works by dr. john brown. horæ subsecivæ. sixth edition. 1 volume, extra foolscap 8vo, price 7s. 6d. locke and sydenham. new edition. extra foolscap 8vo, price 7s. 6d. letter to the rev. john cairns, d.d. second edition. crown 8vo, sewed, price 2s. arthur h. hallam; extracted from 'horæ subsecivæ.' foolscap, sewed, price 2s.; cloth, price 2s. 6d. rab and his friends; extracted from 'horæ subsecivæ.' forty-fifth thousand. foolscap, sewed, price 6d. marjorie fleming: a sketch. fifteenth thousand. foolscap, sewed, price 6d. our dogs; extracted from 'horæ subsecivæ.' nineteenth thousand. foolscap, sewed, price 6d. rab and his friends. with illustrations by sir george harvey, r.s.a., sir j. noel paton, r.s.a., and j. b. cheap edition. in one volume, cloth, price 3s. 6d. 'with brains, sir;' extracted from 'horæ subsecivæ.' foolscap, sewed, price 6d. minchmoor. price 6d. jeems the door-keeper. a lay sermon. price 6d. edinburgh: edmonston and douglas. notes on old edinburgh by the author of 'the englishwoman in america.' [illustration: inscription over doorway in blackfriars wynd. _english visitor._--'so this is blackfriars wynd!' _woman._--'no, it's hell's mouth.'] edinburgh edmonston and douglas 1869. prefatory note by the rev. dr. hanna. was ever a more vivid picture of more revolting scenes offered to the reader's eye than that which the following pages present? if any doubt creep into his mind as to the accuracy of its details, he has but to read the reports of dr. littlejohn and dr. alexander wood, in which everything here stated, not vouched for by the writer herself, is authenticated. can nothing be done, shall nothing be done, to wipe out such foul blots from the face of our fair city? one effort among others is being made in this direction by the association recently organized for improving the condition of the poor. it is in the hope of winning for this association the support of all the humane among us that these "notes" are published. it would be a happy, and not surely hopeless issue, if, by the combined and concentrated endeavours of all interested in the welfare of the poor, such a change were effected that, fifty years hence, it were doubted or denied that ever such a state of things existed as is here so graphically portrayed. w. h. 6, castle terrace, _jan. 20, 1869_. notes on old edinburgh. chapter i. it has been my fortune to see the worst slums of the thames district of london, of birmingham, and other english and foreign cities, the "water-side" of quebec, and the five points and mud huts of new york, and a short time ago a motive stronger than curiosity induced me to explore some of the worst parts of edinburgh--not the very worst, however. honest men can have no desire to blink facts, and no apology is necessary for stating the plain truth, as it appears to me, that there are strata of misery and moral degradation under the shadow of st. giles's crown and within sight of knox's house, more concentrated and unbroken than are to be met with elsewhere, even in a huge city which, by reason of a district often supposed to have no match for vice and abjectness, is continually held up to public reprobation. the rev. r. maguire, rector of st. james's, clerkenwell, accompanied me through a portion only of the district visited, and he expressed his opinion then, and since more formally in print, that more dirt, degradation, overcrowding, and consequent shamelessness and unutterable wretchedness, exist in edinburgh than in any town of twice its size, or in any area of similar extent to the one explored, taken from the worst part of london. with this opinion my own convictions cordially concur. we have plenty of awful guilt-centres in london--as, for instance, the alleys leading out of liquorpond street and the new cut, but even the worst are broken in upon by healthy neighbourhoods. here there is a loathsome infectious sore, occupying a larger area than anywhere else--a district given up in great measure to moral degradation, which extends from the lawnmarket to holyrood, from holyrood along the parallel streets of the cowgate, the grassmarket, and the west port, including most of the adjacent wynds and closes, and only terminating with cowfeeder row. my object was to compare a certain section of edinburgh, both by day and night, with a similar area in the city before alluded to. in company with two philanthropic gentlemen, who did not hesitate to expose these social plague-spots, and guided in one mysterious locality by one of the lieutenants of police, i explored at various times several closes in the high street, cowgate, and west port, going by "house-row." in all cases the people were civil and willing to admit us, and few allowed us to depart without expressing a hope that some good would come out of the efforts proposed to be made for them. in many houses only the children were at home, but they answered our questions with such quick comprehension and painfully precocious intelligence that we were not left in doubt as to the circumstances of their parents. it was a dry, warm morning. no rain had fallen for some weeks. there was a rumour of cholera on the rhine, and under its salutary influence various sanitary precautions, such as lime-washing closes and stairs, had been recently resorted to. the district might have looked cheerful had cheerfulness been possible, so great was the contrast between its aspect now and its look on a wet, murky, autumn day. the appearance of the lower part of the high street was as little pleasant as usual. knots of men who never seem to "move on" stared at the passers-by on the south bridge, bold girls lounged about and chaffed the soldiers, careworn women, and little girls hardly less careworn, stood round the well with their pails--some of the last, we learned, having stood there for two and three hours. there were dirty little children as usual rolling in the gutter or sitting stolidly on the kerb-stone; as usual, haggard, wrinkled, vicious faces were looking out of the dusty windows above, and an air of joylessness, weariness, and struggle hung over all. truly has this street been named the _via dolorosa_. the above-named well, close by john knox's house, is a sign of one of the standing grievances of this district of edinburgh. it is the "water supply" of the large population living in those many-storeyed houses which give the immediate neighbourhood its picturesqueness. if it could tell the tale of one day, we should have plenty of the sensational element, but it would be the true tragedy of the real, suffering, everyday life of the poor. from six in the morning till nearly midnight, it is the centre of a throng, feminine mainly, but often essentially unwomanly in its language and manners. as a horde of thirsty pilgrims struggles for the first draught of the water of the bright oasis of the desert, so this crowd often struggles for the first turn at the tap. in its more usual condition, it is sad rather than belligerent, feeble in its scuffling, loud-voiced in its abuse. here the weakest go to the wall. here children carrying buckets nearly as big as themselves are sometimes known to wait from one to five hours for the water which is to wash the faces, cook the food, and quench the thirst of the family for the day. here they wait, losing time and gaining a precocious familiarity with evil from the profanity and depravity of the talk and chaffing around them. to this well the aged widow, who struggles hard to keep up appearances, with her white mutch and neatly-pinned black shawl, totters with her pail down her dark stair of 150 steps, up the steep close, and down the street, waiting with the patience born of necessity in the heat, or rain, or snow, as the case may be, till the younger and stronger have got their "turn," and then stumbles with failing breath up her stair, the water, which is precious as that of the well of bethlehem, spilling as she goes. at what a cost does she buy the whiteness of her mutch! hither comes the young, weary-looking mother, having locked up her young family in her eyrie. heavily burdened with care she looks. we may trust she forgets the perils of fire and window at home; she scuffles feebly; street brawling is a new and uncongenial thing to her, and she usually ends by losing the best part of the morning. she is slowly dropping out of her cleanly habits. can we wonder? she thinks twice at least about scrubbing the floor, and it isn't much use to wash her children's clothes when they have no place to play in but the gutter. here also come the small children with jugs, and hang about for a frolic, learning to curse and swear and imitate the vices of their elders, if they have not learned them before. it is a pitiful sight in the street, but followed to the homes this lack of water helps to degrade, pity for the sufferers mingles with indignant surprise that proprietors of the _best paying property_ to be found (for so the closes are) have not been compelled ere this to have at least a pipe and tap in every close. outside the great reformer's house is the well of pure water, difficult of access for most, nearly inaccessible at times to the feeble, the diffident, and the old. under the same house is the whisky-shop, easy enough to reach, and the whisky all too easy to procure--only the laying down a few pence, and the fluid which makes life brighter for an hour is at the lips without waiting or scuffling. how can our sad and sorely-tempted ones escape the snare? limited water and unlimited whisky, crowded dens and unwholesome air; we need nothing more to make a city full of drunkards. we followed this water grievance into thirty-seven houses that day, and there was scarcely one in which it was not enlarged upon. did our eyes wander round a room ever so stealthily, its occupier was ready to forestall the glance by saying, "ah, sirs, it's the dirt ye're looking at, but how's puir folk like us to be clean as has to haul every drop of water from that well?" did we shrink ever so slightly from a child whose head and clothing were one mass of dirt, the movement was perceived, and the want of water, the distance from the well, and the long long stair, were the apologies offered. i merely give one instance, which might be multiplied almost indefinitely, of the distress arising from this comparatively little thought-of cause. in a wretched den on the seventh storey, none the brighter or lighter for being nearer the skies, for it had no direct light, a family, consisting of father, mother, and child of three years old, were fighting a hard battle for life. on the floor, on a straw bed, the husband had been "down with fever" for six weeks. he was wandering and murmuring incessantly, "drink! drink!" clutching all the time at a tin pitcher by his side which contained water. he was too weak to lift it, and his wife, who expected shortly to become a mother, was helping him to it every three or four minutes. the bairn was crippled and mentally deficient, and kept crawling into the ashes, so that between it and her husband the poor woman had not a moment's rest. on a line across the room a half-washed sheet was hanging, steaming as it dried. the atmosphere in the room was poisonous. the woman said, "ah, you are feeling the smell. sometimes i think he'd get better if we could have things clean about us. he's got bed-sores, and you see they run a good deal, and i'm such a weak body, i can't haul water enough to wash it out of the sheets. he drinks nearly all i bring--quarts a day. he was always so fond of the water, he never tasted the whisky in his life. he's been a good husband to me; and since we've come here i can't get the water to keep him clean." in answer to inquiry, she said she had waited half an hour at the well the night before, and in coming up the long dark stair a drunk man had pushed against her and upset the whole pailful. on our expressing some sympathy, she burst into tears, sobbing out, "oh, god only knows what it is to _slave_ after the water--it's killing me and him too, _and in the glen we came from the bonnie burn ran by the door_." in that moment, some cruel memory contrasted that foul steaming sheet, whose poisonous fumes nearly overcame the strong, with the linen washed on the grass by the burn, over which the birch and harebell trembled, and bleached afterwards by the sun to the whiteness of snow. they were evicted crofters from perthshire, and misfortune, not drink or vice, had brought them so low. our sanitary reforms are too late for them, for both went shortly afterwards to the land where "they shall thirst no more." travellers have often enlarged upon the hardships suffered by the fellaheen of egypt in carrying water for irrigating purposes. it is from the free, pure nile they draw it at will, and over the pure alluvial soil they carry it. but this water grievance, which exists not only in the canongate and high street, but in the cowgate, the grassmarket, the west port, and elsewhere, involves _female slavery_ in edinburgh of the most grinding description, and consequences from which the moralist and the philanthropist may well shrink. this want of water involves not alone a slavery which in many cases knows no sabbath, and dirt which is a help to degradation, but an absence of all arrangements for decency. looking at this subject from a stranger's stand-point, it seems perfectly credible that the lack of all proper water supply in these crowded districts, the impossibility which it creates of preserving physical self-respect, and the evil influence on the young of the "wait" at the wells, is one among the many causes of the lapsing of the masses in edinburgh. the subject of the water supply is beset with difficulties, but there is a possibility of grappling with and overcoming them. the matter is more closely connected with moral reform than we might think at first sight. in england we have a proverb, "cleanliness is next to godliness," and without indorsing it fully, we may agree that physically filthy habits and moral impurity, among the poor at least, are intimately associated. _it is impossible for these people to be clean in their dwellings, clothes, or persons under present circumstances._ it is inevitable that infectious diseases of the most fatal kind must be generated and diffused. it is certain that the spirit of murmuring against god is fostered by this lack of an element which these female water-carriers suppose should be free to them as light and air. the evil is becoming worse and worse as a larger and larger population crowds into these subdivided dwellings, there, perforce almost, to fall into habits lower than those of the beasts. it is well known that drunkenness, disease, and degradation are the results of a deficient water supply. it is more difficult to estimate statistically the broken health and hearts of the female water-carriers. there is an economy of water and a most prodigal expenditure of human suffering. chapter ii. in the old town, where the population of a village or a fashionable square is constantly crammed into the six or seven storeys of one house, _room-to-room_ visitation, for it is nothing else, affords a visitor in one morning a glimpse of a state of things without a parallel. in no other city could tenements be found without gas, without water-pipes, water-closet, or sink, or temporary receptacle for ashes, and entered only by one long dark stone stair, which return such enormous profits to their owners as from 45 to 60 per cent. scarcely elsewhere does one roof cover a population of 290, 248, 240 persons, living in dens, honeycombed out of larger rooms, without ventilation, without privacy, and often without direct light. in no other city is the respectable mechanic compelled, for want of house accommodation of a proper kind, to bring up his family in a tenement which deserves indictment as a nuisance, or to pay £5, £6, or £8 a year for a den swarming with vermin, with only a wooden partition to keep off the sights and admit all the sounds of haunts of the most degraded vice. in edinburgh, which, in more respects than one, is set on a hill and cannot be hid, there are 13,209 families, comprising not only the vicious and abject, but large numbers of the poorer labouring class, living in houses of but one room, and of these single rooms, 1530 are inhabited by from six to fifteen persons! further, by the last census, 120 of these _shelters_, for they are not houses, were reported as without windows, and 900 were cellars, nearly all of them dark, and many damp. _these_ figures give the astounding result that the families living in one room, and often herding together in closer proximity than animals would endure, comprehend 66,000 persons, or considerably more than one-third of the population of edinburgh![1] the notes which follow are merely a commentary upon the above facts. my room-to-room visitation on a single day included thirty-seven families residing in a close south of the high street and ten families in a close south of the cowgate. i do not give the names of either, in deference to the feelings of respectable persons who are compelled by various causes to reside in them. the entrance of the close which we selected is long and narrow, and so low as to compel a man of average height to stoop. it is paved with round stones, and from the slime in which they were embedded, and from a grating on one side almost choked up with fish heads and insides, and other offal, a pungent and disgusting effluvium was emitted. the width of this close is four feet at the bottom, but the projecting storeys of the upper houses leave only a narrow strip of quiet sky to give light below. a gutter ran along one side of the close against the wall, and this, though so early in the day, was in a state of loathsomeness not to be described. very ragged children, infinitely more ragged and dirty than those which offend our eyes in the open street, were sitting on the edge of this gutter, sitting as if they meant to sit there all day; not playing, not even quarrelling, just _stupefying_. foul air, little light, and bad food had already done their work on most of them. blear eyes, sore faces, and sore feet were almost universal. their matted hair and filthy rags were full of vermin. their faces were thin, pinched, and precocious. many of them had been locked out in the morning when their mothers went to their hawking, washing, and other occupations, and might be locked out till midnight, or later, as we found on the following night. there they sat, letting the slow, vile stream in the gutter run over their feet, and there they were sitting three hours later. they were from three to ten years old. it is all the same if the rain or snow is falling, except that they leave the gutters to huddle together in the foul shelter of the stair-foot. some of these will die, many will be educated into the hardened criminality of the often-imprisoned street boy, many will slide naturally into a life of shame, and a fortunate few will be sentenced to reformatories, from whence they come out decent members of society at the rate of 70 per cent. "god help them!" exclaimed a mother, so drunk that her own babe seemed in peril in her arms. ay, god help them! but our father which is in heaven charges the responsibility of their destiny on the respectable men and women of edinburgh. we entered the first room by descending two steps. it seemed to be an old coal-cellar, with an earthen floor, shining in many places from damp, and from a greenish ooze which drained through the wall from a noxious collection of garbage outside, upon which a small window could have looked had it not been filled up with brown paper and rags. there was no grate, but a small fire smouldered on the floor, surrounded by heaps of ashes. the roof was unceiled, the walls were rough and broken, the only light came in from the open door, which let in unwholesome smells and sounds. no cow or horse could thrive in such a hole. it was abominable. it measured eleven feet by six feet, and the rent was 10d. per week, paid in advance. it was nearly dark at noon, even with the door open; but as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, i saw that the plenishings consisted of an old bed, a barrel with a flagstone on the top of it for a table, a three-legged stool, and an iron pot. a very ragged girl, sorely afflicted with ophthalmia, stood among the ashes doing nothing. she had never been inside a school or church. she did not know how to do anything, but "did for her father and brother." on a heap of straw, partly covered with sacking, which was the bed in which father, son, and daughter slept, the brother, ill with rheumatism and sore legs, was lying moaning from under a heap of filthy rags. he had been a baker "over in the new town," but seemed not very likely to recover. it looked as if the sick man had crept into his dark, damp lair, just to die of hopelessness. the father was past work, but "sometimes got an odd job to do." the sick man had supported the three. it was hard to be godly, impossible to be cleanly, impossible to be healthy in such circumstances. the next room was entered by a low, dark, impeded passage about twelve feet long, too filthy to be traversed without a light. at the extremity of this was a dark winding stair which led up to four superincumbent storeys of crowded subdivided rooms; and beyond this, to the right, a pitch-dark passage with a "room" on either side. it was not possible to believe that the most grinding greed could extort money from human beings for the tenancy of such dens as those to which this passage led. they were lairs into which a starving dog might creep to die, but nothing more. opening a dilapidated door, we found ourselves in a recess nearly 6 feet high, and 9 feet in length by 5 in breadth. it was not absolutely dark, yet matches aided our investigations even at noon-day. there was an earthen floor full of holes, in some of which water had collected. the walls were black and rotten, and alive with wood-lice. there was no grate. the rent paid for this evil den, which was only ventilated by the chimney, is 1s. per week, or £2, 12s. annually! the occupier was a mason's labourer, with a wife and three children. he had come to edinburgh in search of work, and could not afford a "higher rent." the wife said that her husband took the "wee drap." so would the president of the temperance league himself if he were hidden away in such a hole. the contents of this lair on our first visit were a great heap of ashes and other refuse in one corner, some damp musty straw in another, a broken box in the third, with a battered tin pannikin upon it, and nothing else of any kind, saving two small children, nearly nude, covered with running sores, and pitiable from some eye disease. their hair was not long, but felted into wisps, and alive with vermin. when we went in they were sitting among the ashes of an extinct fire, and blinked at the light from our matches. here a neighbour said they sat all day, unless their mother was merciful enough to turn them into the gutter. we were there at eleven the following night, and found the mother, a decent, tidy body, at "_hame_." there was a small fire then, but no other light. she complained of little besides the darkness of the house, and said, in a tone of dull discontent, she supposed it was "as good as such as they could expect in edinburgh." the two children we had seen before were crouching near the embers, blinking at a light we carried, and on the musty straw in the corner a third, about ten years old, was doubled up. this child had not a particle of clothing, but was partially covered with a rag of carpet. she was ill of scrofula, and the straw she lay on seemed to be considered a luxury. three adults (including a respectable-looking grandmother) and three children slept on that unwholesome floor, in a room, be it remembered, 9 by 5, and under 6 feet high. we allow each convict 500 cubic feet of air in his cell. "we consider him as one to be washed, clothed, covered, ventilated; secularly, technically, and religiously taught, regularly exercised, and profitably employed. we do not fling him into a dark hole, even when he misbehaves himself, and we do not leave him there for years to fester in filth."--_daily telegraph_, april 3, 1868. this reads like a bitter satire on what we do to such families as these. on the other side of the dark passage there was a room somewhat larger, for which _a rent of 1s. 6d. per week was obtained_. this had no window or outer wall, and its sole ventilation was by means of a hole in the door. these two lairs were the worst specimens of basement-storey rooms in that close, but the rest were not much better, and their occupiers (all scotch) were equally poor. medical men, with that noble spirit of philanthropy which adorns the profession in edinburgh, know these dens, and the city and parochial missionaries, wearied and discouraged, still speak to the dwellers in them of one who is mighty to save. but they have long cried to the rich, to the men and women of leisure, to the churches, "come over and help us." they ask people to throw aside their theories, to cease wrangling over the cause, and try a rational cure; to give the poor not what the rich and benevolent _like_, but what the poor _know they need_--and that is, houses to dwell in, not dens to rot and perish in, morally and physically. blissful ignorance of the abyss of preventible misery which exists in edinburgh is impossible now. there are many divers at work, and not one returns to the surface without bringing some cumulative proof of the wreck and ruin below. no person, stranger or citizen, who believes the facts can shirk an individual responsibility concerning them. if sanitary reforms and city improvement schemes come too late to save a lapsed generation of adults, kindly contact with the rich, discriminating charity, houses in which cleanliness and decency are possible, may redeem the children. it was with a little hope for them, at least, that we turned from the close that day; a _little_ hope, i say, for the dawn of the day which is to save them has not yet appeared. after the many diseased dismal infants crouching in their dark dens on the sunny day, the children of the gutters seemed almost happy, for they could see above the lofty houses a blue strip of sky, beyond which, they might have heard, dwells their father. but hideous blasphemies all around came forth from infant lips, and of that stinted, joyless, loveless, misused childhood, if left to itself, an impure, unholy manhood and womanhood can be the only end. did the master declare of these, and the legion of these, "of such is the kingdom of heaven?" what then? leaving these basement dens we entered another close, whose lofty houses, with overhanging wooden fronts, give a certain amount of picturesqueness, while they exclude light to such a degree that it is never much more than twilight below, even on a sunny day. it is said that these projecting fronts were built of wood from boroughmuir, presented by a devout king wherewith to provide oratories for the inhabitants of this close--so that every one of them might be in circumstances to obey the command, "but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret." if the tradition be true, it renders the use to which these oratories are now applied, and the condition of the occupants of these dwellings, more sad and revolting by contrast. though the light in the close was little better than twilight, several women were standing outside the houses mending and patching. they said they could not see to do a stitch indoors. there were many children sitting in the gutters, very dirty, ragged, and sore-eyed. these, the women said, were the children of parents too poor to provide them with clothes fit to go into the street. out of sixty-two children of families visited in this close, twenty only are reported as attending school. this statement, probably, is above the real number, as among the thirty-two families visited by myself, there was only one child reported as attending school. so these children, who don't go to school, and are too ragged to be sent to disport themselves in the street, spend their time between their crowded dens upstairs and the narrow, filthy close--for filthy it was, even at midday, although it was paved, and the scavengers had not finished their work more than five hours before. these children have never known cleanliness or decency. the happiness which comes from chasing butterflies, rooting up pig-nuts, and making daisy wreaths, has never come their way; or even the less arcadian jollities of trundling hoops, playing at marbles, and making dirt-pies, in which city children delight themselves elsewhere. but these are "cribbed, cabined, and confined" by the high black walls, and, as a mother said, "they are learning the devil's lessons well." it is no exaggeration to add that many of them are as absolutely ignorant of _love_ as they are of cleanliness, decency, and happiness. locked out into the cold or wet, scantily clad, meanly fed, kicked about in the morning, kicked about at night, cursed instead of kissed, utterly neglected in body and soul, they grow up attaching no meaning whatever to the words _love_ and _home_. the wynds and closes are swarming with them, the ragged and industrial schools, when they get hold of them, are fain to withdraw them by night as well as by day from what in mockery are called their homes, if they are to do anything with them. as long as these are suffered to be born and reared in _dens_, so long must we build prisons, reformatories, and magdalene asylums to teach them, at enormous cost, the decencies they have never known. in going through this close, and several of the poorer districts, i have become aware that a very large number of the parents of these forlorn infants are literally and consciously "_lapsed_." by their willing and frequently regretful admission they were "well-doing before they came to edinburgh," or they were once better off in edinburgh, and "have come down in the world;" they were church members, and had the friendly recognition of ministers and elders; they "paid their way," etc. etc. from one and all of these they have "lapsed," some by drink, others by misfortune; and this was the case with a large proportion of the inhabitants of this "land," in whose deep wretchedness and degradation they are wallowing, and on whose threshold the reader is being detained. but be it solemnly remembered, the children who "are learning the devil's lessons" in the gutter _start not from the platform of well-doing_ from which many of the parents fell, _but from the platform of vice, intemperance, godlessness, recklessness, and filth to which the parents have fallen_. of such as these, one who claims a hearing for their woes and their helplessness (dr. guthrie), writes--"i know the lapsed and wretched classes well. i believe if i was as poor as they i should be as deceitful. circumstances make people what they are much more than many suppose. there is not a wretched child in this town but if my children had been born and bred up in its unhappy circumstances they might have been as bad." the smell of this close was intolerable. how can it be otherwise when all the solid and liquid refuse which has been accumulating in the densely packed habitations during the day, lies in the narrow close from ten at night, in such quantities that the scavengers not unfrequently remove nearly a ton of it at seven in the morning, and the ground and the foundations of the houses are saturated with the liquid refuse and drainage?[2] i only give a sketch of the general conformation and circumstances of the lands in this close, premising that the description--often very much darkened in tint, however--applies to a majority of the old town abodes which, in edinburgh, are considered good property, and fit for the stowage of human beings, in murdoch's close, hume's close, skinner's close, hyndford's close, south foulis' close, cant's close, blackfriars wynd, todrick's wynd, plainstone close, campbell's close, brown's close, etc., to which citizens who take an interest in this painful subject can add various other closes on both sides of the high street and canongate, many stairs in the cowgate, and various entries and closes in the grassmarket and west port. it is supposed that not fewer than 40,000 people live in habitations not superior to, and often much inferior to, the lands hereafter described. the entrance to the first "land" visited was by a very long, narrow, winding stair, with steps so worn as to be unsafe. the stair was as dark by day as by night until near the top, and there was nothing to assist an unsteady walker in his ascent or descent. the wall was broken, and, as we found on striking a light, the cracks swarmed with bugs and other vermin, as, indeed, does every fissure and cranny of the dilapidated tenements above. we had not gone far before the stench which assailed us was worse than that from the worst-kept pigstye, and we found the state of the stair too disgusting for description. it is disgraceful, degrading, shameful; and who is to blame? a stranger at once supposes that it is due partly to the filthy habits of the people, and also to the crime of the landlords in not lighting the stairs. this last is a criminal act as regards cleanliness, morals, and safety, and its continuance ought not to be permitted for another month. the regulation concerning the cleaning of stairs cannot be carried out in the dark, even if the people had brooms, which most of them have not, and if they had a "spigot" in the close instead of having to haul every drop of water from a public well at some distance. there is an infinite injustice and degradation in such a mode of access and egress for frail old age, and infancy scarcely less frail, for females heavily laden with water or refuse-buckets, for young girls, and for men savagely or boisterously drunk, in many cases for a population over 200. on each landing there was a passage branching into several smaller ones, very much like the galleries in a coal-pit, burrowing in and out among endlessly subdivided rooms, measuring from 18 feet by 10 feet to 9 feet by 5 feet, separated by skeleton partitions filled up with plaster, through which any man can put his foot. in this case the long passage was _outside_ the congeries of habitations, and was lighted on two floors by the windows of the recesses before alluded to as having been the oratories of past generations. they had served the greed of late proprietors, for a great number of the rooms partitioned off from the passage were dimly lighted by windows looking upon it. ventilated they could not be, for the smell in this passage was poisonous. nothing shows more forcibly the lapsing of houses, as well as of human beings, than the fact that these recesses, once prized as places for prayer, are now highly valued for another purpose, being receptacles during the day for multitudes of battered pails, containing the ashes and refuse hourly accumulating in the rooms. those persons consider themselves well off who have any such public recesses or corners which can be used for this purpose. in general, in these tenements, the inhabitants are compelled to keep the pail and "backet," containing the unwholesome accumulations of the day, under the bed, if there be one, and, failing that, in any corner, from seven in the morning till ten at night. in large young families, and in sickness and old age, the result may be imagined, when these accumulations of refuse of all descriptions are shut up in rooms without ventilation, along with the steam of half-washed clothes, in air contaminated by the respiration of several persons. in this land the average size of the rooms is 12 feet by 7 feet. if, on the one hand, drink brings people into these abodes, on the other, the foul, vile, depressing air, joined to the want of light and water, drives them in thousands to the dram-shop. there was scarcely a woman whose face did not testify, by its depression, yellowness, and emaciation, to the air she is compelled to breathe by day and night. besides that the absence of temporary receptacles for refuse is utterly disgusting and injurious to health, it inflicts sore toil on the women, who are more than sufficiently burdened with drawing water from the public wells. it is not a small thing for the mother of a family, or a frail old wife, to come down the dark filthy stair late at night with the "ashbacket," even if there be a window half-way down from which she may discharge the contents on the pavement below. all along the passages there were thin partitions stuffed with rags, where the plaster had fallen out, or had been kicked through in some drunken frenzy--doors so broken all round that privacy even from the gaze of passing strangers is impossible--a roof, in part, nothing better than old boards, strengthened with pieces of iron and tin, which, like everything else here, had "seen better days"--floors rotten--so rotten as to require big stones to fill up holes larger than a man's head--windows with hardly any glass left in them--wind and rain coming in in many places--the whole pile apparently little more than just holding together by sheer force of habit, utterly unfit for human habitation _as it is_--a disgrace which public opinion ought to be strong enough to condemn. but it is one of a legion of similar disgraces; it is a lucrative sin, a paying shame; in politer language, it is "a good investment!" ay, a good investment! for these cabins, which, by a pernicious fiction, are called "houses," are rack-rented at from £2, 10s. to £5 each, and pay the _fortunate_ proprietors from 40 to 60 per cent. here are "vested interests" with a vengeance! chapter iii. this rickety "land" is not by any means in one of the worst closes in edinburgh. it is not a haunt of the criminal classes. vice and virtue live side by side, though the virtuous are in a miserable minority, and their children are in grievous peril of vice. i was given to understand, by those well acquainted with the city, that it was a good representative specimen of an average "land" in a high street close. on that and another occasion we visited thirty-two families, going by room-row. i propose to give the circumstances of a few families, taken after this fashion. all the rooms were in themselves wretched, few more than half-lighted, scarcely any capable of ventilation, some on the second-floor requiring candles at mid-day, floors and partitions in a shameful condition, the former in many instances containing holes as big as a man's head, stuffed with stones; the latter very thin and dilapidated, mended with rags, bits of canvas, tin, and paper. the doors were usually made of odds and ends of old boards, so rudely put together that in some rooms the people had nailed canvas over them to prevent strangers from looking in. the windows were nearly all bad, and patched with brown paper; no gas or water. the landlord had never repaired anything within the memory of the "oldest inhabitant." among all the people visited the complaints were the same--rapacious landlords charging from £2, 10s. to £5; no repairs executed; borrowed light, involving an addition to the rent in the shape of 1s. per week for candles; want of privacy; distance of water supply; dark stairs; increasing subdivision of rooms, involving, in some cases, the intense hardship of a right of way through the outer room. it is due to all these people to say, that while they readily answered all our questions, they never begged of us, or even hinted that charity would be acceptable. it is due to some of them also to say, that their attempts to keep their wretched dwellings clean were most praiseworthy. first room, 11 feet by 5 feet. a box-bed took up a third of it. no grate; fire burning on a stone. the furniture consisted of the bed, a table with three legs, and a "creepie." the room had direct light from a small patched window, which was not made to open. the walls were broken, and almost to pieces. there was a hole in the floor filled up with a large stone. the occupier, a mason's labourer, was out seeking work, and his wife was at the well. these two adults and five children between three and fourteen years old slept on the floor, the eldest child said. "but don't your father and mother sleep on the bed?" we asked. "no, they can't for the bugs; we just lies on the floor, all of a heap." "in your clothes?" "no; we takes them off." "do you put anything on?" "no; we's just naked." truly, they had nothing to put on if they did succeed in getting out of the wonderful aggregation of rags which hung on to them. for there were no blankets, or any covering but an old piece of carpet. the rent was £3, 10s. a year. the girl who made this frank revelation was extremely pretty and intelligent. her young brother and sisters were beautiful, but absolutely filthy; their arms and legs were covered with sores, and their matted hair alive with vermin. the father was the only one of the family who could read. the girl said that her father's leg had gone through the floor up to the knee, and then they put the stone in the hole. from this account it appears that, after deducting the space occupied by the bed, seven individuals huddle together all of a heap in an area 6 feet by 5 feet. the room was damp and draughty. the next room was 18 feet by 10 feet; shamefully out of repair, the wooden partition falling to pieces. some of the holes in it were carefully patched with paper, but the neighbours constantly tear this off to look in. one of the so-called panels of the door had been kicked in by a drunken man; the landlord would not repair it, so the occupant had nailed a piece of canvas over it. the window-glass was mostly gone, and though the window had originally been made to open, the sash was too rotten to be touched. the floor was in holes in several places. the rain came in along one wall. the rent is £4. the family consisted of an elderly father and mother, and two sons, plumbers. the father and eldest son had been out of work for some time, and the youngest was only getting better from a fever. they were very reticent about their circumstances, but we gathered that two daughters in service were supporting them. both father and mother were rheumatic from the damp of the house, they said. there were two beds, but they "can't sleep on either,--alive with bugs from the walls," so take refuge on the floor. the woman pulled aside a patch of canvas, and showed the wall swarming with these pests. they had taken every means of destroying them, but in vain. the room was scrupulously clean. the next measured 11 feet by 5, and 6 feet at the highest part. a single pane of glass in a corner under the roof let in as much light as made objects discernible. the plenishings consisted of a filthy straw bed, a bit of carpet, and an iron pot. the floor was almost covered with cinders, and mended in three places with stones. the room was loathsome, the smell overpowering, the look of abject and uncared-for misery sickening. the occupants were a widow, a cinder-picker, and her two children, very poor. the children were "learning the devil's lessons" in the close below. a neighbour told us that the mother often locks them into the room from five o'clock in the morning till ten or eleven at night. the rent is £2, 12s. the next room was a house of ill-fame, with seven occupants, very disorderly, and much complained of by the neighbours on each side, who were separated from it only by a wretched partition. the next room was almost dark; 11 feet by 5 feet; rent, 1s. per week. its sole occupant was a frightful-looking hag, apparently more than seventy years old, a mass of rags and filth, with an uncovered hoary head, whose long locks were tangled with neglect and dirt. she was sleeping off the effects of a drunken debauch on some old straw, but woke up sufficiently to mutter a curse, and glower upon us a moment with her bloodshot eyes. she had received the parish allowance the day before, and this was the result--a whisky-bottle, without a cork, but not quite empty, was lying beside her. there was no other sign of human habitation, and in the wretched object lying on the straw we could hardly recognise humanity. our next visit was of a different kind. reaching the topmost floor, we came upon a passage, very dilapidated, but lighted by a large projecting window. a very respectable artisan was lime-washing the passage, the roof, and the top of the stair. he said it was the best he could do, and he did it once a fortnight. he had two rooms, only one of which had direct light. they were like all the rest, in utter disrepair. he leant against the outer partition, which swerved considerably from the perpendicular as he did so, and said, "the weight of two men would bring it down." he came to a situation in edinburgh, has good wages, and could meet with nothing better than this at the term. the rent is £9 a year. he gave a revolting account of the immorality of the stair. he had three young children, he said; if he couldn't get into a decent neighbourhood he'd rather see them in their graves than grow up there. "what can i hope for my bairns," he added, "when they can't get a breath of fresh air without seeing such as yon?" looking out, we saw in a window, not a pistol-shot off, three debased women, sitting in the broad daylight, absolutely nude, as far as we could see of them. the worthy citizens who were with me blushed for the city called so fair, in which an honest artisan, with money in his pocket, was compelled to shelter his family where all sights and sounds were polluting, feeling, as he did, the abhorrent shame. the top of the stair was much broken, and destitute of any protection. a fall would have been into about forty feet of darkness. on our alluding to this as a great peril for the young children, the man said, with a bitter smile, "bairns reared in such places are like lambs born among precipices--they early learn to take care of themselves." this is true, or the juvenile population of these closes would be decimated. of the sad sights we saw that morning, that was about the saddest--the honest man and his shame, and the helplessness of his circumstances. it was enough to make even "polite indifference" put forth some redeeming effort. first room on fifth floor, 12 by 14 feet. rent £2, 10s. very cold; roof out of repair, and admitting rain; the partitions much broken. the occupiers were a very decent-looking man, seventy-six years old, by trade a shoemaker, his wife, aged seventy-three, and a dumb grandson, who was mending a shoe on the stool on which his grandfather "had sat for sixty-two years." they had parish relief. the woman had been in bed twelve months with paralysis, and suffered much from being removed. the dirt and vermin were perfectly awful. she was a miserable object; apparently she had no bed-gown, and her skeleton chest and ribs, which were exposed to view, might have served as a model for death. both she and her husband had the speech and air of having seen better days. they had lived in this attic for twenty years, and had had typhus fever twice during the last ten. the rent had been raised £1 during the same period. they had five children, scattered in australia and america, but letters addressed to them were returned with the notice "not found." they seemed very poor, but made no complaint of anything but the wretched condition of the room, the cold and damp, the want of privacy, and the distance from which the old man had to bring the water up the long dark stair. the room was clean, with the exception of the bed, but the cracks in the partitions there, as everywhere else, were "alive with bugs." the old man _said_ he was a church-member, and paid 2s. 6d. a year for a seat at a u.p. church. this was their own account of themselves, and the general appearance of things bore it out. such are the cases in which much may be done, by systematic visitation, in the way of arresting a downward course. these people are now in the poor-house, the dram-shop having proved too much for the old man. next room, 8 feet by 9 feet. a most wretched place, only fit to be pulled down; borrowed light. a joiner, in very bad health, and consequently out of work for two years, with his wife and four children, and a daughter by a former marriage, with an illegitimate child, were the occupants. the wife and grown-up daughter earn 7s. 6d. per week by washing. the rent is £2 a year. a most miserable family, utterly gone to wreck. next room.--a blind labourer, very frail, with a wife, who supports the family and four children. after an illness, were ordered into the poor-house, then out again, and were quite broken up by it. this room was wretched in every respect--9 feet by 10 feet, very low, and rented at £2. in the next room there was a very sad case--a compositor, with a wife and two children, living in a room, requiring a candle at mid-day, 12 feet by 8 feet; roof mended with tin, letting in the rain; floor broken and mended with stones, so rotten that a walking-stick went through it in two places. the man's joints were stiff with rheumatism, caught in the damp cold of the room. work had slackened, and after having had a good room in carrubbers close, they had come here. the man had had no work for a long time, and they had pledged everything, till they had only "the clothes they stood in." they had had good furniture, but it "was all gone to keep life in them." they spoke of their poverty very reluctantly, and very warmly of the kindness of the missionary. both man and wife were steady. her earnings supported them; but she was expecting her confinement shortly. the next room was 14 feet by 8 feet, and the remains of a cornice held on to the outer wall. the side walls were skeleton partitions, dilapidated and swarming with bugs. there were three doors. the occupant was a fish-hawker, an irishwoman--cheery and self-asserting, voluble as to herself and her neighbours. had she been of smaller size and milder tongue the hardship of which she complained would have had more pathos about it; but even as it is, a more infamous injustice could scarcely be perpetrated by the proprietors of these ruinous fabrics: her room had been subdivided since she came; she continued to pay the old rent--£4. the occupants of the inner room were a man and woman, with two lodgers, apparently of most irregular habits, who came through her room with a passkey, drunk and sober, at all hours of day and night. this is one of eleven instances of passage-rooms that i have seen in edinburgh. in the cowgate this infamous system flourishes, and occasionally to such an extent that the outer room is the only mode of ingress and egress for three or four others. the insult and hardship this plan entails upon the virtuous, and the facilities for immorality that it affords to the vicious cannot be recited here. outside this woman's room there was a perfect labyrinth of passages, all dark, but on opening a door we entered a room 12 feet square, with direct light, but with rotten partitions, like all the rest, and so pervious to sound that we heard every word of a narrative of our visit which the "decent widder" before mentioned was giving to an incomer. this room was miserable. ashes, the accumulation of days, heaped the floor round the fire. there was no other furniture than a bedstead with a straw mattress upon it, a table, and a stool; but it was the occupants, rather than the apparent poverty, who claimed our attention. a girl about eighteen, very poorly dressed, was sitting on the stool; two others, older and very much undressed, were sitting on the floor, and the three were eating, in most swinish fashion, out of a large black pot containing fish. i have shared a similar meal, in a similar primitive fashion, in an indian wigwam in the hudson's bay territory, but there the women who worshipped the great spirit were modest in their dress and manner, and looked _human_, which these "christian" young women did not. an infant of about a month old, perfect in its beauty, and smiling in its sleep, "as though heaven lay about it," was on the bed, not dressed, but partly covered with a rug. what better could be desired for it than that the angels might take it speedily away from that shameful birth-chamber to behold its father's face in heaven? easier by far to trust it in death to his mercy, than in life to the zeal of the christianity of edinburgh. death for these is better than life; and, in many cases, drugs and neglect soon bring it about. "where are you from?" one of my philanthropic companions asked of the girl of eighteen, the mother. "dundee; mother and i came here five weeks ago. i was a mill-worker." "will the father of your child marry you?" "no, sir." "have you got work here?" "no, sir; i can't get any." "what are you going to do, then?" "i suppose i must do as the others." she gave this answer without shame, and without effrontery. an upbringing in a dundee "pend" had not acquainted her with shame as an attendant upon sin. alas for the hundreds of girl-children growing up among the debasing circumstances of the crowded "lands" of our wynds and closes, without even the instincts of virtue! the next room, though miserable in itself, was clean and well furnished, with pictures hanging upon the partitions. a mother and daughter, both widows, but earning a good living by needlework, were the occupants. they complained bitterly of the gross viciousness of the stair, and of the "awful riot" kept up all night by those newcomers. they told us that the wretched old hag who had come from dundee had five female lodgers, with only two gowns among them all, and that they were of the poorest and most degraded class. these respectable widows, both elderly women, had lived in that room for seven years, and in the main had had quiet neighbours. they now found themselves in this close proximity to a den of vice, unable to exclude the sounds which came through the thin partition, and too terrified at night by the drinking and uproar to be able to sleep. the term was lately passed, so they were compelled to bear it. a few sentences more will take us through the remaining rooms on the two floors we are investigating. there follow a widow, who binds shoes, with two children, sleeping in a large bed in a room 11 feet by 9 feet, with a small window, letting in air too impure to breathe; rent, £2, 12s. a widow, with a brother seventy-two years old, poor, but clean, chiefly dependent on a daughter in service. a mason's labourer, who once farmed six acres of land, now earns 12s. per week; wife with bad eyes, and health too delicate for work, having fretted herself into decline for two children who had died of the cholera; room, 12 feet by 8 feet, rented at 1s. 2d. per week. three adults and six children in a room 12 feet by 10 feet, without direct light. drunken labourer, earning 15s. per week--two sons in prison; two daughters living with him, with three illegitimate children; room, 14 feet by 15 feet; rent, £3, 18s. a year. pauper widow, with one child and two unregistered lodgers. married labourer, with two children, earning 15s. per week; three lodgers (prostitutes) in the same room, 14 feet by 12 feet; rent, £3, 18s.; borrowed light; no furniture; all drunken together. then follow five families, all wretched; and we have completed our room-to-room visitation of two floors in an average land in an average close in the high street. as seen thus, in broad daylight, except for the filth, dilapidation, vermin, darkness, and poverty, combined with the suggestions of immoral conduct on the part of most of the people, there was nothing peculiarly startling to any one at all acquainted with the old town of edinburgh. i have taken this particular close, for the especial reason that what is said of it and its inhabitants applies to dwellings and circumstances in which possibly 40,000 people pass their days. i have given the impression made by it upon a stranger, in preference to depicting entries in a part of the town with which i am well acquainted, and which, in many of their aspects, are far worse. there are cellar-dwellings, damp and dark, old byres with open drains still running through them, let for human beings; garrets, damp and draughty, in which a man can scarcely stand upright; and cabins, of which stairs, roofs, and walls are mainly of wood. there are rooms as small as any i have mentioned, occupied by one, two, and three families, only reached by passage-rooms as small and crowded as themselves; and in these dens the whole round of human life goes on--agonies of birth and death, miseries of sickness and sorrow, marriage jollifications, funeral revels, the cold remains of mortality lying on the same straw with the living; the miserable meal on the table, the unshrouded corpse on the floor. are such woes as these, such absolute savage degradation, the inevitable deposit of the highest christian civilisation? is there, indeed, no balm in gilead--is there no physician there? is it the curse of god's indignation, or the curse of man's selfishness, avarice, and neglect, under which those thousands are lying? is this the "good ground" on which the gospel seed is to spring up and bear fruit one hundredfold? are the rich and godly to send missionaries and bible-women among these masses, and save their own souls by giving the necessary funds? shall they not rather go down themselves among the lost, as christ went, and learn their needs, and find from themselves that foremost among these are decent dwellings in which it might be possible to live and die otherwise than as swine. we might then hear less of money lying at two per cent. in the banks, or lost in insolvent railroads, and more of 8, 10, and 12 per cent. as a certain return. talk of the risk of house property! is it greater than the risks people have contentedly run for years in railroads, mines, and cotton? possibly every £100 spent on improving the dwellings of the poor might do something towards accumulating a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, or moth corrupteth. the walls of the old town houses are generally strong. such a "land" as that which i have described, gutted from cellar to roof, and supplied with water, gas, and a temporary receptacle for rubbish, would make a good substantial house at a comparatively small cost, with a certain return of from 8 to 10 per cent. the removal of the subdividing partitions, new floors, doors, and windows would be a necessity. the good result of such an undertaking in every close and wynd would not be only the placing of sixteen or eighteen families in a position in which, if they were so minded, they could be moral and religious, but the insertion of a _wedge_ into this hardened stratum of viciousness and poverty. the bad could not be so bad in close proximity to the virtuous. the filthy would aspire to be something better. the landlords, the hardest class of all to deal with, would be compelled, by competition and opinion, to amend their property and their ways. decent houses in st. bernard's or st. leonard's have no more influence over the manners and morals of hume's close or todrick's wynd than decent houses in moray place or chester street; but decent lands put down in cant's close or skinner's close, with rooms rented from £2, 10s. to £4, would do a better work of reformation around them than all the agencies which are at work. it is only necessary to refer to the complete renovation of warden's close, grassmarket, by dr. foulis, as a proof of what is to be done by energetic individual action. the restored fabric, as arranged for _human beings_, pays 14 per cent. of course, the still greater overcrowding of other dens during the renovation of even one "land" requires to be carefully provided against. it has been frequently stated that a third of the inhabitants of edinburgh are not in connexion with any christian church. in the thirty-two families visited in ---close, two women were the only persons who professed to attend any place of worship. in another small close which we visited none but a catholic family professed to attend any church. eight years ago, in two populous stairs in another part of the town with which i was well acquainted, there was a total of nine persons attending church out of an adult population of forty. at the present time this number is reduced to one woman, who, "when she goes anywhere, goes to lady yester's." of the thirty-two families before spoken of, most of the women and some of the men had formerly been church-goers. where is this "lapsing" to end? chapter iv. i have given the aspect of the houses and population of a particular district by daylight, avoiding all sensational details. the "night side" of the same is well known from description--the high street filled with a densely compacted, loitering, brawling, buying, selling, singing, cursing, quarrelsome crowd--every fifth man and woman the worse for drink so early as ten at night--a nocturnal market vigorously proceeds under difficulties--men and women puff their wares with stentorian tones and coarse wit--barrows with flaring lights, from which the poorest of the poor are buying the unwholesome refuse of the shops, stale fish, and stale vegetables--boys vending laces, nuts, whistles--women hawking tin and crockery ware, all eager, pushing, poor. add to these, the exhibitors of penny-shows and penny cheats, the singers of low and improper songs, the vendors of popular melodies and penny narrations of crime, and an idea may be formed of the noisy traffic of the high street. as the night goes on, the crowd becomes more drunk and criminal until the legal hour of closing the spirit-shops, when hundreds of pallid, ragged wretches are vomited forth upon the street to carry terrors into their dark, crowded homes. the majority are half-mad, and almost wholly desperate. men and women, savage with drink, are biting, scratching, mauling each other; the air is laden with blasphemies, brutal shouts from the strong; cries from the weak; blows are dealt aimlessly; infants at midnight cry in the wet street for mothers drunk in the gutters or police cells; young girls and boys are locked out for the night by parents frantic with drink, viragos storm, policemen here and there drag an offender out of the crowd amidst the chaffing and coarse laughter of young girls bearing the outward marks of a life of degradation; mothers with infants in their arms lie helpless in the gutters, to be trundled off to the final ignominy of the police cell, wretches scarcely clothed, whom the daylight knows not, slink stealthily to some foul cellar lair,--and all this, and worse than this, from the tron down the canongate, and along the cowgate, and in the grassmarket, and in numbers of the lanes and alleys, broad and narrow, which border upon them. the district we visited by day we visited also by night, to find that at 11 p.m. the whole population of the lands previously described was astir, mostly from evil, partly from the impossibility of quiet; that small children were still out among the influences of the closes and the street, and that there was no sign that the night had come, except the darkness and the increased overcrowding of many of the rooms. the dark, narrow passages were in several places almost impassable, owing to the dead-drunk men who lay across them; the rooms were thronged and stifling, and sick and well, drunk and sober, vicious and virtuous, were all huddled together with only a pretence of separation. whole families were sitting in the dark, or cowering round fires which only rendered the darkness visible. "a horror of great darkness" rested on all the houses. the noise was hideous. decent people might well be afraid of going to bed. half the inmates were under the influence of drink. drunkards tumbled up the long dark stairs, and reeled down the dark passages, with shouts and imprecations, destitute even of the instinct which teaches a wild beast the way to its own den. sounds of brawling, fighting, and revelry came from many of the rooms. here a drunkard was kicking through the panels of a neighbour's door; there two dead-drunk women lay on a heap of straw; here a half-tipsy virago protested to us, with the air of a tragedy queen, that she "took in none but respectable lodgers;" there a man mad with drink tore his wife's throat with his nails. one room presented a scene of disgusting revelry and vice. in the next a feeble woman was stilling the moans of a dying child. "and that day was the preparation." it was the edinburgh saturday night, and over the din and discord of city sins, and over the wail of city sorrows, came the sweet sound of st. giles's bells announcing that the sabbath had begun. of that saturday night in edinburgh the rev. r. maguire, rector of clerkenwell, who was one of our party, writes, in the _church of england temperance magazine_--"we can but say that all we saw that night has left upon our mind the painful feeling, that of all the dark and desolate places of the earth the old town is about the darkest and the most desolate." he adds, in the same paper, after a description of some of the dwellings in hume's close--"we can scarcely feel surprised to know that the condition of these thousands is far past all hope." clerkenwell itself, whitechapel, and lambeth can furnish enough of misery and crime, but it is not believed that any city in europe contains an area of wretchedness so large and unbroken as edinburgh. in other cities the miserable dwellings and their inhabitants hide themselves out of sight in obscure purlieus, scarcely known to the rich by name, much less by observation. here the very core of all is the high street of the city, with a royal palace at one end and a royal castle at the other, and studded down the whole of its picturesque length with public buildings. here are the courts of law, the parliament house, the city chambers, the assembly halls of the established and free churches, the cathedral, numerous places of worship, some of which at least are, or were, fashionable, newspaper offices, printing establishments, and one of the most frequented shops in the city, the wholesale and retail establishment of duncan m'laren and son. thus, instead of being hidden away, the wretchedness and vice of the high street and canongate obtrude themselves on all passers-by, from the representative of royalty who in semi-regal state passes up and down the whole extent of this _via dolorosa_, several times annually, to the summer swarm of tourists from all parts of the world, who return to their own cities rejoicing that they are not as the metropolis of scotland. but it is not from such casual visitors that the amelioration of the condition of the poor is to be expected--not on them that the responsibility rests. it is on the gentlemen who cross the high street daily to lounge in the parliament house, on the _literati_ who frequent one of the finest libraries in britain, on the antiquarians who explore the wynds and closes in search of an ancient inscription or a remnant of a cornice, on the hundreds, both of ladies and gentlemen, whose avocations continually carry them to the various public offices in the high street, on all who see and all who hear. can it be that the feelings of all these are blunted by familiarity with sights which shock a stranger; or that the upper classes in edinburgh are steeped in an unwholesome indifferentism; or that the christianity of the city is waxing feeble and old? without admitting one or all of these defects, it is difficult to account for the extreme complacency with which the majority of the upper classes are acting out the creed, "forget the painful, suppress the disagreeable, banish the ugly;" content to add luxury to luxury, and to throw away money on ill-considered alms, while the poor are perishing from neglect. it is difficult to comprehend such intense apathy, after all that has been written by the daily press, private individuals, and lastly by the "society for improving the condition of the poor," to show the thinly-crusted abyss over which people are disporting themselves. it might have been supposed that when facts similar to those stated in these notes have been reiterated from various quarters, so that no adult in edinburgh can plead ignorance concerning the state of the poor, that the appeal for visitors made by the society aforesaid would have met a tremendous and immediate response, and that the gentlemen of edinburgh would have come forward, as those of other and busier cities have done, to offer willing aid. if there be another thing more mournful than the poverty and immorality of the poor, it is the vicious selfishness of the rich. it is observable in edinburgh, as well as elsewhere, that the upper classes indulge very freely in the expression of opinion on the "dirt, vice, and improvidence of the poor," but the lapsed masses of the old town have a "public opinion" also regarding the selfishness, heartlessness, and indifference of the rich, and express it without much reticence of phraseology. indeed, it is doubtful whether there is a man or woman who looks across the green ravine which separates the old town from the new, who has not a very decided opinion, right or wrong, that the negative and positive delinquencies of the best-instructed class have a great deal to do with the lapsing of the masses in this city. almost the first steps have yet to be taken towards removing this baneful hostility of class, and promoting a healthy feeling on each side. in "house-to-house visitation" in edinburgh, i have observed with much surprise that among 145 families visited 143 were _scotch_. in almost the whole of these the influence of a decent upbringing, and the restraints which connexion with a church imposes, had been thrown away, and the people, utterly debased and pauperized, had not a rag of scottish pride left. it appears from all that can be observed that the mere existence of these unbroken masses of poverty, overcrowding, and vice, has a tendency to _denationalize_ the people, and to produce a population which shall be absolutely barren of those virtues which have been considered peculiarly scotch--a population, in fact, knowing nothing of truthfulness, modesty, reverence for parents and old age, independence, sabbath observance, and thrift. these masses, which are sinking lower and lower, in spite of existing agencies, have little to distinguish them from the "dangerous classes" of london, paris, or new york, except that they are more drunken and dirty. their mere existence, to say nothing of their increase, is sapping the foundations of "scottish nationality." another thing which impresses a stranger is a peculiar habit of speech common to nearly all these people, and is possibly nearly the only relic of their more religious days. "god-forgotten" was the phrase they nearly all used, an expression which gives occasion to the question, "have christians, who are the representatives of god upon earth, misrepresented him to these people by their neglect?" a grudge against god, an idea as if he were the author of evil and not good to them, seemed general. many of the phrases used showed a sort of reckless belief, which, under the circumstances, was worse than unbelief. coming down a long dark stair late at night, from an overcrowded land, a frightful hag clutched my arm with her skinny hand, and hissed into my ear, "_is it god's elect you are seeking here? it's the devil's elect you'll find_," laughing fiendishly at her own wit. "so this is blackfriars wynd," remarked one of our party, as we passed down the crowded alley. "_no, it's hell's mouth_," exclaimed a forlorn woman, who was dragging a drunken man to his joyless home. "do you think the missionary would dare to mock me by telling me of god's love? could he have the face to do it _here_?" a poor woman exclaimed, whose three fatherless children lay ill on some straw, which served for a bed in a cellar, of which it and a kettle were the only "furniture." it is one thing to hear unpleasant facts stated by unwelcome speakers, or to meet with them fossilized in statistical tables, but altogether another to confront them in beings clothed in kindred flesh and blood, in men, women, and children claiming a common fatherhood, and asserting their right to be heard. these our brethren, haggard, hopeless, hardened, vicious, on whose faces sin has graved deeper lines than either sorrow or poverty; this old age which is not venerable, this infancy which is not loveable, these childish faces, or faces which should have been childish, peering from amidst elvish locks, and telling of a precocious familiarity with sin,--these glowering upon us from the tottering west bow, with its patched and dirty windows, from the still picturesque lawnmarket, from the many-storeyed houses of the high street,--these are spectres not easily to be laid to rest, and "polite society," which has become perfect in the polite art of indifference, must encounter them, sooner or later, in one way or another. surely it is possible to raise these our brethren, who are living and dying like brutes, to a platform on which the gospel of him who came to preach glad tidings to the poor would not be met by nearly insuperable obstacles. though more wretches have been pulled out of the mire by mission churches than by any other agency, the masses are "lapsed," "gone under," sunk on the whole to lower depths than the ministerial plummet can sound, and the ministers, most of whom are hampered by the existing necessities of large congregations, are not _directly_ responsible for a condition of things which is a disgrace to scottish christianity. my own experience leads me to believe that these lapsed masses must be raised out of the "slough of despond" before they can hear or see; that these miserable thousands must have at least as much light, air, and space as we give our brutes, before a ministerial visit can be aught but a mockery,--before they can rise to manhood and womanhood in christ. the ministers are not to be altogether blamed for failing to carry the tidings of peace to those who are too deaf, from drink and demoralization, to hear them. condemn them if they fail to thunder into ears scarcely less dull, that the blood of those who are going down alive into the pit will be required of a church-membership which is bound to aim at no lesser measure of devotion than his who laid down his life for the brethren. let them demand the lives of these godless ones from the respectable who enjoy the sabbath luxury of sermons; let them declare a crusade against the christlessness and apathy of those who sit at ease at communion-tables, content to leave those to the outer darkness for whom that same body and blood were broken and shed, and they will be guiltless. it was by a life of sacrifice and a death of shame that the redemption of this world was wrought; and it is by a life of sacrifice alone--if loving search after the lost, if personal sympathy with the wretched, if stooping to raise and aid the poor are to be called sacrifice--that the master's steps can be followed and his work on the earth be completed. i. l. b. edinburgh: t. constable, printer to the queen, and to the university. footnotes: [1] report on the condition of the poorer classes in edinburgh, 1868, p. 19. [2] report on the condition of the poorer classes of edinburgh, 1868, p. 49. now ready, sixth edition, in one vol., extra foolscap 8vo, 7s. 6d. horæ subsecivæ. by john brown, m.d., f.r.s.e. fellow of the royal college of physicians, edinburgh. contents. letter to john cairns, d.d. dr. chalmers. dr. george wilson. her last half-crown. queen mary's child-garden. our dogs. notes on art. "oh, i'm wat, wat!" education through the senses. [greek: agchinoia]--nearness of the [greek: nots]--presence of mind--[greek: eustochia]: happy guessing. the black dwarf's bones. rab and his friends. "with brains, sir!" arthur h. hallam. of all the john browns, commend as to dr. john brown, the physician, the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs. by means of two beautiful volumes, he has given the public a share of his by-hours, and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in any life. dr. brown's master-piece is the story of a dog called 'rab.' the tale moves from the most tragic pathos to the most reckless humour, and could not have been written but by a man of genius. whether it moves to laughter or tears, it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes its author. the contents of these _horæ subsecivæ_ are very miscellaneous. from stories of dogs, biographies of doctors and ministers, hints on medical education and practice, we turn to criticisms on poetry and art. one of the volumes contains the best account of arthur hallam, the hero of mr. tennyson's _elegiacs_, that is anywhere to be found. in the other, there is a very curious and racy criticism on the poems of henry vaughan.--_times._ there is a pleasant article on the arthur henry hallam of '_in memoriam_.'... the story of "rab and his friends" is a veritable gem. it is true, simple, pathetic, and touched with an antique grace, which, in such vicinity, charms and surprises. if any pre-raphaelite aspirant would learn how doric homeliness may be united with the utmost perfection and symmetry of form, let him read this beautiful episode.... a book of much wisdom and beauty, and we most heartily recommend it--its cause as well as its execution.--_fraser's mag._ odds and ends. now ready, vol. i., in cloth, price 4s. 6d., containing nos. 1-10: 1. sketches of highland character.--sheep farmers and drovers. 2. convicts. by a practical hand. 3. wayside thoughts of an asophophilosopher. by d'arcy w. thompson. no. 1. rainy weather; or, the philosophy of sorrow. gooseskin; or, the philosophy of horror. te deum laudamus; or, the philosophy of joy. 4. the enterkin. by john brown, m.d. 5. wayside thoughts of an asophophilosopher. by d'arcy w. thompson. no. 2. asses--history--plagues. 6. penitentiaries and reformatories. 7. notes from paris; or, why are frenchmen and englishmen different? 8. essays by an old man. no. 1. in memoriam--vanitas vanitatum--friends. 9. wayside thoughts of an asophophilosopher. by d'arcy w. thompson. no. 3. not godless, but godly; a triangular treatise on education. 10. the influence of the reformation on the scottish character. by j. a. froude, author of the 'history of england.' now ready, vol. ii., in cloth, price 4s. 6d., containing nos. 11-19: 11. the cattle plague. by lyon playfair, c.b., ll.d, f.r.s., etc. 12. rough nights' quarters. by one of the people who have roughed it. 13. letters on the education of young children. by s. g. o. 14. the stormontfield piscicultural experiments. 1853-1866. by robert buist. 15. a tract for the times. 16. spain in 1866. 17. the highland shepherd. by the author of 'the two queys.' 18. the doctrine of the correlation of forces: its development and evidence. by the rev. james cranbrook, edinburgh. 19. 'bibliomania.' 20. a tract on twigs, and on the best way to bend them. edinburgh: edmonston and douglas. transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. one advertisement in the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. maggie: a girl of the streets by stephen crane chapter i a very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of rum alley. he was throwing stones at howling urchins from devil's row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. his infantile countenance was livid with fury. his small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths. "run, jimmie, run! dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating rum alley child. "naw," responded jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run." howls of renewed wrath went up from devil's row throats. tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. on their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. as they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus. the little champion of rum alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. his coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. he had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. his wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon. on the ground, children from devil's row closed in on their antagonist. he crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. the little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles. from a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. the engineer of a passive tugboat hung lazily to a railing and watched. over on the island, a worm of yellow convicts came from the shadow of a building and crawled slowly along the river's bank. a stone had smashed into jimmie's mouth. blood was bubbling over his chin and down upon his ragged shirt. tears made furrows on his dirt-stained cheeks. his thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel. his roaring curses of the first part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter. in the yells of the whirling mob of devil's row children there were notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery. the little boys seemed to leer gloatingly at the blood upon the other child's face. down the avenue came boastfully sauntering a lad of sixteen years, although the chronic sneer of an ideal manhood already sat upon his lips. his hat was tipped with an air of challenge over his eye. between his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance. he walked with a certain swing of the shoulders which appalled the timid. he glanced over into the vacant lot in which the little raving boys from devil's row seethed about the shrieking and tearful child from rum alley. "gee!" he murmured with interest. "a scrap. gee!" he strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders in a manner which denoted that he held victory in his fists. he approached at the back of one of the most deeply engaged of the devil's row children. "ah, what deh hell," he said, and smote the deeply-engaged one on the back of the head. the little boy fell to the ground and gave a hoarse, tremendous howl. he scrambled to his feet, and perceiving, evidently, the size of his assailant, ran quickly off, shouting alarms. the entire devil's row party followed him. they came to a stand a short distance away and yelled taunting oaths at the boy with the chronic sneer. the latter, momentarily, paid no attention to them. "what deh hell, jimmie?" he asked of the small champion. jimmie wiped his blood-wet features with his sleeve. "well, it was dis way, pete, see! i was goin' teh lick dat riley kid and dey all pitched on me." some rum alley children now came forward. the party stood for a moment exchanging vainglorious remarks with devil's row. a few stones were thrown at long distances, and words of challenge passed between small warriors. then the rum alley contingent turned slowly in the direction of their home street. they began to give, each to each, distorted versions of the fight. causes of retreat in particular cases were magnified. blows dealt in the fight were enlarged to catapultian power, and stones thrown were alleged to have hurtled with infinite accuracy. valor grew strong again, and the little boys began to swear with great spirit. "ah, we blokies kin lick deh hull damn row," said a child, swaggering. little jimmie was striving to stanch the flow of blood from his cut lips. scowling, he turned upon the speaker. "ah, where deh hell was yeh when i was doin' all deh fightin?" he demanded. "youse kids makes me tired." "ah, go ahn," replied the other argumentatively. jimmie replied with heavy contempt. "ah, youse can't fight, blue billie! i kin lick yeh wid one han'." "ah, go ahn," replied billie again. "ah," said jimmie threateningly. "ah," said the other in the same tone. they struck at each other, clinched, and rolled over on the cobble stones. "smash 'im, jimmie, kick deh damn guts out of 'im," yelled pete, the lad with the chronic sneer, in tones of delight. the small combatants pounded and kicked, scratched and tore. they began to weep and their curses struggled in their throats with sobs. the other little boys clasped their hands and wriggled their legs in excitement. they formed a bobbing circle about the pair. a tiny spectator was suddenly agitated. "cheese it, jimmie, cheese it! here comes yer fader," he yelled. the circle of little boys instantly parted. they drew away and waited in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen. the two little boys fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago, did not hear the warning. up the avenue there plodded slowly a man with sullen eyes. he was carrying a dinner pail and smoking an apple-wood pipe. as he neared the spot where the little boys strove, he regarded them listlessly. but suddenly he roared an oath and advanced upon the rolling fighters. "here, you jim, git up, now, while i belt yer life out, you damned disorderly brat." he began to kick into the chaotic mass on the ground. the boy billie felt a heavy boot strike his head. he made a furious effort and disentangled himself from jimmie. he tottered away, damning. jimmie arose painfully from the ground and confronting his father, began to curse him. his parent kicked him. "come home, now," he cried, "an' stop yer jawin', er i'll lam the everlasting head off yehs." they departed. the man paced placidly along with the apple-wood emblem of serenity between his teeth. the boy followed a dozen feet in the rear. he swore luridly, for he felt that it was degradation for one who aimed to be some vague soldier, or a man of blood with a sort of sublime license, to be taken home by a father. chapter ii eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. a wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows. long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. in all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. in the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. a thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. the building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels. a small ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant along the crowded ways. he was hanging back, baby-like, bracing his wrinkled, bare legs. the little girl cried out: "ah, tommie, come ahn. dere's jimmie and fader. don't be a-pullin' me back." she jerked the baby's arm impatiently. he fell on his face, roaring. with a second jerk she pulled him to his feet, and they went on. with the obstinacy of his order, he protested against being dragged in a chosen direction. he made heroic endeavors to keep on his legs, denounce his sister and consume a bit of orange peeling which he chewed between the times of his infantile orations. as the sullen-eyed man, followed by the blood-covered boy, drew near, the little girl burst into reproachful cries. "ah, jimmie, youse bin fightin' agin." the urchin swelled disdainfully. "ah, what deh hell, mag. see?" the little girl upbraided him, "youse allus fightin', jimmie, an' yeh knows it puts mudder out when yehs come home half dead, an' it's like we'll all get a poundin'." she began to weep. the babe threw back his head and roared at his prospects. "ah, what deh hell!" cried jimmie. "shut up er i'll smack yer mout'. see?" as his sister continued her lamentations, he suddenly swore and struck her. the little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burst into tears and quaveringly cursed him. as she slowly retreated her brother advanced dealing her cuffs. the father heard and turned about. "stop that, jim, d'yeh hear? leave yer sister alone on the street. it's like i can never beat any sense into yer damned wooden head." the urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent and continued his attacks. the babe bawled tremendously, protesting with great violence. during his sister's hasty manoeuvres, he was dragged by the arm. finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome doorways. they crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls. at last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a large woman was rampant. she stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-covered table. as the father and children filed in she peered at them. "eh, what? been fightin' agin, by gawd!" she threw herself upon jimmie. the urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the scuffle the babe, tommie, was knocked down. he protested with his usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against a table leg. the mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger. grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled. she dragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his lacerated face with it. jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms. the babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. the father, with a newly-ladened pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair near the stove. jimmie's cries annoyed him. he turned about and bellowed at his wife: "let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, mary? yer allus poundin' 'im. when i come nights i can't git no rest 'cause yer allus poundin' a kid. let up, d'yeh hear? don't be allus poundin' a kid." the woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence. at last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and weeping. the wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a chieftain-like stride approached her husband. "ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "an' what in the devil are you stickin' your nose for?" the babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. the ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him. the man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots on the back part of the stove. "go teh hell," he murmured, tranquilly. the woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's eyes. the rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson. she began to howl. he puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and began to look out at the window into the darkening chaos of back yards. "you've been drinkin', mary," he said. "you'd better let up on the bot', ol' woman, or you'll git done." "you're a liar. i ain't had a drop," she roared in reply. they had a lurid altercation, in which they damned each other's souls with frequence. the babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working in his excitement. the ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the urchin lay. "are yehs hurted much, jimmie?" she whispered timidly. "not a damn bit! see?" growled the little boy. "will i wash deh blood?" "naw!" "will i--" "when i catch dat riley kid i'll break 'is face! dat's right! see?" he turned his face to the wall as if resolved to grimly bide his time. in the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor. the man grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparently determined upon a vengeful drunk. she followed to the door and thundered at him as he made his way down stairs. she returned and stirred up the room until her children were bobbing about like bubbles. "git outa deh way," she persistently bawled, waving feet with their dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children. she shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at the stove, and eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes that hissed. she flourished it. "come teh yer suppers, now," she cried with sudden exasperation. "hurry up, now, er i'll help yeh!" the children scrambled hastily. with prodigious clatter they arranged themselves at table. the babe sat with his feet dangling high from a precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach. jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. maggie, with side glances of fear of interruption, ate like a small pursued tigress. the mother sat blinking at them. she delivered reproaches, swallowed potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle. after a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried little tommie into another room and laid him to sleep with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red and green grandeur. then she came and moaned by the stove. she rocked to and fro upon a chair, shedding tears and crooning miserably to the two children about their "poor mother" and "yer fader, damn 'is soul." the little girl plodded between the table and the chair with a dish-pan on it. she tottered on her small legs beneath burdens of dishes. jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. he cast furtive glances at his mother. his practised eye perceived her gradually emerge from a muddled mist of sentiment until her brain burned in drunken heat. he sat breathless. maggie broke a plate. the mother started to her feet as if propelled. "good gawd," she howled. her eyes glittered on her child with sudden hatred. the fervent red of her face turned almost to purple. the little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake. he floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. he stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. an old woman opened a door. a light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face. "eh, gawd, child, what is it dis time? is yer fader beatin' yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?" chapter iii jimmie and the old woman listened long in the hall. above the muffled roar of conversation, the dismal wailings of babies at night, the thumping of feet in unseen corridors and rooms, mingled with the sound of varied hoarse shoutings in the street and the rattling of wheels over cobbles, they heard the screams of the child and the roars of the mother die away to a feeble moaning and a subdued bass muttering. the old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who could don, at will, an expression of great virtue. she possessed a small music-box capable of one tune, and a collection of "god bless yehs" pitched in assorted keys of fervency. each day she took a position upon the stones of fifth avenue, where she crooked her legs under her and crouched immovable and hideous, like an idol. she received daily a small sum in pennies. it was contributed, for the most part, by persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity. once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity beneath her cloak. when she was arrested she had cursed the lady into a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from rheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policeman whose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said: "the police, damn 'em." "eh, jimmie, it's cursed shame," she said. "go, now, like a dear an' buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs can sleep here." jimmie took a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed. he passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar. straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would let him. he saw two hands thrust down and take them. directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left. in front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure. it was his father, swaying about on uncertain legs. "give me deh can. see?" said the man, threateningly. "ah, come off! i got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud be dirt teh swipe it. see?" cried jimmie. the father wrenched the pail from the urchin. he grasped it in both hands and lifted it to his mouth. he glued his lips to the under edge and tilted his head. his hairy throat swelled until it seemed to grow near his chin. there was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was gone. the man caught his breath and laughed. he hit his son on the head with the empty pail. as it rolled clanging into the street, jimmie began to scream and kicked repeatedly at his father's shins. "look at deh dirt what yeh done me," he yelled. "deh ol' woman 'ill be raisin' hell." he retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue. he staggered toward the door. "i'll club hell outa yeh when i ketch yeh," he shouted, and disappeared. during the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially: "my home reg'lar livin' hell! damndes' place! reg'lar hell! why do i come an' drin' whisk' here thish way? 'cause home reg'lar livin' hell!" jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up through the building. he passed with great caution the door of the gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened. he could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of the room. she was chanting in a mournful voice, occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who, jimmie judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner. "why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep jim from fightin'? i'll break her jaw," she suddenly bellowed. the man mumbled with drunken indifference. "ah, wha' deh hell. w'a's odds? wha' makes kick?" "because he tears 'is clothes, yeh damn fool," cried the woman in supreme wrath. the husband seemed to become aroused. "go teh hell," he thundered fiercely in reply. there was a crash against the door and something broke into clattering fragments. jimmie partially suppressed a howl and darted down the stairway. below he paused and listened. he heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging. with all was the crash of splintering furniture. the eyes of the urchin glared in fear that one of them would discover him. curious faces appeared in doorways, and whispered comments passed to and fro. "ol' johnson's raisin' hell agin." jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitants of the tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. then he crawled upstairs with the caution of an invader of a panther den. sounds of labored breathing came through the broken door-panels. he pushed the door open and entered, quaking. a glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, the cracked and soiled plastering, and the overturned and broken furniture. in the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep. in one corner of the room his father's limp body hung across the seat of a chair. the urchin stole forward. he began to shiver in dread of awakening his parents. his mother's great chest was heaving painfully. jimmie paused and looked down at her. her face was inflamed and swollen from drinking. her yellow brows shaded eyelids that had brown blue. her tangled hair tossed in waves over her forehead. her mouth was set in the same lines of vindictive hatred that it had, perhaps, borne during the fight. her bare, red arms were thrown out above her head in positions of exhaustion, something, mayhap, like those of a sated villain. the urchin bended over his mother. he was fearful lest she should open her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong, that he could not forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated over the woman's grim face. suddenly her eyes opened. the urchin found himself looking straight into that expression, which, it would seem, had the power to change his blood to salt. he howled piercingly and fell backward. the woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about her head as if in combat, and again began to snore. jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. a noise in the next room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was awake. he grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn face riveted upon the intervening door. he heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to him. "jimmie! jimmie! are yehs dere?" it whispered. the urchin started. the thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the door-way of the other room. she crept to him across the floor. the father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like sleep. the mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as if she were in the agonies of strangulation. out at the window a florid moon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the waters of a river glimmered pallidly. the small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. her features were haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear. she grasped the urchin's arm in her little trembling hands and they huddled in a corner. the eyes of both were drawn, by some force, to stare at the woman's face, for they thought she need only to awake and all fiends would come from below. they crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at the window, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at the prostrate, heaving body of the mother. chapter iv the babe, tommie, died. he went away in a white, insignificant coffin, his small waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl, maggie, had stolen from an italian. she and jimmie lived. the inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early age. he became a young man of leather. he lived some red years without laboring. during that time his sneer became chronic. he studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it. he never conceived a respect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed. he clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously in at a mission church where a man composed his sermons of "yous." while they got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where he calculated they stood with the lord. many of the sinners were impatient over the pictured depths of their degradation. they were waiting for soup-tickets. a reader of words of wind-demons might have been able to see the portions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the exhorter and his hearers. "you are damned," said the preacher. and the reader of sounds might have seen the reply go forth from the ragged people: "where's our soup?" jimmie and a companion sat in a rear seat and commented upon the things that didn't concern them, with all the freedom of english gentlemen. when they grew thirsty and went out their minds confused the speaker with christ. momentarily, jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a hopeless altitude where grew fruit. his companion said that if he should ever meet god he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle of beer. jimmie's occupation for a long time was to stand on streetcorners and watch the world go by, dreaming blood-red dreams at the passing of pretty women. he menaced mankind at the intersections of streets. on the corners he was in life and of life. the world was going on and he was there to perceive it. he maintained a belligerent attitude toward all well-dressed men. to him fine raiment was allied to weakness, and all good coats covered faint hearts. he and his order were kings, to a certain extent, over the men of untarnished clothes, because these latter dreaded, perhaps, to be either killed or laughed at. above all things he despised obvious christians and ciphers with the chrysanthemums of aristocracy in their button-holes. he considered himself above both of these classes. he was afraid of neither the devil nor the leader of society. when he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction with existence was the greatest thing in the world. so, eventually, he felt obliged to work. his father died and his mother's years were divided up into periods of thirty days. he became a truck driver. he was given the charge of a painstaking pair of horses and a large rattling truck. he invaded the turmoil and tumble of the down-town streets and learned to breathe maledictory defiance at the police who occasionally used to climb up, drag him from his perch and beat him. in the lower part of the city he daily involved himself in hideous tangles. if he and his team chanced to be in the rear he preserved a demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and bursting forth into yells when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneath the noses of his champing horses. he smoked his pipe calmly for he knew that his pay was marching on. if in the front and the key-truck of chaos, he entered terrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among the drivers on their high seats, and sometimes roared oaths and violently got himself arrested. after a time his sneer grew so that it turned its glare upon all things. he became so sharp that he believed in nothing. to him the police were always actuated by malignant impulses and the rest of the world was composed, for the most part, of despicable creatures who were all trying to take advantage of him and with whom, in defense, he was obliged to quarrel on all possible occasions. he himself occupied a down-trodden position that had a private but distinct element of grandeur in its isolation. the most complete cases of aggravated idiocy were, to his mind, rampant upon the front platforms of all the street cars. at first his tongue strove with these beings, but he eventually was superior. he became immured like an african cow. in him grew a majestic contempt for those strings of street cars that followed him like intent bugs. he fell into the habit, when starting on a long journey, of fixing his eye on a high and distant object, commanding his horses to begin, and then going into a sort of a trance of observation. multitudes of drivers might howl in his rear, and passengers might load him with opprobrium, he would not awaken until some blue policeman turned red and began to frenziedly tear bridles and beat the soft noses of the responsible horses. when he paused to contemplate the attitude of the police toward himself and his fellows, he believed that they were the only men in the city who had no rights. when driving about, he felt that he was held liable by the police for anything that might occur in the streets, and was the common prey of all energetic officials. in revenge, he resolved never to move out of the way of anything, until formidable circumstances, or a much larger man than himself forced him to it. foot-passengers were mere pestering flies with an insane disregard for their legs and his convenience. he could not conceive their maniacal desires to cross the streets. their madness smote him with eternal amazement. he was continually storming at them from his throne. he sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps, plunges, dives and straddles. when they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champing horses, making them swing their heads and move their feet, disturbing a solid dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools, for he himself could perceive that providence had caused it clearly to be written, that he and his team had the unalienable right to stand in the proper path of the sun chariot, and if they so minded, obstruct its mission or take a wheel off. and, perhaps, if the god-driver had an ungovernable desire to step down, put up his flame-colored fists and manfully dispute the right of way, he would have probably been immediately opposed by a scowling mortal with two sets of very hard knuckles. it is possible, perhaps, that this young man would have derided, in an axle-wide alley, the approach of a flying ferry boat. yet he achieved a respect for a fire engine. as one charged toward his truck, he would drive fearfully upon a sidewalk, threatening untold people with annihilation. when an engine would strike a mass of blocked trucks, splitting it into fragments, as a blow annihilates a cake of ice, jimmie's team could usually be observed high and safe, with whole wheels, on the sidewalk. the fearful coming of the engine could break up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehicles at which the police had been swearing for the half of an hour. a fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thing that he loved with a distant dog-like devotion. they had been known to overturn street-cars. those leaping horses, striking sparks from the cobbles in their forward lunge, were creatures to be ineffably admired. the clang of the gong pierced his breast like a noise of remembered war. when jimmie was a little boy, he began to be arrested. before he reached a great age, he had a fair record. he developed too great a tendency to climb down from his truck and fight with other drivers. he had been in quite a number of miscellaneous fights, and in some general barroom rows that had become known to the police. once he had been arrested for assaulting a chinaman. two women in different parts of the city, and entirely unknown to each other, caused him considerable annoyance by breaking forth, simultaneously, at fateful intervals, into wailings about marriage and support and infants. nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: "deh moon looks like hell, don't it?" chapter v the girl, maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. she grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl. none of the dirt of rum alley seemed to be in her veins. the philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it. when a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt disguised her. attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen. there came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said: "dat johnson goil is a puty good looker." about this period her brother remarked to her: "mag, i'll tell yeh dis! see? yeh've edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" whereupon she went to work, having the feminine aversion of going to hell. by a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they made collars and cuffs. she received a stool and a machine in a room where sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent. she perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars, the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything in connection with collars. at night she returned home to her mother. jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the family. as incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs late at night, as his father had done before him. he reeled about the room, swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor. the mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could bandy words with her acquaintances among the police-justices. court-officials called her by her first name. when she appeared they pursued a course which had been theirs for months. they invariably grinned and cried out: "hello, mary, you here again?" her grey head wagged in many a court. she always besieged the bench with voluble excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers. her flaming face and rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island. she measured time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and dishevelled. one day the young man, pete, who as a lad had smitten the devil's row urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his friend, jimmie, strutted upon the scene. he met jimmie one day on the street, promised to take him to a boxing match in williamsburg, and called for him in the evening. maggie observed pete. he sat on a table in the johnson home and dangled his checked legs with an enticing nonchalance. his hair was curled down over his forehead in an oiled bang. his rather pugged nose seemed to revolt from contact with a bristling moustache of short, wire-like hairs. his blue double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, buttoned close to a red puff tie, and his patent-leather shoes looked like murder-fitted weapons. his mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his personal superiority. there was valor and contempt for circumstances in the glance of his eye. he waved his hands like a man of the world, who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says "fudge." he had certainly seen everything and with each curl of his lip, he declared that it amounted to nothing. maggie thought he must be a very elegant and graceful bartender. he was telling tales to jimmie. maggie watched him furtively, with half-closed eyes, lit with a vague interest. "hully gee! dey makes me tired," he said. "mos' e'ry day some farmer comes in an' tries teh run deh shop. see? but dey gits t'rowed right out! i jolt dem right out in deh street before dey knows where dey is! see?" "sure," said jimmie. "dere was a mug come in deh place deh odder day wid an idear he wus goin' teh own deh place! hully gee, he wus goin' teh own deh place! i see he had a still on an' i didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff, so i says: 'git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble,' i says like dat! see? 'git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble'; like dat. 'git deh hell outa here,' i says. see?" jimmie nodded understandingly. over his features played an eager desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the narrator proceeded. "well, deh blokie he says: 't'hell wid it! i ain' lookin' for no scrap,' he says (see?), 'but' he says, 'i'm 'spectable cit'zen an' i wanna drink an' purtydamnsoon, too.' see? 'deh hell,' i says. like dat! 'deh hell,' i says. see? 'don' make no trouble,' i says. like dat. 'don' make no trouble.' see? den deh mug he squared off an' said he was fine as silk wid his dukes (see?) an' he wanned a drink damnquick. dat's what he said. see?" "sure," repeated jimmie. pete continued. "say, i jes' jumped deh bar an' deh way i plunked dat blokie was great. see? dat's right! in deh jaw! see? hully gee, he t'rowed a spittoon true deh front windee. say, i taut i'd drop dead. but deh boss, he comes in after an' he says, 'pete, yehs done jes' right! yeh've gota keep order an' it's all right.' see? 'it's all right,' he says. dat's what he said." the two held a technical discussion. "dat bloke was a dandy," said pete, in conclusion, "but he hadn' oughta made no trouble. dat's what i says teh dem: 'don' come in here an' make no trouble,' i says, like dat. 'don' make no trouble.' see?" as jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their prowess, maggie leaned back in the shadow. her eyes dwelt wonderingly and rather wistfully upon pete's face. the broken furniture, grimey walls, and general disorder and dirt of her home of a sudden appeared before her and began to take a potential aspect. pete's aristocratic person looked as if it might soil. she looked keenly at him, occasionally, wondering if he was feeling contempt. but pete seemed to be enveloped in reminiscence. "hully gee," said he, "dose mugs can't phase me. dey knows i kin wipe up deh street wid any t'ree of dem." when he said, "ah, what deh hell," his voice was burdened with disdain for the inevitable and contempt for anything that fate might compel him to endure. maggie perceived that here was the beau ideal of a man. her dim thoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as god says, the little hills sing together in the morning. under the trees of her dream-gardens there had always walked a lover. chapter vi pete took note of maggie. "say, mag, i'm stuck on yer shape. it's outa sight," he said, parenthetically, with an affable grin. as he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew still more eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career. it appeared that he was invincible in fights. "why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a misunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago. dat's right. he was dead easy. see? he tau't he was a scrapper. but he foun' out diff'ent! hully gee." he walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme warrior. that swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio of ten to one. it, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness. she vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her. "i met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. "i was goin' teh see a frien' of mine. when i was a-crossin' deh street deh chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an' says, 'yer insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat. 'oh, gee,' i says, 'oh, gee, go teh hell and git off deh eart',' i says, like dat. see? 'go teh hell an' git off deh eart',' like dat. den deh blokie he got wild. he says i was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'ing like dat, an' he says i was doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' all like dat. 'gee,' i says, 'gee! deh hell i am,' i says. 'deh hell i am,' like dat. an' den i slugged 'im. see?" with jimmie in his company, pete departed in a sort of a blaze of glory from the johnson home. maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as he walked down the street. here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of fists. here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law. he was a knight. the two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and passed into shadows. turning, maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the scant and crude furniture of her home. a clock, in a splintered and battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an abomination. she noted that it ticked raspingly. the almost vanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous. some faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous. she wondered what pete dined on. she reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. it began to appear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. pete's elegant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had money and manners. it was probable that he had a large acquaintance of pretty girls. he must have great sums of money to spend. to her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. she felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. she thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, pete would shrug his shoulders and say: "oh, ev'ryt'ing goes." she anticipated that he would come again shortly. she spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. she made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly-careening mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. she studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. she wanted it to look well on sunday night when, perhaps, jimmie's friend would come. on sunday night, however, pete did not appear. afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. she was now convinced that pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins. a few evenings later pete entered with fascinating innovations in his apparel. as she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each time, maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously extensive. "say, mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds friday night an' i'll take yehs teh deh show. see?" he spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished, without having glanced at the lambrequin. over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory maggie spent the most of three days in making imaginary sketches of pete and his daily environment. she imagined some half dozen women in love with him and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether contemptible disposition. she thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. he had friends, and people who were afraid of him. she saw the golden glitter of the place where pete was to take her. an entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she might appear small and mouse-colored. her mother drank whiskey all friday morning. with lurid face and tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all friday afternoon. when maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay asleep amidst the wreck of chairs and a table. fragments of various household utensils were scattered about the floor. she had vented some phase of drunken fury upon the lambrequin. it lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner. "hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh been? why deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? been loafin' 'round deh streets. yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil." when pete arrived maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. the curtain at the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. the knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. the fire in the stove had gone out. the displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen grey ashes. the remnants of a meal, ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a corner. maggie's red mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name. chapter vii an orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men on an elevated stage near the centre of a great green-hued hall, played a popular waltz. the place was crowded with people grouped about little tables. a battalion of waiters slid among the throng, carrying trays of beer glasses and making change from the inexhaustible vaults of their trousers pockets. little boys, in the costumes of french chefs, paraded up and down the irregular aisles vending fancy cakes. there was a low rumble of conversation and a subdued clinking of glasses. clouds of tobacco smoke rolled and wavered high in air about the dull gilt of the chandeliers. the vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quitted labor. men with calloused hands and attired in garments that showed the wear of an endless trudge for a living, smoked their pipes contentedly and spent five, ten, or perhaps fifteen cents for beer. there was a mere sprinkling of kid-gloved men who smoked cigars purchased elsewhere. the great body of the crowd was composed of people who showed that all day they strove with their hands. quiet germans, with maybe their wives and two or three children, sat listening to the music, with the expressions of happy cows. an occasional party of sailors from a war-ship, their faces pictures of sturdy health, spent the earlier hours of the evening at the small round tables. very infrequent tipsy men, swollen with the value of their opinions, engaged their companions in earnest and confidential conversation. in the balcony, and here and there below, shone the impassive faces of women. the nationalities of the bowery beamed upon the stage from all directions. pete aggressively walked up a side aisle and took seats with maggie at a table beneath the balcony. "two beehs!" leaning back he regarded with eyes of superiority the scene before them. this attitude affected maggie strongly. a man who could regard such a sight with indifference must be accustomed to very great things. it was obvious that pete had been to this place many times before, and was very familiar with it. a knowledge of this fact made maggie feel little and new. he was extremely gracious and attentive. he displayed the consideration of a cultured gentleman who knew what was due. "say, what deh hell? bring deh lady a big glass! what deh hell use is dat pony?" "don't be fresh, now," said the waiter, with some warmth, as he departed. "ah, git off deh eart'," said pete, after the other's retreating form. maggie perceived that pete brought forth all his elegance and all his knowledge of high-class customs for her benefit. her heart warmed as she reflected upon his condescension. the orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men gave vent to a few bars of anticipatory music and a girl, in a pink dress with short skirts, galloped upon the stage. she smiled upon the throng as if in acknowledgment of a warm welcome, and began to walk to and fro, making profuse gesticulations and singing, in brazen soprano tones, a song, the words of which were inaudible. when she broke into the swift rattling measures of a chorus some half-tipsy men near the stage joined in the rollicking refrain and glasses were pounded rhythmically upon the tables. people leaned forward to watch her and to try to catch the words of the song. when she vanished there were long rollings of applause. obedient to more anticipatory bars, she reappeared amidst the half-suppressed cheering of the tipsy men. the orchestra plunged into dance music and the laces of the dancer fluttered and flew in the glare of gas jets. she divulged the fact that she was attired in some half dozen skirts. it was patent that any one of them would have proved adequate for the purpose for which skirts are intended. an occasional man bent forward, intent upon the pink stockings. maggie wondered at the splendor of the costume and lost herself in calculations of the cost of the silks and laces. the dancer's smile of stereotyped enthusiasm was turned for ten minutes upon the faces of her audience. in the finale she fell into some of those grotesque attitudes which were at the time popular among the dancers in the theatres up-town, giving to the bowery public the phantasies of the aristocratic theatre-going public, at reduced rates. "say, pete," said maggie, leaning forward, "dis is great." "sure," said pete, with proper complacence. a ventriloquist followed the dancer. he held two fantastic dolls on his knees. he made them sing mournful ditties and say funny things about geography and ireland. "do dose little men talk?" asked maggie. "naw," said pete, "it's some damn fake. see?" two girls, on the bills as sisters, came forth and sang a duet that is heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices. they supplemented it with a dance which of course can never be seen at concerts given under church auspices. after the duettists had retired, a woman of debatable age sang a negro melody. the chorus necessitated some grotesque waddlings supposed to be an imitation of a plantation darkey, under the influence, probably, of music and the moon. the audience was just enthusiastic enough over it to have her return and sing a sorrowful lay, whose lines told of a mother's love and a sweetheart who waited and a young man who was lost at sea under the most harrowing circumstances. from the faces of a score or so in the crowd, the self-contained look faded. many heads were bent forward with eagerness and sympathy. as the last distressing sentiment of the piece was brought forth, it was greeted by that kind of applause which rings as sincere. as a final effort, the singer rendered some verses which described a vision of britain being annihilated by america, and ireland bursting her bonds. a carefully prepared crisis was reached in the last line of the last verse, where the singer threw out her arms and cried, "the star-spangled banner." instantly a great cheer swelled from the throats of the assemblage of the masses. there was a heavy rumble of booted feet thumping the floor. eyes gleamed with sudden fire, and calloused hands waved frantically in the air. after a few moments' rest, the orchestra played crashingly, and a small fat man burst out upon the stage. he began to roar a song and stamp back and forth before the foot-lights, wildly waving a glossy silk hat and throwing leers, or smiles, broadcast. he made his face into fantastic grimaces until he looked like a pictured devil on a japanese kite. the crowd laughed gleefully. his short, fat legs were never still a moment. he shouted and roared and bobbed his shock of red wig until the audience broke out in excited applause. pete did not pay much attention to the progress of events upon the stage. he was drinking beer and watching maggie. her cheeks were blushing with excitement and her eyes were glistening. she drew deep breaths of pleasure. no thoughts of the atmosphere of the collar and cuff factory came to her. when the orchestra crashed finally, they jostled their way to the sidewalk with the crowd. pete took maggie's arm and pushed a way for her, offering to fight with a man or two. they reached maggie's home at a late hour and stood for a moment in front of the gruesome doorway. "say, mag," said pete, "give us a kiss for takin' yeh teh deh show, will yer?" maggie laughed, as if startled, and drew away from him. "naw, pete," she said, "dat wasn't in it." "ah, what deh hell?" urged pete. the girl retreated nervously. "ah, what deh hell?" repeated he. maggie darted into the hall, and up the stairs. she turned and smiled at him, then disappeared. pete walked slowly down the street. he had something of an astonished expression upon his features. he paused under a lamp-post and breathed a low breath of surprise. "gawd," he said, "i wonner if i've been played fer a duffer." chapter viii as thoughts of pete came to maggie's mind, she began to have an intense dislike for all of her dresses. "what deh hell ails yeh? what makes yeh be allus fixin' and fussin'? good gawd," her mother would frequently roar at her. she began to note, with more interest, the well-dressed women she met on the avenues. she envied elegance and soft palms. she craved those adornments of person which she saw every day on the street, conceiving them to be allies of vast importance to women. studying faces, she thought many of the women and girls she chanced to meet, smiled with serenity as though forever cherished and watched over by those they loved. the air in the collar and cuff establishment strangled her. she knew she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot, stuffy room. the begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated trains. the place was filled with a whirl of noises and odors. she wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in the room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out, with heads bended over their work, tales of imagined or real girlhood happiness, past drunks, the baby at home, and unpaid wages. she speculated how long her youth would endure. she began to see the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable. she imagined herself, in an exasperating future, as a scrawny woman with an eternal grievance. too, she thought pete to be a very fastidious person concerning the appearance of women. she felt she would love to see somebody entangle their fingers in the oily beard of the fat foreigner who owned the establishment. he was a detestable creature. he wore white socks with low shoes. he sat all day delivering orations, in the depths of a cushioned chair. his pocketbook deprived them of the power to retort. "what een hell do you sink i pie fife dolla a week for? play? no, py damn!" maggie was anxious for a friend to whom she could talk about pete. she would have liked to discuss his admirable mannerisms with a reliable mutual friend. at home, she found her mother often drunk and always raving. it seems that the world had treated this woman very badly, and she took a deep revenge upon such portions of it as came within her reach. she broke furniture as if she were at last getting her rights. she swelled with virtuous indignation as she carried the lighter articles of household use, one by one under the shadows of the three gilt balls, where hebrews chained them with chains of interest. jimmie came when he was obliged to by circumstances over which he had no control. his well-trained legs brought him staggering home and put him to bed some nights when he would rather have gone elsewhere. swaggering pete loomed like a golden sun to maggie. he took her to a dime museum where rows of meek freaks astonished her. she contemplated their deformities with awe and thought them a sort of chosen tribe. "what een hell do you sink i pie fife dolla a week for? play? no, py damn!" maggie was anxious for a friend to whom she could talk about pete. she would have liked to discuss his admirable mannerisms with a reliable mutual friend. at home, she found her mother often drunk and always raving. it seems that the world had treated this woman very badly, and she took a deep revenge upon such portions of it as came within her reach. she broke furniture as if she were at last getting her rights. she swelled with virtuous indignation as she carried the lighter articles of household use, one by one under the shadows of the three gilt balls, where hebrews chained them with chains of interest. jimmie came when he was obliged to by circumstances over which he had no control. his well-trained legs brought him staggering home and put him to bed some nights when he would rather have gone elsewhere. swaggering pete loomed like a golden sun to maggie. he took her to a dime museum where rows of meek freaks astonished her. she contemplated their deformities with awe and thought them a sort of chosen tribe. pete, raking his brains for amusement, discovered the central park menagerie and the museum of arts. sunday afternoons would sometimes find them at these places. pete did not appear to be particularly interested in what he saw. he stood around looking heavy, while maggie giggled in glee. once at the menagerie he went into a trance of admiration before the spectacle of a very small monkey threatening to thrash a cageful because one of them had pulled his tail and he had not wheeled about quickly enough to discover who did it. ever after pete knew that monkey by sight and winked at him, trying to induce hime to fight with other and larger monkeys. at the museum, maggie said, "dis is outa sight." "oh hell," said pete, "wait 'till next summer an' i'll take yehs to a picnic." while the girl wandered in the vaulted rooms, pete occupied himself in returning stony stare for stony stare, the appalling scrutiny of the watch-dogs of the treasures. occasionally he would remark in loud tones: "dat jay has got glass eyes," and sentences of the sort. when he tired of this amusement he would go to the mummies and moralize over them. usually he submitted with silent dignity to all which he had to go through, but, at times, he was goaded into comment. "what deh hell," he demanded once. "look at all dese little jugs! hundred jugs in a row! ten rows in a case an' 'bout a t'ousand cases! what deh blazes use is dem?" evenings during the week he took her to see plays in which the brain-clutching heroine was rescued from the palatial home of her guardian, who is cruelly after her bonds, by the hero with the beautiful sentiments. the latter spent most of his time out at soak in pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated revolver, rescuing aged strangers from villains. maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning in snow storms beneath happy-hued church windows. and a choir within singing "joy to the world." to maggie and the rest of the audience this was transcendental realism. joy always within, and they, like the actor, inevitably without. viewing it, they hugged themselves in ecstatic pity of their imagined or real condition. the girl thought the arrogance and granite-heartedness of the magnate of the play was very accurately drawn. she echoed the maledictions that the occupants of the gallery showered on this individual when his lines compelled him to expose his extreme selfishness. shady persons in the audience revolted from the pictured villainy of the drama. with untiring zeal they hissed vice and applauded virtue. unmistakably bad men evinced an apparently sincere admiration for virtue. the loud gallery was overwhelmingly with the unfortunate and the oppressed. they encouraged the struggling hero with cries, and jeered the villain, hooting and calling attention to his whiskers. when anybody died in the pale-green snow storms, the gallery mourned. they sought out the painted misery and hugged it as akin. in the hero's erratic march from poverty in the first act, to wealth and triumph in the final one, in which he forgives all the enemies that he has left, he was assisted by the gallery, which applauded his generous and noble sentiments and confounded the speeches of his opponents by making irrelevant but very sharp remarks. those actors who were cursed with villainy parts were confronted at every turn by the gallery. if one of them rendered lines containing the most subtile distinctions between right and wrong, the gallery was immediately aware if the actor meant wickedness, and denounced him accordingly. the last act was a triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses, the representative of the audience, over the villain and the rich man, his pockets stuffed with bonds, his heart packed with tyrannical purposes, imperturbable amid suffering. maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of the melodrama. she rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked. the theatre made her think. she wondered if the culture and refinement she had seen imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on the stage, could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt factory. chapter ix a group of urchins were intent upon the side door of a saloon. expectancy gleamed from their eyes. they were twisting their fingers in excitement. "here she comes," yelled one of them suddenly. the group of urchins burst instantly asunder and its individual fragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle about the point of interest. the saloon door opened with a crash, and the figure of a woman appeared upon the threshold. her grey hair fell in knotted masses about her shoulders. her face was crimsoned and wet with perspiration. her eyes had a rolling glare. "not a damn cent more of me money will yehs ever get, not a damn cent. i spent me money here fer t'ree years an' now yehs tells me yeh'll sell me no more stuff! t'hell wid yeh, johnnie murckre! 'disturbance'? disturbance be damned! t'hell wid yeh, johnnie--" the door received a kick of exasperation from within and the woman lurched heavily out on the sidewalk. the gamins in the half-circle became violently agitated. they began to dance about and hoot and yell and jeer. wide dirty grins spread over each face. the woman made a furious dash at a particularly outrageous cluster of little boys. they laughed delightedly and scampered off a short distance, calling out over their shoulders to her. she stood tottering on the curb-stone and thundered at them. "yeh devil's kids," she howled, shaking red fists. the little boys whooped in glee. as she started up the street they fell in behind and marched uproariously. occasionally she wheeled about and made charges on them. they ran nimbly out of reach and taunted her. in the frame of a gruesome doorway she stood for a moment cursing them. her hair straggled, giving her crimson features a look of insanity. her great fists quivered as she shook them madly in the air. the urchins made terrific noises until she turned and disappeared. then they filed quietly in the way they had come. the woman floundered about in the lower hall of the tenement house and finally stumbled up the stairs. on an upper hall a door was opened and a collection of heads peered curiously out, watching her. with a wrathful snort the woman confronted the door, but it was slammed hastily in her face and the key was turned. she stood for a few minutes, delivering a frenzied challenge at the panels. "come out in deh hall, mary murphy, damn yeh, if yehs want a row. come ahn, yeh overgrown terrier, come ahn." she began to kick the door with her great feet. she shrilly defied the universe to appear and do battle. her cursing trebles brought heads from all doors save the one she threatened. her eyes glared in every direction. the air was full of her tossing fists. "come ahn, deh hull damn gang of yehs, come ahn," she roared at the spectators. an oath or two, cat-calls, jeers and bits of facetious advice were given in reply. missiles clattered about her feet. "what deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" said a voice in the gathered gloom, and jimmie came forward. he carried a tin dinner-pail in his hand and under his arm a brown truckman's apron done in a bundle. "what deh hell's wrong?" he demanded. "come out, all of yehs, come out," his mother was howling. "come ahn an' i'll stamp her damn brains under me feet." "shet yer face, an' come home, yeh damned old fool," roared jimmie at her. she strided up to him and twirled her fingers in his face. her eyes were darting flames of unreasoning rage and her frame trembled with eagerness for a fight. "t'hell wid yehs! an' who deh hell are yehs? i ain't givin' a snap of me fingers fer yehs," she bawled at him. she turned her huge back in tremendous disdain and climbed the stairs to the next floor. jimmie followed, cursing blackly. at the top of the flight he seized his mother's arm and started to drag her toward the door of their room. "come home, damn yeh," he gritted between his teeth. "take yer hands off me! take yer hands off me," shrieked his mother. she raised her arm and whirled her great fist at her son's face. jimmie dodged his head and the blow struck him in the back of the neck. "damn yeh," gritted he again. he threw out his left hand and writhed his fingers about her middle arm. the mother and the son began to sway and struggle like gladiators. "whoop!" said the rum alley tenement house. the hall filled with interested spectators. "hi, ol' lady, dat was a dandy!" "t'ree to one on deh red!" "ah, stop yer damn scrappin'!" the door of the johnson home opened and maggie looked out. jimmie made a supreme cursing effort and hurled his mother into the room. he quickly followed and closed the door. the rum alley tenement swore disappointedly and retired. the mother slowly gathered herself up from the floor. her eyes glittered menacingly upon her children. "here, now," said jimmie, "we've had enough of dis. sit down, an' don' make no trouble." he grasped her arm, and twisting it, forced her into a creaking chair. "keep yer hands off me," roared his mother again. "damn yer ol' hide," yelled jimmie, madly. maggie shrieked and ran into the other room. to her there came the sound of a storm of crashes and curses. there was a great final thump and jimmie's voice cried: "dere, damn yeh, stay still." maggie opened the door now, and went warily out. "oh, jimmie." he was leaning against the wall and swearing. blood stood upon bruises on his knotty fore-arms where they had scraped against the floor or the walls in the scuffle. the mother lay screeching on the floor, the tears running down her furrowed face. maggie, standing in the middle of the room, gazed about her. the usual upheaval of the tables and chairs had taken place. crockery was strewn broadcast in fragments. the stove had been disturbed on its legs, and now leaned idiotically to one side. a pail had been upset and water spread in all directions. the door opened and pete appeared. he shrugged his shoulders. "oh, gawd," he observed. he walked over to maggie and whispered in her ear. "ah, what deh hell, mag? come ahn and we'll have a hell of a time." the mother in the corner upreared her head and shook her tangled locks. "teh hell wid him and you," she said, glowering at her daughter in the gloom. her eyes seemed to burn balefully. "yeh've gone teh deh devil, mag johnson, yehs knows yehs have gone teh deh devil. yer a disgrace teh yer people, damn yeh. an' now, git out an' go ahn wid dat doe-faced jude of yours. go teh hell wid him, damn yeh, an' a good riddance. go teh hell an' see how yeh likes it." maggie gazed long at her mother. "go teh hell now, an' see how yeh likes it. git out. i won't have sech as yehs in me house! get out, d'yeh hear! damn yeh, git out!" the girl began to tremble. at this instant pete came forward. "oh, what deh hell, mag, see," whispered he softly in her ear. "dis all blows over. see? deh ol' woman 'ill be all right in deh mornin'. come ahn out wid me! we'll have a hell of a time." the woman on the floor cursed. jimmie was intent upon his bruised fore-arms. the girl cast a glance about the room filled with a chaotic mass of debris, and at the red, writhing body of her mother. "go teh hell an' good riddance." she went. chapter x jimmie had an idea it wasn't common courtesy for a friend to come to one's home and ruin one's sister. but he was not sure how much pete knew about the rules of politeness. the following night he returned home from work at rather a late hour in the evening. in passing through the halls he came upon the gnarled and leathery old woman who possessed the music box. she was grinning in the dim light that drifted through dust-stained panes. she beckoned to him with a smudged forefinger. "ah, jimmie, what do yehs t'ink i got onto las' night. it was deh funnies' t'ing i ever saw," she cried, coming close to him and leering. she was trembling with eagerness to tell her tale. "i was by me door las' night when yer sister and her jude feller came in late, oh, very late. an' she, the dear, she was a-cryin' as if her heart would break, she was. it was deh funnies' t'ing i ever saw. an' right out here by me door she asked him did he love her, did he. an' she was a-cryin' as if her heart would break, poor t'ing. an' him, i could see by deh way what he said it dat she had been askin' orften, he says: 'oh, hell, yes,' he says, says he, 'oh, hell, yes.'" storm-clouds swept over jimmie's face, but he turned from the leathery old woman and plodded on up-stairs. "oh, hell, yes," called she after him. she laughed a laugh that was like a prophetic croak. "'oh, hell, yes,' he says, says he, 'oh, hell, yes.'" there was no one in at home. the rooms showed that attempts had been made at tidying them. parts of the wreckage of the day before had been repaired by an unskilful hand. a chair or two and the table, stood uncertainly upon legs. the floor had been newly swept. too, the blue ribbons had been restored to the curtains, and the lambrequin, with its immense sheaves of yellow wheat and red roses of equal size, had been returned, in a worn and sorry state, to its position at the mantel. maggie's jacket and hat were gone from the nail behind the door. jimmie walked to the window and began to look through the blurred glass. it occurred to him to vaguely wonder, for an instant, if some of the women of his acquaintance had brothers. suddenly, however, he began to swear. "but he was me frien'! i brought 'im here! dat's deh hell of it!" he fumed about the room, his anger gradually rising to the furious pitch. "i'll kill deh jay! dat's what i'll do! i'll kill deh jay!" he clutched his hat and sprang toward the door. but it opened and his mother's great form blocked the passage. "what deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" exclaimed she, coming into the rooms. jimmie gave vent to a sardonic curse and then laughed heavily. "well, maggie's gone teh deh devil! dat's what! see?" "eh?" said his mother. "maggie's gone teh deh devil! are yehs deaf?" roared jimmie, impatiently. "deh hell she has," murmured the mother, astounded. jimmie grunted, and then began to stare out at the window. his mother sat down in a chair, but a moment later sprang erect and delivered a maddened whirl of oaths. her son turned to look at her as she reeled and swayed in the middle of the room, her fierce face convulsed with passion, her blotched arms raised high in imprecation. "may gawd curse her forever," she shrieked. "may she eat nothin' but stones and deh dirt in deh street. may she sleep in deh gutter an' never see deh sun shine agin. deh damn--" "here, now," said her son. "take a drop on yourself." the mother raised lamenting eyes to the ceiling. "she's deh devil's own chil', jimmie," she whispered. "ah, who would t'ink such a bad girl could grow up in our fambly, jimmie, me son. many deh hour i've spent in talk wid dat girl an' tol' her if she ever went on deh streets i'd see her damned. an' after all her bringin' up an' what i tol' her and talked wid her, she goes teh deh bad, like a duck teh water." the tears rolled down her furrowed face. her hands trembled. "an' den when dat sadie macmallister next door to us was sent teh deh devil by dat feller what worked in deh soap-factory, didn't i tell our mag dat if she--" "ah, dat's annuder story," interrupted the brother. "of course, dat sadie was nice an' all dat--but--see--it ain't dessame as if--well, maggie was diff'ent--see--she was diff'ent." he was trying to formulate a theory that he had always unconsciously held, that all sisters, excepting his own, could advisedly be ruined. he suddenly broke out again. "i'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did her deh harm. i'll kill 'im! he t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer. i'll wipe up deh street wid 'im." in a fury he plunged out of the doorway. as he vanished the mother raised her head and lifted both hands, entreating. "may gawd curse her forever," she cried. in the darkness of the hallway jimmie discerned a knot of women talking volubly. when he strode by they paid no attention to him. "she allus was a bold thing," he heard one of them cry in an eager voice. "dere wasn't a feller come teh deh house but she'd try teh mash 'im. my annie says deh shameless t'ing tried teh ketch her feller, her own feller, what we useter know his fader." "i could a' tol' yehs dis two years ago," said a woman, in a key of triumph. "yessir, it was over two years ago dat i says teh my ol' man, i says, 'dat johnson girl ain't straight,' i says. 'oh, hell,' he says. 'oh, hell.' 'dat's all right,' i says, 'but i know what i knows,' i says, 'an' it 'ill come out later. you wait an' see,' i says, 'you see.'" "anybody what had eyes could see dat dere was somethin' wrong wid dat girl. i didn't like her actions." on the street jimmie met a friend. "what deh hell?" asked the latter. jimmie explained. "an' i'll t'ump 'im till he can't stand." "oh, what deh hell," said the friend. "what's deh use! yeh'll git pulled in! everybody 'ill be onto it! an' ten plunks! gee!" jimmie was determined. "he t'inks he kin scrap, but he'll fin' out diff'ent." "gee," remonstrated the friend. "what deh hell?" chapter xi on a corner a glass-fronted building shed a yellow glare upon the pavements. the open mouth of a saloon called seductively to passengers to enter and annihilate sorrow or create rage. the interior of the place was papered in olive and bronze tints of imitation leather. a shining bar of counterfeit massiveness extended down the side of the room. behind it a great mahogany-appearing sideboard reached the ceiling. upon its shelves rested pyramids of shimmering glasses that were never disturbed. mirrors set in the face of the sideboard multiplied them. lemons, oranges and paper napkins, arranged with mathematical precision, sat among the glasses. many-hued decanters of liquor perched at regular intervals on the lower shelves. a nickel-plated cash register occupied a position in the exact centre of the general effect. the elementary senses of it all seemed to be opulence and geometrical accuracy. across from the bar a smaller counter held a collection of plates upon which swarmed frayed fragments of crackers, slices of boiled ham, dishevelled bits of cheese, and pickles swimming in vinegar. an odor of grasping, begrimed hands and munching mouths pervaded. pete, in a white jacket, was behind the bar bending expectantly toward a quiet stranger. "a beeh," said the man. pete drew a foam-topped glassful and set it dripping upon the bar. at this moment the light bamboo doors at the entrance swung open and crashed against the siding. jimmie and a companion entered. they swaggered unsteadily but belligerently toward the bar and looked at pete with bleared and blinking eyes. "gin," said jimmie. "gin," said the companion. pete slid a bottle and two glasses along the bar. he bended his head sideways as he assiduously polished away with a napkin at the gleaming wood. he had a look of watchfulness upon his features. jimmie and his companion kept their eyes upon the bartender and conversed loudly in tones of contempt. "he's a dindy masher, ain't he, by gawd?" laughed jimmie. "oh, hell, yes," said the companion, sneering widely. "he's great, he is. git onto deh mug on deh blokie. dat's enough to make a feller turn hand-springs in 'is sleep." the quiet stranger moved himself and his glass a trifle further away and maintained an attitude of oblivion. "gee! ain't he hot stuff!" "git onto his shape! great gawd!" "hey," cried jimmie, in tones of command. pete came along slowly, with a sullen dropping of the under lip. "well," he growled, "what's eatin' yehs?" "gin," said jimmie. "gin," said the companion. as pete confronted them with the bottle and the glasses, they laughed in his face. jimmie's companion, evidently overcome with merriment, pointed a grimy forefinger in pete's direction. "say, jimmie," demanded he, "what deh hell is dat behind deh bar?" "damned if i knows," replied jimmie. they laughed loudly. pete put down a bottle with a bang and turned a formidable face toward them. he disclosed his teeth and his shoulders heaved restlessly. "you fellers can't guy me," he said. "drink yer stuff an' git out an' don' make no trouble." instantly the laughter faded from the faces of the two men and expressions of offended dignity immediately came. "who deh hell has said anyt'ing teh you," cried they in the same breath. the quiet stranger looked at the door calculatingly. "ah, come off," said pete to the two men. "don't pick me up for no jay. drink yer rum an' git out an' don' make no trouble." "oh, deh hell," airily cried jimmie. "oh, deh hell," airily repeated his companion. "we goes when we git ready! see!" continued jimmie. "well," said pete in a threatening voice, "don' make no trouble." jimmie suddenly leaned forward with his head on one side. he snarled like a wild animal. "well, what if we does? see?" said he. dark blood flushed into pete's face, and he shot a lurid glance at jimmie. "well, den we'll see whose deh bes' man, you or me," he said. the quiet stranger moved modestly toward the door. jimmie began to swell with valor. "don' pick me up fer no tenderfoot. when yeh tackles me yeh tackles one of deh bes' men in deh city. see? i'm a scrapper, i am. ain't dat right, billie?" "sure, mike," responded his companion in tones of conviction. "oh, hell," said pete, easily. "go fall on yerself." the two men again began to laugh. "what deh hell is dat talkin'?" cried the companion. "damned if i knows," replied jimmie with exaggerated contempt. pete made a furious gesture. "git outa here now, an' don' make no trouble. see? youse fellers er lookin' fer a scrap an' it's damn likely yeh'll fin' one if yeh keeps on shootin' off yer mout's. i know yehs! see? i kin lick better men dan yehs ever saw in yer lifes. dat's right! see? don' pick me up fer no stuff er yeh might be jolted out in deh street before yeh knows where yeh is. when i comes from behind dis bar, i t'rows yehs bote inteh deh street. see?" "oh, hell," cried the two men in chorus. the glare of a panther came into pete's eyes. "dat's what i said! unnerstan'?" he came through a passage at the end of the bar and swelled down upon the two men. they stepped promptly forward and crowded close to him. they bristled like three roosters. they moved their heads pugnaciously and kept their shoulders braced. the nervous muscles about each mouth twitched with a forced smile of mockery. "well, what deh hell yer goin' teh do?" gritted jimmie. pete stepped warily back, waving his hands before him to keep the men from coming too near. "well, what deh hell yer goin' teh do?" repeated jimmie's ally. they kept close to him, taunting and leering. they strove to make him attempt the initial blow. "keep back, now! don' crowd me," ominously said pete. again they chorused in contempt. "oh, hell!" in a small, tossing group, the three men edged for positions like frigates contemplating battle. "well, why deh hell don' yeh try teh t'row us out?" cried jimmie and his ally with copious sneers. the bravery of bull-dogs sat upon the faces of the men. their clenched fists moved like eager weapons. the allied two jostled the bartender's elbows, glaring at him with feverish eyes and forcing him toward the wall. suddenly pete swore redly. the flash of action gleamed from his eyes. he threw back his arm and aimed a tremendous, lightning-like blow at jimmie's face. his foot swung a step forward and the weight of his body was behind his fist. jimmie ducked his head, bowery-like, with the quickness of a cat. the fierce, answering blows of him and his ally crushed on pete's bowed head. the quiet stranger vanished. the arms of the combatants whirled in the air like flails. the faces of the men, at first flushed to flame-colored anger, now began to fade to the pallor of warriors in the blood and heat of a battle. their lips curled back and stretched tightly over the gums in ghoul-like grins. through their white, gripped teeth struggled hoarse whisperings of oaths. their eyes glittered with murderous fire. each head was huddled between its owner's shoulders, and arms were swinging with marvelous rapidity. feet scraped to and fro with a loud scratching sound upon the sanded floor. blows left crimson blotches upon pale skin. the curses of the first quarter minute of the fight died away. the breaths of the fighters came wheezingly from their lips and the three chests were straining and heaving. pete at intervals gave vent to low, labored hisses, that sounded like a desire to kill. jimmie's ally gibbered at times like a wounded maniac. jimmie was silent, fighting with the face of a sacrificial priest. the rage of fear shone in all their eyes and their blood-colored fists swirled. at a tottering moment a blow from pete's hand struck the ally and he crashed to the floor. he wriggled instantly to his feet and grasping the quiet stranger's beer glass from the bar, hurled it at pete's head. high on the wall it burst like a bomb, shivering fragments flying in all directions. then missiles came to every man's hand. the place had heretofore appeared free of things to throw, but suddenly glass and bottles went singing through the air. they were thrown point blank at bobbing heads. the pyramid of shimmering glasses, that had never been disturbed, changed to cascades as heavy bottles were flung into them. mirrors splintered to nothing. the three frothing creatures on the floor buried themselves in a frenzy for blood. there followed in the wake of missiles and fists some unknown prayers, perhaps for death. the quiet stranger had sprawled very pyrotechnically out on the sidewalk. a laugh ran up and down the avenue for the half of a block. "dey've trowed a bloke inteh deh street." people heard the sound of breaking glass and shuffling feet within the saloon and came running. a small group, bending down to look under the bamboo doors, watching the fall of glass, and three pairs of violent legs, changed in a moment to a crowd. a policeman came charging down the sidewalk and bounced through the doors into the saloon. the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to see. jimmie caught first sight of the on-coming interruption. on his feet he had the same regard for a policeman that, when on his truck, he had for a fire engine. he howled and ran for the side door. the officer made a terrific advance, club in hand. one comprehensive sweep of the long night stick threw the ally to the floor and forced pete to a corner. with his disengaged hand he made a furious effort at jimmie's coat-tails. then he regained his balance and paused. "well, well, you are a pair of pictures. what in hell yeh been up to?" jimmie, with his face drenched in blood, escaped up a side street, pursued a short distance by some of the more law-loving, or excited individuals of the crowd. later, from a corner safely dark, he saw the policeman, the ally and the bartender emerge from the saloon. pete locked the doors and then followed up the avenue in the rear of the crowd-encompassed policeman and his charge. on first thoughts jimmie, with his heart throbbing at battle heat, started to go desperately to the rescue of his friend, but he halted. "ah, what deh hell?" he demanded of himself. chapter xii in a hall of irregular shape sat pete and maggie drinking beer. a submissive orchestra dictated to by a spectacled man with frowsy hair and a dress suit, industriously followed the bobs of his head and the waves of his baton. a ballad singer, in a dress of flaming scarlet, sang in the inevitable voice of brass. when she vanished, men seated at the tables near the front applauded loudly, pounding the polished wood with their beer glasses. she returned attired in less gown, and sang again. she received another enthusiastic encore. she reappeared in still less gown and danced. the deafening rumble of glasses and clapping of hands that followed her exit indicated an overwhelming desire to have her come on for the fourth time, but the curiosity of the audience was not gratified. maggie was pale. from her eyes had been plucked all look of self-reliance. she leaned with a dependent air toward her companion. she was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure. she seemed to beseech tenderness of him. pete's air of distinguished valor had grown upon him until it threatened stupendous dimensions. he was infinitely gracious to the girl. it was apparent to her that his condescension was a marvel. he could appear to strut even while sitting still and he showed that he was a lion of lordly characteristics by the air with which he spat. with maggie gazing at him wonderingly, he took pride in commanding the waiters who were, however, indifferent or deaf. "hi, you, git a russle on yehs! what deh hell yehs lookin' at? two more beehs, d'yeh hear?" he leaned back and critically regarded the person of a girl with a straw-colored wig who upon the stage was flinging her heels in somewhat awkward imitation of a well-known danseuse. at times maggie told pete long confidential tales of her former home life, dwelling upon the escapades of the other members of the family and the difficulties she had to combat in order to obtain a degree of comfort. he responded in tones of philanthropy. he pressed her arm with an air of reassuring proprietorship. "dey was damn jays," he said, denouncing the mother and brother. the sound of the music which, by the efforts of the frowsy-headed leader, drifted to her ears through the smoke-filled atmosphere, made the girl dream. she thought of her former rum alley environment and turned to regard pete's strong protecting fists. she thought of the collar and cuff manufactory and the eternal moan of the proprietor: "what een hell do you sink i pie fife dolla a week for? play? no, py damn." she contemplated pete's man-subduing eyes and noted that wealth and prosperity was indicated by his clothes. she imagined a future, rose-tinted, because of its distance from all that she previously had experienced. as to the present she perceived only vague reasons to be miserable. her life was pete's and she considered him worthy of the charge. she would be disturbed by no particular apprehensions, so long as pete adored her as he now said he did. she did not feel like a bad woman. to her knowledge she had never seen any better. at times men at other tables regarded the girl furtively. pete, aware of it, nodded at her and grinned. he felt proud. "mag, yer a bloomin' good-looker," he remarked, studying her face through the haze. the men made maggie fear, but she blushed at pete's words as it became apparent to her that she was the apple of his eye. grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation, stared at her through clouds. smooth-cheeked boys, some of them with faces of stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic as the grey heads, tried to find the girl's eyes in the smoke wreaths. maggie considered she was not what they thought her. she confined her glances to pete and the stage. the orchestra played negro melodies and a versatile drummer pounded, whacked, clattered and scratched on a dozen machines to make noise. those glances of the men, shot at maggie from under half-closed lids, made her tremble. she thought them all to be worse men than pete. "come, let's go," she said. as they went out maggie perceived two women seated at a table with some men. they were painted and their cheeks had lost their roundness. as she passed them the girl, with a shrinking movement, drew back her skirts. chapter xiii jimmie did not return home for a number of days after the fight with pete in the saloon. when he did, he approached with extreme caution. he found his mother raving. maggie had not returned home. the parent continually wondered how her daughter could come to such a pass. she had never considered maggie as a pearl dropped unstained into rum alley from heaven, but she could not conceive how it was possible for her daughter to fall so low as to bring disgrace upon her family. she was terrific in denunciation of the girl's wickedness. the fact that the neighbors talked of it, maddened her. when women came in, and in the course of their conversation casually asked, "where's maggie dese days?" the mother shook her fuzzy head at them and appalled them with curses. cunning hints inviting confidence she rebuffed with violence. "an' wid all deh bringin' up she had, how could she?" moaningly she asked of her son. "wid all deh talkin' wid her i did an' deh t'ings i tol' her to remember? when a girl is bringed up deh way i bringed up maggie, how kin she go teh deh devil?" jimmie was transfixed by these questions. he could not conceive how under the circumstances his mother's daughter and his sister could have been so wicked. his mother took a drink from a squdgy bottle that sat on the table. she continued her lament. "she had a bad heart, dat girl did, jimmie. she was wicked teh deh heart an' we never knowed it." jimmie nodded, admitting the fact. "we lived in deh same house wid her an' i brought her up an' we never knowed how bad she was." jimmie nodded again. "wid a home like dis an' a mudder like me, she went teh deh bad," cried the mother, raising her eyes. one day, jimmie came home, sat down in a chair and began to wriggle about with a new and strange nervousness. at last he spoke shamefacedly. "well, look-a-here, dis t'ing queers us! see? we're queered! an' maybe it 'ud be better if i--well, i t'ink i kin look 'er up an'--maybe it 'ud be better if i fetched her home an'--" the mother started from her chair and broke forth into a storm of passionate anger. "what! let 'er come an' sleep under deh same roof wid her mudder agin! oh, yes, i will, won't i? sure? shame on yehs, jimmie johnson, for sayin' such a t'ing teh yer own mudder--teh yer own mudder! little did i t'ink when yehs was a babby playin' about me feet dat ye'd grow up teh say sech a t'ing teh yer mudder--yer own mudder. i never taut--" sobs choked her and interrupted her reproaches. "dere ain't nottin' teh raise sech hell about," said jimmie. "i on'y says it 'ud be better if we keep dis t'ing dark, see? it queers us! see?" his mother laughed a laugh that seemed to ring through the city and be echoed and re-echoed by countless other laughs. "oh, yes, i will, won't i! sure!" "well, yeh must take me fer a damn fool," said jimmie, indignant at his mother for mocking him. "i didn't say we'd make 'er inteh a little tin angel, ner nottin', but deh way it is now she can queer us! don' che see?" "aye, she'll git tired of deh life atter a while an' den she'll wanna be a-comin' home, won' she, deh beast! i'll let 'er in den, won' i?" "well, i didn' mean none of dis prod'gal bus'ness anyway," explained jimmie. "it wasn't no prod'gal dauter, yeh damn fool," said the mother. "it was prod'gal son, anyhow." "i know dat," said jimmie. for a time they sat in silence. the mother's eyes gloated on a scene her imagination could call before her. her lips were set in a vindictive smile. "aye, she'll cry, won' she, an' carry on, an' tell how pete, or some odder feller, beats 'er an' she'll say she's sorry an' all dat an' she ain't happy, she ain't, an' she wants to come home agin, she does." with grim humor, the mother imitated the possible wailing notes of the daughter's voice. "den i'll take 'er in, won't i, deh beast. she kin cry 'er two eyes out on deh stones of deh street before i'll dirty deh place wid her. she abused an' ill-treated her own mudder--her own mudder what loved her an' she'll never git anodder chance dis side of hell." jimmie thought he had a great idea of women's frailty, but he could not understand why any of his kin should be victims. "damn her," he fervidly said. again he wondered vaguely if some of the women of his acquaintance had brothers. nevertheless, his mind did not for an instant confuse himself with those brothers nor his sister with theirs. after the mother had, with great difficulty, suppressed the neighbors, she went among them and proclaimed her grief. "may gawd forgive dat girl," was her continual cry. to attentive ears she recited the whole length and breadth of her woes. "i bringed 'er up deh way a dauter oughta be bringed up an' dis is how she served me! she went teh deh devil deh first chance she got! may gawd forgive her." when arrested for drunkenness she used the story of her daughter's downfall with telling effect upon the police justices. finally one of them said to her, peering down over his spectacles: "mary, the records of this and other courts show that you are the mother of forty-two daughters who have been ruined. the case is unparalleled in the annals of this court, and this court thinks--" the mother went through life shedding large tears of sorrow. her red face was a picture of agony. of course jimmie publicly damned his sister that he might appear on a higher social plane. but, arguing with himself, stumbling about in ways that he knew not, he, once, almost came to a conclusion that his sister would have been more firmly good had she better known why. however, he felt that he could not hold such a view. he threw it hastily aside. chapter xiv in a hilarious hall there were twenty-eight tables and twenty-eight women and a crowd of smoking men. valiant noise was made on a stage at the end of the hall by an orchestra composed of men who looked as if they had just happened in. soiled waiters ran to and fro, swooping down like hawks on the unwary in the throng; clattering along the aisles with trays covered with glasses; stumbling over women's skirts and charging two prices for everything but beer, all with a swiftness that blurred the view of the cocoanut palms and dusty monstrosities painted upon the walls of the room. a bouncer, with an immense load of business upon his hands, plunged about in the crowd, dragging bashful strangers to prominent chairs, ordering waiters here and there and quarreling furiously with men who wanted to sing with the orchestra. the usual smoke cloud was present, but so dense that heads and arms seemed entangled in it. the rumble of conversation was replaced by a roar. plenteous oaths heaved through the air. the room rang with the shrill voices of women bubbling o'er with drink-laughter. the chief element in the music of the orchestra was speed. the musicians played in intent fury. a woman was singing and smiling upon the stage, but no one took notice of her. the rate at which the piano, cornet and violins were going, seemed to impart wildness to the half-drunken crowd. beer glasses were emptied at a gulp and conversation became a rapid chatter. the smoke eddied and swirled like a shadowy river hurrying toward some unseen falls. pete and maggie entered the hall and took chairs at a table near the door. the woman who was seated there made an attempt to occupy pete's attention and, failing, went away. three weeks had passed since the girl had left home. the air of spaniel-like dependence had been magnified and showed its direct effect in the peculiar off-handedness and ease of pete's ways toward her. she followed pete's eyes with hers, anticipating with smiles gracious looks from him. a woman of brilliance and audacity, accompanied by a mere boy, came into the place and took seats near them. at once pete sprang to his feet, his face beaming with glad surprise. "by gawd, there's nellie," he cried. he went over to the table and held out an eager hand to the woman. "why, hello, pete, me boy, how are you," said she, giving him her fingers. maggie took instant note of the woman. she perceived that her black dress fitted her to perfection. her linen collar and cuffs were spotless. tan gloves were stretched over her well-shaped hands. a hat of a prevailing fashion perched jauntily upon her dark hair. she wore no jewelry and was painted with no apparent paint. she looked clear-eyed through the stares of the men. "sit down, and call your lady-friend over," she said cordially to pete. at his beckoning maggie came and sat between pete and the mere boy. "i thought yeh were gone away fer good," began pete, at once. "when did yeh git back? how did dat buff'lo bus'ness turn out?" the woman shrugged her shoulders. "well, he didn't have as many stamps as he tried to make out, so i shook him, that's all." "well, i'm glad teh see yehs back in deh city," said pete, with awkward gallantry. he and the woman entered into a long conversation, exchanging reminiscences of days together. maggie sat still, unable to formulate an intelligent sentence upon the conversation and painfully aware of it. she saw pete's eyes sparkle as he gazed upon the handsome stranger. he listened smilingly to all she said. the woman was familiar with all his affairs, asked him about mutual friends, and knew the amount of his salary. she paid no attention to maggie, looking toward her once or twice and apparently seeing the wall beyond. the mere boy was sulky. in the beginning he had welcomed with acclamations the additions. "let's all have a drink! what'll you take, nell? and you, miss what's-your-name. have a drink, mr. -----, you, i mean." he had shown a sprightly desire to do the talking for the company and tell all about his family. in a loud voice he declaimed on various topics. he assumed a patronizing air toward pete. as maggie was silent, he paid no attention to her. he made a great show of lavishing wealth upon the woman of brilliance and audacity. "do keep still, freddie! you gibber like an ape, dear," said the woman to him. she turned away and devoted her attention to pete. "we'll have many a good time together again, eh?" "sure, mike," said pete, enthusiastic at once. "say," whispered she, leaning forward, "let's go over to billie's and have a heluva time." "well, it's dis way! see?" said pete. "i got dis lady frien' here." "oh, t'hell with her," argued the woman. pete appeared disturbed. "all right," said she, nodding her head at him. "all right for you! we'll see the next time you ask me to go anywheres with you." pete squirmed. "say," he said, beseechingly, "come wid me a minit an' i'll tell yer why." the woman waved her hand. "oh, that's all right, you needn't explain, you know. you wouldn't come merely because you wouldn't come, that's all there is of it." to pete's visible distress she turned to the mere boy, bringing him speedily from a terrific rage. he had been debating whether it would be the part of a man to pick a quarrel with pete, or would he be justified in striking him savagely with his beer glass without warning. but he recovered himself when the woman turned to renew her smilings. he beamed upon her with an expression that was somewhat tipsy and inexpressibly tender. "say, shake that bowery jay," requested he, in a loud whisper. "freddie, you are so droll," she replied. pete reached forward and touched the woman on the arm. "come out a minit while i tells yeh why i can't go wid yer. yer doin' me dirt, nell! i never taut ye'd do me dirt, nell. come on, will yer?" he spoke in tones of injury. "why, i don't see why i should be interested in your explanations," said the woman, with a coldness that seemed to reduce pete to a pulp. his eyes pleaded with her. "come out a minit while i tells yeh." the woman nodded slightly at maggie and the mere boy, "'scuse me." the mere boy interrupted his loving smile and turned a shrivelling glare upon pete. his boyish countenance flushed and he spoke, in a whine, to the woman: "oh, i say, nellie, this ain't a square deal, you know. you aren't goin' to leave me and go off with that duffer, are you? i should think--" "why, you dear boy, of course i'm not," cried the woman, affectionately. she bended over and whispered in his ear. he smiled again and settled in his chair as if resolved to wait patiently. as the woman walked down between the rows of tables, pete was at her shoulder talking earnestly, apparently in explanation. the woman waved her hands with studied airs of indifference. the doors swung behind them, leaving maggie and the mere boy seated at the table. maggie was dazed. she could dimly perceive that something stupendous had happened. she wondered why pete saw fit to remonstrate with the woman, pleading for forgiveness with his eyes. she thought she noted an air of submission about her leonine pete. she was astounded. the mere boy occupied himself with cock-tails and a cigar. he was tranquilly silent for half an hour. then he bestirred himself and spoke. "well," he said, sighing, "i knew this was the way it would be." there was another stillness. the mere boy seemed to be musing. "she was pulling m'leg. that's the whole amount of it," he said, suddenly. "it's a bloomin' shame the way that girl does. why, i've spent over two dollars in drinks to-night. and she goes off with that plug-ugly who looks as if he had been hit in the face with a coin-die. i call it rocky treatment for a fellah like me. here, waiter, bring me a cock-tail and make it damned strong." maggie made no reply. she was watching the doors. "it's a mean piece of business," complained the mere boy. he explained to her how amazing it was that anybody should treat him in such a manner. "but i'll get square with her, you bet. she won't get far ahead of yours truly, you know," he added, winking. "i'll tell her plainly that it was bloomin' mean business. and she won't come it over me with any of her 'now-freddie-dears.' she thinks my name is freddie, you know, but of course it ain't. i always tell these people some name like that, because if they got onto your right name they might use it sometime. understand? oh, they don't fool me much." maggie was paying no attention, being intent upon the doors. the mere boy relapsed into a period of gloom, during which he exterminated a number of cock-tails with a determined air, as if replying defiantly to fate. he occasionally broke forth into sentences composed of invectives joined together in a long string. the girl was still staring at the doors. after a time the mere boy began to see cobwebs just in front of his nose. he spurred himself into being agreeable and insisted upon her having a charlotte-russe and a glass of beer. "they's gone," he remarked, "they's gone." he looked at her through the smoke wreaths. "shay, lil' girl, we mightish well make bes' of it. you ain't such bad-lookin' girl, y'know. not half bad. can't come up to nell, though. no, can't do it! well, i should shay not! nell fine-lookin' girl! f--i--n--ine. you look damn bad longsider her, but by y'self ain't so bad. have to do anyhow. nell gone. on'y you left. not half bad, though." maggie stood up. "i'm going home," she said. the mere boy started. "eh? what? home," he cried, struck with amazement. "i beg pardon, did hear say home?" "i'm going home," she repeated. "great gawd, what hava struck," demanded the mere boy of himself, stupefied. in a semi-comatose state he conducted her on board an up-town car, ostentatiously paid her fare, leered kindly at her through the rear window and fell off the steps. chapter xv a forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue. the street was filled with people desperately bound on missions. an endless crowd darted at the elevated station stairs and the horse cars were thronged with owners of bundles. the pace of the forlorn woman was slow. she was apparently searching for some one. she loitered near the doors of saloons and watched men emerge from them. she scanned furtively the faces in the rushing stream of pedestrians. hurrying men, bent on catching some boat or train, jostled her elbows, failing to notice her, their thoughts fixed on distant dinners. the forlorn woman had a peculiar face. her smile was no smile. but when in repose her features had a shadowy look that was like a sardonic grin, as if some one had sketched with cruel forefinger indelible lines about her mouth. jimmie came strolling up the avenue. the woman encountered him with an aggrieved air. "oh, jimmie, i've been lookin' all over fer yehs--," she began. jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace. "ah, don't bodder me! good gawd!" he said, with the savageness of a man whose life is pestered. the woman followed him along the sidewalk in somewhat the manner of a suppliant. "but, jimmie," she said, "yehs told me ye'd--" jimmie turned upon her fiercely as if resolved to make a last stand for comfort and peace. "say, fer gawd's sake, hattie, don' foller me from one end of deh city teh deh odder. let up, will yehs! give me a minute's res', can't yehs? yehs makes me tired, allus taggin' me. see? ain' yehs got no sense. do yehs want people teh get onto me? go chase yerself, fer gawd's sake." the woman stepped closer and laid her fingers on his arm. "but, look-a-here--" jimmie snarled. "oh, go teh hell." he darted into the front door of a convenient saloon and a moment later came out into the shadows that surrounded the side door. on the brilliantly lighted avenue he perceived the forlorn woman dodging about like a scout. jimmie laughed with an air of relief and went away. when he arrived home he found his mother clamoring. maggie had returned. she stood shivering beneath the torrent of her mother's wrath. "well, i'm damned," said jimmie in greeting. his mother, tottering about the room, pointed a quivering forefinger. "lookut her, jimmie, lookut her. dere's yer sister, boy. dere's yer sister. lookut her! lookut her!" she screamed in scoffing laughter. the girl stood in the middle of the room. she edged about as if unable to find a place on the floor to put her feet. "ha, ha, ha," bellowed the mother. "dere she stands! ain' she purty? lookut her! ain' she sweet, deh beast? lookut her! ha, ha, lookut her!" she lurched forward and put her red and seamed hands upon her daughter's face. she bent down and peered keenly up into the eyes of the girl. "oh, she's jes' dessame as she ever was, ain' she? she's her mudder's purty darlin' yit, ain' she? lookut her, jimmie! come here, fer gawd's sake, and lookut her." the loud, tremendous sneering of the mother brought the denizens of the rum alley tenement to their doors. women came in the hallways. children scurried to and fro. "what's up? dat johnson party on anudder tear?" "naw! young mag's come home!" "deh hell yeh say?" through the open door curious eyes stared in at maggie. children ventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed the front row at a theatre. women, without, bended toward each other and whispered, nodding their heads with airs of profound philosophy. a baby, overcome with curiosity concerning this object at which all were looking, sidled forward and touched her dress, cautiously, as if investigating a red-hot stove. its mother's voice rang out like a warning trumpet. she rushed forward and grabbed her child, casting a terrible look of indignation at the girl. maggie's mother paced to and fro, addressing the doorful of eyes, expounding like a glib showman at a museum. her voice rang through the building. "dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointing with dramatic finger. "dere she stands! lookut her! ain' she a dindy? an' she was so good as to come home teh her mudder, she was! ain' she a beaut'? ain' she a dindy? fer gawd's sake!" the jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter. the girl seemed to awaken. "jimmie--" he drew hastily back from her. "well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing, ain' yeh?" he said, his lips curling in scorn. radiant virtue sat upon his brow and his repelling hands expressed horror of contamination. maggie turned and went. the crowd at the door fell back precipitately. a baby falling down in front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animal from its mother. another woman sprang forward and picked it up, with a chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from an oncoming express train. as the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open doors framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad beams of inquisitive light into the darkness of her path. on the second floor she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the music box. "so," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs? an' dey've kicked yehs out? well, come in an' stay wid me teh-night. i ain' got no moral standin'." from above came an unceasing babble of tongues, over all of which rang the mother's derisive laughter. chapter xvi pete did not consider that he had ruined maggie. if he had thought that her soul could never smile again, he would have believed the mother and brother, who were pyrotechnic over the affair, to be responsible for it. besides, in his world, souls did not insist upon being able to smile. "what deh hell?" he felt a trifle entangled. it distressed him. revelations and scenes might bring upon him the wrath of the owner of the saloon, who insisted upon respectability of an advanced type. "what deh hell do dey wanna raise such a smoke about it fer?" demanded he of himself, disgusted with the attitude of the family. he saw no necessity for anyone's losing their equilibrium merely because their sister or their daughter had stayed away from home. searching about in his mind for possible reasons for their conduct, he came upon the conclusion that maggie's motives were correct, but that the two others wished to snare him. he felt pursued. the woman of brilliance and audacity whom he had met in the hilarious hall showed a disposition to ridicule him. "a little pale thing with no spirit," she said. "did you note the expression of her eyes? there was something in them about pumpkin pie and virtue. that is a peculiar way the left corner of her mouth has of twitching, isn't it? dear, dear, my cloud-compelling pete, what are you coming to?" pete asserted at once that he never was very much interested in the girl. the woman interrupted him, laughing. "oh, it's not of the slightest consequence to me, my dear young man. you needn't draw maps for my benefit. why should i be concerned about it?" but pete continued with his explanations. if he was laughed at for his tastes in women, he felt obliged to say that they were only temporary or indifferent ones. the morning after maggie had departed from home, pete stood behind the bar. he was immaculate in white jacket and apron and his hair was plastered over his brow with infinite correctness. no customers were in the place. pete was twisting his napkined fist slowly in a beer glass, softly whistling to himself and occasionally holding the object of his attention between his eyes and a few weak beams of sunlight that had found their way over the thick screens and into the shaded room. with lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and audacity, the bartender raised his head and stared through the varying cracks between the swaying bamboo doors. suddenly the whistling pucker faded from his lips. he saw maggie walking slowly past. he gave a great start, fearing for the previously-mentioned eminent respectability of the place. he threw a swift, nervous glance about him, all at once feeling guilty. no one was in the room. he went hastily over to the side door. opening it and looking out, he perceived maggie standing, as if undecided, on the corner. she was searching the place with her eyes. as she turned her face toward him pete beckoned to her hurriedly, intent upon returning with speed to a position behind the bar and to the atmosphere of respectability upon which the proprietor insisted. maggie came to him, the anxious look disappearing from her face and a smile wreathing her lips. "oh, pete--," she began brightly. the bartender made a violent gesture of impatience. "oh, my gawd," cried he, vehemently. "what deh hell do yeh wanna hang aroun' here fer? do yeh wanna git me inteh trouble?" he demanded with an air of injury. astonishment swept over the girl's features. "why, pete! yehs tol' me--" pete glanced profound irritation. his countenance reddened with the anger of a man whose respectability is being threatened. "say, yehs makes me tired. see? what deh hell deh yeh wanna tag aroun' atter me fer? yeh'll git me inteh trouble wid deh ol' man an' dey'll be hell teh pay! if he sees a woman roun' here he'll go crazy an' i'll lose me job! see? yer brudder come in here an' raised hell an' deh ol' man hada put up fer it! an' now i'm done! see? i'm done." the girl's eyes stared into his face. "pete, don't yeh remem--" "oh, hell," interrupted pete, anticipating. the girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. she was apparently bewildered and could not find speech. finally she asked in a low voice: "but where kin i go?" the question exasperated pete beyond the powers of endurance. it was a direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter that did not concern him. in his indignation he volunteered information. "oh, go teh hell," cried he. he slammed the door furiously and returned, with an air of relief, to his respectability. maggie went away. she wandered aimlessly for several blocks. she stopped once and asked aloud a question of herself: "who?" a man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the questioning word as intended for him. "eh? what? who? nobody! i didn't say anything," he laughingly said, and continued his way. soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such apparent aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes. she quickened her step, frightened. as a protection, she adopted a demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere. after a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows of houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features. she hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her. suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a chaste black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his chin to his knees. the girl had heard of the grace of god and she decided to approach this man. his beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and kind-heartedness. his eyes shone good-will. but as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. he did not risk it to save a soul. for how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving? chapter xvii upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter, two interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled along a prominent side-street. a dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers, clattered to and fro. electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred radiance. a flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses and chrysanthemums. two or three theatres emptied a crowd upon the storm-swept pavements. men pulled their hats over their eyebrows and raised their collars to their ears. women shrugged impatient shoulders in their warm cloaks and stopped to arrange their skirts for a walk through the storm. people having been comparatively silent for two hours burst into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling from the glowings of the stage. the pavements became tossing seas of umbrellas. men stepped forth to hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied forms of polite request or imperative demand. an endless procession wended toward elevated stations. an atmosphere of pleasure and prosperity seemed to hang over the throng, born, perhaps, of good clothes and of having just emerged from a place of forgetfulness. in the mingled light and gloom of an adjacent park, a handful of wet wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scattered among the benches. a girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street. she threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smiling invitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seeming sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their faces. crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging from the places of forgetfulness. she hurried forward through the crowd as if intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements. the restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed animated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers. a concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift, machine-like music, as if a group of phantom musicians were hastening. a tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air, strolled near the girl. he had on evening dress, a moustache, a chrysanthemum, and a look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully under his eye. seeing the girl walk on as if such a young man as he was not in existence, he looked back transfixed with interest. he stared glassily for a moment, but gave a slight convulsive start when he discerned that she was neither new, parisian, nor theatrical. he wheeled about hastily and turned his stare into the air, like a sailor with a search-light. a stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers, went stolidly by, the broad of his back sneering at the girl. a belated man in business clothes, and in haste to catch a car, bounced against her shoulder. "hi, there, mary, i beg your pardon! brace up, old girl." he grasped her arm to steady her, and then was away running down the middle of the street. the girl walked on out of the realm of restaurants and saloons. she passed more glittering avenues and went into darker blocks than those where the crowd travelled. a young man in light overcoat and derby hat received a glance shot keenly from the eyes of the girl. he stopped and looked at her, thrusting his hands in his pockets and making a mocking smile curl his lips. "come, now, old lady," he said, "you don't mean to tel me that you sized me up for a farmer?" a labouring man marched along; with bundles under his arms. to her remarks, he replied, "it's a fine evenin', ain't it?" she smiled squarely into the face of a boy who was hurrying by with his hands buried in his overcoat pockets, his blonde locks bobbing on his youthful temples, and a cheery smile of unconcern upon his lips. he turned his head and smiled back at her, waving his hands. "not this eve--some other eve!" a drunken man, reeling in her pathway, began to roar at her. "i ain' ga no money!" he shouted, in a dismal voice. he lurched on up the street, wailing to himself: "i ain' ga no money. ba' luck. ain' ga no more money." the girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where the tall black factories shut in the street and only occasional broad beams of light fell across the pavements from saloons. in front of one of these places, whence came the sound of a violin vigorously scraped, the patter of feet on boards and the ring of loud laughter, there stood a man with blotched features. further on in the darkness she met a ragged being with shifting, bloodshot eyes and grimy hands. she went into the blackness of the final block. the shutters of the tall buildings were closed like grim lips. the structures seemed to have eyes that looked over them, beyond them, at other things. afar off the lights of the avenues glittered as if from an impossible distance. street-car bells jingled with a sound of merriment. at the feet of the tall buildings appeared the deathly black hue of the river. some hidden factory sent up a yellow glare, that lit for a moment the waters lapping oilily against timbers. the varied sounds of life, made joyous by distance and seeming unapproachableness, came faintly and died away to a silence. chapter xviii in a partitioned-off section of a saloon sat a man with a half dozen women, gleefully laughing, hovering about him. the man had arrived at that stage of drunkenness where affection is felt for the universe. "i'm good f'ler, girls," he said, convincingly. "i'm damn good f'ler. an'body treats me right, i allus trea's zem right! see?" the women nodded their heads approvingly. "to be sure," they cried out in hearty chorus. "you're the kind of a man we like, pete. you're outa sight! what yeh goin' to buy this time, dear?" "an't'ing yehs wants, damn it," said the man in an abandonment of good will. his countenance shone with the true spirit of benevolence. he was in the proper mode of missionaries. he would have fraternized with obscure hottentots. and above all, he was overwhelmed in tenderness for his friends, who were all illustrious. "an't'ing yehs wants, damn it," repeated he, waving his hands with beneficent recklessness. "i'm good f'ler, girls, an' if an'body treats me right i--here," called he through an open door to a waiter, "bring girls drinks, damn it. what 'ill yehs have, girls? an't'ing yehs wants, damn it!" the waiter glanced in with the disgusted look of the man who serves intoxicants for the man who takes too much of them. he nodded his head shortly at the order from each individual, and went. "damn it," said the man, "we're havin' heluva time. i like you girls! damn'd if i don't! yer right sort! see?" he spoke at length and with feeling, concerning the excellencies of his assembled friends. "don' try pull man's leg, but have a heluva time! das right! das way teh do! now, if i sawght yehs tryin' work me fer drinks, wouldn' buy damn t'ing! but yer right sort, damn it! yehs know how ter treat a f'ler, an' i stays by yehs 'til spen' las' cent! das right! i'm good f'ler an' i knows when an'body treats me right!" between the times of the arrival and departure of the waiter, the man discoursed to the women on the tender regard he felt for all living things. he laid stress upon the purity of his motives in all dealings with men in the world and spoke of the fervor of his friendship for those who were amiable. tears welled slowly from his eyes. his voice quavered when he spoke to them. once when the waiter was about to depart with an empty tray, the man drew a coin from his pocket and held it forth. "here," said he, quite magnificently, "here's quar'." the waiter kept his hands on his tray. "i don' want yer money," he said. the other put forth the coin with tearful insistence. "here, damn it," cried he, "tak't! yer damn goo' f'ler an' i wan' yehs tak't!" "come, come, now," said the waiter, with the sullen air of a man who is forced into giving advice. "put yer mon in yer pocket! yer loaded an' yehs on'y makes a damn fool of yerself." as the latter passed out of the door the man turned pathetically to the women. "he don' know i'm damn goo' f'ler," cried he, dismally. "never you mind, pete, dear," said a woman of brilliance and audacity, laying her hand with great affection upon his arm. "never you mind, old boy! we'll stay by you, dear!" "das ri'," cried the man, his face lighting up at the soothing tones of the woman's voice. "das ri', i'm damn goo' f'ler an' w'en anyone trea's me ri', i treats zem ri'! shee!" "sure!" cried the women. "and we're not goin' back on you, old man." the man turned appealing eyes to the woman of brilliance and audacity. he felt that if he could be convicted of a contemptible action he would die. "shay, nell, damn it, i allus trea's yehs shquare, didn' i? i allus been goo' f'ler wi' yehs, ain't i, nell?" "sure you have, pete," assented the woman. she delivered an oration to her companions. "yessir, that's a fact. pete's a square fellah, he is. he never goes back on a friend. he's the right kind an' we stay by him, don't we, girls?" "sure," they exclaimed. looking lovingly at him they raised their glasses and drank his health. "girlsh," said the man, beseechingly, "i allus trea's yehs ri', didn' i? i'm goo' f'ler, ain' i, girlsh?" "sure," again they chorused. "well," said he finally, "le's have nozzer drink, zen." "that's right," hailed a woman, "that's right. yer no bloomin' jay! yer spends yer money like a man. dat's right." the man pounded the table with his quivering fists. "yessir," he cried, with deep earnestness, as if someone disputed him. "i'm damn goo' f'ler, an' w'en anyone trea's me ri', i allus trea's--le's have nozzer drink." he began to beat the wood with his glass. "shay," howled he, growing suddenly impatient. as the waiter did not then come, the man swelled with wrath. "shay," howled he again. the waiter appeared at the door. "bringsh drinksh," said the man. the waiter disappeared with the orders. "zat f'ler damn fool," cried the man. "he insul' me! i'm ge'man! can' stan' be insul'! i'm goin' lickim when comes!" "no, no," cried the women, crowding about and trying to subdue him. "he's all right! he didn't mean anything! let it go! he's a good fellah!" "din' he insul' me?" asked the man earnestly. "no," said they. "of course he didn't! he's all right!" "sure he didn' insul' me?" demanded the man, with deep anxiety in his voice. "no, no! we know him! he's a good fellah. he didn't mean anything." "well, zen," said the man, resolutely, "i'm go' 'pol'gize!" when the waiter came, the man struggled to the middle of the floor. "girlsh shed you insul' me! i shay damn lie! i 'pol'gize!" "all right," said the waiter. the man sat down. he felt a sleepy but strong desire to straighten things out and have a perfect understanding with everybody. "nell, i allus trea's yeh shquare, din' i? yeh likes me, don' yehs, nell? i'm goo' f'ler?" "sure," said the woman of brilliance and audacity. "yeh knows i'm stuck on yehs, don' yehs, nell?" "sure," she repeated, carelessly. overwhelmed by a spasm of drunken adoration, he drew two or three bills from his pocket, and, with the trembling fingers of an offering priest, laid them on the table before the woman. "yehs knows, damn it, yehs kin have all got, 'cause i'm stuck on yehs, nell, damn't, i--i'm stuck on yehs, nell--buy drinksh--damn't--we're havin' heluva time--w'en anyone trea's me ri'--i--damn't, nell--we're havin' heluva--time." shortly he went to sleep with his swollen face fallen forward on his chest. the women drank and laughed, not heeding the slumbering man in the corner. finally he lurched forward and fell groaning to the floor. the women screamed in disgust and drew back their skirts. "come ahn," cried one, starting up angrily, "let's get out of here." the woman of brilliance and audacity stayed behind, taking up the bills and stuffing them into a deep, irregularly-shaped pocket. a guttural snore from the recumbent man caused her to turn and look down at him. she laughed. "what a damn fool," she said, and went. the smoke from the lamps settled heavily down in the little compartment, obscuring the way out. the smell of oil, stifling in its intensity, pervaded the air. the wine from an overturned glass dripped softly down upon the blotches on the man's neck. chapter xix in a room a woman sat at a table eating like a fat monk in a picture. a soiled, unshaven man pushed open the door and entered. "well," said he, "mag's dead." "what?" said the woman, her mouth filled with bread. "mag's dead," repeated the man. "deh hell she is," said the woman. she continued her meal. when she finished her coffee she began to weep. "i kin remember when her two feet was no bigger dan yer t'umb, and she weared worsted boots," moaned she. "well, whata dat?" said the man. "i kin remember when she weared worsted boots," she cried. the neighbors began to gather in the hall, staring in at the weeping woman as if watching the contortions of a dying dog. a dozen women entered and lamented with her. under their busy hands the rooms took on that appalling appearance of neatness and order with which death is greeted. suddenly the door opened and a woman in a black gown rushed in with outstretched arms. "ah, poor mary," she cried, and tenderly embraced the moaning one. "ah, what ter'ble affliction is dis," continued she. her vocabulary was derived from mission churches. "me poor mary, how i feel fer yehs! ah, what a ter'ble affliction is a disobed'ent chil'." her good, motherly face was wet with tears. she trembled in eagerness to express her sympathy. the mourner sat with bowed head, rocking her body heavily to and fro, and crying out in a high, strained voice that sounded like a dirge on some forlorn pipe. "i kin remember when she weared worsted boots an' her two feets was no bigger dan yer t'umb an' she weared worsted boots, miss smith," she cried, raising her streaming eyes. "ah, me poor mary," sobbed the woman in black. with low, coddling cries, she sank on her knees by the mourner's chair, and put her arms about her. the other women began to groan in different keys. "yer poor misguided chil' is gone now, mary, an' let us hope it's fer deh bes'. yeh'll fergive her now, mary, won't yehs, dear, all her disobed'ence? all her t'ankless behavior to her mudder an' all her badness? she's gone where her ter'ble sins will be judged." the woman in black raised her face and paused. the inevitable sunlight came streaming in at the windows and shed a ghastly cheerfulness upon the faded hues of the room. two or three of the spectators were sniffling, and one was loudly weeping. the mourner arose and staggered into the other room. in a moment she emerged with a pair of faded baby shoes held in the hollow of her hand. "i kin remember when she used to wear dem," cried she. the women burst anew into cries as if they had all been stabbed. the mourner turned to the soiled and unshaven man. "jimmie, boy, go git yer sister! go git yer sister an' we'll put deh boots on her feets!" "dey won't fit her now, yeh damn fool," said the man. "go git yer sister, jimmie," shrieked the woman, confronting him fiercely. the man swore sullenly. he went over to a corner and slowly began to put on his coat. he took his hat and went out, with a dragging, reluctant step. the woman in black came forward and again besought the mourner. "yeh'll fergive her, mary! yeh'll fergive yer bad, bad, chil'! her life was a curse an' her days were black an' yeh'll fergive yer bad girl? she's gone where her sins will be judged." "she's gone where her sins will be judged," cried the other women, like a choir at a funeral. "deh lord gives and deh lord takes away," said the woman in black, raising her eyes to the sunbeams. "deh lord gives and deh lord takes away," responded the others. "yeh'll fergive her, mary!" pleaded the woman in black. the mourner essayed to speak but her voice gave way. she shook her great shoulders frantically, in an agony of grief. hot tears seemed to scald her quivering face. finally her voice came and arose like a scream of pain. "oh, yes, i'll fergive her! i'll fergive her!" a ten years' war an account of the battle with the slum in new york by jacob a. riis author of "how the other half lives" _with illustrations_ [illustration: the riverside press] boston and new york houghton, mifflin and company the riverside press, cambridge 1900 copyright, 1900, by jacob a. riis all rights reserved to the faint-hearted and those of little faith this volume is reproachfully inscribed by the author [illustration: colonel george e. waring, jr.] contents chap. page i. the battle with the slum 1 ii. the tenement house blight 30 iii. the tenement: curing its blight 68 iv. the tenant 104 v. the genesis of the gang 139 vi. letting in the light 169 vii. justice for the boy 204 viii. reform by humane touch 239 list of illustrations page colonel george e. waring, jr. _frontispiece_ police station lodging room on east side 18 the mott street barracks 74 alfred corning clark buildings--_model tenements of city and suburban homes company_ 84 evening in one of the courts of mills house no. 1 94 bone alley 134 mulberry bend park 180 letter h plan of public school no. 165 (showing front on west 109th street) 214 playground on roof of new east broadway schoolhouse (area 8,348 square feet) 220 a tammany-swept east side street before waring 242 the same east side street when colonel waring wielded the broom 248 theodore roosevelt 262 a ten years' war i the battle with the slum the slum is as old as civilization. civilization implies a race, to get ahead. in a race there are usually some who for one cause or another cannot keep up, or are thrust out from among their fellows. they fall behind, and when they have been left far in the rear they lose hope and ambition, and give up. thenceforward, if left to their own resources, they are the victims, not the masters, of their environment; and it is a bad master. they drag one another always farther down. the bad environment becomes the heredity of the next generation. then, given the crowd, you have the slum ready-made. the battle with the slum began the day civilization recognized in it her enemy. it was a losing fight until conscience joined forces with fear and self-interest against it. when common sense and the golden rule obtain among men as a rule of practice, it will be over. the two have not always been classed together, but here they are plainly seen to belong together. justice to the individual is accepted in theory as the only safe groundwork of the commonwealth. when it is practiced in dealing with the slum, there will shortly be no slum. we need not wait for the millennium, to get rid of it. we can do it now. all that is required is that it shall not be left to itself. that is justice to it and to us, since its grievous ailment is that it cannot help itself. when a man is drowning, the thing to do is to pull him out of the water; afterward there will be time for talking it over. we got at it the other way in dealing with our social problems. the doctrinaires had their day, and they decided to let bad enough alone; that it was unsafe to interfere with "causes that operate sociologically," as one survivor of these unfittest put it to me. it was a piece of scientific humbug that cost the age which listened to it dear. "causes that operate sociologically" are the opportunity of the political and every other kind of scamp who trades upon the depravity and helplessness of the slum, and the refuge of the pessimist who is useless in the fight against them. we have not done yet paying the bills he ran up for us. some time since we turned to, to pull the drowning man out, and it was time. a little while longer, and we should have been in danger of being dragged down with him. the slum complaint had been chronic in all ages, but the great changes which the nineteenth century saw, the new industry, political freedom, brought on an acute attack which threatened to become fatal. too many of us had supposed that, built as our commonwealth was on universal suffrage, it would be proof against the complaints that harassed older states; but in fact it turned out that there was extra hazard in that. having solemnly resolved that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we shut our eyes and waited for the formula to work. it was as if a man with a cold should take the doctor's prescription to bed with him, expecting it to cure him. the formula was all right, but merely repeating it worked no cure. when, after a hundred years, we opened our eyes, it was upon sixty cents a day as the living wage of the working-woman in our cities; upon "knee pants" at forty cents a dozen for the making; upon the potter's field taking tithe of our city life, ten per cent, each year for the trench, truly the lost tenth of the slum. our country had grown great and rich; through our ports was poured food for the millions of europe. but in the back streets multitudes huddled in ignorance and want. the foreign oppressor had been vanquished, the fetters stricken from the black man at home; but his white brother, in his bitter plight, sent up a cry of distress that had in it a distinct note of menace. political freedom we had won; but the problem of helpless poverty, grown vast with the added offscourings of the old world, mocked us, unsolved. liberty at sixty cents a day set presently its stamp upon the government of our cities, and it became the scandal and the peril of our political system. so the battle began. three times since the war that absorbed the nation's energies and attention had the slum confronted us in new york with its challenge. in the darkest days of the great struggle it was the treacherous mob; later on, the threat of the cholera, which found swine foraging in the streets as the only scavengers, and a swarming host, but little above the hog in its appetites and in the quality of the shelter afforded it, peopling the back alleys. still later, the mob, caught looting the city's treasury with its idol, the thief tweed, at its head, drunk with power and plunder, had insolently defied the outraged community to do its worst. there were meetings and protests. the rascals were turned out for a season; the arch-thief died in jail. i see him now, going through the gloomy portals of the tombs, whither, as a newspaper reporter, i had gone with him, his stubborn head held high as ever. i asked myself more than once, at the time when the vile prison was torn down, whether the comic clamor to have the ugly old gates preserved and set up in central park had anything to do with the memory of the "martyred" thief, or whether it was in joyful celebration of the fact that others had escaped. his name is even now one to conjure with in the sixth ward. he never "squealed," and he was "so good to the poor"--evidence that the slum is not laid by the heels by merely destroying five points and the mulberry bend. there are other fights to be fought in that war, other victories to be won, and it is slow work. it was nearly ten years after the great robbery before decency got the upper grip in good earnest. that was when the civic conscience awoke in 1879. in that year the slum was arraigned in the churches. the sad and shameful story was told of how it grew and was fostered by avarice, that saw in the homeless crowds from over the sea only a chance for business, and exploited them to the uttermost, making sometimes a hundred per cent, on the capital invested,--always most out of the worst houses, from the tenants of which "nothing was expected" save that they pay the usurious rents; how christianity, citizenship, human fellowship, shook their skirts clear of the rabble that was only good enough to fill the greedy purse, and how the rabble, left to itself, improved such opportunities as it found after such fashion as it knew; how it ran elections merely to count its thugs in, and fattened at the public crib; and how the whole evil thing had its root in the tenements, where the home had ceased to be sacred,--those dark and deadly dens in which the family ideal was tortured to death, and character was smothered; in which children were "damned rather than born" into the world, thus realizing a slum kind of foreordination to torment, happily brief in many cases. the tenement house committee long afterward called the worst of the barracks "infant slaughter houses," and showed, by reference to the mortality lists, that they killed one in every five babies born in them. the story shocked the town into action. plans for a better kind of tenement were called for, and a premium was put on every ray of light and breath of air that could be let into it. money was raised to build model houses, and a bill to give the health authorities summary powers in dealing with tenements was sent to the legislature. the landlords held it up until the last day of the session, when it was forced through by an angered public opinion. the power of the cabal was broken. the landlords had found their waterloo. many of them got rid of their property, which in a large number of cases they had never seen, and tried to forget the source of their ill-gotten wealth. light and air did find their way into the tenements in a half-hearted fashion, and we began to count the tenants as "souls." that is one of our milestones in the history of new york. they were never reckoned so before; no one ever thought of them as "souls." so, restored to human fellowship, in the twilight of the air shaft that had penetrated to their dens, the first tenement house committee was able to make them out "better than the houses" they lived in, and a long step forward was taken. the mulberry bend, the wicked core of the "bloody sixth ward," was marked for destruction, and all slumdom held its breath to see it go. with that gone, it seemed as if the old days must be gone too, never to return. there would not be another mulberry bend. as long as it stood, there was yet a chance. the slum had backing, as it were. the civic conscience was not very robust yet, and required many and protracted naps. it slumbered fitfully eight long years, waking up now and then with a start, while the politicians did their best to lull it back to its slumbers. i wondered often, in those years of delay, if it was just plain stupidity that kept the politicians from spending the money which the law had put within their grasp; for with every year that passed a million dollars that could have been used for small park purposes was lost. but they were wiser than i. i understood when i saw the changes which letting in the sunshine worked. we had all believed it, but they knew it all along. at the same time, they lost none of the chances that offered. they helped the landlords, who considered themselves greatly aggrieved because their property was thereafter to front on a park instead of a pigsty, to transfer the whole assessment of half a million dollars for park benefit to the city. they undid in less than six weeks what it had taken considerably more than six years to do; but the park was cheap at the price. we could afford to pay all it cost to wake us up. when finally, upon the wave of wrath excited by the parkhurst and lexow disclosures, reform came with a shock that dislodged tammany, it found us wide awake, and, it must be admitted, not a little astonished at our sudden access of righteousness. the battle went against the slum in the three years that followed, until it found backing in the "odium of reform" that became the issue in the municipal organization of the greater city. tammany made notes. of what was done, how it was done, and why, during those years, i shall have occasion to speak further in these pages. here i wish to measure the stretch we have come since i wrote "how the other half lives," ten years ago. some of it we came plodding, and some at full speed; some of it in the face of every obstacle that could be thrown in our way, wresting victory from defeat at every step; some of it with the enemy on the run. take it altogether, it is a long way. most of it will not have to be traveled over again. the engine of municipal progress, once started as it has been in new york, may slip many a cog with tammany as the engineer; it may even be stopped for a season; but it can never be made to work backward. even tammany knows that, and is building the schools she so long neglected, and so is hastening the day when she shall be but an unsavory memory. how we strove for those schools, to no purpose! our arguments, our anger, the anxious pleading of philanthropists who saw the young on the east side going to ruin, the warning year after year of the superintendent of schools that the compulsory education law was but an empty mockery where it was most needed, the knocking of uncounted thousands of children for whom there was no room,--uncounted in sober fact; there was not even a way of finding out how many were adrift,--brought only the response that the tax rate must be kept down. kept down it was. "waste" was successfully averted at the spigot; at the bunghole it went on unchecked. in a swarming population like that you must have either schools or jails, and the jails waxed fat with the overflow. the east side, that had been orderly, became a hotbed of child crime. and when, in answer to the charge made by a legislative committee that the father forced his child into the shop, on a perjured age certificate, to labor when he ought to have been at play, that father, bent and heavy-eyed with unceasing toil, flung back the charge with the bitter reproach that we gave him no other choice, that it was either the street or the shop for his boy, and that perjury for him was cheaper than the ruin of the child, we were mute. what, indeed, was there to say? the crime was ours, not his. that was but yesterday. to-day we can count the months to the time when every child who knocks shall find a seat in our schools. we have a school census to tell us of the need. in that most crowded neighborhood in all the world, where the superintendent lately pleaded in vain for three new schools, five have been built, the finest in this or any other land,--great, light, and airy structures, with playgrounds on the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. the briefest of our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall be built without its playground. so the boy is coming to his rights. the streets are cleaned,--not necessarily clean just now; colonel waring is dead, with his doctrine of putting a man instead of a voter behind every broom, killed by politics, he and his doctrine both,--but cleaned. the slum has even been washed. we tried that on hester street years ago, in the age of cobblestone pavements, and the result fairly frightened us. i remember the indignant reply of a well-known citizen, a man of large business responsibility and experience in the handling of men, to whom the office of street-cleaning commissioner had been offered, when i asked him if he would accept. "i have lived," he said, "a blameless life for forty years, and have a character in the community. i cannot afford--no man with a reputation can afford--to hold that office; it will surely wreck it." that was then. it made colonel waring's reputation. he took the trucks from the streets. tammany, in a brief interregnum of vigor under mayor grant, had laid the axe to the unsightly telegraph poles and begun to pave the streets with asphalt, but it left the trucks and the ash barrels to colonel waring as hopeless. trucks have votes; at least their drivers have. now that they are gone, the drivers would be the last to bring them back; for they have children, too, and the rescued streets gave them their first playground. perilous, begrudged by policeman and storekeeper, though it was, it was still a playground. but one is coming in which the boy shall rule unchallenged. the mulberry bend park kept its promise. before the sod was laid in it two more were under way in the thickest of the tenement house crowding, and each, under the law which brought them into existence, is to be laid out in part as a playground. they are not yet finished, but they will be; for the people have taken to the idea, and the politician has made a note of the fact. he saw a great light when the play piers were opened. in half a dozen localities where the slum was striking its roots deep into the soil such piers are now being built, and land is being acquired for small parks. we shall yet settle the "causes that operated sociologically" on the boy with a lawn mower and a sand heap. you have got your boy, and the heredity of the next one, when you can order his setting. even while i am writing, a bill is urged in the legislature to build in every senatorial district in the city a gymnasium and a public bath. it matters little whether it passes at this session or not. the important thing is that it is there. the rest will follow. a people's club is being organized, to crowd out the saloon that has had a monopoly of the brightness and the cheer in the tenement streets too long. the labor unions are bestirring themselves to deal with the sweating curse, and the gospel of less law and more enforcement sits enthroned at albany. theodore roosevelt will teach us again jefferson's forgotten lesson, that "the whole art of government consists in being honest." with a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship by the shortest cut. of free soup there is an end. it was never food for free men. the last spoonful was ladled out by yellow journalism with the certificate of the men who fought roosevelt and reform in the police board that it was good. it is not likely that it will ever plague us again. our experience has taught us a new reading of the old word that charity covers a multitude of sins. it does. uncovering some of them has kept us busy since our conscience awoke, and there are more left. the worst of them all, that awful parody on municipal charity, the police station lodging room, is gone, after twenty years of persistent attack upon the foul dens,--years during which they were arraigned, condemned, indicted by every authority having jurisdiction, all to no purpose. the stale beer dives went with them and with the bend, and the grip of the tramp on our throat has been loosened. we shall not easily throw it off altogether, for the tramp has a vote, too, for which tammany, with admirable ingenuity, has found a new use, since the ante-election inspection of lodging houses has made them less available for colonization purposes than they were. perhaps i should say a new way of very old use. it is simplicity itself. instead of keeping tramps in hired lodgings for weeks at a daily outlay, the new way is to send them all to the island on short commitments during the canvass, and vote them from there _en bloc_ at the city's expense. time and education must solve that, like so many other problems which the slum has thrust upon us. they are the forces upon which, when we have gone as far as our present supply of steam will carry us, we must always fall back; and this we may do with confidence so long as we keep stirring, if it is only marking time, as now. it is in the retrospect that one sees how far we have come, after all, and from that gathers courage for the rest of the way. twenty-nine years have passed since i slept in a police station lodging house, a lonely lad, and was robbed, beaten, and thrown out for protesting; and when the vagrant cur that had joined its homelessness to mine, and had sat all night at the door waiting for me to come out,--it had been clubbed away the night before,--snarled and showed its teeth at the doorman, raging and impotent i saw it beaten to death on the step. i little dreamed then that the friendless beast, dead, should prove the undoing of the monstrous wrong done by the maintenance of these evil holes to every helpless man and woman who was without shelter in new york; but it did. it was after an inspection of the lodging rooms, when i stood with theodore roosevelt, then president of the police board, in the one where i had slept that night, and told him of it, that he swore they should go. and go they did, as did so many another abuse in those two years of honest purpose and effort. i hated them. it may not have been a very high motive to furnish power for municipal reform; but we had tried every other way, and none of them worked. arbitration is good, but there are times when it becomes necessary to knock a man down and arbitrate sitting on him, and this was such a time. it was what we started out to do with the rear tenements, the worst of the slum barracks, and it would have been better had we kept on that track. i have always maintained that we made a false move when we stopped to discuss damages with the landlord, or to hear his side of it at all. his share in it was our grievance; it blocked the mortality records with its burden of human woe. the damage was all ours, the profit all his. if there are damages to collect, he should foot the bill, not we. vested rights are to be protected, but no man has a right to be protected in killing his neighbor. [illustration: police station lodging room on east side] however, they are down, the worst of them. the community has asserted its right to destroy tenements that destroy life, and for that cause. we bought the slum off in the mulberry bend at its own figure. on the rear tenements we set the price, and set it low. it was a long step. bottle alley is gone, and bandits' roost. bone alley, thieves' alley, and kerosene row,--they are all gone. hell's kitchen and poverty gap have acquired standards of decency; poverty gap has risen even to the height of neckties. the time is fresh in my recollection when a different kind of necktie was its pride; when the boy murderer--he was barely nineteen--who wore it on the gallows took leave of the captain of detectives with the cheerful invitation to "come over to the wake. they will have a high old time." and the event fully redeemed the promise. the whole gap turned out to do the dead bully honor. i have not heard from the gap, and hardly from hell's kitchen, in five years. the last news from the kitchen was when the thin wedge of a column of negroes, in their uptown migration, tried to squeeze in, and provoked a race war; but that in fairness should not be laid up against it. in certain local aspects it might be accounted a sacred duty; as much so as to get drunk and provoke a fight on the anniversary of the battle of the boyne. but on the whole the kitchen has grown orderly. the gang rarely beats a policeman nowadays, and it has not killed one in a long while. so, one after another, the outworks of the slum have been taken. it has been beaten in many battles; but its reserves are unimpaired. more tenements are being built every day on twenty-five-foot lots, and however watchfully such a house is planned, if it is to return to the builder the profit he seeks, it will have that within it which, the moment the grasp of official sanitary supervision is loosened, must summon up the ghost of the slum. the common type of tenement to-day is the double-decker, and the double-decker is hopeless. in it the crowding goes on at a constantly increasing rate. this is the sore spot, and as against it all the rest seems often enough unavailing. yet it cannot be. it is true that the home, about which all that is to work for permanent progress must cluster, is struggling against desperate odds in the tenement, and that the struggle has been reflected in the morals of the people, in the corruption of the young, to an alarming extent; but it must be that the higher standards now set up on every hand, in the cleaner streets, in the better schools, in the parks and the clubs, in the settlements, and in the thousand and one agencies for good that touch and help the lives of the poor at as many points, will tell at no distant day, and react upon the homes and upon their builders. to any one who knew the east side, for instance, ten years ago, the difference between that day and this in the appearance of the children whom he sees there must be striking. rags and dirt are now the exception rather than the rule. perhaps the statement is a trifle too strong as to the dirt; but dirt is not harmful except when coupled with rags; it can be washed off, and nowadays is washed off where such a thing would have been considered affectation in the days that were. soap and water have worked a visible cure already, that must go more than skin-deep. they are moral agents of the first value in the slum. and the day must come when rapid transit will cease to be a football between contending forces in a city of three million people, and the reason for the outrageous crowding will cease to exist with the scattering of the centres of production to the suburb. that day may be a long way off, measured by the impatience of the philanthropist, but it is bound to come. meanwhile, philanthropy is not sitting idle and waiting. it is building tenements on the humane plan that wipes out the lines of the twenty-five-foot lot, and lets in sunshine and air and hope. it is putting up hotels deserving of the name for the army that but just now had no other home than the cheap lodging houses which inspector byrnes fitly called "nurseries of crime." these also are standards from which there is no backing down, even if coming up to them is slow work: and they are here to stay, for they pay. that is the test. not charity, but justice,--that is the gospel which they preach. flushed with the success of many victories, we challenged the slum to a fight to the finish a year ago, and bade it come on. it came on. on our side fought the bravest and best. the man who marshaled the citizen forces for their candidate had been foremost in building homes, in erecting baths for the people, in directing the self-sacrificing labors of the oldest and worthiest of the agencies for improving the condition of the poor. with him battled men who had given lives of patient study and effort to the cause of helping their fellow men. shoulder to shoulder with them stood the thoughtful workingman from the east side tenement. the slum, too, marshaled its forces. tammany produced her notes. she pointed to the increased tax rate, showed what it had cost to build schools and parks and to clean house, and called it criminal recklessness. the issue was made sharp and clear. the war cry of the slum was characteristic: "to hell with reform!" we all remember the result. politics interfered, and turned victory into defeat. we were beaten. i shall never forget that election night. i walked home through the bowery in the midnight hour, and saw it gorging itself, like a starved wolf, upon the promise of the morrow. drunken men and women sat in every doorway, howling ribald songs and curses. hard faces i had not seen for years showed themselves about the dives. the mob made merry after its fashion. the old days were coming back. reform was dead, and decency with it. a year later, i passed that same way on the night of election. the scene was strangely changed. the street was unusually quiet for such a time. men stood in groups about the saloons, and talked in whispers, with serious faces. the name of roosevelt was heard on every hand. the dives were running, but there was no shouting, and violence was discouraged. when, on the following day, i met the proprietor of one of the oldest concerns in the bowery,--which, while doing a legitimate business, caters necessarily to its crowds, and therefore sides with them,--he told me with bitter reproach how he had been stricken in pocket. a gambler had just been in to see him, who had come on from the far west, in anticipation of a wide-open town, and had got all ready to open a house in the tenderloin. "he brought $40,000 to put in the business, and he came to take it away to baltimore. just now the cashier of ---bank told me that two other gentlemen--gamblers? yes, that's what you call them--had drawn $130,000 which they would have invested here, and had gone after him. think of all that money gone to baltimore! that's what you've done!" i went over to police headquarters, thinking of the sad state of that man, and in the hallway i ran across two children, little tots, who were inquiring their way to "the commissioner." the older was a hunchback girl, who led her younger brother (he could not have been over five or six years old) by the hand. they explained their case to me. they came from allen street. some undesirable women tenants had moved into the tenement, and when complaint was made that sent the police there, the children's father, who was a poor jewish tailor, was blamed. the tenants took it out of the boy by punching his nose till it bled. whereupon the children went straight to mulberry street to see the commissioner and get justice. it was the first time in twenty years that i had known allen street to come to police headquarters for justice; and in the discovery that the new idea had reached down to the little children i read the doom of the slum, despite its loud vauntings. no, it was not true that reform was dead, with decency. it was not the slum that had won; it was we who had lost. we were not up to the mark,--not yet. but new york is a many times cleaner and better city to-day than it was ten years ago. then i was able to grasp easily the whole plan for wresting it from the neglect and indifference that had put us where we were. it was chiefly, almost wholly, remedial in its scope. now it is preventive, constructive, and no ten men could gather all the threads and hold them. we have made, are making headway, and no tammany has the power to stop us. she knows it, too, and is in such frantic haste to fill her pockets while she has time that she has abandoned her old ally, the tax rate, and the pretense of making bad government cheap government. she is at this moment engaged in raising taxes and assessments at one and the same time to an unheard-of figure, while salaries are being increased lavishly on every hand. we can afford to pay all she charges us for the lesson we are learning. if to that we add common sense, we shall discover the bearings of it all without trouble. yesterday i picked up a book,--a learned disquisition on government,--and read on the title-page, "affectionately dedicated to all who despise politics." that was not common sense. to win the battle with the slum, we must not begin by despising politics. we have been doing that too long. the politics of the slum is apt to be like the slum itself, dirty. then it must be cleaned. it is what the fight is about. politics is the weapon. we must learn to use it so as to cut straight and sure. that is common sense, and the golden rule as applied to tammany. some years ago, the united states government conducted an inquiry into the slums of great cities. to its staff of experts was attached a chemist, who gathered and isolated a lot of bacilli with fearsome latin names, in the tenements where he went. among those he labeled were the _staphylococcus pyogenes albus_, the _micrococcus fervidosus_, the _saccharomyces rosaceus_, and the _bacillus buccalis fortuitus_. i made a note of the names at the time, because of the dread with which they inspired me. but i searched the collection in vain for the real bacillus of the slum. it escaped science, to be identified by human sympathy and a conscience-stricken community with that of ordinary human selfishness. the antitoxin has been found, and is applied successfully. since justice has replaced charity on the prescription the patient is improving. and the improvement is not confined to him; it is general. conscience is not a local issue in our day. a few years ago, a united states senator sought reã«lection on the platform that the decalogue and the golden rule were glittering generalities that had no place in politics, and lost. we have not quite reached the millennium yet, but to-day a man is governor in the empire state who was elected on the pledge that he would rule by the ten commandments. these are facts that mean much or little, according to the way one looks at them. the significant thing is that they are facts, and that, in spite of slipping and sliding, the world moves forward, not backward. the poor we shall have always with us, but the slum we need not have. these two do not rightfully belong together. their present partnership is at once poverty's worst hardship and our worst fault. ii the tenement house blight in a stanton street tenement, the other day, i stumbled upon a polish capmaker's home. there were other capmakers in the house, russian and polish, but they simply "lived" there. this one had a home. the fact proclaimed itself the moment the door was opened, in spite of the darkness. the rooms were in the rear, gloomy with the twilight of the tenement, although the day was sunny without, but neat, even cosy. it was early, but the day's chores were evidently done. the teakettle sang on the stove, at which a bright-looking girl of twelve, with a pale but cheery face, and sleeves brushed back to the elbows, was busy poking up the fire. a little boy stood by the window, flattening his nose against the pane and gazing wistfully up among the chimney pots where a piece of blue sky about as big as the kitchen could be made out. i remarked to the mother that they were nice rooms. "ah yes," she said, with a weary little smile that struggled bravely with hope long deferred, "but it is hard to make a home here. we would so like to live in the front, but we can't pay the rent." i knew the front with its unlovely view of the tenement street too well, and i said a good word for the air shaft--yard or court it could not be called, it was too small for that--which rather surprised myself. i had found few virtues enough in it before. the girl at the stove had left off poking the fire. she broke in the moment i finished, with eager enthusiasm: "why, they have the sun in there. when the door is opened the light comes right in your face." "does it never come here?" i asked, and wished i had not done so, as soon as the words were spoken. the child at the window was listening, with his whole hungry little soul in his eyes. yes, it did, she said. once every summer, for a little while, it came over the houses. she knew the month and the exact hour of the day when its rays shone into their home, and just the reach of its slant on the wall. they had lived there six years. in june the sun was due. a haunting fear that the baby would ask how long it was till june--it was february then--took possession of me, and i hastened to change the subject. warsaw was their old home. they kept a little store there, and were young and happy. oh, it was a fine city, with parks and squares, and bridges over the beautiful river,--and grass and flowers and birds and soldiers, put in the girl breathlessly. she remembered. but the children kept coming, and they went across the sea to give them a better chance. father made fifteen dollars a week, much money; but there were long seasons when there was no work. she, the mother, was never very well here,--she hadn't any strength; and the baby! she glanced at his grave white face, and took him in her arms. the picture of the two, and of the pale-faced girl longing back to the fields and the sunlight, in their prison of gloom and gray walls, haunts me yet. i have not had the courage to go back since. i recalled the report of an english army surgeon, which i read years ago, on the many more soldiers that died--were killed would be more correct--in barracks into which the sun never shone than in those that were open to the light. the capmaker's case is the case of the nineteenth century, of civilization, against the metropolis of america. the home, the family, are the rallying points of civilization. but long since the tenements of new york earned for it the ominous name of "the homeless city." in its 40,000 tenements its workers, more than half of the city's population, are housed. they have no other chance. there are, indeed, wives and mothers who, by sheer force of character, rise above their environment and make homes where they go. happily, there are yet many of them. but the fact remains that hitherto their struggle has been growing ever harder, and the issue more doubtful. the tenement itself, with its crowds, its lack of privacy, is the greatest destroyer of individuality, of character. as its numbers increase, so does "the element that becomes criminal for lack of individuality and the self-respect that comes with it." add the shiftless and the weak who are turned out by the same process, and you have its legitimate crop. in 1880 the average number of persons to each dwelling in new york was 16.37; in 1890 it was 18.52. in 1895, according to the police census, 21.2. the census of 1900 will show the crowding to have gone on at an equal if not at a greater rate. that will mean that so many more tenements have been built of the modern type, with four families to the floor where once there were two. i shall not weary the reader with many statistics. they are to be found, by those who want them, in the census books and in the official records. i shall try to draw from them their human story. but, as an instance of the unchecked drift, let me quote here the case of the tenth ward, that east side district known as the most crowded in all the world. in 1880, when it had not yet attained that bad eminence, it contained 47,554 persons, or 432.3 to the acre. in 1890 the census showed a population of 57,596, which was 522 to the acre. the police census of 1895 found 70,168 persons living in 1514 houses, which was 643.08 to the acre. lastly, the health department's census for the first half of 1898 gave a total of 82,175 persons living in 1201 tenements, with 313 inhabited buildings yet to be heard from. this is the process of doubling up,--literally, since the cause and the vehicle of it all is the double-decker tenement,--which in the year 1895 had crowded a single block in that ward at the rate of 1526 persons per acre, and one in the eleventh ward at the rate of 1774.