"They're like 'goldfish' swimming round and round in a big bowl. They can look through, sort of dimly; but they can't get out?"—Hastings, p. 315.
"We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. We have lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant—the liberation from material attachments; the unbribed soul; the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we are or do, and not by what we have; the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly—the more athletic trim, in short the moral fighting shape…. It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated class is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers."
William James, p. 313.
"There is no essential incongruity between crime and culture."
–Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying."
It was five o'clock, Sunday afternoon, and the slanting sunbeams had crawled across the bed and up the walls and vanished somehow into the ceiling when Voltaire McCartney came to himself, kicked off the patchwork quilt, elevated his torso upon one elbow and took an observation out of the dingy window. The prospect of the Palisades to the northwest was undimmed, for the wind was blowing fresh from the sea and the smoke from the glucose factory on the Jersey side was making straight up the river in a long, black, horizontal bar, behind which the horizon glowed in a brilliant, translucent mass of cloud. McCartney swung his thin legs clear of the bed and fumbled with his left hand in the pocket of a plaid waistcoat dangling from the iron post. The act was unconscious, equivalent to the automatic groping for one's slippers which perchance the reader's own well-regulated feet perform on similar occasions. The pocket in question yielded a square of white tissue which the fingers deftly folded, transferred to the other hand, and then filled with tobacco. Like others nourished upon stimulants and narcotics, McCartney awoke absolutely, without a trace of drowsiness, nervously ready to do the next thing, whatever that might chance to be. His first act was to pull on his shoes, the second to slip his suspender over his rather narrow shoulders, and the third to light the cigarette. Then he sauntered across the room to the window-sill, upon which slept profoundly a small tortoise-shell cat, and picked up a pocket volume, well worn, which he shook open at a point designated by a safety match. For several moments he devoured the page with his eyes, his hollow face filled with peculiar exaltation. Then he expelled a cloud of smoke sucked from the glowing end of his cigarette, tossed away the butt, and thrust the book into his hip-pocket.
"O would there were a heaven to hear!
O would there were a hell to fear!
Ah, welcome fire, eternal fire,
To burn forever and not tire!
Better Ixion's whirling wheel,
And still at any cost to feel!
Dear Son of God, in mercy give
My soul to flames, but – let me LIVE!"
He turned away from the window and pale against the gaudy west his profile shone drawn and haggard. Restlessly he filched his pocket for another cigarette and tossed himself wearily into a painted rocker. The cat awakened, elongated herself in a prodigious and voluptuous yawn of her whole body, dropped to the floor and leaped with a single spring into her master's lap. He stroked her sadly.
"Isabeau! My poor Isabeau! I envy you – creature perfect in symmetry, perfect in feeling!"
The cat rubbed her head against the buttons of his coat. McCartney leaned back his head. The little room was bare of ornament or of furniture other than the chair, save for a deal table at the foot of the bed, bearing a litter of newspapers and yellow pad-paper.
"I am discouraged by the street,
The pacing of monotonous feet!" murmured the man in the rocker. The light died out above the Palisades; the cat snuggled down between her master's legs.
"Dear Son of God, in mercy give
My soul to flames, but let me live!" he added softly. Then he lifted the cat gently to the floor, threw on a short, faded reefer coat, and opened the door.
"Well, Isabeau, it's time for us to go out and earn our supper!"
McCartney gazed solemnly, down from the small rostrum upon which he was standing at the end of the saloon without so much as a smile in answer to the roar of appreciation with which his time-worn anecdote had been received.
"Dot's goot! " shouted an abdominal 'Dutchman,' pounding the table with his beer mug. "Gif us 'n odder!"
"Ya!" exclaimed his confrère. "Dot feller, he 'was a corker, eh?" He put up his hands and making a trumpet of them bawled at McCartney. "Here, kommen sie unt haf a glass bier mit us!"
Three teamsters, a card-sharp, a porter, two cabbies, and a dozen unclassibles nodded their heads and stamped, while the bartender passed up a foaming stein to the performer. McCartney blew off the froth, bowed with easy grace to the assembled company, and drank. Then he descended to the table occupied by the Germans.
"May you all have better luck than the gentleman in my story," he remarked. "But I for one shall go straight to the other place. Heaven for climate-Hell for society, eh? Hoch der Kaiser!"
The Germans threw back their heads and laughed boisterously.
"Make that beer a sandwich, will you? Here, Bill, bring me a slice of cold beef and a cheese sandwich!"
The bartender opened a small ice chest and produced the desired edibles, to which variation in their offered hospitality the two interposed no objection, being in fact somewhat in awe of their intellectual, if not distinguished guest. As McCartney ate he produced a handful of transparent dice.
