Scott Leroy
To Him That Hath

CHAPTER IV
AN UNINVITED GUEST

Black day followed black day, and grudged penny followed grudged penny, till at length there came a day when it seemed the blackness could become no blacker and when his remaining pennies were less than his fingers. On this day he sat long at his window, his wasted, despair-tightened face looking out upon the patched undergarments swinging from lines and upon the boxes and barrels and bottles and papers and rags that littered the deep bottom of the yard, grimly thinking over the prophecy of Kate Morgan. One of the two months she had given his honesty was gone. By the time the second had passed – ? He shiveringly wondered.

This day he ate no evening meal. For a week now one meal had been his daily ration, and that meal pitiably poor and pitiably small. He sat about his room till his nickel clock – which Kate Morgan had brought in one day and deposited upon the wash-stand with her undebatable air of finality – reported quarter past nine, when he rose and walked down into the street. It had been one of those warm days that sometimes come in mid-November – benign messages of remembrance, as it were, from departed summer – and now the people of the tenements filled the streets, for on the packed East Side the street, on warm days, is parlor to the parent and the lover, and nursery to the child.

As David stepped forth he did not notice that he was watched by a pair of keen, boyish eyes from under the rim of a battered slouch hat, and had he noticed he would not have been aware that these same eyes had watched him before. It was a Wednesday evening and David, entangled among the people, like a vessel in a sargasso sea, pursued a slow course toward the Mission, never observing that a boy in a battered hat followed him a way then turned back.

He took his place in the shadowed doorway and waited for Helen Chambers to appear. In a few minutes she came out, Dr. Franklin with her as usual. There was also a second man, gray-haired and slightly stooped, whom David recognised as an older brother of Mr. Chambers, and whom he remembered as a clear-visioned, gentle old philosopher greatly loved by his niece. As they passed, David leaned from the shadow to follow her with his eyes, and the light from the street lamp fell across his face. Dr. Franklin, chancing this instant to look in David's direction, excused himself to Helen and her uncle, who moved forward a few paces, and stepped to the doorway. David pressed frantically back into the shadow.

"Good evening," said Dr. Franklin, holding out a firm, cordial hand, into which David laid his limp fingers. "I've seen you about several times since the evening you called. I've been looking for a chance to invite you to the Mission."

David hardly heard him. He was thinking, wildly, "Suppose she should step to his side? Suppose he should draw me into the light?" It was a moment of blissful, agonising consternation.

"Perhaps I'll come," he managed to whisper. He feared lest his whisper had reached her, and lest she had recognised his voice. But she did not look around.

"I shall expect you. Good night."

Dr. Franklin rejoined Helen and her uncle, and David's hearing, which strained after him, heard him explain as they moved away: "A man who came to the Mission in Mr. Morton's time. He often stands about the Mission, looking at it, but he never comes in."

As soon as they were out of sight David, a-tremble at the narrowness of his escape, slipped from the door and hurried away. As he went, the old question besieged him. If, a minute ago, he had been drawn into the light, would she have spoken to him? And if she had, would it not have been coldly, with disdain?

By the time he reached his tenement he had regained part of his lost composure. As he slipped the key into his door, he heard a sudden scrambling sound within. All his senses were instantly called to alertness. He threw open the door, and sprang into the darkened room.

In the same instant a vague figure leaped through the open window out upon the landing of the fire-escape. David crossed the little room at a bound, caught the coat-tails of the escaping figure, dragged it backwards. The figure turned like a flash, threw something over David's head – a sack, David thought – sprang upon David, and tied the something round his neck with a fierce embrace. David staggered backward under the weight of his adversary, and the two went to the floor in the narrow space between the bed and the wall.

Instantly the figure, with a jerk and a catlike squirm, tried to break away, but David's arms, gripped about its body, held it fast. Then it resumed its choking embrace of David's neck. The sack about his head was heavy; the air hardly came through it. He began to gasp. He tried frantically to throw the figure off, but it held its place. Then one hand fell upon a mop of hair. He clutched it and pushed fiercely upward. The embrace broke, and two fists began to beat his face through the sack. An instant later David managed to scramble to his feet and throw off the sack – and he then saw that the writhing, kicking figure he had captured reached midway between his waist and shoulders.