[1] it goes on not in the tenth ward or on the east side only, but throughout the city. when, in 1897, it was proposed to lay out a small park in the twenty-second ward, up on the far west side, it was shown that five blocks in that section, between forty-ninth and sixty-second streets and ninth and eleventh avenues, had a population of more than 3000 each. the block between sixty-first and sixty-second streets, tenth and eleventh avenues, harbored 3580, which meant 974.6 persons to the acre. [footnote 1: police census of 1895: block bounded by canal, hester, eldridge, and forsyth streets: size 375 ã� 200, population 2628, rate per acre 1526. block bounded by stanton, houston, attorney, and ridge streets: size 200 ã� 300, population 2244, rate per acre 1774.] if we have here to do with forces that are beyond the control of the individual or the community, we shall do well at least to face the facts squarely and know the truth. it is no answer to the charge that new york's way of housing its workers is the worst in the world to say that they are better off than they were where they came from. it is not true, in most cases, as far as the home is concerned: a shanty is better than a flat in a cheap tenement, any day. even if it were true, it would still be beside the issue. in poland my capmaker counted for nothing. nothing was expected of him. here he ranks, after a few brief years, politically equal with the man who hires his labor. a citizen's duty is expected of him, and home and citizenship are convertible terms. the observation of the frenchman who had watched the experiment of herding two thousand human beings in eight tenement barracks in paris, that the result was the "exasperation of the tenant against society," is true the world over. we have done as badly in new york. social hatefulness is not a good soil for citizenship to grow in, where political equality rules. nor will the old lie about the tenants being wholly to blame cover the ground. it has long been overworked in defense of landlord usury. doubtless there are bad tenants. in the matter of renting houses, as in everything else, men have a trick of coming up to what is expected of them, good or bad; but as a class the tenants have been shown all along to be superior to their surroundings. "better than the houses they live in," said the first tenement house commission; and the second gave as its verdict that "they respond quickly to improved conditions." that is not an honest answer. the truth is that if we cannot check the indraught to the cities, we can, if we choose, make homes for those who come, and at a profit on the investment. nothing has been more clearly demonstrated in our day, and it is time that it should be said so that everybody can understand. it is not a case of transforming human nature in the tenant, but of reforming it in the landlord builder. it is a plain question of the per cent. he is willing to take. so that we may get the capmaker's view and that of his fellow tenants,--for, after all, that is the one that counts; the state and the community are not nearly so much interested in the profits of the landlord as in the welfare of the workers,--suppose we take a stroll through a tenement house neighborhood and see for ourselves. we were in stanton street. let us start there, then, going east. towering barracks on either side, five, six stories high. teeming crowds. push-cart men "moved on" by the policeman, who seems to exist only for the purpose. forsyth street: there is a church on the corner, polish and catholic, a combination that strikes one as queer here on the east side, where polish has come to be synonymous with jewish. i have cause to remember that corner. a man killed his wife in this house, and was hanged for it. just across the street, on the stoop of that brown stone tenement, the tragedy was reã«nacted the next year; only the murderer saved the county trouble and expense by taking himself off, also. that other stoop in the same row witnessed a suicide. why do i tell you these things? because they are true. the policeman here will bear me out. they belong to the ordinary setting of life in a crowd such as this. it is never so little worth living, and therefore held so cheap along with the fierce, unceasing battle that goes on to save it. you will go no further unless i leave it out? very well; i shall leave out the murder after we have passed the block yonder. the tragedy of that is of a kind that comes too close to the every-day life of tenement house people to be omitted. the house caught fire in the night, and five were burned to death,--father, mother, and three children. the others got out; why not they? they stayed, it seems, to make sure none was left; they were not willing to leave one behind, to save themselves. and then it was too late; the stairs were burning. there was no proper fire escape. that was where the murder came in; but it was not all chargeable to the landlord, nor even the greater part. more than thirty years ago, in 1867, the state made it law that the stairs in every tenement four stories high should be fireproof, and forbade the storing of any inflammable material in such houses. i do not know when the law was repealed, or if it ever was. i only know that in 1892 the fire department, out of pity for the tenants and regard for the safety of its own men, forced through an amendment to the building law, requiring the stairs of the common type of five-story tenements to be built of fireproof material, and that to-day they are of wood, just as they always were. only last spring i looked up the superintendent of buildings and asked him what it meant. i showed him the law, which said that the stairs should be "built of slow-burning construction or fireproof material;" and he put his finger upon the clause that follows, "as the superintendent of buildings shall decide." the law gave him discretion, and that is how he used it. "hard wood burns slowly," said he. the fire of which i speak was a "cruller fire," if i remember rightly, which is to say that it broke out in the basement bakeshop, where they were boiling crullers (doughnuts) in fat, at four a. m., with a hundred tenants asleep in the house above them. the fat went into the fire, and the rest followed. i suppose that i had to do with a hundred such fires, as a police reporter, before, under the protest of the tenement house committee and the good government clubs, the boiling of fat in tenement bakeshops was forbidden. the chief of the fire department, in his testimony before the committee, said that "tenements are erected mainly with a view of returning a large income for the amount of capital invested. it is only after a fire in which great loss of life occurs that any interest whatever is taken in the safety of the occupants." the superintendent of buildings, after such a fire in march, 1896, said that there were thousands of tenement fire-traps in the city. my reporter's notebook bears witness to the correctness of his statement, and it has many blank leaves that are waiting to be put to that use yet. the reckoning for eleven years showed that, of 35,844 fires in new york, 53.18 per cent. were in tenement houses, though they were only a little more than 31 per cent. of all the buildings, and that 177 occupants were killed, 523 maimed, and 625 rescued by the firemen. their rescue cost the lives of three of these brave men, and 453 were injured in the effort. and when all that is said, not the half is told. a fire in the night in one of those human beehives, with its terror and woe, is one of the things that live in the recollection ever after as a terrible nightmare. yet the demonstration of the tenement house committee, that to build tenements fireproof from the ground up would cost little over ten per cent. more than is spent upon the firetrap, and would more than return the interest on the extra outlay in the saving of insurance and repairs, and in the better building every way, has found no echo in legislation or in the practice of builders. that was the fire chief's way to avoid "the great destruction of life;" but he warned the committee that it would "meet with strong opposition from the different interests, should legislation be requested." the interest of the man who pays the rent will not be suspected in this, so he must have meant the man who collects it. here is a block of tenements inhabited by poor jews. most of the jews who live over here are poor; and the poorer they are, the higher rent do they pay, and the more do they crowd to make it up between them. "the destruction of the poor is their poverty." it is only the old story in a new setting. the slum landlord's profits were always the highest. he spends nothing for repairs, and lays the blame on the tenant. the "district leader" saves him, in these days of tammany rule come back, unless he is on the wrong side of the political fence, in which case the sanitary code comes handy to chase him into camp. a big "order" on his house is a very effective way of making a tenement house landlord discern political truth on the eve of an important election. just before the last, when the election of theodore roosevelt was threatened, the sanitary force displayed such activity as it has not since, up to the raid on the elevated roads, in the examination of tenements belonging very largely, as it happened, to sympathizers with the gallant rough rider's cause; and those who knew did not marvel much at the large vote polled by the tammany candidate in the old city. the halls of these tenements are dark. under the law, there should be a light burning, but it is one of the rarest things to find one. the thing seems well-nigh impossible of accomplishment. two years ago, when the good government clubs set about backing up the board of health in its efforts to work out this reform, which comes close to being one of the most necessary of all,--such untold mischief is abroad in the darkness of these thoroughfares,--the sanitary police reported 12,000 tenement halls unlighted by night, even, and brought them, by repeated orders, down to less than 1000 in six months. i do not believe the light burns in 1000 of them all to-day. it is so easy to put it out when the policeman's back is turned, and save the gas. we had a curious instance at the time of the difficulties that sometimes beset reform. certain halls that were known to be dark were reported sufficiently lighted by the policeman of the district, and it was discovered that it was his standard that was vitiated. he himself lived in a tenement, and was used to its gloom. so an order was issued defining darkness to the sanitary police: if the sink in the hall could be made out, and the slops overflowing on the floor, and if a baby could be seen on the stairs, the hall was light; if, on the other hand, the baby's shrieks were the first warning that it was being trampled upon, the hall was dark. some days later, the old question arose about an eldridge street tenement. the policeman had reported the hall light enough. the president of the board of health, to settle it once for all, went over with me, to see for himself. the hall was very dark. he sent for the policeman. "did you see the sink in that hall?" he asked. the policeman said he did. "but it is pitch dark. how did you see it?" "i lit a match," said the policeman. four families live on these floors, with heaven knows how many children. it was here the police commissioners were requested, in sober earnest, some years ago, by a committee of very practical women philanthropists, to have the children tagged, so as to save the policemen wear and tear in taking them back and forth between the eldridge street police station and headquarters, when they got lost. if tagged, they could be assorted at once and taken to their homes. incidentally, the city would save the expense of many meals. it was shrewdly suspected that the little ones were lost on purpose in a good many cases, as a way of getting them fed at the public expense. that the children preferred the excitement of the police station, and the distinction of a trip in charge of a brass-buttoned guardian, to the ludlow street flat is easy enough to understand. a more unlovely existence than that in one of these tenements it would be hard to imagine. everywhere is the stench of the kerosene stove that is forever burning, serving for cooking, heating, and ironing alike, until the last atom of oxygen is burned out of the close air. oil is cheaper than coal. the air shaft is too busy carrying up smells from below to bring any air down, even if it is not hung full of washing in every story, as it ordinarily is. enterprising tenants turn it to use as a refrigerator as well. there is at least a draught of air, such as it is. when fire breaks out, this draught makes of the air shaft a flue through which the fire roars fiercely to the roof, so transforming what was meant for the good of the tenants into their greatest peril. the stuffy rooms seem as if they were made for dwarfs. most decidedly, there is not room to swing the proverbial cat in any one of them. in one i helped the children, last holiday, to set up a christmas tree, so that a glimpse of something that was not utterly sordid and mean might for once enter their lives. three weeks after, i found the tree standing yet in the corner. it was very cold, and there was no fire in the room. "we were going to burn it," said the little woman, whose husband was then in the insane asylum, "and then i couldn't. it looked so kind o' cheery-like there in the corner." my tree had borne the fruit i wished. it remained for the new york slum landlord to assess the exact value of a ray of sunlight,--upon the tenant, of course. here are two back-to-back rear tenements, with dark bedrooms on the south. the flat on the north gives upon a neighbor's yard, and a hole two feet square has been knocked in the wall, letting in air and sunlight; little enough of the latter, but what there is is carefully computed in the lease. six dollars for this flat, six and a half for the one with the hole in the wall. six dollars a year per ray. in half a dozen houses in this block have i found the same rate maintained. the modern tenement on the corner goes higher: for four front rooms, "where the sun comes right in your face," seventeen dollars; for the rear flat of three rooms, larger and better every other way, but always dark, like the capmaker's, eleven dollars. from the landlord's point of view, this last is probably a concession. but he is a landlord with a heart. his house is as good a one as can be built on a twenty-five-foot lot. the man who owns the corner building in orchard street, with the two adjoining tenements, has no heart. in the depth of last winter, i found a family of poor jews living in a coop under his stairs, an abandoned piece of hallway, in which their baby was born, and for which he made them pay eight dollars a month. it was the most outrageous case of landlord robbery i had ever come across, and it gave me sincere pleasure to assist the sanitary policeman in curtailing his profits by even this much. the hall is not now occupied. the jews under the stairs had two children. the shoemaker in the cellar next door has three. they were fighting and snarling like so many dogs over the coarse food on the table before them, when we looked in. the baby, it seems, was the cause of the row. he wanted it all. he was a very dirty and a very fierce baby, and the other two children were no match for him. the shoemaker grunted fretfully at his last, "ach, he is all de time hungry!" at the sight of the policeman, the young imp set up such a howl that we beat a hasty retreat. the cellar "flat" was undoubtedly in violation of law, but it was allowed to pass. in the main hall, on the ground floor, we counted seventeen children. the facts of life here suspend ordinary landlord prejudices to a certain extent. occasionally it is the tenant who suspends them. the policeman laughed as he told me of the case of a mother who coveted a flat into which she well knew her family would not be admitted; the landlord was particular. she knocked, with a troubled face, alone. yes, the flat was to let; had she any children? the woman heaved a sigh. "six, but they are all in greenwood." the landlord's heart was touched by such woe. he let her have the flat. by night he was amazed to find a flock of half a dozen robust youngsters domiciled under his roof. they had indeed been in greenwood; but they had come back from the cemetery to stay. and stay they did, the rent being paid. high rents, slack work, and low wages go hand in hand in the tenements as promoters of overcrowding. the rent is always one fourth of the family income, often more. the fierce competition for a bare living cuts down wages; and when loss of work is added, the only thing left is to take in lodgers to meet the landlord's claim. the jew usually takes them singly, the italian by families. the midnight visit of the sanitary policeman discloses a state of affairs against which he feels himself helpless. he has his standard: 400 cubic feet of air space for each adult sleeper, 200 for a child. that in itself is a concession to the practical necessities of the case. the original demand was for 600 feet. but of 28,000 and odd tenants canvassed in new york, in the slumming investigation prosecuted by the general government in 1894, 17,047 were found to have less than 400 feet, and of these 5526 slept in unventilated rooms with no windows. no more such rooms have been added since; but there has come that which is worse. it was the boast of new york, till a few years ago, that at least that worst of tenement depravities, the one-room house, too familiar in the english slums, was practically unknown here. it is not so any longer. the evil began in the old houses in orchard and allen streets, a bad neighborhood, infested by fallen women and the thievish rascals who prey upon their misery,--a region where the whole plan of humanity, if plan there be in this disgusting mess, jars out of tune continually. the furnished-room house has become an institution here, speeded on by a conscienceless jew who bought up the old buildings as fast as they came into the market, and filled them with a class of tenants before whom charity recoils, helpless and hopeless. when the houses were filled, the crowds overflowed into the yard. in one case, i found, in midwinter, tenants living in sheds built of odd boards and roof tin, and paying a dollar a week for herding with the rats. one of them, a red-faced german, was a philosopher after his kind. he did not trouble himself to get up, when i looked in, but stretched himself in his bed,--it was high noon,--responding to my sniff of disgust that it was "sehr schoen! ein bischen kalt, aber was!" his neighbor, a white-haired old woman, begged, trembling, not to be put out. she would not know where to go. it was out of one of these houses that fritz meyer, the murderer, went to rob the poorbox in the redemptorist church, the night when he killed policeman smith. the policeman surprised him at his work. in the room he had occupied i came upon a brazen-looking woman with a black eye, who answered the question of the officer, "where did you get that shiner?" with a laugh. "i ran up against the fist of me man," she said. her "man," a big, sullen lout, sat by, dumb. the woman answered for him that he was a mechanic. "what does he work at?" snorted the policeman, restraining himself with an effort from kicking the fellow. she laughed scornfully. "at the junk business." it meant that he was a thief. young men, with blotched faces and cadaverous looks, were loafing in every room. they hung their heads in silence. the women turned their faces away at the sight of the uniform. they cling to these wretches, who exploit their starved affections for their own ease, with a grip of desperation. it is their last hold. women have to love something. it is their deepest degradation that they must love these. even the wretches themselves feel the shame of it, and repay them by beating and robbing them, as their daily occupation. a poor little baby in one of the rooms gave a shuddering human touch to it all. the old houses began it, as they began all the tenement mischief that has come upon new york. but the opportunity that was made by the tenant's need was not one to be neglected. in some of the newer tenements, with their smaller rooms, the lodger is by this time provided for in the plan, with a special entrance from the hall. "lodger" comes, by an easy transition, to stand for "family." only the other night i went with the sanitary police on their midnight inspection through a row of elizabeth street tenements which i had known since they were built, fifteen or sixteen years ago. that is the neighborhood in which the recent italian immigrants crowd. in the house which we selected for examination, in all respects the type of the rest, we found forty-three families where there should have been sixteen. upon each floor were four flats, and in each flat three rooms that measured respectively 14 x 11, 7 x 11, and 7 x 8-1/2 feet. in only one flat did we find a single family. in three there were two to each. in the other twelve each room had its own family living and sleeping there. they cooked, i suppose, at the one stove in the kitchen, which was the largest room. in one big bed we counted six persons, the parents and four children. two of them lay crosswise at the foot of the bed, or there would not have been room. a curtain was hung before the bed in each of the two smaller rooms, leaving a passageway from the hall to the main room. the rent for the front flats was twelve dollars; for that in the rear ten dollars. the social distinctions going with the advantage of location were rigidly observed, i suppose. the three steps across a tenement hall, from the front to "the back," are often a longer road than from ludlow street to fifth avenue. they were sweaters' tenements. but i shall keep that end of the story until i come to speak of the tenants. the houses i have in mind now. they were astor leasehold property, and i had seen them built upon the improved plan of 1879, with air shafts and all that. there had not been water in the tenements for a month then, we were told by the one tenant who spoke english that could be understood. the cold snap had locked the pipes. fitly enough, the lessee was an undertaker, an italian himself, who combined with his business of housing his people above and below the ground that of the padrone, to let no profit slip. he had not taken the trouble to make many or recent repairs. the buildings had made a fair start; they promised well. but the promise had not been kept. in their premature decay they were distinctly as bad as the worst. i had the curiosity to seek out the agent, the middleman, and ask him why they were so. he shrugged his shoulders. with such tenants nothing could be done, he said. i have always held that italians are most manageable, and that, with all the surface indications to the contrary, they are really inclined to cleanliness, if cause can be shown, and i told him so. he changed the subject diplomatically. no doubt it was with him simply a question of the rent. they might crowd and carry on as they pleased, once that was paid; and they did. it used to be the joke of elizabeth street that when the midnight police came, the tenants would keep them waiting outside, pretending to search for the key, until the surplus population of men had time to climb down the fire escape. when the police were gone they came back. we surprised them all in bed. like most of the other tenements we have come across on our trip, these were double-deckers. that is the type of tenement that is responsible for the crowding that goes on unchecked. it is everywhere replacing the older barracks, as they rot or are torn down. this double-decker was thus described by the tenement house committee of 1894: "it is the one hopeless form of tenement construction. it cannot be well ventilated, it cannot be well lighted; it is not safe in case of fire. it is built on a lot 25 feet wide by 100 or less in depth, with apartments for four families in each story. this necessitates the occupation of from 86 to 90 per cent. of the lot's depth. the stairway, made in the centre of the house, and the necessary walls and partitions reduce the width of the middle rooms (which serve as bedrooms for at least two people each) to 9 feet each at the most, and a narrow light and air shaft, now legally required in the centre of each side wall, still further lessens the floor space of these middle rooms. direct light is only possible for the rooms at the front and rear. the middle rooms must borrow what light they can from dark hallways, the shallow shafts, and the rear rooms. their air must pass through other rooms or the tiny shafts, and cannot but be contaminated before it reaches them. a five-story house of this character contains apartments for eighteen or twenty families, a population frequently amounting to 100 people, and sometimes increased by boarders or lodgers to 150 or more." the committee, after looking in vain through the slums of the old world cities for something to compare the double-deckers with, declared that, in their setting, the separateness and sacredness of home life were interfered with, and evils bred, physical and moral, that "conduce to the corruption of the young." the statement needs no argument to convince. yet it is for these that the "interests" of which the fire chief spoke rush into battle at almost every session of the legislature, whenever a step, no matter how short and conservative, is to be taken toward their improvement. no winter has passed, since the awakening conscience of the people of new york city manifested itself in a desire to better the lot of the other half, that has not seen an assault made, in one shape or another, on the structure of tenement house law built up with such anxious solicitude. once a bill to exempt from police supervision, by withdrawing them from the tenement house class, the very worst of the houses, whose death rate threatened the community, was sneaked through the legislature all unknown, and had reached the executive before the alarm was sounded. the governor, put upon his guard, returned the bill, with the indorsement that he was unable to understand what could have prompted a measure that seemed to have reason and every argument against it, and none for it. but the motive is not so obscure, after all. it is the same old one of profit without conscience. it took from the health department the supervision of the light, ventilation, and plumbing of the tenements, which by right belonged there, and put it in charge of a compliant building department, "for the convenience of architects and their clients, and the saving of time and expense to them." for the convenience of the architect's client, the builder, the lot was encroached upon, until of one big block which the tenement house committee measured only 7 per cent. was left uncovered for the air to struggle through; 93 per cent. of it was covered with brick and mortar. rear tenements, to the number of nearly 100, have been condemned as "slaughter houses," with good reason, but this block was built practically solid. the average of space covered in 34 tenement blocks was shown to be 78.13 per cent. the law allowed only 65. the "discretion" that pens tenants in a burning tenement with stairs of wood for the builder's "convenience" cut down the chance of life of their babies unmoved. sunlight and air mean just that, where three thousand human beings are packed into a single block. that was why the matter was given into the charge of the health officials, when politics was yet kept out of their work. of such kind are the interests that oppose betterment of the worker's hard lot in new york; that dictated the appointment by tammany of a commission composed of builders to revise its code of building laws, and that sneer at the "laughable results of the late tenement house committee." those results made for the health and happiness and safety of a million and a half of souls, and were accounted, on every humane ground, the longest step forward that had yet been taken by this community. for the old absentee landlord, who did not know what mischief was afoot, we have got the speculative builder, who does know, but does not care so long as he gets his pound of flesh. half of the just laws that have been passed for the relief of the people he has paralyzed with his treacherous discretion clause, carefully nursed in the school of practical politics to which he gives faithful adherence. the thing has been the curse of our city from the day when the earliest struggle toward better things began. among the first manifestations of that was the prohibition of soap factories below grand street by the act of 1797, which created a board of health with police powers. the act was passed in february, to take effect in july; but long before that time the same legislature had amended it by giving the authorities discretion in the matter. and the biggest soap factory of them all is down there to this day, and is even now stirring up a rumpus among the latest immigrants, the syrians, who have settled about it. no doubt it is all a question of political education; but are not a hundred years enough to settle this much, that compromise is out of place where the lives of the people are at stake, and that it is time our years of "discretion" were numbered? and, please god, the time is at hand. here, set in its frame of swarming tenements, is a wide open space, some time, when enough official red tape has been unwound, to be a park, with flowers and grass and birds to gladden the hearts of those to whom such things have been as tales that are told, all these dreary years, and with a playground in which the children of yonder big school may roam at will, undismayed by landlord or policeman. not all the forces of reaction can put back the barracks that were torn down as one of the "laughable results" of that very tenement house committee's work, or restore to the undertaker his profits from bone alley of horrid memory. it was the tenant's turn to laugh, that time. down half a dozen blocks, among even denser swarms, is another such plot, where football and a skating pond are being planned by the children's friends. we shall hear the story of these yet, and rejoice that the day of reckoning is coming for the builder without a soul. till then let him deck the fronts of his tenements with bravery of plate glass and brass to hide the darkness within. he has done his worst. we can go no further. yonder lies the river. a full mile we have come, through unbroken ranks of tenements with their mighty, pent-up multitudes. here they seem, with a common impulse, to overflow into the street. from corner to corner it is crowded with girls and children dragging babies nearly as big as themselves, with desperate endeavor to lose nothing of the show. there is a funeral in the block. unnumbered sewing-machines cease for once their tireless rivalry with the flour mill in the next block, that is forever grinding in a vain effort to catch up. heads are poked from windows. on the stoops hooded and shawled figures have front seats. the crowd is hardly restrained by the policeman and the undertaker in holiday mourning, who clear a path by force to the plumed hearse. the eager haste, the frantic rush to see,--what does it not tell of these starved lives, of the quality of their aims and ambitions? the mill clatters loudly: there is one mouth less to fill. in the midst of it all, with clamor of urgent gong, the patrol wagon rounds the corner, carrying two policemen precariously perched upon a struggling "drunk," a woman. the crowd scatters, following the new sensation. the tragedies of death and life in the slum have met together. many a mile i might lead you along these rivers, east and west, through the island of manhattan, and find little else than we have seen. the great crowd is yet below fourteenth street, but the northward march knows no slackening of pace. as the tide sets uptown, it reproduces faithfully the scenes of the older wards, though with less of their human interest than here where the old houses, in all their ugliness, have yet some imprint of the individuality of their tenants. only on feast days does little italy, in harlem, recall the bend when it put on holiday attire. anything more desolate and disheartening than the unending rows of tenements, all alike and all equally repellent, of the uptown streets, it is hard to imagine. hell's kitchen in its ancient wickedness was picturesque, at least, with its rocks and its goats and shanties. since the negroes took possession it is only dull, except when, as happened last summer, the remnant of the irish settlers make a stand against the intruders. vain hope! perpetual eviction is their destiny. negro, italian, and jew, biting the dust with many a bruised head under the hibernian's stalwart fist, resistlessly drive him before them, nevertheless, out of house and home. the landlord pockets the gate money. the old robbery still goes on. where the negro pitches his tent, he pays more rent than his white neighbor next door, and is a better tenant. and he is good game forever. he never buys the tenement, as the jew or the italian is likely to do, when he has scraped up money enough to reã«nact, after his own fashion, the trick taught him by his oppressor. the black column has reached the hundredth street on the east side, and the sixties on the west,[2] and there for the present it halts. jammed between africa, italy, and bohemia, the irishman has abandoned the east side uptown. only west of central park does he yet face his foe, undaunted in defeat as in victory. the local street nomenclature, in which the directory has no hand,--nigger row, mixed ale flats, etc.,--indicates the hostile camps with unerring accuracy. [footnote 2: there is an advanced outpost of blacks as far up as one hundred and forty-fifth street, but the main body lingers yet among the sixties.] uptown or downtown, as the tenements grow taller, the thing that is rarest to find is the home of the olden days, even as it was in the shanty on the rocks. "no home, no family, no morality, no manhood, no patriotism!" said the old frenchman. seventy-seven per cent. of their young prisoners, say the managers of the state reformatory, have no moral sense, or next to none. "weakness, not wickedness, ails them," adds the prison chaplain; no manhood, that is to say. years ago, roaming through the british museum, i came upon an exhibit that riveted my attention as nothing else had. it was a huge stone arm, torn from the shoulder of some rock image, with doubled fist and every rigid muscle instinct with angry menace. where it came from or what was its story i do not know. i did not ask. it was its message to us i was trying to read. i had been spending weary days and nights in the slums of london, where hatred grew, a noxious crop, upon the wreck of the home. lying there, mute and menacing, the great fist seemed to me like a shadow thrown from the gray dawn of the race into our busy day with a purpose, a grim, unheeded warning. what was it? in the slum the question haunts me yet. they perished, the empires those rock-hewers built, and the governments reared upon their ruins are long since dead and forgotten. they were born to die, for they were not built upon human happiness, but upon human terror and greed. we built ours upon the bed rock, and its cornerstone is the home. with this bitter mockery of it that makes the slum, can it be that the warning is indeed for us? iii the tenement: curing its blight i stood at seven dials and heard the policeman's account of what it used to be. seven dials is no more like the slum of old than is the five points to-day. the conscience of london wrought upon the one as the conscience of new york upon the other. a mission house, a children's refuge, two big schools, and, hard by, a public bath and a wash house stand as the record of the battle with the slum, which, with these forces in the field, has but one ending. the policeman's story rambled among the days when things were different. then it was dangerous for an officer to go alone there at night. around the corner there came from one of the side streets a procession with banners, parading in honor and aid of some church charity. we watched it pass. in it marched young men and boys with swords and battle-axes, and upon its outskirts skipped a host of young roughs--so one would have called them but for the evidence of their honest employment--who rattled collection boxes, reaping a harvest of pennies from far and near. i looked at the battle-axes and the collection boxes, and thought of forty years ago. where were the seven dials of that day, and the men who gave it its bad name? i asked the policeman. "they were druv into decency, sor," he said, and answered from his own experience the question ever asked by faint-hearted philanthropists. "my father, he done duty here afore me in '45. the worst dive was where that church stands. it was always full of thieves,"--whose sons, i added mentally, have become collectors for the church. the one fact was a whole chapter on the slum. london's way with the tenant we adopted at last in new york with the slum landlord. he was "druv into decency." we had to. moral suasion had been stretched to the limit. the point had been reached where one knock-down blow outweighed a bushel of arguments. it was all very well to build model tenements as object lessons to show that the thing could be done; it had become necessary to enforce the lesson by demonstrating that the community had power to destroy houses which were a menace to its life. the rear tenements were chosen for this purpose. they were the worst as they were the first of new york's tenements. the double-deckers of which i have spoken had, with all their evils, at least this to their credit, that their death rate was not nearly as high as that of the old houses. that was not because of any virtue inherent in the double-deckers, but because the earlier tenements were old, and built in a day that knew nothing of sanitary restrictions, and cared less. hence the showing that the big tenements had much the lowest mortality. the death rate does not sound the depths of tenement house evils, but it makes a record that is needed when it comes to attacking property rights. the mortality of the rear tenements had long been a scandal. they are built in the back yard, generally back to back with the rear buildings on abutting lots. if there is an open space between them, it is never more than a slit a foot or so wide, and gets to be the receptacle of garbage and filth of every kind; so that any opening made in these walls for purposes of ventilation becomes a source of greater danger than if there were none. the last count that was made, in 1898, showed that among the 40,958 tenements in new york there were still 2379 rear houses left. where they are the death rate rises, for reasons that are apparent. the sun cannot reach them. they are damp and dark, and the tenants, who are always the poorest and most crowded, live "as in a cage open only toward the front," said the tenement house committee. a canvass made of the mortality records by dr. roger s. tracy, the registrar of records, showed that while in the first ward (the oldest), for instance, the death rate in houses standing singly on the lot was 29.03 per 1000 of the living, where there were rear houses it rose to 61.97. the infant death rate is a still better test: that rose from 109.58 in the single tenements of the same ward to 204.54 where there were rear houses. one in every five babies had to die, that is to say; the house killed it. no wonder the committee styled the rear tenements "slaughter houses," and called upon the legislature to root them out, and with them every old, ramshackle, disease-breeding tenement in the city. a law which is in substance a copy of the english act for destroying slum property was passed in the spring of 1895. it provides for the seizure of buildings that are dangerous to the public health or unfit for human habitation, and their destruction upon proper proof, with compensation to the owner on a sliding scale down to the point of entire unfitness, when he is entitled only to the value of the material in his house. up to that time, the only way to get rid of such a house had been to declare it a nuisance under the sanitary code; but as the city could not very well pay for the removal of a nuisance, to order it down seemed too much like robbery; so the owner was allowed to keep it. it takes time and a good many lives to grow a sentiment such as this law expressed. the anglo-saxon respect for vested rights is strong in us, also. i remember going through a ragged school in london, once, and finding the eyes of the children in the infant class red and sore. suspecting some contagion, i made inquiries, and was told that a collar factory next door was the cause of the trouble. the fumes from it poisoned the children's eyes. "and you allow it to stay, and let this thing go on?" i asked, in wonder. the superintendent shrugged his shoulders. "it is their factory," he said. i was on the point of saying something that might not have been polite, seeing that i was a guest, when i remembered that, in the newspaper which i carried in my pocket, i had just been reading a plea of some honorable m. p. for a much-needed reform in the system of counsel fees, then being agitated in the house of commons. the reply of the solicitor general had made me laugh. he was inclined to agree with the honorable member, but still preferred to follow precedent by referring the matter to the inns of court. quite incidentally, he mentioned that the matter had been hanging fire in the house two hundred years. it seemed very english to me then; but when we afterward came to tackle our rear tenements, and in the first batch there was a row which i knew to have been picked out by the sanitary inspector, twenty-five years before, as fit only to be destroyed, i recognized that we were kin, after all. [illustration: the mott street barracks] that was gotham court. it was first on the list, and the mott street barracks came next, when, as executive officer of the good government clubs, i helped the board of health put the law to the test the following year. the health department kept a list of 66 old houses, with a population of 5460 tenants, in which there had been 1313 deaths in a little over five years (1889-94). from among them we picked our lot, and the department drove the tenants out. the owners went to law, one and all; but, to their surprise and dismay, the courts held with the health officers. the moral effect was instant and overwhelming. rather than keep up the fight, with no rent coming in, the landlords surrendered at discretion. in consideration of this, compensation was allowed them at the rate of about a thousand dollars a house, although they were really entitled only to the value of the old material. the buildings all came under the head of "wholly unfit." gotham court, with its sixteen buildings, in which, thirty-five years ago, a health inspector counted 146 cases of sickness, including "all kinds of infectious disease," was bought for $19,750, and mullen's court, adjoining, for $7251. they had been under civilized management since, but nothing decent could be made out of them. to show the character of all, let two serve; in each case it is the official record, upon which seizure was made, that is quoted:-no. 98 catherine street: "the floor in the apartments and the wooden steps leading to the second-floor apartment are broken, loose, saturated with filth. the roof and eaves gutters leak, rendering the apartments wet. the two apartments on the first floor consist of one room each, in which the tenants are compelled to cook, eat, and sleep. the back walls are defective; the house wet and damp, and unfit for human habitation. it robs the surrounding houses of light." "the sunlight never enters" was the constant refrain. no. 17 sullivan street: "occupied by the lowest whites and negroes, living together. the houses are decayed from cellar to garret, and filthy beyond description,--the filthiest, in fact, we have ever seen. the beams, the floors, the plaster on the walls, where there is any plaster, are rotten and alive with vermin. they are a menace to the public health, and cannot be repaired. their annual death rate in five years was 41.38." the sunlight enters where these stood, at all events, and into 58 other yards that once were plague spots. of 94 rear tenements seized that year, 60 have been torn down, 33 of them voluntarily by the owners; 29 were remodeled and allowed to stand, chiefly as workshops; 5 other houses were standing empty, and yielding no rent, in march, 1899. the worst of them all, the mott street barracks, are yet in the courts; but all the judges and juries in the land have no power to put them back. it is a case of "they can't put you in jail for that"--"yes, but i am in jail." they are gone, torn down under the referee's decision that they ought to go, before the appellate division called a halt. in 1888 i counted 360 tenants in these tenements, front and rear, all italians, and the infant death rate of the barracks that year was 325 per 1000. there were forty babies, and one in three of them had to die. the general infant death rate for the whole tenement house population that year was 88.38. in the four years following, during which the population and the death rate of the houses were both reduced with an effort, fifty-one funerals went out of the barracks. with entire fitness, a cemetery corporation held the mortgage upon the property. the referee allowed it the price of opening one grave, in the settlement, gave one dollar to the lessee and one hundred and ten dollars to the landlord, who refused to collect, and took his case to the court of appeals, where it is to be argued this summer. the only interest that attaches to it, since the real question has been decided by the wrecker ahead of time, is the raising of the constitutional point, perchance, and the issue of that is not doubtful. the law has been repeatedly upheld, and in massachusetts, where similar action has been taken since, the constitutionality of it has in no case been attacked, so far as i know. i have said before that i do not believe in paying the slum landlord for taking his hand off our throats, when we have got the grip on him in turn. mr. roger foster, who as a member of the tenement house committee drew the law, and as counsel for the health department fought the landlords successfully in the courts, holds to the opposite view. i am bound to say that instances turned up in which it did seem a hardship to deprive the owners of even such property. i remember especially a tenement in roosevelt street, which was the patrimony and whole estate of two children. with the rear house taken away, the income from the front would not be enough to cover the interest on the mortgage. it was one of those things that occasionally make standing upon abstract principle so very uncomfortable. i confess i never had the courage to ask what was done in their case. i know that the tenement went, and i hope--well, never mind what i hope. it has nothing to do with the case. the house is down, and the main issue decided upon its merits. in the 94 tenements (counting the front houses in; they cannot be separated from the rear tenements in the death registry) there were in five years 956 deaths, a rate of 62.9 at a time when the general city death rate was 24.63. it was the last and heaviest blow aimed at the abnormal mortality of a city that ought, by reason of many advantages, to be one of the healthiest in the world. with clean streets, pure milk, medical school inspection, antitoxin treatment of deadly diseases, and better sanitary methods generally; with the sunlight let into its slums, and its worst plague spots cleaned out, the death rate of new york came down from 26.32 per 1000 inhabitants in 1887 to 19.53 in 1897. inasmuch as a round half million was added to its population within the ten years, it requires little figuring to show that the number whose lives were literally saved by reform would people a city of no mean proportions. the extraordinary spell of hot weather, two years ago, brought out the full meaning of this. while many were killed by sunstroke, the population as a whole was shown to have acquired, in better hygienic surroundings, a much greater power of resistance. it yielded slowly to the heat. where two days had been sufficient, in former years, to send the death rate up, it now took five; and the infant mortality remained low throughout the dreadful trial. perhaps the substitution of beer for whiskey as a summer drink had something to do with it; but colonel waring's broom and unpolitical sanitation had more. since it spared him so many voters, the politician ought to have been grateful for this; but he was not. death rates are not as good political arguments as tax rates, we found out. in the midst of it all, a policeman whom i knew went to his tammany captain to ask if good government clubs were political clubs within the meaning of the law, which prohibits policemen from joining such. the answer he received set me to thinking: "yes, the meanest, worst kind of political clubs, they are." yet they had done nothing worse than to save the babies, the captain's with the rest. the landlord read the signs better. he learned his lesson quickly. all over the city, he made haste to set his house to rights, lest it be seized or brought to the bar in other ways. the good government clubs did not rest content with their first victory. they made war upon the dark hall in the double-decker, and upon the cruller bakery. they opened small parks, exposed the abuses of the civil courts, the "poor man's courts," urged on the building of new schools, compelled the cleaning of the tombs prison and hastened the demolition of the wicked old pile, and took a hand in evolving a sensible and humane system of dealing with the young vagrants who were going to waste on free soup. the proposition to establish a farm colony for their reclamation was met with the challenge at albany that "we have had enough reform in new york city," and, as the event proved, for the time being we had really gone as far as we could. but even that was a good long way. some things had been nailed that could never again be undone; and hand in hand with the effort to destroy had gone another to build up, that promised to set us far enough ahead to appeal at last successfully to the self-interest of the builder, if not to his humanity; or, failing that, to compel him to decency. if that promise has not been kept, the end is not yet. i believe it will be kept. the movement for reform, in the matter of housing the people, had proceeded upon a clearly outlined plan that apportioned to each of several forces its own share of the work. at a meeting held under the auspices of the association for improving the condition of the poor, early in the days of the movement, the field had been gone over thoroughly. to the good government clubs fell the task, as already set forth, of compelling the enforcement of the existing tenement house laws. d. o. mills, the philanthropic banker, declared his purpose to build hotels which should prove that a bed and lodging as good as any could be furnished to the great army of homeless men at a price that would compete with the cheap lodging houses, and yet yield a profit to the owner. on behalf of a number of well-known capitalists, who had been identified with the cause of tenement house reform for years, robert fulton cutting, the president of the association for improving the condition of the poor, offered to build homes for the working people that should be worthy of the name, on a large scale. a company was formed, and chose for its president dr. elgin r. l. gould, author of the government report on the housing of the working people, the standard work on the subject. a million dollars were raised by public subscription, and operations were begun at once. two ideas were kept in mind as fundamental: one, that charity that will not pay will not stay; the other, that nothing can be done with the twenty-five-foot lot. it is the primal curse of our housing system, and any effort toward better things must reckon with it first. nineteen lots on sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth streets, west of tenth avenue, were purchased of mrs. alfred corning clark, who took one tenth of the capital stock of the city and suburban homes company; and upon these was erected the first block of tenements. this is the neighborhood toward which the population has been setting with ever increasing congestion. already in 1895 the twenty-second ward contained nearly 200,000 souls. between forty-ninth and sixty-second streets, west of ninth avenue, there are at least five blocks with more than 3000 tenants in each, and the conditions of the notorious tenth ward are certain to be reproduced here, if indeed they are not exceeded. in the fifteenth assembly district, some distance below, but on the same line, the first sociological canvass of the federation of churches had found the churches, schools, and other educational agencies marshaling a frontage of 756 feet on the street, while the saloon fronts stretched themselves over nearly a mile; so that, said the compiler of these pregnant facts, "saloon social ideals are minting themselves in the minds of the people at the ratio of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought." it would not have been easy to find a spot better fitted for the experiment of restoring to the home its rights. [illustration: alfred corning clark buildings _model tenements of city and suburban homes co._] the alfred corning clark buildings, as they were called in recognition of the support of this public-spirited woman, have been occupied a year. when i went through them, the other day, i found all but five of the 373 apartments they contain occupied, and a very large waiting list of applicants for whom there was no room. the doctor alone, of all the tenants, had moved away, disappointed. he had settled on the estate, hoping to build up a practice among so many; but he could not make a living. the plan of the buildings, for which ernest flagg, a young and energetic architect, with a very practical interest in the welfare of the other half, has the credit, seems to me to realize the ideal of making homes under a common roof. the tenants appeared to take the same view of it. they were a notably contented lot. their only objection was to the use of the common tubs in the basement laundry,--a sign that, to my mind, was rather favorable than otherwise, though it argued ill for the scheme of public wash houses on the glasgow plan that has seemed so promising. they were selected tenants as to trustworthiness and desirability on that score, but they were all of the tenement house class. the rents are a little lower than for much poorer quarters in the surrounding tenements. the houses are built around central courts, with light and air in abundance, with fireproof stairs and steam-heated halls. there is not a dark passage anywhere. within, there is entire privacy for the tenant; the partitions are deadened, so that sound is not transmitted from one apartment to another. without, the houses have none of the discouraging barrack look. the architecture is distinctly pleasing. the few and simple rules laid down by the management have been readily complied with, as making for the benefit of all. a woman collects the rents, which are paid weekly in advance. the promise that the property will earn the five per cent. to which the company limits its dividends seems certain to be kept. there is nothing in sight to prevent it, everything to warrant the prediction. the capital stock has since been increased to $2,000,000, and the erection has been begun of a new block of buildings in east sixty-fourth street, within hail of battle row, of anciently warlike memory. james e. ware & son, the architects who, in the competition of 1879, won the prize for the improved tenements that marked the first departure from the boxlike barracks of old, drew the plans, embodying all the good features of the clark buildings with attractions of their own. a suburban colony is being developed by the company, in addition. it is not the least promising feature of its work that a very large proportion of its shareholders are workingmen, who have invested their savings in the enterprise, thus bearing witness to their faith and interest in it. of the entire number of shareholders at the time of the first annual report, forty-five per cent, held less than ten shares each. the success of these and previous efforts at the building of model tenements has had the desired effect of encouraging other attempts in the same direction. they represent the best that can be done in fighting the slum within the city. homewood, the city and suburban homes company's settlement in the country, stands for the way out that must eventually win the fight. that is the track that must be followed, and will be when we have found in rapid transit the key to the solution of our present perplexities. "in the country" hardly describes the site of the colony. it is within the greater city, on long island, hardly an hour's journey by trolley from the city hall, and only a short walk from the bay. here the company has built a hundred cottages, and has room for two or three hundred more. of the hundred houses, seventy-two had been sold when i was there last winter. they are handsome and substantial little houses, the lower story of brick, the upper of timber and stucco, each cottage standing in its own garden. the purchaser pays for the property in monthly payments extending over twenty years. a plan of life insurance, which protects the family and the company alike in the event of the death of the bread-winner, is included in the arrangement. the price of the cottages which so far have found owners has averaged about $3100, and the monthly installment, including the insurance premium, a trifle over $25. it follows that the poorest have not moved to homewood. its settlers include men with an income of $1200 or $1500 a year,--policemen, pilots, letter carriers, clerks, and teachers. this is as it should be. they represent the graduating class, as it were, from the city crowds. it is the province of the philanthropic tenement to prepare the next lot for moving up and out. any attempt to hasten the process by taking a short cut could result only in failure and disappointment. the graduating class is large enough, however, to guarantee that it will not be exhausted by one homewood. before the houses were contracted for, without advertising or effort of any kind to make the thing known, more than eight hundred wage earners had asked to have their names put on the books as applicants for suburban homes. others had built model tenements and made them pay, but it was left to mr. d. o. mills to break ground in the field which lord rowton had filled with such signal success in london. the two mills houses, in bleecker and rivington streets, are as wide a departure as could well be imagined from the conventional type of lodging houses in new york. they are large and beautiful structures, which, for the price of a cot in one of the bowery barracks, furnish their lodgers with as good a bed in a private room as the boarder in the waldorf-astoria enjoys. indeed, it is said to be the very same in make and quality. there are baths without stint, smoking and writing rooms and games, and a free library; a laundry for those who can pay for having their washing done, and a separate one for such as prefer to do it themselves. there is a restaurant in the basement, in which a regular dinner of good quality is served at fifteen cents. the night's lodging is twenty cents. the dearest bowery lodging houses charge twenty-five cents. the bedrooms are necessarily small, but they are clean and comfortable, well lighted and heated. the larger house, no. 1, in bleecker street, has room for 1554 guests; no. 2, in rivington street, for 600. though this represents more than twelve per cent, of the capacity of all the cheap lodging houses in the city, both have been filled since they were opened, and crowds have often been turned away. the bowery "hotels" have felt the competition. their owners deny it, but the fact is apparent in efforts at improvements with which they were not justly chargeable before. only the lowest, the ten-cent houses, are exempt from this statement. these attract a class of custom for which the mills houses do not compete. the latter are intended for the large number of decent mechanics, laborers, and men of small means, hunting for work, who are always afloat in a large city, and who neither seek nor wish charity. the plan and purpose of the builder cannot be better put than in his own words at the opening of the first house. "no patron of the mills hotel," he said, "will receive more than he pays for, unless it be my hearty goodwill and good wishes. it is true that i have devoted thought, labor, and capital to a very earnest effort to help him, but only by enabling him to help himself. in doing the work on so large a scale, and in securing the utmost economies in purchases and in administration, i hope to give him a larger equivalent for his money than has hitherto been possible. he can, without scruple, permit me to offer him this advantage; but he will think better of himself, and will be a more self-reliant, manly man and a better citizen, if he knows that he is honestly paying for what he gets." mr. mills's faith that the business of housing the homeless crowds in decency and comfort could be made to pay just as well as that of housing families in model tenements has been justified. besides providing a fund sufficient for deterioration and replacement, the two houses have made a clear three per cent. profit on the investment of $1,500,000 which they represent. beyond this, they have borne, and will bear increasingly, their own hand in settling with the saloon, which had no rival in the cheerlessness of the cheap lodging house or the boarding house back bedroom. every philanthropic effort to fight it on that ground has drawn renewed courage and hope from mr. mills's work and success. while i am writing, subscriptions are being made to the capital stock of a woman's hotel company, that will endeavor to do for the self-supporting single women of our own city what mr. mills has done for the men. it is proposed to erect, at a cost of $800,000, a hotel capable of sheltering over 500 guests, at a price coming within reach of women earning wages as clerks, stenographers, nurses, etc. the number of women whose needs an establishment of the kind would meet is said to exceed 40,000. the young women's christian association alone receives every year requests enough for quarters to fill a score of such hotels, and can only refer the applicants to boarding houses. experience in other cities shows that a woman's hotel or club can be managed and made profitable, and there seems to be little doubt that new york will be the next to furnish proof of it. it was the dream of a. t. stewart, the merchant prince, to do this service for his city, just as he planned garden city for a home colony for his clerks. it came out differently. the long island town became a cathedral city, and the home of wealth and fashion; his woman's hoarding house a great public hotel, far out of the reach of those he sought to benefit. it may be that the success of the banker's philanthropy will yet realize the dream of the merchant before the end of the century that saw his wealth, his great business, his very name, vanish as if they had never been, and even his bones denied, by ghoulish thieves, a rest in the grave. i like to think of it as a kind of justice to his memory, more eloquent than marble and brass in the empty crypt. mills house no. 1 stands upon the site of mr. stewart's old home, where he dreamed his barren dream of benevolence to his kind. of all these movements the home is the keynote. that is the cheerful sign that shows light ahead. to the home it comes down in the end,--good government, bad government, and all the rest. as the homes of a community are, so is the community. new york has still the worst housing system in the world. eight fifteenths of its people live in tenements, not counting the better class of flats, though legally they come under the definition. the blight of the twenty-five-foot lot remains, with the double-decker. but we can now destroy what is not fit to stand; we have done it, and our republic yet survives. the slum landlord would have had us believe that it must perish with his rookeries. we knew that to build decently improved a neighborhood, made the tenants better and happier, and reduced the mortality. model tenement house building is now proving daily that such houses can be built safer and better every way for less money than the double-decker, by crossing the lot line. the dark hall is not a problem in the tenement built around a central court, for there is no common hall. the plan of the double-decker is shown to be wasteful of space and wall and capital. the model tenement pays, does not deteriorate, and keeps its tenants. after the lapse of ten years, i was the other day in mr. a. t. white's riverside buildings in brooklyn, which are still the best i know of, and found them, if anything, better houses than the day they were built. the stone steps of the stairways were worn: that was all the evidence of deterioration i saw. these, and mr. white's other block of buildings on hicks street, which was built more than twenty years ago,--occupied, all of them, by distinctly poor tenants,--have paid their owner over five per cent. right along. practically, every such enterprise has the same story to tell. dr. gould found that only six per cent. of all the great model housing operations had failed to pay. all the rest were successful. that was the showing of europe. it is the same here. only the twenty-five-foot lot is in the way in new york. [illustration: evening in one of the courts in mills house no. 1] it will continue to be in the way. a man who has one lot will build on it: it is his right. the state, which taxes his lot, has no right to confiscate it by forbidding him to make it yield him an income, on the plea that he might build something which would be a nuisance. but it can so order the building that it shall not be a nuisance: that is not only its right, but its duty. the best which can be made out of a twenty-five-foot lot is not good, but even that has not been made out of it yet. i have seen plans drawn by two young women architects in this city, the misses gannon and hands, and approved by the building department, which let in an amount of light and air not dreamed of in the conventional type of double-decker, while providing detached stairs in a central court. it was not pretended that it was an ideal plan,--far from it; but it indicated clearly the track to be followed in dealing with the twenty-five-foot lot, seeing that we cannot get rid of it. the demand for light and air space must be sharpened and rigidly held to, and "discretion" to cut it down on any pretext must be denied, to the end of discouraging at least the building of double-deckers by the speculative landlord who has more than one lot, but prefers to build in the old way, in order that he may more quickly sell his houses, one by one. with much evidence to the contrary in the big blocks of tenements that are going up on every hand, i think still we are tending in the right direction. i come oftener, nowadays, upon three tenements built on four lots, or two on three lots, than i used to. indeed, there was a time when such a thing would have been considered wicked waste, or evidence of unsound mind in the builder. houses are built now, as they were then, for profit. the business element must be there, or the business will fail. philanthropy and five per cent. belong together in this field; but there is no more reason for allowing usurious interest to a man who makes a living by providing houses for the poor than for allowing it to a lender of money on security. in fact, there is less; for the former draws his profits from a source with which the welfare of the commonwealth is indissolubly bound up. the tenement house committee found that the double-deckers yield the landlord an average of ten per cent., attack the home, and are a peril to the community. model tenements pay a safe five per cent., restore the home, and thereby strengthen the community. it comes down, then, as i said, to a simple question of the per cent. the builder will take. it should help his choice to know, as he cannot now help knowing, that the usurious profit is the price of good citizenship and human happiness, which suffer in the proportion in which the home is injured. the problem of rent should be solved by the same formula, but not so readily. in the case of the builder the state can add force to persuasion, and so urge him along the path of righteousness. the only way to reach the rent collector would be for the municipality to enter the field as a competing landlord. doubtless relief could be afforded that way. the tenement house committee found that the slum landlord charged the highest rents, sometimes as high as twenty-five per cent. he made no repairs. model tenement house rents are lower, if anything, than those of the double-decker, with more space and better accommodations. such a competition would have to be on a very large scale, however, to avail, and i am glad that new york has shown no disposition to undertake it yet. i would rather we, as a community, learned first a little more of the art of governing ourselves without scandal. present relief from the burden that taxes the worker one fourth of his earnings for a roof over his head must be sought in the movement toward the suburbs that will follow the bridging of our rivers, and real rapid transit. on the island rents will always remain high, on account of the great land values. but i have often thought that if the city may not own new tenements, it might with advantage manage the old to the extent of licensing them to contain so many tenants on the basis of the air space, and no more. the suggestion was made when the tenement house question first came up for discussion, thirty years ago, but it was rejected then. the same thing is now proposed for rooms and workshops, as the means of getting the best of the sweating nuisance. why not license the whole tenement, and with the money collected in the way of fees pay for the supervision of them by night and day? the squad of sanitary policemen now comprises for the greater city some ninety men. forty-one thousand tenements in the borough of manhattan alone, at three dollars each for the license, would pay the salaries of the entire body, and leave a margin. seeing that their services are going exclusively to the tenements, it would not seem to be an unfair charge upon the landlords. the home is the key to good citizenship. unhappily for the great cities, there exists in them all a class that has lost the key or thrown it away. for this class, new york, until three years ago, had never made any provision. the police station lodging rooms, of which i have spoken, were not to be dignified by the term. these vile dens, in which the homeless of our great city were herded, without pretense of bed, of bath, of food, on rude planks, were the most pernicious parody on municipal charity, i verily believe, that any civilized community had ever devised. to escape physical and moral contagion in these crowds seemed humanly impossible. of the innocently homeless lad they made a tramp by the shortest cut. to the old tramp they were indeed ideal provision, for they enabled him to spend for drink every cent he could beg or steal. with the stale beer dive, the free lunch counter, and the police lodging room at hand, his cup of happiness was full. there came an evil day, when the stale beer dive shut its doors and the free lunch disappeared for a season. the beer pump, which drained the kegs dry and robbed the stale beer collector of his ware, drove the dives out of business; the raines law forbade the free lunch. just at this time theodore roosevelt shut the police lodging rooms, and the tramp was literally left out in the cold, cursing reform and its fruits. it was the climax of a campaign a generation old, during which no one had ever been found to say a word in defense of these lodging rooms; yet nothing had availed to close them. the city took lodgers on an old barge in the east river, that winter, and kept a register of them. we learned something from that. of nearly 10,000 lodgers, one half were under thirty years old and in good health,--fat, in fact. the doctors reported them "well nourished." among 100 whom i watched taking their compulsory bath, one night, only two were skinny; the others were stout, well-fed men, abundantly able to do a man's work. they all insisted that they were willing, too; but the moment inquiries began with a view of setting such to work as really wanted it, and sending the rest to the island as vagrants, their number fell off most remarkably. from between 400 and 500 who had crowded the barge and the pier sheds, the attendance fell on march 16, the day the investigation began, to 330, on the second day to 294, and on the third day to 171; by march 21 it had been cut down to 121. the problem of the honestly homeless, who were without means to pay for a bed even in a ten-cent lodging house, and who had a claim upon the city by virtue of residence in it, had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions. of 9386 lodgers, 3622 were shown to have been here less than sixty days, and 968 less than a year. the old mistake, that there is always a given amount of absolutely homeless destitution in a city, and that it is to be measured by the number of those who apply for free lodging, had been reduced to a demonstration. the truth is that the opportunity furnished by the triple alliance of stale beer, free lunch, and free lodging at the police station was the open door to permanent and hopeless vagrancy. a city lodging house was established, with decent beds, baths, and breakfast, and a system of investigation of the lodger's claim that is yet to be developed to useful proportions. the link that is missing is a farm school, for the training of young vagrants to habits of industry and steady work, as the alternative of the workhouse. efforts to forge this link have failed so far, but in the good time that is coming, when we shall have learned the lesson that the unkindest thing that can be done to a young tramp is to let him go on tramping, and when magistrates shall blush to discharge him on the plea that "it is no crime to be poor in this country," they will succeed, and the tramp also we shall then have "druv into decency." when i look back now to the time, ten or fifteen years ago, when, night after night, with every police station filled, i found the old tenements in the "bend" jammed with a reeking mass of human wrecks that huddled in hall and yard, and slept, crouching in shivering files, all the way up the stairs to the attic, it does seem as if we had come a good way, and as if all the turmoil and the bruises and the fighting had been worth while. iv the tenant we have considered the problem of the tenement. now about the tenant. how much of a problem is he? and how are we to go about solving his problem? the government "slum inquiry," of which i have spoken before, gave us some facts about him. in new york it found 62.58 per cent. of the population of the slum to be foreign-born, whereas for the whole city the percentage of foreigners was only 43.23. while the proportion of illiteracy in all was only as 7.69 to 100, in the slum it was 46.65 per cent. that, with nearly twice as many saloons to a given number, there should be three times as many arrests in the slum as in the city at large need not be attributed to nationality, except indirectly in its possible responsibility for the saloons. i say "possible" advisedly. anybody, i should think, whose misfortune it is to live in the slum might be expected to find in the saloon a refuge. i shall not quarrel with the other view of it. i am merely stating a personal impression. the fact that concerns us here is the great proportion of the foreign-born. though the inquiry covered only a small section of a tenement district, the result may be accepted as typical. we shall not, then, have to do with an american element in discussing this tenant, for even of the "natives" in the census, by far the largest share is made up of the children of the immigrant. indeed, in new york only 4.77 per cent. of the slum population canvassed were shown to be of native parentage. the parents of 95.23 per cent. had come over the sea, to better themselves, it may be assumed. let us see what they brought us, and what we have given them in return. the italians were in the majority where this census taker went. they were from the south of italy, avowedly the worst of the italian immigration which in the eight years from 1891 to 1898 gave us more than half a million of king humbert's subjects. the exact number, as registered by the emigration bureau, was 502,592. in 1898, 58,613 came over, 36,086 of them with new york as their destination. the official year ends with june. in the six months from july 1 to december 31, the immigrants were sorted out upon a more intelligent plan than previously. the process as applied to the 30,470 italians who were landed during that term yielded this result: from northern italy, 4762; from southern italy, 25,708. of these latter a number came from sicily, the island of the absentee landlord, where peasants die of hunger. i make no apology for quoting here the statement of an italian officer, on duty in the island, to a staff correspondent of the "tribuna" of rome, a paper not to be suspected of disloyalty to united italy. i take it from the "evening post:"-"in the month of july i stopped on a march by a threshing floor where they were measuring grain. when the shares had been divided, the one who had cultivated the land received a single _tumolo_ (less than a half bushel). the peasant, leaning on his spade, looked at his share as if stunned. his wife and their five children were standing by. from the painful toil of a year this was what was left to him with which to feed his family. the tears rolled silently down his cheeks." these things occasionally help one to understand. over against this picture there arises in my memory one from the barge office, where i had gone to see an italian steamer come in. a family sat apart, ordered to wait by the inspecting officer; in the group an old man, worn and wrinkled, who viewed the turmoil with the calmness of one having no share in it. the younger members formed a sort of bulwark around him. "your father is too old," said the official. two young women and a boy of sixteen rose to their feet at once. "are not we young enough to work for him?" they said. the boy showed his strong arms. it is charged against this italian immigrant that he is dirty, and the charge is true. he lives in the darkest of slums, and pays rent that ought to hire a decent flat. to wash, water is needed; and we have a law which orders tenement landlords to put it on every floor, so that their tenants may have the chance. and it is not yet half a dozen years since one of the biggest tenement house landlords in the city, the wealthiest church corporation in the land, attacked the constitutionality of this statute rather than pay a couple of hundred dollars for putting water into two old buildings, as the board of health had ordered, and came near upsetting the whole structure of tenement house law upon which our safety depends. he is ignorant, it is said, and that charge is also true. i doubt if one of the family in the barge office could read or write his own name. yet would you fear especial danger to our institutions, to our citizenship, from these four? he lives cheaply, crowds, and underbids even the jew in the sweatshop. i can myself testify to the truth of these statements. only this spring i was the umpire in a quarrel between the jewish tailors and the factory inspector whom they arraigned before the governor on charges of inefficiency. the burden of their grievance was that the italians were underbidding them in their own market, which of course the factory inspector could not prevent. yet, even so, the evidence is not that the italian always gets the best of it. i came across a family once working on "knee-pants." "twelve pants, ten cents," said the tailor, when there was work. "ve work for dem sheenies," he explained. "ven dey has work, ve gets some; ven dey hasn't, ve don't." he was an unusually gifted tailor as to english, but apparently not as to business capacity. in the astor tenements, in elizabeth street, where we found forty-three families living in rooms intended for sixteen, i saw women finishing "pants" at thirty cents a day. some of the garments were of good grade, and some of poor; some of them were soldiers' trousers, made for the government; but whether they received five, seven, eight, or ten cents a pair, it came to thirty cents a day, except in a single instance, in which two women, sewing from five in the morning till eleven at night, were able, being practiced hands, to finish forty-five "pants" at three and a half cents a pair, and so made together over a dollar and a half. they were content, even happy. i suppose it seemed wealth to them, coming from a land where a parisian investigator of repute found three lire (not quite sixty cents) _per month_ a girl's wages. i remember one of those flats, poor and dingy, yet with signs of the instinctive groping toward orderly arrangement which i have observed so many times, and take to be evidence that in better surroundings much might be made of these people. clothes were hung to dry on a line strung the whole length of the room. upon couches by the wall some men were snoring. they were the boarders. the "man" was out shoveling snow with the midnight shift. by a lamp with brown paper shade, over at the window, sat two women sewing. one had a baby on her lap. two sweet little cherubs, nearly naked, slept on a pile of unfinished "pants," and smiled in their sleep. a girl of six or seven dozed in a child's rocker between the two workers, with her head hanging down on one side; the mother propped it up with her elbow as she sewed. they were all there, and happy in being together even in such a place. on a corner shelf burned a night lamp before a print of the mother of god, flanked by two green bottles, which, seen at a certain angle, made quite a festive show. complaint is made that the italian promotes child labor. his children work at home on "pants" and flowers at an hour when they ought to have been long in bed. their sore eyes betray the little flower-makers when they come tardily to school. doubtless there are such cases, and quite too many of them; yet, in the very block which i have spoken of, the investigation conducted for the tenement house committee by the university department of sociology of columbia college, under professor franklin h. giddings, discovered of 196 children of school age only 23 at work or at home, and in the next block only 27 out of 215. that was the showing of the foreign population all the way through. of 225 russian jewish children only 15 were missing from school, and of 354 little bohemians only 21. the overcrowding of the schools and their long waiting lists occasionally furnished the explanation why they were not there. professor giddings reported, after considering all the evidence: "the foreign-born population of the city is not, to any great extent, forcing children of legal school age into money-earning occupations. on the contrary, this population shows a strong desire to have its children acquire the common rudiments of education. if the city does not provide liberally and wisely for the satisfaction of this desire, the blame for the civic and moral dangers that will threaten our community, because of ignorance, vice, and poverty, must rest on the whole public, not on our foreign-born residents." it is satisfactory to know that the warning has been heeded, and that soon there will be schools enough to hold all the children who come. now, since september 1, 1899, the new factory law reaches also the italian flowermaker in his home, and that source of waste will be stopped. he is clannish, this italian; he gambles and uses a knife, though rarely on anybody not of his own people; he "takes what he can get," wherever anything is free, as who would not, coming to the feast like a starved wolf? there was nothing free where he came from. even the salt was taxed past a poor man's getting any of it. lastly, he buys fraudulent naturalization papers, and uses them. i shall plead guilty for him to every one of these counts. they are all proven. gambling is his besetting sin. he is sober, industrious, frugal, enduring beyond belief, but he will gamble on sunday and quarrel over his cards, and when he sticks his partner in the heat of the quarrel, the partner is not apt to tell. he prefers to bide his time. yet there has lately been evidence once or twice in the surrender of an assassin by his countrymen that the old vendetta is being shelved, and a new idea of law and justice is breaking through. as to the last charge: our italian is not dull. with his intense admiration for the land where a dollar a day waits upon the man with a shovel, he can see no reason why he should not accept the whole "american plan" with ready enthusiasm. it is a good plan. to him it sums itself up in the statement: a dollar a day for the shovel; two dollars for the shovel with a citizen behind it. and he takes the papers and the two dollars. he came here for a chance to live. of politics, social ethics, he knows nothing. government in his old home existed only for his oppression. why should he not attach himself with his whole loyal soul to the plan of government in his new home that offers to boost him into the place of his wildest ambition, a "job on the streets,"--that is, in the street-cleaning department,--and asks no other return than that he shall vote as directed? vote! not only he, but his cousins and brothers and uncles will vote as they are told, to get pietro the job he covets. if it pleases the other man, what is it to him for whom he votes? he is after the job. here, ready-made to the hand of the politician, is such material as he never saw before. for pietro's loyalty is great. as a police detective, one of his own people, once put it to me: "he got a kind of an idea, or an old rule: an eye for an eye; do to another as you'd be done by; if he don't squeal on you, you stick by him, no matter what the consequences." this "kind of an idea" is all he has to draw upon for an answer to the question if the thing is right. but the question does not arise. why should it? was he not told by the agitators whom the police jailed at home that in a republic all men are made happy by means of the vote? and is there not proof of it? it has made him happy, has it not? and the man who bought his vote seems to like it. well, then? very early pietro discovered that it was every man for himself, in the chase of the happiness which this powerful vote had in keeping. he was robbed by the padrone--that is, the boss--when he came over, fleeced on his steamship fare, made to pay for getting a job, and charged three prices for board and lodging and extras while working in the railroad gang. the boss had a monopoly, and pietro was told that it was maintained by his "divvying" with some railroad official. rumor said, a very high-up official, and that the railroad was in politics in the city; that is to say, dealt in votes. when the job gave out, the boss packed him into the tenement he had bought with his profits on the contract; and if pietro had a family, told him to take in lodgers and crowd his flat, as the elizabeth street tenements were crowded, so as to make out the rent, and to never mind the law. the padrone was a politician, and had a pull. he was bigger than the law, and it was the votes he traded in that did it all. now it was pietro's turn. with his vote he could buy what to him seemed wealth. in the muddle of ideas, that was the one which stood out. when citizen papers were offered him for $12.50, he bought them quickly, and got his job on the street. it was the custom of the country. if there was any doubt about it, the proof was furnished when pietro was arrested through the envy and plotting of the opposition boss last fall. distinguished counsel, employed by the machine, pleaded his case in court. pietro felt himself to be quite a personage, and he was told that he was safe from harm, though a good deal of dust might be kicked up; because, when it came down to that, both the bosses were doing the same kind of business. i quote from the report of the state superintendent of elections of january, 1899: "in nearly every case of illegal registration, the defendant was represented by eminent counsel who were identified with the democratic organization, among them being three assistants to the corporation counsel. my deputies arrested rosario calecione and giuseppe marrone, both of whom appeared to vote at the fifth election district of the sixth assembly district; marrone being the democratic captain of the district, and, it was charged, himself engaged in the business of securing fraudulent naturalization papers. in both of these cases farriello had procured the naturalization papers for the men for a consideration. they were subsequently indicted. marrone and calecione were bailed by the democratic leader of the sixth assembly district." the business, says the state superintendent, is carried on "to an enormous extent." it appears, then, that pietro has already "got on to" the american plan as the slum presented it to him, and has in good earnest become a problem. i guessed as much from the statement of a tammany politician to me, a year ago, that every italian voter in his district got his "old two" on election day. he ought to know, for he held the purse. suppose, now, we speak our minds as frankly, for once, and put the blame where it belongs. will it be on pietro? and upon this showing, who ought to be excluded, when it comes to that? the slum census taker did not cross the bowery. had he done so, he would have come upon the refugee jew, the other economic marplot of whom complaint is made with reason. if his nemesis has overtaken him in the italian, certainly he challenged that fate. he did cut wages by his coming. he was starving, and he came in shoals. in fourteen years more than 400,000 jewish immigrants have landed in new york.[3] they had to have work and food, and they got both as they could. in the strife they developed qualities that were anything but pleasing. they herded like cattle. they had been so herded by christian rulers, a despised and persecuted race, through the centuries. their very coming was to escape from their last inhuman captivity in a christian state. they lied, they were greedy, they were charged with bad faith. they brought nothing,--neither money nor artisan skill,--nothing but their consuming energy, to our land, and their one gift was their greatest offense. one might have pointed out that they had been trained to lie, for their safety; had been forbidden to work at trades, to own land; had been taught for a thousand years, with the scourge and the stake, that only gold could buy them freedom from torture. but what was the use? the charges were true. the jew was--he still is--a problem of our slum. [footnote 3: according to the register of the united hebrew charities, between october 1, 1884, and march 1, 1899, the number was 402,181.] and yet, if ever there was material for citizenship, this jew is such material. alone of all our immigrants he comes to us without a past. he has no country to renounce, no ties to forget. within him there burns a passionate longing for a home to call his, a country which will own him, that waits only for the spark of such another love to spring into flame which nothing can quench. waiting for it, all his energies are turned into his business. he is not always choice in method; he often offends. but he succeeds. he is the yeast of any slum, if given time. if it will not let him go, it must rise with him. the charity managers in london said it, when we looked through their slums some years ago: "the jews have renovated whitechapel." i, for one, am a firm believer in this jew, and in his boy. ignorant they are, but with a thirst for knowledge that surmounts any barrier. the boy takes all the prizes in the school. his comrades sneer that he will not fight. neither will he when there is nothing to be gained by it. but i believe that, should the time come when the country needs fighting men, the son of the despised immigrant jew will resurrect on american soil, the first that bade him welcome, the old maccabee type, and set an example for all the rest of us to follow. for fifteen years he has been in the public eye as the vehicle and promoter of sweating, and much severe condemnation has been visited upon him with good cause. he had to do something, and he took to the clothes-maker's trade as that which was most quickly learned. the increasing crowds, the tenement, and his grinding poverty made the soil, wherein the evil thing grew rank. yet the real sweater is the manufacturer, not the workman. it is just a question of expense to the manufacturer. by letting out his work on contract, he can save the expense of running his factory and delay longer making his choice of styles. the jew is the victim of the mischief quite as much as he has helped it on. back of the manufacturer there is still another sweater,--the public. only by its sufferance of the bargain counter and of sweatshop-made goods has the nuisance existed as long as it has. i am glad to believe that its time is passing away. the law has driven the sweatshops out of the tenements, and so deprived them of one of their chief props: there was no rent at all to pay there. child labor, which only four years ago the reinhard committee characterized as "one of the most extensive evils now existing in the city of new york, a constant and grave menace to the welfare of its people," has been practically banished from the tailoring trade. what organization among the workers had failed to effect is apparently going to be accomplished by direct pressure of an outraged public opinion. already manufacturers are returning to their own factories, and making capital of the fact among their customers. the new law, which greatly extends the factory inspector's power over sweatshops, is an expression of this enlightened sentiment. it will put new york a long stride ahead, and quite up to massachusetts. the inspector's tag has proved, where the law was violated, an effective weapon. it suspends all operation of the shop and removal of the goods until the orders of the inspector have been obeyed. but the tag which shall finally put an end to sweating, and restore decent conditions, is not the factory inspector's, i am persuaded, but a trades union label, which shall deserve public confidence and receive it. we have much to learn yet, all of us. i think i can see the end of this trouble, however, when the italian's triumph in the sweatshop shall have proved but a barren victory, to his own gain. in all i have said so far, in these papers, i have not gone beyond the limits of the old city,--of manhattan island, in fact. i want now to glance for a moment at the several attempts made at colonizing refugee jews in this part of the country. brownsville was one of the earliest. its projector was a manufacturer, and its motive profit. the result was the familiar one,--as nasty a little slum as ever the east side had to show. we have it on our hands now in the greater city,--it came in with brooklyn,--and it is not a gain. down in southern new jersey several colonies were started, likewise by speculators, in the persecution of the early eighties, and these also failed. the soil was sandy and poor, and, thrown upon their own resources in a strange and unfriendly neighborhood, with unfamiliar and unremunerative toil, the colonists grew discouraged and gave up in despair. the colonies were approaching final collapse, when the managers of the baron de hirsch fund in new york, who had started and maintained a successful colony at woodbine, in the same neighborhood, took them under the arms and inaugurated a new plan. they persuaded several large clothing contractors in this city to move their plants down to the villages, where they would be assured of steady hands, not so easily affected by strikes. for strikes in sweatshops are often enough the alternative of starvation. upon the land there would be no starvation. the managers of the fund built factories, bought the old mortgages on the farms, and put up houses for the families which the contractors brought down with them. this effort at transplanting the crowd from the ghetto to the soil has now been going on for a year. at latest account, eight contractors and two hundred and fifty families had been moved out. the colonies had taken on a new lease of life and apparent prosperity. while it is yet too early to pass sober judgment, there seems to be good ground for hoping that a real way out has been found that shall restore the jew, at least in a measure, to the soil from which he was barred so long. the experiment is of exceeding interest. the hopes of its projectors that a purely farming community might be established have not been realized. perhaps it was too much to expect. by bringing to the farmers their missing market, and work to the surplus population, the mixed settlement plan bids fair to prove a step in the desired direction. some 18,500 acres are now held by jewish colonists in new jersey. in the new england states, in the last eight years, 600 abandoned farms have been occupied and are cultivated by refugees from russia. as a dairy farmer and a poultry raiser, the jew has more of an immediate commercial grip on the situation and works with more courage. at woodbine, sixty-five boys and girls are being trained in an agricultural school that has won the whole settlement the friendly regard of the neighborhood. of its pupils, eleven came out of tailor shops, and ten had been office boys, messengers, or newsboys. to these, and to the trade schools now successfully operated by the de hirsch fund, we are to look in the next generation for the answer to the old taunt that the jew is a trader, and not fit to be either farmer or craftsman, and for the solution of the problem which he now presents in the slum. i have spoken at length of the jew and the italian, because they are our present problem. yesterday it was the irishman and the bohemian. to-morrow it may be the greek, who already undersells the italian from his pushcart in the fourth ward, and the syrian, who can give greek, italian, and jew points at a trade. from dalmatia a new immigration has begun to come, and there are signs of its working further east in the balkan states, where there is no telling what is in store for us. how to absorb them all safely is the question. doubtless the irishman, having absorbed us politically, would be glad to free us from all concern on that score by doing a like favor for them. but we should not get the best of the slum that way; it would get the best of us, instead. would i shut out the newcomers? sometimes, looking at it from the point of view of the barge office and the sweatshop, i think i would. then there comes up the recollection of a picture of the city of prague that hangs in a bohemian friend's parlor, here in new york. i stood looking at it one day, and noticed in the foreground cannon that pointed in over the city. i spoke of it, unthinking, and said to my host that they should be trained, if against an enemy, the other way. the man's eye flashed fire. "ha!" he cried, "here, yes!" when i think of that, i do not want to shut the door. again, there occurs to me an experience the police had last summer in mulberry street. they were looking for a murderer, and came upon a nest of italian thugs who lived by blackmailing their countrymen. they were curious about them, and sent their names to naples with a request for information. there came back such a record as none of the detectives had ever seen or heard of before. all of them were notorious criminals, who had been charged with every conceivable crime, from burglary to kidnapping and "maiming," and some not to be conceived of by the american mind. five of them together had been sixty-three times in jail, and one no less than twenty-one times. yet, though they were all "under special surveillance," they had come here without let or hindrance within a year. when i recall that, i want to shut the door quick. i sent the exhibit to washington at the time. but then, again, when i think of mrs. michelangelo in her poor mourning for one child run over and killed, wiping her tears away and going bravely to work to keep the home together for the other five until the oldest shall be old enough to take her father's place; and when, as now, there strays into my hand the letter from my good friend, the "woman doctor" in the slum, when her father had died, in which she wrote: "the little scamps of the street have been positively pathetic; they have made such shy, boyish attempts at friendliness. one little chap offered to let me hold his top while it was spinning, in token of affection,"--when i read that, i have not the heart to shut anybody out. except, of course, the unfit, the criminal and the pauper, cast off by their own, and the man brought over here merely to put money into the pockets of the steamship agent, the padrone, and the mine owner. we have laws to bar these out. suppose we begin by being honest with ourselves and the immigrant, and enforcing our own laws. in spite of a healthy effort at the port of new york,--i can only speak for that,--under the present administration, that has not yet been done. when the door has been shut and locked against the man who left his country for his country's good, whether by its "assistance" or not, and when trafficking in the immigrant for private profit has been stopped, then, perhaps, we shall be better able to decide what degree of ignorance in him constitutes unfitness for citizenship and cause for shutting him out. perchance then, also, we shall hear less of the cant about his being a peril to the republic. doubtless ignorance is a peril, but the selfishness that trades upon ignorance is a much greater. he came to us without a country, ready to adopt such a standard of patriotism as he found, at its face value, and we gave him the rear tenement and slum politics. if he accepted the standard, whose fault was it? his being in such a hurry to vote that he could not wait till the law made him a citizen was no worse, to my mind, than the treachery of the "upper class" native, who refuses to go to the polls for fear he may rub up against him there. this last let us settle with first, and see what remains of our problem. we can approach it honestly, then, at all events. when the country was in the throes of the silver campaign, the newspapers told the story of an old laborer who went to the sub-treasury and demanded to see the "boss." he undid the strings of an old leathern purse with fumbling fingers, and counted out more than two hundred dollars in gold eagles, the hoard of a lifetime of toil and self-denial. they were for the government, he said. he had not the head to understand all the talk that was going, but he gathered from what he heard that the government was in trouble, and that somehow it was about not having gold enough. so he had brought what he had. he owed it all to the country, and now that she needed it he had come to give it back. the man was an irishman. very likely he was enrolled in tammany and voted her ticket. i remember a tenement at the bottom of a back alley over on the east side, where i once went visiting with the pastor of a mission chapel. up in the attic there was a family of father and daughter in two rooms that had been made out of one by dividing off the deep dormer window. it was midwinter, and they had no fire. he was a peddler, but the snow had stalled his pushcart and robbed them of their only other source of income, a lodger who hired cot room in the attic for a few cents a night. the daughter was not able to work. but she said, cheerfully, that they were "getting along." when it came out that she had not tasted solid food for many days, was starving, in fact,--indeed, she died within a year, of the slow starvation of the tenements that parades in the mortality returns under a variety of scientific names which all mean the same thing,--she met her pastor's gentle chiding with the excuse, "oh, your church has many poorer than i. i don't want to take your money." these were germans, ordinarily held to be close-fisted; but i found that in their dire distress they had taken in a poor old man who was past working, and had kept him all winter, sharing with him what they had. he was none of theirs; they hardly even knew him, as it appeared. it was enough that he was "poorer than they," and lonely and hungry and cold. it was over here that the children of dr. elsing's sunday school gave out of the depth of their poverty fifty-four dollars in pennies to be hung on the christmas tree as their offering to the persecuted armenians. one of their teachers told me of a bohemian family that let the holiday dinner she brought them stand and wait, while they sent out to bid to the feast four little ragamuffins of the neighborhood who else would have gone hungry. i remember well a teacher in one of the children's aid society's schools, herself a tenement child, who, with breaking heart, but brave face, played and sang the children's christmas carols with them rather than spoil their pleasure, while her only sister lay dying at home. i might keep on and fill many pages with instances of that kind, which simply go to prove that our poor human nature is at least as robust on avenue a as up on fifth avenue, if it has half a chance, and often enough to restore one's faith in it, with no chance at all; and i might set over against it the product of sordid and mean environment which one has never far to seek. good and evil go together in the tenements as in the fine houses, and the evil sticks out sometimes merely because it lies nearer the surface. the point is that the good does outweigh the bad, and that the virtues that turn the balance are after all those that make for good citizenship anywhere, while the faults are oftenest the accidents of ignorance and lack of training, which it is the business of society to correct. i recall my discouragement when i looked over the examination papers of a batch of candidates for police appointment,--young men largely the product of our public schools in this city and elsewhere,--and read in them that five of the original new england states were "england, ireland, scotland, belfast, and cork;" that the fire department ruled new york in the absence of the mayor,--i have sometimes wished it did, and that he would stay away awhile; and that lincoln was murdered by ballington booth. but we shall agree, no doubt, that the indictment of these papers was not of the men who wrote them, but of the school that stuffed its pupils with useless trash, and did not teach them to think. neither have i forgotten that it was one of these very men who, having failed, and afterward got a job as a bridge policeman, on his first pay day went straight from his post, half frozen as he was, to the settlement worker who had befriended him and his sick father, and gave him five dollars for "some one who was poorer than they." poorer than they! what worker among the poor has not heard it? it is the charity of the tenement that covers a multitude of sins. there were thirteen in this policeman's family, and his wages were the biggest item of income in the house. jealousy, envy, and meanness wear no fine clothes and masquerade under no smooth speeches in the slums. often enough it is the very nakedness of the virtues that makes us stumble in our judgment. i have in mind the "difficult case" that confronted some philanthropic friends of mine in a rear tenement on twelfth street, in the person of an aged widow, quite seventy i should think, who worked uncomplainingly for a sweater all day and far into the night, pinching and saving and stinting herself, with black bread and chicory coffee as her only fare, in order that she might carry her pitiful earnings to her big, lazy lout of a son in brooklyn. he never worked. my friends' difficulty was a very real one, for absolutely every attempt to relieve the widow was wrecked upon her mother heart. it all went over the river. yet one would not have had her different. sometimes it is only the unfamiliar setting that shocks. when an east side midnight burglar, discovered and pursued, killed a tenant who blocked his way of escape, a few weeks ago, his "girl" gave him up to the police. but it was not because he had taken human life. "he was good to me," she explained to the captain whom she told where to find him, "but since he robbed the church i had no use for him." he had stolen, it seems, the communion service in a staten island church. the thoughtless laughed. but in her ignorant way she was only trying to apply the standards of morality as they had been taught her. stunted, bemuddled, as they were, i think i should prefer to take my chances with her rather than with the woman of wealth and luxury who, some years ago, gave a christmas party to her lap-dog, as on the whole the sounder of the two, and by far the more hopeful. [illustration: bone alley] all of which is merely saying that the country is all right, and the people are to be trusted with the old faith in spite of the slum. and it is true, if we remember to put it that way,--in spite of the slum. there is nothing in the slum to warrant that faith save human nature as yet uncorrupted. how long it is to remain so is altogether a question of the sacrifices we are willing to make in our fight with the slum. as yet, we are told by the officials having to do with the enforcement of the health ordinances, which come closer to the life of the individual than any other kind, that the poor in the tenements are "more amenable to the law than the better class." it is of the first importance, then, that we should have laws deserving of their respect, and that these laws should be enforced, lest they conclude that the whole thing is a sham. respect for law is a very powerful bar against the slum. but what, for instance, must the poor jew understand, who is permitted to buy a live hen at the market, yet neither to kill nor keep it in his tenement, and who on his feast day finds a whole squad of policemen detailed to follow him around and see that he does not do any of the things with his fowl for which he must have bought it? or the day laborer, who drinks his beer in a "raines law hotel," where brick sandwiches, consisting of two pieces of bread with a brick between, are set out on the counter, in derision of the state law which forbids the serving of drinks without "meals"? (the stanton street saloon keeper who did that was solemnly acquitted by a jury.) or the boy, who may buy fireworks on the fourth of july, but not set them off? these are only ridiculous instances of an abuse that pervades our community life to an extent that constitutes one of the gravest perils. insincerity of that kind is not lost on our fellow citizen by adoption, who is only anxious to fall in with the ways of the country; and especially is it not lost on his boy. we shall see how it affects him. he is the one for whom we are waging the battle with the slum. he is the to-morrow that sits to-day drinking in the lesson of the prosperity of the big boss who declared with pride upon the witness stand that he rules new york, that judges pay him tribute, and that only when _he_ says so a thing "goes;" and that it is all for what he can get out of it, "just the same as everybody else." he sees corporations to-day pay blackmail and rob the people in return, quite according to the schedule of hester street. only there it is the police who charge the peddler twenty cents, while here it is the politicians taking toll of the franchises, twenty per cent. wall street is not ordinarily reckoned in the slum, because of certain physical advantages; but, upon the evidence of the day, i think we shall have to conclude that the advantage ends there. the boy who is learning such lessons,--how is it with him? the president of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children says that children's crime is increasing, and he ought to know. the managers of the children's aid society, after forty-six years of wrestling with the slum for the boy, in which they have lately seemed to get the upper hand, say in this year's report that on the east side children are growing up in certain districts "entirely neglected," and that the number of such children "increases beyond the power of philanthropic and religious bodies to cope properly with their needs." in the tompkins square lodging house the evening classes are thinning out, and the keeper wails: "those with whom we have dealt of late have not been inclined to accept this privilege; how to make night school attractive to shiftless, indifferent street boys is a difficult problem to solve." perhaps it is only that he has lost the key. across the square, the boys' club of st. mark's place, that began with a handful, counts five thousand members to-day, and is seeking a place to build a house of its own. the school census man announces that no boy in that old stronghold of the "bread or blood" brigade need henceforth loiter in the street because there is not room in the public school, and the brigade has disbanded for want of recruits. the shop is being shut against the boy, and the bars let down at the playground. but from tompkins square, nevertheless, came jacob beresheim, whose story i shall tell you presently. v the genesis of the gang jacob beresheim was fifteen when he was charged with murder. it is now more than three years ago, but the touch of his hand is cold upon mine, with mortal fear, as i write. every few minutes, during our long talk on the night of his arrest and confession, he would spring to his feet, and, clutching my arm as a drowning man catches at a rope, demand with shaking voice, "will they give me the chair?" the assurance that boys were not executed quieted him only for the moment. then the dread and the horror were upon him again. of his crime the less said the better. it was the climax of a career of depravity that differed from other such chiefly in the opportunities afforded by an environment which led up to and helped shape it. my business is with that environment. the man is dead, the boy in jail. but unless i am to be my brother's jail keeper, merely, the iron bars do not square the account of jacob with society. society exists for the purpose of securing justice to its members, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. when it fails in this, the item is carried on the ledger with interest and compound interest toward a day of reckoning that comes surely with the paymaster. we have heard the chink of his coin on the counter, these days, in the unblushing revelations before the mazet committee of degraded citizenship, of the murder of the civic conscience, and in the applause that hailed them. and we have begun to understand that these are the interest on jacob's account, older, much older than himself. he is just an item carried on the ledger. but with that knowledge the account is at last in a way of getting squared. let us see how it stands. we shall take jacob as a type of the street boy on the east side, where he belonged. what does not apply to him in the review applies to his class. but there was very little of it indeed that he missed or that missed him. he was born in a tenement in that section where the tenement house committee found 324,000 persons living out of sight and reach of a green spot of any kind, and where sometimes the buildings, front, middle, and rear, took up ninety-three per cent. of all the space on the block. such a home as he had was there, and of the things that belonged to it he was the heir. the sunlight was not among them. it "never entered" there. darkness and discouragement did, and dirt. later on, when he took to the dirt as his natural weapon in his battles with society, it was said of him that it was the only friend that stuck to him, and it was true. very early the tenement gave him up to the street. the thing he took with him as the one legacy of home was the instinct for the crowd, which meant that the tenement had wrought its worst mischief upon him: it had smothered that in him around which character is built. the more readily did he fall in with the street and its ways. character implies depth, a soil, and growth. the street is all surface: nothing grows there; it hides only a sewer. it taught him gambling as its first lesson, and stealing as the next. the two are never far apart. from shooting craps behind the "cop's" back to filching from the grocer's stock or plundering a defenseless peddler is only a step. there is in both the spice of law-breaking that appeals to the shallow ambition of the street as heroic. occasionally the raids have a comic tinge. a german grocer wandered into police headquarters the other day, with an appeal for protection against the boys. "vat means dot 'cheese it'?" he asked, rubbing his bald head in helpless bewilderment. "efery dime dey says 'cheese it,' somedings vas gone." to the lawlessness of the street the home opposes no obstacle, as we have seen. until very recently the school did not. it might have more to offer even now. there are, at least, schools where there were none then, and so much is gained; also, they are getting better, but too many of them, in my unprofessional judgment, need yet to be made over, until they are fit to turn out whole, sound boys, instead of queer manikins stuffed with information for which they have no use, and which is none of their business anyhow. it seemed to me sometimes, when watching the process of cramming the school course with the sum of human knowledge and conceit, as if it all meant that we distrusted nature's way of growing a man from a boy, and had set out to show her a shorter cut. a common result was the kind of mental befogment that had abraham lincoln murdered by ballington booth, and a superficiality, a hopeless slurring of tasks, that hitched perfectly with the spirit of the street, and left nothing to be explained in the verdict of the reformatory, "no moral sense." there was no moral sense to be got out of the thing, for there was little sense of any kind in it. the boy was not given a chance to be honest with himself by thinking a thing through; he came naturally to accept as his mental horizon the headlines in his penny paper and the literature of the dare-devil-dan-the-death-dealing-monster-of-dakota order, which comprise the ordinary ã¦sthetic equipment of the slum. the mystery of his further development into the tough need not perplex anybody. but jacob beresheim had not even the benefit of such schooling as there was to be had. he did not go to school, and nobody cared. there was indeed a law directing that every child should go, and a corps of truant officers to catch him if he did not; but the law had been a dead letter for a quarter of a century. there was no census to tell what children ought to be in school, and no place but a jail to put those in who shirked. jacob was allowed to drift. from the time he was twelve till he was fifteen, he told me, he might have gone to school three weeks,--no more. church and sunday school missed him. i was going to say that they passed by on the other side, remembering the migration of the churches uptown, as the wealthy moved out of, and the poor into, the region south of fourteenth street. but that would hardly be fair. they moved after their congregations; but they left nothing behind. in the twenty years that followed the war, while enough to people a large city moved in downtown, the number of churches there was reduced from 141 to 127. fourteen protestant churches moved out. only two roman catholic churches and a synagogue moved in. i am not aware that there has been any large increase of churches in the district since, but we have seen that the crowding has not slackened pace. jacob had no trouble in escaping the sunday school as he had escaped the public school. his tribe will have none until the responsibility incurred in the severance of church and state sits less lightly on a christian community, and the church, from a mob, shall have become an army, with von moltke's plan of campaign, "march apart, fight together." the christian church is not alone in its failure. the jew's boy is breaking away from safe moorings rather faster than his brother of the new dispensation. the church looks on, but it has no cause for congratulation. he is getting nothing in place of that which he lost, and the result is bad. there is no occasion for profound theories about it. the facts are plain enough. the new freedom has something to do with it, but neglect to look after the young has quite as much. apart from its religious aspect, seen from the angle of the community's interest wholly, the matter is of the gravest import. what the boy's play has to do with building character in him froebel has told us. through it, he showed us, the child "first perceives moral relations," and he made that the basis of the kindergarten and all common-sense education. that prop was knocked out. new york never had a children's playground till within the last year. truly it seemed, as abram s. hewitt said, as if in the early plan of our city the children had not been thought of at all. such moral relations as jacob was able to make out ran parallel with the gutter always, and counter to law and order as represented by the policeman and the landlord. the landlord had his windows to mind, and the policeman his lamps and the city ordinances which prohibit even kite-flying below fourteenth street where the crowds are. the ball had no chance at all. it is not two years since a boy was shot down by a policeman for the heinous offense of playing football in the street on thanksgiving day. but a boy who cannot kick a ball around has no chance of growing up a decent and orderly citizen. he must have his childhood, so that he may be fitted to give to the community his manhood. the average boy is just like a little steam engine with steam always up. the play is his safety valve. with the landlord in the yard and the policeman on the street sitting on his safety valve and holding it down, he is bound to explode. when he does, when he throws mud and stones and shows us the side of him which the gutter developed, we are shocked and marvel much what our boys are coming to, as if we had any right to expect better treatment of them. i doubt if jacob, in the whole course of his wizened little life, had ever a hand in an honest game that was not haunted by the dread of the avenging policeman. that he was not "doing anything" was no defense. the mere claim was proof that he was up to mischief of some sort. besides, the policeman was usually right. play in such a setting becomes a direct incentive to mischief in a healthy boy. jacob was a healthy enough little animal. such fun as he had he got out of law-breaking in a small way. in this he was merely following the ruling fashion. laws were apparently made for no other purpose that he could see. such a view as he enjoyed of their makers and executors at election seasons inspired him with seasonable enthusiasm, but hardly with awe. a slogan, now, like that raised by tammany's late candidate for district attorney,--"to hell with reform!"--was something he could grasp. of what reform meant he had only the vaguest notion, but the thing had the right ring to it. roosevelt preaching enforcement of law was from the first a "lobster" to him, not to be taken seriously. it is not among the least of the merits of the man that by his sturdy personality, as well as by his unyielding persistence, he won the boy over to the passive admission that there might be something in it. it had not been his experience. there was the law which sternly commanded him to go to school, and which he laughed at every day. then there was the law to prevent child labor. it cost twenty-five cents for a false age certificate to break that, and jacob, if he thought of it at all, probably thought of perjury as rather an expensive thing. a quarter was a good deal to pay for the right to lock a child up in a factory, when he ought to have been at play. the excise law was everybody's game. the sign that hung in every saloon, saying that nothing was sold there to minors, never yet barred out his "growler" when he had the price. there was another such sign in the tobacco shop, forbidding the sale of cigarettes to boys of his age. jacob calculated that when he had the money he smoked as many as fifteen in a day, and he laughed when he told me. he laughed, too, when he remembered how the boys of the east side took to carrying balls of cord in their pockets, on the wave of the lexow reform, on purpose to measure the distance from the school door to the nearest saloon. they had been told that it should be two hundred feet, according to law. there were schools that had as many as a dozen within the tabooed limits. it was in the papers how, when the highest courts said that the law was good, the saloon keepers attacked the schools as a nuisance and detrimental to property. in a general way jacob sided with the saloon keeper; not because he had any opinion about it, but because it seemed natural. such opinions as he ordinarily had he got from that quarter. when, later on, he came to be tried, his counsel said to me, "he is an amazing liar." no, hardly amazing. it would have been amazing if he had been anything else. lying and mockery were all around him, and he adjusted himself to the things that were. he lied in self-defense. jacob's story ends here, as far as he is personally concerned. the story of the gang begins. so trained for the responsibility of citizenship, robbed of home and of childhood, with every prop knocked from under him, all the elements that make for strength and character trodden out in the making of the boy, all the high ambition of youth caricatured by the slum and become base passions,--so equipped he comes to the business of life. as a "kid" he hunted with the pack in the street. as a young man he trains with the gang, because it furnishes the means of gratifying his inordinate vanity, that is the slum's counterfeit of self-esteem. upon the jacobs of other days there was a last hold,--the father's authority. changed conditions have loosened that also. there is a time in every young man's life when he knows more than his father. it is like the measles or the mumps, and he gets over it, with a little judicious firmness in the hand that guides. it is the misfortune of the slum boy of to-day that it is really so, and that he knows it. his father is an italian or a jew, and cannot even speak the language to which the boy is born. he has to depend on him in much, in the new order of things. the old man is "slow," he is "dutch." he maybe an irishman with some advantages; he is still a "foreigner." he loses his grip on the boy. ethical standards of which he has no conception clash. watch the meeting of two currents in river or bay, and see the line of drift that tells of the struggle. so in the city's life strive the currents of the old and the new, and in the churning the boy goes adrift. the last hold upon him is gone. that is why the gang appears in the second generation, the first born upon the soil,--a fighting gang if the irishman is there with his ready fist, a thievish gang if it is the east side jew,--and disappears in the third. the second boy's father is not "slow." he has had experience. he was clubbed into decency in his own day, and the night stick wore off the glamour of the thing. his grip on the boy is good, and it holds. it depends now upon chance what is to become of the lad. but the slum has stacked the cards against him. there arises in the lawless crowd a leader, who rules with his stronger fists or his readier wit. around him the gang crystallizes, and what he is it becomes. he may be a thief, like david meyer, a report of whose doings i have before me. he was just a bully, and, being the biggest in his gang, made the others steal for him and surrender the "swag," or take a licking. but that was unusual. ordinarily the risk and the "swag" are distributed on more democratic principles. or he may be of the temper of mike of poverty gap, who was hanged for murder at nineteen. while he sat in his cell at police headquarters, he told with grim humor of the raids of his gang on saturday nights when they stocked up at "the club." they used to "hook" a butcher's cart or other light wagon, wherever found, and drive like mad up and down the avenue, stopping at saloon or grocery to throw in what they wanted. his job was to sit at the tail of the cart with a six-shooter and pop at any chance pursuer. he chuckled at the recollection of how men fell over one another to get out of his way. "it was great to see them run," he said. mike was a tough, but with a better chance he might have been a hero. the thought came to him, too, when it was all over and the end in sight. he put it all in one sober, retrospective sigh, that had in it no craven shirking of the responsibility that was properly his: "i never had no bringing up." there was a meeting some time after his death to boom a scheme for "getting the boys off the street," and i happened to speak of mike's case. in the audience was a gentleman of means and position, and his daughter, who manifested great interest and joined heartily in the proposed movement. a week later, i was thunderstruck at reading of the arrest of my sympathetic friend's son for train-wrecking up the state. the fellow was of the same age as mike. it appeared that he was supposed to be attending school, but had been reading dime novels instead, until he arrived at the point where he "had to kill some one before the end of the month." to that end he organized a gang of admiring but less resourceful comrades. after all, the plane of fellowship of poverty gap and madison avenue lies nearer than we often suppose. i set the incident down in justice to the memory of my friend mike. if this one went astray with so much to pull him the right way, and but the single strand broken, what then of the other? mike's was the day of irish heroics. since their scene was shifted from the east side there has come over there an epidemic of child crime of meaner sort, but following the same principle of gang organization. it is difficult to ascertain the exact extent of it, because of the well-meant but, i am inclined to think, mistaken effort on the part of the children's societies to suppress the record of it for the sake of the boy. enough testimony comes from the police and the courts, however, to make it clear that thieving is largely on the increase among the east side boys. and it is amazing at what an early age it begins. when, in the fight for a truant school, i had occasion to gather statistics upon this subject, to meet the sneer of the educational authorities that the "crimes" of street boys compassed at worst the theft of a top or a marble. i found among 278 prisoners, of whom i had kept the run for ten months, two boys, of four and eight years respectively, arrested for breaking into a grocery, not to get candy or prunes, but to rob the till. the little one was useful to "crawl through a small hole." there were "burglars" of six and seven years, and five in a bunch, the whole gang apparently, at the age of eight. "wild" boys began to appear in court at that age. at eleven, i had seven thieves, two of whom had a record on the police blotter, and an "habitual liar;" at twelve, i had four burglars, three ordinary thieves, two arrested for drunkenness, three for assault, and three incendiaries; at thirteen, five burglars, one with a "record," as many thieves, one "drunk," five charged with assault and one with forgery; at fourteen, eleven thieves and house-breakers, six highway robbers,--the gang on its unlucky day, perhaps,--and ten arrested for fighting, not counting one who had assaulted a policeman, in a state of drunken frenzy. one of the gangs made a specialty of stealing baby carriages, when left unattended in front of stores. they "drapped the kids in the hallway" and "sneaked" the carriages. and so on. the recital was not a pleasant one, but it was effective. we got our truant school, and one way that led to the jail was blocked. it may be that the leader is neither thief nor thug, but ambitious. in that case the gang is headed for politics by the shortest route. likewise, sometimes, when he is both. in either case it carries the situation by assault. when the gang wants a thing, the easiest way seems to it always to take it. there was an explosion in a fifth street tenement, one night last january, that threw twenty families into a wild panic, and injured two of the tenants badly. there was much mystery about it, until it came out that the housekeeper had had a "run in" with the gang in the block. it wanted club-room in the house, and she would not let it in. beaten, it avenged itself in characteristic fashion by leaving a package of gunpowder on the stairs, where she would be sure to find it when she went the rounds with her candle to close up. that was a gang of that kind, headed straight for albany. and what is more, it will get there, unless things change greatly. the gunpowder was just a "bluff" to frighten the housekeeper, an installment of the kind of politics it meant to play when it got its chance. there was "nothing against this gang" except a probable row with the saloon keeper, since it applied elsewhere for house-room. not every gang has a police record of theft and "slugging" beyond the early encounters of the street. "our honored leader" is not always the captain of a band of cutthroats. he is the honorary president of the "social club" that bears his name, and he counts for something in the ward. but the ethical standards do not differ. "do others, or they will do you," felicitously adapted from holy writ for the use of the slum, and the classic war-cry, "to the victors the spoils," made over locally to read, "i am not in politics for my health," still interpret the creed of the political as of the "slugging" gang. they drew their inspiration from the same source. of what gang politics means every large city in our country has had its experience. new york is no exception. history on the subject is being made yet, in the sight of us all. our business with the gang, however, is in the making of it. take now the showing of the reformatory,[4] to which i have before made reference, and see what light it throws upon the matter: 71 per cent. of prisoners with no moral sense, or next to none, yet more than that proportion possessed of "natural mental capacity," which is to say that they had the means of absorbing it from their environment, if there had been any to absorb. bad homes sent half of all prisoners there; bad company 92 per cent. the reformatory repeats the prison chaplain's verdict, "weakness, not wickedness," in its own way: "malevolence does not characterize the criminal, but aversion to continuous labor." if "the street" had been written across it in capital letters, it could not have been made plainer. twelve per cent. only of the prisoners came from good homes, and one in a hundred had kept good company; evidently he was not of the mentally capable. they will tell you at the prison that, under its discipline, 83 per cent. are set upon their feet and make a fresh start. with due allowance for a friendly critic, there is still room for the three fourths labeled normal. the children's aid society will give you even better news of the boys rescued from the slum before it had branded them for its own. scarce five per cent. are lost, though they leave such a black mark that they make trouble for all the good boys that are sent out from new york. better than these was the kindergarten record in san francisco. new york has no monopoly of the slum. of nine thousand children from the slummiest quarters of that city who had gone through the golden gate association's kindergartens, just one was said to have got into jail. the merchants who looked coldly on the experiment before brought their gold to pay for keeping it up. they were hard-headed men of business, and the demonstration that schools were better than jails any day appealed to them as eminently sane and practical. [footnote 4: year-book of elmira state reformatory, 1897. the statistics deal with 8319 prisoners received there in twenty-three years. the social stratum whence they came is sufficiently indicated by the statement that 18.3 per cent. were illiterates, and 43.3 per cent. were able to read and write with difficulty; 35.2 per cent. had an ordinary common school education; 3.2 per cent. came out of high schools or colleges.] and well it might. the gang is a distemper of the slum that writes upon the generation it plagues the recipe for its own corrective. it is not the night stick, though in the acute stage that is not to be dispensed with. neither is it the jail. to put the gang behind iron bars affords passing relief, but it is like treating a symptom without getting at the root of the disease. prophylactic treatment is clearly indicated. the boy who flings mud and stones is entering his protest in his own way against the purblind policy that gave him jails for schools and the gutter for a playground, that gave him dummies for laws and the tenement for a home. he is demanding his rights, of which he has been cheated,--the right to his childhood, the right to know the true dignity of labor that makes a self-respecting manhood. the gang, rightly understood, is our ally, not our enemy. like any ailment of the body, it is a friend come to tell us of something that has gone amiss. the thing for us to do is to find out what it is, and set it right. that is the story of the gang. that we have read and grasped its lesson at last, an item in my morning paper, which i read at the breakfast table to-day, bears witness. it tells that the league for political education has set about providing a playground for the children up on the west side, near the model tenements which i described. just so! with a decent home and a chance for the boy to grow into a healthy man, his political education can proceed without much further hindrance. now let the league for political education trade off the policeman's club for a boys' club, and it may consider its course fairly organized. i spoke of the instinct for the crowd in the tenement house boy as evidence that the slum had got its grip on him. and it is true of him. the experience that the helpless poor will not leave their slum when a chance of better things is offered is wearily familiar to most of us. i recall the indignant amazement of my good friend, the president of the baron de hirsch fund, when, of a hundred of the neediest families chosen to be the pioneers in the experiment of transplanting the crowds of the ghetto to the country, where homes and work were waiting for them, only seven wanted to go. they preferred the excitement of the street. one has to have resources to face the loneliness of the woods and the fields. we have seen what resources the slum has at its command. in the boy it laid hold of the instinct for organization, the desire to fall in and march in line that belongs to all boys, and is not here, as abroad, cloyed with military service in the young years,--and anyhow is stronger in the american boy than in his european brother,--and perverted it to its own use. that is the simple secret of the success of the club, the brigade, in winning back the boy. it is fighting the street with its own weapon. the gang is the club run wild. how readily it owns the kinship was never better shown than by the experience of the college settlement girls, when they first went to make friends in the east side tenements. i have told it before, but it will bear telling again, for it holds the key to the whole business. they gathered in the drift, all the little embryo gangs that were tuning up in the district, and made them into clubs,--young heroes, knights of the round table, and such like; all except one, the oldest, that had begun to make a name for itself with the police. that one held aloof, observing coldly what went on, to make sure it was "straight." they let it be, keeping the while an anxious eye upon it; until one day there came a delegation with the proposition, "if you will let us in, we will change and have your kind of a gang." needless to say it was let in. and within a year, when, through a false rumor that the concern was moving away, there was a run on the settlement's penny provident bank, the converted gang proved itself its stanchest friend by doing actually what john halifax did, in miss mulock's story: it brought all the pennies it could raise in the neighborhood by hook or by crook and deposited them as fast as the regular patrons--the gang had not yet risen to the dignity of a bank account--drew them out, until the run ceased. the cry "get the boys off the street" that has been raised in our cities, as the real gravity of the situation has been made clear, has led to the adoption of curfew ordinances in many places. any attempt to fit such a scheme to metropolitan life would probably result simply in adding one more dead-letter law, more dangerous than all the rest, to those we have. besides, the curfew rings at nine o'clock. the dangerous hours, when the gang is made, are from seven to nine, between supper and bedtime. this is the gap the club fills out. the boys take to the street because the home has nothing to keep them there. to lock them up in the house would only make them hate it more. the club follows the line of least resistance. it has only to keep also on the line of common sense. it must be a real club, not a reformatory. its proper function is to head off the jail. the gang must not run it. but rather that than have it help train up a band of wretched young cads. the signs are not hard to make out. when a boy has had his head swelled by his importance as a member of the junior street-cleaning band to the point of reproving his mother for throwing a banana peel in the street, the thing to be done is to take him out and spank him, if it _is_ reverting to "the savagery" of the street. better a savage than a cad. the boys have the making of both in them. their vanity furnishes abundant material for the cad, but only when unduly pampered. left to itself, the gang can be trusted not to develop that kink. it comes down in the end to the personal influence that is always most potent in dealing with these problems. we had a gang start up once when my boys were of that age, out in the village on long island where we lived. it had its headquarters in our barn, where it planned divers raids that aimed at killing the cat and other like outrages; the central fact being that the boys had an air rifle, with which it was necessary to murder something. my wife discovered the conspiracy, and, with woman's wit, defeated it by joining the gang. she "gave in wood" to the election bonfires, and pulled the safety valve upon all the other plots by entering into the true spirit of them,--which was adventure rather than mischief,--and so keeping them within safe lines. she was elected an honorary member, and became the counselor of the gang in all their little scrapes. i can yet see her dear brow wrinkled in the study of some knotty gang problem, which we discussed when the boys had been long asleep. they did not dream of it, and the village never knew what small tragedies it escaped, nor who it was that so skillfully averted them. it is always the women who do those things. they are the law and the gospel to the boy, both in one. it is the mother heart, i suppose, and there is nothing better in all the world. i am reminded of the conversion of "the kid" by one who was in a very real sense the mother of a social settlement uptown, in the latitude of battle row. the kid was driftwood. he had been cast off by a drunken father and mother, and was living on what he could scrape out of ash barrels, and an occasional dime for kindling-wood which he sold from a wheel-barrow, when the gang found and adopted him. my friend adopted the gang in her turn, and civilized it by slow stages. easter sunday came, when she was to redeem her promise to take the boys to witness the services in a neighboring church, where the liturgy was especially impressive. it found the larger part of the gang at her door,--a minority, it was announced, were out stealing potatoes, hence were excusable,--in a state of high indignation. "the kid's been cussin' awful," explained the leader. the kid showed in the turbulent distance, red-eyed and raging. "but why?" asked my friend, in amazement. "'cause he can't go to church!" it appeared that the gang had shut him out, with a sense of what was due to the occasion, because of his rags. restored to grace, and choking down reminiscent sobs, the kid sat through the easter service, surrounded by the twenty-seven "proper" members of the gang. civilization had achieved a victory, and no doubt my friend remembered it in her prayers with thanksgiving. the manner was of less account. battle row has its own ways, even in its acceptance of means of grace. i walked home from the office to-night. the street wore its normal aspect of mingled dullness and the kind of expectancy that is always waiting to turn any excitement, from a fallen horse to a fire, to instant account. the early june heat had driven the multitudes from the tenements into the street for a breath of air. the boys of the block were holding a meeting at the hydrant. in some way they had turned the water on, and were splashing in it with bare feet, reveling in the sense that they were doing something that "went against" their enemy, the policeman. upon the quiet of the evening broke a bugle note and the tramp of many feet keeping time. a military band came around the corner, stepping briskly to the tune of "the stars and stripes forever." their white duck trousers glimmered in the twilight, as the hundred legs moved as one. stoops and hydrant were deserted with a rush. the gang fell in with joyous shouts. the young fellow linked arms with his sweetheart and fell in too. the tired mother hurried with the baby carriage to catch up. the butcher came, hot and wiping his hands on his apron, to the door to see them pass. "yes," said my companion, guessing my thoughts,--we had been speaking of the boys,--"but look at the other side. there is the military spirit. do you not fear danger from it in this country?" no, my anxious friend, i do not. let them march; and if with a gun, better still. often enough it is the choice of the gun on the shoulder, or, by and by, the stripes on the back in the lockstep gang. vi letting in the light i had been out of town and my way had not fallen through the mulberry bend in weeks until that morning when i came suddenly upon the park that had been made there in my absence. sod had been laid, and men were going over the lawn cutting the grass after the rain. the sun shone upon flowers and the tender leaves of young shrubs, and the smell of new-mown hay was in the air. crowds of little italian children shouted with delight over the "garden," while their elders sat around upon the benches with a look of contentment such as i had not seen before in that place. i stood and looked at it all, and a lump came in my throat as i thought of what it had been, and of all the weary years of battling for this. it had been such a hard fight, and now at last it was won. to me the whole battle with the slum had summed itself up in the struggle with this dark spot. the whir of the lawn mower was as sweet a song in my ear as that which the skylark sang when i was a boy, in danish fields, and which gray hairs do not make the man forget. in my delight i walked upon the grass. it seemed as if i should never be satisfied till i had felt the sod under my feet,--sod in the mulberry bend! i did not see the gray-coated policeman hastening my way, nor the wide-eyed youngsters awaiting with shuddering delight the catastrophe that was coming, until i felt his cane laid smartly across my back and heard his angry command:-"hey! come off the grass! d' ye think it is made to walk on?" so that was what i got for it. it is the way of the world. but it was all right. the park was there, that was the thing. and i had my revenge. i had just had a hand in marking five blocks of tenements for destruction to let in more light, and in driving the slum from two other strongholds. where they were, parks are being made to-day in which the sign "keep off the grass!" will never be seen. the children may walk in them from morning till night, and i too, if i want to, with no policeman to drive us off. i tried to tell the policeman something about it. but he was of the old dispensation. all the answer i got was a gruff:-"g'wan now! i don't want none o' yer guff!" it was all "guff" to the politicians, i suppose, from the day the trouble began about the mulberry bend, but toward the end they woke up nobly. when the park was finally dedicated to the people's use, they took charge of the celebration with immense unction, and invited themselves to sit in the high seats and glory in the achievement which they had done little but hamper and delay from the first. they had not reckoned with colonel waring, however. when they had had their say, the colonel arose and, curtly reminding them that they had really had no hand in the business, proposed three cheers for the citizen effort that had struck the slum this staggering blow. there was rather a feeble response on the platform, but rousing cheers from the crowd, with whom the colonel was a prime favorite, and no wonder. two years later he laid down his life in the fight which he so valiantly and successfully waged. it is the simple truth that he was killed by politics. the services which he had rendered the city would have entitled him in any reputable business to be retained in the employment that was his life and his pride. had he been so retained he would not have gone to cuba, and would in all human probability be now alive. but tammany is not "in politics for her health" and had no use for him, though no more grievous charge could be laid at his door, even in the heat of the campaign, than that he was a "foreigner," being from rhode island. spoils politics never craved a heavier sacrifice of any community. it was colonel waring's broom that first let light into the slum. that which had come to be considered an impossible task he did by the simple formula of "putting a man instead of a voter behind every broom." the words are his own. the man, from a political dummy who loathed his job and himself in it with cause, became a self-respecting citizen, and the streets that had been dirty were swept. the ash barrels which had befouled the sidewalks disappeared, almost without any one knowing it till they were gone. the trucks that obstructed the children's only playground, the street, went with the dirt despite the opposition of the truckman who had traded off his vote to tammany in the past for stall room at the curbstone. they did not go without a struggle. when appeal to the alderman proved useless, the truckman resorted to strategy. he took a wheel off, or kept a perishing nag, that could not walk, hitched to the truck over night to make it appear that it was there for business. but subterfuge availed as little as resistance. in the mulberry bend he made his last stand. the old houses had been torn down, leaving a three-acre lot full of dirt mounds and cellar holes. into this the truckmen of the sixth ward hauled their carts, and defied the street cleaners. they were no longer in their way, and they were on the park department's domain, where no colonel waring was in control. but while their owners were triumphing, the children playing among the trucks set one of them rolling down into a cellar, and three or four of the little ones were crushed. that was the end. the trucks disappeared. even tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. they were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking places of all manner of mischief at night, but i have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide "slips" at the river. colonel waring did more for the cause of labor than all the walking delegates of the town together, by investing a despised but highly important task with a dignity which won the hearty plaudits of a grateful city. when he uniformed his men and announced that he was going to parade with them so that we might all see what they were like, the town laughed and poked fun at the "white wings;" but no one went to see them who did not come away converted to an enthusiastic belief in the man and his work. public sentiment, that had been half reluctantly suspending judgment, expecting every day to see the colonel "knuckle down to politics" like his predecessors, turned in an hour, and after that there was little trouble. the tenement house children organized street cleaning bands to help along the work, and colonel waring enlisted them as regular auxiliaries and made them useful. they had no better friend. when the unhappy plight of the persecuted pushcart men, all immigrant jews, who were blackmailed, robbed, and driven from pillar to post as a nuisance, though licensed to trade in the street, appealed vainly for a remedy, colonel waring found a way out in a great morning market in hester street that should be turned over to the children for a playground in the afternoon. though he proved that it would pay interest on the investment in market fees, and many times in the children's happiness, it was never built. it would have been a most fitting monument to the man's memory. his broom saved more lives in the crowded tenements than a squad of doctors. it did more: it swept the cobwebs out of our civic brain and conscience, and set up a standard of a citizen's duty which, however we may for the moment forget, will be ours until we have dragged other things than our pavements out of the mud. even the colonel's broom would have been powerless to do that for "the bend." that was hopeless and had to go. there was no question of children or playground involved. the worst of all the gangs, the whyã³s, had its headquarters in the darkest of its dark alleys; but it was left to the police. we had not begun to understand that the gangs meant something to us beyond murder and vengeance, in those days. no one suspected that they had any such roots in the soil that they could be killed by merely destroying the slum. the cholera was rapping on our door and, with the bend there, we felt about it as a man with stolen goods in his house must feel when the policeman comes up the street. back in the seventies we began discussing what ought to be done. by 1884 the first tenement house commission had summoned up courage to propose that a street be cut through the bad block. in the following year a bill was brought in to destroy it bodily, and then began the long fight that resulted in the defeat of the slum a dozen years later. it was a bitter fight, in which every position of the enemy had to be carried by assault. the enemy was the deadly official inertia that was the outcome of political corruption born of the slum plus the indifference of the mass of our citizens, who probably had never seen the bend. if i made it my own concern to the exclusion of all else, it was only because i knew it. i had been part of it. homeless and alone, i had sought its shelter, not for long,--that was not to be endured,--but long enough to taste of its poison, and i hated it. i knew that the blow must be struck there, to kill. looking back now over those years, i can see that it was all as it should be. we were learning the alphabet of our lesson then. we could have learned it in no other way so thoroughly. before we had been at it more than two or three years, it was no longer a question of the bend merely. the small parks law that gave us a million dollars a year to force light and air into the slum, to its destruction, grew out of it. the whole sentiment which in its day, groping blindly and angrily, had wiped out the disgrace of the five points, just around the corner, crystallized and took shape in its fight. it waited merely for the issue of that, to attack the slum in its other strongholds; and no sooner was the bend gone than the rest surrendered, unconditionally. but it was not so easy campaigning at the start. in 1888 plans were filed for the demolition of the block. it took four years to get a report of what it would cost to tear it down. about once in two months during all that time the authorities had to be prodded into a spasm of activity, or we would probably have been yet where we were then. once when i appealed to the corporation counsel to give a good reason for the delay, i got the truth out of him without evasion. "well, i tell you," he said blandly, "no one here is taking any interest in that business. that is good enough reason for you, isn't it?" it was. that tammany reason became the slogan of an assault upon official incompetence and treachery that hurried things up considerably. the property was condemned at a total cost to the city of a million and a half, in round numbers, including the assessment of half a million for park benefit which the property owners were quick enough, with the aid of the politicians, to get saddled on the city at large. in 1894 the city took possession and became the landlord of the old barracks. for a whole year it complacently collected the rents and did nothing. when it was shamed out of that rut, too, and the tenements were at last torn down, the square lay as the wreckers had left it for another year, until it became such a plague spot that, as a last resort, with a citizen's privilege, i arraigned the municipality before the board of health for maintaining a nuisance upon its premises. i can see the shocked look of the official now, as he studied the complaint. "but, my dear sir," he coughed diplomatically, "isn't it rather unusual? i never heard of such a thing." "neither did i," i replied, "but then there never was such a thing before." that night, while they were debating the "unusual thing," happened the accident to the children of which i spoke, emphasizing the charge that the nuisance was "dangerous to life," and there was an end. in the morning the bend was taken in hand, and the following spring the mulberry bend park was opened. a million dollars a year had been lost while we were learning our lesson. the small parks fund was not cumulative, and when it came to paying for the bend a special bill had to be passed to authorize it, the award being "more than one million in one year." the wise financiers who framed and hung in the comptroller's office a check for three cents that had been under-paid on a school site, for the taxpayer to bow before in awe and admiration at such business methods, could find no way to make the appropriation for two years apply, though the new year was coming in a week or two. but the gilder tenement house commission had been sitting, the committee of seventy had been at work, and a law was on the statute books authorizing the expenditure of three million dollars for two open spaces in the parkless district on the east side, where jacob beresheim was born. it had shown that while the proportion of park area inside the limits of the old city was equal to one thirteenth of all, below fourteenth street, where one third of the people lived, it was barely one fortieth. it took a citizen's committee appointed by the mayor just three weeks to seize the two sites which are now being laid out in playgrounds chiefly, and it took the good government clubs with their allies at albany less than two months to get warrant of law for the tearing down of the houses ahead of final condemnation lest any mischance befall through delay or otherwise,--a precaution which subsequent events proved to be eminently wise. the slow legal proceedings are going on yet. [illustration: mulberry bend park] the playground part of it was a provision of the gilder law that showed what apt scholars we had been. i was a member of that committee, and i fed fat my grudge against the slum tenement, knowing that i might not again have such a chance. bone alley went. i shall not soon get the picture of it, as i saw it last, out of my mind. i had wandered to the top floor of one of the ramshackle tenements in the heart of the block, to a door that stood ajar, and pushed it open. on the floor lay three women rag-pickers with their burdens, asleep, overcome by the heat and the beer, the stale stench of which filled the place. swarms of flies covered them. the room--no! let it go. thank god, we shall not again hear of bone alley. where it stood workmen are to-day building a gymnasium with baths for the people, and a playground and park which may even be turned into a skating-pond in winter if the architect keeps his promise. a skating-pond for the children of the eleventh ward! no wonder the politician is in a hurry to take the credit for what is going forward over there. it is that or nothing with him now. it will be all up with tammany, once the boys find out that these were the things she withheld from them all the years, for her own gain. half a dozen blocks away the city's first public bath house is at last going up, after many delays, and godliness will have a chance to move in with cleanliness. the two are neighbors everywhere, but in the slum the last must come first. glasgow has half a dozen public baths. rome, two thousand years ago, washed its people most sedulously, and in heathen japan to-day, i am told, there are baths, as we have saloons, on every corner. christian new york never had a bath house. in a tenement population of 255,033 the gilder committee found only 306 who had access to bath-rooms in the houses where they lived. the church federation canvass of the fifteenth assembly district counted three bath-tubs to 1321 families. nor was that because they so elected. the people's baths took in 115,000 half dimes last year for as many baths, and forty per cent. of their customers were italians. the free river baths admitted 5,096,876 customers during the summer. the "great unwashed" were not so from choice, it would appear. bone alley brought thirty-seven dollars under the auctioneer's hammer. thieves' alley, in the other park down at rutgers square, where the police clubbed the jewish cloakmakers a few years ago for the offense of gathering to assert their right to "being men, live the life of men," as some one who knew summed up the labor movement, brought only seven dollars, and the old helvetia house, where boss tweed and his gang met at night to plan their plundering raids on the city's treasury, was knocked down for five. kerosene row would not have brought enough to buy kindling wood with which to start one of the numerous fires that gave it its bad name. it was in thieves' alley that the owner in the days long gone by hung out the sign: "no jews need apply." last week i watched the opening of the first municipal playground upon the site of the old alley, and in the thousands that thronged street and tenements from curb to roof with thunder of applause, there were not twoscore who could have found lodging with the old jew-baiter. he had to go with his alley before the better day could bring light and hope to the tenth ward. in all this the question of rehousing the population, that had to be so carefully considered abroad in the destruction of slums, gave no trouble. the speculative builder had seen to that. in the five wards, the seventh, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, and seventeenth, in which the unhoused ones would look for room, if they wanted to stay near their old home, there were, according to the tenement census at the time when the old houses were torn down, 4268 vacant apartments, with room for more than 18,000 persons at our average of four and a half to the family. even including the mulberry bend, the whole number of the dispossessed was not 10,000. on manhattan island there were at this time more than 37,000 vacant apartments, so that the question could not arise in any serious shape, much as it plagued the dreams of some well-meaning people. as a matter of fact the unhoused were scattered much more widely than had been anticipated, which was one of the very purposes sought to be attained. many of them had remained in their old slum more from force of habit and association than because of necessity. "everything takes ten years," said abram s. hewitt when, exactly ten years after he had as mayor championed the small parks act, he took his seat as chairman of the advisory committee on small parks. the ten years had wrought a great change. it was no longer the slum of to-day, but that of to-morrow that challenged attention. the committee took the point of view of the children from the first. it had a large map prepared showing where in the city there was room to play and where there was none. then it called in the police and asked them to point out where there was trouble with the boys; and in every instance the policeman put his finger upon a treeless slum. "they have no other playground than the street," was the explanation given in each case. "they smash lamps and break windows. the storekeepers kick and there is trouble. that is how it begins." "many complaints are received daily of boys annoying pedestrians, storekeepers, and tenants by their continually playing baseball in some parts of almost every street. the damage is not slight. arrests are frequent, much more frequent than when they had open lots to play in." this last was the report of an uptown captain. he remembered the days when there were open lots there. "but these lots are now built upon," he said, "and for every new house there are more boys and less chance for them to play." the committee put a red daub on the map to indicate trouble. then it asked those police captains who had not spoken to show them where their precincts were, and why they had no trouble. every one of them put his finger on a green spot that marked a park. "my people are quiet and orderly," said the captain of the tompkins square precinct. the police took the square from a mob by storm twice in my recollection, and the commander of the precinct then was hit on the head with a hammer by "his people" and laid out for dead. "the hook gang is gone," said he of corlears hook. the professional pursuit of that gang was to rob and murder inoffensive citizens by night and throw them into the river, and it achieved a bad eminence at its calling. "the whole neighborhood has taken a change, and decidedly for the better," said the captain of mulberry street, and the committee rose and said that it had heard enough. the map was hung on the wall, and in it were stuck pins to mark the site of present and projected schools as showing where the census had found the children crowding. the moment that was done the committee sent the map and a copy of chapter 338 of the laws of 1895 to the mayor, and reported that its task was finished. this is the law and all there is of it:- "the people of the state of new york, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows:- "section 1. hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the city of new york without an open-air playground attached to or used in connection with the same. "section 2. this act shall take effect immediately." where the map was daubed with red the school pins crowded one another. on the lower east side, where child crime was growing fast, and no less than three storm centres were marked down by the police, nine new schools were going up or planned, and in the uptown precinct whence came the wail about the ball players there were seven. the playground had proved its case. where it was expedient it was to be a school playground. it seemed a happy combination, for the new law had been a stumbling-block to the school commissioners, who were in a quandary over the needful size of an "open-air playground." the success of the roof-garden idea suggested a way out. but schools are closed at the time of the year when playgrounds are most needed for city children. to get the garden on the roof of the schoolhouse recognized as the public playground seemed a long step toward turning it into a general neighborhood evening resort that should be always open, and so toward bringing school and people, and especially the school and the boy, together in a bond of mutual sympathy highly desirable for both. that was the burden of the committee's report. it made thirteen recommendations besides, as to the location of parks and detached playgrounds, only one of which has been adopted. but that is of less account--as also was the information imparted to me as secretary of the committee by our peppery tammany mayor, that we had "as much authority as a committee of bootblacks in his office"--than the fact that the field has at last been studied and its needs have been made known. the rest will follow, with or without the politician's authority. the one recommendation that has been carried out was that of a riverside park in the region uptown on the west side where the federation of churches and christian workers found "saloon social ideals minting themselves upon the minds of the people at the rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought." there is an outdoor gymnasium to-day on the chosen site,--while the legal proceedings to take possession are unraveling their red tape,--and a recreation pier hard by. in the evening the young men of the neighborhood may be seen trooping riverward with their girls to hear the music. the gang that "laid out" two policemen, to my knowledge, has gone out of business. the best laid plans are sometimes upset by surprising snags. we had planned for two municipal playgrounds on the east side where the need is greatest, and our plans were eagerly accepted by the city authorities. but they were never put into practice. a negligent attorney killed one, a lazy clerk the other. and both served under the reform government. the first of the two playgrounds was to have been in rivington street, adjoining the new public bath, where the boys, for want of something better to do, were fighting daily battles with stones, to the great damage of windows and the worse aggravation of the householders. four hundred children in that neighborhood petitioned the committee for a place of their own where there were no windows to break, and we found one. it was only after the proceedings had been started that we discovered that they had been taken under the wrong law and the money spent in advertising had been wasted. it was then too late. the daily assaults upon the windows were resumed. the other case was an attempt to establish a model school park in a block where more than four thousand children attended day and night school. the public school and the pro-cathedral, which divided the children between them, were to be allowed to stand, at opposite ends of the block. the surrounding tenements were to be torn down to make room for a park and playground which should embody the ideal of what such a place ought to be, in the opinion of the committee. the roof garden was not in the original plan except as an alternative of the street-level playground, where land came too high. the plentiful supply of light and air, the safety from fire to be obtained by putting the school in a park, beside the fact that it could thus be "built beautiful," were considerations of weight. plans were made, and there was great rejoicing in essex street, until it came out that this scheme had gone the way of the other. the clerk who should have filed the plans in the register's office left that duty to some one else, and it took just twenty-one days to make the journey, a distance of five hundred feet or less. the greater new york had come then with tammany, and the thing was not heard of again. when i traced the failure down to the clerk in question, and told him that he had killed the park, he yawned and said:-"yes, and i think it is just as well it is dead. we haven't any money for those things. it is very nice to have small parks, and very nice to have a horse and wagon, if you can afford it. but we can't. why, there isn't money enough to run the city government." so the labor of weary weeks and months in the children's behalf was all undone by a third-rate clerk in an executive office; but he saved the one thing he had in mind: the city government is "run" to date, and his pay is secure. neither stupidity, spite, nor the false cry that "reform extravagance" has wrecked the city's treasury will be able much longer, however, to cheat the child out of his rights. the playground is here to wrestle with the gang for the boy, and it will win. it came so quietly that we hardly knew of it till we heard the shouts. it took us seven years to make up our minds to build a play pier,--recreation pier is its municipal title,--and it took just about seven weeks to build it when we got so far; but then we learned more in one day than we had dreamed of in the seven years. half the east side swarmed over it with shrieks of delight, and carried the mayor and the city government, who had come to see the show, fairly off their feet. and now "we are seven," or will be when the one in brooklyn has been built,--great, handsome structures, seven hundred feet long, some of them, with music every night for mother and the babies, and for papa, who can smoke his pipe there in peace. the moon shines upon the quiet river, and the steamers go by with their lights. the street is far away with its noise. the young people go sparking in all honor, as it is their right to do. the councilman who spoke the other day of "pernicious influences" lying in wait for them there made the mistake of his life, unless he has made up his mind to go out of politics. the play piers have taken a hold of the people which no crabbed old bachelor can loosen with trumped-up charges. their civilizing influence upon the children is already felt in a reported demand for more soap in the neighborhood where they are, and even the grocer smiles approval. the play pier is the kindergarten in the educational campaign against the gang. it gives the little ones a chance. often enough it is a chance for life. the street as a playground is a heavy contributor to the undertaker's bank account. i kept the police slips of a single day in may two years ago, when four little ones were killed and three crushed under the wheels of trucks in tenement streets. that was unusual, but no day has passed in my recollection that has not had its record of accidents which bring grief as deep and lasting to the humblest home as if it were the pet of some mansion on fifth avenue that was slain. the kindergarten teaching bore fruit. to-day there are half a dozen full-blown playgrounds downtown and uptown where the children swarm. private initiative set the pace, but the idea has been engrafted upon the municipal plan. the city helped get at least one of them under way. the outdoor recreation league was organized last year by public-spirited citizens, including many amateur athletes and enthusiastic women, with the object of "obtaining recognition of the necessity for recreation and physical exercise as fundamental to the moral and physical welfare of the people." together with the social reform club and the federation of churches and christian workers it maintained a playground on the uptown west side last summer. the ball came into play there for the first time as a recognized factor in civic progress. the day might well be kept for all time among those that mark human emancipation, for it was social reform and christian work in one, of the kind that tells. only the year before, the athletic clubs had vainly craved the privilege of establishing a gymnasium in the east river park, where the children wistfully eyed the sacred grass, and cowered under the withering gaze of the policeman. a friend whose house stands opposite the park found them one day swarming over her stoop in such shoals that she could not enter, and asked them why they did not play tag under the trees instead. the instant shout came back: "'cause the cop won't let us." now a splendid gymnasium has been opened on the site of the people's park that is to come at fifty-third street and eleventh avenue. it is called hudsonbank. a board fence more than a thousand feet long surrounds it. the director pointed out to me with pride, last week, that not a board had been stolen from it in a year, while other fences within twenty feet of it were ripped to pieces. and he was right. the neighborhood is one that has been anything but distinguished for its respect for private property in the past, and where boards have a market value among the irish settlers. better testimony could not have been borne to the spirit in which the gift was accepted by the children. poverty gap, that was fairly transformed by one brief season's experience with its "holy terror park,"[5] a dreary sand lot upon the site of the old tenements in which the alley gang once murdered the one good boy of the block for the offense of supporting his aged parents by his work as a baker's apprentice,--poverty gap is to have its permanent playground, and mulberry bend and corlears hook are down on the league's books; which is equivalent to saying that they, too, will shortly know the climbing pole and the vaulting buck. for years the city's only playground that had any claim upon the name--and that was only a little asphalted strip behind a public school in first street--was an old graveyard. we struggled vainly to get possession of another, long abandoned. the dead were of more account than the living. but now at last it is their turn. the other day i watched the children at their play in the new hester street gymnasium. the dusty square was jammed with a mighty multitude. it was not an ideal spot, for it had not rained in weeks, and powdered sand and cinders had taken wing and floated like a pall over the perspiring crowd. but it was heaven to them. a hundred men and boys stood in line, waiting their turn upon the bridge ladder and the traveling rings that hung full of struggling and squirming humanity, groping madly for the next grip. no failure, no rebuff discouraged them. seven boys and girls rode with looks of deep concern--it is their way--upon each end of the see-saw, and two squeezed into each of the forty swings that had room for one, while a hundred counted time and saw that none had too much. it is an article of faith with these children that nothing that is "going" for their benefit is to be missed. sometimes the result provokes a smile, as when a band of young jews, starting up a club, called themselves the christian heroes. it was meant partly as a compliment, i suppose, to the ladies that gave them club-room; but at the same time, if there was anything in a name, they were bound to have it. it is rather to cry over than to laugh at, if one but understands it. the sight of these little ones swarming over a sand heap until scarcely an inch of it was in sight, and gazing in rapt admiration at the poor show of a dozen geraniums and english ivy plants in pots on the window-sill of the overseer's cottage, was pathetic in the extreme. they stood for ten minutes at a time resting their eyes upon them. in the crowd were aged women and bearded men with the inevitable sabbath silk hat, who it seemed could never get enough of it. they moved slowly, when crowded out, looking back many times at the enchanted spot, as long as it was in sight. [footnote 5: the name was bestowed before the fact, not after.] perhaps there was in it, on the part of the children at least, just a little bit of the comforting sense of proprietorship. they had contributed of their scant pennies more than a hundred dollars toward the opening of the playground, and they felt that it was their very own. all the better. two policemen watched the passing show, grinning. but their clubs hung idly from their belts. the words of a little woman whom i met last year in chicago kept echoing in my ear. she was the "happiest woman alive," for she had striven long for a playground for her poor children, and had got it. "the police like it," she said. "they say that it will do more good than all the sunday schools in chicago. the mothers say, 'this is good business.' the carpenters that put up the swings and things worked with a will; everybody was glad. the police lieutenant has had a tree called after him. the boys that did that used to be terrors. now they take care of the trees. they plead for a low limb that is in the way, that no one may cut it off." the twilight deepens and the gates of the playground are closed. the crowds disperse slowly. in the roof garden on the hebrew institute across east broadway lights are twinkling and the band is tuning up. little groups are settling down to a quiet game of checkers or love-making. paterfamilias leans back against the parapet where palms wave luxuriously in the summer breeze. the newspaper drops from his hand; he closes his eyes and is in dreamland, where strikes come not. mother knits contentedly in her seat, with a smile on her face that was not born of the ludlow street tenement. over yonder a knot of black-browed men talk with serious mien. they might be met any night in the anarchist cafã©, half a dozen doors away, holding forth against empires. here wealth does not excite their wrath, nor power their plotting. in the roof garden anarchy is harmless, even though a policeman typifies its government. they laugh pleasantly to one another as he passes, and he gives them a match to light their cigars. it is thursday, and smoking is permitted. on friday it is discouraged because it offends the orthodox, to whom the lighting of a fire, even the holding of a candle, is anathema on the sabbath eve. the band plays on. one after another, tired heads droop upon babes slumbering peacefully at the breast. ludlow street, the tenement, are forgotten; eleven o'clock is not yet. down along the silver gleam of the river a mighty city slumbers. the great bridge has hung out its string of shining pearls from shore to shore. "sweet land of liberty!" overhead the dark sky, the stars that twinkled their message to the shepherds on judã¦an hills, that lighted their sons through ages of slavery, and the flag of freedom borne upon the breeze,--down there the tenement, the--ah, well! let us forget, as do these. now if you ask me: "and what of it all? what does it avail?" let me take you once more back to the mulberry bend, and to the policeman's verdict add the police reporter's story of what has taken place there. in fifteen years i never knew a week to pass without a murder there, rarely a sunday. it was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the city. in the slum the two are interchangeable terms for reasons that are clear enough to me. but i shall not speculate about it, only state the facts. the old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. when they were torn down, i counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which i myself remembered, and those i had forgotten probably numbered seven times seventeen. the district attorney connected more than a score of murders of his own recollection with bottle alley, the whyã³ gang's headquarters. two years have passed since it was made into a park, and scarce a knife has been drawn, or a shot fired, in all that neighborhood. only twice have i been called as a police reporter to the spot. it is not that the murder has moved to another neighborhood, for there has been no increase of violence in little italy or wherever else the crowd went that moved out. it is that the light has come in and made crime hideous. it is being let in wherever the slum has bred murder and robbery, bred the gang, in the past. wait, now, another ten years, and let us see what a story there will be to tell. avail? why, here is tammany actually applauding comptroller coler's words in plymouth church last night: "whenever the city builds a schoolhouse upon the site of a dive and creates a park, a distinct and permanent mental, moral, and physical improvement has been made, and public opinion will sustain such a policy, even if a dive-keeper is driven out of business and somebody's ground rent is reduced." and tammany's press agent sends forth this pã¦an: "in the light of such events how absurd it is for the enemies of the organization to contend that tammany is not the greatest moral force in the community." tammany a moral force! the park and the playground have availed, then, to bring back the day of miracles. vii justice for the boy sometimes, when i see my little boy hugging himself with delight at the near prospect of the kindergarten, i go back in memory forty years and more to the day when i was dragged, a howling captive, to school, as a punishment for being bad at home. i remember, as though it were yesterday, my progress up the street in the vengeful grasp of an exasperated servant, and my reception by the aged monster--most fitly named madame bruin--who kept the school. she asked no questions, but led me straightway to the cellar, where she plunged me into an empty barrel and put the lid on over me. applying her horn goggles to the bunghole, to my abject terror, she informed me, in a sepulchral voice, that that was the way bad boys were dealt with in school. when i ceased howling from sheer fright, she took me out and conducted me to the yard, where a big hog had a corner to itself. she bade me observe that one of its ears had been slit half its length. it was because the hog was lazy, and little boys who were that way minded were in danger of similar treatment; in token whereof she clipped a pair of tailor's shears suggestively close to my ear. it was my first lesson in school. i hated it from that hour. the barrel and the hog were never part of the curriculum in any american boy's school, i suppose; they seem too freakish to be credited to any but the demoniac ingenuity of my home ogre. but they stood for a comprehension of the office of school and teacher which was not patented by any day or land. it is not so long since the notion yet prevailed that the schools were principally to lock children up in for the convenience of their parents, that we should have entirely forgotten it. only the other day a clergyman from up the state came into my office to tell of a fine reform school they had in his town. they were very proud of it. "and how about the schools for the good boys in your town?" i asked, when i had heard him out. "are they anything to be proud of?" he stared. he guessed they were all right, he said, after some hesitation. but it was clear that he did not know. it is not necessary to go back forty years to find us in the metropolis upon the clergyman's platform, if not upon madame bruin's. ten will do. they will bring us to the day when roof playgrounds were contemptuously left out of the estimates for an east side school, as "frills" that had nothing to do with education; when the board of health found but a single public school in more than sixscore that was so ventilated as to keep the children from being poisoned by foul air; when the authority of the talmud had to be invoked by the superintendent of school buildings to convince the president of the board of education, who happened to be a jew, that seventy-five or eighty pupils were far too many for one class-room; when a man who had been dead a year was appointed a school trustee of the third ward, under the mouldy old law surviving from the day when new york was a big village, and filled the office as well as if he had been alive, because there were no schools in his ward; when manual training and the kindergarten were yet the fads of yesterday, looked at askance; when fifty thousand children roamed the streets for whom there was no room in the schools, and the only defense of the school commissioners was that they "didn't know" there were so many; and when we mixed truants and thieves in a jail with entire unconcern. indeed, the jail filled the title rã´le in the educational cast of that day. its inmates were well lodged and cared for, while the sanitary authorities twice condemned the essex market school across the way as wholly unfit for children to be in, but failed to catch the ear of the politician who ran things unhindered. when (in 1894) i denounced the "system" of enforcing--or not enforcing--the compulsory education law as a device to make thieves out of our children by turning over their training to the street, he protested angrily; but the experts of the tenement house committee found the charge fully borne out by the facts. they were certainly plain enough in the sight of us all, had we chosen to see. when at last we saw, we gave the politician a vacation for a season. to say that he was to blame for all the mischief would not be fair. we were to blame for leaving him in possession. he was only a link in the chain which our indifference had forged; but he was always and everywhere an obstruction to betterment,--sometimes, illogically, in spite of himself. successive tammany mayors had taken a stand for the public schools, when it was clear that reform could not be delayed much longer; but they were helpless against a system of selfishness and stupidity of which they were the creatures, though they posed as its masters. they had to go with it as unfit, and upon the wave that swept out the last of the rubbish came reform. the committee of seventy took hold, the good government clubs, the tenement house committee, and the women of new york. five years we strove with the powers of darkness, and look now at the change. the new york school system is not yet the ideal one,--it may never be; but the jail, at least, has been cast out of the firm. we have a compulsory education law under which it will be possible, when a seat has been provided for every child, to punish the parent for the boy's truancy, unless he surrenders him as unmanageable; and we can count the months now till every child shall find the latchstring out on the school door. we have had to put our hands deep into our pockets to get to that point, but we are nearly there now. since 1895 the expenditure of twenty-two and a half millions of dollars for new schools in the old city has been authorized by law, and two thirds of the money has been spent. fifty-odd new buildings have been put up, or are going up while i am writing, every one of them with its playground, which will by and by be free to all the neighborhood. the idea is at last working through that the schools belong to the people, and are primarily for the children and their parents; not mere vehicles of ward patronage, or for keeping an army of teachers in office and pay. the silly old rã©gime is dead. the ward trustee is gone with his friend the alderman, loudly proclaiming the collapse of our liberties in the day that saw the schools taken from "the people's" control. they were "the people." experts manage our children's education, which was supposed in the old plan to be the only thing that did not require any training. to superintend a brickyard demanded some knowledge, but anybody could run the public schools. it cost us an election to take that step. one of the tammany district leaders, who knew what he was talking about, said to me after it was all over: "i knew we would win. your bringing those foreigners here did the business. our people believe in home rule. we kept account of the teachers you brought from out of town, and who spent the money they made here out of town, and it got to be the talk among the tenement people in my ward that their daughters would have no more show to get to be teachers. that did the business. we figured the school vote in the city at forty-two thousand, and i knew we could not lose." the "foreigners" were teachers from massachusetts and other states, who had achieved a national reputation at their work. there lies upon my table a copy of the minutes of the board of education of january 9, 1895, in which is underscored a report on a primary school in the bronx. "it is a wooden shanty," is the inspector's account, "heated by stoves, and is a regular tinder box; cellar wet, and under one class-room only. this building was erected in order, i believe, to determine whether or not there was a school population in the neighborhood to warrant the purchase of property to erect a school on." that was the way then of taking a school census, and the result was the utter failure of the compulsory education law to compel anything. to-day we have a biennial census, ordained by law, which, when at last it gets into the hands of some one who can count, will tell us how many jacob beresheims are drifting upon the shoals of the street. and we have a truant school to keep them safe in. to it, says the law, no thief shall be committed. it is not yet five years since the burglar and the truant--who, having been refused admission to the school because there was not room for him, inconsequently was locked up for contracting idle ways--were herded in the juvenile asylum, and classified there in squads of those who were four feet, four feet seven, and over four feet seven! i am afraid i scandalized some good people, during the fight for decency in this matter, by insisting that it ought to be considered a good mark for jacob that he despised such schools as were provided for him. but it was true. except for the risk of the burglar, the jail was preferable by far. a woman has now had charge of the truant school for fourteen months, and she tells me that of quite twenty-five hundred boys scarce sixty were rightly called incorrigible, and even these a little longer and tighter grip would probably win over. for such, a farm school is yet to be provided. the rest responded promptly to an appeal to their pride. she "made it a personal matter" with each of them, and the truant vanished; the boy was restored. the burglar, too, made it a personal matter in the old contact, and the result was two burglars for one. in common with nearly all those who have paid attention to this matter, mrs. alger believes that the truant school strikes at the root of the problem of juvenile crime. after thirty years of close acquaintance with the child population of london, mr. andrew drew, chairman of the industrial committee of the school board, declared his conviction that "truancy is to be credited with nearly the whole of our juvenile criminality." but for years there seemed to be no way of convincing the new york school board that the two had anything to do with each other. as executive officer of the good government clubs, i fought that fight to a finish. we got the school, and in mrs. alger, at the time a truant officer, a person singularly well qualified to take charge of it. she has recently been removed, that her place might be given to a man. it is the old scheme come back,--a voter behind the broom,--and the old slough waiting to overwhelm us again. but it will not get the chance. i have my own idea of how this truancy question is going to be solved. yesterday i went with superintendent snyder through some of the new schools he is building, upon what he calls the letter h plan, in the crowded districts. it is the plan of the hã´tel de cluny in paris, and to my mind as nearly perfect as it is possible to make a schoolhouse. there is not a dark corner in the whole structure, from the splendid gymnasium under the red-tiled roof to the indoor playground on the ground floor, which, when thrown in one with the two open-air playgrounds that lie embraced in the arms of the h, will give the children nearly an acre of asphalted floor space from street to street, to romp on. seven such schools are going up to-day, each a beautiful palace, and within the year sixteen thousand children will be housed in them. when i think of the old allen street school, where the gas had to be kept burning even on the brightest days, recitations suspended every half hour, and the children made to practice calisthenics so that they should not catch cold while the windows were opened to let in fresh air; of the dark playground downstairs, with the rats keeping up such a racket that one could hardly hear himself speak at times, or of the other east side playground where the boys "weren't allowed to speak above a whisper," so as not to disturb those studying overhead, i fancy that i can make out both the cause and the cure of the boy's desperation. "we try to make our schools pleasant enough to hold the children," wrote the superintendent of schools in indianapolis to me once, and added that they had no truant problem worth bothering about. with the kindergarten and manual training firmly engrafted upon the school course, as they are at last, and with it reaching out to enlist also the boy's play through playground and vacation schools, i shall be willing to turn the boy, who will not come in, over to the reformatory. they will not need to build a new wing to the jail for his safe-keeping. [illustration: letter h plan of public school no. 165 _showing front on west 109th street_] all ways lead to rome. the reform in school-building dates back, as does every other reform in new york, to the mulberry bend. it began there. the first school that departed from the soulless old tradition, to set beautiful pictures before the child's mind as well as dry figures on the slate, was built there. at the time i wanted it to stand in the park, hoping so to hasten the laying out of that; but although the small parks law expressly permitted the erection on park property of buildings for "the instruction of the people," the officials upon whom i pressed my scheme could not be made to understand that as including schools. perhaps they were right. i catechised thirty-one fourth ward girls in a sewing school, about that time, twenty-six of whom had attended the public schools of the district more than a year. one wore a badge earned for excellence in her studies. in those days every street corner was placarded with big posters of napoleon on a white horse riding through fire and smoke. there was one right across the street. yet only one of the thirty-one knew who napoleon was. she "thought she had heard of the gentleman before." it came out that the one impression she retained of what she had heard was that "the gentleman" had two wives. they knew of washington that he was the first president of the united states, and cut down a cherry-tree. they were sitting and sewing at the time almost on the identical spot where he lived and held office. to the question who ruled before washington the answer came promptly: no one; he was the first. they agreed reluctantly, upon further consideration, that there was probably "a king of america" before his day, and the irish damsels turned up their noses at the idea. the people of canada, they thought, were copper-colored. the same winter i was indignantly bidden to depart from a school in the fourth ward by a trustee who had heard that i had written a book about the slum and spoken of "his people" in it. those early steps in the reform path stumbled sadly at times over obstacles that showed how dense was the ignorance and how rank were the prejudices we had to fight. when i wrote that the allen street school was overrun by rats, which was a fact any one might observe for himself by spending five minutes in the building, i was called sharply to account by the mayor in the board of estimate and apportionment. there were no rats, he said. the allen street school was the worst of them all, and i determined that the time had come to make a demonstration. i procured a rat trap, and was waiting for an idle hour to go over and catch one of the rats, so that i might have it stuffed and sent to the board over which the mayor presided, as a convincing exhibit; but before i got so far reform swept the whole conspiracy of ignorance and jobbery out of the city hall. that was well enough as far as it went; but that the broom was needed elsewhere we learned later, when the good government clubs fought for the inspection of the schools and of the children by trained oculists. the evidence was that the pupils were made both near-sighted and stupid by the want of proper arrangement of their seats and of themselves in the class-room. the fact was not denied, and the scheme was strongly indorsed by the board of health and by some of the ablest and best known oculists in the city; but it was wrecked upon an opposition in which we heard the ignorant and selfish cry that it would "interfere with private practice," and so curtail the profits of the practitioner. the proposal to inspect the classes daily for evidence of contagious disease--which, carried out, has proved a most effective means of preventing the spread of epidemics, and one of the greatest blessings--had been opposed, happily unsuccessfully, with the same arguments.