"Ever see any dice like those?" he asked, rolling them across the wet table. The first German examined them with approval.
"Dose is pooty, eh?" he remarked to his neighbour. "I trow you for die Schnapps, eh?"
McCartney watched them covetously as they emptied the leathern shaker, solemnly counting the spots at the conclusion of each cast.
"Here, let me show you how," volunteered their guest. "Poker hands." He rattled the dice and poured them forth. They came up indiscriminately.
"Not so goot, eh?" commented the German. "I'll trow you. I'll trow ennyboty mit clear dice. Venn dey ain't loated I can trow mit ennyboty." He held them up to the light. "Dese is clear – goot."
"Three times for a dollar," said McCartney.
"So," answered the German. He threw carefully, and counted two sixes, two aces, and a five. He left in the sixes and threw the others. This time he got an ace and two fives. Once more he put them back, but accomplished no better result.
"Now, I'll show you," said McCartney, and emptied the shaker. The dice tumbled upon the table to the tune of two aces, two sixes and a five. He put back the sixes and the five and threw another ace, a three, and a five.
"I win," he remarked. "You don't know how!"
"Vat's dot? Don't know how, eh!" roared the other. "I trow you for fife dollars, see? Gif me dose leetle dice." He threw with a heavy bang that shook the table. Again he got two sixes, two aces and a five, and put back the latter. This time he secured another ace and leaned back and took a heavy draught of beer.
"Full house! Beat dat eef you can!"
McCartney tossed the dice carelessly upon the board for two fours, one ace and two fives. To the amazement of the Germans, he left in the ace and returned the other four to the shaker. This time he got two more aces. His last throw gave him another ace and a five.
"Zum teuffel!" growled the German, thrusting his hand into his pocket and drawing forth a dirty wad of bills. "Here, take your money!" He handed McCartney six dollars.
"Kind sirs, good night," remarked McCartney, thrusting the bills into his waistcoat pocket and arising from his place. "I must betake me hence. Experience is the only teacher. Let me advise you never to play games of chance with strangers."
The two Germans stared at him stupidly. "You don't understand? Permit me. You saw the dice were not loaded? Very good! You examined them? Very good again. Your powers of observation are uncultivated, merely. The stern mother of invention – that is to say necessity – has obeyed the law of evolution. Three of the dice in my pocket bear no even numbers. The information is well worth your six dollars. Again, good night."
"Betruger!" cried the loser of the six dollars; arising heavily and upsetting his beer. "Dot feller skivinded us mit dice geloaded! Sheet! Sheet!"
They blundered toward the side entrance, while McCartney side-stepped into an adjacent portal. Long Acre Square gleamed from end to end. Above him an electric display, momentarily vanishing and reappearing, heralded the attributes of the cigar sacred to the Scottish bard. Peering through the haze generated by the countless lights a few tiny stars repaid diligent search. A scanty number of pedestrians were abroad. The pantheon of delights shone silent save for an occasional clanging car. The Germans passed in search of an officer, excitedly jabbering about the "sheet." Their angry expressions reverberating along the concrete, fading gradually into the hum of the lower town.
Then slowly into view crept one of those anachronisms of the metropolis – a huge, shaggy horse slowly stalking northward, dragging a rickety express waggon whereon reposed a semi-somnolent yokel. Hitched by its shafts to the tail of the wagon trailed a decrepit brougham (destined, probably, for country depot service), behind this a debilitated Stanhope buggy, followed by a dog-cart, a spider, a buckboard, with last of all a hoodless Victoria. This picturesquely mournful procession of vanished respectability staggered hesitatingly past our hero, who regarded it with vast amusement. To his fanciful imagination it appeared like the fleshless vertebra of a sea-serpent slowly writhing into the obscurity of the night. Occasionally one of the component dorsals would strike an inequality in the pavement and start upon a brief frolic of its own, swinging out of line at a tangent until hauled back into place again by the pull of the shaggy horse. Sometimes all started in different directions at one and the same time and the semblance to a skeleton snake was heightened – even the ominous rattle was not wanting. The Victoria looked restful to McCartney, whose legs were always tired.
"Why should we fret that others ride?
Perhaps dull care sits by their side,
And leaves us foot men free!"
he hummed to himself, recollecting an old college glee.
All the same that old bandbox looks not uncomfortable. How long is it since I have used a cushion! Poverty makes a poor bed-fellow!"
As the last equipage swung by, McCartney took a few steps in the same direction and clambered in. He had become, a "footman" in fact, but a very undignified and luxurious footman, who lay back with his feet crossed against the box in front of him. Of all the lights on Broadway none glowed so comfortingly for McCartney as the tip of his cigarette.