His right hand still fastened in his captive's hair, David lighted the gas. There, at the end of his arm, was a boy with the figure of fourteen and the face of twenty. His clothes, baggy and torn, were for the latter age; the trousers were rolled up six years at the bottom. The face was wrinkled in a scowl, and the eyes gleamed defiance. He was panting heavily. On the floor lay what David had thought was a sack; it was his own overcoat.

"Why you're nothing but a boy!" David cried.

"A boy! Nuttin'! If I'd been in form, I'd 'a' showed you!"

David locked the door, cut off escape by standing before the window, and disentangled his fingers from the boy's locks. He then saw that the boy's dirty yellow hair flowed upward from his forehead in a cow-lick.

The boy put his hands in his pockets and continued his defiant stare.

"Now, sir, what were you doing in here?" David demanded.

"What you t'ink?" the boy returned coolly. "You t'ink I come to collect de rent?"

"You tried to steal my coat."

"Gee, you're wise! How'd you guess it?"

David regarded the little fellow steadily for a minute or more. He now noticed that the figure before him was very thin, and he remembered that once the embrace had been broken the boy had been a mere child even to his own weak strength.

"What did you want that coat for?" he asked.

"It's like dis, cul," the boy answered in a tone of confidence. "I owns a swell clo'es-joint on Fift' Avenoo, an' I'm out gittin' in me fall stock."

"What's your name?" David demanded.

"Reggie Vanderbilt."

David did not try another question. He scrutinised the boy in silence, wondering what he should do with this young thief who, instead of showing the proper caught-in-the-act penitence, persisted in wearing the air of one who is master of the situation. David now took note that the boy's coat-collar was turned up and that the coat was held closed by a button near the throat and a safety pin at the bottom. The gaping front of the coat showed him a white line. He stepped forward, and with a quick hand loosened the button at the throat. It was as he had guessed – nothing but a mere rag of an undershirt that left the chest half bare – and the bare chest was rippled with ribs.

"Keep out o' dere!" the boy snapped, jerking away.

David was silent; then he said accusingly: "You're hungry!"

"Well, if I am – it's me own bellyache!"

"You tried to take that coat because you're hungry?"

"I did, did I?"

"Didn't you?"

"Oh, come stop jabbin' me in de ear wid your questions," the boy returned sharply. "What you t'ink I took it for? To buy me goil a automobile?"

He was silent for several moments, his bright eyes on David; then he threw off his defiant look. "Hungry?" he sniffed. "You don't know what de woid means! Me – well, me belly don't have to look it up in no dictionary. I ain't chawed nuttin' but wind for a mont'."

"You were going to sell it?"

"Nix. Pawn it."

David looked from the boy to the coat, and from the coat to the boy. One hand, in his pocket, mechanically fingered his fortune – seven coppers. After a minute he picked up the coat, put it across his arm, and opened the door.

"Come on," he said.

The boy did not budge. "Where you goin' to take me?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nowhere. You're going to take me."

"Where?"

"To the pawnshop," said David.

The boy gave a sneer of disgust, and an outward push with an open, dirty hand. "Oh, say now, cul, don't feed me dat infant's food! D'you t'ink I can't see t'rough dat steer? I'm wise to where – to de first cop!"

He shuffled from his place against the wall. "Well, you got me. Come on. Let's go."

He stepped through the door and stood quietly till David had the key in the lock. Then suddenly he darted toward the stairway. David sprang after him and caught his coat-tail just as he was taking three stairs at one step. David fastened his right hand upon the boy's sleeve, and side by side they marched down the four flights of stairs and into the street.

"Now take me to the pawnshop," David directed.

The boy gave a knowing grunt but said nothing. He walked quietly along till they sighted a policeman standing on a corner half a block ahead. Then he began to drag backward, and David had fairly to push him. As they came up to the officer David glanced down, and saw tenseness, alertness, fear – the look of the captured animal that watches for a chance to escape.

The officer noticed David's grip on the boy's sleeve. "What you caught there?" he demanded.