[6] it is very well to prate about the rapacity of politicians, but these things came often enough to show what they meant by the claim that they were "closer to the people" than we who were trying to help them; and they were all the more exasperating because they came rarely from below,--the tenement people, when they were not deliberately misled, were ready and eager to fall in with any plan for bettering things, notably where it concerned the schools,--but usually from those who knew better, and from whom we had a right to expect support and backing. [footnote 6: i set down reluctantly this censure of an honored profession, to individual members of which i have been wont, in a long succession of troubled years, to go for advice and help in public matters, and never in vain. the statement of the chief sanitary officer of the health department, reaffirmed at the time i am writing, is, however, positive to the effect that to this opposition, and this only, was due the failure of that much-needed reform which had for years been with me a pet measure.] speaking of that reminds me of a mishap i had in the hester street school,--the one with the "frills" which the board of education cut off. i happened to pass it after school hours, and went in to see what sort of a playground the roof would have made. i met no one on the way, and, finding the scuttle open, climbed out and up the slant of the roof to the peak, where i sat musing over our lost chance, when the janitor came to close up. he must have thought i was a crazy man, and my explanation did not make it any better. he haled me down, and but for the fortunate chance that the policeman on the beat knew me, i should have been taken to the lockup as a dangerous lunatic,--all for dreaming of a playground on the roof of a schoolhouse. janitor and board of commissioners to the contrary notwithstanding, the dream became real. there stands another school in hester street to-day within easy call, that has a playground measuring more than twelve thousand square feet on the roof, one of half that size down on the ground, and an asphalted indoor playground as big as the one on the roof. together they measure a trifle less than thirty thousand feet. to the indignant amazement of my captor, the janitor, his school was thrown open to the children in the last summer vacation, and in the winter they put a boys' club in to worry him. what further indignities there are in store for him, in this day of "frills," there is no telling. a resolution is on record which states, under date of may 18, 1897, that "it is the sense of the board of superintendents that the schoolhouses may well be used in the cause of education as neighborhood centres, providing reading-rooms, branch offices of public libraries, etc." and to cut off all chance of relapse into the old doubt whether "such things are educational," that laid so many of our hopes on the dusty shelf of the circumlocution office, the state legislature has expressly declared that the commonwealth will take the chance, which boards of education shunned, of a little amusement creeping in. the schools may be used for "purposes of recreation." to the janitor it must seem that the end of all things is at hand. [illustration: playground on roof of new east broadway schoolhouse _area 8,348 square feet_] in the crowded districts, the school playgrounds were thrown open to the children during the long vacation last year, with kindergarten teachers to amuse them, and half a score of vacation schools tempted more than four thousand children from the street into the cool shade of the class-rooms. they wrought in wood and iron, they sang and they played and studied nature,--out of a barrel, to be sure, that came twice a week from long island filled with "specimens;" but toward the end we took a hint from chicago, and let the children gather their own specimens on excursions around the bay and suburbs of the city. that was a tremendous success. the mere hint that money might be lacking to pay for the excursions this summer set the st. andrew's brotherhood men on long island to devising schemes for inviting the schoolchildren out on trolley and shore trips. with the christian endeavor, the epworth league, and kindred societies looking about for something to try their young strength and enthusiasm on, we may be here standing upon the threshold of something which shall bring us nearer to a universal brotherhood than all the consecrations and badges that have yet been invented. the mere contact with nature, even out of a barrel, brought something to those starved child lives that struck a new note. sometimes it rang with a sharp and jarring sound. the boys in the hester street school could not be made to take an interest in the lesson on wheat until the teacher came to the effect of drought and a bad year on the farmer's pocket. then they understood. they knew the process. strikes cut into the earnings of hester street, small enough at the best of times, at frequent intervals, and the boys need not be told what a bad year means. no other kind ever occurs there. they learned the lesson on wheat in no time, after that. oftener it was a gentler note that piped timidly in the strange place. a barrel of wild roses came one day, instead of the expected "specimens," and these were given to the children. they took them greedily. "i wondered," said the teacher, "if it was more love of the flower, or of getting something for nothing, no matter what." but even if it were largely the latter, there was still the rose. nothing like it had come that way before, and without a doubt it taught its own lesson. the italian child might have jumped for it more eagerly, but its beauty was not wasted in jew-town, either. the baby kissed it, and it lay upon more than one wan cheek, and whispered who knows what thought of hope and courage that were nearly gone. even in hester street the wild rose from the hedge was not wasted. the result of it all was wholesome and good, because it was common sense. the way to fight the slum in the children's lives is with sunlight and flowers and play, which their child hearts crave, if their eyes have never seen them. the teachers reported that the boys were easier to manage, more quiet, and played more fairly than before. the police reports showed that fewer were arrested or run over in the streets than in other years. a worse enemy was attacked than the trolley car or the truck. in the kindergarten at the hull house in chicago there hangs a picture of a harvest scene, with the man wiping his brow, and a woman resting at his feet. the teacher told me that a little girl with an old face picked it out among all the rest, and considered it long and gravely. "well," she said, when her inspection was finished, "he knocked her down, didn't he?" a two hours' argument for kindergartens or vacation schools could not have put it stronger or better. the awakening of the civic conscience is nowhere more plainly traced than in our public schools. the last five years have set us fifty years ahead, and there is now no doubling on the track we have struck. we have fifty kindergartens to-day where five years ago we had one, and their method has invaded the whole system of teaching. cooking, the only kind of temperance preaching that counts for anything in a school course, is taught in the girls' classes. five years ago a minister of justice declared in the belgian chamber that the nation was reverting to a new form of barbarism, which he described by the term "alcoholic barbarism," and pointed out as its first cause the "insufficiency of the food procurable by the working classes." he referred to the quality, not the quantity. the united states experts, who lately made a study of the living habits of the poor in new york, spoke of it as a common observation that "a not inconsiderable amount of the prevalent intemperance can be traced to poor food and unattractive home tables." the toasting-fork in jacob's sister's hand beats preaching in the campaign against the saloon, just as the boys' club beats the police club in fighting the gang. the cram and the jam are being crowded out as common-sense teaching steps in and takes their place, and the "three h's," the head, the heart, and the hand,--a whole boy,--are taking the place too long monopolized by the "three r's." there was need of it. it had seemed sometimes as if, in our anxiety lest he should not get enough, we were in danger of stuffing the boy to the point of making a hopeless dunce of him. it is a higher function of the school to teach principles than to impart facts merely. teaching the boy municipal politics and a thousand things to make a good citizen of him, instead of so filling him with love of his country and pride in its traditions that he is bound to take the right stand when the time comes, is as though one were to attempt to put all the law of the state into its constitution to make it more binding. the result would be hopeless congestion and general uselessness. it comes down to the teacher in the end, and there are 5600 of them in the old city alone, 10,000 for the greater city;[7] the great mass faithful and zealous, but yoked to the traditions of a day that is past. half the machine teaching, the wooden output of our public schools in the past, i believe was due to the practical isolation of the teachers between the tyranny of politics and the distrust of those who had good cause to fear the politician and his work. there was never a more saddening sight than that of the teachers standing together in an almost solid body to resist reform of the school system as an attack upon them. there was no pretense on their part that the schools did not need reform. they knew better. they fought for their places. throughout the fight no word came from them of the children's rights. they imagined that theirs were in danger, and they had no thought for anything else. we gathered then the ripe fruit of politics, and it will be a long while, i suppose, before we get the taste out of our mouths. but the grip of politics on our schools has been loosened, if not shaken off altogether, and the teacher's slavery is at an end, if she herself so wills it. once hardly thought worthy of a day laborer's hire, she will receive a policeman's pay for faithful service[8] in the school year now begun, with his privilege of a half-pay pension on retirement. within three weeks after the passage of the salary bill forty-two teachers in the boroughs of manhattan and bronx had applied for retirement. the training schools are hard at work filling up the gaps. the windows of the schoolhouse have been thrown open, and life let in there too with the sunlight. the day may be not far distant when ours shall be schools "for discovering aptitude," in professor felix adler's wise plan. the problem is a vast one, even in its bulk; every year seats must be found on the school benches for twenty thousand additional children. however deep we have gone down into our pockets to pay for new schools, there are to-day in the greater city nearly thirty thousand children in half-day or part-time classes, waiting their chance. but that it can and will be solved the experience of the last five years fully warrants. [footnote 7: the exact number for april, 1899, was 9989; number of pupils registered, 401,761; average daily attendance, 370,722.] [footnote 8: the teacher's pay, under the new act, is from $600 to $1400. the policeman's pay is $1400.] in the solution the women of new york will have had no mean share. in the struggle for school reform they struck the telling blows, and the credit for the victory was justly theirs. the public education association, originally a woman's auxiliary to good government club e, has since worked as energetically with the school authorities as it before worked against them. it has opened many windows for little souls by hanging schoolrooms with beautiful casts and pictures, and forged at the same time new and strong links in the chain that bound the boy all too feebly to the school. at a time when the demand of the boys of the east side for club room, which was in itself one of the healthiest signs of the day, had reached an exceedingly dangerous pass, the public education association broke ground that will prove the most fertile field of all. the raines law saloon, quick to discern in the new demand the gap that would divorce it by and by from the man, attempted to bridge it by inviting the boy in under its roof. occasionally the girl went along. a typical instance of how the scheme worked was brought to my attention at the time by the manager of the college settlement. the back room of the saloon was given to the club free of charge, with the understanding that the boy members should "treat." as a means of raising the needed funds, the club hit upon the plan of fining members ten cents when they "got funny." to defeat this device of the devil some way must be found; but club room was scarce among the tenements. the good government clubs proposed to the board of education that it open the empty class-rooms at night for the children's use. it was my privilege to plead their cause before the school board, and to obtain from it the necessary permission, after some hesitation and doubt as to whether "it was educational." the public education association promptly assumed the responsibility for "the property," and the hester street school was opened. there are now two schools that are given over to evening clubs. the property has not been molested, but the boys who have met under miss winifred buck's management have learned many a lesson of self-control and practical wisdom that has proved "educational" in the highest degree. her plan is simplicity itself. through their play--the meeting usually begins with a romp--in quarters where there is not too much elbow-room, the boys learn the first lesson of respecting one another's rights. the subsequent business meeting puts them upon the fundamentals of civilized society, as it were. out of the debate of the question, do we want boys who swear, steal, gamble, and smoke cigarettes? grow convictions as to why these vices are wrong that put "the gang" in its proper light. punishment comes to appear, when administered by the boys themselves, a natural consequence of law-breaking, in defense of society; and the boy is won. he can thenceforward be trusted to work out his own salvation. if he does it occasionally with excessive unction, remember how recent is his conversion. "_resolved_, that wisdom is better than wealth," was rejected as a topic for discussion by one of the clubs, because "everybody knows it is." this was in the tenth ward. if temptation had come that way in the shape of a pushcart with pineapples--we are all human! anyway, they had learned the right. with the women to lead, the school has even turned the tables on the jail and invaded it bodily. for now nearly two years the public education association has kept school in the tombs, for the boys locked up there awaiting trial. of thirty-one pupils on this school register, the other day, twelve were charged with burglary, four with highway robbery, and three with murder. that was the gang run to earth at last. better late than never. the windows of their prison overlooked the spot where the gallows used to stand that cut short many a career such as they pursued. they were soberly attentive to their studies, which were of a severely practical turn. their teacher, mr. david willard, who was a resident of the university settlement in its old delancey street home,--the fact that the forces for good one finds at work in the slum usually lead back to the settlements shows best that they have so far escaped the peril of stiffening into mere institutions,--has his own sound view of how to head off the hangman. daily and nightly he gathers about him in the house on chrystie street, where he makes his home, three hundred boys and girls, whom he meets as their friend, on equal terms. the club is the means of getting them there, and so it is in its right place. once a week another teacher comes to the tombs school, and tells the boys of our city's history, its famous buildings and great men; trying so to arouse their interest as a first step toward a citizen's pride. this one also is sent by a club of women, the city history club, which in three years has done strange things among the children. it sprang from the proposition of mr. robert abbe that the man and the citizen has his birth in the boy, and that to love a thing one must know it first. the half-dozen classes that were started for the study of our city's history have swelled into nearly a hundred, with quite eighteen hundred pupils. the pregnant fact was noted early by the teachers, that the immigrant boy easily outstrips in interest for his adopted home the native, who perchance turns up his nose at him, and later very likely complains of the "unscrupulousness" of the jew who forged ahead of him in business as well. "everything takes ten years." looking back from the closing year of the century, one is almost tempted to turn mr. hewitt's phrase about, and say that everything has been packed into ten years. the tenth winter of the free lectures, which the city provides to fill up in a measure those gaps which the earlier years left, has just passed. when the first course showed an attendance of 22,149 upon 186 lectures, we were all encouraged; but the last season saw 1923 lectures delivered upon every topic of human interest, from the care of our bodies and natural science to literature, astronomy, and music, and a multitude of 519,411 persons, chiefly workingmen and their wives, the parents of the schoolboy, heard them. forty-eight schools and halls were employed for the purpose. the people's institute adds to this programme a forum for the discussion of social topics, nineteenth-century history, and "present problems" on a wholly non-partisan, unsectarian basis. the institute was launched upon its educational mission within six weeks after the disastrous greater new york election in 1897. it has since drawn to the platform of the cooper institute audiences, chiefly of workingmen more or less connected with the labor movement, that have filled its great hall. the spirit that animates its work is shown in its review of the field upon the threshold of its third year. speaking of the social issues that are hastening toward a settlement, it says: "society is about to be organized, gradually, wisely, on the lines of the recognition of the brotherhood of man. the people's institute holds to-day, as no other institution in this city, the confidence of all classes of the working people; also of the best minds among the well-to-do classes. it can throw all its influence upon the side of removing misunderstandings, promoting mutual confidence.... this is its great work." a great undertaking, truly, but one in which no one may rashly say it shall not succeed. as an installment, it organized last spring, for study, discussion, and social intercourse, the first of a chain of people's clubs, full of a strong and stirring life, which within three months had a membership of three hundred and fifty, and a list of two hundred and fifty applicants. while the institute's plan has met with this cordial reception downtown, uptown, among the leisure classes, its acceptance has been nothing like so ready. selfish wealth has turned a cold shoulder to the brotherhood of man, as so often in the past. still the proffered hand is not withdrawn. in a hundred ways it is held out with tender of help and sympathy and friendship, these days, where distrust and indifference were once the rule. the people's university extension society, leaving the platform to its allies, invades the home, the nursery, the kindergarten, the club, wherever it can, with help and counsel. down on the lower east side, the educational alliance conducts from the hebrew institute an energetic campaign among the jewish immigrants that reaches fully six thousand souls, two thirds of them children, every day in the week. sixty-two clubs alone hold meetings in the building on saturday and sunday. under the same roof the baron hirsch fund has taught sixteen thousand children of refugee jews in nine years. it passes them on to the public schools within six months of their landing, the best material they receive from anywhere. so the boy is being got ready for dealing, in the years that are to come, with the other but not more difficult problems of setting his house to rights, and ridding it of the political gang which now misrepresents him and us. and justice to jacob is being evolved. not yet without obstruction and dragging of feet. the excellent home library plan that proved so wholesome in the poor quarters of boston has failed in new york, except in a few notable instances, through the difficulty of securing the visitors upon whom the plan depends for its success. the same want has kept the boys' club from reaching the development that would apply the real test to it as a barrier against the slum. there are fifteen clubs for every winifred buck that is in sight. from the city history club, the charity organization society, from everywhere, comes the same complaint. the hardest thing in the world to give is still one's self. but it is all the time getting to be easier. there are daily more women and men who, thinking of the boy, can say, and do, with my friend of the college settlement, when an opportunity to enter a larger field was offered her, "no, i am content to stay here, to be ready for johnnie when he wants me." justice for the boy, and for his father. an itinerant jewish glazier, crying his wares, was beckoned into a stable by the foreman, and bidden to replace a lot of broken panes, enough nearly to exhaust his stock. when, after working half the day, he asked for his pay, he was driven from the place with jeers and vile words. raging and impotent, he went back to his poor tenement cursing a world in which there was no justice for a poor man. if he had next been found ranting with anarchists against the social order, would you have blamed him? he found instead, in the legal aid society, a champion that pleaded his cause and compelled the stableman to pay him his wages. for a hundred thousand such--more shame to us--this society has meant all that freedom promised: justice to the poor man. it too has earned a place among the forces that are working out through the new education the brighter day, for it has taught the lesson which all the citizens of a free state need most to learn,--respect for law. viii reform by humane touch i have sketched in outline the gains achieved in the metropolis since its conscience awoke. now, in closing this account, i am reminded of the story of an old irishman who died here a couple of years ago. patrick mullen was an honest blacksmith. he made guns for a living. he made them so well that one with his name on it was worth a good deal more than the market price of guns. other makers went to him with offers of money for the use of his stamp; but they never went twice. when sometimes a gun of very superior make was brought to him to finish, he would stamp it p. mullen, never patrick mullen. only to that which he himself had wrought did he give his honest name without reserve. when he died, judges and bishops and other great men crowded to his modest home by the east river, and wrote letters to the newspapers telling how proud they had been to call him friend. yet he was, and remained to the end, plain patrick mullen, blacksmith and gunmaker. in his life he supplied the answer to the sigh of dreamers in all days: when will the millennium come? it will come when every man is a patrick mullen at his own trade; not merely a p. mullen, but a patrick mullen. the millennium of municipal politics, when there shall be no slum to fight, will come when every citizen does his whole duty as a citizen; not before. as long as he "despises politics," and deputizes another to do it for him, whether that other wears the stamp of a croker or of a platt,--it matters little which,--we shall have the slum, and be put periodically to the trouble and the shame of draining it in the public sight. a citizen's duty is one thing that cannot be farmed out safely; and the slum is not limited by the rookeries of mulberry or ludlow streets. it has long roots that feed on the selfishness and dullness of fifth avenue quite as greedily as on the squalor of the sixth ward. the two are not nearly so far apart as they look. i am not saying this because it is anything new, but because we have just had an illustration of its truth in municipal politics. waring and roosevelt were the patrick mullens of the reform administration which tammany has now replaced with her insolent platform, "to hell with reform." it was not an ideal administration, but it can be said of it, at least, that it was up to the times it served. it made compromises with spoils politics, and they were wretched failures. it took waring and roosevelt on the other plan, on which they insisted, of divorcing politics from the public business, and they let in more light than even my small parks over on the east side. for they showed us where we stood and what was the matter with us. we believed in waring when he demonstrated the success of his plan for cleaning the streets: not before. when roosevelt announced his programme of enforcing the excise law because it _was_ law, a howl arose that would have frightened a less resolute man from his purpose. but he went right on doing the duty he was sworn to do. and when, at the end of three months of clamor and abuse, we saw the spectacle of the saloon keepers formally resolving to help the police instead of hindering them; of the prison ward in bellevue hospital standing empty for three days at a time, an astonishing and unprecedented thing, which the warden could only attribute to the "prompt closing of the saloons at one a. m.;" and of the police force recovering its lost self-respect, we had found out more and greater things than whether the excise law was a good or a bad law. we understood what roosevelt meant when he insisted upon the "primary virtues" of honesty and courage in the conduct of public business. for the want of them in us, half the laws that touched our daily lives had become dead letters or vehicles of blackmail and oppression. it was worth something to have that lesson taught us in that way; to find out that simple, straightforward, honest dealing as between man and man is after all effective in politics as in gunmaking. perhaps we have not mastered the lesson yet. but we have not discharged the teacher, either. [illustration: a tammany-swept east side street, before waring (_see picture facing page 248_)] courage, indeed! there were times during that stormy spell when it seemed as if we had grown wholly and hopelessly flabby as a people. all the outcry against the programme of order did not come from the lawless and the disorderly, by any means. ordinarily decent, conservative citizens joined in counseling moderation and virtual compromise with the law-breakers--it was nothing else--to "avoid trouble." the old love of fair play had been whittled down by the jackknife of all-pervading expediency to an anã¦mic desire to "hold the scales even;" that is a favorite modern device of the devil for paralyzing action in men. you cannot hold the scales even in a moral issue. it inevitably results in the triumph of evil, which asks nothing better than the even chance to which it is not entitled. when the trouble in the police board had reached a point where it seemed impossible not to understand that roosevelt and his side were fighting a cold and treacherous conspiracy against the cause of good government, we had the spectacle of a christian endeavor society inviting the man who had hatched the plot, the bitter and relentless enemy whom the mayor had summoned to resign, and afterward did his best to remove as a fatal obstacle to reform,--inviting this man to come before it and speak of christian citizenship! it was a sight to make the bosses hug themselves with glee. for christian citizenship is their nightmare, and nothing is so cheering to them as evidence that those who profess it have no sense. apart from the moral bearings of it, what this question of enforcement of law means in the life of the poor was illustrated by testimony given before the police board very recently. a captain was on trial for allowing the policy swindle to go unchecked in his precinct. policy is a kind of penny lottery, with alleged daily drawings which never take place. the whole thing is a pestilent fraud, which is allowed to exist only because it pays heavy blackmail to the police and the politicians. expert witnesses testified that eight policy shops in the twenty-first ward, which they had visited, did a business averaging about thirty-two dollars a day each. the twenty-first is a poor irish tenement ward. the policy sharks were getting two hundred and fifty dollars or more a day of the hard-earned wages of those poor people, in sums of from one and two cents to a quarter, without making any return for it. the thing would seem incredible, were it not too sadly familiar. the saloon keeper got his share of what was left, and rewarded his customer by posing as the "friend of the poor man" whenever his business was under scrutiny; i have yet in my office the record of a single week during the hottest of the fight between roosevelt and the saloons, as showing of what kind that friendship is. it embraces the destruction of eight homes by the demon of drunkenness: the suicide of four wives, the murder of two others by drunken husbands, the killing of a policeman in the street, and the torture of an aged woman by her rascal son, who "used to be a good boy till he took to liquor, when he became a perfect devil." in that rã´le he finally beat her to death for giving shelter to some evicted fellow tenants who else would have had to sleep in the street. nice friendly turn, wasn't it? and yet there was something to be said for the saloon keeper. he gave the man the refuge from his tenement which he needed. i say needed, purposely. there has been a good deal of talk lately about the saloon as a social necessity. about all there is to that is that the saloon is there, and the necessity too. man is a social animal, whether he lives in a tenement or in a palace. but the palace has resources; the tenement has not. it is a good place to get away from at all times. the saloon is cheery and bright, and never far away. the man craving human companionship finds it there. he finds, too, in the saloon keeper one who understands his wants much better than the reformer who talks civil service in the meetings. "civil service" to him and his kind means yet a contrivance for keeping them out of a job. the saloon keeper knows the boss, if he is not himself the boss or his lieutenant, and can steer him to the man who will spend all day at the city hall, if need be, to get a job for a friend, and all night pulling wires to keep him in it, if trouble is brewing. mr. beecher used to say, when pleading for bright hymn tunes, that he didn't want the devil to have the monopoly of all the good music in the world. the saloon has had the monopoly up to date of all the cheer in the tenements. if its owner has made it pan out to his own advantage and the boss's, we at least have no just cause of complaint. we let him have the field all to himself. as to this boss, of whom we hear so much, what manner of man is he? that depends on how you look at him. i have one in mind, a district boss, whom you would accept instantly as a type, if i were to mention his name, which i shall not do for a reason which i fear will shock you: he and i are friends. in his private capacity i have real regard for him. as a politician and a boss i have none at all. i am aware that this is taking low ground in a discussion of this kind, but perhaps the reader will better understand the relations of his "district" to him, if i let him into mine. there is no political bond between us, of either district or party; just the reverse. it is purely personal. he was once a police justice,--at that time he kept a saloon,--and i never knew one with more common sense, which happens to be the one quality especially needed in that office. up to the point where politics came in i could depend upon him entirely. at that point he let me know bluntly that he was in the habit of running his district to suit himself. the way he did it brought him under the just accusation of being guilty of every kind of rascality known to politics. when next our paths would cross each other, it would very likely be on some errand of mercy, to which his feet were always swift. i recall the distress of a dear and gentle lady at whose dinner table i once took his part. she could not believe that there was any good in him; what he did must be done for effect. some time after that she wrote asking me to look after an east side family that was in great trouble. it was during the severe cold spell of last winter, and there was need of haste. i went over at once; but although i had lost no time, i found my friend the boss ahead of me. it was a real pleasure to me to be able to report to my correspondent that he had seen to their comfort, and to add that it was unpolitical charity altogether. the family was that of a jewish widow with a lot of little children. he is a roman catholic. there were no men, consequently no voters, in the house, which was far outside of his district, too; and as for effect, he was rather shamefaced at my catching him at it. i do not believe that a soul has ever heard of the case from him to this day. [illustration: the same east side street when colonel waring wielded the broom (_see picture facing page 242_)] my friend is a tammany boss. during that same cold spell a politician of the other camp came into my office and gave me a hundred dollars to spend as i saw fit among the poor. his district was miles uptown, and he was most unwilling to disclose his identity, stipulating in the end that no one but i should know where the money came from. he was not seeking notoriety. the plight of the suffering had appealed to him, and he wanted to help where he could, that was all. now, i have not the least desire to glorify the boss in this. he is not glorious to me. he is simply human. often enough he is a coarse and brutal fellow, in his morals as in his politics. again, he may have some very engaging personal traits that bind his friends to him with the closest of ties. the poor man sees the friend, the charity, the power that is able and ready to help him in need; is it any wonder that he overlooks the source of this power, this plenty,--that he forgets the robbery in the robber who is "good to the poor"? anyhow, if anybody got robbed, it was "the rich." with the present ethical standards of the slum, it is easy to construct even a scheme of social justice out of it that is very comforting all round, even to the boss himself, though he is in need of no sympathy or excuse. "politics," he will tell me in his philosophic moods, "is a game for profit. the city foots the bills." patriotism means to him working for the ticket that shall bring more profit. "i regard," he says, lighting his cigar, "a repeater as a shade off a murderer, but you are obliged to admit that in my trade he is a necessary evil." i am not obliged to do anything of the kind, but i can understand his way of looking at it. he simply has no political conscience. he has gratitude, loyalty to a friend,--that is part of his stock in trade,--fighting blood, plenty of it, all the good qualities of the savage; nothing more. and a savage he is, politically, with no soul above the dross. he would not rob a neighbor for the world; but he will steal from the city--though he does not call it by that name--without a tremor, and count it a good mark. when i tell him that, he waves his hand toward wall street as representative of the business community, and toward the office of his neighbor, the padrone, as representative of the railroads, and says with a laugh, "don't they all do it?" the boss believes in himself. it is one of his strong points. and he has experience to back him. in the fall of 1894 we shook off boss rule in new york, and set up housekeeping for ourselves. we kept it up three years, and then went back to the old style. i should judge that we did it because we were tired of too much virtue. perhaps we were not built to hold such a lot at once. besides, it is much easier to be ruled than to rule. that fall, after the election, when i was concerned about what would become of my small parks, of the health department in which we took such just pride, and of a dozen other things, i received one unvarying reply to my anxious question, or rather two. if it was the health department, i was told: "go to platt. he is the only man who can do it. he is a sensible man, and will see that it is protected." if small parks, it was: "go to croker. he will not allow the work to be stopped." a playgrounds bill was to be presented in the legislature, and everybody advised: "go to platt. he won't have any objection: it is popular." and so on. my advisers were not politicians. they were business men, but recently honestly interested in reform. i was talking one day with a gentleman of very wide reputation as a philanthropist, about the unhappy lot of the old fire-engine horses,--which, after lives of toil that deserve a better fate, are sold for a song to drag out a weary existence hauling some huckster's cart around,--and wishing that they might be pensioned off to live out their years on a farm, with enough to eat and a chance to roll in the grass. he was much interested, and promptly gave me this advice: "i tell you what you do. you go and see croker. he likes horses." no wonder the boss believes in himself. he would be less than human if he did not. and he is very human. i had voted on the day of the greater new york election,--the tammany election, as we learned to call it afterward,--in my home out in the borough of queens, and went over to the depot to catch the train for the city. on the platform were half a dozen of my neighbors, all business men, all "friends of reform." some of them were just down from breakfast. one i remembered as introducing a resolution, in a meeting we had held, about the discourtesy of local politicians. he looked surprised when reminded that it was election day. "why, is it to-day?" he said. "they didn't send any carriage," said another regretfully. "i don't see what's the use," said the third; "the roads are just as bad as when we began talking about it." (we had been trying to mend them.) the fourth yawned and said: "i don't care. i have my business to attend to." and they took the train, which meant that they lost their votes. the tammany captain was busy hauling his voters by the cartload to the polling place. over there stood a reform candidate who had been defeated in the primary, and puffed out his chest. "the politicians are afraid of me," he said. they slapped him on the back, as they went by, and told him that he was a devil of a fellow. so tammany came back. the health department is wrecked. the police force is worse than before roosevelt took hold of it, and we are back in the mud out of which we pulled ourselves with such an effort. and we are swearing at it. but i am afraid we are swearing at the wrong fellow. the real tammany is not the conscienceless rascal that plunders our treasury and fattens on our substance. that one is a mere counterfeit. it is the voter who waits for a carriage to take him to the polls, the man who "doesn't see what's the use;" the business man who says "business is business," and has no time to waste on voting; the citizen who "will wait to see how the cat jumps, because he doesn't want to throw his vote away;" the cowardly american who "doesn't want to antagonize" anybody; the fool who "washes his hands of politics." these are the real tammany, the men after the boss's own heart. for every one whose vote he buys, there are two of these who give him theirs for nothing. we shall get rid of him when these withdraw their support, when they become citizens of the patrick mullen stamp, as faithful at the polling place as he was at the forge; not before. the true work of reform is at the top, not at the bottom. the man in the slum votes according to his light, and the boss holds the candle. but the boss is in no real sense a leader. he follows instead, always as far behind the moral sentiment of the community as he thinks is safe. he has heard it said that a community will not be any better than its citizens, and that it will be just as good as they are, and he applies the saying to himself. he is no worse a boss than the town deserves. i can conceive of his taking credit to himself as some kind of a moral instrument by which the virtue of the community may be graded, though that is most unlikely. he does not bother himself with the morals of anything. but right here is his achilles heel. the man has no conscience. he cannot tell the signs of it in others. it always comes upon him unawares. reform to him simply means the "outs" fighting to get in. the real thing he will always underestimate. such a man is not the power he seems. he is formidable only in proportion to the amount of shaking it takes to rouse the community's conscience. the boss is like the measles, a distemper of a self-governing people's infancy. when we shall have come of age politically, he will have no terrors for us. meanwhile, being charged with the business of governing, which we left to him because we were too busy making money, he follows the track laid out for him, and makes the business pan out all that is in it. he fights when we want to discharge him. of course he does. no man likes to give up a good job. he will fight or bargain, as he sees his way clear. he will give us small parks, play piers, new schools, anything we ask, to keep his place, while trying to find out "the price" of this conscience which he does not understand. even to the half of his kingdom he will give, to be "in" on the new deal. he has done it before, and there is no reason that he can see why it should not be done again. and he will appeal to the people whom he is plundering to trust him because they know him. odd as it sounds, this is where he has his real hold. i have shown why this is so. to the poor people of his district the boss is a real friend in need. he is one of them. he does not want to reform them; far from it. no doubt it is very ungrateful of them, but the poor people have no desire to be reformed. they do not think they need to be. they consider their moral standards quite as high as those of the rich, and resent being told that they are mistaken. the reformer comes to them from another world to tell them these things, and goes his way. the boss lives among them. he helped john to a job on the pipes in their hard winter, and got mike on the force. they know him as a good neighbor, and trust him to their harm. he drags their standard ever farther down. the question for those who are trying to help them is how to make them transfer their allegiance, and trust their real friends instead. it ought not to be a difficult question to answer. any teacher could do it. he knows, if he knows anything, that the way to get and keep the children's confidence is to trust them, and let them know that they are trusted. they will almost always come up to the demand thus made upon them. preaching to them does little good; preaching at them still less. men, whether rich or poor, are much like children. the good in them is just as good as it is said to be, and the bad, considering their enlarged opportunities for mischief, not so much worse than it is called. a vigorous optimism, a stout belief in one's fellow man, is better equipment in a campaign for civic virtue than stacks of tracts and arguments, economic and moral, are. there is good bottom, even in the slum, for that kind of an anchor to get a grip on. a year ago i went to see a boxing match there had been much talk about. the hall was jammed with a rough and noisy crowd, hotly intent upon its favorite. his opponent, who hailed, i think, from somewhere in delaware, was greeted with hostile demonstrations as a "foreigner." but as the battle wore on, and he was seen to be fair and manly, while the new yorker struck one foul blow after another, the attitude of the crowd changed rapidly from enthusiastic approval of the favorite to scorn and contempt; and in the last round, when he knocked the delawarean over with a foul blow, the audience rose in a body and yelled to have the fight given to the "foreigner," until my blood tingled with pride. for the decision would leave it practically without a cent. it had staked all it had on the new yorker. "he is a good man," i heard on all sides, while the once favorite sneaked away without a friend. "good" meant fair and manly to that crowd. i thought, as i went to the office the next morning, that it ought to be easy to appeal to such a people with measures that were fair and just, if we could only get on common ground. but the only hint i got from my reform paper was an editorial denunciation of the brutality of boxing, on the same page that had an enthusiastic review of the college football season. i do not suppose it did any harm, for the paper was probably not read by one of the men it had set out to reform. but suppose it had been, how much would it have appealed to them? exactly the qualities of robust manliness which football is supposed to encourage in college students had been evoked by the trial of strength and skill which they had witnessed. as to the brutality, they knew that fifty young men are maimed or killed at football to one who fairs ill in a boxing match. would it seem to them common sense, or cant and humbug? it comes down in the end to a question of common sense and common honesty. for how many failures of reform effort is insincerity not to blame! last spring i attended a meeting at albany that had been called by the governor to discuss the better enforcement of the labor laws. we talked the situation over, and mr. roosevelt received from those present their ready promise to aid him in every way in making effective the laws that represented so much toil and sacrifice, yet had until then been in too many instances barren of results. some time after, a workingman told me with scorn how, on our coming home, one of our party had stopped in at the factory inspector's office to urge him to "let up" on a friend, a cigar manufacturer, who was violating a law for which the labor organizations had fought long years as absolutely necessary to secure human conditions in the trade. how much stock might he and his fellows be supposed to take in a movement that had such champions? "you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours," is a kind of politics in which the reformer is no match for the boss. the boss will win on that line every time. a saving sense of humor might have avoided that and many other pitfalls. i am seriously of the opinion that a professional humorist ought to be attached to every reform movement, to keep it from making itself ridiculous by either too great solemnity or too much conceit. as it is, the enemy sometimes employs him with effect. failing the adoption of that plan, i would recommend a decree of banishment against photographers, press-clippings men, and the rest of the congratulatory staff. why should the fact that a citizen has done a citizen's duty deserve to be celebrated in print and picture, as if something extraordinary had happened? the smoke of battle had not cleared away after the victory of reform, in the fall of 1894, before the citizens' committee and all the little sub-committees rushed pell-mell to the photographer's to get themselves on record as the men who did it. the spectacle might have inspired in the humorist the advice to get two sets made, while they were about it,--one to serve by and by as an exhibit of the men who didn't; and, as the event proved, he would have been right. but it is easy to find fault, and on that tack we get no farther. those men did a great work, and they did it well. the mile-posts they set up on the road to better things will guide another generation to the goal, however the present may go astray. good schools, better homes, and a chance for the boy are arguments that are not lost upon the people. they wear well. it may be that, like moses and his followers, we of the present day shall see the promised land only from afar and with the eye of faith, because of our sins; that to a younger and sturdier to-morrow it shall be given to blaze the path of civic righteousness that was our dream. i like to think that it is so, and that that is the meaning of the coming of men like roosevelt and waring at this time with their simple appeal to the reason of honest men. unless i greatly err in reading the signs of the times, it is indeed so, and the day of the boss and of the slum is drawing to an end. our faith has felt the new impulse; rather, i should say, it has given it. the social movements, and that which we call politics, are but a reflection of what the people honestly believe, a chart of their aims and aspirations. charity in our day no longer means alms, but justice. the social settlements are substituting vital touch for the machine charity that reaped a crop of hate and beggary. they are passenger bridges, it has been truly said, not mere "shoots" for the delivery of coal and groceries; bridges upon which men go over, not down, from the mansion to the tenement. we have learned that we cannot pass off checks for human sympathy in settlement of our brotherhood arrears. the church, which once stood by indifferent, or worse, is hastening to enter the life of the people. in the memory of men yet living, one church, moving uptown away from the crowd, left its old mulberry street home to be converted into tenements that justly earned the name of "dens of death" in the health department's records, while another became the foulest lodging house in an unclean city. it was a church corporation which in those bad days owned the worst underground dive downtown, and turned a deaf ear to all remonstrances. the church was "angling for souls." but souls in this world live in bodies endowed with reason. the results of that kind of fishing were empty pews and cold hearts, and the conscience-stricken cry that went up, "what shall we do to lay hold of this great multitude that has slipped from us?" [illustration: theodore roosevelt] ten years have passed, and to-day we see the churches of every denomination uniting in a systematic canvass of the city to get at the facts of the people's life of which they had ceased to be a part, pleading for parks, playgrounds, kindergartens, libraries, clubs, and better homes. there is a new and hearty sound to the word "brother" that is full of hope. the cry has been answered. the gap in the social body, between rich and poor, is no longer widening. we are certainly coming closer together. ten years ago, when the king's daughters lighted a christmas tree in gotham court, the children ran screaming from santa claus as from a "bogey man." last christmas the boys in the hebrew institute's schools nearly broke the bank laying in supplies to do him honor. i do not mean that the jews are deserting to join the christian church. they are doing that which is better,--they are embracing its spirit; and they and we are the better for it. god knows we waited long enough; and how close we were to each other all the while without knowing it! last christmas a clergyman, who lives out of town and has a houseful of children, asked me if i could not find for them a poor family in the city with children of about the same ages, whom they might visit and befriend. he worked every day in the office of a foreign mission in fifth avenue, and knew little of the life that moved about him in the city. i picked out a hungarian widow in an east side tenement, whose brave struggle to keep her little flock together had enlisted my sympathy and strong admiration. she was a cleaner in an office building; not until all the arrangements had been made did it occur to me to ask where. then it turned out that she was scrubbing floors in the missionary society's house, right at my friend's door. they had passed each other every day, each in need of the other, and each as far from the other as if oceans separated them instead of a doorstep four inches wide. * * * * * looking back over the years that lie behind with their work, and forward to those that are coming, i see only cause for hope. as i write these last lines in a far distant land, in the city of my birth, the children are playing under my window, and calling to one another with glad cries in my sweet mother tongue, even as we did in the long ago. life and the world are before them, bright with the promise of morning. so to me seem the skies at home. not lightly do i say it, for i have known the toil of rough-hewing it on the pioneer line that turns men's hair gray; but i have seen also the reward of the toil. new york is the youngest of the world's great cities, barely yet out of its knickerbockers. it may be that the dawning century will see it as the greatest of them all. the task that is set it, the problem it has to solve and which it may not shirk, is the problem of civilization, of human progress, of a people's fitness for self-government that is on trial among us. we shall solve it by the world-old formula of human sympathy, of humane touch. somewhere in these pages i have told of the woman in chicago who accounted herself the happiest woman alive because she had at last obtained a playground for her poor neighbors' children. "i have lived here for years," she said to me, "and struggled with principalities and powers, and have made up my mind that the most and the best i can do is to live right here with my people and smile with them,--keep smiling; weep when i must, but smile as long as i possibly can." and the tears shone in her gentle old eyes as she said it. when we have learned to smile and weep with the poor, we shall have mastered our problem. then the slum will have lost its grip and the boss his job. until then, while they are in possession, our business is to hold taut and take in slack right along; never letting go for a moment. electrotyped and printed by h. o. houghton and co. the riverside press cambridge, mass., u. s. a. a child of the jago by arthur morrison author of 'tales of mean streets' third edition methuen & co. 36 essex street, w.c. london 1897 to arthur osborne jay vicar of holy trinity, shoreditch _... woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!..._ _because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar:_ _say unto them which daub it with untempered mortar, that it shall fall: there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, o great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it._ _lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?--_ ezekiel xiii. 3 ... 10 12. * * * * * preface to the third edition i am glad to take this, the first available opportunity, to acknowledge the kindness with which _a child of the jago_ has been received: both by the reading public, from which i have received many gratifying assurances that what i have tried to say has not altogether failed of its effect: and by the reviewers, the most of whom have written in very indulgent terms. i think indeed, that i am the more gratified by the fact that this reception has not been unanimous: because an outcry and an opposition, even from an unimportant minority, are proofs that i have succeeded in saying, however imperfectly, something that was worth being said. under the conditions of life as we know it there is no truth worth telling that will not interfere with some hearer's comfort. various objections have been made to _a child of the jago_, and many of them had already been made to _tales of mean streets_. and it has been the way of the objectors as well as the way of many among the kindest of my critics, to call me a 'realist.' the word has been used sometimes, it would seem, in praise; sometimes in mere indifference as one uses a phrase of convenient description; sometimes by way of an irremediable reproach. it is natural, then, not merely that i should wish to examine certain among the objections made to my work, but that i should feel some interest in the definition and description of a realist. a matter never made clear to me. now it is a fact that i have never called myself a 'realist,' and i have never put forth any work as 'realism.' i decline the labels of the schoolmen and the sophisters: being a simple writer of tales, who takes whatever means lie to his hand to present life as he sees it; who insists on no process; and who refuses to be bound by any formula or prescription prepared by the cataloguers and the pigeon-holers of literature. so it happens that when those who use the word 'realist' use it with no unanimity of intent and with a loose, inapprehensive application, it is not easy for me, who repudiate it altogether, to make a guess at its meaning. nevertheless, it seems to me that the man who is called a 'realist' is one who, seeing things with his own eyes, discards the conventions of the schools, and presents his matter in individual terms of art. for awhile the schoolmen abuse him as a realist; and in twenty years' time, if his work have life in it, he becomes a classic. constable was called a realist; so was corot. who calls these painters realists now? the history of japanese art affords a continuous illustration. from the day when iwasa matahei impudently arose and dared to take his subjects from the daily life of the people, to the day when hiroshigé, casting away the last rag of propriety, adventurously drew a cast shadow, in flat defiance of all the canons of tosa and kano--in all this time, and through all the crowded history of the school of ukioyé, no artist bringing something of his own to his art but was damned for a realist. even the classic harunobu did not escape. look now at the work of these men, and the label seems grotesque enough. so it goes through the making of all art. a man with the courage of his own vision interprets what he sees in fresh terms, and gives to things a new reality and an immediate presence. the schoolmen peer with dulled eyes from amid the heap of precedents and prescriptions about them, and, distracted by seeing a thing sanctioned neither by precedent nor by prescription, dub the man realist, and rail against him for that his work fits none of their pigeon-holes. and from without the schools many cry out and complain: for truth is strong meat, and the weakling stomach turns against it, except in minim doses smothered in treacle. thus we hear the feeble plea that the function of imagination is the distortion of fact: the piteous demand that the artist should be shut up in a flower-garden, and forbidden to peep through the hedge into the world. and they who know nothing of beauty, who are innately incapable of comprehending it, mistake it for mere prettiness, and call aloud for comfits; and among them that cannot understand, such definitions of the aims of art are bandied, as mean, if they mean anything, that art finds its most perfect expression in pink lollipops and gilt boxes. but in the end the truth prevails, if it be well set forth; and the schoolmen, groaning in their infinite labour, wearily write another prescription, admit another precedent, and make another pigeon-hole. i have been asked, in print, if i think that there is no phase of life which the artist may not touch. most certainly i think this. more, i know it. it is the artist's privilege to seek his material where he pleases, and it is no man's privilege to say him nay. if the community have left horrible places and horrible lives before his eyes, then the fault is the community's; and to picture these places and these lives becomes not merely his privilege, but his duty. it was my fate to encounter a place in shoreditch, where children were born and reared in circumstances which gave them no reasonable chance of living decent lives: where they were born fore-damned to a criminal or semi-criminal career. it was my experience to learn the ways of this place, to know its inhabitants, to talk with them, eat, drink, and work with them. for the existence of this place, and for the evils it engendered, the community was, and is, responsible; so that every member of the community was, and is, responsible in his degree. if i had been a rich man i might have attempted to discharge my peculiar responsibility in one way; if i had been a statesman i might have tried another. being neither of these things, but a mere writer of fiction, i sought to do my duty by writing a tale wherein i hoped to bring the conditions of this place within the apprehension of others. there are those who say that i should have turned away my eyes and passed by on the other side: on the very respectable precedent of the priest and the levite in the parable. now, when the tale was written and published it was found, as i have said, to cause discomfort to some persons. it is needless to say more of the schoolmen. needless, too, to say much of the merely genteel: who were shocked to read of low creatures, as kiddo cook and pigeony poll, and to find my pages nowhere illuminated by a marquis. of such are they who delight to read of two men in velvet and feathers perforating each other's stomachs with swords; while josh perrott and billy leary, punching each other's heads, present a scene too sickening and brutal to consider without disgust. and it was in defiance of the maunderings of such as these that charles lamb wrote much of his essay _on the genius and character of hogarth_. but chiefly this book of mine disturbed those who had done nothing, and preferred to do nothing, by way of discharging their responsibility toward the jago and the people in it. the consciousness of duty neglected is discomforting, and personal comfort is the god of their kind. they firmly believe it to be the sole function of art to minister to their personal comfort--as upholstery does. they find it comfortable to shirk consideration of the fate of the jago children, to shut their eyes to it, to say that all is well and the whole world virtuous and happy. and this mental attitude they nickname optimism, and vaunt it--exult in it as a quality. so that they cry out at the suggestion that it is no more than a selfish vice; and finding truth where they had looked for the materials of another debauch of self-delusion, they moan aloud: they protest, and they demand as their sacred right that the bitter cup be taken from before them. they have moaned and protested at _a child of the jago_, and, craven and bewildered, any protest seemed good enough to them. and herein they have not wanted for allies among them that sit in committee-rooms, and tinker. for your professed philanthropist, following his own spirit, and seeing nothing, honestly resents the demonstration that his tinkering profits little. there is a story current in the east end of london, of a distracted lady who, being assailed with a request for the loan of a saucepan, defended herself in these words:--'tell yer mother i can't lend 'er the saucepan, consekince o' 'avin' lent it to mrs brown, besides which i'm a-usin' of it meself, an' moreover it's gone to be mended, an' what's more i ain't got one.' in a like spirit of lavish objection it has been proclaimed in a breath that i transgress:--because (1) i should not have written of the jago in all the nakedness of truth; (2) my description is not in the least like; (3) moreover, it is exaggerated; (4) though it may be true, it is quite unnecessary, because the jago was already quite familiar, and everybody knew all about it; (5) the jago houses have been pulled down; and (6) there never was any such place as the jago at all. to objections thus handsomely variegated it is not easy to reply with the tripping brevity wherewith they may be stated; and truly it is little reply that they call for, except, perhaps, in so far as they may be taken to impugn the sincerity of my work and the accuracy of my picture. a few of the objectors have caught up enough of their wits to strive after a war in my own country. they take hold of my technical method, and accuse me of lack of 'sympathy'; they claim that if i write of the jago i should do so 'even weeping.' now, my technical method is my own, and is deliberately designed to achieve a certain result, as is the method of every man--painter, poet, sculptor, or novelist--who is not the slave and the plaything of his material. my tale is the tale of my characters, and i have learned better than to thrust myself and my emotions between them and my reader. the cant of the charge stares all too plainly from the face of it. it is not that these good people wish me to write 'even weeping': for how do they know whether i weep or not? no: their wish is, not that i shall weep, but that i shall weep obscenely in the public gaze. in other words, that i shall do their weeping for them, as a sort of emotional bedesman: that i shall make public parade of sympathy in their behalf, so that they may keep their own sympathy for themselves, and win comfort from the belief that they are eased of their just responsibility by vicarious snivelling. but the protest, that my picture of the jago is untrue, is another thing. for the most part it has found very vague expression, but there are instances of rash excursion into definiteness. certain passages have been denoted as exaggerations--as impossibilities. now, i must confess that, foreseeing such adventurous indiscretions, i had, for my own diversion, set _a child of the jago_ with traps. for certain years i have lived in the east end of london, and have been, not an occasional visitor, but a familiar and equal friend in the house of the east-ender in all his degrees; for, though the steps between be smaller, there are more social degrees in the east end than ever in the west. in this experience i have seen and i have heard things that persons sitting in committee-rooms would call diabolical fable; nevertheless, i have seen them, and heard them. but it was none of my design to write of extreme instances: typical facts were all i wanted; these, i knew, would be met--or shirked--with incredulity; so that, whenever i saw reason to anticipate a charge of exaggeration--as for instance, in the matter of faction fighting--i made my typical incident the cold transcript of a simple fact, an ordinary, easy-going fact, a fact notorious in the neighbourhood, and capable of any amount of reasonable proof. if i touched my fact at all, it was to subdue it; that and no more. the traps worked well. not one definite charge of exaggeration has been flung but it has been aimed at one of the normal facts i had provided as a target: not one. sometimes the effect has had a humour of its own; as when a critic in a literary journal, beginning by selecting two of my norms as instances of 'palpable exaggeration,' went on to assure me that there was no need to describe such life as the life in the jago, because it was already perfectly familiar to everybody. luckily i need not vindicate my accuracy. that has been done for me publicly by independent and altogether indisputable authority. in particular, the devoted vicar of the parish, which i have called the jago, has testified quite unreservedly to the truth of my presentation. others also, with special knowledge, have done the same; and though i refer to them, and am grateful for their support, it is with no prejudice to the validity of my own authority. for not only have i lived in the east end of london (which one may do, and yet never see it) but observation is my trade. i have remarked in more than one place the expression of a foolish fancy that because the houses of the old jago have been pulled down, the jago difficulty has been cleared out of the way. that is far from being the case. the jago, as mere bricks and mortar, is gone. but the jago in flesh and blood still lives, and is crowding into neighbourhoods already densely over-populated. in conclusion: the plan and the intention of my story made it requisite that, in telling it, i should largely adhere to fact; and i did so. if i write other tales different in scope and design, i shall adhere to fact or neglect it as may seem good to me: regardless of anybody's classification as a realist, or as anything else. for though i have made a suggestion, right or wrong, as to what a realist may be, whether i am one or not is no concern of mine; but the concern (if it be anybody's) of the tabulators and the watersifters. a. m. _february 1897._ [illustration: the old jago; sketch plan] a child of the jago i it was past the mid of a summer night in the old jago. the narrow street was all the blacker for the lurid sky; for there was a fire in a farther part of shoreditch, and the welkin was an infernal coppery glare. below, the hot, heavy air lay, a rank oppression, on the contorted forms of those who made for sleep on the pavement: and in it, and through it all, there rose from the foul earth and the grimed walls a close, mingled stink--the odour of the jago. from where, off shoreditch high street, a narrow passage, set across with posts, gave menacing entrance on one end of old jago street, to where the other end lost itself in the black beyond jago row; from where jago row began south at meakin street, to where it ended north at honey lane--there the jago, for one hundred years the blackest pit in london, lay and festered; and half-way along old jago street a narrow archway gave upon jago court, the blackest hole in all that pit. a square of two hundred and fifty yards or less--that was all there was of the jago. but in that square the human population swarmed in thousands. old jago street, new jago street, half jago street lay parallel, east and west: jago row at one end and edge lane at the other lay parallel also, stretching north and south: foul ways all. what was too vile for kate street, seven dials, and ratcliff highway in its worst day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt--all that teemed in the old jago. old jago street lay black and close under the quivering red sky; and slinking forms, as of great rats, followed one another quickly between the posts in the gut by the high street, and scattered over the jago. for the crowd about the fire was now small, the police was there in force, and every safe pocket had been tried. soon the incursion ceased, and the sky, flickering and brightening no longer, settled to a sullen flush. on the pavement some writhed wearily, longing for sleep; others, despairing of it, sat and lolled, and a few talked. they were not there for lack of shelter, but because in this weather repose was less unlikely in the street than within doors: and the lodgings of the few who nevertheless abode at home were marked here and there by the lights visible from the windows. for in this place none ever slept without a light, because of three kinds of vermin that light in some sort keeps at bay: vermin which added to existence here a terror not to be guessed by the unafflicted: who object to being told of it. for on them that lay writhen and gasping on the pavement; on them that sat among them; on them that rolled and blasphemed in the lighted rooms; on every moving creature in this, the old jago, day and night, sleeping and walking, the third plague of egypt, and more, lay unceasing. the stifling air took a further oppression from the red sky. by the dark entrance to jago court a man rose, flinging out an oath, and sat with his head bowed in his hands. 'ah--h--h--h,' he said. 'i wish i was dead: an' kep' a cawfy shop.' he looked aside from his hands at his neighbours; but kiddo cook's ideal of heaven was no new thing, and the sole answer was a snort from a dozing man a yard away. kiddo cook felt in his pocket and produced a pipe and a screw of paper. 'this is a bleed'n' unsocial sort o' evenin' party, this is,' he said, 'an' 'ere's the on'y real toff in the mob with ardly 'arf a pipeful left, an' no lights. d' y' 'ear, me lord'--leaning toward the dozing neighbour--'got a match?' 'go t' 'ell!' 'o wot 'orrid langwidge! it's shocking, blimy. arter that y' ought to find me a match. come on.' 'go t' 'ell!' a lank, elderly man, who sat with his back to the wall, pushed up a battered tall hat from his eyes, and, producing a box of matches, exclaimed 'hell? and how far's that? you're in it!' he flung abroad a bony hand, and glanced upward. over his forehead a greasy black curl dangled and shook as he shuddered back against the wall. 'my god, there can be no hell after this!' 'ah,' kiddo cook remarked, as he lit his pipe in the hollow of his hands, 'that's a comfort, mr beveridge, any'ow.' he returned the matches, and the old man, tilting his hat forward, was silent. a woman, gripping a shawl about her shoulders, came furtively along from the posts, with a man walking in her tracks--a little unsteadily. he was not of the jago, but a decent young workman, by his dress. the sight took kiddo cook's idle eye, and when the couple had passed, he said meditatively: 'there's billy leary in luck ag'in: 'is missis do pick 'em up, s'elp me. i'd carry the cosh meself if i'd got a woman like 'er.' cosh-carrying was near to being the major industry of the jago. the cosh was a foot length of iron rod, with a knob at one end, and a hook (or a ring) at the other. the craftsman, carrying it in his coat sleeve, waited about dark staircase corners till his wife (married or not) brought in a well drunken stranger: when, with a sudden blow behind the head, the stranger was happily coshed, and whatever was found on him as he lay insensible was the profit on the transaction. in the hands of capable practitioners this industry yielded a comfortable subsistence for no great exertion. most, of course, depended on the woman: whose duty it was to keep the other artist going in subjects. there were legends of surprising ingatherings achieved by wives of especial diligence: one of a woman who had brought to the cosh some six-and-twenty on a night of public rejoicing. this was, however, a story years old, and may have been no more than an exemplary fiction, designed, like a sunday school book, to convey a counsel of perfection to the dutiful matrons of the old jago. the man and woman vanished in a doorway near the jago row end, where, for some reason, dossers were fewer than about the portal of jago court. there conversation flagged, and a broken snore was heard. it was a quiet night, as quietness was counted in the jago; for it was too hot for most to fight in that stifling air--too hot to do more than turn on the stones and swear. still the last hoarse yelps of a combat of women came intermittently from half jago street in the further confines. in a little while something large and dark was pushed forth from the door-opening near jago row which billy leary's spouse had entered. the thing rolled over, and lay tumbled on the pavement, for a time unnoted. it might have been yet another would-be sleeper, but for its stillness. just such a thing it seemed, belike, to two that lifted their heads and peered from a few yards off, till they rose on hands and knees and crept to where it lay: jago rats both. a man it was; with a thick smear across his face, and about his head the source of the dark trickle that sought the gutter deviously over the broken flags. the drab stuff of his pockets peeped out here and there in a crumpled bunch, and his waistcoat gaped where the watch-guard had been. clearly, here was an uncommonly remunerative cosh--a cosh so good that the boots had been neglected, and remained on the man's feet. these the kneeling two unlaced deftly, and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the deeper shadow of jago row. a small boy, whom they met full tilt at the corner, staggered out to the gutter and flung a veteran curse after them. he was a slight child, by whose size you might have judged his age at five. but his face was of serious and troubled age. one who knew the children of the jago, and could tell, might have held him eight, or from that to nine. he replaced his hands in his trousers pockets, and trudged up the street. as he brushed by the coshed man he glanced again toward jago row, and, jerking his thumb that way, 'done 'im for 'is boots,' he piped. but nobody marked him till he reached jago court, when old beveridge, pushing back his hat once more, called sweetly and silkily, 'dicky perrott!' and beckoned with his finger. the boy approached, and as he did so the man's skeleton hand suddenly shot out and gripped him by the collar. 'it--never--does--to--see--too--much!' beveridge said, in a series of shouts, close to the boy's ear. 'now go home,' he added, in a more ordinary tone, with a push to make his meaning plain: and straightway relapsed against the wall. the boy scowled and backed off the pavement. his ragged jacket was coarsely made from one much larger, and he hitched the collar over his shoulder as he shrank toward a doorway some few yards on. front doors were used merely as firewood in the old jago, and most had been burnt there many years ago. if perchance one could have been found still on its hinges, it stood ever open and probably would not shut. thus at night the jago doorways were a row of black holes, foul and forbidding. dicky perrott entered his hole with caution, for anywhere, in the passage and on the stairs, somebody might be lying drunk, against whom it would be unsafe to stumble. he found nobody, however, and climbed and reckoned his way up the first stair-flight with the necessary regard for the treads that one might step through and the rails that had gone from the side. then he pushed open the door of the first-floor back and was at home. a little heap of guttering grease, not long ago a candle end, stood and spread on the mantel-piece, and gave irregular light from its drooping wick. a thin-railed iron bedstead, bent and staggering, stood against a wall, and on its murky coverings a half-dressed woman sat and neglected a baby that lay by her, grieving and wheezing. the woman had a long dolorous face, empty of expression and weak of mouth. 'where 'a' you bin, dicky?' she asked, rather complaining than asking. 'it's sich low hours for a boy.' dicky glanced about the room. 'got anythink to eat?' he asked. 'i dunno,' she answered listlessly. 'p'raps there's a bit o' bread in the cupboard. i don't want nothin', it's so 'ot. an' father ain't bin 'ome since tea-time.' the boy rummaged and found a crust. gnawing at this, he crossed to where the baby lay. ''ullo, looey,' he said, bending and patting the muddy cheek. ''ullo!' the baby turned feebly on its back, and set up a thin wail. its eyes were large and bright, its tiny face was piteously flea-bitten and strangely old. 'wy, she's 'ungry, mother,' said dicky perrott, and took the little thing up. he sat on a small box, and rocked the baby on his knees, feeding it with morsels of chewed bread. the mother, dolefully inert, looked on and said: 'she's that backward i'm quite wore out; more 'n ten months old, an' don't even crawl yut. it's a never-endin' trouble, is children.' she sighed, and presently stretched herself on the bed. the boy rose, and carrying his little sister with care, for she was dozing, essayed to look through the grimy window. the dull flush still spread overhead, but jago court lay darkling below, with scarce a sign of the ruinous back yards that edged it on this and the opposite sides, and nothing but blackness between. the boy returned to his box, and sat. then he said: 'i don't s'pose father's 'avin' a sleep outside, eh?' the woman sat up with some show of energy. 'wot?' she said sharply. 'sleep out in the street like them low ranns an' learys? i should 'ope not. it's bad enough livin' 'ere at all, an' me being used to different things once, an' all. you ain't seen 'im outside, 'ave ye?' 'no, i ain't seen 'im: i jist looked in the court.' then, after a pause: 'i 'ope 'e's done a click,' the boy said. his mother winced. 'i dunno wot you mean, dicky,' she said, but falteringly. 'you--you're gittin' that low an' an'--' 'wy, copped somethink, o' course. nicked somethink. you know.' 'if you say sich things as that i'll tell 'im wot you say, an' 'e'll pay you. we ain't that sort o' people, dicky, you ought to know. i was alwis kep' respectable an' straight all my life, i'm sure, an'--' 'i know. you said so before, to father--i 'eard: w'en 'e brought 'ome that there yuller prop--the necktie pin. wy, where did 'e git that? 'e ain't 'ad a job for munse and munse: where's the yannups come from wot's bin for to pay the rent, an' git the toke, an' milk for looey? think i dunno? i ain't a kid. i know.' 'dicky, dicky! you mustn't say sich things!' was all the mother could find to say, with tears in her slack eyes. 'it's wicked an'--an' low. an' you must alwis be respectable an' straight, dicky, an' you'll--you'll git on then.' 'straight people's fools, _i_ reckon. kiddo cook says that, an' 'e's as wide as broad street. w'en i grow up i'm goin' to git toffs' clo'es an' be in the 'igh mob. they does big clicks.' 'they git put in a dark prison for years an' years, dicky--an'--an' if you're sich a wicked low boy, father 'll give you the strap--'ard,' the mother returned, with what earnestness she might. 'gimme the baby, an' you go to bed, go on; 'fore father comes.' dicky handed over the baby, whose wizen face was now relaxed in sleep, and slowly disencumbered himself of the ungainly jacket, staring at the wall in a brown study. 'it's the mugs wot git took,' he said, absently. 'an' quoddin' ain't so bad.' then, after a pause, he turned and added suddenly: 's'pose father'll be smugged some day, eh, mother?' his mother made no reply, but bent languidly over the baby, with an indefinite pretence of settling it in a place on the bed. soon dicky himself, in the short and ragged shirt he had worn under the jacket, burrowed head first among the dingy coverings at the foot, and protruding his head at the further side, took his accustomed place crosswise at the extreme end. the filthy ceiling lit and darkened by fits as the candle-wick fell and guttered to its end. he heard his mother rise and find another fragment of candle to light by its expiring flame, but he lay still wakeful. after a time he asked: 'mother, why don't you come to bed?' 'waitin' for father. go to sleep.' he was silent for a little. but brain and eyes were wide awake, and soon he spoke again. 'them noo 'uns in the front room,' he said. 'ain't the man give 'is wife a 'idin' yut?' 'no.' 'nor yut the boy--'umpty-backed 'un?' 'no.' 'seems they're mighty pertickler. fancy theirselves too good for their neighbours; i 'eard pigeony poll say that; on'y poll said--' 'you mustn't never listen to pigeony poll, dicky. ain't you 'eard me say so? go to sleep. 'ere comes father.' there was, indeed, a step on the stairs, but it passed the landing, and went on to the top floor. dicky lay awake, but silent, gazing upward and back through the dirty window just over his head. it was very hot, and he fidgeted uncomfortably, fearing to turn or toss lest the baby should wake and cry. there came a change in the hue of the sky, and he watched the patch within his view, until the red seemed to gather in spots, and fade a spot at a time. then at last there was a tread on the stairs, that stayed at the door; and father had come home. dicky lay still, and listened. 'lor, josh, where ye bin?' dicky heard his mother say. 'i'm almost wore out a-waitin'.' 'awright, awright'--this in a hoarse grunt, little above a whisper. 'got any water up 'ere? wash this 'ere stick.' there was a pause, wherein dicky knew his mother looked about her in vacant doubt as to whether or not water was in the room. then a quick, undertoned scream, and the stick rattled heavily on the floor. 'it's sticky!' his mother said. 'o my gawd, josh, look at that--an' bits o' 'air, too!' the great shadow of an open hand shot up across the ceiling and fell again. 'o josh! o my gawd! you ain't, 'ave ye? not--not--not that?' 'not wot? gawblimy, not what? shutcher mouth. if a man fights, you're got to fight back, ain' cher? any one 'ud think it was a murder, to look at ye. i ain't sich a damn fool as that. 'ere--pull up that board.' dicky knew the loose floor-board that was lifted with a slight groaning jar. it was to the right of the hearth, and he had shammed sleep when it had been lifted once before. his mother whimpered and cried quietly. 'you'll git in trouble, josh,' she said. 'i wish you'd git a reg'lar job, josh, like what you used--i do--i do.' the board was shut down again. dicky perrott through one opened eye saw the sky a pale grey above, and hoped the click had been a good one: hoped also that it might bring bullock's liver for dinner. * * * * * out in the jago the pale dawn brought a cooler air and the chance of sleep. from the paving of old jago street sad grey faces, open-mouthed, looked upward as from the valley of dry bones. down by jago row the coshed subject, with the blood dry on his face, felt the colder air, and moved a leg. ii three-quarters of a mile east of the jago's outermost limit was the east end elevation mission and pansophical institute: such was the amazing success whereof, that a new wing had been built, and was now to be declared open by a bishop of great eminence and industry. the triumphs of the east end elevation mission and pansophical institute were known and appreciated far from east london, by people who knew less of that part than of asia minor. indeed, they were chiefly appreciated by these. there were kept, perpetually on tap for the aspiring east ender, the higher life, the greater thought, and the wider humanity: with other radiant abstractions, mostly in the comparative degree, specifics all for the manufacture of the superior person. there were many lectures given on still more subjects. pictures were borrowed and shown, with revelations to the uninformed of the morals ingeniously concealed by the painters. the uninformed were also encouraged to debate and to produce papers on literary and political matters, while still unencumbered with the smallest knowledge thereof: for the enlargement of the understanding and the embellishment of the intellect. and there were classes, and clubs, and newspapers, and games of draughts, and musical evenings, and a brass band, whereby the life of the hopeless poor might be coloured, and the misery of the submerged alleviated. the wretches who crowded to these benefits were tradesmen's sons, small shop-keepers and their families, and neat clerks, with here and there a smart young artisan of one of the especially respectable trades. they freely patronised the clubs, the musical evenings, the brass band, and the bagatelle board; and those who took themselves seriously debated and mutually-improved with pomp. others, subject to savage fits of wanting-to-know, made short rushes at random evening classes, with intervals of disgusted apathy. altogether, a number of decently-dressed and mannerly young men passed many evenings at the pansophical institute in harmless pleasures, and often with an agreeable illusion of intellectual advance. other young men, more fortunately circumstanced, with the educational varnish fresh and raw upon them, came from afar, equipped with a foreign mode of thought and a proper ignorance of the world and the proportions of things, as missionaries. not without some anxiety to their parents, they plunged into the perilous deeps of the east end, to struggle--for a fortnight--with its suffering and its brutishness. so they went among the tradesmen's sons and the shopmen, who endured them as they endured the nominal subscription; and they came away with a certain relief, and with some misgiving as to what impression they had made, and what they had done to make it. but it was with knowledge and authority that they went back among those who had doubted their personal safety in the dark region. the east end, they reported, was nothing like what it was said to be. you could see much worse places up west. the people were quite a decent sort, in their way: shocking bounders, of course; but quite clean and quiet, and very comfortably dressed, with ties and collars and watches. but the missionaries were few, and the subscribers to the elevation mission were many. most had been convinced, by what they had been told, by what they had read in charity appeals, and perhaps by what they had seen in police-court and inquest reports, that the whole east end was a wilderness of slums: slums packed with starving human organisms without minds and without morals, preying on each other alive. these subscribers visited the institute by twos and threes, on occasions of particular festivity among the neat clerks, and were astonished at the wonderful effects of pansophic elevation on the degraded classes, their aspect and their habits. perhaps it was a concert where nobody was drunk: perhaps a little dance where nobody howled a chorus, nor wore his hat, nor punched his partner in the eye. it was a great marvel, whereunto the observers testified: so that more subscriptions came, and the new wing was built. the afternoon was bright, and all was promising. a small crowd of idlers hung about the main door of the institute, and stared at a string of flags. away to the left stood the new wing, a face of fair, clean brick; the ornamentation, of approved earnestness, in terra-cotta squares at regular intervals. within sat many friends and relations of the shopmen and superior mechanics, and waited for the bishop; the eminences of the elevation mission sitting apart on the platform. without, among the idlers, waited dicky perrott. his notions of what were going on were indistinct, but he had a belief, imbibed through rumour and tradition, that all celebrations at such large buildings were accompanied by the consumption, in the innermost recesses, of cake and tea. even to be near cake was something. in shoreditch high street was a shop where cake stood in the window in great slabs, one slab over another, to an incalculable value. at this window--against it, as near as possible, his face flattened white--dicky would stand till the shop-keeper drove him off: till he had but to shut his eyes to see once more, in the shifting black, the rich yellow sections with their myriad raisins. once a careless errand-boy, who had bought a slice, took so clumsy a bite as he emerged that near a third of the whole piece broke and fell; and this dicky had snatched from the paving and bolted with, ere the owner quite saw his loss. this was a superior sort of cake, at a penny. but once he had managed to buy himself a slice of an inferior sort for a halfpenny, in meakin street. dicky perrott, these blessed memories in his brain, stood unobtrusively near the door, with the big jacket buttoned over as decently as might be, full of a desperate design: which was to get inside by whatsoever manner of trick or opportunity he might, and so, if it were humanly possible, to the cake. the tickets were being taken at the door by an ardent young elevator--one of the missionaries. him, and all such washed and well-dressed people, dicky had learnt to hold in serene contempt when the business in hand was dodging. there was no hurry: the elevator might waste his vigilance on the ticket-holders for some time yet. and dicky knew better than to betray the smallest sign of a desire for entrance while his enemy's attention was awake. carriages drew up, and yielded more eminences: toward the end the bishop himself, whom dicky observed but as a pleasant-looking old gentleman in uncommon clothes; and on whom he bestowed no more thought than a passing wonder at what might be the accident to his hat which had necessitated its repair with string. but at the spikes of the bishop's carriage came another; and out of that there got three ladies, friends of the ticket-receiver, on whom they closed, greeting and shaking hands; and in a flash dicky perrott was beyond the lobby and moving obscurely along the walls of the inner hall, behind pillars and in shadow, seeking cake. the choral society sang their lustiest, and there were speeches. eminences expressed their surprise and delight at finding the people of the east end, gathered in the institute building, so respectable and clean, thanks to persistent, indefatigable, unselfish elevation. the good bishop, amid clapping of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs, piped cherubically of everything. he rejoiced to see that day, whereon the helping hand of the west was so unmistakably made apparent in the east. he rejoiced also to find himself in the midst of so admirably typical an assemblage--so representative, if he might say so, of that great east end of london, thirsting and crying out for--for elevation: for that--ah--elevation which the more fortunately circumstanced denizens of--of other places, had so munificently--laid on. the people of the east end had been sadly misrepresented--in popular periodicals and in--in other ways. the east end, he was convinced, was not so black as it was painted. (applause.) he had but to look about him. _etcetera, etcetera._ he questioned whether so well-conducted, morally-given, and respectable a gathering could be brought together in any west end parish with which he was acquainted. it was his most pleasant duty on this occasion--and so on and so forth. dicky perrott had found the cake. it was in a much smaller room at the back of the hall, wherein it was expected that the bishop and certain eminences of the platform would refresh themselves with tea after the ceremony. there were heavy, drooping curtains at the door of this room, and deep from the largest folds the ratling from the jago watched. the table was guarded by a sour-faced man--just such a man as drove him from the window of the cake shop in shoreditch high street. nobody else was there yet, and plainly the sour-faced man must be absent or busy ere the cake could be got at. there was a burst of applause in the hall: the new wing had been declared open. then there was more singing, and after that much shuffling and tramping, for everybody was free to survey the new rooms on the way out; and the importances from the platform came to find the tea. filling the room and standing about in little groups; chatting, munching, and sipping, while the sour-faced man distractedly floundered amid crockery: not a soul of them all perceived an inconsiderable small boy, ducking and dodging vaguely among legs and round skirts, making, from time to time, a silent snatch at a plate on the table: and presently he vanished altogether. then the amiable bishop, beaming over the tea-cup six inches from his chin, at two courtiers of the clergy, bethought him of a dinner engagement, and passed his hand downward over the rotundity of his waistcoat. 'dear, dear,' said the bishop, glancing down suddenly, 'why--what's become of my watch?' there hung three inches of black ribbon, with a cut end. the bishop looked blankly at the elevators about him. * * * * * three streets off, dicky perrott, with his shut fist deep in his breeches pocket, and a gold watch in the fist, ran full drive for the old jago. iii there was nobody in chase; but dicky perrott, excited by his novel exploit, ran hard: forgetting the lesson first learnt by every child of the jago, to avoid, as far as may be, suspicious flight in open streets. he burst into the old jago from the jago row corner, by meakin street; and still he ran. a small boy a trifle bigger than himself made a sharp punch at him as he passed, but he took no heed. the hulking group at the corner of old jago street, ever observant of weaklings with plunder, saw him, and one tried to catch his arm, but he had the wit to dodge. past the jago court passage he scudded, in at the familiar doorway, and up the stairs. a pale hunchbacked child, clean and wistful, descended, and him dicky flung aside and half downstairs with 'git out, 'ump!' josh perrott sat on the bed, eating fried fish from an oily paper; for it was tea-time. he was a man of thirty-two, of middle height and stoutly built, with a hard, leathery face as of one much older. the hair about his mouth seemed always three days old--never much less nor much more. he was a plasterer--had, at least, so described himself at police-courts. but it was long since he had plastered, though he still walked abroad splashed and speckled, as though from an eruption of inherent plaster. in moments of pride he declared himself the only member of his family who had ever learned a trade, and worked at it. it was a long relinquished habit, but while it lasted he had married a decent boiler-maker's daughter, who had known nothing of the jago till these latter days. one other boast josh perrott had: that nothing but shot or pointed steel could hurt him. and this, too, was near being a true boast; as he had proved in more than one fight in the local arena--which was jago court. now he sat peaceably on the edge of the bed, and plucked with his fingers at the oily fish, while his wife grubbed hopelessly about the cupboard shelves for the screw of paper which was the sugar-basin. dicky entered at a burst. 'mother--father--look! i done a click! i got a clock--a red 'un!' josh perrott stopped, jaw and hand, with a pinch of fish poised in air. the woman turned, and her chin fell. 'o, dicky, dicky,' she cried, in real distress, 'you're a awful low, wicked boy. my gawd, josh, 'e--'e'll grow up bad: i said so.' josh perrott bolted the pinch of fish, and sucked his fingers as he sprang to the door. after a quick glance down the stairs he shut it, and turned to dicky. 'where d'je get that, ye young devel?' he asked, and snatched the watch. 'claimed it auf a ol' bloke w'en 'e was drinkin' 'is tea,' dicky replied, with sparkling eyes. 'let's 'ave a look at it, father.' 'did 'e run after ye?' 'no--didn't know nuffin' about it. i cut 'is bit o' ribbin with my knife.' dicky held up a treasured relic of blade and handle, found in a gutter. 'ain' cher goin' to let's 'ave a look at it?' josh perrott looked doubtfully toward his wife: the children were chiefly her concern. of her sentiments there could be no mistake. he slipped the watch into his own pocket, and caught dicky by the collar. 'i'll give you somethink, you dam young thief,' he exclaimed, slipping off his belt. 'you'd like to have us all in stir for a year or two, i s'pose; goin' thievin' watches like a growed-up man.' and he plied the belt savagely, while dicky, amazed, breathless and choking, spun about him with piteous squeals, and the baby woke and puled in feeble sympathy. there was a rip, and the collar began to leave the old jacket. feeling this, josh perrott released it, and with a quick drive of the fist in the neck sent dicky staggering across the room. dicky caught at the bed frame, and limped out to the landing, sobbing grievously in the bend of his sleeve. it was more than his mother had intended, but she knew better than to attempt interference. now that he was gone, she said, with some hesitation: ''adn't you better take it out at once, josh?' 'yus, i'm goin',' josh replied, turning the watch in his hand. 'it's a good 'un--a topper.' 'you--you won't let weech 'ave it, will ye, josh? 'e--'e never gives much.' 'no bloomin' fear. i'm goin' up 'oxton with this 'ere.' * * * * * dicky sobbed his way down the stairs and through the passage to the back. in the yard he looked for tommy rann, to sympathise. but tommy was not, and dicky paused in his grief to reflect that perhaps, indeed, in the light of calm reason, he would rather cast the story of the watch in a more heroic mould, for tommy's benefit, than was compatible with tears and a belted back. so he turned and squeezed through a hole in the broken fence, sobbing again, in search of the friend that shared his inmost sorrows. the belting was bad--very bad. there was broken skin on his shins where the strap had curled round, and there was a little sticky blood under the shirt half way up his back: to say nothing of bruises. but it was the hopeless injustice of things that shook him to the soul. wholly unaided, he had done, with neatness and credit, a click that anybody in the jago would have been proud of. overjoyed, he had hastened to receive the commendations of his father and mother, and to place the prize in their hands, freely and generously, though perhaps with some hope of hot supper by way of celebration. and his reward was this. why? he could understand nothing: could but feel the wrong that broke his heart. and so, sobbing, he crawled through two fences to weep on the shaggy neck of jerry gullen's canary. jerry gullen's canary was no bird, but a donkey: employed by jerry gullen in his occasional intervals of sobriety to drag a cranky shallow, sometimes stored with glass bottles, rags, and hearth-stone: sometimes with firewood manufactured from a convenient hoarding, or from the joinery of an empty house: sometimes with empty sacks covering miscellaneous property suddenly acquired and not for general inspection. his vacations, many and long, jerry gullen's canary spent, forgotten and unfed, in jerry gullen's back-yard: gnawing desperately at fences, and harrowing the neighbourhood with his bray. thus the nickname, facetiously applied by kiddo cook in celebration of his piteous song, grew into use; and 'canary' would call the creature's attention as readily as a mouthful of imprecations. jerry gullen's canary was gnawing, gnawing, with a sound as of a crooked centre-bit. everywhere about the foul yard, ten or twelve feet square, wood was rounded and splintered and bitten white, and as the donkey turned his heavy head, a drip of blood from his gums made a disc on the stones. a twitch of the ears welcomed dicky, grief-stricken as he was; for it was commonly thus that he bethought him of solace in jerry gullen's back-yard. and so dicky, his arms about the mangy neck, told the tale of his wrongs till consolation came in composition of the heroic narrative designed for tommy rann. 'o, canary, it is a blasted shame!' iv when dicky perrott came running into jago row with the bishop's watch in his pocket, another boy punched a fist at him, and at the time dicky was at a loss to guess the cause--unless it were a simple caprice--but stayed neither to inquire nor to retaliate. the fact was that the ranns and the learys were coming out, fighting was in the air, and the small boy, meeting another a trifle smaller, punched on general principles. the ranns and the learys, ever at war or in guarded armistice, were the great rival families--the montagues and the capulets--of the old jago. the learys indeed, scarce pretended to rivalry--rather to factious opposition. for the ranns gloried in the style and title of the 'royal family,' and dominated the jago; but there were mighty fighters, men and women, among the learys, and when a combat arose it was a hard one and an animated. the two families ramified throughout the jago; and under the rann standard, whether by kin or by custom, were the gullens, the fishers, the spicers, and the walshes; while in the leary train came dawsons, greens, and harnwells. so that near all the jago was wont to be on one side or the other, and any of the jago which was not, was apt to be the worse for it; for the ranns drubbed all them that were not of their faction in the most thorough and most workmanlike manner, and the learys held by the same practice; so that neutrality meant double drubbing. but when the ranns and learys combined, and the old jago issued forth in its entire might against dove lane, then the battle was one to go miles to see. this, however, was but a rann and leary fight; and it was but in its early stages when dicky perrott, emerging from jerry gullen's back-yard, made for shoreditch high street by way of the 'posties'--the passage with posts at the end of old jago street. his purpose was to snatch a handful of hay from some passing waggon, or of mixed fodder from some unguarded nosebag, wherewith to reward the sympathy of jerry gullen's canary. but by the 'posties,' at the edge lane corner, tommy rann, capless, and with a purple bump on his forehead, came flying into his arms, breathless, exultant, a babbling braggart. he had fought johnny leary and joe dawson, he said, one after the other, and pretty nigh broke johnny leary's blasted neck; and joe's dawson's big brother was after him now with a bleed'n' shovel. so the two children ran on together, and sought the seclusion of their own back yard; where the story of johnny rann's prowess, with scowls and the pounding of imaginary foes, and the story of the bishop's watch, with suppressions and improvements, mingled and contended in the thickening dusk. and jerry gullen's canary went forgotten and unrequited. that night fighting was sporadic and desultory in the jago. bob the bender was reported to have a smashed nose, and sam cash had his head bandaged at the hospital. at the bag of nails in edge lane, snob spicer was knocked out of knowledge with a quart pot, and cocko harnwell's missis had a piece bitten off of one ear. as the night wore on, taunts and defiances were bandied from window to door, and from door to window, between those who intended to begin fighting to-morrow; and shouts from divers corners gave notice of isolated scuffles. once a succession of piercing screams seemed to betoken that sally green had begun. there was a note in the screams of sally green's opposites which the jago had learned to recognise. sally green, though of the weaker faction, was the female champion of the old jago: an eminence won and kept by fighting tactics peculiar to herself. for it was her way, reserving teeth and nails, to wrestle closely with her antagonist, throw her by a dexterous twist on her face, and fall on her, instantly seizing the victim's nape in her teeth, gnawing and worrying. the sufferer's screams were audible afar, and beyond their invariable eccentricity of quality--a quality a vaguely suggestive of dire surprise--they had mechanical persistence, a pump-like regularity, that distinguished them, in the accustomed ear, from other screams. josh perrott had not been home all the evening: probably the bishop's watch was in course of transmutation into beer. dicky, stiff and domestically inclined, nursed looey and listened to the noises without till he fell asleep, in hopeful anticipation of the morrow. for tommy rann had promised him half of a broken iron railing wherewith to fight the learys. v sleep in the jago was at best a thing of intermission, for reasons--reasons of multitude--already denoted; nevertheless dicky slept well enough to be unconscious of his father's homecoming. in the morning, however, there lay josh perrott, snoring thunderously on the floor, piebald with road-dust. this was not a morning whereon father would want breakfast--that was plain: he would wake thirsty and savage. so dicky made sure of a crust from the cupboard, and betook himself in search of tommy rann. as to washing, he was never especially fond of it, and in any case there were fifty excellent excuses for neglect. the only water was that from the little tap in the back yard. the little tap was usually out of order, or had been stolen bodily by a tenant; and if it were not, there was no basin there, nor any soap, nor towel; and anything savouring of moderate cleanliness was resented in the jago as an assumption of superiority. fighting began early, fast and furious. the ranns got together soon, and hunted the learys up and down, and attacked them in their houses: the learys' chances only coming when straggling ranns were cut off from the main body. the weapons in use, as was customary, rose in effectiveness by a swiftly ascending scale. the learys, assailed with sticks, replied with sticks torn from old packing-cases, with protruding nails. the two sides bethought them of coshes simultaneously, and such as had no coshes--very few--had pokers and iron railings. ginger stagg, at bay in his passage, laid open pud palmer's cheek with a chisel; and, knives thus happily legitimised with the least possible preliminary form, everybody was free to lay hold of whatever came handy. in old jago street, half way between jago court and edge lane, stood the feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the four public-houses in the jago. into the feathers some dozen learys were driven, and for a while they held the inner bar and the tap-room against the ranns, who swarmed after them, chairs, bottles, and pewter pots flying thick, while mother gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on the beer-pulls in the bar, supplicating and blubbering aloud. then a partition came down with a crash, bringing shelves and many glasses with it, and the ranns rushed over the ruin, beating the learys down, jumping on them, heaving them through the back windows. having thus cleared the house of the intruding enemy, the ranns demanded recompense of liquor, and took it, dragging handles off beer-engines, seizing bottles, breaking into the cellar, and driving in bungs. nobody better than mother gapp could quell an ordinary bar riot--even to knocking a man down with a pot; but she knew better than to attempt interference now. nothing could have made her swoon, but she sat limp and helpless, weeping and blaspheming. the ranns cleared off, every man with a bottle or so, and scattered, and this for a while was their undoing. for the learys rallied and hunted the ranns in their turn: a crowd of eighty or a hundred sweeping the jago from honey lane to meakin street. then they swung back through edge lane to old jago street, and made for jerry gullen's--a house full of ranns. jerry gullen, bill rann, and the rest took refuge in the upper floors and barricaded the stairs. below, the learys broke windows and ravaged the rooms, smashing whatsoever of furniture was to be found. above, pip walsh, who affected horticulture on his window-sill, hurled down flower-pots. on the stairs, billy leary, scaling the barricade, was flung from top to bottom, and had to be carried home. and then pip walsh's missis scattered the besiegers on the pavement below with a kettleful of boiling water. there was a sudden sortie of ranns from jago court, but it profited nothing; for the party was small, and, its advent being unexpected, there was a lack of prompt co-operation from the house. the learys held the field. down the middle of old jago street came sally green: red faced, stripped to the waist, dancing, hoarse and triumphant. nail-scores wide as the finger striped her back, her face, and her throat, and she had a black eye; but in one great hand she dangled a long bunch of clotted hair, as she whooped defiance to the jago. it was a trophy newly rent from the scalp of norah walsh, champion of the rann womankind, who had crawled away to hide her blighted head, and be restored with gin. none answered sally's challenge, and, staying but to fling a brickbat at pip walsh's window, she carried her dance and her trophy into edge lane. the scrimmage on jerry gullen's stairs was thundering anew, and parties of learys were making for other houses in the street, when there came a volley of yells from jago row, heralding a scudding mob of ranns. the defeated sortie-party from jago court, driven back, had gained new jago street by way of the house-passages behind the court, and set to gathering the scattered faction. now the ranns came, drunk, semi-drunk, and otherwise, and the learys, leaving jerry gullen's, rushed to meet them. there was a great shock, hats flew, sticks and heads made a wooden rattle, and instantly the two mobs were broken into an uproarious confusion of tangled groups, howling and grappling. here a man crawled into a passage to nurse a broken head; there a knot gathered to kick a sprawling foe. so the fight thinned out and spread, resolving into many independent combats, with concerted rushes of less and less frequency, till once again all through the jago each fought for his own hand. kiddo cook, always humorous, ran hilariously through the streets, brandishing a long roll of twisted paper, wherewith he smacked the heads of learys all and sundry, who realised too late that the paper was twisted round a lodging-house poker. now, of the few neutral jagos: most lay low. josh perrott, however, hard as nails and respected for it, feared neither rann nor leary, and leaving a little money with his missis, carried his morning mouth in search of beer. pigeony poll, harlot and outcast, despised for that she neither fought nor kept a cosh-carrier, like a respectable married woman, slunk and trembled in corners and yards, and wept at the sight of bleeding heads. as for old beveridge, the affair so grossly excited him that he neglected business (he cadged and wrote begging screeves) and stayed in the jago, where he strode wildly about the streets, lank and rusty, stabbing the air with a carving knife, and incoherently defying 'all the lot' to come near him. nobody did. dicky perrott and tommy rann found a snug fastness in jago row. for there was a fence with a loose board, which, pushed aside, revealed a hole where-through a very small boy might squeeze; and within were stored many barrows and shallows, mostly broken, and of these one, tilted forward and bottom up, made a hut or den, screened about with fence and barrows. here they hid while the learys swept the jago, and hence they issued from time to time to pound such youngsters of the other side as might come in sight. the bits of iron railing made imposing weapons, but were a trifle too big and heavy for rapid use in their puny hands. still, dicky managed to double up little billy leary with a timely lunge in the stomach, and tommy rann made bobby harnwell's nose bleed very satisfactorily. on the other hand, the bump on tommy rann's forehead was widened by the visitation of a stick, and dicky perrott sustained a very hopeful punch in the eye, which he cherished enthusiastically with a view to an honourable blackness. in the snuggery intervals they explained their prowess one to another, and dicky alluded to his intention, when he was a man, to buy a very long sword wherewith to cut off the learys' heads: tommy rann inclining, however, to a gun, with which one might also shoot birds. the battle flagged a little toward mid-day, but waxed lively again as the afternoon began. it was then that dicky perrott, venturing some way from the retreat, found himself in a scrimmage, and a man snatched away his piece of iron and floored a leary with it. gratifying as was the distinction of aiding in the exploit, dicky mourned the loss of the weapon almost unto tears, and tommy rann would not go turn-about with the other, but kept it wholly for himself; so dicky was fain to hunt sorrowfully for a mere stick. even a disengaged stick was not easy to find just then. so dicky, emerging from the jago, tried meakin street, where there were shops, but unsuccessfully, and so came round by luck row, a narrow way from meakin street by walker's cook shop, up through the jago. * * * * * dicky's mother, left with the baby, fastened the door as well as she might, and trembled. indeed she had reason. the time of josh perrott's return was a matter of doubt, but when he did come he would want something to eat; it was for that he had left the money. but dicky was out, and there was nothing in the cupboard. from the window she saw divers fights in jago court; and a man lay for near two hours on the stones with a cut on his temple. as for herself, she was no favourite in the neighbourhood at any time. for one thing, her husband did not carry the cosh. then she was an alien who had never entirely fallen into jago ways; she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but she was never drunk, she never quarrelled, she did not gossip freely. also her husband beat her but rarely, and then not with a chair nor a poker. justly irritated by such superiorities as these, the women of the jago were ill-disposed to brook another: which was, that hannah perrott had been married in church. for these reasons she was timid at the most peaceful of times, but now, with ranns and learys on the war-path, and herself obnoxious to both, she trembled. she wished dicky would come and do her errand. but there was no sign of him, and mid-day wore into afternoon. it was late for josh as it was, and he would be sure to come home irritable: it was his way when a bad head from overnight struggled with morning beer. if he found nothing to eat there would be trouble. at length she resolved to go herself. there was a lull in the outer din, and what there was seemed to come from the farther parts of honey lane and jago row. she would slip across by luck row to meakin street and be back in five minutes. she took up little looey and went. and as dicky, stickless, turned into luck row, there arose a loud shriek and then another, and then in a changed voice a succession of long screams with a regular breath-pause. sally green again! he ran, turned into old jago street, and saw. sprawled on her face in the foul road lay a writhing woman and screamed; while squeezed under her arm was a baby with mud in its eyes and a cut cheek, crying weakly; and spread over all, clutching her prey by hair and wrist, sally green hung on the nape like a terrier, jaws clenched, head shaking. thus dicky saw it in a flash, and in an instant he had flung himself on sally green, kicking, striking, biting and crying, for he had seen his mother and looey. the kicks wasted themselves among the woman's petticoats, and the blows were feeble; but the sharp teeth were meeting in the shoulder-flesh, when help came. norah walsh, vanquished champion, now somewhat recovered, looked from a window, saw her enemy vulnerable, and ran out armed with a bottle. she stopped at the kerb to knock the bottom off the bottle, and then, with an exultant shout, seized sally green by the hair and stabbed her about the face with the jagged points. blinded with blood, sally released her hold on mrs perrott and rolled on her back, struggling fiercely; but to no end, for norah walsh, kneeling on her breast, stabbed and stabbed again, till pieces of the bottle broke away. sally's yells and plunges ceased, and a man pulled norah off. on him she turned, and he was fain to run, while certain learys found a truck which might carry sally to the hospital. * * * * * hannah perrott was gone indoors, hysterical and helpless. she had scarce crossed the street on her errand when she had met sally green in quest of female ranns. mrs perrott was not a rann, but she was not a leary, so it came to the same thing. moreover, there was her general obnoxiousness. she had tried to run, but that was useless; and now, sobbing and bleeding, she was merely conscious of being gently led, almost carried, indoors and upstairs. she was laid back on the bed, and somebody loosened her hair and wiped her face and neck, giving her hoarse, comforting words. then she saw the face--scared though coarse and pitted, and red about the eyes--that bent over her. it was pigeony poll's. dicky had followed her in, no longer the hero of the jago row retreat, but with his face tearful and distorted, carrying the baby in his arms, and wiping the mud from her eyes. now he sat on the little box and continued his ministrations, with fear in his looks as he glanced at his mother on the bed. * * * * * without, the fight rallied once more. the learys ran to avenge sally green, and the ranns met them with a will. down by the bag of nails a party of ranns was driven between the posts and through the gut into shoreditch high street, where a stand was made until fag dawson dropped, with a shoemaker's knife sticking under his arm-pit. then the ranns left, with most of the learys after them, and fag dawson was carried to a chemist's by the police, never to floor a rann again. for he was chived in the left lung. thus the fight ended. for a faction fight in the jago, with a few broken heads and ribs and an odd knife wound here and there--even with a death in the hospital from kicks or what not--was all very well; but when it came to homicide in the open high street, the police drew the line, and entered the jago in force. ordinarily, a peep now and again from a couple of policemen between the 'posties' was all the supervision the jago had, although three policemen had been seen to walk the length of old jago street together, and there were raids in force for special captures. there was a raid in force now, and the turmoil ceased. nothing would have pleased both ranns and learys better than to knock over two or three policemen, for kicking-practice; but there were too many for the sport, and for hours they patrolled the jago's closest passages. of course nobody knew who chived fag dawson. no inquiring policeman ever found anybody in the old jago who knew anything, even to the harm of his bitterest foe. it was the sole commandment that ran there:--'thou shalt not nark.' that night it was known that there would be a fight between josh perrott and billy leary, once the latter grew well. for josh perrott came home, saw his wife, and turned rann on the spot. but for the police in the jago that night, there would have been many a sore head, if no worse, among the learys, by visitation of josh perrott. sally green's husband had fled years ago, and billy leary, her brother, was the obvious mark for josh's vengeance. he was near as eminent a fighter among the men as his sister among the women, and a charming scrap was anticipated. it would come off, of course, in jago court one sunday morning, as all fights of distinction did; and perhaps somebody in the high mob would put up stakes. vi in the morning the police still held the jago. their presence embarrassed many, but none more than dicky perrott, who would always take a turning, or walk the other way, at sight of a policeman. dicky got out of old jago street early, and betook him to meakin street, where there were chandlers' shops with sugar in their windows, and cook-shops with pudding. he designed working through by these to shoreditch high street, there to crown his solace by contemplation of the cake-shop. but, as he neared weech's coffee-shop, scarce half through meakin street, there stood weech himself at the door, grinning and nodding affably, and beckoning him. he was a pleasant man, this mr aaron weech, who sang hymns aloud in the back parlour, and hummed the tunes in the shop: a prosperous, white-aproned, whiskered, half-bald, smirking tradesman, who bent and spoke amiably to boys, looking sharply in their eyes, but talked to a man mostly with his gaze on the man's waistcoat. indeed, there seemed to be something about mr aaron weech especially attractive to youth. nearly all his customers were boys and girls, though not boys and girls who looked likely to pay a great deal in the way of refreshment, much as they took. but he was ever indulgent, and at all times accessible to his young clients. even on sunday (though, of course, his shutters were kept rigidly up on the day of rest) a particular tap would bring him hot-foot to the door: not to sell coffee, for mr weech was no sabbath-breaker. now he stood at his door, and invited dicky with nods and becks. dicky, all wondering, and alert to dodge in case the thing were a mere device to bring him within striking distance, went. 'w'y dicky perrott,' quoth mr weech in a tone of genial surprise, 'i b'lieve you could drink a cup o' cawfy!' dicky, wondering how mr weech had learnt his name, believed he could. 'an' eat a slice o' cake too, i'll be bound,' mr weech added. dicky's glance leapt. yes, he could eat a slice of cake too. 'ah, i knew it,' said mr weech, triumphantly; 'i can always tell.' he rubbed dicky's cap about his head, and drew him into the shop, at this hour bare of customers. at the innermost compartment they stopped, and mr weech, with a gentle pressure on the shoulders, seated dicky at the table. he brought the coffee, and not a single slice of cake, but two. true, it was not cake of elevation mission quality, nor was it so good as that shown at the shop in high street: it was of a browner, dumpier, harder nature, and the currants were gritty and few. but cake it was, and to consider it critically were unworthy. dicky bolted it with less comfort than he might, for mr weech watched him keenly across the table. and, indeed, from some queer cause, he felt an odd impulse to cry. it was the first time that he had ever been given anything, kindly and ungrudgingly. he swallowed the last crumb, washed it down with the dregs of his cup, and looked sheepishly across at mr weech. 'goes down awright, don't it?' that benefactor remarked. 'ah, i like to see you enjoyin' of yerself. i'm very fond o' you young 'uns: 'specially clever 'uns like you.' dicky had never been called clever before, so far as he could recollect, and he wondered at it now. mr weech, leaning back, contemplated him smilingly for some seconds, and then proceeded. 'yus,' he said, 'you're the sort o' boy as can 'ave cawfy and cake w'enever you want it, you are.' dicky wondered more, and his face said as much. 'you know,' mr weech pursued, winking again, grinning and nodding. 'that was a fine watch you found the other day. y'ought to 'a' brought it to me.' dicky was alarmed. how did mr weech learn about the watch? perhaps he was a friend of the funny old man who lost it. dicky half rose, but his affable patron leaned across and pushed him back on the seat. 'you needn't be frightened,' he said. 'i ain't goin' to say nothink to nobody. but i know all about it, mind, an' i could if i liked. you found the watch, an' it was a red 'un, on a bit o' ribbin. well, then you went and took it 'ome, like a little fool. wot does yer father do? w'y 'e ups an' lathers you with 'is belt, an' 'e keeps the watch 'isself. that's all you git for yer pains. see--i know all about it.' and mr weech gazed on dicky perrott with a fixed grin. ''oo toldjer?' dicky managed to ask at last. 'ah!'--this with a great emphasis and a tapping of the forefinger beside the nose--'i don't want much tellin': it ain't much as goes on 'ereabout i don't know of. never mind 'ow. p'raps i got a little bird as w'ispers--p'raps i do it some other way. any'ow i know. it ain't no good any boy tryin' to do somethink unbeknownst to me, mindjer.' mr weech's head lay aside, his grin widened, his glance was sidelong, his forefinger pointed from his temple over dicky's head, and altogether he looked so very knowing that dicky shuffled in his seat. by what mysterious means was this new-found friend so well informed? the doubt troubled him, for dicky knew nothing of mr aaron weech's conversation, an hour before, with tommy rann. 'but it's awright, bless yer,' mr weech went on presently. 'nobody's none the wuss for me knowin' about 'em.... well, we was a-talkin' about the watch, wasn't we? all you got after sich a lot o' trouble was a woppin' with a belt. that was too bad.' mr weech's voice was piteous and sympathetic. 'after you a-findin' sich a nice watch--a red 'un an' all!--you gits nothink for yerself but a beltin'. never mind, you'll do better next time--i'll take care o' that. i don't like to see a clever boy put upon. you go an' find another, or somethink else--anythink good--an' then you bring it 'ere.' mr weech's friendly sympathy extinguished dicky's doubt. 'i didn't find it,' he said, shy but proud. 'it was a click--i sneaked it.' 'eh?' ejaculated mr weech, a sudden picture of blank incomprehension. 'eh? what? click? wot's a click? sneaked? wot's that? i dunno nothink about no talk o' that sort, an' i don't want to. it's my belief it means somethink wrong--but i dunno, an' i don't want to. 'ear that? eh? don't let me 'ave no more o' that, or you'd better not come near me agin. if you _find_ somethink, awright: you come to me an' i'll give ye somethink for it, if it's any good. it ain't no business of anybody's _where_ you find it, o' course, an' i don't want to know. but clicks and sneaks--them's greek to me, an' i don't want to learn 'em. unnerstand that? nice talk to respectable people, with yer clicks an' sneaks!' dicky blushed a little, and felt very guilty without in the least understanding the offence. but mr weech's virtuous indignation subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and he went on as amiably as ever. 'when you _find_ anythink,' he said, 'jist like you found that watch, don't tell nobody, an' don't let nobody see it. bring it 'ere quiet, when there ain't any p'liceman in the street, an' come right through to the back o' the shop, an' say, "i come to clean the knives." unnerstand? "i come to clean the knives." there ain't no knives to clean--it's on'y a way o' tellin' me you got somethink without other people knowin'. an' then i'll give you somethink for it--money p'raps, or p'raps cake or wot not. don't forgit. "i come to clean the knives." see?' yes, dicky understood perfectly; and dicky saw a new world of dazzling delights. cake--limitless cake, coffee, and the like whenever he might feel moved thereunto; but more than all, money--actual money. good broad pennies, perhaps whole shillings--perhaps even more still: money to buy bullock's liver for dinner, or tripe, or what you fancied: saveloys, baked potatoes from the can on cold nights, a little cart to wheel looey in, a boat from a toy-shop with sails! 'there's no end o' things to be found all over the place, an' a sharp boy like you can find 'em every day. if you don't find 'em, someone else will; there's plenty on 'em about on the look-out, an' you got jist as much right as them. on'y mind!'--mr weech was suddenly stern and serious, and his forefinger was raised impressively--'you know you can't do anythink without i know, an' if you say a word--if you say a word,' his fist came on the table with a bang, 'somethink 'll happen to you. somethink bad.' mr weech rose, and was pleasant again, though business-like. 'now, you just go an' find somethink,' he said. 'look sharp about it, an' don't go an' git in trouble. the cawfy's a penny, an' the cake's a penny--ought prop'ly to be twopence, but say a penny this time. that's twopence you owe me, an' you better bring somethink an' pay it off quick. so go along.' this was an unforeseen tag to the entertainment. for the first time in his life dicky was in debt. it was a little disappointing to find the coffee and cake no gift after all: though, indeed, it now seemed foolish to have supposed they were; for in dicky perrott's world people did not give things away--that were the act of a fool. thus dicky, with his hands in his broken pockets, and thought in his small face, whereon still stood the muddy streaks of yesterday's tears, trudged out of mr aaron weech's shop-door, and along meakin street. now he was beginning the world seriously, and must face the fact. truly the world had been serious enough for him hitherto, but that he knew not. now he was of an age when most boys were thieving for themselves, and he owed money like a man. true it was, as mr weech had said, that everybody--the whole jago--was on the look-out for himself. plainly he must take his share, lest it fall to others. as to the old gentleman's watch, he had but been beforehand. through foolish ingenuousness he had lost it, and his father had got it, who could so much more easily steal one for himself; for he was a strong man, and had but to knock over another man at any night-time. nobody should hear of future clicks but mr weech. each for himself? come, he must open his eyes. vii there was no chance all along meakin street. the chandlers and the keepers of cook-shops knew their neighbourhood too well to leave articles unguarded. soon dicky reached shoreditch high street. there things were a little more favourable. there were shops, as he well remembered, where goods were sometimes exhibited at the doors and outside the windows; but to-day there seemed to be no chance of the sort. as for the people, he was too short to try pockets, and indeed the high street rarely gave passage to a more unpromising lot. moreover, from robbery from the person he knew he must abstain, except for such uncommon opportunities as that of the bishop's watch, for some years yet. he hung about the doors and windows of shop after shop, hoping for a temporary absence of the shop-keeper, which might leave something snatchable. but he hoped in vain. from most shops he was driven away, for the shoreditch trader is not slow to judge the purpose of a loitering boy. so he passed nearly two hours: when at last he saw his chance. it came in an advantageous part of high street, not far from the 'posties,' though on the opposite side of the way. a nurse-girl had left a perambulator at a shop door, while she bought inside, and on the perambulator lay loose a little skin rug, from under which a little fat leg stuck and waved aloft. dicky set his back to the shop, and sidled to within reach of the perambulator. but it chanced that at this moment the nurse-girl stepped to the door, and she made a snatch at his arm as he lifted the rug. this he dropped at once, and was swinging leisurely away (for he despised the chase of any nurse-girl) when a man took him suddenly by the shoulder. quick as a weasel, dicky ducked under the man's arm, pulled his shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested an instant on the tips of his fingers to avoid the catch of the other hand, and shot out into the road. the man tried to follow, but dicky ran under the belly of a standing horse, under the head of another that trotted, across the fore-platform of a tramcar--behind the driver's back--and so over to the 'posties.' he slouched into the jago, disappointed. as he crossed edge lane, he was surprised to perceive a stranger--a toff, indeed--who walked slowly along, looking up right and left at the grimy habitations about him. he wore a tall hat, and his clothes were black, and of a pattern that dicky remembered to have seen at the elevation mission. they were, in fact, the clothes of a clergyman. for himself, he was tall and soundly built, with a certain square muscularity of face, and of age about thirty-five. he had ventured into the jago because the police were in possession, dicky thought; and wondered in what plight he would leave, had he come at another time. but losing view of the stranger, and making his way along old jago street, dicky perceived that indeed the police were gone, and that the jago was free. he climbed the broken stairs and pushed into the first-floor back, hopeful, though more doubtful, of dinner. there was none. his mother, tied about the neck with rags, lay across the bed nursing the damage of yesterday, and commiserating herself. a yard from her lay looey, sick and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. dicky moved to lift her, but at that she cried the more, and he was fain to let her lie. she rolled her head from side to side, and raised her thin little hand vaguely toward it, with feverishly working fingers. dicky felt her head and she screamed again. there was a lump at the side, a hard, sharp lump; got from the stones of the roadway yesterday. and there was a curious quality, a rather fearful quality, in the little wails: uneasily suggestive of the screams of sally green's victims. father was out, prowling. there was nothing eatable in the cupboard, and there seemed nothing at home worth staying for. he took another look at looey, but refrained from touching her, and went out. the opposite door on the landing was wide open, and he could hear nobody in the room. he had never seen this door open before, and now he ventured on a peep: for the tenants of the front room were strangers, late arrivals, and interlopers. their name was roper. roper was a pale cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times and out of work. he had a pale wife, disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, her exceeding use of soap and water, her aloofness from gossip. she had a deadly pale baby; also there was a pale hunchbacked boy of near dicky's age. collectively the ropers were disliked as strangers: because they furnished their own room, and in an obnoxiously complete style; because roper did not drink, nor brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything all day but look for work; because all these things were a matter of scandalous arrogance, impudently subversive of jago custom and precedent. mrs perrott was bad enough, but such people as these!... dicky had never before seen quite such a room as this. everything was so clean: the floor, the windows, the bed-clothes. also there was a strip of old carpet on the floor. there were two perfectly sound chairs; and two pink glass vases on the mantel-piece; and a clock. nobody was in the room, and dicky took a step farther. the clock attracted him again. it was a small, cheap, nickel-plated, cylindrical thing, of american make, and it reminded him at once of the bishop's watch. it was not gold, certainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and it could go--it was going. dicky stepped back and glanced at the landing. then he darted into the room, whipped the clock under the breast of the big jacket, and went for the stairs. half way down he met the pale hunchback ascending. left at home alone, he had been standing in the front doorway. he saw dicky's haste, saw also the suspicious bulge under his jacket, and straightway seized dicky's arm. 'where 'a' you bin?' he asked sharply. 'bin in our room? what you got there?' 'nothin' o' yours, 'ump. git out o' that!' dicky pushed him aside. 'if you don't le' go i'll corpse ye!' but one arm and hand was occupied with the bulge, and the other was for the moment unequal to the work of driving off the assailant. the two children wrangled and struggled downstairs, through the doorway and into the street: the hunchback weak, but infuriate, buffeting, biting and whimpering; dicky infuriate too, but alert for a chance to break away and run. so they scrambled together across the street, dicky dragging away from the house at every step; and just at the corner of luck row, getting his fore-arm across the other's face, he back-heeled him, and the little hunchback fell heavily, and lay breathless and sobbing, while dicky scampered through luck row and round the corner into meakin street. mr weech was busier now, for there were customers. but dicky and his bulge he saw ere they were well over the threshold. 'ah yus, dicky,' he said, coming to meet him. 'i was expectin' you. come in- _in the swe-e-et by an' by, we shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er!_ come in 'ere.' and still humming his hymn, he led dicky into the shop parlour. here dicky produced the clock, which mr weech surveyed with no great approval. 'you'll 'ave to try an' do better than this, you know,' he said. 'but any'ow 'ere it is, sich as it is. it about clears auf wot you owe, i reckon. want some dinner?' this was a fact, and dicky admitted it. 'awright- _in the swe-e-e-t by an' by_,-come out an' set down. i'll bring you somethink 'ot.' this proved to be a very salt bloater, a cup of the usual muddy coffee, tasting of burnt toast, and a bit of bread: afterwards supplemented by a slice of cake. this to dicky was a banquet. moreover, there was the adult dignity of taking your dinner in a coffee-shop, which dicky supported indomitably now that he began to feel at ease in mr weech's: leaning back in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking about at the walls with the grocers' almanacks hanging thereto, and the sunday school anniversary bills of past date, gathered from afar to signalise the elevated morals of the establishment. 'done?' queried mr weech in his ear. 'awright, don't 'ang about 'ere then. bloater's a penny, bread a 'a'peny, cawfy a penny, cake a penny. you'll owe thrippence a'peny now.' viii when dicky perrott and the small hunchback were hauling and struggling across the street, old fisher came down from the top-floor back, wherein he dwelt with his son bob, bob's wife and two sisters, and five children: an apartment in no way so clean as the united efforts of ten people might be expected to have made it. old fisher, on whose grimy face the wrinkles were deposits of mud, stopped at the open door on the first floor, and, as dicky had done, he took a peep. perplexed at the monstrous absence of dirt, and encouraged by the stillness, old fisher also ventured within. nobody was in charge, and old fisher, mentally pricing the pink glass vases at threepence, made for a small chest in the corner of the room, and lifted the lid. within lay many of roper's tools, from among which he had that morning taken such as he might want on an emergent call to work, to carry as he tramped curtain road. clearly these were the most valuable things in the place; and, slipping a few small articles into his pockets, old fisher took a good double handful of the larger, and tramped upstairs with them. presently he returned with bob's missis, and together they started with more. as they emerged, however, there on the landing stood the little hunchback, sobbing and smearing his face with his sleeve. at sight of this new pillage he burst into sharp wails, standing impotent on the landing, his streaming eyes following the man and woman ascending before him. old fisher, behind, stumped the stairs with a clumsy affectation of absent-mindedness; the woman, in front, looked down, merely indifferent. scarce were they vanished above, however, when the little hunchback heard his father and mother on the lower stairs. ix dicky came moodily back from his dinner at mr weech's, plunged in mystified computation: starting with a debt of twopence, he had paid mr weech an excellent clock--a luxurious article in dicky's eyes--had eaten a bloater, and had emerged from the transaction owing threepence halfpenny. of what such a clock cost he had no notion, though he felt it must be some inconceivable sum. as mr weech put it, the adjustment of accounts would seem to be quite correct; but the broad fact that all had ended in increasing his debt by three half-pence, remained and perplexed him. he remembered having seen such clocks in a shop in norton folgate. to ask the price, in person, were but to be chased out of the shop; but they were probably ticketed, and perhaps he might ask some bystander to read the ticket. this brought the reflection that, after all, reading was a useful accomplishment on occasion: though a matter of too much time and trouble to be worth while. dicky had never been to school; for the elementary education act ran in the jago no more than any other act of parliament. there was a board school, truly, away out of the jago bounds, by the corner of honey lane, where children might go free, and where some few jago children did go now and again, when boots were to be given away, or when tickets were to be had, for tea, or soup, or the like. but most parents were of josh perrott's opinion: that school-going was a practice best never begun; for then the child was never heard of, and there was no chance of inquiries or such trouble. not that any such inquiries were common in the jago, or led to anything. meantime dicky, minded to know if his adventure had made any stir in the house, carried his way deviously toward home. working through the parts beyond jago row, he fetched round into honey lane, so coming at new jago street from the farther side. choosing one of the houses whose backs gave on jago court, he slipped through the passage, and so, by the back yard, crawled through the broken fence into the court. left and right were the fronts of houses, four a side. before him, to the right of the narrow archway leading to old jago street, was the window of his own home. he gained the back yard quietly, and at the kitchen door met tommy rann. 'come on,' called tommy. ''ere's a barney! they're a-pitchin' into them noo 'uns--roperses. roperses sez fisherses is sneaked their things. they _are_ a-gittin' of it!' from the stairs, indeed, came shouts and curses, bumps and sobs and cries. the first landing and half the stairs were full of people, men and women, ranns and learys together. when ranns joined learys it was an ill time for them they marched against; and never were they so ready and so anxious to combine as after a fight between themselves, were but some common object of attack available. here it was. here were these pestilent outsiders, the ropers, assailing the reputation of the neighbourhood by complaining of being robbed. as though their mere presence in the jago, with their furniture and their superiority, were not obnoxious enough: they must turn about and call their neighbours thieves! they had been tolerated too long already. they should now be given something for themselves, and have some of their exasperating respectability knocked off; and if, in the confusion, their portable articles of furniture and bed-clothing found their way into more deserving hands--why, serve them right. the requisite volleys of preliminary abuse having been discharged, more active operations began under cover of fresh volleys. dicky, with tommy rann behind him, struggled up the stairs among legs and skirts, and saw that the ropers, the man flushed, but the woman paler than ever, were striving to shut their door. within, the hunchback and the baby cried, and without, those on the landing, skidding the door with their feet, pushed inward, and now began to strike and maul. somebody seized the man's wrist, and norah walsh got the woman by the hair and dragged her head down. in a peep through the scuffle dicky saw her face, ashen and sweat-beaded, in the jamb of the door, and saw norah walsh's red fist beat into it twice. then somebody came striding up the stairs, and dicky was pushed farther back. over the shoulders of those about him, dicky saw a tall hat, and then the head beneath it. it was the stranger he had seen in edge lane--the parson: active and resolute. norah walsh he took by the shoulder, and flung back among the others, and as he turned on him, the man who held roper's wrist released it and backed off. 'what is this?' demanded the new-comer, stern and hard of face. 'what is all this?' he bent his frown on one and another about him, and, as he did it, some shrank uneasily, and on the faces of others fell the blank lack of expression that was wont to meet police inquiries in the jago. dicky looked to see this man beaten down, kicked and stripped. but a well-dressed stranger was so new a thing in the jago, this one had dropped among them so suddenly, and he had withal so bold a confidence, that the jagos stood irresolute. a toff was not a person to be attacked without due consideration. after such a person there were apt to be inquiries, with money to back them, and vengeance sharp and certain: the thing, indeed, was commonly thought too risky. and this man, so unflinchingly confident, must needs have reason for it. he might have the police at instant call--they might be back in the jago at the moment. and he flung them back, commanded them, cowed them with his hard, intelligent eyes, like a tamer among beasts. 'understand this, now,' he went on, with a sharp tap of his stick on the floor. 'this is a sort of thing i will _not_ tolerate in my parish--in this parish: nor in any other place where i may meet it. go away, and try to be ashamed of yourselves--go. go, all of you, i say, to your own homes: i shall come there and talk to you again soon. go along, sam cash--you've a broken head already, i see. take it away: i shall come and see you too.' those on the stairs had melted away like punished school-children. most of the others, after a moment of averted face and muttered justification one to another, were dragging their feet, each with a hang-dog pretence of sauntering airily off from some sight no longer interesting. sam cash, who had already seen the stranger in the street, and was thus perhaps a trifle less startled than the others at his advent, stood, however, with some assumption of virtuous impudence, till amazed by sudden address in his own name: whereat, clean discomfited, he ignominiously turned tail and sneaked downstairs in meaner case than the rest. how should this strange parson know him, and know his name? plainly he must be connected with the police. he had brought out the name as pat as you please. so argued sam cash with his fellows in the outer street: never recalling that jerry gullen had called aloud to him by name, when first he observed the parson in the street; had called to him, indeed, to haste to the bashing of the ropers; and thus had first given the stranger notice of the proceeding. but it was the way of the jago that its mean cunning saw a mystery and a terror where simple intelligence saw there was none. as the crowd began to break up, dicky pushed his own door a little open behind him, and there stood on his own ground, as the others cleared off; and the hunchback ventured a peep from behind his swooning mother. 'there y'are, that's 'im!' he shouted, pointing at dicky. ''e begun it! 'e took the clock!' dicky instantly dropped behind his door, and shut it fast. the invaders had all gone--the fishers had made upstairs in the beginning--before the parson turned and entered the ropers' room. in five minutes he emerged and strode upstairs: whence he returned, after a still shorter interval, herding before him old fisher and bob fisher's missis, sulky and reluctant, carrying tools. and thus it was that the reverend henry sturt first addressed his parishioners. the parish, besides the jago, comprised meakin street and some small way beyond, and it was to this less savage district that his predecessor had confined his attention: preaching every sunday in a stable, in an alley behind a disused shop, and distributing loaves and sixpences to the old women who attended regularly on that account. for to go into the jago were for him mere wasted effort. and so, indeed, the matter had been since the parish came into being. x when dicky retreated from the landing and shut the door behind him, he slipped the bolt, a strong one, put there by josh perrott himself, possibly as an accessory to escape by the window in some possible desperate pass. for a little he listened, but no sound hinted of attack from without, and he turned to his mother. josh perrott had been out since early morning, and dicky, too, had done no more than look in for a moment in search of dinner. hannah perrott, grown tired of self commiseration, felt herself neglected and aggrieved--slighted in her state of invalid privilege. so she transferred some of her pity from her sore neck to her desolate condition as misprized wife and mother, and the better to feel it, proceeded to martyrise herself, with melancholy pleasure, by a nerveless show of 'setting to rights' in the room--a domestic novelty, perfunctory as it was. looey, still restless and weeping, she left on the bed, for, being neglected herself, it was not her mood to tend the baby; she would aggravate the relish of her sorrows in her own way. besides, looey had been given something to eat a long time ago, and had not eaten it yet: with her there was nothing else to do. so that now, as she dragged a rag along the grease-strewn mantel-piece, mrs perrott greeted dicky:--'there y'are, dicky, comin' 'inderin' 'ere jest when i'm a-puttin' things to rights.' and she sighed with the weight of another grievance. looey lay on her back, faintly and vainly struggling to turn her fearful little face from the light. clutched in her little fist was the unclean stump of bread she had held for hours. dicky plucked a soft piece and essayed to feed her with it, but the dry little mouth rejected the morsel, and the head turned feverishly from side to side to the sound of that novel cry. she was hot wherever dicky touched her, and presently he said:--'mother, i b'lieve looey's queer. i think she wants some med'cine.' his mother shook her head peevishly. 'o, you an' looey's a noosance,' she said. 'a lot you care about _me_ bein' queer, you an' yer father too, leavin' me all alone like this, an' me feelin' ready to drop, an' got the room to do an' all. i wish you'd go away an' stop 'inderin' of me like this.' dicky took but another look at looey, and then slouched out. the landing was clear, and the ropers' door was shut. he wondered what had become of the stranger with the tall hat--whether he was in the ropers' room or not. the thought hurried him, for he feared to have that stranger asking him questions about the clock. he got out into the street, thoughtful. he had some compunctions in the matter of that clock, now. not that he could in any reasonable way blame himself. there the clock had stood at his mercy, and by all jago custom and ethic it was his if only he could get clear away with it. this he had done, and he had no more concern in the business, strictly speaking. nevertheless, since he had seen the woman's face in the jamb of the door, he felt a sort of pity for her--that she should have lost her clock. no doubt she had enjoyed its possession, as, indeed, he would have enjoyed it himself, had he not had to take it instantly to mr weech. and his fancy wandered off in meditation of what he would do with a clock of his own. to begin with, of course, he would open it, and discover the secret of its works and its ticking: perhaps thereby discovering how to make a clock himself. also he would frequently wind it up, and he would show the inside to looey, in confidence. it would stand on the mantel-piece, and raise the social position of the family. people would come respectfully to ask the time, and he would tell them, with an air. yes, certainly a clock must stand eminent among the things he would buy, when he had plenty of money. he must look out for more clicks: the one way to riches. as to the ropers, again. bad it must be, indeed, to be deprived suddenly of a clock, after long experience of the joys it brought; and norah walsh had punched the woman in the face, and clawed her hair, and the woman could not fight. dicky was sorry for her, and straightway resolved to give her another clock, or, if not a clock, something that would please her as much. he had acquired a clock in the morning; why not another in the afternoon? failing a clock, he would try for something else, and the ropers should have it. the resolve gave dicky a virtuous exaltation of spirit, the reward of the philanthropist. again he began the prowl after likely plunder that was to be his daily industry. meakin street he did not try. the chandlers' and the cook-shops held nothing that might be counted a consolatory equivalent for a clock. through the 'posties' he reached shoreditch high street at once, and started. this time his movements aroused less suspicion. in the morning he had no particular prize in view, and loitered at every shop, waiting his chance at anything portable. now, with a more definite object, he made his promenade easily, but without stopping or lounging by shop-fronts. the thing, whatsoever it might be, must be small, handsome, and of an interesting character--at least as interesting as the clock was. it must be small, not merely for facility of concealment and removal--though these were main considerations--but because stealthy presentation were then the easier. it would have pleased dicky to hand over his gift openly, and to bask in the thanks and the consideration it would procure. but he had been accused of stealing the clock, and an open gift would savour of admission and peace-offering, whereas in that matter stark denial was his plain course. a roll of print stuff would not do; apples would not do; and fish was wide of his purpose. up one side and down the other side of high street he walked, his eyes instant for suggestion and opportunity. but all in vain. nobody exposed clocks out of doors, and of those within not one but an attempt on it were simple madness. and of the things less desperate of access nothing was proper to the occasion: all were too large, too cheap, or too uninteresting. oddly, dicky feared failure more than had he been hunting for himself. he tried farther south, in norton folgate. there was a shop of cheap second-hand miscellanies: saddles, razors, straps, dumbbells, pistols, boxing gloves, trunks, bags, and billiard-balls. many of the things hung about the door-posts in bunches, and within all was black, as in a cave. at one door-post was a pistol. nothing could be more interesting than a pistol--indeed it was altogether a better possession than a clock; and it was a small, handy sort of thing. probably the ropers would be delighted with a pistol. he stood and regarded it with much interest. there were difficulties. in the first place it was beyond his reach; and in the second, it hung by the trigger-guard on a stout cord. just then, glancing within the shop, he perceived a pair of fiery eyes regarding him, panther-like, from the inner gloom; and he hastily resumed his walk, as the jew shop-keeper reached the door, and watched him safely away. now he came to bishopsgate street, and here at last he chose the gift. it was at a toy-shop: a fine, flaming toy-shop, with carts, dolls, and hoops dangling above, and wooden horses standing below, guarding two baskets by the door. one contained a mixed assortment of tops, whips, boats, and woolly dogs; the other was lavishly filled with shining, round metal boxes, nobly decorated with coloured pictures, each box with a little cranked handle. as he looked, a tune, delightfully tinkled on some instrument, was heard from within the shop. dicky peeped. there was a lady, with a little girl at her side who was looking eagerly at just such a shining, round box in the saleswoman's hands, and it was from that box, as the saleswoman turned the handle, that the tune came. dicky was enchanted. this--this was the thing, beyond debate: a pretty little box that would play music whenever you turned a handle. this was a thing worth any fifty clocks. indeed it was almost as good as a regular barrel-organ, the first thing he would buy if he were rich. there was a shop-boy in charge of the goods outside the window, and his eyes were on dicky. so dicky whistled absently, and strolled carelessly along. he swung behind a large waggon, crossed the road, and sought a convenient doorstep; for his mind was made up, and his business was now to sit down before the toy-shop, and wait his opportunity. a shop had been boarded up after a fire, and from its doorstep one could command a perfect view of the toy-shop across the broad thoroughfare with its crowded traffic--could sit, moreover, safe from interference. here he took his seat, secure from the notice of the guardian shop-boy, whose attention was given to passengers on his own side. the little girl, gripping the new toy in her hand, came out at her mother's side and trotted off. for a moment dicky reflected that the box could be easily snatched. but after all the little girl had but one: whereas the shopwoman had many, and at best could play on no more than one at a time. he resumed his watch of the shop-boy, confident that sooner or later a chance would come. a woman stopped to ask the price of something, and dicky had half crossed the road ere the boy had begun to answer. but the answer was short, and the boy's attention was released too soon. at last the shopwoman called the boy within, and dicky darted across--not directly, but so as to arrive invisibly at the side next the basket of music boxes. a quick glance behind him, a snatch at the box with the reddest picture, and a dash into the traffic did it. the dash would not have been called for but for the sudden re-appearance of the shop-boy ere the box had vanished amid the intricacies of dicky's jacket. dicky was fast, but the boy was little slower, and was, moreover, bigger, and stronger on his legs; and dicky reached the other pavement and turned the next corner into widegate street, the pursuer scarce ten yards behind. it was now that he first experienced 'hot beef'--which is the jago idiom denoting the plight of one harried by the cry 'stop thief.' down widegate street, across sandys row and into raven row he ran his best, clutching the hem of his jacket and the music box that lay within. crossing sandys row a loafing lad shouldered against the shop-boy, and dicky was grateful, for he made it a gain of several yards. but others had joined in the hunt, and dicky for the first time began to fear. this was a bad day--twice already he had been chased; and now--it was bad. he thought little more, for a stunning fear fell upon him: the fear of the hunted, that calculates nothing, and is measured by no apprehension of consequences. he remembered that he must avoid spitalfields market, full of men who would stop him; and he knew that in many places where a man would be befriended many would make a virtue of stopping a boy. to the right along bell lane he made an agonised burst of speed, and for a while he saw not nor remembered anything; heard no more than dreadful shouts drawing nearer his shoulders, felt only the fear. but he could not last. quick enough when fresh, he was tiny and ill fed, and now he felt his legs trembling and his wind going. something seemed to beat on the back of his head, till he wondered madly if it were the shop-boy with a stick. he turned corners, and chose his way by mere instinct, ashen-faced, staring, open-mouthed. how soon would he give in, and drop? a street more--half a street--ten yards? rolling and tripping, he turned one last corner and almost fell against a vast, fat, unkempt woman whose clothes slid from her shoulders. ''ere y' are, boy,' said the woman, and flung him by the shoulder through the doorway before which she stood. he was saved at his extremity, for he could never have reached the street's end. the woman who had done it (probably she had boys of her own on the crook) filled the entrance with her frowsy bulk, and the chase straggled past. dicky caught the stair-post for a moment's support, and then staggered out at the back of the house. he gasped, he panted, things danced blue before him, but still he clutched his jacket hem and the music box lying within. the back door gave on a cobble-paved court, with other doors, two coster's barrows, and a few dusty fowls. dicky sat on a step where a door was shut, and rested his head against the frame. the beating in his head grew slower and lighter, and presently he could breathe with no fear of choking. he rose and moved off, still panting, and feeble in the legs. the court ended in an arched passage, through which he gained the street beyond. here he had but to turn to the left, and he was in brick lane, and thence all was clear to the old jago. regaining his breath and his confidence as he went, he bethought him of the jago row retreat, where he might examine his prize at leisure, embowered amid trucks and barrows. thither he pushed his way, and soon, in the shade of the upturned barrow, he brought out the music box. bright and shiny, it had taken no damage in the flight, though on his hands he found scratches, and on his shins bruises, got he knew not how. on the top of the box was the picture of a rosy little boy in crimson presenting a scarlet nosegay to a rosy little girl in pink, while a red brick mansion filled the distance and solidified the composition. the brilliant hoop that made the sides (silver, dicky was convinced) was stamped in patterns, and the little brass handle was an irresistible temptation. dicky climbed a truck, and looked about him, peeping from beside the loose fence-plank. then, seeing nobody very near, he muffled the box as well as he could in his jacket, and turned the handle. this was indeed worth all the trouble. _gently does the trick_ was the tune, and dicky, with his head aside and his ear on the bunch of jacket that covered the box, listened: his lips parted, his eyes seeking illimitable space. he played the tune through, and played it again, and then growing reckless, played it with the box unmuffled, till he was startled by a bang on the fence from without. it was but a passing boy with a stick, but dicky was sufficiently disturbed to abandon his quarters and take his music elsewhere. what he longed to do was to take it home and play it to looey, but that was out of the question: he remembered the watch. but there was jerry's gullen's canary, and him dicky sought and found. canary blinked solemnly when the resplendent box was flashed in his eyes, and set his ears back and forward as, muffled again in dicky's jacket, it tinkled out its tune. tommy rann should not see it, lest he prevail over its beneficent dedication to the ropers. truly, as it was, dicky's resolution was hard to abide by. the thing acquired at such a cost of patience, address, hard flight, and deadly fear was surely his by right--as surely, quite, as the clock had been. and such a thing he might never touch again. but he put by the temptation manfully, and came out by jerry gullen's front door. he would look no more on the music box, beautiful as it was: he would convey it to the ropers before temptation came again. it was not easy to devise likely means. their door was shut fast, of course. for a little while he favoured the plan of setting the box against the threshold, knocking, and running off. but an opportunity might arise of doing the thing in a way to give him some glimpse of the ropers' delight, an indulgence he felt entitled to. so he waited a little, listened a little, and at last came out into the street, and loafed. it was near six o'clock, and a smell of bloater hung about jerry gullen's door and window; under the raised sash jerry gullen, close-cropped and foxy of face, smoked his pipe, sprawled his elbows, and contemplated the world. dicky, with the music box stowed out of sight, looked as blank of design and as destitute of possession as he could manage; for there were loafers near mother gapp's, loafers at the luck row corner--at every corner--and loafers by the 'posties,' all laggard of limb and alert of eye. he had just seen a child, going with an empty beer can, thrown down, robbed of his coppers and a poor old top, and kicked away in helpless tears; and the incident was commonplace enough, or many would have lacked pocket-money. whosoever was too young, too old, or too weak to fight for it must keep what he had well hidden, in the jago. down the street came billy leary, big, flushed and limping, and hanging to a smaller man by a fistful of his coat on the shoulder. dicky knew the small man for a good toy-getter--(which = watch stealer)--and judged he had had a good click, the proceeds whereof billy leary was battening upon in beershops. for billy leary rarely condescended to anything less honourable than bashing, and had not yet fallen so low as to go about stealing for himself. his missis brought many to the cosh, and his chief necessity--another drink--he merely demanded of the nearest person with the money to buy it, on pain of bashing. or he walked into the nearest public-house, selected the fullest pot, and spat in it: a ceremony that deprived the purchaser of further interest in the beer, and left it at his own disposal. there were others, both ranns and learys, who pursued a similar way of life; but billy leary was biggest among them--big men not being common in the jago--and rarely came to a difficulty: as, however, he did once come, having invaded the pot of a stranger, who turned out to be a mile end pugilist exploring shoreditch. it was not well for any jago who had made a click to have billy leary know of it; for then the clicker was apt to be sought out, clung to, and sucked dry; possibly bashed as well, when nothing more was left, if billy leary were still but sober enough for the work. dicky gazed after the man with interest. it was he whom his father was to fight in a week or so--perhaps in a few days: on the first sunday, indeed, that leary should be deemed fit enough. how much of the limp was due to yesterday's disaster and how much to to-day's beer, dicky could not judge. but there seemed little reason to look for a long delay before the fight. as dicky turned away a man pushed a large truck round the corner from edge lane, and on the footpath beside it walked the parson, calm as ever, with black clothes and tall hat, whole and unsoiled. he had made himself known in the jago in the course of that afternoon. he had traversed it from end to end, street by street and alley by alley. his self-possession, his readiness, his unbending firmness, abashed and perplexed the jagos, and his appearance just as the police had left could but convince them that he must have some mysterious and potent connection with the force. he had attempted very little in the way of domiciliary visiting, being content for the time to see his parish, and speak here a word and there another with his parishioners. an encounter with kiddo cook did as much as anything toward securing him a proper deference. in his second walk through old jago street, as he neared the feathers, he was aware of a bunch of grinning faces pressed against the bar window, and as he came abreast, forth stepped kiddo cook from the door, impudently affable, smirking and ducking with mock obsequiousness, and offering a quart pot. 'an' 'ow jer find jerself, sir?' he asked, with pantomime cordiality. 'hof'ly shockin' these 'ere lower classes, ain't they? er--yus; disgustin', weally. er--might i--er--prepose--er--a little refreshment? ellow me.' the parson, grimly impassive, heard him through, took the pot, and instantly jerking it upward, shot the beer, a single splash, into kiddo's face. 'there are things i must teach you, i see, my man,' he said, without moving a muscle, except to return the pot. kiddo cook, coughing, drenched and confounded, took the pot instinctively and backed to mother gapp's door, while the bunch of faces at the bar window tossed and rolled in a joyous ecstasy: the ghost whereof presently struggled painfully among kiddo's own dripping features, as he realised the completeness of his defeat, and the expedience of a patient grin. the parson went calmly on. before this, indeed when he left the ropers' room, and just after dicky had started out, he had looked in at the perrotts' quarters to speak about the clock. but plainly no clock was there, and mrs perrott's flaccid indignation at the suggestion, and her unmistakable ignorance of the affair, decided him to carry the matter no further, at any rate for the present. moreover, the little hunchback's tale was inconclusive. he had seen no clock in dicky's possession--had but met him on the stairs with a bulging jacket. the thing might be suspicious, but the new parson knew better than to peril his influence by charging where he could not convict. so he duly commiserated hannah perrott's troubles, suggested that the baby seemed unwell and had better be taken to a doctor, and went his way about the jago. now he stopped the truck by dicky's front door and mounted to the ropers' room. for he had seen that the jago was no place for them now, and had himself found them a suitable room away by dove lane. and so, emboldened by his company, the ropers came forth, and with the help of the man who had brought the truck, carried down the pieces of their bedstead, a bundle of bedding, the two chairs, the pink vases, and the strip of old carpet, and piled them on the truck with the few more things that were theirs. dicky, with his hand on the music box in the lining of his jacket, sauntered up by the tail of the truck, and, waiting his chance, plunged his gift under the bundle of bedding, and left it there. but the little hunchback's sharp eyes were jealously on him, and 'look there!' he squealed, ''e put 'is 'and in the truck an' took somethink!' 'ye lie!' answered dicky, indignant and hurt, but cautiously backing off; 'i ain't got nothink.' he spread his hands and opened his jacket in proof. 'think i got yer bloomin' bedstead?' he had nothing, it was plain. in fact, at the tail of the truck there was nothing he could easily have moved at all, certainly nothing he could have concealed. so the rest of the little removal was hurried, for heads were now at windows, the loafers began to draw about the truck, and trouble might break out at any moment: indeed, the ropers could never have ventured from their room but for the general uneasy awe of the parson. for nothing was so dangerous in the jago as to impugn its honesty. to rob another was reasonable and legitimate, and to avoid being robbed, so far as might be, was natural and proper. but to accuse anybody of a theft was unsportsmanlike, a foul outrage, a shameful abuse, a thing unpardonable. you might rob a man, bash a man, even kill a man; but to 'take away his character'--even when he had none--was to draw down the execrations of the whole jago; while to assail the pure fame of the place--to 'give the street a bad name'--this was to bring the jago howling and bashing about your ears. the truck moved off at last, amid murmurings, mutterings, and grunts from the onlookers. the man of the truck pulled, roper shoved behind, and his wife, with her threadbare decency and her meagre, bruised face, carried the baby, while the hunchbacked boy went by her side. all this under convoy of the reverend henry sturt. a little distance gave more confidence to a few, and, when the group had reached within a score of yards of edge lane, there came a hoot or two, a 'yah!' and other less spellable sounds, expressive of contempt and defiance. roper glanced back nervously, but the rest held on their way regardless. then came a brickbat, which missed the woman by very little and struck the truck wheel. at this the parson stopped and turned on his heel, and cocko harnwell, the flinger, drove his hands into his breeches pockets and affected an interest in mother gapp's window; till, perceiving the parson's eyes directed sternly upon him, and the parson's stick rising to point at him, he ingloriously turned tail and scuttled into jago court. and so the ropers left the jago. dove lane was but a stone's-throw ahead when some of the load shifted, and the truck was stopped to set the matter right. the chest was pushed back, and the bedding was lifted to put against it, and so the musical box came to light. roper picked it up and held it before the vicar's eyes. 'look at that, sir,' he said. 'you'll witness i know nothing of it, won't you? it ain't mine, an' i never saw it before. it's bin put in for spite to put a theft on us. when they come for it you'll bear me out, sir, won't you? that was the perrott boy as was put up to do that, i'll be bound. when he was behind the truck.' but nobody came for dicky's gift, and in the jago twilight dicky vainly struggled to whistle the half-remembered tune, and to persuade himself that he was not sorry that the box was gone. xi josh perrott reached home late for tea but in good humour. he had spent most of the day at the bag of nails, dancing attendance on the high mobsmen. those of the high mob were the flourishing practitioners in burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of such dippers--such pick-pockets--as could dress well, welshers, and snides-men. these, the grandees of rascality, lived in places far from the jago, and some drove in gigs and pony traps. but they found the bag of nails a convenient and secluded exchange and house of call, and there they met, made appointments, designed villainies, and tossed for sovereigns: deeply reverenced by the admiring jagos, among whom no ambition flourished but this--to become also of these resplendent ones. it was of these that old beveridge had spoken one day to dicky, in language the child but half understood. the old man sat on a curb in view of the bag of nails, and smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. he hauled dicky to his side, and, pointing with his pipe, said:--'see that man with the furs?' 'what?' dicky replied. 'mean 'im in the ice-cream coat, smokin' a cigar? yus.' 'and the other with the brimmy tall hat, and the red face, and the umbrella?' 'yus.' 'what are they?' ''igh mob. 'ooks. toffs.' 'right. now, dicky perrott, you jago whelp, look at them--look hard. some day, if you're clever--cleverer than anyone in the jago now--if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough--one of a thousand--maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. there it is--that's your aim in life--there's your pattern. learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps--' he waved his hand toward the bag of nails. 'it's the best the world has for you, for the jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. so do your devilmost, or god help you, dicky perrott--though he wont: for the jago's got you!' old beveridge had eccentric talk and manners, and the jago regarded him as a trifle 'balmy,' though anything but a fool. so that dicky troubled little to sift the meaning of what he said. josh perrott's mission among the high mob had been to discover some mobsman who might be disposed to back him in the fight with billy leary. for though a private feud was the first cause of the turn-up, still business must never be neglected, and a feud or anything else that could produce money must be made to produce it, and when a fight of exceptional merit is placed before spectators, it is but fair that they should pay for their diversion. but few high mobsmen were at the bag of nails that day. sunday was the day of the chief gatherings of the high mob: sunday the market-day, so to speak, of the jago, when such rent as was due weekly was paid (most of the jago rents were paid daily and nightly) and other accounts were settled or fought out. moreover, the high mob were perhaps a trifle shy of the jago at the time of a faction fight; and one was but just over, and that cut short at a third of the usual span of days. so that josh waited long and touted vainly, till a patron arrived who knew him of old; who had employed him, indeed, as 'minder'--which means a protector or a bully, as you please to regard it--on a racecourse adventure involving bodily risk. on this occasion josh had earned his wages with hard knocks given and taken, and his employer had conceived a high and thankful opinion of his capacity. wherefore he listened now to the tale of the coming fight, and agreed to provide something in the way of stakes, and to put something on for josh himself: looking for his own profit to the bets he might make at favourable odds with his friends. for billy leary was notorious as being near prime ruffian of the jago, while josh's reputation was neither so evil nor so wide. and so it was settled, and josh came pleased to his tea; for assuredly billy leary would have no difficulty in finding another notable of the high mob to cover the stakes. dicky was at home, sitting by looey on the bed; and when he called his father it seemed pretty plain to josh that the baby was out of sorts. 'she's rum about the eyes,' he said to his wife. 'blimy if she don't look as though she was goin' to squint.' josh was never particularly solicitous as to the children, but he saw that they were fed and clothed--perhaps by mere force of the habit of his more reputable days of plastering. he had brought home tripe, rolled in paper, and stuffed into his coat pocket, to make a supper on the strength of the day's stroke of business. when this tripe was boiled, he and dicky essayed to drive morsels into looey's mouth, and to wash them down with beer; but to no end but choking rejection. whereat josh decided that she must go to the dispensary in the morning. and in the morning he took her, with dicky at his heels; for not only did his wife still nurse her neck, but in truth she feared to venture abroad. the dispensary was no charitable institution, but a shop so labelled in meakin street, one of half a dozen such kept by a medical man who lived away from them, and bothered himself as little about them as was consistent with banking the takings and signing the death-certificates. a needy young student, whose sole qualification was cheapness, was set to do the business of each place, and the uniform price for advice and medicine was sixpence. but there was a deal of professional character in the blackened and gilt lettered front windows, and the sixpences came by hundreds. for hospital letters but rarely came meakin street way. such as did were mostly in the hands of tradesmen, who subscribed for the purpose of getting them, and gave them to their best customers, as was proper and business-like. and so the dispensary flourished, and the needy young student grew shifty and callous, and no doubt there were occasional faith-cures. indeed, cures of simple science were not at all impossible. for there was always a good supply of two drugs in the place--turkey rhubarb and sulphuric acid: both very useful, both very cheap, and both going very far in varied preparation, properly handled. an ounce or two of sulphuric acid, for instance, costing something fractional, dilutes with water into many gallons of physic. excellent medicines they made too, and balanced each other very well by reason of their opposite effects. but indeed they were not all, for sometimes there were two or three other drugs in hand, interfering, perhaps troublesomely, with the simple division of therapeutics into the two provinces of rhubarb and sulphuric acid. business was brisk at the dispensary: several were waiting, and medicine and advice were going at the rate of two minutes for sixpence. looey's case was not so clear as most of the others: she could not describe its symptoms succinctly, as 'a pain here,' or 'a tight feeling there.' she did but lie heavily, staring blankly upward (she did not mind the light now), with the little cast in her eyes, and repeat her odd little wail; and dicky and his father could tell very little. the young student had a passing thought that he might have known a trifle more of the matter if he had had time to turn up ross on nerve and brain troubles--were such a proceeding consistent with the dignity of the dispensary; but straightway assigning the case to the rhubarb province, made up a powder, ordered josh to keep the baby quiet, and pitched his sixpence among the others, well within the two minutes. and faith in the dispensary was strengthened, for indeed looey seemed a little better after the powder; and she was fed with spoonfuls of a fluid bought at a chandler's shop, and called milk. xii 'dicky perrott, come 'ere,' said mr aaron weech in a voice of sad rebuke, a few days later. 'come 'ere, dicky perrott.' he shook his head solemnly as he stooped. dicky slouched up. 'what was that you found the other day an' didn't bring to me?' 'nuffin'.' dicky withdrew a step. 'it's no good you a-tellin' me that, dicky perrott, when i know better. you know very well you can't pervent me knowin'.' his little eyes searched dicky's face, and dicky sulkily shifted his own gaze. 'you're a wicked, ungrateful young 'ound, an' i've a good mind to tell a p'liceman to find out where you got that clock. come 'ere now--don't you try runnin' away. wot! after me a-takin' you in when you was 'ungry, an' givin' you cawfy an' cake, an' good advice like a father, an' a bloater an' all, an' you owin' me thrippence a'peny besides, then you goes an'--an' takes yer findin's somewhere else!' 'i never!' protested dicky stoutly. but mr weech's cunning, equal to a shrewd guess that since his last visit dicky had probably had another 'find,' and quick to detect a lie, was slack to perceive a truth. 'now don't you go an' add on a wicked lie to yer sinful ungratefulness, wotever you do,' he said, severely. 'that's wuss, an' i alwis know. doncher know the little 'ymn?- an' 'im as does one fault at fust an' lies to 'ide it, makes it two. it's bad enough to be ungrateful to me as is bin so kind to you, an' it's wuss to break the fust commandment. if the bloater don't inflooence you, the 'oly 'ymn ought. 'ow would you like me to go an' ask yer father for that thrippence a'peny you owe me? that's wot i'll 'ave to do if you don't mind.' dicky would not have liked it at all, as his frightened face testified. 'then find somethink an' pay it at once, an' then i won't. i won't be 'ard on you, if you'll be a good boy. but don't git playin' no more tricks--'cos i'll know all about 'em. now go an' find somethink quick.' and dicky went. xiii ten days after his first tour of the old jago, the reverend henry sturt first preached in the parish church made of a stable, in an alley behind meakin street, but few yards away, though beyond sight and sound of the jago. there, that sunday morning was a morning of importance, a time of excitement, for the fight between billy leary and josh perrott was to come off in jago court. the assurance that there was money in the thing was a sovereign liniment for billy leary's bruises--for they were but bruises--and he hastened to come by that money, lest it melt by caprice of the backers, or the backers themselves fall at unlucky odds with the police. he made little of josh perrott, his hardness and known fighting power notwithstanding. for was there not full a stone and a half between their weights? and had billy not four or five inches the better in height and a commensurate advantage in reach? and billy leary's own hardness and fighting power were well proved enough. it was past eleven o'clock. the weekly rents--for the week forthcoming--had been extracted, or partly extracted, or scuffled over. old poll rann, who had made money in sixty-five years of stall-farming and iniquity, had made the rounds of the six houses she rented, to turn out the tenants of the night who were disposed to linger. many had already stripped themselves to their rags at pitch-and-toss in jago court; and the game still went busily on in the crowded area and in overflow groups in old jago street; and men found themselves deprived, not merely of the money for that day's food and that night's lodging, but even of the last few pence set by to back a horse for tuesday's race. a little-regarded fight or two went on here and there as usual, and on kerbs and doorsteps sat women, hideous at all ages, filling the air with the rhetoric of the jago. presently down from edge lane and the 'posties' came the high mobsmen, swaggering in check suits and billycocks, gold chains and lumpy rings: stared at, envied, and here and there pointed out by name or exploit. 'him as done the sparks in from regent street for nine centuries o' quids'; 'him as done five stretch for a snide bank bill an' they never found the oof'; 'him as maced the bookies in france an' shot the nark in the boat'; and so forth. and the high mob being come, the fight was due. of course, a fight merely as a fight was no great matter of interest: the thing was too common. but there was money on this; and again, it was no common thing to find billy leary defied, still less to find him challenged. moreover, the thing had a rann and leary complexion, and it arose out of the battle of less than a fortnight back. so that josh perrott did not lack for partisans, though not a rann believed he could stand long before billy leary billy's cause, too, had lost some popularity because it had been reported that sally green, in hospital, had talked of 'summonsing' norah walsh in the matter of her mangled face: a scandalous device to overreach, a piece of foul practice repugnant to all proper feeling; more especially for such a distinguished jago as sally green--so well able to take care of herself. but all this was nothing as affecting the odds. they ruled at three to one on billy leary, with few takers, and went to four to one before the fight began. josh perrott had been strictly sober for a full week. and the family had lived better, for he had brought meat home each day. now he sat indifferently at the window of his room, and looked out at the crowd in jago court till such time as he might be wanted. he had not been out of the room that morning: he was saving his energy for billy leary. as for dicky, he had scarce slept for excitement. for days he had enjoyed consideration among his fellows on account of this fight. now he shook and quivered, and nothing relieved his agitation but violent exertion. so he rushed downstairs a hundred times to see if the high mob were coming, and back to report that they were not. at last he saw their overbearing checks, and tore upstairs, face before knees, with ''ere they are, father! 'ere they are! they're comin' down the street, father!' and danced frenzied about the room and the landing. presently jerry gullen and kiddo cook came, as seconds, to take josh out, and then dicky quieted a little externally, though he was bursting at the chest and throat, and his chin jolted his teeth together uncontrollably. josh dragged off his spotted coat and waistcoat and flung them on the bed, and then was helped out of his ill-mended blue shirt. he gave a hitch to his trousers-band, tightened his belt, and was ready. 'ta-ta, ol' gal,' he said to his wife, with a grin; 'back agin soon.' 'with a bob or two for ye,' added kiddo cook, grinning likewise. hannah perrott sat pale and wistful, with the baby on her knees. through the morning she had sat so, wretched and helpless, sometimes putting her face in her hands, sometimes breaking out hopelessly:--'don't, josh, don't--good gawd, josh, i wish you wouldn't!' or 'josh, josh, i wish i was dead!' josh had fought before, it was true, and more than once, but then she had learned of the matter afterward. this preparation and long waiting were another thing. once she had even exclaimed that she would go with him--though she meant nothing. now, as josh went out at the door, she bent over looey and hid her face again. 'good luck, father,' called dicky, 'go it!' though the words would hardly pass his throat, and he struggled to believe that he had no fear for his father. no sooner was the door shut than he rushed to the window, though josh could not appear in jago court for three or four minutes yet. the sash-line was broken, and the window had been propped open with a stick. in his excitement dicky dislodged the stick, and the sash came down on his head, but he scarce felt the blow, and readjusted the stick with trembling hands, regardless of the bruise rising under his hair. 'aincher goin' to look, mother?' he asked. 'wontcher 'old up looey?' but his mother would not look. as for looey, she looked at nothing. she had been taken to the dispensary once again, and now lay drowsy and dull, with little more movement than a general shudder and a twitching of the face at long intervals. the little face itself was thinner and older than ever: horribly flea-bitten still, but bloodlessly pale. mrs perrott had begun to think looey was ailing for something; thought it might be measles or whooping-cough coming, and complained that children were a continual worry. dicky hung head and shoulders out of the window, clinging to the broken sill and scraping feverishly at the wall with his toes. jago court was fuller than ever. the tossing went on, though now with more haste, that most might be made of the remaining time. a scuffle still persisted in one corner. some stood to gaze at the high mob, who, to the number of eight or ten, stood in an exalted group over against the back fences of new jago street; but the thickest knot was about cocko harnwell's doorstep, whereon sat billy leary, his head just visible through the press about him, waiting to keep his appointment. then a close group appeared at the archway, and pushed into the crowd, which made way at its touch, the disturbed tossers pocketing their coppers, but the others busily persisting, with no more than a glance aside between the spins. josh perrott's cropped head and bare shoulders marked the centre of the group, and as it came, another group moved out from cocko harnwell's doorstep, with billy leary's tall bulk shining pink and hairy in its midst. ''e's in the court, mother,' called dicky, scraping faster with his toes. the high mobsmen moved up toward the middle of the court, and some from the two groups spread and pushed back the crowd. still half a dozen couples, remote by the walls, tossed and tossed faster than ever, moving this way and that as the crowd pressed. now there was an irregular space of bare cobble stones and house refuse, five or six yards across, in the middle of jago court, and all round it the shouting crowd was packed tight, those at the back standing on sills and hanging to fences. every window was a clump of heads, and women yelled savagely or cheerily down and across. the two groups were merged in the press at each side of the space, billy leary and josh perrott in front of each, with his seconds. 'naa then, any more 'fore they begin?' bawled a high mobsman, turning about among his fellows. 'three to one on the big 'un--three to one! 'ere, i'll give fours--four to one on leary! fourer one! fourer one!' but they shook their heads; they would wait a little. leary and perrott stepped out. the last of the tossers stuffed away his coppers, and sought for a hold on the fence. 'they're a-sparrin', mother!' cried dicky, pale and staring, elbows and legs a-work, till he was like to pitch out of window. from his mother there but jerked a whimpering sob, which he did not hear. the sparring was not long. there was little of subtlety in the milling of the jago: mostly no more than a rough application of the main hits and guards, with much rushing and ruffianing. what there was of condition in the two men was josh's: smaller and shorter, he had a certain hard brownness of hide that leary, in his heavy opulence of flesh, lacked; and there was a horny quality in his face and hands that reminded the company of his boast of invulnerability to anything milder than steel. also his breadth of chest was great. nevertheless all odds seemed against him, by reason of billy leary's size, reach, and fighting record. the men rushed together, and josh was forced back by weight. leary's great fists, left and right, shot into his face with smacking reports, but left no mark on the leathery skin, and josh, fighting for the body, drove his knuckles into the other's ribs with a force that jerked a thick grunt from billy's lips at each blow. there was a roar of shouts. 'go it, father! fa--ther! fa--ther!' dicky screamed from the window, till his voice broke in his throat and he coughed himself livid. the men were at holds, and swaying this way and that over the uneven stones. blood ran copiously from billy leary's nose over his mouth and chin, and, as they turned, dicky saw his father spit away a tooth over leary's shoulder. they clipped and hauled to and fro, each striving to break the other's foothold. then perrott stumbled at a hole, lost his feet, and went down, with leary on top. cheers and yells rent the air, as each man was taken to his own side by his seconds. dicky let go the sill and turned to his mother, wild of eye, breathless with broken chatter. 'father 'it 'im on the nose, mother, like that--'is ribs is goin' black where father pasted 'em--'e was out o' breath fust--there' blood all over 'is face, mother--father would 'a' chucked 'im over if 'e 'adn't tumbled in a 'ole--father 'it 'im twice on the jore--'e--o!' dicky was back again on the sill, kicking and shouting, for time was called, and the two men rushed again into a tangled knot. but the close strife was short. josh had but closed to spoil his man's wind, and, leaving his head to take care of itself, stayed till he had driven left and right on the mark, and then got back. leary came after him, gasping and blowing already, and josh feinted a lead and avoided, bringing leary round on his heel and off again in chase. once more josh met him, drove at his ribs, and got away out of reach. leary's wind was going fast, and his partisans howled savagely at josh--perceiving his tactics--taunting him with running away, daring him to stand and fight. 'i'll take that four to one,' called a high mobsman to him who had offered the odds in the beginning. 'i'll stand a quid on perrott!' 'not with me you won't,' the other answered. 'evens, if you like.' 'right. done at evens, a quid.' perrott, stung at length by the shouts from leary's corner, turned on billy and met him at full dash. he was himself puffing by this, though much less than his adversary, and, at the cost of a heavy blow (which he took on his forehead), he visited billy's ribs once more. both men were grunting and gasping now, and the sound of blows was as of the confused beating of carpets. dicky, who had been afflicted to heart-burst by his father's dodging and running, which he mistook for simple flight, now broke into excited speech once more:-'father's 'it 'im on the jore ag'in--'is eye's a-bungin' up--_go it, father, bash 'i-i-i-m!_ father's landin' 'im--'e--' hannah perrott crept to the window and looked. she saw the foul jago mob, swaying and bellowing about the shifting edge of an open patch, in the midst whereof her husband and billy leary, bruised, bloody and gasping, fought and battered infuriately; and she crept back to the bed and bent her face on looey's unclean little frock; till a fit of tense shuddering took the child, and the mother looked up again. without, the round ended. for a full minute the men took and gave knock for knock, and then leary, wincing from another body-blow, swung his right desperately on perrott's ear, and knocked him over. exulting shouts rose from the leary faction, and the blow struck dicky's heart still. but josh was up almost before kiddo cook reached him, and dicky saw a wide grin on his face as he came to his corner. the leathery toughness of the man, and the advantage it gave him, now grew apparent. he had endured to the full as much and as hard punching as had his foe--even more, and harder; once he had fallen on the broken cobble-stones with all leary's weight on him; and once he had been knocked down on them. but, except for the sweat that ran over his face and down his back, and for a missing front tooth and the lip it had cut, he showed little sign of the struggle; while leary's left eye was a mere slit in a black wen, his nose was a beaten mass, which had ensanguined him (and indeed josh) from crown to waist, and his chest and flanks were a mottle of bruises. 'father's awright, mother--i see 'im laughin'! and 'e's smashed leary's nose all over 'is face!' up again they sprang for the next round, perrott active and daring, leary cautious and a trifle stiff. josh rushed in and struck at the tender ribs once more, took two blows callously on his head, and sent his left at the nose, with a smack as of a flail on water. with that leary rushed like a bull, and josh was driven and battered back, for the moment without response. but he ducked, and slipped away, and came again, fresh and vicious. and now it was seen that perrott's toughness of hand was lasting. leary's knuckles were raw, cut, and flayed, and took little good by the shock when they met the other's stubborn muzzle; while josh still flung in his corneous fists, hard and lasting as a bag of bullets. but suddenly, stooping to reach the mark once more, josh's foot turned on a projecting stone, and he floundered forward into billy's arms. like a flash his neck was clipped in the big man's left arm: josh perrott was in chancery. quick and hard leary pounded the imprisoned head, while jerry gullen and kiddo cook danced distracted and dismayed, and the crowd whooped and yelled. dicky hung delirious over the sill, and shrieked he knew not what. he saw his father fighting hard at the back and ribs with both hands, and leary hammering his face in a way to make pulp of an ordinary mazzard. then suddenly josh perrott's right hand shot up from behind, over leary's shoulder, and gripped him at the chin. slowly, with tightened muscles, he forced his man back over his bent knee, leary clinging and swaying, but impotent to struggle. then, with an extra wrench from josh, up came leary's feet from the ground, higher, higher, till suddenly josh flung him heavily over, heels up, and dropped on him with all his weight. the ranns roared again. josh was up in a moment, sitting on kiddo cook's knee, and taking a drink from a bottle. billy leary lay like a man fallen from a house-top. his seconds turned him on his back, and dragged him to his corner. there he lay limp and senseless, and there was a cut at the back of his head. the high mobsman who held the watch waited for half a minute and then called 'time!' josh perrott stood up, but billy leary was knocked out of knowledge, and heard not. he was beaten. josh perrott was involved in a howling, dancing crowd, and was pushed, grinning, this way and that, slapped on the back, and offered drinks. in the outskirts the tossers, inveterate, pulled out their pence and resumed their game. dicky spun about, laughing, flushed, and elated, and as soon as the door was distinct to his dazzled sight, he ran off downstairs. his mother, relieved and even pleased, speculated as to what money the thing might bring. she put the baby on the bed, and looked from the window. josh, in the crowd, shouted and beckoned her, pointing and tapping his bare shoulder. he wanted his clothes. she gathered together the shirt, the coat, and the waistcoat, and hurried downstairs. looey could come to no harm lying on the bed for a few minutes. and, indeed, hannah perrott felt that she would be a person of distinction in the crowd, and was not sorry to have an excuse for going out. 'three cheers for the missis!' sang out kiddo cook as she came through the press. 'i said 'e'd 'ave a bob or two for you, didn't i?' josh perrott, indeed, was rich--a capitalist of five pounds. for a sovereign a side had been put up, and his backer had put on a sovereign for him at three to one. so that now it became him to stand beer to many sympathisers. also, he felt that the missis should have some part in the celebration, for was it not her injury that he had avenged on sally green's brother? so hannah perrott, pleased though timorous, was hauled away with the rest to mother gapp's. here she sat by josh's side for an hour. once or twice she thought of looey, but with native inertness she let the thought slip. perhaps dicky would be back, and at any rate it was hard if she must not take half an hour's relaxation once in a way. at last came dicky, urgent perplexity in his face, looking in at the door. josh, minded to be generous all round, felt for a penny. 'mother,' said dicky, plucking at her arm, 'pigeony poll's at 'ome, nussin' looey; she told me to tell you to come at once.' pigeony poll? what right had she in the room? the ghost of hannah perrott's respectability rose in resentment. she supposed she must go. she arose, mystified, and went, with dicky at her skirts. pigeony poll sat by the window with the baby in her arms, and pale misgiving in her dull face. 'i--i come in, mrs perrott, mum,' she said, with a hush in her thick voice, 'i come in 'cos i see you goin' out, an' i thought the baby'd be alone. she--she's 'ad a sort o' fit--all stiff an' blue in the face and grindin' 'er little mouth. she's left auf now--but i--i dunno what to make of 'er. she's so--so--' hannah perrott stared blankly, and lifted the child, whose arm dropped and hung. the wizen age had gone from looey's face, and the lids were down on the strained eyes; her pale lips lay eased of the old pinching--even parted in a smile. for she looked in the face of the angel that plays with the dead children. hannah perrott's chin fell. 'lor',' she said bemusedly, and sat on the bed. an odd croaking noise broke in jerks from pigeony poll as she crept from the room, with her face bowed in the bend of her arm, like a weeping schoolboy. dicky stared, confounded.... josh came and gazed stupidly, with his mouth open, walking tip-toe. but at a word from kiddo cook, who came in his tracks, he snatched the little body and clattered off to the dispensary, to knock up the young student. * * * * * the rumour went in the jago that josh perrott was in double luck. for here was insurance money without a doubt. but in truth that was a thing the perrotts had neglected. * * * * * hannah perrott felt a listless relief; josh felt nothing in particular, except that there was no other thing to be done, and that mother gapp's would be a cheerful place to finish the day in, and keep up the missis's pecker. so that eight o'clock that evening at perrotts' witnessed a darkening room wherein an inconsiderable little corpse lay on a bed; while a small ragamuffin spread upon it with outstretched arms, exhausted with sobbing, a soak of muddy tears:--'o looey, looey! can't you 'ear? won't you never come to me no more?' and the reverend henry sturt, walking from church through luck row toward his lodgings in kingsland road, heard shouts and riot behind the grimy panes of mother gapp's, and in the midst the roar of many voices joined in the jago chant:-_six bloomin' long months in a prison, six more bloomin' months i must stay, for meetin' a bloke in our alley, an' takin' 'is uxter away!_ _toora-li--toora-li--looral, toora-li--toora-li--lay, a-coshin' a bloke in our alley, an' takin' 'is uxter away!_ xiv on an autumn day four years after his first coming to the jago, the reverend henry sturt left a solicitor's office in cheapside, and walked eastward, with something more of hope and triumph in him than he had felt since the jago fell to his charge. for the ground was bought whereon should be built a church and buildings accessory, and he felt, not that he was like to see any great result from his struggle, but that perhaps he might pursue it better armed and with less of grim despair than had been his portion hitherto. it had taken him four years to gather the money for the site, and some of it he was paying from his own pocket. he was unmarried, and had therefore no reason to save. still, he must be careful, for the sake of the parish: the church must be built, and some of the money would probably be wanted for that. moreover, there were other calls. the benefice brought a trifle less than £200 a year, and out of that, so far as it would go, he paid (with some small outside help) £130 for rent of the temporary church and the adjacent rooms; the organist's salary; the rates and the gas-bills; the cost of cleaning, care, and repair; the sums needed for such relief as was impossible to be withheld; and a thousand small things beside. while the jagos speculated wildly among themselves as to the vast sums he must make by his job. for what toff would come and live in the jago except for a consideration of solid gain? what other possible motive could there be, indeed? still, he had an influence among them such as they had never known before. for one thing, they feared in him what they took for a sort of supernatural insight. the mean cunning of the jago, subtle as it was, and baffling to most strangers, foundered miserably before his relentless intelligence; and crafty rogues--'wide as broad street,' as their proverb went--at first sulked, faltered and prevaricated transparently, but soon gave up all hope or effort to deceive him. thus he was respected. once he had made it plain that he was no common milch-cow in the matter of gratuities: to be bamboozled for shillings, cajoled for coals, and bullied for blankets: then there became apparent in him qualities of charity and lovingkindness, well-judged and governed, that awoke in places a regard that was in a way akin to affection. and the familiar habit of the jago slowly grew to call him father sturt. father sturt was not to be overreached: that was the axiom gloomily accepted by all in the jago who lived by what they accounted their wits. you could not juggle shillings and clothing (convertible into shillings) out of father sturt by the easy fee-faw-fum of repentance and salvation that served with so many. there were many of the jagos (mightily despised by some of the sturdier ruffians) who sallied forth from time to time into neighbouring regions in pursuit of the profitable sentimentalist: discovering him--black-coated, earnest, green--sometimes a preacher, sometimes a layman, sometimes one having authority on the committee of a charitable institution; dabbling in the east end on his own account, or administering relief for a mission, or disbursing a mansion house fund. he was of two chief kinds: the merely-soft,--the 'man of wool' as the jago word went,--for whom any tale was good enough, delivered with the proper wistful misery: and the gullible-cocksure, confident in a blind experience, who was quite as easy to tap, when approached with a becoming circumspection. a rough and ready method, which served well in most cases with both sorts, was a profession of sudden religious awakening. for this, one offered an aspect either of serene happiness or of maniacal exaltation, according to the customer's taste. a better way, but one demanding greater subtlety, was the assumption of the part of earnest inquirer, hesitating on the brink of salvation. for the attitude was capable of indefinite prolongation, and was ever productive of the boots, the coats, and the half-crowns used to coax weak brethren into the fold. but with father sturt, such trouble was worse than useless; it was, indeed, but to invite a humiliating snub. thus, when fluffy pike first came to father sturt with the intelligence that he had at last found grace, the father sturt asked if he had found it in a certain hamper--a hamper hooked that morning from a railway van--and if it were of a quality likely to inspire an act of restoration to the goods office. nothing was to be done with a man of this disgustingly practical turn of mind, and the jagos soon ceased from trying. father sturt had made more of the stable than the make-shift church he had found. he had organised a club in a stable adjoining, and he lived in the rooms over the shut-up shop. in the club he gathered the men of the jago indiscriminately, with the sole condition of good behaviour on the premises. and there they smoked, jumped, swung on horizontal bars, boxed, played at cards and bagatelle, free from interference save when interference became necessary. for the women there were sewing-meetings and singing. and all governed with an invisible discipline, which, being brought to action, was found to be of iron. now there was ground on which might be built a worthier church; and father sturt had in mind a church which should have by its side a cleanly lodging-house, a night-shelter, a club, baths and washhouses. and at a stroke he would establish this habitation and wipe out the blackest spot in the jago. for the new site comprised the whole of jago court and the houses that masked it in old jago street. this was a dream of the future--perhaps of the immediate future, if a certain new millionaire could only be interested in the undertaking--but of the future certainly. the money for the site alone had been hard enough to gather. in the first place the east london elevation mission and pansophical institute was asking very diligently for funds--and was getting them. it was to that, indeed, that people turned by habit when minded to invest in the amelioration of the east end. then about this time there had arisen a sudden quacksalver, a panjandrum of philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place, who undertook, for a fixed sum, to abolish poverty and sin together; and many, pleased with the new gaudery, poured out before him the money that had gone to maintain hospitals and to feed proved charities. so that gifts were scarce and hard to come by--indeed, were apt to be thought unnecessary, for was not misery to be destroyed out of hand? moreover, father sturt wanted not for enemies among the sentimental-cocksure. he was callous and cynical in face of the succulent penitence of fluffy pike and his kind. he preferred the frank rogue before the calculating snivelmonger. he had a club at which boxing was allowed, and dominoes--flat ungodliness. he shook hands familiarly every day with the lowest characters: his tastes were vulgar and brutal. and the company at his club was really dreadful. these things the cocksure said, with shaking of heads; and these they took care should be known among such as might give father sturt money. father sturt!