"My prayer is answered," he remarked, softly to himself. "Thus do I escape the 'monotonous feet.' Had I only Isabeau I should have attained the height of human happiness – to have dined, to smoke, to ride on cushions under the starlight, to have six dollars, and not to know where one is going – a plethora of gifts. So I can spare Isabeau for the nonce. Doubtless she would not particularly care for the delights of locomotion."
Thus Voltaire sailed northward, noticed only by solitary policemen and lonely wayfarers. Near Eightieth Street his eye caught the burning circle of a clock pointing at half past nine, and he stretched himself and yawned again. They were passing the vestibule of an old church which contrasted quaintly with the more ambitious modern architecture of the neighbourhood. From the interior floated out the grey unison of a hymn. McCartney swung himself to the ground and listened while the skeleton rattled up the avenue.
"Egad!" thought he, "yon prayerful folk are not troubled with my disorder. Hell is for them what Jersey City is for me – a vital reality."
A woman, her head shrouded in a worn grey shawl, approached timidly and stationed herself near the door. McCartney could see that she was weeping and that she had a baby in her arms. He grumbled a bit to himself at this business. It did not suit his fancy – his scheme, who had planned a continuation of this night of comedy so auspiciously begun, and disliked any incongruity.
"Broke?" he inquired without rising. The woman nodded. She was really weeping, he could see that.
"What's the matter?"
"Dan cleared out the flat and skipped yesterday afternoon. We've had nothing to eat – me and the kid – all day."
"Let's look at your hands."
The woman held out a thin, rough, red hand. McCartney gave it a glance and continued:
"What's your kid's name?"
"Catherine."
McCartney gazed at her intently. "Look here, do you think those folks in there would help you?"
"I don't know. It's better than the Island."
"Don't try it," advised McCartney. "They'd think you were working some game on 'em. Leave this graft to me."
The woman started back, half frightened, but McCartney's smile reassured her.
"Here's yours on account." He handed her the five-dollar bill he had secured from the Germans. "I know how. You don't. You need it. I don't." He waved aside her thanks. "Now go home, and, listen to me, don't take Dan back – he's no good."
The woman hurried away, and with her departure silence fell again. McCartney seated himself upon the curb and lit still another cigarette eyeing the door expectantly. Once he arose and dropped a piece of silver into the poor-box inside the porch, listening intently to the loud rattle it made in falling. It was clearly the sole occupant, for no answering dink came in response.
"Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun."
Softly murmured McCartney.
"You will be lonely in there all by yourself, little one. Here's a brother to keep you company," said he, pushing in another.
The hymn ceased and the congregation began to pass out. McCartney retired into the darkness of a corner, scrutinizing every face among the worshippers. Last of all came a little old man scuffling along with the aid of a cane. His snowy beard gave him an aspect singularly benign. McCartney laughed to himself.
"Grandpa, I trust we shall become better acquainted," he remarked under his breath, as he followed the old fellow down the street.
The loud vibrations of the bell in the deserted rooms of the floor below brought no immediate response, and instead of a brighter blaze of hospitality, the light in the hall was hurriedly extinguished. McCartney only pressed his thumb to the round receptacle of the bell the more assiduously, repeating the process at varying intervals until the light again illumined the door. A shadow hesitated upon the lace curtain, then the door itself was slowly, doubtfully opened, and the old man shuffled into the vestibule peering suspiciously through the iron fretwork. McCartney without going too close – he knew well the dread of human eyes, face to face – looked nonchalantly up and down the street, realising that he must give his quarry time to regain the self-possession this midnight visit must have shattered. After a pause the bolt was shot and the door opened upon its chain.
"Was that you ringing? What do you want?"
"Yes, it was I who rang. I trust you'll excuse the lateness of my call. It's imperative for me to see you."
"Who are you? And what do you want to see me about?"
"My name is Blake. Blake of the 'Daily Dial.' It is a personal matter."
"Don't know you. Don't know any Blake. Don't read the 'Dial.' What is the personal matter?"
"For God's sake, sir, let me speak with you. It's a matter of life and death. Don't deny me, sir. Hear me first."
The little old man closed the door a couple of inches.
"Want money, eh?"
"Help, sir. Only a word of sympathy. I've a dying child–"
"Can't you come round in the morning?"
"It will be too late then. I implore you to listen to me for only a few moments. I've been waiting two hours upon the sidewalk for you to return and it's too late for me to go elsewhere."
The door opened sufficiently for the old man to thrust his face close to the crack and inspect his visitor from head to heels. Evidently McCartney's appearance and the manner of his speech had made an impression which was now struggling with prudence and common sense. The Deacon, moreover, had a reputation to support. It would not do to turn an applicant away who might be in dire extremity – and who might go elsewhere and carry the tale with him.