"Just a friend of mine," David answered, and passed on.

After a few paces the boy peered stealthily up, an uncomprehending look in his face. "Say, pard, you're a queer guy!" he said; and a moment later he added: "You needn't hold me. I'll go wid you."

David withdrew his hand, and a little further on the boy led David for the first time in his life into a pawnbroker's shop. David threw the coat upon the counter and asked for as much as could be advanced upon it.

A large percentage of pledges are never redeemed, and the less advanced on an unredeemed pledge the greater the pawnbroker's profit when it is sold. The money-lender looked the coat over. "A dollar and a half," he said.

"Ah, git out wid your plunk and a half!" the boy cut in. "Dat's stealin' widout takin' de risks. T'ree."

"It ain't worth it," returned the usurer.

The boy picked up the coat. "Come on," he said to David, and started out.

"Two!" called out the pawnbroker.

The boy walked on.

"Two and a half!"

The boy returned and threw the coat upon the counter.

Twenty minutes later they were back in the room, and several grocery parcels lay on the bed. With a gaze that was three parts wonderment and one part suspicion, the boy watched David cooking over the gas stove. He made no reply to David's remarks save when one was necessary, and then his answer was no more than a monosyllable.

At length the supper was ready. The table was the soap-box cupboard, so placed that one of them might have the edge of the bed as his chair. On this table were a can of condensed milk, a mound of sliced bread, and a cube of butter in its wooden dish. On the gas stove stood a frying-pan of eggs and bacon and a pot of coffee.

After the boy, at David's invitation, had blackened a basin of water with his hands, they sat down. David gave the boy two eggs and several strips of bacon, and served himself a like portion. Then they set to – one taste of eggs or bacon to three or four bites of bread. The boy never stopped, and David paused only to refill the coffee cups from time to time and to pour into them a pale string of condensed milk. And the boy never spoke, save once there oozed through his bread-stuffed mouth the information that his "belly was scairt most stiff."

Presently the boy's plate was clean to shininess – polished by pieces of bread with which he had rubbed up the last blotch of grease, the last smear of yellow. He looked over at the frying-pan in which was a fifth egg, and an extra strip of bacon. David caught the stare, and quickly turned the egg and bacon into the boy's plate.

The boy looked from the plate to David. "You don't want it?" he asked fearfully.

"No."

He waited for no retraction. A few minutes later, after having finished the egg and meat and the remaining slices of bread, he leaned back with a profound sigh, and steadily regarded David.

At length he said, abruptly: "Me name's Tom."

"Thanks," said David. "What's your last name?"

The boy's defiance and suspicion had fallen from him. "Jenks I calls meself. But I dunno. Me old man had a lot o' names – Jones, Simmons, Hall, an' some I forget. He changed 'em for his healt' – see? So I ain't wise to which me real name is."

Under David's questioning he became communicative about his history. "You had to be tough meat to live wid me old man. Me mudder wasn't built to stand de wear and tear, an' about de time I was foist chased off to school, she went out o' biz. I stayed wid me old man till I was twelve. He hit de booze hard, an' kep' himself in form by poundin' me. He was hell. Since den I been woikin' for meself."

It was now twelve by Kate Morgan's clock – an hour past David's bed-time. "Where do you live?" he asked Tom.

"In me clo'es," Tom answered, grinning. David found himself liking that grin, which pulled the face to one side like a finger in a corner of the mouth.

"Where are you going to stay to-night?"

"Been askin' meself de same question." He stood up. "But I guess I'd better be chasin' meself so you can git to bed."

"Don't go just yet," said David. He looked at his narrow bed, then looked at Tom. "Suppose you stay with me to-night. I guess we can double up in the bed there."

Tom's mouth fell agape. "Me – sleep – in – your – bed?"

"Of course – why not?"

The boy sank back into his chair. "Well, say, you are a queer guy!" he burst out. He stared at David, then slowly shook his head. "I won't do it. Anyhow, I couldn't sleep in a bed. It'd keep me awake. But I'm up agin it, an' I'll stay if you'll let me sleep on de floor."