--the name itself was sheer papistry. and many comforted themselves by writing him anonymous letters, displaying hell before his eyes, and dealing him vivid damnation. so father sturt tramped back to the jago, and to the strain and struggle that ceased not for one moment of his life, though it left never a mark of success behind it. for the jago was much as ever. were the lump once leavened by the advent of any denizen a little less base than the rest, were a native once ridiculed and persuaded into a spell of work and clean living, then must father sturt hasten to drive him from the jago ere its influence suck him under for ever; leaving for his own community none but the entirely vicious. and among these he spent his life: preaching little, in the common sense, for that were but idle vanity in this place; but working, alleviating, growing into the jago life, flinging scorn and ridicule on evil things, grateful for tiny negative successes--for keeping a few from ill-behaviour but for an hour; conscious that wherever he was not, iniquity flourished unreproved; and oppressed by the remembrance that albeit the jago death-rate ruled full four times that of all london beyond, still the jago rats bred and bred their kind unhindered, multiplying apace and infecting the world. in luck row he came on josh perrott, making for home with something under the skirt of his coat 'how d'ye do, josh?' said father sturt, clapping a hand on josh's shoulder, and offering it as josh turned about. josh, with a shifting of the object under his coat, hastened to tap his cap-peak with his forefinger before shaking hands. he grinned broadly, and looked this way and that, with mingled gratification and embarrassment, as was the jago way in such circumstances. because one could never tell whether father sturt would exchange a mere friendly sentence or two, or, with concealed knowledge, put some disastrous question about a watch, or a purse, or a breast-pin, or what not. 'very well, thanks, father,' answered josh, and grinned amiably at the wall beyond the vicar's elbow. 'and what have you been doing just lately?' 'oo--odd jobs, father.' always the same answer, all over the jago. 'not quite such odd jobs as usual, i hope, josh, eh?' father sturt smiled, and twitched josh playfully by the button-hole as one might treat a child. 'i once heard of a very odd job in the kingsland road that got a fine young man six months' holiday. eh, josh?' josh perrott wriggled and grinned sheepishly; tried to frown, failed, and grinned again. he had only been out a few weeks from that six moon. presently he said:--'awright, father; you do rub it into a bloke, no mistake.' the grin persisted as he looked first at the wall, then at the pavement, then down the street, but never in the parson's face. 'ah, there's a deal of good in a blister sometimes, isn't there, josh? what's that i see--a clock? not another odd job, eh?' it was indeed a small nickel-plated american clock which josh had under his coat, and which he now partly uncovered with positive protests. 'no, s'elp me, father, it's all straight--all fair trade, father--jist a swop for somethink else, on me solemn davy. that's wot it is, father--straight.' 'well, i'm glad you thought to get it, josh,' father sturt pursued, still twitching the button-hole. 'you never have been a punctual churchgoer, you know, josh, and i'm glad you've made arrangements to improve. you'll have no excuse now, you know, and i shall expect you on sunday morning--promptly. don't forget: i shall be looking for you.' and father sturt shook hands again, and passed on, leaving josh perrott still grinning dubiously, and striving to assimilate the invitation to church. the clock was indeed an exchange, though not altogether an innocent one: the facts being these. early that morning josh had found himself scrambling hastily along a turning out of brick lane, accompanied by a parcel of nine or ten pounds of tobacco, and extremely conscious of the hasty scrambling of several other people round the corner. some of these people turned that corner before josh reached the next, so that his course was observed, and it became politic to get rid of his parcel before a possible heading-off in meakin street. there was one place where this might be done, and that was at weech's. a muddy yard, one of a tangle of such places behind meakin street, abutted on weech's back-fence; and it was no uncommon thing for a jago on the crook, hard pressed, to pitch his plunder over the fence, double out into the crowd, and call on mr aaron weech for the purchase-money as soon as opportunity served. the manoeuvre was a simple one, facilitated by the plan of the courts; but it was only adopted in extreme cases, because mr aaron weech was at best but a mean paymaster, and with so much of the upper hand in the bargain as these circumstances conferred, was apt to be meaner than ever. but this case seemed to call for the stratagem, and josh made for the muddy yard, dropped the parcel over the fence, with a loud whistle, and backed off by the side passage in the regular way. when he called on mr aaron weech a few hours later, that talented tradesman, with liberal gestures, told out shillings singly in his hand, pausing after each as though that were the last. but josh held his hand persistently open, till mr weech, having released the fifth shilling, stopped altogether, scandalised at such rapacity. but still josh was not satisfied, and as he was not quite so easy a customer to manage as the boys who commonly fenced at the shop, mr weech compromised, in the end, by throwing in a cheap clock. it had been in hand for a long time; and josh was fain to take it, since he could get no more. and thus it was that dicky, coming in at about five o'clock, was astonished to see on the mantel-piece, amid the greasy ruins of many candle ends, the clock that had belonged to the ropers four years before. xv as for dicky, he went to school. that is to say, he turned up now and again, at irregular intervals, at the board school just over the jago border in honey lane. when anything was given away, he attended as a matter of course; but he went now and again without such inducement--perhaps because he fancied an afternoon's change, perhaps because the weather was cold and the school was warm. he was classed as a half-timer, an arrangement which variegated the register, but otherwise did not matter. other boys, half-timers or not, attended as little as he. it was long since the managers had realised the futility of attempting compulsion in the jago. dicky was no fool, and he had picked up some sort of reading and writing as he went along. moreover, he had grown an expert thief, and had taken six strokes of a birch-rod by order of a magistrate. as yet he rarely attempted a pocket, being, for most opportunities, too small; but he was comforted by the reflection that probably he would never get really tall, and thus grow out of pocket-picking when he was fully experienced, as was the fate of some. for no tall man can be a successful pickpocket, because he must bend to his work, and so advertise it to every beholder. meantime dicky practised that petty larceny which is possible in every street in london; and at odd times he would play the scout among the practitioners of the 'fat's a-running' industry. if one crossed meakin street by way of luck row and kept his way among the courts ahead, he presently reached the main bethnal green road, at the end whereof stood the great goods depot of a railway company. here carts and vans went to and fro all day, laden with goods from the depot, and certain gangs among the jagos preyed on these continually. a quick-witted scout stood on the look-out for such vehicles as went with unguarded tailboards. at the approach of one such he sent the shout '_fat's a-runnin'!_' up luck row, and, quick at the signal, a gang scuttled down, by the court or passage which his waved hand might hint at, seized whatever could be snatched from the cart, and melted away into the courts, sometimes leaving a few hands behind to hinder and misdirect pursuit. taking one capture with another, the thing paid very well; and besides, there were many vans laden with parcels of tobacco, not from the railway depot but from the tobacco factories hard by, a click from which was apt to prove especially lucrative. dicky was a notable success as scout. the department was a fairly safe one, but it was not always easy to extract from the gang the few coppers that were regarded as sufficient share for service done. moreover, mr weech was not pleased; for by now dicky was near to being his most remunerative client, and the cart robberies counted nothing, for the fat's a-running boys fenced their swag with a publican at hoxton. and though dicky had grown out of his childish belief that mr weech could hear a mile away and see through a wall, he had a cautious dread of the weapon he supposed to lie ever to his patron's hand--betrayal to the police. in other respects things were easier. his father took no heed of what he did, and even his mother had so far accepted destiny as to ask if he had a copper or two, when there was a scarcity. indeed hannah perrott filled her place in the jago better than of old. she would gossip, she drew no very rigid line as to her acquaintance, and dicky had seen her drunk. still, for old jago street she was a quiet woman, and she never brawled nor fought. of fighting, indeed, josh could do enough for the whole family, once again four in number. for the place of looey, forgotten, was supplied by em, aged two. when dicky came home and recognised the clock on the mantel-piece, being the more certain because his mother told him it had come from weech's, the thing irritated him strangely. through all those four years since he had carried that clock to mr weech, he had never got rid of the wretched hunchback. he, too, went to the board school in honey lane (it lay between dove lane and the jago), but he went regularly, worked hard, and was a favourite with teachers. so far, dicky was unconcerned. but scarce an ill chance came to him but, sooner or later, he found the hunchback at the back of it. if ever a teacher mysteriously found out that it was dicky who had drawn his portrait, all nose and teeth, on the blackboard, the tale had come from bobby roper. whenever dicky, chancing upon school by ill luck on an afternoon when sums were to be done, essayed to copy answers from his neighbour's slate, up shot the hunchback's hand in an instant, the tale was told, and handers were dicky's portion. once, dinnerless and hungry, he had stolen a sandwich from a teacher's desk; and, though he had thought himself alone and unseen, the hunchback knew it, and pointed him out, white malice in his thin face and eager hate in his thrust finger. for a fortnight dicky dared not pass a little fruit shop in meakin street, because of an attempt on an orange, betrayed by his misshapen schoolfellow, which brought him a hard chase from the fruiterer and a bad bruise on the spine from a board flung after him. the hunchback's whole energies--even his whole time--seemed to be devoted to watching him. dicky, on his part, received no injuries meekly. in the beginning he had tried threats and public jeers at his enemy's infirmity. then, on some especially exasperating occasion, he pounded bobby roper savagely about the head and capsized him into a mud-heap. but bodily reprisal, though he erected it into a practice, proved no deterrent. for the little hunchback, though he might cry at the pummelling, retorted with worse revenge of his own sort. and once or twice bystanders, seeing a deformed child thus treated, interfered with clouts on dicky's ears. the victim, moreover, designed another retaliation. he would go to some bigger boy with a tale that dicky had spoken vauntingly of fighting him and beating him hollow, with one hand. this brought the big boy after dicky at once, with a hiding: except on some rare occasion when the hunchback rated his instrument of vengeance too high, and dicky was able to beat him in truth. but this was a very uncommon mistake. and after this dicky did not wait for specific provocation: he 'clumped' bobby roper, or rolled him in the gutter, as a matter of principle, whenever he could get hold of him. that afternoon dicky had suffered again. two days earlier, tea and cake had been provided by a benevolent manager for all who attended the school. consequently the attendance was excellent, and included dicky. but his attempt to secrete a pocketful of cake, to carry home for em, was reported by bobby roper; and dicky was hauled forth, deprived of his plunder, and expelled in disgrace. he waited outside and paid off the score fiercely, by the help of a very long and pliant cabbage stalk. but this afternoon bill bates, a boy a head taller than himself and two years older, had fallen on him suddenly in lincoln street, and, though dicky fought desperately and kicked with much effect, had dealt him a thrashing that left him bruised, bleeding, dusty, and crying with rage and pain. this was the hunchback's doing, without a doubt. dicky limped home, but was something comforted by an accident in shoreditch high street, whereby a coster's barrow-load of cough-drops was knocked over by a covered van, and the cough-drops were scattered in the mud. for while the carman and the coster flew at each other's name and address, and defamed each other's eyes and mother, dicky gathered a handful of cough-drops, muddy, it is true, but easy to wipe. and so he made for home more cheerfully disposed: till the sight of the ropers' old clock brought the hunchback to mind once more, and in bitter anger he resolved to search for him forthwith, and pass on the afternoon's hiding, with interest. as he emerged into the street, a hand was reached to catch him, which he dodged by instinct. he rushed back upstairs, and emptied his pockets, stowing away in a safe corner the rest of the cough-drops, the broken ruin he called his knife, some buttons and pieces of string, a bit of chalk, three little pieces of slate pencil and two marbles. then he went down again into the street, confident in his destitution, and watched, forgetting the hunchback in the excitement of the spectacle. the loafers from the corners had conceived a sudden notion of co-operation, and had joined forces to the array of twenty or thirty. confident in their numbers, they swept the street, stopping every passenger--man, woman or child--and emptying all pockets. a straggler on the outskirts of the crowd, a hobbledehoy like most of the rest, had snatched at but had lost dicky, and was now busy, with four or five others, rolling a woman, a struggling heap of old clothes and skinny limbs, in the road. it was biddy flynn, too old and worn for anything but honest work, who sold oranges and nuts from a basket, and who had been caught on her way out for her evening's trade in high street. she was a fortunate capture, being a lone woman with all her possessions about her. under her skirt, and tied round her waist with string, she kept her money-bag; and it was soon found and dragged away, yielding two and eightpence farthing and a lucky shoe-tip, worn round and bright. she had, moreover, an old brass brooch; but unfortunately her wedding ring, worn to pin-wire, could not be got past the knotted knuckle--though it would have been worth little in any case. so biddy flynn, exhausted with plunging and screaming, was left, and her empty basket was flung at her. she staggered away, wailing and rolling her head, with her hand to the wall; and the gang, sharing out, sucked oranges with relish, and turned to fresh exploits. dicky watched from the jago court passage. business slackened for a little while, and the loafers were contemplating a raid in force on mother gapp's till, when a grown lad ran in pell-mell from luck row with a square parcel clipped under his arm--a parcel of aspect well known among the fat's a-running boys--a parcel that meant tobacco. he was collared at once. 'stow it, bill!' he cried breathlessly, recognising his captor. 'the bloke's a-comin'!' but half-a-dozen hands were on his plunder, it was snatched away, and he was flung back on the flags. there was a clatter on the stones of luck row, and a light van came rattling into old jago street, the horse galloping, the carman lashing and shouting:--'stop 'im! stop thief!' the sight was so novel that for a moment the gang merely stared and grinned. this man must be a greenhorn--new to the neighbourhood--to venture a load of goods up luck row. and it was tobacco, too. he was pale and flustered, and he called wildly, as he looked this way and that:--'a man's stole somethin' auf my van. where's 'e gawn?' 'no good, guv'nor,' cried one. 'the ball's stopped rollin'. you're lawst 'im.' 'my gawd!' said the man, in a sweat, 'i'm done. there's two quid's worth o' 'bacca--an' i on'y got the job o' monday--bin out nine munse!' 'was it a parcel like this 'ere?' asked another, chuckling, and lifting a second packet over the tailboard. 'yus--put it down! gawd--wotcher up to? 'ere--'elp! 'elp!' the gang were over the van, guffawing and flinging out the load. the carman yelled aloud, and fought desperately with his whip--bill hanks is near blind of an eye now from one cut; but he was the worse for it. for he was knocked off the van in a heap, and, as he lay, they cleared his pockets, and pulled off his boots; those that had caught the sting of the whip kicking him about the head till it but shifted in the slime at the stroke, an inanimate lump. there was talk of how to deal with the horse and van. to try to sell them was too large a job, and too risky. so, as it was growing dusk, the senseless carman was put on the floor of the van, the tailboard was raised, and one of the gang led the horse away, to lose the whole thing in the busy streets. here was a big haul, and many of the crowd busied themselves in getting it out of sight, and scouting out among the fences to arrange sales. those who remained grew less active, and hung at the corner of luck row, little more than an ordinary corner-group of loafers. then dicky remembered the hunchback, and slouched off to dove lane. but he could see nothing of bobby roper. the jago and dove lane were districts ever at feud, active or smouldering, save for brief intervals of ostentatious reconciliation, serving to render the next attack on dove lane the more savage--for invariably the jagos were aggressors and victors. dicky was careful in his lurkings, therefore: lest he should be recognised and set upon by more dove lane boys than would be convenient. he knew where the ropers lived, and he went and hung about the door. once he fancied he could hear a disjointed tinkle, as of a music-box grown infirm, but he was not sure of it. and in the end he contented himself, for the present, with flinging a stone through the ropers' window, and taking to his heels. the jago was black with night, the rats came and went, and the cosh-carriers lurked on landings. on a step, pigeony poll, drunk because of a little gin and no food, sang hideously and wept. the loafers had dispersed to spend their afternoon's makings. the group which dicky had left by luck row corner, indeed, had been discouraged early in the evening in consequence of an attempt at 'turning over' old beveridge, as he unsuspectingly stalked among them, in from his city round. for the old man whipped out his case-knife and drove it into the flesh of nobber sugg's arm, at the shoulder--stabbed, too, at another, and ripped his coat. so nobber sugg, with blood streaming through his sleeve, went off with two more to tie up the arm; and old beveridge, grinning and mumbling fiercely, strode about the street, knife in hand, for ten minutes, ere he grew calm enough to go his way. this tommy rann told dicky, sitting in the back-yard and smoking a pipe; a pipe charged with tobacco pillaged from a tin-full which his father had bought, at about fourpence a pound, from a loafer. and both boys crawled indoors deadly sick. xvi josh perrott was at church on sunday morning, as father sturt had bid him. not because of the bidding, but because the vicar overtook him and kiddo cook in meakin street, and hauled them in, professing to be much gratified at their punctuality, and charging them never to fall away from the habit. the two jagos, with dubious grins, submitted as they must, and were in a little while surprised to find others arriving, friends and acquaintances never suspected of church-going. the fact was, that father sturt, by dint of long effort, had so often brought so many to his stable-church, as he had now brought josh and kiddo, that the terrors and embarrassments of the place had worn off, and many, finding nothing more attractive elsewhere, would make occasional attendances of their own motion. wet sundays, particularly, inclined them to church: where there might be a fire, where at least there was a clean room, with pictures on the wall, where there were often flowers, where there was always music, and where father sturt made an address of a quarter of an hour, which nobody ever suspected of being a sermon; an address which one might doze over or listen to, as one might be disposed; but which most listened to, more or less, partly because of an uneasy feeling that father sturt would know if they did not, and partly because it was very easy to understand, was not oppressively minatory, was spoken with an intimate knowledge of themselves, and was, indeed, something of a refreshing novelty, being the simple talk of a gentleman. josh perrott and kiddo cook were not altogether sorry they had come. it was a rest. stable though it had been, they had never sat in so pleasant a room before. there was nothing to do, no constant watch to be kept, no police to avoid, and their wits had a holiday. they forgot things. their courage never rose so high as to build the thought; but in truth pipes would have made them happy. the address being done, father sturt announced the purchase of the site for the new church, and briefly described his scheme. he would give tenants good notice, he said, before the houses were destroyed. meantime, they must pay rent; though most of the amounts would be reduced. and after the benediction, father sturt, from his window over the closed shop, saw josh perrott and kiddo cook guffawing and elbowing one another up luck row. each was accusing the other of having tried to sing. xvii there was much talk of father sturt's announcement. many held it a shame that so much money, destined for the benefit of the jago, should be spent in bricks and mortar, instead of being distributed among themselves. they fell to calculating the price of the land and houses, and to working it out laboriously in the denomination of pots and gallons. more: it was felt to be a grave social danger that jago court should be extinguished. what would become of the jago without jago court? where would sunday morning be spent? where would the fights come off, and where was so convenient a place for pitch and toss? but mainly they feared the police. jago court was an unfailing sanctuary, a city of refuge ever ready, ever secure. there were times when two or three of the police, hot in the chase, would burst into the jago at the heels of a flying marauder. then the runaway would make straight for the archway, and, once he was in jago court, danger was over. for he had only to run into one of the ever-open doors at right or left, and out into back-yards and other houses; or, better, to scramble over the low fence opposite, through the back door before him, and so into new jago street. beyond the archway the police could not venture, except in large companies. a young constable who tried it once, getting ahead of two companions in his ardour, was laid low as he emerged from the passage, by a fire-grate adroitly let drop from an upper window. the blotting out of such a godsend of a place as this would be a calamity. the jago would never be the same again. as it was, the old jago was a very convenient, comfortable sort of place, they argued. they could not imagine themselves living anywhere else. but assuredly it would be the jago no longer without jago court. and this thing was to be done, too, with money got together for their benefit! the sole explanation the jago could supply was the one that at last, with arithmetical variations, prevailed. the landlords were to be paid a sum (varying in jago estimation from a hundred pounds to a hundred thousand) for the houses and the ground, and of this they were secretly to return to father sturt a certain share (generally agreed on as half), as his private fee for bringing about so desirable a transaction. looked at from all points, this appeared to be the most plausible explanation: for no other could reasonably account for father sturt's activity. no wonder he could afford to reduce some of the rents! was he not already receiving princely wages (variously supposed to be something from ten pounds to thirty pounds a week) from the government, for preaching every sunday? still the rents were to be reduced: that was the immediate consideration, and nothing but an immediate consideration carried weight in the jago, where a shilling to-day was to be preferred to a constant income beginning in a month's time. the first effect of the announcement was a rush of applications for rooms in the doomed houses, each applicant demanding to be accommodated by the eviction of somebody already established, but now disinterestedly discovered to be a bad tenant. they were all disappointed, but the residents had better luck than they had hoped. for the unexpected happened, and the money for a part of the new buildings was suddenly guaranteed. wherefore father sturt, knowing that many would be hard put to it to find shelter when the houses came down, and guessing that rents would rise with the demand, determined to ask none for the little while the tenements endured. scarce had he made his decision known ere he regretted it, popular as it was. for he reflected that the money saved would merely melt, and that at the inevitable turning out, not a soul would be the better off for the relief, but, indeed, might find it harder than ever to pay rent after the temporary easement. it would have been better rigidly to exact the rent, and return it in lump to each tenant as he left. the sum would have been an inducement to leave peaceably--a matter in which trouble was to be expected. but then, what did any windfall of shillings bring in the jago? what but a drunk? this was one of father sturt's thousand perplexities, and he could but hope that, perhaps, he had done right after all. the old buildings were sold, as they stood, to the house-wreckers, and on the house-wreckers devolved the work of getting the lodgers out. for weeks the day was deferred, but it drew very near at last, and a tall hoarding was put up. next morning it had vanished; but there was a loud crackling where the jagos boiled their pots; dicky perrott and tommy rann had a bonfire in edge lane; and jerry gullen's canary sweated abroad before a heavy load of cheap firewood. then josh perrott and billy leary, his old enemy, were appointed joint guardians of the new hoarding, each to get half-a-crown on every morning when the fence was found intact. and in the end there came eviction day, and once more the police held the jago in force, escorting gangs of men with tumbrils. as for the perrotts, they could easily find another room, at the high rent always charged for the privilege of residence in the jago. to have remained in one room four or five years, and to have paid rent with indifferent good regularity was a feat sufficiently rare to be notorious, and to cause way to be made for them wherever a room was falling vacant, or could be emptied. they went no farther than across the way, to a room wherein a widow had died over her sack-making two days before, and had sat on the floor with her head between her knees for hours, while her children, not understanding, cried that they were hungry. these children were now gone to the workhouse: more fortunate than the many they left behind. and the room was a very fair one, ten feet square or so. the rest of the tenants thought not at all of new quarters, and did nothing to find them, till they found themselves and their belongings roofless in old jago street. then with one accord they demanded lodgings of the vicar. most of them had never inhabited any rooms so long as they had these which they must now leave--having been ejected again and again because of unpaid rent. nevertheless, they clamoured for redress as they might have clamoured had they never changed dwellings in their lives. nobody resisted the police; for there were too many of them. moreover, father sturt was there, and few had hardihood for any but their best behaviour in his presence. still, there were disputes among the jagos themselves, that sometimes came very near to fights. ginger stagg's missis professed to recognise a long-lost property in a tin kettle brought into the outer air among the belongings of mrs walsh. the miscellaneous rags and sticks that were cocko harnwell's household goods got mingled in the roadway with those appertaining to the fishers; and their assortment without a turn of family combat was a task which tried the vicar's influence to the utmost. mrs rafferty, too, was suspected of undue pride in a cranky deal wash-stand, and thereby of a disposition to sneer at the humbler turn-out of the regans from the next floor: giving occasion for a shrill and animated row. the weather was dry, fortunately, and the evicted squatted in the roadway, by their heaps, or on them, squabbling and lamenting. ginger stagg, having covered certain crockery with the old family mattress, forgetfully sat on it, and came upon father sturt with an indignant demand for compensation. father sturt's efforts to stimulate a search for new lodgings met with small success at first. it was felt that, no doubt, there were lodgings to be had, but they would be open to the fatal objection of costing something; and the jago temperament could neither endure nor understand payment for what had once been given for nothing. father sturt, the jagos argued, had given them free quarters for so long. then why should he stop now? if they cleared out in order to make room for his new church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodging on the same terms. so they sat and waited for him to do it. at length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his own finding. and hereat others, learning that in these cases rent in advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must be paid they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that father sturt might find. of course the thing was not done without payments from the vicar's pocket. some were wholly destitute; others could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could open a jago tenancy. distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him, father sturt helped sparingly and in secret; for a precedent of almsgiving was an evil thing in the jago, confirming the shiftlessness which was already a piece of jago nature, and setting up long affliction for the almsgiver. enough of such precedents existed; and the inevitable additions thereto were a work of anxious responsibility and jealous care. so the bivouac in old jago street melted away. for one thing, there were those among the dispossessed who would not waste time in unproductive inactivity just then; for war had arisen with dove lane, and spoils were going. dove lane was no very reputable place, but it was not like the jago. in the phrase of the district, the dove laners were pretty thick, but the jagos were thick as glue. there were many market-porters among the dove laners, and at this, their prosperous season, they and their friends resorted to a shop in meakin street, kept by an 'ikey' tailor, there to buy the original out-and-out downy benjamins, or the celebrated bang-up kicksies, cut saucy, with artful buttons and a double fakement down the sides. and hereabout they were apt to be set upon by jagos; overthrown by superior numbers; bashed; and cleaned out. or, if the purchases had been made, they were flimped of their kicksies, benjies or daisies, as the case might be. so that a fight with dove lane might be an affair of some occasional profit; and it became no loyal jago to idle in the stronghold. father sturt's task was nearly over, when, returning to old jago street, he saw dicky perrott sitting by a still-remaining heap--a heap small and poor even among those others. the perrotts had been decorously settled in their new home since early morning; but here was dicky, guarding a heap with a baby on it, and absorbed in the weaving of rush bags. 'that's right, dicky my boy,' said father sturt in the approving voice that a jago would do almost anything--except turn honest--to hear. and dicky, startled, looked up, flushed and happy, over his shoulder. 'rush bags, eh?' the vicar went on, stooping and handing dicky another rush from the heap. 'and whose are they?' the bags, the rushes, the heap, and the baby belonged to mrs bates, the widow, who was now in search of a new room. dicky had often watched the weaving of fishmongers' frails, and, since it was work in which he had had no opportunity of indulging, it naturally struck him as a fascinating pastime. so that he was delighted by the chance which he had taken, and mrs bates, for her part, was not sorry to find somebody to mind her property. moreover, by hard work and the skill begot of much practice, she was able to earn a sum of some three farthings an hour at the rush bags: a profit which her cupidity made her reluctant to lose, for even half an hour. and thus to have dicky carry on the business--and in his enthusiasm he did it very well--was a further consideration. father sturt chatted with dicky till the boy could scarce plait for very pride. would not dicky like to work regularly every day, asked father sturt, and earn wages? dicky could see no graceful answer but the affirmative; and in sober earnest he thought he would. father sturt took hold of dicky's vanity. was he not capable of something better than other jago boys? why should he not earn regular wages, and live comfortably, well fed and clothed, with no fear of the police, and no shame for what he did? _he_ might do it, when others could not. they were not clever enough. they called themselves 'clever' and 'wide;' 'but,' said father sturt, 'is there one of them that can deceive me?' and dicky knew there was not one. most did no work, the vicar's argument went on, because they had neither the pluck to try nor the intelligence to accomplish. else why did they live the wretched jago life instead of take the pleasanter time of the decent labourer? dicky, already zealous at work as exampled in rush bag-making, listened with wistful pride. yes, if he could, he would work and take his place over the envious heads of his jago friends. but how? nobody would employ a boy living in the jago. that was notorious. the address was a topsy-turvy testimonial for miles round. all the same when mrs bates at last took away her belongings, dicky ran off in delighted amaze to tell his mother and em that he was going to tea at father sturt's rooms. and the wreckers tore down the foul old houses, laying bare the secret dens of a century of infamy; lifting out the wide sashes of the old 'weavers' windows'--the one good feature in the structures; letting light and air at last into the subterraneous basements where men and women had swarmed, and bred, and died, like wolves in their lairs; and emerging from clouds of choking dust, each man a colony of vermin. but there were rooms which the wreckers--no jack-a-dandies neither--flatly refused to enter; and nothing would make them but much coaxing, the promise of extra pay, and the certainty of much immediate beer. xviii mr grinder kept a shop in the bethnal green road. it was announced in brilliant lettering as an 'oil, colour and italian warehouse,' and there, in addition to the oil and the colour, and whatever of italian there might have been, he sold pots, pans, kettles, brooms, shovels, mops, lamps, nails, and treacle. it was a shop ever too tight for its stock, which burst forth at every available opening, and heaped so high on the paving that the window was half buried in a bank of shining tin. father sturt was one of the best customers: the oil, candles and utensils needed for church and club all coming from mr grinder's. mr grinder was losing his shop-boy, who had found a better situation; and father sturt determined that, could but the oil-man be persuaded, dicky perrott should be the new boy. mr grinder was persuaded. chiefly perhaps, because the vicar undertook to make good the loss, should the experiment end in theft; partly because it was policy to oblige a good customer; and partly, indeed, because mr grinder was willing to give such a boy a chance in life, for he was no bad fellow, as oil-and-colourmen go, and had been an errand boy himself. so that there came a monday morning when dicky, his clothes as well mended as might be (for hannah perrott, no more than another jago, could disobey father sturt), and a cut-down apron of his mother's tied before him, stood by mr grinder's bank of pots and kettles, in an eager agony to sell something, and near blind with the pride of the thing. he had been waiting at the shop-door long ere mr grinder was out of bed; and now, set to guard the outside stock--a duty not to be neglected in that neighbourhood--he brushed a tin pot here and there with his sleeve, and longed for some jago friend to pass and view him in his new greatness. the goods he watched over were an unfailing source of interest; and he learned by much repetition the prices of all the saucepans, painted in blue distemper on the tin, and ranging from eightpence-halfpenny, on the big pots in the bottom row, to three-halfpence on the very little ones at the top. and there were long ranks of little paraffin lamps at a penny--the sort that had set fire to a garret in half jago street a month since, and burnt old mother leary to a greasy cinder. with a smaller array of a superior quality at fourpence-halfpenny--just like the one that had burst at jerry gullen's, and burnt the bed. while over his head swung doormats at one-and-eightpence, with penny mousetraps dangling from their corners. when he grew more accustomed to his circumstances, he bethought him to collect a little dirt, and rub it down the front of his apron, to give himself a well-worked and business-like appearance; and he greatly impeded women who looked at the saucepans and the mousetraps, ere they entered the shop, by his anxiety to cut them off from mr grinder and serve them himself. he remembered the boy at the toy-shop in bishopsgate street, years ago, who had chased him through spitalfields; and he wished that some lurching youngster would snatch a mousetrap, that he might make a chase himself. at mr grinder's every call dicky was prompt and willing; for every new duty was a fresh delight, and the whole day a prolonged game of real shopkeeping. and at his tea--he was to have tea each day in addition to three and sixpence every saturday--he took scarce five minutes. there was a trolley--just such a thing as porters used at railway stations, but smaller--which was his own particular implement, his own to pack parcels on for delivery to such few customers as did not carry away their own purchases: and to acquire the dexterous management of this trolley was a pure joy. he bolted his tea to start the sooner on a trolley-journey to a public-house two hundred yards away. his enthusiasm for work as an amusement cooled in a day or two, but all his pride in it remained. the fight with dove lane waxed amain, but dicky would not be tempted into more than a distant interest in it. in his day-dreams he saw himself a tradesman, with a shop of his own and the name 'r. perrott,' with a gold flourish, over the door. he would employ a boy himself then; and there would be a parlour, with stuff-bottomed chairs and a shade of flowers, and em grown up and playing on the piano. truly father sturt was right: the hooks were fools, and the straight game was the better. bobby roper, the hunchback, went past the shop once, and saw him. dicky, minding his new dignity, ignored his enemy, and for the first time for a year and more, allowed him to pass without either taunt or blow. the other, astonished at dicky's new occupation, came back and back again, staring, from a safe distance, at dicky and the shop. dicky, on his part, took no more notice than to assume an ostentatious vigilance: so that the hunchback, baring his teeth in a snigger of malice, at last turned on his heel and rolled off. twice kiddo cook passed, but made no sign of recognition beyond a wink; and dicky felt grateful for kiddo's obvious fear of compromising him. once old beveridge came by, striding rapidly, his tatters flying, and the legend 'hard up' chalked on his hat, as was his manner in his town rambles. he stopped abruptly at sight of dicky, stooped, and said:--'dicky perrott? hum--hum--hey?' then he hurried on, doubtless conceiving just such a fear as kiddo cook's. as for tommy rann, his affections were alienated by dicky's outset refusal to secrete treacle in a tin mug for a midnight carouse; and he did not show himself. so matters went for near a week. but mr weech missed dicky sadly. it was rare for a day to pass without a visit from dicky, and dicky had a way of bringing good things. mr weech would not have sold dicky's custom for ten shillings a week. so that when mr weech inquired, and found that dicky was at work in an oil-shop, he was naturally annoyed. moreover, if dicky perrott got into _that_ way of life, he would have no fear for himself, and might get talking inconveniently among his new friends about the business affairs of mr aaron weech. and at this reflection that philanthropist grew thoughtful. xix dicky had gone on an errand, and mr grinder was at the shop door, when there appeared before him a whiskered and smirking figure, with a quick glance each way along the street, and a long and smiling one at the oil-man's necktie. 'good mornin', mr grinder, good mornin' sir.' mr weech stroked his left palm with his right fist and nodded pleasantly. 'i'm in business meself, over in meakin street--name of weech: p'r'aps you know the shop? i--i jist 'opped over to ask'--grinder led the way into the shop--'to ask (so's to make things quite sure y'know, though no doubt it's all right) to ask if it's correct you're awfferin' brass roastin'-jacks at a shillin' each.' 'brass roastin'-jacks at a shillin'?' exclaimed grinder, shocked at the notion. 'why, no!' mr weech appeared mildly surprised. 'nor yut seven-poun' jars o' jam an' pickles at sixpence?' he pursued, with his eye on those ranged behind the counter. 'no!' 'nor doormats at fourpence?' 'fourpence? cert'nly not!' mr weech's face fell into a blank perplexity. he pawed his ear with a doubtful air, murmuring absently:--'well i'm sure 'e _said_ fourpence: an' sixpence for pickles, an' bring 'em round after the shop was shut. but there', he added, more briskly, 'there's no 'arm done, an' no doubt it's a mistake.' he turned as though to leave, but grinder restrained him. 'but look 'ere,' he said, 'i want to know about this. wotjer mean? _'oo_ was goin' to bring round pickles after the shop was shut? _'oo_ said fourpence for doormats?' 'oh, i expect it's jest a little mistake, that's all,' answered weech, making another motion toward the door; 'an' i don't want to git nobody into trouble.' 'trouble? nice trouble i'd be in if i sold brass smoke-jacks for a bob! there's somethink 'ere as i ought to know about. tell me about it straight.' weech looked thoughtfully at the oil-man's top waistcoat button for a few seconds, and then said:--'yus, p'raps i better. i can feel for you, mr grinder, 'avin' a feelin' 'art, an' bein' in business meself. where's your boy?' 'gawn out.' 'comin' back soon?' 'not yut. come in the back-parlour.' there mr weech, with ingenuous reluctance, assured mr grinder that dicky perrott had importuned him to buy the goods in question at the prices he had mentioned, together with others--readily named now that the oil-man swallowed so freely--and that they were to be delivered and paid for at night when dicky left work. but perhaps, mr weech concluded, parading an obstinate belief in human nature, perhaps the boy, being new to the business, had mistaken the prices, and was merely doing his best to push his master's trade. 'no fear o' that,' said grinder, shaking his head gloomily. 'not the least fear o' that. 'e knows the cheapest doormats i got's one an' six--i 'eard him tell customers so outside a dozen times; an' anyone can see the smoke-jacks is ticketed five an 'nine'--as mr weech had seen, when he spoke of them. 'i thought that boy was too eager an' willin' to be quite genavin,' dicky's master went on. ''e ain't 'ad me yut, that's one comfort: if anythin' 'ud bin gawn i'd 'a' missed it. but out 'e goes as soon as 'e comes back: you can take yer davy o' that!' 'ah,' replied mr weech, 'it's fearful the wickedness there is about, ain't it? it's enough to break yer 'art. sich a neighb'r'ood, too! wy, if it was known as i'd give you this 'ere little friendly information, bein' in business meself an' knowin' wot it is, my life wouldn't be safe a hower. it wouldn't, mr grinder.' 'wouldn't it?' said mr grinder. 'you mean them in the jago, i s'pose.' 'yus. they're a awful lot, mr grinder--you've no idear. the father o' this 'ere boy as i've warned you aginst, 'e's in with a desprit gang, an' they'd murder me if they thought i'd come an' told you honest, w'en you might 'a' bin robbed, as is my nature to. they would indeed. so o' course you won't say wot i toldjer, nor 'oo give you this 'ere honourable friendly warnin'--not to nobody.' 'that's awright,' answered the simple grinder, 'i won't let on. but out 'e goes, promp'. i'm obliged to ye, mr weech. er--r wot'll ye take?' weech put away the suggestion with a virtuous palm:--'nothink at all, mr grinder, thanks all the same. i never touch nothink; an' i'm glad to--to do any moral job, so to speak, as comes in my way. 'scatter seeds o' kindness' you know, as the--the psalm says, mr grinder. your boy ain't back, is 'e?' and after peering cautiously, mr weech went his way. xx dicky completed his round, and pushed his unladen trolley grinder-ward with a fuller sense of responsibility than ever. for he carried money. a publican had paid him four and threepence, and he had taken two and tenpence elsewhere. he had left his proud signature, pencilled large and black, on two receipts, and he stopped in a dozen doorways to count the money over again, and make sure that all was right. between the halts he added four and three to two and ten mentally, and proved his sum correct by subtracting each in turn from seven and a penny. and at last he stood his trolley on end by the bank of saucepans, and entered the shop. 'walker's is paid, an' wilkins is paid,' said dicky, putting down the money. 'two an' ten an' four an' three's seven an' a penny.' mr grinder looked steadily and sourly at dicky, and counted. he pitched the odd penny into the till and shook the rest of the coins in his closed hand, still staring moodily in the boy's face. 'it's three an' six a week you come 'ere at,' he said. 'yus sir,' dicky replied, since grinder seemed to expect an answer. the supreme moment when he should take his first wages had been the week's beacon to him, reddening and brightening as saturday night grew nearer. 'three an' six a week an' yer tea.' dicky wondered. 'so as if i found out anythink about--say brass roastin'-jacks for instance--i could give ye yer three an' six an' start y' auf, unless i did somethin' wuss.' dicky was all incomprehension; but something made him feel a little sick. 'but s'posin' i _didn't_ find out anythink about--say seven-pun' jars o' pickles--an' s'pose i wasn't disposed to suspect anythink in regard to--say doormats; then i could either give ye a week s notice or pay y' a week's money an' clear y' out on the spot, without no more trouble.' mr grinder paused, and still looked at dicky with calm dislike. then he added, as though in answer to himself, 'yus.' ... he dropped the money slowly from his right hand to his left. dicky's mouth was dry, and the drawers and pickle-jars swam before him at each side of grinder's head. what did it mean? ''ere y' are,' cried mr grinder, with sudden energy, thrusting his hand across the counter. 'two three-and-sixes is seven shillin's, an' you can git yer tea at 'ome with yer dirty little sister. git out o' my shop!' dicky's hand closed mechanically on the money, and after a second's pause, he found broken speech. 'w--w--wot for, sir?' he asked, huskily. 'i ain't done nothink!' 'no, an' you sha'n't do nothink, that's more. out ye go! if i see ye near the place agin i'll 'ave ye locked up!' dicky slunk to the door. he felt the sobs coming, but he turned at the threshold and said with tremulous lips:--'woncher gimme a chance, sir? s'elp me, i done me best. i--' mr grinder made a short rush from the back of the shop, and dicky gave up and fled. it was all over. there could never be a shop with 'r. perrott' painted over it, now; there would be no parlour with stuff-bottomed chairs and a piano for em to play. he was cut off from the trolley for ever. dicky was thirteen, and at that age the children of the jago were past childish tears; but tears he could not smother, even till he might find a hiding-place: they burst out shamefully in the open street. he took dark turnings, and hid his head in doorways. it was very bitter. at last, when the sobs grew fewer, he remembered the money gripped in his wet fist. it was a consolation. seven shillings was a vast sum in dicky's eyes; until that day he had never handled so much in his life. it would have been handsome recompense, he thought, for any trouble in the world but this. he must take it home, of course; it might avail to buy sympathy of his father and mother. but then, to think he might have had as much every fortnight of his life, a good tea every day, and the proud responsibility, and the trolley! at this his lips came awry again, his eyes sought his sleeve, and he turned to another doorway. his glance fell on the white apron, now smudged and greased in good earnest. it made him feel worse; so he untied it and stuffed it away under his jacket. he wondered vaguely what had occurred to irritate mr grinder, and why he talked of pickles and doormats; but the sorrow of it all afflicted him to the extinction of such minor speculation. and in this misery he dragged his reluctant feet toward the old jago. xxi he handed his father the seven shillings, and received a furious belting for losing his situation. he cried quietly, but it was not because of the strap. all he feared now was to meet father sturt. he had rather fifty beltings than father sturt's reproaches; and, having disgraced himself with mr grinder in some mysterious way which it was beyond his capacity to understand, what but reproaches could he expect from the vicar? the whole world was against him. as for himself, he was hopeless: plainly he must have some incomprehensible defect of nature, since he offended, do as he might, and could neither understand nor redeem his fault. he wondered if it had been so with little neddy wright, who had found the world too ruthless for him at ten; and had tied a brick to his neck, as he had seen done with needless dogs, and let himself timidly down into the canal at haggerstone bridge. so he shuffled through jago row, when a hand came on his shoulder and a hoarse voice said:--'wot's the matter, dicky?' he turned, and saw the mild, coarse face of pigeony poll, the jaw whereof was labouring on something tough and sticky. poll pulled from her pocket a glutinous paper, clinging about a cohesive lump of broken toffee--the one luxury of her moneyed times. ''ave a bit,' she said. 'wot's the matter?' but dicky thrust the hand away and fled, for he feared another burst of tears. his eyes were bad enough as it was, and he longed to hide himself in some hole. he turned into new jago street. hither it was that jerry gullen had betaken himself with his family and the canary, after the great eviction. dicky slackened his pace, loitered at jerry's doorway, and presently found himself in the common passage. it was long since he had had a private interview with jerry gullen's canary: for, indeed, he was thirteen--he was no longer a child, in fact!--and it was not well that he should indulge in such foolish weakness. nevertheless he went as far as the back door. there stood the old donkey, mangy and infirm as ever, but apparently no nearer the end. the wood of the fence was bitten in places, but it was not as yet gnawed to the general whiteness and roundness of that in canary's old abode. canary, indeed, was fortunate to-day, for at the sound of dicky's step he lifted his nose from a small heap of straw, dust, and mouldy hay, swept into a corner. dicky stepped into the yard, and put his hand on canary's neck; presently he glanced guiltily at the windows above. nobody was looking. and in five minutes dicky, aged as he was, had told canary his troubles, while new tears wetted the ragged crest and dropped into the dusty straw. now his grief lost some of its edge. ashamed as he was, he had a shapeless, unapprehended notion that canary was the sole creature alive that could understand and feel with him. and canary poked his nose under the old jacket and sniffed in sympathy, as the broken lining tickled him. dicky's intellectuals began to arrange themselves. plainly, mr weech's philosophy was right after all. he was of the jago, and he must prey on the outer world, as all the jago did; not stray foolishly off the regular track in chase of visions, and fall headlong. father sturt was a creature of another mould. who was he, dicky perrott, that he should break away from the jago habit, and strain after another nature? what could come of it but defeat and bitterness? as old beveridge had said, the jago had got him. why should he fight against the inevitable, and bruise himself? the ways out of the jago old beveridge had told him, years ago. gaol, the gallows and the high mob. there was his chance, his aspiration, his goal: the high mob. to dream of oil-shops or regular wages was foolishness. his bed was made in the jago, and he must lie on it. his hope in life, if he might have a hope at all, was to be of the high mob. spare nobody, stop at nothing, do his devilmost: old beveridge had said that years ago. the task was before him, and he must not balk at it. as for gaol and the gallows, well! there they were, and he could not help it; ill ways out of the jago, both, but still--ways out. he rubbed his face carefully with his sleeve, put away his foolish ambitions, and went forth with a brave heart: to accomplish his destiny for well or ill,--a jago rat. to do his devilmost. but to avoid father sturt. out he went into shoreditch high street, and there he prowled the evening away; there and in norton folgate. but he touched for nothing--nothing at all. he feared lest his week's honesty had damaged his training. even an apple on a stall he failed at, and had to run. and then he turned into bethnal green road. but here a thought checked him suddenly. what of mr grinder? he had threatened to have dicky locked up if he came near the shop again. but a child of the jago knew too much to be frightened by such a threat as that. he went on. he felt interested to see how his late employer was getting along without him, and who was minding the goods outside the shop. probably there was nobody: and this gave dicky an idea. he had forgotten his smudgy apron, folded and tucked away in the lining of his jacket. now he pulled it out, and fastened it before him once more. he knew mr grinder's habits in the shop, and if he could seize a fitting opportunity he might be able, attired in his apron, to pick up or reach down any article that struck his fancy, fearless of interference from passers-by; for he would seem to be still shop-boy. with that he hastened, for it was near closing time at grinder's. he took the opposite side of the road, the better to observe unseen in the darkness. but mr grinder had already begun to carry things in from the pavement. as dicky looked he came out with a long pole wherewith he unhooked from above a clattering cluster of pails and watering pots, and a bunch of doormats. the doormats he let fall on the flags, while he carried in the pots and pails. dicky knew that these pots and pails were kept at night in a shed behind the house; so he scuttled across the road, opening the blade of his old knife as he ran. he cut the string that held the mats together, selected a thick one, rolled it under his arm, and edged off into the shadow. then he ran quietly across to the nearest turning. presently mr grinder came out, hooked his finger in the string among the mats, and pulled up nothing. he stooped, and saw that the string was cut. he looked about him suspiciously, flung the mats over, and counted them. then he stood erect; stared up the street, down the street, and across the road, with his mouth open; and made short rushes left and right into the gloom. then he returned to the mats and scratched his head. finally, he gave another glance about the street, picked up the mats in his arms and carried them in, counting them as he went. and, the mats bestowed, whenever he came forth for a fresh armful of saucepans, he stood and gazed doubtfully, now this way, now that, about the bethnal green road. mr aaron weech was pushing his last shutter into its place when 'clean the knives,' said dicky perrott, in perfunctory repetition of the old formula. mr weech seemed taken aback. 'wot, that?' he asked, doubtfully, pointing at the doormat. then, after a sharp look about the almost deserted street, he ran to jago row corner, twenty yards away, and looked down there. nobody was hiding, and he came back. he led the way into the shop, and closed the door. then, looking keenly in dicky's face, he suddenly asked,--''oo toldjer to bring that 'ere?' 'told me?' dicky answered sullenly. 'nobody told me. don'cher want it?' ''ow much did 'e tell ye t'ask for it?' 'tell me? 'oo?' '_you_ know. 'ow much didjer say 'e said?' dicky was mystified. 'dunno wotcher mean,' he replied. mr weech suddenly broke into a loud laugh, but kept his keen look on the boy's face nevertheless. 'ah, it's a good joke, dicky, ain't it?' he said, and laughed again. 'but you can't 'ave me, ye know! mr grinder's a old friend o' mine, an' i know 'is little larks. wot did 'e tell ye to do if i wouldn't 'ave that doormat?' 'tell me?' asked dicky, plainly more mystified than ever. 'wy 'e never told me nothink. 'e gimme the sack this afternoon, an' chucked me out.' 'then wotcher got yer apron on now for?' 'oh,' said dicky, looking down at it, 'i jist put it on agin--o' purpose.' and he glanced at the mat. mr weech understood, and grinned--a genuine grin this time. 'that's right dicky,' he said, 'never let yer wits go a-ramblin'. a sharp boy like you's a lot too good for a shop-boy, slavin' away from mornin' till night, an' treated ungrateful. wot did 'e sack ye for?' 'i dunno. took a fit in 'is 'ead, i s'pose. wotcher goin' to gimme for this mat? it's a two an' three mat.' 'want somethink to eat, doncher?' suggested mr weech, glancing at a heap of stale cake. 'no i don't,' dicky answered, with sulky resolution. 'i want money.' 'awright,' said mr weech, resignedly. 'you ain't 'ad much to eat an' drink 'ere for a long time, though. but i'll do the 'an'some, seein' you're bin treated ungrateful by grinder. 'ere's twopence.' but dicky held to the mat. 'twopence ain't enough,' he said. 'i want fourpence.' he meant to spare nobody--not even mr weech. 'wot? fourpence?' gasped mr weech indignantly. 'wy, you're mad. take it away.' dicky rolled the mat under his arm and turned to the door. ''ere,' said mr weech, seeing him going, 'i'll make it thrippence, seein' you're bin treated so bad. thrippence--_and_ a slice o' cake,' he added, perceiving that dicky did not hesitate. 'i don't want no cake,' dicky answered doggedly. 'i want fourpence, an' i won't take no less.' the good weech was unwilling that dicky should find another market after all, so he submitted to the extortion. 'ah well,' he said, with a sigh, pulling out the extra coppers, 'jist for this once, then. you'll ave to make it up next time. mindjer, it's on'y 'cos i'm sorry for ye bein' treated ungrateful. don't _you_ go an' treat _me_ ungrateful, now.' dicky pocketed his pence and made for home, while mr weech, chuckling gently at his morning prophecy of a doormat for fourpence, carried the plunder to the room reserved for new and unused stock; promising himself, however, a peep at grinder's shop in the morning, to make quite sure that dicky had really left. so ended dicky's dealings with the house of grinder. when father sturt next saw the oil-man, and inquired of dicky's progress, he was met with solemn congratulations that no larcenies were to pay for. mr grinder's sagacity, it seemed, had enabled him to detect and crush at the outset dicky's plans for selling stock wholesale on his own account. out of consideration for the vicar's recommendation he had refrained from handing the boy over to the police, but had paid him a week in advance and dismissed him. father sturt insisted on repaying the money, and went his way with a heavy heart. for if this were what came of the promising among his flock, what of the others? for some while he saw nothing of dicky; and the incident fell back among a crowd of others in his remembrance: for dicky was but one among thousands, and the disappointment was but one of many hundreds. lying awake that night, but with closed eyes, dicky heard his mother, talking with his father, suggest that perhaps an enemy had earwigged grinder, and told him a tale that had brought about dicky's dismissal: somebody, perhaps, who wanted the situation for somebody else. josh perrott did no more than grunt at the guess, but it gave a new light to dicky. clearly that would account for grinder's change. but who could the mischief-maker be? the little clock on the mantel-piece ticked away busily in the silence, and dicky instantly thought of the hunchback. he it must have been, without a doubt. who else? was he not hanging about the shop, staring and sneering, but a day or two back? and was it not he who had pursued him with malice on every occasion, in school and out? had not bobby roper this very trick of lying tales? where was the gratuitous injury in all these four years that had not been bobby roper's work? dicky trembled with rage as he lay, and he resolved on condign revenge. the war with dove lane was over for the time being, but that made it easier for him to catch his enemy. xxii the feud between the jago and dove lane was eternal, just as was that between the ranns and the learys; but, like the rann and leary feud, it had its paroxysms and its intervals. and, in both cases, the close of a paroxysm was signalised by a great show of amity between the factions. bob rann and billy leary would drink affably from the same pot, and norah walsh and sally green would call each other 'mum'; while jagos and dove-laners would mingle in bars and lend pinches of tobacco, and call each other 'matey.' a paroxysm in the war had now passed, and reconciliation was due. the dove-laners had been heavily thrashed: their benjamins and kicksies had been impounded in meakin street, and they had ceased from buying. dove lane itself had been swept from end to end by the victorious jago, and the populations of both were dotted thickly with bandaged heads. this satisfactory state of things achieved, there was little reason left for fighting. moreover, if fighting persisted too long at a time, the police were apt to turn up in numbers, subjecting the neighbourhood to much inconvenient scrutiny, and very often coming across jagos--or even dove-laners--'wanted' on old accounts. so peace was declared; and, as a visible sign thereof, it was determined that the dove-laners should visit the jago in a body, there to join in a sing-song at mother gapp's. mother gapp's was chosen, not only because it _was_ mother gapp's--an important consideration--but also because of the large room behind the bar, called the 'club-room,' which had long ago been made of two rooms and a big cupboard, by the cutting away of crazy partitions from the crazy walls. scarce was it dark when the dove-laners, in a succession of hilarious groups--but withal a trifle suspicious--began to push through mother gapp's doors. their caps pulled down to their ears, their hands in their pockets, their shoulders humped, and their jackets buttoned tight, they lurched through the jago, grinning with uneasy affability at the greetings that met them, being less practised than the jagos in the assumption of elaborate cordiality. in the club-room of the feathers there were but three or four of the other party, though the bar was packed. the three or four, of whom josh perrott was one, were by way of a committee of stewards deputed to bid the dove-laners welcome, and to help them to seats. the jagos were in some sort in the situation of hosts, and it had been decided after debate that it would ill become them to take their places till their guests were seated. the punctilio of the jago on such occasions was a marvel ever. so josh perrott stood at one side of the club-room door and billy leary at the other, shaking hands with all who entered, and strenuously maintaining cheerful grins. now the jago smile was a smile by itself, unlike the smiles in other places. it faded suddenly, and left the face--the jago face--drawn and sad and startling by contrast, as of a man betrayed into mirth in the midst of great sorrow. so that a persistent grin was known for a work of conscious effort. the dove-laners came in still larger numbers than had been expected, and before long it was perceived that there would be little space in the club-room, if any at all, for the jagos. already the visitors seemed to fill the place, but they still kept coming, and found places by squeezing. there was some doubt as to what had best be done. meanwhile the sing-song began, for at least a score were anxious to 'oblige' at once, and every moment fresh volunteers arose. many dove-laners stood up, and so made more room; but more came, and still more, till the club-room could hold not another, and the very walls were like to burst. under the low ceiling hung a layer of smoke that obscured the face of the man standing on the table at the end to sing; and under the smoke was a close-packed array of heads, hats, and clay pipes, much diversified by white bandages and black eyes. such dove-laners as came in now were fain to find places in the bar, if they could; and a crowd of jagos, men and women, hung about the doors of the feathers. more fortunate than other boys, dicky, who would go anywhere to hear what purported to be music, had succeeded in worming himself through the bar and almost to the door of the club-room; but he could get no farther, and now he stood compressed, bounded on the face by cocko harnwell's coat-tails, and on the back of the head by fluffy pike's moleskin waistcoat, with pearlies down the front and the artful dodge over the pockets. pud palmer--one of the reception committee--was singing. he accompanied his chorus by a step dance, and all the company stamped in sympathy:- '_she's a fighter, she's a biter, she's a swearer, she's a tearer, the gonophs down aar alley they calls 'er rorty sal; but as i'm a pertikiler sort o' bloke, i calls 'er rorty sairer, i'm goin'_--' crack!--crash! dicky clung to cocko harnwell's coat-tails lest he were trampled to death; and for a while he was flung about, crushed and bruised, among rushing men, like a swimmer among breakers, while the air was rent with howls and the smash of glass. for the club-room floor had given way. it had been built but slightly in the beginning, as floor for two small rooms and a cupboard, with little weight to carry. old and rotten now, and put to the strain of a multitude, stamping in unison, it had failed utterly, and had let down a struggling mob of men five feet on the barrels in the cellar, panic-stricken and jumbled with tables, pots, wooden forms, lighted pipes and splintered joinery. from the midst of the stramash a dove-laner bawled aloud that it was a trap, and instantly jagos and dove-laners were at each others' throats, and it was like to go hard with the few jagos among the ruins. billy leary laid about him desperately with a ragged piece of flooring, while josh perrott and pud palmer battered dove-laners with quart pots. then it was shouted without that the dove-laners were exterminating the jagos within, and a torrent of jagos burst through the doors, poured through the bar, and over the club-room threshold into the confusion below. dicky, bruised, frightened and flung like a rag this way and that, at last made shift to grasp a post, and climb up on the bar counter. mother gapp, a dishevelled maniac, was dancing amid pots and broken glass, black in the face, screaming inaudibly. dicky stumbled along the counter, climbed over the broken end of a partition, and fell into the arms of kiddo cook, coming in with the rush. 'put the boy out!' yelled kiddo, turning and heaving him over the heads behind him. somebody caught dicky by a leg and an arm, his head hit the door post, the world turned a double-somersault about him, and he came down with a crash. he was on the flags of old jago street, with all his breath driven out of him. but he was quickly on his feet again. a crowd beat against the front of mother gapp's, and reinforcements came running from everywhere, with the familiar rallying-cry, 'jago! jago 'old tight!' dove lane had abused the jago hospitality; woe to the dove-laners! there were scuffles here and there, where dove-laners, who had never reached the club-room, or who had been crowded out of it, made for escape. dicky was shaken and sore, but he pulled himself together resolutely. he had seen a few dove lane boys about before he had got into the feathers, and plainly it was his duty to find them and bash them. moreover, he wondered what had become of his father. he hastened through the dark passage of the house next to mother gapp's, into the back yard, and through the broken fence. there was a door in the club-room wall, and through this he thought to see what was going forward. the cellar--at any rate, at the farther end--was a pit of writhing forms, and the din rose loud as ever. a short figure stood black against the light, and held by the door-post, looking down at the riot. dicky knew it. he sprang at bobby roper, pulled him by the arm, and struck at him furiously. the hunchback, whimpering, did his best to retaliate and to get away; but dicky, raging at the remembrance of his fancied injury, struck savagely, and struck again, till bobby roper tripped backward over the projecting end of a broken floor-board, and pitched headlong into the cellar. he struck a barrel and rolled over, falling into the space between that and two other barrels. dicky looked, but the hunchback did not move. then some of the dove-laners flung pots at the lamps hanging against the club-room walls. soon they were smashed and fell, and there was a darkness; and under cover thereof the aliens essayed flight. dicky was a little frightened at what he had done, but he felt that with bobby roper anything was justifiable. some dove-laners escaped by the back door--the cellar was low, and there was not five feet between the barrels and the broken joists--and these dicky avoided by getting back through the fence. in the end, most of the enemy struggled away by one means or another, and when lights were brought at last the jagos were found pummelling each other savagely in the gloom. father sturt, apprised of something uncommon by the exodus of members from the club, finally locked the doors and came to investigate. he arrived as the jagos were extricating themselves from the cellar, and it was he who lifted the little hunchback from among the barrels and carried him into the open air; he also who carried him home. no bone was broken, and no joint was disturbed, but there was a serious shock, many contusions, and a cut on the scalp. so said the surgeon whom father sturt took with him to dove lane. and bobby roper lay a fortnight in bed. more plaster than ever embellished the heads of dove lane and the jago that night; but for the jagos there was compensation. for down among the barrels lay many a packet of tobacco, many a pair of boots, and many a corner stuffed with mixed property of other sorts: which mother gapp had fenced for many a month back. so that it happened to more than one warrior to carry home again something with which he had run between the 'posties' long before, and had sold to mother gapp for what she would give. the ground floor of the feathers stood a battered shell. the damage of four years ago was inconsiderable compared to this. with tears and blasphemy mother gapp invaded the hoard of her long iniquity to buy a new floor; but it was the larceny--the taking of the tobacco and the boots, and the many other things from among the barrels--that cut her to the soul. a crool--a crool thing was such robbery--sheer robbery, said mother gapp. josh perrott got a bad sprain in the cellar and had to be helped home. more, he took with him not a single piece of plunder, such was his painful disablement. xxiii for more than a week josh perrott could not walk about. and it was a bad week. for some little while his luck had been but poor, and now he found himself laid up with a total reserve fund of fourteenpence. a coat was pawned with old poll rann (who kept a leaving shop in a first floor back in jago row) for ninepence. then josh swore at dicky for not being still at grinder's, and told him to turn out and bring home some money. dicky had risen almost too sore and stiff to stand, on the morning after the fight at the feathers, and he was little better now. but he had to go, and he went, though he well knew that a click was out of the question, for his joints almost refused to bend. but he found that the fat's a-running boys were contemplating business, and he scouted for them with such success as to bring home sevenpence in the evening. then kiddo cook, who had left mother gapp's with a double armful on the night of the sing-song, found himself rich enough, being a bachelor, to lend josh eighteenpence. and a shawl of hannah perrott's was pawned. that, though, was redeemed the next day, together with the coat. for dicky brought home a golden sovereign. it had been an easy click--scarce a click at all, perhaps, strictly speaking. dicky had tramped into the city, and had found a crowd outside st paul's--a well-dressed crowd, not being moved on: for something was going forward in the cathedral. he recognised one of the high mob, a pogue-hunter--that is a pickpocket who deals in purses. dicky watched this man's movements, by way of education; for he was an eminent practitioner, and worked alone, with no assistant to cover him. dicky saw him in the thick of the crowd, standing beside and behind one lady after another; but it was only when his elbow bent to slip something into his own pocket that dicky knew he had 'touched.' presently he moved to another part of the crowd, where mostly men were standing, and there he stealthily let drop a crumpled newspaper, and straightway left the crowd. he had 'worked' it as much as he judged safe. dicky wriggled toward the crumpled paper, slipped it under his jacket, and cleared away also. he knew that there was something in the paper beside news: that, in fact, there were purses in it--purses emptied and shed as soon as might be, because nobody can swear to money, but strange purses lead to destruction. dicky recked little of this danger, but made his best pace to a recess in a back street, there to examine his pogues; for though the uxter was gone from them, they might yet bring a few coppers from mr weech, if they were of good quality. they were a fairly sound lot. one had a large clasp that looked like silver, and another was quite new, and dicky was observing with satisfaction the shop-shininess of the lining, when he perceived a cunning pocket at the back, lying flat against the main integument--and in it was a sovereign! he gulped at the sight. clearly the pogue-hunter, emptying the pogues in his pocket by sense of touch, had missed the flat pocket. dicky was not yet able to run with freedom, but he never ceased from trotting till he reached his own staircase in old jago street. and so the eight or nine days passed, and josh went out into the jago with no more than a tenderness about his ankle. now, he much desired a good click; so he went across high street shoreditch, to kingsland railway station and bought a ticket for canonbury. luck was against him, it was plain. he tramped the northern suburbs from three o'clock till dark, but touched for nothing. he spent money, indeed, for he feared to overwork his ankle, and for that reason rested in divers public-houses. he peeped in at the gates of quiet gardens, in the hope of garden-hose left unwatched, or tennis-rackets lying in a handy summer-house. but he saw none. he pried about the doors of private stable-yards, in case of absent grooms and unprotected bunches of harness; but in vain. he inspected quiet areas and kitchen entrances in search of unguarded spoons--even descended into one area, where he had to make an awkward excuse about buying old bottles, in consequence of meeting the cook at the door. he tramped one quiet road after another on the look out for a dead 'un--a house furnished, but untenanted. but there was never a dead 'un, it seemed, in all the northern district. so he grew tired and short-tempered, and cursed himself for that he had not driven off with a baker's horse and cart that had tempted him early in the afternoon. it grew twilight, and then dark. josh sat in a public-house, and took a long rest and some bread and cheese. it would never do to go home without touching, and for some time he considered possibilities with regard to a handful of silver money, kept in a glass on a shelf behind the bar. but it was out of reach, and there were too many people in the place for any attempt by climbing on the counter. josh grew savage and soured. plastering itself was not such troublesome work; and at least the pay was certain. it was little short of ten o'clock when he left the public-house and turned back toward canonbury. he would have _something_ on the way, he resolved, and he would catch the first train home. he would have to knock somebody over in a dark street, that was all. it was nothing new, but he would rather have made his click another way this time, because his tender ankle might keep him slow, or even give way altogether; and to be caught in a robbery with violence might easily mean something more than mere imprisonment; it might mean a dose of the 'cat': and the cat was a thing the thought or the mention whereof sent shudders through the old jago. but no: nobody worth knocking down came his way. truly luck was out to-night. there was a spot by the long garden wall of a corner house that would have suited admirably, and as josh lingered there, and looked about him, his eye fell on a ladder, reared nearly upright against the back wall of that same corner house, and lashed at the roof. it passed by the side of the second floor window, whereof the top sash was a little open. that would do. it was not his usual line of work, but it looked very promising. he stuck his stick under his waistcoat by way of the collar, and climbed the wall with gingerly care, giving his sound foot all the hard work. the ladder offered no difficulty, but the bottom sash of the window was stiff, and he cracked a pane of glass in pushing at the frame with his stick. the sash lifted, however, in the end, and he climbed into the dark room, being much impeded by the dressing-table. all was quiet in the house, and the ticking of a watch on the dressing-table was distinct in the ear. josh felt for it and found it, with a chain hanging from the bow. the house was uncommonly quiet. could it possibly be a dead 'un after all? josh felt that he ought to have inspected the front windows before climbing the wall, but the excitement of the long-delayed chance had ruined his discretion. at any rate he would reconnoitre. the door was ajar and the landing was dark. down in the drawing-room a gross, pimply man, in shirt-sleeves and socks, sat up on the sofa at the sound of an opened window higher in the house. he took a drink from the glass by his side, and listened. then he rose and went softly upstairs. josh perrott came out on the landing. it was a long landing, with a staircase at the end, illuminated from somewhere below: so that it was not a case of a dead 'un after all. he tip-toed along to take a look down the stairs, nevertheless. then he was conscious of a loud breathing, as of an over-gorged cow, and up behind the stair-rails rose a fat head, followed by a fat trunk, between white shirt-sleeves. josh sank into the shadow. the man had no light, but discover him he must, sooner or later, for the landing was narrow. better sooner, and suddenly. as the man's foot was on the topmost stair, josh sprang at him with a straight left-hander that took him on the broad chin, and sent him downstairs in a heap, with a crash and a roar. josh darted back to the room he had just left, scrambled through the window, and slid down the ladder, as he had slid down many another when he was a plasterer's boy. he checked himself short of the bottom, sprang at the wall-coping, flung himself over, and ran up the dark by-street, with the sound of muffled roars and screams faint in his ears. he ran a street or two, taking every corner as he came to it, and then fell into a walk. in his flight he had not spared his ankle, and now it was painful. moreover, he had left his stick behind him, in the bedroom. but he was in highbury, and canonbury road station was less than half a mile away. he grinned silently as he went, for there was something in the aspect of the overfed householder, and in the manner of his downfall, that gave the adventure a comic flavour. he took a peep at his spoil as he passed under a street lamp, for all watches and chains are the same in the dark, and the thing might be a mere waterbury on a steel guard. but no: both were gold, and heavy: a red clock and slang if ever there was one. and so josh perrott hobbled and chuckled his way home. xxiv but indeed josh perrott's luck was worse than he thought. for the gross, pimply man was a high mobsman--so very high a mobsman that it would have been slander and libel, and a very great expense, to write him down a mobsman at all. he paid a rent of a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and heavy rates, and put half-a-crown into the plate at a very respectable chapel every sunday. he was, in fact, the king of high mobsmen, spoken of among them as the mogul. he did no vulgar thievery: he never screwed a chat, nor claimed a peter, nor worked the mace. he sat easily at home, and financed (sometimes planned) promising speculations: a large swindle requiring much ground-baiting and preliminary outlay; or a robbery of specie from a mail train; or a bank fraud needing organization and funds. when the results of such speculations consisted of money he took the lion's share. when they were expressed in terms of imprisonment they fell to active and intelligent subordinates. so that for years the mogul had lived an affluent and a blameless life, far removed from the necessity of injudicious bodily exercise, and characterised by every indulgence consistent with a proper suburban respectability. he had patronised, snubbed, or encouraged high mobsmen of more temerarious habit, had profited by their exploits, and had read of their convictions and sentences with placid interest in the morning papers. and after all this, to be robbed in his own house and knocked downstairs by a casual buster was an outrage that afflicted the mogul with wrath infuriate. because that was a sort of trouble that had never seemed a possibility, to a person of his eminence: and because the angriest victim of dishonesty is a thief. however, the burglar had got clean away, that was plain; and he had taken the best watch and chain in the house, with the mogul's initials on the back. so that respectable sufferer sent for the police, and gave his attention to the the alleviation of bumps and the washing away of blood. in his bodily condition a light blow was enough to let a great deal of blood--no doubt with benefit; and josh perrott's blows were not light in any case. so it came to pass that not only were the police on the look-out for a man with a large gold watch with the mogul's monogram on the back; but also the word was passed as by telegraph through underground channels, till every fence in london was warned that the watch was the mogul's; and ere noon next day there was not one but would as lief have put a scorpion in his pocket as that same toy and tackle that josh perrott was gloating over in his back room in old jago street. as for josh, his ankle was bad in the morning, and swelled. he dabbed at it perseveringly with wet rags, and rubbed it vigorously, so that by one o'clock he was able to lace up his boot and go out. he was anxious to fence his plunder without delay, and he made his way to hoxton. the watch seemed to be something especially good, and he determined to stand out for a price well above the usual figure. for the swag of common thieves commanded no such prices as did that of the high mob. all of it was bought and sold on the simple system first called into being seventy years back and more by the prince of fences, ikey solomons. a breast-pin brought a fixed sum, good or bad, and a roll of cloth brought the fixed price of a roll of cloth, regardless of quality. thus a silver watch fetched six shillings, never more and never less; a gold watch was worth twice as much; an uncommonly good one--a rich man's watch--would bring as much as eighteen shillings, if the thief were judge enough of its quality to venture the demand. and as it commonly took three men to secure a single watch in the open street--one to 'front,' one to snatch, and a third to take from the snatcher--the gains of the toy-getting trade were poor, except to the fence. this time josh resolved to put pressure on the fence, and to do his best to get something as near a sovereign as might be. and as to the chain, so thick and heavy, he would fight his best for the privilege of sale by weight. thus turning the thing in his mind, he entered the familiar doorway of the old clothes shop. 'vot is id?' asked the fence, holding out his hand with the customary air of contempt for what was coming, by way of discounting it in advance. this particular fence, by-the-bye, never bought anything himself. he inspected whatever was brought on behalf of an occult friend; and the transaction was completed by a shabby third party in an adjoining court. but he had an amazingly keen regard for his friend's interests. josh put the watch into the extended hand. the fence lifted it to his face, turned it over, and started. he looked hard at josh, and then again at the watch, and handed it hastily back, holding it gingerly by the bow. 'don' vant _dot_,' he said; 'nod me--nod 'im, i mean. no, no.' he turned away, shaking his hand as though to throw off contamination. 'take id avay.' 'wot's the matter?' josh demanded, astonished. 'is it 'cos o' the letters on the back? you can easy send it to church, can't ye?' a watch is 'sent to church' when it is put into another case. but the fence waved away the suggestion. 'take id avay i tell you,' he said. 'i--'e von't 'ave nodden to do vid id.' 'wot's the matter with the chain, then?' asked josh. but the fence walked away to the back of the shop, wagging his hands desperately, like a wet man seeking a towel, and repeating only:--'nodden to do vid id--take id avay--nodden to do vid id.' josh stuffed his prize back into his pocket, and regained the street. he was confounded. what was wrong with cohen? did he suspect a police trick to entrap him? josh snorted with indignation at the thought. he was no nark! but perhaps the police were showing a pressing interest in cohen's business concerns just now, and he had suspended fencing for a while. the guess was a lame one, but he could think of none better at the moment, as he pushed his way to the jago. he would try mother gapp. mother gapp would not even take the watch in her hands; her eyes were good enough at that distance. 'lor', josh perrott,' she said, 'wot 'a' ye bin up to now? want to git me lagged now, do ye? ain't satisfied with breakin' up the 'ouse an' ruinin' a pore widder that way, ain't ye? you git out, go on. i 'ad 'nough o' you!' it was very extraordinary. was there a general reclamation of fences? but there were men at work at the feathers, putting down boards and restoring partitions; and two of them had been 'gone over' ruinously on their way to work, and now they came and went with four policemen. possibly mother gapp feared the observation of carpenters. be it as it might, there was nothing for it now but weech's. mr weech was charmed. 'dear me, it's a wonderful fine watch, mr perrott--a wonderful fine watch. an' a beautiful chain.' but he was looking narrowly at the big monogram as he said it. 'it's reely a wonderful article. 'ow they do git 'em up, to be sure! cost a lot o' money too, i'll be bound. might you be thinkin' o' sellin' it?' 'yus o' course,' replied josh. 'that's wot i brought it for.' 'ah, it's a lovely watch, mr perrott--a lov-erly watch; an' the chain matches it. but you mustn't be too 'ard on me. shall we say four pound for the little lot?' it was more than double josh's wildest hopes, but he wanted all he could get. 'five,' he said doggedly. weech gazed at him with tender rebuke. 'five pound's a awful lot o' money, mr perrott,' he said. 'you're too 'ard on me, reely. i 'ardly know 'ow i can scrape it up. but it's a beautiful little lot, an' i won't 'aggle. but i ain't got all that money in the 'ouse now. i never keep so much money in the 'ouse--sich a neighb'r'ood, mr perrott! bring it round to-morrer mornin' at eleven.' 'awright, i'll come. five quid, mind.' 'ah yus,' answered mr weech, with a reproving smile. 'it's reely more than i ought!' josh was jubilant, and forgot his sore ankle. he had never handled such a sum as five pounds since his fight with billy leary, years ago; when, indeed, he had stooped to folly in the shape of lavish treating, and so had not enjoyed the handling of the full amount. mr weech, also, was pleased. for it was a great stroke of business to oblige so distinguished a person as the mogul. there was no telling what advantages it might not lead to in the way of trade. that night the perrotts had a hot supper, brought from walker's cook-shop in paper. and at eleven the next morning josh, twenty yards from mr weech's door, with the watch and chain in his pocket, was tapped on the arm by a constable in plain clothes, while another came up on the other side. 'mornin', perrott,' said the first constable, cheerily. 'we've got a little business with you at the station.' 'me? wot for?' 'oh well, come along; p'raps it ain't anything--unless there's a gold watch an' chain on you, from highbury. it's just a turnin' over.' 'awright,' replied josh, resignedly. 'it's a fair cop. i'll go quiet.' 'that's right, perrott; it ain't no good playin' the fool, you know.' they were moving along; and as they came by weech's shop, a whiskered face, with a patch of shining scalp over it, peeped from behind a curtain that hung at the rear of the bloaters and plumcake in the window. as he saw it, josh ducked suddenly, wrenching his arm free, and dashed over the threshold. mr weech, whiskers and apron flying, galloped through the door at the back, and the constables sprang upon josh instantly and dragged him into the street. 'wotcher mean?' cried the one who knew him, indignantly, and with a significant glance at the other. 'call that goin' quiet?' josh's face was white and staring with rage. 'awright,' he grunted through his shut teeth, after a pause. 'i'll go quiet now. i ain't got nothin' agin _you_.' xxv dicky's morning theft that day had been but a small one--he had run off with a new two-foot rule that a cabinet-maker had carelessly left on an unfinished office table at his shop door in curtain road. it was not much, but it might fetch some sort of a dinner at weech's, which would be better than going home, and, perhaps, finding nothing. so about noon, all ignorant of his father's misfortune, he came by way of holywell lane and bethnal green road to meakin street. mr weech looked at him rather oddly, dicky fancied, when he came in, but he took the two-foot rule with alacrity, and brought dicky a rasher of bacon, and a slice of cake afterward. this seemed very generous. more: mr weech's manner was uncommonly amiable, and when the meal was over, of his own motion, he handed over a supplementary penny. dicky was surprised; but he had no objection, and he thought little more about it. as soon as he appeared in luck row he was told that his father had been 'smugged.' indeed the tidings had filled the jago within ten minutes. josh perrott was walking quietly along meakin street,--so went the news,--when up comes snuffy and another split, and smugs him. josh had a go for weech's door, to cut his lucky out at the back, but was caught. that was a smart notion of josh's, the jago opinion ran, to get through weech's and out into the courts behind. but it was no go. hannah perrott sat in her room, inert and lamenting. dicky could not rouse her, and at last he went off by himself to reconnoitre about commercial street police station, and pick up what information he might; while a gossip or two came and took mrs perrott for consolation to mother gapp's. little em, unwashed, tangled and weeping, could well take care of herself and the room, being more than two years old. josh perrott would be brought up to-morrow, dicky ascertained, at the north london police court. so the next morning found dicky trudging moodily along the two miles of flags to stoke newington road; while his mother and three sympathising friends, who foresaw an opportunity for numerous tiny drops with interesting circumstances to flavour them, took a penny cast on the way in a tramcar. dicky, with some doubt as to the disposition of the door-keeping policeman toward ragged boys, waited for the four women, and contrived to pass in unobserved among them. several jagos were in the court, interested not only in josh's adventure, but in one of cocko harnwell's, who had indulged, the night before, in an animated little scramble with three policemen in dalston; and they waited with sympathetic interest while the luck was settled of a long string of drunk-and-disorderlies. at last josh was brought in, and lurched composedly into the dock, in the manner of one who knew the routine. the police gave evidence of arrest, in consequence of information received, and of finding the watch and chain in josh's trousers pocket. the prosecutor, with his head conspicuously bedight with sticking-plaster, puffed and grunted up into the witness-box, kissed the book, and was a 'retired commission agent.' he positively identified the watch and chain, and he not less positively identified josh perrott, whom he had picked out from a score of men in the police-yard. this would have been a feat indeed for a man who had never seen josh, and had only once encountered his fist in the dark, had it not been for the dutiful though private aid of mr weech: who, in giving his information had described josh and his one suit of clothes with great fidelity, especially indicating a scar on the right cheek-bone which would mark him among a thousand. the retired commission agent was quite sure of the prisoner. he had met him on the stairs, where there was plenty of light from a lamp, and the prisoner had attacked him savagely, beating him about the head and flinging him downstairs. the policeman called by the prosecutor's servant deposed to finding the prosecutor bruised and bleeding. there was a ladder against the back of the house; a bedroom window had been opened; there were muddy marks on the sill; and he had found the stick--produced--lying in the bedroom. josh leaned easily on the rail before him while evidence was being given, and said 'no, yer worship,' whenever he was asked if he desired to question a witness. he knew better than to run the risk of incriminating himself by challenging the prosecutor's well-coloured evidence; and, as it was a certain case of committal for trial, it would have been useless in any event. he made the same reply when he was asked if he had anything to say before being committed: and straightway was 'fullied.' he lurched serenely out of the dock, waving his cap at his friends in the court, and that was all. the jagos waited till cocko harnwell got his three months and then retired to neighbouring public-houses; but dicky remembered his little sister, and hurried home. the month's session at the old bailey had just begun, so that josh had no long stay at holloway. among the jagos it was held to be a most creditable circumstance that josh was to take his trial with full honours at the old bailey, and not at mere county sessions at clerkenwell, like a simple lob-crawler or peter-claimer. for josh's was a case of burglary with serious violence, such as was fitting for the old bailey, and not even a high mobsman could come to trial with greater glory. 'as like as not it's laggin' dues, after 'is other convictions,' said bill rann. and jerry gullen thought so too. dicky went, with his mother and em, to see josh at newgate. they stood with other visitors, very noisy, before a double iron railing covered with wire-netting, at the farther side whereof stood josh and other prisoners, while a screaming hubbub of question and answer filled the air. josh had little to say. he lounged against the farther railing with his hands in his pockets, asked what cocko harnwell had got, and sent a message to bill rann. while his wife did little more than look dolefully through the wires, and pipe:--'oh, josh, wotever shall i do?' at intervals, with no particular emotion; while em pressed her smudgy little face against the wires, and stared mightily; and while dicky felt that if he had been younger he would have cried. when time was up, josh waved his hand and slouched off, and his family turned out with the rest: little em carrying into later years a memory of father as a man who lived in a cage. in such a case as this, the jago would have been for ever disgraced if josh perrott's pals had neglected to get up a 'break' or subscription to pay for his defence. things were never very flourishing in the jago. but this was the sort of break a jago could not shirk, lest it were remembered against him when his own turn came. so enough was collected to brief an exceedingly junior counsel, who did his useless best. but the facts were too strong even for the most inexperienced advocate; the evidence of the prosecutor was nowhere to be shaken, and the jury found a verdict of guilty without leaving the box--indeed, with scarce the formality of collecting their heads together over the rails. then josh's past was most unpleasantly raked up before him. he had been convicted of larceny, of assaulting the police, and of robbery with violence. there were two sentences of six months' imprisonment recorded against him, one of three months, and two of a month. besides fines. the recorder considered it a very serious offence. not deterred by the punishments he had already received, the prisoner had proceeded to a worse crime--burglary; and with violence. it was plain that lenience was wasted in such a case, and simple imprisonment was not enough. there must be an exemplary sentence. the prisoner must be kept in penal servitude for five years. lagging dues it was, as bill rann had anticipated. that josh perrott agreed with him was suggested by the fact that from the very beginning he described himself as a painter; because a painter in prison is apt to be employed at times in painting--a lighter and a more desirable task than falls to the lot of his fellows in other trades. in a room by the court josh saw his wife, dicky, and bill rann (josh's brother-in-law for the occasion) before his ride to holloway, his one stopping place on the way to chelmsford gaol. little em had been left sprawling in the jago gutters. this time hannah perrott wept in good earnest, and dicky, notwithstanding his thirteen years, blinked very hard at the wall before him. the arrangement of josh's affairs was neither a long nor a difficult labour. 's'pose you'll 'ave to do wot you can with rush bags, an' sacks, and match-boxes, an' wot not,' he said to his wife, and she assented. josh nodded:--'an' if you 'ave to go in the 'ouse,'--he meant the workhouse,--'well, it can't be 'elped. you won't be no wuss auf 'n me.' 'oh, _she'll_ be awright,' said bill rann, jerking his thumb cheerfully toward the missis. 'wot about you? think they'll make it parkhurst?' josh shook his head moodily. parkhurst being the prison reserved for convicts of less robust habit, he had little hope of enjoying its easier conditions. presently he said:--'i bin put away this time--fair put away.' 'wot?' answered bill, 'narkin' dues is it?' josh nodded. ''oo done it then? 'oo narked?' josh shook his head. 'never mind,' he said, 'i don't want 'im druv out o' the jago 'fore i come out. i'd be sorry to miss 'im. _i_ know 'im--that's enough.' and then time was up. josh suffered the missis to kiss him, and shook hands with bill rann. 'good luck to all you jagos,' he said. dicky shook hands too, and said 'good-bye, father!' in a voice of such laboured cheerfulness that a grin burst for a moment amid josh's moody features as he was marched away, and so departed for the place--in jago idiom--where the dogs don't bite. xxvi it was father sturt's practice to visit every family in his parish in regular order. but small as the parish was--insignificant, indeed, in mere area--its population exceeded eight thousand: so that the round was one of many months, for visiting was but one among innumerable duties. but josh perrott's lagging secured his family a special call. not that the circumstances were in any way novel or at all uncommon; nor even that the vicar had any hope of being able to help. he was but the one man who could swim in a howling sea of human wreckage. in the jago, wives like hannah perrott, temporarily widowed by the absence of husbands 'in the country,' were to be counted in scores, and most were in worse case than she, in the matter of dependent children. father sturt's house-list revealed the fact that in old jago street alone, near seventy of the males were at that moment on ticket-of-leave. in the perrott case, indeed, the sufferers were fortunate, as things went. mrs perrott had but herself and the child of two to keep, for dicky could do something, whether good or bad, for himself. the vicar might try to get regular work for dicky, but it would be a vain toil, for he must tell an employer what he knew of dicky's past and of that other situation. he could but give the woman the best counsel at his command, and do what he might to quicken any latent spark of energy. so he did his best, and that was all. the struggle lay with hannah perrott. she had been left before, and more than once; but then the periods had been shorter, and, as a matter of fact, things had fallen out so well that scarce more than a meal here and there had had to be missed, though, when they came, the meals were apt to be but of crusts. and now there was more trouble ahead; for though she began her lonely time with but one small child on hand, she knew that ere long there would be two. of course, she had worked before; not only when josh had been 'in' but at other times, to add to the family resources. she was a clumsy needlewoman: else she might hope to earn some ninepence or a shilling a day at making shirts, by keeping well to the needle for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four; and from the whole sum there would be no deductions, except for needles and cotton, and what the frugal employer might choose to subtract for work to which he could devise an objection. but, as it was, she must do her best to get some sack-making. they paid one and sevenpence a hundred for sacks, and, with speed and long hours, she could make a hundred in four days. rush bag-making would bring even more, which would be desirable, considering the three-and-sixpence a week for rent: which, with the payments for other rooms, made the rent of the crazy den in old jago street about equal, space for space, to that of a house in onslow square. then there was a more lucrative employment still, but one to be looked for at intervals only: one not to be counted on at all, in fact, for it was a prize, and many sought after it. this was the making of match-boxes. for making one hundred and forty-four outside cases with paper label and sandpaper, and the same number of trays to slide into them--a gross of complete boxes, or two hundred and eighty-eight pieces in all--one got twopence farthing; indeed, for a special size one even got a farthing a gross more; and all the wood and the labels and the sandpaper were provided free: so that the fortunate operative lost nothing out of the twopence farthing but the cost of the paste, and the string for tying up the boxes into regularly numbered batches, and the time employed in fetching the work and taking it back again. and if seven gross were to be got, and could be done in a day--and it was really not very difficult for the skilful hand who kept at work long enough--the day's income was one and threepence three-farthings, less expenses: still better, that, than the shirts. but the work was hard to get. as the public-spirited manufacturers complained: people would buy swedish matches, whereas if people would support home industries and buy no matches but theirs, they would be able to order many a twopence-farthingsworth of boxes more. there might be collateral sources of income, but these were doubtful and irregular. probably dicky would bring in a few coppers now and again. then judicious attendance at churches, chapels and prayer-meetings beyond the jago borders was rewarded by coal-tickets, boots, and the like. it was necessary to know just where and when to go and what to say, else the sole result might be loss of time. there was a church in bethnal green, for instance, which it would be foolish to enter before the end of the litany, for then you were in good time to get your half-quarter hundredweight of coals; but at other places they might object to so late an appearance. above all, one must know the ropes. there were several women in the jago who made almost a living in this way alone. they were experts; they knew every fund, every meeting-house, all the comings and goings of the gullible; insomuch that they would take black umbrage at any unexpected difficulty in getting what they demanded. 'wy,' one would say, 'i 'ad to pitch sich a bleed'n' 'oly tale i earned it twice over.' but these were the proficient, and proficiency in the trade was an outcome of long experience working on a foundation of natural gifts; and hannah perrott could never hope to be among them. turning these things in her mind, she addressed herself to her struggle. she managed to get some sacks, but for a week or two she could make nothing like twenty-five a day, though dicky helped. her fingers got raw; but she managed to complete a hundred within the first week. they might have been better done, as the employer said when he saw them. but she got her full one and sevenpence. she pawned her boots for fourpence, and wore two old odd ones of josh's; and she got twopence on a petticoat. dicky also helped a little; and at the end of a fortnight there came a godsend in the shape of material for match-boxes. mrs perrott was slow with them at first; but dicky was quick, and even little em began to learn to spread paste. xxvii dicky grew slighter and lanker, dark about the eyes, and weaker. he was growing longitudinally, and that made his lateral wasting the quicker and the more apparent. a furtive frighted look hung ever in his face, a fugitive air about his whole person. his mother's long face was longer than ever, and blacker under the eyes than dicky's own, and her weak open mouth hung at the corners as that of a woman faint with weeping. little em's knees and elbows were knobs in the midst of limbs of unnatural length. rarely could a meal be seen ahead; and when it came, it made dicky doubtful whether or not hunger were really caused by eating. but his chief distress was to see that little em cried not like a child, but silently, as she strove to thread needles or to smear matchbox labels. and when good fortune brought match-boxes, there was an undue loss on the twopence farthing in the matter of paste. the stuff was a foul mess, sour and faint, and it was kept in a broken tea-cup, near which dicky had detected his sister sucking her fingers; for in truth little em stole the paste. on and off, by one way and another, mrs perrott made enough to keep the rent paid with indifferent regularity, and sometimes there was a copper or so left over. she did fairly well, too, at the churches and prayer-meetings; people saw her condition, and now and again would give her something beyond the common dole; so that she learned the trick of looking more miserable than usual at such places. the roof provided, dicky felt that his was the task to find food. alone, he might have rubbed along clear of starvation, but there were his mother and his sister. lack of victuals shook his nerve and made him timid. moreover, his terror grew greater than ever at the prospect of being caught in a theft. he lay awake at night and sweated to think of it. who would bring in things from the outer world for mother and em then? and the danger was worse than ever. he had felt the police-court birch, and it was bad, very bad. but he would take it every day and take it almost without a tear, rather than the chance of a reformatory. magistrates were unwilling to send boys to reformatories while both father and mother were at hand to control them, for that were relieving the parents of their natural responsibility; but in a case like dicky's, a 'schooling' was a very likely thing. so that dicky, as he prowled, was torn between implacable need and the fear of being cut off from all chance of supplying it. it was his rule never to come home without bringing something, were it no more than a mildewed crust. it was a resolve impossible to keep at times, but at those times it was two in the morning ere he would drag himself, pallid and faint, into the dark room where the others might be--probably were--lying awake and unfed. rather than face such a homecoming he had sometimes ventured on a more difficult feat than stealing in the outer world: he had stolen in the jago. sam cash, for instance, had lost a bloater. dicky never ate at weech's now. rarely, indeed, would he take payment in kind, unless it were for something of smaller value than the average of his poor pilferings; and then he carried the food home. but cheaper things could be bought elsewhere, so that more usually he insisted on money payments: to the grief of mr weech, who set forth the odiousness of ingratitude at length; though his homilies had no sort of effect on dicky's morals. father sturt saw that hannah perrott gained no ground in her struggle, and urged her to apply for outdoor parish relief, promising to second her request with the guardians. but with an odd throwback to the respectability of her boiler-making ancestry, she disliked the notion of help from the parish, and preferred to remain as she was; for there at least her ingrained inertness seemed to side with some phantom of self-respect. to her present position she had subsided by almost imperceptible degrees, and she was scarce conscious of a change. but to parish relief there was a distinct and palpable step: a step that, on the whole, it seemed easier not to take. but it was with eagerness that she took a maternity society's letter, wherewith the vicar had provided himself on her behalf. for her time was drawing near. xxviii josh perrott well understood the advantage of good prison-behaviour, and after six months in his chelmsford cell he had earned the right to a visit from friends. but none came. he had scarcely expected that anybody would, and asked for the order merely on the general principle that a man should take all he can get, useful or not. for there would have been a five shilling fare to pay for each visitor from london, and hannah perrott could as easily have paid five pounds. and indeed she had other things to think of. kiddo cook had been less observed of late in the jago. in simple fact he was at work. he found that a steady week of porterage at spitalfields market would bring him sixteen shillings and perhaps a little more; and he had taken father sturt's encouragement to try another week, and a week after that. father sturt too, had cunningly stimulated kiddo's ambitions: till he cherished aspirations to a fruit and vegetable stall, with a proper tarpaulin cover for bad weather; though he cherished them in secret, confident that they were of his own independent conception. perhaps the perrotts saw as much of kiddo as did anybody at this time. for kiddo, seeing how it went with them (though indeed it went as badly with others too) built up laboriously a solemn and most circumstantial lie. there was a friend of his, a perfect gentleman, who used a beer-shop by spitalfields market, and who had just started an extensive and complicated business in the general provision line. he sold all sorts of fruit and vegetables fresh, and all sorts of meat, carrots, cabbages, saveloys, fried fish and pease-pudding cooked. his motto was:--'everything _of_ the best.' but he had the misfortune to be quite unable himself to judge whether his goods were really of the best or not, in consequence of an injury to his palate, arising from a blow on the mouth with a quart pot, inflicted in the heat of discussion by a wealthy acquaintance. so that he, being a perfect gentleman, had requested kiddo cook, out of the friendship he bore him, to drop in occasionally and test his samples. 'take a good big whack, you know,' said he, 'and get the advice of a friend or two, if _you_ ain't sure.' so kiddo would take frequent and handsome whacks accordingly, to the perfect gentleman's delight; and, not quite knowing what to do with all the whacks, or being desirous of an independent opinion on them (there was some confusion between these two motives) he would bring mrs perrott samples, from time to time, and hope it wouldn't inconvenience her. it never did. it was late in the dusk of a rainy day that kiddo cook stumped into old jago street with an apple in his pocket for em. it was not much, but money was a little short, and at any rate the child would be pleased. as he climbed the stairs he grew conscious of sounds of anguish, muffled by the perrotts' door. there might have been sobs, and there seemed to be groans; certainly little em was crying, though but faintly, and something--perhaps boot-heels--scraped on the boards. kiddo hesitated a little, and then knocked softly. the knock was unnoticed, so in the end he pushed the door open. * * * * * the day had been a bad one with the perrotts. dicky had gone out early, and had not returned. his mother had tramped unfed to the sackmakers, but there was no work to be got. she tried the rush bag people, with a like result. nor was any matchbox material being given out. an unregarded turnip had rolled from a shop into the gutter, and she had seized it stealthily. it was not in nature to take it home whole, and once a corner was cleared, she dragged herself jago-ward, gnawing the root furtively as she went. and so she joined em at home late in the afternoon. * * * * * kiddo pushed the door open and went in. at his second step he stood staring, and his chin dropped. 'good gawd!' said kiddo cook. he cleared the stairs in three jumps. he stood but an instant on the flags before the house, with a quick glance each way, and then dashed off through the mud. pigeony poll was erratic in residence, but just now she had a room by the roof of a house in jago row, and up the stairs of this house kiddo ran, calling her by name. 'go over to perrotts', quick!' he shouted from the landing below as poll appeared at her door. 'run, for gawd's sake, or the woman'll croak! i'm auf to father's.' and he rushed away to the vicar's lodgings. father sturt emerged at a run, and made for a surgeon's in shoreditch high street. and when the surgeon reached hannah perrott he found her stretched on her ragged bed, tended, with anxious clumsiness, by pigeony poll; while little em, tearful and abashed, sat in a corner and nibbled a bit of turnip. hannah perrott had anticipated the operation of the maternity society letter, and another child of the jago had come unconsenting into its black inheritance. father sturt met the surgeon as he came away in the later evening, and asked if all were well. the surgeon shrugged his shoulders. 'people would call it so,' he said. 'the boy's alive, and so is the mother. but you and i may say the truth. you know the jago far better than i. is there a child in all this place that wouldn't be better dead--still better unborn? but does a day pass without bringing you just such a parishioner? here lies the jago, a nest of rats, breeding, breeding, as only rats can; and we say it is well. on high moral grounds we uphold the right of rats to multiply their thousands. sometimes we catch a rat. and we keep it a little while, nourish it carefully, and put it back into the nest to propagate its kind.' father sturt walked a little way in silence. then he said:--'you are right, of course. but who'll listen, if you shout it from the housetops? i might try to proclaim it myself, if i had time and energy to waste. but i have none--i must work, and so must you. the burden grows day by day, as you say. the thing's hopeless, perhaps, but that is not for me to discuss. i have my duty.' the surgeon was a young man, but shoreditch had helped him over most of his enthusiasms. 'that's right,' he said, 'quite right. people are so very genteel, aren't they?' he laughed, as at a droll remembrance. 'but, hang it all, men like ourselves needn't talk as though the world was built of hardbake. it's a mighty relief to speak truth with a man who knows--a man not rotted through with sentiment. think how few men we trust with the power to give a fellow creature a year in gaol, and how carefully we pick them! even damnation is out of fashion, i believe, among theologians. but any noxious wretch may damn human souls to the jago, one after another, year in year out, and we respect his right: his sacred right.' at the 'posties' the two men separated. the rain, which had abated for a space, came up on a driving wind, and whipped dicky perrott home to meet his new brother. xxix things grew a little easier with the perrotts. father sturt saw that there was food while the mother was renewing her strength, and he had a bag of linen sent. more, he carried his point as to parish relief by main force. it was two shillings and three quartern loaves a week. unfortunately the loaves were imprinted with the parish mark, or they might have been sold at the chandler's, in order that the whole measure of relief might be passed on to the landlord (a very respectable man, with a chandler's shop of his own) for rent. as it was, the bread perforce was eaten, and the landlord had the two shillings, as well as eighteenpence which had to be got in some other way. of course, hannah perrott might have 'taken in lodgers' in the room, as others did, but she doubted her ability to bully the rent out of them, or to turn them out if they did not pay. whatever was pawnable had gone already, of course, except the little nickel-plated clock. that might have produced as much as sixpence, but she had a whim to keep it. she regarded it as a memorial of josh, for it was his sole contribution to the family appointments. dicky, with a cast-off jacket from the vicar's store, took to hanging about liverpool street station in quest of bags to carry. sometimes he got bags, and coppers for carrying them: sometimes he got kicks from porters. an hour or two of disappointment in this pursuit would send him off on the prowl to 'find' new stock for mr weech. he went farther afield now: to the market-places in mile end and stepney, and to the riverside, where there were many chances--guarded jealously, however, by the pirate boys of the neighbourhood, who would tolerate no interlopers at the wharves. in the very early morning, too, he practised the sand-bag fake, in the jago. for there were those among the jagos who kept (two even bred) linnets and such birds, and prepared them for julking, or singing matches at the bag of nails. it was the habit of the bird-fanciers to hang their little wooden cages on nails out of window, and there they hung through the night: for it had been noted, as a surprising peculiarity in linnets, that a bird would droop and go off song after a dozen or so of nights in a jago room, in company with eight, ten or a dozen human sleepers, notwithstanding the thoughtful shutting of windows. so that any early riser provided with a little bag packed with a handful or so of sand, could become an opulent bird-owner in half-an-hour. let but the sand-bag be pitched with proper skill at the bottom of a cage, and that cage would leave the nail, and come tumbling and fluttering down into the ready hands of the early riser. the sand-bag brought down the cage and fell quietly on the flags, which was why it was preferred before a stone. the sand-bag faker was moved by no particular love of linnets. his spoil was got rid of as soon as the bird-shops opened in club row. and his craft was one of danger. thus the months went with dicky, and the years. there were changes in the jago. the baby was but three months old when father sturt's new church was opened, and the club set going in new buildings; and it was at that time that josh perrott was removed to portland. even the gradual removal of the old jago itself was begun. for the county council bought a row of houses at the end of jago row, by honey lane, with a design to build big barrack dwellings on the site. the scenes of the jago court eviction were repeated, with less governed antics. for the county council knew not jago ways; and when deputations came forth weeping, protesting the impossibility of finding new lodgings, and beseeching a respite, they were given six weeks more, and went back delighted into free quarters. at the end of the six weeks a larger deputation protested a little louder, wept a great deal more, and poached another month; for it would seem an unpopular thing to turn the people into the street. thus in the end, when the unpopular thing had to be done, it was with sevenfold trouble, loud cursing of the county council in the public street, and many fights. but this one spot of the jago cleared, the county council began to creep along jago row and into half jago street; and after long delay the crude yellow brick of the barrack dwellings rose above the oft-stolen hoardings, and grew, storey by storey. dicky was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. if josh perrott had only earned his marks, he would soon be out now. xxx josh perrott earned his marks, and in less than four years from his conviction he came away from portland. it was a mere matter of hours ere his arrival in london, when dicky, hands in pockets, strolled along old jago street, and by the 'posties' to high street. dicky was almost at his seventeenth birthday. he had grown his utmost, and stood five feet two. he wore a cap with a cloth peak and ear-laps tied at the top with strings, slap-up kicksies, cut saucy, and a bob-tail coat of the out-and-out description: though all these glories were torn and shabby, and had been bought second-hand. he was safe from any risk of the reformatory now, being well over the age; and he had had the luck never to have been taken by the police since his father's lagging--though there were escapes too narrow to be thought about with comfort. it was a matter for wonderment, and he spoke of it with pride. here he was, a man of long experience, and near seventeen years old, yet he had never been in prison. few, very few of such an age could say that. sometimes he saw his old enemy, the hunchback, who worked at a shoemaker's, but he saw him with unconcern. he cared nothing for tale-bearing now. the memory of old injuries had dulled, and, after all, this was a merely inconsiderable hunchback, whom it were beneath his dignity to regard with anything but tolerant indifference. bob roper steered clear at such encounters, and showed his teeth like a cat, and looked back malevolently. it didn't matter. dicky was not married, either in the simple jago fashion or in church. there was little difference, as a matter of fact, so far as facility went. there was a church in bethnal green where you might be married for sevenpence if you were fourteen years old, and no questions asked--or at any rate they were questions answers whereunto were easy to invent. you just came in, drunk if possible, with a batch of some scores, and rowdied about the church with your hat on, and the curate worked off the crowd at one go, calling the names one after another. you sang, or you shouted, or you drank out of a bottle, or you flung a prayer-book at a friend, as the fancy took you; and the whole thing was not a bad joke for the money, though after all sevenpence is half-a-gallon, and not to be wasted. but dicky had had enough to do to look after his mother and em and little josh--as hannah perrott had called the baby. dicky, indeed, had a family already. more: the jago girls affected him with an odd feeling of repulsion. not of themselves, perhaps, though they were squalid drabs long ere they were ripe for the sevenpenny church: but by comparison with the clean, remote shop-girls who were visible through the broad windows in the outer streets. dicky intended the day to be a holiday. he was not going 'out,' as the word went, for ill-luck had a way of coming on notable days like this, and he might easily chance to 'fall' before his father got home. he was almost too big now for carrying bags at liverpool street, because small boys looked cheaper than large ones--not that there was anything especially large about dicky, beyond his height of five feet two; and at the moment he could think of nothing else that might turn a copper. he stood irresolute on the high street footway, and as he stood, kiddo cook hove in sight, dragging a barrow-load of carrots and cabbages. kiddo had not yet compassed the stall with the rain-proof awning. but it was almost in sight, for the barrow could scarce hold all that he could sell; and there was a joke abroad that he was to be married in father sturt's church: some facetiously suggesting that mother gapp would prove a good investment commercially, while others maintained the greater eligibility of old poll rann. ''tcheer, dicky!' said kiddo, pulling up and wiping his cap-lining with a red cotton handkerchief. 'ol' man out to-day, ain't 'e?' 'yus,' dicky answered. ''spect 'im up to-night.' kiddo nodded, and wiped his face. ''spose the mob'll git up a break for 'im,' he said; 'but 'e'll 'ave a bit o' gilt from stir as well, won't 'e? so 'e'll be awright.' and kiddo stuffed his handkerchief into his trousers pocket, pulled his cap tight, and bent to his barrow-handles. dicky turned idly to the left, and slouched to the corner of meakin street. there he loafed for a little while, and then went as aimlessly up the turning. meakin street was much as ever. there were still the chandlers' shops, where tea and sugar were sold by the farthingsworth, and the barber's where hair was fashionably cut for three half-pence: though jago hair was commonly cut in another place and received little more attention. there was still walker's cook-shop, foggy with steam, its windows all a-trickle, and there was the original slap-up tog emporium, with its kicksies and its benjamins cut saucy as ever, and its double fakements still artful. at the 'dispensary' there was another young student, but his advice and medicine were sixpence, just as his remote predecessor's had been for little looey, long forgotten. and farther down on the opposite side, mr aaron weech's coffee-shop, with its sunday-school festival bills, maintained its general band-of-hope air, and displayed its shrivelled bloaters, its doubtful cake, and its pallid scones in an odour of respectability and stale pickles. dicky glanced in as he came by the door, and met the anxious eye of mr weech, whom he had not seen for a fortnight. for dicky was no boy now, but knew enough to sell at cohen's or elsewhere whenever possible, and to care not a rap for mr weech. as that tradesman saw dicky, he burst into an eager smile, and came forward. 'good mornin',--er--' with a quick glance--'mr perrott! good mornin'! you're quite a stranger, reely!' _mister_ perrott! mr weech was very polite. dicky stopped, and grunted a cautious salutation. 'do come in, mr perrott. wy, is the good noos right wot i 'ear, about yer father a-comin' 'ome from--from the country?' dicky confirmed the news. 'well i _am_ glad t' 'ear that now.' mr weech grinned exceedingly, though there was something lacking in his delight. 'but there, wot'll you 'ave, mr perrott? say anythink in the 'ole shop and welcome! it's sich an 'appy occasion, mr perrott, i couldn't think o' chargin' you a 'apeny. 'ave a rasher, now, do. there's one on at this very moment. sairer! ain't that rasher done yut?' dicky did not understand this liberality, but he had long since adopted the policy of taking all he could get. so he sat at a table, and mr weech sat opposite. 'jist like ole times, ain't it?' said mr weech. 'an' that reminds me i owe you a shillin'. it's that pair o' noo boots you chucked over the back fence a fortnight ago. w'en i come to look at 'em, they was better'n wot i thought, an' so i says to meself, "this won't do," says i. "on'y ninepence for a pair o' boots like them ain't fair," i says, "an' i'd rayther be at a lawss on 'em than not be fair. fair's fair, as the apostle david says in the proverbs, an' them boots is worth very near _one_-an'-nine. so i'll give mr perrott another shillin'," i says, "the very next time i see 'im." an' there it is.' he put the shilling on the table, and dicky pocketed it, nothing loth. the thing might be hard to understand, but that concerned him not. there was the shilling. likewise, there was the bacon, and the coffee that went with it, and dicky went at them with a will, recking nothing of why they were there, and nothing of any matter which might make the giver anxious in the prospect of an early meeting with josh. 'ah,' mr weech went on, 'it'll be quite a pleasure to see yer father agin, that it will. wot a blessed release! "free from the lor o 'appy condition," as the 'ymn says. i 'ope 'e'll be well an' 'arty. an' if--_if_ there should be anythink in the way of a friendly lead or a subscription or wot not, i 'ope--remember this, mr perrott, won'tcher?--i 'ope you'll let me 'ave a chance to put down somethink good. not as i can reely afford it, ye know, mr perrott--trade's very pore, an' it's sich a neighb'r'ood!--but i'll do it for yer father--yus, if it's me last copper. ye won't forgit that, will ye? an' if 'e'd like any little relish w'en 'e comes 'ome--sich as a 'addick or a bit o' 'am--wy, i'll wrop it up an' send it.' this was all very handsome, and dicky wished some notion of the sort had occurred to mr weech on a few of the dinnerless days of the past four years. but he went away wondering if it might not be well to regard mr weech with caution for a while. for there must be a reason for all this generosity. xxxi it was in mother gapp's that josh perrott and his family met. hannah had started out with an idea of meeting him at waterloo station; but, finding herself an object of distinction and congratulation among the women she met, she had lingered by the way, accepting many little drops, to prove herself not unduly proud, and so had failed of her intent. josh, on his part, had not been abstinent. he had successfully run the gauntlet of prisoners' aid societies and the like, professing to have 'a job waiting for him' in shoreditch, and his way across london had been freely punctuated at public-houses; for his prison gratuity was a very pleasant and useful little sum. and now, when at last they met, he was not especially gracious. he wanted to know, not only why he had found nobody at home, but also why hannah had never been to see him at portland. as to the second question, the obvious and sufficient answer was that the return fare to portland would have been some twenty-five shillings: a sum that hannah had never seen together since josh left her. as to the first, she protested, with muddled vehemence, that she had gone to meet him, and had missed him by some mistake as to arrival platforms. so that at length, urged thereto by the rest of the hour's customers at the feathers, josh kissed her sulkily and ordered her a drink. em was distrustful at first, but drank her allowance of gin with much relish, tipping the glass again and again to catch the last drop; and little josh, now for the first time introduced to josh the elder, took a dislike to his father's not particularly sober glare and grin, and roared aloud upon his knee, assailing him, between the roars, with every curse familiar in the jago, amid the genial merriment of the company. dicky came in quietly, and stood at his father's elbow with the pride natural to a dutiful son on such an occasion. and at closing-time they all helped each other home. in the morning josh rose late. he looked all the better for his lagging, browner than ever in the face, smarter and stouter. in a corner he perceived a little heap of made match-boxes, and, hard by, the material for more. it was em's work of yesterday morning. 'support 'ome ind_us_tries,' said josh, musingly. 'yus. twopence-farden a gross.' and he kicked the heap to splinters. he strolled out into the street, to survey the jago. in the bulk it was little changed, though the county council had made a difference in the north-east corner, and was creeping farther and farther still. the dispossessed jagos had gone to infect the neighbourhoods across the border, and to crowd the people a little closer. they did not return to live in the new barrack-buildings; which was a strange thing, for the county council was charging very little more than double the rents which the landlords of the old jago had charged. and so another jago, teeming and villainous as the one displaced, was slowly growing, in the form of a ring, round about the great yellow houses. but the new church and its attendant buildings most took josh's notice. they were little more than begun when last he walked old jago street in daylight, and now they stood, large and healthy amid the dens about them, a wonder and a pride. as he looked, jerry gullen and bill rann passed. 'wayo, brother-in-law!' sang out bill rann, who remembered the old bailey fiction of four years back, and thought it a capital joke. 'nice sort o' thing, ain't it?' said jerry gullen with indignant sarcasm, jerking his thumb toward the new church. 'the street's clean ruined. wot's the good o' livin' 'ere now? wy, a man mustn't even do a click, blimy!' 'an' doncher?' asked josh with a grin. hereat another grin broke wide on jerry gullen's face, and he went his way with a wink and a whistle. 'and so you're back again, josh perrott!' said old beveridge, seedier than ever, with the 'hard up' fresh chalked on the changeless hat. 'back again! pity you couldn't stay there, isn't it? pity we can't all stay there.' josh looked after the gaunt old figure with much doubt and a vague indignation: for such a view was foreign to his understanding. and as he looked father sturt came out of the church, and laid his hand on josh's shoulder. 'what!' exclaimed the vicar, 'home again without coming to see me! but there, you must have been coming. i hope you haven't been knocking long? come in now, at any rate. you're looking wonderfully well. what a capital thing a holiday is, isn't it--a good long one?' taking josh by the arm he hauled him, grinning, sheepish and almost blushing, toward the club door. and at that moment sam cash came hurrying round luck row corner, with his finger through a string, and on that string a bunch of grouse. 'dear me,' said father sturt, turning back, but without releasing josh's arm. 'here's our dear friend, sam cash, taking home something for his lunch. come, sam, with such a fine lot of birds as that, i'm sure you'll be proud to tell us where they came from. eh?' for a moment sam cash was a trifle puzzled, even offended. then there fell over his face the mask of utter inexpression which the vicar had learned to know. said sam cash, stolidly: 'i bin 'avin' a little shootin' with a friend.' 'dear, dear, what a charming friend! and where are his moors? nowhere about the bethnal green road, i suppose, by the goods depot? come now, i'm sure josh perrott would like to know. you didn't get any shooting in your little holiday, did you, josh?' josh grinned, delighted, but sam shuffled uneasily, with a hopeless sidelong glance as in search of a hole wherein to hide. 'ah, you see,' father sturt said, 'he doesn't want his friend's hospitality to be abused. let me see--two, four, six--why there must be nine or ten brace, and all at one shot, too! sam always makes his bag at one shot, you know, josh, whatever the game is. yes, wonderful shooting. and did you shoot the label at the same time, sam? come, i _should_ like to look at that label!' but the wretched sam was off at a bolt, faster than a police pursuit would have sent him, while josh guffawed joyously. to be 'rotted' by father sturt was the true jago terror, but to the jagos looking on it was pure delight. theft was a piece of the jago nature; but at least father sturt could wither the pride of it by such ridicule as the jago could understand. 'there--he's very bashful for a sportsman, isn't he, josh?' the vicar proceeded. 'but you must come and see the club at once. you shall be a member.' josh spent near an hour in the new buildings. father sturt showed him the club, the night shelter, the church, and his own little rooms. he asked, too, much about josh's intentions for the future. of course, josh was 'going to look for a job.' father sturt knew he would say that. every jago had been going to look for a job ever since the vicar first came to the place. but he professed to take josh's word seriously, and offered to try to get him taken on as a plasterer at some of the new county council buildings. he flattered josh by reminding him of his command of a regular trade. josh was a man with opportunities, and he should be above the pitiable expedients of the poor untradesmanlike about him. indeed, he should leave the jago altogether, with his family, and start afresh in a new place, a reputable mechanic. to these things josh perrott listened with fidgety deference, answering only 'yus, father,' when it seemed to be necessary. in the end he promised to 'think it over,' which meant nothing, as the parson well knew. and in the mood in which josh came away he would gladly have risked another lagging to serve father sturt's convenience; but he would rather have suffered one than take father sturt's advice. he made the day a holiday. he had been told that he was in for a little excitement, for it was held that fitting time had arrived for another scrap with dove lane; but the affair was not yet moving. snob spicer had broken a window with a dove-laner's head, it was true, but nothing had come of it, and etiquette demanded that the next card should be played by dove lane. for the present, the jago was content to take thought for josh's 'friendly lead.' such a thing was everybody's right on return from a lagging, and this one was fixed for a night next week. all that day mr weech looked out anxiously, but josh perrott never passed his way. xxxii bill rann called for josh early the next morning, and they strolled down old jago street in close communion. 'are you on for a job?' asked bill. ''cos i got one cut an' dried--a topper, an' safe as 'ouses.' 'wot sort o' job's this?' 'wy a bust--unless we can screw it.' this meant a breaking-in, with a possibility of a quieter entrance by means of keys. it was unpleasantly suggestive of josh's last exploit, but he answered: 'awright. depends, o' course.' 'o, it's a good un.' bill rann grinned for no obvious reason, and slapped his leg to express rapturous amusement. 'it's a good un--you can take yer davy o' that. i bin a thinkin' about it for a fortnight, but it wants two. damme, it's nobby!' and bill rann grinned again, and made two taps of a step-dance. 'wotjer think,' he pursued, suddenly serious, 'wotjer think o' screwin' a fence?' it was a novel notion, but in josh's mind, at first flush, it seemed unsportmanlike. 'wot fence?' asked josh. bill rann's grin burst wide again. he bent low, with outstretched chin, and stuck his elbows out as he answered: 'wy, ole weech!' josh bared his teeth--but with no smile--looking sharply in the other's upturned face. bill rann, bent nearly double, and with hands in pockets, flapped his arms in the manner of wings, chuckled aloud, and, jerking his feet back and forth, went elaborately through the first movement of the gallows-flap. 'eh? eh?' said he. ''ow's that strike ye, ole cock?' josh answered not, but his parted lips stretched wide, and his tongue-tip passed quickly over them while he thought. 'it'll be a fair cop for 'im,' bill pursued, eagerly. ''e's treated us all pretty mean, one time or other. wy, i bet 'e _owes_ us fifty quid atween us, wot with all the times 'e's squeeged us for a bit. it'll on'y be goin' to bring away our own stuff!' 'g-r-r-r!' josh growled, glaring fiercely; 'it was 'im as put me away for my laggin'! bleed'n' swine!' bill rann stopped, surprised. 'wot--'im?' he exclaimed. 'ole weech narked ye? 'owjer know that?' josh told the tale of his negotiations in the matter of the mogul's watch, and described weech's terror at sight of his dash at the shop-door. 'i'm on,' said josh in conclusion. 'it's one way o' payin' 'im, an' it'll bring a bit in. on'y _'e_ better not show 'isself w'ile i'm abaat! _'e_ wouldn't git auf with a punch on the chin, like the bloke at 'ighbury!' josh perrott ended with a tigerish snarl and a white spot at the curl of each of his nostrils. 'blimy!' said bill rann; 'an' so it was 'im, was it? i often wondered 'oo you meant. well, flimpin' 'im's the best way. won't 'e sing a bleed'n' 'ymn w'en 'e finds 'is stuff weeded!' bill flung back his head, and laughed again. 'but there,--let's lay it out.' and the two men fell to the discussion of methods. weech's back-fence was to be his undoing. it was the obvious plan. the front shutters were impracticable in such a place as meakin street; but the alleys in the rear were a perfect approach. bill rann had surveyed the spot attentively, and, after expert consideration, he had selected the wash-house window as the point of entrance. old boxes and packing-wood littered the yard, and it would be easy to mount a selected box, shift the catch of the little window, and wriggle in, feet first, without noise. true, the door between the wash-house and the other rooms might be fastened, but it could be worked at under cover; and bill rann had a belief that there must be a good deal of 'stuff' in the wash-house itself. there would be nobody in the house but weech, because the wretched old woman, who swept the floors and cooked bloaters, was sent away at night; so that every room must be unoccupied but one. as for tools, josh had none, but bill rann undertook to provide them; and in the matter of time it was considered that that same night would be as good as any. it would be better than most, in fact, for it was wednesday, and bill rann had observed that mr weech went to the bank in high street, shoreditch, pretty regularly on thursday mornings. this day also mr weech kept a careful watch for josh perrott, but saw him not. xxxiii hannah perrott did her best to keep josh from going out that night. she did not explain her objections, because she did not know precisely what they were, though they were in some sort prompted by his manner; and it was solely because of her constitutional inability to urge them with any persistence that she escaped forcible retort. for josh was in a savage and self-centred mood. 'wy, wot's up?' asked bill rann, when they met, looking doubtfully in his pal's face. 'you ain't bin boozin', 'ave ye?' josh repelled the question with a snarl. 'no i ain't,' he said. 'got the tools?' there was a thickness in his voice, with a wildness in his eye, that might well explain his partner's doubt. 'yus. come under the light. i couldn't git no twirls, an' we sha'n't want 'em. 'ere's a screwdriver, an' two gimlets, an' a knife for the winderketch, an' a little james, an' a neddy--' 'a neddy!' josh cut in, scornfully pointing his thumb at the instrument, which some call life-preserver. 'a neddy for weech! g-r-r-r! i might take a neddy to a _man_!' 'that's awright,' bill replied. 'but it 'ud frighten 'im pretty well, wouldn't it? look 'ere. s'pose we can't find the oof. w'y shouldn't we wake up mr weech very quiet an' respeckful, an' ask 'im t' 'elp us? 'e's all alone, an' i'm sure 'e'll be glad to 'blige, w'en 'e sees this 'ere neddy, without waitin' for a tap. w'y, blimy, i b'lieve 'e'd be afraid to sing out any'ow, for fear o' bringin' in the coppers to find all the stuff 'e's bought on the crook! it's all done, once we're inside!' it was near midnight, and bill rann had observed weech putting up his shutters at eleven. so the two jagos walked slowly along meakin street, on the side opposite weech's, with sharp eyes for the windows. all was quiet; there was no visible light--none from the skylight over the shop door, none from the window above, none from the garret window above that. they passed on, crossed the road, strolled back, and listened at the door; there was no sound from within. the clock in a distant steeple struck twelve, and was joined at the fourth stroke by the loud bell of st leonards, hard by; and ere the last mild note had sounded from the farthest clock in the awakened chorus, josh perrott and bill rann had taken the next turning, and were pushing their way to the alleys behind weech's. foul rat-runs, these alleys, not to be traversed by a stranger. josh and bill plunged into one narrow archway after another, each of which might have been the private passage of a house, and came at last, stealthy and unseen, into the muddy yard. weech's back-fence was before them, and black house-backs crowded them round. there were but one or two lights in the windows, and those windows were shut and curtained. the rear of weech's house was black and silent as the front. they peered over the fence. the yard was pitch-dark, but faint angular tokens here and there told of heaped boxes and lumber. 'we won't tip 'im the whistle this time,' whispered bill rann, with a smothered chuckle. 'over!' he bent his knee, and josh straddled from it over the rickety fence with quiet care, and lowered himself gingerly on the other side. 'clear 'ere,' he whispered. 'come on.' since bill's display of the tools josh had scarce spoken a word. bill wondered at his taciturnity, but respected it as a business-like quality in the circumstances. it was but a matter of four or five yards to the wash-house window, but they bent and felt their way. josh took up an old lemonade-case as he went, and planted it on the ground below the window, stretching his hand for the knife as he did so. and now he took command and foremost place. it was an old shoemaker's knife, with too long a handle; for there was a skew-joint in the sash, and the knife would not bend. presently bill rann, below, could see that josh was cutting away the putty from the pane, and in five minutes the pane itself was put into his hand. he stooped, and laid it noiselessly on the soft ground. josh turned the catch and lifted the sash. there was some noise, but not much, as he pushed the frame up evenly, with a thumb at each side. they waited; but it was quite still, and josh, sitting on the sill, manoeuvred his legs, one at a time, through the narrow opening. then, turning over, he let himself down, and beckoned bill rann to follow. bill rann had a small tin box, with an inch of candle on the inside of one end, so that when the wick was lit the contrivance made a simple but an effective lantern, the light whereof shone in front alone, and could be extinguished at a puff. now a match was struck, and a quick view taken of the wash-house. there was not much about; only cracked and greasy plates, jars, tins, pots and pans, and in a corner a miscellaneous heap, plainly cheap pilferings, covered with a bit of old carpet. the air was offensive with the characteristic smell of weech's--the smell of stale pickles. 'there ain't nothin' to waste time over 'ere,' said josh, aloud. 'come on!' 'shut up, you damn fool!' exclaimed bill rann, in a whisper. 'd'jer want to wake 'im?' 'umph! why not?' was the reply, still aloud. bill began to feel that his pal was really drunk. but, silent once more, josh applied himself to the door of the inner room. it was crank and old, worn and battered at the edges. josh forced the wedge end of the jemmy through the jamb, splintering the perished wood of the frame, and, with a push, forced the striking-box of the lock off its screws. there was still a bolt at the top; that at the bottom had lost its catch--but this gave as little trouble as the lock. bill rann strained the door open from below, the jemmy entered readily, and in a few seconds the top bolt was in like case with the bottom. they entered the room behind the shop, and it was innocent and disappointing. a loo table, four horse-hair-covered chairs, a mirror, three coloured wall-texts, two china figures and a cheap walnut sideboard--that was all. the slow step of a policeman without stopped, with a push at the shop-door, to test its fastenings, and then went on; and stronger than ever was the smell of stale pickles. to try the shop would be mere waste of time. weech's pocket was the till, and there could be no other prize. a door at the side of the room, latched simply, gave on the stairs. 'take auf yer boots,' bill whispered, unlacing his own, and slinging them across his shoulder by the tied laces. but josh would not, and he said so, with an oath. bill could not understand him. _could_ it be drink? bill wished him a mile away. 'awright,' he whispered, 'you set down 'ere w'ile i slip upstairs an' take a peep. i bet the stuffs in the garret. best on'y one goes, quiet.' josh sat, and bill, taking his lantern, crept up the stairs noiselessly, save for one creak. he gained the stair-head, listened a moment, tip-toed along the small landing, and was half-way up the steep and narrow garret-stairs, when he heard a sound, and stopped. somebody was on the lower flight. there was a heavy tread, with the kick of a boot against stair or skirting-board; and then came noisy steps along the landing. josh was coming up in his boots! bill rann was at his wits' end. he backed down the garret-stairs, and met josh at the foot. 'are ye balmy?' he hissed fiercely, catching josh by the collar and pulling him into the turn of the stairs. 'd'ye want another five stretch?' a loud creak and a soft thump sounded from behind the door at the other end of the landing; and then a match was struck. 'keep back on the stairs,' bill whispered. ''e's 'eard you.' josh sat on a stair, perfectly still, with his legs drawn up out of sight from the door. bill blew out his light. he would not venture open intimidation of weech now, with josh half muzzy, lest some burst of lunacy brought in the police. a soft treading of bare feet, the squeak of a door-handle, a light on the landing, and aaron weech stood at his open door in his shirt, candle in hand, his hair rumpled, his head aside, his mouth a little open, his unconscious gaze upward; listening intently. he took a slight step forward. and then bill rann's heart turned over and over. for josh perrott sprang from the stair, and, his shoulders humped and his face thrust out, walked deliberately across the landing. weech turned his head quickly; his chin fell on his chest as by jaw-break; there were but dots amid the white of his eyes; his head lay slowly back, as the candle tilted and shot its grease on the floor. the door swung wider as his shoulder struck it, and he screamed, like a rabbit that sees a stoat. then, with a wrench, he turned, letting drop the candle, and ran shrieking to the window, flung it open, and yelled into the black street. ''elp! 'elp! p'lice! _murder! murder! murder! murder!_' 'run, josh--run, ye blasted fool!' roared bill rann, bounding across the landing, and snatching at his arm. 'go on--go on! i'm comin'!' josh answered without turning his head. and bill took the bottom flight at a jump. the candle flared as it lay on the floor, and spread a greasy pool about it. '_murder! murder! mu-r-r--_' josh had the man by the shoulder, swung him back from the window, gripped his throat, and dragged him across the carpet as he might drag a cat, while weech's arms waved uselessly, and his feet feebly sought a hold on the floor. 'now!' cried josh perrott, glaring on the writhen face below his own, and raising his case-knife in the manner of a cleaver, 'sing a hymn! sing the hymn as'll do ye most good! you'll cheat me when ye can, an' when ye can't you'll put me five year in stir, eh? sing a hymn, ye snivellin' nark!' from the street there came the noise of many hurrying feet and of a scattered shouting. josh perrott made an offer at slashing the slaty face, checked his arm, and went on. 'you'll put down somethin' 'an'some at my break, will ye? an' you'll starve my wife an' kids all to bones an' teeth four year! sing a hymn, ye cur!' he made another feint at slashing. men were beating thunderously at the shop door, and there were shrill whistles. 'won't sing yer hymn? there ain't much time! my boy was goin' straight, an' earnin' wages: someone got 'im chucked. a man 'as time to think things out, in stir! sing, ye son of a cow! sing! sing!' twice the knife hacked the livid face. but the third hack was below the chin; and the face fell back. the bubbling thing dropped in a heap, and put out the flaring candle. without, the shouts gathered to a roar, and the door shook under heavy blows. 'open--open the door!' cried a deep voice. he looked from the open window. there was a scrambling crowd, and more people were running in. windows gaped, and thrust out noisy heads. the flash of a bull's-eye dazzled him, and he staggered back. 'perrott! perrott!' came a shout. he had but glanced out, but he was recognised. he threw down his knife, and made for the landing, slipping on the wet floor and stumbling against the heap. there were shouts from behind the house now; they were few, but they were close. he dashed up the narrow stairs, floundered through the back garret, over bags and boxes and heaps of mingled commodities, and threw up the sash. men were stumbling invisibly in the dark yard below. he got upon the sill, swung round by the dormer-frame, and went, hands and knees, along the roof. yells and loud whistles rose clamant in the air, and his own name was shouted to and fro. then the blows on the shop-door ceased with a splintering crash, and there was a trampling of feet on floor-boards. the roofs were irregular in shape and height, and his progress was slow. he aimed at reaching the roof of father sturt's old club building, still empty. he had had this in mind from the moment he climbed from the garret-window; for in the work of setting the drains in order an iron ventilating pipe had been carried up from the stable-yard to well above the roof. it was a stout pipe, close by the wall, to which it was clamped with iron attachments. four years had passed since he had seen it, and he trusted to luck to find it still standing, for it seemed his only chance. down below people scampered and shouted. crowds had sprung out of the dark night as by magic; and the police--they must have been lying in wait in scores. it seemed a mere matter of seconds since he had scaled the back fence; and now people were tearing about the house behind him, and shouting out of windows to those below. he hoped that the iron pipe might not be gone. good--it was there. he peered from the parapet down into the stable-yard, and the place seemed empty. he gripped the pipe with hands and knees, and descended. the alley had no back way: he must take his chance in meakin street. he peeped. at the street end there was a dark obstruction, set with spots of light: a row of police. that way was shut; he must try the jago--luck row was almost opposite, and no jago would betray him. the hunters were already on the roofs. men shouted up to them from the street, and kept pace with them, coming nearer. he took a breath and dashed across, knocking a man over at the corner. up luck row, into old jago street he ran, past his own home, and across to a black doorway, just as father sturt, roused by the persistent din, opened his window. the passage was empty, and for an instant he paused, breathless. but there were howls without, and the pelting of many feet. the man knocked over at the corner had given the alarm, and the hunt was up. into the back-yard and over the fence; through another passage into new jago street; with a notion to gain the courts by honey lane and so away. but he was thinking of the jago as it had been--he had forgotten the demolishment. as he neared jago row the place of it lay suddenly before him--an open waste of eighty yards square, skirted by the straight streets and the yellow barracks, with the board school standing dark among them. and along the straight streets more men were rushing, and more police. they were new-comers: why not venture over? he rubbed his cheek, for something like a film of gum clung to it. then he remembered, and peered closely at his hands. blood, sticking and drying and peeling; blood on hands and face, blood on clothes, without a doubt. to go abroad thus were to court arrest, were he known or not. it must be got off; but how? to go home was to give himself up. the police were there long since--they swarmed the jago through. some half-dismantled houses stood at hand, and he made for the nearest. there were cellars under these houses, reached from the back-yards. many a jago had been born, had lived, and had died in such a place. a cellar would hide him for an hour, while he groped himself clean as he might. broken brickwork littered the space that had been the back-yard. feeling in the dark for the steps, which stood in a little pit, his foot turned on a stone, and he pitched headlong. the cellar itself was littered with rubbish, and he lay among it a little while, breathless and bruised. when he tried to rise, he found his ankle useless. it was the old sprain, got at mother gapp's before his lagging, and ever ready to assert itself. he sat among the brickbats to pull off the boot--that was foul and sticky too--and he rubbed the ankle. he had been a fool to think of the cellar: why not any corner among the walls above? he had given way to the mere panic instinct to burrow, to hide himself in a hole, and he had chosen one wherefrom there was no second way of escape--none at all but by the steps he had fallen in at. far better to have struck out boldly across the streets by columbia market to the canal: who could have seen the smears in the darkness? and in the canal he might have washed the lot away, secure from observation, under a bridge. the thing might be possible, even now, if he could stand the pain. but no, the foot was useless when he tried it. he was trapped like a rat. he rubbed and kneaded the ankle diligently, and managed to draw the boot on. but stand on both legs he could not. he might have crawled up the steps on hands and knees, but what was the use of that? so he sat, and waited. knots of men went hurrying by, and he caught snatches of their talk. there had been a murder--a man was murdered in his bed--it was a woman--a man had murdered his wife--there were two murders--three--the tale went every way, but it was always murder, murder, murder. everybody was saying murder: till in the passing footsteps, in the vague shouts in the distance, and presently in the mere black about him he heard the word still--murder, murder, murder. he fell to contrasting the whispered fancy with the real screams in that bedroom. he wondered what bill rann thought of it all, and what had become of the james and the gimlets. he pictured the crowd in old jago street, pushing into his room, talking about him, telling the news. he wondered if hannah had been asleep when they came, and what she said when they told her. and more people hurried past the ruined house, all talking murder, murder, still murder. the foot was horribly painful. was it swelling? yes, he thought it was; he rubbed it again. what would dicky do? if only dicky knew where he was! that might help. there was a new burst of shouts in the distance. what was that? perhaps they had caught bill rann; but that was unlikely. they knew nothing of bill--they had seen but one man. perhaps they were carrying away the heap on a shutter: that would be no nice job, especially down the steep stairs. there had been very little in the wash-house, and nothing in the next room; the garrets were pretty full of odd things, but no doubt the money was in the bedroom. the smell of stale pickles was very strong. so his thoughts chased one another--eager, trivial, crowded--till his head ached with their splitting haste. to take heed for the future, to plan escape, to design expedients--these were merely impossible, sitting there inactive in the dark. he thought of the pipe he had slid down, what it cost, why they put it there, who the man was that he ran against at luck row, whether or not he hurt him, what the police would do with the bloaters and cake and bacon at the shop, and--again--of the smell of stale pickles. * * * * * father sturt was up and dressed, standing guard on the landing outside the perrotts' door. the stairs were full of jagos--mostly women--constantly joined by new-comers, all anxious to batter the door and belabour the hidden family with noisy sympathy and sedulous inquiries: all, that is, except the oldest mrs walsh in the jago, who, possessed by an unshakable conviction that josh's wife must have 'druv 'im to it,' had come in a shawl and a petticoat to give hannah a piece of her mind. but all were driven back and sent grumbling away, by father sturt. every passage from the jago was held by the police, and a search from house to house was begun. with clear consciences the jagos all could deny any knowledge of josh perrott's whereabouts; but a clear conscience was little valued in those parts, and one after another affirmed point blank that the man seen at the window was not perrott at all, but a stranger who lived a long way off. this, of course, less by way of favouring the fugitive than of baffling the police: the jago's first duty. but the police knew the worth of such talk, and the search went on. thus it came to pass that in the grey of the morning a party in new jago street, after telling each other that the ruins must be carefully examined, climbed among the rubbish, and were startled by a voice from underground. 'awright,' cried josh perrott in the cellar. 'i'm done; it's a cop. come an' 'elp me out o' this 'ole.' xxxiv the lion and unicorn had been fresh gilt since he was there before, but the white-headed old gaoler in the dock was much the same. and the big sword--what did they have a big sword for, stuck up there, over the red cushions, and what was the use of a sword six foot long? but perhaps it wasn't six foot after all--it looked longer than it was; and no doubt it was only for show, and probably a dummy with no blade. there was a well-dressed black man sitting down below among the lawyers. what did he want? why did they let him in? a nice thing--to be made a show of, for niggers! and josh perrott loosened his neckcloth with an indignant tug of the forefinger, and went off into another train of thought. he had a throbbing, wavering headache, the outcome of thinking so hard about so many things. they were small things, and had nothing to do with his own business; but there were so many of them, and they all had to be got through at such a pace, and one thing led to another. ever since they had taken him he had been oppressed by this plague of galloping thought, with few intervals of rest, when he could consider immediate concerns. but of these he made little trouble. the thing was done. very well then, he would take his gruel like a man. he had done many a worse thing, he said, that had been thought less of. the evidence was a nuisance. what was the good of it all? over and over and over again. at the inquest, at the police court, and now here. repeated, laboriously taken down, and repeated again. and now it was worse than ever, for the judge insisted on making a note of everything, and wrote it down slowly, a word at a time. the witnesses were like barrel-organs, producing the same old tune mechanically, without changing a note. there was the policeman who was in meakin street at twelve-thirty on the morning of the fourth of the month, when he heard cries of murder, and proceeded to the coffee-shop. there was the other policeman who also 'proceeded' there, and recognised the prisoner, whom he knew, at the first-floor window. and there was the sergeant who had found him in the cellar, and the doctor who had made an examination, and the knife, and the boots, and all of it. it was murder, murder, murder still. why? wasn't it plain enough? he felt some interest in what was coming--in the sentence, and the black cap, and so on--never having seen a murder trial before. but all this repetition oppressed him vaguely amid the innumerable things he had to think of, one thing leading to another. hannah and dicky were there, sitting together behind the glass partition that rose at the side of the dock. hannah's face was down in her hands, and dicky's face was thin and white, and he sat with his neck stretched, his lips apart, his head aside to catch the smallest word. his eyes, too, were red with strained, unwinking attention. josh felt vaguely that they might keep a bolder face, as he did himself. his sprained foot was still far from well, but he stood up, putting his weight on the other. he might have been allowed to sit if he had asked, but that would look like weakness. there was another judge this time, an older one, with spectacles. he had come solemnly in, after lunch, with a bunch of flowers in his hand, and josh thought he made an odd figure in his long red gown. why did he sit at the end of the bench, instead of in the middle, under the long sword? perhaps the old gentleman, who sat there for a little while and then went away, was the lord mayor. that would account for it. there was another room behind the bedroom at weech's, which he had never thought about. perhaps the money was there, after all. could they have missed any hiding place in the shop parlour? no: there was the round table, with the four chairs about it, and the little sideboard; besides the texts on the wall, and two china figures on the mantel-piece--that was all. there was a copper in the wash-house, but there was nothing in it. the garret was a very good place to keep things in; but there was a strong smell of stale pickles. he could smell it now--he had smelt it ever since. the judge stopped a witness to speak of a draught from a window. josh perrott watched the shutting of the window--they did it with a cord. he had not noticed a draught himself. but pigeons were flying outside the panes and resting on the chimney-stacks. pud palmer tried to keep pigeons in jago row, but one morning the trap was found empty. a poulterer gave fourpence each for them. they were ticketed at eighteenpence a pair in the shop, and that was fivepence profit apiece for the poulterer. tenpence a pair profit on eleven pairs was nearly ten shillings--ten shillings all but tenpence. they wouldn't have given any more in club row. a man had a four-legged linnet in club row, but there was a show in bethnal green road with a two-headed sheep. it was outside there that ginger stagg was pinched for lob-crawling. and so on, and so on, till his head buzzed again. his counsel was saying something. how long had he been talking? what was the good of it? he had told him that he had no defence. the lawyer was enlarging on the dead man's iniquities, talking of provocation, and the heat of passion, and the like. he was aiming desperately at a recommendation to mercy. that was mere foolery. but presently the judge began to sum up. they were coming to something at last. but it was merely the thrice-told evidence once more. the judge blinked at his notes, and went at it again; the policeman with his whistle, and the other with his lantern, and the doctor, and the sergeant, and the rest. it was shorter this time, though. josh perrott turned and looked at the clock behind him, with the faces over it, peering from the gallery. but when he turned to face the judge again he had forgotten the time, and crowded trivialities were racing through the narrow gates of his brain once more. there was a cry for silence, and then a fresh voice spoke. 'gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?' 'we have.' the foreman was an agitated, colourless man, and he spoke in a low tone. 'do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty?' 'guilty.' yes, that was right; this was the real business. his head was clear and ready now. 'and is that the verdict of you all?' 'yes.' was that hannah sobbing? a pale parson in his black gown came walking along by the bench, and stood like a tall ghost at the judge's side, his eyes raised and his hands clasped. the judge took a black thing from the seat beside him, and arranged it on his head. it was a sort of soft mortarboard, josh noted curiously, with a large silk tassel hanging over one side, giving the judge, with his wig and his spectacles and his red gown, a horribly jaunty look. no brain could be clearer than josh perrott's now. 'prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed on you according to law?' 'no sir--i done it. on'y 'e was a worse man than me!' the clerk of arraigns sank into his place, and the judge spoke. 'joshua perrott, you have been convicted, on evidence that can leave no doubt whatever of your guilt in the mind of any rational person, of the horrible crime of wilful murder. the circumstances of your awful offence there is no need to recapitulate, but they were of the most brutal and shocking character. you deliberately, and with preparation, broke into the house of the man whose death you have shortly to answer for in a higher court than this: whether you broke in with a design of robbery as well as of revenge by murder i know not, nor is it my duty to consider: but you there, with every circumstance of callous ferocity, sent the wretched man to that last account which you must shortly render for yourself. of the ill-spent life of that miserable man, your victim, it is not for me to speak, nor for you to think. and i do most earnestly beseech you to use the short time yet remaining to you on this earth in true repentance, and in making your peace with almighty god. it is my duty to pronounce sentence of that punishment which not i, but the law of this country, imposes for the crime which you have committed. the sentence of the court is: that you be taken to the place whence you came, and thence to a place of execution: and that you be there hanged by the neck till you be dead: and may the lord have mercy on your soul!' 'amen!' it was from the tall black figure. well, well, that was over. the gaoler touched his arm. right. but first he took a quick glance through the glass partition. hannah was falling over, or something,--a mere rusty swaying bundle,--and dicky was holding her up with both arms. dicky's face was damp and grey, and twitching lines were in his cheeks. josh took a step toward the partition, but they hurried him away. xxxv all this hard thinking would be over in half an hour or so. what was to come now didn't matter; no more than a mere punch in the eye. the worst was over on saturday, and he had got through that all right. hannah was very bad, and so was dicky. em cried in a bewildered sort of way, because the others did. little josh, conceiving that his father was somehow causing all the tears, kicked and swore at him. he tried to get hannah to smile at this, but it was no go; and they had to carry her out at last. dicky was well-plucked though, bad as he was. he felt him shake and choke when he kissed him, but he walked out straight and steady, with the two children. well, it was over.... he hoped they would get up a break in the jago for hannah and the youngsters. his own break had never come off--they owed him one. the last break he was at was at mother gapp's, before the dove-laners fell through the floor. it must have cost mother gapp a deal of money to put in the new floor; but then she must have made a lot in her time, what with one thing and another. there was the fencing, and the houses she had bought in honey lane, and the two fourpenny doss-houses in hoxton that they said were hers, and--well, nobody could say what else. some said she came of the gipsies that used to live at the mount years ago. the mount was a pretty thick place now, but not so thick as the jago: the jagos were thick as glue and wide as broad street. bob the bender fell in broad street, toy-getting, and got a stretch and a half.... yes, yes, of course, they always tolled a bell. but it was rather confusing, with things to think about. ah, they had come at last. come, there was nothing more to think about now; nothing but to take it game. hold tight--jago hold tight.... 'no thank you, sir--nothing to say, special. on'y much obliged to ye, thank ye kindly, for the grub an'--an' bein' kind an' wot not. thanks all of ye, come to that. specially you, sir.' it was the tall black figure again.... what, this was the chap, was it? seedy-looking. sort of undertaker's man to look at. all right--straps. not cords to tie, then. waist; wrists; elbows; more straps dangling below--do them presently. this was how they did it, then.... this way? 'i am the resurrection and the life, saith the lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.' a very big gate, this, all iron, painted white. round to the right. not very far, they told him. it was dark in the passage, but the door led into the yard, where it was light and open, and sparrows were twittering. another door: in a shed. this was the place. all white, everywhere--frame too; not black after all. up the steps.... hold tight: not much longer. stand there? very well. 'man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. he cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. 'in the midst of life....' xxxvi it was but a little crowd that stood at the old bailey corner while the bell tolled, to watch for the black flag. this was not a popular murder. josh perrott was not a man who had been bred to better things; he did not snivel and rant in the dock; and he had not butchered his wife nor his child, nor anybody with a claim on his gratitude or affection; so that nobody sympathised with him, nor got up a petition for pardon, nor wrote tearful letters to the newspapers. and the crowd that watched for the black flag was a small one, and half of it came from the jago. while it was watching, and while the bell was tolling, a knot of people stood at the perrotts' front-doorway, in old jago street. father sturt went across as soon as the sleepers of the night had been seen away from the shelter, and spoke to kiddo cook, who stood at the stair-foot to drive off intruders. 'they say she's been settin' up all night, father,' kiddo reported, in a hushed voice. 'an' poll's jest looked in at the winder from walsh's, and says she can see 'em all kneelin' round a chair with that little clock o' theirs on it. it's--it's more'n 'alf an hour yut.' 'i shall come here myself presently, and relieve you. can you wait? you mustn't neglect trade, you know.' 'i'll wait all day, father, if ye like. nobody sha'n't disturb 'em.' when father sturt returned from his errand, 'have you heard anything?' he asked. 'no, father,' answered kiddo cook. 'they ain't moved.' there were two faint notes from a distant steeple, and then the bell of st leonards beat out the inexorable hour. xxxvii kiddo cook prospered. the stall was a present fact, and the awning was not far off; indeed, he was vigilantly in search of a second-hand one, not too much worn. but with all his affluence he was not often drunk. nothing could be better than his pitch--right out in the high street, in the busiest part, and hard by the london and county branch bank. they called it kiddo's bank in the jago, and made jokes about alleged deposits of his. if you bought a penn'orth of greens from kiddo, said facetious jagos, he didn't condescend to take the money himself; he gave you a slip of paper, and you paid at the bank. and kiddo had indulged in a stroke of magnificence that no other jago would have thought of. he had taken _two_ rooms, in the new county council dwellings. the secret was that father sturt had agreed to marry kiddo cook and pigeony poll. there would be plenty for both to do, what with the stall and the regular round with the barrow. the wedding-day came when hannah perrott had been one week a widow. for a few days father sturt had left her alone, and had guarded her privacy. then, seeing that she gave no sign, he went with what quiet comfort he might, and bespoke her attention to her concerns. he invented some charing work in his rooms for her. she did it very badly, and if he left her long alone, she would be found on the floor, with her face in a chair-seat, crying weakly. but the work was something for her to do and to think about, and by dint of bustling it and magnifying its importance, father sturt brought her to some degree of mindfulness and calm. dicky walked that morning in a sort of numb, embittered fury. what should he do now? his devilmost. spare nobody and stop at nothing. old beveridge was right that morning years ago. the jago had got him, and it held him fast. now he went doubly sealed of the outcasts: a jago with a hanged father. father sturt talked of work, but who would give _him_ work? and why do it, in any case? what came of it before? no, he was a jago and the world's enemy; father sturt was the only good man in it; as for the rest, he would spoil them when he could. there was something for to-morrow night, if only he could get calmed down enough by then. a builder's yard in kingsland with an office in a loft, and money in a common desk. tommy rann had found it, and they must do it together; if only he could get this odd numbness off him, and have his head clear. so much crying, perhaps, and so much trying not to, till his head was like to burst. deep-eyed and pale, he dragged round into edge lane, and so into new jago street. jerry gullen's canary was harnessed to the barrow, and jerry himself was piling the barrow with rags and bottles. dicky stood and looked; he thought he would rub canary's head, but then he changed his mind, and did not move. jerry gullen glanced at him furtively once or twice, and then said: 'good ole moke for wear, ain't 'e?' 'yus,' dicky answered moodily, his talk half random. ''e'll peg out soon now.' ''im? not 'im. wy, i bet 'e'll live longer'n you will. _'e_ ain't goin' to die.' 'i think 'e'd like to,' said dicky, and slouched on. yes, canary would be better off, dead. so would others. it would be a comfortable thing for himself if he could die quietly then and there. but it would never do for mother and the children to be left helpless. how good for them all to go off easily together, and wake in some pleasant place, say a place like father sturt's sitting-room, and perhaps find--but there, what foolishness! what was this unendurable stupor that clung about him like a net? he knew everything clearly enough, but it was all in an atmosphere of dull heedlessness. there would be some relief in doing something violent--in smashing something to little pieces with a hammer. he came to the ruined houses. there was a tumult of yells, and a crowd of thirty or forty lads went streaming across the open waste, waving sticks. 'come on! come on, jago! 'ere they are!' a fight! ah, what more welcome! and dove lane, too--dove lane, that had taken to bawling the taunt, 'jago cut-throats,' since ... he was in the thick of the raid. 'come on, jago! jago! 'ere they are!' past the board school and through honey lane they went, and into dove lane territory. a small crowd of dove-laners broke and fled. straight ahead the jagos went, till they were suddenly taken in flank at a turning by a full dove lane mob. the jagos were broken by the rush, but they fought stoutly, and the street was filled with a surge of combat. 'jago! jago hold tight!' thin, wasted and shaken, dicky fought like a tiger. he had no stick till he floored a dove-laner and took his from him, but then he bludgeoned apace, callous to every blow, till he fought through the thick, and burst out at the edge of the fray. he pulled his cap tight, and swung back, almost knocking over, but disregarding, a leather-aproned, furtive hunchback, who turned and came at his heels. 'jago! jago hold tight!' yelled dicky perrott. 'come on, father sturt's boys!' he was down. just a punch under the arm from behind. as he rolled, face under, he caught a single glimpse of the hunchback, running. but what was this--all this? a shout went up. 'stabbed! chived! they chived dicky perrott!' the fight melted. somebody turned dicky on his back, and he moaned, and lay gasping. he lifted his dabbled hands, and looked at them, wondering. they tried to lift him, but the blood poured so fast that they put him down. somebody had gone for a surgeon. 'take me 'ome,' said dicky, faintly, with an odd gurgle in his voice. 'not 'awspital.' the surgeon came running, with policemen at his heels. he ripped away the clothes from about the wound, and shook his head. it was the lung. water was brought, and cloths, and an old door. they put dicky on the door, and carried him toward the surgery; and two lads who stayed by him were sent to bring his friends. the bride and bridegroom, meeting the news on the way home, set off at a run, and father sturt followed. 'good gawd, dicky,' cried poll, tearing her way to the shutter as it stopped at the surgery door, 'wot's this?' dicky's eye fell on the flowered bonnet that graced the wedding, and his lip lifted with the shade of a smile. 'luck, pidge!' he was laid out in the surgery. a crowd stood about the door, while father sturt went in. the vicar lifted his eyebrows questioningly, and the surgeon shook his head. it was a matter of minutes. father sturt bent over and took dicky's hand. 'my poor dicky,' he said, 'who did this?' 'dunno, fa'er.' the lie--the staunch jago lie. thou shalt not nark. 'fetch mother an' the kids. fa'er!' 'yes, my boy?' 'tell mist' beveridge there's 'nother way out--better.' the end and pg distributed proofreaders [illustration: they walked, thus guided by an obsequious waiter, through a light _confetti_ of tossed greetings.] gaslight sonatas by fannie hurst 1918 [dedication: to my mother and my father] contents i. bitter-sweet ii. sieve of fulfilment iii. ice-water, pl--! iv. hers _not_ to reason why v. golden fleece vi. nightshade vii. get ready the wreaths gaslight sonatas i bitter-sweet much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, and the statistical path to the heart is more figurative than literal. it is difficult to write stylistically a per-annum report of 1,327 curvatures of the spine, whereas the poor specific little vertebra of mamie o'grady, daughter to lou, your laundress, whose alcoholic husband once invaded your very own basement and attempted to strangle her in the coal-bin, can instantly create an apron bazaar in the church vestry-rooms. that is why it is possible to drink your morning coffee without nausea for it, over the head-lines of forty thousand casualties at ypres, but to push back abruptly at a three-line notice of little tony's, your corner bootblack's, fatal dive before a street-car. gertie slayback was statistically down as a woman wage-earner; a typhoid case among the thousands of the borough of manhattan for 1901; and her twice-a-day share in the subway fares collected in the present year of our lord. she was a very atomic one of the city's four millions. but after all, what are the kings and peasants, poets and draymen, but great, greater, or greatest, less, lesser, or least atoms of us? if not of the least, gertie slayback was of the very lesser. when she unlocked the front door to her rooming-house of evenings, there was no one to expect her, except on tuesdays, which evening it so happened her week was up. and when she left of mornings with her breakfast crumblessly cleared up and the box of biscuit and condensed-milk can tucked unsuspectedly behind her camisole in the top drawer there was no one to regret her. there are some of us who call this freedom. again there are those for whom one spark of home fire burning would light the world. gertie slayback was one of these. half a life-time of opening her door upon this or that desert-aisle of hall bedroom had not taught her heart how not to sink or the feel of daily rising in one such room to seem less like a damp bathing-suit, donned at dawn. the only picture--or call it atavism if you will--which adorned miss slayback's dun-colored walls was a passe-partout snowscape, night closing in, and pink cottage windows peering out from under eaves. she could visualize that interior as if she had only to turn the frame for the smell of wood fire and the snap of pine logs and for the scene of two high-back chairs and the wooden crib between. what a fragile, gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business of lining a crib in never-never land and warming no man's slippers before the fire of imagination. there was that picture so acidly etched into miss slayback's brain that she had only to close her eyes in the slit-like sanctity of her room and in the brief moment of courting sleep feel the pink penumbra of her vision begin to glow. of late years, or, more specifically, for two years and eight months, another picture had invaded, even superseded the old. a stamp-photograph likeness of mr. james p. batch in the corner of miss slayback's mirror, and thereafter no man's slippers became number eight-and-a-half c, and the hearth a gilded radiator in a dining-living-room somewhere between the fourteenth street subway and the land of the bronx. how miss slayback, by habit not gregarious, met mr. batch is of no consequence, except to those snug ones of us to whom an introduction is the only means to such an end. at a six o'clock that invaded even union square with heliotrope dusk, mr. james batch mistook, who shall say otherwise, miss gertie slayback, as she stepped down into the wintry shade of a subway kiosk, for miss whodoesitmatter. at seven o'clock, over a dish of lamb stew _à la_ white kitchen, he confessed, and if miss slayback affected too great surprise and too little indignation, try to conceive six nine-hour week-in-and-week-out days of hair-pins and darning-balls, and then, at a heliotrope dusk, james p. batch, in invitational mood, stepping in between it and the papered walls of a dun-colored evening. to further enlist your tolerance, gertie slayback's eyes were as blue as the noon of june, and james p. batch, in a belted-in coat and five kid finger-points protruding ever so slightly and rightly from a breast pocket, was hewn and honed in the image of youth. his the smile of one for whom life's cup holds a heady wine, a wrinkle or two at the eye only serving to enhance that smile; a one-inch feather stuck upright in his derby hatband. it was a forelock once stamped a corsican with the look of emperor. it was this hat feather, a cock's feather at that and worn without sense of humor, to which miss slayback was fond of attributing the consequences of that heliotrope dusk. "it was the feather in your cap did it, jimmie. i can see you yet, stepping up with that innocent grin of yours. you think i didn't know you were flirting? cousin from long island city! 'say,' i says to myself, i says, 'i look as much like his cousin from long island city, if he's got one, as my cousin from hoboken (and i haven't got any) would look like my sister if i had one.' it was that sassy little feather in your hat!" they would laugh over this ever-green reminiscence on sunday park benches and at intermission at moving pictures when they remained through it to see the show twice. be the landlady's front parlor ever so permanently rented out, the motion-picture theater has brought to thousands of young city starvelings, if not the quietude of the home, then at least the warmth and a juxtaposition and a deep darkness that can lave the sub-basement throb of temples and is filled with music with a hum in it. for two years and eight months of saturday nights, each one of them a semaphore dropping out across the gray road of the week, gertie slayback and jimmie batch dined for one hour and sixty cents at the white kitchen. then arm and arm up the million-candle-power flare of broadway, content, these two who had never seen a lake reflect a moon, or a slim fir pointing to a star, that life could be so manifold. and always, too, on saturday, the tenth from the last row of the de luxe cinematograph, broadway's best, orchestra chairs, fifty cents; last ten rows, thirty-five. the give of velvet-upholstered chairs, perfumed darkness, and any old love story moving across it to the ecstatic ache of gertie slayback's high young heart. on a saturday evening that was already pointed with stars at the six-o'clock closing of hoffheimer's fourteenth street emporium, miss slayback, whose blondness under fatigue could become ashy, emerged from the bargain-basement almost the first of its frantic exodus, taking the place of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the popular drug store adjoining, her gaze, something even frantic in it, sifting the passing crowd. at six o'clock fourteenth street pours up from its basements, down from its lofts, and out from its five-and-ten-cent stores, shows, and arcades, in a great homeward torrent--a sweeping torrent that flows full flush to the subway, the elevated, and the surface car, and then spreads thinly into the least pretentious of the city's homes--the five flights up, the two rooms rear, and the third floor back. standing there, this eager tide of the fourteenth street emporium, thus released by the six-o'clock flood-gates, flowed past miss slayback. white-nosed, low-chested girls in short-vamp shoes and no-carat gold vanity-cases. older men resigned that ambition could be flayed by a yard-stick; young men still impatient of their clerkship. it was into the trickle of these last that miss slayback bored her glance, the darting, eager glance of hot eyeballs and inner trembling. she was not so pathetically young as she was pathetically blond, a treacherous, ready-to-fade kind of blondness that one day, now that she had found that very morning her first gray hair, would leave her ashy. suddenly, with a small catch of breath that was audible in her throat, miss slayback stepped out of that doorway, squirming her way across the tight congestion of the sidewalk to its curb, then in and out, brushing this elbow and that shoulder, worming her way in an absolutely supreme anxiety to keep in view a brown derby hat bobbing right briskly along with the crowd, a greenish-black bit of feather upright in its band. at broadway, fourteenth street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into union square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first false feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. across this park miss slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a run when the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred others, and finally learning to keep its course by the faint but distinguishing fact of a slight dent in the crown. at broadway, some blocks before that highway bursts into its famous flare, mr. batch, than whom it was no other, turned off suddenly at right angles down into a dim pocket of side-street and into the illuminated entrance of ceiner's café hungarian. meals at all hours. lunch, thirty cents. dinner, fifty cents. our goulash is famous. new york, which expresses itself in more languages to the square block than any other area in the world, babylon included, loves thus to dine linguistically, so to speak. to the crescent turkish restaurant for its business men's lunch comes fourth avenue, whose antique-shop patois reads across the page from right to left. sight-seeing automobiles on mission and commission bent allow altoona, iowa city, and quincy, illinois, fifteen minutes' stop-in at ching ling-foo's chinatown delmonico's. spaghetti and red wine have set new york racing to reserve its table d'hôtes. all except the latin race. jimmie batch, who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in lower manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the cosmopolite. his digestive range included _borsch_ and _chow maigne; risotta_ and ham and. to-night, as he turned into café hungarian, miss slayback slowed and drew back into the overshadowing protection of an adjoining office-building. she was breathing hard, and her little face, somehow smaller from chill, was nevertheless a high pink at the cheek-bones. the wind swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up to it. there was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally one turned for a backward glance at her standing there so frankly indeterminate. suddenly miss slayback adjusted her tam-o'-shanter to its flop over her right ear, and, drawing off a pair of dark-blue silk gloves from over immaculately new white ones, entered ceiner's café hungarian. in its light she was not so obviously blonder than young, the pink spots in her cheeks had a deepening value to the blue of her eyes, and a black velvet tam-o'-shanter revealing just the right fringe of yellow curls is no mean aid. first of all, ceiner's is an eating-place. there is no music except at five cents in the slot, and its tables for four are perpetually set each with a dish of sliced radishes, a bouquet of celery, and a mound of bread, half the stack rye. its menus are well thumbed and badly mimeographed. who enters ceiner's is prepared to dine from barley soup to apple strudel. at something after six begins the rising sound of cutlery, and already the new-comer fears to find no table. off at the side, mr. jimmie batch had already disposed of his hat and gray overcoat, and tilting the chair opposite him to indicate its reservation, shook open his evening paper, the waiter withholding the menu at this sign of rendezvous. straight toward that table miss slayback worked quick, swift way, through this and that aisle, jerking back and seating herself on the chair opposite almost before mr. batch could raise his eyes from off the sporting page. there was an instant of silence between them--the kind of silence that can shape itself into a commentary upon the inefficacy of mere speech--a widening silence which, as they sat there facing, deepened until, when she finally spoke, it was as if her words were pebbles dropping down into a well. "don't look so surprised, jimmie," she said, propping her face calmly, even boldly, into the white-kid palms. "you might fall off the christmas tree." above the snug, four-inch collar and bow tie mr. batch's face was taking on a dull ox-blood tinge that spread back, even reddening his ears. mr. batch had the frontal bone of a clerk, the horn-rimmed glasses of the literarily astigmatic, and the sartorial perfection that only the rich can afford not to attain. he was staring now quite frankly, and his mouth had fallen open. "gert!" he said. "yes," said miss slayback, her insouciance gaining with his discomposure, her eyes widening and then a dolly kind of glassiness seeming to set in. "you wasn't expecting me, jimmie?" he jerked up his head, not meeting her glance. "what's the idea of the comedy?" "you don't look glad to see me, jimmie." "if you--think you're funny." she was working out of and then back into the freshly white gloves in a betraying kind of nervousness that belied the toss of her voice. "well, of all things! mad-cat! mad, just because you didn't seem to be expecting me." "i--there's some things that are just the limit, that's what they are. some things that are just the limit, that no fellow would stand from any girl, and this--this is one of them." her lips were trembling now. "you--you bet your life there's some things that are just the limit." he slid out his watch, pushing back. "well, i guess this place is too small for a fellow and a girl that can follow him around town like a--like--" she sat forward, grasping the table-sides, her chair tilting with her. "don't you dare to get up and leave me sitting here! jimmie batch, don't you dare!" the waiter intervened, card extended. "we--we're waiting for another party," said miss slayback, her hands still rigidly over the table-sides and her glance like a steady drill into mr. batch's own. there was a second of this silence while the waiter withdrew, and then mr. batch whipped out his watch again, a gun-metal one with an open face. "now look here. i got a date here in ten minutes, and one or the other of us has got to clear. you--you're one too many, if you got to know it." "oh, i do know it, jimmie! i been one too many for the last four saturday nights. i been one too many ever since may scully came into five hundred dollars' inheritance and quit the ladies' neckwear. i been one too many ever since may scully became a lady." "if i was a girl and didn't have more shame!" "shame! now you're shouting, jimmie batch. i haven't got shame, and i don't care who knows it. a girl don't stop to have shame when she's fighting for her rights." he was leaning on his elbow, profile to her. "that movie talk can't scare me. you can't tell me what to do and what not to do. i've given you a square deal all right. there's not a word ever passed between us that ties me to your apron-strings. i don't say i'm not without my obligations to you, but that's not one of them. no, sirree--no apron-strings." "i know it isn't, jimmie. you're the kind of a fellow wouldn't even talk to himself for fear of committing hisself." "i got a date here now any minute, gert, and the sooner you--" "you're the guy who passed up the sixty-first for the safety first regiment." "i'll show you my regiment some day." "i--i know you're not tied to my apron-strings, jimmie. i--i wouldn't have you there for anything. don't you think i know you too well for that? that's just it. nobody on god's earth knows you the way i do. i know you better than you know yourself." "you better beat it, gertie. i tell you i'm getting sore." her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost edged with hysteria. "come on, jimmie--out the side entrance before she gets here. may scully ain't the company for you. you think if she was, honey, i'd--i'd see myself come butting in between you this way, like--like a--common girl? she's not the girl to keep you straight. honest to god she's not, honey." "my business is my business, let me tell you that." "she's speedy, jimmie. she was the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." "when i want advice about my friends i ask for it." "it's not her good name that worries me, jimmie, because she 'ain't got any. it's you. she's got you crazy with that five hundred, too--that's what's got me scared." "gee! you ought to let the salvation army tie a bonnet under your chin." "she's always had her eyes on you, jimmie. 'ain't you men got no sense for seein' things? since the day they moved the gents' furnishings across from the ladies' neckwear she's had you spotted. her goings-on used to leak down to the basement, alrighty. she's not a good girl, may ain't, jimmie. she ain't, and you know it. is she? is she?" "aw!" said jimmie batch. "you see! see! 'ain't got the nerve to answer, have you?" "aw--maybe i know, too, that she's not the kind of a girl that would turn up where she's not--" "if you wasn't a classy-looking kind of boy, jimmie, that a fly girl like may likes to be seen out with, she couldn't find you with magnifying glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your mouth and had swallowed it. she's not the kind of girl, jimmie, a fellow like you needs behind him. if--if you was ever to marry her and get your hands on them five hundred dollars--" "it would be my business." "it'll be your ruination. you're not strong enough to stand up under nothing like that. with a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket you--you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would." "it would be my own spontaneous combustion." "you got to be drove, jimmie, like a kid. with them few dollars you wouldn't start up a little cigar-store like you think you would. you and her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months. cigar-stores ain't the place for you, jimmie. you seen how only clerking in them was nearly your ruination--the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick out. they ain't cigar-stores; they're only false faces for gambling." "you know it all, don't you?" "oh, i'm dealing it to you straight! there's too many sporty crowds loafing around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under. i found you in one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a new job a week, a--" "yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too." "don't throw over, jimmie, what my getting you out of it to a decent job in a department store has begun to do for you. and you're making good, too. higgins told me to-day, if you don't let your head swell, there won't be a fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any higher." "aw!" "don't throw it all over, jimmie--and me--for a crop of dyed red hair and a few dollars to ruin yourself with." he shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door. "don't keep no date with her to-night, jimmie. you haven't got the constitution to stand her pace. it's telling on you. look at those fingers yellowing again--looka--" "they're my fingers, ain't they?" "you see, jimmie, i--i'm the only person in the world that likes you just for what--you ain't--and hasn't got any pipe dreams about you. that's what counts, jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not because of." "we will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three." "i know there's not a better fellow in the world if he's kept nailed to the right job, and i know, too, there's not another fellow can go to the dogs any easier." "to hear you talk, you'd think i was about six." "i'm the only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. i know you're soft and lazy and selfish and--" "don't forget any." "and i know you're my good-looking good-for-nothing, and i know, too, that you--you don't care as much--as much for me from head to toe as i do for your little finger. but i--i like you just the same, jimmie. that--that's what i mean about having no shame. i--do like you so--so terribly, jimmie." "aw now--gert!" "i know it, jimmie--that i ought to be ashamed. don't think i haven't cried myself to sleep with it whole nights in succession." "aw now--gert!" "don't think i don't know it, that i'm laying myself before you pretty common. i know it's common for a girl to--to come to a fellow like this, but--but i haven't got any shame about it--i haven't got anything, jimmie, except fight for--for what's eating me. and the way things are between us now is eating me." "i--why, i got a mighty high regard for you, gert." "there's a time in a girl's life, jimmie, when she's been starved like i have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute when she busts out." "i understand, gert, but--" "for two years and eight months, jimmie, life has got to be worth while living to me because i could see the day, even if we--you--never talked about it, when you would be made over from a flip kid to--to the kind of a fellow would want to settle down to making a little--two-by-four home for us. a--little two-by-four all our own, with you steady on the job and advanced maybe to forty or fifty a week and--" "for god's sake, gertie, this ain't the time or the place to--" "oh yes, it is! it's got to be, because it's the first time in four weeks that you didn't see me coming first." "but not now, gert. i--" "i'm not ashamed to tell you, jimmie batch, that i've been the making of you since that night you threw the wink at me. and--and it hurts, this does. god! how it hurts!" he was pleating the table-cloth, swallowing as if his throat had constricted, and still rearing his head this way and that in the tight collar. "i--never claimed not to be a bad egg. this ain't the time and the place for rehashing, that's all. sure you been a friend to me. i don't say you haven't. only i can't be bossed by a girl like you. i don't say may scully's any better than she ought to be. only that's my business. you hear? my business. i got to have life and see a darn sight more future for myself than selling shirts in a fourteenth street department store." "may scully can't give it to you--her and her fast crowd." "maybe she can and maybe she can't." "them few dollars won't make you; they'll break you." "that's for her to decide, not you." "i'll tell her myself. i'll face her right here and--" "now, look here, if you think i'm going to be let in for a holy show between you two girls, you got another think coming. one of us has got to clear out of here, and quick, too. you been talking about the side door; there it is. in five minutes i got a date in this place that i thought i could keep like any law-abiding citizen. one of us has got to clear, and quick, too. god! you wimmin make me sick, the whole lot of you!" "if anything makes you sick, i know what it is. it's dodging me to fly around all hours of the night with may scully, the girl who put the tang in tango. it's eating around in swell sixty-cent restaurants like this and--" "gad! your middle name ought to be nagalene." "aw, now, jimmie, maybe it does sound like nagging, but it ain't, honey. it--it's only my--my fear that i'm losing you, and--and my hate for the every-day grind of things, and--" "i can't help that, can i?" "why, there--there's nothing on god's earth i hate, jimmie, like i hate that bargain-basement. when i think it's down there in that manhole i've spent the best years of my life, i--i wanna die. the day i get out of it, the day i don't have to punch that old time-clock down there next to the complaints and adjustment desk, i--i'll never put my foot below sidewalk level again to the hour i die. not even if it was to take a walk in my own gold-mine." "it ain't exactly a garden of roses down there." "why, i hate it so terrible, jimmie, that sometimes i wake up nights gritting my teeth with the smell of steam-pipes and the tramp of feet on the glass sidewalk up over me. oh. god! you dunno--you dunno!" "when it comes to that the main floor ain't exactly a maiden's dream, or a fellow's, for that matter." "with a man it's different, it's his job in life, earning, and--and the woman making the two ends of it meet. that's why, jimmie, these last two years and eight months, if not for what i was hoping for us, why--why--i--why, on your twenty a week, jimmie, there's nobody could run a flat like i could. why, the days wouldn't be long enough to putter in. i--don't throw away what i been building up for us, jimmie, step by step! don't, jimmie!" "good lord, girl! you deserve better 'n me." "i know i got a big job, jimmie, but i want to make a man out of you, temper, laziness, gambling, and all. you got it in you to be something more than a tango lizard or a cigar-store bum, honey. it's only you 'ain't got the stuff in you to stand up under a five-hundred-dollar windfall and--a--and a sporty girl. if--if two glasses of beer make you as silly as they do, jimmie, why, five hundred dollars would land you under the table for life." "aw-there you go again!" "i can't help it, jimmie. it's because i never knew a fellow had what's he's cut out for written all over him so. you're a born clerk, jimmie. "sure, i'm a slick clerk, but--" "you're born to be a clerk, a good clerk, even a two-hundred-a-month clerk, the way you can win the trade, but never your own boss. i know what i'm talking about. i know your measure better than any human on earth can ever know your measure. i know things about you that you don't even know yourself." "i never set myself up to nobody for anything i wasn't." "maybe not, jimmie, but i know about you and--and that central street gang that time, and--" "you!" "yes, honey, and there's not another human living but me knows how little it was your fault. just bad company, that was all. that's how much i--i love you, jimmie, enough to understand that. why, if i thought may scully and a set-up in business was the thing for you, jimmie, i'd say to her, i'd say, if it was like taking my own heart out in my hand and squashing it, i'd say to her, i'd say, 'take him, may.' that's how i--i love you, jimmie. oh, ain't it nothing, honey, a girl can come here and lay herself this low to you--" "well, haven't i just said you--you deserve better." "i don't want better, jimmie. i want you. i want to take hold of your life and finish the job of making it the kind we can both be proud of. us two, jimmie, in--in our own decent two-by-four. shopping on saturday nights. frying in our own frying-pan in our own kitchen. listening to our own phonograph in our own parlor. geraniums and--and kids--and--and things. gas-logs. stationary washtubs. jimmie! jimmie!" mr. james p. batch reached up for his hat and overcoat, cramming the newspaper into a rear pocket. "come on," he said, stalking toward the side door and not waiting to see her to her feet. outside, a banner of stars was over the narrow street. for a chain of five blocks he walked, with a silence and speed that miss slayback could only match with a running quickstep. but she was not out of breath. her head was up, and her hand, where it hooked into mr. batch's elbow, was in a vise that tightened with each block. you who will mete out no other approval than that vouched for by the stamp of time and whose contempt for the contemporary is from behind the easy refuge of the classics, suffer you the shuddering analogy that between aspasia who inspired pericles, theodora who suggested the justinian code, and gertie slayback who commandeered jimmie batch, is a sistership which rounds them, like a lasso thrown back into time, into one and the same petticoat dynasty behind the throne. true, gertie slayback's _mise en scène_ was a two-room kitchenette apartment situated in the bronx at a surveyor's farthest point between two subway stations, and her present state one of frequent red-faced forays down into a packing-case. but there was that in her eyes which witchingly bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. hers was actually the titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its wings, that surrender can be so sweet. once she sat on the edge of the packing-case, dallying a hammer, then laid it aside suddenly, to cross the littered room and place the side of her head to the immaculate waistcoat of mr. jimmie batch, red-faced, too, over wrenching up with hatchet-edge a barrel-top. "jimmie darling, i--i just never will get over your finding this place for us." mr. batch wiped his forearm across his brow, his voice jerking between the squeak of nails extracted from wood. "it was you, honey. you give me the to-let ad, and i came to look, that's all." "just the samey, it was my boy found it. if you hadn't come to look we might have been forced into taking that old dark coop over on simpson street." "what's all this junk in this barrel?" "them's kitchen utensils, honey." "kitchen what?" "kitchen things that you don't know nothing about except to eat good things out of." "what's this?" "don't bend it! that's a celery-brush. ain't it cute?" "a celery-brush! why didn't you get it a comb, too?" "aw, now, honey-bee, don't go trying to be funny and picking through these things you don't know nothing about! they're just cute things i'm going to cook something grand suppers in, for my something awful bad boy." he leaned down to kiss her at that. "gee!" she was standing, her shoulder to him and head thrown back against his chest. she looked up to stroke his cheek, her face foreshortened. "i'm all black and blue pinching myself, jimmie." "me too." "every night when i get home from working here in the flat i say to myself in the looking-glass, i say, 'gertie slayback, what if you're only dreamin'?'" "me too." "i say to myself, 'are you sure that darling flat up there, with the new pink-and-white wall-paper and the furniture arriving every day, is going to be yours in a few days when you're mrs. jimmie batch?'" "mrs. jimmie batch--say, that's immense." "i keep saying it to myself every night, 'one day less.' last night it was two days. to-night it'll be--one day, jimmie, till i'm--her." she closed her eyes and let her hand linger up at his cheek, head still back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in the ash-blond fluff of her hair. "talk about can't wait! if to-morrow was any farther off they'd have to sweep out a padded cell for me." she turned to rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "bad boy! can't wait! and here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. up to the time of this draft business, jimmie batch, 'pretty soon' was the only date i could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying over one day's wait. bad honey boy!" he reached back for the pink newspaper so habitually protruding from his hip pocket. "you ought to see the way they're neck-breaking for the marriage-license bureaus since the draft. first thing we know, tine whole shebang of the boys will be claiming the exemption of sole support of wife." "it's a good thing we made up our minds quick, jimmie. they'll be getting wise. if too many get exemption from the army by marrying right away, it'll be a give-away." "i'd like to know who can lay his hands on the exemption of a little wife to support." "oh, jimmie, it--it sounds so funny. being supported! me that always did the supporting, not only to me, but to my mother and great-grand-mother up to the day they died." "i'm the greatest little supporter you ever seen." "me getting up mornings to stay at home in my own darling little flat, and no basement or time-clock. nothing but a busy little hubby to eat him nice, smelly, bacon breakfast and grab him nice morning newspaper, kiss him wifie, and run downtown to support her. jimmie, every morning for your breakfast i'm going to fry--" "you bet your life he's going to support her, and he's going to pay back that forty dollars of his girl's that went into his wedding duds, that hundred and ninety of his girl's savings that went into furniture--" "we got to meet our instalments every month first, jimmie. that's what we want--no debts and every little darling piece of furniture paid up." "we--i'm going to pay it, too." "and my jimmie is going to work to get himself promoted and quit being a sorehead at his steady hours and all." "i know more about selling, honey, than the whole bunch of dubs in that store put together if they'd give me a chance to prove it." she laid her palm to his lips. "'shh-h-h! you don't nothing of the kind. it's not conceit, it's work is going to get my boy his raise." "if they'd listen to me, that department would--" "'shh-h! j. g. hoffheimer don't have to get pointers from jimmie batch how to run his department store." "there you go again. what's j. g. hoffheimer got that i 'ain't? luck and a few dollars in his pocket that, if i had in mine, would-"it was his own grit put those dollars there, jimmie. just put it out of your head that it's luck makes a self-made man." "self-made! you mean things just broke right for him. that's two-thirds of this self-made business." "you mean he buckled right down to brass tacks, and that's what my boy is going to do." "the trouble with this world is it takes money to make money. get your first few dollars, i always say, no matter how, and then when you're on your feet scratch your conscience if it itches. that's why i said in the beginning, if we had took that hundred and ninety furniture money and staked it on--" "jimmie, please--please! you wouldn't want to take a girl's savings of years and years to gamble on a sporty cigar proposition with a card-room in the rear. you wouldn't, jimmie. you ain't that kind of fellow. tell me you wouldn't, jimmie." he turned away to dive down into the barrel. "naw," he said, "i wouldn't." the sun had receded, leaving a sudden sullen gray, the little square room, littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture, and the paperhanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, darkening and seeming to chill. "we got to quit now, jimmie. it's getting dark and the gas ain't turned on in the meter yet." he rose up out of the barrel, holding out at arm's-length what might have been a tinsmith's version of a porcupine. "what in--what's this thing that scratched me?" she danced to take it. "it's a grater, a darling grater for horseradish and nutmeg and cocoanut. i'm going to fix you a cocoanut cake for our honeymoon supper to-morrow night, honey-bee. essie wohlgemuth over in the cake-demonstrating department is going to bring me the recipe. cocoanut cake! and i'm going to fry us a little steak in this darling little skillet. ain't it the cutest!" "cute she calls a tin skillet." "look what's pasted on it. 