"Won't a bed-ticket do you, eh? And come in the morning?"
McCartney saw the vacillation in the other's mind.
"I'm sorry, but I must see you now, if at all. To-morrow might be too late."
The owner of the house closed the door, unslipped the chain and retreated inside the hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving the way free for his visitor to follow. McCartney entered, hat in hand, and shut the door behind him, catching at a glance the austerity of the furniture and walls. To him every inch of the Brussels carpet, the ponderous, polished walnut hat-rack, the massive blue china stand with its lonely umbrella and stout bamboo cane, and the heavily framed oil copy of St. John spoke eloquently.
"I must ask your pardon again, sir, for disturbing you. But a man of your character, as you have no doubt discovered, must suffer for the sake of his reputation. I–"
McCartney swayed and seized a yellow-plush portiere for support. In a moment he had regained control of himself – apparently.
"A touch of faintness. I haven't eaten since morning." He looked around for a chair. The old man made a show of concern.
"Nothing to eat! Dear me! Well, well! Come in and sit down. Perhaps I can find something."
Deacon Andrews led the way past the stairs and swung open the door to the dining-room. It had a musty smell, just a hint of the prison pen at noon time, and McCartney shuddered. The old man disappeared into the darkness, struck a sulphur match, a fact noted by his guest, and with some difficulty lighted a gas jet in a grotesquely proportioned chandelier. The gas which had blazed up, he turned down to half its original volume.
"There, sit down," said he, pointing to a mahogany chair shrouded in a ticking cover, and settled himself in another on the opposite side of a great desert of table. McCartney did as he was bidden, mentally tabulating the additional facts offered to his observation by the remainder of the room. There was evident the same bare vastness as in the outer hall. Two more oils, one of mythological, the other of religious purport, balanced each other over the wings of a huge black carven sideboard. For the rest the yellow and brown wallpaper repeated itself interminably into the shadow.
"Feel better?" asked the Deacon.
"Yes, much," answered McCartney. "I'm used to going without food. The body can stand suffering better than the mind – and the heart."
"Let's try and fix up the body first," remarked the Deacon, opening a compartment beneath the sideboard. "Here, try some of these," and he placed a plate of water biscuits upon the table.
McCartney essayed more or less successfully to eat one, while the old man retreated into the pantry and after a hollow ringing of water upon an empty sink, returned with a thick tumbler of Croton.
"Good, eh? Nothing like plain flour food and Adam's ale! Now, what is it you want to say. I must be getting to bed."
McCartney hastily swallowed the last of the biscuit and leaned forward.
"If I could be sure my dear wife and child could have this to-night, I should be happy indeed. Oh, sir, poverty can be borne – but to see those whom we love suffer and be powerless to help them – I can hardly address myself to you, sir. I have never asked for charity before. I'm a hard working man. I had a good position, a little home of my own and a wife and child whom I loved devotedly. I care for nothing else in the world. Then came the chance that ended so disastrously for us. I thought it was the tide in my affairs, you know, that might lead on to fortune. My wife was offered a position in a travelling company at sixteen dollars a week, and they agreed to take me with them as press agent at thirty-five – fifty dollars a week all told. Can you blame us?"
"I don't approve of play-acting," said the Deacon.
"Don't think the less of my wife for that. She meant it for the best." McCartney's face worked and he brushed his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Look here, what's the use wasting time," interrupted the Deacon. "How do I know who you are?"
"You have only my word, sir, that is true."
"What did you say you did for a living?"
"I'm a reporter. I live by my pen, sir, and I write articles on various subjects for the newspapers. I have even written a very modest book. But the modern public has crude taste in literature," sighed McCartney.
"Well, go on, now, and tell me about your trip or whatever it was," said the Deacon.
"I gave up for the time, as I said, the precarious livelihood of a space-writer. We sublet our rooms. I spent what little money I had saved upon a costume for my wife, and we started out making one-night stands."
"What was the name of your play?" inquired the Deacon abruptly.
"The Two Orphans," replied McCartney without hesitation. "We got along well enough until we reached Rochester, and there the show broke down – went to the wall. We were stranded, without a cent, in a theatrical boarding-house. My wife was taken down with pneumonia and little Cathie–"
"Little what?" asked the Deacon.
