drawn by their voices, came out of David's room and mounted the steps. He belonged to that class of men whose life is a balance between gratification of appetite and the relentless pursuit of small gain, and his coarse, full-lipped, small-eyed face bore the family likeness.

"Ain't you this fellow Aldrich?" he demanded aggressively, blocking the head of the stairway.

"You know I am," said David.

"Yes – but I wanted to hear you confess it with your own lips. I have been hearin' about you from St. Christopher's Mission. Ain't you the fellow that stole that money from there?"

David saw the brink of a new disaster. But the owner's manner made him bristle.

"Well?"

"Well, no crook can be janitor in my house! Take your things out o' that room, and git!"

David wanted to seize the owner by the shoulders and shake his mean little soul out upon the sidewalk. "I take my orders from Mr. Rogers," he returned, controlling himself.

"And Rogers takes his orders from me. See? Now you git!"

"Rogers is my employer."

He swore fiercely at David. "Get too fresh, you dirty thief, and I'll punch your face in!"

"Please try!"

He looked into David's gleaming eyes, at the shoulders that promised too much strength, and his threatening attitude subsided.

"Well, if you won't go for me, we'll see what you'll say to Rogers!" he snorted. "You come with me to his office."

"If you want me, you'll find me in my room."

David brushed roughly by the owner and went down the stairway. A minute later, the owner and Rogers entered the room.

"Now you fire him," the owner ordered Rogers. "I ain't goin' to have no jailbirds around."

"But he's given most excellent service for almost a year," Rogers protested in his quiet voice.

"I ain't to be fooled by that trick," sneered the owner, with a wise look. "I ain't one o' them muckheads that believes because a thief's been straight for nine months he's always goin' to be straight. No sir! He's nine months nearer his next crooked stunt! Now fire him."

"But – "

"Cut out your 'buts'!" he roared, savagely. "Fire him or" – he looked threateningly at Rogers – "there's agents that will!"

Rogers turned slowly upon David who was standing beside his table with burning eyes and clenched face.

"I think you'll have to go, Aldrich," he said, after a moment.

Without a word David picked up his hat and, followed by Tom, walked out of the room. As he tramped hotly through the streets – the boy, pale and silent, beside him – his bitterness was at first directed even against Rogers. But in a little while he remembered Rogers's situation, and that Rogers could not have saved him – and the bitterness ran out of him. In its place came the sharp realisation that he was again in the abyss – stronger, better able than a year before to make his way from its smooth-walled depths – but nevertheless in the abyss. What should he do? how should he get out? – these questions were constantly begging answers till, two hours later, wearied from walking, he came again into his room.

Rogers rose from his table as he entered and looked questioningly at him.

"You understand? – I had to do it?"

"Yes," said David, taking the hand he held out.

Rogers sent Tom out on an errand. After the boy had gone, anger slowly lit its fires in Rogers's thin white cheeks.

"The hardest part of it all is, I dare not be a man, be myself!" he burst out fiercely. "You don't know how heavy and revolting this mask of discretion, of control, of subserviency, becomes at times! He should have been kicked out, stamped on! Ah, to be unafraid! – that's the greatest thing in the world!"

He stood leaning on his tightened fists, which rested on the table, his eyes blazing across at David. But after a moment the red and flame began to die from his face and eyes.

"Come, sit down," he said abruptly. "There's something I want to say to you."

They both took chairs. "I've been thinking of a plan for several weeks, and I guess this is the time to tell you," Rogers began. "As you know, the land syndicate that's been secretly buying in land up along the Palisades has been sending its agents to me. The syndicate is still keeping itself in the dark, but I've learned that it's called the New Jersey Home Company, and that Alexander Chambers is its president. The active work of making a deal with them has just begun, and the deal ought to come to a head in a month or six weeks."

He paused and gazed steadily at David, his thin face drawing with despair. Then he said in a low voice:

"Haven't you noticed – during the last year – I've been losing strength?"

David nodded.

"Yes – these prison lungs!" he breathed, with fierce bitterness. "I saw my doctor last week. He told me in this climate I might last a year – a little more, a little less. If I went to Colorado or New Mexico I might last several years, might even get well. That's what I want to do – finish up this deal, then drop everything and go West.

"He told me I must do no work, and keep away from excitement. I knew that already. Yet this deal's going to mean a lot of both. I simply haven't got the strength to see it through. I must have someone to help me – and I want that someone to be you."

"Me!" cried David. "Why, I don't know the first thing about real estate."

"You don't need to. The chief thing will be just to stick to the price I set. There'll be a lot of stiff talking – you can do that. And Mr. Hoffman will help some; he's got a little interest in the deal."

"But my record. They'll doubtless learn about it. Aren't you afraid that may endanger you?"

"I count that they'll say I've taken you in to give you a new chance in life – and perhaps think no more about it. As for the danger, I'd rather have a man I can trust whose record they may find out, than have near me a man who may find out my record – and tell."

David nodded. "I see your point."

"You'll be with me, won't you?"

"Can a drowning man refuse a rope thrown him?"

They shook hands.

"The financial situation is like this," Rogers went on. "In my option I guaranteed the owners to sell the land for one hundred and fifteen thousand; I had to guarantee high to keep the land. I am to have half of all I get over that amount, and in addition, an agent's commission of five per cent. of the sale price. I am demanding from the syndicate a very much larger price than it has been paying for similar tracts. And I'll get my price, too – for they must have the land; and besides, the price is fair, much less than the land is worth to the syndicate. I'm asking one hundred and fifty thousand.

"That makes my share twenty-five thousand. And I shall have earned it. Several times in the last five years the owners – they're a pretty weak lot – have wanted to sell at insignificant prices, but I wouldn't let them. And if I hadn't been holding them together, they would have sold out months ago to the syndicate at the syndicate's price – eighty or ninety thousand. So you see I'm doing a mighty good thing for the owners.

"Now as to terms between you and me. Twenty-five thousand is more than I'll need even if I live longer than the doctor has promised me. Now I know what you want to do about that Mission money. If the deal comes off as I expect, five thousand will be your share."

"Five thousand dollars!" gasped David. "For a month's work? I can't take it. I shall not have earned the smallest fraction of it!"

"Yes, you will take it. Without your help, I'll fail – so you'll earn it all right. Besides, even if you didn't earn it, with whom should I divide the money I don't need if not with you?"

David still objected, and at length Rogers cried out:

"Oh, take it as a loan, then, and pay off the Mission! You'd rather owe me than it, wouldn't you? You can pay me back when I need it. The proposition is the same either way, for I'll be dead before I need it, and I'll make you a present of the amount in my will."

In the end David consented. Rogers went on with the other details of his plan. David should live with him, and Tom could sleep on a cot in the office. It would be wise, with this big deal on, to make a more pretentious office show; Kate Morgan (he spoke of her calmly, but David surmised the quality of the calmness within), who had recently finished her business course and was looking for a better place than her present one, should be their stenographer. For the sake of the help it would be to her, and to try the effect of the work-cure upon him, old Jimmie should succeed to David's place as janitor, and of course he and Kate should have the basement flat as their home.

When Rogers had gone David walked up and down his basement room – his last night there! – and looked excitedly into the future. The book – he expected nothing of that. But here only a month away, almost within his hand, was the sum which, as far as money alone could pay for it, would buy his fair name. He felt an impulse to write Helen of the great promise the next month held, but the memory that her father was engaged on the other side vaguely prompted him not to do so; and then came the second thought that it would be better to surprise her. Yes, he would wait till he had repaid the money to St. Christopher's, and then go to her with the receipt in his hand.