'little housewife's skillet. the kitchen fairy.' that's what i'm going to be, jimmie, the kitchen fairy. give me that. it's a rolling-pin. all my life i've wanted a rolling-pin. look, honey, a little string to hang it up by. i'm going to hang everything up in rows. it's going to look like tiffany's kitchen, all shiny. give me, honey; that's an egg-beater. look at it whiz. and this--this is a pan for war bread. i'm going to make us war bread to help the soldiers." "you're a little soldier yourself," he said. "that's what i would be if i was a man, a soldier all in brass buttons." "there's a bunch of the fellows going," said mr. batch, standing at the window, looking out over roofs, dilly-dallying up and down on his heels and breaking into a low, contemplative whistle. she was at his shoulder, peering over it. "you wouldn't be afraid, would you, jimmie?" "you bet your life i wouldn't." she was tiptoes now, her arms creeping up to him. "only my boy's got a wife--a brand-new wifie to support, 'ain't he?" "that's what he has," said mr. batch, stroking her forearm, but still gazing through and beyond whatever roofs he was seeing. "jimmie!" "huh?" "look! we got a view of the hudson river from our flat, just like we lived on riverside drive." "all the hudson river i can see is fifteen smoke-stacks and somebody's wash-line out." "it ain't so. we got a grand view. look! stand on tiptoe, jimmie, like me. there, between that water-tank on that black roof over there and them two chimneys. see? watch my finger. a little stream of something over there that moves." "no, i don't see." "look, honey-bee, close! see that little streak?" "all right, then, if you see it i see it." "to think we got a river view from our flat! it's like living in the country. i'll peek out at it all day long. god! honey, i just never will be over the happiness of being done with basements." "it was swell of old higgins to give us this half-saturday. it shows where you stood with the management, gert--this and a five-dollar gold piece. lord knows they wouldn't pony up that way if it was me getting married by myself." "it's because my boy 'ain't shown them down there yet the best that's in him. you just watch his little safety-first wife see to it that from now on he keeps up her record of never in seven years punching the time-clock even one minute late, and that he keeps his stock shelves o. k. and shows his department he's a comer-on." "with that bunch of boobs a fellow's got a swell chance to get anywheres." "it's getting late, jimmie. it don't look nice for us to stay here so late alone, not till--to-morrow. ruby and essie and charley are going to meet us in the minister's back parlor at ten sharp in the morning. we can be back here by noon and get the place cleared enough to give 'em a little lunch--just a fun lunch without fixings." "i hope the old guy don't waste no time splicing us. it's one of the things a fellow likes to have over with." "jimmie! why, it's the most beautiful thing in the world, like a garden of lilies or--or something, a marriage ceremony is! you got the ring safe, honey-bee, and the license?" "pinned in my pocket where you put 'em, flirty gertie." "flirty gertie! now you'll begin teasing me with that all our life--the way i didn't slap your face that night when i should have. i just couldn't have, honey. goes to show we were just cut and dried for each other, don't it? me, a girl that never in her life let a fellow even bat his eyes at her without an introduction. but that night when you winked, honey--something inside of me just winked back." "my girl!" "you mean it, boy? you ain't sorry about nothing, jimmie?" "sorry? well, i guess not!" "you saw the way--she--may--you saw for yourself what she was, when we saw her walking, that next night after ceiner's, nearly staggering, up sixth avenue with budge evans." "i never took any stock in her, honey. i was just letting her like me." she sat back on the box edge, regarding him, her face so soft and wont to smile that she could not keep her composure. "get me my hat and coat, honey. we'll walk down. got the key?" they skirmished in the gloom, moving through slit-like aisles of furniture and packing-box. "ouch!" "oh, the running water is hot, jimmie, just like the ad said! we got red-hot running water in our flat. close the front windows, honey. we don't want it to rain in on our new green sofa. not 'til it's paid for, anyways." "hurry." "i'm ready." they met at the door, kissing on the inside and the outside of it; at the head of the fourth, third, and the second balustrade down. "we'll always make 'em little love landings, jimmie, so we can't ever get tired climbing them." "yep." outside there was still a pink glow in a clean sky. the first flush of spring in the air had died, leaving chill. they walked briskly, arm in arm, down the asphalt incline of sidewalk leading from their apartment house, a new street of canned homes built on a hillside--the sepulchral abode of the city's trapped whose only escape is down the fire-escape, and then only when the alternative is death. at the base of the hill there flows, in constant hubbub, a great up-and-down artery of street, repeating itself, mile after mile, in terms of the butcher, the baker, and the "every-other-corner drug-store of a million dollar corporation". housewives with perambulators and oil-cloth shopping bags. children on rollerskates. the din of small tradesmen and the humdrum of every city block where the homes remain unbearded all summer and every wife is on haggling terms with the purveyor of her evening roundsteak and mess of rutabaga. then there is the soap-box provender, too, sure of a crowd, offering creed, propaganda, patent medicine, and politics. it is the pulpit of the reformer and the housetop of the fanatic, this soapbox. from it the voice to the city is often a pious one, an impious one, and almost always a raucous one. luther and sophocles, and even a citizen of nazareth made of the four winds of the street corner the walls of a temple of wisdom. what more fitting acropolis for freedom of speech than the great out-of-doors! turning from the incline of cross-street into this petty baghdad of the petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above the inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. a youth, thewed like an ox, surmounted on a stack of three self provided canned-goods boxes, his in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost ready to break out in stars; a crowd tightening about him. "it's a soldier boy talkin', gert." "if it ain't!" they tiptoed at the fringe of the circle, heads back. "look, gert, he's a lieutenant; he's got a shoulder-bar. and those four down there holding the flags are just privates. you can always tell a lieutenant by the bar." "uh-huh." "say, them boys do stack up some for uncle sam." "'shh-h-h, jimmie!" "i'm here to tell you that them boys stack up some." a banner stiffened out in the breeze, mr. batch reading: "enlist before you are drafted. last chance to beat the draft. prove your patriotism. enlist now! your country calls!" "come on," said mr. batch. "wait. i want to hear what he's saying." "... there's not a man here before me can afford to shirk his duty to his country. the slacker can't get along without his country, but his country can very easily get along without him." cheers. "the poor exemption boobs are already running for doctors' certificates and marriage licenses, but even if they get by with it--and it is ninety-nine to one they won't--they can't run away from their own degradation and shame." "come on, jimmie." "wait." "men of america, for every one of you who tries to dodge his duty to his country there is a yellow streak somewhere underneath the hide of you. women of america, every one of you that helps to foster the spirit of cowardice in your particular man or men is helping to make a coward. it's the cowards and the quitters and the slackers and dodgers that need this war more than the patriotic ones who are willing to buckle on and go! "don't be a buttonhole patriot! a government that is good enough to live under is good enough to fight under!" cheers. "if there is any reason on earth has manifested itself for this devastating and terrible war it is that it has been a maker of men. "ladies and gentlemen, i am back from four months in the trenches with the french army, and i've come home, now that my own country is at war, to give her every ounce of energy i've got to offer. as soon as a hole in my side is healed up. i'm going back to those trenches, and i want to say to you that them four months of mine face to face with life and with death have done more for me than all my twenty-four civilian years put together." cheers. "i'll be a different man, if i live to come back home after this war and take up my work again as a draftsman. why, i've seen weaklings and self-confessed failures and even ninnies go into them trenches and come out--oh yes, plenty of them do come out--men. men that have got close enough down to the facts of things to feel new realizations of what life means come over them. men that have gotten back their pep, their ambitions, their unselfishness. that's what war can do for your men, you women who are helping them to foster the spirit of holding back, of cheating their government. that's what war can do for your men. make of them the kind of men who some day can face their children without having to hang their heads. men who can answer for their part in making the world a safe place for democracy." an hour they stood there, the air quieting but chilling, and lavishly sown stars cropping out. street lights had come out, too, throwing up in ever darker relief the figure above the heads of the crowd. his voice had coarsened and taken on a raw edge, but every gesture was flung from the socket, and from where they had forced themselves into the tight circle gertie slayback, her mouth fallen open and her head still back, could see the sinews of him ripple under khaki and the diaphragm lift for voice. there was a shift of speakers then, this time a private, still too rangy, but his looseness of frame seeming already to conform to the exigency of uniform. "come on, jimmie. i--i'm cold." they worked out into the freedom of the sidewalk, and for ten minutes, down blocks of petty shops already lighted, walked in a silence that grew apace. he was suddenly conscious that she was crying, quietly, her handkerchief wadded against her mouth. he strode on with a scowl and his head bent. "let's sit down in this little park, jimmie. i'm tired." they rested on a bench on one of those small triangles of breathing space which the city ekes out now and then; mill ends of land parcels. he took immediately to roving the toe of his shoe in and out among the gravel. she stole out her hand to his arm. "well, jimmie?" her voice was in the gauze of a whisper that hardly left her throat. "well, what?" he said, still toeing. "there--there's a lot of things we never thought about, jimmie." "aw!" "eh, jimmie?" "you mean _you_ never thought about it?" "what do you mean?" "i know what i mean alrighty." "i--i was the one that suggested it, jimmie, but--but you fell in. i--i just couldn't bear to think of it, jimmie--your going and all. i suggested it, but--but you fell in." "say, when a fellow's shoved he falls. i never gave a thought to sneaking an exemption until it was put in my head. i'd smash the fellow in the face that calls me coward, i will." "you could have knocked me down with a feather, jimmie, looking at it his way all of a sudden." "you couldn't knock me down. don't think i was ever strong enough for the whole business. i mean the exemption part. i wasn't going to say anything. what's the use, seeing the way you had your heart set on--on things? but the whole business, if you want to know it, went against my grain. i'll smash the fellow in the face that calls me coward." "i know, jimmie; you--you're right. it was me suggested hurrying things like this. sneakin'! oh, god! ain't i the messer-up!" "lay easy, girl. i'm going to see it through. i guess there's been fellows before me and will be after me who have done worse. i'm going to see it through. all i got to say is i'll smash up the fellow calls me coward. come on, forget it. let's go." she was close to him, her cheek crinkled against his with the frank kind of social unconsciousness the park bench seems to engender. "come on, gert. i got a hunger on." '"shh-h-h, jimmie! let me think. i'm thinking." "too much thinking killed a cat. come on." "jimmie!" "huh?" "jimmie--would you--had you ever thought about being a soldier?" "sure. i came in an ace of going into the army that time after--after that little central street trouble of mine. i've got a book in my trunk this minute on military tactics. wouldn't surprise me a bit to see me land in the army some day." "it's a fine thing, jimmie, for a fellow--the army." "yeh, good for what ails him." she drew him back, pulling at his shoulder so that finally he faced her. "jimmie!" "huh?" "i got an idea." "shoot." "you remember once, honey-bee, how i put it to you that night at ceiner's how, if it was for your good, no sacrifice was too much to make." "forget it." "you didn't believe it." "aw, say now, what's the use digging up ancient history?" "you'd be right, jimmie, not to believe it. i haven't lived up to what i said." "oh lord, honey! what's eating you now? come to the point." she would not meet his eyes, turning her head from him to hide lips that would quiver. "honey, it--it ain't coming off--that's all. not now--anyways." "what ain't?" "us." "who?" "you know what i mean, jimmie. it's like everything the soldier boy on the corner just said. i--i saw you getting red clear behind your ears over it. i--i was, too, jimmie. it's like that soldier boy was put there on that corner just to show me, before it was too late, how wrong i been in every one of my ways. us women who are helping to foster slackers. that's what we're making of them--slackers for life. and here i been thinking it was your good i had in mind, when all along it's been mine. that's what it's been, mine!" "aw, now, gert--" "you got to go, jimmie. you got to go, because you want to go and--because i want you to go." "where?" "to war." he took hold of her two arms because they were trembling. "aw, now, gert, i didn't say anything complaining. i--" "you did, jimmie, you did, and--and i never was so glad over you that you did complain. i just never was so glad. i want you to go, jimmie. i want you to go and get a man made out of you. they'll make a better job out of you than ever i can. i want you to get the yellow streak washed out. i want you to get to be all the things he said you would. for every line he was talking up there, i could see my boy coming home to me some day better than anything i could make out of him, babying him the way i can't help doing. i could see you, honey-bee, coming back to me with the kind of lift to your head a fellow has when he's been fighting to make the world a safe place for dem--for whatever it was he said. i want you to go, jimmie. i want you to beat the draft, too. nothing on earth can make me not want you to go." "why, gert--you're kiddin'!" "honey, you want to go, don't you? you want to square up those shoulders and put on khaki, don't you? tell me you want to go!" "why--why, yes, gert, if--" "oh, you're going, jimmie! you're going!" "why, girl--you're crazy! our flat! our furniture--our--" "what's a flat? what's furniture? what's anything? there's not a firm in business wouldn't take back a boy's furniture--a boy's everything--that's going out to fight for--for dem-o-cracy! what's a flat? what's anything?" he let drop his head to hide his eyes. do you know it is said that on the desert of sahara, the slope of sorrento, and the marble of fifth avenue the sun can shine whitest? there is an iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and carrara façade that is sheer light distilled to its utmost. on one such day when, standing on the high slope of fifth avenue where it rises toward the park, and looking down on it, surging to and fro, it was as if, so manifest the brilliancy, every head wore a tin helmet, parrying sunlight at a thousand angles of refraction. parade-days, all this glittering midstream is swept to the clean sheen of a strip of moire, this splendid desolation blocked on each side by crowds half the density of the sidewalk. on one of these sun-drenched saturdays dedicated by a growing tradition to this or that national expression, the ninety-ninth regiment, to a flare of music that made the heart leap out against its walls, turned into a scene thus swept clean for it, a wave of olive drab, impeccable row after impeccable row of scissors-like legs advancing. recruits, raw if you will, but already caparisoned, sniffing and scenting, as it were, for the great primordial mire of war. there is no state of being so finely sensitized as national consciousness. a gauntlet down and it surges up. one ripple of a flag defended can goose-flesh a nation. how bitter and how sweet it is to give a soldier! to the seething kinetic chemistry of such mingling emotions there were women who stood in the frontal crowds of the sidewalks stifling hysteria, or ran after in terror at sight of one so personally hers, receding in that great impersonal wave of olive drab. and yet the air was martial with banner and with shout. and the ecstasy of such moments is like a dam against reality, pressing it back. it is in the pompless watches of the night or of too long days that such dams break, excoriating. for the thirty blocks of its course gertie slayback followed that wave of men, half run and half walk. down from the curb, and at the beck and call of this or that policeman up again, only to find opportunity for still another dive out from the invisible roping off of the sidewalk crowds. from the middle of his line, she could see, sometimes, the tail of jimmie batch's glance roving for her, but to all purports his eye was solely for his own replica in front of him, and at such times, when he marched, his back had a little additional straightness that was almost swayback. nor was gertie slayback crying. on the contrary, she was inclined to laughter. a little too inclined to a high and brittle sort of dissonance over which she seemed to have no control. "'by, jimmie! so long! jimmie! you-hoo!" tramp. tramp. tramp-tramp-tramp. "you-hoo! jimmie! so long, jimmie!" at fourteenth street, and to the solemn stroke of one from a tower, she broke off suddenly without even a second look back, dodging under the very arms of the crowd as she ran out from it. she was one and three-quarter minutes late when she punched the time-clock beside the complaints and adjustment desk in the bargain-basement. ii sieve of fulfilment how constant a stream is the runnel of men's small affairs! dynasties may totter and half the world bleed to death, but one or the other corner _pâtisserie_ goes on forever. at a moment when the shadow of world-war was over the country like a pair of black wings lowering mrs. harry ross, who swooned at the sight of blood from a penknife scratch down the hand of her son, but yawned over the head-line statistics of the casualties at verdun, lifted a lid from a pot that exuded immediate savory fumes, prodded with a fork at its content, her concern boiled down to deal solely with stew. an alarm-clock on a small shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. a dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the air-shaft, dimming them. mrs. ross lowered the shade and lighted the gas-jet. so short that in the long run she wormed first through a crowd, she was full of the genial curves that, though they bespoke three lumps in her coffee in an elevator and escalator age, had not yet reached uncongenial proportions. in fact, now, brushing with her bare forearm across her moistly pink face, she was like flora, who, rather than fade, became buxom. a door slammed in an outer hall, as she was still stirring and looking down into the stew. "edwin!" "yes, mother." "don't track through the parlor." "aw!" "you hear me?" "i yain't! gee, can't a feller walk?" "put your books on the hat-rack." "i am." she supped up bird-like from the tip of her spoon, smacking for flavor. "i made you an asafetida-bag, edwin, it's in your drawer. don't you leave this house to-morrow without it on." "aw-w-w-w-w!" "it don't smell." "where's my stamp-book?" "on your table, where it belongs." "gee whiz! if you got my argentine stamps mixed!" "get washed." "where's my batteries?" "under your bed, where they belong." "i'm hungry." "your father'll be home any minute now. don't spoil your appetite." "i got ninety in manual training, mother." "did yuh, edwin?" "all the other fellows only got seventy and eighty." "mamma's boy leads 'em." he entered at that, submitting to a kiss upon an averted cheek. "see what mother's fixed for you!" "m-m-m-m! fritters!" "don't touch!" "m-m-m-m--lamb stew!" "i shopped all morning to get okra to go in it for your father." "m-m-m-m-m!" she tiptoed up to kiss him again, this time at the back of the neck, carefully averting her floury hands. "mamma's boy! i made you three pen-wipers to-day out of the old red table-cover." "aw, fellers don't use pen-wipers!" he set up a jiggling, his great feet coming down with a clatter. "stop!" "can't i jig?" "no; not with neighbors underneath." he flopped down, hooking his heels in the chair-rung. at sixteen's stage of cruel hazing into man's estate edwin ross, whose voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles, wore a nine shoe and a thirteen collar. his first long trousers were let down and taken in. his second taken up and let out. when shaving promised to become a manly accomplishment, his complexion suddenly clouded, postponing that event until long after it had become a hirsute necessity. when he smiled apoplectically above his first waistcoat and detachable collar, his adam's apple and his mother's heart fluttered. "blow-cat dennis is going to city college." "who's he?" "a feller." "quit crackin' your knuckles." "he only got seventy in manual training." "tell them things to your father, edwin; i 'ain't got the say-so." "his father's only a bookkeeper, too, and they live 'way up on a hundred and forty-fourth near third." "i'm willing to scrimp and save for it, edwin; but in the end i haven't got the say-so, and you know it." "the boys that are going to college got to register now for the high school college society." "your father, edwin, is the one to tell that to." "other fellers' mothers put in a word for 'em." "i do, edwin; you know i do! it only aggravates him--there's papa now, edwin, coming in. help mamma dish up. put this soup at papa's place and this at yours. there's only two plates left from last night." in mrs. ross's dining-room, a red-glass dome, swung by a chain over the round table, illuminated its white napery and decently flowered china. beside the window looking out upon a gray-brick wall almost within reach, a canary with a white-fluted curtain about the cage dozed headless. beside that window, covered in flowered chintz, a sewing-machine that could collapse to a table; a golden-oak sideboard laid out in pressed glassware. a homely simplicity here saved by chance or chintz from the simply homely. mr. harry ross drew up immediately beside the spread table, jerking open his newspaper and, head thrown back, read slantingly down at the head-lines. "hello, pop!" "hello, son!" "watch out!" "hah--that's the stuff! don't spill!" he jammed the newspaper between his and the chair back, shoving in closer to the table. he was blond to ashiness, so that the slicked-back hair might or might not be graying. pink-shaved, unlined, nose-glasses polished to sparkle, he was ten years his wife's senior and looked those ten years younger. clerks and clergymen somehow maintain that youth of the flesh, as if life had preserved them in alcohol or shaving-lotion. mrs. ross entered then in her crisp but faded house dress, her round, intent face still moistly pink, two steaming dishes held out. he did not rise, but reached up to kiss her as she passed. "burnt your soup a little to-night, mother." she sat down opposite, breathing deeply outward, spreading her napkin out across her lap. "it was edwin coming in from school and getting me worked up with his talk about--about--" "what?" "nothing. edwin, run out and bring papa the paprika to take the burnt taste out. i turned all the cuffs on your shirts to-day, harry." "lordy! if you ain't fixing at one thing, you're fixing another." "anything new?" he was well over his soup now, drinking in long draughts from the tip of his spoon. "news! in a. e. unger's office, a man don't get his nose far enough up from the ledger to even smell news." "i see goldfinch & goetz failed." "could have told 'em they'd go under, trying to put on a spectacular show written in verse. that same show boiled down to good forty-second street lingo with some good shapes and a proposition like alma zitelle to lift it from poetry to punch has a world of money in it for somebody. a war spectacular show filled with sure-fire patriotic lines, a bunch of show-girl battalions, and a figure like alma zitelle's for the goddess of liberty--a world of money, i tell you!" "honest, harry?" "that trench scene they built for that show is as fine a contrivance as i've ever seen of the kind. what did they do? set it to a lot of music without a hum or a ankle in it. a few classy nurses like the mercy militia sextet, some live, grand-old-flag tunes by harry mordelle, and there's a half a million dollars in that show. unger thinks i'm crazy when i try to get him interested, but i--" "i got ninety in manual training to-day, pop." "that's good, son. little more of that stew, mother?" "unger isn't so smart, honey, he can't afford to take a tip off you once in a while: you've proved that to him." "yes, but go tell him so." "he'll live to see the day he's got to give you credit for being the first to see money in 'pan-america.'" "credit? huh! to hear him tell it, he was born with that idea in his bullet head." "i'd like to hear him say it to me, if ever i lay eyes on him, that it wasn't you who begged him to get into it." "i'll show 'em some day in that office that i can pick the winners for myself, as well as for the other fellow. believe me, unger hasn't raised me to fifty a week for my fancy bookkeeping, and he knows it, and, what's more, he knows i know he knows it." "the fellers that are goin' to college next term have to register for the high school college society, pop--dollar dues." "well, you aren't going to college, and that's where you and i save a hundred cents on the dollar. little more gravy, mother." the muscles of edwin's face relaxed, his mouth dropping to a pout, the crude features quivering. "aw, pop, a feller nowadays without a college education don't stand a show." "he don't, don't he? i know one who will." edwin threw a quivering glance to his mother and gulped through a constricted throat. "mother says i--i can go if only you--" "your mother'd say you could have the moon, too, if she had to climb a greased pole to get it. she'd start weaving door-mats for the cingalese hottentots if she thought they needed 'em." "but, harry, he--" "your mother 'ain't got the bills of this shebang to worry about, and your mother don't mind having a college sissy a-laying around the house to support five years longer. i do." "it's the free city college, pop." "you got a better education now than nine boys out of ten. if you ain't man enough to want to get out after four years of high school and hustle for a living, you got to be shown the way out. i started when i was in short pants, and you're no better than your father. your mother sold notions and axle-grease in an up-state general store up to the day she married. now cut out the college talk you been springing on me lately. i won't have it--you hear? you're a poor man's son, and the sooner you make up your mind to it the better. pass the chow-chow, mother." nervousness had laid hold of her so that in and out among the dishes her hand trembled. "you see, harry, it's the free city college, and--" "i know that free talk. so was high school free when you talked me into it, but if it ain't one thing it's been another. cadet uniform, football suit--" "the child's got talent for invention, harry; his manual-training teacher told me his air-ship model was--" "i got ninety in manual training when the other fellers only got seventy." "i guess you're looking for another case like your father, sitting penniless around the house, tinkering on inventions up to the day he died." "pa never had the business push, harry. you know yourself his churn was ready for the market before the peerless beat him in on it." "well, your son is going to get the business push trained into him. no boy of mine with a poor daddy eats up four years of his life and my salary training to be a college sissy. that's for the rich men's sons. that's for the clarence ungers." "i'll pay it back some day, pop; i--." "they all say that." "if it's the money, harry, maybe i can--" "if it didn't cost a cent, i wouldn't have it. now cut it out--you hear? quick!" edwin ross pushed back from the table, struggling and choking against impending tears. "well, then, i--i--" "and no shuffling of feet, neither!" "he didn't shuffle, harry; it's just his feet growing so fast he can't manage them." "well, just the samey, i--i ain't going into the theayter business. i--i--" mr. ross flung down his napkin, facing him. "you're going where i put you, young man. you're going to get the right kind of a start that i didn't get in the biggest money-making business in the world." "i won't. i'll get me a job in an aeroplane-factory." his father's palm came down with a small crash, shivering the china. "by gad! you take that impudence out of your voice to me or i'll rawhide it out!" "harry!" "leave the table!" "harry, he's only a child--" "go to your room!" his heavy, unformed lips now trembling frankly against the tears he tried so furiously to resist, edwin charged with lowered head from the room, sobs escaping in raw gutturals. mr. ross came back to his plate, breathing heavily, fist, with a knife upright in it, coming down again on the table, his mouth open, to facilitate labored breathing. "by heaven! i'll cowhide that boy to his senses! i've never laid hand on him yet, but he ain't too old. i'll get him down to common sense, if i got to break a rod over him." handkerchief against trembling lips, mrs. ross looked after the vanished form, eyes brimming. "harry, you--you're so rough with him." "i'll be rougher yet before i'm through." "he's only a--" "he's rewarding the way you scrimped to pay his expenses for nonsense clubs and societies by asking you to do it another four years. you're getting your thanks now. college! well, not if the court knows it--" "he's got talent, harry; his teacher says he--" "so'd your father have talent." "if pa hadn't lost his eye in the civil war--" "i'm going to put my son's talent where i can see a future for it." "he's ambitious, harry." "so'm i--to see my son trained to be something besides a looney inventor like his grandfather before him." "it's all i want in life, harry, to see my two boys of you happy." "it's your woman-ideas i got to blame for this. i want you to stop, millie, putting rich man's ideas in his head. you hear? i won't stand for it." "harry, if--if it's the money, maybe i could manage--" "yes--and scrimp and save and scrooge along without a laundress another four years, and do his washing and--" "i--could fix the money part, harry--easy." he regarded her with his jaw dropped in the act of chewing. "by gad! where do you plant it?" "it--it's the way i scrimp, harry. another woman would spend it on clothes or--a servant--or matinées. it ain't hard for a home body like me to save, harry." he reached across the table for her wrist. "poor little soul," he said, "you don't see day-light." "let him go, harry, if--if he wants it. i can manage the money." his scowl returned, darkening him. "no. a. e. unger never seen the inside of a high school, much less a college, and i guess he's made as good a pile as most. i've worked for the butcher and the landlord all my life, and now i ain't going to begin being a slave to my boy. there's been two or three times in my life where, for want of a few dirty dollars to make a right start, i'd be, a rich man to-day. my boy's going to get that right start." "but, harry, college will--" "i seen money in 'pan-america' long before unger ever dreamed of producing it. i sicked him onto 'the official chaperon' when every manager in town had turned it down. i went down and seen 'em doing 'the white elephant' in a yiddish theater and wired unger out in chicago to come back and grab it for broadway. where's it got me? nowhere. because i whiled away the best fifteen years of my life in an up-state burg, and then, when i came down here too late in life, got in the rut of a salaried man. well, where it 'ain't got me it's going to get my son. i'm missing a chance, to-day that, mark my word, would make me a rich man but for want of a few--" "harry, you mean that?" "my hunch never fails me." she was leaning across the table, her hands clasping its edge, her small, plump face even pinker. he threw out his legs beneath the table and sat back, hands deep in pockets, and a toothpick hanging limp from between lips that were sagging. "gad! if i had my life to live over again as a salaried man, i'd--i'd hang myself first! the way to start a boy to a million dollars in this business is to start him young in the producing-end of a strong firm." "you--got faith in this goldfinch & goetz failure like you had in 'pan-america' and 'the chaperon,' harry?" "i said it five years ago and it come to pass. i say it now. for want of a few dirty dollars i'm a poor man till i die." "how--many dollars, harry?" "don't make me say it, millie--it makes me sick to my stummick. three thousand dollars would buy the whole spectacle to save it from the storehouse. i tried charley ryan--he wouldn't risk a ten-spot on a failure." "harry, i--oh, harry--" "why, mother, what's the matter? you been overworking again, ironing my shirts and collars when they ought to go to the laundry? you--" "harry, what would you say if--if i was to tell you something?" "what is it, mother? you better get annie in on mondays. we 'ain't got any more to show without her than with her." "harry, we--have!" "well, you just had an instance of the thanks you get." "harry, what--what would you say if i could let you have nearly all of that three thousand?" he regarded her above the flare of a match to his cigar-end. "huh?" "if i could let you have twenty-six hundred seventeen dollars and about fifty cents of it?" he sat well up, the light reflecting in points off his polished glasses. "mother, you're joking!" her hands were out across the table now, almost reaching his, her face close and screwed under the lights. "when--when you lost out that time five years ago on 'pan-america' and i seen how linger made a fortune out of it, i says to myself, 'it can never happen again.' you remember the next january when you got your raise to fifty and i wouldn't move out of this flat, and instead gave up having annie in, that was what i had in my head, harry. it wasn't only for sending edwin to high school; it was for--my other boy, too, harry, so it couldn't happen again." "millie, you mean--" "you ain't got much idea, harry, of what i been doing. you don't know it, honey, but, honest, i ain't bought a stitch of new clothes for five years. you know i ain't, somehow--made friends for myself since we moved here." "it's the hard shell town of the world!" "you ain't had time, harry, to ask yourself what becomes of the house allowance, with me stinting so. why, i--i won't spend car fare, harry, since 'pan-america,' if i can help it. this meal i served up here t-night, with all the high cost of living, didn't cost us two thirds what it might if--if i didn't have it all figured up. where do you think your laundry-money that i've been saving goes, harry? the marmalade-money i made the last two christmases? the velvet muff i made myself out of the fur-money you give me? it's all in the farmers' trust, harry. with the two hundred and ten i had to start with five years ago, it's twenty-six hundred and seventeen dollars and fifty cents now. i've been saving it for this kind of a minute, harry. when it got three thousand, i was going to tell you, anyways. is that enough, harry, to do the goldfinch-goetz spectacle on your own hook? is it, harry?" he regarded her in a heavy-jawed kind of stupefaction. "woman alive!" he said. "great heavens, woman alive!" "it's in the bank, waiting, harry--all for you." "why, millie, i--i don't know what to say." "i want you to have it, harry. it's yours. out of your pocket, back into it. you got capital to start with now." "i--why, i can't take that money, millie, from you!" "from your wife? when she stinted and scrimped and saved on shoe-leather for the happiness of it?" "why, this is no sure thing i got on the brain." "nothing is." "i got nothing but my own judgment to rely on." "you been right three times, harry." "there's not as big a gamble in the world as the show business. i can't take your savings, mother." "harry, if--if you don't, i'll tear it up. it's what i've worked for. i'm too tired, harry, to stand much. if you don't take it, i--i'm too tired, harry, to stand it." "but, mother--" "i couldn't stand it, i tell you," she said, the tears now bursting and flowing down over her cheeks. "why, millie, you mustn't cry! i 'ain't seen you cry in years. millie! my god! i can't get my thoughts together! me to own a show after all these years; me to--" "don't you think it means something to me, too, harry?" "i can't lose, millie. even if this country gets drawn into the war, there's a mint of money in that show as i see it. it'll help the people. the people of this country need to have their patriotism tickled." "all my life, harry, i've wanted a gold-mesh bag with a row of sapphires and diamonds across the top--" "i'm going to make it the kind of show that 'dixie' was a song--" "and a gold-colored bird-of-paradise for a black-velvet hat, all my life, harry--" "with alma zitelle in the part--" "is it her picture i found in your drawer the other day, harry, cut out from a sunday newspaper?" "one and the same. i been watching her. there's a world of money in that woman, whoever she is. she's eccentric and they make her play straight, but if i could get hold of her--my god! millie, i--i can't believe things!" she rose, coming round to lay her arms across his shoulders. "we'll be rich, maybe, harry--" "i've picked the winners for the other fellows every time, mil." "anyhow, it's worth the gamble, harry." "i got a nose for what the people want. i've never been able to prove it from a high stool, but i'll show 'em now--by god! i'll show 'em now!" he sprang up, pulling the white table-cloth awry and folding her into his embrace. "i'll show 'em." she leaned from him, her two hands against his chest, head thrown back and eyes up to him. "we--can educate our boy, then, harry, like--like a rich man's son." "we ain't rich yet." "promise me, harry, if we are--promise me that, harry. it's the only promise i ask out of it. whatever comes, if we win or lose, our boy can have college if he wants." he held her close, his head up and gazing beyond her. "with a rich daddy my boy can go to college like the best of 'em." "promise me that, harry." "i promise, millie." he released her then, feeling for an envelope in an inner pocket, and, standing there above the disarrayed dinner-table, executed some rapid figures across the back of it. she stood for a moment regarding him, hands pressed against the sting of her cheeks, tears flowing down over her smile. then she took up the plate of cloying fritters and tiptoed out, opening softly the door to a slit of a room across the hall. in the patch of light let in by that opened door, drawn up before a small table, face toward her ravaged with recent tears, and lips almost quivering, her son lay in the ready kind of slumber youth can bring to any woe. she tiptoed up beside him, placing the plate of fritters back on a pile of books, let her hands run lightly over his hair, kissed him on each swollen lid. "my son! my little boy! my little boy!" where broadway leaves off its roof-follies and its water-dancing, its eighty-odd theaters and its very odd hawaiian cabarets, upper broadway, widening slightly, takes up its macadamized rush through the city in block-square apartment-houses, which rise off plate-glass foundations of the de-luxe greengrocer shops, the not-so-green beauty-parlors, and the dyeing-and-cleaning, automobile-supplies, and confectionery establishments of middle new york. in a no-children-allowed, swimming-pool, electric-laundry, roof-garden, dogs'-playground, cold-storage apartment most recently erected on a block-square tract of upper broadway, belonging to and named after the youngest scion of an ancestor whose cow-patches had turned to kingdoms, the fifteenth layer of this gigantic honeycomb overlooked from its seventeen outside windows the great babylonian valley of the city, the wide blade of the river shining and curving slightly like an arabian dagger, and the embankment of new jersey's palisades piled against the sky with the effect of angry horizon. nights, viewed from one of the seventeen windows, it was as if the river flowed under a sullen sheath which undulated to its curves. on clear days it threw off light like parrying steel in sunshine. were days when, gazing out toward it, mrs. ross, whose heart was like a slow ache of ever-widening area, could almost feel its laving quality and, after the passage of a tugor pleasure-boat, the soothing folding of the water down over and upon itself. often, with the sun setting pink and whole above the palisades, the very copper glow which was struck off the water would beat against her own west windows, and, as if smarting under the brilliance, tears would come, sometimes staggering and staggering down, long after the glow was cold. with such a sunset already waned, and the valley of unrest fifteen stories below popping out into electric signs and the red danger-lanterns of streets constantly in the remaking, mrs. harry ross, from the corner window of her seventeen, looked down on it from under lids that were rimmed in red. beneath the swirl of a gown that lay in an iridescent avalanche of sequins about her feet, her foot, tilted to an unbelievable hypothenuse off a cloth-of-silver heel, beat a small and twinkling tattoo, her fingers tattooing, too, along the chair-sides. how insidiously do the years nibble in! how pussy-footed and how cocksure the crow's-feet! one morning, and the first gray hair, which has been turning from the cradle, arrives. another, the mirror shows back a sag beneath the eyes. that sag had come now to mrs. ross, giving her eye-sockets a look of unconquerable weariness. the streak of quicksilver had come, too, but more successfully combated. the head lying back against the brocade chair was guilty of new gleams. brass, with a greenish alloy. sitting there with the look of unshed tears seeming to form a film over her gaze, it was as if the dusk, flowing into a silence that was solemnly shaped to receive it, folded her in, more and more obscuring her. a door opened at the far end of the room, letting in a patch of hall light and a dark figure coming into silhouette against it. "you there?" she sprang up. "yes, harry--yes." "good lord! sitting in the dark again!" he turned a wall key, three pink-shaded lamps, a cluster of pink-glass grapes, and a center bowl of alabaster flashing up the familiar spectacle of louis fourteenth and the interior decorator's turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a marble psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, festooned in rosebuds. around through these mr. ross walked quickly, winding his hands, rubbing them. "well, here i am!" "had your supper--dinner, harry?" "no. what's the idea calling me off when i got a business dinner on hand? what's the hurry call this time? i have to get back to it." she clasped her hands to her bare throat, swallowing with effort. "i--harry--i--" "you've got to stop this kind of thing, millie, getting nervous spells like all the other women do the minute they get ten cents in their pocket. i ain't got the time for it--that's all there is to it." "i can't help it, harry. i think i must be going crazy. i can't stop myself. all of a sudden everything comes over me. i think i must be going crazy." her voice jerked up to an off pitch, and he flung himself down on the deep-cushioned couch, his stiff expanse of dress shirt bulging and straining at the studs. a bit redder and stouter, too, he was constantly rearing his chin away from the chafing edge of his collar. "o lord!" he said. "i guess i'm let in for some cutting-up again! well, fire away and have it over with! what's eating you this time?" she was quivering so against sobs that her lips were drawn in against her teeth by the great draught of her breathing. "i can't stand it, harry. i'm going crazy. i got to get relief. it's killing me--the lonesomeness--the waiting. i can't stand no more." he sat looking at a wreath of roses in the light carpet, lips compressed, beating with fist into palm. "gad! i dunno! i give up. you're too much for me, woman." "i can't go on this way--the suspense--can't--can't." "i don't know what you want. god knows i give up! thirty-eight-hundred-dollar-a-year apartment--more spending-money in a week than you can spend in a month. clothes. jewelry. your son one of the high-fliers at college--his automobile--your automobile. passes to every show in town. gad! i can't help it if you turn it all down and sit up here moping and making it hot for me every time i put my foot in the place. i don't know what you want; you're one too many for me." "i can't stand--" "all of a sudden, out of a clear sky, she sends for me to come home. second time in two weeks. no wonder, with your long face, your son lives mostly up at the college. i 'ain't got enough on my mind yet with the 'manhattan revue' opening to-morrow night. you got it too good, if you want to know it. that's what ails women when they get to cutting up like this." she was clasping and unclasping her hands, swaying, her eyes closed. "i wisht to god we was back in our little flat on a hundred and thirty-seventh street. we was happy then. it's your success has lost you for me. i ought to known it, but--i--i wanted things so for you and the boy. it's your success has lost you for me. back there, not a supper we didn't eat together like clockwork, not a night we didn't take a walk or--" "there you go again! i tell you, millie, you're going to nag me with that once too often. then ain't now. what you homesick for? your poor-as-a-church-mouse days? i been pretty patient these last two years, feeling like a funeral every time i put my foot in the front door--" "it ain't often you put it in." "but, mark my word, you're going to nag me once too often!" "o god! harry, i try to keep in! i know how wild it makes you--how busy you are, but--" "a man that's give to a woman heaven on earth like i have you! a man that started three years ago on nothing but nerve and a few dollars, and now stands on two feet, one of the biggest spectacle-producers in the business! by gad! you're so darn lucky it's made a loon out of you! get out more. show yourself a good time. you got the means and the time. ain't there no way to satisfy you?" "i can't do things alone all the time, harry. i--i'm funny that way. i ain't a woman like that, a new-fangled one that can do things without her husband. it's the nights that kill me--the nights. the--all nights sitting here alone--waiting." "if you 'ain't learned the demands of my business by now, i'm not going over them again." "yes; but not all--" "you ought to have some men to deal with. i'd like to see mrs. unger try to dictate to him how to run his business." "you've left me behind, harry. i--try to keep up, but--i can't. i ain't the woman to naturally paint my hair this way. it's my trying to keep up, harry, with you and--and--edwin. these clothes--i ain't right in 'em, harry; i know that. that's why i can't stand it. the suspense. the waiting up nights. i tell you i'm going crazy. crazy with knowing i'm left behind." "i never told you to paint up your hair like a freak." "i thought, harry--the color--like hers--it might make me seem younger--" "you thought! you're always thinking." she stood behind him now over the couch, her hand yearning toward but not touching him. "o god! harry, ain't there no way i can please you no more--no way?" "you can please me by acting like a human being and not getting me home on wild-goose chases like this." "but i can't stand it, harry! the quiet. nobody to do for. you always gone. edwin. the way the servants--laugh. i ain't smart enough, like some women. i got to show it--that my heart's breaking." "go to matinées; go--" "tell me how to make myself like alma zitelle to you, harry. for god's sake, tell me!" he looked away from her, the red rising up above the rear of his collar. "you're going to drive me crazy desperate, too, some day, on that jealousy stuff. i'm trying to do the right thing by you and hold myself in, but--there's limits." "harry, it--ain't jealousy. i could stand anything if i only knew. if you'd only come out with it. not keep me sitting here night after night, when i know you--you're with her. it's the suspense, harry, as much as anything is killing me. i could stand it, maybe, if i only knew. if i only knew!" he sprang up, wheeling to face her across the couch. "you mean that?" "harry!" "well, then, since you're the one wants it, since you're forcing me to it--i'll end your suspense, millie. yes. let me go, millie. there's no use trying to keep life in something that's dead. let me go." she stood looking at him, cheeks cased in palms, and her sagging eye-sockets seeming to darken, even as she stared. "you--her--" "it happens every day, millie. man and woman grow apart, that's all. your own son is man enough to understand that. nobody to blame. just happens." "harry--you mean--" "aw, now, millie, it's no easier for me to say than for you to listen. i'd sooner cut off my right hand than put it up to you. been putting it off all these months. if you hadn't nagged--led up to it, i'd have stuck it out somehow and made things miserable for both of us. it's just as well you brought it up. i--life's life, millie, and what you going to do about it?" a sound escaped her like the rising moan of a gale up a flue; then she sat down against trembling that seized her and sent ripples along the iridescent sequins. "harry--alma zitelle--you mean--harry?" "now what's the use going into all that, millie? what's the difference who i mean? it happened." "harry, she--she's a common woman." "we won't discuss that." "she'll climb on you to what she wants higher up still. she won't bring you nothing but misery, harry. i know what i'm saying; she'll--" "you're talking about something you know nothing about--you--" "i do. i do. you're hypnotized, harry. it's her looks. her dressing like a snake. her hair. i can get mine fixed redder 'n hers, harry. it takes a little time. mine's only started to turn, harry, is why it don't look right yet to you. this dress, it's from her own dressmaker. harry--i promise you i can make myself like--her--i promise you, harry--" "for god's sake, millie, don't talk like--that! it's awful! what's those things got to do with it? it's--awful!" "they have, harry. they have, only a man don't know it. she's a bad woman, harry--she's got you fascinated with the way she dresses and does--" "we won't go into that." "we will. we will. i got the right. i don't have to let you go if i don't want to. i'm the mother of your son. i'm the wife that was good enough for you in the days when you needed her. i--" "you can't throw that up to me, millie. i've squared that debt." "she'll throw you over, harry, when i'll stand by you to the crack of doom. take my word for it, harry. o god! harry, please take my word for it!" she closed her streaming eyes, clutching at his sleeve in a state beyond her control. "won't you please? please!" he toed the carpet. "i--i'd sooner be hit in the face, millie, than--have this happen. swear i would! but you see for yourself we--we can't go on this way." she sat for a moment, her stare widening above the palm clapped tightly against her mouth. "then you mean, harry, you want--you want a--a--" "now, now, millie, try to keep hold of yourself. you're a sensible woman. you know i'll do the right thing by you to any amount. you'll have the boy till he's of age, and after that, too, just as much as you want him. he'll live right here in the flat with you. money's no object, the way i'm going to fix things. why, millie, compared to how things are now--you're going to be a hundred per cent, better off--without me." she fell to rocking herself in the straight chair. "oh, my god! oh, my god!" "now, millie, don't take it that way. i know that nine men out of ten would call me crazy to--to let go of a woman like you. but what's the use trying to keep life in something that's dead? it's because you're too good for me, millie. i know that. you know that it's not because i think any less of you, or that i've forgot it was you who gave me my start. i'd pay you back ten times more if i could. i'm going to settle on you and the boy so that you're fixed for life. when he's of age, he comes into the firm half interest. there won't even be no publicity the way i'm going to fix things. money talks, millie. you'll get your decree without having to show your face to the public." "o god--he's got it all fixed--he's talked it all over with her! she--" "you--you wouldn't want to force something between you and me, millie; that--that's just played out--" "i done it myself. i couldn't let well enough alone. i was ambitious for 'em. i dug my own grave. i done it myself. done it myself!" "now, millie, you mustn't look at things that way. why, you're the kind of a little woman all you got to have is something to mother over. i'm going to see to it that the boy is right here at home with you all the time. he can give up those rooms at the college--you got as fine a son as there is in the country, millie--i'm going to see to it that he is right here at home with you--" "o god--my boy--my little boy--my little boy!" "the days are over, millie, when this kind of thing makes any difference. if it was--the mother--it might be different, but where the father is--to blame--it don't matter with the boy. anyways, he's nearly of age. i tell you, millie, if you'll just look at this thing sensible--" "i--let me think, let--me--think." her tears had quieted now to little dry moans that came with regularity. she was still swaying in her chair, eyes closed. "you'll get your decree, millie, without--." "don't talk," she said, a frown lowering over her closed eyes and pressing two fingers against each temple. "don't talk." he walked to the window in a state of great perturbation, stood pulling inward his lips and staring down into the now brilliantly lighted flow of broadway. turned into the room with short, hasty strides, then back again. came to confront her. "aw, now, millie--millie--" stood regarding her, chewing backward and forward along his fingertips. "you--you see for yourself, millie, what's dead can't be made alive--now, can it?" she nodded, acquiescing, her lips bitterly wry. "my lawyer, millie, he'll fix it, alimony and all, so you won't--" "o god!" "suppose i just slip away easy, millie, and let him fix up things so it'll be easiest for us both. send the boy down to see me to-morrow. he's old enough and got enough sense to have seen things coming. he knows. suppose--i just slip out easy, millie, for--for--both of us. huh, millie?" she nodded again, her lips pressed back against outburst. "if ever there was a good little woman, millie, and one that deserves better than me, it's--" "don't!" she cried. "don't--don't--don't!" "i--" "go--quick--now!" he hesitated, stood regarding her there in the chair, eyes squeezed closed like iphigenia praying for death when exiled in tauris. "millie--i--" "go!" she cried, the wail clinging to her lips. he felt round for his hat, his gaze obscured behind the shining glasses, tiptoed out round the archipelago of too much furniture, groped for the door-handle, turning it noiselessly, and stood for the instant looking back at her bathed in the rosy light and seated upright like a sleeping ariadne; opened the door to a slit that closed silently after him. she sat thus for three hours after, the wail still uppermost on the silence. at ten o'clock, with a gust that swayed the heavy drapes, her son burst in upon the room, his stride kicking the door before he opened it. six feet in his gymnasium shoes, and with a ripple of muscle beneath the well-fitting, well-advertised campus coat for college men, he had emerged from the three years into man's complete estate, which, at nineteen, is that patch of territory at youth's feet known as "the world." gray eyed, his dark lashes long enough to threaten to curl, the lean line of his jaw squaring after the manner of america's fondest version of her manhood, he was already in danger of fond illusions and fond mommas. "hello, mother!" he said, striding quickly through the chairs and over to where she sat. "edwin!" "thought i'd sleep home to-night, mother." he kissed her lightly, perking up her shoulder butterflies of green sequins, and standing off to observe. "got to hand it to my little mother for quiet and sumptuous el-e-gance! some classy spangy-wangles!" he ran his hand against the lay of the sequins, absorbed in a conscious kind of gaiety. she moistened her lips, trying to smile. "oh, boy," she said--"edwin!"--holding to his forearm with fingers that tightened into it. "mother," he said, pulling at his coat lapels with a squaring of shoulders, "you--you going to be a dead game little sport?" she was looking ahead now, abstraction growing in her white face. "huh?" he fell into short strides up and down the length of the couch front. "i--i guess i might have mentioned it before, mother, but--but--oh, hang!--when a fellow's a senior it--it's all he can do to get home once in a while and--and--what's the use talking about a thing anyway before it breaks right, and--well, everybody knows it's up to us college fellows--college men--to lead the others and show our country what we're made of now that she needs us--eh, little dressed-up mother?" she looked up at him with the tremulous smile still trying to break through. "my boy can mix with the best of 'em." "that's not what i mean, mother." "you got to be twice to me what you been, darling--twice to me. listen, darling. i--oh, my god!" she was beating softly against his hand held in hers, her voice rising again, and her tears. "listen, darling--" "now, mother, don't go into a spell. the war is going to help you out on these lonesome fits, mother. like slawson put it to-day in integral calculus four, war reduces the personal equation to its lowest terms--it's a matter of--." "i need you now, edwin--o god! how i need you! there never was a minute in all these months since you've grown to understand how--it is between your father and me that i needed you so much--" "mother, you mustn't make it harder for me to--tell you what i--" "i think maybe something has happened to me, edwin. i can feel myself breathe all over--it's like i'm outside of myself somewhere--" "it's nervousness, mother. you ought to get out more. i'm going to get you some war-work to do, mother, that 'll make you forget yourself. service is what counts these days!" "edwin, it's come--he's leaving me--it--" "speaking of service, i--i guess i might have mentioned it before, mother, but--but--when war was declared the other day, a--a bunch of us fellows volunteered for--for the university unit to france, and--well, i'm accepted, mother--to go. the lists went up to-night. i'm one of the twenty picked fellows." "france?" "we sail for bordeaux for ambulance service the twentieth, mother. i was the fourth accepted with my qualifications--driving my own car and--and physical fitness. i'm going to france, mother, among the first to do my bit. i know a fellow got over there before we were in the war and worked himself into the air-fleet. that's what i want, mother, air service! they're giving us fellows credit for our senior year just the same. bob vandaventer and clarence unger and some of the fellows like that are in the crowd. are you a dead-game sport, little mother, and not going to make a fuss--" "i--don't know. what--is--it--i--" "your son at the front, mother, helping to make the world a safer place for democracy. does a little mother with something like that to bank on have time to be miserable over family rows? you're going to knit while i'm gone. the busiest little mother a fellow ever had, doing her bit for her country! there's signs up all over the girls' campus: 'a million soldiers "out there" are needing wool jackets and chest-protectors. how many will you take care of?' you're going to be the busiest little mother a fellow ever had. you're going to stop making a fuss over me and begin to make a fuss over your country. we're going into service, mother!" "don't leave me, edwin! baby darling, don't leave me! i'm alone! i'm afraid." "there, there, little mother," he said, patting at her and blinking, "i--why--why, there's men come back from every war, and plenty of them. good lord! just because a fellow goes to the front, he--" "i got nothing left. everything i've worked for has slipped through my life like sand through a sieve. my hands are empty. i've lost your father on the success i slaved for. i'm losing my boy on the fine ideas and college education i've slaved for. i--don't leave me, edwin. i'm afraid--don't--" "mother--i--don't be cut up about it. i--" "why should i give to this war? i ain't a fine woman with the fine ideas you learn at college. i ask so little of life--just some one who needs me, some one to do for. i 'ain't got any fine ideas about a son at war. why should i give to what they're fighting for on the other side of the ocean? don't ask me to give up my boy to what they're fighting for in a country i've never seen--my little boy i raised--my all i've got--my life! no! no!" "it's the women like you, mother--with guts--with grit--that send their sons to war." "i 'ain't got grit!" "you're going to have your hands so full, little mother, taking care of the army and navy, keeping their feet dry and their chests warm, that before you know it you'll be down at the pier some fine day watching us fellows come home from victory." "no--no--no!" "you're going to coddle the whole fighting front, making 'em sweaters and aviation sets out of a whole ton of wool i'm going to lay in the house for you. time's going to fly for my little mother." "i'll kill myself first!" "you wouldn't have me a quitter, little mother. you wouldn't have the other fellows in my crowd at college go out and do what i haven't got the guts to do. you want me to hold up my head with the best of 'em." "i don't want nothing but my boy! i--" "us college men got to be the first to show that the fighting backbone of the country is where it belongs. if us fellows with education don't set the example, what can we expect from the other fellows? don't ask me to be a quitter, mother. i couldn't! i wouldn't! my country needs us, mother--you and me--" "edwin! edwin!" "attention, little mother--stand!" she lay back her head, laughing, crying, sobbing, choking. "o god--take him and bring him back--to me!" on a day when sky and water were so identically blue that they met in perfect horizon, the s. s. _rowena_, sleek-flanked, mounted fore and aft with a pair of black guns that lifted snouts slightly to the impeccable blue, slipped quietly, and without even a newspaper sailing-announcement into a frivolous midstream that kicked up little lace edged wavelets, undulating flounces of them. a blur of faces rose above deck-rails, faces that, looking back, receded finally. the last flag and the last kerchief became vapor. against the pier-edge, frantically, even perilously forward, her small flag thrust desperately beyond the rail, mrs. ross, who had lost a saving sense of time and place, leaned after that ship receding in majesty, long after it had curved from view. the crowd, not a dry-eyed one, women in spite of themselves with lips whitening, men grim with pride and an innermost bleeding, sagged suddenly, thinning and trickling back into the great, impersonal maw of the city. apart from the rush of the exodus, a youth remained at the rail, gazing out and quivering for the smell of war. finally, he too, turned back reluctantly. now only mrs. ross. an hour she stood there, a solitary figure at the rail, holding to her large black hat, her skirts whipped to her body and snapping forward in the breeze. the sun struck off points from the water, animating it with a jewel-dance. it found out in a flash the diamond-and-sapphire top to her gold-mesh hand-bag, hoppity-skippiting from facet to facet. "my boy--my little boy!" a pair of dock-hands, wiping their hands on cotton-waste, came after a while to the door of the pier-house to observe and comment. conscious of that observation, she moved then through the great dank sheds in and among the bales and boxes, down a flight of stairs and out to the cobbled street. her motor-car, the last at the entrance, stood off at a slant, the chauffeur lopping slightly and dozing, his face scarcely above the steering-wheel. she passed him with unnecessary stealth, her heels occasionally wedging between the cobbles and jerking her up. two hours she walked thus, invariably next to the water's edge or in the first street running parallel to it. truck-drivers gazed at and sang after her. deckand dock-hands, stretched out in the first sun of spring, opened their eyes to her passing, often staring after her under lazy lids. behind a drawn veil her lips were moving, but inaudibly now. motor-trucks, blocks of them, painted the gray of war, stood waiting shipment, engines ready to throb into no telling what mire. once a van of knitted stuffs, always the gray, corded and bound into bales, rumbled by, close enough to graze and send her stumbling back. she stood for a moment watching it lumber up alongside a dock. it was dusk when she emerged from the rather sinister end of west street into battery park, receding in a gracious new-green curve from the water. tier after tier of lights had begun to prick out in the back-drop of skyscraping office-buildings. the little park, after the six-o'clock stampede, settled back into a sort of lamplit quiet, dark figures, the dregs of a city day, here and there on its benches. the back-drop of office-lights began to blink out then, all except the tallest tower in the world, rising in the glory of its own spotlight into a rococo pinnacle of man's accomplishment. strolling the edge of that park so close to the water that she could hear it seethe in the receding, a policeman finally took to following mrs. ross, his measured tread behind hers, his night-stick rapping out every so often. she found out a bench then, and never out of his view, sat looking out across the infinitude of blackness to where the bay so casually meets the sea. night dampness had sent her shivering, the plumage of her hat, the ferny feathers of the bird-of-paradise, drooping almost grotesquely over the brim. a small detachment of boy scouts, sturdy with an enormous sense of uniform and valor, marched through the asphalt alleys of the park with trained, small-footed, regimental precision--small boys with clean, lifted faces. a fife and drum came up the road. rat-a-tat-tat! rat-a-tat-tat! high over the water a light had come out--liberty's high-flung torch. watching it, and quickened by the fife and drum to an erect sitting posture, mrs. ross slid forward on her bench, lips opening. the policeman standing off, rapped twice, and when she rose, almost running toward the lights of the elevated station, followed. within her apartment on upper broadway, not even a hall light burned when she let herself in with her key. at the remote end of the aisle of blackness a slit of yellow showed beneath the door, behind it the babble of servants' voices. she entered with a stealth that was well under cover of those voices, groping into the first door at her right, feeling round for the wall key, switching the old rose-and-gold room into immediate light. stood for a moment, her plumage drooping damply to her shoulders, blue foulard dress snagged in two places, her gold mesh bag with the sapphire-and-diamond top hanging low from the crook of her little finger. a clock ticked with almost an echo into the rather vast silence. she entered finally, sidling in among the chairs. a great mound of gray yarn, uncut skein after uncut skein of it, rose off the brocade divan, more of them piled in systematic pyramids on three chairs. she dropped at sight of it to the floor beside the couch, burying her face in its fluff, grasping it in handfuls, writhing into it. surges of merciful sobs came sweeping through and through her. after a while, with a pair of long amber-colored needles, she fell to knitting with a fast, even furious ambidexterity, her mouth pursing up with a driving intensity, her boring gaze so concentrated on the thing in hand that her eyes seemed to cross. dawn broke upon her there, her hat still cockily awry, tears dried in a vitrified gleaming down her cheeks. beneath her flying fingers, a sleeveless waistcoat was taking shape, a soldier's inner jacket against the dam of trenches. at sunup it lay completed, spread out as if the first of a pile. the first noises of the city began to rise remotely. a bell pealed off somewhere. day began to raise its conglomerate voice. on her knees beside the couch there, the second waistcoat was already taking shape beneath the cocksure needles. the old pinkly moist look had come out in her face. one million boys "out there" were needing chest-protectors! iii ice-water, pl--! when the two sides of every story are told, henry viii. may establish an alibi or two, shylock and the public-school system meet over and melt that too, too solid pound of flesh, and xantippe, herself the sturdier man than socrates, give ready, lie to what is called the shrew in her. landladies, whole black-bombazine generations of them--oh, so long unheard!--may rise in one indictment of the boarder: the scarred bureau-front and match-scratched wall-paper; the empty trunk nailed to the floor in security for the unpaid bill; cigarette-burnt sheets and the terror of sudden fire; the silent newcomer in the third floor back hustled out one night in handcuffs; the day-long sobs of the blond girl so suddenly terrified of life-about-to-be and wringing her ringless hands in the fourth-floor hall-room; the smell of escaping gas and the tightly packed keyhole; the unsuspected flutes that lurk in boarders' trunks; towels, that querulous and endless paean of the lodger; the high cost of liver and dried peaches, of canned corn and round steak! tired bombazine procession, wrapped in the greasy odors of years of carpet-sweeping and emptying slops, airing the gassy slit of room after the coroner; and padding from floor to floor on a mission of towels and towels and towels! sometimes climbing from floor to floor, a still warm supply of them looped over one arm, mrs. kaufman, who wore bombazine, but unspotted and with crisp net frills at the throat, and upon whose soft-looking face the years had written their chirography in invisible ink, would sit suddenly, there in the narrow gloom of her halls, head against the balustrade. oftener than not the katz boy from the third floor front would come lickety-clapping down the stairs and past her, jumping the last four steps of each flight. "irving, quit your noise in the hall." "aw!" "ain't you ashamed, a big boy like you, and mrs. suss with her neuralgia?" "aw!"--the slam of a door clipping off this insolence. after a while she would resume her climb. and yet in mrs. kaufman's private boarding-house in west eighty-ninth street, one of a breastwork of brownstone fronts, lined up stoop for stoop, story for story, and ash-can for ash-can, there were few enough greasy odors except upon the weekly occasion of monday's boiled dinner; and, whatever the status of liver and dried peaches, canned corn and round steak, her menus remained static--so static that in the gas-lighted basement dining-room and at a remote end of the long, well-surrounded table mrs. katz, with her napkin tucked well under her third chin, turned _sotto_ from the protruding husband at her right to her left neighbor, shielding her remark with her hand. "am i right, mrs. finshriber? i just said to my husband in the five years we been here she should just give us once a change from friday-night lamb and noodles." "say, you should complain yet! with me it's six and a half years day after to-morrow, easter day, since i asked myself that question first." "even my irving says to me to-night up in the room; jumping up and down on the hearth like he had four legs--" "i heard him, mrs. katz, on my ceiling like he had eight legs." "'mamma,' he says, 'guess why i feel like saying "baa."'" "saying what?" "sheep talk, mrs. finshriber. b-a-a, like a sheep goes." "oh!" "'cause i got so many friday nights' lamb in me, mamma,' he said. quick like a flash that child is." mrs. finshriber dipped her head and her glance, all her drooping features pulled even farther down at their corners. "i ain't the one to complain, mrs. katz, and i always say, when you come right down to it maybe mrs. kaufman's house is as good as the next one, but--" "i wish, though, mrs. finshriber, you would hear what mrs. spritz says at her boarding-house they get for breakfast: fried--" "you can imagine, mrs. katz, since my poor husband's death, how much appetite i got left; but i say, mrs. katz, just for the principle of the thing, it would not hurt once if mrs. kaufman could give somebody else besides her own daughter and vetsburg the white meat from everything, wouldn't it?" "it's a shame before the boarders! she knows, mrs. pinshriber, how my husband likes breast from the chicken. you think once he gets it? no. i always tell him, not 'til chickens come doublebreasted like overcoats can he get it in this house, with vetsburg such a star boarder." "last night's chicken, let me tell you, i don't wish it to a dog! such a piece of dark meat with gizzard i had to swallow." mrs. katz adjusted with greater security the expanse of white napkin across her ample bosom. gold rings and a quarter-inch marriage band flashed in and out among the litter of small tub-shaped dishes surrounding her, and a pouncing fork of short, sure stab. "right away my husband gets mad when i say the same thing. 'when we don't like it we should move,' he says." "like moving is so easy, if you got two chairs and a hair mattress to take with you. but i always say, mrs. katz, i don't blame mrs. kaufman herself for what goes on; there's _one_ good woman if there ever was one!" "they don't come any better or any better looking, my husband always says. 's-ay,' i tell him, 'she can stand her good looks.'" "it's that big-ideaed daughter who's to blame. did you see her new white spats to-night?" right away the minute they come out she has to have 'em. i'm only surprised she 'ain't got one of them red hats from gimp's what is all the fad. believe me, if not for such ideas, her mother could afford something better as succotash for us for supper." "it's a shame, let me tell you, that a woman like mrs. kaufman can't see for herself such things. god forbid i should ever be so blind to my irving. i tell you that ruby has got it more like a queen than a boarding-housekeeper's daughter. spats, yet!" "rich girls could be glad to have it always so good." "i don't say nothing how her mother treats vetsburg, her oldest boarder, and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn't be made to take up a little stenography or help with the housework!" "s-ay, when that girl even turns a hand, pale like a ghost her mother gets." "how girls are raised nowadays, even the poor ones!" "i ain't the one to complain, mrs. katz, but just look down there, that red stuff." "where?" "ain't it cranberry between ruby and vetsburg?" "yes, yes, and look such a dish of it!" "is it right extras should be allowed to be brought on a table like this where fourteen other boarders got to let their mouth water and look at it?" "you think it don't hurt like a knife! for myself i don't mind, but my irving! how that child loves 'em, and he should got to sit at the same table without cranberries." from the head of the table the flashing implements of carving held in askance for stroke, her lips lifted to a smile and a simulation of interest for display of further carnivorous appetites, mrs. kaufman passed her nod from one to the other. "miss arndt, little more? no? mr. krakower? gravy? mrs. suss? mr. suss? so! simon? mr. schloss? miss horowitz? mr. vetsburg, let me give you this little tender--no? then, ruby, here let mama give you just a little more--" "no, no, mama, please!" she caught at the hovering wrist to spare the descent of the knife. by one of those rare atavisms by which a poet can be bred of a peasant or peasant be begot of poet, miss ruby kaufman, who was born in newark, posthumous, to a terrified little parent with a black ribbon at the throat of her gown, had brought with her from no telling where the sultry eyes and tropical-turned skin of spice-kissed winds. the corpuscles of a shah might have been running in the blood of her, yet simon kaufman, and simon kaufman's father before him, had sold wool remnants to cap-factories on commission. "ruby, you don't eat enough to keep a bird alive. ain't it a shame, mr. vetsburg, a girl should be so dainty?" mr. meyer vetsburg cast a beetling glance down upon miss kaufman, there so small beside him, and tinked peremptorily against her plate three times with his fork. "eat, young lady, like your mama wants you should, or, by golly! i'll string you up for my watch-fob--not, mrs. kaufman?" a smile lay under mr. vetsburg's gray-and-black mustache. gray were his eyes, too, and his suit, a comfortable baggy suit with the slouch of the wearer impressed into it, the coat hiking center back, the pocket-flaps half in, half out, and the knees sagging out of press. "that's right, mr. vetsburg, you should scold her when she don't eat." above the black-bombazine basque, so pleasantly relieved at the throat by a v of fresh white net, a wave of color moved up mrs. kaufman's face into her architectural coiffure, the very black and very coarse skein of her hair wound into a large loose mound directly atop her head and pierced there with a ball-topped comb of another decade. "i always say, mr. vetsburg, she minds you before she minds anybody else in the world." "ma," said miss kaufman, close upon that remark, "some succotash, please." from her vantage down-table, mrs. katz leaned a bit forward from the line. "look, mrs. finshriber, how for a woman her age she snaps her black eyes at him. it ain't hard to guess when a woman's got a marriageable daughter--not?" "you can take it from me she'll get him for her ruby yet! and take it from me, too, almost any girl i know, much less ruby kaufman, could do worse as get meyer vetsburg." "s-say, i wish it to her to get him. for why once in a while shouldn't a poor girl get a rich man except in books and choruses?" "believe me, a girl like ruby can manage what she wants. take it from me, she's got it behind her ears." "i should say so." "without it she couldn't get in with such a crowd of rich girls like she does. i got it from mrs. abrams in the arline apartments how every week she plays five hundred with nathan shapiro's daughter." "no! shapiro & stein?" "and yesterday at matinée in she comes with a box of candy and laughing with that rifkin girl! how she gets in with such swell girls, i don't know, but there ain't a nice saturday afternoon i don't see that girl walking on fifth avenue with just such a crowd of fine-dressed girls, all with their noses powdered so white and their hats so little and stylish." "i wouldn't be surprised if her mother don't send her down to atlantic city over easter again if vetsburg goes. every holiday she has to go lately like it was coming to her." "say, between you and me, i don't put it past her it's that markovitch boy down there she's after. ray klein saw 'em on the boardwalk once together, and she says it's a shame for the people how they sat so close in a rolling-chair." "i wouldn't be surprised she's fresh with the boys, but, believe me, if she gets the uncle she don't take the nephew!" "say, a clerk in his own father's hotel like the markovitches got in atlantic city ain't no crime." "her mother has got bigger thoughts for her than that. for why i guess she thinks her daughter should take the nephew when maybe she can get the uncle herself. nowadays it ain't nothing no more that girls marry twice their own age." "i always say i can tell when leo markovitch comes down, by the way her mother's face gets long and the daughter's gets short." "can you blame her? leo markovitch, with all his monograms on his shirt-sleeves and such black rims on his glasses, ain't the rosenthal vetsburg hosiery company, not by a long shot! there ain't a store in this town you ask for the no hole guaranteed stocking, right away they don't show it to you. just for fun always i ask." "cornstarch pudding! irving, stop making that noise at mrs. kaufman! little boys should be seen and not heard even at cornstarch pudding." "_gott_! wouldn't you think, mrs. katz, how mrs. kaufman knows how i hate desserts that wabble, a little something extra she could give me." "how she plays favorite, it's a shame. i wish you'd look, too, mrs. finshriber, how flora proskauer carries away from the table her glass of milk with slice bread on top. i tell you it don't give tune to a house the boarders should carry away from the table like that. irving, come and take with you that extra piece cake. just so much board we pay as flora proskauer." the line about the table broke suddenly, attended with a scraping of chairs and after-dinner chirrupings attended with toothpicks. a blowsy maid strained herself immediately across the strewn table and cloying lamb platter, and turned off two of the three gas jets. in the yellow gloom, the odors of food permeating it, they filed out and up the dim lit stairs into dim-lit halls, the line of conversation and short laughter drifting after. a door slammed. then another. irving katz leaped from his third floor threshold to the front hearth, quaking three layers of chandeliers. from morris krakower's fourth floor back the tune of a flute began to wind down the stairs. out of her just-closed door mrs. finshriber poked a frizzled gray head. "ice-water, ple-ase, mrs. kauf-man." at the door of the first floor back mrs. kaufman paused with her hand on the knob. "mama, let me run and do it." "don't you move, ruby. when annie goes up to bed it's time enough. won't you come in for a while, mr. vetsburg?" "don't care if i do". she opened the door, entering cautiously. "let me light up, mrs. kaufman." he struck a phosphorescent line on the sole of his shoe, turning up three jets. "you must excuse, mr. vetsburg, how this room looks. all day we've been sewing ruby her new dress." she caught up a litter of dainty pink frills in the making, clearing a chair for him. "sit down, mr. vetsburg." they adjusted themselves around the shower of gaslight. miss kaufman fumbling in her flowered work-bag, finally curling her foot up under her, her needle flashing and shirring through one of the pink flounces. "ruby, in such a light you shouldn't strain your eyes." "all right, ma," stitching placidly on. "what'll you give me, ruby, if i tell you whose favorite color is pink?" "aw, vetsy!" she cried, her face like a rose, "_your_ color's pink!" from the depths of an inverted sewing-machine top mrs. kaufman fished out another bit of the pink, ruffling it with deft needle. the flute lifted its plaintive voice, feeling for high c. mr. vetsburg lighted a loosely wrapped cigar and slumped in his chair. "if anybody," he observed, "should ask right this minute where i'm at, tell 'em for me, mrs. kaufman, i'm in the most comfortable chair in the house." "you should keep it, then, up in your room, mr. vetsburg, and not always bring it down again when i get annie to carry it up to you." "say, i don't give up so easy my excuse for dropping in evenings." "honest, you--you two children, you ought to have a fence built around you the way you like always to be together." he sat regarding her, puffing and chewing his live cigar. suddenly he leaped forward, his hand closing rigidly over hers. "mrs. kaufman!" "what?" "quick, there's a hole in your chin." "_gott_! a--a--what?" at that he relaxed at his own pleasantry, laughing and shrugging. with small white teeth miss kaufman bit off an end of thread. "don't let him tease you, ma; he's after your dimple again." "_ach, du_--tease, you! shame! hole in my chin he scares me with!" she resumed her work with a smile and a twitching at her lips that she was unable to control. a warm flow of air came in, puffing the lace curtains. a faint odor of departed splendor lay in that room, its high calcimined ceiling with the floral rosette in the center, the tarnished pier-glass tilted to reflect a great pair of walnut folding-doors which cut off the room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of _salon_ parlor. a folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. a divan with a winding back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped bureau alongside. a bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts blown into them. mrs. kaufman let her hands drop idly in her lap and her head fell back against the chair. in repose the lines of her mouth turned up, and her throat, where so often the years eat in first, was smooth and even slender above the rather round swell of bosom. "tired, mommy?" "always around easter spring fever right away gets hold of me!" mr. vetsburg bit his cigar, slumped deeper; and inserted a thumb in the arm of his waistcoat. "why, mrs. kaufman, don't you and ruby come down by atlantic city with me to-morrow over easter? huh? a few more or less don't make no difference to my sister the way they get ready for crowds." miss kaufman shot forward, her face vivid. "oh, vetsy," she cried, and a flush rushed up, completely dyeing her face. his face lit with hers, a sunburst of fine lines radiating from his eyes. "eh?" "why--why, we--we'd just love it, wouldn't we, ma? atlantic city, easter day! ma!" mrs. kaufman sat upright with a whole procession of quick emotions flashing their expressions across her face. they ended in a smile that trembled as she sat regarding the two of them. "i should say so, yes! i--you and ruby go, mr. vetsburg. atlantic city, easter day, i bet is worth the trip. i--you two go, i should say so, but you don't want an old woman to drag along with you." "ma! just listen to her, vetsy! ain't she--ain't she just the limit? half the time when we go in stores together they take us for sisters, and then she--she begins to talk like that to get out of going!" "ruby don't understand; but it ain't right, mr. vetsburg, i should be away over saturday and sunday. on easter always they expect a little extra, and with annie's sore ankle, i--i--" "oh, mommy, can't you leave this old shebang for only two days just for an easter sunday down at atlantic, where--where everybody goes?" "you know yourself, ruby, how always on annie's sunday out--" "well, what of it? it won't hurt all of them old things upstairs that let you wait on them hand and foot all year to go without a few frills for their easter dinner." "ruby!" "i mean it. the old gossip-pots! i just sat and looked at them there at supper, and i said to myself, i said, to think they drown kittens and let those poor lumps live!" "ruby, aren't you ashamed to talk like that?" "sat there and looked at poor old man katz with his ear all ragged like it had been chewed off, and wondered why he didn't just go down to brooklyn bridge for a high jump." "ruby, i--" "if all those big, strapping women, suss and finshriber and the whole gang of them, were anything but vegetables, they'd get out and hustle with keeping house, to work some of their flabbiness off and give us a chance to get somebody in besides a chocolate-eating, novel-reading crowd of useless women who think, mommy, you're a dumbwaiter, chambermaid, lady's maid, and french chef rolled in one! honest, ma, if you carry that ice-water up to katz to-night on the sly, with that big son of hers to come down and get it, i--i'll go right up and tell her what i think of her if she leaves to-morrow." "mr. vetsburg, you--you mustn't listen to her." "can't take a day off for a rest at atlantic city, because their old easter dinner might go down the wrong side. honest, mama, to--to think how you're letting a crowd of old, flabby women that aren't fit even to wipe your shoes make a regular servant out of you! mommy!" there were tears in miss kaufman's voice, actual tears, big and bright, in her eyes, and two spots of color had popped out in her cheeks. "ruby, when--when a woman like me makes her living off her boarders, she can't afford to be so particular. you think it's a pleasure i can't slam the door right in mrs. katz's face when six times a day she orders towels and ice-water? you think it's a pleasure i got to take sass from such a bad boy like irving? i tell you, ruby, it's easy talk from a girl that doesn't understand. _ach_, you--you make me ashamed before mr. vetsburg you should run down to the people we make our living off of." miss kaufman flashed her vivid face toward mr. vetsburg, still low there in his chair. she was trembling. "vetsy knows! he's the only one in this house does know! he 'ain't been here with us ten years, ever since we started in this big house, not--not to know he's the only one thinks you're here for anything except impudence and running stairs and standing sass from the bad boys of lazy mothers. you know, don't you, vetsy?" "ruby! mr. vetsburg, you--you must excuse--" from the depths of his chair mr. vetsburg's voice came slow and carefully weighed. "my only complaint, mrs. kaufman, with what ruby has got to say is it ain't strong enough. it maybe ain't none of my business, but always i have told you that for your own good you're too _gemütlich_. no wonder every boarder what you got stays year in and year out till even the biggest kickers pay more board sooner as go. in my business, mrs. kaufman, it's the same, right away if i get too easy with--" "but, mr. vetsburg, a poor woman can't afford to be so independent. i got big expenses and big rent; i got a daughter to raise--" "mama, haven't i begged you a hundred times to let me take up stenography and get out and hustle so you can take it easy--haven't i?" a thick coating of tears sprang to mrs. kaufman's eyes and muddled the gaze she turned toward mr. vetsburg. "is it natural, mr. vetsburg, a mother should want her only child should have always the best and do always the things she never herself could afford to do? all my life, mr. vetsburg, i had always to work. even when i was five months married to a man what it looked like would some day do big things in the wool business, i was left all of a sudden with nothing but debts and my baby." "but, mama--" "is it natural, mr. vetsburg, i should want to work off my hands my daughter should escape that? nothing, mr. vetsburg, gives me so much pleasure she should go with all those rich girls who like her well enough poor to be friends with her. always when you take her down to atlantic city on holidays, where she can meet 'em, it--it--" "but, mommy, is it any fun for a girl to keep taking trips like that with--with her mother always at home like a servant? what do people think? every holiday that vetsy asks me, you--you back out. i--i won't go without you, mommy, and--and i _want_ to go, ma, i--i _want_ to!" "my easter dinner and--" "you, mrs. kaufman, with your easter dinner! ruby's right. when your mama don't go this time not one step we go by ourselves--ain't it?" "not a step." "but--" "to-morrow, mrs. kaufman, we catch that one-ten train. twelve o'clock i call in for you. put ginger in your mama, ruby, and we'll open her eyes on the boardwalk--not?" "oh, vetsy!" he smiled, regarding her. tears had fallen and dried on mrs. kaufman's cheeks; she wavered between a hysteria of tears and laughter. "i--children--" she succumbed to tears, daubing her eyes shamefacedly. he rose kindly. "say, when such a little thing can upset her it's high time she took for herself a little rest. if she backs out, we string her up by the thumbs--not, ruby?" "we're going, ma. going! you'll love the markovitchs' hotel, ma dearie, right near the boardwalk, and the grandest glassed-in porch and--and chairs, and--and nooks, and things. ain't they, vetsy?" "yes, you little ruby, you," he said, regarding her with warm, insinuating eyes, even crinkling an eyelid in a wink. she did not return the glance, but caught her cheeks in the vise of her hands as if to stem the too quick flush. "now you--you quit!" she cried, flashing her back upon him in quick pink confusion. "she gets mad yet," he said, his shoulders rising and falling in silent laughter. "don't!" "well," he said, clicking the door softly after him, "good night and sleep tight." "'night, vetsy." upon the click of that door mrs. kaufman leaned softly forward in her chair, speaking through a scratch in her throat. "ruby!" with her flush still high, miss kaufman danced over toward her parent, then as suddenly ebbed in spirit, the color going. "why, mommy, what--what you crying for, dearie? why, there's nothing to cry for, dearie, that we're going off on a toot to-morrow. honest, dearie, like vetsy says, you're all nerves. i bet from the way suss hollered at you to-day about her extra milk you're upset yet. wouldn't i give her a piece of my mind, though! here, move your chair, mommy, and let me pull down the bed." "i--i'm all right, baby. only i just tell you it's enough to make anybody cry we should have a friend like we got in vetsburg. i--i tell you, baby, they just don't come better than him. not, baby? don't be ashamed to say so to mama." "i ain't, mama! and, honest, his--his whole family is just that way. sweet-like and generous. wait till you see the way his sister and brother-in-law will treat us at the hotel to-morrow. and--and leo, too." "i always say the day what meyer vetsburg, when he was only a clerk in the firm, answered my furnished-room advertisement was the luckiest day in my life." "you ought to heard, ma. i was teasing him the other day, telling him that he ought to live at the savoy, now that he's a two-thirds member of the firm." "ruby!" "i was only teasing, ma. you just ought to seen his face. any day he'd leave us!" mrs. kaufman placed a warm, insinuating arm around her daughter's slim waist, drawing her around the chair-side and to her. "there's only one way, baby, meyer vetsburg can ever leave me and make me happy when he leaves." "ma, what you mean?" "you know, baby, without mama coming right out in words." "ma, honest i don't. what?" "you see it coming just like i do. don't fool mama, baby." the slender lines of miss kaufman's waist stiffened, and she half slipped from the embrace. "now, now, baby, is it wrong a mother should talk to her own baby about what is closest in both their hearts?" "i--i--mama, i--i don't know!" "how he's here in this room every night lately, ruby, since you--you're a young lady. how right away he follows us up-stairs. how lately he invited you every month down at atlantic city. baby, you ain't blind, are you?" "why, mama--why, mama, what is meyer vetsburg to--to me? why, he--he's got gray hair, ma; he--he's getting bald. why, he--he don't know i'm on earth. he--he's--" "you mean, baby, he don't know anybody else is on earth. what's, nowadays, baby, a man forty? why--why, ain't mama forty-one, baby, and didn't you just say yourself for sisters they take us?" "i know, ma, but he--he--. why, he's got an accent, ma, just like old man katz and--and all of 'em. he says 'too-sand' for thousand. he--" "baby, ain't you ashamed like it makes any difference how a good man talks?" she reached out, drawing her daughter by the wrists down into her lap. "you're a bad little flirt, baby, what pretends she don't know what a blind man can see." miss kaufman's eyes widened, darkened, and she tugged for the freedom of her wrists. "ma, quit scaring me!" "scaring you! that such a rising man like vetsburg, with a business he worked himself into president from clerk, looks every day more like he's falling in love with you, should scare you!" "ma, not--not him!" in reply she fell to stroking the smooth black plaits, wound coronet fashion about miss kaufman's small head. large, hot tears sprang to her eyes. "baby, when you talk like that it's you that scares mama!" "he--he--" "why, you think, ruby, i been making out of myself a servant like you call it all these years except for your future? for myself a smaller house without such a show and maybe five or six roomers without meals, you think ain't easier as this big barn? for what, baby, you think i always want you should have extravagances maybe i can't afford and should keep up with the fine girls what you meet down by atlantic city if it ain't that a man like meyer vetsburg can be proud to choose you from the best?" "mama! mama!" "don't think, ruby, when the day comes what i can give up this white-elephant house that it won't be a happy one for me. every night when i hear from up-stairs how mrs. katz and all of them hollers down 'towels' and 'ice-water' to me like i--i was their slave, don't think, baby, i won't be happiest woman in this world the day what i can slam the door, bang, right on the words." "mama, mama, and you pretending all these years you didn't mind!" "i don't, baby. not one minute while i got a future to look forward to with you. for myself, you think i ask anything except my little girl's happiness? anyways, when happiness comes to you with a man like meyer vetsburg, don't--don't it come to me, too, baby?" "please, i--" "that's what my little girl can do for mama, better as stenography. set herself down well. that's why, since we got on the subject, baby, i--i hold off signing up the new lease, with every day shulif fussing so. maybe, baby, i--well, just maybe--eh, baby?" for answer a torrent of tears so sudden that they came in an avalanche burst from miss kaufman, and she crumpled forward, face in hands and red rushing up the back of her neck and over her ears. "ruby!" "no, no, ma! no, no!" "baby, the dream what i've dreamed five years for you!" "no, no, no!" she fell back, regarding her. "why, ruby. why, ruby, girl!" "it ain't fair. you mustn't!" "mustn't?" "mustn't! mustn't!" her voice had slipped up now and away from her. "why, baby, it's natural at first maybe a girl should be so scared. maybe i shouldn't have talked so soon except how it's getting every day plainer, these trips to atlantic city and--" "mama, mama, you're killing me." she fell back against her parent's shoulder, her face frankly distorted. a second, staring there into space, mrs. kaufman sat with her arm still entwining the slender but lax form. "ruby, is--is it something you ain't telling mama?" "oh, mommy, mommy!" "is there?" "i--i don't know." "ruby, should you be afraid to talk to mama, who don't want nothing but her child's happiness?" "you know, mommy. you know!" "know what, baby?" "i--er--" "is there somebody else you got on your mind, baby?" "you know, mommy." "tell mama, baby. it ain't a--a crime if you got maybe somebody else on your mind." "i can't say it, mommy. it--it wouldn't be--be nice." "nice?" "he--he--we ain't even sure yet." "he?" "not--yet." "who?" "you know." "so help me, i don't." "mommy, don't make me say it. maybe if--when his uncle meyer takes him in the business, we--" "baby, not leo?" "oh, mommy, mommy!" and she buried her hot, revealing face into the fresh net v. "why--why, baby, a--a _boy_ like that!" "twenty-three, mama, ain't a boy!" "but, ruby, just a clerk in his father's hotel, and two older brothers already in it. a--a boy that 'ain't got a start yet." "that's just it, ma. we--we're waiting! waiting before we talk even--even much to each other yet. maybe--maybe his uncle meyer is going to take him in the business, but it ain't sure yet. we--" "a little yellow-haired boy like him that--that can't support you, baby, unless you live right there in his mother's and father's hotel away--away from me!" "ma!" "ruby, a smart girl like you. a little snip what don't make salt yet, when you can have the uncle hisself!" "i can't help it, ma! if--if--the first time vetsy took me down to--to the shore, if--if leo had been a king or a--or just what he is, it wouldn't make no difference. i--i can't help my--my feelings, ma. i can't!" a large furrow formed between mrs. kaufman's eyes, darkening her. "you wouldn't, ruby!" she said, clutching her. "oh, mommy, mommy, when a--a girl can't help a thing!" "he ain't good enough for you, baby!" "he's ten times too good; that--that's all you know about it. mommy, please! i--i just can't help it, dearie. it's just like when i--i saw him a--a clock began to tick inside of me. i--" "o my god!" said mrs. kaufman, drawing her hand across her brow. "his uncle meyer, ma, 's been hinting all along he--he's going to give leo his start and take him in the business. that's why we--we're waiting without saying much, till it looks more like--like we can all be together, ma." "all my dreams! my dreams i could give up the house! my baby with a well-to-do husband maybe on riverside drive. a servant for herself, so i could pass, maybe, mrs. suss and mrs. katz by on the street. ruby, you--you wouldn't, ruby. after how i've built for you!" "oh, mama, mama, mama!" "if you 'ain't got ambitions for yourself, ruby, think once of me and this long dream i been dreaming for--us." "yes, ma. yes." "ruby, ruby, and i always thought when you was so glad for atlantic city, it was for vetsburg; to show him how much you liked his folks. how could i know it was--." "i never thought, mommy. why--why, vetsy he's just like a relation or something." "i tell you, baby, it's just an idea you got in your head." "no, no, mama. no, no." suddenly mrs. kaufman threw up her hands, clasping them tight against her eyes, pressing them in frenzy. "o my god!" she cried. "all for nothing!" and fell to moaning through her laced fingers. "all for nothing! years. years. years." "mommy darling!" "oh--don't, don't! just let me be. let me be. o my god! my god!" "mommy, please, mommy! i didn't mean it. i didn't mean it, mommy darling." "i can't go on all the years, ruby. i'm tired. tired, girl." "of course you can't, darling. we--i don't want you to. 'shh-h-h!" "it's only you and my hopes in you that kept me going all these years. the hope that, with some day a good man to provide for you, i could find a rest, maybe." "yes, yes." "every time what i think of that long envelope laying there on that desk with its lease waiting to be signed to-morrow, i--i could squeeze my eyes shut so tight and wish i didn't never have to open them again on this--this house and this drudgery. if you marry wrong, baby, i'm caught. caught in this house like a rat in a trap." "no, no, mommy. leo, he--his uncle--" "don't make me sign that new lease, ruby. shulif hounds me every day now. any day i expect he says is my last. don't make me saddle another five years with the house. he's only a boy, baby, and years it will take, and--i'm tired, baby. tired! tired!" she lay back with her face suddenly held in rigid lines and her neck ribbed with cords. at sight of her so prostrate there, ruby kaufman grasped the cold face in her ardent young hands, pressing her lips to the streaming eyes. "mommy, i didn't mean it. i didn't! i--we're just kids, flirting a little, leo and me. i didn't mean it, mommy!" "you didn't mean it, ruby, did you? tell mama you didn't." "i didn't, ma. cross my heart. it's only i--i kinda had him in my head. that's all, dearie. that's all!" "he can't provide, baby." "'shh-h-h, ma! try to get calm, and maybe then--then things can come like you want 'em. 'shh-h-h, dearie! i didn't mean it. 'course leo's only a kid. i--we--mommy dear, don't. you're killing me. i didn't mean it. i didn't." "sure, baby? sure?" "sure." "mama's girl," sobbed mrs. kaufman, scooping the small form to her bosom and relaxing. "mama's own girl that minds." they fell quiet, cheek to cheek, staring ahead into the gaslit quiet, the clock ticking into it. the tears had dried on mrs. kaufman's cheeks, only her throat continuing to throb and her hand at regular intervals patting the young shoulder pressed to her. it was as if her heart lay suddenly very still in her breast. "mama's own girl that minds." "it--it's late, ma. let me pull down the bed." "you ain't mad at mama, baby? it's for your own good as much as mine. it is unnatural a mother should want to see her--" "no, no, mama. move, dearie. let me pull down the bed. there you are. now!" with a wrench mrs. kaufman threw off her recurring inclination to tears, moving casually through the processes of their retirement. "to-morrow, baby, i tighten the buttons on them new spats. how pretty they look." "yes, dearie." "i told mrs. katz to-day right out her irving can't bring any more his bicycle through my front hall. wasn't i right?" "of course you were, ma." "miss flora looked right nice in that pink waist to-night--not? four-eighty-nine only, at gimp's sale." "she's too fat for pink." "you get in bed first, baby, and let mama turn out the lights." "no, no, mama; you." in her white slip of a nightdress, her coronet braids unwound and falling down each shoulder, even her slightness had waned. she was like juliet who at fourteen had eyes of maid and martyr. they crept into bed, grateful for darkness. the flute had died out, leaving a silence that was plaintive. "you all right, baby?" "yes, ma." and she snuggled down into the curve of her mother's arm. "are you, mommy?" "yes, baby." "go to sleep, then." "good night, baby." "good night, mommy." silence. lying there, with her face upturned and her eyes closed, a stream of quiet tears found their way from under miss kaufman's closed lids, running down and toward her ears like spectacle frames. an hour ticked past, and two damp pools had formed on her pillow. "asleep yet, baby?" "almost, ma." "are you all right?" "fine." "you--you ain't mad at mama?" "'course not, dearie." "i--thought it sounded like you was crying." "why, mommy, 'course not! turn over now and go to sleep." another hour, and suddenly mrs. kaufman shot out her arm from the coverlet, jerking back the sheet and feeling for her daughter's dewy, upturned face where the tears were slashing down it. "baby!" "mommy, you--you mustn't!" "oh, my darling, like i didn't suspicion it!" "it's only--" "you got, ruby, the meanest mama in the world. but you think, darling, i got one minute's happiness like this?" "i'm all right, mommy, only--" "i been laying here half the night, ruby, thinking how i'm a bad mother what thinks only of her own--" "no, no, mommy. turn over and go to sl--" "my daughter falls in love with a fine, upright young man like leo markovitch, and i ain't satisfied yet! suppose maybe for two or three years you ain't so much on your feet. suppose even his uncle meyer don't take him in. don't any young man got to get his start slow?" "mommy!" "because i got for her my own ideas, my daughter shouldn't have in life the man she wants!" "but, mommy, if--" "you think for one minute, ruby, after all these years without this house on my hands and my boarders and their kicks, a woman like me would be satisfied? why, the more, baby, i think of such a thing, the more i see it for myself! what you think, ruby, i do all day without steps to run, and my gedinks with housekeeping and marketing after eighteen years of it? at first, ruby, ain't it natural it should come like a shock that you and that rascal leo got all of a sudden so--so thick? i--it ain't no more, baby. i--i feel fine about it." "oh, mommy, if--if i thought you did!" "i do. why not? a fine young man what my girl is in love with. every mother should have it so." "mommy, you mean it?" "i tell you i feel fine. you don't need to feel bad or cry another minute. i can tell you i feel happy. to-morrow at atlantic city if such a rascal don't tell me for himself, i--i ask him right out!" "ma!" "for why yet he should wait till he's got better prospects, so his mother-in-law can hang on? i guess not!" "mommy darling. if you only truly feel like that about it. why, you can keep putting off the lease, ma, if it's only for six months, and then we--we'll all be to--" "of course, baby. mama knows. of course!" "he--i just can't begin to tell you, ma, the kind of a fellow leo is till you know him better, mommy dear." "always vetsburg says he's a wide-awake one!" "that's just what he is, ma. he's just a prince if--if there ever was one. one little prince of a fellow." she fell to crying softly, easy tears that flowed freely. "i--i can tell you, baby, i'm happy as you." "mommy dear, kiss me." they talked, huddled arm in arm, until dawn flowed in at the window and dirty roofs began to show against a clean sky. footsteps began to clatter through the asphalt court and there came the rattle of milk-cans. "i wonder if annie left out the note for mrs. suss's extra milk!" "don't get up, dearie; it's only five--" "right away, baby, with extra towels i must run up to miss flora's room. that six o'clock-train for trenton she gets." "ma dear, let me go." "lay right where you are! i guess you want you should look all worn out when a certain young man what i know walks down to meet our train at atlantic city this afternoon, eh?" "oh, mommy, mommy!" and ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows. at eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and every sort of maker hustling in and out the basementway; the sweeping of upstairs halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the smell of spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from various stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its saturday-morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of motor-cars, tops back and nosing for the speedway of upper broadway. a homely bouquet of odors rose from the basement kitchen, drifting up through the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed. after a morning of up-stairs and down-stairs and in and out of chambers, mrs. kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved apron still angular with starch, hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the staircase and entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside the open shelf of her desk. a long envelope lay uppermost on that desk, and she took it up slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them squeezed tight as if she would press back a vision, even then a tear oozing through. she blinked it back, but her mouth was wry with the taste of tears. a slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. "mrs. katz broke 'er mug!" "take the one off mr. krakow's wash-stand and give it to her, tillie." she was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though it swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall forward into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and falling. but after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his white apron and shirt-sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a file on her desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance and a keen eye for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon. on the very heels of him, so that they met and danced to pass each other in the doorway, mr. vetsburg entered, with an overcoat flung across his right arm and his left sagging to a small black traveling-bag. "well," he said, standing in the frame of the open door, his derby well back on his head and regarding her there beside the small desk, "is this what you call ready at twelve?" she rose and moved forward in her crackly starched apron. "i--please, mr. vetsburg, it ain't right, i know!" "you don't mean you're not going!" he exclaimed, the lifted quality immediately dropping from his voice. "you--you got to excuse me again, mr. vetsburg. it ain't no use i should try to get away on saturdays, much less easter saturday." "well, of all things!" "right away, the last minute, mr. vetsburg, right one things after another." he let his bag slip to the floor. "maybe, mrs. kaufman," he said, "it ain't none of my business, but ain't it a shame a good business woman like you should let herself always be tied down to such a house like she was married to it?" "but--" "can't get away on saturdays, just like it ain't the same any other day in the week, i ask you! saturday you blame it on yet!" she lifted the apron from her hem, her voice hurrying. "you can see for yourself, mr. vetsburg, how in my brown silk all ready i was. even--even ruby don't know yet i don't go. down by gimp's i sent her she should buy herself one of them red straw hats is the fad with the girls now. she meets us down by the station." "that's a fine come-off, ain't it, to disappoint--" "at the last minute, mr. vetsburg, how things can happen. out of a clear sky mrs. finshriber has to-morrow for easter dinner that skin doctor, abrams, and his wife she's so particular about. and annie with her sore ankle and--" "a little shyster doctor like abrams with his advertisements all over the newspapers should sponge off you and your holiday! by golly! mrs. kaufman, just like ruby says, how you let a whole houseful of old hens rule this roost it's a shame!" "when you go down to station, mr. vetsburg, so right away she ain't so disappointed i don't come, tell her maybe to-morrow i--." "i don't tell her nothing!" broke in mr. vetsburg and moved toward her with considerable strengthening of tone. "mrs. kaufman, i ask you, do you think it right you should go back like this on ruby and me, just when we want most you should--" at that she quickened and fluttered. "ruby and you! ach, it's a old saying, mr. vetsburg, like the twig is bent so the tree grows. that child won't be so surprised her mother changes her mind. just so changeable as her mother, and more, is ruby herself. with that girl, mr. vetsburg, it's--it's hard to know what she does one minute from the next. i always say no man--nobody can ever count on a little harum-scarum like--like she is." he took up her hat, a small turban of breast feathers, laid out on the table beside him, and advanced with it clumsily enough. "come," he said, "please now, mrs. kaufman. please." "i--" "i--i got plans made for us to-morrow down by the shore that's--that's just fine! come now, mrs. kaufman." "please, mr. vetsburg, don't force. i--i can't! i always say nobody can ever count on such a little harum-scarum as--" "you mean to tell me, mrs. kaufman, that just because a little shyster doctor--" her hand closed over the long envelope again, crunching it. "no, no, that--that ain't all, mr. vetsburg. only i don't want you should tell ruby. you promise me? how that child worries over little things. shulif from the agency called up just now. he don't give me one more minute as two this afternoon i--i should sign. how i been putting them off so many weeks with this lease it's a shame. always you know how in the back of my head i've had it to take maybe a smaller place when this lease was done, but, like i say, talk is cheap and moving ain't so easy done--ain't it? if he puts in new plumbing in the pantry and new hinges on the doors and papers my second floor and mrs. suss's alcove, like i said last night, after all i could do worse as stay here another five year--ain't it, mr. vetsburg?" "i--" "a house what keeps filled so easy, and such a location, with the subway less as two blocks. i--so you see, mr. vetsburg, if i don't want i come back and find my house on the market, maybe rented over my head, i got to stay home for shulif when he comes to-day." a rush of dark blood had surged up into mr. vetsburg's face, and he twiddled his hat, his dry fingers moving around inside the brim. "mrs. kaufman," he cried--"mrs. kaufman, sometimes when for years a man don't speak out his mind, sometimes he busts all of a sudden right out. i--oh--e-e-e!" and, immediately and thickly inarticulate, made a tremendous feint at clearing his throat, tossed up his hat and caught it; rolled his eyes. "mr. vetsburg?" "a man, mrs. kaufman, can bust!" "bust?" he was still violently dark, but swallowing with less labor. "yes, from holding in. mrs. kaufman, should a woman like you--the finest woman in the world, and i can prove it--a woman, mrs. kaufman, who in her heart and my heart and--should such a woman not come to atlantic city when i got everything fixed like a stage set!" she threw out an arm that was visibly trembling. "mr. vetsburg, for god's sake, 'ain't i just told you how that she--harum-scarum--she--." "will you, mrs. kaufman, come or won't you? will you, i ask you, or won't you?" "i--i can't, mr.--" "all right, then, i--i bust out now. to-day can be as good as to-morrow! not with my say in a t'ousand years, mrs. kaufman, you sign that lease! i ain't a young man any more with fine speeches, mrs. kaufman, but not in a t'ousand years you sign that lease." "mr. vetsburg, ruby--i--" "if anybody's got a lease on you, mrs. kaufman, i--i want it! i want it! that's the kind of a lease would suit me. to be leased to you for always, the rest of your life!" she could not follow him down the vista of fancy, but stood interrogating him with her heartbeats at her throat. "mr. vetsburg, if he puts on the doors and hinges and new plumbing in--." "i'm a plain man, mrs. kaufman, without much to offer a woman what can give out her heart's blood like it was so much water. but all these years i been waiting, mrs. kaufman, to bust out, until--till things got riper. i know with a woman like you, whose own happiness always is last, that first your girl must be fixed--." "she's a young girl, mr. vetsburg. you--you mustn't depend--. if i had my say--." "he's a fine fellow, mrs. kaufman. with his uncle to help 'em, they got, let me tell you, a better start as most young ones!" she rose, holding on to the desk. "i--i--" she said. "what?" "lena," he uttered, very softly. "lena, mr. vetsburg?" "it 'ain't been easy, lenie, these years while she was only growing up, to keep off my lips that name. a name just like a leaf off a rose. lena!" he reiterated and advanced. comprehension came quietly and dawning like a morning. "i--i--. mr. vetsburg, you must excuse me," she said, and sat down suddenly. he crossed to the little desk and bent low over her chair, his hand not on her shoulder, but at the knob of her chair. his voice had a swift rehearsed quality. "maybe to-morrow, if you didn't back out, it would sound finer by the ocean, lenie, but it don't need the ocean a man should tell a woman when she's the first and the finest woman in the world. does it, lenie?" "i--i thought ruby. she--" "he's a good boy, leo is, lenie. a good boy what can be good to a woman like his father before him. good enough even for a fine girl like our ruby, lenie--_our_ ruby!" "_gott im himmel_! then you--" "wide awake, too. with a start like i can give him in my business, you 'ain't got to worry ruby 'ain't fixed herself with the man what she chooses. to-morrow at atlantic city all fixed i had it i should tell--" "you!" she said, turning around in her chair to face him. "you--all along you been fixing--" he turned sheepish. "ain't it fair, lenie, in love and war and business a man has got to scheme for what he wants out of life? long enough it took she should grow up. i knew all along once those two, each so full of life and being young, got together it was natural what should happen. mrs. kaufman! lenie! lenie!" prom two flights up, in through the open door and well above the harsh sound of scrubbing, a voice curled down through the hallways and in. "mrs. kaufman, ice-water--ple-ase!" "lenie," he said, his singing, tingling fingers closing over her wrist. "mrs. kauf-man, ice-water, pl--" with her free arm she reached and slammed the door, let her cheek lie to the back of his hand, and closed her eyes. iv hers _not_ to reason why in the third winter of a world-madness, with europe guzzling blood and wild with the taste of it, america grew flatulent, stenching winds from the battle-field blowing her prosperity. granaries filled to bursting tripled in value, and, in congested districts, men with lean faces rioted when bread advanced a cent a loaf. munition factories, the fires of destruction smelting all night, worked three shifts. millions of shells for millions of dollars. millions of lives for millions of shells. a country feeding into the insatiable maw of war with one hand, and with the other pouring relief-funds into coffers bombarded by guns of its own manufacture--quelling the wound with a finger and widening it with a knife up the cuff. in france, women with blue faces and too often with the pulling lips of babes at dry breasts, learned the bitter tasks of sewing closed the coat sleeves and of cutting off and hemming the trousers leg at the knee. in america, women new to the feel of fur learned to love it and not question whence it came. men of small affairs, suddenly earthquaked to the crest of the great tidal wave of new market-values, went drunk with wealth. in new york, where so many great forces of a great country coagulate, the face of the city photographed would have been a composite of fat and jowl, rouge and heavy lip--satiated yet insatiate, the head double-chinned and even a little loggy with too many satisfactions. but that is the new york of the saturnite and of teufelsdröckh alone with his stars. upon mrs. blutch connors, gazing out upon the tide of west forty-seventh street, life lay lightly and as unrelated as if ravage and carnage and the smell of still warm blood were of another planet. a shower of white light from an incandescent tooth-brush sign opposite threw a pallid reflection upon mrs. connors; it spun the fuzz of frizz rising off her blond coiffure into a sort of golden fog and picked out the sequins of her bodice. the dinner-hour descends glitteringly upon west forty-seventh street, its solid rows of long, lanky hotels, actors' clubs, and sixty-cent _tables d'hôte_ adding each its candle-power. from her brace of windows in the hotel metropolis, the street was not unlike a gully cut through mica, a honking tributary flowing into the great sea of broadway. a low, high-power car, shaped like an ellipse, cut through the snarl of traffic, bleating. a woman, wrapped in a greatcoat of "baby" pelts and an almost undistinguishable dog in the cove of her arm, walked out from the hotel metropolis across the sidewalk and into a taxicab. an army of derby hats, lowered slightly into the wind, moved through the white kind of darkness. standing there, buffeting her pink nails across her pink palms, mrs. connors followed the westward trend of that army. out from it, a face lying suddenly back flashed up at her, a mere petal riding a swift current. but at sight of it mrs. blutch connors inclined her entire body, pressing a smile and a hand against the cold pane, then turned inward, flashing on an electrolier--a bronze nydia holding out a cluster of frosted bulbs. a great deal of the strong breath of a popular perfume and a great deal of artificial heat lay sweet upon that room, as if many flowers had lived and died in the same air, leaving insidious but slightly stale memories. the hotel suite has become the brocaded tomb of the old-fashioned garden. the kitchen has shrunk into the chafing-dish, and all the dear old concoctions that mother used to try to make now come tinned, condensed, and predigested in sixty-seven varieties. even the vine-covered threshold survives only in the booklets of promoters of suburban real estate. in new york, the home-coming spouse arrives on the vertical, shunted out at whatever his layer. yet, when mrs. connors opened the door of her pink-brocaded sitting-room, her spirit rose with the soughing rise of the elevator, and romance--hardy fellow--showed himself within a murky hotel corridor. "honeybunch!" "babe!" said mr. blutch connors, upon the slam of the lift door. and there, in the dim-lit halls, with its rows of closed doors in blank-faced witness thereof, they embraced, these two, despising, as flaubert despised, to live in the reality of things. "my boy's beau-ful cheeks all cold!" "my girl's beau-ful cheeks all warm and full of some danged good cologne," said mr. connors, closing the door of their rooms upon them, pressing her head back against the support of his arm, and kissing her throat as the chin flew up. he pressed a button, and the room sprang into more light, coming out pinkly and vividly--the brocaded walls pliant to touch with every so often a gilt-framed engraving; a gilt table with an onyx top cheerfully cluttered with the sauciest short-story magazines of the month; a white mantelpiece with an artificial hearth and a pink-and-gilt _chaise-longue_ piled high with small, lacy pillows, and a very green magazine open and face downward on the floor beside it. "comin' better, honeybunch?" "i dunno, babe. the town's mad with money, but i don't feel myself going crazy with any of it." "what ud you bring us, honey?" he slid out of his silk-lined greatcoat, placing his brown derby atop. "three guesses, babe," he said, rubbing his cold hands in a dry wash, and smiling from five feet eleven of sartorial accomplishment down upon her. "honey darlin'!" said mrs. connors, standing erect and placing her cheek against the third button of his waistcoat. "wow! how i love the woman!" he cried, closing his hands softly about her throat and tilting her head backward again. "darlin', you hurt!" "br-r-r--can't help it!" when mr. connors moved, he gave off the scent of pomade freely; his slightly thinning brown hair and the pointy tips to a reddish mustache lay sleek with it. there was the merest suggestion of _embonpoint_ to the waistcoat, but not so that, when he dropped his eyes, the blunt toes of his russet shoes were not in evidence. his pin-checked suit was pressed to a knife-edge, and his brocaded cravat folded to a nicety; there was an air of complete well-being about him. men can acquire that sort of eupeptic well-being in a turkish bath. young mothers and life-jobbers have it naturally. suddenly, mrs. connors began to foray into his pockets, plunging her hand into the right, the left, then stopped suddenly, her little face flashing up at him. "it's round and furry--my honeybunch brought me a peach! beau-ful pink peach in december! nine million dollars my hubby pays to bring him wifey a beau-ful pink peach." she drew it out--a slightly runty one with a forced blush--and bit small white teeth immediately into it. "m-m-m!"--sitting on the _chaise-longue_ and sucking inward. he sat down beside her, a shade graver. "is my babe disappointed i didn't dig her coat and earrings out of hock?" she lay against him. "i should worry!" "there just ain't no squeal in my girl." "wanna bite?" "any one of 'em but you would be hollering for their junk out of pawn. but, lord, the way she rigs herself up without it! where'd you dig up the spangles, babe? gad! i gotta take you out to-night and buy you the right kind of a dinner. when i walks my girl into a café, they sit up and take notice, all righty. spangles she rigs herself up in when another girl, with the way my luck's been runnin', would be down to her shimmy-tail." she stroked his sleeve as if it had the quality of fur. "is the rabbit's foot still kicking my boy?" "never seen the like, honey. the cards just won't come. this afternoon i even played the wheel over at chuck's, and she spun me dirt." "it's gotta turn, blutch." "sure!" "remember the run of rotten luck you had that year in cincinnati, when the ponies was runnin' at latonia?" "yeh." "lost your shirt, hon, and the first day back in new york laid a hundred on the wheel and won me my seal coat. you--we--we couldn't be no lower than that time we got back from latonia, hon?" he laid his hand over hers. "come on, babe. joe'll be here directly, and then we're going and blow them spangles to a supper." "blutch, answer!" "now there's nothin' to worry about, babe. have i ever landed anywhere but on my feet? we'll be driving a racer down broadway again before the winter's over. there's money in motion these wartimes, babe. they can't keep my hands off it." "blutch, how--how much did you drop to-day? "i could tell clear down on the street you lost, honey, the way you walked so round-shouldered." "what's the difference, honey? come; just to show you i'm a sport, i'm going to shoot you and joe over to jack's in one of them new white taxi-cabs." "blutch, how much?" "well, if you gotta know it, they laid me out to-day, babe. dropped that nine hundred hock-money like it was a hot potato, and me countin' on bringin' you home your coat and junk again to-night. gad! them cards wouldn't come to me with salt on their tails." "nine hundred! blutch, that--that leaves us bleached!" "i know it, hon. just never saw the like. wouldn't care if it wasn't my girl's junk and fur coat. that's what hurts a fellow. if there's one thing he ought to look to, it's to keep his wimmin out of the game." "it--it ain't that, blutch; but--but where's it comin' from?" he struck his thigh a resounding whack. "with seventy-five bucks in my jeans, girl, the world is mine. why, before i had my babe for my own, many's the time i was down to shoe-shine money. up to 'leven years ago it wasn't nothing, honey, for me to sleep on a pool-table one night and _de luxe_ the next. if life was a sure thing for me, i'd ask 'em to put me out of my misery. it's only since i got my girl that i ain't the plunger i used to be. big blutch has got his name from the old days, honey, when a dime, a dollar, and a tire-rim was all the same size." she sat hunched up in the pink-satinet frock, the pink sequins dancing, and her small face smaller because of the way her light hair rose up in the fuzzy aura. "blutch, we--we just never was down to the last seventy-five before. that time at latonia, it was a hundred and more." "why, girl, once, at hot springs, i had to hock my coat and vest, and i got started on a run of new luck playin' in my shirt-sleeves, pretending i was a summer boy." "that was the time you gave lenny gratz back his losings and got him back to his wife." "right-o! seen him only to-night. he's traveling out of cleveland for an electric house and has forgot how aces up looks. that boy had as much chance in the game as a deacon." mrs. connors laid hold of mr. connors's immaculate coat lapel, drawing him toward her. "oh, blutch--honey--if only--if only--" "if only what, babe?" "if you--you--" "why, honey, what's eatin' you? i been down pretty near this low many a time; only, you 'ain't known nothing about it, me not wanting to worry your pretty head. you ain't afraid, babe, your old hubby can't always take care of his girl a1, are you?" "no, no, blutch; only--" "what, babe?" "i wish to god you was out of it, blutch! i wish to god!" "out of what, babe?" "the game, blutch. you're too good, honey, and too--too honest to be in it. what show you got in the end against your playin' pals like joe kirby and al flexnor? i know that gang, blutch. i've tried to tell you so often how, when i was a kid livin' at home, that crowd used to come to my mother's--" "now, now, girl; business is--" "you're too good, blutch, and too honest to be in it. the game'll break you in the end. it always does. blutch darling, i wish to god you was out of it!" "why, ann 'lisbeth, i never knew you felt this way about it." "i do, blutch, i do! for years, it's been here in me--here, under my heart--eatin' me, blutch, eatin' me!" and she placed her hands flat to her breast. "why, babe!" "i never let on. you--i--you been too good, blutch, to a girl like--like i was for me to let out a whimper about anything. a man that took a girl like--like me that had knocked around just like--my mother and even--even my grandmother before me had knocked around--took and married me, no questions asked. a girl like me 'ain't got the right to complain to no man, much less to one like you. the heaven you've given me for eleven years, blutch! the heaven! sometimes, darlin', just sittin' here in a room like this, with no--no reason for bein' here--it's just like i--" "babe, babe, you mustn't!" "sittin' here, waiting for you to come and not carin' for nothing or nobody except that my boy's comin' home to me--it's like i was in a dream, blutch, and like i was going to wake up and find myself back in my mother's house, and--" "babe, you been sittin' at home alone too much. i always tell you, honey, you ought to make friends. chuck de roy's wife wants the worst way to get acquainted with you--a nice, quiet girl. it ain't right, babe, for you not to have no friends at all to go to the matinée with or go buyin' knickknacks with. you're gettin' morbid, honey." she worked herself out of his embrace, withholding him with her palms pressed out against his chest. "i 'ain't got nothing in life but you, honey. there ain't nobody else under the sun makes any difference. that's why i want you to get out of it, blutch. it's a dirty game--the gambling game. you ain't fit for it. you're too good. they've nearly got you now, blutch. let's get out, honey, while the goin's good. let's take them seventy-five bucks and buy us a peanut-stand or a line of goods. let's be regular folks, darlin'! i'm willin' to begin low down. don't stake them last seventy-five, blutch. break while we're broke. it ain't human nature to break while your luck's with you." he was for folding her in his arms, but she still withheld him. "blutch darlin', it's the first thing i ever asked of you." he grew grave, looking long into her blue eyes with the tears forming over them. "why, ann 'lisbeth, danged if i know what to say! you sure you're feelin' well, babe? 'ain't took cold, have you, with your fur coat in hock?" "no, no, no!" "well, i--i guess, honey, if the truth was told, your old man ain't cut out for nothing much besides the gamin'-table--a fellow that's knocked around the world the way i have." "you are, blutch; you are! you're an expert accountant. didn't you run the two dollar hat store that time in syracuse and get away with it?" "i know, babe; but when a fellow's once used to makin' it easy and spendin' it easy, he can't be satisfied lopin' along in a little business. why, just take to-night, honey! i only brought home my girl a peach this evening, but that ain't sayin' that before morning breaks i can't be bringin' her a couple of two-carat stones." "no, no, blutch; i don't want 'em. i swear to god i don't want 'em!" "why, babe, i just can't figure out what's got into you. i never heard you break out like this. are you scared, honey, because we happen to be lower than--" "no, no, darlin'; i ain't scared because we're low. i'm scared to get high again. it's the first run of real luck you've had in three years, blutch. there was no hope of gettin' you out while things was breakin' good for you; but now--" "i ain't sayin' it's the best game in the world. i'd see a son of mine laid out before i'd let him get into it. but it's what i'm cut out for, and what are you goin' to do about it? 'ain't you got everything your little heart desires? ain't we going down to sheepshead when the first thaw sets in? ain't we just a pair of love-birds that's as happy as if we had our right senses? come, babe; get into your jacket. joe'll be here any minute, and i got that porterhouse at jack's on the brain. come kiss your hubby." she held up her face with the tears rolling down it, and he kissed a dry spot and her yellow frizzed bangs. "my girl! my cry-baby girl!" "you're all i got in the world, blutch! thinkin' of what's best for you has eat into me." "i know! i know!" "we'll never get nowheres in this game, hon. we ain't even sure enough of ourselves to have a home like--like regular folks." "never you mind, babe. startin' first of the year, i'm going to begin to look to a little nest-egg." "we ought to have it, blutch. just think of lettin' ourselves get down to the last seventy-five! what if a rainy day should come--where would we be at? if you--or me should get sick or something." "you ain't all wrong, girl." "you'd give the shirt off your back, blutch; that's why we can't ever have a nest-egg as long as you're playin' stakes. there's too many hard-luck stories lying around loose in the gamblin' game." "the next big haul i make i'm going to get out, girl, so help me!" "blutch!" "i mean it. we'll buy a chicken-farm." "why not a little business, blutch, in a small town with--" "there's a great future in chicken-farmin'. i set boy higgins up with a five-hundred spot the year his lung went back on him, and he paid me back the second year." "blutch darlin', you mean it?" "why not, babe--seein' you want it? there ain't no string tied to me and the green-felt table. i can go through with anything i make up my mind to." "oh, honey baby, you promise! darling little fuzzy chickens!" "why, girl, i wouldn't have you eatin' yourself thisaway. the first ten-thou' high-water mark we hit i'm quits. how's that?" "ten thousand! oh, blutch, we--" "what's ten thou', girl! i made the hot springs haul with a twenty-dollar start. if you ain't careful, we'll be buyin' that chicken-farm next week. that's what can happen to my girl if she starts something with her hubby." suddenly mrs. connors crumpled in a heap upon the lacy pillows, pink sequins heaving. "why, babe--babe, what is it? you're sick or something to-night, honey." he lifted her to his arms, bent almost double over her. "nothin', blutch, only--only i just never was so happy." "lord!" said blutch connors. "all these years, and i never knew anything was eatin' her." "i--i never was, blutch." "was what?" "so--happy." "lord bless my soul! the poor little thing was afraid to say it was a chicken-farm she wanted!" he patted her constantly, his eyes somewhat glazy. "us two, blutch, livin' regular." "you ain't all wrong, girl." "you home evenings, blutch, regular like." "you poor little thing!" "you'll play safe, blutch? play safe to win!" "i wish i'd have went into the farmin' three years ago, babe, the week i hauled down eleven thou'." "you was too fed up with luck then, blutch. i knew better 'n to ask." "lord bless my soul! and the poor little thing was afraid to say it was a chicken-farm she wanted!" "promise me, blutch, you'll play 'em close--to win!" "al's openin' up his new rooms to-night. me and joe are goin' to play 'em fifty-fifty. it looks to me like a haul, babe." "he's crooked, blutch, i tell you." "no more 'n all of 'em are, babe. your eyes open and your pockets closed is my motto. what you got special against joe? you mustn't dig up on a fellow, babe." "i--. why ain't he livin' in white plains, where his wife and kids are?" "what i don't know about the private life of my card friends don't hurt me." "it's town talk the way he keeps them rooms over at the liberty. 'way back when i was a kid, blutch, i remember how he used to--" "i know there ain't no medals on joe, babe, but if you don't stop listenin' to town talk, you're going to get them pretty little ears of yours all sooty." "i know, blutch; but i could tell you things about him back in the days when my mother--" "me and him are goin' over to al's to-night and try to win my babe the first chicken for her farm. whatta you bet? us two ain't much on the sociability end, but we've played many a lucky card fifty-fifty. saturday is our mascot night, too. come, babe; get on your jacket, and--" "honeybunch, you and joe go. i ain't hungry." "but--" "i'll have 'em send me up a bite from the grill." "you ain't sore because i asked joe? it's business, babe." "of course i ain't, honey; only, with you and him goin' right over to al's afterward, what's the sense of me goin'? i wanna stay home and think. it's just like beginnin' to-night i could sit here and look right into the time when there ain't goin' to be no more waitin' up nights for my boy. i--they got all little white chickens out at denny's roadhouse, blutch--white with red combs. can we have some like them?" "you betcher life we can! i'm going to win the beginnings of that farm before i'm a night older. lordy! lordy! and to think i never knew anything was eatin' her!" "blutch, i--i don't know what to say. i keep cryin' when i wanna laugh. i never was so happy, blutch, i never was." "my little kitty-puss!" * * * * * at seven o'clock came mr. joe kirby, dark, corpulent, and black of cigar. "come right in, joe! i'm here and waitin' for you." "ain't the missis in on this killin'?" "she--not this--" "no, joe; not--to-night." "sorry to hear it," said mr. kirby, flecking an inch of cigar-ash to the table-top. "fine rig-up, with due respect to the lady, your missis is wearing to-night." "the wife ain't so short on looks, is she?" "blutch!" "you know my sentiments about her. they don't come no ace-higher." she colored, even quivered, standing there beside the bronze nydia. "i tell her we're out for big business to-night, joe." "sky's the limit. picked up a pin pointin' toward me and sat with my back to a red-headed woman. can't lose." "well, good-night, babe. take care o' yourself." "good night, blutch. you'll play 'em close, honey?" "you just know i will, babe." an hour she sat there, alone on the _chaise-longue_, staring into space and smiling at what she saw there. finally she dropped back into the lacy mound of pillows, almost instantly asleep, but still smiling. * * * * * at four o'clock, that hour before dawn cracks, even the west forties, where night is too often cacophonous with the sound of revelry, drop into long narrow aisles of gloom. thin, high-stooped houses with drawn shades recede into the mouse-colored mist of morning, and, as through quagmire, this mist hovering close to ground, figures skulk--that nameless, shapeless race of many bloods and one complexion, the underground complexion of paste long sour from standing. at somewhat after that hour mr. blutch connors made exit from one of these houses, noiseless, with scarcely a click after him, and then, without pause, passed down the brownstone steps and eastward. a taxicab slid by, its honk as sorrowful as the cry of a plover in a bog. another--this one drawing up alongside, in quest of fare. he moved on, his breath clouding the early air, and his hands plunged deep in his pockets as if to plumb their depth. there was a great sag to the silhouette of him moving thus through the gloom, the chest in and the shoulders rounding and lessening their front span. once he paused to remove the brown derby and wipe at his brow. a policeman struck his stick. he moved on. an all-night drug-store, the modern sort of emporium where the capsule and the herb have become side line to the ivoritus toilet-set and the pocket-dictionary, threw a white veil of light across the sidewalk. well past that window, but as if its image had only just caught up with him, mr. connors turned back, retracing ten steps. a display-window, denuded of frippery but strewn with straw and crisscrossed with two large strips of poster, proclaimed chicklet face powder to the cosmetically concerned. with an eye to fidelity, a small brood of small chickens, half dead with bad air and not larger than fists, huddled rearward and out of the grilling light--puny victims to an indorsed method of correspondence-school advertising. mr. connors entered, scouting out a dozy clerk. "say, bo, what's one of them chicks worth?" "ain't fer sale." mr. connors lowered his voice, nudging. "i gotta sick wife, bo. couldn't you slip me one in a 'mergency?" "what's the idea--chicken broth? you better go in the park and catch her a chippie." "on the level, friend, one of them little yellow things would cheer her up. she's great one for pets." "can't you see they're half-dead now? what you wanna cheer her up with--a corpse? if i had my way, i'd wring the whole display's neck, anyhow." "what'll you take for one, bo?" "it'll freeze to death." "look! this side pocket is lined with velvet." "dollar." "aw, i said one, friend, not the whole brood." "leave or take." mr. connors dug deep. "make it sixty cents and a poker-chip, bo. it's every cent i got in my pocket." "keep the poker-chip for pin-money." when mr. connors emerged, a small, chirruping bunch of fuzz, cupped in his hand, lay snug in the velvet-lined pocket. at sixth avenue, where the great skeleton of the elevated stalks mid-street, like a prehistoric _pithecanthropus erectus_, he paused for an instant in the shadow of a gigantic black pillar, readjusting the fragile burden to his pocket. stepping out to cross the street, simultaneously a great silent motor-car, noiseless but wild with speed, tore down the surface-car tracks, blacker in the hulking shadow of the elevated trellis. a quick doubling up of the sagging silhouette, and the groan of a clutch violently thrown. a woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of horror. a crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. white, peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. a uniform pushing through. a crowbar and the hard breathing of men straining to lift. a sob in the dark. stand back! stand back! * * * * * dawn--then a blue, wintry sky, the color and hardness of enamel; and sunshine, bright, yet so far off the eye could stare up to it unsquinting. it lay against the pink-brocaded window-hangings of the suite in the hotel metropolis; it even crept in like a timid hand reaching toward, yet not quite touching, the full-flung figure of mrs. blutch connors, lying, her cheek dug into the harshness of the carpet, there at the closed door to the bedroom--prone as if washed there, and her yellow hair streaming back like seaweed. sobs came, but only the dry kind that beat in the throat and then come shrilly, like a sheet of silk swiftly torn. how frail are human ties, have said the _beaux esprits_ of every age in one epigrammatic fashion or another. but frailty can bleed; in fact, it's first to bleed. lying there, with her face swollen and stamped with the carpet-nap, squirming in a grief that was actually abashing before it was heartbreaking, ann 'lisbeth connors, whose only epiphany of life was love, and shut out from so much else that helps make life sweet, was now shut out from none of its pain. once she scratched at the door, a faint, dog-like scratch for admission, and then sat back on her heels, staring at the uncompromising panel, holding back the audibility of her sobs with her hand. heart-constricting silence, and only the breath of ether seeping out to her, sweet, insidious. she took to hugging herself violently against a sudden chill that rushed over her, rattling her frame. the bedroom door swung noiselessly back, fanning out the etheric fumes, and closed again upon an emerging figure. "doctor--quick--god!--what?" he looked down upon her with the kind of glaze over his eyes that bellini loved to paint, compassion for the pain of the world almost distilled to tears. "doctor--he ain't--" "my poor little lady!" "o god--no--no--no! no, doctor, no! you wouldn't! please! please! you wouldn't let him leave me here all alone, doctor! o god! you wouldn't! i'm all alone, doctor! you see, i'm all alone. please don't take him from me. he's mine! you can't! promise me, doctor! my darlin' in there--why are you hurtin' him so? why has he stopped hollerin'? cut me to pieces to give him what he needs to make him live. don't take him from me, doctor. he's all i got! o god--god--please!" and fell back swooning, with an old man's tear splashing down as if to revivify her. * * * * * the heart has a resiliency. strained to breaking, it can contract again. even the waiting women, iseult and penelope, learned, as they sat sorrowing and watching, to sing to the swing of the sea. when, out of the slough of dark weeks, mrs. connors took up life again, she was only beaten, not broken--a reed lashed down by storm and then resilient, daring to lift its head again. a wan little head, but the eyes unwashed of their blue and the irises grown large. the same hard sunshine lay in its path between the brocade curtains of a room strangely denuded. it was as if spring had died there, when it was only the _chaise-longue_, barren of its lacy pillows, a glass vase and silver-framed picture gone from the mantel, a mexican afghan removed from a divan and showing its bulges. it was any hotel suite now--uncompromising; leave me or take me. in taking leave of it, mrs. connors looked about her even coldly, as if this barren room were too denuded of its memories. "you--you been mighty good to me, joe. it's good to know--everything's--paid up." mr. joe kirby sat well forward on a straight chair, knees well apart in the rather puffy attitude of the uncomfortably corpulent. "now, cut that! whatever i done for you, annie, i done because i wanted to. if you'd 'a' listened to me, you wouldn't 'a' gone and sold out your last dud to raise money. whatcha got friends for?" "the way you dug down for--for the funeral, joe. he--he couldn't have had the silver handles or the gray velvet if--if not for you, joe. he--he always loved everything the best. i can't never forget that of you, joe--just never." she was pinning on her little crêpe-edged veil over her decently black hat, and paused now to dab up under it at a tear. "i'd 'a' expected poor old blutch to do as much for me." "he would! he would! many's the pal he buried." "i hate, annie, like anything to see you actin' up like this. you ain't fit to walk out of this hotel on your own hook. where'd you get that hand-me-down?" she looked down at herself, quickly reddening. "it's a warm suit, joe." "why, you 'ain't got a chance! a little thing like you ain't cut out for but one or two things. coddlin'--that's your line. the minute you're nobody's doll you're goin' to get stepped on and get busted." "whatta you know about--" "what kind of a job you think you're gonna get? adviser to a corporation lawyer? you're too soft, girl. what chance you think you got buckin' up against a town that wants value received from a woman. aw, you know what i mean, annie. you can't pull that baby stuff all the time." "you," she cried, beating her small hands together, "oh, you--you--" and then sat down, crying weakly. "them days back there! why, i--i was such a kid it's just like they hadn't been! with her and my grandmother dead and gone these twelve years, if it wasn't for you it's--it's like they'd never been." "nobody was gladder 'n me, girl, to see how you made a bed for yourself. i'm commendin' you, i am. that's just what i'm tryin' to tell you now, girl. you was cut out to be somebody's kitten, and--" "o god!" she sobbed into her handkerchief, "why didn't you take me when you took him?" "now, now, annie, i didn't mean to hurt your feelings. a good-lookin' woman like you 'ain't got nothing to worry about. lemme order you up a drink. you're gettin' weak again." "no, no; i'm taking 'em too often. but they warm me. they warm me, and i'm cold, joe--cold." "then lemme--" "no! no!" he put out a short, broad hand toward her. "poor little--" "i gotta go now, joe. these rooms ain't mine no more." he barred her path. "go where?" '"ain't i told you? i'm going out. anybody that's willin' to work can get it in this town. i ain't the softy you think i am." he took her small black purse up from the table. "what's your capital?" "you--quit!" "ten--'leven--fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents." "you gimme!" "you can't cut no capers on that, girl." "i--can work." he dropped something in against the coins. it clinked. she sprang at him. "no, no; not a cent from you--for myself. i--i didn't know you in them days for nothing. i was only a kid, but i--i know you! i know. you gimme! gimme!" he withheld it from her. "hold your horses, beauty! what i was then i am now, and i ain't ashamed of it. human, that's all. the best of us is only human before a pretty woman." "you gimme!" she had snatched up her small hand-satchel from the divan and stood flashing now beside him, her small, blazing face only level with his cravat. "what you spittin' fire for? that wa'n't nothin' i slipped in but my address, girl. when you need me call on me. 'the liberty, 96.' go right up in the elevator, no questions asked. get me?" he said, poking the small purse into the v of her jacket. "get me?" "oh, you--woh--woh--woh!" with her face flung back and twisted, and dodging his outflung arm, she was down four flights of narrow, unused stairs and out. once in the streets, she walked with her face still thrust up and a frenzy of haste in her stride. red had popped out in her cheeks. there was voice in each breath--moans that her throat would not hold. that night she slept in the kind of fifty-cent room the city offers its decent poor. a slit of a room with a black-iron bed and a damp mattress. a wash-stand gaunt with its gaunt mission. a slop-jar on a zinc mat. a caneless-bottom chair. the chair she propped against the door, the top slat of it beneath the knob. through a night of musty blackness she lay in a rigid line along the bed-edge. you who love the city for its million pulses, the beat of its great heart, and the terrific symphony of its soul, have you ever picked out from its orchestra the plaintive rune of the deserving poor? it is like the note of a wind instrument--an oboe adding its slow note to the boom of the kettle-drum, the clang of gold-colored cymbals, and the singing ecstasy of violins. one such small voice ann 'lisbeth connors added to the great threnody of industry. department stores that turned from her services almost before they were offered. offices gleaned from penny papers, miles of them, and hours of waiting on hard-bottom chairs in draughty waiting-rooms. faces, pasty as her own, lined up alongside, greedy of the morsel about to fall. when the pinch of poverty threatens men and wolves, they grow long-faced. in these first lean days, a week of them, ann 'lisbeth's face lengthened a bit, too, and with the fuzz of yellow bangs tucked well up under her not so decent black hat, crinkles came out about her eyes. nights she supped in a family-entrance café beneath her room--veal stew and a glass of beer. she would sit over it, not unpleasantly muzzy. she slept of nights now, and not so rigidly. then followed a week of lesser department stores as she worked her way down-town, of offices tucked dingily behind lithograph and small-ware shops, and even an ostrich-feather loft, with a "curlers wanted" sign hung out. in what school does the great army of industry earn its first experience? who first employs the untaught hand? upon ann 'lisbeth, untrained in any craft, it was as if the workaday world turned its back, nettled at a philistine. once she sat resting on a stoop beneath the sign of a woman's-aid bureau. she read it, but, somehow, her mind would not register. the calves of her legs and the line where her shoe cut into her heel were hurting. she supped in the family-entrance café again--the bowl of veal stew and two glasses of beer. some days following, her very first venture out into the morning, she found employment--a small printing-shop off sixth avenue just below twenty-third street. a mere pocket in the wall, a machine champing in its plate-glass front. visiting-cards while you wait thirty-five cents a hundred she entered. "the sign says--'girl wanted.'" a face peered down at her from a high chair behind the champing machine. "'goil wanted,' is what it says. goil!" "i--i ain't old," she faltered. "cut cards?" "i--try me." "five a week." "why--yes." "hang your coat and hat behind the sink." before noon, a waste of miscut cards about her, she cut her hand slightly, fumbling at the machine, and cried out. "for the love of mike--you want somebody to kiss it and make it well? here's a quarter for your time. with them butter-fingers, you better get a job greasin' popcorn." out in the sun-washed streets the wind had hauled a bit. it cut as she bent into it. with her additional quarter, she still had two dollars and twenty cents, and that afternoon, in lower sixth avenue, at the instance of another small card fluttering out in the wind, she applied as dishwasher in a lunch-room and again obtained--this time at six dollars a week and suppers. the jefferson market lunch room, thick with kicked-up sawdust and the fumes of hissing grease, was sunk slightly below the level of the sidewalk, a fitting retreat for the mole-like humanity that dined furtively at its counter. men with too short coat-sleeves and collars turned up; women with beery eyes and uneven skirt-hems dank with the bilge-water of life's lower decks. lower sixth avenue is the abode of these shadows. where are they from, and whither going--these women without beauty, who walk the streets without handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? what is the terrible riddle? why, even as they blubber, are there women whose bodies have the quality of cream, slipping in between scented sheets? ann 'lisbeth, hers not to argue, but accept, dallied with no such question. behind the lunch-room, a sink of unwashed dishes rose to a mound. she plunged her hands into tepid water that clung to her like fuzz. "ugh!" "go to it!" said the proprietor, who wore a black flap over one eye. "dey won't bite. if de grease won't cut, souse 'em wit' lye. don't try to muzzle no breakage on me, neither, like the slut before you. i kin hear a cup crack." "i won't," said ann 'lisbeth, a wave of the furry water slopping out and down her dress-front. followed four days spent in the grease-laden heat of the kitchen, the smell of strong foods, raw meat, and fish stews thick above the sink. she had moved farther down-town, against car fare; but because she talked now constantly in her sleep and often cried out, there were knockings from the opposite side of the partitions and oaths. for two evenings she sat until midnight in a small rear café, again pleasantly muzzy over three glasses of beer and the thick warmth of the room. another night she carried home a small bottle, tucking it beneath her coat as she emerged to the street. she was grease-stained now, in spite of precautions, and her hat, with her hair uncurled to sustain it, had settled down over her ears, grotesquely large. the week raced with her funds. on the sixth day she paid out her last fifty cents for room-rent, and, without breakfast, filched her lunch from a half-eaten order of codfish balls returned to the kitchen. yes, reader; but who are you to turn away sickened and know no more of this? you who love to bask in life's smile, but shudder at its drool! a carpenter did not sicken at a leper. he held out a hand. that night, upon leaving, she asked for a small advance on her week's wage, retreating before the furiously stained apron-front and the one eye of the proprietor cast down upon her. "lay off! lay off! who done your bankin' last year? to-morrow's your day, less four bits for breakage. speakin' o' breakage, if you drop your jacket, it'll bust. watch out! that pint won't last you overnight. layoff!" she reddened immediately, clapping her hand over the small protruding bottle in her pocket. she dared not return to her room, but sat out the night in a dark foyer behind a half-closed storm-door. no one found her out, and the wind could not reach her. toward morning she even slept sitting. but the day following, weak and too soft for the lift, straining to remove the great dish-pan high with crockery from sink to table, she let slip, grasping for a new hold. there was a crash and a splintered debris--plates that rolled like hoops to the four corners of the room, shivering as they landed; a great ringing explosion of heavy stoneware, and herself drenched with the webby water. "o god!" she cried in immediate hysteria. "o god! o god!" and fell to her knees in a frenzy of clearing-up. a raw-boned minerva, a waitress with whom she had had no previous word, sprang to her succor, a big, red hand of mercy jerking her up from the debris. "clear out! he's across the bar. beat it while the going's good. your week's gone in breakage, anyways, and he'll split up the place when he comes. clear out, girl, and here--for car fare." out in the street, her jacket not quite on and her hat clapped askew, ann 'lisbeth found herself quite suddenly scuttling down a side-street. in her hand a dime burnt up into the palm. for the first time in these weeks, except when her pint or the evening beer had vivified her, a warmth seemed to flow through ann 'lisbeth. chilled, and her wet clothing clinging in at the knees, a fever nevertheless quickened her. she was crying as she walked, but not blubbering--spontaneous hot tears born of acute consciousness of pain. a great shame at her smelling, grease-caked dress-front smote her, too, and she stood back in a doorway, scraping at it with a futile forefinger. february had turned soft and soggy, the city streets running mud, and the damp insidious enough to creep through the warmth of human flesh. a day threatened with fog from east river had slipped, without the interim of dusk, into a heavy evening. her clothing dried, but sitting in a small triangle of park in grove street, chill seized her again, and, faint for food, but with nausea for it, she tucked her now empty pint bottle beneath the bench. she was crying incessantly, but her mind still seeming to revive. her small black purse she drew out from her pocket. it had a collapsed look. yet within were a sample of baby-blue cotton crêpe, a receipt from a dyeing-and-cleaning establishment, and a bit of pink chamois; in another compartment a small assortment of keys. she fumbled among them, blind with tears. once she drew out, peering forward toward a street-lamp to inspect it. it clinked as she touched it, a small metal tag ringing. hotel liberty 96 an hour ann 'lisbeth sat there, with the key in her lax hand. finally she rubbed the pink chamois across her features and adjusted her hat, pausing to scrape again with forefinger at the front of her, and moved on through the gloom, the wind blowing her skirt forward. she boarded a seventh avenue street-car, extracting the ten-cent piece from her purse with a great show of well-being, sat back against the carpet-covered, lengthwise seat, her red hands, with the cut forefinger bound in rag, folded over her waist. at fiftieth street she alighted, the white lights of the whitest street in the world forcing down through the murk, and a theater crowd swarming to be turned from reality. the incandescent sign of the hotel liberty jutted out ahead. she did not pause. she was in and into an elevator even before a lackey turned to stare. she found "ninety-six" easily enough, inserting the key and opening the door upon darkness--a warm darkness that came flowing out scented. she found the switch, pressed it. a lamp with a red shade sprang up and a center chandelier. a warm-toned, well-tufted room, hotel chromos well in evidence, but a turkey-red air of solid comfort. beyond, a white-tiled bathroom shining through the open door, and another room hinted at beyond that. she dropped, even in her hat and jacket, against the divan piled with fat-looking satin cushions. tears coursed out from her closed eyes, and she relaxed as if she would swoon to the luxury of the pillows, burrowing and letting them bulge up softly about her. a half-hour she lay so in the warm bath of light, her little body so quickly fallen into vagrancy not without litheness beneath the moldy skirt. * * * * * some time after eight she rose, letting the warm water in the bathroom lave over her hands, limbering them, and from a bottle of eau de cologne in a small medicine-chest sprinkled herself freely and touched up the corners of her eyes with it. a thick robe of turkish toweling hung from the bathroom door. she unhooked it, looping it over one arm. a key scraped in the lock. from where she stood a rigidity raced over ann 'lisbeth, locking her every limb in paralysis. her mouth moved to open and would not. the handle turned, and, with a sudden release of faculties, darting this way and that, as if at bay, she tore the white-enameled medicine-chest from its moorings, and, with a yell sprung somewhere from the primordial depths of her, stood with it swung to hurl. the door opened and she lunged, then let it fall weakly and with a small crash. the chambermaid, white with shock at that cry, dropped her burden of towels in the open doorway and fled. ann 'lisbeth fled, too, down the two flights of stairs her frenzy found out for her, and across the flare of broadway. the fog from east river was blowing in grandly as she ran into its tulle. it closed around and around her. v golden fleece how saving a dispensation it is that men do not carry in their hearts perpetual ache at the pain of the world, that the body-thuds of the drink-crazed, beating out frantic strength against cell doors, cannot penetrate the beatitude of a mother bending, at that moment, above a crib. men can sit in club windows while, even as they sit, are battle-fields strewn with youth dying, their faces in mud. while men are dining where there are mahogany and silver and the gloss of women's shoulders, are men with kick-marks on their shins, ice gluing shut their eyes, and lashed with gale to some ship-or-other's crow's-nest. women at the opera, so fragrant that the senses swim, sit with consciousness partitioned against a sweating, shuddering woman in some forbidding, forbidden room, hacking open a wall to conceal something red-stained. one-half of the world does not know or care how the other half lives or dies. when, one summer, july came in like desert wind, west cabanne terrace and that part of residential st. louis that is set back in carefully conserved, grove-like lawns did not sip its iced limeades with any the less refreshment because, down-town at the intersection of broadway and west street, a woman trundling a bundle of washing in an old perambulator suddenly keeled of heat, saliva running from her mouth-corners. at three o'clock, that hour when so often a summer's day reaches its stilly climax and the heat-dance becomes a thing visible, west cabanne terrace and its kind slip into sheerest and crêpiest de chine, click electric fans to third speed, draw green shades, and retire for siesta. at that same hour, in the popular store, where broadway and west street intersect, one hundred and fifty salesgirls--jaded sentinels for a public that dares not venture down, loll at their counters and after the occasional shopper, relax deeper to limpidity. at the jewelry counter, a crystal rectangle facing broadside the main entrance and the bleached and sun-grilled street without, miss lola hassiebrock, salient among many and with olympian certainty of self, lifted two junoesque arms like unto the handles of a vase, held them there in the kind of rigidity that accompanies a yawn, and then let them flop. "oh-h-h-h, god bless my soul!" she said. miss josie beemis, narrowly constricted between shoulders that barely sloped off from her neck, with arms folded flat to her flat bosom and her back a hypothenuse against the counter, looked up. "watch out, loo! i read in the paper where a man up in alton got caught in the middle of one of those gaps and couldn't ungap." miss hassiebrock batted at her lips and shuddered. "it's my nerves, dearie. all the doctors say that nine gaps out of ten are nerves." miss beemis hugged herself a bit flatter, looking out straight ahead into a parasol sale across the aisle. "enough sleep ain't such a bad cure for gaps," she said. "i'll catch up in time, dearie; my foot's been asleep all day." "huh!"--sniffling so that her thin nose quirked sidewise. "i will now indulge in hollow laughter--" "you can't, dearie," said miss hassiebrock, driven to vaudevillian extremities, "you're cracked." "well, i may be cracked, but my good name ain't." a stiffening of miss hassiebrock took place, as if mere verbiage had suddenly flung a fang. from beneath the sternly and too starched white shirtwaist and the unwilted linen cravat wound high about her throat and sustained there with a rhinestone horseshoe, it was as if a wave of color had started deep down, rushing up under milky flesh into her hair. "is that meant to be an in-sinuating remark, josie?" "'tain't how it's meant; it's how it's took." "there's some poor simps in this world, maybe right here in this store, ought to be excused from what they say because they don't know any better." "i know this much: to catch the north end street-car from here, i don't have to walk every night down past the stag hotel to do it." at that miss hassiebrock's ears, with the large pearl blobs in them, tingled where they peeped out from the scallops of yellow hair, and she swallowed with a forward movement as if her throat had constricted. "i--take the street-car where i darn please, and it's nobody's darn business." "sure it ain't! only, if a poor working-girl don't want to make it everybody's darn business, she can't run around with the fast rich boys of this town and then get invited to help hem the altar-cloth." "anything i do in this town i'm not ashamed to do in broad daylight." "maybe; but just the samey, i notice the joy rides out to claxton don't take place in broad daylight. i notice that 'tall, striking blonde' and charley cox's speed-party in the morning paper wasn't exactly what you'd call a 'daylight' affair." "no, it wasn't; it was--my affair." "say, if you think a girl like you can run with the black sheep of every rich family in town and make a noise like a million dollars with the horsy way she dresses, it ain't my grave you're digging." "maybe if some of the girls in this store didn't have time to nose so much, they'd know why i can make them all look like they was caught out in the rain and not pressed the next morning. while they're snooping in what don't concern them i'm snipping. snipping over my last year's black-and-white-checked jacket into this year's cutaway. if you girls had as much talent in your needle as you've got in your conversation, you might find yourselves somewheres." "maybe what you call 'somewheres' is what lots of us would call 'nowheres.'" miss hassiebrock drew herself up and, from the suzerainty of sheer height, looked down upon miss beemis there, so brown and narrow beside the friendship-bracelet rack. "i'll have you know, josie beemis, that if every girl in this store watched her step like me, there'd be a darn sight less trouble in the world." "i know you don't go beyond the life-line, loo, but, gee! you--you do swim out some!" "little loo knows her own depth, all righty." "not the way you're cuttin' up with charley cox." miss hassiebrock lowered her flaming face to scrutinize a tray of rhinestone bar pins. "i'd like to see any girl in this store turn down a bid with charley cox. i notice there are plenty of you go out to the highland dances hoping to meet even his imitation." "the rich boys that hang around the stag and out to the highlands don't get girls like us anywheres." "i don't need them to get me anywhere. it's enough when a fellow takes me out that he can tuck me up in a six-cylinder and make me forget my stone-bruise. give me a fellow that smells of gasolene instead of bay rum every time. trolley-car johnnies don't mean nothing in my life." "you let john simeon out of this conversation!" "you let charley cox out!" "maybe he don't smell like a cleaned white glove, but john means something by me that's good." "well, since you're so darn smart, josie beemis, and since you got so much of the english language to spare, i'm going to tell you something. three nights in succession, and i can prove it by the crowd, charley cox has asked me to marry him. begged me last night out at claxton inn, with jess turner and all that bunch along, to let them roust out old man gerber there in claxton and get married in poetry. put that in your pipe and smoke it awhile, josie; it may soothe your nerve." "y-aw," said miss beemis. the day dwindled. died. at west street, where broadway intersects, the red sun at its far end settled redly and cleanly to sink like a huge coin into the horizon. the popular store emptied itself into this hot pink glow, scurried for the open street-car and, oftener than not, the overstuffed rear platform, nose to nose, breath to breath. fortunately the popular store took its semi-annual inventory of yards and not of souls. such a stock-taking, that of the human hearts which beat from half after eight to six behind six floors of counters, would have revealed empty crannies, worn thin in places with the grind of routine. the eight-thirty-to-six business of muslin underwear, crash toweling, and skirt-binding. the great middle class of shoppers who come querulous with bunions and babies. the strap-hanging homeward ride. supper, but usually within range of the range that boils it. the same smells of the same foods. the, cinematograph or front-stoop hour before bed. or, if love comes, and he will not be gainsaid, a bit of wooing at the fountain--the soda-fountain. but even he, oftener than not, comes moist-handed, and in a ready-tied tie. as if that matters, and yet somehow, it does. leander wore none, or had he, would have worn it flowing. then bed, and the routine of its unfolding and coaxing the pillow from beneath the iron clamp. an alarm-clock crashing through the stuff of dreams. coffee within reach of the range. another eight-thirty-to-six reality of muslin underwearing, crash toweling, and skirt-binding. but, not given to self-inventory, the popular store emptied itself with that blessed elasticity of spirit which, unappalled, stretches to to-morrows as they come. at ninth street miss lola hassiebrock loosed her arm where miss beemis had linked into it. wide-shouldered and flat-hipped, her checked suit so pressed that the lapels lay entirely flat to the swell of her bosom, her red sailor-hat well down over her brow, and the high, swathing cravat rising to inclose her face like a wimple, she was fashion's apotheosis in tailor-made mood. when miss hassiebrock walked, her skirt, concealing yet revealing an inch glimmer of gray-silk stocking above gray-suede spats, allowed her ten inches of stride. she turned now, sidestepping within those ten inches. "see you to-morrow, josie." "ain't you taking the car?" "no, dearie," said miss hassiebrock, stepping down to cross the street; "you take it, but not for keeps." and so, walking southward on ninth street in a sartorial glory that was of her own making-over from last season, even st. louis, which at the stroke of six rushes so for the breeze of its side yards, leaving darkness to creep into down-town streets that are as deserted as cañons, turned its feminine head to bear in mind the box-plaited cutaway, the male eye appraising its approval with bold, even quirking eye. through this, and like diana, who, so aloof from desire, walked in the path of her own splendor, strode miss hassiebrock, straight and forward of eye. past the stag hotel, in an aisle formed by lounging young bloods and a curb lined with low, long-snouted motor-cars, the gaze beneath the red sailor and above the high, horsy stock a bit too rigidly conserved. slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. a youth still wearing a fraternity pin pretended to lick his downy chops. the son of the president of the mound city oil company emitted a long, amorous whistle. willie waxter--youngest scion, scalawag, and scorcher of one of the oldest families--jammed down his motorgoggles from the visor of his cap, making the feint of pursuing. mr. charley cox, of half a hundred first-page exploits, did pursue, catching up slightly breathless. "what's your hurry, honey?" she spun about, too startled. "charley cox! well, of all the nerve! why didn't you scare me to death and be done with it?" "did i scare you, sweetness? cross my heart, i didn't mean to." "well, i should say you did!" he linked his arm into hers. "come on; i'll buy you a drink." she unlinked. "honest, can't a girl go home from work in this town without one of you fellows getting fresh with her?" "all right, then; i'll buy you a supper. the car is back there, and we'll shoot out to the inn. what do you say? i feel like a house afire this evening, kiddo. what does your speedometer register?" "charley, aren't you tired painting this old town yet? ain't there just nothing will bring you to your senses? honest, this morning's papers are a disgrace. you--you won't catch me along again." he slid his arm, all for ingratiating, back into hers. "come now, honey; you know you like me for my speed." she would not smile. "honest, charley, you're the limit." "but you like me just the same. now don't you, loo?" she looked at him sidewise. "you've been drinking, charley." he felt of his face. "not a drop, loo. i need a shave, that's all." "look at your stud--loose." he jammed a diamond whip curling back upon itself into his maroon scarf. he was slightly heavy, so that his hands dimpled at the knuckle, and above the soft collar, joined beneath the scarf with a goldbar pin, his chin threatened but did not repeat itself. "i got to go now, charley; there's a north end car coming." "aw, now, sweetness, what's the idea? didn't you walk down here to pick me up?" an immediate flush stung her face. "well, of all the darn conceit! can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?" "i got to hand it you, loo; when you walk down this street, you make every girl in town look warmed over." "do you like it, charley? it's that checked jacket i bought at hamlin's sale last year made over." "say, it's classy! you look like all the money in the world, honey." "huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and ida bell's last year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five." "you're the show-piece of the town, all right. come on; let's pick up a crowd and muss-up claxton road a little." "i meant what i said, charley. after the cuttings-up of last night and the night before i'm quits. maybe charley cox can afford to get himself talked about because he's charley cox, but a girl like me with a job to hold down, and the way ma and ida bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green around the gills, when i got home last night--nix! i'm getting myself talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, charley." "i'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of me. a fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with him than ask her to marry him--now can he? if i'd have had my way last night, i'd--" "you was drunk when you asked me, charley." "you mean you got cold feet?" "thank god, i did!" "i don't blame you, girl. you might do worse--but not much." "that's what you'd need for your finishing-touch, a girl like me dragging you down." "you mean pulling me up." "yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent." "i'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. you 'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. you're the kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and i wish it to you." "lots you know." "come on; let me ride you around the block, then." "if--if you like my company so much, can't you just take a walk with me or come out and sit on our steps awhile?" "lord, girl, flamm avenue is hot enough to fry my soul to-night!" "we can't all have fathers that live in thirty-room houses out in kingsmoreland place." "thank god for that! i sneaked home this morning to change my clothes, and thought maybe i'd got into somebody's mausoleum by mistake." "was--was your papa around, charley?" "in the library, shut up with old man brookes." "did he--did he see the morning papers? you know what he said last time, charley, when the motor-cycle cop chased you down an embankment." "honey, if my old man was to carry out every threat he utters, i'd be disinherited, murdered, hong-konged, shanghaied, and cremated every day in the year." "i got to go now, charley." "not let a fellow even spin you home?" "you know i want to, charley, but--but it don't do you any good, boy, being seen with me in that joy-wagon of yours. it--it don't do you any good, charley, ever--ever being seen with me." "there's nothing or nobody in this town can hurt my reputation, honey, and certainly not my ace-spot girl. turn your mind over, and telephone down for me to come out and pick you up about eight." "don't hit it up to-night, charley. can't you go home one evening?" he juggled her arm. "you're a nice little girl, all righty." "there's my car." he elevated her by the elbow to the step, swinging up half-way after her to drop a coin into the box. "take care of this little lady there, conductor, and don't let your car skid." "oh, charley--silly!" she forced her way into the jammed rear platform, the sharp brim of the red sailor creating an area for her. "s'long, charley!" "s'long, girl!" wedged there in the moist-faced crowd, she looked after him, at his broad back receding. an inclination to cry pressed at her eyeballs. flamm avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street, unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a gas-mask to the face. opening the door upon the hassiebrock front room, convertible from bedto sitting-room by the mere erect-position-stand of the folding-bed, a wave of this tarry heat came flowing out, gaseous, sickening. miss hassiebrock entered with her face wry, made a diagonal cut of the room, side-stepping a patent rocker and a table laid out with knickknacks on a lace mat, slammed closed two windows, and, turning inward, lifted off her hat, which left a brand across her forehead and had plastered down her hair in damp scallops. "whew!" "lo-o, that you?" "yes, ma." "come out to your supper. i'll warm up the kohlrabi." miss hassiebrock strode through a pair of chromatic portières, with them swinging after her, and into an unlit kitchen, gray with dusk. a table drawn out center and within range of the gas-range was a blotch in the gloom, three figures surrounding it with arms that moved vaguely among a litter of dishes. "i wish to heaven somebody in this joint would remember to keep those front windows shut!" miss ida bell hassiebrock, at the right of the table, turned her head so that, against the window, her profile, somewhat thin, cut into the gloom. "there's a lot of things i wish around here," she said, without a ripple to her lips. "hello, ma!" "i'll warm up the kohlrabi, loo." mrs. hassiebrock, in the green black of a cotton umbrella and as sparse of frame, moved around to the gas-range, scraping a match and dragging a pot over the blue flame. "never mind, ma; i ain't hungry." at the left of the table genevieve hassiebrock, with thirteen's crab-like silhouette of elbow, rigid plaits, and nose still hitched to the star of her nativity, wound an exceedingly long arm about miss hassiebrock's trim waist-line. "i got b in de-portment to-day, loo. you owe me the wear of your spats sunday." miss hassiebrock squeezed the hand at her waist. "all right, honey. cut loo a piece of bread." "gussie flint's mother scalded her leg with the wash-boiler." "did she? aw!" mrs. hassiebrock came then, limping around, tilting the contents of the steaming pot to a plate. "sit down, ma; don't bother." miss hassiebrock drew up, pinning a fringed napkin that stuck slightly in the unfolding across her shining expanse of shirtwaist. broke a piece of bread. dipped. silence. "paula krausnick only got c in de-portment. when the monitor passed the basin, she dipped her sponge soppin'-wet." "anything new, ma?" mrs. hassiebrock, now at the sink, swabbed a dish with gray water. "my feet's killin' me," she said. miss ida bell, who wore her hair in a coronet wound twice round her small head, crossed her knife and fork on her plate, folded her napkin, and tied it with a bit of blue ribbon. "i think it's a shame, ma, the way you keep thumping around in your stocking feet like this was backwoods." "i can't get my feet in shoes--the joints--" "you thump around as much as you darn please, ma. if ida bell don't like the looks of you, let her go home with some of her swell stenog friends. you let your feet hurt you any old way you want 'em to. i'm going to buy you some arnica. pass the kohlrabi." "well, my swell 'stenog friends,' as you call them, keep themselves self-respecting girls without getting themselves talked about, and that's more than i can say of my sister. if ma had the right kind of gumption with you, she'd put a stop to it, all right." mrs. hassiebrock leaned her tired head sidewise into the moist palm of her hand. "she's beyond me and the days when a slipper could make her mind. i wisht to god there was a father to rule youse!" "i tell you, ma--mark my word for it--if old man brookes ever finds out i'm sister to any of the crowd that runs with charley cox and willie waxter and those boys whose fathers he's lawyer for, it'll queer me for life in that office--that's what it will. a girl that's been made confidential stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like i am, to pick up the morning's paper." "paula krausnick's lunch was wrapped in the paper where charley cox got pinched for speedin'--speedin'--speedin'--" "shut up, genevieve! just don't you let my business interfere with yours, ida bell. brookes don't know you're on earth outside of your dictation-book. take it from me, i bet he wouldn't know you if he met you on the street." "that's about all you know about it! if you found yourself confidential stenographer to the biggest lawyer in town, he'd know you, all right--by your loud dressing. a blind man could see you coming." "ma, are you going to stand there and let her talk to me thataway? i notice she's willing to borrow my loud shirtwaists and my loud gloves and my loud collars." "if ma had more gumption with you, maybe things would be different." mrs. hassiebrock limped to the door, dangling a pail. "i 'ain't got no more strength against her. my ears won't hold no more. i'm taking this hot oil down to mrs. flint's scalds. she's, beyond my control, and the days when a slipper could make her mind. i wisht to god there was a father! i wisht to god!" her voice trailed off and down a rear flight of stairs. "yes _sir_," resumed miss hassiebrock, her voice twanging in her effort at suppression, "i notice you're pretty willing to borrow some of my loud dressing when you get a bid once in a blue moon to take a boat-ride up to alton with that sad-faced roy brownell. if charley didn't have a cent to his name and a harelip, he'd make roy brownell look like thirty cents." "if roy brownell was charley cox, i'd hate to leave him laying around loose where you could get your hands on him." "genevieve, you run out and play." "if--if you keep running around till all hours of the night, with me and ma waiting up for you, kicking up rows and getting your name insinuated in the newspapers as 'the tall, handsome blonde,' i--i'm going to throw up my job, i am, and you can pay double your share for the running of this flat. next thing we know, with that crowd that don't mean any good to you, this family is going to find itself with a girl in trouble on its hands." "you--" "and if you want to know it, and if i wasn't somebody's confidential stenographer, i could tell you that you're on the wrong scent. boys like charley cox don't mean good by your kind of a girl. if you're not speedy, you look it, and that's almost the same as inviting those kind of boys to--" miss lola hassiebrock sprang up then, her hand coming down in a small crash to the table. "you cut out that talk in front of that child!" thus drawn into the picture, genevieve, at thirteen, crinkled her face for not uncalculating tears. "in this house it's fuss and fuss and fuss. other children can go to the 'movies' after supper, only me-e-e--" "here, honey; loo's got a dime for you." "sending that child out along your own loose ways, instead of seeing to it she stays home to help ma do the dishes!" "i'll do the dishes for ma." "it's bad enough for one to have the name of being gay without starting that child running around nights with--" "ida bell!" "you dry up, ida bell! i'll do what i pl--ease with my di--uhm--di--uhm." "if you say another word about such stuff in front of that child, i'll--" "well, if you don't want her to hear what she sees with her eyes all around her, come into the bedroom, then, and i can tell you something that'll bring you to your senses." "what you can tell me i don't want to hear." "you're afraid." "i am, am i?" "yes." with a wrench of her entire body, miss lola hassiebrock was across the room at three capacity strides, swung open a door there, and stood, head flung up and pressing back tears, her lips turned inward. "all right, then--tell--" after them, the immediately locked door resisting, genevieve fell to batting the panels. "let me in! let me in! you're fussin' about your beaux. ray brownell has a long face, and charley cox has a red face--red face--red face! let me in! in!" after a while the ten-cent piece rolled from her clenched and knocking fist, scuttling and settling beneath the sink. she rescued it and went out, lickety-clapping down the flight of rear stairs. silence descended over that kitchen, and a sooty dusk that almost obliterated the table, drawn out and cluttered after the manner of those who dine frowsily; the cold stove, its pots cloying, and a sink piled high with a task whose only ending is from meal to meal. finally that door swung open again; the wide-shouldered, slim-hipped silhouette of miss hassiebrock moved swiftly and surely through the kind of early darkness, finding out for itself a wall telephone hung in a small patch of hallway separating kitchen and front room. her voice came tight, as if it were a tense coil in her throat that she held back from bursting into hysteria. "give me olive, two-one-o." the toe of her boot beat a quick tattoo. "stag?... say, get me charley cox. he's out in front or down in the grill or somewhere around. page him quick! important!" she grasped the nozzle of the instrument as she waited, breathing into it with her head thrown back. "hello--charley? that you? it's me. loo ... _loo_! are you deaf, honey? what you doing?... oh, i got the blues, boy; honest i have. blue as a cat.... i don't know--just the indigoes. nothing much. ain't lit up, are you, honey?... sure i will. don't bring a crowd. just you and me. i'll walk down to gessler's drug-store and you can pick me up there.... quit your kidding.... ten minutes. yeh. good-by." * * * * * claxton inn, slightly outside the city limits and certain of its decorums, stands back in a grove off a macadamized highway that is so pliant to tire that of summer nights, with tops thrown back and stars sown like lavish grain over a close sky and to a rushing breeze that presses the ears like an eager whisper, motor-cars, wild to catch up with the horizon, tear out that road--a lightning-streak of them--fearing neither penal law nor dead man's curve. slacking only to be slacked, cars dart off the road and up a gravel driveway that encircles claxton inn like a lariat swung, then park themselves among the trees, lights dimmed. placid as a manse without, what was once a private and now a public house maintains through lowered lids its discreet white-frame exterior, shades drawn, and only slightly revealing the parting of lace curtains. it is rearward where what was formerly a dining-room that a huge, screened-in veranda, very whitely lighted, juts suddenly out, and a showy hallway, bordered in potted palms, leads off that. here discretion dares lift her lids to rove the gravel drive for who comes there. in a car shaped like a motor-boat and as low to the ground mr. charley cox turned in and with a great throttling and choking of engine drew up among the dim-eyed monsters of the grove and directly alongside an eight-cylinder roadster with a snout like a greyhound. "aw, charley, i thought you promised you wasn't going to stop!" "honey, sweetness, i just never was so dry." miss hassiebrock laid out a hand along his arm, sitting there in the quiet car, the trees closing over them. "there's yiddles farm a little farther out, charley; let's stop there for some spring water." he was peeling out of his gauntlets, and cramming them into spacious side pockets. "water, honey, can wash me, but it can't quench me." "no high jinks to-night, though, charley?" "sure--no." they high-stepped through the gloom, and finally, with firmer step, up the gravel walk and into the white-lighted, screened-in porch. three waiters ran toward their entrance. a woman with a bare v of back facing them, and three plumes that dipped to her shoulders, turned square in her chair. "hi, charley. hi, loo!" "h'lo, jess!" they walked, thus guided by two waiters, through a light _confetti_ of tossed greetings, sat finally at a table half concealed by an artificial palm. "you don't feel like sitting with jess and the crowd, loo?" "charley, hasn't that gang got you into enough mix-ups?" "all right, honey; anything your little heart desires." she leaned on her elbows across the table from him, smiling and twirling a great ring of black onyx round her small finger. "love me?" "br-r-r--to death!" "sure?" "sure. what'll you have, hon?" "i don't care." "got any my special gold top on ice for me, george? good. shoot me a bottle and a special layout of _hors-d'oeuvre_. how's that, sweetness?" "yep." "poor little girl," he said, patting the black onyx, "with the bad old blues! i know what they are, honey; sometimes i get crazy with 'em myself." her lips trembled. "it's you makes me blue, charley." "now, now; just don't worry that big, nifty head of yours about me." "the--the morning papers and all. i--i just hate to see you going so to--to the dogs, charley--a--fellow like you--with brains." "i'm a bad egg, girl, and what you going to do about it? i was raised like one, and i'll die like one." "you ain't a bad egg. you just never had a chance. you been killed with coin." "killed with coin! why, loo, do you know, i haven't had to ask my old man for a cent since my poor old granny died five years ago and left me a world of money? while he's been piling it up like the rocky mountains i've been getting down to rock-bottom. what would you say, sweetness, if i told you i was down to my last few thousands? time to touch my old man, eh?" he drank off his first glass with a quaff, laughing and waving it empty before her face to give off its perfume. "my old man is going to wake up in a minute and find me on his checking-account again. charley boy better be making connections with headquarters or he won't find himself such a hit with the niftiest doll in town, eh?" "charley, you--you haven't run through those thousands and thousands and thousands the papers said you got from your granny that time?" "it was slippery, hon; somebody buttered it." "charley, charley, ain't there just no limit to your wildness?" "you're right, girl; i've been killed with coin. my old man's been too busy all these years sitting out there in that marble tomb in kingsmoreland biting the rims off pennies to hold me back from the devil. honey, that old man, even if he is my father, didn't know no more how to raise a boy like me than that there salt-cellar. every time i got in a scrape he bought me out of it, filled up the house with rough talk, and let it go at that. it's only this last year, since he's short on health, that he's kicking up the way he should have before it got too late. my old man never used to talk it out with me, honey. he used to lash it out. i got a twelve-year-old welt on my back now, high as your finger. maybe it'll surprise you, girl, but now, since he can't welt me up any more, me and him don't exchange ten words a month." "did--did he hear about last night, charley? you know what came out in the paper about making a new will if--if you ever got pulled in again for rough-housing?" "don't you worry that nifty head of yours about my old man ever making a new will. he's been pulling that ever since they fired me from the academy for lighting a cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill." "charley!" "next to taking it with him, he'll leave it to me before he'll see a penny go out of the family. i've seen his will, hon." "charley, you--you got so much good in you. the way you sent that wooden leg out to poor old lady guthrie. the way you made jimmy ball go home, and the blind-school boys and all. why can't you get yourself on the right track where you belong, charley? why don't you clear--out--west where it's clean?" "i used to have that idea, loo. west, where a fellow's got to stand on his own. why, if i'd have met a girl like you ten years ago, i'd have made you the baby doll of the pacific coast. i like you, loo. i like your style and the way you look like a million dollars. when a fellow walks into a café with you he feels like he's wearing the hope diamond. maybe the society in this town has given me the cold shoulder, but i'd like to see any of the safety-first boys walk in with one that's got you beat. that's what i think of you, girl." "aw, now, you're lighting up. charley. that's four glasses you've taken." "thought i was kidding you last night--didn't you--about wedding-bells?" "you were lit up." "i know. you're going to watch your step, little girl, and i don't know as i blame you. you can get plenty of boys my carat, and a lot of other things thrown in i haven't got to offer you." "as if i wouldn't like you, charley, if you were dead broke!" "of course you would! there, there, girl, i don't blame any of you for feathering your nest." he was flushed now and above the soft collar, his face had relaxed into a not easily controllable smile. "feather your nest, girl; you got the looks to do it. it's a far cry from flamm avenue to where a classy girl like you can land herself if she steers right. and i wish it to you, girl; the best isn't good enough." "i--i dare you to ask me again, charley!" "ask what?" "you know. throw your head up the way you do when you mean what you say and--ask." he was wagging his head now insistently, but pinioning his gaze with the slightly glassy stare of those who think none too clearly. "honest, i don't know, beauty. what's the idea?" "didn't you say yourself--gerber, out here in claxton that--magistrate that marries you in verse--" "by gad, i did!" "well--i--i--dare you to ask me again, charley." he leaned forward. "you game, girl?" "sure." "no kidding?" "try me." "i'm serious, girl." "so'm i." "there's jess over there can get us a special license from his brother-in-law. married in verse in claxton sounds good to me, honey." "but not--the crowd, charley; just you--and--" "how're we going to get the license, honey, this time of night without jess? let's make it a million-dollar wedding. we're not ashamed of nobody or nothing." "of course not, charley." "now, you're sure, honey? you're drawing a fellow that went to the dogs before he cut his canines." "you're not all to the canines yet, charley." "i may be a black sheep, honey, but, thank god, i got my golden fleece to offer you!" "you're not--black." "you should worry, girl! i'm going to make you the million-dollar baby doll of this town, i am. if they turn their backs, we'll dazzle 'em from behind. i'm going to buy you every gewgaw this side of the mississippi. i'm going to show them a baby doll that can make the high-society bunch in this town look like subway sports. are you game, girl? now! think well! here goes. jess!" "charley--i--you--" "jess--over here! quick!" "charley--honey--" * * * * * at eleven o'clock a small, watery moon cut through a sky that was fleecily clouded--a swift moon that rode fast as a ship. it rode over but did not light squire gerber's one-and-a-half-storied, weathered-gray, and set-slightly-in-a-hollow house on claxton countryside. three motor-cars, their engines chugging out into wide areas of stillness, stood processional at the curb. a red hall light showed against the door-pane and two lower-story windows were widely illuminated. within that room of chromos and the cold horsehair smell of unaired years, silence, except for the singing of three gas-jets, had momentarily fallen, a dozen or so flushed faces, grotesquely sobered, staring through the gaseous fog, the fluttering lids of a magistrate whose lips habitually fluttered, just lifting from his book. a hysterical catch of breath from miss vera de long broke the ear-splitting silence. she reached out, the three plumes dipping down the bare v of her back, for the limp hand of the bride. "gawd bless you, dearie; it's a big night's work!" * * * * * in the tallest part of st. louis, its busiest thoroughfares inclosing it in a rectangle, the hotel sherman, where traveling salesmen with real alligator bags and third-finger diamonds habitually shake their first pullman dust, rears eighteen stories up through and above an aeriality of soft-coal smoke, which fits over the rim of the city like a skull-cap. in the louis quinze, gilt-bedded, gilt-framed, gilt-edged bridal-suite _de luxe_ on the seventeenth floor, mrs. charley cox sat rigid enough and in shirt-waisted incongruity on the lower curl of a gilt divan that squirmed to represent the letter s. "charley--are you--sorry?" he wriggled out of his dust-coat, tossing it on the gilt-canopied bed and crossed to her, lifting off her red sailor. "now that's a fine question for a ten-hours' wifey to ask her hubby, ain't it? am i sorry, she asks me before the wedding crowd has turned the corner. lord, honey, i never expected anything like you to happen to me!" she stroked his coat-sleeve, mouthing back tears. "now everybody'll say--you're a goner--for sure--marrying a--popular store girl." "if anybody got the worst of this bargain, it's my girl." "my own boy," she said, still battling with tears. "you drew a black sheep, honey, but i say again and again, 'thank god, you drew one with golden fleece!'" "that--that's the trouble, charley--there's just no way to make a boy with money know you married him for any other reason." "i'm not blaming you, honey. lord! what have i got besides money to talk for me?" "lots. why--like jess says, charley, when you get to squaring your lips and jerking up your head, there's nothing in the world you can't do that you set out to do." "well, i'm going to set out to make the stiff-necks of this town turn to look at my girl, all right. i'm going to buy you a chain of diamonds that'll dazzle their eyes out; i'm--" "charley, charley, that's not what i want, boy. now that i've got you, there ain't a chain of diamonds on earth i'd turn my wrist for." "yes, there is, girl; there's a string of pear-shaped ones in--" "i want you to buck up, honey; that's the finest present you can give me. i want you to buck up like you didn't have a cent to your name. i want you to throw up your head the way you do when you mean business, and show that charley cox, without a cent to his name, would be--" "would be what, honey?" "a winner. you got brains, charley--if only you'd have gone through school and shown them. if you'd only have taken education, charley, and not got fired out of all the academies, my boy would beat 'em all. lord! boy, there's not a day passes over my head i don't wish for education. that's why i'm so crazy my little sister genevieve should get it. i'd have took to education like a fish to water if i'd have had the chance, and there you were, charley, with every private school in town and passed 'em up." "i know, girl, just looks like every steer i gave myself was the wrong steer till it was too late to get in right again. bad egg, i tell you, honey." "too late! why, charley--and you not even thirty-one yet? with your brains and all--too late! you make me laugh. if only you will--why, i'm game to go out west, charley, on a ranch, where you can find your feet and learn to stand on them. you got stuff in you, you have. jess turner says you was always first in school, and when you set your jaw there wasn't nothing you couldn't get on top of. if you'd have had a mother and--and a father that wasn't the meanest old man in town, dear, and had known how to raise a hot-headed boy like you, you'd be famous now instead of notorious--that's what you'd be." he patted her yellow hair, tilting her head back against his arm, pinching her cheeks together and kissing her puckered mouth. "dream on, honey. i like you crazy, too." "but, honey, i--" "you married this millionaire kid, and, bless your heart, he's going to make good by showing you the color of his coin!" "charley!" she sprang back from the curve of his embrace, unshed tears immediately distilled. "why, honey--i didn't mean it that way! i didn't mean to hurt your feelings. what i meant was--'sh-h-h-h, loo--all i meant was, it's coming to you. where'd the fun be if i couldn't make this town point up its ears at my girl? nobody knows any better than your hubby what his loo was cut out for. she was cut out for queening it, and i'm going to see that she gets what's her due. wouldn't be surprised if the papers have us already. let's see what we'll give them with their coffee this morning." he unfolded his fresh sheet, shaking it open with one hand and still holding her in the cove of his arm. "guess we missed the first edition, but they'll get us sure." she peered at the sheet over his shoulder, her cheek against his and still sobbing a bit in her throat. the jerking of her breath stopped then; in fact, it was as if both their breathing had let down with the oneness of a clock stopped. it was she who moved first, falling back from him, her mouth dropping open slightly. he let the paper fall between his wide-spread knees, the blood flowing down from his face and seeming to leave him leaner. "charley--charley--darling!" "my--poor old man!" he said in a voice that might have been his echo in a cave. "he--his heart must have give out on him, charley, while he slept in the night." "my--poor--old--man!" she stretched out her hand timidly to his shoulder. "charley--boy--my poor boy!" he reached up to cover her timid touch, still staring ahead, as if a mental apathy had clutched him. "he died like--he--lived. gad--it's--tough!" "it--it wasn't your fault, darling. god forgive me for speaking against the dead, but--everybody knows he was a hard man, charley--the way he used to beat you up instead of showing you the right way. poor old man, i guess he didn't know--" "my old man--dead!" she crept closer, encircling his neck, and her wet cheek close to his dry one. "he's at peace now, darling--and all your sins are forgiven--like you forgive--his." his lips were twisting. "there was no love lost there, girl. god knows there wasn't. there was once nine months we didn't speak. never could have been less between a father and son. you see he--he hated me from the start, because my mother died hating him--but--_dead_--that's another matter. ain't it, girl--ain't it?" she held her cheek to his so that her tears veered out of their course, zigzagging down to his waistcoat, stroked his hair, placing her rich, moist lips to his eyelids. "my darling! my darling boy! my own poor darling!" sobs rumbled up through him, the terrific sobs that men weep. "you--married a rotter, loo--that couldn't even live decent with his--old man. he--died like a dog--alone." "'sh-h-h, charley! just because he's dead don't mean he was any better while he lived." "i'll make it up to you, girl, for the rotter i am. i'm a rich man now, loo." "'sh-h-h!" "i'll show you, girl. i can make somebody's life worth living. i'm going to do something for somebody to prove i'm worth the room i occupy, and that somebody's going to be you, loo. i'm going to build you a house that'll go down in the history of this town. i'm going to wind you around with pearls to match that skin of yours. i'm going to put the kind of clothes on you that you read of queens wearing. i've seen enough of the kind of meanness money can breed. i'm going to make those romans back there look like pikers. i'm--" she reached out, placing her hand pat across his mouth, and, in the languid air of the room, shuddering so that her lips trembled. "charley--for god's sake--it--it's a sin to talk that way!" "o god, i know it, girl! i'm all muddled--muddled." he let his forehead drop against her arm, and in the long silence that ensued she sat there, her hand on his hair. the roar of traffic, seventeen stories below, came up through the open windows like the sound of high seas, and from where she sat, staring out between the pink-brocade curtains, it was as if the close july sky dipped down to meet that sea, and space swam around them. "o god!" he said, finally. "what does it all mean--this living and dying--" "right living, charley, makes dying take care of itself." "god! how he must have died, then! like a dog--alone." "'sh-h-h, charley; don't get to thinking." without raising his head, he reached up to stroke her arm. "honey, you're shivering." "no-o." "everything's all right, girl. what's the use me trying to sham it's not. i--i'm bowled over for the minute, that's all. if it had to come, after all, it--it came right for my girl. with that poor old man out there, honey, living alone like a dog all these years, it's just like putting him from one marble mausoleum out there on kingsmoreland place into one where maybe he'll rest easier. he's better off, loo, and--we--are too. hand me the paper, honey; i--want to see--just how my--poor old man--breathed out." then mrs. cox rose, her face distorted with holding back tears, her small high heels digging into and breaking the newspaper at his feet. "charley--charley--" "why, girl, what?" "you don't know it, but my sister, charley--ida bell!" "why, loo, i sent off the message to your mama. they know it by now." "charley--charley--" "why, honey, you're full of nerves! you mustn't go to pieces like this. your sister's all right. i sent them a--" "you--you don't know, charley. my sister--i swore her an oath on my mother's prayer-book. i wouldn't tell, but, now that he's dead, that--lets me out. the will--charley, he made it yesterday, like he always swore he would the next time you got your name on the front page." "made what, honey? who?" "charley, can't you understand? my sister ida bell and brookes--your father's lawyer. she's his private stenographer--brookes's, honey. you know that. but she told me last night, honey, when i went home. you're cut off, charley! your old man sent for brookes yesterday at noon. i swear to god, charley! my sister ida bell she broke her confidence to tell me. he's give a million alone to the new college hospital. half a million apiece to four or five old people's homes. he's give his house to the city with the art-gallery. he's even looked up relations to give to. he kept his word, honey, that all those years he kept threatening. he--he kept it the day before he died. he must have had a hunch--your poor old man. charley darling, don't look like that! if your wife ain't the one to break it to you you're broke, who is? you're not 'million dollar charley' no more, honey. you're just my own charley, with his chance come to him--you hear, _my_ charley, with the best thing that ever happened to him in his life happening right now." he regarded her as if trying to peer through something opaque, his hands spread rather stupidly on his wide knees. "huh?" "charley, charley, can't you understand? a dollar, that puts him within the law, is all he left you." "he never did. he never did. he wouldn't. he couldn't. he never did. i saw--his will. i'm the only survivor. i saw his will." "charley, i swear to god! i swear as i'm standing here you're cut off. my sister copied the new will on her typewriter three times and seen the sealed and stamped one. he kept his word. he wrote it with his faculties and witnesses. we're broke, charley--thank god, we're flat broke!" "he did it? he did it? my old man did it?" "as sure as i'm standing here, charley." he fell to blinking rapidly, his face puckering to comprehend. "i never thought it could happen. but i--i guess it could happen. i think you got me doped, honey." "charley, charley!" she cried, falling down on her knees beside him, holding his face in the tight vise of her hands and reading with such closeness into his eyes that they seemed to merge into one. "haven't you got your loo? haven't you got her?" he sprang up at that, jerking her backward, and all the purple-red gushed up into his face again. "yes, by god, i've got you! i'll break the will. i'll--" "charley, no--no! he'd rise out of his grave at you. it's never been known where a will was broke where they didn't rise out of the grave to haunt." he took her squarely by the shoulders, the tears running in furrows down his face. "i'll get you out of this, loo. no girl in god's world will have to find herself tied up to me without i can show her a million dollars every time she remembers that she's married to a rotter. i'll get you out of this, girl, so you won't even show a scratch. i'll--" "charley," she said, lifting herself by his coat lapels, and her eyes again so closely level with his, "you're crazy with the heat--stark, raving crazy! you got your chance, boy, to show what you're made of--can't you see that? we're going west, where men get swept out with clean air and clean living. we'll break ground in this here life for the kind of pay-dirt that'll make a man of you. you hear? a man of you!" he lifted her arms, and because they were pressing insistently down, squirmed out from beneath them. "you're a good sport, girl; nobody can take that from you. but just the same, i'm going to let you off without a scratch." "'good sport'! i'd like to know, anyways, where i come in with all your solid-gold talk. me that's stood behind somebody-or-other's counter ever since i had my working-papers." "i'll get you out of--" "have i ever lived anywheres except in a dirty little north st. louis flat with us three girls in a bed? haven't i got my name