"Short for Catherine–caught the croup. We had nowhere to turn. I pawned my watch to pay our board bill. We were sleeping in a single room–the three of us. For days I tramped the streets of Rochester looking for some work to do, but I was absolutely friendless and could find nothing. My wife got a little better, but little Catherine seemed to grow worse. I pawned my wife's wedding ring, all my clothes but those I have on, even my baby's tiny little bracelet we bought for her on her second birthday–Oh, God, how I suffered! We talked it all over and decided that as New York was the only place where I was known I had better return and earn enough money to send for them as soon as I could. The manager let me use his pass back to the city. I reached here three days ago, but I have found no work of any sort. Some of the press boys have shared their meals with me, but for the moment I'm penniless. Meantime, my wife is lying sick in a strange household and my little girl may be dying!" McCartney sobbed brokenly. "I'm at my last gasp. I've nowhere to sleep to-night. No money to buy breakfast. I can't even pay for a postage stamp to write to them!"
"What street did you stay in at Rochester?"
"1421 Maple Avenue," shot back McCartney. "I wish you, could see my little Catherine–she's such a tiny ball of sunshine. Every morning she used to come and wake me, and say 'Come, Daddy, come to breafcrust!' She couldn't pronounce the word right – I hope she never will. She called the little dog I gave her a fox 'terrial' dog. Some people say children are all alike. If they could only see her – if she's still alive. Why I wouldn't give ten cents to live if I could only make sure Edith would have enough to get along on and give Catherine a decent education. I want that girl to grow up into a fine noble woman like her mother. And to think the last time I saw her she was lying in a stuffy hall bed-room in a third class lodging house, her little, forehead burning with fever, with my poor sick wife stretched beside her, fearing to move lest she should wake the child. She may be dead by this time, for I've had no work for three days, and I've been able to send them nothing–nothing! They may have been turned out into the streets, for the board bill was a week overdue when I left them. Don't you see it drives me nearly mad? I'm worse off a thousand times than if I stayed there with them. Sometimes I think there can't be any God, for if there was He'd never let me suffer so. And all for a little money – just because I can't pay the fare back to my sick wife and dying baby–my poor, sweet, little baby!"
McCartney's voice broke and he buried his haggard face on his arms. For a moment or two neither spoke, then the Deacon sighed deeply.
"You do seem to have had hard luck," he remarked awkwardly. McCartney was still too overcome with emotion to reply.
"I reckon I'll have to break my rule and help you without references. I don't believe in giving as a rule, unless you know who you are giving to."
He put his hand in his pocket.
"But I'll do it this time." He placed two quarters upon the table.
"There, half a dollar'll keep you nicely for a while. Of course, there's no use sendin' money to Rochester. Your land-lady can't turn sick folks into the street, and if she does they can go to the hospital–" He paused, startled by the look on McCartney's face, for the latter had risen like an avenging angel, white and trembling. Pointing at the two harmless coins, he cried:
"Is that your answer to the appeal of a starving man? Is that all your religion has done for you? Is that how you obey your Lord's teachings? 'Cup of cold water' indeed! Cold water! Cold water! That's what you've got instead of blood; you withered old epidermis! You miserable, dried up, apology for a human being!" He paused for breath, sweeping the room with indignant scorn.
"I know your kind! You old Christian Shylock! You bought those chromos at an auction! You took that old sideboard for a debt – yes, a debt at 18 per cent interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing psalms and wear out your trousers on the platform at the prayer-meeting, and then loan out the church's money on worthless securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. You read a penny newspaper and take books out of a circulating library. You put a petticoat on these chairs so your miserly little body won't wear out the seats."
The lean vagabond half shouted his anathema, the pallor of his face and brow darkening red from the violence of his passion. It was the very ecstasy of anger. Before it the little man with the white hair shrank into himself, diminishing into his chair, seeking moral opportunity of escape.
McCartney looked at the two coins contemptuously.
"Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "Half a dollar for a dying child and a starving woman, to say nothing of a shelterless man!" He broke into a mirthless laugh. "Allow me to return your generous answer to my application for assistance. A code of morals of my own, which doubtless you would not appreciate, compels me to restore what is obviously ten times more precious to the donor than to the recipient."
He filliped the two coins across the table into the lap of his host, who still crouched furtively with his head near the table.
"It makes me sick to look at you! Who could gaze without disgust upon the spectacle of an ossified creature like yourself, creeping through bare, deserted old age towards a grave mortgaged to the Devil. Ugh! It is the horridest spectacle I have seen in a month."
"You're mad!" muttered the old man with hoarse fearfulness.
"Sometimes, but not now!" retorted McCartney. "I'll hold my evening session for Misers a moment longer. I pity you, Lord Pin-head Penurious! I pity you that you should have gone through life, a small term of say sixty years, in such stupidity. Sixty years of grubbing, of weighing meat and. adding figures, of watching the prices fools pay for stocks, and how many days of life? How many good deeds? Oh, marvellous lack of wit! What know you of real happiness? Let me introduce myself, since you're so blind. What do you think I am, my good old Noddy Numbskull?"
"Crazy!" gasped the old man. "Do be quiet! Let me get you something more to eat."