"But there are no extra bed-clothes."

"Wouldn't want 'em if dere was. I'd be too hot."

So it was settled. Ten minutes later the room was dark, David was in bed, and Tom was lying in the space between the bed's foot and the wall, with David's coat for extra covering and with Browning's poems and a volume of Molière as a pillow. There was deep silence for another ten minutes, then a cautious whisper rose from the foot of the bed.

"Are you asleep?"

"No," said David.

"Say, why didn't you have me pinched?" the voice asked.

No answer.

The voice rose again. "Why did you gimme dat extry egg?"

No answer.

"Why did you ask me to stay here? Ain't you afraid I'll skin out wid your clo'es?"

Again there was no answer. But presently David said: "Better go to sleep, Tom."

There was a brief, deep silence; then once more the voice came from the foot of the bed. "I ain't just wise to you," said the voice, and there was a note of huskiness in it, "but say, pard, you gits my vote!"

CHAPTER V
GUEST TURNS HOST

The first object David's eyes fell upon when they opened the next morning was Tom, sitting beside the bed, a look of waiting eagerness on his pinched face. The instant he saw David was awake he sprang up, and David perceived the boy had on one pair of the boxing-gloves.

"Can you use de mitts?" Tom asked excitedly.

"A little. I used to, that is," David answered, smiling at the odd figure the cow-lick, the eager face, the baggy coat and the big boxing-gloves combined to make of the boy.

"Come on, den! – git up! Let's have a go."

David slipped out of bed, and while he was dressing Tom entertained him with an account of the Corbett-Britt fight, kinematograph pictures of which he had seen at one of the Bowery theatres. Tom danced about the narrow space between the bed and the wall, taking the part of one man, then of the other, giving blows and receiving blows, feinting, ducking, rushing and being rushed against imaginary ropes, and gasping out bits of description: "Corbett breaks in an' lands like dis – Jimmie hands back dis poke – Corbett goes groggy – dey clinch – bing! bang! biff! – Den Jimmie gits in dis peach – Corbett kerplunks – one, two, t'ree, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten – an' Corbett's a has-been!"

By this time David was half-dressed, and had drawn on the other pair of gloves. They gravely shook hands and drew apart. "Be careful, and don't make me a has-been," David cautioned.

"Oh, mudder! Fetch me a step-ladder!" besought Tom, looking upward at David's head. He spat from one side of his mouth, drew his head down between his shoulders, rushed in, and began directing a fury of blows at David's stomach, which was near the level of his fists; and it took all David's long-rusted, but one-time considerable, skill to ward off the rapid fists. He made no attempt to get in a blow himself, and this soon drew on him Tom's wrath.

"I ain't no baby!" the boy yelled in disgust. "Punch me!"

David proceeded to land a few light touches about the slender body.

"A-a-h, punch me!" Tom gasped. "Harder!"

David obeyed, and landed a chest blow that sent Tom to his back. David dropped to his knees beside him, alarmed, for the boy's face was white and dazed. But Tom rose to an elbow and pushed David away. His lips moved silently, then with sound: "Seven, eight, nine, ten." At "ten" he sprang to his feet and rushed at David again.

But David threw up his hands. "That's enough for to-day. And finish fights are against the New York law."

Tom grumblingly drew off the gloves. After their breakfast of bread and coffee David asked him what he was going to do that day.

"Look for odd jobs."

"Where will you stay to-night?"

"Dunno."

"How did you like the floor?"

"Bully!"

"Well, suppose you come back and try it again to-night. Be here at six. Will you?"

"Will I!" gasped the boy. "You can just bet your gran'mudder's suspenders dat I will!"

When David returned at six, after another day of hopeless search, he found Tom sitting in the doorway of the tenement. The boy's face lighted up with his lop-sided smile; David felt a quick glow at having someone to give him a welcoming look – even though that someone were only a ragged, stunted boy in an old slouch hat that from time to time slipped down and eclipsed the sharp face.