all over town for speed, just because i've always had to rustle out and try to learn how to flatten out a dime to the size of a dollar? where do i come in on the solid-gold talk, i'd like to know. i'm the penny-splitter of the world, the girl that made the five-and-ten-cent store millinery department famous. i can look tailor-made on a five-dollar bill and a tissue-paper pattern. why, honey, with me scheming for you, starting out on your own is going to make a man of you. you got stuff in you. i knew it, charley, the first night you spied me at the highlands dance. somewhere out west charley cox is now going to begin to show 'em the stuff in charley cox--that's what charley cox & co. are going to do!" he shook his head, turning away his eyes to hide their tears. "you been stung, loo. nothing on earth can change that." she turned his face back to her, smiling through her own tears. "you're not adding up good this morning, mr. cox. when do you think i called you up last night? when could it have been if not after my sister broke her confidence to tell me? why do you think all of a sudden last night i seen your bluff through about gerber? it was because i knew i had you where you needed me, charley--i never would have dragged you down the other way in a million years, but when i knew i had you where you needed me--why, from that minute, honey, you didn't have a chance to dodge me!" she wound her arms round him, trembling between the suppressed hysteria of tears and laughter. "not a chance, charley!" he jerked her so that her face fell back from him, foreshortened. "loo--oh, girl! oh, girl!" her throat was tight and would not give her voice for coherence. "charley--we--we'll show 'em--you--me!" looking out above her head at the vapory sky showing through the parting of the pink-brocade curtains, rigidity raced over mr. cox, stiffening his hold of her. the lean look had come out in his face; the flanges of his nose quivered; his head went up. vi nightshade over the silent places of the world flies the vulture of madness, pausing to wheel above isolated farm-houses, where a wife, already dizzy with the pressure of rarefied silence, looks up, magnetized. then across the flat stretches, his shadow under him moving across moor and the sand of desert, slowing at the perpetually eastern edge of a mirage, brushing his actual wings against the brick of city walls; the garret of a dreamer, brain-sick with reality. flopping, until she comes to gaze, outside the window of one so alone in a crowd that her four hall-bedroom walls are closing in upon her. lowering over a childless house on the edge of a village. were times when mrs. hanna burkhardt, who lived on the edge of a village in one such childless house, could in her fancy hear the flutter of wings, too. there had once been a visit to a doctor in high street because of those head-noises and the sudden terror of not being able to swallow. he had stethoscoped and prescribed her change of scene. had followed two weeks with cousins fifty miles away near lida, ohio, and a day's stop-over in cincinnati allowed by her railroad ticket. but six months after, in the circle of glow from a tablelamp that left the corners of the room in a chiaroscuro kind of gloom, there were again noises of wings rustling and of water lapping and the old stricture of the throat. across the table, a paisley cover between them, mr. john burkhardt, his short spade of beard already down over his shirt-front, arm hanging lax over his chair-side and newspaper fallen, sat forward in a hunched attitude of sleep, whistling noises coming occasionally through his breathing. a china clock, the centerpiece of the mantel, ticked spang into the silence, enhancing it. hands in lap, head back against the mat of her chair, mrs. burkhardt looked straight ahead of her into this silence--at a closed door hung with a newspaper rack, at a black-walnut horsehair divan, a great sea-shell on the carpet beside it. a nickelplated warrior gleamed from the top of a baseburner that showed pink through its mica doors. he stood out against the chocolate-ocher wallpaper and a framed declaration of independence, hanging left. a coal fell. mr. burkhardt sat up, shook himself of sleep. "little chilly," he said, and in carpet slippers and unbuttoned waistcoat moved over to the base-burner, his feet, to avoid sloughing, not leaving the floor. he was slightly stooped, the sateen back to his waistcoat hiking to the curve of him. but he swung up the scuttle with a swoop, rattling coal freely down into the red-jowled orifice. "ugh, don't!" she said. "i'm burnin' up." he jerked back the scuttle, returning to his chair, and, picking up the fallen newspaper, drew down his spectacles from off his brow and fell immediately back into close, puckered scrutiny of the printed page. "what time is it, burkhardt? that old thing on the mantel's crazy." he drew out a great silver watch. "seven-forty." "o god!" she said. "i thought it was about ten." the clock ticked in roundly again except when he rustled his paper in the turning. the fire was crackling now, too, in sharp explosions. beyond the arc of lamp the room was deeper than ever in shadow. finally john burkhardt's head relaxed again to his shirt-front, the paper falling gently away to the floor. she regarded his lips puffing out as he breathed. hands clasped, arms full length on the table, it was as if the flood of words pressing against the walls of her, to be shrieked rather than spoken, was flowing over to him. he jerked erect again, regarding her through blinks. "must 'a' dozed off," he said, reaching down for his newspaper. she was winding her fingers now in and out among themselves. "burkhardt?" "eh?" "what--does a person do that's smotherin'?" "eh?" "i know. that's what i'm doing. smotherin'!" "a touch of the old trouble, hanna?" she sat erect, with her rather large white hands at the heavy base to her long throat. they rose and fell to her breathing. like heine, who said so potently, "i am a tragedy," so she, too, in the sulky light of her eyes and the pulled lips and the ripple of shivers over her, proclaimed it of herself. "seven-forty! god! what'll i do, burkhardt? what'll i do?" "go lay down on the sofa a bit, hanna. i'll cover you with a plaid. it's the head-noises again bothering you." "seven-forty! what'll i do? seven-forty and nothing left but bed." "i must 'a' dozed off, hanna." "yes; you must 'a' dozed off," she laughed, her voice eaten into with the acid of her own scorn. "yes; you must 'a' dozed off. the same way as you dozed off last night and last month and last year and the last eight years. the best years of my life--that's what you've dozed off, john burkhardt. he 'must 'a' dozed off,'" she repeated, her lips quivering and lifting to reveal the white line of her large teeth. "yes; i think you must 'a' dozed off!" he was reading again in stolid profile. she fell to tapping the broad toe of her shoe, her light, dilated eyes staring above his head. she was spare, and yet withal a roundness left to the cheek and forearm. long-waisted and with a certain swing where it flowed down into straight hips, there was a bony, olympian kind of bigness about her. beneath the washed-out blue shirtwaist dress her chest was high, as if vocal. she was not without youth. her head went up like a stag's to the passing of a band in the street, or a glance thrown after her, or the contemplation of her own freshly washed yellow hair in the sunlight. she wore a seven glove, but her nails had great depth and pinkness, and each a clear half-moon. they were dug down now into her palms. "for god's sake, talk! say something, or i'll go mad!" he laid his paper across his knee, pushing up his glasses. "sing a little something, hanna. you're right restless this evening." "'restless'!" she said, her face wry. "if i got to sit and listen to that white-faced clock ticking for many more evenings of this winter, you'll find yourself with a raving maniac on your hands. that's how restless i am!" he rustled his paper again. "don't read!" she cried. "don't you dare read!" he sat staring ahead, in a heavy kind of silence, breathing outward and passing his hand across his brow. her breathing, too, was distinctly audible. "lay down a bit, hanna. i'll cover you--" "if they land me in the bug-house, they can write on your tombstone when you die, 'hanna long burkhardt went stark raving mad crazy with hucking at home because i let her life get to be a machine from six-o'clock breakfast to eight-o'clock bed, and she went crazy from it.' if that's any satisfaction to you, they can write that on your tombstone." he mopped his brow this time, clearing his throat. "you knew when we married, hanna, they called me 'silent' burkhardt. i never was a great one for talking unless there was something i wanted to say." "i knew nothin' when i married you. nothin' except that along a certain time every girl that can gets married. i knew nothin' except--except--" "except what?" "nothin'." "i've never stood in your light, hanna, of having a good time. go ahead. i'm always glad when you go up-town with the neighbor women of a saturday evening. i'd be glad if you'd have 'em in here now and then for a little sociability. have 'em. play the graphophone for 'em. sing. you 'ain't done nothin' with your singin' since you give up choir." "neighbor women! old maids' choir! that's fine excitement for a girl not yet twenty-seven!" "come; let's go to a moving picture, hanna. go wrap yourself up warm." "movie! oh no; no movie for me with you snorin' through the picture till i'm ashamed for the whole place. if i was the kind of girl had it in me to run around with other fellows, that's what i'd be drove to do, the deal you've given me. movie! that's a fine enjoyment to try to foist off on a woman to make up for eight years of being so fed up on stillness that she's half-batty!" "maybe there's something showin' in the op'ry-house to-night." "oh, you got a record to be proud of, john burkhardt: not a foot in that opera-house since we're married. i wouldn't want to have your feelin's!" his quietude was like a great, impregnable, invisible wall inclosing him. "i'm not the man can change his ways, hanna. i married at forty, too late for that." "i notice you liked my pep, all righty, when i was workin' in the feed-yard office. i hadn't been in it ten days before you were hangin' on my laughs from morning till night." "i do yet, hanna--only you don't laugh no more. there's nothin' so fine in a woman as sunshine." "provided you don't have to furnish any of it." "because a man 'ain't got it in him to be light in his ways don't mean he don't enjoy it in others. why, there just ain't nothin' to equal a happy woman in the house! them first months, hanna, showed me what i'd been missin'. it was just the way i figured it--somebody around like you, singin' and putterin'. it was that laugh in the office made me bring it here, where i could have it always by me." "it's been knocked out of me, every bit of laugh i ever had in me; lemme tell you that." "i can remember the first time i ever heard you, hanna. you was standin" at the office window lookin' out in the yards at jerry sims unloadin' a shipment of oats; and little old cocker was standin' on top of one of the sacks barkin' his head off. i--" "yeh; i met clara sims on the street yesterday, back here for a visit, and she says to me, she says: 'hanna burkhardt, you mean to tell me you never done nothing with your voice! you oughta be ashamed. if i was your husband, i'd spend my last cent trainin' that contralto of yours. you oughtn't to let yourself go like this. women don't do it no more.' that, from the tackiest girl that ever walked this town. i wished high street had opened up and swallowed me." "now, hanna, you mustn't--" "in all these years never so much as a dance or a car-ride as far as middletown. church! church! church! till i could scream at the sight of it. not a year of my married life that 'ain't been a lodestone on my neck! eight of' 'em! eight!" "i'm not sayin' i'm not to blame, hanna. a woman like you naturally likes life. i never wanted to hold you back. if i'm tired nights and dead on my feet from twelve hours on 'em, i never wanted you to change your ways." "yes; with a husband at home in bed, i'd be a fine one chasin' around this town alone, wouldn't i? that's the thanks a woman gets for bein' self-respectin'." "i always kept hopin', hanna, i could get you to take more to the home." "the home--you mean the tomb!" "why, with the right attention, we got as fine an old place here as there is in this part of town, hanna. if only you felt like giving it a few more touches that kinda would make a woman-place out of it! it 'ain't changed a whit from the way me and my old father run it together. a little touch here and there, hanna, would help to keep you occupied and happier if--" "i know. i know what's comin'." "the pergola i had built. i used to think maybe you'd get to putter out there in the side-yard with it, trailin' vines; the china-paintin' outfit i had sent down from cincinnati when i seen it advertised in the _up-state gazette_; a spaniel or two from old cocker's new litter, barkin' around; all them things, i used to think, would give our little place here a feelin' that would change both of us for the better. with a more home-like feelin' things might have been different between us, hanna." "keepin" a menagerie of mangy spaniels ain't my idea of livin'." "aw, now, hanna, what's the use puttin' it that way? take, for instance, it's been a plan of mine to paint the house, with the shutters green and a band of green shingles runnin' up under the eaves. a little encouragement from you and we could perk the place up right smart. all these years it's kinda gone down--even more than when i was a bachelor in it. sunk in, kinda, like them iron jardinières i had put in the front yard for you to keep evergreen in. it's them little things, hanna. then that--that old idea of mine to take a little one from the orphanage--a young 'un around the--" "o lord!" "i ain't goin' to mention it if it aggravates you, but--but makin' a home out of this gray old place would help us both, hanna. there's no denyin' that. it's what i hoped for when i brought you home a bride here. just had it kinda planned. you putterin' around the place in some kind of a pink apron like you women can rig yourselves up in and--" "there ain't a girl in adalia has dropped out of things the way i have, i had a singin' voice that everybody in this town said--" "there's the piano, hanna, bought special for it." "i got a contralto that--" "there never was anything give me more pleasure than them first years you used it. i ain't much to express myself, but it was mighty fine, hanna, to hear you." "yes, i know; you snored into my singin' with enjoyment, all right." "it's the twelve hours on my feet that just seem to make me dead to the world, come evening." "a girl that had the whole town wavin' flags at her when she sung 'the holy city' at the nineteen hundred street-carnival! kittie scogin bevins, one of the biggest singers in new york to-day, nothing but my chorus! where's it got me these eight years? nowheres! she had enough sense to cut loose from ed bevins, who was a lodestone, too, and beat it. she's singing now in new york for forty a week with a voice that wasn't strong enough to be more than chorus to mine." "kittie scogin, hanna, is a poor comparison for any woman to make with herself." "it is, is it? well, i don't see it thataway. when she stepped off the train last week, comin' back to visit her old mother, i wished the whole depot would open up and swallow me--that's what i wished. me and her that used to be took for sisters. i'm eight months younger, and i look eight years older. when she stepped off that train in them white furs and a purple face-veil, i just wished to god the whole depot would open and swallow me. that girl had sense. o god! didn't she have sense!" "they say her sense is what killed ed bevins of shame and heartbreak." "say, don't tell me! it was town talk the way he made her toady to his folks, even after he'd been cut off without a cent. kittie told me herself the very sight of the old bevins place over on orchard street gives her the creeps down her back. if not for old lady scogin, 'way up in the seventies, she'd never put her foot back in this dump. that girl had sense." "there's not a time she comes back here it don't have an upsettin' influence on you, hanna." "i know what's upsettin' me, all right. i know!" he sighed heavily. "i'm just the way i am, hanna, and there's no teachin' an old dog new tricks. it's a fact i ain't much good after eight o'clock evenin's. it's a fact--a fact!" they sat then in a further silence that engulfed them like fog. a shift of wind blew a gust of dry snow against the window-pane with a little sleety noise. and as another evidence of rising wind, a jerk of it came down the flue, rattling the fender of a disused grate. "we'd better keep the water in the kitchen runnin' to-night. the pipes'll freeze." tick-tock. tick. tock. she had not moved, still sitting staring above the top of his head. he slid out his watch, yawning. "well, if you think it's too raw for the movin' pictures, hanna, i guess i'll be movin' up to bed. i got to be down to meet a five-o'clock shipment of fifty bales to-morrow. i'll be movin' along unless there's anything you want?" "no--nothing." "if--if you ain't sleepy awhile yet, hanna, why not run over to widow dinninger's to pass the time of evenin'? i'll keep the door on the latch." she sprang up, snatching a heavy black shawl, throwing it over her and clutching it closed at the throat. "where you goin', hanna?" "walkin'," she said, slamming the door after her. in adalia, chiefly remarkable for the indestructo safe works and a river which annually overflows its banks, with casualties, the houses sit well back from tree-bordered streets, most of them frame, shingle-roofed veterans that have lived through the cycle-like years of the bearing, the marrying, the burying of two, even three, generations of the same surname. a three-year-old, fifteen-mile traction connects the court-house with the indestructo safe works. high street, its entire length, is paved. during a previous mayoralty the town offered to the lida tool works a handsome bonus to construct branch foundries along its river-banks, and, except for the annual flood conditions, would have succeeded. in spring adalia is like a dear old lady's garden of marigold and bleeding-heart. flushes of sweetpeas ripple along its picket fences and off toward the backyards are long grape-arbors, in autumn their great fruit-clusters ripening to purple frost. come winter there is almost an instant shriveling to naked stalk, and the trellis-work behind vines comes through. even the houses seem immediately to darken of last spring's paint, and, with windows closed, the shades are drawn. oftener than not adalia spends its evening snugly behind these drawn shades in great scoured kitchens or dining-rooms, the house-fronts dark. when mrs. burkhardt stepped out into an evening left thus to its stilly depth, shades drawn against it, a light dust of snow, just fallen, was scurrying up-street before the wind, like something phantom with its skirts blowing forward. little drifts of it, dry as powder, had blown up against the porch. she sidestepped them, hurrying down a wind-swept brick walk and out a picket gate that did not swing entirely after. behind her, the house with its wimple of shingle roof and unlighted front windows seemed to recede somewhere darkly. she stood an undecided moment, her face into the wind. half down the block an arc-light swayed and gave out a moving circle of light. finally she turned her back and went off down a side-street, past a lighted corner grocer, crossed a street to avoid the black mouth of an alley, then off at another right angle. the houses here were smaller, shoulder to shoulder and directly on the sidewalk. before one of these, for no particular reason distinguishable from the others, mrs. burkhardt stepped up two shallow steps and turned a key in the center of the door, which set up a buzz on its reverse side. her hand, where it clutched the shawl at her throat, was reddening and roughening, the knuckles pushing up high and white. waiting, she turned her back to the wind, her body hunched up against it. there was a moving about within, the scrape of a match, and finally the door opening slightly, a figure peering out. "it's me, mrs. scogin--hanna burkhardt!" the door swung back then, revealing a just-lighted parlor, opening, without introduction of hall, from the sidewalk. "well, if it ain't hanna burkhardt! what you doin' out this kind of a night? come in. kittie's dryin' her hair in the kitchen. used to be she could sit on it, and it's ruint from the scorchin' curlin'-iron. i'll call her. sit down, hanna. how's burkhardt? i'll call her. oh, kittie! kit-tie, hanna burkhardt's here to see you." in the wide flare of the swinging lamp, revealing mrs. scogin's parlor of chromo, china plaque, and crayon enlargement, sofa, whatnot, and wax bouquet embalmed under glass, mrs. burkhardt stood for a moment, blowing into her cupped hands, unwinding herself of shawl, something niobian in her gesture. "yoo-hoo--it's only me, kit! shall i come out?" "naw--just a minute; i'll be in." mrs. scogin seated herself on the edge of the sofa, well forward, after the manner of those who relax but ill to the give of upholstery. she was like a study of what might have been the grandmother of one of rembrandt's studies of a grandmother. there were lines crawling over her face too manifold for even the etcher's stroke, and over her little shriveling hands that were too bird-like for warmth. there is actually something avian comes with the years. in the frontal bone pushing itself forward, the cheeks receding, and the eyes still bright. there was yet that trenchant quality in mrs. scogin, in the voice and gaze of her. "sit down, hanna." "don't care if i do." "you can lean back against that chair-bow." "hate to muss it." "how's burkhardt?" "all right." "he's been made deacon--not?" "yeh." "if mine had lived, he'd the makin' of a pillar. once label a man with hard drinkin', and it's hard to get justice for him. there never was a man had more the makin' of a pillar than mine, dead now these sixteen years and molderin' in his grave for justice." "yes, mrs. scogin." "you can lean back against that bow." "thanks." "so burkhardt's been made deacon." "three years already--you was at the church." "a deacon. mine went to his grave too soon." "they said down at market to-day, mrs. scogin, that addie fitton knocked herself against the woodbin and has water on the knee." "let the town once label a man with drinkin', and it's hard to get justice for him." "it took martha and eda and gessler's hired girl to hold her in bed with the pain." "yes, yes," said mrs. scogin, sucking in her words and her eyes seeming to strain through the present; "once label a man with drinkin'." kittie scogin bevins entered then through a rain of bead portières. insistently blond, her loosed-out hair newly dry and flowing down over a very spotted and very baby-blue kimono, there was something soft-fleshed about her, a not unappealing saddle of freckles across her nose, the eyes too light but set in with a certain feline arch to them. "hello, han!" "hello, kittie!" "snowing?" "no." "been washing my hair to show it a good time. one month in this dump and they'd have to hire a hearse to roll me back to forty-second street in." "this ain't nothing. wait till we begin to get snowed in!" "i know. say, you c'n tell me nothing about this tank i dunno already. i was buried twenty-two years in it. move over, ma." she fitted herself into the lower curl of the couch, crossing her hands at the back of her head, drawing up her feet so that, for lack of space, her knees rose to a hump. "what's new in deadtown, han?" "'new'! this dump don't know we got a new war. they think it's the old civil one left over." "burkhardt's been made a deacon, kittie." "o lord! ma, forget it!" mrs. scogin bevins threw out her hands to mrs. burkhardt in a wide gesture, indicating her mother with a forefinger, then with it tapping her own brow. "crazy as a loon! bats!" "if your father had--" "ma, for gossakes--" "you talk to kittie, hanna. my girls won't none of 'em listen to me no more. i tell 'em they're fightin' over my body before it's dead for this house and the one on ludlow street. it's precious little for 'em to be fightin' for before i'm dead, but if not for it, i'd never be gettin' these visits from a one of 'em." "ma!" "i keep tellin' her, kittie, to stay home. new york ain't no place for a divorced woman to set herself right with the lord." "ma, if you don't quit raving and clear on up to bed, i'll pack myself out to-night yet, and then you'll have a few things to set right with the lord. go on up, now." "i--" "go on--you hear?" mrs. scogin went then, tiredly and quite bent forward, toward a flight of stairs that rose directly from the parlor, opened a door leading up into them, the frozen breath of unheated regions coming down. "quick--close that door, ma!" "come to see a body, hanna, when she ain't here. she won't stay at home, like a god-fearin' woman ought to." "light the gas-heater up there, if you expect me to come to bed. i'm used to steam-heated flats, not barns." "she's a sassy girl, hanna. your john a deacon and hers lies molderin' in his grave, a sui--" mrs. scogin bevins flung herself up, then, a wave of red riding up her face. "if you don't go up--if you--don't! go--now! honest, you're gettin' so luny you need a keeper. go--you hear?" the door shut slowly, inclosing the old figure. she relaxed to the couch, trying to laugh. "luny!" she said. "bats! nobody home!" "i like your hair like that, kittie. it looks swell." "it's easy. i'll fix it for you some time. it's the vampire swirl. all the girls are wearing it." "remember the night, kit, we was singin' duets for the second street presbyterian out at grody's grove and we got to hair-pullin' over whose curls was the longest?" "yeh. i had on a blue dress with white polka-dots." "that was fifteen years ago. remember joe claiborne promised us a real stage-job, and we opened a lemonade-stand on our front gate to pay his commission in advance?" they laughed back into the years. "o lord! them was days! seems to me like fifty years ago." "not to me, kittie. you've done things with your life since then. i 'ain't." "you know what i've always told you about yourself, hanna. if ever there was a fool girl, that was hanna long. lord! if i'm where i am on my voice, where would you be?" "i was a fool." "i could have told you that the night you came running over to tell me." "there was no future in this town for me, kit. stenoggin' around from one office to another. he was the only real provider ever came my way." "i always say if john burkhardt had shown you the color of real money! but what's a man to-day on just a fair living? not worth burying yourself in a dump like this for. no, sirree. when i married ed, anyways i thought i smelled big money. i couldn't see ahead that his father'd carry out his bluff and cut him off. but what did you have to smell--a feed-yard in a hole of a town! what's the difference whether you live in ten rooms like yours or in four like this as long as you're buried alive? a girl can always do that well for herself after she's took big chances. you could be lord knows where now if you'd 'a' took my advice four years ago and lit out when i did." "i know it, kit. god knows i've eat out my heart with knowin' it! only--only it was so hard--a man givin' me no more grounds than he does. what court would listen to his stillness for grounds? i 'ain't got grounds." "say, you could 'a' left that to me. my little lawyer's got a factory where he manufactures them. he could 'a' found a case of incompatibility between the original turtle-doves." "god! his stillness, kittie--like--" "john burkhardt would give me the razzle-dazzle jimjams overnight, he would. that face reminds me of my favorite funeral." "i told him to-night, kittie, he's killin' me with his deadness. i ran out of the house from it. it's killin' me." "why, you poor simp, standing for it!" "that's what i come over for, kit. i can't stand no more. if i don't talk to some one, i'll bust. there's no one in this town i can open up to. him so sober--and deacon. they don't know what it is to sit night after night dyin' from his stillness. whole meals, kit, when he don't open his mouth except, 'hand me this; hand me that'--and his beard movin' up and down so when he chews. because a man don't hit you and gives you spending-money enough for the little things don't mean he can't abuse you with--with just gettin' on your nerves so terrible. i'm feelin' myself slip--crazy--ever since i got back from cincinnati and seen what's goin' on in the big towns and me buried here; i been feelin' myself slip--slip, kittie." "cincinnati! good lord! if you call that life! any monday morning on forty-second street makes cincinnati look like new-year's eve. if you call cincinnati life!" "he's small, kittie. he's a small potato of a man in his way of livin'. he can live and die without doin' anything except the same things over and over again, year out and year in." "i know. i know. ed was off the same pattern. it's the adalia brand. lord! hanna long, if you could see some of the fellows i got this minute paying attentions to me in new york, you'd lose your mind. spenders! them new york guys make big and spend big, and they're willing to part with the spondoolaks. that's the life!" "i--you look it, kit. i never seen a girl get back her looks and keep 'em like you. i says to him to-night, i says, 'when i look at myself in the glass, i wanna die.'" "you're all there yet, hanna. your voice over here the other night was something immense. big enough to cut into any restaurant crowd, and that's what counts in cabaret. i don't tell anybody how to run his life, but if i had your looks and your contralto, i'd turn 'em into money, i would. there's forty dollars a week in you this minute." mrs. burkhardt's head went up. her mouth had fallen open, her eyes brightening as they widened. "kit--when you goin' back?" "to-morrow a week, honey--if i live through it." "could--you help me--your little lawyer--your--" "remember, i ain't advising--" "could you, kit, and to--to get a start?" "they say it of me there ain't a string in the bijou cafe that i can't pull my way." "could you, kit? would you?" "i don't tell nobody how to run his life, hanna. it's mighty hard to advise the other fellow about his own business. i don't want it said in this town, that's down on me, anyways, that kit scogin put ideas in hanna long's head." "you didn't, kit. they been there. once i answered an ad. to join a county fair. i even sent money to a vaudeville agent in cincinnati. i--" "nothing doing in vaudeville for our kind of talent. it's cabaret where the money and easy hours is these days. just a plain little solo act--contralto is what you can put over. a couple of 'where is my wandering boy to-night' sob-solos is all you need. i'll let you meet billy howe of the bijou. billy's a great one for running in a chaser act or two." "i--how much would it cost, kittie, to--to--" "hundred and fifty done it for me, wardrobe and all." "kittie, i--would you--" "sure i would! only, remember, i ain't responsible. i don't tell anybody how to run his life. that's something everybody's got to decide for herself." "i--have--decided, kittie." at something after that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, john burkhardt lifted his head to the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of an oceanic walnut bedstead. "yes, hanna?" "wake up!" "i been awake--" she set the lamp down on the brown-marble top of a wash-stand, pushed back her hair with both hands, and sat down on the bed-edge, heavily breathing from a run through deserted night's streets. "i gotta talk to you, burkhardt--now--to-night." "now's no time, hanna. come to bed." "things can't go on like this, john." he lay back slowly. "maybe you're right, hanna. i been layin' up here and thinkin' the same myself. what's to be done?" "i've got to the end of my rope." "with so much that god has given us, hanna--health and prosperity--it's a sin before him that unhappiness should take root in this home." "if you're smart, you won't try to feed me up on gospel to-night!" "i'm willin' to meet you, hanna, on any proposition you say. how'd it be to move down to schaefer's boardin'-house for the winter, where it'll be a little recreation for you evenings, or say we take a trip down to cincinnati for a week. i--" "oh no," she said, looking away from him and her throat throbbing. "oh no, you don't! them things might have meant something to me once, but you've come too late with 'em. for eight years i been eatin' out my heart with 'em. now you couldn't pay me to live at schaefer's. i had to beg too long for it. cincinnati! why, its new-year's eve is about as lively as a real town's monday morning. oh no, you don't! oh no!" "come on to bed, hanna. you'll catch cold. your breath's freezin'." "i'm goin'--away, for good--that's where--i'm goin'!" her words threatened to come out on a sob, but she stayed it, the back of her hand to her mouth. her gaze was riveted, and would not move, from a little curtain above the wash-stand, a guard against splashing crudely embroidered in a little hand-in-hand boy and girl. "you--you're sayin' a good many hasty things to-night, hanna." "maybe." he plucked at a gray-wool knot in the coverlet. "mighty hasty things." she turned, then, plunging her hands into the great suds of feather bed, the whole thrust of her body toward him. "'hasty'! is eight years hasty? is eight years of buried-alive hasty? i'm goin', john burkhardt; this time i'm goin' sure--sure as my name is hanna long." "goin' where, hanna?" "goin' where each day ain't like a clod of mud on my coffin. goin' where there's a chance for a woman like me to get a look-in on life before she's as skinny a hex at twenty-seven as old lady scog--as--like this town's full of. i'm goin' to make my own livin' in my own way, and i'd like to see anybody try to stop me." "i ain't tryin', hanna." she drew back in a flash of something like surprise. "you're willin', then?" "no, hanna, not willin'." "you can't keep me from it. incompatibility is grounds!" the fires of her rebellion, doused for the moment, broke out again, flaming in her cheeks. he raised himself to his elbow, regarding her there in her flush, the white line of her throat whiter because of it. she was strangely, not inconsiderably taller. "why, hanna, what you been doin' to yourself?" her hand flew to a new and elaborately piled coiffure, a half-fringe of curling-iron, little fluffed out tendrils escaping down her neck. "in--incompatibility is grounds." "it's mighty becomin', hanna. mighty becomin'." "it's grounds, all right!" "'grounds'? grounds for what, hanna?" she looked away, her throat distending as she swallowed. "divorce." there was a pause, then so long that she had a sense of falling through its space. "look at me, hanna!" she swung her gaze reluctantly to his. he was sitting erect now, a kind of pallor setting in behind the black beard. "leggo!" she said, loosening his tightening hand from her wrists. "leggo; you hurt!" "i--take it when a woman uses that word in her own home, she means it." "this one does." "you're a deacon's wife. things--like this are--are pretty serious with people in our walk of life. we--'ain't learned in our communities yet not to take the marriage law as of god's own makin'. i'm a respected citizen here." "so was ed bevins. it never hurt his hide." "but it left her with a black name in the town." "who cares? she don't." "it's no good to oppose a woman, hanna, when she's made up her mind; but i'm willin' to meet you half-way on this thing. suppose we try it again. i got some plans for perkin' things up a bit between us. say we join the buckeye bowling club, and--" "no! no! no! that gang of church-pillars! i can't stand it, i tell you; you mustn't try to keep me! you mustn't! i'm a rat in a trap here. gimme a few dollars. hundred and fifty is all i ask. not even alimony. lemme apply. gimme grounds. it's done every day. lemme go. what's done can't be undone. i'm not blamin' you. you're what you are and i'm what i am. i'm not blamin' anybody. you're what you are, and god almighty can't change you. lemme go, john; for god's sake, lemme go!" "yes," he said, finally, not taking his eyes from her and the chin hardening so that it shot out and up. "yes, hanna; you're right. you got to go." * * * * * the skeleton of the elevated railway structure straddling almost its entire length, sixth avenue, sullen as a clayey stream, flows in gloom and crash. here, in this underworld created by man's superstructure, mrs. einstein, slightly used gowns, nudges mike's eating-place from the left, and on the right stover's vaudeville agency for lilliputians divides office-space and rent with the vibro health belt company. it is a kind of murky drain, which, flowing between, catches the refuse from fifth avenue and the leavings from broadway. to sixth avenue drift men who, for the first time in a miss-spending life, are feeling the prick of a fraying collar. even fifth avenue is constantly feeding it. a _couturier's_ model gone hippy; a specialty-shop gone bankrupt; a cashier's books gone over. its shops are second-hand, and not a few of its denizens are down on police records as sleight-of-hand. at night women too weary to be furtive turn in at its family entrances. it is the cauldron of the city's eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. it is the home of the most daring all-night eating-places, the smallest store, the largest store, the greatest revolving stage, the dreariest night court, and the drabest night birds in the world. war has laid its talons and scratched slightly beneath the surface of sixth avenue. hufnagel's delicatessen, the briny hoar of twenty years upon it, went suddenly into decline and the hands of a receiver. recruiting stations have flung out imperious banners. keeley's chop-house--open all night--reluctantly swings its too hospitable doors to the one-o'clock-closing mandate. to the new-yorker whose nights must be filled with music, preferably jazz, to pass keeley's and find it dark is much as if bacchus, emulating the newest historical rogue, had donned cassock and hood. even that half of the evening east of the cork-popping land of the midnight son has waned at keeley's. no longer a road-house on the incandescent road to dawn, there is something hangdog about its very waiters, moving through the easy maze of half-filled tables; an orchestra, sheepish of its accomplishment, can lift even a muted melody above the light babel of light diners. there is a cabaret, too, bravely bidding for the something that is gone. at twelve o'clock, five of near-broadway's best breed, in woolly anklets and wristlets and a great shaking of curls, execute the poodle-prance to half the encores of other days. may deland, whose ripple of hip and droop of eyelid are too subtle for censorship, walks through her hula-hula dance, much of her abandon abandoned. a pair of _apaches_ whirl for one hundred and twenty consecutive seconds to a great bang of cymbals and seventy-five dollars a week. at shortly before one miss hanna de long, who renders ballads at one-hour intervals, rose from her table and companion in the obscure rear of the room, to finish the evening and her cycle with "darling, keep the grate-fire burning," sung in a contralto calculated to file into no matter what din of midnight dining. in something pink, silk, and conservatively v, she was a careful management's last bland ingredient to an evening that might leave too cayenne a sting to the tongue. at still something before one she had finished, and, without encore, returned to her table. "gawd!" she said, and leaned her head on her hand. "i better get me a job hollerin' down a well!" her companion drained his stemless glass with a sharp jerking back of the head. his was the short, stocky kind of assurance which seemed to say, "greater securities hath no man than mine, which are gilt-edged." obviously, mr. lew kaminer clipped his coupons. "not so bad," he said. "the song ain't dead; the crowd is." "say, they can't hurt my feelin's. i been a chaser-act ever since i hit the town." "well, if i can sit and listen to a song in long skirts twelve runnin' weeks, three or four nights every one of 'em, take it from me, there's a whistle in it somewhere." "just the same," she said, pushing away her glass, "my future in this business is behind me." he regarded her, slumped slightly in his chair, celluloid toothpick dangling. there was something square about his face, abetted by a parted-in-the-middle toupee of great craftsmanship, which revealed itself only in the jointure over the ears of its slightly lighter hair with the brown of his own. there was a monogram of silk on his shirt-sleeve, of gold on his bill-folder, and of diamonds on the black band across the slight rotundity of his waistcoat. "never you mind, i'm for you, girl," he said. there was an undeniable taking-off of years in miss de long. even the very texture of her seemed younger and the skin massaged to a new creaminess, the high coiffure blonder, the eyes quicker to dart. "lay off, candy kid," she said. "you're going to sugar." "have another fizz," he said, clicking his fingers for a waiter. "anything to please the bold, bad man," she said. "you're a great un," he said. "fellow never knows how to take you from one minute to the next." "you mean a girl never knows how to take you." "say," he said, "any time anybody puts anything over on you!" "and you?" "there you are!" he cried, eying her fizz. "drink it down; it's good for what ails you." "gawd!" she said. "i wish i knew what it was is ailin' me!" "drink 'er down!" "you think because you had me goin' on these things last night that to-night little sister ain't goin' to watch her step. well, watch her watch her step," nevertheless, she drank rather thirstily half the contents of the glass. "i knew what i was doin' every minute of the time last night, all righty. i was just showin' us a good time." "sure!" "it's all right for us girls to take what we want, but the management don't want nothing rough around--not in war-time." "right idea!" "there's nothing rough about me, lew. none of you fellows can't say that about me. i believe in a girl havin' a good time, but i believe in her always keepin' her self-respect. i always say it never hurt no girl to keep her self-respect." "right!" "when a girl friend of mine loses that, i'm done with her. that don't get a girl nowheres. that's why i keep to myself as much as i can and don't mix in with the girls on the bill with me, if--" "what's become of the big blond-looker used to run around with you when you was over at the bijou?" "me and kit ain't friends no more." "she was some looker." "the minute i find out a girl ain't what a self-respectin' girl ought to be then that lets me out. there's nothin' would keep me friends with her. if ever i was surprised in a human, lew, it was in kittie scogin. she got me my first job here in new york. i give her credit for it, but she done it because she didn't have the right kind of a pull with billy howe. she done a lot of favors for me in her way, but the minute i find out a girl ain't self-respectin' i'm done with that girl every time." "that baby had some pair of shoulders!" "i ain't the girl to run a friend down, anyway, when she comes from my home town; but i could tell tales--gawd! i could tell tales!" there was new loquacity and a flush to miss de long. she sipped again, this time almost to the depth of the glass. "the way to find out about a person, lew, is to room with 'em in the same boardin'-house. beware of the baby stare is all i can tell you. beware of that." "that's what _you_ got," he said, leaning across to top her hand with his, "two big baby stares." "well, lew kaminer," she said, "you'd kid your own shadow. callin' me a baby-stare. of all things! lew kaminer!" she looked away to smile. "drink it all down, baby-stare," he said, lifting the glass to her lips. they were well concealed and back away from the thinning patter of the crowd, so that, as he neared her, he let his face almost graze--indeed touch, hers. she made a great pretense of choking. "o-oh! burns!" "drink it down-like a major." she bubbled into the glass, her eyes laughing at him above its rim. "aw gone!" he clicked again with his fingers. "once more, charlie!" he said, shoving their pair of glasses to the table-edge. "you ain't the only money-bag around the place!" she cried, flopping down on the table-cloth a bulky wad tied in one corner of her handkerchief. "well, whatta you know about that? pay-day?" "yeh-while it lasts. i hear there ain't goin' to be no more cabarets or camembert cheese till after the war." "what you going to do with it--buy us a round of fizz?" she bit open the knot, a folded bill dropping to the table, uncurling. "lord!" she said, contemplating and flipping it with her finger-tip. "where i come from that twenty-dollar bill every week would keep me like a queen. here it ain't even chicken feed." "you know where there's more chicken feed waitin' when you get hard up, sister. you're slower to gobble than most. you know what i told you last night, kiddo--you need lessons." "what makes me sore, lew, is there ain't an act on this bill shows under seventy-five. it goes to show the higher skirts the higher the salary in this business." "you oughta be singin' in grand op'ra." "yeh--sure! the diamond horseshoe is waitin' for the chance to land me one swift kick. it only took me twelve weeks and one meal a day to land this after kittie seen to it that they let me out over at the bijou. say, i know where i get off in this town, lew. if there's one thing i know, it's where i get off. i ain't a squab with a pair of high-priced ankles. i'm down on the agencies' books as a chaser-act, and i'm down with myself for that. if there's one thing i ain't got left, it's illusions. get me? illusions." she hitched sidewise in her chair, dipped her forefinger into her fresh glass, snapped it at him so that he blinked under the tiny spray. "that for you!" she said, giggling. she was now repeatedly catching herself up from a too constant impulse to repeat that giggle. "you little devil!" he said, reaching back for his handkerchief. she dipped again, this time deeper, and aimed straighter. "quit!" he said, catching her wrist and bending over it. "quit it, or i'll bite!" "ow! ouch!" her mouth still resolute not to loosen, she jerked back from him. there was only the high flush which she could not control, and the gaze, heavy lidded, was not so sure as it might have been. she was quietly, rather pleasantly, dizzy. "i wish--" she said. "i--wi-ish--" "what do you wi-ish?" "oh, i--i dunno what i wish!" "if you ain't a card!" he had lighted a cigar, and, leaning toward her, blew out a fragrant puff to her. "m-m-m!" she said; "it's a cleopatra." "nop." "a el dorado." "guess again." "a what, then?" "it's a habana queen. habana because it reminds me of hanna." "aw--you!" at this crowning puerility mr. kaminer paused suddenly, as if he had detected in his laughter a bray. "is habana in the war, lew?" "darned if i know exactly." "ain't this war just terrible, lew?" "don't let it worry you, girl. if it puts you out of business, remember, it's boosted my stocks fifty per cent. you know what i told you about chicken feed." she buried her nose in her handkerchief, turning her head. her eyes had begun to crinkle. "it--it's just awful! all them sweet boys!" "now, cryin' ain't goin' to help. you 'ain't got no one marchin' off." "that's just it. i 'ain't got no one. everything is something awful, ain't it?" her sympathies and her risibilities would bubble to the surface to confuse her. "awful!" he scraped one forefinger against the other. "cry-baby! cry-baby, stick your little finger in your little eye!" she regarded him wryly, her eyes crinkled now quite to slits. "you can laugh!" "look at the cry-baby!" "i get so darn blue." "now--now--" "honest to gawd, lew, i get so darn blue i could die." "you're a nice girl, and i'd like to see anybody try to get fresh with you!" "do you--honest, lew--like me?" "there's something about you, girl, gets me every time. cat-eyes! kitty-eyes!" "sometimes i get so blue--get to thinkin' of home and the way it all happened. you know the way a person will. home and the--divorce and the way it all happened with--him--and how i come here and--where it's got me, and--and i just say to myself, 'what's the use?' you know, lew, the way a person will. back there, anyways, i had a home. there's something in just havin' a home, lemme tell you. bein' a somebody in your own home." "you're a somebody any place they put you." "you never seen the like the way it all happened, lew. so quick! the day i took the train was like i was walkin' for good out of a dream. not so much as a post-card from there since--" "uh--uh--now--cry-baby!" "i--ain't exactly sorry, lew; only god knows, more'n once in those twelve weeks out of work i was for goin' back and patchin' it up with him. i ain't exactly sorry, lew, but--but there's only one thing on god's earth that keeps me from being sorry." "what?" "you." he flecked his cigar, hitching his arm up along the chair-back, laughed, reddened slightly. "that's the way to talk! these last two nights you been lightin' up with a man so he can get within ten feet of you. now you're shoutin'!" she drained her glass, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. she was sitting loosely forward now, her hand out on his. "you're the only thing on god's earth that's kept me from--sneakin" back there--honest. lew, i'd have gone back long ago and eat dirt to make it up with him--if not for you. i--ain't built like kittie scogin and those girls. i got to be self-respectin' with the fellows or nothing. they think more of you in the end--that's my theory." "sure!" "a girl's fly or--she just naturally ain't that way. that's where all my misunderstanding began with kittie--when she wanted me to move over in them rooms on forty-ninth street with her--a girl's that way or she just ain't that way!" "sure!" "lew--will you--are you--you ain't kiddin' me all these weeks? taxicabbin' me all night in the park and--drinkin' around this way all the time together. you 'ain't been kiddin' me, lew?" he shot up his cigar to an oblique. "now you're shoutin'!" he repeated. "it took three months to get you down off your high horse, but now we're talkin' the same language." "lew!" "it ain't every girl i take up with; just let that sink in. i like 'em frisky, but i like 'em cautious. that's where you made a hit with me. little of both. them that nibble too easy ain't worth the catch." she reached out the other hand, covering his with her both. "you're--talkin' weddin'-bells, lew?" he regarded her, the ash of his cigar falling and scattering down his waistcoat. "what bells?" "weddin', lew." her voice was as thin as a reed. "o lord!" he said, pushing back slightly from the table. "have another fizz, girl, and by that time we'll be ready for a trip in my underground balloon. waiter!" she drew down his arm, quickly restraining it. she was not so sure now of controlling the muscles of her mouth. "lew!" "now--now--" "please, lew! it's what kept me alive. thinkin' you meant that. please, lew! you ain't goin' to turn out like all the rest in this town? you--the first fellow i ever went as far as--last night with. i'll stand by you, lew, through thick and thin. you stand by me. you make it right with me, lew, and--" he cast a quick glance about, grasped at the sides of the table, and leaned toward her, _sotto_. "for god's sake, hush! are you crazy?" "no," she said, letting the tears roll down over the too frank gyrations of her face--"no, i ain't crazy. i only want you to do the right thing by me, lew. i'm--blue. i'm crazy afraid of the bigness of this town. there ain't a week i don't expect my notice here. it's got me. if you been stringin' me along like the rest of 'em, and i can't see nothing ahead of me but the struggle for a new job--and the tryin' to buck up against what a decent girl has got to--" "why, you're crazy with the heat, girl! i thought you and me was talking the same language. i want to do the right thing by you. sure i do! anything in reason is yours for the askin'. that's what i been comin' to." "then, lew, i want you to do by me like you'd want your sister done by." "i tell you you're crazy. you been hitting up too many fizzes lately." "i--" "you ain't fool enough to think i'm what you'd call a free man? i don't bring my family matters down here to air 'em over with you girls. you're darn lucky that i like you well enough to--well, that i like you as much as i do. come, now; tell you what i'm goin' to do for you: you name your idea of what you want in the way of--" "o god! why don't i die? i ain't fit for nothing else!" he cast a glance around their deserted edge of the room. a waiter, painstakingly oblivious, stood two tables back. "wouldn't i be better off out of it? why don't i die?" he was trembling down with a suppression of rage and concern for the rising gale in her voice. "you can't make a scene in public with me and get away with it. if that's your game, it won't land you anywhere. stop it! stop it now and talk sense, or i'll get up. by god! if you get noisy, i'll get up and leave you here with the whole place givin' you the laugh. you can't throw a scare in me." but miss de long's voice and tears had burst the dam of control. there was an outburst that rose and broke on a wave of hysteria. "lemme die--that's all i ask! what's there in it for me? what has there ever been? don't do it, lew! don't--don't!" it was then mr. kaminer pushed back his chair, flopped down his napkin, and rose, breathing heavily enough, but his face set in an exaggerated kind of quietude as he moved through the maze of tables, exchanged a check for his hat, and walked out. for a stunned five minutes her tears, as it were, seared, she sat after him. the waiter had withdrawn to the extreme left of the deserted edge of the room, talking behind his hand to two colleagues in servility, their faces listening and breaking into smiles. finally miss de long rose, moving through the zigzag paths of empty tables toward a deserted dressing-room. in there she slid into black-velvet slippers and a dark-blue walking-skirt, pulled on over the pink silk, tucking it up around the waist so that it did not sag from beneath the hem, squirmed into a black-velvet jacket with a false dicky made to emulate a blouse-front, and a blue-velvet hat hung with a curtain-like purple face-veil. as she went out the side, keeley's was closing its front doors. outside, not even to be gainsaid by sixth avenue, the night was like a moist flower held to the face. a spring shower, hardly fallen, was already drying on the sidewalks, and from the patch of bryant park across the maze of car-tracks there stole the immemorial scent of rain-water and black earth, a just-set-out crescent of hyacinths giving off their light steam of fragrance. how insidious is an old scent! it can creep into the heart like an ache. who has not loved beside thyme or at the sweetness of dusk? dear, silenced laughs can come back on a whiff from a florist's shop. oh, there is a nostalgia lurks in old scents! even to hanna de long, hurrying eastward on forty-second street, huggingly against the shadow of darkened shop-windows, there was a new sting of tears at the smell of earth, daring, in the lull of a city night, to steal out. there are always these dark figures that scuttle thus through the first hours of the morning. whither? twice remarks were flung after her from passing figures in slouch-hats--furtive remarks through closed lips. at five minutes past one she was at the ticket-office grating of a train-terminal that was more ornate than a rajah's dream. "adalia--please. huh? ohio. next train." "seven-seven. track nine. round trip?" "n-no." "eighteen-fifty." she again bit open the corner knot of her handkerchief. * * * * * when hanna de long, freshly train-washed of train dust, walked down third street away from the station, old man rentzenauer, for forty-odd springs coaxing over the same garden, was spraying a hose over a side-yard of petunias, shirt-sleeved, his waistcoat hanging open, and in the purpling light his old head merging back against a story-and-a-half house the color of gray weather and half a century of service. at sight of him who had shambled so taken-for-granted through all of her girlhood, such a trembling seized hold of hanna de long that she turned off down amboy street, making another wide detour to avoid a group on the koerner porch, finally approaching second street from the somewhat straggly end of it farthest from the station. she was trembling so that occasionally she stopped against a vertigo that went with it, wiped up under the curtain of purple veil at the beads of perspiration which would spring out along her upper lip. she was quite washed of rouge, except just a swift finger-stroke of it over the cheek-bones. she had taken out the dicky, too, and for some reason filled in there with a flounce of pink net ripped off from the little ruffles that had flowed out from her sleeves. she was without baggage. at ludlow street she could suddenly see the house, the trees meeting before it in a lace of green, the two iron jardinières empty. they had been painted, and were drying now of a clay-brown coat. when she finally went up the brick walk, she thought once that she could not reach the bell with the strength left to pull it. she did, though, pressing with her two hands to her left side as she waited. the house was in the process of painting, too, still wet under a first wash of gray. the pergola, also. the door swung back, and then a figure emerged full from a background of familiarly dim hallway and curve of banister. she was stout enough to be panting slightly, and above the pink-and-white-checked apron her face was ruddy, forty, and ever so inclined to smile. "yes?" "is--is--" out from the hallway shot a cocker spaniel, loose-eared, yapping. "queenie, queenie--come back. she won't bite--queenie--bad girl!--come back from that nasturtium-bed--bad girl!--all washed and combed so pretty for a romp with her favver when him come home so tired. queenie!" she caught her by a rear leg as she leaped back, wild to rollick, tucking her under one arm, administering three diminutive punishments on the shaggy ears. "bad! bad!" "is mr.--burkhardt--home?" "aw, now, he ain't! i sent him down by gredel's nurseries on his way home to-night, for some tulip-bulbs for my iron jardinières. he ought to be back any minute if he 'ain't stopped to brag with old man gredel that our arbutus beats his." then, smiling and rubbing with the back of her free hand at a flour-streak across her cheek: "if--if it's the lady from the orphan asylum come to see about the--the little kid we want--is there anything i can do for you? i'm his wife. won't you come in?" "oh no!" said miss de long, now already down two of the steps. "i--i--oh no, no!--thank you! oh no--no!--thank you!" she walked swiftly, the purple veil blown back and her face seeming to look out of it whitely, so whitely that she became terrible. night was at hand, and adalia was drawing down its front shades. vii get ready the wreaths where st. louis begins to peter out into brickand limestone-kilns and great scars of unworked and overworked quarries, the first and more unpretentious of its suburbs take up--benson, maplehurst, and ridgeway heights intervening with one-story brick cottages and two-story packing-cases--between the smoke of the city and the carefully parked queen anne quietude of glenwood and croton grove. over benson hangs a white haze of limestone, gritty with train and foundry smoke. at night the lime-kilns, spotted with white deposits, burn redly, showing through their open doors like great, inflamed diphtheretic throats, tongues of flame bursting and licking out. winchester road, which runs out from the heart of the city to string these towns together, is paved with brick, and its traffic, for the most part, is the great, tin-tired dump-carts of the quarries and steel interurban electric cars which hum so heavily that even the windows of outlying cottages titillate. for blocks, from benson to maplehurst and from maplehurst to ridgeway heights, winchester road repeats itself in terms of the butcher, the baker, the corner saloon. a feed-store. a monumentand stone-cutter. a confectioner. a general-merchandise store, with a glass case of men's collars outside the entrance. the butcher, the baker, the corner saloon. at benson, where this highway cuts through, the city, wreathed in smoke, and a great oceanic stretch of roofs are in easy view, and at closer range, an outlying section of public asylums for the city's discard of its debility and its senility. jutting a story above the one-storied march of winchester road, the convenience merchandise corner, benson, overlooks, from the southeast up-stairs window, a remote view of the city hospital, the ferris-wheel of an amusement park, and on clear days the oceanic waves of roof. below, within the store, that view is entirely obliterated by a brace of shelves built across the corresponding window and brilliantly stacked with ribbons of a score of colors and as many widths. a considerable flow of daylight thus diverted, the convenience merchandise corner, even of early afternoon, fades out into half-discernible corners; a rear-wall display of overalls and striped denim coats crowded back into indefinitude, the haberdashery counter, with a giant gilt shirt-stud suspended above, hardly more outstanding. even the notions and dry-goods, flanking the right wall in stacks and bolts, merge into blur, the outline of a white-sateen and corseted woman's torso surmounting the topmost of the shelves with bold curvature. with spring sunshine even hot against the steel rails of winchester road, and awnings drawn against its inroads into the window display, mrs. shila coblenz, routing gloom, reached up tiptoe across the haberdashery counter for the suspended chain of a cluster of bulbs, the red of exertion rising up the taut line of throat and lifted chin. "a little light on the subject, milt." "let me, mrs. c." facing her from the outer side of the counter, mr. milton bauer stretched also, his well-pressed, pin-checked coat crawling up. all things swam out into the glow. the great suspended stud; the background of shelves and boxes; the scissors-like overalls against the wall; a clothesline of children's factory-made print frocks; a center-bin of women's untrimmed hats; a headless dummy beside the door, enveloped in a long-sleeved gingham apron. beneath the dome of the wooden stud, mrs. shila coblenz, of not too fulsome but the hour-glass proportions of two decades ago, smiled, her black eyes, ever so quick to dart, receding slightly as the cheeks lifted. "two twenty-five, milt, for those ribbed assorted sizes and reinforced heels. leave or take. bergdorff & sloan will quote me the whole mill at that price." with his chest across the counter and legs out violently behind, mr. bauer flung up a glance from his order-pad. "have a heart, mrs. c. i'm getting two-forty for that stocking from every house in town. the factory can't turn out the orders fast enough at that price. an up-to-date woman like you mustn't make a noise like before the war." "leave or take." "you could shave an egg," he said. "and rush up those printed lawns. there was two in this morning, sniffing around for spring dimities." "any more cotton goods? next month, this time, you'll be paying an advance of four cents on percales." "stocked." "can't tempt you with them wash silks, mrs. c.? neatest little article on the market to-day." "no demand. they finger it up, and then buy the cotton stuffs. every time i forget my trade hacks rock instead of clips bonds for its spending-money i get stung." "this here wash silk, mrs. c., would--" "send me up a dress-pattern off this coral-pink sample for selene." "this here dark mulberry, mrs. c., would suit you something immense." "that'll be about all." he flopped shut his book, snapping a rubber band about it and inserting it in an inner coat pocket. "you ought to stick to them dark, winy shades, mrs. c. with your coloring and black hair and eyes, they bring you out like a gipsy. never seen you look better than at the y.m.h.a. entertainment." quick color flowed down her open throat and into her shirtwaist. it was as if the platitude merged with the very corpuscles of a blush that sank down into thirsty soil. "you boys," she said, "come out here and throw in a jolly with every bill of goods. i'll take a good fat discount instead." "fact. never seen you look better. when you got out on the floor in that stamp-your-foot kind of dance with old man shulof, your hand on your hip and your head jerking it up, there wasn't a girl on the floor, your own daughter included, could touch you, and i'm giving it to you straight." "that old thing! it's a russian folk-dance my mother taught me the first year we were in this country. i was three years old then, and, when she got just crazy with homesickness, we used to dance it to each other evenings on the kitchen floor." "say, have you heard the news?" "no." "guess." "can't." "hammerstein is bringing over the crowned heads of europe for vaudeville." mrs. coblenz moved back a step, her mouth falling open. "why, milton bauer, in the old country a man could be strung up for saying less than that!" "that didn't get across. try another. a frenchman and his wife were traveling in russia, and--" "if--if you had an old mother like mine up-stairs, milton, eating out her heart and her days and her weeks and her months over a husband's grave somewhere in siberia and a son's grave somewhere in kishinef, you wouldn't see the joke neither." mr. bauer executed a self-administered pat sharply against the back of his hand. "keeper," he said, "put me in the brain ward. i--i'm sorry, mrs. c., so help me! didn't mean to. how is your mother, mrs. c.? seems to me, at the dance the other night, selene said she was fine and dandy." "selene ain't the best judge of her poor old grandmother. it's hard for a young girl to have patience for old age sitting and chewing all day over the past. it's right pitiful the way her grandmother knows it, too, and makes herself talk english all the time to please the child and tries to perk up for her. selene, thank god, 'ain't suffered, and can't sympathize!" "what's ailing her, mrs. c.? i kinda miss seeing the old lady sitting down here in the store." "it's the last year or so, milt. just like all of a sudden a woman as active as mama always was, her health and--her mind kind of went off with a pop." "thu! thu!" "doctor says with care she can live for years, but--but it seems terrible the way her--poor mind keeps skipping back. past all these thirty years in america to--even weeks before i was born. the night they--took my father off to siberia, with his bare feet in the snow--for distributing papers they found on him--papers that used the word 'svoboda'--'freedom.' and the time, ten years later--they shot down my brother right in front of her for--the same reason. she keeps living it over--living it over till i--could die." "say, ain't that just a shame, though!" "living it, and living it, and living it! the night with me, a heavy three-year-old, in her arms that she got us to the border, dragging a pack of linens with her! the night my father's feet were bleeding in the snow, when they took him! how with me a kid in the crib, my--my brother's face was crushed in--with a heel and a spur. all night, sometimes, she cries in her sleep--begging to go back to find the graves. all day she sits making raffia wreaths to take back--making wreaths--making wreaths!" "say, ain't that tough!" "it's a godsend she's got the eyes to do it. it's wonderful the way she reads--in english, too. there ain't a daily she misses. without them and the wreaths--i dunno--i just dunno. is--is it any wonder, milt, i--i can't see the joke?" "my god, no!" "i'll get her back, though." "why, you--she can't get back there, mrs. c." "there's a way. nobody can tell me there's not. before the war--before she got like this, seven hundred dollars would have done it for both of us--and it will again, after the war. she's got the bank-book, and every week that i can squeeze out above expenses, she sees the entry for herself. i'll get her back. there's a way lying around somewhere. god knows why she should eat out her heart to go back--but she wants it. god, how she wants it!" "poor old dame!" "you boys guy me with my close-fisted buying these last two years. it's up to me, milt, to squeeze this old shebang dry. there's not much more than a living in it at best, and now, with selene grown up and naturally wanting to have it like other girls, it ain't always easy to see my way clear. but i'll do it, if i got to trust the store for a year to a child like selene. i'll get her back." "you can call on me, mrs. c., to keep my eye on things while you're gone." "you boys are one crowd of true blues, all right. there ain't a city salesman comes out here i wouldn't trust to the limit." "you just try me out." "why, just to show you how a woman don't know how many real friends she has got, why--even mark haas, of the mound city silk company, a firm i don't do a hundred dollars' worth of business with a year, i wish you could have heard him the other night at the y.m.h.a., a man you know for yourself just goes there to be sociable with the trade." "fine fellow, mark haas!" "'when the time comes, mrs. coblenz,' he says, 'that you want to make that trip, just you let me know. before the war there wasn't a year i didn't cross the water twice, maybe three times, for the firm. i don't know there's much i can do; it ain't so easy to arrange for russia, but, just the same, you let me know when you're ready to make that trip.' just like that he said it. that from mark haas!" "and a man like haas don't talk that way if he don't mean it." "mind you, not a hundred dollars a year business with him. i haven't got the demands for silks." "that wash silk i'm telling you about, though, mrs. c., does up like a--" "there's ma thumping with the poker on the up-stairs floor. when it's closing-time she begins to get restless. i--i wish selene would come in. she went out with lester goldmark in his little flivver, and i get nervous about automobiles." mr. bauer slid an open-face watch from his waistcoat. "good lord! five-forty, and i've just got time to sell the maplehurst emporium a bill of goods!" "good-night, milt; and mind you put up that order of assorted neckwear yourself. greens in ready-tieds are good sellers for this time of the year, and put in some reds and purples for the teamsters." "no sooner said than done." "and come out for supper some sunday night, milt. it does mama good to have young people around." "i'm yours." "good-night, milt." he reached across the counter, placing his hand over hers. "good-night, mrs. c.," he said, a note lower in his throat; "and remember that call-on-me stuff wasn't all conversation." "good-night, milt," said mrs. coblenz, a coating of husk over her own voice and sliding her hand out from beneath, to top his. "you--you're all right!" * * * * * up-stairs, in a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal half of the store, the window overlooking the remote sea of city was turning taupe, the dusk of early spring, which is faintly tinged with violet, invading. beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old flesh, mrs. miriam horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with grasses, the écru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great stack in a bedroom cupboard. a clock, with a little wheeze and burring attached to each chime, rang six, and upon it mrs. coblenz, breathing from a climb, opened the door. "ma, why didn't you rap for katie to come up and light the gas? you'll ruin your eyes, dearie." she found out a match, immediately lighting two jets of a center-chandelier, turning them down from singing, drawing the shades of the two front and the southeast windows, stooping over the upholstered chair to imprint a light kiss. "a fine day, mama. there'll be an entry this week. thirty dollars and thirteen cents and another call for garden implements. i think i'll lay in a hardware line after we--we get back. i can use the lower shelf of the china-table, eh, ma?" mrs. horowitz, whose face, the color of old linen in the yellowing, emerged rather startling from the still black hair strained back from it, lay back in her chair, turning her profile against the upholstered back, half a wreath and a trail of raffia sliding to the floor. age had sapped from beneath the skin, so that every curve had collapsed to bagginess, the cheeks and the underchin sagging with too much skin. even the hands were crinkled like too large gloves, a wide, curiously etched marriage band hanging loosely from the third finger. mrs. goblenz stooped, recovering the wreath. "say, mama, this one is a beauty! that's a new weave, ain't it? here, work some more, dearie--till selene comes with your evening papers." with her profile still to the chair-back, a tear oozed down the corrugated face of mrs. horowitz's cheek. another. "now, mama! now, mama!" "i got a heaviness--here--inside. i got a heaviness--" mrs. coblenz slid down to her knees beside the chair. "now, mama; shame on my little mama! is that the way to act when shila comes up after a good day? 'ain't we got just lots to be thankful for--the business growing and the bank-book growing, and our selene on top? shame on mama!" "i got a heaviness--here--inside--here." mrs. coblenz reached up for the old hand, patting it. "it's nothing, mama--a little nervousness." "i'm an old woman. i--" "and just think, shila's mama, mark haas is going to get us letters and passports and--" "my son--my boy--his father before him--" "mama--mama, please don't let a spell come on! it's all right. shila's going to fix it. any day now, maybe--" "you'm a good girl. you'm a good girl, shila." tears were coursing down to a mouth that was constantly wry with the taste of them. "and you're a good mother, mama. nobody knows better than me how good." "you'm a good girl, shila." "i was thinking last night, mama, waiting up for selene--just thinking how all the good you've done ought to keep your mind off the spells, dearie." "my son--" "why, a woman with as much good to remember as you've got oughtn't to have time for spells. i got to thinking about coblenz, mama, how--you never did want him, and when i--i went and did it, anyway, and made my mistake, you stood by me to--to the day he died. never throwing anything up to me! never nothing but my good little mother, working her hands to the bone after he got us out here to help meet the debts he left us. ain't that a satisfaction for you to be able to sit and think, mama, how you helped--" "his feet--blood from my heart in the snow--blood from my heart!" "the past is gone, darling. what's the use tearing yourself to pieces with it? them years in new york when it was a fight even for bread, and them years here trying to raise selene and get the business on a footing, you didn't have time to brood then, mama. that's why, dearie, if only you'll keep yourself busy with something--the wreaths--the--" "his feet--blood from my--" "but i'm going to take you back, mama. to papa's grave. to aylorff's. but don't eat your heart out until it comes, darling. i'm going to take you back, mama, with every wreath in the stack; only, you mustn't eat out your heart in spells. you mustn't, mama; you mustn't." sobs rumbled up through mrs. horowitz, which her hand to her mouth tried to constrict. "for his people he died. the papers--i begged he should burn them--he couldn't--i begged he should keep in his hate--he couldn't--in the square he talked it--the soldiers--he died for his people--they got him--the soldiers--his feet in the snow when they took him--the blood in the snow--o my god!--my--god!" "mama darling, please don't go over it all again. what's the use making yourself sick? please!" she was well forward in her chair now, winding her dry hands one over the other with a small rotary motion. "i was rocking--shila-baby in my lap--stirring on the fire black lentils for my boy--black lentils--he--" "mama!" "my boy. like his father before him. my--" "mama, please! selene is coming any minute now. you know how she hates it. don't let yourself think back, mama. a little will-power, the doctor says, is all you need. think of to-morrow, mama; maybe, if you want, you can come down and sit in the store awhile and--" "i was rocking. o my god! i was rocking, and--" "don't get to it--mama, please! don't rock yourself that way! you'll get yourself dizzy! don't, ma; don't!" "outside--my boy--the holler--o god! in my ears all my life! my boy--the papers--the swords--aylorff--aylorff--" "'shh-h-h--mama--" "it came through his heart out the back--a blade with two sides--out the back when i opened the door; the spur in his face when he fell, shila--the spur in his face--the beautiful face of my boy--my aylorff--my husband before him--that died to make free!" and fell back, bathed in the sweat of the terrific hiccoughing of sobs. "mama, mama! my god! what shall we do? these spells! you'll kill yourself, darling. i'm going to take you back, dearie--ain't that enough? i promise. i promise. you mustn't, mama! these spells--they ain't good for a young girl like selene to hear. mama, 'ain't you got your own shila--your own selene? ain't that something? ain't it? ain't it?" large drops of sweat had come out and a state of exhaustion that swept completely over, prostrating the huddled form in the chair. "bed--my bed!" with her arms twined about the immediately supporting form of her daughter, her entire weight relaxed, and footsteps that dragged without lift, one after the other, mrs. horowitz groped out, one hand feeling in advance, into the gloom of a room adjoining. "rest! o my god! rest!" "yes, yes, mama; lean on me." "my--bed." "yes, yes, darling." "bed." her voice had died now to a whimper that lay on the room after she had passed out of it. when selene coblenz, with a gust that swept the room, sucking the lace curtains back against the panes, flung open the door upon that chromatic scene, the two jets of gas were singing softly into its silence, and within the nickel-trimmed baseburner the pink mica had cooled to gray. sweeping open that door, she closed it softly, standing for the moment against it, her hand crossed in back and on the knob. it was as if--standing there with her head cocked and beneath a shadowy blue sailor-hat, a smile coming out--something within her was playing, sweetly insistent to be heard. philomela, at the first sound of her nightingale self, must have stood thus, trembling with melody. opposite her, above the crowded mantelpiece and surmounted by a raffia wreath, the enlarged-crayon gaze of her deceased maternal grandfather, abetted by a horrible device of photography, followed her, his eyes focusing the entire room at a glance. impervious to that scrutiny, miss coblenz moved a tiptoe step or two farther into the room, lifting off her hat, staring and smiling through a three-shelved cabinet of knickknacks at what she saw far and beyond. beneath the two jets, high lights in her hair came out, bronze showing through the brown waves and the patches of curls brought out over her cheeks. in her dark-blue dress, with the row of silver buttons down what was hip before the hipless age, the chest sufficiently concave and the silhouette a mere stroke of a hard pencil, miss selene coblenz measured up and down to america's venus de milo, whose chief curvature is of the spine. slim-etched, and that slimness enhanced by a conscious kind of collapse beneath the blue-silk girdle that reached up half-way to her throat, hers were those proportions which strong women, eschewing the sweet-meat, would earn by the sweat of the turkish bath. when miss coblenz caught her eye in the square of mirror above the mantelpiece, her hands flew to her cheeks to feel of their redness. they were soft cheeks, smooth with the pollen of youth, and hands still casing them, she moved another step toward the portièred door. "mama!" mrs. coblenz emerged immediately, finger up for silence, kissing her daughter on the little spray of cheek-curls. "'shh-h-h! gramaw just had a terrible spell." she dropped down into the upholstered chair beside the base-burner, the pink and moisture of exertion out in her face, took to fanning herself with the end of a face-towel flung across her arm. "poor gramaw!" she said. "poor gramaw!" miss coblenz sat down on the edge of a slim, home-gilded chair, and took to gathering the blue-silk dress into little plaits at her knee. "of course, if you don't want to know where i've been--or anything--" mrs. coblenz jerked herself to the moment. "did mama's girl have a good time? look at your dress, all dusty! you oughtn't to wear your best in that little flivver." suddenly miss coblenz raised her glance, her red mouth bunched, her eyes all iris. "of course--if you don't want to know--anything." at that large, brilliant gaze, mrs. coblenz leaned forward, quickened. "why, selene!" "well, why--why don't you ask me something?" "why, i--i dunno, honey. did--did you and lester have a nice ride?" there hung a slight pause, and then a swift moving and crumpling-up of miss coblenz on the floor beside her mother's knee. "you know--only, you won't ask." with her hand light upon her daughter's hair, mrs. coblenz leaned forward, her bosom rising to faster breathing. "why--selene--i--why--" "we--we were speeding along, and--all of a sudden, out of a clear sky, he--he popped. he wants it in june, so we can make it our honeymoon to his new territory out in oklahoma. he knew he was going to pop, he said, ever since that first night he saw me at the y.m.h.a. he says to his uncle mark, the very next day in the store, he says to him, 'uncle mark,' he says, 'i've met _the_ little girl.' he says he thinks more of my little finger than all of his regular crowd of girls in town put together. he wants to live in one of the built-in-bed flats on wasserman avenue, like all the swell young marrieds. he's making twenty-six hundred now, mama, and if he makes good in the new oklahoma territory, his uncle mark is--is going to take care of him better. ain't it like a dream, mama--your little selene all of a sudden in with--the somebodies?" immediate tears were already finding staggering procession down mrs. coblenz's face, her hovering arms completely encircling the slight figure at her feet. "my little girl! my little selene! my all!" "i'll be marrying into one of the best families in town, ma. a girl who marries a nephew of mark haas can hold up her head with the best of them. there's not a boy in town with a better future than lester. like lester says, everything his uncle mark touches turns to gold, and he's already touched lester. one of the best known men on washington avenue for his blood-uncle, and on his poor dead father's side related to the katz & harberger harbergers. was i right, mama, when i said if you'd only let me stop school i'd show you? was i right, momsie?" "my baby! it's like i can't realize it. so young!" "he took the measure of my finger, mama, with a piece of string. a diamond, he says, not too flashy, but neat." "we have 'em, and we suffer for 'em, and we lose 'em." "he's going to trade in the flivver for a chummy roadster, and--" "oh, darling, it's like i can't bear it!" at that miss coblenz sat back on her tall wooden heels, mauve spats crinkling. "well, you're a merry little future mother-in-law, momsie!" "it ain't that, baby. i'm happy that my girl has got herself up in the world with a fine upright boy like lester; only--you can't understand, babe, till you've got something of your own flesh and blood that belongs to you, that i--i couldn't feel anything except that a piece of my heart was going if--if it was a king you was marrying." "now, momsie, it's not like i was moving a thousand miles away. you can be glad i don't have to go far, to new york or to cleveland, like alma yawitz." "i am! i am!" "uncle--uncle mark, i guess, will furnish us up like he did leon and irma--only, i don't want mahogany; i want circassian walnut. he gave them their flat-silver, too, puritan design, for an engagement present. think of it, mama, me having that stuck-up irma sinsheimer for a relation! it always made her sore when i got chums with amy at school and got my nose in it with the acme crowd, and--and she'll change her tune now, i guess, me marrying her husband's second cousin." "didn't lester want to--to come in for a while, selene, to--to see--me?" sitting there on her heels, miss coblenz looked away, answering with her face in profile. "yes; only--i--well, if you want to know it, mama, it's no fun for a girl to bring a boy like lester up here in--in this crazy room, all hung up with gramaw's wreaths and half the time her sitting out there in the dark, looking in at us through the door and talking to herself." "gramaw's an old--" "is it any wonder i'm down at amy's half the time? how do you think a girl feels to have gramaw keep hanging onto that old black wig of hers and not letting me take the crayons or wreaths down off the wall? in lester's crowd they don't know nothing about revolutionary stuff and persecutions. amy's grandmother don't even talk with an accent, and lester says his grandmother came from alsace-lorraine. that's french. they think only tailors and old-clothes men and--." "selene!" "well, they do. you--you're all right, mama, as up to date as any of them, but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off barefooted to siberia like a tramp? and the way she was cooking black beans when my uncle died. other girls' grandmothers don't tell everything they know. alma yawitz's grandmother wears lorgnettes, and you told me yourself they came from nearly the same part of the pale as gramaw. but you don't hear them remembering it. alma yawitz says she's alsace-lorraine on both sides. people don't tell everything they know. anyway where a girl's got herself as far as i have!" through sobs that rocked her, mrs. coblenz looked down upon her daughter. "your poor old grandmother don't deserve that from you! in her day she worked her hands to the bone for you. with the kind of father you had we might have died in the gutter but for how she helped to keep us out, you ungrateful girl--your poor old grandmother, that's suffered so terrible!" "i know it, mama, but so have other people suffered." "she's old, selene--old." "i tell you it's the way you indulge her, mama. i've seen her sitting here as perk as you please, and the minute you come in the room down goes her head like--like she was dying." "it's her mind, selene--that's going. that's why i feel if i could only get her back. she ain't old, gramaw ain't. if i could only get her back where she--could see for herself--the graves--is all she needs. all old people think of--the grave. it's eating her--eating her mind. mark haas is going to fix it for me after the war--maybe before--if he can. that's the only way poor gramaw can live--or die--happy, selene. now--now that my--my little girl ain't any longer my responsibility, i--i'm going to take her back--my little--girl"--her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head, her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down--"my all." "it's you will be my responsibility now, ma." "no! no!" "the first thing lester says was a flat on wasserman and a spare room for mother coblenz when she wants to come down. wasn't it sweet for him to put it that way right off, ma? 'mother coblenz,' he says." "he's a good boy, selene. it'll be a proud day for me and gramaw. gramaw mustn't miss none of it. he's a good boy and a fine family." "that's why, mama, we--got to--to do it up right." "lester knows, child, he's not marrying a rich girl." "a girl don't have to--be rich to get married right." "you'll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl." "it--it would be different if lester's uncle and all wasn't in the acme club crowd, and if i hadn't got in with all that bunch. it's the last expense i'll ever be to you, mama." "oh, baby, don't say that!" "i--me and lester--lester and me were talking, mama--when the engagement's announced next week--a reception--" "we can clear out this room, move the bed out of gramaw's room into ours, and serve the ice-cream and cake in--" "oh, mama, i don't mean--that!" "what?" "who ever heard of having a reception _here_! people won't come from town 'way out to this old--cabbage-patch. even gertie wolf, with their big house on west pine boulevard, had her reception at the walsingham hotel. you--we--can't expect mark haas and all the relations--the sinsheimers-and--all to come out here. i'd rather not have any." "but, selene, everybody knows we ain't millionaires, and that you got in with that crowd through being friends at school with amy rosen. all the city salesmen and the boys on washington avenue, even mark haas himself, that time he was in the store with lester, knows the way we live. you don't need to be ashamed of your little home, selene, even if it ain't on west pine boulevard." "it'll be--your last expense, mama. the walsingham, that's where the girl that lester goldmark marries is expected to have her reception." "but, selene, mama can't afford nothing like that." pink swam up into miss coblenz's face, and above the sheer-white collar there was a little beating movement at the throat, as if something were fluttering within. "i--i'd just as soon not get married as--as not to have it like other girls." "but, selene--" "if i--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with marrying into a--a family like lester's--i--then--there's no use. i--i can't! i--wouldn't!" she was fumbling, now, for a handkerchief, against tears that were imminent. "why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back yet from russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that can't be bought these days. bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the border, and--" "oh, i know! i knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. that old, worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest." "it's hand-woven, selene, with--" "i wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if i didn't have any trousseau. if i can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens, like even alma yawitz, and a--a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, i wouldn't have any. i wouldn't." her voice, crowded with passion and tears, rose to the crest of a sob. "i--i'd die first!" "selene, selene, mama 'ain't got the money. if she had it, wouldn't she be willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding she wants? a trousseau like alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a cent. her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen, un-monogrammed. a reception at the walsingham costs two hundred dollars, if it costs a cent. selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can afford, but she 'ain't got the money!" "you--have got the money!" "so help me god, selene! you know, with the quarries shut down, what business has been. you know how--sometimes even to make ends meet it is a pinch. you're an ungrateful girl, selene, to ask what i ain't able to do for you. a child like you, that's been indulged, that i 'ain't even asked ever in her life to help a day down in the store. if i had the money, god knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl ever had. but i 'ain't got the money--i 'ain't got the money." "you have got the money! the book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and forty. i guess i ain't blind. i know a thing or two." "why, selene! that's gramaw's--to go back--" "you mean the bank-book's hers?" "that's gramaw's, to go back--home on. that's the money for me to take gramaw and her wreaths back home on." "there you go--talking luny." "selene!" "well, i'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along like that." "you--" "all right. if you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first before me, with all my life to live--all right!" "your poor old--" "it's always been gramaw first in this house, anyway. i couldn't even have company since i'm grown up because the way she's always allowed around. nobody can say i ain't good to gramaw; lester says it's beautiful the way i am with her, remembering always to bring the newspapers and all, but just the same, i know when right's right and wrong's wrong. if my life ain't more important than gramaw's, with hers all lived, all right. go ahead!" "selene, selene, ain't it coming to gramaw, after all her years' hard work helping us that--she should be entitled to go back with her wreaths for the graves? ain't she entitled to die with that off her poor old mind? you bad, ungrateful girl, you, it's coming to a poor old woman that's suffered as terrible as gramaw that i should find a way to take her back." "take her back. where--to jail? to prison in siberia herself--" "there's a way--" "you know gramaw's too old to take a trip like that. you know in your own heart she won't ever see that day. even before the war, much less now, there wasn't a chance for her to get passports back there. i don't say it ain't all right to kid her along, but when it comes to--to keeping me out of the--the biggest thing that can happen to a girl--when gramaw wouldn't know the difference if you keep showing her the bank-book--it ain't right. that's what it ain't. it ain't right!" in the smallest possible compass, miss coblenz crouched now upon the floor, head down somewhere in her knees, and her curving back racked with rising sobs. "selene--but some day--" "some day nothing! a woman like gramaw can't do much more than go down-town once a year, and then you talk about taking her to russia! you can't get in there, i--tell you--no way you try to fix it after--the way gramaw--had--to leave. even before the war ray letsky's father couldn't get back on business. there's nothing for her there, even after she gets there. in thirty years, do you think you can find those graves? do you know the size of siberia? no! but i got to pay--i got to pay for gramaw's nonsense. but i won't. i won't go to lester if i can't go right. i--." "baby, don't cry so--for god's sake, don't cry so!" "i wish i was dead!" "'sh-h-h! you'll wake gramaw." "i do!" "o god, help me to do the right thing!" "if gramaw could understand, she'd be the first one to tell you the right thing. anybody would." "no! no! that little bank-book and its entries are her life--her life." "she don't need to know, mama. i'm not asking that. that's the way they always do with old people to keep them satisfied. just humor 'em. ain't i the one with life before me--ain't i, mama?" "o god, show me the way!" "if there was a chance, you think i'd be spoiling things for gramaw? but there ain't, mama--not one." "i keep hoping if not before, then after the war. with the help of mark haas--" "with the book in her drawer, like always, and the entries changed once in a while, she'll never know the difference. i swear to god she'll never know the difference, mama!" "poor gramaw!" "mama, promise me--your little selene. promise me?" "selene, selene, can we keep it from her?" "i swear we can, mama." "poor, poor gramaw!" "mama? mama darling?" "o god, show me the way!" "ain't it me that's got life before me? my whole life?" "yes--selene." "then, mama, please--you will--you will--darling?" "yes, selene." in a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five-dollar-an-evening-with-lights and cloak-room-service ballroom of the hotel walsingham, a family hostelry in that family circle of st. louis known as its west end, the city holds not a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a dais which can be carried in for the purpose, morning readings of "little moments from little plays," and with the introduction of a throne-chair, the monthly lodge-meetings of the lady mahadharatas of america. for weddings and receptions, a lane of red carpet leads up to the slight dais; and lined about the brocade and paneled walls, gilt-and-brocade chairs, with the crest of walsingham in padded embroidery on the backs. crystal chandeliers, icicles of dripping light, glow down upon a scene of parquet floor, draped velours, and mirrors wreathed in gilt. at miss selene coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel. light, glitteringly filtered through the glass prisms, flowed down upon the dais; upon miss selene coblenz, in a taffeta that wrapped her flat waist and chest like a calyx and suddenly bloomed into the full-inverted petals of a skirt; upon mr. lester goldmark, his long body barely knitted yet to man's estate, and his complexion almost clear, standing omnivorous, omnipotent, omnipresent, his hair so well brushed that it lay like black japanning, a white carnation at his silk lapel, and his smile slightly projected by a rush of very white teeth to the very front. next in line, mrs. coblenz, the red of a fervent moment high in her face, beneath the maroon-net bodice the swell of her bosom, fast, and her white-gloved hand constantly at the opening and shutting of a lace-and-spangled fan. back, and well out of the picture, a potted hydrangea beside the louis quinze armchair, her hands in silk mitts laid out along the gold-chair sides, her head quavering in a kind of mild palsy, mrs. miriam horowitz, smiling and quivering her state of bewilderment. with an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, mr. lester goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved arm of mrs. coblenz. "say, mother coblenz, ain't it about time this little girl of mine was resting her pink-satin double a's? she's been on duty up here from four to seven. no wonder uncle mark bucked." mrs. coblenz threw her glance out over the crowded room, surging with a wave of plumes and clipped heads like a swaying bucket of water which crowds but does not lap over its sides. "i guess the crowd is finished coming in by now. you tired, selene?" miss coblenz turned her glowing glance. "tired! this is the swellest engagement-party i ever had." mrs. coblenz shifted her weight from one slipper to the other, her maroon-net skirts lying in a swirl around them. "just look at gramaw, too! she holds up her head with the best of them. i wouldn't have had her miss this, not for the world." "sure one fine old lady! ought to have seen her shake my hand, mother coblenz. i nearly had to holler, 'ouch!'" "mama, here comes sara suss and her mother. take my arm, lester honey. people mama used to know." miss coblenz leaned forward beyond the dais with the frail curve of a reed. "howdado, mrs. suss.... thank you. thanks. howdado, sara? meet my _fiancé_, lester haas goldmark; mrs. suss and sara suss, my _fiancé_.... that's right, better late than never. there's plenty left.... we think he is, mrs. suss. aw, lester honey, quit! mama, here's mrs. suss and sadie." "mrs. suss! say--if you hadn't come, i was going to lay it up against you. if my new ones can come on a day like this, it's a pity my old friends can't come, too. well, sadie, it's your turn next, eh?... i know better than that. with them pink cheeks and black eyes, i wish i had a dime for every chance." (_sotto_.) "do you like it, mrs. suss? pussy-willow taffeta.... say, it ought to be. an estimate dress from madame murphy--sixty-five with findings. i'm so mad, sara, you and your mama couldn't come to the house that night to see her things. if i say so myself, mrs. suss, everybody who seen it says jacob sinsheimer's daughter herself didn't have a finer. maybe not so much, but every stitch, mrs. suss, made by the same sisters in the same convent that made hers.... towels! i tell her it's a shame to expose them to the light, much less wipe on them. ain't it?... the goodness looks out from his face. and such a love-pair! lunatics, i call them. he can't keep his hands off. it ain't nice, i tell him.... me? come close. i dyed the net myself. ten cents' worth of maroon color. don't it warm your heart, mrs. suss? this morning, after we got her in lester's uncle mark's big automobile, i says to her, i says, 'mama, you sure it ain't too much?' like her old self for a minute, mrs. suss, she hit me on the arm. 'go 'way,' she said; 'on my grandchild's engagement day anything should be too much?' here, waiter, get these two ladies some salad. good measure, too. over there by the window, mrs. suss. help yourselves." "mama, 'sh-h-h! the waiters know what to do." mrs. coblenz turned back, the flush warm to her face. "say, for an old friend i can be my own self." "can we break the receiving-line now, lester honey, and go down with everybody? the sinsheimers and their crowd over there by themselves, we ought to show we appreciate their coming." mr. goldmark twisted high in his collar, cupping her small bare elbow in his hand. "that's what i say, lovey; let's break. come, mother coblenz, let's step down on high society's corns." "lester!" "you and selene go down with the crowd, lester. i want to take gramaw to rest for a while before we go home. the manager says we can have room fifty-six by the elevator for her to rest in." "get her some newspapers, ma, and i brought her a wreath down to keep her quiet. it's wrapped in her shawl." her skirts delicately lifted, miss coblenz stepped down off the dais. with her cloud of gauze-scarf enveloping her, she was like a tulle-clouded "springtime," done in the key of botticelli. "oop-si-lah, lovey-dovey!" said mr. goldmark, tilting her elbow for the downward step. "oop-si-lay, dovey-lovey!" said miss coblenz, relaxing to the support. gathering up her plentiful skirts, mrs. coblenz stepped off, too, but back toward the secluded chair beside the potted hydrangea. a fine line of pain, like a cord tightening, was binding her head, and she put up two fingers to each temple, pressing down the throb. "mrs. coblenz, see what i got for you!" she turned, smiling. "you don't look like you need salad and green ice-cream. you look like you needed what i wanted--a cup of coffee." "aw, mr. haas--now where in the world--aw, mr. haas!" with a steaming cup outheld and carefully out of collision with the crowd, mr. haas unflapped a napkin with his free hand, inserting his foot in the rung of a chair and dragging it toward her. "now," he cried, "sit and watch me take care of you!" there comes a tide in the affairs of men when the years lap softly, leaving no particular inundations on the celebrated sands of time. between forty and fifty, that span of years which begin the first slight gradations from the apex of life, the gray hair, upstanding like a thick-bristled brush off mr. haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness enhanced even the moving-over of a button. when mr. haas smiled, his mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of careful dentistry, and when, upon occasion, he threw back his head to laugh, the roof of his mouth was his own. he smiled now, peering through gold-rimmed spectacles attached by a chain to a wire-encircled left ear. "sit," he cried, "and let me serve you!" standing there with a diffidence which she could not crowd down, mrs. coblenz smiled through closed lips that would pull at the corners. "the idea, mr. haas--going to all that trouble!" "'trouble'! she says. after two hours' handshaking in a swallow-tail, a man knows what real trouble is!" she stirred around and around the cup, supping up spoonfuls gratefully. "i'm sure much obliged. it touches the right spot." he pressed her down to the chair, seating himself on the low edge of the dais. "now you sit right there and rest your bones." "but my mother, mr. haas. before it's time for the ride home she must rest in a quiet place." "my car'll be here and waiting five minutes after i telephone." "you--sure have been grand, mr. haas!" "i shouldn't be grand yet to my--let's see--what relation is it i am to you?" "honest, you're a case, mr. haas--always making fun!" "my poor dead sister's son marries your daughter. that makes you my--nothing-in-law." "honest, mr. haas, if i was around you, i'd get fat laughing." "i wish you was." "selene would have fits. 'never get fat, mama,' she says, 'if you don't want--'" "i don't mean that." "what?" "i mean i wish you was around me." she struck him then with her fan, but the color rose up into the mound of her carefully piled hair. "i always say i can see where lester gets his comical ways. like his uncle, that boy keeps us all laughing." "gad! look at her blush! i know women your age would give fifty dollars a blush to do it that way." she was looking away again, shoulders heaving to silent laughter, the blush still stinging. "it's been so--so long, mr. haas, since i had compliments made to me. you make me feel so--silly." "i know it, you nice, fine woman, you; and it's a darn shame!" "mr.--haas!" "i mean it. i hate to see a fine woman not get her dues. anyways, when she's the finest woman of them all!" "i--the woman that lives to see a day like this--her daughter the happiest girl in the world, with the finest boy in the world--is getting her dues, all right, mr. haas." "she's a fine girl, but she ain't worth her mother's little finger-nail." "mr.--haas!" "no, sir-ree!" "i must be going now, mr. haas. my mother--" "that's right. the minute a man tries to break the ice with this little lady, it's a freeze-out. now what did i say so bad? in business, too. never seen the like. it's like trying to swat a fly to come down on you at the right minute. but now, with you for a nothing-in-law, i got rights." "if--you ain't the limit, mr. haas!" "don't mind saying it, mrs. c., and, for a bachelor, they tell me i'm not the worst judge in the world, but there's not a woman on the floor stacks up like you do." "well--of all things!" "mean it." "my mother, mr. haas, she--" "and if anybody should ask you if i've got you on my mind or not, well, i've already got the letters out on that little matter of the passports you spoke to me about. if there's a way to fix that up for you, and leave it to me to find it, i--" she sprang now, trembling, to her feet, all the red of the moment receding. "mr. haas, i--i must go now. my--mother--" he took her arm, winding her in and out among crowded-out chairs behind the dais. "i wish it to every mother to have a daughter like you, mrs. c." "no! no!" she said, stumbling rather wildly through the chairs. "no! no! no!" he forged ahead, clearing her path of them. beside the potted hydrangea, well back and yet within an easy view, mrs. horowitz, her gilt armchair well cushioned for the occasion, and her black grenadine spread decently about her, looked out upon the scene, her slightly palsied head well forward. "mama, you got enough? you wouldn't have missed it, eh? a crowd of people we can be proud to entertain. not? come; sit quiet in another room for a while, and then mr. haas, with his nice big car, will drive us all home again. you know mr. haas, dearie--lester's uncle that had us drove so careful in his fine car. you remember, dearie--lester's uncle?" mrs. horowitz looked up, her old face crackling to smile. "my grandchild! my grandchild! she'm a fine one. not? my grandchild! my grandchild!" "you--mustn't mind, mr. haas. that's--the way she's done since--since she's--sick. keeps repeating--" "my grandchild! from a good mother and a bad father comes a good grandchild. my grandchild! she'm a good one. my--" "mama dearie, mr. haas is in a hurry. he's come to help me walk you into a little room to rest before we go home in mr. haas's big, fine auto. where you can go and rest, mama, and read the newspapers. come." "my back--_ach_--my back!" "yes, yes, mama; we'll fix it. up! so--la!" they raised her by the crook of each arm, gently. "so! please, mr. haas, the pillows. shawl. there!" around a rear hallway, they were almost immediately into a blank, staring hotel bedroom, fresh towels on the furniture-tops only enhancing its staleness. "here we are. sit her here, mr. haas, in this rocker." they lowered her, almost inch by inch, sliding down pillows, against the chair-back. "now, shila's little mama want to sleep?" "i got--no rest--no rest." "you're too excited, honey; that's all." "no rest." "here--here's a brand-new hotel bible on the table, dearie. shall shila read it to you?" "aylorff--" "now, now, mama. now, now; you mustn't! didn't you promise shila? look! see, here's a wreath wrapped in your shawl for shila's little mama to work on. plenty of wreaths for us to take back. work awhile, dearie, and then we'll get selene and lester, and, after all the nice company goes away, we'll go home in the auto." "i begged he should keep in his hate--his feet in the--" "i know! the papers! that's what little mama wants. mr. haas, that's what she likes better than anything--the evening papers." "i'll go down and send 'em right up with a boy, and telephone for the car. the crowd's beginning to pour out now. just hold your horses there, mrs. c., and i'll have those papers up here in a jiffy." he was already closing the door after him, letting in and shutting out a flare of music. "see, mama, nice mr. haas is getting us the papers. nice evening papers for shila's mama." she leaned down into the recesses of the black grenadine, withdrawing from one of the pockets a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, adjusting them with some difficulty to the nodding head. "shila's--little mama! shila's mama!" "aylorff, the littlest wreath for--aylorff--_meine kräntze_--" "yes, yes." "_mem mann. mein sühn_." "'shh-h-h, dearie!" "aylorff--_der klenste kranz far ihm_!" "'shh-h-h, dearie! talk english, like selene wants. wait till we get on the ship--the beautiful ship to take us back. mama, see out the window! look! that's the beautiful forest park, and this is the fine hotel walsingham just across. see out! selene is going to have a flat on--" "_sey hoben gestorben far freiheit. sey hoben_--" "there! that's the papers!" to a succession of quick knocks, she flew to the door, returning with the folded evening editions under her arm. "now," she cried, unfolding and inserting the first of them into the quivering hands--"now, a shawl over my little mama's knees and we're fixed!" with a series of rapid movements she flung open one of the black-cashmere shawls across the bed, folding it back into a triangle. beside the table, bare except for the formal, unthumbed bible, mrs. horowitz rattled out a paper, her near-sighted eyes traveling back and forth across the page. music from the ferned-in orchestra came in drifts, faint, not so faint. from somewhere, then immediately from everywhere--beyond, below, without, the fast shouts of newsboys mingling. suddenly and of her own volition, and with a cry that shot up through the room, rending it like a gash, mrs. horowitz, who moved by inches, sprang to her supreme height, her arms, the crooks forced out, flung up. "my darlings--what died--for it! my darlings what died for it! my darlings--aylorff, my husband!" there was a wail rose up off her words, like the smoke of incense curling, circling around her. "my darlings what died to make free!" "mama! darling! mama! mr. haas! help! mama! my god!" "aylorff--my husband--i paid with my blood to make free--my blood--. my son--my--own--" immovable there, her arms flung up and tears so heavy that they rolled whole from her face down to the black grenadine, she was as sonorous as the tragic meter of an alexandrine line; she was like ruth, ancestress of heroes and progenitor of kings. "my boy--my own! they died for it! _mein mann! mein sühn_!" on her knees, frantic to press her down once more into the chair, terrified at the rigid immobility of the upright figure, mrs. coblenz paused then, too, her clasp falling away, and leaned forward to the open sheet of the newspaper, its black head-lines facing her: russia free bans down 100,000 siberian prisoners liberated in her ears a ringing silence, as if a great steel disk had clattered down into the depths of her consciousness. there on her knees, trembling seized her, and she hugged herself against it, leaning forward to corroborate her gaze. most rigid autocracy in the world overthrown russia rejoices "mama! mama! my god! mama!" "home, shila; home! my husband who died for it--aylorff! home now, quick! my wreaths! my wreaths!" "o my god! mama!" "home!" "yes, darling--yes--" "my wreaths!" "yes, yes, darling; your wreaths. let--let me think. freedom! o my god! help me to find a way! o my god!" "my wreaths!" "here, darling, here!" from the floor beside her, the raffia wreath half in the making, mrs. coblenz reached up, pressing it flat to the heaving old bosom. "there, darling, there!" "i paid with my blood--" "yes, yes, mama; you--paid with your blood. mama--sit, please. sit and--let's try to think. take it slow, darling; it's like we can't take it in all at once. i--we--sit down, darling. you'll make yourself terrible sick. sit down, darling; you--you're slipping." "my wreaths--" heavily, the arm at the waist gently sustaining, mrs. horowitz sank rather softly down, her eyelids fluttering for the moment. a smile had come out on her face, and, as her head sank back against the rest, the eyes resting at the downward flutter, she gave out a long breath, not taking it in again. "mama! you're fainting!" she leaned to her, shaking the relaxed figure by the elbows, her face almost touching the tallow-like one with the smile lying so deeply into it. "mama! my god! darling, wake up! i'll take you back. i'll find a way to take you. i'm a bad girl, darling, but i'll find a way to take you. i'll take you if--if i kill for it! i promise before god i'll take you. to-morrow--now--nobody can keep me from taking you. the wreaths, mama! get ready the wreaths! mama darling, wake up! get ready the wreaths! the wreaths!" shaking at that quiet form, sobs that were full of voice tearing raw from her throat, she fell to kissing the sunken face, enclosing it, stroking it, holding her streaming gaze closely and burningly against the closed lids. "mama, i swear to god i'll take you! answer me, mama! the bank-book--you've got it! why don't you wake up, mama? help!" upon that scene, the quiet of the room so raucously lacerated, burst mr. haas, too breathless for voice. "mr. haas--my mother! help--my mother! it's a faint, ain't it? a faint?" he was beside her at two bounds, feeling of the limp wrists, laying his ear to the grenadine bosom, lifting the reluctant lids, touching the flesh that yielded so to touch. "it's a faint, ain't it, mr. haas? tell her i'll take her back. wake her up, mr. haas! tell her i'm a bad girl, but i--i'm going to take her back. now! tell her! tell her, mr. haas, i've got the bank-book. please! please! o my god!" he turned to her, his face working to keep down compassion. "we must get a doctor, little lady." she threw out an arm. "no! no! i see! my old mother--my old mother--all her life a nobody--she helped--she gave it to them--my mother--a poor little widow nobody--she bought with her blood that freedom--she--" "god! i just heard it down-stairs--it's the tenth wonder of the world. it's too big to take in. i was afraid--" "mama darling, i tell you, wake up! i'm a bad girl, but i'll take you back. tell her, mr. haas, i'll take her back. wake up, darling! i swear to god i'll take you!" "mrs. coblenz, my--poor little lady, your mother don't need you to take her back. she's gone back where--where she wants to be. look at her face, little lady. can't you see she's gone back?" "no! no! let me go. let me touch her. no! no! mama darling!" "why, there wasn't a way, little lady, you could have fixed it for that poor--old body. she's beyond any of the poor fixings we could do for her. you never saw her face like that before. look!" "the wreaths--the wreaths!" he picked up the raffia circle, placing it back again against the quiet bosom. "poor little lady!" he said. "shila--that's left for us to do. you and me, shila--we'll take the wreaths back for her." "my darling--my darling mother! i'll take them back for you! i'll take them back for you!" "_we'll_ take them back for her--shila." "i'll--" "_we'll_ take them back for her--shila." "_we'll_ take them back for you, mama. we'll take them back for you, darling!" the end [illustration: "then it's all lies! lies and murder!"] the clarion by samuel hopkins adams with illustrations by w.d. stevens _published october 1914_ to the memory of my father myron adams who lived and died a soldier of ideals this book is reverently inscribed contents i. the itinerant ii. our leading citizen iii. esmé iv. the shop v. the scion vi. launched vii. the owner viii. a partnership ix. glimmerings x. in the way of trade xi. the initiate xii. the thin edge xiii. new blood xiv. the rookeries xv. juggernaut xvi. the strategist xvii. reprisals xviii. milly xix. donnybrook xx. the lesser tempting xxi. the power of print xxii. patriots xxiii. creeping flame xxiv. a failure in tactics xxv. stern logic xxvi. the parting xxvii. the greater tempting xxviii. "whose bread i eat" xxix. certina charley xxx. illumination xxxi. the voice of the prophet xxxii. the warning xxxiii. the good fight xxxiv. vox populi xxxv. tempered metal xxxvi. the victory xxxvii. mcguire ellis wakes up xxxviii. the convert illustrations "then it's all lies! lies and murder!" help and cure are at their beck and call "kill it," she urged softly "don't go near him. don't look" the clarion chapter i the itinerant between two flames the man stood, overlooking the crowd. a soft breeze, playing about the torches, sent shadows billowing across the massed folk on the ground. shrewdly set with an eye to theatrical effect, these phares of a night threw out from the darkness the square bulk of the man's figure, and, reflecting garishly upward from the naked hemlock of the platform, accentuated, as in bronze, the bosses of the face, and gleamed deeply in the dark, bold eyes. half of marysville buzzed and chattered in the park-space below, together with many representatives of the farming country near by, for the event had been advertised with skilled appeal: cf. the "canoga county palladium," april 15, 1897, page 4. the occupant of the platform, having paused, after a self-introductory trumpeting of professional claims, was slowly and with an eye to oratorical effect moistening lips and throat from a goblet at his elbow. now, ready to resume, he raised a slow hand in an indescribable gesture of mingled command and benevolence. the clamor subsided to a murmur, over which his voice flowed and spread like oil subduing vexed waters. "pain. pain. pain. the primal curse, the dominant tragedy of life. who among you, dear friends, but has felt it? you men, slowly torn upon the rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the torches); "all you who have known burning nights and pallid mornings, i offer you r-r-r-release!" on the final word his face lighted up as from an inner fire of inspiration, and he flung his arms wide in an embracing benediction. the crowd, heavy-eyed, sodden, wondering, bent to him as the torch-fires bent to the breath of summer. with the subtle sense of the man who wrings his livelihood from human emotions, he felt the moment of his mastery approaching. was it fully come yet? were his fish securely in the net? betwixt hovering hands he studied his audience. his eyes stopped with a sense of being checked by the steady regard of one who stood directly in front of him only a few feet away; a solid-built, crisply outlined man of forty, carrying himself with a practical erectness, upon whose face there was a rather disturbing half-smile. the stranger's hand was clasped in that of a little girl, wide-eyed, elfin, and lovely. "release," repeated the man of the torches. "blessed release from your torments. peace out of pain." the voice was of wonderful quality, rich and unctuous, the labials dropping, honeyed, from the lips. it wooed the crowd, lured it, enmeshed it. but the magician had, a little, lost confidence in the power of his spell. his mind dwelt uneasily upon his well-garbed auditor. what was he doing there, with his keen face and worldly, confident carriage, amidst those clodhoppers? was there peril in his presence? your predatory creature hunts ever with fear in his heart. "guardy," the voice of the elfin child rang silvery in the silence, as she pressed close to her companion. "guardy, is he preaching?" "yes, my dear little child." the orator saw his opportunity and swooped upon it, with a flash of dazzling teeth from under his pliant lips. "this sweet little girl asks if i am preaching. i thank her for the word. preaching, indeed! preaching a blessed gospel, for this world of pain and suffering; a gospel of hope and happiness and joy. i offer you, here, now, this moment of blessed opportunity, the priceless boon of health. it is within reach of the humblest and poorest as well as the millionaire. the blessing falls on all like the gentle rain from heaven." his hands, outstretched, quivering as if to shed the promised balm, slowly descended below the level of the platform railing. behind the tricolored cheesecloth which screened him from the waist down something stirred. the hands ascended again into the light. in each was a bottle. the speaker's words came now sharp, decisive, compelling. "here it is! look at it, my friends. the wonder of the scientific world, the never-failing panacea, the despair of the doctors. all diseases yield to it. it revivifies the blood, reconstructs the nerves, drives out the poisons which corrupt the human frame. it banishes pain, sickness, weakness, and cheats death of his prey. oh, grave, where is thy victory? oh, death, where is thy power? overcome by my marvelous discovery! harmless as water! sweet on the tongue as honey! potent as a miracle! by the grace of heaven, which has bestowed this secret upon me, i have saved five thousand men, women, and children from sure doom, in the last three years, through my swift and infallible remedy, professor certain's vitalizing mixture; as witness my undenied affidavit, sworn to before almighty god and a notary public and published in every newspaper in the state." wonder and hope exhaled in a sigh from the assemblage. people began to stir, to shift from one foot to another, to glance about them nervously. professor certain had them. it needed but the first thrust of hand into pocket to set the avalanche of coin rolling toward the platform. from near the speaker a voice piped thinly:-"will it ease my cough?" the orator bent over, and his voice was like a benign hand upon the brow of suffering. "ease it? you'll never know you had a cough after one bottle." "we-ell, gimme--" "just a moment, my friend." the professor was not yet ready. "put your dollar back. there's enough to go around. oh, uncle cal! step up here, please." an old negro, very pompous and upright, made his way to the steps and mounted. "you all know old uncle cal parks, my friends. you've seen him hobbling and hunching around for years, all twisted up with rheumatics. he came to me yesterday, begging for relief, and we began treatment with the vitalizing mixture right off. look at him now. show them what you can do, uncle." wild-eyed, the old fellow gazed about at the people. "glory! hallelujah!" emotional explosives left over from the previous year's revival burst from his lips. he broke into a stiff, but prankish double-shuffle. "i'd like to try some o' that on my old mare," remarked a facetious-minded rustic, below, and a titter followed. "good for man or beast," retorted the professor with smiling amiability. "you've seen what the vitalizing mixture has done for this poor old colored man. it will do as much or more for any of you. and the price is only one dollar!" the voice double-capitalized the words. "don't, for the sake of one hundred little cents, put off the day of cure. don't waste your chance. don't let a miserable little dollar stand between you and death. come, now. who's first?" the victim of the "cough" was first, closely followed by the mare-owning wit. then the whole mass seemed to be pressing forward, at once. like those of a conjurer, the deft hands of the professor pushed in and out of the light, snatching from below the bottles handed up to him, and taking in the clinking silver and fluttering greenbacks. and still they came, that line of grotesques, hobbling, limping, sprawling their way to the golden promise. never did pied piper flute to creatures more bemused. only once was there pause, when the dispenser of balm held aloft between thumb and finger a cart-wheel dollar. "phony!" he said curtly, and flipped it far into the darkness. "don't any more of you try it on," he warned, as the thwarted profferer of the counterfeit sidled away, and there was, in his tone, a dominant ferocity. presently the line of purchasers thinned out. the vitalizing mixture had exhausted its market. but only part of the crowd had contributed to the levy. mainly it was the men, whom the "spiel" had lured. now for the women. the voice, the organ of a genuine artist, took on a new cadence, limpid and tender. "and now, we come to the sufferings of those who bear pain with the fortitude of the angels. our women-folk! how many here are hiding that dreadful malady, cancer? hiding it, when help and cure are at their beck and call. lady," he bent swiftly to the slattern under the torch and his accents were a healing effluence, "with my soothing, balmy oils, you can cure yourself in three weeks, or your money back." "i do' know haow you knew," faltered the woman. "i ain't told no one yet. kinder hoped it wa'n't thet, after all." he brooded over her compassionately. "you've suffered needlessly. soon it would have been too late. the vitalizing mixture will keep up your strength, while the soothing, balmy oils drive out the poison, and heal up the sore. three and a half for the two. thank you. and is there some suffering friend who you can lead to the light?" the woman hesitated. she moved out to the edge of the crowd, and spoke earnestly to a younger woman, whose comely face was scarred with the chiseling of sleeplessness. "joe, he wouldn't let me," protested the younger woman. "he'd say 't was a waste." "but ye'll be cured," cried the other in exaltation. "think of it. ye'll sleep again o' nights." the woman's hand went to her breast, with a piteous gesture. "oh, my god! d'yeh think it could be true?" she cried. "accourse it's true! didn't yeh hear whut he sayed? would he dast swear to it if it wasn't true?" tremulously the younger woman moved forward, clutching her shawl about her. "could yeh sell me half a bottle to try it, sir?" she asked. the vender shook his head. "impossible, my dear madam. contrary to my fixed professional rule. but, i'll tell you what i will do. if, in three days you're not better, you can have your money back." she began painfully to count out her coins. reaching impatiently for his price, the professor found himself looking straight into the eyes of the well-dressed stranger. "are you going to take that woman's money?" the question was low-toned but quite clear. an uneasy twitching beset the corners of the professional brow. for just the fraction of a second, the outstretched hand was stayed. then:-"that's what i am. and all the others i can get. can i sell _you_ a bottle?" behind the suavity there was the impudence of the man who is a little alarmed, and a little angry because of the alarm. "why, yes," said the other coolly. "some day i might like to know what's in the stuff." "hand up your cash then. and here you are--doctor. it _is_ 'doctor,' ain't it?" "you've guessed it," returned the stranger. [illustration: help and cure are at their beck and call.] at once the platform peddler became the opportunist orator again. "a fellow practitioner, in my audience, ladies and gentlemen; and doing me the honor of purchasing my cure. sir," the splendid voice rose and soared as he addressed his newest client, "you follow the noblest of callings. my friends, i would rather heal a people's ills than determine their destinies." giving them a moment to absorb that noble sentiment, he passed on to his next source of revenue: dyspepsia. he enlarged and expatiated upon its symptoms until his subjects could fairly feel the grilling at the pit of their collective stomach. one by one they came forward, the yellow-eyed, the pasty-faced feeders on fried breakfasts, snatchers of hasty noon-meals, sleepers on gorged stomachs. about them he wove the glamour of his words, the arch-seducer, until the dollars fidgeted in their pockets. "just one dollar the bottle, and pain is banished. eat? you can eat a cord of hickory for breakfast, knots and all, and digest it in an hour. the vitalizing mixture does it." assorted ills came next. in earlier spring it would have been pneumonia and coughs. now it was the ailments that we have always with us: backache, headache, indigestion and always the magnificent promise. so he picked up the final harvest, gleaning his field. "now,"--the rotund voice sunk into the confidential, sympathetic register, yet with a tone of saddened rebuke,--"there are topics that the lips shrink from when ladies are present. but i have a word for you young men. young blood! ah, young blood, and the fire of life! for that we pay a penalty. yet we must not overpay the debt. to such as wish my private advice--_private_, i say, and sacredly confidential--" he broke off and leaned out over the railing. "thousands have lived to bless the name of professor certain, and his friendship, at such a crisis; thousands, my friends. to such, i shall be available for consultation from nine to twelve to-morrow, at the moscow hotel. remember the time and place. men only. nine to twelve. and all under the inviolable seal of my profession." some quality of unexpressed insistence in the stranger--or was it the speaker's own uneasiness of spirit?--brought back the roving, brilliant eyes to the square face below. "a little blackmail on the side, eh?" the words were spoken low, but with a peculiar, abrupt crispness. this, then, was direct challenge. professor certain tautened. should he accept it, or was it safer to ignore this pestilent disturber? craft and anger thrust opposing counsels upon him. but determination of the issue came from outside. "lemme through." from the outskirts of the crowd a rawboned giant forced his way inward. he was gaunt and unkempt as a weed in winter. "here's trouble," remarked a man at the front. "allus comes with a hardscrabbler." "what's a hardscrabbler?" queried the well-dressed man. "feller from the hardscrabble settlement over on corsica lake. tough lot, they are. make their own laws, when they want any; run their place to suit themselves. ain't much they ain't up to. hoss-stealin', barn-burnin', boot-leggin', an' murder thrown in when--" "be you the doctor was to corsica village two years ago?" the newcomer's high, droning voice cut short the explanation. "i was there, my friend. testimonials and letters from some of your leading citizens attest the work--" "you give my woman morpheean." there was a hideous edged intonation in the word, like the whine of some plaintive and dangerous animal. "my friend!" the professor's hand went forth in repressive deprecation. "we physicians give what seems to us best, in these cases." "a reg'lar doctor from burnham seen her," pursued the hardscrabbler, in the same thin wail, moving nearer, but not again raising his eyes to the other's face. instead, his gaze seemed fixed upon the man's shining expanse of waistcoat. "he said you doped her with the morpheean you give her." "so your chickens come home to roost, professor," said the stranger, in a half-voice. "impossible," declared the professor, addressing the hardscrabbler. "you misunderstood him." "they took my woman away. they took her to the 'sylum." foreboding peril, the people nearest the uncouth visitor had drawn away. only the stranger held his ground; more than held it, indeed, for he edged almost imperceptibly nearer. he had noticed a fleck of red on the matted beard, where the lip had been bitten into. also he saw that the professor, whose gaze had so timorously shifted from his, was intent, recognizing danger; intent, and unafraid before the threat. "she used to cry fer it, my woman. cry fer the morpheean like a baby." he sagged a step forward. "she don't haff to cry no more. she's dead." whence had the knife leapt, to gleam so viciously in his hand? almost as swiftly as it was drawn, the healer had snatched one of the heavy torch-poles from its socket. almost, not quite. the fury leapt and struck; struck for that shining waistcoat, upon which his regard had concentrated, with an upward lunge, the most surely deadly blow known to the knife-fighter. two other movements coincided, to the instant. from the curtain of cheesecloth the slight form of a boy shot upward, with brandished arms; and the square-built man reached the hardscrabbler's jaw with a powerful and accurate swing. there was a scream of pain, a roar from the crowd, and an answering bellow from the quack in midair, for he had launched his formidable bulk over the rail, to plunge, a crushing weight, upon the would-be murderer, who lay stunned on the grass. for a moment the avenger ground him, with knees and fists; then was up and back on the platform. already the city man had gained the flooring, and was bending above the child. there was a sprinkle of blood on the bright, rough boards. "oh, my god! boy-ee! has he killed you?" "no: he isn't killed," said the stranger curtly. "keep the people back. lift down that torch." the professor wavered on his legs, grasping at the rail for support. "you _are_ a doctor?" he gasped. "yes." "can you save him? any money--" "set the torch here." "oh, boyee, boyee!" the great, dark man had dropped to his knees, his face a mask of agony. "oh, the devil!" said the physician disgustedly. "you're no help. clear a way there, some of you, so that i can get him to the hotel." then, to the other. "keep quiet. there's no danger. only a flesh wound, but he's fainted." carefully he swung the small form to his shoulder, and forced a way through the crowd, the little girl, who had followed him to the platform, composedly trotting along in his wake, while the hardscrabbler, moaning from the pain of two broken ribs, was led away by a constable. some distance behind, the itinerant wallowed like a drunken man, muttering brilliant bargain offers of good conduct to almighty god, if "boyee" were saved to him. once in the little hotel room, the physician went about his business with swift decisiveness, aided by the mite of a girl, who seemed to know by instinct where to be and what to do in the way of handling towels, wash-basin, and the other simple paraphernalia required. professor certain was unceremoniously packed off to the drug store for bandages. when he returned the patient had recovered consciousness. "where's dad?" he asked eagerly. "did he hurt dad?" "no, boyee." the big man was at the bedside in two long, velvety-footed steps. struck by the extenuation of the final "y" in the term, the physician for the first time noted a very faint foreign accent, the merest echo of some alien tongue. "are you in pain, boyee?" "not very much. it doesn't matter. why did he want to kill you?" "never mind that, now," interrupted the physician. "we'll get that scratch bound up, and then, young man, you'll go to sleep." pallid as a ghost, the itinerant held the little hand during the process of binding the wound. "boyee" essayed to smile, at the end, and closed his eyes. "now we can leave him," said the physician. "poppet, curl up in that chair and keep watch on our patient while this gentleman and i have a little talk in the outer room." with a brisk nod of obedience and comprehension, the elfin girl took her place, while the two men went out. "what do i owe you?" asked professor certain, as soon as the door had closed. "nothing." "oh, that won't do." "it will have to do." "courtesy of the profession? but--" the other laughed grimly, cutting him short. "so you call yourself an m.d., do you?" "call myself? i am. regular degree from the dayton medical college." he sleeked down his heavy hair with a complacent hand. the physician snorted. "a diploma-mill. what did you pay for your m.d.?" "one hundred dollars, and it's as good as your four-year p. and s. course or any other, for my purposes," retorted the other, with hardihood. "what's more, i'm a member of the american academy of surgeons, with a special diploma from st. luke's hospital of niles, michigan, and a certificate of fellowship in the national medical scientific fraternity. pleased to meet a brother practitioner." the sneer was as palpable as it was cynical. "you've got all the fake trimmings, haven't you? do those things pay?" "do they! better than your game, i'll bet. name your own fee, now, and don't be afraid to make it strong." "i'm not in regular practice. i'm a naval surgeon on leave. give your money to those poor devils you swindled to-night. i don't like the smell of it." "oh, you can't rile me," returned the quack. "i don't blame you regulars for getting sore when you see us fellows culling out coin from under your very noses, that you can't touch." "cull it, and welcome. but don't try to pass it on to me." "well, i'd like to do something for you in return for what you did for my son." "would you? pay me in words, then, if you will and dare. what is your vitalizing mixture?" "that's my secret." "liquor? eh?" "some." "morphine?" "a little." "and the rest syrup and coloring matter, i suppose. a fine vitalizer!" "it gets the money," retorted the other. "and your soothing, balmy oils for cancer? arsenious acid, i suppose, to eat it out?" "what if it is? as well that as anything else--for cancer." "humph! i happened to see a patient you'd treated, two years ago, by that mild method. it wasn't cancer at all; only a benign tumor. your soothing oils burned her breast off, like so much fire. she's dead now." "oh, we all make mistakes." "but we don't all commit murder." "rub it in, if you like to. you can't make me mad. just the same, if it wasn't for what you've done for boyee--" "well, what about 'boyee'?" broke in his persecutor quite undisturbed. "he seems a perfectly decent sort of human integer." the bold eyes shifted and softened abruptly. "he's the big thing in my life." "bringing him up to the trade, eh?" "no, damn you!" "damn me, if you like. but don't damn him. he seems to be a bit too good for this sort of thing." "to tell you the truth," said the other gloomily, "i was going to quit at the end of this year, anyway. but i guess this ends it now. accidents like this hurt business. i guess this closes my tour." "is the game playing out?" "not exactly! do you know what i took out of this town last night? one hundred and ten good dollars. and to-morrow's consultation is good for fifty more. that 'spiel' of mine is the best high-pitch in the business." "high-pitch?" "high-pitching," explained the quack, "is our term for the talk, the patter. you can sell sugar pills to raise the dead with a good-enough high-pitch. i've done it myself--pretty near. with a voice like mine, it's a shame to drop it. but i'm getting tired. and boyee ought to have schooling. so, i'll settle down and try a regular proprietary trade with the mixture and some other stuff i've got. i guess i can make printer's ink do the work. and there's millions in it if you once get a start. more than you can say of regular practice. i tried that, too, before i took up itinerating." he grinned. "a midge couldn't have lived on my receipts. by the way," he added, becoming grave, "what was your game in cutting in on my 'spiel'?" "just curiosity." "you ain't a government agent or a medical society investigator?" the physician pulled out a card and handed it over. it read, "mark elliot, surgeon, u.s.n." "don't lose any sleep over me," he advised, then went to open the outer door, in response to a knock. a spectacled young man appeared. "they told me professor certain was here," he said. "what is it?" asked the quack. "about that stabbing. i'm the editor of the weekly 'palladium.'" "glad to see you, mr. editor. always glad to see the press. of course you won't print anything about this affair?" the visitor blinked. "you wouldn't hardly expect me to kill the story." "not? does anybody else but me give you page ads.?" "well, of course, we try to favor our advertisers," said the spectacled one nervously. "that's business! i'll be coming around again next year, if this thing is handled right, and i think my increased business might warrant a double page, then." "but the paper will have to carry something about it. too many folks saw it happen." "just say that a crazy man tried to interrupt the lecture of professor andrew leon certain, the distinguished medical savant, and was locked up by the authorities." "but the knifing. how is the boy?" "somebody's been giving you the wrong tip. there wasn't any knife," replied the professor with a wink. "you may send me two hundred and fifty copies of the paper. and, by the way, do what you can to get that poor lunatic off easy, and i'll square the bills--with commission." "i'll see the justice first thing in the morning," said the editor with enthusiasm. "much obliged, professor certain. and the article will be all right. i'll show you a proof. it mightn't be a bad notion for you to drop in at the jail with me, and see neal, the man that stab--that interrupted the meeting, before he gets talking with any one else." "so it mightn't. but what about my leaving, now?" professor certain asked of the physician. "go ahead. i'll keep watch." shortly after the itinerant had gone out with the exponent of free and untrammeled journalism, the boy awoke and looked about with fevered anxiety for his father. the little nurse was beside him at once. "you mustn't wiggle around," she commanded. "do you want a drink?" gratefully he drank the water which she held to his lips. "where's my dad?" he asked. "he's gone out. he'll come back pretty soon. lie down." he sank back, fixing his eyes upon her. "will you stay with me till he comes?" she nodded. "does it hurt you much?" her cool and tiny fingers touched his forehead, soothingly. "you're very hot. i think you've got a little fever." "don't take your hand away." his eyes closed, but presently opened again. "i think you're very pretty," he said shyly. "do you? i like to have people think i'm pretty. uncle guardy scolds me for it. not really, you know, but just pretending. he says i'm vain." "is that your uncle, the gentleman that fixed my arm?" "yes. i call him uncle guardy because he's my guardian, too." "i like him. he looks good. but i like you better. i like you a lot." "everybody does," replied the girl with dimpling complacency. "they can't help it. it's because i'm me!" for a moment he brooded. "am i going to die?" he asked quite suddenly. "die? of course not." "would you be sorry if i did?" "yes. if you died you couldn't like me any more. and i want everybody to like me and think me pretty." "i'm glad i'm not. it would be tough on dad." "my uncle guardy thinks your father is a bad man," said the fairy, not without a spice of malice. up rose the patient from his pillow. "then i hate him. he's a liar. my dad is the best man in the world." a brighter hue than fever burnt in his cheeks, and his hand went to his shoulder. "i won't have his bandages on me," he cried. but she had thrown herself upon his arm, and pushed him back. "oh, don't! please don't," she besought. "uncle guardy told me to keep you perfectly quiet. and i've made you sit up--" "what's all this commotion?" demanded dr. elliot brusquely, from the door. "you said my father was a bad man," cried the outraged patient. "lie back, youngster." the physician's hand was gentle, but very firm. "i don't recall saying any such thing. where did you get it?" "i said you _thought_ he was a bad man," declared the midget girl. "i know you do. you wouldn't have spoken back to him down in the square if you hadn't." her uncle turned upon her a slow, cool, silent regard. "esmé, you talk too much," he said finally. "i'm a little ashamed of you, as a nurse. take your place there by the bedside. and you, young man, shut your ears and eyes and go to sleep." hardly had the door closed behind the autocrat of the sick-room, when his patient turned softly. "you're crying," he accused. "i'm not!" the denial was the merest gasp. the long lashes quivered with tears. "yes, you are. he was mean to you." "he's _never_ mean to me." the words came in a sobbing rush. "but he--he--stopped loving me just for that minute. and when anybody i love stops loving me i want to die!" the boy's brown hands crept timidly to her arm. "i like you awfully," he said. "and i'll never stop, not even for a minute!" "won't you?" again she was the child coquette. "but we're going away to-night. perhaps you won't see me any more." "oh, yes, i shall. i'll look for you until i find you." "i'll hide," she teased. "that won't matter, little girl." he repeated the form softly and drowsily. "little girl; little girl; i'd do anything in the world for you, little girl, if ever you asked me. only don't go away while i'm asleep." back of them the door had opened quietly and professor certain, who, with dr. elliot, had been a silent spectator of the little drama, now closed it again, withdrawing, on the further side, with his companion. "he'll sleep now," said the physician. "that's all he needs. hello! what's this?" in a corner of the sofa was a tiny huddle, outlined vaguely as human, under a faded shawl. drawing aside the folds, the quack disclosed a wild little face, framed in a mass of glowing red hair. "that hardscrabbler's young 'un," he said. "she was crying quietly to herself, in the darkness outside the jail, poor little tyke. so i picked her up, and" (with a sort of tender awkwardness) "she was glad to come with me. seemed to kind of take to me. kiddies generally do." "do they? that's curious." "i suppose you think so," replied the quack, without rancor. "what are you going to do with her?" "i'll see, later. at present i'm going to keep her here with us. she's only seven, and her mother's dead. are you staying here to-night?" "got to. missed my connection." "then at least you'll let me pay your hotel bill, if you won't take my money." "why, yes: i suppose so," said the other grudgingly. "i'll look at the boy in the morning. but he'll be all right. only, don't take up your itinerating again for a few days." "i'm through, i tell you. give me a growing city to settle in and i'll go in for the regular proprietary manufacturing game. know anything about worthington?" "yes." "pretty good, live town?" "first-class, and not too critical, i suppose, to accept your business," said dr. elliot dryly. "i'm on my way there now for a visit. well, i must get my little girl." the itinerant opened the door, looked, and beckoned. the boy lay on his pillow, the girl was curled in her chair, both fast asleep. their hands were lightly clasped. dr. elliot lifted his ward and carried her away. the itinerant, returning to the hardscrabbler girl, took her out to arrange the night's accommodation for her. so, there slept that night under one roof and at the charge of professor andrew l. certain, five human beings who, long years after, were destined to meet and mingle their fates, intricate, intimate strands in the pattern of human weal and woe. chapter ii our leading citizen the year of grace, 1913, commended itself to dr. l. andré surtaine as an excellent time in which to be alive, rich, and sixty years old. thoroughly, keenly, ebulliently alive he was. thoroughly rich, also; and if the truth be told, rather ebulliently conscious of his wealth. you could see at a glance that he had paid no usurious interest to fate on his success; that his vigor and zest in life remained to him undiminished. vitality and a high satisfaction with his environment and with himself as well placed in it, radiated from his bulky and handsome person; but it was the vitality that impressed you first: impressed and warmed you; perhaps warned you, too, on shrewder observation. a gleaming personality, this. but behind the radiance one surmised fire. occasion given, dr. surtaine might well be formidable. the world had been his oyster to open. he had cleaved it wide. ill-natured persons hinted, in reference to his business, that he had used poison rather than the knife wherewith to loosen the stubborn hinges of the bivalve. money gives back small echo to the cries of calumny, however. and dr. surtaine's certina, that infallible and guaranteed blood-cure, eradicator of all known human ills, "famous across the map of the world," to use one of its advertising phrases, under the catchword of "professor certain's certina, the sure-cure" (for he preserved the old name as a trade-mark), had made a vast deal of money for its proprietor. worthington estimated his fortune at fifteen millions, growing at the rate of a million yearly, and was not preposterously far afield. in a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, claimed (one hundred and seventy-five thousand allowed by a niggling and suspicious census), this is all that the most needy of millionaires needs. it was all that dr. surtaine needed. he enjoyed his high satisfaction as a hard-earned increment. something more than satisfaction beamed from his face this blustery march noon as he awaited the worthington train at a small station an hour up the line. he fidgeted like an eager boy when the whistle sounded, and before the cars had fairly come to a stop he was up the steps of the sleeper and inside the door. there rose to meet him a tall, carefully dressed and pressed youth, whose exclamation was evenly apportioned between welcome and surprise. "dad!" "boy-ee!" to the amusement of the other passengers, the two seized each other in a bear-hug. "oof!" panted the big man, releasing his son. "that's the best thing that's happened to me this year. george" (to the porter), "get me a seat. get us two seats together. aren't any? perhaps this gentleman," turning to the chair back of him, "wouldn't mind moving across the aisle until we get to worthington." "certainly not. glad to oblige," said the stranger, smiling. people usually were "glad to oblige" dr. surtaine whether they knew him or not. the man inspired good will in others. "it's nearly a year since i've set eyes on my son," he added in a voice which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; "and it seems like ten. how are you feeling, hal? you look chirp as a cricket." "couldn't possibly feel better, sir. where did you get on?" "here at state crossing. thought i'd come up and meet you. the office got on my nerves this morning. work didn't hold me worth a cent. i kept figuring you coming nearer and nearer until i couldn't stand it, so i banged down my desk, told my secretary that i was going to california on the night boat and mightn't be back till evening, hung the scrap-basket on the stenographer's ear when she tried to hold me up to sign some letters, jumped out of the fifth-story window, and here i am. i hope you're as tickled to see me as i am to see you." the young man's hand went out, fell with a swift movement, to touch his father's, and was as swiftly withdrawn again. "worthington's just waiting for you," the doctor rattled on. "you're put up at all the clubs. people you've never heard of are laying out dinners and dances for you. you're a distinguished stranger; that's what you are. welcome to our city and all that sort of thing. i'd like to have a brass band at the station to meet you, only i thought it might jar your quiet european tastes. eh? at that, i had to put the boys under bonds to keep 'em from decorating the factory for you." "you don't seem to have lost any of your spirit, dad," said the junior, smiling. "noticed that already, have you? well, i'm holding my own, boyee. up to date, old age hasn't scratched me with his claws to any noticeable extent--is that the way it goes?--see 'familiar quotations.' i'm getting to be a regular book-worm, hal. shakespeare, r.l.s., kipling, arnold bennett, hall caine--all the high-brows. and i _get_ 'em, too. soak 'em right in. i love it! tell me, who's this balzac? an agent was in yesterday trying to make me believe that he invented culture. what about him? i'm pretty hot on the culture trail. look out, or i'll overhaul you." "you won't have to go very far or fast. i've got only smatterings." but the boy spoke with a subdued complacency not wholly lost upon the shrewd father. "not so much that you'll think worthington dull and provincial?" "oh, i dare say i shall find it a very decent little place." but here hal touched another pride and loyalty, quite as genuine as that which dr. surtaine felt for his son. "little place!" he cried. "two hundred thousand of the livest people on god's earth. a gen-u-wine american city if there ever was one." "evidently it suits you, sir." "couldn't suit better if i'd had it made to order," chuckled the doctor. "and i did pretty near make it over to order. it was a dead-and-alive town when we opened up here. didn't care much about my business, either. now we're the biggest thing in town. why certina is the cross-mark that shows where worthington is on the map. the business is sim-plee booming." the word exploded in rapture. "nothing like it ever known in the proprietary trade. wait till you see the shop." "that will be soon, won't it, sir? i think i've loafed quite long enough." "you're only twenty-five," his father defended him. "it isn't as if you'd been idling. your four years abroad have been just so much capital. educational capital, i mean. i've got plenty of the other kind, for both of us. you don't need to go into the business unless you want to." "being an american, i suppose i've got to go to work at something." "not necessarily." "you don't want me to live on you all my life, though, i suppose." "well, i don't want you to want me to want you to," returned the other, laughing. "but there's no hurry." "to tell the truth, i'm rather bored with doing nothing. and if i can be of any use to you in the business--" "you're ready to resume the partnership," his father concluded the sentence for him. "that was the foundation of it all; the old days when i did the 'spieling' and you took in the dollars. how quick your little hands were! can you remember it? the smelly smoke of the torches, and the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below. and to think what has grown out of it. god, boyee! it's a miracle," he exulted. "it isn't very clear in my memory. i used to get pretty sleepy, i remember," said the son, smiling. "poor boyee! sometimes i hated the life, for you. but there was nobody to leave you with; and you were all i had. anyway, it's turned out well, hasn't it?" "that remains to be seen for me, doesn't it? i'm rather at the start of things." "most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and the world for a playground." "one gets tired of playing. _and_ of globe-trotting." "good! do you think you can make worthington feel like home?" "how can i tell, sir? i haven't spent two weeks altogether in the place since i entered college eight years ago." "did it ever strike you that i'd carefully planned to keep you away from here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at summer places?" "yes." "you've never spoken of it." "no." "good boy! now i'll tell you why. i wanted to be absolutely established before i brought you back here. not in business, alone. that came long ago. there have been obstacles, in other ways. they're all overcome. to-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and i, hal. do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?" "rather more like a freshman entering college," said the other, laughing. "it isn't the town, it's the business that i have misgivings about." "misgivings? how's that?" asked the father quickly. "what i can do in it." "oh, that. my doubts are whether it's the best thing for you." "don't you want me to go into it, dad?" "of course i want you with me, boyee. but--well, frank and flat, i don't know whether it's genteel enough for you." "genteel?" the younger surtaine repeated the distasteful adjective with surprise. "some folks make fun of it, you know. it's the advertising that makes it a fair mark. 'certina,' they say. 'that's where he made his money. patent-medicine millions.' i don't mind it. but for you it's different." "if the money is good enough for me to spend, it's good enough for me to earn," said hal surtaine a little grandiloquently. "humph! well, the business is a big success, and i want you to be a big success. but that doesn't mean that i want to combine the two. isn't there anything else you've ever thought of turning to?" "i've got something of a leaning toward your profession, dad." "my prof--oh, you mean medicine." "yes." "nothing in it. doctors are a lot of prejudiced pedants and hypocrites. not one in a thousand is more than an inch wide. what started you on that?" "i hardly know. it was just a notion. i think the scientific and sociological side is what appeals to me. but my interest is only theoretical." "that's very well for a hobby. not as a profession. here we are, half an hour late, as usual." the sudden and violent bite of the brakes, a characteristic operation of that mummy among railroads, the mid-state and great muddy river, commonly known as the "mid-and-mud," flung forward in an involuntary plunge the incautious who had arisen to look after their things. hal surtaine found himself supporting the weight of a fortuitous citizen who had just made his way up the aisle. "thank you," said the stranger in a dry voice. "you're the prodigal son of whom we've heard such glowing forecast, i presume." "well met, mr. pierce," called dr. surtaine's jovial voice. "yes, that's my son, harrington, you're hanging to. hal, this is mr. elias m. pierce, one of the men who run worthington." releasing his burden hal acknowledged the introduction. elias m. pierce, receding a yard or so into perspective, revealed himself as a spare, middle-aged man who looked as if he had been hewn out of a block, square, and glued into a permanent black suit. under his palely sardonic eye hal felt that he was being appraised, and in none too amiable a spirit. "a favorite pleasantry of your father's, mr. surtaine," said pierce. "what became of douglas? oh, here he is." a clean-shaven, rather floridly dressed man came forward, was introduced to hal, and inquired courteously whether he was going to settle down in worthington. "probably depends on how well he likes it," cut in the dry mr. pierce. "you might help him decide. i'm sure william would be glad to have you lunch with him one day this week at the huron club, mr. surtaine." somewhat surprised and a little annoyed at this curiously vicarious suggestion of hospitality, the newcomer hesitated, although douglas promptly supported the offer. before he had decided what to reply, his father eagerly broke in. "yes, yes. you must go, hal," he said, apparently oblivious of the fact that he had not been included in the invitation. "i'll try to be there, myself," continued pierce, in a flat tone of condescension. "douglas represents me, however, not only legally but in other matters that i'm too busy to attend to." "mr. pierce is president of the huron club," explained dr. surtaine. "it's our leading social organization. you'll meet our best business men there." and hal had no alternative but to accept. here william douglas turned to speak to dr. surtaine. "the reverend norman hale has been looking for you. it is some minor hitch about that mission matter, i believe. just a little diplomacy wanted. he said he'd call to see you day after to-morrow." "meaning more money, i suppose," said dr. surtaine. then, more loudly: "well, the business can stand it. all right. send him along." with hal close on his heels he stepped from the car. but douglas, having the cue from his patron, took the younger man by the arm and drew him aside. "come over and meet some of our fair citizens," he said. "nothing like starting right." the pierce motor car, very large, very quietly complete and elegant, was waiting near at hand, and in it a prematurely elderly, subdued nondescript of a woman, and a pretty, sensitive, sensuous type of brunette, almost too well dressed. to mrs. pierce and miss kathleen pierce, hal was duly presented, and by them graciously received. as he stood there, bareheaded, gracefully at ease, smiling up into the interested faces of the two ladies, dr. surtaine, passing to his own car to await him, looked back and was warmed with pride and gratitude for this further honorarium to his capital stock of happiness, for he saw already in his son the assurance of social success, and, on the hour's reckoning, summed him up. and since we are to see much of harrington surtaine, in evil chance and good, and see him at times through the eyes of that shrewd observer and capitalizer of men, his father, the summing-up is worth our present heed, for all that it is to be considerably modified in the mind of its proponent, as events develop. this, then, is dr. surtaine's estimate of his beloved "boyee," after a year of separation. "a little bit of a prig. a little bit of a cub. just a _little_ mite of a snob, too, maybe. but the right, solid, clean stuff underneath. and my son, thank god! _my_ son all through." chapter iii esmé hal saw her first, vivid against the lifeless gray of the cement wall, as he turned away from the pierce car. a little apart from the human current she stood, still and expectant. as if to point her out as the chosen of gods and men, the questing sun, bursting in triumph through a cloud-rift, sent a long shaft of gold to encompass and irradiate her. to the end, whether with aching heart or glad, hal was to see her thus, in flashing, recurrent visions; a slight, poised figure, all gracious curves and tender consonances, with a cluster of the trailing arbutus, that first-love of the springtide, clinging at her breast. the breeze bore to him the faint, wild, appealing fragrance which is the very breath and soul of the blossom's fairy-pink. half-turning, she had leaned a little, as a flower leans, to the warmth of the sunlight, uplifting her face for its kiss. she was not beautiful in any sense of regularity of outline or perfection of feature, so much as lovely, with the lustrous loveliness which defiantly overrides the lapse of line and proportion, and imperiously demands the homage of every man born of woman. chill analysis might have judged the mouth, with its delicate, humorous quirk at the corners, too large; the chin too broad, for all its adorable baby dimple; the line of the nose too abrupt, the wider contours lacking something of classic exactitude. but the chillest analysis must have warmed to enthusiasm at the eyes; wide-set, level, and of a tawny hazel, with strange, wine-brown lights in their depths, to match the brownish-golden sheen of the hair, where the sun glinted from it. as it were a higher power of her physical splendor, there emanated from the girl an intensity and radiance of joy in being alive and lovely. involuntarily hal surtaine paused as he approached her. her glance fell upon him, not with the impersonal regard bestowed upon a casual passer-by, but with an intent and brightening interest,--the thrill of the chase, had he but known it,--and passed beyond him again. but in that brief moment, the conviction was borne in upon him that sometime, somewhere, he had looked into those eyes before. puzzled and eager he still stared, until, with a slight flush, she moved forward and passed him. at the head of the stairs he saw her greet a strongly built, grizzled man; and then became aware of his father beckoning to him from the automobile. "bewitched, hal?" said dr. surtaine as his son came to him. "was i staring very outrageously, sir?" "why, you certainly looked interested," returned the older man, laughing. "but i don't think you need apologize to the young lady. she's used to attention. rather lives on it, i guess." the tone jarred on hal. "i had a queer, momentary feeling that i'd seen her before," he said. "don't you recall where?" "no," said hal, startled. "_do_ i know her?" "apparently not," taunted the other good-humoredly. "you should know. hers is generally considered a face not difficult to remember." "impossible to forget!" "in that case it must be that you haven't seen her before. but you will again. and, then look out, boy-ee. danger ahead!" "how's that, sir?" "you'll see for yourself when you meet her. half of the boys in town are crazy over her. she eats 'em alive. can't you tell the man-killer type when you see it?" "oh, that's all in the game, isn't it?" returned hal lightly. "so long as she plays fair. and she looks like a girl of breeding and standards." "all of that. esmé elliot is a lady, so far as that goes. but--well, i'm not going to prejudice you. here she comes now." "who is it with her?" "her uncle, dr. elliot. he doesn't altogether approve of us--me, i mean." uncle and niece were coming directly toward them now, and hal watched her approach with a thrill of delight in her motion. it was a study in harmonies. she moved like a cloud before the wind; like a ship upon the high seas; like the swirl of swift waters above hidden depths. as the pair passed to their car, which stood next to dr. surtaine's, the girl glanced up and nodded, with a brilliant smile, to the doctor, who returned to the salutation an extra-gallant bow. "you seem to be friends," commented hal, somewhat amused. "that was more for you than for me. but the fair esmé can always spare one of those smiles for anything that wears trousers." hal moved uneasily. he felt a sense of discord. as he cast about for a topic to shift to, the elliot car rolled ahead slowly, and once more he caught the woodsy perfume of the pink bloom. strangely and satisfyingly to his quickened perceptions, it seemed to express the quality of the wearer. despite her bearing of worldly self-assurance, despite the atmosphere of modishness about her, there was in her charm something wild and vivid, vernal and remote, like the arbutus which, alone among flowers, keeps its life-secret virgin and inviolate, resisting all endeavors to make it bloom except in its own way and in its own chosen places. chapter iv the shop certina had found its first modest home in worthington on a side street. as the business grew, the staid tenement which housed it expanded and drew to itself neighboring buildings, until it eventually gave way to the largest, finest, and most up-to-date office edifice in the city. none too large, fine, or modern was this last word in architecture for the triumphant nostrum and the minor medical enterprises allied to it. for though certina alone bore the name and spread the fame and features of its inventor abroad in the land, many lesser experiments had bloomed into success under the fertilizing genius of the master-quack. inanimate machinery, when it runs sweetly, gives forth a definite tone, the bee-song of work happily consummated. so this great human mechanism seemed, to harrington surtaine as he entered the realm of its activities, moving to music personal to itself. through its wide halls he wandered, past humming workrooms, up spacious stairways, resonant to the tread of brisk feet, until he reached the fifth floor where cluster the main offices. here through a succession of open doors he caught a glimpse of the engineer who controlled all these lively processes, leaning easily back from his desk, fresh, suavely groomed, smiling, an embodiment of perfect satisfaction. before dr. surtaine lay many sheaves of paper, in rigid order. a stenographer sat in a far corner, making notes. from beyond a side door came the precise, faint clicking of a typewriter. the room possessed an atmosphere of calm and poise; but not of restfulness. at once and emphatically it impressed the visitor with a sense that it was a place where things were done, and done efficiently. upon his son's greeting, dr. surtaine whirled in his chair. "come down to see the old slave at work, eh?" he said. "yes, sir." hal's hand fell on the other's shoulder, and the doctor's fingers went up to it for a quick pressure. "i thought i'd like to see the wheels go 'round." "you've come to the right spot. this is the good old cash-factory, and yours truly is the man behind the engine. the state, i'm it, as napoleon said to louis the quince. where mcbeth sits is the head of the table." "in other words, a one-man business." "that's the secret. there's nothing in this shop that i can't do, and don't do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in. i can put more pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business. modesty isn't my besetting sin, you see, hal." "why should it be? every brick in this building would give the lie to it." "say every frame on these four walls," suggested dr. surtaine with an expansive gesture. following this indication, hal examined the decorations. on every side were ordinary newspaper advertisements, handsomely mounted, most of them bearing dates on brass plates. here and there appeared a circular, or a typed letter, similarly designated. above dr. surtaine's desk was a triple setting, a small advertisement, a larger one, and a huge full-newspaper-page size, each embodying the same figure, that of a man half-bent over, with his hand to his back and a lamentable expression on his face. certain strongly typed words fairly thrust themselves out of the surrounding print: "pain--back--take care--means something--your kidneys." and then in dominant presentment- certina cures. "what do you think of old lame-boy?" asked dr. surtaine. "from an æsthetic point of view?" "never mind the æsthetics of it. 'handsome is as handsome does.'" "what has that faded beauty done, then?" "carried many a thousand of our money to bank for us, boyee. that's the ad. that made the business." "did you design it?" "every word and every line, except that i got a cheap artist to touch up the drawing a little. then i plunged. when that copy went out, we had just fifty thousand dollars in the world, you and i. before it had been running three months, i'd spent one hundred thousand dollars more than we owned, in the newspapers, and had to borrow money right and left to keep the manufacturing and bottling plant up to the orders. it was a year before we could see clear sailing, and by that time we were pretty near quarter of a million to the good. talk about ads. that pull! it pulled like a mule-team and a traction engine and a fifty-cent painless dentist all in one. i'm still using that copy, in the kidney season." "do kidneys have seasons?" "kidney troubles do." "i'd have thought such diseases wouldn't depend on the time of year." "maybe they don't, actually," admitted the other. "maybe they're just crowded out of the public mind by the pressure of other sickness in season, like rheumatism in the early winter, and pneumonia in the late. but there's no doubt that the kidney season comes in with the changes of the spring. that's one of my discoveries, too. i tell you, boyee, i've built my success on things like that. it's psychology: that's what it is. that's what you've got to learn, if you're going into the concern." "i'm ready, dad. it sounds interesting. more so than i'd have thought." "interesting! it's the very heart and core of the trade." dr. surtaine leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a picture of expository enthusiasm. "here's the theory. you see, along about march or april people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy. they don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. well, one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. after wonder comes worry. he's the best little worrier in the trade, old lame-boy is. he just pesters folks into taking proper care of themselves. they get certina, and we get their dollars. and they get their money's worth, too," he added as an afterthought for hal's benefit, "for it's a mighty good thing to have your kidneys tonicked up at this time of year." "but, dad," queried hal, with an effort of puzzled reminiscence, "in the old days certina wasn't a kidney remedy, was it?" "not specially. it's always been _good_ for the kidneys. good for everything, for that matter. besides, the formula's been changed." "changed? but the formula's the vital thing, isn't it?" "yes, yes. of course. certainly it's the vital thing: certainly. but, you see,--well,--new discoveries in medicine and that sort of thing." "you've put new drugs in?" "yes: i've done that. buchu, for instance. that's supposed to be good for the kidneys. dropped some things out, too. morphine got sort of a bad name. the muckrakers did that with their magazine articles." "of course i don't pretend to know about such things, dad. but morphine seems a pretty dangerous thing for people to take indiscriminately." "well, it's out. there ain't a grain of it in certina to-day." "i'm glad of it." "oh, i don't know. it's useful in its place. for instance, you can't run a soothing-syrup without it. but when the pure food law compelled us to print the amount of morphine on the label, i just made up my mind that i'd have no government interference in the certina business, so i dropped the drug." "did the law hurt our trade much?" "not so far as certina goes. i'm not even sure it didn't help. you see, now we can print 'guaranteed under the u.s. food and drugs act' on every bottle. in fact we're required to." "what does the guaranty mean?" "that whatever statement may be on the label is accurate. that's all. but the public takes it to mean that the government officially guarantees certina to do everything we claim for it," chuckled dr. surtaine. "it's a great card. we've done more business under the new formula than we ever did under the old." "what is the formula now?" "prying into the secrets of the trade?" chuckled the elder man. "but if i'm coming into the shop, to learn--" "right you are, boyee," interrupted his father buoyantly. "there's the formula for making profits." he swept his hand about in a spacious circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls. "there's where the brains count. come along," he added, jumping up; "let's take a turn around the joint." every day, dr. surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to go through the entire plant. "it's the only way to keep a business up to mark. besides, i like to know my people." evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked him. so much hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their wanderings. first they went to the printing-plant, the certina company doing all its own printing; then to what dr. surtaine called "the literary bureau." "three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy," he explained in an aside. "one of 'em gets five thousand a year; but even so i have to go over all his stuff. if i could teach him to write ads. like i do it myself, i'd pay him ten thousand--yes, twenty thousand. i'd have to, to keep him. the circulars they do better; but i edit those, too. what about that name for the new laxative pills, con? hal, i want you to meet mr. conover, our chief ad.-man." conover, a dapper young man with heavy eye-glasses, greeted hal with some interest, and then turned to the business in hand. "what'd you think of 'anti-pellets'?" he asked. "anti, opposed to, you know. in the sub-line, tell what they're opposed to: indigestion, appendicitis, and so on." "don't like it," returned dr. surtaine abruptly. "anti-ralgia's played that to death. lemme think, for a moment." down he plumped into conover's chair, seized a pencil and made tentative jabs at a sheet of paper. "pellets, pellets," he muttered. then, in a kind of subdued roar, "i've got it! i've got it, con! 'pro-pellets.' tell people what they're for, not what they're against. besides, the name has got the idea of pro-pulsion. see? pro-pellets, pro-pel!" his big fist shot forward like a piston-rod. "just the idea for a laxative. eh?" "fine!" agreed conover, a little ruefully, but with genuine appreciation of the fitness of the name. "i wish i'd thought of it." "you did--pretty near. anyway, you made me think of it. anti-pellets, pro-pellets: it's just one step. like as not you'd have seen it yourself if i hadn't butted in. now, go to it, and figure out your series on that." with kindly hands he pushed conover back into his chair, gave him a hearty pat on the shoulder, and passed on. hal began to have an inkling of the reasons for his father's popularity. "have we got other medicines besides certina?" he asked. "bless you, yes! this little laxative pills business i took over from a concern that didn't have the capital to advertise it. across the hall there is the sure soother department. that's a teething syrup: does wonders for restless babies. on the floor below is the cranicure mixture for headaches, rub-it-in balm for rheumatism and bruises, and a couple of small side issues that we're not trying to push much. we're handling stomachine and relief pills from here, but the pills are made in cincinnati, and we market 'em under another trade name." "stomachine is for stomach troubles, i assume," said hal. "what are the relief pills?" "oh, a female remedy," replied his father carelessly. "quite a booming little trade, too. take a look at the certina collection of testimonials." in a room like a bank vault were great masses of testimonial letters, all listed and double-catalogued by name and by disease. "genuine. provably genuine, every one. there's romance in some of 'em. and gratitude; good lord! sometimes when i look 'em over, i wonder i don't run for president of the united states on a certina platform." from the testimonial room they went to the art department where dr. surtaine had some suggestions to make as to bill-board designs. "you'll never get another puller like old lame-boy," hal heard the head designer say with a chuckle, and his father reply: "if i could i'd start another proprietary as big as certina." "where does that lead to?" inquired hal, as they approached a side passage sloping slightly down, and barred by a steel door. "the old building. the manufacturing department is over there." "compounding the medicine, you mean?" "yes. bottling and shipping, too." "aren't we going through?" "why, yes: if you like. you won't find much to interest you, though." nor, to hal's surprise, did dr. surtaine himself seem much concerned with this phase of the business. apparently his hand was not so close in control here as in the other building. the men seemed to know him less well. "all this pretty well runs itself," he explained negligently. "don't you have to keep a check on the mixing, to make sure it's right?" "oh, they follow the formula. no chance for error." they walked amidst chinking trucks, some filled with empty, some with filled and labeled bottles, until they reached the carton room where scores of girls were busily inserting the bottles, together with folded circulars and advertising cards, into pasteboard boxes. at the far end of this room a pungent, high-spiced scent, as of a pickle-kitchen with a fortified odor underlying it, greeted the unaccustomed nose of the neophyte. "good!" he sniffed. "how clean and appetizing it smells!" enthusiasm warmed the big man's voice once more. "just what it is, too!" he exclaimed. "now you've hit on the second big point in certina's success. it's easy to take. what's the worst thing about doctors' doses? they're nasty. the very thought of 'em would gag a cat. tell people that here's a remedy better than the old medicine and pleasant to the taste, and they'll take to it like ducks to water. certina is the first proprietary that ever tasted good. next to old lame-boy, it's my biggest idea." "are we going into the mixing-room?" asked his son. "if you like. but you'll see less than you smell." so it proved. a heavy, wet, rich vapor shrouded the space about a huge cauldron, from which came a sound of steady plashing. presently an attendant gnome, stripped to the waist, appeared, nodded to dr. surtaine, called to some one back in the mist, and shortly brought hal a small glass brimming with a pale-brown liquid. "just fresh," he said. "try it." "my kidneys are all right," protested hal. "i don't need any medicine." "take it for a bracer. it won't hurt you," urged the gnome. hal looked at his father, and, at his nod, put his lips to the glass. "why, it tastes like spiced whiskey!" he cried. "not so far out of the way. columbian spirits, caramel, cinnamon and cardamom, and a touch of the buchu. good for the blues. finish it." hal did so and was aware of an almost instantaneous glow. "strong stuff, sir," he said to his father as they emerged into a clearer atmosphere. "they like it strong," replied the other curtly. "i give 'em what they like." the attendant gnome followed. "mr. dixon was looking for you, dr. surtaine. here he comes, now." "dixon's our chief chemist," explained dr. surtaine as a shabby, anxious-looking man ambled forward. "we're having trouble with that last lot of cascara, sir," said he lugubriously. "in the number four?" "yes, sir. it don't seem to have any strength." "substitute senna." so offhand was the tone that it sounded like a suggestion rather than an order. as the latter, however, the chemist contentedly took it. "it'll cost less," he observed; "and i guess it'll do the work just as well." to hal it seemed a somewhat cavalier method of altering a medical formula. but his mind, accustomed to easy acceptance of the business which so luxuriously supplied his wants, passed the matter over lightly. "first-rate man, dixon," remarked dr. surtaine as they passed along. "college-bred, and all that. boozes, though. i only pay him twenty-five a week, and he's mighty glad to get it." on the way back to the offices, they traversed the checking and accounting rooms, the agency department, the great rows of desks whereat the shipping and mailing were looked after, and at length stopped before the door of a small office occupied by a dozen women. one of these, a full-bosomed, slender, warm-skinned girl with a wealth of deep-hued, rippling red hair crowning her small, well-poised head, rose and came to speak to dr. surtaine. "did you get the message i sent you about letter number seven?" she asked. "hello, milly," greeted the presiding genius, pleasantly. "just what was that about number seven?" "it isn't getting results." "no? let's see it." dr. surtaine was as interested in this as he had been casual about the drug alteration. "i don't think it's personal enough," pursued the girl, handing him a sheet of imitation typewriter print. "oh, you don't," said her employer, amused. "maybe you could better it." "i have," said the girl calmly. "you always tell us to make suggestions. mine are on the back of the paper." "good for you! hal, here's the prettiest girl in the shop, and about the smartest. milly, this is my boy." the girl looked up at hal with a smile and brightened color. he was suddenly interested and appreciative to see to what a vivid prettiness her face was lighted by the raised glance of her swift, gray-green eyes. "are you coming into the business, mr. surtaine?" she asked composedly, and with almost as proprietary an air as if she had said "our business." "i don't know. is it the sort of business you would advise a rather lazy person to embark in, miss--" "neal," she supplied; adding, with an illustrative glance around, upon her busy roomful, all sorting and marking correspondence, "you see, i only give advice by letter." she turned away to answer one of the subordinates, and, at the same time, dr. surtaine was called aside by a man with a shipping-bill. looking down the line of workers, hal saw that each one was simply opening, reading, and marking with a single stroke, the letters from a distributing groove. to her questioner milly neal was saying, briskly: "that's three and seven. can't you see, she says she has spots before her eyes. that's stomach. and the lameness in the side is kidneys. mark it 'three pass to seven.' there's a combination form for that." "what branch of the work is this?" asked hal, as she lifted her eyes to his again. "symptom correspondence. this is the sorting-room." "please explain. i'm a perfect greenhorn, you know." "you've seen the ads. of course. nobody could help seeing them. they all say, 'write to professor certain'--the trade name, you know. it's the regular stock line, but it does bring in the queries. here's the afternoon mail, now." hundreds upon hundreds of letters came tumbling from a bag upon the receiving-table. all were addressed to "prof." or "dr." certain. "how can my father hope to answer all those?" cried hal. the girl surveyed him with a quaint and delicious derision. "he? you don't suppose he ever sees them! what are _we_ here for?" "you do the answering?" "practically all of it, by form-letters turned out in the printing department. for instance, letter one is coughs and colds; two, headaches; three, stomach; and so on. as soon as a symp-letter is read the girl marks it with the form-letter number, underscores the address, and it goes across to the letter room where the right answer is mailed, advising the prospect to take certina. orders with cash go direct to the shipping department. if the symp-writer wants personal advice that the form-letters don't give, i send the inquiry upstairs to dr. de vito. he's a regular graduate physician who puts in half his time as our medical adviser. we can clear up three thousand letters a day, here." "i can readily see that my father couldn't attend to them personally," said hal, smiling. "and it's just as good this way. certina is what the prospects want and need. it makes no difference who prescribes it. this is the chief's own device for handling the correspondence." "the chief?" "your father. we all call him that, all the old hands." hal's glance skimmed over the fresh young face, and the brilliant eyes. "you wouldn't call yourself a very old hand, miss neal." "seven years i've worked for the chief, and i never want to work in a better place. he's been more than good to me." "because you've deserved it, young woman," came the doctor's voice from behind hal. "that's the one and only reason. i'm a flint-livered old divvle to folks that don't earn every cent of their wages." "don't you believe him, mr. surtaine," controverted the girl, earnestly. "when one of my girls came down last year with tuber--" "whoof! whoof! whoof!" interrupted the big man, waving his hands in the air. "stop it! this is no experience meeting. milly, you're right about this letter. it's the confidential note that's lacking. it'll work up all right along the line of your suggestion. i'll have to send hal to you for lessons in the business." "miss neal would have to be very patient with my stupidity." "i don't think it would be hard to be patient with you," she said softly; and though her look was steady he saw the full color rise in her cheeks, and, startled, felt an answering throb in his pulses. "but you mustn't flirt with her, hal," warned the old quack, with a joviality that jarred. uncomfortably conscious of himself and of the girl's altered expression, hal spoke a hasty word or two of farewell, and followed his father out into the hallway. but the blithe and vivid femininity of the young expert plucked at his mind. at the bend of the hall, he turned with half a hope and saw her standing at the door. her look was upon him, and it seemed to him to be both troubled and wistful. chapter v the scion to harrington surtaine, life had been a game with easy rules. certain things one must not do. decent people didn't do them. that's all there was to that. in matters of morals and conduct, he was guided by a natural temperance and an innate sense of responsibility to himself. difficult questions had not come up in his life. consequently he had not found the exercise of judgment troublesome. his tendency, as regarded his own affairs, was to a definite promptness of decision, and there was an end of the matter. others he seldom felt called upon to judge, but if the instance were ineluctable, he was prone to an amiable generosity. ease of living does not breed in the mind a strongly defined philosophy. all that young mr. surtaine required of his fellow beings was that they should behave themselves with a due and respectable regard to the rights of all in general and of himself in particular--and he would do the same by them. rather a pallid attenuation of the golden rule; but he had thus far found it sufficient to his existence. into this peaceful world-scheme intruded, now, a disorganizing factor. he had brought it home with him from his visit to the "shop." an undefined but pervasive distaste for the vast, bustling, profitable certina business formed the nucleus of it. as he thought it over that night, amidst the heavily ornate elegance of the great bedroom, which, with its dressing-room and bath, his father had set aside for his use in the surtaine mansion, he felt in the whole scheme of the thing a vague offense. the air which he had breathed in those spacious halls of trade had left a faintly malodorous reminiscence in his nostrils. one feature of his visit returned insistently to his mind: the contrast between the semi-contemptuous carelessness exhibited by his father toward the processes of compounding the cure and the minute and insistent attention given to the methods of expounding it. was the advertising really of so much more import than the medicine itself? if so, wasn't the whole affair a matter of selling shadow rather than substance? but it is not in human nature to view with too stern a scrutiny a business which furnishes one's easeful self with all the requisites of luxury, and that by processes of almost magic simplicity. hal reflected that all big businesses doubtless had their discomforting phases. he had once heard a lecturing philosopher express a doubt as to whether it were possible to defend, ethically, that prevalent modern phenomenon, the millionaire, in any of his manifestations. by the counsel of perfection this might well be true. but who was he to judge his father by such rigorous standards? of the medical aspect of the question he could form no clear judgment. to him the patent medicine trade was simply a part of the world's business, like railroading, banking, or any other form of merchandising. his own precocious commercial experience, when, as a boy, he had played his little part in the barter and trade, had blinded him on that side. nevertheless, his mind was not impregnably fortified. old lame-boy, bearer of dollars to the bank, loomed up, a disturbing figure. then, from a recess in his memory, there popped out the word "genteel." his father had characterized the certina business as being, possibly, not sufficiently "genteel" for him. he caught at the saving suggestion. doubtless that was the trouble. it was the blatancy of the business, not any evil quality inherent in it, which had offended him. kindest and gentlest of men and best of fathers as dr. surtaine was, he was not a paragon of good taste; and his business naturally reflected his personality. even this was further than hal had ever gone before in critical judgment. but he seized upon the theory as a defense against further thought, and, having satisfied his self-questionings with this sop, he let his mind revert to his trip through the factory. it paused on the correspondence room and its attractive forewoman. "she seemed a practical little thing," he reflected. "i'll talk to her again and get her point of view." and then he wondered, rather amusedly, how much of this self-suggestion arose from a desire for information, and how much was inspired by a memory of her haunting, hungry eyes. on the following morning he kept away from the factory, lunched at the huron club with william douglas, elias m. pierce, who had found time to be present, and several prominent citizens whom he thought quite dully similar to each other; and afterward walked to the certina building to keep an appointment with its official head. "been feeding with our representative citizens, eh?" his father greeted him. "good! meantime the old man grubbed along on a bowl of milk and a piece of apple pie, at a hurry-up lunch-joint. good working diet, for young or old. besides, it saves time." "are you as busy as all that, dad?" "pretty busy this morning, because i've had to save an hour for you out of this afternoon. we'll take it right now if you're ready." "quite ready, sir." "hal, where's europe?" "europe? in the usual place on the map, i suppose." "you didn't bring it back with you, then?" "not a great deal of it. they mightn't have let it through the customs." dr. surtaine snapped a rubber band from a packet of papers lying on his desk. "considering that you seem to have bought it outright," he said, twinkling, "i thought you might tell me what you intend doing with it. there are the bills." "have i gone too heavy, sir?" asked hal. "you've never limited me, and i supposed that the business--" "the business," interrupted his father arrogantly, "could pay those bills three times over in any month. that isn't the point. the point is that you've spent something more than forty-eight thousand dollars this last year." hal whistled ruefully. "call it an even fifty," he said. "i've made a little, myself." "no! have you? how's that?" "while i was in london i did a bit of writing; sketches of queer places and people and that sort of thing, and had pretty good luck selling 'em. one fellow i know there even offered me a job paragraphing. that's like our editorial writing, you know." "fine! that makes me feel easier. i was afraid you might be going soft, with so much money to spend." "how i ever spent that much--" "never mind that. it's gone. however, we'll try another basis. i'd thought of an allowance, but i don't quite like the notion. hal, i'm going to give you your own money." "my own money? i didn't know that i had any." "well, you have." "where did i get it?" "from our partnership. from the old days on the road." "rather an intangible fortune, isn't it?" "that old itinerant business was the nucleus of the certina of to-day. you had a profit-sharing right in that. you've still got it--in this. hal, i'm turning over to you to-day half a million dollars." "that's a lot of money, dad," said the younger man soberly. "the interest doesn't come to fifty thousand dollars a year, though." "more than half; and that's more than plenty." "well, i don't know. we'll try it. at any rate, it's your own. plenty more where it comes from, if you need extra." "i shan't. it's more than generous of you--" "not a bit of it. no more than just, boyee. so let the thanks go." "all right, sir. but--you know how i feel about it." "i guess i know just about how you and i feel toward each other on anything that comes up between us, boyee." there was a grave gentleness in dr. surtaine's tone. "well, there are the papers," he added, more briskly. "i haven't put all your eggs in one basket, you see." going over the certificates hal found himself possessed of fifty thousand dollars in the stock of the mid-state and great muddy railroad: an equal sum in the security power products company; twenty-five thousand each in the stock of the worthington trust company and the remsen savings bank; one hundred thousand in the certina company, and fifty thousand in three of its subsidiary enterprises. besides this, he found five check-books in the large envelope which contained his riches. "what are these, dad?" he asked. "cash on deposit in local and new york banks. you might want to do some investing of your own. or possibly you might see some business proposition you wanted to buy into." "i see some security power products company certificates. what is that?" "the local light, heat, and power corporation. it pays ten per cent. certina never pays less than twenty. the rest is all good for six, at least and the mid-and-mud averages eight. you've got upwards of thirty-seven thousand income there, not counting your deposits. while you're looking about, deciding what you're going to do, it'll be your own money and nobody else's that you're spending." "do you think many fathers would do this sort of thing, dad?" said hal warmly. "any sensible one would. i don't want to own you, boyee. i want you to own yourself. and to make yourself," he added slowly. "if i can make myself like you, dad--" "oh, i'm a good-enough piece of work, for my day and time," laughed the father. "but i want a fine finish on you. while you're looking around for your life-work, how about doing a little unpaid job for me?" "anything," cried hal. "just try me." "do you know what an old home week is?" "only what i read in to-day's paper announcing the preliminary committee." "that gave you enough idea. we make a big thing of old home week in worthington. this year it will be particularly big because it's the hundredth anniversary of the city. the president of the united states will be here. i'm to be chairman of the general committee, and i want you for my secretary." "nothing i'd like better, sir." "good! all the moneyed men in town will be on the committee. the work will put you in touch with the people who count. well, that settles our business. good luck to you in your independence, boyee." he touched a bell. "any one waiting to see me, jim?" he asked the attendant. "yes, sir. the reverend norman hale." "send him in." "shall i go, dad?" asked hal. "oh, you might take a little ramble around the shop. go anywhere. ask any questions of anybody. they all know you." at the door, hal passed a tall, sinewy young man with heavy brows and rebellious hair. a slight, humorous uptilt to his mouth relieved the face of impassivity and saved it from a too formal clericalism. the visitor was too deeply concerned with some consideration of his inner self to more than glance at hal, who heard dr. surtaine's hearty greeting through the closing door. "glad to see you, mr. hale. take a chair." the visitor bowed gravely and sat down. "you've come to see me about--?" "your subscription to the east end church club fund." "i am heartily in sympathy with the splendid work your church is doing in the--er--less salubrious parts of our city," said dr. surtaine. "doubtless," returned the young clergyman dryly. "seems to be saving his wind," thought dr. surtaine, a little uneasily. "i suppose it's a question," he continued, aloud, "of the disposition of the sum--" "no: it is not." if this bald statement required elucidation or expansion, its proponent didn't seem to realize the fact. he contemplated with minute scrutiny a fly which at that moment was alighting (in about the proportion of the great american eagle) upon the pained countenance of old lame-boy. "well?" queried the other, adding to himself, "what the devil ails the man!" the scrutinized fly rose, after the manner of its kind, and (now reduced to normal scale) touched lightly in its exploratory tour upon dr. surtaine's domed forehead. following it thus far, the visitor's gaze rested. dr. surtaine brushed off the insect. he could not brush off the regard. under it and his caller's continued silence he grew fidgety. "while i'm very glad," he suggested, "to give you what time you need--" "i've come here because i wanted to have this thing out with you face to face." "well, have it out," returned the other, smiling but wary. the young clergyman drew from his pocket a folded newspaper page to which was pinned an oblong of paper. this he detached and extended to the other. "what's that?" asked the doctor, making no motion to receive it, for he instantly recognized it. "your check." "you're returning it?" "without thanks." "you mean to turn down two thousand dollars!" demanded the other in slow incredulity. "exactly." "why?" "is that question asked in good faith?" "it is." "then you haven't seen the letter written by the superintendent of our sunday school to the certina company." "what kind of a letter?" "a testimonial letter--for which your two thousand dollars is payment, i suppose." "two thousand for a church testimonial!" dr. surtaine chuckled at his caller's innocence. "why, i wouldn't pay that for a united states senator. besides," he added virtuously, "certina doesn't buy its testimonials." "then it's an unfortunate coincidence that your check should have come right on top of mr. smithson's very ill-advised letter." by a regular follow-up mechanism devised by himself, every donation by dr. surtaine was made the basis of a shrewd attempt to extract from the beneficiary an indorsement of certina's virtues, or, if not that, of the personal character and professional probity of its proprietor. this is what had happened in the instance of the check to mr. hale's church, smithson being the medium through whom the attempt was made. the quack saw no occasion to explain this to his inquisitor. so he merely said: "i never saw any such letter," which was, in a literal sense, true. "nor will you know anything about it, i suppose, until the name of the church is spread broadcast through your newspaper advertising." now, it is a rule of the patent medicine trade never to advertise an unwilling testimonial because that kind always has a kick-back. hence:-"oh, if you feel that way about it," said dr. surtaine disdainfully, "i'll keep it out of print." "and return it to me," continued the other, in a tone of calm sequentiality, which might represent either appeal, suggestion, or demand. "don't see the point," said the quack shortly. "since you do not intend to use it in your business, it can't be of any value to you," countered the other. "what's its value to you?" "in plain words, the honor of my church is involved. the check is a bribe. the letter is the graft." "nothing of the sort. you come here, a minister of the gospel," dr. surtaine reproached him sorrowfully, "and use hard words about a transaction that is perfectly straight business and happens every day." "not in my church." "it isn't your letter, anyhow. you didn't write it." "it is written on the official paper of the church. smithson told me so. he didn't understand what use would be made of it when he wrote it. take your check back, dr. surtaine, and give me the letter." "persistency, thy name is a jewel," said dr. surtaine with an air of scholarliness. "you win. the letter will be returned to-morrow. you'll take my word, i suppose?" "certainly; and thank you." "and now, suppose i offered to leave the check in your hands?" asked the doctor curiously. "i couldn't take it," came the decisive reply. "do you mind telling me why?" the visitor spread out upon the table the newspaper page which he had taken from his pocket. "this morning's 'clarion,'" he said. "so that's the trouble! you've been reading that blackmailing sheet. why, what's the 'clarion,' anyway? a scandal-mongering, yellow blatherskite, on its last legs financially. it's for sale to any bidder who'd be fool enough to put up money. the 'clarion' went after me because it couldn't get our business. it ain't any straighter than a corkscrew's shadow." "do i understand you to say that this attack is due to your refusal to advertise in the 'clarion'?" "that's it, to a t. and now, you see, mr. hale," continued dr. surtaine in a tone of long-suffering and dignified injury, "how believing all you see in print lures you into chasing after strange dogs." the visitor's mouth quivered a little at this remarkable paraphrase of the scripture passage; but he said gravely enough: "then we get back to the original charges, which the 'clarion' quotes from the 'church standard.'" "and there you are! up to three years ago the 'standard' took all the advertising we'd give them, and glad to get it. then it went daffy over the muckraking magazine exposures, and threw out all the proprietary copy. now nothing will do but it must roast its old patrons to show off its new virtue." "do you deny what the editor of the 'standard' said about certina?" dr. surtaine employed the stock answer of medical quackery when challenged on incontrovertible facts. "why, my friend," he said with elaborate carelessness, "if i tried to deny everything that irresponsible parties say about me, i wouldn't have any time left for business. well, well; plenty of other people will be glad of that two thousand. turn in the check at the cashier's window, please. good-day to you." the reverend norman hale retired, leaving the "clarion's" denunciation lying outspread on the table. meantime, wandering in the hallway, hal had encountered milly neal. "are you very busy, miss neal?" he asked. "not more than usual," she answered, regarding him with bright and kindly eyes. "did you want me?" "yes. i want to know some things about this business." "outside of my own department, i don't know much." "well; inside your own department, then. may i ask some questions?" with a businesslike air she consulted a tiny watch, then glanced toward a settee at the end of the hall. "i'll give you ten minutes," she announced. "suppose we sit down over there." "do the writers of those letters--symp-letters, i believe, you call them--" he began; "do they seem to get benefit out of the advice returned?" "what advice? to take certina? why, yes. most of 'em come back for more." "you think it good medicine for all that long list of troubles?" the girl's eyes opened wide. "of course it's a good medicine!" she cried. "do you think the chief would make any other kind?" "no; certainly not," he hastened to disclaim. "but it seems like a wide range of diseases to be cured by one and the same prescription." "oh, we've got other proprietaries, too," she assured him with her pretty air of partnership. "there's the stomachine, and the headache powders and the relief pills and the liniment; dr. surtaine runs 'em all, and every one's a winner. not that i keep much track of 'em. we only handle the certina correspondence in our room. i know what that can do. why, i take certina myself when there's anything the matter with me." "do you?" said hal, much interested. "well, you're certainly a living testimonial to its efficacy." "all the people in the shop take it. it's a good tonic, even when you're all right." the listener felt his vague uneasiness soothed. if those who were actually in the business had faith in the patent medicine's worth, it must be all that was claimed for it. "i firmly believe," continued the little loyalist, "that the chief has done more good and saved more lives than all the doctors in the country. i'd trust him further than any regular doctor i know, even if he doesn't belong to their medical societies and all that. they're jealous of him; that's what's the matter with them." "good for you!" laughed hal, feeling his doubts melt at the fire of her enthusiasm. "you're a good rooter for the business." "so's the whole shop. i guess your father is the most popular employer in worthington. have you decided to come into the business, mr. surtaine?" "do you think i'd make a valuable employee, miss milly?" he bantered. but to milly neal the subject of the certina factory admitted of no jocularity. she took him under advisement with a grave and quaint dubiety. "have you ever worked?" "oh, yes; i'm not wholly a loafer." "for a living, i mean." "unfortunately i've never had to." "how old are you?" "twenty-five." "i don't believe i'd want you in my department, if it was up to me," she pronounced. "do you think i wouldn't be amenable to your stern discipline?" still she refused to meet him on his ground of badinage. "it isn't that. but i don't think you'd be interested enough to start in at the bottom and work up." "perhaps you're right, miss neal," said hal, a little startled by the acuteness of her judgment, and a little piqued as well. "though you condemn me to a life of uselessness on scant evidence." she went scarlet. "oh, please! you know i didn't mean that. but you seem too--too easy-going, too--" "too ornamental to be useful?" suddenly she stamped her foot at him, flaming into a swift exasperation. "you're laughing at me!" she accused. "i'm going back to my work. i won't stay and be made fun of." then, in another and rather a dismayed tone, "oh, i'm forgetting about your being the chief's son." hal jumped to his feet. "please promise to forget it when next we meet," he besought her with winning courtesy. "you've been a kind little friend and adviser. and i thank you for what you have said." "not at all," she returned lamely, and walked away, her face still crimson. returning to the executive suite, the young scion found his father immersed in technicalities of copy with the second advertising writer. "sit down, boyee," said he. "i'll be through in a few minutes." and he resumed his discussion of "black-face," "36-point," "indents," "boxes," and so on. left to his own devices hal turned idly to the long table. from the newspaper which the reverend norman hale had left, there glared up at him in savage black type this heading:- certina a fake _religious editor shows up business and professional_ _methods of dr. l. andré surtaine_ the article was made up of excerpts from a religious weekly's exposé, interspersed with semi-editorial comment. as he skimmed it, hal's wrath and loyalty waxed in direct ratio. malice was obvious in every line, to the incensed reader. but the cause and purpose were not so clear. as he looked up, brooding upon it, he caught his father's eye. "been reading that slush, hal?" "yes, sir. of course it's all a pack of lies. but what's the reason for it?" "blackmail, son." "do they expect to get money out of you this way?" "no. that isn't it. i've always refused to have any business dealings with 'em, and this is their way of revenge." "but i didn't know you advertised certina in the local papers." "we don't. proprietaries don't usually advertise in their own towns. we're so well known at home that we don't have to. but some of the side lines, like the relief pills, that go out under another trade name, use space in the worthington papers. the 'clarion' isn't getting that copy, so they're sore." "can't you sue them for libel, dad?" "hardly worth while. decent people don't read the 'clarion' anyway, so it can't hurt much. it's best just to ignore such things." "something ought to be done about it," declared hal angrily. stuffing the paper into his pocket he took his wrath out into the open air. hard and fast he walked, but the farther he went the hotter burned his ire. there was in harrington surtaine a streak of the romantic. his inner world was partly made up of such chimerical notions as are bred in a lively mind, not in very close touch with the world of actualities, by a long course of novel-reading and theater-going. deep within him stirred a conviction that there was a proper and suitable, nay, an almost obligatory, method made and provided for just such crises as this: something that a keen-spirited and high-bred youth ought to do about it. suddenly it came to him. young surtaine returned home with his resolve taken. in the morning he would fare forth, a modern knight redressing human wrongs, and lick the editor of the "clarion." overnight young mr. surtaine revised his project. horsewhipping would be no more than the offending editor deserved. however, he should have his chance. let him repent and retract publicly, and the castigation should be remitted. forthwith the avenger sat him down to a task of composition. the apology which, after sundry corrections and emendations, he finally produced in fair copy, was not alone complete and explicit: it was fairly abject. in such terms might a confessed and hopeless criminal cast himself desperately upon the mercy of the court. previsioning this masterly _apologium_ upon the first page of the morrow's "clarion,"--or perhaps at the top of the editorial columns,--its artificer thrilled with the combined pride of authorship and poetic justice. on the walls of the commodious room which had been set aside in the surtaine mansion for the young master's study hung a plaited dog-whip. the agent of just reprisals curled this neatly inside his overcoat pocket and set forth upon his errand. it was then ten o'clock in the morning. now, in hunting the larger fauna of the north american continent with a dog-whip, it is advantageous to have some knowledge of the game's habits. mr. harrington surtaine's first error lay in expecting to find the editorial staff of a morning newspaper on duty in the early forenoon. so much a sweeper, emerging from a pile of dust, communicated to him across a railing, further volunteering that three o'clock would be a well-chosen hour for return, as the boss would be less pressed upon by engagements then, perhaps, than at other hours. in the nature of things, the long delay might well have cooled the knightliest ardor. but as he departed from the office, mr. surtaine took with him a copy of that day's "clarion" for perusal, and in its pages discovered a "follow-up" of the previous day's outrage. back home he went, and added to his literary effort a few more paragraphs wherein the editorial "we" more profoundly cringed, cowered, and crawled in penitential abasement. despite the relish of the words, hal rather hoped that the editor would refuse to publish his masterpiece. he itched to use that whip. chapter vi launched for purposes of vital statistics, the head office boy of the worthington "daily clarion" was denominated reginald currier. as this chaste cognomen was artistically incompatible with his squint eye, his militant swagger, and a general bearing of unrepressed hostility toward all created beings, he was professionally known as "bim." journalism, for him, was comprised in a single tenet; that no visitor of whatsoever kind had or possibly could have any business of even remotely legitimate nature within the precincts of the "clarion" office. tradition of the place held that a dent in the wall back of his desk marked the termination of an argument in which reginald, all unwitting, had essayed to maintain his thesis against the lightweight champion of the state who had come to call on the sporting editor. there had been a lull in the activities of this minor cerberus when the light and swinging footfall of one coming up the dim stairway several steps at a time aroused his ready suspicions. he bristled forth to the rail to meet a tall and rather elegant young man whom he greeted with a growl to this effect: "hoojer wanter see?" "is the editor in?" "whajjer want uvvum?" the tall visitor stepped forward, holding out a card. "take this to him, please, and say that i'd like to see him at once." unwisely, reginald disregarded the card, which fluttered to the floor. more unwisely, he ignored a certain tensity of expression upon the face of his interlocutor. most unwisely he repeated, in his very savagest growl: "whajjer want uvvum, i said. didn' chu hear me?" graceful and effortless as the mounting lark, reginald currier rose and soared. when he again touched earth, it was only to go spinning into a far corner where he first embraced, then strove with and was finally tripped and thrown by a large and lurking waste-basket. somewhat perturbed, he extricated himself in time to see the decisive visitor disappear through an inner door. retrieving the crumpled and rejected card from its resting-place, he examined it with interest. the legend upon it was "mr. harrington surtaine." "huh!" grunted reginald currier; "i never seen _that_ in no sporting column." once within the sacred precincts, young mr. surtaine turned into an inner room, bumped against a man trailing a kite-tail of proof, who had issued from a door to the right, asked a question, got a response, and entered the editor's den. two littered desks made up the principal furniture of the place. impartially distributed between the further desk and a chair, the form of one lost in slumber sprawled. at the nearer one sat a dyspeptic man of middle age waving a heavy pencil above a galley proof. "are you the editor?" asked hal. "one editor. i'm mr. sterne. how the devil did you get in here?" "are you responsible for this?" hal held up the morning's clipping, headed "surtaine fakeries explained." "who are you?" asked sterne, nervously hitching in his chair. "i am harrington surtaine." the journalist whistled, a soft, long-drawn note. "dr. surtaine's son?" he inquired. "yes." "that's awkward." "not half as awkward as it's going to be unless you apologize privately and publicly." mr. sterne looked at him estimatingly, at the same time wadding up a newspaper clipping from the desk in front of him. this he cast at the slumberer with felicitous accuracy. "hoong!" observed that gentleman, starting up and caressing his cheek. "wake up, mac. here's a man from the trouble belt, with samples to show." the individual thus addressed slowly rose out of his chair, exhibiting a squat, gnarly figure surmounted by a very large head. hal's hand came up out of his pocket, with the dog-whip writhing unpleasantly after it. simultaneously, the ex-sleeper projected himself, without any particular violence but with astonishing quickness, between the caller and his prey. without at all knowing whence it was derived, hal became aware of a large, black, knobby stick, which it were inadequate to call a cane, in his new opponent's grasp. of physical courage there was no lack in the scion of the surtaine line. neither, however, was he wholly destitute of reasoning powers and caution. the figure before him was of an unquestionable athleticism; the weapon of obvious weight and fiber. the situation was embarrassing. "please don't lick the editor," said the interrupter of poetic justice good-humoredly. "appropriately framed and hung upon the wall, fifteen cents apiece. yah-ah-ah-oo!" he yawned prodigiously. "calm down," he added. hal stared at the squat and agile figure. "you're the office bully and bouncer, i suppose," he said. "mcguire ellis, _at_ your service. bounce only when compelled. otherwise peaceful. _and_ sleepy." "my business is with this man," said hal, indicating sterne. "put up your toy, then, and state it in words of one syllable." for a moment the visitor pondered, drawing the whip through his hands, uncertainly. "i'm not fool enough to go up against that war-club," he remarked. mr. mcguire ellis nodded approval. "first sensible thing i've heard you say," he remarked. "but neither"--here hal's jaw projected a little--"am i going to let this thing drop." "law?" inquired sterne. "if you think there's any libel in what the 'clarion' has said, ask your lawyer. what do you want, anyway?" thus recalled to the more pacific phase of his errand, hal produced his document. "if you've got an iota of decency or fairness about you, you'll print that," he said. sterne glanced through it swiftly. "nothing doing," he stated succinctly. "did dr. surtaine send you here with that thing?" "my father doesn't know that i'm here." "oho! so that's it. knight-errantry, eh? now, let me put this thing to you straight, mr. harrington surtaine. if your father wants to make a fair and decent statement, without abuse or calling names, over his own signature, the 'clarion' will run it, at fifty cents a word." "you dirty blackmailer!" said hal slowly. "hard names go with this business, my young friend," said the other coolly. "at present you've got me checked. but you don't always keep your paid bully with you, i suppose. one of these days you and i will meet--" "and you'll land in jail." "he talks awfully young, doesn't he?" said mr. ellis, shaking a solemn head. "as for blackmail," continued sterne, a bit eagerly, "there's nothing in that. we've never asked dr. surtaine for a dollar. he hasn't got a thing on us." "you never asked him for advertising either, i suppose," said hal bitterly. "only in the way of business. just as we go out after any other advertising." "if he had given you his ads.