"A thief, at your service. Oh, don't start. I'll not carry away your mahogany sideboard nor your bronze chandelier. I steal only to keep myself in purse – to live. You dig to add to the column of figures in your pass book. I walk among the gods. My brain is worth twenty grey bags like yours. I have thoughts and dreams in terms to you unintelligible. I can live more in a week than haply you have done in the course of your whole crawling existence. What do you know of the spirit? Behind your altar sits a calf of gold. You grovel before it and slip out at the bottom the shekels you drop in at the top. To you the moon will always be made of green cheese, that 'orbed maiden with white tire laden!' Your hands are callous from counting money, your brain is–"
The old fellow arose. "Leave my house! Get out of here!"
He was an absurd figure; not more than five feet high, in his black broadcloth suit and string-tie as he faced McCartney's blazing eyes, and the latter laughed at him.
"I will fast enough. But you see I'm having a sensation–living. I'm doing good. Oh, yes, I am. If not to you, at least to myself. Do you think I'll ever forget little 'Cathie'? God! How I could have loved a real child! And I've only a cat." He laughed again. "I don't blame you for thinking me crazy – even you. Come now, wasn't my picture of the phthisic wife and moaning child worth a place on the line – I mean, wasn't it good, eh? Worth more than two beggarly quarters? It gave me a thrill – what I need – it'll keep me alive for another twenty-four hours, without this." He held up a nickel-plated hypodermic syringe. It shone in the gaslight, and the old man started back and held out his hands.
"Don't shoot!" he cried in senile terror.
"Carrion!" cried McCartney. "Why do I waste my time on you? Why? Because I'm in your debt. I owe you little Catherine. I shall never forget her. And you, you–you are her foster-father! God forbid!"
The old man sat down resignedly at the extreme side of the table.
"By God I pity you!" exclaimed the lean man. "Do you hear that? I pity you – I!–a wretched, drugged, wilted, useless bundle of nerves twisted into the image of a man; a chap born with a silver spoon, with gifts, who tossed them all into the gutter – threw 'a pearl away richer than all his tribe'; a miserable creature who can't live without this (he pressed the needles into his wrist) and yet I wouldn't change with you! I'm more of a man than you. My very wants are sweeter than any joys your brutish senses can ever feel.
"O would there were a heaven to hear!
O would there were a hell to fear!
Dear Son of God, in mercy give
My soul to flames, but let me live!"
"You don't know what that means! Haven't the vaguest idea. You're a mummy. You'll be the same ten thousand years from now. I suppose you think I made it up, eh?
'I am discouraged by the street,
The pacing of monotonous feet.'
"That's all you want. You couldn't understand anything else, and yet it's my torture, and my salvation!"
The glow came back into McCartney's eyes and he repeated–
"Yes, that picture of little Catherine was worth more than two quarters. It ought to have been good for twenty dollars. It's worth more than that to me."
McCartney's voice had grown strong and clear. The old fellow looked at him sharply and changed his tone. He must get this madman out of his house. He must humour him.
"Come, come, that's all right. Cheer up! Why, I had a little girl of my own once."
McCartney pierced him through and through with swimming eyes.
"And her memory was only worth two miserable quarters? You lie, you wretched old man, you lie!"
The old fellow started back. The door banged. McCartney was gone.
T HE worst little devils in the world are the little devils in the lawyer's office. They sit in the outer hall chewing gum, kicking the rungs off the chairs, jeering at the stenographers, letting the frantic telephone take care of itself, and insulting clients, until the maddened employer descends in his wrath—and the next morning another ad appears in the columns of "The Law Journal":
Wanted: Bright American boy to answer telephone, etc. Wages, four dollars. Apply between nine and ten o'clock. 7138 Broadway Towers.
That was how Bat came to us—looking like the front page of a comic supplement. He was fourteen, fiercely freckled, looked stunted on account of his clothes, smelt of cigarettes, and had the irresistible smile of an embarrassed angel.
Through "Zaza," as he called the Titian haired stenographer, were learned fragmentary details of his family history otherwise uncommunicated. His father had been a motorman until he had been killed by a fire engine, and his mother had been an actress who had gone "on the blink" and was now "a janitor" He had one sister, swore horribly, went to night school, and knew the batting average of every member of the National and American Leagues. He was wholly a wonder, that Bat! The four offices—Rynders', Fink's, Hallowell's, and mine—opened into a central space where Bat—so called from his ears—sat "at the focus of our convergency," answering the telephone, taking orders, giving information, and directing affairs from eight a. m. until six.
And all the time while he was manipulating the telephone with one hand Bat would be looking up calls, addressing envelops, putting backs on legal documents, interviewing book agents and insurance men, receiving clients, and ragging the stenographer.