They had dinner, and after it they set forth on a walk. David left the guidance to Tom, and the boy led the way down the Bowery, where, to the hellish music of elevated trains, and by the garish light that streamed from restaurants, pawnshops, music-halls and saloons, moved the all-night procession of thieves and thugs, cheap sports and cheap confidence men, gutter-rags of men and women, girls whose bold, roving eyes sought markets for their charms – all those whom we of sheltered morals are wont to consider the devil's irretrievable share, without thinking much, or caring much, as to why they should be his. Tom's tongue maintained a constant commentary on everything they passed; to talk was clearly one of his delights. What he said was interesting, and was given a grotesque vivacity by his snappy diction of the streets; but David shivered again and again at the knowledge he had where he should have had ignorance.

The boy was erudite in the wickedness of this part of the city. That innocent-looking second-hand store, which was run by the fat old woman in the doorway, was in reality a "fence;" that laundry was an opium den; in the back of that brilliantly-lighted club-room, whose windows were labelled "The Three Friends' Association," there was a gambling joint; that saloon was the hang-out of a gang of men and women thieves; in that music hall, through whose open door they glimpsed a dancer in a red knee-skirt doing the high kick, the girls got their brief admirers drunk and picked their pockets; – and so on, and on, missing nothing that he should not have known.

At Chatham Square they turned into the Jewish quarter and shouldered homeward through narrow streets that from wall to wall were a distracting entanglement of playing children, baby carriages, families on door-steps, promenading lovers, hurrying men, arguing groups, flambeau-lighted pushcarts whose bent and bearded proprietors offered the chaotic crowd every commodity from cucumbers to clothes. The latter part of their walk took them by St. Christopher's, through the glowing colours of the Morton memorial window; and the Mission came in for a few of Tom's sentences. It was a great place to steal women's pocketbooks. "A lot o' swell ladies from Fift' Avenoo comes down dere to monkey wid de kids – hell knows what for. Dere easy fruit. I pinched two or t'ree fat leathers dere meself."

David marvelled at the boy's intimacy with wickedness, yet he understood it. Evil was the one thing Tom had had a chance to become acquainted with; it had for him the familiar face that virtue has for children raised amid happier circumstances. The conditions of its childhood, whether good or bad, are the normal conditions of life to the child. So to Tom wickedness was normal; he talked of stealing, of gambling, of women, with the natural vivacity that another boy might have talked of his marbles.

David saw, as definitely as the calendar sees to-morrow, the future of this boy if there were no influence counter to the influence that was now sweeping him toward his fate. He saw arrest (Tom had boasted that he had been arrested once) – prison – a hardening of the boy's nature – a life of crime. He heard little of the rest of the boy's chatter, and presently he came to a decision – a very unpretentious decision, for he was poorer than poverty, and what confidence he once had in his personal influence had slipped away. But the little he could do for the boy, that he would do.

"How would you like to stay with me for awhile, Tom?" he asked when they were back in his room. "I can't offer you anything but the floor for a bed – and perhaps not that after a few weeks."

"D'you mean I can stay wid you?" Tom cried, springing up, his eyes a-gleam. "Say, dat'll be great! We'll divide on de price! An' we'll have a little go wid de mitts ev'ry day!"

"Very well. But I want to place one condition on your staying. You're to be strictly honest with me, and you're not to steal. You understand?"

The boy made a grimace. "All right – since you ask me. But say, you're queer!"

The next morning David bought Tom a red cotton sweater and advanced him a quarter with which to buy a stock of papers. Two weeks passed, every day very much like the one before it. David found no work, and Tom made but little. During the two weeks the rent fell due, and most of David's library went to a second-hand book dealer and the proceeds went to the landlady. Then, two or three at a time, the rest of the books were carried to the second-hand store.

At length there came a morning when there was not a cent, and when, to perfect the day's despair, David woke with a burning soreness throughout his body – the consequence of having been caught the day before in a cold rain and having walked for several hours in his wet clothes. He crawled out of bed, but soon crept in again. His muscles could make no search for work that day.

Tom proposed a doctor. David dismissed the suggestion; doctors required money. But, money or no money, Tom saw there had to be one thing – food. He sat gazing for several minutes at the boxing-gloves, their last negotiable possession, which his favour had thus far kept out of the pawnshop; then with a set face he put them under his arm and walked out of the room. He returned with fifty cents.