--" "oh, i don't say that we'd have gone after him if he'd been one of our regular advertisers. every other paper in town gets his copy; why shouldn't we? we have to look out for ourselves. we look out for our patrons, too. naturally, we aren't going to knock one of our advertisers. others have got to take their chances." "and that's modern journalism!" "it's the newspaper business," cried sterne. "no different from any other business." "no wonder decent people consider newspaper men the scum of the earth," said hal, with rather ineffectual generalization. "don't be young!" besought mcguire ellis wearily. "pretend you're a grown-up man, anyway. you look as if you might have some sense about you somewhere, if you'd only give it a chance to filter through." some not unpleasant quirk of speech and manner in the man worked upon hal's humor. "why, i believe you're right about the youngness," he admitted, with a smile. "perhaps there are other ways of getting at this thing. just for a test,--for the last time will you or will you not, mr. sterne, publish this apology?" "we will not. there's just one person can give me orders." "who is that?" "the owner." "i think you'll be sorry." mcguire ellis turned upon him a look that was a silent reproach to immaturity. "anything more?" queried sterne. "nothing," said hal, with an effort at courtesy. "good-day to you both." "well, what about it?" asked mcguire ellis of his chief, as the visitor's footsteps died away. "nothing about it. when'll the next surtaine roast be ready?" "ought to be finished to-morrow." "schedule it for thursday. we'll make the old boy squeal yet. do you believe the boy when he says that his father didn't send him?" "sounded straight. pretty straight boy he looked like to me, anyway." "pretty fresh kid, _i_ think. and a good deal of a pin-head. distributing agency for the old man's money, i guess. he won't get anywhere." "well, i'm not so sure," said ellis contemplatively. "of course he acts gosh-awful young. but did you notice him when he went?" "not particularly." "he was smiling." "well?" "always look out for a guy that smiles when he's licked. he's got a come-back to him." eleven o'clock that night saw mcguire ellis lift his head from the five-minute nap which he allowed himself on evenings of light pressure after the washington copy was run off, and blink rapidly. at the same moment mr. david sterne gave utterance to an exclamation, partly of annoyance, partly of surprise. mr. harrington surtaine, wearing an expression both businesslike and urbane stood in the doorway. "good-evening, gentlemen," he remarked. mr. sterne snorted. mr. ellis's lips seemed about to form the reproachful monosyllable "young." without further greeting the visitor took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on a peg. "you make yourself at home," growled sterne. "i do," agreed hal, and, discarding his coat, hung that on another peg. "i've got a right to." tilting a slumber-burdened head, mcguire ellis released his adjuration against youthfulness. "what's the answer?" demanded sterne. "i've just bought out the 'clarion,'" said hal. chapter vii the owner some degree of triumph would perhaps have been excusable in the new owner. most signally had he turned the tables on his enemies. yet it was with no undue swagger that he seated himself upon a chair of problematical stability, and began to study the pages of the morning's issue. sterne regarded him dubiously. "this isn't a bluff, i suppose?" he asked. "ask your lawyers." "mac, get rockwell's house on the 'phone, will you, and find out if we've been sold." presently the drawl of mr. ellis was heard, pleading with a fair and anonymous central, whom he addressed with that charming impersonality employed toward babies, pet dogs, and telephone girls, as "tootsie," to abjure juvenility, and give him 322 vincent, in a hurry. "you'll excuse me, mr. surtaine," said sterne, in a new and ingratiating tone, for which hal liked him none the better, "but verifying news has come to be an instinct with me." "it's straight," said ellis, turning his heavy face to his principal, after a moment's talk over the wire. "bought _and_ sold, lock, stock, and barrel." "have you had any newspaper experience, mr. surtaine?" inquired sterne. "not on the practical side." "as owner i suppose you'll want to make changes." "undoubtedly." "they all do," sighed sterne. "but my contract has several months--" "yes: i've been over the contracts with a lawyer. yours and mr. ellis's. he says they won't hold." "all newspaper contracts are on the cheese," observed mcguire ellis philosophically. "swiss cheese, at that. full of holes." "i don't admit it," protested sterne. "even so, to turn a man out--" a snort of disgust from ellis interrupted the plea. the glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful and captious immaturity. "contract or no contract, you'll both be fairly treated," said the new owner shortly. "who, me?" inquired ellis. "you can go rapidly to hell and take my contract with you. i know when i'm fired." "who fired you?" "i did. to save you the satisfaction." "very good of you, i'm sure," drawled hal in a tone of lofty superiority, turning away. out of the corner of his eye, however, he could see mcguire ellis making pantomime as of one spanking a baby with fervor. amusement helped him to the recovery of his temper. "working under an amateur journalist will just suit sterne," observed ellis, in a tone quite as offensive as hal's. "cut it out, mac," suggested his principal. "there's no occasion for hard words." "amateur isn't the hardest word in the dictionary," said hal quietly. "perhaps i'll become a professional in time." "buying a newspaper doesn't make a newspaper man." "well, i'm not too old to learn. but see here, mr. ellis, doesn't your contract hold you?" "the contract that you said was no good? do you expect it to work all one way?" "well, professional honor, then, i should suppose--" "professional honor!" cut in ellis, with scathing contempt. "you step in here and buy a paper out of a freak of revenge--" "hold on, there! how can you know my motive?" "what else could it be?" hal was silent, finding no answer. "you see! to feed your mean little spite, you've taken over control of the biggest responsibility, for any one with any decent sense of responsibility, that a man could take on his shoulders. and what will you make of it? a toy! a rich kid's plaything." "well, what would you make of it, yourself?" asked hal. "a teacher and a preacher. a force to tear down and to build up. to rip this old town wide open, and remould it nearer to the heart's desire! that's what a newspaper might be, and ought to be, and could be, by god in heaven, if the right man ever had a free hand at it." "don't get profane, my boy," tittered sterne. "you think that's swearing?" retorted ellis. "yes; _you_ would. but i was nearer praying then than i've ever been since i came to this office. we'll never live to see that prayer answered, you and i." "perhaps," began hal. "oh, perhaps!" ellis snatched the word from his lips. "perhaps you're the boy to do it, eh? why, it's your kind that's made journalism the sewer of the professions, full of the scum and drainings of every other trade's failures. what chance have we got to develop ideals when you outsiders control the whole business?" "hullo!" observed sterne with a grin. "where do you come in on the idealist business, mac? this is new talk from you." "new? why wouldn't it be new? would i waste it on you, dave sterne?" "you certainly never have since i've known you." "call it easing up my mind if you like. i can afford that luxury, now that you 're not my boss any longer. not but what it's all greek to you." "had a drink to-day, mac?" "no, damn you. but i'm going out of here and take a hundred. first, though, i'm going to tell young bib-and-tucker over there a thing or two about his new toy. oh, yes: you can listen, too, sterne, but it won't get to your shelled-in soul." "you in'trust muh, strangely," said sterne, and looked over to hal for countenance of his uneasy amusement. but the new owner did not appear amused. he had faced around in his chair and now sat regarding the glooming and exalted ellis with an intent surprise. "a plaything! that's what you think you've bought, young mr. harrington surtaine. one of two things you'll do with it: either you'll try to run it yourself, and you'll dip deeper and deeper into poppa's medicine-bag till he gets sick of it and closes you up; or you'll hire some practical man to manage it, and insist on dividends that'll keep it just where it is now. and that's pretty low, even for a worthington paper." "it won't live on blackmail, at any rate," said hal, his mind reverting to its original grievance. "maybe it will. you won't know it if it does. anyhow, it'll live on suppression and distortion and manipulation of news, because it'll have to, if it's going to live at all." "you mean that is the basis of the newspaper business as it is to-day?" "generally speaking. it certainly is in worthington." "you're frank, at any rate. where's all your glowing idealism now?" "vanished into mist. all idealism goes that way, doesn't it?" "not if you back it up with work. you see, mr. ellis, i'm something of an idealist myself." "the certina brand of idealism. guaranteed under the pure thought and deed act." "our money may have been made a little--well, blatantly," said hal, flushing. "but at least it's made honestly." he was too intent on his subject to note either sterne's half-wink or ellis's stare of blank amazement. "and i'm going to run this newspaper on the same high principles. i don't quite reconcile your standards with the practices of this paper, mr. ellis--" "mac has nothing to do with the policy of the paper, mr. surtaine," put in sterne. "he's only an employee." "then why don't you get work on some paper that practices your principles?" "hard to find. not having been born with a silver spoon, full of certina, in my mouth, i have to earn my own living. it isn't profitable to make a religion of one's profession, mr. surtaine. not that i think you need the warning. but i've tried it, and i know." "do you know, it's rather a pity you don't like me," said hal, with ruminative frankness. "i think i could use some of that religion of yours." "not on the market," returned ellis shortly. "you see," pursued the other, "it's really my own money i've put into this paper: half of all i've got." "how much did you pay for it?" inquired ellis: "since we're telling each other our real names." "two hundred and thirty thousand dollars." "whee-ee-ee-ew!" both his auditors joined in the whistle. "they asked two-fifty." "half of that would have bought," said sterne. hal digested that information in silence for a minute. "i suppose i was easy. hurry never yet made a good bargain. but, now that i've got this paper i'm going to run it myself." "on the rocks," prophesied mcguire ellis. "utter and complete shipwreck. i'm glad i'm off." "is it your habit, mr. ellis, to run at the first suggestion of disaster?" ellis looked his questioner up and down. "say the rest of it," he barked. "why, it seems to me you're still an officer of this ship. doesn't it enter into your ethics somewhere that you ought to stick by her until the new captain can fill your place, and not quit in the face of the shipwreck you foresee?" "humph," grunted mcguire ellis, "i guess you're not quite as young as i thought you were. how long would you want me to stay?" "about a year." "what!" "on an unbreakable contract. to be editorial manager. you see, i'm prepared to buy ideals." "what about my opinion of amateur journalism?" "you'll just have to do the best you can about that." "give me till to-morrow to think it over." "all right." ellis put down the hat and cane which he had picked up preparatory to his departure. "not going out after those hundred drinks, eh, mac?" laughed sterne. "indefinitely postponed," replied the other. "the first thing to do," said hal decisively, "is to make amends. mr. sterne, the 'clarion' is to print a full retraction of the attacks upon my father, at once." "yes, sir," assented sterne, slavishly responsive to the new authority. not so mcguire ellis. "if you do that you'll make a fool of your own paper," he said bluntly. "make a fool of the paper by righting a rank injustice?" "just the point. it isn't a rank injustice." "see here, mr. sterne: isn't it a fact that this attack was made because my father doesn't advertise with you?" the editor twisted uneasily in his chair. "a newspaper's got to look out for its own interests," he asserted defensively. "please answer my question." "well--yes; i suppose it is so." "then you're simply operating a blackmailing scheme to get the certina advertising for the 'clarion.'" "the certina advertising?" repeated sterne in obvious surprise. "certina doesn't advertise locally. most patent medicines don't. it's a sort of fashion of the trade not to," explained ellis. "what on earth is all this about, then?" the two newspaper men exchanged a glance. obviously the new boss understood little of his progenitor's extensive business interests. "might as well know sooner as later," decided ellis, aloud. "it's the neverfail company of cincinnati that we got turned down on." "what is the neverfail company?" "one of dr. surtaine's alia--one of the names he does business under. every other paper in town gets their copy. we don't. hence the roast." "what sort of business is it?" "relief pills. here's the ad. in this morning's 'banner.'" the name struck chill on hal's memory. he stared at the sinister oblong of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing to apprehend the full villainy of the lure. "whatever the advertising is," said he, "the principle is the same." "precisely," chirped ellis. "and you call that decent journalism?" "no: my extremely youthful friend, i do not. what's more, i never did." "if you want a retraction published," said sterne, spreading wide his hands as one offering fealty, "wouldn't it be just as well to preface it with an announcement of the taking-over of the paper by yourself?" "that itself would be tantamount to an announced reversal of policy," mused hal. again sterne and ellis glanced at each other, but with a different expression this time. the look meant that they had recognized in the intruder a flash of that mysterious sense vaguely known as "the newspaper instinct," with which a few are born, but which most men acquire by giving mortgages on the blest illusions of youth. "cor-_rect_," said ellis. "let the retraction rest for the present. i'll decide it later." the door was pushed open, and a dark man of perhaps thirty, with a begrimed and handsome face, entered. in one hand he held a proof. "about this paragraph," he said to sterne in a slightly foreign accent. "is it to run to-morrow?" "what paragraph is that?" "the one-stick editorial guying dr. surtaine." "kill it," said sterne hastily. "this is mr. harrington surtaine. mr. surtaine, this is max veltman, foreman of our composing-room." slowly the printer turned his fine, serious face from one to the other. "ah," he said presently. "so it is arranged. we do not print this paragraph. good!" impossible to take offense at the tone. yet the smile which accompanied it was so plainly a sneer that hal's color rose. "mr. surtaine is the new owner of the 'clarion,'" explained ellis. "in that case, of course," said veltman quietly. "good-night, gentlemen." "good-looking chap," remarked hal. "but what a curious expression." "veltman's a thinker and a crank," said ellis. "if he had a little more balance he'd make his mark. but he's a sort of melancholiac. ill-health, nerves, and a fixed belief in the general wrongness of creation." "well. i'll get to know more about the shop to-morrow," said hal. "i'm for home and sleep just now. see you at--what time, by the way?" "noon," said sterne. "if that suits you." "perfectly. good-night." arrived at home, hal went straight to the big ground-floor library where, as the light suggested, his father sat reading. "dad, do you want a retraction printed?" "of the 'clarion' article?" "yes." "from 'want' to 'get' the road runs rocky," said the senior surtaine whimsically. "i've just come from removing a few of the rocks at the 'clarion' office." "go down to lick the editor?" dr. surtaine's eyes twinkled. "there may have been some such notion in the back of my head." "expensive exercise. did you do it?" "no. he had a club." "if i were running a slander-machine like the 'clarion' i'd want six-inch armor-plate and a quick-fire battery. well, what did you do?" "bought the paper." "you needn't have gone down town to do that. it comes to the office." "you don't understand. i've bought the 'clarion,' presses, plant, circulation, franchise, good-will, ill-will, high, low, jack, and the game." "you! what for?" "why," said hal thoughtfully; "mainly because i lost my temper, i believe." "sounds like a pretty heavy loss, boy-ee." "two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. oh, the prodigal son hasn't got anything on me, dad, when it comes to scattering patrimonies," he concluded a little ruefully. "what are you going to do with it, now you've got it?" "run it. i've bought a career." "now you're talking." the big man jumped up and set both hands on hal's shoulders. "that's the kind of thing i like to hear, and in the kind of way it ought to be said. you go to it, hal. i'll back you, as far as you like." "no, sir. i thank you just the same: this is my game." "want to play it alone, do you?" "how else can i make a career of it?" "right you are, boyee. but it takes something behind money to build up a newspaper. and the 'clarion' 'll take some building up." "well, i've got aspiration enough, if it comes to that," smiled hal. "aspiration's a good starter: but it's perspiration that makes a business go. are you ready to take off your coat and work?" "i certainly am. there's a lot for me to learn." "there is. everything. want some advice from the old man?" "i most surely do, dad." "listen here, then. a newspaper is a business proposition. never forget that. all these hifalutin' notions about its being a palladium and the voice of the people and the guardian of public interests are good enough to talk about on the editorial page. gives a paper a following, that kind of guff does. but the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other business, to make money. there's the principle, the policy, the politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. now, how are you going to make money with the 'clarion'?" "by making it a better paper than the others." "hm! better. yes: that's all right, so long as you mean the right thing by 'better.' better for the people that want to use it and can pay for using it." "the readers, you mean?" "the advertisers. it's the advertisers that pay for the paper, not the readers. you've got to have circulation, of course, to get the advertising. but remember this, always: circulation is only a means to an end. it never yet paid the cost of getting out a daily, and it never will." "i know enough of the business to understand that." "good! look at the 'clarion,' as it is. it's got a good circulation. and that lets it out. it can't get the advertising. so it's losing money, hand over fist." "why can't it?" "it's yellow. it doesn't treat the business interests right." "sterne says they always look after their own advertisers." "oh, that! naturally they have to. any newspaper will do that. but they print a lot of stuff about strikes and they're always playing up to the laboring man and running articles about abuses and pretending to be the friend of the poor and all that slush, and the better class of business won't stand for it. once a paper gets yellow, it has to keep on. otherwise it loses what circulation it's got. no advertiser wants to use it then. the department stores do go into the 'clarion' because it gets to a public they can't reach any other way. but they give it just as little space as they can. it isn't popular." "well, i don't intend to make the paper yellow." "of course you don't. keep your mind on it as a business proposition and you won't go wrong. remember, it's the advertiser that pays. think of that when you write an editorial. frame it and hang it where every sub-editor and reporter can't help but see it. ask of every bit of news, 'is this going to get me an advertiser? is that going to lose me an advertiser?' be on the lookout to do your advertisers favors. they appreciate little things like special notices and seeing their names in print, in personals, and that kind of thing. and keep the paper optimistic. don't knock. boost. business men warm up to that. why, boy-ee, if you'll just stick to the policy i've outlined, you'll not only make a big success, but you'll have a model paper that'll make a new era in local journalism; a paper that every business man in town will swear by and that'll be the pride of worthington before you're through." fired by the enthusiasm of his fair vision of a higher journalism, dr. surtaine had been walking up and down, enlivening, with swinging arms, the chief points of his pæan of policy. now he dropped into his chair and with a change of voice said: "never mind about that retraction, hal." "no?" "no. forget it. when do you start in work?" "to-morrow." "you must save to-morrow evening." "for what?" "you're invited to the festus willards'. mrs. willard was particularly anxious you should come." "but i don't know them, dad." "doesn't matter. it's about the most exclusive house in town. a cut above me, i can tell you. i've never so much as set foot in it." "then i won't go," declared his son, flushing. "yes: you must," insisted his father anxiously. "don't mind about me. i'm not ambitious socially. i told you some folks don't like the business. it's too noisy. but you won't throw out any echoes. you'll go, boyee?" "since you want me to, of course, sir. but i shan't find much time for play if i'm to learn my new trade." "oh, you can hire good teachers," laughed his father. "well, i'm sleepy. good-night, mr. editor." "good-night, dad. i could use some sleep myself." but thought shared the pillow with hal surtaine's head. try as he would to banish the contestants, dr. surtaine's pæan of policy and mcguire ellis's impassioned declaration of faith did battle for the upper hand in his formulating professional standards. the doctor's theory was the clean-cut, comprehensible, and plausible one. but something within hal responded to the hot idealism of the fighting journalist. he wanted ellis for a fellow workman. and his last waking notion was that he wanted and needed ellis mainly because ellis had told him to go to hell. chapter viii a partnership all the adjectives in the social register were exhausted by the daily papers in describing mrs. festus willard's dance. without following them into that verbal borderland wherein "recherché" vies with "exclusive," and "chic" disputes precedence with "distingué," it is sufficient for the purposes of this narrative to chronicle the fact that the pick of worthington society was there, and not much else. also, if i may borrow from the society editor's convenient phrase-book, "among those present" was mr. harrington surtaine. for reasons connected with his new venture, hal had come late. he was standing near the doorway wondering by what path to attain to an unidentified hostess, when miss esmé elliot, at the moment engaged with that very hostess on some matter of feminine strategy with which we have no concern, spied him. "who is the young greek godling, hopelessly lost in the impenetrable depths of your drawing-room?" she propounded suddenly. "who? what? where?" queried mrs. willard, thus abruptly recalled to her duties. "yonder by the doorway, looking as if he didn't know a soul." "it's some stranger," said the hostess, trying to peer around an intervening palm. "i must go and speak to him." "wait. festus has got him." for the host, a powerful, high-colored man in his early forties, with a slight limp, had noticed the newcomer and was now introducing himself. miss elliot watched the process with interest. "jinny," she announced presently, "i want that to play with." the stranger turned a little, so that his full face was shown. "it's hal surtaine!" exclaimed mrs. willard. "i don't care who it is. it looks nice. please, mayn't i have it to play with?" "will you promise not to break it? it used to be a particular pet of mine." "when?" "oh, years ago. when you were in your cradle." "where?" "on the st. lawrence. several summers. he was my boy-knight, and chaperon, and protector. such a dear, chivalrous boy!" "was he in love with you?" demanded miss elliot with lively interest. "of course he wasn't. he was a boy of fifteen, and i a mature young woman of twenty-one." "he _was_ in love with you," accused the girl, noting a brightness in her friend's color. "there was a sort of knightly devotion," admitted the other demurely. "there always is, isn't there, in a boy of that age, for a woman years older?" "and you didn't know him at first?" "it's ten years since i've set eyes on him. he doesn't even know that i am the mrs. festus willard who is giving this party." "festus is looking around for you. they'll be over here in a minute. no! don't get up yet. i want you to do something for me." "what is it, norrie?" "i'm not going to feel well, about supper-time." "why not?" "would _you_ feel well if you'd been in to dinner three times in the last week with will douglas, and then had to go in to supper with him, too?" "but i thought you and will--" "i'm tired of having people think," said miss elliot plaintively. "too much douglas! yes; i shall be quite indisposed, about one dance before supper." "i'll send you home." "no, you won't, jinny, dear. because i shall suddenly recover, about two minutes before the oysters arrive." "norrie!" "truly i shall. quite miraculously. and you're to see that the young greek godling doesn't get any other partner for supper--" "esmé!!" "--because i'm sure he'd rather have me," she concluded superbly. "eleanor stanley maxwell elliot!" "oh, you may call me _all_ my names. i'm accustomed to abuse from you. but you'll arrange it, _dear_ jinny, won't you!" "did you ever fail of anything when you put on that wheedling face and tone?" "never," said miss elliot with composure, but giving her friend a little hug. "here they come. i fly. bring him to me later." piloted by festus willard, hal crossed the floor, and beheld, moving to meet him with outstretched hands, a little woman with an elfin face and the smile of a happy child. "have you forgotten me, hal?" "lady jeannette!" he cried, the old boyhood name springing to his lips. "what are you doing here?" "didn't festus tell you?" she looked fondly up at her big husband. "i didn't know that the surprise would last up to the final moment." "it's the very best surprise that has happened to me in worthington," declared hal emphatically. "we're quite prepared to adopt you, surtaine," said willard pleasantly. "jinny has never ceased to wonder why she heard nothing from you in reply to her note telling of our engagement." "never got it," said hal promptly. "and i've wondered why she dropped me so unaccountably. it's rather luck for me, you know," he added, smiling, "to find friends ready-made in a strange town." "oh, you'll make friends enough," declared mrs. willard. "the present matter is to make acquaintances. come and dance this dance out with me and then i'll take you about and introduce you. are you as good a dancer as you used to be?" hal was, and something more. and in his hostess he had one of the best partners in worthington. cleverly she had judged that the "boston" with her, if he were proficient, would be the strongest recommendation to the buds of the place. and, indeed, before they had gone twice about the floor, many curious and interested eyes were turned upon them. not the least interested were those of miss elliot, who privately decided, over a full and overflowing programme, that she would advance her recovery to one dance before the supper announcement. "you're going to be a social success, hal," whispered his partner. "i feel it. and _where_ did you learn that delightful swing after the dip?" "picked it up on shipboard. but i shan't have much time for gayeties. you see, i've become a workingman." "tell me about it to-morrow. you're to dine with us; quite _en famille_. you _must_ like festus, hal." "i should think that would be easy." "it is. he is just the finest, cleanest, straightest human being in the world," she said soberly. "now, come away and meet a million people." so late was it that most of the girls had no vacancies on their programmes. but jeannette willard was both a diplomat and a bit of a despot, socially, and several of the young eligibles relinquished, with surprisingly good grace, so hal felt, their partners, in favor of the newcomer. he did not then know the tradition of worthington's best set, that hospitality to a stranger well vouched for should be the common concern of all. very pleasant and warming he found this atmosphere, after his years abroad, with its happy, well-bred frankness, its open comradeship, and obvious, "first-name" intimacies. but though every one he met seemed ready to extend to him, as a friend of the willards, a ready welcome, he could not but feel himself an outsider, and at the conclusion of a dance he drew back into a side passage, to watch for a time. borne on a draught of air from some invisibly opening door behind him there came to his nostrils the fairy-spice of the arbutus-scent. he turned quickly, and saw her almost at his shoulder, the girl of the lustrous face. behind her was festus willard. "ah, there you are, surtaine," he said. "i've been looking for you to present you to miss elliot. esmé, this is mr. harrington surtaine." she neither bowed nor moved in acknowledgment of hal's greeting, but looked at him with still, questioning eyes. the springtide hue of the wild flower at her breast was matched in her cheek. her head was held high, bringing out the pure and lovely line of chin and throat. to hal it seemed that he had never seen anything so beautiful and desirable. "is it a bet?" festus willard's quiet voice was full of amusement. "have you laid a wager as to which will keep silent longest?" at this, hal recovered himself, though stumblingly. "'fain would i speak,'" he paraphrased, "'but that i fear to--to--to--'" "stutter," suggested willard, with solicitous helpfulness. the girl broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over its private delectations. "if i could have a dance with you," suggested hal, "i'm sure it would help my aphasia." "i'm afraid," she began dubiously, "that--no; here's one just before supper. if you haven't that--" "no: i haven't," said hal hastily. "it's awfully good of you--and lucky for me." "i'll be with mrs. willard," said the girl, nodding him a cheerful farewell. just what or who his partners for the next few dances were, hal could not by any effort recall the next day. he was conscious, on the floor, only of an occasional glimpse of her, a fugitive savor of the wildwood fragrance, and then she had disappeared. later, as he returned from a talk with festus willard outside, he became aware of the challenge of deep-hued, velvety eyes, regarding him with a somewhat petulant expression, and recognized his acquaintance of the motor car and the railroad terminal. "you'd forgotten me," accused miss kathleen pierce, pouting, as he came to greet her. hal's disclaimer had sufficient diplomatic warmth to banish her displeasure. she introduced to him as dr. merritt a striking-looking, gray-haired young man, who had come up at the same time with an anticipatory expression. this promptly vanished when she said offhandedly to him: "you've had three dances with me already, hugh. i'm going to give this one to mr. surtaine if he wants it." "of course i want it," said hal. "not that you deserve it," she went on. "you should have come around earlier. i'm not in the habit of giving dances this late in the evening." "how could i break through the solid phalanx of supplicating admirers?" "at least, you might have tried. i want to try that new step i saw you doing with mrs. willard. and i always get what i want." "unfortunate young lady!" "why unfortunate?" "to have nothing seem unattainable. life must pall on you terribly." "indeed, it doesn't. i like being a spoiled child, don't you? don't you think it's fun having everything you want to buy, and having a leading citizen for a father?" "is your father a leading citizen?" asked hal, amused. "of course. so's yours. neither of them quite knows which is the most leading. dr. surtaine is the most popular, but i suppose pop is the most influential. between the two of them they pretty much run this little old burg. of course," she added with careless insolence, "pop has got it all over dr. surtaine socially. "i humbly feel that i am addressing local royalty," said hal, smiling sardonically. "who? me? oh, i'm only the irresponsible child of wealth and power. dr. merritt called me that once--before i got him tamed." turning to look at the gray young man who stood not far off, and noting the quiet force and competence of the face, hal hazarded a guess to himself that the very frank young barbarian with whom he was talking was none too modest in her estimate of her own capacities. "mrs. willard is our local queen," she continued. "and esmé elliot is the princess. have you met esmé yet?" "yes." "then, of course, nobody else has a chance--so long as you're the newest toy. still, you might find a spare hour between-times to come and call on us. come on; let's dance." "pert" was the mildest term to which hal reduced his characterization of miss pierce, by the time the one-step ended. nevertheless, he admitted to himself that he had been amused. his one chief concern now, however, was the engagement with miss elliot. when finally his number came around, he found her calmly explaining to a well-favored young fellow with a pained expression that he must have made a mistake about the number, while mrs. willard regarded her with mingled amusement and disfavor. "don't expect me to dance," she said as hal approached. "i've twisted my foot." "i'm sorry," said he blankly. "let's find a quiet place where we can sit. and then you may get me some supper." his face lighted up. esmé elliot remarked to herself that she had seldom seen a more pleasing specimen of the youth of the species. "this is rather like a fairy-gift," he began eagerly, as they made their way to a nook under the stairway, specially adapted to two people of hermit tastes. "i shouldn't have dared to expect such good fortune." "you'll find me quite a fairy-godmother if you're good. besides," she added with calm audacity, "i wanted you to myself." "why?" he asked, amused and intrigued. "curiosity. my besetting sin. you're a phenomenon." "an ambiguous term. it may mean merely a freak." "a new young man in worthington," she informed him, "is a phenomenon, a social phenomenon. of course he may be a freak, also," she added judicially. "newness is a charm that soon wears off." "then you're going to settle down here?" "yes. i've joined the laboring classes." "what kind of labor?" "journalism. i've just started in, to-day." "really! which paper?" "the 'clarion.'" her expressive face changed. "oh," she said, a little blankly. "you don't like the 'clarion'?" "i almost never see it. so i don't know. and you're going to begin at the bottom? that's quite brave of you." "no; i'm going to begin at the top. that's braver. anyway, it's more reckless. i've bought the paper." "have you! i hadn't heard of it." "nobody's heard of it yet. no outsider. you're the first." "how delightful!" she leaned closer and looked into his face with shining eyes. "tell me more. what are you going to do with it?" "learn something about it, first." "it's rather yellow, isn't it?" "putting it mildly, yes. that's one of the things i want to change." "oh, i wish i owned a newspaper!" "do you? why?" "for the power of it. to say what you please and make thousands listen." the pink in her cheeks deepened. "there's nothing in the world like the thrill of that sense of power. it's the one reason why i'd be almost willing to be a man." "perhaps you wouldn't need to be. couldn't you exert the power without actually owning the newspaper?" "how?" "by exercising your potent influence upon the obliging proprietor," he suggested smiling. there came a dancing light in her eyes. "do you think i'd make a good goddess-outside-the-machine, to the 'daily clarion'?" "charming! for a two-cent stamp--no, for a spray of your arbutus, i'll sell you an editorial sphere of influence." "generous!" she cried. "what would my duties be?" "to advise the editor and proprietor on all possible points," he laughed. "and my privileges?" "the right of a queen over a slave." "we move fast," she said. her fingers went to the cluster of delicate-hued bells in her bodice. but it was a false gesture. esmé elliot was far too practiced in her chosen game to compromise herself to comment by allowing a man whom she had just met to display her favor in his coat. "am i to have my price?" his voice was eager now. she looked very lovely and childlike, with her head drooping, consideringly, above the flowers. "give me a little time," she said. "to undertake a partnership on five minutes' notice--that isn't business, is it?" "nor is this--wholly," he said, quite low. esmé straightened up. "i'm starved," she said lightly. "are you not going to get me any supper?" after his return she held the talk to more impersonal topics, advising him, with an adorable assumption of protectiveness, whom he was to meet and dance with, and what men were best worth his while. at parting, she gave him her hand. "i will let you know," she said, "about the--the sphere of influence." hal danced several more numbers, with more politeness than enjoyment, then sought out his hostess to say good-night. "i'll see you to-morrow, then," she said: "and you shall tell me all your news." "you're awfully good to me, lady jeannette," said he gratefully. "without you i'd be a lost soul in this town." "most people are good to you, i fancy, hal," said she, looking him over with approval. "as for being a lost soul, you don't look it. in fact you look like a very well-found soul, indeed." "it _is_ rather a cheerful world to live in," said hal with apparent irrelevance. "i hope they haven't spoiled you," she said anxiously. "are you vain, hal? no: you don't look it." "what on earth should i be vain about? i've never done anything in the world." "no? yet you've improved. you've solidified. what have you been doing to yourself? not falling in love?" "not that, certainly," he replied, smiling. "nothing much but traveling." "how did you like esmé elliot?" she asked abruptly. "quite attractive," said hal in a flat tone. "quite attractive, indeed!" repeated his friend indignantly. "in all your travelings, i don't believe you've ever seen any one else half as lovely and lovable." "local pride carries you far, lady jeannette," laughed hal. "and i _had_ intended to have her here to dine to-morrow; but as you're so indifferent--" "oh, don't leave her out on my account," said hal magnanimously. "i believe you're more than half in love with her already." "well, you ought to be a good judge unless you've wholly forgotten the old days," retorted hal audaciously. jeannette willard laughed up at him. "don't try to flirt with a middle-aged lady who is most old-fashionedly in love with her husband," she advised. "keep your bravo speeches for esmé! she's used to them." "rather goes in for that sort of thing, doesn't she?" "you mean flirtation? someone's been talking to you about her," said mrs. willard quickly. "what did they say?" "nothing in particular. i just gathered the impression." "don't jump to any conclusions about esmé," advised his friend. "most men think her a desperate flirt. she does like attention and admiration. what woman doesn't? and esmé is very much a woman." "evidently!" "if she seems heartless, it's because she doesn't understand. she enjoys her own power without comprehending it. esmé has never been really interested in any man. if she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be more careful about hurting others. yet the very men who have been hardest hit remain her loyal friends." "a tribute to her strategy." "a finer quality than that. it is her own loyalty, i think, that makes others loyal to her. but the men here aren't up to her standard. she is complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it. fine and clean as our worthington boys are, there isn't one of them who could appeal to the imagination and idealism of a girl like esmé elliot. for esmé, under all that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn't found her ideal." "and therefore hasn't found herself." she flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him. "that's rather subtle of you," she said. "i hope you don't know _too_ much about women, hal." "not i! just a shot in the dark." "i said there wasn't a man here up to her standard. that isn't quite true. there is one,--you met him to-night,--but he has troubles of his own, elsewhere," she added, smiling. "i had hoped--but there has always been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him and esmé." "for a guess, that might be dr. merritt," said hal. "how did you know?" she cried. "i didn't. only, he seems, at a glance, different and of a broader gauge than the others." "you're a judge of men, at least. as for esmé, i suppose she'll marry some man much older than herself. heaven grant he's the right one! for when she gives, she will give royally, and if the man does not meet her on her own plane--well, there will be tragedy enough for two!" "deep waters," said hal. the talk had changed to a graver tone. "deep and dangerous. shipwreck for the wrong adventurer. but el dorado for the right. such a golden el dorado, hal! the man i want for esmé elliot must have in him something of woman for understanding, and something of genius for guidance, and, i'm afraid, something of the angel for patience, and he must be, with all this, wholly a man." "a pretty large order, lady jeannette. well, i've had my warning. good-night." "perhaps it wasn't so much warning as counsel," she returned, a little wistfully. "how poor esmé's ears must be burning. there she goes now. what a picture! come early to-morrow." hal's last impression of the ballroom, as he turned away, was summed up in one glance from esmé elliot's lustrous eyes, as they met his across her partner's shoulder, smiling him a farewell and a remembrance of their friendly pact. "honey-jinny," said mrs. willard's husband, after the last guest had gone; "i don't understand about young surtaine. where did he get it?" "get what, dear? one might suppose he was a corrupt politician." "one might suppose he might be anything crooked or wrong, knowing his old, black quack of a father. but he seems to be clean stuff all through. he looks it. he acts it. he carries himself like it. and he talks it. i had a little confab with him out in the smoking-room, and i tell you, jinny-wife, i believe he's a real youngster." "well, he had a mother, you know." "did he? what about her?" "she was an old friend of my mother's. dr. surtaine eloped with her out of her father's country place in midvale. he was an itinerant peddler of some cure-all then. she was a gently born and bred girl, but a mere child, unworldly and very romantic, and she was carried away by the man's personal beauty and magnetism." "i can't imagine it in a girl of any sort of family." "mother has told me that he had a personal force that was almost hypnotic. there must have been something else to him, too, for they say that hal's mother died, as desperately in love as she had been when she ran away with him, and that he was almost crushed by her loss and never wholly got over it. he transferred his devotion to the child, who was only three years old when the mother died. when hal was a mere child my mother saw him once taking in dollars at a country fair booth,--just think of it, dearest,--and she said he was the picture of his girl-mother then. later, when professor certain, as he called himself then, got rich, he gave hal the best of education. but he never let him have anything to do with the ellersleys--that was mrs. surtaine's name. all the family are dead now." "well, there must be some good in the old boy," admitted willard. "but i don't happen to like him. i do like the boy. blood does tell, jinny. but if he's really as much of an ellersley as he looks, there's a bitter enlightenment before him when he comes to see dr. surtaine as he really is." meantime hal, home at a reasonable hour, in the interest of his new profession, had taken with him the pleasantest impressions of the willards' hospitality. he slept soundly and awoke in buoyant spirits for the dawning enterprise. on the breakfast table he found, in front of his plate, a bunchy envelope addressed in a small, strong, unfamiliar hand. within was no written word; only a spray of the trailing arbutus, still unwithered of its fairy-pink, still eloquent, in its wayward, woodland fragrance, of her who had worn it the night before. chapter ix glimmerings ignorance within one's self is a mist which, upon closer approach, proves a mountain. to the new editor of the "clarion" the things he did not know about this enterprise of which he had suddenly become the master loomed to the skies. together with the rest of the outer world, he had comfortably and vaguely regarded a newspaper as a sort of automatic mill which, by virtue of having a certain amount of grain in the shape of information dumped into it, worked upon this with an esoteric type-mechanism, and, in due and exact time, delivered a definite grist of news. of the refined and articulated processes of acquisition, selection, and elimination which went to the turning-out of the final product, he was wholly unwitting. he could as well have manipulated a linotype machine as have given out a quiet sunday's assignment list: as readily have built a multiple press as made up an edition. so much he admitted to mcguire ellis late in the afternoon of the day after the willard party. fascinated, he had watched that expert journalist go through page after page of copy, with what seemed superhuman rapidity and address, distribute the finished product variously upon hooks, boxes, and copy-boys, and, the immediate task being finished, lapse upon his desk and fall asleep. meantime, the owner himself faced the unpleasant prospect of being smothered under the downfall of proofs, queries, and scribbled sheets which descended upon his desk from all sides. for a time he struggled manfully: for a time thereafter he wallowed desperately. then he sent out a far cry for help. the cry smote upon the ear of mcguire ellis, "hoong!" ejaculated that somnolent toiler, coming up out of deep waters. "did you speak?" "i want to know what i'm to do with all of these things," replied his boss, indicating the augmenting drifts. "throw 'em on the floor, is _my_ advice," said the employee drowsily. "the more stuff you throw away, the better paper you get out. that's a proverb of the business." "in other words, you think the paper would get along better without me than with me?" "but you're enjoying yourself, aren't you?" queried his employee. heaving himself out of his chair, he ambled over to hal's desk and evolved out of the chaos some semblance of order. "don't find it as easy as your enthusiasm painted it," he suggested. "oh, i've still got the enthusiasm. if only i knew where to begin." ellis rubbed his ear thoughtfully and remarked: "once i knew a man from phoenix, arizona, who was so excited the first time he saw the ocean that he borrowed a uniform from an absent friend, shinned aboard a five-thousand-ton brigantine, and ordered all hands to put out to sea immediately in the teeth of a whooping gale. but he," added the narrator in the judicial tone of one who cites mitigating circumstances, "was drunk at the time." "thanks for the parallel. i don't like it. but never mind that. the question is, what am i going to do?" "that's the question all right. are you putting it to me?" "i am." "well, i was just going to put it to you." "no use. i don't know." the two men looked each other in the eye, long and steadily. ellis's harsh face relaxed to a sort of grin. "you want me to tell you?" "yes." "what do you think you're hiring, a professor of journalism in the infant class?" the tone of the question offset any apparent ill-nature in the wording. "it might be made worth your while." "all right; i'm hired." "that's good," said hal heartily. "i think you'll find i'm not hard to get along with." "i think _you'll_ find _i_ am," replied the other with some grimness. "but i know the game. well, let's get down to cases. what do you want to do with the 'clarion'?" "make it the cleanest, decentest newspaper in the city." "then you don't think it's that, now." "no. i know it isn't." "did you get that from dr. surtaine?" "partly." "what's the other part?" "first-hand impressions. i've been going through the files." "when?" "since nine o'clock this morning." "with what idea?" "why, having bought a piece of property, i naturally want to know about it." "been through the plant yet? that's your property, too." "no. i thought i'd find out more from the files. i've bought a newspaper, not a building." the characteristic grunt with which ellis favored his employer in reply to this seemed to have a note of approval in it. "well; now that you own the 'clarion,'" he said after a pause, "what do you think of it?" "it's yellow, and it's sensational, and--it's vulgar." there was nothing complimentary in the other's snort this time. "of course it's vulgar. you can't sell a sweet-scented, prim old-maidy newspaper to enough people to pay for the z's in one font of type. people are vulgar. don't forget that. and you've got to make a newspaper to suit them. lesson number one." "it needn't be a muckraking paper, need it, forever smelling out something rotten, and exploiting it in big headlines?" "oh, that's all bluff," replied the journalist easily. "we never turn loose on anything but the surface of things. why, if any one started in really to muckrake this old respectable burg, the smell would drive most of our best citizens to the woods." "frankly, mr. ellis, i don't like cheap cynicism." "prefer to be fed up on pleasant lies?" queried his employee, unmoved. "not that either. i can take an unpleasant truth as well as the next man. but it's got to be the truth." "do you know the nickname of this paper?" "yes. my father told me of it." "it was his set that pinned it on us. 'the daily carrion,' they call us, and they said that our triumphal roosters ought to be vultures. do you know why?" "in plain english because of the paper's lies and blackguardism." "in plainer english, because of its truth. wait a minute, now. i'm not saying that the 'clarion' doesn't lie. all papers do, i guess. they have to. but it's when we've cut loose on straight facts that we've got in wrong." "give me an instance." "well, the sewing-girls' strike." "engineered by a crooked labor leader and a notoriety-seeking woman." "i see the bunch have got to you already, and have filled you up with their dope. never mind that, now. we're supposed to be a sort of tribune of the common people. rights of the ordinary citizen, and that sort of thing. so we took up the strike and printed the news pretty straight. no other paper touched it." "why not?" "didn't dare. we had to drop it, ourselves. not until we'd lost ten thousand dollars in advertising, though, and gained an extra blot on our reputation as being socialistic and an enemy to capital and all that kind of rot." "wasn't it simply a case of currying favor with the working-classes?" "according as you look at it." apparently weary of looking at it at all, mcguire ellis tipped back in his chair and contemplated the ceiling. when he spoke his voice floated up as softly as a ring of smoke. "how honest are you going to be, mr. surtaine?" "what!" "i asked you how honest you are going to be." "it's a question i don't think you need to ask me." "i do. how else will i find out?" "i intend the 'clarion' to be strictly and absolutely honest. that's all there is to that." "don't be so young," said mcguire ellis wearily. "'strictly and absol'--see here, did you ever read 'the wrecker'?" "more than once." "remember the chap who says, 'you seem to think honesty as simple as blindman's-buff. i don't. it's some difference of definition, i suppose'? now, there's meat in that." "difference of definition be hanged. honesty is honesty." "and policy is policy. and bankruptcy is bankruptcy." "i don't see the connection." "it's there. honesty for a newspaper isn't just a matter of good intentions. it's a matter of eternal watchfulness and care and expert figuring-out of things." "you mean that we're likely to make mistakes about facts--" "we're certain to. but that isn't what i mean at all. i mean that it's harder for a newspaper to be honest than it is for the pastor of a rich church." "you can't make me believe that." "facts can. but i'm not doing my job. you want to learn the details of the business, and i'm wasting time trying to throw light into the deep places where it keeps what it has of conscience. that'll come later. now where shall i begin?" "with the structure of the business." "all right. a newspaper is divided into three parts. news is the merchandise which it has to sell. advertising is the by-product that pays the bills. the editorial page is a survival. at its best it analyzes and points out the significance of important news. at its worst, it is a mouthpiece for the prejudices or the projects of whoever runs it. few people are influenced by it. many are amused by it. it isn't very important nowadays." "i intend to make it so on the 'clarion.'" ellis turned upon him a regard which carried with it a verdict of the most abandoned juvenility, but made no comment. "news sways people more than editorials," he continued. "that's why there's so much tinkering with it. i'd like to give you a definition of news, but there isn't any. news is conventional. it's anything that interests the community. it isn't the same in any two places. in arizona a shower is news. in new orleans the boll-weevil is news. in worthington anything about your father is news: in denver they don't care a hoot about your father; so, unless he elopes or dies, or buys a fake titian, or breaks the flying-machine record, or lectures on medical quackery, he isn't news away from home. if mrs. festus willard is bitten by a mad dog, every dog-chase for the week following is news. when a martyred suffragette chews a chunk out of the king of england, the local meetings of the votes-for-women sorority become a live topic. if ever you get to the point where you can say with certainty, 'this is news; that isn't,' you'll have no further need for me. you'll be graduated." "where does a paper get its news?" "through mechanical channels, mostly. if you read all the papers in town,--and you'll have to do it,--you'll see that they've got just about the same stuff. why shouldn't they have? the big, clumsy news-mill grinds pretty impartially for all of them. there's one news source at police headquarters, another at the city hall, another in the financial department, another at the political headquarters, another in the railroad offices, another at the theaters, another in society, and so on. at each of these a reporter is stationed. he knows his own kind of news as it comes to him, ready-made, and, usually, not much else. then there's the general, unclassified news of the city that drifts in partly by luck, partly by favor, partly through the personal connections of the staff. one paper is differentiated from another principally by getting or missing this sort of stuff. for instance, the 'banner' yesterday had a 'beat' about you. it said that you had come back and were going to settle down and go into your father's business." "that's not true." "glad to hear it. your hands will be full with this job. but it was news. everybody is interested in the son of our leading citizen. the 'banner' is strong on that sort of local stuff. i think i'll jack up our boys in the city room by hinting that there may be a shake-up coming under the new owner. knowing they're on probation will make 'em ambitious." "and the news of the outside world?" "much the same principle as the local matter and just as machine-like. the 'clarion' is a unit in a big system, the national news exchange bureau. not only has the bureau its correspondents in every city and town of any size, but it covers the national sources of news with special reporters. also the international. theoretically it gives only the plainest facts, uncolored by any bias. as a matter of fact, it's pretty crooked. it suppresses news, and even distorts it. it's got a secret financial propaganda dictated by wall street, and its policies are always open to suspicion." "why doesn't it get honest reporters?" "oh, its reporters are honest enough. the funny business is done higher up, in the executive offices." "isn't there some other association we can get into?" "not very well, just now. the exchange franchise is worth a lot of money. besides," he concluded, yawning, "i don't know that they're any worse than we are." hal got to his feet and walked the length of the office and back, five times. at the end of this exercise he stood, looking down at his assistant. "ellis, are you trying to plant an impression in my mind?" "no." "you're doing it." "of what sort?" "i hardly know. something subtle, and lurking and underhanded in the business. i feel as if you had your hands on a curtain that you might pull aside if you would, but that you don't want to shock my--my youthfulness." "plain facts are what you want, aren't they?" "exactly." "well, i'm giving them to you as plain as you can understand them. i don't want to tell you more than you're ready to believe." "try it, as an experiment." "who do you suppose runs the newspapers of this town?" "why, mr. vane runs the 'banner.' mr. ford owns the 'press.' the 'telegram'--let me see--" "no; no; no," cried ellis, waving his hands in front of his face. "i don't mean the different papers. i mean all of 'em. the 'clarion,' with the others." "nobody runs them all, surely." "three men run them all; pierce, gibbs, and hollenbeck." "e.m. pierce?" "elias middleton pierce." "i had luncheon with him yesterday, and with mr. gibbs--" "ah! that's where you got your notions about the strike." "--and neither of them spoke of any newspaper interests." "catch them at it! they're the publication committee of the retail dry goods union." "what is that?" "the combination of local department stores. and, as such, they can dictate to every worthington newspaper what it shall or shall not print." "nonsense!" "including the 'clarion.'" "there you're wrong, anyway." "the department stores are the biggest users of advertising space in the city. no paper in town could get along without them. if they want a piece of news kept out of print, they tell the editor so, and you bet it's kept out. otherwise that paper loses the advertising." "has it ever been done here?" "has it? get veltman down to tell you about the store employees' federation." "veltman? what does he know of it? he's in the printing-department, isn't he?" "composing-room; yes. outside he's a labor agitator and organizer. a bit of a fanatic, too. but an a1 man all right. get the composing-room," he directed through the telephone, "and ask mr. veltman to come to mr. surtaine's office." as the printer entered, hal was struck again with his physical beauty. "did you want to see me?" he asked, looking at the "new boss" with somber eyes. "tell mr. surtaine about the newspapers and the store federation, max," said ellis. the german shook his head. "nothing new in that," he said, with the very slightest of accents. "we can't organize them unless the newspapers give us a little publicity." "explain it to me, please. i know nothing about it," said hal. "for years we've been trying to organize a union of department store employees." "aren't they well treated?" "not quite as well as hogs," returned the other in an impassive voice. "the girls wanted shorter hours and extra pay for overtime at holiday time and old home week. every time we've tried it the stores fire the organizers among their employees." "hardly fair, that." "this year we tried to get up a public meeting. reverend norman hale helped us, and dr. merritt, the health officer, and a number of women. it was a good news feature, and that was what we wanted, to get the movement started. but do you think any paper in town touched it? not one." "but why?" "e.m. pierce's orders. he and his crowd." "even the 'clarion,' which is supposed to have labor sympathies?" "the 'clarion'!" there was a profundity of contempt in veltman's voice; and a deeper bitterness when he snapped his teeth upon a word which sounded to hal suspiciously like the biblical characterization of an undesirable citizeness of babylon. "in any case, they won't give the 'clarion' any more orders." "oh, yes, they will," said veltman stolidly. "then they'll learn something distinctly to their disadvantage." the splendid, animal-like eyes of the compositor gleamed suddenly. "do you mean you're going to run the paper honestly?" hal almost recoiled before the impassioned and incredulous surprise in the question. "what is 'honestly'?" "give the people who buy your paper the straight news they pay for?" "certainly, the paper will be run that way." "as easy as rolling off a log," put in mcguire ellis, with suspicious smoothness. veltman looked from one to the other. "yes," he said: and again "yes-s-s." but the life had gone from his voice. "anything more?" "nothing, thank you," answered hal. "brains, fire, ambition, energy, skill, everything but balance," said ellis, as the door closed. "he's the stuff that martyrs are made of--or lunatics. same thing, i guess." "isn't he a trouble-maker among the men?" "no. he's a good workman. something more, too. sometimes he writes paragraphs for the editorial page; and when they're not too radical, i use 'em. he's brought us in one good feature, that 'kitty the cutie' stuff." "i'd thought of dropping that. it's so cheap and chewing-gummy." "catches on, though. we really ought to run it every day. but the girl hasn't got time to do it." "who is she?" "some kid in your father's factory, i understand. protégée of veltman's, he brought her stuff in and we took it right off the bat." "well, i'll tell you one thing that is going." "what?" "the 'clarion's motto. 'we lead: let those who can follow.'" hal pointed to the "black-face" legend at the top of the first editorial column. "got anything in its place?" "i thought of 'with malice toward none: with charity for all.'" "worked to death. but i've never seen it on a newspaper. shall i tell veltman to set it up in several styles so you may take your pick?" "yes. let's start it in to-morrow." that night harrington surtaine went to bed pondering on the strange attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "gentlemen: honesty is the best policy," while, in a corner, mcguire ellis and max veltman clasped each other in an apoplectic agony of laughter. on the following day the blatant cocks of the shrill "clarion" stood guard at either end of the paper's new golden text. chapter x in the way of trade dr. surtaine sat in little george's best chair, beaming upon the world. by habit, the big man was out of his seat with his dime and nickel in the bootblack's ready hand, almost coincidently with the final clip-clap of the rhythmic process. but this morning he lingered, contemplating with an unobtrusive scrutiny the occupant of the adjoining chair, a small, angular, hard man, whose brick-red face was cut off in the segment of an abrupt circle, formed by a low-jammed green hat. this individual had just briskly bidden his bootblack "hurry it up" in a tone which meant precisely what it said. the youth was doing so. "george," said dr. surtaine, to the proprietor of the stand. "yas, suh." "were you ever in st. jo, missouri?" "yas, suh, doctah suhtaine; oncet." "for long?" "no, suh." "didn't live there, did you?" "no, suh." "george," said his interlocutor impressively, "you're lucky." "yas, suh," agreed the negro with a noncommittal grin. "while you can buy accommodations in a graveyard or break into a penitentiary, don't you ever live in st. jo missouri, george." the man in the adjacent seat half turned toward dr. surtaine and looked him up and down, with a freezing regard. "it's the sink-hole and sewer-pipe of creation, george. they once elected a chicken-thief mayor, and he resigned because the town was too mean to live in. ever know any folks there, george?" "don't have no mem'ry for 'em, doctah." "you're lucky again. they're the orneriest, lowest-down, minchin', pinchin', pizen trash that ever tainted the sweet air of heaven by breathing it, george." "you don' sesso, doctah suhtaine, suh." "i do sess precisely so, george. does the name mcquiggan mean anything to you?" "don' mean nothin' at-tall to me, doctah." "you got away from st. jo in time, then. otherwise you might have met the mcquiggan family, and never been the same afterward." "ef you don' stop youah feet a-fidgittin', boss," interpolated the neighboring bootblack, addressing the green-hatted man in aggrieved tones, "i cain't do no good wif this job." "mcquiggan was the name," continued the volunteer biographer. "the best you could say of the mcquiggans, george, was that one wasn't much cusseder than the others, because he couldn't be. human nature has its limitations, george." "it suttinly have, suh." "but if you had to allow a shade to any of 'em, it would probably have gone to the oldest brother, l.p. mcquiggan. barring a scorpion i once sat down on while in swimming, he was the worst outrage upon the scheme of creation ever perpetrated by a short-sighted providence." "get out of that chair!" the little man had shot from his own and was dancing upon the pavement. "what for?" dr. surtaine's tone was that of inquiring innocence. "to have your fat head knocked off." with impressive agility for one of his size and years, the challenged one descended. he advanced, "squared," and suddenly held out a muscular and plump hand. "hullo, elpy." "huh?" the other glared at him, baleful and baffled. "hullo, i said. don't you know me?" "no, i don't. neither will your own family after i get through with you." "come off, elpy; come off. i licked you once in the old days, and i guess i could do it now, but i don't want to. come and have a drink with old andy." "andy? andy the spieler? andy certain?" "dr. l. andré surtaine, at your service. _now_, will you shake?" still surly, mr. mcquiggan hung back. "what about that roast?" he demanded. "wasn't sure of you. twenty years is a long time. but i knew if it was you you'd want to fight, and i knew if you didn't want to fight it wasn't you. i'll buy you one in honor of the best little city west of the mississip, and the best bunch of sports that ever came out of it, the mcquiggans of st. jo, missouri. does that go?" "it goes," replied the representative of the family concisely. across the café table dr. surtaine contemplated his old acquaintance with friendly interest. "the same old scrappy elpy," he observed. "what's happened to you, since you used to itinerate with the iroquois extract of life?" "plenty." "you're looking pretty prosperous." "have to, in my line." "what is it?" mr. mcquiggan produced a card, with the legend:- +-----------------------------------------+ | | | mcquiggan & straight | | streaky mountain copper company | | orsten, palas county, nev. | | | | | | l.p. mcquiggan arthur straight | | _president_ _vice-pres. & treas._ | | | +-----------------------------------------+ "any good?" queried the doctor. "best undeveloped property in the state." "why don't you develop it?" "capital." "get the capital." "will you help me?" "sure." "how?" "advertise." "advertising costs money." "and brings two dollars for every one you spend." "maybe," retorted the other, with a skeptical air. "but my game is still talk." "talk gets dimes; print gets dollars," said his friend sententiously. "you have to show me." "show you!" cried the doctor. "i'll write your copy myself." "_you_ will? what do you know about mining?" "not a thing. but there isn't much i don't know about advertising. i've built up a little twelve millions, plus, on it. and i can sell your stock like hot cakes through the 'clarion.'" "what's the 'clarion'?" "my son's newspaper." "thereby keeping the graft in the family, eh?" "don't be a fool, elpy. i'm showing you profits. besides doing you a good turn, i'd like to bring in some new business to the boy. now you take half-pages every other day for a week and a full page sunday--" "pages!" almost squalled the little man. "d'you think i'm made of money?" "elpy," said dr. surtaine, abruptly, "do you remember my platform patter?" "like the multiplication table." "was it good?" "best ever!" "well, i'm a slicker proposition with a pen than i ever was with a spiel. and you're securing my services for nothing. come around to the office, man, and let me show you." still suspicious, mr. mcquiggan permitted himself to be led away, expatiating as he went, upon the unrivaled location and glorious future of his mining property. from time to time, dr. surtaine jotted down an unostentatious note. the first view of the certina building dashed mr. mcquiggan's suspicions; his inspection of his old friend's superb office slew them painlessly. "is this all yours, andy? on the level? did you do it all on your own?" "every bit of it! with my little pen-and-ink. take a look around the walls and you'll see how." he seated himself at his desk and proceeded to jot down, with apparent carelessness, but in broad, sweeping lines, a type lay-out, while his guest passed from advertisement to advertisement, in increasing admiration. before old lame-boy he paused, absolutely fascinated. "i thought that'd get you," exulted the host, who, between strokes of the creative pen had been watching him. "i've seen it in the newspaper, but never connected it with you. being out of the medical line i lost interest. say, it's a wonder! did it fetch 'em?" "fetch 'em? it knocked 'em flat. that picture's the foundation of this business. talk about suggestion in advertising! he's a regular hypnotist, old lame-boy is. plants the suggestion right in the small of your back, where we want it. why, elpy, i've seen a man walk up to that picture on a bill-board as straight as you or me, take one good, long look, and go away hanging onto his kidneys, and squirming like a lizard. fact! what do you think of that? genius, i call it: just flat genius, to produce an effect like that with a few lines and a daub or two of color." "some pull!" agreed mr. mcquiggan, with professional approval. "and then--'try certina,' eh?" "for a starter and, for a finisher 'certina _cures_.' shoves the bottle right into their hands. the first bottle braces 'em. they take another. by the time they've had half a dozen, they love it." "booze?" "sure! flavored and spiced up, nice and tasty. great for the temperance trade. _and_ the best little repeater on the market. now take a look, elpy." he tapped the end of his pen upon the rough sketch of the mining advertisement, which he had drafted. mr. mcquiggan bent over it in study, and fell a swift victim to the magic of the art. "why, that would make a wad of bills squirm out of the toe of a stockin'! it's new game to me. i've always worked the personal touch. but i'll sure give it a try-out, andy." "i guess it's bad!" exulted the other. "i guess i've lost the trick of tolling the good old dollars in! take this home and try it on your cash register! now, come around and meet the boy." thus it was that editor-in-chief harrington surtaine, in the third week of his incumbency received a professional call from his father, and a companion from whose pockets bulged several sheets of paper. "shake hands with mr. mcquiggan, hal," said the doctor. "make a bow when you meet him, too. he's your first new business for the reformed 'clarion.'" "in what way?" asked hal, meeting a grip like iron from the stranger. "news?" "news! i guess not. business, i said. real money. advertising." "it's like this, mr. surtaine," said l.p. mcquiggan, turning his spare, hard visage toward hal. "i've got some copper stock to sell--an a1 under-developed proposition; and your father, who's an old pal, tells me the 'clarion' can do the business for me. now, if i can get a good rate from you, it's a go." "mr. shearson, the advertising manager, is your man. i don't know anything about advertising rates." "then you'd best get busy and learn," cried dr. surtaine. "i'm learning other things." "for instance?" "what news is and isn't." "look here, boyee." dr. surtaine's voice was surcharged with a disappointed earnestness. "put yourself right on this. news is news; any paper can get it. but advertising is _money_. let your editors run the news part, till you can work into it. _you get next to the door where the cash comes in._" in the fervor of his advice he thumped hal's desk. the thump woke mcguire ellis, who had been devoting a spare five minutes to his favorite pastime. for his behoof, the exponent of policy repeated his peroration. "isn't that right, ellis?" he cried. "you're a practical newspaper man." "it's true to type, anyway," grunted ellis. "sure it is!" cried the other, too bent on his own notions to interpret this comment correctly. "and now, what about a little reading notice for mcquiggan's proposition?" "yes: an interview with me on the copper situation and prospects might help," put in mcquiggan. hal hesitated, looking to ellis for counsel. "you've got to do something for an advertiser on a big order like this, boyee," urged his father. "let's see the copy," put in ellis. the trained journalistic eye ran over the sheets. "lot of gaudy slush about copper mines in general," he observed, "and not much information on streaky mountain." "it's an undeveloped property," said mcquiggan. "strong on geography," continued ellis. "'in the immediate vicinity,'" he read from one sheet, "'lie the copper monarch mine paying 40 per cent dividends, the deep gulch mine, paying 35 per cent, the three sisters, last chance, alkali spring mines, all returning upwards of 25 per cent per annum: and immediately adjacent is the famous strike-for-the-west property which enriches its fortunate stockholders to the tune of 75 per cent a year!' are you on the same range as the strike-for-the-west, mr. mcquiggan?" "it's an adjacent property," growled the mining man. "what d'you know about copper?" "oh, i've seen a little mining, myself. and a bit of mining advertising. that's quite an ad. of yours, mcquiggan." "i wrote that ad.," said dr. surtaine blandly: "and i challenge anybody to find a single misstatement in it." "you're safe. there isn't any. and scarcely a single statement. but if you wrote it, i suppose it goes." "and the interview, too," rasped mcquiggan. "it's usual," said ellis to hal. "the tail with the hide: the soul with the body, when you're selling." "but we're not selling interviews," said hal uneasily. "you're getting nearly a thousand dollars' worth of copy, and giving a bonus that don't cost you anything," said his father. "the papers have done it for me ever since i've been in business." "i guess that's right, too," agreed ellis. "why don't you take mcquiggan down to meet your mr. shearson, hal?" suggested the doctor. "i'll stay here and round out a couple of other ideas for his campaign." hal had risen from his desk when there was a light knock at the door and milly neal's bright head appeared. "hullo!" said dr. surtaine. "what's up? anything wrong at the shop, milly?" the girl walked into the room and stood trimly at ease before the four men. "no, chief," said she. "i understood mr. surtaine wanted to see me." "i?" said hal blankly, pushing a chair toward her. "yes. didn't you? they told me you left word for me in the city room, to see you when i came in again. sometimes i send my copy, so i only just got the message." "miss neal is 'kitty the cutie,'" explained mcguire ellis. "looks it, too," observed l.p. mcquiggan jauntily, addressing the upper far corner of the room. miss neal looked at him, met a knowing and conscious smile, looked right through the smile, and looked away again, all with the air of one who gazes out into nothingness. "guess i'll go look up this shearson person," said mr. mcquiggan, a trifle less jauntily. "see you all later." "i'd no notion you were the writer of the cutie paragraphs, milly," said dr. surtaine. "they're lively stuff." "nobody has. i'm keeping it dark. it's only a try-out. you _did_ send for me, didn't you?" she added, turning to hal. "yes. what i had in mind to say to you--that is, to the author--the writer of the paragraphs," stumbled hal, "is that they're a little too--too--" "too flip?" queried his father. "that's what makes 'em go." "if they could be done in a manner not quite so undignified," suggested the editor-in-chief. color rose in the girl's smooth cheek. "you think they're vulgar," she charged. "that's rather too harsh a word," he protested. "you do! i can see it." she flushed an angry red. "i'd rather stop altogether than have you think that." "don't be young," put in mcguire ellis, with vigor. "kitty has caught on. it's a good feature. the paper can't afford to drop it." "that's right," supplemented dr. surtaine. "people are beginning to talk about those items. they read 'em. i read 'em myself. they've got the go, the pep. they're different. but, milly, i didn't even know you could write." "neither did i," said the girl staidly, "till i got to putting down some of the things i heard the girls say, and stringing them together with nonsense of my own. one evening i showed some of it to mr. veltman, and he took it here and had it printed." "i was going to suggest, mr. surtaine," said mcguire ellis formally, "that we put miss kitty on the five-dollar-a-column basis and make her an every-other-day editorial page feature. i think the stuff's worth it." "we can give it a trial," said his principal, a little dubiously, "since you think so well of it." "then, milly, i suppose you'll be quitting the shop to become a full-fledged writer," remarked dr. surtaine. "no, indeed, chief." the girl smiled at him with that frank friendliness which hal had noted as informing every relationship between dr. surtaine and the employees of the certina plant. "i'll stick. the regular pay envelope looks good to me. and i can do this work after hours." "how would it be if i was to put you on half-time, milly?" suggested her employer. "you can keep your department going by being there in the mornings and have your afternoons for the writing." the girl thanked him demurely but with genuine gratitude. "then we'll look for your copy here on alternate days," said hal. "and i think i'll give you a desk. as this develops into an editorial feature i shall want to keep an eye on it and to be in touch with you. perhaps i could make suggestions sometimes." she rose, thanking him, and hal held open the door for her. once again he felt, with a strange sensation, her eyes take hold on his as she passed him. "pretty kid," observed ellis. "veltman is crazy about her, they say." "_good_ kid, too," added dr. surtaine, emphasizing the adjective. "you might tell veltman that, whoever he is." "tell him, yourself," retorted ellis with entire good nature. "he isn't the sort to offer gratuitous information to." upon this advice, l.p. mcquiggan reëntered. "all fixed," said he, with evident satisfaction. "we went to the mat on rates, but shearson agreed to give me some good reading notices. now, i'll beat it. see you to-night, andy?" dr. surtaine nodded. "you owe me a commission, boyee," said he, smiling at hal as mcquiggan made his exit. "but i'll let you off this time. i guess it won't be the last business i bring in to you. only, don't you and ellis go looking every gift horse too hard in the teeth. you might get bit." "shut your eyes and swallow it and ask no questions, if it's good, eh, doctor?" said mcguire ellis. "that's the motto for your practice." "right you are, my boy. and it's the motto of sound business. what is business?" he continued, soaring aloft upon the wings of a pæan of policy. "why, business is a deal between you and me in which i give you my goods and a pleasant word, and you give me your dollar and a polite reply. some folks always want to know where the dollar came from. not me! i'm satisfied to know that its coming to me. money has wings, and if you throw stones at it, it'll fly away fast. and you want to remember," he concluded with the fervor of honest conviction, "that a newspaper can't be quite right, any more than a man can, unless it makes its own living. well. i'm not going to preach any more. so long, boys." "what do you think of it, mr. surtaine?" inquired mcguire ellis, after the lecturer had gone his way. "pretty sound sense, eh?" "i wonder just what you mean by that, ellis. not what you say, certainly." but ellis only laughed and turned to his "flimsy." meantime the editor of the "clarion" was being quietly but persistently beset by another sermonizer, less cocksure of text than the sweet singer of policy, but more subtle in influence. this was miss esmé elliot. already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their acquaintance had developed into a real, if somewhat indeterminate connection. esmé found her new acquaintance interesting both for himself and for his career. her set in general considered the ripening friendship merely "another of esmé's flirtations," and variously prophesied the dénouement. to the girl's own mind it was not a flirtation at all. she was (she assured herself) genuinely absorbed in the development of a new mission in which she aspired to be influential. that she already exercised a strong sway of personality over hal surtaine, she realized. indeed, in the superb confidence of her charm, she would have been astonished had it been otherwise. just where her interest in the newly adventured professional field ended, and in harrington surtaine, the man, began, she would have been puzzled to say. kathleen pierce had bluntly questioned her on the subject. "yes, of course i like him," said esmé frankly. "he's interesting and he's a gentleman, and he has a certain force about him, and he's"--she paused, groping for a characterization--"he's unexpected." "what gets me," said kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there. know what i mean? there's a scrapper behind that nice-boy smile." "he hasn't scrapped with me, yet, kathie," smiled the beauty. "don't let him," advised the other. "it mightn't be safe. still, i suppose you understand him by now, down to the ground." "indeed i do not. didn't i tell you he was unexpected? he has an uncomfortable trick," complained miss elliot, "just when everything is smooth and lovely, of suddenly leveling those gray-blue eyes of his at you, like two pistols. 'throw up your hands and tell me what you really mean!' one doesn't always want to tell what one really means." "bet you have to with him, sooner or later," returned her friend. this conversation took place at the vanes' _al fresco_ tea, to which hal came for a few minutes, late in the afternoon of his father's visit with mcquiggan, mainly in the hope of seeing esmé elliot. within five minutes after his arrival, worthington society was frowning, or smiling, according as it was masculine or feminine, at their backs, as they strolled away toward the garden. miss esmé was feeling a bit petulant, perhaps because of kathie pierce's final taunt. "i think you aren't living up to our partnership," she accused. "is it a partnership, where one party is absolute slave to the other's slightest wish?" he smiled. "there! that is exactly it. you treat me like a child." "i don't think of you as a child, i assure you." "you listen to all i say with pretended deference, and smile and--and go your own way with inevitable motion." "wherein have i failed in my allegiance?" asked hal, courteously concerned. "haven't we published everything about all the charities that you're interested in?" "oh, yes. so far as that goes. but the paper itself doesn't seem to change any. it's got the same tone it always had." "what's wrong with its tone?" the eyes were leveled at her now. "speaking frankly, it's tawdry. it's lurid. it's--well, yellow." "a matter of method. you're really more interested, then, in the way we present news than in the news we present." "i don't know anything about news, itself. but i don't see why a newspaper run by a gentleman shouldn't be in good taste." "nor do i. except that those things take time. i suppose i've got to get in touch with my staff before i can reform their way of writing the paper." "haven't you done that yet?" "i simply haven't had time." "then i'll make you a nice present of a very valuable suggestion. give a luncheon to your employees, and invite all the editors and reporters. make a little speech to them and tell them what you intend to do, and get them to talk it over and express opinions. that's the way to get things done. i do it with my mission class. and, by the way, don't make it a grand banquet at one of the big hotels. have it in some place where the men are used to eating. they'll feel more at home and you'll get more out of them." "will you come?" "no. but you shall come up to the house and report fully on it." had miss esmé elliot, experimentalist in human motives, foreseen to what purpose her ingenious suggestion was to work out, she might well have retracted her complaint of lack of real influence; for this casual conversation was the genesis of the talk-it-over breakfast, an institution which potently affected the future of the "clarion" and its young owner. chapter xi the initiate within a month after hal's acquisition of the "clarion," dr. surtaine had become a daily caller at the office. "just to talk things over," was his explanation of these incursions, which hal always welcomed, no matter how busy he might be. advice was generally the form which the visitor's talk took; sometimes warning; not infrequently suggestions of greater or less value. always his counsel was for peace and policy. "keep in with the business element, boyee. remember all the time that worthington is a business city, the liveliest little business city between new york and chicago. business made it. business runs it. business is going to keep on running it. anybody who works on a different principle, i don't care whether it's in politics or journalism or the pulpit, is going to get hurt. i don't deny you've braced up the 'clarion.' people are beginning to talk about it already. but the best men, the moneyed men, are holding off. they aren't sure of you yet. sometimes i'm not sure myself. every now and then the paper takes a stand i don't like. it goes too far. you've put ginger into it. i have to admit that. and ginger's a good thing, but sugar catches more flies." the notion of a breakfast to the staff met with the doctor's instant approval. "that's the idea!" said he "i'll come to it, myself. lay down your general scheme and policy to 'em. get 'em in sympathy with it. if any of 'em aren't in sympathy with it, get rid of those. kickers never did any business any good. you'll get plenty of kicks from outside. then, when the office gets used to your way of doing things, you can quit wasting so much time on the news and editorial end." "but that's what makes the paper, dad." "get over that idea. you hire men to get out the paper. let 'em earn their pay while you watch the door where the dollars come in. advertising, my son: that's the point to work at. in a way i'm sorry you let sterne out." the ex-editor had left, a fortnight before, on a basis agreeable to himself and hal, and mcguire ellis had taken over his duties. "certainly you had no reason to like sterne, dad." "for all that, he knew his job. everything sterne did had a dollar somewhere in the background. even his blackmailing game. he worked with the business office, and he took his orders on that basis. now if you had some man whom you could turn over this news end to while you're building up a sound advertising policy--" "how about mcguire ellis?" dr. surtaine glanced over to the window corner where the associate editor was somnambulantly fighting a fly for the privilege of continuing a nap. "too much of a theorist: too much of a knocker." "he's taught me what little i know about this business," said hal. "hi! wake up, ellis. do you know you've got to make a speech in an hour? this is the day of the formal feed." "hoong!" grunted ellis, arousing himself. "speech? i can't make a speech. make it yourself." "i'm going to." "what are you going to talk about?" "well, i might borrow your text and preach them a sermon on honesty in journalism. seriously, i think the whole paper has degenerated to low ideals, and if i put it to them straight, that every man of them, reporter, copy-reader, or editor, has got to measure up to an absolutely straight standard of honesty--" "they'll throw the tableware at you," said mcguire ellis quietly: "at least they ought to, if they don't." the two surtaines stared at him in surprise. "who are you," continued the journalist, "to talk standards of honesty in journalism to those boys?" "he's their boss: that's all he is," said dr. surtaine weightily. "let him set the example, then, jack the paper up where it belongs, and there'll be no difficulty with the men who write it." "but, mac, you've been hammering at me about the crookedness of journalism in worthington from the first." "all right. crookedness there is. where does it come from? from the men in control, mostly. let me tell you something, you two: there's hardly a reporter in this city who isn't more honest than the paper he works for." "hifalutin nonsense," said dr. surtaine. "from your point of view. you're an outsider. it's outsiders that make the newspaper game as bad as it is. look at 'em in this town. who owns the 'banner'? a political boss. who owns the 'news'? a brewer. the 'star'? a promoter, and a pretty scaly one at that. the 'observer' belongs body and soul to an advertising agency, and the 'telegraph' is controlled by the banks. and one and all of 'em take their orders from the dry goods union, which means elias m. pierce, because they live on its advertising." "why not? that's business," said dr. surtaine. "are we talking about business? i thought it was standards. what do those men know about the ethics of journalism? if you put the thing up to him, like as not e.m. pierce would tell you that an ethic is something a doctor gives you to make you sleep." "how about the 'clarion,' mac?" said hal, smiling. "it's run by an outsider, too, isn't it?" "that's what i want to know." there was no answering smile on ellis's somber and earnest face. "i've thought there was hope for you. you've had no sound business training, thank god, so your sense of decency may not have been spoiled." "you don't seem to think much of business standards," said the doctor tolerantly. "not a great deal. i've bumped into 'em too hard. not so long ago i was publisher of a paying daily in an eastern city. the directors were all high-class business men, and the chairman of the board was one of those philanthropist-charity-donator-pillar-of-the-church chaps with a permanent crease of high respectability down his front. well, one day there turned up a double murder in the den of one of these venereal quacks that infest every city. it set me on the trail, and i had my best reporter get up a series about that gang of vampires. naturally that necessitated throwing out their ads. the advertising manager put up a howl, and we took the thing to the board of directors. in those days i had all my enthusiasm on tap. i had an array of facts, too, and i went at that board like a revivalist, telling 'em just the kind of devil-work the 'men's specialists' did. at the finish i sat down feeling pretty good. nobody said anything for quite a while. then the chairman dropped the pencil he'd been puttering with, and said, in a kind of purry voice: 'gentlemen: i thought mr. ellis's job on this paper was to make it pay dividends, and not to censor the morals of the community.'" "and, by crikey, he was right!" cried dr. surtaine. "from the business point of view." "oh, you theorists! you theorists!" dr. surtaine threw out his hands in a gesture of pleasant despair. "you want to run the world like a sunday-school class." "instead of like a three-card-monte game." "with your lofty notions, ellis, how did you ever come to work on a sheet like the 'clarion'?" "a man's got to eat. when i walked out of that directors' meeting i walked out of my job and into a saloon; and from that saloon i walked into a good many other saloons. luckily for me, booze knocked me out early. i broke down, went west, got my health and some sense back again, drifted to this town, found an opening on the 'clarion,' and took it, to make a living." "you won't continue to do that," advised dr. surtaine bluntly, "if you keep on trying to reform your bosses." "but what makes me sick," continued ellis, disregarding this hint, "is to have people assume that newspaper men are a lot of semi-crooks and shysters. what does the petty grafting that a few reporters do--and, mind you, there's mighty little of it done--amount to, compared with the rottenness of a paper run by my church-going reformer with the business standards?" a call from the business office took hal away. at once ellis turned to the older man. "are you going to run the paper, doc?" "no: no, my boy. hal owns it, on his own money." "because if you are, i quit." "that's no way to talk," said the magnate, aggrieved. "there isn't a man in worthington treats his employees better or gets along with 'em smoother than me." "that's right, too, i guess. only i don't happen to want to be your employee." "you're frank, at least, mr. ellis." "why not? i've laid my cards on the table. you know me for what i am, a disgruntled dreamer. i know you for what you are, a hard-headed business man. we don't have to quarrel about it. tell you what i'll do: i'll match you, horse-and-horse, for the soul of your boy." "you're a queer dick, ellis." "don't want to match? then i suppose i've got to fight you for him," sighed the editor. the big man laughed whole-heartedly. "not a chance, my friend! not a chance on earth. i don't believe even a woman could come between hal and me, let alone a man." "_or_ a principle?" "ah--ah! dealing in abstractions again. look out for this fellow, boyee," he called jovially as hal came back to his desk. "he'll make your paper the official organ of the muckrakers' union." "i'll watch him," promised hal. "meantime i'll take your advice about my speech, mac, and blue-pencil the how-to-be-good stuff." "now you're talking! i'll tell you, boss: why not get some of the fellows to speak up. you might learn a few things about your own paper that would interest you." "good idea! but, mac, i wish you wouldn't call me 'boss.' it makes me feel absurdly young." "all right, hal," returned ellis, with a grin. "but you've still got some youngness to overcome, you know." an hour later, looking down the long luncheon table, the editor-owner felt his own inexperience more poignantly. with a very few exceptions, these men, his employees, were his seniors in years. more than that, he thought to see in the faces an air of capability, of assurance, of preparedness, a sort of work-worthiness like the seaworthiness of a vessel which has passed the high test of wind and wave. and to him, untried, unformed, ignorant, the light amateur, all this human mechanism must look for guidance. humility clouded him at the recollection of the spirit in which he had taken on the responsibility so vividly personified before him, a spirit of headlong wrath and revenge, and he came fervently to a realization and a resolve. he saw himself as part of a close-knit whole; he visioned, sharply, the institution, complex, delicate, almost infinitely powerful for good or evil, not alone to those who composed it, but to the community to which it bore so subtle a relationship. and he resolved, with a determination that partook of the nature of prayer and yet was more than prayer, to give himself loyally, unsparingly, devotedly to the common task. in this spirit he rose, at the close of the luncheon, to speak. no newspaper reported the maiden speech of mr. harrington surtaine to the staff of the worthington "clarion." newspapers are reticent about their own affairs. in this case it is rather a pity, for the effort is said to have been an eminently successful one. estimated by its effect, it certainly was, for it materialized with quite spiritistic suddenness, from out the murk of uncertainty and suspicion, the form and substance of a new _esprit de corps_, among the "clarion" men, and established the system of talk-it-over breakfasts which made a close-knit, jealously guarded corporation and club out of the staff. free of all ostentation or self-assertiveness was hal's talk; simple, and, above all virtues, brief. he didn't tell his employees what he expected of them. he told them what they might expect of him. the frankness of his manner, the self-respecting modesty of his attitude toward an audience of more experienced subordinates, his shining faith and belief in the profession which he had adopted; all this eked out by his ease of address and his dominant physical charm, won them from the first. only at the close did he venture upon an assertion of his own ideas or theories. "it is the sydney 'bulletin,' i think, which preserves as its motto the proposition that every man has at least one good story in him. i have been studying newspaper files since i took this job,--all the files of all the papers i could get,--and i'm almost ready to believe that much news which the papers publish has got realer facts up its sleeve: that the news is only the shadow of the facts. i'd like to get at the why of the day's news. do you remember sherlock holmes's 'commonplace' divorce suit, where the real cause was that the husband used to remove his front teeth and hurl 'em at the wife whenever her breakfast-table conversation wasn't sprightly enough to suit him? once out of a hundred times, i suppose, the everyday processes of our courts hide something picturesque or perhaps important in the background. any paper that could get and present that sort of news would liven up its columns a good deal. and it would strike a new note in worthington. i'll give you a motto for the 'clarion,' gentlemen: 'the facts behind the news.' and now i've said my say, and i want to hear from you." here for the first time hal struck a false note. newspaper men, as a class, abhor public speaking. so much are they compelled to hear from "those bores who prate intolerably over dinner tables," that they regard the man who speaks when he isn't manifestly obliged to, as an enemy to the public weal, and are themselves most loath thus to add to the sum of human suffering. merely by way of saving the situation, wayne, the city editor, arose and said a few words complimentary to the new owner. he was followed by the head copy-reader in the same strain. two of the older sub-editors perpetrated some meaningless but well-meant remarks, and the current of events bade fair to end in complete stagnation, when from out of the ruck, midway of the table, there rose the fringed and candid head of one william s. marchmont, the railroad and markets reporter. marchmont was an elderly man, of a journalistic type fast disappearing. there is little room in the latter-day pressure of newspaper life for the man who works on "booze." but though a steady drinker, and occasionally an unsteady one, marchmont had his value. he was an expert in his specialty. he had a wide acquaintance, and he seldom became unprofessionally drunk in working hours. to offset the unwonted strain of rising before noon, however, he had fortified himself for this occasion by several cocktails which were manifest in his beaming smile and his expansive flourish in welcoming mr. surtaine to the goodly fellowship of the pen. "very good, all that about the facts behind the news," he said genially. "very instructive and--and illuminating. but what i wanta ask you is this: we fellows who have to _write_ the facts behind the news; where do we get off?" "i don't understand you," said hal. "lemme explain. last week we had an accident on the mid-and-mud. engineer ran by his signals. rear end collision. seven people killed. coroner's inquest put all the blame on the engineer. engineer wasn't tending to his duty. that's news, isn't it, mr. surtaine?" "undoubtedly." "yes: but here's the facts. that engineer had been kept on duty forty-eight hours with only five hours off. he was asleep when he ran past the block and killed those people." "is he telling the truth, mac?" asked hal in a swift aside to ellis. "if he says so, it's right," replied ellis. "what do you call that?" pursued the speaker. "murder. i call it murder." max veltman, who sat just beyond the speaker, half rose from his chair. "the men who run the road ought to be tried for murder." "oh, _you_ can call it that, all right, in one of your socialist meetings," returned the reporter genially. "but i can't." "why can't you?" demanded hal. "the railroad people would shut down on news to the 'clarion.' i couldn't get a word out of them on anything. what good's a reporter who can't get news? you'd fire me in a week." "can you prove the facts?" "i can." "write it for to-morrow's paper. i'll see that you don't lose your place." marchmont sat down, blinking. again there was silence around the table, but this time it was electric, with the sense of flashes to come. the slow drawl of lindsay, the theater reporter, seemed anti-climatic as he spoke up, slouched deep in his seat. "how much do you know of dramatic criticism in this town, mr. surtaine?" "nothing." "maybe, then, you'll be pained to learn that we're a set of liars--i might even go further--myself among the number. there hasn't been honest dramatic criticism written in worthington for years." "that is hard to believe, mr. lindsay." "not if you understand the situation. suppose i roast a show like 'the nymph in the nightie' that played here last week. it's vapid and silly, and rotten with suggestiveness. i wouldn't let my kid sister go within gunshot of it. but i've got to tell everybody else's kid sister, through our columns, that it's a delightful and enlivening _mélange_ of high class fun and frolic. to be sure, i can praise a fine performance like 'kindling' or 'the servant in the house,' but i've got to give just as clean a bill of health to a gutter-and-brothel farce. otherwise, the high-minded gentlemen that run our theaters will cut off my tickets." "buy them at the box-office," said hal. "no use. they wouldn't let me in. the courts have killed honest criticism by deciding that a manager can keep a critic out on any pretext or without any. besides, there's the advertising. we'd lose that." "speaking of advertising,"--now it was lynch, a young reporter who had risen from being an office boy,--"i guess it spoils some pretty good stories from the down-town district. look at that accident at scheffer and mintz's; worth three columns of anybody's space. tank on the roof broke, and drowned out a couple of hundred customers. panic, and broken bones, and all kinds of things. how much did we give it? one stick! and we didn't name the place: just called it 'a washington street store.' there were facts behind _that_ news, all right. but i guess mr. shearson wouldn't have been pleased if we'd printed 'em." in fact, shearson, the advertising manager, looked far from pleased at the mention. "if you think a one-day story would pay for the loss of five thousand a year in advertising, you've got another guess, young man," he growled. "he's right, there," said dr. surtaine, on one side of hal; and from the other, mcguire ellis chirped:-"things are beginning to open up, all right, mr. editor." two aspirants were now vying for the floor, the winner being the political reporter for the paper. "would you like to hear some facts about the news we don't print?" he asked. "go ahead," replied hal. "you have the floor." "you recall a big suffrage meeting here recently, at which mrs. barkerly from london spoke. well, the chairman of that meeting didn't get a line of his speech in the papers: didn't even get his name mentioned. do you know why?" "i can't even imagine," said hal. "because he's the socialist candidate for governor of this state. he's blackballed from publication in every newspaper here." "by whom?" inquired hal. "by the hinted wish of the chamber of commerce. they're so afraid of the socialist movement that they daren't even admit it's alive." "not at all!" dr. surtaine's rotund bass boomed out the denial. "there are some movements that it's wisest to disregard. they'll die of themselves. socialism is a destructive force. why should the papers help spread it by noticing it in their columns?" "well, i'm no socialist," said the political reporter, "but i'm a newspaper man, and i say it's news when a socialist does a thing just as much as when any one else does it. yet if i tried to print it, they'd give me the laugh on the copy-desk." "it's a fact that we're all tied down on the news in this town," corroborated wayne; "what between the chamber of commerce and the dry goods union and the theaters and the other steady advertisers. you must have noticed, mr. surtaine, that if there's a shoplifting case or anything of that kind you never see the name of the store in print. it's always 'a state street department store' or 'a warburton avenue shop.' ask ellis if that isn't so." "correct," said ellis. "why shouldn't it be so?" cried shearson. "you fellows make me tired. you're always thinking of the news and never of the advertising. who is it pays your salaries, do you think? the men who advertise in the 'clarion.'" "hear! hear!" from dr. surtaine. "and what earthly good does it do to print stuff like those shoplifting cases? where's the harm in protecting the store?" "i'll tell you where," said ellis. "that mcburney girl case. they got the wrong girl, and, to cover themselves, they tried to railroad her. it was a clear case. every paper in town had the facts. yet they gave that girl the reputation of a thief and never printed a correction for fear of letting in the store for a damage suit." "did the 'clarion' do that?" asked hal. "yes." "get me a full report of the facts." "what are you going to do?" asked shearson. "print them." "oh, my lord!" groaned shearson. the circle was now drawing in and the talk became brisker, more detailed, more intimate. to his overwhelming amazement hal learned some of the major facts of that subterranean journalistic history which never gets into print; the ugly story of the blackmail of a president of the united states by a patent medicine concern (dr. surtaine verified this with a nod); the inside facts of the failure of an important senatorial investigation which came to nothing because of the drunken debauchery of the chief senatorial investigator; the dreadful details of the death of a leading merchant in a great eastern city, which were so glossed over by the local press that few of his fellow citizens ever had an inkling of the truth; the obtainable and morally provable facts of the conspiracy on the part of a mighty financier which had plunged a nation into panic; these and many other strange narratives of the news, known to every old newspaper man, which made the neophyte's head whirl. then, in a pause, a young voice said: "well, to bring the subject up to date, what about the deaths in the rookeries?" "shut up," said wayne sharply. there followed a general murmur of question and answer. "what about the rookeries?"--"don't know."--"they say the death-rate is a terror."--"are they concealing it at the city hall?"--"no; merritt can't find out."--"bet tip o'farrell can."--"oh, he's in on the game."--"just another fake, i guess." in vain hal strove to catch a clue from the confused voices. he had made a note of it for future inquiry, when some one called out: "mac ellis hasn't said anything yet." the others caught it up. "speech from mac!"--"don't let him out."--"if you can't speak, sing a song."--"play a tune on the _bazoo_."--"hike him up there, somebody."--"silence for the macguire!!" "i've never made a speech in my life," said ellis, glowering about him, "and you fellows know it. but last night i read this in plutarch: 'themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.'" ellis paused, lifting one hand. "fellows," he said, and he turned sharply to face hal surtaine, "i don't know how the devil old themistocles ever could do it--unless he owned a newspaper!" silence followed, and then a quick acclaiming shout, as they grasped the implicit challenge of the corollary. then again silence, tense with curiosity. no doubt of what they awaited. their expectancy drew hal to his feet. "i had intended to speak but once," he said, in a constrained voice, "but i've learned more here this afternoon--more than--than i could have thought--" he broke off and threw up his hand. "i'm no newspaper man," he cried. "i'm only an amateur, a freshman at this business. but one thing i believe; it's the business of a newspaper to give the news without fear or favor, and that's what the 'clarion' is going to do from this day. on that platform i'll stand by any man who'll stand by me. will you help?" the answer rose and rang like a cheer. the gathering broke into little, excited, chattering groups, sure symptom of the success of a meeting. much conjecture was expressed and not a little cynicism. "compared to us ishmael would be a society favorite if surtaine carries this through," said one. "it means suspension in six months," prophesied shearson. but most of the men were excitedly enthusiastic. your newspaper man is by nature a romantic; otherwise he would not choose the most adventurous of callings. and the fighting tone of the new boss stimulated in them the spirit of chance and change. slowly and reluctantly they drifted away to the day's task. at the close hal sat, thoughtful and spent, in a far corner when ellis walked heavily over to him. the associate editor gazed down at his bemused principal for a time. from his pocket he drew the thick blue pencil of his craft, and with it tapped hal thrice on the shoulder. "rise up, sir newspaper man," he pronounced solemnly. "i hereby dub thee knight-editor." chapter xii the thin edge across the fresh and dainty breakfast table, dr. miles elliot surveyed his even more fresh and dainty niece and ward with an expression of sternest disapproval. not that it affected in any perceptible degree that attractive young person's healthy appetite. it was the habit of the two to breakfast together early, while their elderly widowed cousin, who played the part of feminine propriety in the household in a highly self-effacing and satisfactory manner, took her tea and toast in her own rooms. it was further dr. elliot's custom to begin the day by reprehending everything (so far as he could find it out) which miss esmé had done, said, or thought in the previous twenty-four hours. this, as he frequently observed to her, was designed to give her a suitably humble attitude toward the scheme of creation, but didn't. "out all night again?" he growled. "pretty nearly," said esmé cheerfully, setting a very even row of very white teeth into an apple. "humph! what was it this time?" "a dinner-dance at the norris's." "have a good time?" "beautiful! my frock was pretty. and i was pretty. and everybody was nice to me. and i wish it were going to happen right over again to-night." "whom did you dance with mostly?" "anybody that asked me." "dare say. how many new victims?" he demanded. "don't be a silly guardy. i'm not a man-eating tiger or tigress, or the great american puma--or pumess. don't you think 'pumess' is a nice lady-word, guardy?" "did you dance with will douglas?" catechised the grizzled doctor, declining to be shunted off on a philological discussion. next to acting as legal major domo to e.m. pierce, douglas's most important function in life was apparently to fetch and carry for the reigning belle of worthington. his devotion to esmé elliot had become stock gossip of the town, since three seasons previous. "almost half as often as he asked me," said the girl. "that was eight times, i think." "nice boy, will." "boy!" there was a world of expressiveness in the monosyllable. "not a day over forty," observed the uncle. "and you are twenty-two. not that you look it"--judicially--"like thirty-five, after all this dissipation." esmé rose from her seat, walked with great dignity past her guardian, and suddenly whirling, pounced upon his ear. "do i? do i?" she cried. "do i look thirty-five? quick! take it back." "ouch! oh! no. not more'n thirty. oo! all right; twenty-five, then. fifteen! three!!!" she kissed the assaulted ear, and pirouetted over to the broad window-seat, looking in her simple morning gown like a school-girl. "wonder how you do it," grumbled dr. elliot. "up all night roistering like a sophomore--" "i was in bed at three." "down next morning, fresh as a--a--" "rose," she supplied tritely. "--cake o' soap," concluded her uncle. "now, as for you and will douglas, as between will's forty--" "marked down from forty-five," she interjected. "and your twenty-two--" "looking like thirty-something." "never mind," said dr. elliot in martyred tones. "_i_ don't want to finish _any_ sentence. why should i? got a niece to do it for me." "nobody wants you to finish that one. you're a matchmaking old maid," declared esmé, wrinkling her delicate nose at him, "and if you're ever put up for our sewing-circle i shall blackball you. gossip!" "oh, if i wanted to gossip, i'd begin to hint about the name of surtaine." the girl's color did not change. "as other people have evidently been doing to you." "a little. did you dance with him last night?" "he wasn't there. he's working very hard on his newspaper." "you seem to know a good deal about it." "naturally, since i've bought into the paper myself. i believe that's the proper business phrase, isn't it?" "bought in? what do you mean? you haven't been making investments without my advice?" "don't worry, guardy, dear. it isn't strictly a business transaction. i've been--ahem--establishing a sphere of influence." "over harrington surtaine?" "over his newspaper." "look here, esmé! how serious is this surtaine matter?" dr. elliot's tone had a distinct suggestion of concern. "for me? not serious at all." "but for him?" "how can i tell? isn't it likely to be serious for any of the unprotected young of your species when a great american pumess gets after him?" she queried demurely. "but you can't know him very well. he's been here only a few weeks, hasn't he?" "more than a month. and from the first he's gone everywhere." "that's quite unusual for your set, isn't it? i thought you rather prided yourselves on being careful about outsiders." "no one's an outsider whom jinny willard vouches for. besides every one likes hal surtaine for himself." "you among the number?" "yes, indeed," she responded frankly. "he's attractive. and he seems older and more--well--interesting than most of the boys of my set." "and that appeals to you?" "yes: it does. i get awfully bored with the just-out-of-college chatter of the boys. i want to see the wheels go round, guardy. real wheels, that make up real machinery and get real things done. i'm not quite an _ingénue_, you know." "thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, fifteen, three," murmured her uncle, rubbing his ear. "and does young surtaine give you inside glimpses of the machinery of his business?" "sometimes. he doesn't know very much about it himself, yet." "it's a pretty dirty business, honey. and, i'm afraid, he's a pretty bad breed." "the father _is_ rather impossible, isn't he?" she said, laughing. "but they say he's very kindly, and well-meaning, and public-spirited, and that kind of thing." "he's a scoundrelly old quack. it's a bad inheritance for the boy. where are you off to this morning?" "to the 'clarion' office." "what! well, but, see here, dear, does cousin clarice approve of that sort of thing?" "wholly," esmé assured him, dimpling. "it's on behalf of the recreation club. that's the reverend norman hale's club for working-girls, you know. we're going to give a play. and, as i'm on the press committee, it's quite proper for me to go to the newspapers and get things printed." "humph!" grunted dr. elliot. "well: good hunting--pumess." after the girl had gone, he sat thinking. he knew well the swift intimacies, frank and clean and fine, which spring up in the small, close-knit social circles of a city like worthington. and he knew, too, and trusted and respected the judgment of mrs. festus willard, whose friendship was tantamount to a certificate of character and eligibility. as against that, he set the unforgotten picture of the itinerant quack, vending his poison across the countryside, playing on desperate fears and tragic hopes, coining his dollars from the grimmest of false dies; and now that same quack,--powerful, rich, generous, popular, master of the good things of life,--still draining out his millions from the populace, through just such deadly swindling as that which had been lighted up by the flaring exploitation of the oil torches fifteen years before. could any good come from such a stock? he decided to talk it out with esmé, sure that her fastidiousness would turn away from the ugly truth. meantime, the girl was making a toilet of vast and artful simplicity wherewith to enrapture the eye of the beholder. the first profound effect thereof was wrought upon reginald currier, alias "bim," some fifteen minutes later, at the outer portals of the "clarion" office. "hoojer wanter--" he began, and then glanced up. almost as swiftly as he had aforetime risen under hal's irate and athletic impulsion, the redoubtable bim was lifted from his seat by the power of miss elliot's glance. "gee!" he murmured. the great american pumess, looking much more like a very innocent, soft, and demurely playful kitten, accepted this ingenuous tribute to her charms with a smile. "good-morning," she said. "is mr. surtaine in?" "same t'you," responded the courteous mr. currier. "sure he is. walk this way, maddim!" they found the editor at his desk. his absorbed expression brightened as he jumped up to greet his visitor. "you!" he cried. esmé let her hand rest in his and her glance linger in his eyes, perhaps just a little longer than might have comported with safety in one less adept. "how is the paper going?" she inquired, taking the chair which he pulled out for her. "completely to the dogs," said hal. "no! why i thought--" "you haven't given any advice to the editor for six whole days," he complained. "how can you expect an institution to run, bereft of its presiding genius? is it your notion of a fair partnership to stay away and let your fellow toilers wither on the bough? i only wonder that the presses haven't stopped." "would this help at all?" the visitor produced from her shopping-bag the written announcement of the recreation club play. "undoubtedly it will save the day. lost atlantis will thrill to hear, and deep-sea cables bear the good news to unborn generations. what is it?" she frowned upon his levity. "it is an interesting item, a _very_ interesting item of news," she said impressively. "bring one in every day," he directed: "in person. we can't trust the mails in matters of such vital import." and scrawling across the copy a single hasty word in pencil, he thrust it into a wire box. "what's that you've written on it?" "the mystic word 'must.'" "does it mean that it must be printed?" "precisely, o fountain of intuition. it is one of the proud privileges which an editor-in-chief has. otherwise he does exactly what the city desk or the advertising manager or the head proof-reader or the fourth assistant office boy tells him. that's because he's new to his job and everybody in the place knows it." "yet i don't think it would be easy for any one to make you do a thing you really didn't want to do," she observed, regarding him thoughtfully. "when you lift your eyebrows like that--" "i thought you weren't to make pretty speeches to me in business hours," she reproached him. "such a stern and rock-bound partner! very well. how does the paper suit your tastes?" "you've got an awfully funny society column." "we strive to amuse. but i thought only people outside of society ever read society columns--except to see if their names were there." "i read _all_ the paper," she answered severely. "and i'd like to know who mrs. wolf tone maher is." "ring up 'information,'" he suggested. "don't be flippant. also mr. and mrs. b. kirschofer, and miss amelia sproule. all of which give teas in the society columns of the 'clarion.' _or_ dances. _or_ dinners. and i notice they're always sandwiched in between the willards or the vanes or the ellisons or the pierces, or some of our own crowd. i'm curious." "so am i. let's ask wayne." accordingly the city editor was summoned and duly presented to miss elliot. but when she put the question to him, he looked uncomfortable. like a good city editor, however, he defended his subordinate. "it isn't the society reporter's fault," he said. "he knows those people don't belong." "how do they get in there, then?" asked hal. "mr. shearson's orders." "is mr. shearson the society editor?" asked esmé. "no. he's the advertising manager." "forgive my stupidity, but what has the advertising manager to do with social news?" "a big heap lot," explained wayne. "it's the most important feature of the paper to him. wolf tone maher is general manager of the bee hive department store. we get all their advertising, and when mrs. maher wants to see her name along with the 'swells,' as she would say, mr. shearson is glad to oblige. b. kirschofer is senior partner in the firm of kirschofer & kraus, of the bargain emporium. miss sproule is the daughter of alexander sproule, proprietor of the agony parlors, three floors up." "agony parlors?" queried the visitor. "painless dentistry," explained wayne. "mr. shearson handles all that matter and sends it down to us." "marked 'must,' i suppose," remarked miss elliot, not without malice. "so the mystic 'must' is not exclusively a chief-editorial prerogative?" the editor-in-chief looked annoyed, thereby satisfying his visitor's momentary ambition. "hereafter, mr. wayne, all copy indorsed 'must' is to be referred to me," he directed. "that kills the 'must' thing," commented the city editor cheerfully. "what about 'must not'?" "another complication," laughed esmé. "i fear i'm peering into the dark and secret places of journalism." "for example, a story came in last night that was a hummer," said wayne; "about e.m. pierce's daughter running down an apple-cart in her sixty-horse-power car, and scattering dago, fruit, and all to the four winds of heaven. robbins saw it, and he's the best reporter we have for really funny stuff." "kathleen drives that car like a demon out on a spree," said esmé. "but of course you wouldn't print anything unpleasant about it." "why not?" asked wayne. "well, she belongs to our crowd,--mr. surtaine's friends, i mean,--and it was accidental, i suppose, and so long as the man wasn't hurt--" "only a sprained shoulder." "--and i'm sure agnes would be more than willing to pay for the damage." "oh, yes. she asked the worth of his stock and then doubled it, gave him the money, and drove off with her mud guards coquettishly festooned with grapes. that's what made it such a good story." "but, mr. wayne"--esmé's eyes were turned up to his pleadingly: "those things are funny to tell. but they're so vulgar, in the paper. think, if it were your sister." "if my sister went tearing through crowded streets at forty miles an hour, i'd have her examined for homicidal mania. that pierce girl will kill some one yet. even then, i suppose we won't print a word of it." "what would stop us?" asked hal. "the fear of elias m. pierce. his 'must not' is what kills this story." "let me see it." "oh, it isn't visible. but every editor in town knows too much to offend the president of the consolidated employers' organization, let alone his practical control of the dry goods union." "you were at the staff breakfast yesterday, i believe, mr. wayne." "what? yes; of course i was." "and you heard what i said?" "yes. but you can't do that sort of thing all at once," replied the city editor uneasily. "we certainly never shall do it without making a beginning. please hold the pierce story until you hear from me." "tell me all about the breakfast," commanded esmé, as the door closed upon wayne. briefly hal reported the exchange of ideas between himself and his staff, skeletonizing his own speech. "splendid!" she cried. "and isn't it exciting! i love a good fight. what fun you'll have. oh, the luxury of saying exactly what you think! even i can't do that." "what limits are there to the boundless privileges of royalty?" asked hal, smiling. "conventions. for instance, i'd love to tell you just how fine i think all this is that you're doing, and just how much i like and admire you. we've come to be real friends, haven't we? and, you see, i can be of some actual help. the breakfast was my suggestion, wasn't it? so you owe me something for that. are you properly grateful?" "try me." "then, august and terrible sovereign, spare the life of my little friend kathie." hal drew back a bit. "i'm afraid you don't realize the situation." the great american pumess shot forth a little paw--such a soft, shapely, hesitant, dainty, appealing little paw--and laid it on hal's hand. "please," she said. "but, esmé,"--he began. it was the first time he had used that intimacy with her. her eyes dropped. "we're partners, aren't we?" she said. "of course." "then you won't let them print it!" "if miss pierce goes rampaging around the streets--" "please. for me,--partner." "one would have to be more than human, to say no to you," he returned, laughing a little unsteadily. "you're corrupting my upright professional sense of duty." "it can't be a duty to hold a friend up to ridicule, just for a little accident." "i'm not so sure," said hal, again. "however, for the sake of our partnership, and if you'll promise to come again soon to tell us how to run the paper--" "i knew you'd be kind!" there was just the faintest pressure of the delicate paw, before it was withdrawn. the great american pumess was feeling the thrill of power over men and events. "i think i like the newspaper business. but i've got to be at my other trade now." "what trade is that?" "didn't you know i was a little sister of the poor? when you've lost all your money and are ill, i'll come and lay my cooling hand on your fevered brow and bring wine jelly to your tenement." "aren't you afraid of contagious diseases?" he asked anxiously. "such places are always full of them." "oh, they placard for contagion. it's safe enough. and i'm really interested. it's my only excuse to myself for living." "if bringing happiness wherever you go isn't enough--" "no! no!" she smiled up into his eyes. "this is still a business visit. but you may take me to my car." on his way back hal stopped to tell wayne that perhaps the pierce story wasn't worth running, after all. unease of conscience disturbed his work for a time thereafter. he appeased it by the excuse that it was no threat or pressure from without which had influenced his action. he had killed the item out of consideration for the friend of his friend. what did it matter, anyway, a bit of news like that? who was harmed by leaving it out? as yet he was too little the journalist to comprehend that the influences which corrupt the news are likely to be dangerous in proportion as they are subtle. wayne understood better, and smiled with a cynical wryness of mouth upon mcguire ellis, who, having passed hal and esmé on the stairs, had lingered at the city desk and heard the editor-in-chief's half-hearted order. "still worrying about dr. surtaine's influence over the paper?" asked the city editor, after hal's departure. "yes," said ellis. "don't." "why not?" "did you happen to notice about the prettiest thing that ever used eyes for weapons, in the hall?" "something of that description." "let me present you, in advance, to miss esmé elliot, the new boss of our new boss," said wayne, with a flourish. "god save the irish!" said mcguire ellis. chapter xiii new blood echoes of the talk-it-over breakfast rang briskly in the "clarion" office. it was suggested to hal that the success of the function warranted its being established as a regular feature of the shop. later this was done. one of the participants, however, was very ill-pleased with the morning's entertainment. dr. surtaine saw, in retrospect and in prospect, his son being led astray into various radical and harebrained vagaries of journalism. none of those at the breakfast had foreseen more clearly than the wise and sharpened quack what serious difficulties beset the course which hal had laid out for himself. trouble was what dr. surtaine hated above all things. whatever taste for the adventurous he may have possessed had been sated by his career as an itinerant. now he asked only to be allowed to hatch his golden dollars peacefully, afar from all harsh winds of controversy. that his own son should feel a more stirring ambition left him clucking, a bewildered hen on the brink of perilous waters. but he clucked cunningly. and before he undertook his appeal to bring the errant one back to shore he gave himself two days to think it over. to this extent dr. surtaine had become a partisan of the new enterprise; that he, too, previsioned an ideal newspaper, a newspaper which, day by day, should uphold and defend the best interests of the community, and, as an inevitable corollary, nourish itself on their bounty. by the best interests of the community--he visualized the phrase in large print, as a creed for any journal--dr. surtaine meant, of course, business in the great sense. gloriously looming in the future of his fancy was the day when the "clarion" should develop into the perfect newspaper, the fine flower of journalism, an organ in which every item of news, every line of editorial, every word of advertisement, should subserve the one vital purpose, business; should aid in some manner, direct or indirect, in making a dollar for the "clarion's" patrons and a dime for the "clarion's" till. but how to introduce these noble and fortifying ideals into the mind of that flighty young bird, hal? dr. surtaine, after studying the problem, decided to employ the instance of the mid-state and great muddy river railroad as the entering wedge of his argument. hal owned a considerable block of stock, earning the handsome dividend of eight per cent. under attacks possibly leading to adverse legislation, this return might well be reduced and hal's own income suffer a shrinkage. therefore, in the interests of all concerned, hal ought to keep his hands off the subject. could anything be clearer? obviously not, the senior surtaine thought, and so laid it before the junior, one morning as they were walking down town together. hal admitted the assault upon the mid-and-mud; defended it, even; added that there would be another phase of it presently in the way of an attempt on the part of the paper to force a better passenger service for worthington. dr. surtaine confessed a melancholious inability to see what the devil business it was of hal's. "it isn't i that's making the fight, dad. it's the 'clarion.'" "the same thing." "not at all the same thing. something very much bigger than i or any other one man. i found that out at the breakfast." that breakfast! socialistic, anarchistic, anti-christian, were the climactic adjectives employed by dr. surtaine to signify his disapproval of the occasion. "sorry you didn't like it, dad. you heard nothing but plain facts." "plain slush! just look at this railroad accident article broad-mindedly, boyee. you own some mid-and-mud stock." "thanks to you, dad." "paying eight per cent. how long will it go on paying that if the newspapers keep stirring up trouble for it? anti-railroad sentiment is fostered by just such stuff as the 'clarion' printed. what if the engineer _was_ worked overtime? he got paid for it." "and seven people got killed for it. i understand the legislature is going to ask why, mainly because of our story and editorial." "there you are! sicking a pack of demagogues onto the mid-and-mud. how can it make profits and pay your dividends if that kind of thing keeps up?" "i don't know that i need dividends earned by slaughtering people," said hal slowly. "maybe you don't need the dividends, but there's plenty of people that do, people that depend on 'em. widows and orphans, too." "oh, that widow-and-orphan dummy!" cried hal. "what would the poor, struggling railroads ever do without it to hide behind!" "you talk like ellis," reproved his father. "boyee, i don't want you to get too much under his influence. he's an impractical will-o'-the-wisp chaser. just like all the writing fellows." by this time they had reached the "clarion" building. "come in, dad," invited hal, "and we'll talk to ellis about old home week. he's with you there, anyway." "oh, he's all right aside from his fanatical notions," said the other as they mounted the stairs. the associate editor nodded his greetings from above a pile of left-over copy. "old home week?" he queried. "let's see, when does it come?" "in less than six months. it isn't too early to give it a start, is it?" asked hal surtaine. "no. it's news any time, now." "more than that," said dr. surtaine. "it's advertising. i can turn every ad. that goes out to the 'clarion.'" "last year we got only the pickings," remarked ellis. "last year your owner wasn't the son of the committee's chairman." "by the way, dad, i'll have to resign that secretaryship. every minute of my spare time i'm going to put in around this office." "i guess you're right. but i'm sorry to lose you." "think how much more i can do for the celebration with this paper than i could as secretary." "right, again." "some one at the breakfast," observed hal, "mentioned the rookeries, and wayne shut him up. what are the rookeries? i've been trying to remember to ask." the other two looked at each other with raised eyebrows. as well might one have asked, "what is the city hall?" in worthington. ellis was the one to answer. "hell's hole and contamination. the worst nest of tenements in the state. two blocks of 'em, owned by our best citizens. run by a political pull. so there's no touching 'em." "what's up there now; more murders?" asked the doctor. "somebody'll be calling it that if it goes much further," replied the newspaper man. "i don't know what the official _alias_ of the trouble is. if you want details, get wayne." in response to a telephone call the city editor presented his lank form and bearded face at the door of the sanctum. "the rookeries deaths?" he said. "oh, malaria--for convenience." "malaria?" repeated dr. surtaine. "why, there aren't any mosquitoes in that locality now." "so the health officer, dr. merritt, says. but the certificates keep coming in. he's pretty worried. there have been over twenty cases in no. 7 and no. 9 alone. three deaths in the last two days." "is it some sort of epidemic starting?" asked hal. "that would be news, wouldn't it?" at the word "epidemic," dr. surtaine had risen, and now came forward flapping his hand like a seal. "the kind of news that never ought to get into print," he exclaimed. "that's the sort of thing that hurts a whole city." "so does an epidemic if it gets a fair start," suggested ellis. "epidemic! epidemic!" cried the doctor. "ten years ago they started a scare about smallpox in those same rookeries. the smallpox didn't amount to shucks. but look what the sensationalism did to us. it choked off old home week, and lost us hundreds of thousands of dollars." "i was a cub on the 'news' then," said wayne. "and i remember there were a lot of deaths from chicken-pox that year. i didn't suppose people--that is, grown people--died of chicken-pox very often: not more often, say, than they die of malaria where there are no mosquitoes." "suspicion is one thing. fact is another," said dr. surtaine decisively. "hal, i hope you aren't going to take up with this nonsense, and risk the success of the centennial old home week." "i can't see what good we should be doing," said the new editor. "it's big news, if it's true," suggested wayne, rather wistfully. "suppression of a real epidemic." "ghost-tales and goblin-shine," laughed the big doctor, recovering his good humor. "who's the physician down there?" "dr. de vito, an italian. nobody else can get into the rookeries to see a case. o'farrell's the agent, and he sees to that." "tip o'farrell, the labor politician? i know him. and i know de vito well. in fact, he does part-time work in the certina plant. i'll tell you what, hal. i'll just make a little expert investigation of my own down there, and report to you." "the 'clarion's special commissioner, dr. l. andré surtaine," said ellis sonorously. "no publicity, boys. this is a secret commission. and here's your chance right now to make the 'clarion' useful to the committee, hal, by keeping all scare-stuff out of the paper." "if it really does amount to anything, wouldn't it be better," said hal, "to establish a quarantine and go in there and stamp the thing out? we've plenty of time before old home week." "no; no!" cried the doctor. "think of the publicity that would mean. it would be a year before the fear of it would die out. every other city that's jealous of worthington would make capital of it and thousands of people whose money we want would be scared away." ellis drew wayne aside. "what does dr. merritt really think? smallpox?" "no. the place has been too well vaccinated. it might be scarlet fever, or diphtheria, or even meningitis. merritt wants to go in there and open it up, but the mayor won't let him. he doesn't dare take the responsibility without any newspaper backing. and none of the other papers dares tackle the ownership of the rookeries." "then we ought to. a good, rousing sensation of that sort is just what the paper needs." "we won't get it. there's too many ropes on the boy boss. first the girl and now the old man." "wait and see. he's got good stuff in him and he's being educated every day. give him time." "mr. wayne, i'd like to see the health office reports," called hal, and the two went out. selecting one of his pet cigars, dr. surtaine advanced upon mcguire ellis, extending it. "mac, you're a good fellow at bottom," he said persuasively. "what's the price," asked ellis, "of the cigar and the compliment together? in other words, what do you want of me?" "keep your hands off the boy." "didn't i offer fair and square to match you for his soul? you insisted on fight." "if you'd just let him alone," pursued the quack, "he'd come around right side up with care. he's sound and sensible at bottom. he's got a lot of me in him. but you keep feeding him up on your yellow journal ideas. what'll they ever get him? trouble; nothing but trouble. even if you should make a sort of success of the paper with your wild sensationalism it wouldn't be any real good to hal. it wouldn't get him anywhere with the real people. it'd be a sheet he'd always have to be a little ashamed of. i tell you what, mac, in order to respect himself a man has got to respect his business." "just so," said mcguire ellis. "do you respect your business, doc?" "do i!! it makes half a million a year clear profit." the associate editor turned to his work whistling softly. chapter xiv the rookeries two conspicuous ornaments of worthington's upper world visited worthington's underworld on a hot, misty morning of early june. both were there on business, dr. l. andré surtaine in the fulfillment of his agreement with his son--the exact purpose of the visit, by the way, would have inspired harrington surtaine with unpleasant surprise, could he have known it; and miss esmé elliot on a tour of inspection for the visiting nurses' association, of which she was an energetic official. whatever faults or foibles might be ascribed to miss elliot, she was no faddist. that which she undertook to do, she did thoroughly and well; and for practical hygiene she possessed an inborn liking and aptitude, far more so than, for example, her fortuitous fellow slummer of the morning, dr. surtaine, whom she encountered at the corner where the rookeries begin. the eminent savant removed his hat with a fine flourish, further reflected in his language as he said:-"what does beauty so far afield?" "thank you, if you mean me," said esmé demurely. "do you see something else around here that answers the description?" "no: i certainly don't," she replied, letting her eyes wander along the street where sadler's shacks rose in grime and gauntness to offend the clean skies. "i am going over there to see some sick people." "ah! charity as well as beauty; the perfect combination." the doctor's pomposity always amused esmé. "and what does science so far from its placid haunts?" she mocked. "are you scattering the blessings of certina amongst a grateful proletariat?" "not exactly. i'm down here on some other business." "well, i won't keep you from it, dr. surtaine. good-bye." the swinging doors of a saloon opened almost upon her, and a short, broad-shouldered foreigner, in a ruffled-up silk hat, bumped into her lightly and apologized. he jogged up to dr. surtaine. "hello, de vito," said dr. surtaine. "at the service of my distinguish' confrère," said the squat italian. "am i require at the factory?" "no. i've come to look into this sickness. where is it?" "the opposite eemediate block." dr. surtaine eyed with disfavor the festering tenement indicated. "new cases?" "two, only." "who's treating them?" "i am in charge. mr. o'farrell employs my services: so the pipple have not to pay anything. all the time which i am not at the certina factory, i am here." "just so. and no other doctor gets in?" "there is no call. they are quite satisfied." "and is the board of health satisfied?" the employee shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. "how is it you americans say? 'what he does not know cannot hurt somebody.'" "is o'farrell agent for all these barracks?" dr. surtaine inquired as they walked up the street. "all. many persons own, but mr. o'farrell is boss of all. this number 4, mr. gibbs owns. he is of the great department store. you know. a ver' fine man, mr. gibbs." "a very fine fool," retorted the doctor, "to let himself get mixed up with such rotten property. why, it's a reflection on all us men of standing." "nobody knows he is owner. and it pays twelve per cent," said the italian mildly. he paused at the door. "do we go in?" he asked. an acrid-soft odor as of primordial slime subtly intruded upon the sensory nerves of the visitor. the place breathed out decay; the decay of humanity, of cleanliness, of the honest decencies of life turned foul. something lethal exhaled from that dim doorway. there was a stab of pestilence, reaching for the brain. but the old charlatan was no coward. "show me the cases," he said. for an hour he moved through the black, stenchful passageways, up and down ramshackle stairs, from human warren to human warren, pausing here to question, there to peer and sniff and poke with an exploring cane. out on the street again he drew full, heaving breath. "o'farrell's got to clean up. that's all there is to that," he said decisively. "the doctor thinks?" queried the little physician. dr. surtaine shook his head. "i don't know. but i'm sure of one thing. there's three of them ought to be gotten out at once. the third-floor woman, and that brother and sister in the basement." "and the german family at the top?" dr. surtaine tapped his chest significantly. "sure to be plenty of that in this kind of hole. nothing to do but let 'em die." he did not mention that he had left a twenty-dollar bill and a word of cheer with the gasping consumptive and his wife. outside of the line of business dr. surtaine's charities were silent. "how many of the _other_ cases have you had here?" "eleven. seven deaths. four i take away." "and what is your diagnosis, doctor?" inquired the old quack professionally of the younger ignoramus. again de vito shrugged. "for public, malignant malaria. how you call it? pernicious. for me, i do' know. maybe--" he leaned forward and spoke a low word. "meningitis?" repeated the other. "possibly. i've never seen much of the infectious kind. what are you giving for it?" "certina, mostly." dr. surtaine looked at him sharply, but the italian's face was innocent of any sardonic expression. "as well that as anything," muttered its proprietor. "by the way, you might get testimonials from any of 'em that get well. can you find o'farrell?" "yes, sir." "tell him i want to see him at my office at two o'clock." "ver' good. what do you think it is, doctor?" dr. surtaine waved a profound hand. "very obscure. demands consideration. but get those cases out of the city. there's no occasion to risk the board of health seeing them." at the corner dr. surtaine again met miss elliot and stopped her. "my dear young lady, ought you to be risking your safety in such places as these?" "no one ever interferes. my badge protects me." "but there's so much sickness." "that is what brings me," she smiled. "it might be contagious. in fact, i have reason to believe that there is--er--measles in this block." "i've had it, thank you. may i give you a lift in my car?" "no, thank you. but i think you should consult your uncle before coming here again." "the entire surtaine family seems set upon barring me from the rookeries. i wonder why." with which parting shot she left him. going home, he bathed and changed into his customary garb of smooth black, to which his rotund placidity of bearing imparted an indescribably silky finish. his discarded clothes he put, with his own hands, into an old grip, sprinkled them plenteously with a powerful disinfectant, and left orders that they be destroyed. it was a phase of dr. surtaine's courage that he never took useless risks, either with his own life, or (outside of business) with the lives of others. having lunched, he went to his office where he found o'farrell waiting. the politician greeted him with a mixture of deference and familiarity. at one stage of their acquaintance familiarity had predominated, when having put through a petty but particularly rancid steal for the benefit of the certina business, o'farrell had become inspired with effusiveness to the extent of addressing his patron as "doc." he never made that particular error again. yet, to the credit of dr. surtaine's tact and knowledge of character be it said, o'farrell was still the older man's loyal though more humble friend, after the incident. to-day he was plainly apprehensive. "them other cases the same thing?" he asked. "yes, o'farrell." "what is it?" "that i can't tell you." "you went in and saw 'em?" dr. surtaine nodded. "by god, i wouldn't do it," declared o'farrell, shivering. "i wouldn't go in there, not to collect the rent! it's catching, ain't it?" "in all probability it is a contagious or zymotic disease." the politician shook his head, much impressed, as it was intended he should be. "cleaning-up time for you, i guess, o'farrell," pursued the other. "all right, if you say so. but i won't have any board o' health snitches bossing it. they'd want to pull the whole row down." "exactly what ought to be done." "what! and it averagin' better'n ten per cent," cried the agent in so scandalized a tone that the doctor could not but smile. "how have you managed to keep them out, thus far?" "haven't. there's been a couple of inspectors around, but i stalled 'em off. and we got the sick cases out right from under 'em." "dr. merritt is a hard man to handle if he once gets started." "he's got his hands full. the papers have been poundin' him because his milk regulations have put up the price. persecution of the dairymen, they call it. well, persecution of an honest property owner--with a pull--won't look pretty for mr. health officer if he don't find nothing there. and the papers'll back me." "ellis of the 'clarion' has his eye on the place." "you can square that through your boy, can't you?" the doctor had his own private doubts, but didn't express them. "leave it to me," he said. "get some disinfectants and clean up. your owners can stand the bill--at ten per cent. much obliged for coming in, o'farrell." as the politician went out an office girl entered and announced: "there's a man out in the reception hall, doctor, waiting to see you. he's asleep with his elbow on the stand." "wake him up and ask him for his berth-check, alice," said dr. surtaine, "and if he says his name is ellis, send him in." ellis it was who entered and dropped into the chair pushed forward by his host. "glad to see you, my boy," dr. surtaine greeted him. "i thought you were going to send a reporter." "ordinarily we would have sent one. but i'm pretty well interested in this myself. i expected to hear from you long ago." "busy, my boy, busy. it's only been a week since i undertook the investigation. and these things take time." "apparently. what's the result?" "nothing." the quack spread his hands abroad in a blank gesture. "false alarm. couple of cases of typhoid and some severe tonsillitis, that looked like diphtheria." "people die of tonsillitis, do they?" "sometimes." "and are buried?" "naturally." "what in?" "why, in coffins, i suppose." "then why were these bodies buried in quicklime?" "what bodies?" "last week's lot." "you mean in canadaga county? o'farrell said nothing about quicklime." "that's what i mean. apparently o'farrell _did_ say something about more corpses smuggled out last week." "mr. ellis," said the doctor, annoyed at his slip, "i am not on the witness stand." "dr. surtaine," returned the other in the same tone, "when you undertake an investigation for the 'clarion,' you are one of my reporters and i expect a full and frank report from you." "bull's-eye for you, my boy. you win. they did run those cases out. before we're through with it they'll probably run more out. you see, the health bureau has got it in for o'farrell, and if they knew there was anything up there, they'd raise a regular row and queer things generally." "what _is_ up?" "honestly, i don't know." "nor even suspect?" "well, it might be scarlet fever. or, perhaps diphtheria. you see strange types sometimes." "if it's either, failure to report is against the law." "technically, yes. but we've got it fixed to clean things up. the people will be looked after. there's no real danger of its spreading much. and you know how it is. the rookeries have got a bad name, anyway. anything starting there is sure to be exaggerated. why, look at that chicken-pox epidemic a few years ago." "i understand nobody who had been vaccinated got any of the chicken-pox, as you call it." "that's as may be. what did it amount to, anyway? nothing. yet it almost ruined old home week." "naturally you don't want the centennial home week endangered. but we don't want the health of the city endangered." "'we.' who's we?" "well, the 'clarion.'" "don't work the guardian-of-the-people game on me, my boy. and don't worry about the city's health. if this starts to spread we'll take measures." by no means satisfied with this interview, mcguire ellis left the certina plant, and almost ran into dr. elliot, whom he hailed, for he had the faculty of knowing everybody. "not doing any doctoring nowadays, are you?" "no," retorted the other. "doing any sickening, yourself?" ellis grinned. "it's despairing weariness that makes me look this way. i'm up against a tougher job than old diogenes. i'm looking for an honest doctor." "you fish in muddy waters," commented his acquaintance, glancing up at the certina building. "there's something very wrong down in the twelfth ward." "not going in for reform politics, are you?" "this isn't political. some kind of disease has broken out in o'farrell's rookeries." "delirium tremens," suggested dr. elliot. "yes: that's a funny joke," returned the other, unmoved; "but did you ever hear of any one sneaking d-t cases across the county line at night to a pest-house run by a political friend of o'farrell's?" "can't say i have." "or burying the dead in quicklime?" "quicklime? what's this, 'clarion' sensationalism?" "don't be young. i'm telling you. quicklime. canadaga county." not only had dr. elliot served his country in the navy, but he had done duty in that efficient fighting force, which reaps less honor and follows a more noble, self-sacrificing and courageous ideal than any army or navy, the united states public health service. under that banner he had fought famines, panic, and pestilence, from the stricken lumber-camps of the north, to the pent-in, quarantined bayous of the south; and now, at the hint of danger, there came a battle-glint into his sharp eyes. "tell me what you know." "now you're talking!" said the newspaper man. "it's little enough. but we've got it straight that they've been covering up some disease for weeks." "what do the certificates call it?" "malaria and septic something, i believe." "septicæmia hemorrhagica?" "that's it." "an alias. that's what they called bubonic plague in san francisco and yellow fever in texas in the old days of concealment." "it couldn't be either of those, could it?" "no. but it might be any reportable disease: diphtheria, smallpox, any of 'em. even that hardly explains the quicklime." "could you look into it for us; for the 'clarion'?" "i? work for the 'clarion'?" "why not?" "i don't like your paper." "but you'd be doing a public service." "possibly. how do i know you'd print what i discovered--supposing i discovered anything?" "we're publishing an honest paper, nowadays." "_are_ you? got this morning's?" like all good newspaper men, mcguire ellis habitually went armed with a copy of his own paper. he produced it from his coat pocket. "honest, eh?" muttered the physician grimly as he twisted the "clarion" inside out. "honest! well, not to go any farther, what about this for honesty?" top of column, "next to reading," as its contract specified, the lure of the neverfail company stood forth, bold and black. "boon to troubled womanhood" was the heading. dr. elliot read, with slow emphasis, the lying half-promises, the specious pretenses of the company's "relief pills." "no case too obstinate": "suppression from whatever cause": "thousands of women have cause to bless this sovereign remedy": "saved from desperation." "no doubt what that means, is there?" queried the reader. "it seems pretty plain." "what do you mean, then, by telling me you run an honest paper when you carry an abortion advertisement every day?" "will that medicine cause abortion?" "certainly it won't cause abortion!" "well, then." "can't you see that makes it all the worse, in a way? it promises to bring on abortion. it encourages any fool girl who otherwise might be withheld from vice by fear of consequences. it puts a weapon of argument into the hands of every rake and ruiner; 'if you get into trouble, this stuff will fix you all right.' how many suicides do you suppose your 'boon to womanhood' and its kind of hellishness causes in a year, thanks to the help of your honest journalism?" "when i said we were honest, i wasn't thinking of the advertising." "but i am. can you be honest on one page and a crook on another? can you bang the big drum of righteousness in one column and promise falsely in the next to commit murder? ellis, why does the 'clarion' carry such stuff as that?" "do you really want to know?" "well, you're asking me to help your sheet," the ex-surgeon reminded him. "because dr. l. andré surtaine _is_ the neverfail company." "oh," said the other. "and i suppose dr. l. andré surtaine _is_ the 'clarion,' also. well, i don't choose to be associated with that honorable and high-minded polecat, thank you." "don't be too sure about the 'clarion.' harrington surtaine isn't his father." "the same rotten breed." "plus another strain. where it comes from i don't know, but there's something in the boy that may work out to big ends." dr. miles elliot was an abrupt sort of person, as men of independent lives and thought are prone to be. "look here, ellis," he said: "are you trying to be honest, yourself? now, don't answer till you've counted three." "one--two--three," said mcguire ellis solemnly. "i'm honestly trying to put the 'clarion' on the level. that's what you really want to know, i suppose." "against all the weight of influence of dr. surtaine?" "bless you; he doesn't half realize he's a crook. thinks he's a pretty fine sort of chap. the worst of it is, he _is_, too, in some ways." "good to his family, i suppose, in the intervals of distributing poison and lies." "he's all wrapped up in the boy. which is going to make it all the harder." "make what all the harder?" "prying 'em apart." "have you set yourself that little job?" "since we're speaking out in meeting, i have." "good. why are you speaking out in meeting to me, particularly?" "on the theory that you may have reason for being interested in mr. harrington surtaine." "don't know him." "your niece does." "just how does that concern this discussion?" "what business is it of mine, you mean. well, dr. elliot, i'm pretty much interested in trying to make a real newspaper out of the 'clarion.' my notion of a real newspaper is a decent, clean newspaper. if i can get my young boss to back me up, we'll have a try at my theory. to do this, i'll use any fair means. and if miss elliot's influence is going to be on my side, i'm glad to play it off against dr. surtaine's." "look here, ellis, i don't like this association of my niece's name with young surtaine." "all right. i'll drop it, if you object. maybe i'm wrong. i don't know miss elliot, anyway. but sooner or later there's coming one big fight in the 'clarion' office, and it's going to open two pairs of eyes. old doc surtaine is going to discover his son. hal surtaine is going to find out about the old man. neither of 'em is going to be awfully pleased. and in that ruction the fate of the neverfail company's ad. is going to be decided and with it the fate and character of the 'clarion.' now, dr. elliot, my cards are on the table. will you help me in the rookeries matter?" "what do you want me to do?" "go cautiously, and find out what that disease is." "i'll go there to-morrow." "they won't let you in." "won't they?" dr. elliot's jaw set. "don't risk it. some of o'farrell's thugs will pick a fight with you and the whole thing will be botched." "how about getting a united states public health surgeon down here?" "fine! can you do it?" "i think so. it will take time, though." "that can't be helped. i'll look you up in a few days." "all right. and, ellis, if i can help in the other thing--the clean-up--i'm your man." meantime from his office dr. surtaine had, after several attempts, succeeded in getting the medical office of canadaga county on the telephone. "hello! that you, doctor simons?--seen o'farrell?--yes; you ought to get in touch with him right away--three more cases going over to you.--oh, they're there, are they? you're isolating them, aren't you?--pest-house? that's all right.--all bills will be paid--liberally. you understand?--what are you calling it? diphtheria?--good enough for the present.--ever see infectious meningitis? i thought it might be that, maybe--no? what do you think, then?--_what_! good god, man! it can't be! such a thing has never been heard of in this part of the country--what?--yes: you're right. we can't talk over the 'phone. come over to-morrow. good-bye." putting up the receiver, dr. surtaine turned to his desk and sat immersed in thought. presently he shook his head. he scratched a few notes on a pad, tore off the sheet and thrust it into the small safe at his elbow. proof of a half-page certina display beckoned him in buoyant, promissory type to his favorite task. he glanced at the safe. once again he shook his head, this time more decisively, took the scribbled paper out and tore it into shreds. turning to the proof he bent over it, striking out a word here, amending there, jotting in a printer's direction on the margin; losing himself in the major interest. the "special investigator" of the "clarion" was committing the unpardonable sin of journalism. he was throwing his paper down. chapter xv juggernaut misfortunes never come singly--to the reckless. the first mischance breeds the second, apparently by ill luck, but in reality through the influence of irritant nerves. thus descended nemesis upon miss kathleen pierce. not that miss pierce was of a misgiving temperament: she had too calm and superb a conviction of her own incontrovertible privilege in every department of life for that. but esmé elliot had given her a hint of her narrow escape from the "clarion," and she was angry. to the pierce type of disposition, anger is a spur. kathleen's large green car increased its accustomed twenty-miles-an-hour pace, from which the police of the business section thoughtfully averted their faces, to something nearer twenty-five. three days after the wreck of the apple cart, she got results. harrington surtaine was crossing diagonally to the "clarion" office when the moan of a siren warned him for his life, and he jumped back from the pierce juggernaut. as it swept by he saw kathleen at the wheel. beside her sat her twelve-year-old brother. a miscellaneous array of small luggage was heaped behind them. "never mind the speed laws," murmured hal softly. "_sauve qui peut_. there, by heavens, she's done it!" the car had swerved at the corner, but not quite quickly enough. there was a snort of the horn, a scream that gritted on the ear like the clamor of tortured metals, and a huddle of black and white was flung almost at hal's feet. equally quick with him, a middle-aged man, evidently of the prosperous working-classes, helped him to pick the woman up. she was a trained nurse. the white band on her uniform was splotched with blood. she groaned once and lapsed, inert, in their arms. "help me get her to the automobile," said hal. "this is a hospital case." "what automobile?" said the other. hal glanced up the street. he saw the green car turning a corner, a full block away. "she didn't even stop," he muttered, in a paralysis of surprise. "stop?" said the other. "her? that's e.m. pierce's she-whelp. true to the breed. she don't care no more for a workin'-woman's life than her father does for a workin'-man's." a policeman hurried up, glanced at the woman and sent in an ambulance call. "i want your name," said hal to the stranger. "what for?" "publication now. later, prosecution. i'm the editor of the 'clarion.'" the man took off his hat and scratched his head. "leave me out of it," he said. "you won't help me to get justice for this woman?'" cried hal. "what can you do to e.m. pierce's girl in this town?" retorted the man fiercely. "don't he own the town?" "he doesn't own the 'clarion.'" "let the 'clarion' go up against him, then. i daresn't." "you'll never get him," said a voice close to hal's ear. it was veltman, the foreman of the 'clarion' composing-room. "he's a street-car employee. it's as much as his job is worth to go up against pierce." they were pressed back, as the clanging ambulance arrived with its white-coated commander. "no; not dead," he said. "help me get her in." this being accomplished, hal hurried up to the city room of the paper. he remembered the pile of suit-cases in the pierce car, and made his deductions. "send a reporter to the union station to find kathleen pierce. she's in a green touring-car. she's just run down a trained nurse. have him interview her; ask her why she didn't turn back after she struck the woman; whether she doesn't know the law. find out if she's going to the hospital. get her estimate of how fast she was going. we'll print anything she says. then he's to go to st. james hospital, and ask about the nurse. i'll give him the details of the accident." news of a certain kind, of the kind important to the inner machinery of a newspaper, spreads swiftly inside an office. within an hour, shearson, the advertising manager, was at his chief's desk. "about that story of miss pierce running over the trained nurse," he began. "what is your suggestion?" asked hal curiously. "e.m. pierce is a power in this town, and out of it. he's the real head of the retail dry goods union. he's a director in the security power products company. he's the big boss of the national consolidated employers' association. he practically runs the retail dry goods union. gibbs, of the boston store, is his brother-in-law, and the girl's uncle. mr. pierce has got a hand in pretty much everything in worthington. and he's a bad man in a fight." "so i have heard." "if we print this story--" "we're going to print the story, mr. shearson." "it's full of dynamite." "it was a brutal thing. if she hadn't driven right on--" "but she's only a kid." "the more reason why she shouldn't be driving a car." "why have you got it in for her, mr. surtaine?" ventured the other. "i haven't got it in for her. but we've let her off once. and this is too flagrant a case." "it means a loss of thousands of dollars in advertising, just as like as not." "that can't be helped." shearson did the only thing he could think of in so unheard-of an emergency. he went out to call up the office of e.m. pierce. left to his own thoughts, the editor-in-chief reconstructed the scene of the outrage. none too strong did that term seem to him. the incredible callousness of the daughter of millions, speeding away without a backward glance at the huddled form in the gutter, set a flame of wrath to heating his brain. he built up a few stinging headlines, and selected one which he set aside. "girl plays juggernaut. elias m. pierce's daughter seriously injures nurse and leaves her lying in gutter." not long after he had concluded, mcguire ellis entered, slumped into his chair, and eyed his employer from under bent brows. "got a grip on your temper?" he asked presently. "what's the occasion?" countered hal. "i think you're going to have an interview with elias m. pierce." "where and when?" "in his office. as soon as you can get there." "i think not." "not?" repeated ellis, conning the other with his curious air. "why should i go to elias m. pierce's office?" "because he's sent for you." "don't be absurd, mac." "and don't _you_ be young. in all worthington there aren't ten men that don't jump when elias m. pierce crooks his finger. who are you, to join that noble company of martyrs?" achieving no nibble on this bait, the speaker continued: "jerry saunders has been keeping wayne's telephone on the buzz, ordering the story stopped." "who is jerry saunders?" "pierce's man, and master of our fates. so he thinks, anyway. in other words, general factotum of the boston store. wayne told him the matter was in your hands. all storm signals set, and e.m.'s secretary telephoning that the great man wants to see you at once. _don't_ you think it would be safer to go?" mr. harrington surtaine swung full around on his chair, looked at his assistant with that set and level gaze of which esmé elliot had aforetime complained, and turned back again. a profound chuckle sounded from behind him. "this'll be a shock to mr. pierce," said ellis. "i'll break it diplomatically to his secretary." and thus was the manner of the celt's diplomacy. "hello,--mr. pierce's secretary?--tell mr. pierce--get this _verbatim_, please,--that mr. harrington surtaine is busy at present, but will try to find time to see him here--_here_, mind you, at the 'clarion' office, at 4.30 this afternoon--what? oh, yes; you understood, all right. don't be young.--what? do _not_ sputter into the 'phone.--just give him the message.--no; mr. surtaine will not speak with you.--nor with mr. pierce. he's busy.--_good_-bye." "two hours leeway before the storm," said hal. "why deliberately stir him up, mac?" "no one ever saw pierce lose his temper. i've a curiosity in that direction. besides, he'll be easier to handle, mad. do you know pierce?" "i've lunched with him, and been there to the house to dinner once or twice. wish i hadn't." "let me give you a little outline of him. elias m. is the hard-shell new england type. he was brought up in the fear of god and the poor-house. god was a good way off, i guess; but there stood the poor-house on the hill, where you couldn't help but see it. the way of salvation from it was through the dollar. elias m. worked hard for his first dollar, and for his millionth. he's still working hard. he still finds the fear of god useful: he puts it into everybody that goes up against his game. the fear of the poor-house is with him yet, though he doesn't realize it. it's the mainspring of his religion. there's nothing so mean as fear; and elias m.'s fear is back of all his meanness, his despotism in business, his tyranny as an employer. i tell you, boss, if you ever saw a hellion in a cutaway coat, elias m. pierce is it, and you're going to smell sulphur when he gets here. better let him do the talking, by the way." prompt to the minute, elias m. pierce arrived. with him came william douglas, his personal counsel. having risen to greet them, hal stood leaning against his desk, after they were seated. the lawyer disposed himself on the far edge of his chair, as if fearing that a more comfortable pose might commit him to something. mr. pierce sat solid and square, a static force neatly buttoned into a creaseless suit. his face was immobile, but under the heavy lids the eyes smouldered, dully. the tone of his voice was lifelessly level: yet with an immanent menace. "i do not make appointments outside my own office--" he began, looking straight ahead of him. mindful of ellis's advice, hal stood silent, in an attitude of courteous attention. "but this is a case of saving time. my visit has to do with the accident of which you know." whether or not hal knew was undeterminable from sign or speech of his. "it was wholly the injured woman's fault," pursued mr. pierce, and turned a slow, challenging eye upon hal. over his shoulder the editor-in-chief caught sight of mcguire ellis laying finger on lip, and following up this admonition by a gesture of arms and hands as of one who pays out line to a fish. douglas fidgeted on his desperate edge. "you sent a reporter to interview my daughter. he was impertinent. he should be discharged." still mr. pierce was firing into silence. something rattled and flopped in a chute at his elbow. he turned, irritably. that mr. pierce's attention should have been diverted even for a moment by this was sufficient evidence that he was disconcerted by the immobility of the foe. but his glance quickly reverted and with added weight. heavily he stared, then delivered his ultimatum. "the 'clarion' will print nothing about the accident." the editor of the "clarion" smiled. at sight of that smile some demon-artist in faces blocked in with lightning swiftness parallel lines of wrath at right angles to the corners of the pierce mouth. through the lips shone a thin glint of white. "you find me amusing?" men had found elias m. pierce implacable, formidable, inscrutable, even amenable, in some circumstances, with a conscious and godlike condescension; but no opponent had ever smiled at his commands as this stripling of journalism was doing. still there was no reply. in his chair mcguire ellis leaned back with an expression of beatitude. the lawyer, shrewd enough to understand that his principal was being baited, now took a hand. "you may rely on mr. pierce to have the woman suitably cared for." now the editorial smile turned upon william douglas. it was gentle, but unsatisfying. "_and_ the reporter will be discharged at once," continued elias m. pierce, exactly as if douglas had not spoken at all. "mr. ellis," said hal, "will you 'phone mr. wayne to send up the man who covered the pierce story?" the summoned reporter entered the room. he was a youth named denton, one year out of college, eager and high-spirited, an enthusiast of his profession, loving it for its adventurousness and its sense of responsibility and power. these are the qualities that make the real newspaper man. they die soon, and that is why there are no good, old reporters. elias m. pierce turned upon him like a ponderous machine of vengeance. "what have you to say for yourself?" he demanded. up under denton's fair skin ran a flush of pink. "who are you?" he blurted. "you are speaking to mr. elias m. pierce," said douglas hastily. six weeks before, young denton would perhaps have moderated his attitude in the interests of his job. but now through the sensitive organism of the newspaper office had passed the new vigor; the feeling of independence and of the higher responsibility to the facts of the news only. the men believed that they would be upheld within their own rights and those of the paper. harrington surtaine's standards had been not only absorbed: they had been magnified and clarified by minds more expert than his own. subconsciously, denton felt that his employer was back of him, must be back of him in any question of professional honor. "what i've got to say, i've said in writing." "show it to me." the insolence of the command was quite unconscious. the reporter turned to hal. "mr. denton," said hal, "did miss pierce explain why she didn't return after running the nurse down?" "she said she was in a hurry: that she had a train to catch." "did you ask her if she was exceeding the speed limit?" "she was not," interjected elias m. pierce. "she said she didn't know; that nobody ever paid any attention to speed laws." "what about her license?" "i asked her and she said it was none of my business." "quite right," approved mr. pierce curtly. "tell the desk to run the interview _verbatim_, under a separate head. will the nurse die?" mr. pierce snorted contemptuously. "die! she's hardly hurt." "dislocated shoulder, two ribs broken, and scalp wounds. she'll get well," said the reporter. "now, see here, surtaine," said douglas smoothly, "be reasonable. it won't do the 'clarion' any good to print a lot of yellow sensationalism about this. there are half a dozen witnesses who say it was the nurse's fault." "we have evidence on the other side." "from whom?" "max veltman, of our composing-room." "veltman? veltman?" repeated elias m. pierce, who possessed a wonderful memory for men and events. "he's that anarchist fellow. hates every man with a dollar. stirred up the labor troubles two years ago. i told my men to smash his head if they ever caught him within two blocks of our place." "speaking of anarchy," said mcguire ellis softly. "a prejudiced witness; one of your own employees," pointed out the lawyer. "i wouldn't believe him under oath," said pierce. "perhaps you wouldn't believe me, either. i saw the whole thing myself," said hal quietly. "and you intend to print it?" demanded pierce. "it's news. the 'clarion's business is to print the news." "then there remains only to warn you," said douglas, "that you will be held to full liability for anything you may publish, civil _and_ criminal." "take that down, mr. denton," said hal. "i've got it," said the reporter. "that isn't all." elias m. pierce rose and his eyes were wells of somber fury. "you print that story--one word of it--and i'll smash your paper." "take that down, mr. denton." hal's voice was even. "i've got it," said denton in the same tone. "you don't know what i am in this city." every word of the great man's voice rang with the ruthless arrogance of his power. "i can make or mar any man or any business. i've fought the demagogues of labor and driven 'em out of town. i've fought the demagogues of politics and killed them off. and you think with your little spewing demagoguery of newspaper filth, you can override me? you think because you've got your father's quack millions behind you, that you can stand up to me?" "take that down, mr. denton." "i've got it." "then take this, too," cried elias m. pierce, losing all control, under the quiet remorselessness of this goading: "people like my daughter and me aren't at the mercy of scum like you. we've got rights that aren't responsible to every little petty law. by god, i've made and unmade judges in this town: and i'll show you what the law can do before i'm through with you. i'll gut your damned paper." "not missing anything, are you, mr. denton?" "i've got it all." throughout, douglas, with a strained face, had been plucking at his principal's arm. now elias m. pierce turned to him. "go to judge ransome," he said sharply, "and get an injunction against the 'clarion.'" mcguire ellis sauntered over. "i wouldn't," he drawled. "i'm not asking your advice." "and i'm not looking for gratitude. but just let me suggest this: ransome may be one of the judges you brag of owning. but if he grants an injunction i'll advise mr. surtaine to publish a spread on the front page, stating that we have the facts, that we're enjoined from printing them at present, but that now or a year from now we'll tell the whole story in every phase. with that hanging over him, i don't believe judge ransome will care to issue any fake injunction." "there's such a thing as contempt of court," warned douglas. "making and unmaking judges, for example?" suggested ellis. "just one final word to you." the pierce face was thrust close to hal's. "you keep your hands off my daughter if you expect to live in this town." "my one regret for miss pierce is that she is your daughter," retorted hal. "you have given me the material for a leading editorial in to-morrow's issue. i recommend you to buy the paper." the other glared at him speechless. "it will be called," said hal, "'a study in heredity.' good-day." and he gave the retiring magnate a full view of his back as he sat down to write it. chapter xvi the strategist "never write with a hot pen." thus runs one of mcguire ellis's golden rules of journalism. had his employer better comprehended, in those early days, the ellisonian philosophy, perhaps the "heredity" editorial might never have appeared. now, as it lay before him in proof, it seemed but the natural expression of a righteous wrath. "neither kathleen pierce nor her father can claim exemption or consideration in this instance," hal had written, in what he chose to consider his most telling passage. "were it the girl's first offense of temerity, allowance might be made. but the city streets have long been the more perilous because of her defiance of the rights of others. here she runs true to type. she is her father's own daughter. in the light of his character and career, of his use of the bludgeon in business, of his resort to foul means when fair would not serve, of his brutal disregard of human rights in order that his own power might be enhanced, of his ruthless and crushing tyranny, not alone toward his employees, but toward all labor in its struggle for better conditions, we can but regard the girl who left her victim crushed and senseless in the gutter and sped on because, in the words of her own bravado, she 'had a train to catch,' as a striking example of the influence of heredity. if the law which she so contemptuously brushed aside is to be aborted by the influence and position of her family, the precept will be a bitter and dangerous one. much arrant nonsense is vented concerning the 'class-hatred' stirred up by any criticism of the rich. one such instance as the running-down of miss cleary bears within it far more than the extremest demagoguery the potentialities of an unleashed hate. it is a lesson in lawlessness." still in the afterglow of composition, hal, tinkering lightly with the proofs, felt a hand on his shoulder. "well, boy-ee," said the voice of dr. surtaine. "hello, father," returned hal. "sit down. what's up?" "i've just had a message from e.m. pierce." "did you obey a royal command and go to his office?" "no." "neither did i." "with you it's different. you're a younger man. and elias m. pierce is the most powerful--um--er--well, _as_ powerful as any man in worthington." "outside of this office, possibly." "don't you be foolish, boy-ee. you can't fight him." "nor do i want to," said hal, a little chilled, nevertheless, by the gravity of the paternal tone. "but when he comes in here and dictates what the 'clarion' shall and shall not print--" "about his own daughter." "news, father. it's news." "news is what you print. if you don't print it, it isn't news. isn't that right? well, then!" "not quite. news is what happens. if no paper published this, it would be current by word of mouth just the same. a hundred people saw it." "anyway, tone your article down, won't you, boy-ee?" "i'm afraid i can't, dad." "of course you can. here, let me see it." mcguire ellis looked up sharply, his face wrinkled into an anxious query. it relaxed when hal handed the editorial proof to the doctor, saying, "look at this, instead." dr. surtaine read slowly and carefully. "do you know what you're doing?" he said, replacing the strip of paper. "i think so." "that editorial will line up every important business man in worthington against you." "i don't see why it should." "because they'll see that none of 'em are safe if a newspaper can do that sort of thing. it's never been done here. the papers have always respected men of position, and their business and their families, too. worthington won't stand for that sort of thing." "it's true, isn't it?" "all the more harm if it is," retorted dr. surtaine, thus codifying the sum and essence of the outsider's creed of journalism. "do you know what they'll call you if you print that? they'll call you an anarchist." "will they?" "ask ellis." "probably," agreed the journalist. "every friend and business associate of pierce's will be down on you." "the whole angry hive of capital and privilege," confirmed ellis. "you see," cried the pleader; "you can't print it. publishing an article about kathleen pierce will be bad enough, but it's nothing to what this other roast would be. one would make pierce hate you as long as he lives. the other will make the whole business interests of the city your enemy. how can you live without business?" "business isn't as rotten as that," averred hal. "if it is, i'm going to fight it." "fight business!" it was almost a groan. "tell him, ellis, what a serious thing this is. you agree with me in that, don't you?" "entirely." "and that the 'clarion' can't afford to touch the thing at all? you're with me there, too, aren't you?" "absolutely not." "you're going to stand by and see my boy turn traitor to his class?" "damn his class," said mcguire ellis, in mild, conversational tones. "as much as you like," agreed the other, "in talk. but when it comes to print, remember, it's our class that's got the money." "wouldn't it be a refreshing change," suggested ellis, "to have one paper in worthington that money won't buy?" "all very well, if you were strong enough." the wily old charlatan shifted his ground. "wait until you've built up to it. then, when you've got the public, you can afford to be independent." "get your price and then reform. is that the idea, father?" said hal. "boy-ee, i don't know what's come over you lately. journalism seems to have got into your blood." "blame ellis. he's been my preceptor." "both of you have got your lesson to learn." "well, i've learned one," asserted hal: "that it's the business of a newspaper to print the news." "there's only one sound business principle, success. when it costs you more to print a thing than not to print it, it's bad business to print it." "i'm sorry, dad, but the 'clarion' is going to carry this to-morrow." "in case you're nervous about mr. pierce," put in mcguire ellis with machiavellian innuendo, "i can pass it on to him that you're in no way responsible for the 'clarion's policy." "me, afraid of elias m. pierce?" our leading citizen's prickly vanity was up in arms at once. "i'll match him or fight him dollar for dollar, as long as my weasel-skin lasts. no, sir: if hal's going to fight, i'll stick by him as long as there's a dollar in the till." "it's mighty good of you, dad, and i know you'd do it. but i've made up my mind to win out or lose out on the capital you gave me. and i won't take a cent more." "that's business, too, son. i like that. but i hate to see you lose. by publishing your editorial you're committing your paper absolutely to a policy, and a fatal one. well, i won't argue any more. but i haven't given up yet." "well, that's over," said hal, as his father departed, gently smoothing down his silk hat. "and i hope that ends it." "do you?" mcguire ellis raised a tuneful baritone in song:- 'you may think you've got 'em going,' said the bar-keep to the bum. 'but cheer up and beer up. the worst is yet to come!' "unless my estimate of e.m. pierce is wrong," he continued, "you'll begin to hear from the other newspapers soon." so it proved. advertising managers called up and talked interminably over the telephone. editors-in-chief wrote polite notes. one fellow proprietor called. by all the canons of editorial courtesy they exhorted mr. surtaine to hold his hand from the contemplated sacrilege against their friend and patron, elias m. pierce. equally polite, mr. surtaine replied that the "clarion" would print the news. how much of the news would he print? all the news, now and forever, one and inseparable, or words to that effect. painfully and protestingly the noble fellowship of the free and untrammeled press pointed out that if the "clarion" insisted on informing the public, they too, in self-defense, must supply something in the way of information to cover themselves, loth though they were so to do. but the burden of sin and vengeance would rest upon the paper which forced them into such a course. still patient, hal found refuge in truism: to wit, that what his fellow editors chose to do was wholly and specifically their business. from the corollary, he courteously refrained. meantime, the object of editor surtaine's scathing had not been idle. to the indignant journalist, miss kathleen pierce had appeared a brutal and hardened scion of wealth and injustice. this was hardly a just view. careless she was, and unmindful of standards; but not cruel. in this instance, panic, not callousness, had been the mainspring of her apparent cruelty. she was badly scared; and when her angry father told her what she might expect at the hands of a "yellow newspaper," she became still more badly scared. in this frame of mind she fled for refuge to miss esmé elliot. "i didn't mean to run over her," she wailed. "you know i didn't, esmé. she ran out just like a m-m-mouse, and i felt the car hit her, and then she was all crumpled up in the gutter. oh, i was so frightened! i wanted to go back, but i was afraid, and phil began to cry and say we'd killed her, and i lost my head and put on speed. i didn't mean to, esmé!" "of course you didn't, dear. who says you did?" "the newspaper is going to say so. that awful reporter! he caught me at the station and asked me a lot of questions. i just shook my head and wouldn't say a word," lied the frightened girl. "but they're going to print an awful interview with me, father says. he's furious at me." "in what paper, kathie?" "the 'clarion.' father says the other papers won't publish anything about it, but he can't stop the 'clarion.'" "i can," said miss esmé elliot confidently. the heiress to the pierce millions lifted her woe-begone face. "you?" she cried incredulously. "how?" "i've got a pull," said esmé, dimpling. a light broke in upon her suppliant. "of course! hal surtaine! but father has been to see him and he won't promise a thing. i don't see what he's got against me." "don't worry, dear. perhaps your father doesn't understand how to go about it." "no," said the other thoughtfully. "father would try to bully and threaten. he tried to bully me!" miss pierce stamped a well-shod foot in memory of her manifold wrongs. then feminine curiosity interposed a check. "esmé! are you engaged to hal surtaine?" "no, indeed!" the girl's laughter rang silvery and true. "are you going to be?" "i'm not going to be engaged to anybody. not for a long time, anyway. life is too good as it is." "is he in love with you?" persisted kathleen. esmé lifted up a very clear and sweet mezzo-soprano in a mocking lilt of song:- "how should my heart know what love may be?" the visitor regarded her admiringly. "of course he is. what man wouldn't be! and you've seen a lot of him lately, haven't you?" "i'm helping him run his paper--with good advice." "oh-h-h!" miss pierce's soft mouth and big eyes formed three circles. "and you're going to advise him--" "i'm going to advise him ver-ree earnestly not to say a word about you in the paper, if you'll promise never, never to do it again." the other clasped her in a bear-hug. "you duck! i'll just crawl through the streets after this. you watch me! the police will have to call time on me to make sure i'm not obstructing the traffic. but, esmé--" "well?" kathleen caught her hand and snuggled it up to her childishly. "how often do you see hal surtaine?" "you ought to know. there's something going on every evening now. and he goes everywhere." "yes: but outside of that?" esmé laughed. "how hard you're working to make a romance that isn't there. i go to his office once in a while, just to see the wheels go 'round." "and are you going to the office now?" "no," said esmé, after consideration. "hal surtaine is coming here. this evening." "you have an appointment with him?" "not yet. i'll telephone him." "father telephoned him, but he wouldn't come to see father. so father had to go to see him." "mahomet! well, i'm the mountain in this case. go in peace, my child." esmé patted the other's head with an absurd and delightful affectation of maternalism. "and look in the 'clarion' to-morrow with a clear assurance. you shan't find your name there--unless in the social doings column. good-bye, dear." having thus engaged her honor, the advisor to the editor sat her down to plan. at the conclusion of a period of silent thought, she sent a telephone message which made the heart of young mr. surtaine accelerate its pace perceptibly. was he too busy to come up to greenvale, dr. elliot's place, at 8.30 sharp? busy he certainly was, but not too busy to obey any behest of his partner. that was very nice of him. it would take but a few minutes. as many minutes as she could use, she might have, or hours. then he was to consider himself gratefully thanked and profoundly curtsied to, over the wire. by the way, if he had a galley proof of anything that had been written about kathleen pierce's motor accident, would he bring that along? and didn't he think it quite professional of her to remember all about galleys and things? highly professional and clever (albeit in a somewhat altered tone, not unnoted by the acute listener). yes, he would bring the proof. at 8.30, then, sharp. "the new boss of our new boss," wayne had styled the charming interloper, on the occasion of her first visit to the "clarion" office. had she heard, esmé would have approved. more, she would have believed, though not without misgivings. well she knew that she had not yet proved her power over her partner. many and various as were the men upon whom, in the assay of her golden charm, she had exercised the arts of coquetry, this test was on a larger scale. this was the potential conquest of an institution. could she make a newspaper change its hue, as she could make men change color, with the power of a word or the incitement of a glance? the very dubiety of the issue gave a new zest to the game. behold, now, miss esmé elliot, snarer of men's eyes and hearts, sharpening her wits and weapons for the fray; aye, even preparing her pitfall. cunningly she made a bower of one end of the broad living-room at greenvale with great sprays of apple blossoms from the orchard, ravishing untold spoilage of her mother and forerunner, eve, for the bedecking of the quiet, cozy nook. pink was ever her color; the hue of the flushing of spring, of the rising blood in the cheek of maidenhood, and the tenderest of the fruit-blooms was not more downy-soft of tint than the face it bent to brush. at the close of the task, a heavy voice startled her. "what's all this about?" "uncle guardy! you mustn't, you really mustn't come in on tiptoe that way." "stamped like an elephant," asserted dr. elliot. "but you were so immersed in your floral designs--what kind of a play is it?" she turned upon him the sparkle of golden lights in wine-brown eyes. "it's a fairy bower. i'm going to do a bewitchment." "upon what victim?" "upon a newspaper. i'm going to be a fairy godmother sort of witch and save my foster-child by--by arointing something out of print." "doing _what_?" "arointing it. don't you know, you say, 'aroint thee, witch,' when you want to get rid of her? well, if a witch can be arointed, why shouldn't she aroint other things?" "all very well, if you understand the process. do you?" "of course. it's done 'with woven paces and with waving arms.' 'beware, beware; her flashing eyes, her float--'" "stop it! you shall not make a poetry cocktail out of tennyson and coleridge, and jam it down my throat; or i'll aroint myself. besides, you're not a witch, at all. i know you for all your big cap, and your cloak, and the basket on your arm. 'grandmother, what makes your teeth so white?'" "no, no. i'm not that kind of a beastie, at all. wrong guess, guardy." "yet there's a gleam of the hunt about you. is it, oh, is it, the great american pumess that i have the honor to address?" she made him a sweeping bow. "in a good cause." "about which i shall doubtless hear to-morrow?" "don't i always confess my good actions?" "at what hour does the victim's dying shriek rend the quivering air?" "mr. surtaine is due here at half past eight." "humph! young surtaine, eh? shy bird, if it has taken all this time to bring him down. well, run and dress. it's after five and that gives you less than three hours for prinking up, counting dinner in." whatever time and effort may have gone to the making of the great american pumess's toilet, hal thought, as he came down the long room to where she stood embowered in pink, that he had never beheld anything so freshly lovely. she gave him a warm and yielding hand in welcome, and drew away a bit, surveying him up and down with friendly eyes. "you're looking unusually smart to-night," she approved. "london clothes don't set so well on many americans. but your tie is askew. wait. let me do it." with deft fingers she twitched and patted the bow into submission. the touch of intimacy represented the key in which she had chosen to pitch her play. sinking back into a cushioned corner of the settee, she curled up cozily, and motioned him to a chair. "draw it around," she directed. "i want you where you can't get away, for i'm going to cast a spell over you." "_going_ to?" the accent on the first word was stronger than the reply necessitated. "do many people ask favors of an editor?" "more than enough." "and is the editor often kind and obliging?" "that depends on the favor." "not a little bit on the asker?" "naturally, that, too." "your tone isn't very encouraging." she searched his face with her limpid, lingering regard. "did you bring the proofs?" "yes." still holding his eyes to hers, she stretched out her hand to receive the strip of print, "do you think i'd better read it?" "no." "then i will." studying her face, as she read, hal saw it change from gay to grave, saw her quiver and wince with a swiftly indrawn breath, and straightened his spine to what he knew was coming. "oh, it's cruel," she said in a low tone, letting the paper fall on her knee. "it's true," said hal. "oh, no! even if it were, it ought not to be published." "why?" "because--" the girl hesitated. "because she's one of us?" "no. yes. it has something to do with my feeling, i suppose. why, you've been a guest at her house." "suppose i have. the 'clarion' hasn't." "isn't that rather a fine distinction?" "on the contrary. personally, i might refrain from saying anything about it. journalistically, how can i? it's the business of the 'clarion' to give the news. more than that: it's the honor of the 'clarion.'" "but what possible good will it do?" "if it did no other good, it would warn other reckless drivers." "let the police look to that. it's their business." "you know that the police dare do nothing to the daughter of elias m. pierce. see here, partner,"--hal's tone grew gentle,--"don't you recall, in that long talk we had about the paper, one afternoon, how you backed me up when i told you what i meant to do in the way of making the 'clarion' honest and clean and strong enough to be straight in its attitude toward the public? why, you've been the inspiration of all that i've been trying to do. i thought that was the true esmé. wasn't it? was i wrong? you're not going back on me, now?" "but she's so young," pleaded esmé, shifting her ground before this attack. "she doesn't think. she's never had to think. your article makes her look a--a murderess. it isn't fair. it isn't true, really. if you could have seen her here, so frightened, so broken. she cried in my arms. i told her it shouldn't be printed. i promised." here was the great american pumess at bay, and suddenly splendid in her attitude of protectiveness. in that moment, she had all but broken hal's resolution. he rose and walked over to the window, to clear his thought of the overpowering appeal of her loveliness. "how can i--" he began, coming back: but paused because she was holding out to him the proof. across it, in pencil, was written, "must not," and the initials, e.s.m.e. "kill it," she urged softly. "and my honesty with it." "oh, no. it can't be so fatal, to be kind for once. let her off, poor child." hal stood irresolute. "if it were i?" she insisted softly. "if it were you, would you ask it?" "i shouldn't have to. i'd trust you." the sweetness of it shook him. but he still spoke steadily. "others trust me, now. the men in the office. trust me to be honest." again she felt the solid wall of character blocking her design, and within herself raged and marveled, and more deeply, admired. resentment was uppermost, however. find a way through that barrier she must and would. whatever scruples may have been aroused by his appeal to her she banished. no integer of the impressionable sex had ever yet won from her such a battle. none ever should: and assuredly not this one. the great american pumess was now all feline. she leaned forward to him. "you promised." "i?" "have you forgotten?" "i have never forgotten one word that has passed between us since i first saw you." "ah; but when was that?" "seven weeks ago to-day, at the station." [illustration: "kill it," she urged softly.] "fifteen years ago this summer," she corrected. "you _have_ forgotten," she laughed gayly at the amazement in his face. "and the promise." up went a pink-tipped finger in admonition. "listen and be ashamed, o faithless knight. 'little girl, little girl: i'd do anything in the world for you, little girl. anything in the world, if ever you asked me.' think, and remember. have you a scar on your left shoulder?" the effort of recollection dimmed hal's face. "wait! i'm beginning to see. the light of the torches across the square, and the man with the knife.--then darkness.--was unconscious, wasn't i?