WE used to leave our doors open and hug ourselves with joy to hear him when he fancied himself undiscovered.
"Say, Zaza!" Bat would fling over his shoulder between times, as a relief to the bullied operator. "They got an ad out for auburn mops up to Weber's. Why don't you try? You'd look fine back of the footlights—way back!"
"Fresh!" from the dignified Swazey.
"I heard those 'rats,' like what you wear, come from China off dead folks an' carry disease—better look out!" Bat would continue undaunted.
"You're a disgusting little thing!" snappishly.
"Aw, say, keep yer temper!" Bat would grin. "If yer don't, that pie-faced yap over in the bucketshop won't take yer to the theayter no more!"
But, unfortunately for Bat, the "pie face" was informed of these remarks, and a terrific noonday affair came off in the alley hack of the Exchange, from which Bat emerged with a missing tooth and a swollen eye.
"I could a licked the mut, if I could a reached his face; but he was too blame tall!" he confided to the elevator man Nevers, his particular, intimate friend.
But Zaza was overcome by contrition, and in amends offered to kiss Bat on her way out of the office that evening. He feinted, however, and ducked safely to cover.
"You women!" was all he deigned to remark on this occasion.
He was a continuous masticator of gum, and we constantly found it in crystallized globules under the seats of our chairs and along the table edges. But never did a boy work like Bat! He was down sorting out the avalanche of mail at eight-twenty-five, drawing checks, and filing letters—and doubtless reading our private correspondence. By nine the telephone would begin its perennial and uninterrupted rattle, and his day had really begun. At noon he left the office for his hour's "rest," loaded with packages, letters, messages to deliver, bank checks to deposit, and with commissions of all sorts to execute. One wondered if he ever got a chance to eat and what he paid for it.
Gradually he lengthened out a bit, and his clothes adjusted themselves better to the smallness of his person; but his fury of energy continued like the fire of the prophets.
He kept track of the cases made the daily entries in the office diaries, and answered the court calendars. For the first time in our lives we lawyers slept easily; for we knew that if by any chance anyone of us should kept from the office Bat would never let a default be taken or other legal accident guardian angel for the small
"Look here, you Bat!" said Hallowell to him one day in March. "Don't you ever take any exercise—play, I mean?"
"Play!" answered Bat solemnly. "I ain't got time to play. What would become of the office?"
But we all of us, at one time or another, caught him studying catalogues of sporting goods and the baseball columns of the Sunday supplements. A couple of weeks later he brought a humpy ball to the office and left it with a disreputable looking mit in the towel closet. From that time on he would would come in at the close of the lunch hour with bis cheeks aglow and his eyes ablaze.
RYNDERS was a big man with yellowish white hair, who did a corporation business and lived with his mother and sisters at Yonkers. He didn't come down on Saturdays, but played golf at the Pocantico Club course; while Fink was a short, fat little chap who looked as if he had stolen a small globe and was trying to carry it away under his waistcoat. He was baldish, rather a swell, and liked the Fifth-ave. windows of the Union Club, and for these reasons there were those who hinted that he led a double existence. Hallowell was six feet three, with bronzed cheeks, black eyes, and curly brown hair. Each had a good sized practice that required Bat's constant attention, and he assumed a well deserved air of proprietorship over all.
"You can't go to lunch with Mr. Seabury," he'd say to Hallowell; "you've promised to go with Mr. Johnson."
"That's so!" Hallowell would exclaim. "What am I doing tonight, Bat?"
"You're going to the theayter with Mr. Buckridge—don't you mind how I bought the tickets off that speculator?"
"Oh, say, Mr. Rynders, don't forget to buy that basket of grapes for your sister on the way home."
Also he would lie—for the office—in a way to convince the most doubtful of Thomases, and so consummately that the recording angel must, I believe, on those occasions have unhesitatingly taken the position that Morals did not enter into Art. If by any chance clients asked our whereabouts, we were never, by any possibility, off on a vacation. Not at all! We had merely "stepped out for a minute" and would "be right back," or he could get us if necessary—and "please leave your "phone number." If we were out of town but within call, Bat would pretend that we were in court, make a memorandum of what the client wanted, and either attend to it himself or telephone us for orders.
And as Bat stayed with us and increased in wisdom and in stature (he was at the rapidly growing age), his profanity became less colorful and his manners and habits akin to being civilized. By April he was as fast on the machine as Swazey, and even more accurate; for his fingers raced over the keys until they rattled like a continuous volley of small arms. Only his spelling and chirographv were weak—but, then, it is an age of mechanics, and which of us can write?