That night Tom came home discouraged. He had hunted work all day, but no one wanted him. "Dey all wanted to hire a good suit o' clo'es," he explained to David. But the next morning he seemed confident. "I t'ought of a place where I t'ink I can git a job," he said, as he started away after having prepared for David a breakfast that David's feverish lips could not touch.

His confidence was well founded, for that evening he entered the room with an armload of bundles. "Look at dis, will you!" he cried, dropping the parcels on the bed. "Bread, an' butter, an' eggs, an' steak – ev'ryt'ing. You got to git well, now! You're goin' to git fat!"

David in his surprise sat up in bed. "Why, where did you get all those things?"

"Didn't I say I'd git a job? Well, I did! In a big hardware store. I'm errand boy – ev'ryt'ing! De boss say, 'Tom do dis; Tom do dat.' I do 'em all, quick! De next minute I say to de boss, 'anyt'ing else?' He pays me six a week, I'm so quick."

"But you've only worked a day. You haven't been paid already?"

"Sure. I hands de boss a piece o' talk: me mudder's sick, an' I needs ready coin bad. So he pays me a dollar ev'ry day."

David made a mental note that later there must be a few more remarks on the subject of lying; but this was not the time to reprove Tom's fib. He took the boy's hand in his hot, weak grasp. "You're mighty good to me, Tom," he said, huskily.

Tom's face slipped to one side and twitched. His blinking eyes avoided David's gaze. "Oh, dat's nuttin'," he gruffly returned. "Nobody goes back on his pal."

At the end of the first week of David's illness Kate Morgan returned home, having given up her position, and thenceforward she prepared most of his meals, chatted much with him, and lent him ten-cent novels. One result of their chats was that Kate became strengthened in her conviction that David had been a thief of great skill and daring. Contradiction availed him nothing. "Your last haul was a big one – you told me so yourself," she would say. "And only the top-notchers have your kind of talk and manners."

One day she returned to the matter of her former prophecy. "You've had enough of this," she said. "When you get out of bed, and get your strength back, you'll be at the old game again. You see!"

During this time Tom left for work regularly at half-past seven, and returned regularly at half-past six; and each evening he insisted on turning his dollar in to David, to be spent under David's direction. One night, as Tom was giving frightful punishment to an imaginary opponent with the boxing gloves – he had redeemed them with part of his second day's pay – several coins slipped from his pocket and went ringing upon the floor. When Tom rose from picking them up David's thin face was gazing at him in sorrowful accusation. The boy paled before the look. He was silent for a moment. Then he asked mechanically, almost without breath: "What's de matter?"

"Haven't you been stealing from your employers?" David asked, in a low voice.

The boy's colour came back. "No I ain't. Honest."

"Then where did you get that money?"

"Why – why, Kate Morgan give it to me. She t'ought I might want to buy a few extry t'ings."

David was unconvinced, but from principle he gave Tom the benefit of the doubt. He had the instinctive masculine repugnance to accepting money from a woman; so a moment later, when Kate came in, he said to her: "I want to thank for you for loaning that money to Tom. I understand and appreciate – but I don't need the money. You must take it back."

"What money?" she asked blankly.

She turned about on Tom, who was sitting at the foot of the bed where David could not see him. The boy's face was very white, and he was hardly breathing. He looked appealingly at her.

Kate's face darkened. "Tom," she said sharply, "I told you not to tell that!"

When she had gone, David called Tom to him and took his hand. "I beg your pardon, Tom," he said.

Tom made no answer at all.

All these days, when David was not chatting with Kate, or reading about the love of the fair mill-girl and the mill-owner's son, he was wanly staring into his future. He longed for the day when he could begin search again – and that day was also his great fear. Often he lay thinking for hours of Helen Chambers. He thought of the lovers she must have; of her marriage that might not be far off; of the noble place she would have in life – honoured, admired, a doer of good. He would never meet her, never speak to her – never see her, save perhaps as he had been doing, from places of shadow.

Well … he prayed that she might be happy!