THERE was a hectic pressure on all of us during March, and our tempers suffered in consequence. Even Swazev, usually a monument of placidity, showed the effects of overwork and complained of her health. So Bat was taken off the 'phone (ostensibly) and given a machine of his own and turned into a regular stenographer. But the helpless amœba that was employed to fill his place at the wire proved so utterly and disastrously incompetent that Bat moved his typewriter over to the switchbox, borrowed a telephone girl's fillet, and became stenographer and telephone operator as well. I confess that I did notice that the imp was getting pale and that the freckles stood out more prominently than when he came; but I had a big case on and no time to think of anything else—and maybe it wasn't work, anyway, but just the spring.
For the spring was coming, and as it came something worked a change in Bat. Do you know that soft, dreamy breeze that wafts off the river and steals through your windows, usually tight closed against the clamor of the curb brokers? Do you know that frayed sparrow that comes and sits on your window ledge and waits for some one? Do you know that lightness that steals over your heart of a morning when you seat yourself at your desk amid the smell of dusty lawbooks? Well, there comes a time when the breeze and the sparrow and the leap of the heart unite to tell you that something is happening to old Mother Earth—and at the same time something happened to Bat. He grew gaunt and silent, and his eyes had a distant pensive look that would have convinced you, if you hadn't known that he was only fourteen, that he was in love.
Then one day Hallowell called Bat, and the imp didn't answer; for he didn't hear his master's voice, and the crewman found him glued to a paper describing a baseball game at Atlanta, Georgia.
"So that's what's the matter with you!" laughed Hallowell with a gleam in his black eyes. "I feel the same way, old man. When's the first game at the Polo Grounds?"
"Two weeks from tomorrow," answered Bat. "Say. Mr. Hallowell, I want to get off early that Saturday, if you don't mind. It begins at one-thirty, and I've bought a reserved seat."
"Sure thing!" replied Hallowell, laying his hand on the imp's shoulder.
For the next two weeks Bat lived in a dream, and his talk was an incoherent delirium about Josh Devore, Wagner, and others who were neither members of the judiciary nor authors of legal textbooks. He spent every minute of his spare time in devouring the base-ball columns and explaining the mysteries of the game to Swazey.
"Mebbe I'll take you to one sometime," he even volunteered condescendingly. "I think mebbe you could get onto most of the points. Honest, Zaza, you're not such a lemon, after all!"
"Thanks!" answered the lemon, in high dudgeon, "When I go to a place of public amusement it'll be with a man, not a babe in arms!"
But Bat was too excited to mind even so deadly an insult, and he went at his work with a frenzy that otherwise must surely have landed him in a lunatic asylum. Saturday was coming! It was only three days off! He must finish up all his work so that he would have nothing on his mind the day of the great game!
AND then suddenly the towers began to fall about him. Rynders developed a touch of rheumatism and Stayed at home, and Hallowell was called to Portland to a directors' meeting. On Friday afternoon a case came in that required the immediate drawing of papers, and Fink and I stayed down in the office until eleven p. m. with both Swazey and Bat hammering away for dear life at the machines. Then Fink gathered up the papers and told Bat that he was going to Albany, and to be on the wire at the office all the next morning until twelve, in case he had forgotten something. As for me, 1 had nothing on, and so I took a spin in the motor up the Hudson. None of us gave a thought to the imp or recalled that it was the day of the great opening game at the Polo grounds between Pittsburgh and the Giants.
All that night Bat lay broad awake beside his little sister in an eight by ten room opening on an airshaft, with his brain in a whirl, hearing the click of the machine, and trying to remember all the things that Rynders, Hallowell. Fink, and I might have forgotten. Near morning he stole up to the roof and cooled his hot, freckled face in the night breeze. In the graying dawn the electric signs seemed like old friends,—the Dutchwoman beating the boy with her stick regularly every fifteen seconds, the winking blue and red pickle sign, the rotating wheel of fire which the handwriting on the wall said was "A good tire"; but, as he watched, they stopped and faded one by one. And down beyond that tangle of tracks he knew lay the soft green sward on which a few hours later, to the thundering applause of thousands of onlookers, his champions would meet their bitterest foes in the greatest struggle of the year. He'd not miss that, at any rate! Not that!
As the east yellowed, tiny wisps of cloud hung over the horizon line, no bigger than commas. Then Bat saw that they were commas, with tails,—comma-dashes, quotes, and colons, like when Mr. Rynders dictated, "On reading and filing the annexed affidavit of A. B. (comma), verified the blank day of blank (comma), and on motion of C. D. (comma), it is hereby (comma, dash, new paragraph, caps) ordered, and then follow the order in Wiggins versus Bates." But these commas had a curious way of swinging around, up, and down, all over the sky, till by and by the sun pushed up behind the gastanks across the Harlem and all his punctuation chased itself away.