--then the fairy child with the soft eyes, looking down at me. little girl, little girl, it was you! that is why i seemed to remember, that day at the station, before i knew you." "yes," she said, smiling up at him. "how wonderful! and you remembered. how more than wonderful!" "yes, i remembered." it was no part of her plan--quite relentless, now--to tell him that her uncle had recounted to her the events of that far-distant night, and that she had been holding them in reserve for some hitherto undetermined purpose of coquetry. so she spoke the lie without a tremor. what he would say next, she almost knew. nor did he disappoint her expectation. "and so you've come back into my life after all these years!" "you haven't taken back your proof." she slipped it into his hand. "what have you done with my subscription-flower?" "the arbutus? it stands always on my desk." "do you see the rest of it anywhere?" her eyes rested on a tiny vase set in a hanging window-box of flowers, and holding a brown and withered wisp. "i tend those flowers myself," she continued. "and i leave the dead arbutus there to remind me of the responsibilities of journalism--and of the hold i have over the incorruptible editor." "does it weigh upon you?" he answered the tender laughter in her eyes. "only the uncertainty of it." "do you realize how strong it is, esmé?" "not so strong, apparently, as certain foolish scruples." a soft color rose in her face, as she half-buried it in a great mass of apple blossom. from the mass she chose a spray, and set it in the bosom of her dress, then got to her feet and moved slowly toward him. "you're not wearing my colors to-night." this was directed to the white rose in his buttonhole. he took it out and tossed it into the fireplace. "pink's the only wear," declared the girl gayly. with delicate fingers she detached a little luxuriant twig of the bloom from her breast, and set it in the place where the rose had been. her face was close to his. he could feel her hands above his heart. "please," she breathed. "what?" he was playing for time and reason. "for kathleen pierce. please." his hand closed over hers. "you are bribing me." if she said it again, she knew that he would kiss her. so she spoke, with lifted face and eyes of uttermost supplication. "for me. please." men had kissed esmé elliot before; for she had played every turn of the game of coquetry. some she had laughed to scorn and dismissed; some she had sweetly rebuked, and held to their adoring fealty. she had known the kiss of headlong passion, of love's humility, of desperation, even of hot anger; but none had ever visited her lips twice. the game, for her, was ended with the surrender and the avowal; and she protected herself the more easily in that her pulses had never been stirred to more than the thrill of triumph. in hal surtaine's arms she was playing for another stake. so intent had she been upon her purpose that the guerdon of the modern venus victrix, the declaration of the lover, was held in the background of her mind. for a swift, bewildering moment, she felt his lips upon hers, the gentlest, the tenderest pressure, instantly relaxed: then the sudden knowledge of him for what he was, a loyal and chivalrous gentleman thus beguiled, burned her with a withering and intolerable shame. simultaneously she felt her heart go out to him as never yet had it gone to any man, and in that secret shock to her maidenhood, the coquette in her waned and the woman waxed. she drew back, quivering, aghast. with all the force of this new and tumultuous emotion, she hoped for her own defeat: yearned over him that he should refuse that for which she had unworthily pressed. yet, such is the perversity of that strange struggle against the great surrender, that she gathered every power of her sex to gain the dreaded victory. by an effort she commanded her voice, releasing herself from his arms. "wait. don't speak to me for a minute," she said hoarsely. "but i must speak, now,--dear, dearest." "am--am i that to you?" the feline in her caught desperately at the opportunity. "always. from the first." "but--you forgot." "let me atone with the rest of my life for that treason." he laughed happily. "you keep your promise, then, to the little girl?" at her feet lay the galley proof. birdlike she darted down upon it, seized, and tore it half across. "no: you do it," she commanded, thrusting it into his hand. no longer was he master of himself. the kiss had undermined him. "must i?" he said. victorious and aghast, she yet smiled into his face. "i knew i could believe in you," she cried. "you're a true knight, after all. i declare you my knight-editor. no well-equipped journalistic partnership should be without one." perhaps had the phrase been different, hal might have yielded. so narrow a margin of chance divides the paths of honor and dishonor, to mortals groping dimly through the human maze. but the words were an echo to wake memory. rugged, harsh, and fine the face of mcguire ellis rose before hal. he heard the rough voice, with its undertone of affection beneath the jocularity of the rather feeble pun, and it called him back like a trumpet summons to the loyalty which he had promised to the men of the "clarion." he slipped the half-torn paper into his pocket. "i can't do it, esmé." "you--can't--do--it?" "no." finality was in the monosyllable. she looked into his leveled and quiet eyes, and knew that she had lost. and the demon of perversity, raging, stung her to its purposes. "after this, you tell me that you can't, you won't?" "dearest! you're not going to let it make a difference in our love for each other." "_our_ love! you go far, and fast." "do i go too far, since you have let me kiss you?" "i didn't," she cried. "then you meant nothing by it?" she shrugged her shoulders. "you are trying to take advantage of a position which you forced," she said coldly. "let me understand this clearly." he had turned white. "you let me make love to you, in order to entrap me and save your friend. is that it?" no reply came from her other than what he could read in compressed lips and smouldering eyes. "so that is the kind of woman you are." there were both wonder and distress in his voice. "that is the kind of woman for whose promise to be my wife i would have given the heart out of my body." at this the tumult and catastrophe of her emotion fused into a white hot, illogical anger against this man who was suffering, and by his suffering made her suffer. "your wife? yours?" she smiled hatefully. "the wife of the son of a quack? you do yourself too much honor, hal surtaine." "i fear that i did you too much honor," he replied quietly. suffocation pressed upon her throat as she saw him go to the door. for a moment the wild desire to hold him, to justify herself, to explain, even to ask forgiveness, seized her. bitterly she fought it down, and so stood, with wide eyes and smiling lips. at the door he turned to look, with a glance less of appeal than of incredulity that she, so lovely, so alluring, so desirable beyond all the world, a creature of springtime and promise embowered amidst the springtime and promise of the apple-bloom, could be such as her speech and action proclaimed her. hal carried from her house, like a barbed arrow, the memory of that still and desperate smile. chapter xvii reprisals working on an empty heart is almost as severe a strain as the less poetic process of working on an empty stomach. on the morning after the failure of esmé's strategy and the wrecking of hal's hopes, the young editor went to his office with a languid but bitter distaste for its demands. the first item in the late afternoon mail stung him to a fitter spirit, as a sharp blow will spur to his best efforts a courageous boxer. this was a packet, containing the crumbled fragments of a spray of arbutus, and a note in handwriting now stirringly familiar. i have read your editorial. from a man dishonest enough to print deliberate lies and cowardly enough to attack a woman, it is just such an answer as i might have expected. eleanor s.m. elliot. at first the reference to the editorial bewildered hal. then he remembered. esmé had known nothing of the editorial until she read it in the paper. she had inferred that he wrote it after leaving her, thus revenging himself upon her by further scarification of the friend for whom she had pleaded. to the charge of deliberate mendacity he had no specific clue, not knowing that kathleen pierce had denied the authenticity of the interview. he mused somberly upon the venomed injustice of womankind. the note and its symbol of withered sweetness he buried in his waste-basket. if he could but discard as readily the vision of a face, strangely lovely in its anger and chagrin, and wearing that set and desperate smile! well, there was but one answer to her note. that was to make the "clarion" all that she would have it not be! no phantoms of lost loveliness came between mcguire ellis and his satisfaction over the pierce _coup_. characteristically, however, he presented the disadvantageous as well as the favorable aspects of the matter to his employer. "some paper this morning!" he began. "the town is humming like a hive." "over the pierce story?" asked hal. "nothing else talked of. we were sold out before nine this morning." "selling papers is our line of business," observed the owner-editor. "you won't think so when you hear shad shearson. he's an avalanche of woe, waiting to sweep down upon you." "what's his trouble? the department store advertising?" "the boston store advertising is gone. others are threatening to follow. pierce has called a meeting of the publications committee of the dry goods union. discipline is in the air, boss. have you seen the evening papers?" "yes." "what did you think of their stories of the accident?" "i seemed to notice a suspicious similarity." "you can bet every one of those stories came straight from e.m. pierce's own office. you'll see, they'll be the same in to-morrow morning's papers. now that we've opened up, they all have to cover the news, so they've thoughtfully sent around to inquire what elias m. would like to have printed." "from what they say," remarked hal flippantly, "the nurse ought to be arrested for trying to bump a sixty-horsepower car out of the roadway." "we strive to please, in the local newspaper shops." ellis turned to answer the buzzing telephone. "get on your life preserver," he advised his principal. "shearson's coming up to weep all over you." the advertising manager entered, his plump cheeks sagging into lugubrious and reproachful lines, speaking witnesses to a sentiment not wholly unjustifiable in his case. to see circulation steadily going up and advertising as steadily going down, is an irritant experience to the official responsible for the main income of a daily paper, advertising revenue. "advertisers have some rights," he boomed, in his heavy voice. "including that of homicide?" asked hal. "let the law take care of that. it ain't our affair." "would it be our affair if pierce didn't control advertising?" shearson's fat hands went to his fat neck in a gesture of desperation. "that's different," he cried. "i can't seem to make you see my point. why looka here, mr. surtaine. who pays for the running of a newspaper? the advertisers. where do your profits come from? advertising. there never was a paper could last six months on circulation alone. it's the ads. that keep every paper going. well, then: how's a paper going to live that turns against its own support? tell me that. if you were running a business, and a big buyer came in, would you roast him and knock his methods, and criticize his family, and then expect to sell him a bill of goods? or would you take him out to the theater and feed him a fat cigar, and treat him the best you know how? you might have your own private opinion of him--" "a newspaper doesn't deal in private opinions," put in hal. "well, it can keep 'em private for its own good, can't it? how many readers care whether e.m. pierce's daughter ran over a woman or not? what difference does it make to them? they'd be just as well satisfied to read about the latest kick-up in mexico, or the scandal at washington, or mrs. whoopdoodle's newport dinner to the troupe of educated fleas. but it makes a lot of difference to e.m. pierce, and he can make it a lot of difference to us. so long as he pays us good money, he's got a right to expect us to look out for his interests." "so have our readers who pay us good money, mr. shearson." "what are their interests?" asked the advertising manager, staring. "to get the news straight. you've given me your theory of journalism; now let me give you mine. as i look at it, there's a contract of honor between a newspaper and its subscribers. tacitly the newspaper says to the subscriber, 'for two cents a day, i agree to furnish you with the news of your town, state, nation, and the outside world, selected to the best of my ability, and presented without fear or favor.' on this basis, if the newspaper fakes its news, if it distorts facts, or if it suppresses them, it is playing false with its subscribers. it is sanding its sugar, and selling shoddy for all-wool. isn't that true?" "every newspaper does it," grumbled shearson. "and the public knows it." "doubted. the public knows that newspapers make mistakes and do a lot of exaggerating and sensationalizing. but you once get it into their heads that a certain newspaper is concealing and suppressing news, and see how long that paper will last. the circulation will drop and the very men like pierce will be the first to withdraw their advertising patronage. your keen advertiser doesn't waste time fishing in dead pools. so even as a matter of policy the straight way may be the best, in the long run. whether it is or not, get this firmly into your mind, mr. shearson. from now on the first consideration of the 'clarion' will be news and not advertising." "then, good-_night_ 'clarion,'" pronounced shearson with entire solemnity. "is that your resignation, mr. shearson?" "do you want me to quit?" "no; i don't. i believe you're an efficient man, if you can adjust yourself to new conditions. do you think you can?" "well, i ain't much on the high-brow stuff, mr. surtaine, but i can take orders, i guess. i'm used to the old 'clarion,' and i kinda like you, even if we don't agree. maybe this virtuous jag'll get us some business for what it loses us. but, say, mr. surtaine, you ain't going to get virtuous in your advertising columns, too, are you?" "i hadn't considered it," said hal. "one of these days i'll look into it." "for god's sake, don't!" pleaded shearson, with such a shaken flabbiness of vehemence that both hal and ellis laughed, though the former felt an uneasy puzzlement. the article and editorial on the pierce accident had appeared in a thursday's "clarion." in their issues of the following day, the other morning papers dealt with the subject most delicately. the "banner" published, without obvious occasion, a long and rather fulsome editorial on e.m. pierce as a model of high-minded commercial emprise and an exemplar for youth: also, on the same page in its "pointed paragraphs," the following, with a point quite too palpably aimed:-"it is said, on plausible if not direct authority, that one of our morning contemporaries will appropriately alter its motto to read, 'with malice toward all: with charity for none.'" but it remained for that evening's "telegram" to bring up the heavy guns. from its first edition these headlines stood out, black and bold:- e.m. pierce defends daughter * * * * * magnate incensed at unjust attacks will push case against her traducers to a finish there followed an interview in which the great man announced his intention of bringing both civil and criminal action for libel against the "clarion." mcguire ellis frowned savagely at the sheet. "dirty skunk!" he growled. "meaning our friend pierce?" queried hal. "no. meaning parker, and the whole 'telegram' outfit." "why?" "because they printed that interview." "what's wrong with it? it's news." "don't be positively infantile, boss. newspapers don't print libel actions brought against other newspapers. it's unprofessional. it's unethical. it isn't straight." "no: i don't see that at all," decided hal, after some consideration. "that amounts simply to this, that the newspapers are in a combination to discourage libel actions, by suppressing all mention of them." "certainly. why not? libel suits are generally holdups." "i think the 'telegram' is right. whatever pierce says is news, and interesting news." "you bet parker would never have carried that if his holding corporation wasn't a heavy borrower in the pierce banks." "maybe not. but i think we'll carry it." "in the 'clarion'?" almost shouted ellis. "certainly. let's have wayne send a reporter around to pierce. if pierce won't give us an interview, we'll reprint the 'telegram's,' with credit." "we'd be cutting our own throats, and playing pierce's game. besides, stuff about ourselves isn't news." hal's inexperience had this virtue, that it was free of the besetting and prejudicial superstitions of the craft of print. "if it's interesting, it's the 'clarion' kind of news." ellis, about to protest further, met the younger man's level gaze, and swallowed hard. "all right," he said. "i'll tell wayne." so the "clarion" violated another tradition of newspaperdom, to the amused contempt of its rivals, who were, however, possibly not quite so amused or so contemptuous as they appeared editorially to be. also it followed up the interview with an explicit statement of its own intentions in the matter, which were not precisely music to the savage breast of e.m. pierce. evidences of that formidable person's hostilities became increasingly manifest from day to day. one morning a fire marshal dropped casually in upon the "clarion" office, looked the premises over, and called the owner's attention to several minor and unsuspected violations of the law, the adjustment of which would involve no small inconvenience and several hundred dollars outlay. by a curious coincidence, later in the day, a factory inspector happened around,--a newspaper office being, legally, within the definition of a factory,--and served a summons on mcguire ellis as publisher, for permitting smoking in the city room. from time immemorial every edition of every newspaper in the united states of america has evolved out of rolling clouds of tobacco smoke: but the "clarion" alone, apparently, had come within the purview of the law. subsequently, hal learned, to his amusement, that all the other newspaper offices were placarded with notices of the law in yiddish, so that none might be unduly disturbed thereby! to give point to the discrimination, down on the street, a zealous policeman arrested one of the "clarion's" bulk-paper handlers for obstructing the sidewalk. "pierce's political pull is certainly working," observed ellis, "but it's coarse work." finer was to come. two libel suits mushroomed into view in as many days, provoked, as it were, out of conscious nothing; unimportant but harassing: one, brought by a ne'er-do-well who had broken a leg while engaged in a drunken prank months before, the other the outcome of a paragraph on a little, semi-fraudulent charity. "i'll bet that eminent legal light, mr. william douglas, could tell something about these," said ellis, "though his name doesn't appeal on the papers." "we'll print these, too,--and we'll tell the reason for them," said hal. but on this last point his assistant dissuaded him. the efficient argument was that it would look like whining, and the one thing which a newspaper must not do was to lament its own ill-treatment. on top of the libel suits came a letter from the midland national bank, stating with perfect courtesy that, under its present organization, a complicated account like that of the "clarion" was inconvenient to handle; wherefore the bank was reluctantly obliged to request its withdrawal. "bottling us up financially," remarked ellis. "i expected this, before." "there are other banks than the midland that'll be glad of our business," replied hal. "probably not." "no? then they're curious institutions." "there isn't one of 'em in which elias m. pierce isn't a controlling factor. ask your father." on the following day when dr. surtaine, who had been out of town for several days, dropped in at the office, hal had a memorandum ready on the point. the old quack eased himself into a chair with his fine air of ample leisure, creating for himself a fragrant halo of cigar smoke. "well, boyee." the tone was a mingling of warm affection and semi-humorous reproach. "you went and did it to elias m., didn't you?" "yes, sir. we went and did it." the doctor shook his head, looking at the other through narrowing eyes. "and it's worrying you. you're not looking right." "oh, i'm well enough: a little sleeplessness, that's all." he did not deem it necessary to tell his father that upon his white nights the unforgettable face of esmé elliot had gleamed persistently from out the darkness, banishing rest. "suppose you let me do some of the worrying, boyee." "haven't you enough troubles in your own business, dad?" smiled hal. "machinery, son. automatic, at that. runs itself and turns out the dollars, regular, for breakfast. very different from the newspaper game." "i _should_ like your advice." "on the take-it-or-leave-it principle, i suppose," answered dr. surtaine, with entire good humor. "in the pierce matter you left it. how do you like the results?" "not very much." dr. surtaine spread out upturned hands, in dumb, oracular illustration of his own sagacity. "but i'd do the same thing over again if it came up for decision." "that's exactly what you mustn't do, hal. banging around the shop like that, cracking people on the knuckles may give you a temporary feeling of power and importance" (hal flushed boyishly), "but it don't pay. now, if i get you out of this scrape, i want you to go more carefully." "how are you going to get me out of it?" "square it with e.m. pierce. he's a good friend of mine." "do you really like mr. pierce, dad?" "hm! ah--er--well, boyee, as for that, that's another tail on a cat. in a business way, i meant." "in a business way he's trying to be a pretty efficient enemy of mine. how would you like it if he undertook to interfere with certina?" by perceptible inches dr. surtaine's chest rounded in slow expansion. "legislatures and government bureaus have tried that. they never got away with it yet. elias pierce is a pretty big man in this town, but i guess he knows enough to keep hands and tongue off me." "if not off your line of business," amended ellis. "did you see his interview in the 'telegram'?" he tossed over a copy of the paper folded to a column wherein mr. pierce, with more temper than tact, had possessed himself of his adversary's editorial text, "heredity," and proceeded to perform a variant thereon. "if this young whippersnapper," mr. pierce had said, "this fledgling thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his unearned money, perhaps he wouldn't talk so glibly about heredity." thence the interview pursued a course of indirect reflection upon the matter and method of the patent medicine trade, as exemplified in certina and its allied industries. the top button of dr. surtaine's glossy morning coat, as he read, seemed in danger of flying off into infinite space. his powerful hands opened and closed slowly. leaning forward he reached for the telephone, but checked himself. "mr. pierce seems to have let go both barrels at once," he said with a strong effort of control. "pretty little exhibition of temper, isn't it?" said hal, smiling. "temper's expensive. perhaps we'll teach elias m. pierce that lesson before we're through. you remember it, too, next time you start in on a muckraking jag." "our muckraking, as you call it, isn't a question of temper, dad," said hal earnestly. "it's a question of policy. what the 'clarion' is doing, is done because we're trying to be a newspaper. we've got to stick to that. i've given my word." "who to?" "to the men on the staff." "what's more," put in mcguire ellis, turning at the door on his way out to see a caller, "the fellows have got hold of the idea. that's what gives the 'clarion' the go it's got. we're all rowing one stroke." "and the captain can't very well quit in mid-race." hal took up the other's metaphor, as the door closed behind him. "so you see, dad, i've got to see it through, no matter what it costs me." the father's rich voice dropped to a murmur. "hasn't it cost you something more than money, already, boyee? i understand miss esmé is a pretty warm friend of pierce's girl." hal winced. "all right, boyee. i don't want to pry. but lots of things come quietly to the old man's ear. you've got a right to your secrets." "it isn't any secret, dad. in fact, it isn't anything any more," said hal, smiling wanly. "yes, the price was pretty high. i don't think any other will ever be so high." dr. surtaine heaved his bulk out of the chair and laid a heavy arm across his son's shoulder. "boyee, you and i don't agree on a lot of things. we're going to keep on not agreeing about a lot of things. you think i'm an old fogy with low-brow standards. i think you've got a touch of that prevalent disease of youth, fool-in-the-head. but, i guess, as father and son, pal and pal, we're pretty well suited,--eh?" "yes," said hal. there was that in the monosyllable which wholly contented the older man. "go ahead with your 'clarion,' boyee. blow your fool head off. deave us all deaf. play any tune you want, and pay yourself for your piping. i won't interfere--any more'n i can help, being an old meddler by taste. blood's thicker than water, they say. i guess it's thicker than printer's ink, too. remember this, right or wrong, win or lose, boyee, i'm with you." chapter xviii milly all hal's days now seemed filled with pierce. pierce's friends, dependents, employees, associates wrote in, denouncing the "clarion," canceling subscriptions, withdrawing advertisements. pierce's club, the huron, compelled the abandonment of mr. harrington surtaine's candidacy. pierce's clergyman bewailed the low and vindictive tone of modern journalism. the pierce newspapers kept harassing the "clarion"; the pierce banks evinced their financial disapproval; the pierce lawyers diligently sought new causes of offense against the foe; while pierce's mayor persecuted the newspaper office with further petty enforcements and exactions. pierce's daughter, however, fled the town. with her went miss esmé elliot. according to the society columns, including that of the "clarion," they were bound for a restful voyage on the pierce yacht. from time to time editor surtaine retaliated upon the foe, employing the news of the slow progress of miss cleary, the nurse, to maintain interest in the topic. protests invariably followed, sometimes from sources which puzzled the "clarion." one of the protestants was hugh merritt, the young health officer of the city, who expressed his views to mcguire ellis one day. "no," ellis reported to his employer, on the interview, "he didn't exactly ask that we let up entirely. but he seemed to think we were going too strong. i couldn't quite get his reasons, except that he thought it was a terrible thing for the pierce girl, and she so young. queer thing from merritt. they don't make 'em any straighter than he is." alone of the lot of protests, that of mrs. festus willard gained a response from hal. "you're treating her very harshly, hal." "we're giving the facts, lady jinny." "_are_ they the facts? _all_ the facts?" "so far as human eyes could see them." "men's eyes don't see very far where a woman is concerned. she's very young and headstrong, and, hal, she hasn't had much chance, you know. she's elias pierce's daughter." "thus having every chance, one would suppose." "every chance of having everything. very little chance of being anything." there was a pause. then: "very well, hal, i know i can trust you to do what you believe right, at least. that's a good deal. festus tells me to let you alone. he says that you must fight your own fight in your own way. that's the whole principle of salvation in festus's creed." "not a bad one," said hal. "i'm not particularly liking to do this, you know, lady jinny." "so i can understand. have you heard anything from esmé elliot since she left?" "no." "you mustn't drop out of the set, hal," said the little woman anxiously. "you've made good so quickly. and our crowd doesn't take up with the first comer, you know." since esmé elliot had passed out of his life, as he told himself, hal found no incentive to social amusements. hence he scarcely noticed a slow but widening ostracism which shut him out from house after house, under the pressure of the pierce influence. but mrs. festus willard had perceived and resented it. that any one for whom she had stood sponsor should fail socially in worthington was both irritating and incredible to her. hence she made more of hal than she might otherwise have found time to do, and he was much with her and festus willard, deriving, on the one hand, recreation and amusement from her sparkling _camaraderie_, and on the other, support and encouragement from her husband's strong, outspoken, and ruggedly honest common sense. neither of them fully approved of his attack on kathleen pierce, whom they understood better than he did. but they both--and more particularly festus willard--appreciated the courage and honor of the "clarion's" new standards. except for an occasional dinner at their house, and a more frequent hour late in the afternoon or early in the evening, with one or both of them, hal saw almost nothing of the people into whose social environment he had so readily slipped. because of his exclusion, there prospered the more naturally a casual but swiftly developing intimacy which had sprung up between himself and milly neal. it began with her coming to hal for his counsel about her copy. from the first she assumed an attitude of unquestioning confidence in his wisdom and taste. this flattered the pedagogue which is inherent in all of us. he was wise enough to see promptly that he must be delicately careful in his criticism, since here he was dealing out not opinion, but gospel. poised and self-confident the girl was in her attitude toward herself: the natural consequence of early success and responsibility. but about her writing she exhibited an almost morbid timidity lest it be thought "vulgar" or "common" by the editor-in-chief; and once mcguire ellis felt called upon to warn hal that he was "taking all the gimp out of the 'kitty the cutie' stuff by trying to sewing-circularize it." of literature the girl knew scarcely anything; but she had an eager ambition for better standards, and one day asked hal to advise her in her reading. not without misgivings he tried her with stevenson's "virginibus puerisque" and was delighted with the swiftness and eagerness of her appreciation. then he introduced her by careful selection to the poets, beginning with tennyson, through wordsworth, to browning, and thence to the golden-voiced singers of the sonnet, and all of it she drank in with a wistful and wondering delight. soon her visits came to be of almost daily occurrence. she would dart in of an evening, to claim or return a book, and sit perched on the corner of the big work-table, like a little, flashing, friendly bird; always exquisitely neat, always vividly pretty and vividly alive. sometimes the talk wandered from the status of instructor and instructed, and touched upon the progress of the "clarion," the view which milly's little world took of it, possible ways of making it more interesting to the women readers to whom the "cutie" column was supposed to cater particularly. more than once the more personal note was touched, and the girl spoke of her coming to the certina factory, a raw slip of a country creature tied up in calico, and of dr. surtaine's kindness and watchfulness over her. "he wanted to do well by me because of the old man--my father, i mean," she caught herself up, blushing. "they knew each other when i was a kid." "where?" asked hal. "oh, out east of here," she answered evasively. again she said to him once, "what i like about the 'clarion' is that it's trying to do something for _folks_. that's all the religion i could ever get into my head: that human beings are mostly worth treating decently. that counts for more than all your laws and rules and church regulations. i don't like rules much," she added, twinkling up at him. "i always want to kick 'em over, just as i always want to break through the police lines at a fire." "but rules and police lines are necessary for keeping life orderly," said hal. "i suppose so. but i don't know that i like things too orderly. my teacher called me a lawless little demon, once, and i guess i still am. suppose i should break all the rules of the office? would you fire me?" and before he could answer she was up and had flashed away. as the intimacy grew, hal found himself looking forward to these swift-winged little visits. they made a welcome break in the detailed drudgery; added to the day a glint of color, bright like the ripple of half-hidden flame that crowned milly's head. once veltman, intruding on their talk, had glared blackly and, withdrawing, had waited for the girl in the hallway outside from whence, as she left, hal could hear the foreman's deep voice in anger and her clear replies tauntingly stimulating his chagrin. having neglected the willards for several days, hal received a telephone message, about a month after esmé elliot's departure, asking him to stop in. he found mrs. willard waiting him in the conservatory. his old friend looked up as he entered, with a smile which did not hide the trouble in her eyes. "aren't you a lily-of-the-field!" admired the visitor, contemplating her green and white costume. "it's the vanes' dance. not going?" "not asked. besides, i'm a workingman these days." "so one might infer from your neglect of your friends. hal, i've had a letter from esmé elliot." "any message?" he asked lightly, but with startled blood. there was no answering lightness in her tones. "yes. one i hate to give. hal, she's engaged herself to will douglas. it must have been by letter, for she wasn't engaged when she left. 'tell hal surtaine' she says in her letter to me." "thank you, lady jinny," said hal. the diminutive lady looked at him and then looked away, and suddenly a righteous flush rose on her cheeks. "i'm fond of esmé," she declared. "one can't help but be. she compels it. but where men are concerned she seems to have no sense of her power to hurt. i could _kill_ her for making me her messenger. hal, boy," she rose, slipping an arm through his caressingly, "i do hope you're not badly hurt." "i'll get over it, lady jinny. there's the job, you know." he started for the office. then, abruptly, as he went, "the job" seemed purposeless. unrealized, hope had still persisted in his heart--the hope that, by some possible turn of circumstance, the shattered ideal of esmé elliot would be revivified. the blighting of his love for her had been no more bitter, perhaps less so, than the realization which she had compelled in him of her lightness and unworthiness. still, he had wanted her, longed for her, hoped for her. now that hope was gone. there seemed nothing left to work for, no adequate good beyond the striving. he looked with dulled vision out upon blank days. with a sudden weakening of fiber he turned into a hotel and telephoned mcguire ellis that he wouldn't be at the office that evening. to the other's anxious query was he ill, he replied that he was tired out and was going home to bed. meantime, far across the map at a famous florida hostelry, the great american pumess, in the first flush and pride of her engagement which all commentators agree upon as characteristic of maidenhood's vital resolution, lay curled up in a little fluffy coil of misery and tears, repeating between sobs, "i hate him! i _hate_ him!" meaning her _fiancé_, mr. william douglas, with whom her mind and emotions should properly have been concerned? not so, perspicacious reader. meaning mr. harrington surtaine. upon _his_ small portion of the map, that gentleman wooed sleep in vain for hours. presently he arose from his tossed bed, dressed quietly, slipped out of the big door and walked with long, swinging steps down to the "clarion" building. there it stood, a plexus of energies, in the midst of darkness and sleep. eye-like, its windows peered vigilantly out into the city. a door opened to emit a voice that bawled across the way some profane demand for haste in the delivery of "that grub"; and through the shaft of light hal could see brisk figures moving, and hear the roar and thrill of the press sealing its irrevocable message. again he felt, with a pride so profound that its roots struck down into the depths of humility, his own responsibility to all that straining life and energy and endeavor. he, the small atom, alone in the night, _was_ the "clarion." those men, the fighting fellowship of the office, were rushing and toiling and coordinating their powers to carry out some ideal still dimly inchoate in his brain. what mattered his little pangs? there was a man's test to meet, and the man within him stretched spiritual muscles for the trial. "if i could only be sure what's right," he said within himself, voicing the doubt of every high-minded adventurer upon unbeaten paths. sharply, and, as it seemed to him, incongruously, he wondered that he had never learned to pray; not knowing that, in the unfinished phrase he had uttered true prayer. a chill breeze swept down upon him. looking up into the jeweled heavens he recalled from the far distance of memory, the prayer of a great and simple soul,- "make thou my spirit pure and clear as are the frosty skies." hal set out for home, ready now for a few hours' sleep. at a blind corner he all but collided with a man and a woman, walking at high speed. the woman half turned, flinging him a quick and silvery "good-evening." it was milly neal. the man with her was max veltman. chapter xix donnybrook worthington began to find the "clarion" amusing. it blared a new note. common matter of everyday acceptance which no other paper in town had ever considered as news, became, when trumpeted from between the rampant roosters, vital with interest. and whithersoever it directed the public attention, some highly respectable private privilege winced and snarled. worthington did not particularly love the "clarion" for the enemies it made. but it read it. now, a newspaper makes its enemies overnight. friends take months or years in the making. hence the "clarion," whilst rapidly broadening its circle of readers, owed its success to the curiosity rather than to the confidence which it inspired. meantime the effect upon its advertising income was disastrous. if credence could be placed in the lamenting shearson, wherever it attacked an abuse, whether by denunciation or ridicule, it lost an advertiser. moreover the public, not yet ready to credit any journal with honest intentions, was inclined to regard the "clarion" as "a chronic kicker." the "banner's" gibing suggestion of a reversal of the editorial motto between the triumphant birds to read "with malice toward all," stuck. but there were compensations. the blatant cocks had occasional opportunity for crowing. with no small justification did they shrill their triumph over the midland & big muddy railroad. the "mid and mud" had declared war upon the "clarion," following the paper's statement of the true cause of the walkersville wreck, as suggested by marchmont, the reporter, at the breakfast. marchmont himself had been banished from the railroad offices. all sources of regular news were closed to him. therefore, backed by the "clarion," he proceeded to open up a line of irregular news which stirred the town. for years the "mid and mud" had given to worthington a passenger service so bad that no community less enslaved to a _laissez-faire_ policy would have endured it. through trains drifted in anywhere from one to four hours late. local trains, drawn by wheezy, tin-pot locomotives of outworn pattern, arrived and departed with such casualness as to render schedules a joke, and not infrequently "bogged down" between stations until some antediluvian engine could be resuscitated and sent out to the rescue. the day coaches were of the old, dangerous, wooden type. the pullman service was utterly unreliable, and the station in which the traveling populace of worthington spent much of its time, a draft-ridden barn. yet worthington suffered all this because it was accustomed to it and lacked any means of making protest vocal. then the "clarion" started in publishing its "yesterday's time-table of the midland & big muddy r.r. co." to this general effect: day express due 10 a.m. arrived 11.43 a.m. late 1 hour 43 min. noon local due 12 a.m. arrived 2.10 p.m. late 2 hrs. 10 min. sunrise limited due 3 p.m. arrived 3.27 p.m. late 0 hrs. 27 min. and so on. from time to time there would appear, underneath, a special item, of which the following is an example: "the eastern states through express of the midland & big muddy railroad arrived and departed on time yesterday. when asked for an explanation of this phenomenon, the officials declined to be interviewed." against this "persecution," the "mid and mud" authorities at first maintained a sullen silence. the "clarion" then went into statistics. it gave the number of passengers arriving and departing on each delayed train, estimated the value of their time, and constructed tables of the money value of time lost in this way to the city of worthington, per day, per month, and per year. the figures were not the less inspiring of thought, for being highly amusing. people began to take an interest. they brought or sent in personal experiences. a commercial traveler, on the 7.50 train (arriving at 10.01, that day), having lost a big order through missing an appointment, told the "clarion" about it. a contractor's agent, gazing from the windows of the stalled "limited" out upon "fresh woods and pastures new" twenty miles short of worthington, what time he should have been at a committee meeting of the council, forfeited a $10,000 contract and rushed violently into "clarion" print, breathing slaughter and law-suits. judge abner halloway and family, arriving at the new york pier in a speeding taxi from the eastern express (five hours late out of worthington), just in time to see the lusitania take his forwarded baggage for a pleasant outing in europe, hired a stenographer (male) to tell the "clarion" what he thought of the matter, in words of seven syllables. professor beeton trachs, the globe-trotting lecturer, who arrived via the "m. and m." for an eight o'clock appearance, at 9.54, gave the "clarion" an interview proper to the occasion of having to abjure a $200 guaranty, wherein the mildest and most judicial opinion expressed by professor trachs was that crawling through a tropical jungle on all fours was speed, and being hurtled down a mountain on the bosom of a landslide, comfort, compared to travel on the "mid and mud." all these and many similar experiences, the "clarion" published in its "news of the m. and m." column. it headed them, "stories of survivors." for six weeks the railroad endured the proddings of ridicule. then the fourth vice-president of the road appeared in mr. harrington surtaine's sanctum. he was bland and hinted at advertising. two weeks later the third vice-president arrived. he was vague and hinted at reprisals. the second vice-president presented himself within ten days thereafter, departed after five unsatisfactory minutes, and reported at headquarters, with every symptom of an elderly gentleman suffering from shock, that young mr. surtaine had seemed bored. the first vice-president then arrived on a special train. "what do you want, anyway?" he asked. "decent passenger service for worthington," said the editor. "just what i've told every other species _and_ number of vice-president on your list." "you get it," said the first vice-president. thus was afforded another example of that super-efficiency which, we are assured, marks the caste of the american railroad as superior to all others, and which consists in sending four men and spending several weeks to do what one could do better in a single day. in the course of a few weeks the midland & big muddy did bring its service up to a reasonable standard, and the owner of the "clarion" savored his first pleasant proof of the power of the press. vastly less important, but swifter and more definite in results and more popular in effect, was the "clarion's" anti-hat-check campaign. the stickler, worthington's newest hotel, had established a coat-room with the usual corps of girl-bandits, waiting to strip every patron of his outer garments before admitting him to the restaurant, and returning them only upon the blackmail of a tip. all the other good restaurants had followed suit. worthington resented it, as it resented most innovations; but endured the imposition, for lack of solidarity, until the "clarion" took up the subject in a series of paragraphs. "do you think," blandly inquired the editorial roosters, "that when you tip the hat-check girl she gets the tip? she doesn't. it goes to a man who rents from the restaurant the privilege of bullying you out of a dime or a quarter. the girl holds you up, because if she doesn't extort fifteen dollars a week, she loses her job and her own munificent wages of seven dollars. the 'clarion' takes pleasure in announcing a series of portraits of the high-minded pirates of finance whom you support in luxury, when you 'give up' to the check-girl. our first portrait, ladies and gentlemen, is that of mr. abe hotzenmuller, race-track bookmaker and whiskey agent, who, in the intervals of these more reputable occupations, extracts alms from the patrons of the hotel stickler." next in line was "shirty" macdonough, a minor politician, "appropriately framed in silver dimes," as the "clarion" put it. he was followed by eddie perkins, proprietor of a dubious resort on mail street. by this time coat-room franchises had suffered a severe depreciation. they dropped almost to zero when the newspaper, having clinched the lesson home with its "photo-graft gallery of leading dime-hunters," exhorted its readers: "if you think you need your change as much as these men do, watch for the coupon in to-morrow's 'clarion,' and stick it in your hat." the coupon was as follows: i read the clarion. i will not give one cent in tips to any coat-room grafter. what are you going to do about it? the enterprise hit upon the psychological moment. every check-room bristled with hats proclaiming defiance, and, incidentally, advertising the "clarion." the "cut-out coupon" ran for three weeks. in one month the stickler check-room, last to surrender, gave up the ghost, and mr. hotzenmuller sued the proprietor for his money back! over the theatrical managers the paper's victory was decisive in this, that it established honest dramatic criticism in worthington. but only at a high cost. not a line of theater advertising appeared in the columns after the editorial announcement of independence. press tickets were cut off. the "clarion's" dramatic reporter was turned back from the gate of the various theaters, after paying for admittance. nevertheless, the "clarion" continued to publish frank criticism of current drama, through a carefully guarded secret arrangement with the critic of the "evening news." about this time a famous star, opening a three days' engagement, got into difficulties with the scene-shifters' union over an unjust demand for extra payment, refused to be blackmailed, and canceled the second performance. one paper only gave the facts, and that was the "clarion," generally regarded as the defender and mouthpiece of the laboring as against the capitalistic interests. great was the wrath of the unions. boycott was threatened; even a strike in the office. in response, the editorial page announced briefly that its policy of giving the news accurately and commenting upon it freely exempted no man or organization. the trouble soon died out, but, while making new enemies amongst the rabid organization men, strengthened the "clarion's" growing repute for independence. one of the most violent objectors was max veltman, whose protest, delivered to hal and mcguire ellis, was so vehement that he was advised curtly and emphatically to confine his activities and opinions to his own department. "look out for that fellow," advised ellis, as the foreman went away fuming. "he hates you." "only his fanaticism," said hal. "more than that. it's personal. i think," added the associate editor after some hesitancy, "it's 'kitty the cutie.' he's jealous, hal. and i think he's right. that girl's getting too much interested in you." hal flushed sharply. "nonsense!" he said, and the subject lapsed. meantime the manager of the ralston opera house, where the labor trouble had occurred, made tentative proffer of peace in the form of sending in the theater advertising again. hal promptly refused to accept it, by way of an object-lesson, despite the almost tearful protest of his own business office. this blow almost killed shearson. in fact, the unfortunate advertising manager now lived in an atmosphere of stygian gloom. two of the most extensive purchasers of newspaper space, the boston store and the triangle store, had canceled their contracts immediately after the attack on the pierces, through a "joker" clause inserted to afford such an opportunity. all the other department stores threatened to follow suit when the "clarion" took up the cause of the consumers' league. mrs. festus willard was president of the organization, which had been practically moribund since its inception, for the sufficient reason that no mention of its activities, designs, or purposed reforms could gain admission to any newspaper in worthington. the retail union saw to that through its all-potent publication committee. perceiving the crescent emancipation of the "clarion," mrs. willard, after due consultation with her husband, appealed to hal. would he help the league to obtain certain reforms? specifically, seats for shopgirls, and extra pay for extra work, as during old home week, when the stores kept open until 10 p.m.? hal agreed, and, in the face of the dismalest forecasts from shearson, prepared several editorials. moreover, "kitty the cutie" took up the campaign in her column, and her series of "lunch-time chats," with their slangy, pungent, workaday flavor, presented the case of the overworked saleswomen in a way to stir the dullest sympathies. the event fully justified shearson in his rôle of cassandra. half of the remaining stores represented in the retail union notified the "clarion" of the withdrawal of their advertising. thus some twelve hundred dollars a week of income vanished. moreover, the union, it was hinted, would probably blacklist the "clarion" officially. and the shop-folk gained nothing by the campaign. the merchants were strong enough to defeat the league and its sole backer at every point. this was one of the "clarion's" failures. coincident with the ebb of the store advertising occurred a lapse in circulation, inexplicable to the staff until an analysis indicated that the women readers were losing interest. it was young mr. surtaine who solved the mystery, by a flash of that newspaper instinct with which ellis had early credited him. "department store advertising is news," he decided, in a talk with ellis and shearson. "how can advertising be news?" objected the manager. "anything that interests the public is news, on the authority of no less an expert than mr. mcguire ellis. shopping is the main interest in life of thousands of women. they read the papers to find out where the bargains are. watch 'em on the cars any morning and you'll see them studying the ads. the information in those ads. is what they most want. now that we don't give it to them, they are dropping the paper. so we've got to give it to them." "now you're talking," cried shearson. "cut out this consumers' league slush and i'll get the stores back." "we'll cut out nothing. but we'll put in something. we'll print news of the department stores as news, not as advertising." "well, if that ain't the limit!" lamented shearson. "if you give 'em advertising matter free, how can you ever expect 'em to pay for it?" "we're not giving it to the stores. we're giving it to our readers." "in which case," remarked mcguire ellis with a grin, "we can afford to furnish the real facts." "exactly," said hal. from this talk developed a unique department in the "clarion." an expert woman shopper collected the facts and presented them daily under the caption, "where to find real bargains," and with the prefatory note, "no paid matter is accepted for this column." the expert had an allowance for purchasing, where necessary, and the utmost freedom of opinion was granted her. thus, in the midst of a series of items, such as--"the boston store is offering a special sale of linens at advantageous prices"; "the necktie sale at the emporium contains some good bargains"; and "scheffler and mintz's 'furniture week' is worth attention, particularly in the rocking-chair and dining-set lines"--might appear some such information as this: "in the special bargain sale of ribbons at the emporium the prices are slightly higher than the same lines sold for last week, on the regular counter"; or, "the heavily advertised antique rug collection at the triangle is mostly fraudulent. with a dozen exceptions the rugs are modern and of poor quality"; or, "the boston shop's special sale of rain coats are mostly damaged goods. accept none without guarantee." never before had mercantile worthington known anything like this. something not unlike panic was created in commercial circles. lawyers were hopefully consulted, but ascertained in the first stages of investigation, that wherever a charge of fraud was brought, the "clarion" office actually had the goods, by purchase. all this was costly to the "clarion." but it added nearly four thousand solid circulation, of the buying class, a class of the highest value to any advertiser. only with difficulty and by exercise of pressure on the part of e.m. pierce, were the weaker members among the withdrawing advertisers dissuaded from resuming their patronage of the "clarion." "i wouldn't have thought it possible," said the dictator, angrily, to his associates. "the thing is getting dangerous. the damned paper is out for the truth." "and the public is finding it out," supplemented gibbs, his brother-in-law. "wait till my libel suit comes on," said pierce grimly. "i don't believe young mr. surtaine will have enough money left to indulge in the luxury of muckraking, after that." "won't the old man back him up?" "tells me that the boy is playing a lone hand," said pierce with satisfaction. herein he spoke the fact. while the "clarion's" various campaigns were still in mid-career, dr. surtaine had made his final appeal to his son in vain, ringing one last change upon his pæan of policy. "what good does it all do you or anybody else? you're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." he paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism: "boyee, you can't sell a stink, in this town." "perhaps i can help to get rid of it," said hal. "not you! nobody thanks you for your pains. they take notice for a while, because their noses compel 'em to. then they forget. what thanks does the public give a newspaper? but the man you've roasted--he's after you, all the time. a sore toe doesn't forget. look at pierce." "pierce has bothered me," confessed hal. "he's shut me off from the banks. none of them will loan the 'clarion' a cent. i have to go out of town for my money." "can you blame him? i'd have done the same if he'd roasted you as you roasted his girl." "news, dad," said hal wearily. "it was news." "let's not go over that again. you'll stick to your policy, i suppose, till it ruins you. about finances, by the way, where do you stand?" "stand?" repeated hal. "i wish we did. we slip. downhill; and pretty fast." "why wouldn't you? fighting your own advertisers." "some advertising has come in, though. mostly from out of town." "foreign proprietary," said dr. surtaine, using the technical term for patent-medicine advertising from out of town, "isn't it? i've been doing a little missionary work among my friends in the trade, hal; persuaded them to give the 'clarion' a try-out. the best of it is, they're getting results." "they ought to. do you know we're putting on circulation at the rate of nearly a thousand a week?" "expensive, though, isn't it?" "pretty bad. the paper costs a lot more to get out. we've enlarged our staff. now we need a new press. there's thirty-odd thousand dollars, in one lump." "how long can you go on at this rate?" "without any more advertising?" "you certainly aren't gaining, by your present policy." "well, i can stick it out through the year. by that time the advertising will be coming in. it's _got_ to come to the paper that has the circulation, dad." "hum!" droned the big doctor, dubiously. "have you reckoned the pierce libel suits in?" "he can't win them." "can't he? i don't know. he intends to try. and he feels pretty cocky about it. e.m. pierce has something up his sleeve, boyee." "that would be a body-blow. but he can't win," repeated hal. "why, i saw the whole thing myself." "just the same you ought to have the best libel lawyer you can get from new york. all the good local men are tied up with pierce or afraid of him." "can't afford it." to this point the big man had been leading up. "i've been thinking over this pierce matter, hal, and i've made up my mind. pierce is getting to think he's the whole thing around here. he's bullied this town all his life, just as he's bullied his employees until they hate him like poison. but now he's gone up against the wrong game. roast certina, will he? the pup! why, if he'd ever run his factories or his store or his consolidated employees' organization one hundredth part as decently as i've run our business, he wouldn't have to stay in nights for fear some one might sneak a knife into him out of the dark." this was something less than just to elias m. pierce, who, whatever his other faults, had never been a fearful man. "libel, eh?" continued the genius of certina, quietly but formidably. "we'll teach him a few things about libel, before he's through. here's my proposition, boyee. you can fight pierce, but you can't fight all worthington. every enemy you make for the 'clarion' becomes an ally of pierce. quit all these other campaigns. stop roasting the business men and advertisers. drop your attack on the mid and mud: you've got 'em licked, anyway. let up on the street railway: i notice you're taking a fall out of them on their overcrowding. treat the theaters decently: they're entitled to a fair chance for their money. cut out this consumers' league foolishness (i'm surprised at milly neal--the way she's lost her head over that). make friends instead of foes. and go after elias m. pierce, to the finish. do this, and i'll back you with the whole certina income. come on, now, boyee. be sensible." hal's reply came without hesitation. "i'm sorry, dad: but i can't do it. i've told you i'd stand or fall on what you've already given me. if i can't pull through on that, i can't pull through at all. let's understand each other once and for all, dad. i've got to try this thing out to the end. and i won't ask or take one cent from you or any one else, win or lose." "all right, boyee," returned his father sorrowfully. "you're wrong, dead wrong. but i like your nerve. only, let me tell you this. you think you're going to keep on printing the news and the whole news and all that sort of thing. i tell you, it can't be done." "why can't it be done?" "because, sooner or later, you'll bump up against your own interests so hard that you'll have to quit." "i don't see that at all, sir." "no, you don't. but one of these days something in the news line will come up that'll hit you right between the eyes, if ever it gets into print. then see what you'll do." "i'll print it." "no, you won't, boyee. human nature ain't built that way. you'll smother it, and be glad you've got the power to." "dad, you believe i'm honest, don't you?" "too blamed honest in some ways." "but you'd take my word?" "oh, that! yes. for anything." "then i put my honor on this. if ever the time comes that i have to suppress legitimate news to protect or aid my own interests, i'll own up i'm beaten: i'll quit fighting, and i'll make the 'clarion' a very sucking dove of journalism. is that plain?" "shake, boyee. you've bought a horse. just the same, i hate to let up on pierce. sure you won't let me hire a new york lawyer for the libel suit?" "no. thank you just as much, dad. that's a 'clarion' fight, and the 'clarion's money has got to back it." it was the gist of this decision which, some days later, had reached e.m. pierce, and caused him such satisfaction. with the "clarion" depending upon its own resources, unbacked by the great reserve wealth of certina's proprietor, he confidently expected to wreck it and force its suspension by an overwhelming verdict of damages. for, as dr. surtaine had surmised, he held a card up his sleeve. chapter xx the lesser tempting seven days of the week did mr. harrington surtaine labor, without by any means doing all his work. for to the toil which goes to the making of many newspapers there is no end; only ever a fresh beginning. had he brought to the enterprise a less eager appetite for the changeful adventure of it, the unremitting demand must soon have dulled his spirit. abounding vitality he possessed, but even this flagged at times. one soft spring sunday, while the various campaigns of the newspaper were still in mid-conflict, he decided to treat himself to a day off. so, after a luxurious morning in bed, he embarked in his runabout for an exploration around the adjacent country. having filled his lungs with two hours of swift air, he lunched, none too delicately, at a village fifty miles distant, and, on coming out of the hotel, was warned by a sky shaded from blue to the murkiest gray, into having the top of his car put up. the rain chased him for thirty miles and whelmed him in a wild swirl at the thirty-first. driving through this with some caution, he saw ahead of him a woman's figure, as supple as a willow withe, as gallant as a ship, beating through the fury of the elements. hal slowed down, debating whether to offer conveyance, when he caught a glint of ruddy waves beneath the drenched hat, and the next instant he was out and looking into the flushed face and dancing eyes of milly neal. "what on earth are you doing here?" he cried. "can't you see?" she retorted merrily. "i'm a fish." "you need to be. get in. you're soaked to the skin," he continued, dismayed, as she began to shiver under the wrappings he drew around her. "never mind. i'll have you home in a few minutes." but the demon of mischance was abroad in the storm. before they had covered half a mile the rear tire went. milly was now shaking dismally, for all her brave attempts to conceal it. a few rods away a sign announced "markby's road-house." concerned solely to get the girl into a warm and dry place, hal turned in, bundled her out, ordered a private room with a fireplace, and induced the proprietor's wife by the persuasions of a ten-dollar bill to provide a change of clothing for the outer, and hot drinks for the inner, woman. half an hour later when he had affixed a new tire to the wheel, he and milly sat, warmed and comforted before blazing logs, waiting for her clothes to dry out. "i know i look a fright," she mourned. "that mrs. markby must buy her dresses by the pound." she gazed at him comically from above a quaint and nondescript garment, to which she had given a certain daintiness with a cleverly placed ribbon or two and an adroit use of pins. privately, hal considered that she looked delightfully pretty, with her provocative eyes and the deep gleam of red in her hair like flame seen through smoke. "do you often go out wading, ten miles from home?" he asked. "not very. i was running away." "i didn't see any one in pursuit." "they knew too much." her firm little chin set rather grimly. "do you want to hear about it?" "yes. i'm curious," confessed hal. "i went to lunch with another girl and a couple of drummers, out at callender's pond hotel. she said she knew the men and they were all right. they weren't. they got too fresh altogether. so i told florence she could do as she pleased, but i was for home and the trolley. i guess i could have made it with a life-preserver," she laughed. hal was surprisedly conscious of a rasp of anger within him. "you ought not to put yourself into such a position," he declared. she threw him a covert glance from the corner of her sparkling eyes. "oh, i guess i can take care of myself," she decided calmly. "i always have. when fresh drummers begin to talk private dining-room and cold bottles, i spread my little wings and flit." "to another private room," mocked hal. "aren't you afraid?" "with you? you're different." there sounded in her voice the purring note of utter content which is the subtlest because the most unconscious flattery of womankind. a silence fell between them. hal stared into the fire. "are you warm enough?" he asked presently. "yes." "do you want something to eat? or drink? what did you have to drink?" he added, glancing at the empty glass on the table. "certina." "certina?" he queried, uncertain at first whether she was joking. "how could you get certina here?" "why not? they keep it at all these places. there's quite a bar-trade in it." "is that so?" said hal, with a vague feeling of disturbance of ideas. "which job do you like best: the certina or the newspaper, miss neal?" "my other boss calls me milly," she suggested. "very well,--milly, then." "oh, i'm for the office. it's more exciting, a lot." "your stuff," said hal, in the language of the cult, "is catching on." "you don't like it, though," she countered quickly. "yes, i do. much better than i did, anyway. but the point is that it's a success. editorially i _have_ to like it." "i'd rather you liked it personally." "some of it i do. the 'lunch-time chats'--" "and some of it you think is vulgar." "one has to suit one's style to the matter," propounded hal. "'kitty the cutie' isn't supposed to be a college professor." "i hate to have you think me vulgar," she insisted. "oh, come!" he protested; "that isn't fair. i don't think _you_ vulgar, milly." "i like to have you call me milly," she said. "it seems quite natural to," he answered lightly. "i've thought sometimes i'd like to try my hand at a regular news story," she went on, in a changed tone. "i think i've got one, if i could only do it right; one of those facts-behind-the-news stories that you talked to us about. do you remember meeting me with max veltman the other night?" "yes." "did you think it was queer?" "a little." "a girl i used to know back in the country tried to kill herself. she wrote me a letter, but it didn't get to me till after midnight, so i called up max and got him to go with me down to the rookeries district where she lives. poor little maggie! she got caught in one of those sewing-girl traps." "some kind of machinery?" "machinery? you don't know much about what goes on in your town, do you?" "not as much as an editor ought to know--which is everything." "i'll bring you maggie's letter. that tells it better than i can. and i want to write it up, too. let me write it up for the paper." she leaned forward and her eyes besought him. "i want to prove i can do something besides being a vulgar little 'kitty the cutie.'" "oh, my dear," he said, half paternally, but only half, "i'm sorry i hurt you with that word." "you didn't mean to." her smile forgave him. "maggie's story means another fight for the paper. can we stand another?" he warmed to the possessive "we." "so you know about our warfare," he said. "more than you think, perhaps. the books you gave me aren't the only things i study. i study the 'clarion,' too." "why?" he asked, interested. "because it's yours." she looked at him straightly now. "can you pull it through, boss?" "i think so. i hope so." "we've lost a lot of ads. i can reckon that up, because i had some experience in the advertising department of the certina shop, and i know rates." she pursed her lips with a dainty effect of careful computation. "somewhere about four thousand a week out, isn't it?" "four thousand, three hundred and seventy in store business last week." the talk settled down and confined itself to the financial and editorial policies of the paper, milly asking a hundred eager and shrewd questions, now and again proffering some tentative counsel or caution. impersonal though it seemed, through it hal felt a growing tensity of intercourse; a sense of pregnant and perilous intimacy drawing them together. "since you're taking such an interest, i might get you to help mr. ellis run the paper when i go away," he suggested jocularly. "you're not going away?" the query came in a sort of gasp. "next week." "for long?" her hand, as if in protest against the dreaded answer, went out to the arm of his chair. his own met and covered it reassuringly. "not very. it's the new press." "we're going to have a new press?" "hadn't you heard? you seem to know so much about the office. we're going to build up the basement and set the press just inside the front wall and then cut a big window through so that the world and his wife can see the 'clarion' in the very act of making them better." both fell silent. their hands still clung. their eyes were fixed upon the fire. suddenly a log, half-consumed, crashed down, sending abroad a shower of sparks. the girl darted swiftly up to stamp out a tiny flame at her feet. standing, she half turned toward hal. "where are you going?" she asked. "to new york." "take me with you." so quietly had the crisis come that he scarcely realized it. for a measured space of heart-beats he gazed into the fireplace. as he stared, she slipped to the arm of his chair. he felt the alluring warmth of her body against his shoulder. then he would have turned to search her eyes, but, divining him, she denied, pressing her cheek close against his own. "no; no! don't look at me," she breathed. "you don't know what you mean," he whispered. "i do! i'm not a child. take me with you." "it means ruin for you." "ruin! that's a word! words don't frighten me." "they do me. they're the most terrible things in the world." she laughed at that. "is it the word you're afraid of, or is it me?" she challenged. "i'm not asking you anything. i don't want you to marry me. oh!" she cried with a sinking break of the voice, "do you think i'm _bad_?" freeing himself, he caught her face between his hands. "are you--have you been 'bad,' as you call it?" "i don't blame you for asking--after what i've said. but i haven't." "and now?" "now, i care. i never cared before. it was that, i suppose, kept me straight. don't you care for me--a little, hal?" he rose and strode to the window. when he turned from his long look out into the burgeoning spring she was standing silent, expectant. like stone she stood as he came back, but her arms went up to receive him. her lips melted into his, and the fire of her face flashed through every vein. "and afterward?" he said hoarsely. there was triumph in her answering laughter, passion-shaken though it was. "then you'll take me with you." "but afterward?" he repeated. lingeringly she released herself. "let that take care of itself. i don't care for afterward. we're free, you and i. what's to hinder us from doing as we please? who's going to be any the worse for it? oh, i told you i was lawless. it's the hardscrabbler blood in me, i guess." deep in hal's memory a response to that name stirred. "somewhere," he said, "i have run across a hardscrabbler before." "me. but you've forgotten." "have i? let me see. it was in the old days when dad and i were traveling. you were the child with the wonderful red hair, the night i was hurt. _were_ you?" "and next day i tried to bite you because you wanted to play with a prettier little girl in beautiful clothes." esmé! the electric spark of thought leaped the long space of years from the child, esmé, to the girl, in the vain love of whom he had eaten his heart hollow. for the moment, passion for the vivid woman-creature before him had dulled that profounder feeling almost to obliteration. perhaps--so the thought came to him--he might find forgetfulness, anodyne in milly neal's arms. but what of milly, taken on such poor terms? the bitter love within him gave answer. not loyalty to esmé elliot whom he knew unworthy, but to milly herself, bound him to honor and restraint; so strangely does the human soul make its dim and perilous way through the maze of motives. even though the girl, now questing his face with puzzled, frightened eyes, asked nothing but to belong to him; demanded no bond of fealty or troth, held him free as she held herself free, content with the immediate happiness of a relation that, must end in sorrow for one or the other, yet he could not take what she so prodigally, so gallantly proffered, with the image of another woman smiling through his every thought. that, indeed, were to be unworthy, not of esmé, not of himself, but of milly. he made a step toward her, and her glad hands went out to him again. very gently he took them; very gently he bent and kissed her cheek. "that's for good-bye," he said. the voice in which he spoke seemed alien to his ears, so calm it was, so at variance with his inner turmoil. "you won't take me with you?" "no." "you promised." "i know." he was not concerned now with verbal differentiations. truly, he had promised, wordlessly though it had been. "but i can't." "you don't care?" she said piteously. "i care very much. if i cared less--" "there's some other woman." "yes." flame leaped in her eyes. "i hope she poisons your life." "i hope i haven't poisoned yours," he returned, lamely enough. "oh, i'll manage to live on," she gibed. "i guess there are other men in the world besides you." "don't make it too hard, milly." "you're pitying me! don't you dare pity me!" a sob rose, and burst from her. then abruptly she seized command over herself. "what does it all matter?" she said. "go away now and let me change my clothes." "are they dry?" "i don't care whether they're dry or not. i don't care what becomes of me now." all the sullen revolt of generations of lawlessness was vocal in her words. "you wait and see!" somehow hal got out of the room, his mind awhirl, to await her downstairs. in a few moments she came, and with eyes somberly averted got into the runabout without a word. as they swung into the road, they met mcguire ellis and wayne, who bowed with a look of irrepressible surprise. during the ride homeward hal made several essays at conversation. but the girl sat frozen in a white silence. only when they pulled up at her door did she speak. "i'm going to try to forget this," she said in a dry, hard voice. "you do the same. i won't quit my job unless you want me to." "don't," said hal. "but you won't be bothered with seeing me any more. i'll send you maggie breen's letter and the story. i guess i understand a little better now how she felt when she took the poison." with that rankling in his brain, hal surtaine sat and pondered in his private study at home. his musings arraigned before him for judgment and contrast the two women who had so stormily wrought upon his new life. esmé elliot had played with his love, had exploited it, made of it a tinsel ornament for vanity, sought, through it, to corrupt him from the hard-won honor of his calling. she had given him her lips for a lure; she had played, soul and body, the petty cheat with a high and ennobling passion. yet, because she played within the rules by the world's measure, there was no stain upon her honor. by that same measure, what of milly neal? in her was no trickery of sex; only the ungrudging, wide-armed offer of all her womanhood, reckless of aught else but love. debating within himself the phrase, "an honest woman," hal laughed aloud. his laughter lacked much of being mirthful, and something of being just. for he had reckoned two daughters of eve by the same standard, which is perhaps the oldest and most disastrous error hereditary to all the sons of adam. chapter xxi the power of print hal paid thirty-two thousand dollars for the new press. it was a delicate giant of mechanism, able not only to act, but also to think with stupendous accuracy and swiftness; lacking only articulate speech to be wholly superhuman. but in signing the check for it, hal, for the first time in his luxurious life experienced a financial qualm. always before there had been an inexhaustible source wherefrom to draw. now that he had issued his declaration of pecuniary independence, he began to appreciate the perishable nature of money. he came back from his week's journey to new york feeling distinctly poorer. moreover there was an uncomfortable paradox connected with his purchase. that he should be put to so severe an expenditure merely for the purpose of incurring an increased current expense, struck him as a rather sardonic joke. yet so it was. circulation does not mean direct profit to a newspaper. on the contrary, it implies loss in many cases. for some weeks it had been costing the "clarion," to print the extra papers necessitated by the increased demand, more than the money received from their sale. until the status of the journal should justify a higher advertising charge, every added paper sold would involve a loss. true, an augmented circulation logically commands a higher advertising rate; it is thus that a newspaper reaps its harvest; and soon hal hoped to be able to raise his advertising rate from fifteen to twenty-five cents a line. at that return his books would show a profit on a normal volume of advertising. meantime he performed an act of involuntary philanthropy with every increase of issue, nevertheless, hal felt for his mechanical giant something of the new-toy thrill. to him it was a symbol of productive power. it made appeal to his imagination, typifying the reborn "clarion." he saw it as a master-loom weaving fresh patterns, day by day, into the fabric of the city's life and thought. that all might view the process, he had it mounted high from the basement, behind a broad plate-glass show window set in the front wall, a highly unstrategic position, as mcguire ellis pointed out. "suppose," said he, "a horse runs wild and makes a dive through that window? or a couple of bums get shooting at each other, and a stray bullet comes whiffling through the glass and catches young mr. press in his delikit insides. we're out of business for a week, maybe, mending him up." shearson, however, was in favor of it. it suggested prosperity and aroused public interest. on hal's return from new york, the fat and melancholious advertising manager had exhibited a somewhat mollified pessimism. "the boston store is coming back," he visited hal's sanctum to announce. "why, that's john m. gibbs's store, isn't it?" "sure." "and he's e.m. pierce's brother-in-law. i thought he'd stick by his family in fighting the 'clarion.'" "family is all right, but grinder gibbs is for business first and everything else afterwards. our rates look good to him, with the circulation we're showing. and he knows we bring results. he's been using us on the quiet for a little side issue of his own." "what's that?" "some sewing-girls' employment thing. it's in the 'classified' department. don't amount to much; but it's proved to him that the 'clarion' ad does the business. i've been on his trail for two weeks. so the store starts in sunday with half-pages. they say pierce is crazy mad." "no wonder." "the best of it is that now the retail union won't fight us, as a body, for taking up the consumers' league fight. they can't very well, with their second biggest store using the 'clarion's columns." mcguire ellis, too, was feeling quite cheerful over the matter. "it shows that you can be independent and get away with it," he declared, "if you get out an interesting enough paper. by the way, that's a hot little story 'kitty the cutie' turned in on the breen girl's suicide." "it was only attempted suicide, wasn't it?" "the first time. she had a second trial at it day before yesterday and turned the trick. you'll find neal's copy on your desk. i held it for you." from out of a waiting heap of mail, proof, and manuscript, hal selected the sheets covered with milly neal's neat business chirography. she had written her account briefly and with restraint, building her "story" around the girl's letter. it set forth the tragedy of a petty swindle. the scheme was as simple as it was cruel. a concern calling itself "the sewing aid association" advertised for sewing-women, offering from ten to fifteen dollars a week to workers; experience not necessary. maggie breen answered the advertisement. the manager explained to her that the job was making children's underclothing from pattern. she would be required to come daily to the factory and sew on a machine which she would purchase from the company, the price, thirty dollars, being reckoned as her first three weeks' wages. to all this, duly set forth in a specious contract, the girl affixed her signature. she was set to work at once. the labor was hard, the forewoman a driver, but ten dollars a week is good pay. hoping for a possible raise maggie turned out more garments than any of her fellow workers. for two weeks and a half all went well. in another few days the machine would be paid for, the money would begin to come in, and maggie would get a really square meal, which she had come to long for with a persistent and severe hankering. then the trap was sprung. maggie's work was found "unsatisfactory." she was summarily discharged. in vain did she protest. she would try again; she would do better. no use; "the house" found her garments unmarketable. sorrowfully she asked for her money. no money was due her. again she protested. the manager thrust a copy of her contract under her nose and turned her into the street. thus the "sewing aid association" had realized upon fifteen days' labor for which they had not paid one cent, and the "installment" sewing-machine was ready for its next victim. this is a very pleasant and profitable policy and is in use, in one form or another, in nearly every american city. proof of which the sufficiently discerning eye may find in the advertising columns of many of our leading newspapers and magazines. to maggie breen it was small consolation that she was but one of many. even her simple mind grasped the "joker" in the contract. she tore up that precious document, went home, reflected that she was rather hungry and likely to be hungrier, quite wretched and likely to be wretcheder; and so made a decoction of sulphur matches and drank it. an ambulance surgeon disobligingly arrived in time to save her life for once; but the second time she borrowed some carbolic acid, which is more expeditious than any ambulance surgeon. this was the story which "kitty the cutie," while sticking close to the facts, had contrived to inform with a woman's wrath and a woman's pity. reading it, hal took fire. he determined to back it up with an editorial. but first he would look into the matter for himself. with this end in view he set out for number 65 sperry street, where maggie breen's younger sister and bedridden mother lived. it was his maiden essay at reporting. sperry street shocked hal. he could not have conceived that a carefully regulated and well-kept city such as worthington (he knew it, be it remembered, chiefly from above the wheels of an automobile) would permit such a slum to exist. on either side of the street, gaunt wooden barracks, fire-traps at a glance, reared themselves five rackety stories upward, for the length of a block. across intersecting grant street the sky-line dropped a few yards, showing ragged through the metal cornice and sickly brick chimneys of a tenement row only a degree less forbidding than the first. the street itself was a mere refuse patch smeared out over bumpy cobbles. the visitor entered the tenement at 65, between reeking barrels which had waited overlong for the garbage cart. he was received without question, as a reporter for the "clarion." at first sadie breen, anæmic, hopeless-eyed, timorous, was reluctant to speak. but the mother proved hal's ally. "let 'im put it in the paper," she exhorted. "maybe it'll keep some other girl away from them sharks." "why didn't your sister sue the company?" asked hal. "where'd we get the money for a lawyer?" whined sadie. "it's no use, anyway," said mrs. breen. "they've tried it in municipal court. the sharks always wins. somebody ought to shoot that manager," she added fiercely. "yes; that's great to say," jeered sadie, in a whine. "but look what happened to that mason girl from hoppers hollow. she hit at him with a pair of scissors, an' they sent her up for a year." "better that than cissy green's way. you know what become of her. went on the street," explained mrs. breen to hal. they poured out story after story of poor women entrapped by one or another of those lures which wring the final drop of blood from the bleakest poverty. in the midst of the recital there was a knock at the door, and a tall young man in black entered. he at once introduced himself to hal as the reverend norman hale, and went into conference with the two women about a place for sadie. this being settled, hal's mission was explained to him. "a reporter?" said the reverend norman. "i wish the papers _would_ take this thing up. a little publicity would kill it off, i believe." "won't the courts do anything?" "they can't. i've talked to the judge. the concern's contract is water-tight." the two young men went down together through the black hallways, and stood talking at the outer door. "how do people live in places like this?" exclaimed hal. "not very successfully. the death-rate is pretty high. particularly of late. there's what a friend of mine around the corner--he happens to be a barkeeper, by the way--calls a lively trade in funerals around here." "is your church in this district?" "my club is. people call it a mission, but i don't like the word. it's got too much the flavor of reaching down from above to dispense condescending charity." "charity certainly seems to be needed here." "help and decent fairness are needed; not charity. what's your paper, by the way?" "the 'clarion.'" "oh!" said the other, in an altered tone. "i shouldn't suppose that the 'clarion' would go in much for any kind of reform." "do you read it?" "no. but i know dr. surtaine." "dr. surtaine doesn't own the 'clarion.' i do." "you're harrington surtaine? i thought i had seen you somewhere before. but you said you were a reporter." "pardon me, i didn't. mrs. breen said that. however, it's true; i'm doing a bit of reporting on this case. and i'm going to do some writing on it before i'm through." "as for dr. surtaine--" began the young clergyman, then checked himself, pondering. what further he might have had to say was cut off by a startling occurrence. a door on the floor above opened; there was a swift patter of feet, and then from overhead, a long-drawn, terrible cry. immediately a young girl, her shawl drawn about her face, ran from the darkness into the half-light of the lower hall and would have passed between them but that norman hale caught her by the arm. "lemme go! lemme go!" she shrieked, pawing at him. "quiet," he bade her. "what is it, emily?" "oh, mr. hale!" she cried, recognizing him and clutching at his shoulder. "don't let it get me!" "nothing's going to hurt you. tell me about it." "it's the death," she shuddered. the man's face changed. "here?" he said. "in this block?" "don't you go," she besought. "don't you go, mr. hale. you'll get it." "where is it? answer me at once." "first-floor front," sobbed the girl. "mrs. schwarz." "don't wait for me," said the minister to hal. "in fact you'd better leave the place. good-day." thus abruptly discarded from consideration, hal turned to the fugitive. "is some one dead?" "not yet." "dying, then?" "as good as. it's the death," said the girl with a strong shudder. "you said that before. what do you mean by the death?" "don't keep me here talkin'," she shivered. "i wanta go home." hal walked along with her, wondering. "i wish you would tell me," he said gently. "all i know is, they never get well." "what sort of sickness is it?" "search me." the petty slang made a grim medium for the uncertainty of terror which it sought to express. "they've had it over in the rookeries since winter. there ain't no name for it. they just call it the death." "the rookeries?" said hal, caught by the word. "where are they?" "don't you know the rookeries?" the girl pointed to the long double row of grisly wooden edifices down the street. "them's sadler's shacks on this side, and tammany barracks on the other. they go all the way around the block." "you say the sickness has been in there?" "yes. now it's broken out an' we'll all get it an' die," she wailed. a little, squat, dark man hurried past them. he nodded, but did not pause. "i know him," said hal. "who is he?" "doc de vito. he tends to all the cases. but it's no good. they all die." "you keep your head," advised hal. "don't be scared. and wash your hands and face thoroughly as soon as you get home." "a lot o' good that'll do against the death," she said scornfully, and left him. back at the office, hal, settling down to write his editorial, put the matter of the rookeries temporarily out of mind, but made a note to question his father about it. milly neal's article, touched up and amplified by hal's pen, appeared the following morning. the editorial was to be a follow-up in the next day's paper. coming down early to put the finishing touches to this, hal found the article torn out and pasted on a sheet of paper. across the top of the paper was written in pencil: "_clipped from the clarion; a deadly parallel_." the penciled legend ran across the sheet to include, under its caption a second excerpt, also in "clarion" print, but of the advertisement style: wanted--sewing-girls for simple machine work. experience not necessary. $10 to $15 a week guaranteed. apply in person at 14 manning street. the sewing aid association. below, in the same hand writing was the query: "_what's your percentage of the blood-money, mr. harrington surtaine?"_ hal threw it over to ellis. "whose writing is that?" he asked. "it looks familiar to me." "max veltman's," said ellis. he took in the meaning of it. "the insolent whelp!" he said. "insolent? yes; he's that. but the worst of it is, i'm afraid he's right." and he telephoned for shearson. the advertising manager came up, puffing. hal held out the clipping to him. "how long has that been running?" "on and off for six months." "throw it out." "throw it out!" repeated the other bitterly. "that's easy enough said." "and easily enough done." "it's out already. taken out by early notice this morning." "that's all right, then." "_is_ it all right!" boomed shearson. "_is_ it! you won't think so when you hear the rest of it." "try me." "do you know _who_ the sewing aid association is?" "no." "it's john m. gibbs! that's who it is!" "yell louder, shearson. it may save you from apoplexy," advised mcguire ellis with tender solicitude. "and we lose every line of the boston store advertising, that i worked so hard to get back." "that'll hurt," allowed ellis. "hurt! it draws blood, that does. that sewing aid association is gibbs's scheme to supply the children's department of his store. why couldn't you find out who you were hitting, mr. surtaine?" demanded shearson pathetically, "before you went and mucksed everything up this way? see what comes of all this reform guff." "are you sure that john m. gibbs is back of that sewing-girl ad?" "sure? didn't he call me up this morning and raise the devil?" "thank you, mr. shearson. that's all." to his editorial galley-proof hal added two lines. "what's that, mr. surtaine?" asked the advertising manager curiously. "that's outside of your department. but since you ask, i'll tell you. it's an editorial on the kind of swindle that causes tragedies like maggie breen's. and the sentence which i have just added, thanks to you, is this: "'the proprietor of this scheme which drives penniless women to the street or to suicide is john m. gibbs, principal owner of the boston store.'" words failed shearson; also motive power, almost. for reckonable seconds he stood stricken. then slowly he got under way and rolled through the door. once, on the stairs, they heard from him a protracted rumbling groan. "ruin," was the one distinguishable word. it left an echo in hal's brain, an echo which rang hollowly amongst misgivings. "_is_ it ruin to try and run a newspaper without taking a percentage of that kind of profits, mac?" he asked. "well, a newspaper can't be too squeamish about its ads." was the cautious answer. "do all newspapers carry that kind of stuff?" "not quite. most of them, though. they need the money." "what's the matter with business in this town? everything seems to be rotten." ellis took refuge in a proverb. "business is business," he stated succinctly. "and it's as bad everywhere as here? this is all new to me, you know. i rather expected to find every concern as decently and humanly run as certina." one swift, suspicious glance ellis cast upon his superior, but hal's face was candor itself. "well, no," he admitted. "perhaps it isn't as bad in some cities. the trouble here is that all the papers are terrorized or bribed into silence. until we began hitting out with our little shillalah, nobody had ever dared venture a peep of disapproval. so, business got to thinking it could do as it pleased. you can't really blame business much. immunity from criticism isn't ever good for the well-known human race." hal took the matter of the "sewing aid" swindle home with him for consideration. hitherto he had considered advertising only as it affected or influenced news. now he began to see it in another light, as a factor in itself of immense moral moment and responsibility. it was dimly outlined to his conscience that, as a partner in the profit, he became also a partner in the enterprise. thus he faced the question of the honesty or dishonesty of the advertising in his paper. and this is a question fraught with financial portent for the honorable journalist. chapter xxii patriots worthington's old home week is a gay, gaudy, and profitable institution. during the six days of its course the city habitually maintains the atmosphere of a three-ringed circus, the bustle of a county fair, and the business ethics of the bowery. allured by widespread advertising and encouraged by special rates on the railroads, the countryside for a radius of one hundred miles pours its inhabitants into the local metropolis, their pockets filled with greased dollars. upon them worthington lavishes its left-over and shelf-cluttering merchandise, at fifty per cent more than its value, amidst general rejoicings. as festus willard once put it, "there is a sound of revelry by night and larceny by day." but then mr. willard, being a manufacturer and not a retailer, lacks the subtler sympathy which makes lovely the spirit of old home hospitality. this year the celebration was to outdo itself. because of the centennial feature, no less a person than the president of the united states, who had spent a year of his boyhood at a local school, was pledged to attend. in itself this meant a record crowd. crops had been good locally and the toil-worn agriculturist had surplus money wherewith to purchase phonographs, gold teeth, crayon enlargements of self and family, home instruction outfits for hand-painting sofa cushions, and similar prime necessities of farm life. to transform his static savings into dynamic assets for itself was worthington's basic purpose in holding its gala week. and now this beneficent plan was threatened by one individual, and he young, inexperienced, and a new worthingtonian, mr. harrington surtaine. this unforeseen cloud upon the horizon of peace, prosperity, and happiness rose into the ken of dr. surtaine the day after the appearance of the sewing-girl editorial. dr. surtaine hadn't liked that editorial. with his customary air of long-suffering good nature he had told hal so over his home-made apple pie and rich milk, at the cheap and clean little luncheon place which he patronized. hal had no defense or excuse to offer. indeed, his reference to the topic was of the most casual order and was immediately followed by this disconcerting question: "what about the rookeries epidemic, dad?" "epidemic? there's no epidemic, boyee." "well, there's something. people are dying down there faster than they ought to. it's spread beyond the rookeries now." this was no news to the big doctor. but it was news to him that hal knew it. "how do you know?" he asked. "i've been down there and ran right upon it." the father's affection and alarm outleapt his caution at this. "you better keep away from there, boyee," he warned anxiously. "if there's no epidemic, why should i keep away?" "there's always a lot of infection down in those tenements," said dr. surtaine lamely. "dad, when you made your report for the 'clarion' did you tell us all you knew?" "all except some medical technicalities," said the doctor, who never told a lie when a half-lie would serve. "i've just had a talk with the health officer, dr. merritt." "merritt's an alarmist." "he's alarmed this time, certainly." "what does he think it is?" "it?" said hal, a trifle maliciously. "the epidemic?" "epidemic's a big word. the sickness." "how can he tell? he's had no chance to see the cases. they still mysteriously disappear before he can get to them. by the way, your dr. de vito seems to have a hand in that." "hal, i wish you'd get over your trick of seeing a mystery in everything," said his father with a mild and tempered melancholy. "it's a queer slant to your brain." "there's a queer slant to this business of the rookeries somewhere, but i don't think it's in my brain. merritt says the mayor is holding him off, and he believes that tip o'farrell, agent for the rookeries, has got the mayor's ear. he wants to force the issue by quarantining the whole locality." "and advertise to the world that there's some sort of contagion there!" cried dr. surtaine in dismay. "well, if there is--" "think of old home week," adjured his father. "the whole thing would be stamped out long before then." "but not the panic and the fear of it. hal, i do hope you aren't going to take this up in the 'clarion.'" "not at present. there isn't enough to go on. but we're going to watch, and if things get any worse i intend to do something. so much i've promised merritt." the result of this conversation was that dr. surtaine called a special meeting of the committee on arrangements for old home week. in conformity with the laws of its genus, the committee was made up of the representative business men of the city, with a clergyman or two for compliment to the church, and most of the newspaper owners or editors, to enlist the "services of the press." its chairman was thoroughly typical of the mental and ethical attitude of the committee. he felt comfortably assured that as he thought upon any question of local public import, so would they think. nevertheless, he didn't intend to tell them all he knew. such was not the purpose of the meeting. its real purpose, not to put too fine a point on it, was to intimidate the newspapers, lest, if the "clarion" broke the politic silence, others might follow; and, as a secondary step, to furnish funds for the handling of the rookeries situation. since dr. surtaine designed to reveal as little as possible to his colleagues, he naturally began his speech with the statement that he would be perfectly frank with them. "there's more sickness than there ought to be in the rookeries district," he proceeded. "it isn't dangerous, but it may prove obstinate. some sort of malarious affection, apparently. perhaps it may be necessary to do some cleaning up down there. in that case, money may be needed." "how much?" somebody asked. "five thousand dollars ought to do it." "that's a considerable sum," another pointed out. "and this is a serious matter," retorted the chairman. "many of us remember the disastrous effect that rumors of smallpox had on old home week, some years back. we can't afford to have anything of that sort this time. an epidemic scare might ruin the whole show." now, an epidemic to these hard-headed business men was something that kept people away from their stores. and the rumor of an epidemic might accomplish that as thoroughly as the epidemic itself. therefore, without questioning too far, they were quite willing to spend money to avert such disaster. the sum suggested was voted into the hands of a committee of three to be appointed by the chair. "in the mean time," continued dr. surtaine, "i think we should go on record to the effect that any newspaper which shall publish or any individual who shall circulate any report calculated to inspire distrust or alarm is hostile to the best interests of the city." "well, what newspaper is likely to do that?" demanded leroy vane, of the "banner." "if it's any it'll be the 'clarion,'" growled colonel parker, editor of the "telegram." "the newspaper business in this town is going to the dogs since the 'clarion' changed hands," said carney ford, of the "press," savagely. "nobody can tell what they're going to do next over there. they're keeping the decent papers on the jump all the time, with their yellowness and scarehead muckraking." "a big sensational story about an epidemic would be great meat for the 'clarion,'" said vane. "what does it care for the best interests of the town?" "as an editor," observed dr. surtaine blandly, "my son don't appear to be over-popular with his confrères." "why should he be?" cried parker. "he's forever publishing stuff that we've always let alone. then the public wants to know why we don't get the news. get it? of course we get it. but we don't always want to print it. there's such a thing as a gentleman's understanding in the newspaper business." "so i've heard," replied the chairman. "well, gentlemen, the boy's young. give him time." "i'll give him six months, not longer, to go on the way he's been going," said john m. gibbs, with a vicious snap of his teeth. "does the 'clarion' really intend to publish anything about an epidemic?" asked stickler, of the hotel stickler. "nothing is decided yet, so far as i know. but i may safely say that there's a probability of their getting up some kind of a sensational story." "can't you control your own son?" asked some one bluntly. "understand this, if you please, gentlemen. over the worthington 'clarion' i have no control whatsoever." "well, there's where the danger lies," said vane. "if the 'clarion' comes out with a big story, the rest of us have got to publish something to save our face." "what's to be done, then?" cried stickler. "this means a big loss to the hotel business." "to all of us," amended the chairman. "my suggestion is that our special committee be empowered to wait upon the editor of the 'clarion' and talk the matter over with him." embodied in the form of a motion this was passed, and the chair appointed as that committee three merchants, all of whom were members of the publication committee of the retail union; and, as such, exercised the most powerful advertising control in worthington. dr. surtaine still pinned his hopes to the dollar and its editorial potency. unofficially and privately these men invited to go with them to the "clarion" office elias m. pierce, who had not been at the meeting. at first he angrily refused. he wished to meet that young whelp surtaine nowhere but in a court of law, he announced. but after bertram hollenbeck, of the emporium, the chairman of the subcommittee, had outlined his plan, pierce took a night to think it over, and in the morning accepted the invitation with a grim smile. forewarned by his father, who had begged that he consider carefully and with due regard to his own future the proposals to be set before him, hal was ready to receive the deputation in form. pierce's presence surprised him. he greeted all four men with equally punctilious politeness, however, and gave courteous attention while hollenbeck spoke for his colleagues. the merchant explained the purpose of the visit; set forth the importance to the city of the centennial old home week, and urged the inadvisability of any sensationalism which might alarm the public. "we have sufficient assurance that there's nothing dangerous in the present situation," he said. "i haven't," said hal. "if i had, there would be nothing further to be said. the 'clarion' is not seeking to manufacture a sensation." "what is the 'clarion' seeking to do?" asked stensland, another of the committee. "discover and print the news." "well, it isn't news until it's printed," hollenbeck pointed out comfortably. "and what's the use of printing that sort of thing, anyway? it does a lot of people a lot of harm; but i don't see how it can possibly do any one any good." "oh, put things straight," said stensland. "here, mr. editor; you've stirred up a lot of trouble and lost a lot of advertising by it. now, you start an epidemic scare and kill off the biggest retail business of the year, and you won't find an advertiser in town to stand by you. is that plain?" "plain coercion," said hal. "call it what you like," began the apostle of frankness, when hollenbeck cut in on him. "no use getting excited," he said. "let's hear mr. surtaine's views. what do you think ought to be done about the rookeries?" in anticipation of some such question hal had been in consultation with dr. elliot and the health officer that morning. "open up the rookeries to the health authorities and to private physicians other than dr. de vito. call tip o'farrell's blockade off. clean out and disinfect the tenements. if necessary, quarantine every building that's suspected." "why, what do you think the disease is?" cried hollenbeck, taken aback by the positiveness of hal's speech. "do _you_ tell _me_. you've come here to give directions." "something in the nature of malaria," said hollenbeck, recovering himself. "so there's no call for extreme measures. the old home week committee will look after the cleaning-up. as for quarantine, that would be a confession. and we want to do the thing as quietly as possible." "you've come to the wrong shop to buy quiet," said hal mildly. "now listen to _me_." elias m. pierce sat forward in his chair and fixed his stony gaze on hal's face. "this is what you'll do with the 'clarion.' you'll agree here and now to print nothing about this alleged epidemic." hal turned upon him a silent but benign regard. the recollection of that contained smile lent an acid edge to the magnate's next speech. "you will further promise," continued pierce, "to quit all your muckraking of the business interests and business men of this town." still hal smiled. "and you will publish to-morrow a full retraction of the article about my daughter and an ample apology for the attack upon me." the editorial expression did not change. "on those conditions," pierce concluded, "i will withdraw the criminal proceedings against you, but not the civil suit. the indictment will be handed down to-morrow." "i'm ready for it." "are you ready for this? we have two unbiased witnesses--unbiased, mind you--who will swear that the accident was miss cleary's own fault. and--" there was the hint of an evil smile on the thin lips, as they released the final words very slowly--"and miss cleary's own affidavit to that effect." for the moment the words seemed a jumble to hal. meaning, dire and disastrous, informed them, as he repeated them to himself. providentially his telephone rang, giving him an excuse to go out. he hurried over to mcguire ellis. "i'm afraid it's right, boss," said the associate editor, after hearing hal's report. "but how can it be? i saw the whole thing." "e.m. pierce is rich. the nurse is poor. that is, she has been poor. lately i've had a man keeping tabs on her. since leaving the hospital, she's moved into an expensive flat, and has splurged out into good clothes. whence the wherewithal?" "bribery!" "without a doubt." "then pierce has got us." "it looks so," admitted ellis sorrowfully. "but we can't give in," groaned hal. "it means the end of the 'clarion.' what is there to do?" "play for time," advised the other. "go back there with a stiff upper lip and tell 'em you won't be bulldozed or hurried. then we'll have a council." "suppose they demand an answer." "refuse. see here, hal. i know pierce. he'd never give up his revenge, for any good he could do to the cause of the city by holding off the 'clarion' on this old home week business if there weren't something else. pierce isn't built that way. that bargain offer is mighty suspicious. there's a weak spot in his case somewhere. hold him off, and we'll hunt for it." none could have guessed, from the young editor's bearing, on his return, that he knew himself to be facing a crucial situation. with the utmost nonchalance he insisted that he must have time for consideration. influenced by pierce, who was sure he had hal beaten, the committee insisted on an immediate reply to their ultimatum. "you go up against this bunch," advised stensland, "and it's dollars to doughnuts the receiver'll have your 'clarion' inside of six months." hal leaned indolently against the door. "speaking of dollars and doughnuts," he said, "i'd like to tell you gentlemen a little story. you all know who babson is, the biggest stock-market advertiser in the country. well, babson's vanity is to be a great man outside of his own line. he owns a big country place down east, near the old town of singatuck; one of the oldest towns on the coast. babson is as new as singatuck is old. the people didn't care much about his patronizing ways. nevertheless, he kept doing things to 'brace the town up,' as he put it. the town needed it. it was about bankrupt. the fire department was a joke, the waterworks a farce, and the town hall a ruin. babson thought this gave him a chance to put his name on the map. so he said to his local factotum, 'you go down to the meeting of the selectmen next week, shake a bagful of dollars in front of those old doughnuts, and make 'em this proposition: i'll give five thousand dollars to the fire department, establish a water system, rebuild the town hall, pay off the town debt and put ten thousand dollars into the treasury if they'll change the name of the town from singatuck to babson.' "the factotum went to the meeting and presented the proposition. now singatuck is proud of its age and character with a local pride that is quite beyond the babson dollars or the babson type of imagination. his proposition aroused no debate. there was a long silence. then an old moss-farmer who hadn't had money enough to buy himself a new tooth for twenty years arose and said: 'i move you, mister chairman, that this body thank mr. babson kindly for his offer and tell him to go to hell.' "the motion was carried unanimously, and the meeting proceeded to the consideration of other business. i cite this, gentlemen, merely as evidence that the disparity between the dollar and the doughnut isn't as great as some suppose." the third member of the committee, who had thus far spoken no word, peered curiously at hal from above a hooked nose. he was mintz, of sheffler and mintz. "do i get you righd?" he observed mildly; "you're telling us to go where the selectmen sent misder babson." "plumb," replied hal, with his most amiable expression. "so far as any immediate decision is concerned." "less ged oud," said mr. mintz to his colleagues. they got out. mintz was last to go. he came over to hal. "i lyg your story," he said. "i lyg to see a feller stand up for his bizniz against the vorlt. i'm a jew. i hope you lose--but--goot luck!" he held out his hand. hal took it. "mr. mintz, i'm glad to know you," said he earnestly. nothing now remained for the committee to do but to expend their allotted fund to the best purpose. their notion of the proper method was typically commercial. they thought to buy off an epidemic. many times this has been tried. never yet has it succeeded. it embodies one of the most dangerous of popular hygienic fallacies, that the dollar can overtake and swallow the germ. chapter xxiii creeping flame for sheer uncertainty an epidemic is comparable only to fire on shipboard. the wisest expert can but guess at the time or place of its catastrophic explosion. it may thrust forth here and there a tongue of threat, only to subside and smoulder again. sometimes it "sulks" for so protracted a period that danger seems to be over. then, without warning, comes swift disaster with panic in its train. but one man in all worthington knew, early, the true nature of the disease which quietly crept among the rookeries licking up human life, and he was well trained in keeping his own counsel. in this crisis, whatever dr. surtaine may have lacked in scrupulosity of method, his intentions were good. he honestly believed that he was doing well by his city in veiling the nature of the contagion. scientifically he knew little about it save in the most general way; and his happy optimism bolstered the belief that if only secrecy could be preserved and the fair repute of the city for sound health saved, the trouble would presently die out of itself. he looked to his committee to manage the secrecy. unfortunately this particular form of trouble hasn't the habit of dying out quietly and of itself. it has to be fought and slain in the open. as dr. surtaine's committee hadn't the faintest notion of how to handle their five-thousand-dollar appropriation, they naturally consulted the honorable tip o'farrell, agent for and boss of the rookeries. and as the honorable tip had a very definite and even eager notion of what might be done with that amount of ready cash, he naturally volunteered to handle the fund to the best advantage, which seemed quite reasonable, since he was familiar with the situation. therefore the disposition of the money was left to him. do not, however, oh high-minded and honorable reader, be too ready to suppose that this was the end of the five thousand dollars, so far as the rookeries are concerned. politicians of the o'farrell type may not be meticulous on points of finance. but they are quite likely to be human. tip o'farrell had seen recently more misery than even his toughened sensibilities could uncomplainingly endure. some of the fund may have gone into the disburser's pocket. a much greater portion of it, i am prepared to affirm, was distributed in those intimate and effective forms of beneficence which, skillfully enough managed, almost lose the taint of charity. o'farrell was tactful and he knew his people. many cases over which organized philanthropy would have blundered sorely, were handled with a discretion little short of inspired. much wretchedness was relieved; much suffering and perhaps some lives saved. the main issue, nevertheless, was untouched. the epidemic continued to spread beneath the surface of silence. o'farrell wasn't interested in that side of it. he didn't even know what was the matter. what money he expended on that phase of the difficulty was laid out in perfecting his system of guards, so that unauthorized doctors couldn't get in, or unauthorized news leak out. also he continued to carry on an irregular but costly traffic in dead bodies. meantime, the special committee of the old home week organization, thus comfortably relieved of responsibility and the appropriation, could now devote itself single-mindedly to worrying over the "clarion." according to elias m. pierce, no mean judge of men, there was nothing to worry about in that direction. that snake, he considered, was scotched. it might take time for said snake, who was a young snake with a head full of poison (his uncomplimentary metaphor referred, i need hardly state, to mr. harrington surtaine), to come to his serpentine senses; but in the end he must realize that he was caught. the committee wasn't so smugly satisfied. time was going on and there was no word, one way or the other, from the "clarion" office. inside that office more was stirring than the head of it knew about. on a warmish day, mcguire ellis, seated at his open window, had permitted the bland air of early june to lull him to a nap, which was rudely interrupted by the intrusion of a harsh point amongst his waistcoat buttons. stumbling hastily to his feet he confronted dr. miles elliot. "wassamatter?" he demanded, in the thick tones of interrupted sleep. "what are you poking me in the ribs for?" "mcburney's point," observed the visitor agreeably. "now, if you had appendicitis, you'd have yelped. you haven't got appendicitis." "much obliged," grumped mr. ellis. "couldn't you tell me that without a cane?" "i spoke to you twice, but all you replied was 'hoong!' as i speak only the mandarin dialect of chinese--" "sit down," said ellis, "and tell me what you're doing in this den of vice and crime." "vice and crime is correct," confirmed the physician. "you're still curing cancer, consumption, corns, colds, and cramps in print, for blood money. i've come to report." mcguire ellis stared. "what on?" "the rookeries epidemic." "quick work," the journalist congratulated him sarcastically. "the assignment is only a little over two months old." "well, i might have guessed, any time in those two months, but i wanted to make certain." "_are_ you certain?" "reasonably." "what is it?" "typhus." "what's that? something like typhoid?" "it bears about the same relation to typhoid," said the doctor, eyeing the other with solemnity, "as housemaid's knee does to sunstroke." "well, don't get funny with me. i don't appreciate it. is it very serious?" "not more so than cholera," answered the doctor gravely. "hey! then why aren't we all dead?" "because it doesn't spread so rapidly. not at first, anyway." "how does it spread? come on! open up!" "probably by vermin. it's rare in this country. there was a small epidemic in new york in the early nineties. it was discovered early and confined to one tenement. there were sixty-three people in the tenement when they clapped on the quarantine. thirty-two of 'em came out feet first. the only outside case was a reporter who got in and wrote a descriptive article. he died a week later." "sounds as if this little affair of the rookeries might be some story." "it is. there may have been fifty deaths to date; or maybe a hundred. we don't know." ellis sat back in his chair with a bump. "who's 'we'?" "dr. merritt and myself." "the health bureau is on, then. what's merritt going to do about it?" "what can he do?" "give out the whole thing, and quarantine the district." "the mayor will remove him the instant he opens his mouth, and kill any quarantine. merritt will be discredited in all the papers--unless the 'clarion' backs him. will it?" ellis dropped his head in his hand. "i don't know," he said finally. "not running an honest paper this week?" sneered the physician lightly. "by the way, where's young hopeful?" "see here, dr. elliot," said ellis. "you're a good old scout. if you hadn't poked me in the stomach i believe i'd tell you something." "try it," encouraged the other. "all right. here it is. they've put it up to hal surtaine pretty stiff, this gang of perfectly honorable business men, leading citizens, pillars of the church, porch-climbers, and pickpockets who run the city. i guess you know who i mean." dr. elliot permitted himself a reserved grin. "all right. they've got him in a clove hitch. at least it looks so. and one of the conditions for letting up on him is that he suppresses all news of the epidemic. then they'll have the 'clarion' right where they've got every other local paper." "nice town, worthington," observed dr. elliot, with easy but apparently irrelevant affability. but mcguire ellis went red. "it's easy enough for you to sit there and be righteous," he said. "but get this straight. if the young boss plays straight and tells 'em all to go to hell, it'll be a close call of life or death for the paper." "and if he doesn't?" "easy going. advertising'll roll in on us. money'll come so fast we can't dodge it. are you so blame sure what _you'd_ do in those conditions?" "mac," said the brusque physician, for the first time using the familiar name: "between man and man, now: _what_ about the boy?" from the ancient loyalty of his race sprang mcguire ellis's swift word, "my hand in the fire for any that loves him." "but--stanch, do you think?" persisted the other. "i hope it." "well, i wish it was you owned the 'clarion.'" "do you, now? i don't. how do _i_ know what i'd do?" "human lives, mac: human lives, on this issue." "who else knows it's typhus, doc?" "nobody but merritt and me. you bound me in confidence, you know." "good man!" "there's one other ought to know, though." "who's that?" "norman hale." "the reverend norman's all right. we could do with a few more ministers like him around the place. but why, in particular, should he know?" "for one thing, he suspects, anyway. then, he's down in the slums there most of the time, and he could help us. besides, he's got some rights of safety himself. he's out in the reception room now, under guard of that man-eating office boy of yours." "all right, if you say so." accordingly the reverend norman hale was summoned, sworn to confidence, and informed. he received the news with a quiver of his long, gaunt features. "i was afraid it was something like that," he said. "what's to be done?" "i'll tell you my plan," said ellis, who had been doing some rapid thinking. "i'll put the best man in the office on the story, and give him a week on it if necessary. how soon is the epidemic likely to break, doctor?" "god knows," said the physician gravely. "well, we'll hurry him as much as we can. our reporter will work independently. no one else on the staff will know what he's doing. i'll expect you two and dr. merritt to give him every help. i'll handle the story myself, at this end. and i'll see that it's set up in type by our foreman, whom i can trust to keep quiet. therefore, only six people will know about it. i think we can keep the secret. then, when i've got it all in shape, two pages of it, maybe, with all the facts, i'll pull a proof and hit the boss right between the eyes with it. that'll fetch him, i _think_." the others signified their approval. "but can't we do something in the mean time?" asked dr. elliot. "a little cleaning-up, maybe? who owns that pest-hole?" "any number of people," said the clergyman. "it's very complicated, what with ground leases, agencies, and trusteeships. i dare say some of the owners don't even know that the property belongs to them." "one of the things we might find out," said ellis. "might be interesting to publish." "i'll send you a full statement of what i got about the burials in canadaga county," promised dr. elliot. "coming along, mr. hale?" "no. i want to speak to mr. ellis about another matter." the clergyman waited until the physician had left and then said, "it's about milly neal." "well, what about her?" "i thought you could tell me. or perhaps mr. surtaine." remembering that encounter outside of the road house weeks before, ellis experienced a throb of misgiving. "why mr. surtaine?" he demanded. "because he's her employer." ellis gazed hard at the young minister. he met a straight and clear regard which reassured him. "he isn't, now," said he. "she's left?" "yes." "that's bad," worried the clergyman, half to himself. "bad for the paper. 'kitty the cutie' was a feature." "why did she leave?" "just quit. sent in word about ten days ago that she was through. no explanation." "mr. ellis, i'm interested in milly neal," said the minister, after some hesitation. "she's helped me quite a bit with our club down here. there's a lot in that girl. but there's a queer, un-get-at-able streak, too. do you know a man named veltman?" "max? yes. he's foreman of our composing-room." "she's been with him a great deal lately." "why not? they're old friends. no harm in veltman." "he's a married man." "that so! i never knew that. well, 'kitty the cutie' ought to be keen enough to take care of herself." "there's the difficulty. she doesn't seem to want to take care of herself. she's lost interest in the club. for a time she was drinking heavily at some of the all-night places. and this news of her quitting here is worst of all. she seemed so enthusiastic about the work." "her job's open for her if she wants to come back." "good! i'm glad to hear that. it gives me something to work on." "by the way," said mcguire ellis, "how do you like the paper?" sooner or later he put this question to every one with whom he came in contact. what he found out in this way helped to make him the journalistic expert he was. "pretty well," hesitated the other. "what's wrong with it?" inquired ellis. "well, frankly, some of your advertising." "we're the most independent paper in this town on advertising," stated ellis with conviction. "i know you dropped the sewing aid society advertisement," admitted hale. "but you've got others as bad. yes, worse." "show 'em to me." leaning forward to the paper on ellis's desk, the visitor indicated the "copy" of relief pills. ellis's brow puckered. "you're the second man to kick on that," he said. "the other was a doctor." "it's a bad business, mr. ellis. it's the devil's own work. isn't it hard enough for girls to keep straight, with all the temptations around them, without promising them immunity from the natural results of immorality?" "those pills won't do the trick," blurted ellis. "they won't?" cried the other in surprise. "so doctors tell me." "then the promise is all the worse," said the clergyman hotly, "for being a lie." "well, i have troubles enough over the news part of the paper, without censoring the ads. when an advertiser tries to control news or editorial policy, i step in. otherwise, i keep out. there's my platform." hale nodded. "let me know how i can help on the epidemic matter," said he, and took his leave. "the trouble with really good people," mused mcguire ellis, "is that they always expect other people to be as good as they are. and _that's_ expensive," sighed the philosopher, turning back to his desk. while ellis and his specially detailed reporter were working out the story of the rookeries epidemic in the light of dr. elliot's information, hal surtaine, floundering blindly, sought a solution to his problem, which was the problem of his newspaper. indeed, it meant, as far as he could judge, the end of the "clarion" in a few months, should he decide to defy elias m. pierce. against the testimony of the injured nurse, he could scarcely hope to defend the libel suits successfully. even though the assessed damages were not heavy enough to wreck him, the loss of prestige incident to defeat would be disastrous. moreover, there was the chance of imprisonment or a heavy fine on the criminal charge. furthermore, if he decided to print the account of the epidemic (always supposing that he could discover what it really was), practically every local advertiser would desert him in high dudgeon over the consequent ruin of the centennial celebration. was it better to publish an honest paper for the few months and die fighting, or compromise for the sake of life, and do what good he might through the agency of a bound, controlled, and tremulous journalistic policy? for the first time, now that the crisis was upon him, he realized to the full how profoundly the "clarion" had become part of his life. at the outset, only the tool of a casual though fascinating profession, later, the lever of an expanding and increasing power, the paper had insensibly intertwined with every fiber of his ambition. to a degree that startled him he had come to think, feel, and hope in terms of this thought-machine which he owned, which owned him. it had taken on for him a character; his own, yet more than his own and greater. for it spoke, not of his spirit alone, but with a composite voice; sometimes confused, inarticulate, only semi-expressive; again as with the tongues of prophecy. his ship was beginning to find herself; to evolve, from the anarchic clamor of loose effort, a harmony and a personality. with the thought came a warm glow of loyalty to his fellow workers; to the men who, knowing more than he knew, had yet accepted his ideals so eagerly and stood to them so loyally; to the spirit that had flashed to meet his own at that first "talk-it-over" breakfast, and had never since flagged; to ellis, the harsh, dogged, uncouth evangel, preaching his strange mission of honor; to wayne, patient, silent, laborious, dependable; to young denton, a "gentleman unafraid," facing the threats of e.m. pierce; even to portly shearson, struggling against such dismal odds for _his_ poor little principle of journalism--to make the paper pay. how could he, their leader, recant his doctrine before these men? yet--and the qualifying thought dashed cold upon his enthusiasm--what did the alternative imply for them? the almost certain loss of their places. to be thrown into the street, a whole officeful of them, seeking jobs which didn't exist, on the collapse of the "clarion." could he do that to them? did he not, at least, owe them a living? some had come to the "clarion" from other papers, even from other cities, attracted by its enterprise, by its "ginger," by the rumor of a fresh and higher standard in journalism. what of them? for himself he had only reputation, ethical standard, the intangible matter of existence to consider. for them it might be hunger and want. here, indeed, was a conflicting ideal. his mind reverted to the things he had been able to get done, in the few months of his editorial tenure; the success of some of his campaigns, the educational effect of them even where they had failed of their definite object, as had the fight for the consumers' league. one article had put the chief gambler of the city on the defensive to an extent which seriously crippled his business. another had killed forever the vilest den in town, a saloon back-room where vicious women gathered in young boys and taught them to snuff cocaine, and had led to an anti-cocaine ordinance, which the saloon element, who instinctively resented any species of "reform" as a threat against business, opposed. whereupon, hal, in an editorial on the prohibition movement, had tartly pointed out that where the saloons were openly vaunting themselves disdainful of public decency, the public was in immediate process of wiping out the saloons. which citation of fact caused a cold chill to permeate the spines of the liquor interests, and led the large, sleek leader of that clan to make a surpassingly polite and friendly call upon hal, who, rather to his surprise, found that he liked the man very much. they had parted, indeed, on hearty terms and the understanding that there would be no further objection to the "coke-law" from the saloon keepers. there wasn't. the liquor men kept faith. though aiming at independence in politics, the "clarion" had been drawn into a number of local political fights, and more than once had gone wrong in advocating an apparently useful measure only to find itself serving some hidden politician's selfish ends. these same politicians, hal came in time to learn, were not all bad, even the worst of them. the toughest and crookedest of the grafting aldermen felt a genuine interest and pride in his vice-sodden ward, and when the "clarion" had helped to abate a notorious nuisance there, dropped in to see the editor. "mr. surtaine," said he, chewing his cigar with some violence, "you and me ain't got much in common. you think i'm a grafter, and i think you're a lily-finger. but i came to thank you just the same for helping us out over there." "glad to help you out when i can," said hal, with his disarming smile: "or to fight you when i have to." "shake," said the heeler. "i guess we'll average down into pretty good enemies. lemme know whenever i can do you a turn." then there was the electric light fight. since the memory of man worthington had paid the most exorbitant gas rate in the state. the "clarion" set out to inquire why. so insistent was its thirst for information that the "banner" and the "telegram" took up the cudgels for the public-spirited corporation which paid ten per cent dividends by overcharging the local public. thereupon the "clarion" pointed out that the president of the gas company was the second largest stockholder in the "telegram," and that the local editorial writer of the "banner" derived, for some unexplained reason, a small but steady income in the form of salary, from the gas company. this exposure was regarded as distinctly "not clubby" by the newspaper fraternity in general: but the public rather enjoyed it, and made such a fuss over it that a legislative investigation was ordered. meantime, by one of those curious by-products of the journalistic output, the local university preserved to itself the services of its popular professor of political economy, who was about to be discharged for _lèse majesté_, in that he had held up as an unsavory instance of corporate control, the worthington gas company, several of whose considerable stockholders were members of the institution's board of trustees. the "clarion" made loud and lamentable noises about this, and the board reconsidered hastily. louder and much more lamentable were the noises made by the president of the university, the reverend dr. knight, a little brother of one of the richest and greatest of the national corporations, in denunciation of the "clarion": so much so, indeed, that they were published abroad, thereby giving the paper much extensive free advertising. pleasant memories, these, to hal. not always pleasant, perhaps, but at least vividly interesting, the widely varying types with whom his profession had brought him into contact: mcguire ellis, "tip" o'farrell, the reverend norman hale, dr. merritt, elias m.-the mechanism of thought checked with a wrench. pierce had it in his power to put an end to all this. he must purchase the right to continue, and at pierce's own price. but was the price so severe? after all, he could contrive to do much; to carry on many of his causes; to help build up a better and cleaner worthington; to preserve a moiety of his power, at the sacrifice of part of his independence; and at the same time his paper would make money, be successful, take its place among the recognized business enterprises of the town. as for the rookeries epidemic upon which all this turned, what did he really know of it, anyway? very likely it had been exaggerated. probably it would die out of itself. if lives were endangered, that was the common chance of a slum. then, of a sudden, memory struck at his heart with the thrust of a more vital, more personal, dread. for one day, wandering about in the stricken territory, he had seen esmé elliot entering a tenement doorway. chapter xxiv a failure in tactics miss eleanor stanley maxwell elliot, home from her wanderings, stretched her hammock and herself in it between two trees in a rose-sweet nook at greenvale, and gave herself up to a reckoning of assets and liabilities. decidedly the balance was on the wrong side. miss esmé could not dodge the unseemly conclusion that she was far from pleased with herself. this was perhaps a salutary frame of mind, but not a pleasant one. if possible, she was even less pleased with the world in which she lived. and this was neither salutary nor pleasant. furthermore, it was unique in her experience. hitherto she had been accustomed to a universe made to her order and conducted on much the same principle. now it no longer ran with oiled smoothness. her trip on the pierce yacht had been much less restful than she had anticipated. for this she blamed that sturdy knight of the law, mr. william douglas. mr. douglas's offense was that he had inveigled her into an engagement. (i am employing her own term descriptive of the transaction.) it was a crime of brief duration and swift penalty. the relation had endured just four weeks. possibly its tenure of life might have been longer had not the young-middle-aged lawyer accepted, quite naturally, an invitation to join the cruise of the pierce family and _his fiancée_. the lawyer's super-respectful attitude toward his principal client disgusted esmé. she called it servile. for contrast she had the memory of another who had not been servile, even to his dearest hope. there were more personal contrasts of memory, too; subtler, more poignant, that flushed in her blood and made the mere presence of her lover repellent to her. the status became unbearable. esmé ended it. in plain english, she jilted the highly eligible mr. william douglas. to herself she made the defense that he was not what she had thought, that he had changed. this was unjust. he had not changed in the least; he probably never would change from being the private-secretary type of lawyer. toward her, in his time of trial, he behaved not ill. justifiably, he protested against her decision. finding her immovable, he accepted the prevailing worthingtonian theory of miss elliot's royal prerogative as regards the male sex, and returned, miserably enough, to his home and his practice. another difficulty had arisen to make distasteful the pierce hospitality. kathleen pierce, in a fit of depression foreign to her usually blithe and easy-going nature, had become confidential and had blurted out certain truths which threw a new and, to esmé, disconcerting light upon the episode of the motor accident. in her first appeal to esmé, it now appeared, the girl had been decidedly less than frank. therefore, in her own judgment of hal and the "clarion," esmé had been decidedly less than just. in her resentment, esmé had almost quarreled with her friend. common honesty, she pointed out, required a statement to harrington surtaine upon the point. would kathleen write such a letter? no! kathleen would not. in fact, kathleen would be d-a-m-n-e-d, darned, if she would. very well; then it remained only (this rather loftily) for esmé herself to explain to mr. surtaine. later, she decided to explain by word of mouth. this would involve her return to worthington, which she had come to long for. she had become sensible of a species of homesickness. in some ill-defined way harrington surtaine was involved in that nostalgia. not that she had any desire to see him! but she felt a certain justifiable curiosity--she was satisfied that it was justifiable--to know what he was doing with the "clarion," since her established sphere of influence had ceased to be influential. was he really as unyielding in other tests of principle as he had shown himself with her? already she had altered her attitude to the extent of admitting that it _was_ principle, even though mistaken. esmé had been subscribing to the "clarion," and studying it; also she had written, withal rather guardedly, to sundry people who might throw light on the subject; to her uncle, to dr. hugh merritt, her old and loyal friend largely by virtue of being one of the few young men of the place who never had been in love with her (he had other preoccupations), to young denton the reporter, who was a sort of cousin, and to mrs. festus willard, who, alone of the correspondents, suspected the underlying motive. from these sundry informants she garnered diverse opinions; the sum and substance of which was that, on the whole, hal was fighting the good fight and with some success. thereupon esmé hated him harder than before--and with considerably more difficulty. on a late may day she had slipped quietly back into worthington. that small portion of the populace which constituted worthington society was ready to welcome her joyously. but she had no wish to be joyously welcomed. she didn't feel particularly joyous, herself. and society meant going to places where she would undoubtedly meet will douglas and would probably not meet hal surtaine. esmé confessed to herself that douglas was rather on her conscience, a fact which, in itself, marked some change of nature in the great american pumess. she decided that society was a bore. for refuge she turned to her interest in the slums, where the reverend norman hale, for whom she had a healthy, honest respect and liking, was, so she learned, finding his hands rather more than full. always an enthusiast in her pursuits, she now threw herself into this to the total exclusion of all other interests. to herself she explained this on the theory that she needed something to occupy her mind. something _else_ she really meant, for mr. harrington surtaine was now occupying it to an inexcusable extent. she wished very much to see harrington surtaine, and, for the first time in her life, she feared what she wished. what she had so loftily announced to kathleen pierce as her unalterable determination toward the editor of the "clarion" wasn't as easy to perform as to promise. yet, the explanation of the partial error, into which the self-excusatory miss pierce had led her, was certainly due him, according to her notions of fair play. if she sent for him to come, he would, she shrewdly judged, decline. the alternative was to beard him in his office. in the strengthening and self-revealing solitude of her garden, this glowing summer day, esmé sat trying to make up her mind. a daring brown thrasher, his wings a fair match for the ruddy-golden glow in the girl's eyes, hopped into her haunt, and twittered his counsel of courage. "i'll do it now," said esmé, and the bird, with a triumphant chirp of congratulation, swooped off to tell the news to the world of wings and flowers. to the consequent interview there was no witness. so it may best be chronicled in the report made by the interviewer to her friend mrs. festus willard, who, in the cool seclusion of her sewing-room, was overwhelmed by a rush of esmé to the heart, as she put it. not having been apprised of miss elliot's conflicting emotions since her departure, mrs. willard's mind was as a page blank for impressions when her visitor burst in upon her, pirouetted around the room, appropriated the softest corner of the divan, and announced spiritedly: "you needn't ask me where i've been, for i won't tell you; or what i've been doing, for it's my own affair; anyway, you wouldn't be interested. and if you insist on knowing, i've been revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon--at three o'clock p.m." "what do you mean, moon?" inquired mrs. willard, unconsciously falling into a pit of slang. "the moon we all cry for and don't get. in this case a haughty young editor." "you've been to see hal surtaine," deduced mrs. willard. "you have guessed it--with considerable aid and assistance." "what for?" "on a matter of journalistic import," said miss elliot solemnly. "but you don't cry for hal surtaine," objected her friend, reverting to the lunar metaphor. "don't i? i'd have cried--i'd have burst into a perfect storm of tears--for him--or you--or anybody who so much as pointed a finger at me, i was so scared." "scared? you! i don't believe it." "i don't believe it myself--now," confessed esmé, candidly. "but it felt most extremely like it at the time." "you know i don't at all approve of--" "of me. i know you don't, jinny. neither does he." "what did you do to him?" "me? i cooed at him like a dove of peace. "but he was very stiff and proud he said, 'you needn't talk so loud,'" chanted miss esmé mellifluously. "he didn't!" "well, if he didn't, he meant it. he wanted to know what the big, big d-e-v, dev, i was doing there, anyway." "norrie elliot! tell me the truth." "very well," said miss elliot, aggrieved. "_you_ report the conversation, then, since you won't accept my version." "if you would give me a start--" "just what he wouldn't do for me," interrupted esmé. "i went in there to explain something and he pointed the finger of scorn at me and accused me of frequenting low and disreputable localities." "norrie!" "well," replied the girl brazenly, "he said he'd seen me about the rookeries district; and if that isn't a low--" "had he?" "nothing more probable, though i didn't happen to see him there." "what were you doing there?" "precisely what he wanted to know. he said it rather as if he owned the place. so i explained in words of one syllable that i went there to pick edelweiss from the fire escapes. jinny, dear, you don't know how hard it is to crowd 'edelweiss' into one syllable until you've tried. it splutters." "so do you," said the indignant mrs. willard. "you do worse; you gibber. if you weren't just the prettiest thing that heaven ever made, some one would have slain you long ago for your sins." "pretty, yourself," retorted esmé. "my real charm lies in my rigid adherence to the spirit of truth. your young friend mr. surtaine scorned my floral jest. he indicated that i ought not to be about the tenements. he said there was a great deal of sickness there. that was why i was there, i explained politely. then he said that the sickness might be contagious, and he muttered something about an epidemic and then looked as if he wished he hadn't." "i've heard some talk of sickness in the rookeries. ought you to be going there?" asked the other anxiously. "mr. surtaine thinks not. quite severely. and in elderly tones. naturally i asked him what kind of an epidemic it was. he said he didn't know, but he was sure the place was dangerous, and he was surprised that uncle guardy hadn't warned me. uncle guardy _had_, but i don't do everything i'm warned about. so then i asked young mr. editor why, as he knew there was a dangerous epidemic about, he should warn little me privately instead of warning the big public, publicly." "meddlesome child! can you never learn to keep your hands off?" "i was spurring him to his editorial duties. "but he was very proud and stiff ... he said that he would tell me, if--" lilted miss esmé, rising to do a _pas seul_ upon the willards' priceless anatolian rug. "sit down," commanded her hostess. "if--what?" "if nothing. just if. that's the end of the song. don't you know your lewis carroll? "i sent a message to the fish, i told them, 'this is what i wish.' the little fishes of the sea, they sent an answer--" "i don't want to know about the fish," disclaimed mrs. willard vehemently. "i want to know what happened between you and hal surtaine." "and you the vice-president of the poetry club!" reproached esmé. "very well. he was very proud and--oh, i said that before. but he really was, this time. he said, 'our last discussion of the policy of the "clarion" closed that topic between us.' somebody called him away before i could think of anything mean and superior enough to answer, and when he came back--always supposing he isn't still hiding in the cellar--i was no longer present." "then you didn't give him the message you went for." "no. didn't i say i was scared?" mrs. willard excused herself, ostensibly to speak to a maid; in reality to speak to a telephone. on her return she made a frontal attack:-"norrie, what made you break your engagement to will douglas?" "why? don't you approve?" "did you break it for the same reason that drove you into it?" "what reason do you think drove me into it?" "hal surtaine." "he didn't!" she denied furiously. "and you didn't break it because of him?" "no! i broke it because i don't want to get married," cried the girl in a rush of words. "not to will douglas. or to--to anybody. why should i? i don't want to--i won't," she continued, half laughing, half sobbing, "go and have to bother about running a house and have a lot of babies and lose my pretty figure--and get fat--and dowdy--and slow-poky--and old. look at molly vane: twins already. she's a horrible example. why do people always have to have children--" she stopped, abruptly, herself stricken at the stricken look in the other's face. "oh, jinny, darling jinny," she gasped; "i forgot! your baby. your little, dead baby! i'm a fool; a poor little silly fool, chattering of realities that i know nothing about." "you will know some day, my dear," said the other woman, smiling valiantly. "don't deny the greatest reality of all, when it comes. are you sure you're not denying it now?" the sunbeams crept and sparkled, like light upon ruffled waters, across esmé's obstinately shaken head. "perhaps you couldn't help hurting him. but be sure you aren't hurting yourself, too." "that's the worst of it," said the girl, with one of her sudden accesses of sweet candor. "i needn't have hurt him at all. i was stupid." she paused in her revelation. "but he was stupider," she declared vindictively; "so it serves him right." "how was he stupider?" "he thought," said esmé with sorrowful solemnity, "that i was just as bad as i seemed. he ought to have known me better." the older woman bent and laid a cheek against the sunny hair. "and weren't you just as bad as you seemed?" "worse! anyway, i'm afraid so," said the confessional voice, rather muffled in tone. "but i--i just got led into it. oh, jinny, i'm not awfully happy." mrs. willard's head went up and she cocked an attentive ear, like an expectant robin. "some one outside," said she. "i'll be back in a moment. you sit there and think it over." esmé curled back on the divan. a minute later she heard the curtains part at the end of the dim room, and glanced up with a smile, to face, not jeannette willard, but hal surtaine. "you 'phoned for me, lady jinny," he began: and then, with a start, "esmé! i--i didn't expect to find you here." "nor i to see you," she said, with a calmness that belied her beating heart. "sit down, please. i have something to tell you. it's what i really came to the office to say." "yes?" "about kathleen pierce." hal frowned. "do you think there can be any use--" "please," she begged, with uplifted eyes of entreaty. "she--she didn't tell me the truth about that interview with your reporter. it was true; but she made me think it wasn't. she confessed to me, and she feels very badly. so do i. i believed that you had deliberately made that up, about her saying that she didn't turn back because she wanted to catch a train. i believed, too, that the editorial was written after our--our talk. i'm sorry." hal stood above her, looking rather stern, and a little old and worn, she thought. "if that is an apology, it is accepted," he said with surface politeness. to him she was, in that moment, a light-minded woman apologizing for the petty misdeed, and paying no heed to the graver wrong that she had done him. jeannette willard could have set him right in a word; could have shown him what the girl felt, unavowedly to herself but with underlying conviction, that for so great an offense no apology could suffice; nothing short of complete surrender. but mrs. willard was not there to help out. she was waiting hopefully, outside. "and that is all?" he said, after a pause, with just a shade of contempt in his voice. "all," she said lightly, "unless you choose to tell me how the 'clarion' is getting on." "as well as could be expected. we pay high for our principles. but thus far we've held to them. you should read the paper." "i do." "to expect your approval would be too much, i suppose." "no. in many ways i like it. in fact, i think i'll renew my subscription." it was innocently said, without thought of the old playful bargain between them, which had terminated with the mailing of the withered arbutus. but to hal it seemed merely a brazen essay in coquetry; an attempt to reconstitute the former relation, for her amusement. "the subscription lists are closed, on the old terms," he said crisply. "oh, you couldn't have thought i meant that!" she whispered; but he was already halfway down the room, on the echo of his "good-afternoon, miss elliot." as before, he turned at the door. and he carried with him, to muse over in the depths of his outraged heart once more, the mystery of that still and desperate smile. any woman could have solved it for him. any, except, possibly, esmé elliot. "it didn't come out as i hoped, festus," said the sorrowful little mrs. willard to her husband that evening. "i don't know that hal will ever believe in her again. how can he be so--so stupidly unforgiving!" "always the man's fault, of course," said her big husband comfortably. "no. she's to blame. but it's the fault of men in general that norrie is what she is; the men of this town, i mean. no man has ever been a man with norrie elliot." "what have they been?" "mice. it's a tradition of the place. they lie down in rows for her to trample on. so of course she tramples on them." "well, i never trampled on mice myself," observed festus willard. "it sounds like uncertain footing. but i'll bet you five pounds of your favorite candy against one of your very best kisses, that if she undertakes to make a footpath of hal surtaine she'll get her feet hurt." "or her heart," said his wife. "and, oh, festus dear, it's such a real, warm, dear heart, under all the spoiled-childness of her." chapter xxv stern logic between dr. surtaine and his son had risen a barrier built up of reticences. at the outset of their reunion, they had chattered like a pair of schoolboy friends, who, after long separation, must rehearse to each other the whole roster of experiences. the doctor was an enthusiast of speech, glowingly loquacious above knife and fork, and the dinner hours were enlivened for his son by his fund of far-gathered business incidents and adventures, pointed with his crude but apt philosophy, and irradiated with his centripetal optimism. he possessed and was conscious of this prime virtue of talk, that he was never tiresome. yet recently he had noted a restlessness verging to actual distaste on hal's part, whenever he turned the conversation upon his favorite topic, the greatness of certina and the commercial romance of the proprietary medicine business. in his one close fellowship, the old quack cultivated even the minor and finer virtues. with hal he was scrupulously tactful. if the boy found _his_ business an irksome subject, he would talk about the boy's business. and he did, sounding the pæan of policy across the surtaine mahogany in a hundred variations supported by a thousand instances. but here, also, hal grew restive. he responded no more willingly to leads on journalism than to encomiums of certina. again the affectionate diplomat changed his ground. he dropped into the lighter personalities; chatted to hal of his new friends, and was met halfway. but in secret he puzzled and grieved over the waning of frankness and freedom in their intercourse. dinner, once eagerly looked forward to by both as the best hour of the day, was now something of an ordeal, a contact in which each must move warily, lest, all unknowing, he bruise the other. of the underlying truth of the situation dr. surtaine had no inkling. had any one told him that his son dared neither speak nor hear unreservedly, lest the gathering suspicions about his father, against which he was fighting while denying to himself their very existence, should take form and substance of unescapable facts, the doctor would have failed utterly of comprehension. he ascribed hal's unease and preoccupation to a more definite cause. sedulous in everything which concerned his "boyee," he had learned something of the affair with esmé elliot, and had surmised distressfully how hard the blow had been: but what worried him much more were rumors connecting hal's name with milly neal. several people had seen the two on the day of the road-house adventure. milly, with her vivid femininity was a natural mark for gossip. the mere fact that she had been in hal's runabout was enough to set tongues wagging. then, sometime thereafter, she had resigned her position in the "clarion" office without giving any reason, so dr. surtaine understood. the whole matter looked ugly. not that the charlatan would have been particularly shocked had hal exhibited a certain laxity of morals in the matter of women. for this sort of offense dr. surtaine had an easy toleration, so long as it was kept decently under cover. but that his son should become entangled with one of his--dr. surtaine's--employees, a woman under the protection of his roof, even though it were but the factory roof--that, indeed, would be a shock to his feudal conception of business honor. such dismal considerations the doctor had suppressed during an unusually uncomfortable dinner, on a hot and thunder-breeding evening when both of the surtaines had painfully talked against time. immediately after the meal, hal, on pretext of beating the storm to the office, left. his father took his forebodings to the club and attempted to lose them along with several rubbers of absent-minded bridge. meantime the woman for whom his loyalty was concerned as well as for his son, was stimulating a resolution with the slow poison of liquor around the corner from the "clarion" office. nine p.m. is slack tide in a morning newspaper office. the afternoon news is cleared up; the night wires have not yet begun to buzz with outer-world tidings of importance; the reporters are still afield on the evening's assignments. as the champion short-distance sleeper of his craft, which distinction he claimed for himself without fear of successful contradiction, mcguire ellis was wont to devote half an hour or more, beginning on the ninth stroke of the clock, to the cultivation of morpheus. intruders were not popular at that hour. to respect for this habitude, reginald currier, known to mortals as bim, guardian of the sacred gates, had been rigorously educated. but bim had a creed of his own which mollified the rigidity of specific standards, and one tenet thereof was the apothegm, "once a 'clarion' man, always a 'clarion' man," the same applying to women. therefore, when milly neal appeared at the gate at 9.05 in the evening, the cerberus greeted her professionally with a "how goes it, miss cutie?" and passed her in without question. she went straight to the inner office. "hoong!" grunted mcguire ellis, rubbing his eyes in a desperate endeavor to disentangle dreams from actualities. "what are _you_ doing here?" "i want to see mr. surtaine." something in the girl's aspect put ellis on his guard. "what do you want to see him about?" he asked. "i don't see any examination bureau license pinned to you, ellis," she retorted hardily. "the boss is out." "i don't believe it." "all right," said mcguire ellis equably. "i'm a liar." "then you're the proper man for a 'clarion' job," came the savage retort. "come off, kitty. don't be young!" "i want to see hal surtaine," she said with sullen insistence. shaking himself out of his chair, the associate editor started across the room to the telephone at hal's desk, but halted sharply in front of the girl. "you've been drinking," he said. "what's it to you if i have?" the man's hand fell on her shoulder. there was no familiarity in the act; only comradeship. comradeship in the voice, also, and concern, as he said, "cut it, neal, cut it. there's nothing in it. you're too good stuff to throw yourself away on that." "don't you worry about me." she shook off his hand, and seated herself. "still working at the certina joint?" "no. i'm not working." "see here, neal: what made you quit us?" the girl withheld speech back of tight-pressed lips. "oh, well, never mind that. the point is, we miss you. we miss the 'cutie' column. it was good stuff. we want you back." still silence. "and i guess you miss us. you liked the job, didn't you?" the girl gazed past him with ashen eyes. "oh, my god!" she said under her breath. "your job back and no questions asked," pursued ellis, with an outer cheerfulness which cost him no small effort in the face of his growing conviction of some tragic issue pending. now she looked directly at him, and there was a flicker of flame in her regard. "do you know what a hardscrabbler is, ellis?" she asked. the other rubbed his head in puzzlement. "i don't believe i do," he confessed. "then you won't understand when i tell you that i'm one and that i'd see your 'clarion' blazing in hell before i'd take another cent of your money." the fire died from her face, and in her former tone of dulled stolidity she repeated, "i want to see mr. surtaine." with every word uttered, mcguire ellis's forebodings had grown darker. that hal surtaine, carried away by the girl's vividness and allure, might have involved himself in a _liaison_ with her was credible enough. he recalled the episode of the road-house, on that stormy spring day. that hal would have deserted her afterward, ellis could not believe. and yet--and yet--why otherwise should she come with the marks of fierce misery in her face, demanding an interview at this time? on one point ellis's mind was swiftly made up: she should not see hal. "miss neal," he said quietly, "you can sit there all night, but you can't see the boss unless you tell me your errand." the girl rose, slowly. "oh, i guess you all stand together here," she said. "well, remember: i gave him his chance to square himself." when hal came up from a visit to the new press half an hour later, ellis had decided to say nothing of the call. later, he must have it out with his employer, for the sake of both of them and of the "clarion." but it was an ordeal which he was glad to postpone. nothing more, he judged, was to be feared that night, from milly neal; he could safely sleep over the problem. having a certain sufficient religion of his own, mcguire ellis still believes that a merciful heaven forgives us our sins; but, looking back on that evening's decision, he sometimes wonders whether it ever fully pardons our mistakes. while he sat reading proof on the status of a flickering foreign war, the hardscrabbler's daughter, in a quiet back room farther down the block, slowly sipped more gin; and gin is fire and fury to the hardscrabbler blood. at eleven o'clock that evening, dr. surtaine, returning to that massive hybrid of architecture which he called home, found milly neal waiting in his study. "well, milly: what's up?" he asked, cheerfully enough in tone, but with a sinking heart. "i want to know what you're going to do for me?" "something wrong?" "you've got a right to know. i'm in trouble." "what kind of trouble?" "the kind you make money out of with your relief pills." "milly! milly!" cried the quack, in honest distress. "i wouldn't have believed it of you." "yes: it's terrible, isn't it!" mocked the girl. "what are you going to do about it? it's up to you." "up to me?" queried the doctor, bracing himself for what was coming. "don't you promise, with your relief pills to get women out of trouble?" dr. surtaine's breath came a little easier. perhaps she was not going to force the issue upon him by mentioning hal. if this were diplomacy, he would play the game. "certainly not! certainly not!" he protested with a scandalized air. "we've never made such a claim. it would be against the law." "look at this." she held up in her left hand a clipping, showing a line-cut of a smiling woman, over the caption "a happy lady"; and announcing in wide print, "every form of suppression relieved. the most obstinate cases yield at once. thousands of once desperate women bless the name of relief pills." "i don't want to look at it," said the doctor. "no, i guess you don't! it's from the 'clarion,' that clipping. and the neverfail company that makes the fake abortion pills is _you_." "it doesn't mean--that. you've misread it." "it _does_ mean just that to every poor, silly fool of a girl that reads it. what else can it mean? 'the most obstinate cases'--" "don't! don't!" there was a pause, then: "of course, you can't stay in the certina factory after this." a bitter access of mirth seized the girl. the sound of it "rang cracked and thin, like a fiend's laughter, heard in hell, far down." "of course!" she mocked. "the pious and holy dr. surtaine couldn't have an employee who went wrong. not even though it was his lies that helped tempt her." "don't try to put it off on me. you are suffering for your own sin, my girl," accused the quack. "i'll stand my share of it; the suffering and the disgrace, if there is any. but you've got to stand your share. you promised to get me out of this and i believed you." "_i_! promised to--" "in plain print." she tossed the clipping at him with her left hand. the other she held in her lap, under a light wrap which she carried. "and i believed you. i thought you were square. then when the pills didn't help, i went to a doctor, and he laughed and said they were nothing but sugar and flavoring. he wouldn't help me. he said no decent doctor would. _you_ ain't a decent doctor. you're a lying devil. are you going to help me out?" "if you had come in a proper spirit--" "that's enough. i've got my answer." she rose slowly to her feet. "after i found out what was wrong with me, i went home to my father. i didn't tell him about myself. but i told him i was quitting the certina business. and he told me about my mother, how you sent her to her death. one word from me would have brought him here after you. _this_ time he wouldn't have missed you. then they'd have hung him, i suppose. that's why i held my tongue. you killed my mother, you and your quack medicines; and now you've done this to me." her hand jerked up out of the wrap. "i don't see where you come in to live any longer," said milly neal deliberately. dr. surtaine looked into the muzzle of a revolver. there was a step on the soft rug outside, the curtain of the door to dr. surtaine's right parted, and hal appeared. he carried a light stick. "i thought i heard--" he began. then, seeing the revolver, "what's this! put that down!" "don't move, either of you," warned the girl. "i haven't said my say out. you're a fine-matched pair, you two! him with his sugar-pills and you, hal surtaine, with your lying promises." lying promises! the phrase, thus used in the girl's mouth against the son, struck to the father's heart, confirming his dread. it _was_ hal, then. for the moment he forgot his instant peril, in his sorrow and shame. "i don't know why i shouldn't kill you both," went on the half-crazed girl. "that'd even the score. two surtaines against two neals, my mother and me." the light of slaying was in her eyes, as she stiffened her arm. just a fraction of an inch the arm swerved, for a streak of light was darting toward her. hal had taken the only chance. he had flung his cane, whirling, in the hope of diverting her aim, and had followed it at a leap. the two shots were almost instantaneous. at the second, the quack reeled back against the wall. the girl turned swiftly upon hal, and as he seized her he felt the cold steel against his neck. the touch seemed to paralyze him. strangely enough, the thought of death was summed up in a vast, regretful curiosity to know why all this was happening. then the weapon fell. "i can't kill _you_!" cried the girl, in a bursting sob, and fell, face down, upon the floor. hal, snatching up the revolver, ran to his father. "i'm all right," declared the quack. "only the shoulder. just winged. get me a drink from that decanter." his son obeyed. with swift, careful hands he got the coat off the bulky-muscled arm, and saw, with a heart-lifting relief, that the bullet had hardly more than grazed the flesh. meantime the girl had crawled, still sobbing, to a chair. "did i kill him?" she asked, covering her eyes against what she might see. "no," said hal. "listen," commanded dr. surtaine. "some one's coming. keep quiet." he walked steadily to the door and called out, "it's nothing. just experimenting with a new pistol. go back to your bed." "who was it?" asked hal. "the housekeeper. there's just one thing to do for the sake of all of us. this has _got_ to be hushed up. i'm going out to telephone. don't let her get away, hal." "get away! oh, my god!" breathed the girl. hal walked over to her, his heart wrung with pity. "why did you come here to kill my father, milly?" he asked. she stooped to pick up the "happy lady" clipping from the floor. "that's why," she said. "good god!" said hal. "have you been taking that--those pills?" "taking 'em? yes, and believing in 'em, till i found out it was all damned lies. and your fine and noble and honest 'clarion' advertises the lies just as your fine and noble and honest father makes the pills. they're no good. do you get that? and when i came here and told your father he'd got to help me out of my trouble, what do you think he told me? that i'd lost my job at the factory!" "who is the man, milly?" "what business is that of yours?" "i'll go after him and see that he marries you if it takes--" "oh, he'd be only too glad to marry me if he could. he can't. poor max has got a wife somewhere--" "max? it's veltman!" cried hal. "the dirty scoundrel." "oh, don't blame max," said the girl wearily. "it isn't his fault. after you threw me down"--hal winced--"i started to run wild. it's the hardscrabbler in me. i took to drinking and running around, and max pulled me out of it, and i went to live with him. i didn't care. nothing mattered, anyway. and i wasn't afraid of anything like this happening, because i thought the pills made it all safe." here dr. surtaine reappeared. "i've got a detective coming that i can trust." "a detective?" cried hal. "oh, dad--" "you keep out of this," retorted his father, in a tone such as his son had never heard from him before. "i guess you've done enough. the question is"--he continued as regardless of milly as if she had been deaf--"how to hush her up." "you've had your chance to hush me up," said the girl sullenly. "any money within reason--" "i don't want your money." "listen here, then. you tried to murder me. that's ten years in state's prison. now, if ever i hear of you opening your mouth about this, i'll send you up. i guess that will keep you quiet. now, then, what's your answer?" "give me a glass of whiskey, and i'll tell you." hal poured her out a glass. she passed a swift hand above it. "here's peace and quiet in the proprietary medicine business," she said, and drank. "i guess that'll--make--some--stir," she added, with an effect of carefully timing her words. her body lapsed quite gently back into the chair. the two men ran and bent over her as the glass tinkled and rolled on the floor. there was an acrid, bitter scent in the air. they lifted their heads, and their eyes met in a haggard realization. no longer was there any need of hushing up milly neal. chapter xxvi the parting the doorbell buzzed. "that's the detective," said dr. surtaine to hal. "stay here." he wormed himself painfully into an overcoat which concealed his scarified shoulder, and went out. in a few moments he and the officer reappeared. the latter glanced at the body. "heart disease, you say?" he asked. "yes: valvular lesion." "better 'phone the coroner's office, eh?" "not necessary. i can give a certificate. the coroner will be all right," said dr. surtaine, with an assurance derived from the fact that a year before he had given that functionary five hundred dollars for not finding morphine in the stomach of a baby who had been dosed to death on the "sure soother" powders. "that goes," agreed the detective. "what undertaker?" "any. and, murtha, while you're at the 'phone, call up the 'clarion' office and tell mcguire ellis to come up here on the jump, will you?" left to themselves, with the body between them, father and son fell into a silence, instinct with the dread of estranging speech. hal made the first effort. "your shoulder?" he said. "nothing," declared the doctor. "later on will do for that." he brooded for a time. "you can trust ellis, can you?" "absolutely." "it's the newspapers we have to look out for. everything else is easy." he conducted the detective, who had finished telephoning, into the library, set out drinks and cigars for him and returned. nothing further was said until ellis arrived. the associate editor's face, as he looked from the dead girl to hal, was both sorrowful and stern. but he was there to act; not to judge or comment. he consulted his watch. "eleven forty-five," he said. "better give out the story to-night." "why not wait till to-morrow?" asked dr. surtaine. "the longer you wait, the more it will look like suppressing it." "but we _want_ to suppress it." "certainly," agreed ellis. "i'm telling you the best way. fix the story up for the 'clarion' and the other papers will follow our lead." "if we can arrange a story that they'll believe--" began hal. "oh, they won't believe it! not the kind of story we want to print. they aren't fools. but that won't make any difference." "i should think it would be just the sort of possible scandal our enemies would catch at." "you've still got a lot to learn about the newspaper game," replied his subordinate contemptuously. "one newspaper doesn't print a scandal about the owner of another. it's an unwritten law. they'll publish just what we tell 'em to--as we would if it was their dis--i mean misfortune. come, now," he added, in a hard, businesslike voice, "what are we going to call the cause of death?" "miss neal died of heart disease." "call it heart disease," confirmed the other. "circumstances?" this was a poser. dr. surtaine and hal looked at each other and looked away again. "how would this do?" suggested ellis briskly. "miss neal came here to consult dr. surtaine on an emergency in her department at the factory, was taken ill while waiting, and was dead when he--no; that don't fit. if she died without medical attendance, the coroner would have to give a permit for removal. died shortly after dr. surtaine's arrival in spite of his efforts to revive her; that's it!" "just about how it happened," said dr. surtaine gratefully. "for publication. now give me the real facts--under that overcoat of yours." dr. surtaine started, and winced as the movement tweaked the raw nerves of his wound. "there's nothing else to tell," he said. "you brought me here to lie for you," said the journalist. "all right, i'm ready. but if i'm to lie and not get caught at it, i must know the truth. now, when i see a man wearing an overcoat over a painful arm, and discover what looks like a new bullet hole in the wall of the room, i think a dead body may mean something more than heart disease." "i don't see--" began the charlatan. but hal cut him short. "for god's sake," he cried in a voice which seemed to gouge its way through his straining throat, "let's have done with lies for once." and he blurted out the whole story, eking out what he lacked in detail, by insistent questioning of his father. when they came to the part about the relief pills, ellis looked up with a bitter grin. "works out quite logically, doesn't it?" he observed. then, walking over to the body, he looked down into the face, with a changed expression. "poor little girl!" he muttered. "poor little kitty!" he whirled swiftly upon the surtaines. "by god, _i'd_ like to write her story!" he cried. the outburst was but momentary. instantly he was his cool, capable self again. "you've had experience in this sort of thing before, i suppose?" he inquired of dr. surtaine. "yes. no! whaddye mean?" blustered the quack. "only that you'll know how to fix the police and the coroner." "no call for any fixing." "so all that i have to do is to handle the newspapers," pursued the other imperturbably. "all right. there'll be no more than a paragraph in any paper to-morrow. 'working-girl drops dead,' or something like that. you can sleep easy, gentlemen." so obvious was the taunt that hal stared at his friend, astounded. upon the doctor it made no impression. "say, ellis. do something for me, will you?" he requested. "wire to belford couch, the willard, washington, to come on here by first train." "couch? oh, that's certina charley, isn't it? your professional fixer?" "never mind what he is. you'll be sure to do it, won't you?" "no. do it yourself," said ellis curtly, and walked out without a good-night. "well, whaddye think of that!" spluttered dr. surtaine. "that fellow's getting the big-head." hal made no reply. he had dropped into a chair and now sat with his head between his hands. when he raised his face it was haggard as if with famine. "dad, i'm going away." "where?" demanded his father, startled. "anywhere, away from this house." "no wonder you're shaken, boyee," said the other soothingly. "we'll talk about it in the morning. after a night's rest--" "in this house? i couldn't close my eyes for fear of what i'd see!" "it's been a tough business. i'll give you a sleeping powder." "no; i've got to think this out: this whole business of the relief pills." dr. surtaine was instantly on the defensive. "don't go getting any sentimental notions now, hal. it's a perfectly legal business." "so much the worse for the law, then." "you talk like an anarchist!" returned his father, shocked. "do you want to be better than the law?" "if the law permits murder--i do," said hal, very low. indignation rose up within dr. surtaine: not wholly unjustified, considering his belief that hal was primarily responsible for the tragedy. "are your hands so clean, then?" he asked significantly. "god knows, they're not!" cried the son, with passion. "i didn't know. i didn't realize." "yet you turn on me--" "oh, dad, i don't want to quarrel with you. all i know is, i can't stay in this house any more." dr. surtaine pondered for a few minutes. perhaps it was better that the boy should go for a time, until his conscience worked out a more satisfactory state of mind. his own conscience was clear. he was doing business within the limits set for him by the law and the post office authorities, which had once investigated the "pills" and given them a clean bill. milly neal should not put the onus of her own recklessness and immorality upon him. nevertheless, he was glad that belford couch was coming on; and, by the way, he must telephone a dispatch to him. rising, he addressed his son. "where shall you go?" "i don't know. some hotel. the dunstan." "very well. i'll see you at the office soon, i suppose. good-night." all hal's world whirled about him as he saw his father leave the room. what seemed to him a monstrous manifestation of chance had overwhelmed and swept him from all moorings. but was it chance? was it not, rather, as mcguire ellis had suggested, the exemplification of an exact logic? the closing of the door behind his father sent a current of air across the room in which a bit of paper on the floor wavered and turned. hal picked it up. it was the clipping from the "clarion"--his newspaper--which milly neal had brought as her justification. one line of print stood out, writhing as if in an uncontrollable access of diabolic glee: "only $1 a box: satisfaction guaranteed"; and above it the face of the happy lady, distorted by the crumpling of the paper, smirked up at him with a taunt. he thought to interpret that taunt in the words which veltman had used, aforetime:-"what's _your_ percentage?" chapter xxvii the greater tempting journalistic worthington ran true to type in the milly neal affair. no newspaper published more than a paragraph about the "sudden death." suicide was not even hinted at in print. but newspaperdom had its own opinion, magnified and colored by the processes of gossip, over which professional courtesy exercised no control. that the girl had killed herself was generally understood: that there had been a shooting, previous to her death, was also current. eager report recalled and exaggerated the fact that she had been seen with hal surtaine at a dubious road-house some months previous. the popular "inside knowledge" of the tragedy was that milly had gone to the surtaine mansion to force hal's hand, failing in which she had shot him, inflicting an inconsiderable wound, and then killed herself; and that dr. surtaine had thereupon turned his son out of the house. hal's removal to the hotel served to bear out this surmise, and the doctor's strategic effort to cover the situation by giving it out that his son's part of the mansion was being remodeled--even going to the lengths of actually setting a force of men to work there--failed to convince the gossips. between the two men, the situation was now most difficult. quite instinctively hal had fallen in with his father's theory that the primal necessity, after the tragedy, was to keep everything out of print. that by so doing he wholly subverted his own hard-won policy did not, in the stress of the crisis, occur to him. later he realized it. yet he could see no other course of action as having been possible to him. the mere plain facts of the case constituted an accusation against dr. surtaine, unthinkable for a son to publish against his father. and hal still cozened himself into a belief in the quack's essential innocence, persuading his own reason that there was a blind side to the man which rendered it impossible for him to see through the legal into the ethical phases of the question. by this method he was saving his loyalty and affection. but so profound had been the shock that he could not, for a time, endure the constant companionship of former days. consequently the frequent calls which dr. surtaine deemed it expedient to make for the sake of appearances, at hal's hotel, resulted in painful, rambling, topic-shifting talks, devoid of any human touch other than the pitiful and thwarted affection of two personalities at hopeless odds. "least said soonest mended" was a favorite aphorism of the experienced quack. but in this tangle it failed him. it was he who first touched on the poisoned theme. "look here, boy-ee," said he, a week after the burial. "we're both scared to death of what each of us is thinking. let's agree to forget this until you are ready to talk it out with me." "what good will talk do?" said hal drearily. "none at present." his father sighed. he had hoped for a clean breast of it, a confession of the intrigue that should leave the way open to a readjustment of relations. "so let's put the whole thing aside." "all right," agreed hal listlessly. "i suppose you know," he added, "before we close the subject, that i've ordered the relief pills advertising out of the 'clarion.'" "you needn't have bothered. it won't be offered again." silence fell between them. "i've about decided to quit that line," the charlatan resumed with an obvious effort. "not that it isn't strictly legal," he added, falling back upon his reserve defense. "but it's too troublesome. the copy is ticklish; i've had to write all those ads. myself. and, at that, there's some newspapers won't accept 'em and others that want to edit 'em. belford couch and i have been going over the whole matter. he's the diplomat of the concern. and we've about decided to sell out. anyway," he added, brightening, "there ain't hardly money enough in a side-line like the pills to pay for the trouble of running it separate." if dr. surtaine had looked for explicit approval of his virtuous resolution, he was disappointed. yet hal experienced, or tried to believe that he experienced, a certain factitious glow of satisfaction at this proof that his father was ready to give up an evil thing even without being fully convinced of its wrongfulness. this helped the son to feel that, at least, his sacrifice had been made for a worthy affection. still, he had no word to say except that he must get to the office. the doctor left with gloom upon his handsome face. with mcguire ellis, hal's association had become even more difficult than with the doctor. since his abrupt and unceremonious departure from the room of death, in the belief in hal's guilt, ellis had maintained a purely professional attitude toward his employer. for a time, in his wretchedness and turmoil of spirit, hal had scarcely noticed ellis's withdrawal of fellowship, vaguely attributing his silence to unexpressed sympathy. but later, when he broached the subject of milly's death, he was met with a stony avoidance which inspired both astonishment and resentment. sub-normal as he now was in nervous strength and tension, he shrank from having it out with ellis. but he felt, for the first time in his life, forlorn and friendless. on his part mcguire ellis brooded over a deep anger. he was not a man to yield lightly of his best; but he had given to hal, first a fine loyalty, and later, as they grew into closer association, a warm if rather reticent affection. for the rough idealist had found in his employer an idealism not always as clear and intelligent as his own, yet often higher and finer; and along with the professional protectiveness which he had assumed over the younger man's inexperience had come an honest admiration and far-reaching hopes. now he saw in his chief one who had betrayed his cause through a weak and selfish indulgence. the clear-sighted journalist knew that the newspaper owner with a shameful secret binds his own power in the coils of that secret. and fatally in error as he was as to the nature of the entanglement in which hal was involved, he foresaw the inevitable effect of the situation upon the "clarion." moreover, he was bitterly disappointed in hal as a man. had his superior "gone on the loose" and contracted a _liaison_ with some woman of the outer world, ellis would have passed over the abstract morality of the question. but to take advantage of a girl in his own employ, and then so cruelly to leave her to her fate,--there was rot at the heart of the man who could do that. the excision of the offending "relief pills" ad. after the culmination of the tragedy, was simply a sop to hypocrisy. only once had ellis made any reference to milly's death. on the day of her funeral max veltman had disappeared, without notice. a week later he reported for duty, shaken and pallid. "do you want to take him back?" ellis inquired of hal. hal's first impulse was to say "no"; but he conquered it, remembering milly neal's pitiful generosity toward her lover. "where has he been?" he asked. "drunk, i guess." "what do you think?" "i think yes." "all right, if he's sobered up. tell him it mustn't happen again." there was a gleam in mcguire ellis's eye. "suppose _you_ tell him that it mustn't happen again. it would come with more force from you." hal whirled in his chair. "mac, what's the matter with you?" "nothing. i was just thinking of 'kitty the cutie.'" "what were you thinking of her?" "only that max veltman would have gone through hell-fire for her. and, from his looks, he's been through and had the heart burned out of him." with that he resumed his proof-reading in a dogged silence. to hal's great relief veltman kept out of his way. the man seemed dazed with misery, but did his work well enough. rumors reached the office that he was striving to gain a refuge from his sufferings by giving all his leisure hours to work in the rookeries district, under the direction of the reverend norman hale. ellis was of the opinion that his mind was somewhat affected, and that he would bear watching a bit; and was the more disturbed in that veltman shared the secret of the great epidemic "spread," now practically completed for the "clarion's" publishing or suppressing. ellis held the belief that, now, hal would order it suppressed. the man who had shirked his responsibility to milly neal could hardly be relied on for the stamina necessary to such an exploitation. the time was at hand for the decision to be made. the two physicians, elliot and merritt, pressed for publication. every day, they pointed out, not only meant a further risk of life, but also increased the impending danger of a general outburst which would find the city wholly unprepared. on the other hand, the journalists, ellis and wayne, held out for delay. they perceived the one weak point in their case, that neither a dead body nor a living patient had as yet come to the hands of the constituted authorities for diagnosis. the sole determination had been made on corpses carried across the line and now probably impossible of identification. the committee fund was doing its work of concealment effectually. but fate tripped the strategy board at last, using the reverend norman hale as its agent. since milly neal's death, the reverend norman had tried to find time to call on hal surtaine, and had failed. he wished to talk with him about veltman. three days after the funeral he had hauled the "clarion's" foreman out of the gutter, stood between him and suicide for one savage night of struggle, and listened to the remorse of a haunted soul. being a man and a brother, the reverend norman forbore blame or admonition; being a physician of the inner being, he devised work for the wreck in his slums, and had driven him relentlessly that he might find peace in the service of others. slowly the man won back to sanity. one obsession persisted, however, disturbing to the clergyman. veltman was willing to do penance himself, in any possible way, but he insisted that, since the surtaines shared his guilt, they, too, must make amends, before his dead mistress could rest in her grave. apprised by veltman of the whole wretched story, hale secretly sympathized with this view of the surtaines' responsibility. but he was concerned lest, in veltman, it take some form of direct vengeance. when he learned that veltman had returned to the "clarion" composing-room to work, the minister, unable to spare time for a call from his almost sleepless activities, sent an urgent request to hal to meet him at the recreation club. hal being out, ellis got the note, observed the "immediate and important" on the envelope, read the contents, and set out for the rendezvous. he never got there. for at the corner of sperry street he was met by a messenger who knew him. "the back room at mcmaney's," said the urchin. "he's in there, waitin'." ellis entered the place. at a table sat the reverend norman hale, with an expression of radiant happiness on his gaunt face. the barkeeper, who, on his own initiative, had just brought in a steaming hot drink, stood watching him with unfeigned concern. hale welcomed ellis warmly, and drew a chair close for him. "you sent for mr. surtaine," said ellis. "did i?" asked the other vaguely. "i forget. it doesn't matter. nothing matters, now. ellis, i've found out the secret." "what secret?" "the great secret. the solution," replied the young minister, buoyantly. "all that is necessary is to get the bodies." "yes, of course," agreed the other, with rising uneasiness. "but they smuggle them out as fast--" "they won't when i've told them. mcguire ellis,"--he gripped his companion suddenly with fingers that clamped like a burning vise,--"_i can bring the dead back to life_." "tell me about it. but take a swallow of this first." ellis pushed the hot drink toward him. "you're cold." "nothing but excitement. the glory of it! all this suffering and grief and death--" "wait a minute. i want a drink myself." he turned to the bartender. "get an auto," he whispered. "quick!" "there's a rig outside," said the man. "i seen he was sick when he came in, so i sent for it." "good man!" said ellis. "telephone to dr. merritt at the health office to meet me instantly at the hospital. tell him why. now, mr. hale," he added, "come on. let's get along. you can tell me on the way." still rapt with his vision the minister rose, and permitted himself to be guided to the carriage. once inside he fell into a semi-stupor. only at the hospital, where dr. merritt was waiting to see him safe within the isolation ward, did he come to his rightful senses, cool, and, as ever, thoughtful of everything but himself. "you've got your chance for a diagnosis at last, doctor," he whispered to the health officer. half an hour later, dr. merritt came out to the waiting journalist. "typhus," he said, with grievous exultation. "unmistakably and officially typhus. we've got our case. only, i wish to god it had been any of the rest of us." "will he die?" queried ellis. "god knows. i should say his chance was worse than even. he's worn out from overwork." for assurance, dr. elliot was sent for and added his diagnosis. ellis got authoritative interviews with both men, and the "clarion's" great, potential sensation was now fully ripe for print. denton the reporter had done the previous work well. his "story," leaded out and with subheads, ran flush to two pages of the paper, and every paragraph of it struck fire. it would, as ellis said, set off a ton of dynamite beneath sleepy worthington. that night veltman "pulled" a proof, and ellis stayed far into the morning, pasting up a dummy of the article for hal's inspection and final judgment. it was on thursday that norman hale was taken to the hospital. friday noon mcguire ellis laid before his principal the carefully constructed dummy with the brief comment: "there's the epidemic story." hal accepted and read it in silence. once or twice he made a note. when he had finished, he turned to find ellis's gaze fixed upon him. "we ought to run it monday," said ellis. "we can round it all up by then." monday is the dead day of journalism, the day for which news articles which do not demand instant production are reserved, both to liven up a dull paper and because the sensation produced is greater. however, the sensation inevitable to the publishing of this article, as hal instantly realized, would be enormous on any day. "it's big stuff," said he, with a long breath. ellis nodded. "shall i release it for monday?" "n-n-no," came the dubious reply. "it's been held already for ten days." "then what does it matter if we hold it a little longer?" "human lives, maybe. isn't that matter enough?" "that's only a guess. i've got to have time on this," insisted hal. "it's the most vital question of policy that the paper has had to face." "policy!" grunted ellis savagely. "besides, i've given my word to the chamber of commerce committee that we wouldn't publish any epidemic news without due warning to them." "then it's to be killed?" "'wait for orders' proof," said hal stonily. "i might have known," sneered ellis, with an infinite depth of scorn, and went to bear the bitter message to wayne. while the "clarion" policy trembled in the balance, dr. surtaine's committee on suppression was facing a new crisis brought about by the striking down of norman hale, of which they received early information. should he die, as was believed probable, the news, whether or not the full facts got into print, would surely become a focus for the propagation of alarmist rumors. in their distress, the patriots of commerce paid a hasty visit to their chief, craving counsel. having foreseen the possibility of some such contingency, dr. surtaine was ready with a plan. the committee would enlarge itself, call a meeting of the representative men of the town, organize an emergency health committee of one hundred, and take the field against the onset of pernicious malaria. this show of fighting force would allay public alarm, a large fund would be raised, the newspapers would be kept in thorough subjection, and the disease could be wiped out without undue publicity or the imperiling of old home week. "what about the 'clarion'?" inquired hollenbeck, of the committee. "they're still holding off." "safe as your hat," dr. surtaine assured the questioner with a smile. "at the meeting you told us you couldn't answer for your son's paper," stensland recalled. "i can now," said the confident quack. "just you leave it to me." he went direct to the "clarion" office, revolving in his mind the impending interview. for the first time since the tragedy he anticipated a meeting with his son without embarrassment, for now he had a definite topic to talk about, difficult though it might be. finding hal at the editorial desk he went direct to the point. "boy-ee, the epidemic is spreading." "i know it." "i'm going to take hold of the matter personally, from now on." "in what way?" "by organizing a committee of one hundred to cover the city and make a scientific campaign." "are you going to let people know that it's typhus?" "sh-sh-sh! so you know, do you? well, the important thing now is to see that others don't find out. don't even whisper the word. malaria's our cue; pernicious malaria. what's the use of scaring every one to death? we'll call a public meeting for next week--" "publicity is the last thing you want, i should think." "semi-public, i should have said. the epidemic has gone so far that people are beginning to take notice. we've got to reassure them and the right kind of an emergency health committee is the way to do it, belford couch is working up the meeting now. i've kept him over on purpose for it. he's the best little diplomat in the proprietary business. and yours truly will be elected chairman of the committee. it'll cost us a ten-thousand-dollar donation to the fund, but it's worth it to the business." "to the business? i don't quite see how." "simple as a pin! when it's all over and we're ready to let the account of it get into print, dr. surtaine, proprietor of certina, will be the principal figure in the campaign. what's that worth in advertising to the year's business? not that i'm doing it for that. i'm doing it to save old home week." "with a little profit on the side." dr. surtaine deemed it politic to ignore the tone of the commentary. "why not? nobody's hurt by it. you'll be on the central committee, boy-ee." "no; i don't think so." "why not?" "i think i'd better keep out of the movement, dad." "as you like. and you'll see that the 'clarion' keeps out of it, too?" "so that's it." "yes, boy-ee: that's it. you can see, for yourself, that a newspaper sensation would ruin everything just now--and also ruin the paper that sprung it." "so i heard from elias m. pierce sometime since." "for once pierce is right." "are you asking me to suppress the epidemic story?" "to let us handle it our own way," substituted the doctor. "we've got our campaign all figured out and ready to start. do you know what the great danger is now?" "letting the infection go on without taking open measures to stop it." "you're way wrong! starting a panic that will scatter it all over the place is the real danger. have you heard of a single case outside of the rookeries district, so far?" hal strove to recall the death-list on the proof. "no," he admitted. "you see! it's confined to one locality. now, what happens if you turn loose a newspaper scare? why, those poor, ignorant people will swarm out of the rookeries and go anywhere to escape the quarantine that they know will come. you'll have an epidemic not localized, but general. the situation will be ten times as difficult and dangerous as it is now." struck with the plausibility of this reasoning, hal hesitated. "that's up to the authorities," he said. "the authorities!" cried the charlatan, in disdain. "what could they do? the damage would be done before they got ready to move. you see, we've got to handle this situation diplomatically. look here, boyee; what's the worst feature of an epidemic? panic. you know the bible parable. the seven plagues came to egypt and ten thousand people died. the grand vizier said to the plagues, 'how many of my people have you slain?' the plagues said, 'a thousand.' 'what about the other nine thousand?' said the grand vizier. 'not guilty!' said the plagues. 'they were slain by fear.' maybe it was in 'paradise lost' and not the bible. but the lesson's the same. panic is the killer." "but the disease is increasing all the time," objected hal. "are we to sit still and--" "is it?" broke in the wily controversialist. "how do you account for this, then?" he drew from his pocket a printed leaflet. "take a peek at those figures. fewer deaths in the rookeries this last week than in any week since march." this was true. not infrequently there comes an inexplicable subsidence of mortality in mid-epidemic. no competent hygienist is deceived into mistaking this phenomenon for an indication of the end. not being a hygienist hal was again impressed. "the health bureau's own statistics," continued the argumentator, pushing his advantage. "with dr. merritt's signature at the bottom." "dr. merritt says that the epidemic is being fostered by secrecy, suppression, and lying." "all sentimentalism. merritt would turn the city upside down if he had his way. was it him that told you it was typhus?" "no. we've got a two-page story in proof now, giving the whole facts of the epidemic." "you can't publish it, boy-ee," said his father firmly. "can't? that sounds like an order." adroitly dr. surtaine caught at the word. "an order drawn on your word of honor." "if there's any question of honor to the 'clarion,' it's to tell the truth plainly and take the consequences." "who said anything about the 'clarion's honor? this is between you and me." "you'll have to speak more plainly," said hal with a dawning dread. "boyee, i hate to do this, but i've got to, to save the city. you gave me your word that the day you had to suppress news for your own sake, you'd quit this don quixotic business and treat others as decently and considerately as you treated yourself." "go on," said hal, in a half whisper. "well--milly neal." dr. surtaine wet his lips nervously. "you saved yourself there by keeping the story out of the papers. of course you were right. you were dead right. you'd have been a fool to do anything else. but there you are. and there's your promise." a nausea of the soul sickened hal. that his father, whom he had so loved and honored, should make of the loyalty which had, at the cost of principle, protected the name of surtaine against open disgrace, a tool wherewith to tear down his professional standards--it was like some incredible and malign jocosity of a devilish logic. of what was going on in the quack's mind he had no inkling. he could not know that his father saw in the suppression of the suicide news, only a natural and successful effort on the part of hal to conceal his own guilt in milly's death. no more could dr. surtaine comprehend that it was the dreadful responsibility of the surtaine quackery for which hal had unhesitantly sacrificed the declared principle of the "clarion." so they gazed darkly at each other across the chasm, each seeing his opponent in the blackest colors. "you hold me to that?" demanded hal, half choked. "i have to, boy-ee." to dr. surtaine the issue which he had raised was but the distasteful means to a necessary end. to hal it meant the final capitulation to the forces against which he had been fighting since his first enlightenment. "i might as well sell the 'clarion' now, and be done with it," he declared bitterly. "nonsense! if you stuck to this foolishness you'd have to sell it or lose it. you'd be ruined, both in influence and in money. how would you feel when mac ellis, and wayne, and all the fellows that stuck by you found themselves out of a job because of your pig-headedness? and what harm are you doing by dropping the story, anyway? we've got this thing beaten, right now. it isn't spreading. it's dropping off. what'll the 'clarion' look like when its great sensation peters out into thin air? but by that time the harm'll be done and the whole country will think we're a plague-stricken city. don't do all that damage and spoil everything just for a false delusion, boyee." but hal's mind was brooding on the fatal promise which he had so confidently made his father. one way out there was. "since it's a question of my word to you," he said, "i could still publish the truth about milly neal." "no. you couldn't do that, boyee," said his father in a tone, half sorrowful, half shamed. "no. you're right. i couldn't--god help me!" to proclaim his own father a moral criminal in his own paper was the one test which hal lacked the power to meet. it was the world-old conflict between loyalty and principle--in which loyalty so often and so tragically wins the first combat. after all, hal forced himself to consider, he was not serving his public ill by this particular sacrifice of principle. the official mortality figures helped him to persuade himself that the typhus was indeed ebbing. for himself, as the price of silence, there was easy sailing under the flag of local patriotism, and with every success in prospect. yet it was with sunken eyes that he turned to the tempter. "all right," he said, with a half groan, "i give in. we won't print it." dr. surtaine heaved a great sigh of relief. "that's horse sense!" he cried jovially. "now, you go ahead on those lines and you'll make the 'clarion' the best-paying proposition in worthington. i'll drop a few hints where they'll do the most good, and you'll see the advertisers breaking their necks to come in. journalism is no different from any other business, boy-ee. live and let live. bear and forbear. there's the rule for you. the trouble with you, boy-ee, has been that you've been trying to run a business on pink-tea principles." "the trouble with me," said his son bitterly, "is that i've been trying to reform a city when i ought to have been reforming myself." "oh, you're all right, boy-ee," his affectionate and admiring father reassured him. "you're just finding yourself. as for this reform--" and he was launched upon the second measure of the pæan of policy when hal cut him short by ringing a bell and ordering the boy to send mcguire ellis to him. ellis came up from the city room. "kill the epidemic story, mr. ellis," he ordered. red passion surged up into ellis's face. "kill--" he began, in a strangled voice. "kill it. you understand?" the associate editor's color receded. he looked with slow contempt from father to son. "oh, yes, i understand," he said. "any other orders to-day?" hal made no reply. his father, divining that this was no time for further speech, took his departure. mcguire ellis went out with black despair at his heart, a soldier betrayed by his captain. and the proprietor of the "clarion," his feet now set in the path of success and profit, turned back to his work in sodden disenchantment, sighing as youth alone sighs, and as youth sighs only when it foregoes the dream of ideals which is its immortal birthright. chapter xxviii "whose bread i eat" having yielded, hal proposed to take profit by his surrender. with a cynicism born of his bitter disappointment and self-contempt, he took a certain savage and painful satisfaction in stating the new policy editorially. "as the 'clarion' is going to be a journalistic prostitute," said he to his father, across the luncheon table, where they were consulting on details of the new policy, "i'm going to go after the business on that basis." dr. surtaine was pained. every effort of his own convenient logic he put forth to prove that, in this instance, the path of duty and of glory (financial) was one and the same. hal refused the proffered gloss. "at least you and i can call things by their right names now," said he. but however hal might talk, what he wrote met his elder's unqualified approval, as it appeared in the proof sent him by his son. it was a cunningly worded leading editorial, headed "standards," and it dealt appreciatively, not to say reverently, with the commercial greatness of worthington. business, the editor stated, might have to adjust itself to new conditions and opinions in worthington as elsewhere, but nobody who understood the character of the city's leading men could doubt their good purpose or ability to effect the change with the least damage to material prosperity. meantime the fitting attitude for the public was one not of criticism but of forbearance and assistance. this was equally true of journalism. the "clarion" admitted seeing a new light. constructive rather than destructive effort was called for. and so forth, and so on. no intelligent reader could have failed, reading it, to understand that the "clarion" had hauled down its flag. yet the capitulation must not, for business reasons, be too obvious. hal spent some toilful hours over the proof, inserting plausible phrases, covering his tracks with qualifying clauses, putting the best front on the shameful matter, with a sick but determined heart, and was about to send it up with the final "o.k." when he came out of his absorption to realize that some one was standing waiting, had been standing waiting, for some minutes at his elbow. he looked around and met the intent gaze of the foreman of the composing-room. "what is it, veltman?" he asked sharply. "that epidemic story." "well? what about it?" "did you order it killed?" "certainly. haven't you thrown it down?" "no. it's still in type." "throw it down at once." "mr. surtaine, have you thought what you are doing?" "it is no part of your job to catechize me, veltman." "between man and man." he stepped close to hal, his face blazing with exaltation. "i must speak now or forever hold my peace." "speak fast, then." "it's your last chance, this epidemic spread. your last chance to save the 'clarion' and yourself." "that will do, velt--" "no, no! listen to me. i didn't say a word when you kept milly's suicide out of print." "i should think not, indeed!" retorted hal angrily. "that's my shame. i ought to have seen that published if i had to set it up myself." "perhaps you're not aware, veltman, that i know your part in the neal affair." "i'd have confessed to you, if you hadn't. but do you know your own? yours and your father's?" "keep my father out of this!" "your own, then. do you know that the money that bought this paper for you was coined out of the blood of deceived girls? do you know that you and i are paid with the proceeds of the ad. that led milly neal to her death? do you know that?" "and if i do, what then?" asked hal, overborne by the man's conviction and vehemence. "tell it!" cried the other, beating his fist upon the desk until the blood oozed from the knuckles. "tell it in print. confess, man, and warn others!" "veltman, suppose we were to print that whole wretched story to-morrow, including the truth about your relations with her." "do it! do it!" cried the other, choked with eagerness. "i'd thank you on my knees. penance! give me my chance to do penance! i'll make my own confession in writing. i'll write it in my own blood if need be." "steady, veltman. keep cool." "you think i'm crazy? perhaps i am. there's a fire at my brain since she died. i loved her, mr. surtaine." "but you sacrificed her, veltman," returned hal in a gentler tone, for the man's face was livid with agony. "don't i know it! my god, don't i know it! but _you_ can't escape the responsibility because of my sin. it was your paper that helped fool her. she believed in the paper, and in your father." "the relief pills advertising is out. that much i'll tell you." "now that it's done its work. not enough! you and i can't bring milly back to life, mr. surtaine, but we can save other lives in peril. god has given you your chance, in this epidemic." "how do you know about the epidemic?" "hasn't it taken mr. hale, the only friend i've got in the world? and won't it take its hundreds of other lives unless warning is given? why doesn't the 'clarion' speak out, mr. surtaine? _why is that story ordered killed?_" "consideration of policy which--" "policy! oh, my god! and the people dying! harrington surtaine,"--his eyes blazed into the other's with the flame of fanaticism,--"i tell you, if you don't accept this opportunity that the lord gives you, you and your paper are damned. do you know what it means to damn the soul of a paper? why, man, there are people who believe in the 'clarion' like gospel." hal got to his feet. "veltman, i dare say you mean well. but you don't understand this." "don't i!" the face took on a sudden appalling savagery. "don't i know you're bought and paid for! sold out! that's what you've done. a bargain! a bargain! pay my little price and i'll do your meanest bidding. i'd rather have hell burning at my heart as it burns now than what you've got rotting at yours, young surtaine." the tensity of hal's restraint broke. with one powerful effort he sent the foreman whirling through the open door into the hall, slammed the door after him, and stood shaking. he heard and felt the jar of veltman's body as it struck the wall, and slumped to the floor; then the slow limp of his retreating footsteps. with a seething brain he returned to his proof--and shuddered away from it. there was blood spattered over the print. hurriedly he thrust it aside and rang for a fresh galley. but the red spots rose between his eyes and the work, like an accusation, like a prophecy. of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious manhood was to form and fulfill itself--he beheld this vast mechanism blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific genius, potent beyond the powers of humanity, working out the dire complications of men, and the tragic destruction of women. and he beheld himself, fast in its grip. he thrust the proof into the tube, scrawled the "o.k." order on it for the morrow, and hurried away from the office as from a place accursed. that night conscience struck at him once more, making a weapon of words from the book of a dead master. he had been reading "beauchamp's career"; and, seeking refuge from the torture of thought in its magic, he came upon the novelist-philosopher's damning indictment of modern journalism: _"and this press, declaring itself independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest here, an interest there. it cannot have a conscience. it is a bad guide, a false guardian; its abject claim to be our national and popular interpreter--even that is hollow and a mockery. it is powerful only when subservient. an engine of money, appealing to the sensitiveness of money, it has no connection with the mind of the nation. and that it is not of, but apart from the people, may be seen when great crises come--in strong gales the power of the press collapses; it wheezes like a pricked pigskin of a piper."_ hal flung the book from him. but its accusations pursued him through the gates of sleep, and poisoned his rest. in the morning he had recovered his balance, and with it his dogged determination to see the matter through. he forced himself to read the leading editorial, finding spirit even to admire the dexterity with which he had held out the promise of good behavior to the business interests, whilst pretending to a sturdy independence. shearson met him at the entrance to the building, beaming. "that'll bring business," said the advertising manager. "i've had half a dozen telephones already about it." "that's good," replied hal half-heartedly. "yes, _sir_," pursued the advertising manager: "i can smell money in the air to-day. and, by the way, i've got a tip that, for a little mild apology, e.m. pierce will withdraw both his suits." "i'll think about it," promised hal. he was rather surprised at the intensity of his own relief from the prospect of the court ordeal. at least, he was getting his price. mcguire ellis was, for once, not asleep, though there was no work on his desk when hal entered the sanctum. "veltman's quit," was his greeting. "i'm not surprised," said hal. "then you've seen the editorial page this morning?" "yes. but what has that to do with veltman's resignation?" "everything, i should think. notice anything queer about the page?" "no." "look it over again." hal took up the paper and scrutinized the sheet. "i don't see a thing wrong," he said. "that lets me out," said ellis grimly. "if you can't see it when you're told it's there, i guess i can't be blamed for not catching it in proof. of course the last thing one notices is a stock line that's always been there unchanged. look at the motto of the paper. veltman must have chiseled out the old one, and set this in, himself, the last thing before we went to press. how do you like it? looks to me to go pretty well with our leading editorial this morning." there between the triumphal cocks, where formerly had flaunted the braggart boast of the old "clarion," and more latterly had appeared the gentle legend of the martyred president, was spread in letters of shame to the eyes of the "clarion's" owner, the cynic profession of the led captain, of the prostituted pen, of all those who have or shall sell mind and soul and honor for hire;- _"whose bread i eat, his song i sing."_ chapter xxix certina charley mr. belford couch was a man of note. you might search vainly for the name among the massed thousands of "who's who in america," or even in those biographical compilations which embalm one's fame and picture for a ten-dollar consideration. shout the cognomen the length of fifth avenue, bellow it up walnut and down chestnut street, lend it vocal currency along the lake shore drive, toss it to the winds that storm in from the golden gate to assault nob hill, and no answering echo would you awake. but give to its illustrious bearer his familiar title; speak but the words "certina charley" within the precincts of the nation's capital and the very asphalt would find a viscid voice wherewith to acclaim the joke, while senate would answer house, and department reply to bureau with the curses of the stung ones. for mr. belford couch was least loved where most laughed at. from the nature of his profession this arose. his was a singular career. he pursued the fleeting testimonial through the mazy symptoms of disease (largely imaginary) and cure (wholly mythical). to extract from the great and shining ones of political life commendations of certina; to beguile statesmen who had never tasted that strange concoction into asseverating their faith in the nostrum's infallibility for any and all ailments; to persuade into fulsome print solemnly asinine senators and unwarily flattered congressmen--that was the touchstone of his living. some the demon rum betrayed into his hands. others he won by sheer personal persuasiveness, for he was a master of the suave plea. again, political favors or "inside information" made those his debtors from whom he exacted and extracted the honor of their names for dr. surtaine's upholding. blackmail, even, was hinted at. "what does it matter?" thought the deluded or oppressed victim. "merely a line of meaningless indorsement to sign my name to." and within a fortnight advertising print, black and looming, would inform the reading populace of the whole country that "united states senator gull says of certina: 'it is, in my opinion, unrivaled as a never-failing remedy for coughs and colds,'" with a picture, coarse-screen, libelously recognizable. certina charley was not a testimonial-chaser alone. had he been, dr. surtaine would not have retained him at a generous salary, but would have paid him, as others of his strange species are paid, by the piece; one hundred dollars for a representative, two hundred and fifty dollars for a senator, and as high as five hundred for a hero conspicuous in the popular eye. the special employee of certina was a person of diverse information and judicious counsel. his chief had not incorrectly described him as the diplomat of the trade. no small diplomacy had been required for the planning of the emergency committee scheme, the details of which mr. couch had worked out, himself. it was, as he boasted to dr. surtaine, "a clincher." "look out for the medicos," he had said to dr. surtaine in outlining his great idea. "they're mean to handle. you can always buy or bluff a newspaper, but a doctor is different. some of 'em you can grease, but they're the scrubs. the real fellers won't touch money, and the worst of 'em just seem to love trouble. merritt's that kind. but we can fix merritt by raising twenty or thirty thousand dollars and handing it over to him to organize his campaign against the epidemic. from all i can learn, merritt has got the goods as a health officer. he knows his business. there's no man in town could handle the thing better, unless it's you, chief, and you don't want to mix up in the active part of it. merritt'll be crazy to do it, too. that's where we'll have him roped. you say to him, 'take this money and do the work, but do it on the quiet. that's the condition. if you can't keep our secret, we'll have you fired and get some man that can.' the mayor will chuck him if the committee says so. but it won't be necessary, if i've got merritt sized up. he wants to get into this fight so bad that he'll agree to almost anything. his assistants we can square. "so much for the official end of it. but what about the run of the medical profession? if they go around diagnosing typhus, the news'll spread almost as fast as through the papers. so here's how we'll fix them. recommend the city council to pass an ordinance making it a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, and revocation of license to practice, for a physician to make a diagnosis of any case as a pestilential disease. the council will do it on the committee's say-so." "whew!" whistled the old charlatan. "that's going pretty strong, bel. the doctors won't stand for that." "believe me, they will. it's been tried and it worked fine, on the coast, when they had the plague there. that's where i got the notion: but the revocation of the license is my own scheme. that'll scare 'em out of their wits. you'll find they don't dare peep about typhus. especially as there aren't a dozen doctors in town that ever saw a case of it." "that's so," agreed his principal. "i guess you're right after all, bel." "sure, am i! you say you've got the newspapers fixed." "sewed up tight." "keno! our programme's complete. you and mr. pierce and the mayor see merritt and get him. call the meeting for next week. make some good-natured, diplomatic feller chairman. send out the call to about three hundred of your solidest men. then we'll elect you permanent chairman, you can pick your emergency committee, put the resolution about pest-diagnosis up to the city council--and there you are. my job's done. i shall _not_ be among those present." "done, and mighty well done, bel. you'll be going back to washington?" "no, i guess i better stick around for a while--in case. besides, i want a little rest." like so many persons of the artistic temperament, certina charley was subject to periods of relaxation. with him these assumed the phase of strong drink, evenly and rather thickly spread over several days. on the afternoon before the carefully planned meeting, ten days after norman hale was taken to the hospital, the diplomat of quackery, his shoulders eased of all responsibility, sat lunching early at the hotel dunston. his repast consisted of a sandwich and a small bottle of well-frappéd champagne. to him, lunching, came a drummer of the patent medicine trade; a blatant and boastful fellow, from whose methods the diplomat in mr. belford couch revolted. nevertheless, the newcomer was a forceful person, and when, over two ponies of brandy ordered by the luncher in the way of inevitable hospitality, he launched upon a criticism of some of the recent certina legislative strategy as lacking vigor (a reproach by no means to be laid to the speaker's language), mr. couch's tenderest feelings were lacerated. with considerable dignity for one in his condition, he bade his guest go farther and fare worse, and in mitigation of the latter's parthian taunt, "kid-glove fussing, 'bo," called heaven and earth and the whole café to witness that, abhorrent though self-trumpeting was to him, no man had ever handled more delicately a prickly proposition than he had handled the certina legislative interests. gazing about him for sympathy he espied the son of his chief passing between the tables, and hailed him. two casual meetings with certina charley had inspired in hal a mildly amused curiosity. therefore, he readily enough accepted an invitation to sit down, while declining a coincident one to have a drink, on the plea that he was going to work. "say," appealed charley, "did you hear that cough-lozenge-peddling boob trying to tell me where to get off, in the proprietary game? me!" "perhaps he didn't know who you are," suggested hal tactfully. "perhaps he don't know the way from his hand to his face with a glass of booze, either," retorted the offended one, with elaborate sarcasm. "everybody in the trade knows me. sure you won't have a drink?" "no, thank you." "don't drink much myself," announced the testimonial-chaser. "just once in a while. weak kidneys." "that's a poor tribute from a certina man." "oh, certina's all right--for those that want it. the best doctor is none too good for me when i'm off my feed." "well, they call certina 'the people's doctor,'" said hal, quoting an argument his father had employed. "one of the chief's catchwords. and ain't it a corker! he's the best old boy in the business, on the bunk." "just what do you mean by that?" asked hal coldly. but certina charley was in an expansive mood. it never occurred to him that the heir of the certina millions was not in the certina secrets: that he did not wholly understand the nature of his father's trade, and view it with the same jovial cynicism that inspired the old quack. "who's to match him?" he challenged argumentatively. "i tell you, they all go to school to him. there ain't one of our advertising tricks, from old lame-boy down to the money-back guarantee, that the others haven't crabbed. take that 'people's doctor' racket. schwarzman copied it for his marovian mixture. vollmer ran his 'poor man's physician' copy six months, on marsh-weed. 'poor man's doctor'! it's pretty dear treatment, i tell you." "surely not," said hal. "sure _is_ it! what's a doctor's fee? three dollars, probably." "and certina is a dollar a bottle. if one bottle cures--" "does _what_? quit your jollying," laughed certina charley unsteadily. "cures the disease," said hal, his suspicions beginning to congeal into a cold dread that the revelation which he had been unconfessedly avoiding for weeks past was about to be made. "if it did, we'd go broke. do you know how many bottles must be sold to any one patron before the profits begin to come in? six! count them, six." "nonsense! it can't cost so much to make as--" "make? of course it don't. but what does it cost to advertise? you think i'm a little drink-taken, but i ain't. i'm giving you the straight figures. it costs just the return on six bottles to get certina into mr. e.z. mark's hands, and until he's paid his seventh dollar for his seventh bottle our profits don't come in. advertising is expensive, these days." "how many bottles does it take to cure?" asked hal, clinging desperately to the word. "nix on the cure thing, 'bo. you don't have to put up any bluff with me. i'm on the inside, right down to the bottom." "very well. maybe you know more than i do, then," said hal, with a grim determination, now that matters had gone thus far, to accept this opportunity of knowledge, at whatever cost of disillusionment. "go ahead. open up." "a real cure couldn't make office-rent," declared the expert with conviction. "what you want in the proprietary game is a jollier. certina's that. the booze does it. you ought to see the farmers in a no-license district lick it up. three or four bottles will give a guy a pretty strong hunch for it. and after the sixth bottle it's all velvet to us, except the nine cents for manufacture and delivery." "but it must be some good or people wouldn't keep on buying it," pursued hal desperately. "you've got all the old stuff, haven't you! the good ol' stock arguments," said certina charley, giggling. "the chief has taught you the lesson all right. must be studyin' up to go before a legislative committee. well, here's the straight of it. folks keep on buying certina for the kick there is in it. it's a bracer. and it's a repeater, the best repeater in the trade." "but it must cure lots of them. look at the testimonials. surely they're genuine." "so's a rhinestone genuine--as a rhinestone. the testimonials that ain't bought, or given as a favor, are from rubes who want to see their names in print." "at least i suppose it isn't harmful," said hal desperately. "no more than any other good ol' booze. it won't hurt a well man. i used to soak up quite a bit of it myself till my doc gave me an option on dyin' of bright's disease or quittin'." "bright's disease!" exclaimed hal. "oh, yes, i know: we cure bright's disease, don't we? well, if there's anything worse for old george w. bright's favorite ailment than raw alcohol, then my high-priced physizzian don't know his business." "let me get this straight," said hal with a white face. "do i understand that certina--" "say, wassa matter?" broke in certina charley, in concern; "you look sick." "never mind me. you go on and tell me the truth about this thing." "i guess i been talkin' too much," muttered certina charley, dismayed. he gulped down the last of his champagne with a tremulous hand. "this's my second bottle," he explained. "an' brandy in between. say, i thought you knew all about the business." "i know enough about it now so that i've got to know the rest." "you--you won't gimme away to the chief? i didn't mean to show up his game. i'm--i'm pretty strong for the old boy, myself." "i won't give you away. go on." "whaddye want to know, else?" "is there _anything_ that certina is good for?" "sure! didn't i tell you? it's the finest bracer--" "as a cure?" "it's just as good as any other prup-proprietary." "that isn't the question. you say it is harmful in bright's disease." "why, looka here, mr. surtaine, you know yourself that booze is poison to any feller with kidney trouble. rheumatism, too, for that matter. but they get the brace, and they think they're better, and that helps push the trade, too." "and that's where my money came from," said hal, half to himself. "it's all in the trade," cried certina charley, summoning his powers to a defense. "there's lots that's worse. there's the cocaine dopes for catarrh; they'll send a well man straight to hell in six months. there's the baby dopes; and the g-u cures that keep the disease going when right treatment could cure it; and the methylene blue--" "stop it! stop it!" cried hal. "i've heard enough." alcohol, the juggler with men's thoughts, abruptly pressed upon a new center of ideation in certina charley's brain. "d'you think i like it?" he sniveled, with lachrymose sentimentality. "i gotta make a living, haven't i? here's you and me, two pretty decent young fellers, having to live on a fake. well," he added with solacing philosophy, "if we didn't get it, somebody else would." "tell me one thing," said hal, getting to his feet. "does my father know all this that you've been telling me?" "does the chief _know_ it? _does_ he? why, say, my boy, ol' doc surtaine, he _wrote_ the proprietary medicine business!" misgivings beset the optimistic soul of certina charley as his guest faded from his vision; faded and vanished without so much as a word of excuse or farewell. for once hal had been forgetful of courtesy. gazing after him his host addressed the hovering waiter:-"say, bill, i guess i been talkin' too much with my face. bring's another of those li'l bo'ls." chapter xxx illumination certina charley, plus an indeterminate quantity of alcohol, had acted upon hal's mind as a chemical precipitant. all the young man's hitherto suppressed or unacknowledged doubts of the certina trade and its head were now violently crystallized. hal hurried out of the hotel, the wrath in his heart for the deception so long wrought upon him chilled by a profounder feeling, a feeling of irreparable loss. he thought in that moment that his love for his father was dead. it was not. it was only his trust that was dying, and dying hard. since that day of his first visit to the certina factory, hal's standards had undergone an intrinsic but unconscious alteration. brought up to the patent medicine trade, though at a distance, he thought of it, by habit, as on a par with other big businesses. one whose childhood is spent in a glue factory is not prone to be supersensitive to odors. so, to harrington surtaine, those ethical and moral difficulties which would have bulked huge to one of a different training, were merely inherent phases of a profitable business. misgivings had indeed stirred, at first. for these he had chided himself, as for an over-polite revulsion from the necessary blatancy of a broadly advertised enterprise. more searching questions, as they arose within him, he had met with the counter-evidence of the internal humanism and fair-dealing of the certina shop, and of the position of its beloved chief in the commercial world. in the face of the relief pills exposure, hal could no longer excuse his father on the ground that dr. surtaine honestly credited his medicines with impossible efficacies. still, he had reasoned, the doctor had been willing instantly to abandon this nostrum when the harm done by it was concretely brought home to him. though this argument had fallen far short of reconciling hal to the surtaine standards, nevertheless it had served as a makeshift to justify in part his abandonment of the hard-won principles of the "clarion," a surrender necessary for the saving of a loved and honored father in whose essential goodness he had still believed. now the edifice of his faith was in ruins. if certina itself, if the tutelary genius of the house of surtaine, were indeed but a monstrous quackery cynically accepted as such by those in the secret, what shred of defense remained to him who had so prospered by it? through the wreckage of his pride, his loyalty, his affection, hal saw, in place of the glowing and benign face of dr. surtaine, the simulacrum of fraud, sleek and crafty, bloated fat with the blood of tragically hopeful dupes. one great lesson of labor hal had already learned, that work is an anodyne. from his interview with certina charley he made straight for the "clarion" office. as he hurried up the stairs, the door of shearson's room opened upon him, and there emerged therefrom a brick-red, agile man who greeted him with a hard cordiality. "your paper certainly turned the trick. i gotta hand it to you!" "what trick?" asked hal, not recognizing the stranger. "selling my stock. streaky mountain copper company. don't you remember?" hal did remember now. it was l.p. mcquiggan. "more of the same for me, _if_ you please," continued the visitor. "i've just made the deal with shearson. he's stuck me up on rates a little. that's all right, though. the 'clarion' fetches the dough. i want to start the new campaign with an interview on our prospects. is it o.k.?" "come up and see mr. ellis," said hal. having led him to the editorial office, hal sat down to work, but found no escape from his thoughts. there was but one thing to do: he must have it out at once with dr. surtaine. he telephoned the factory for an appointment. sharp-eared mcquiggan caught the call. "that my old pal, andy?" said he. "gimme a shot at him while you've got him on the wire, will you?" cheery, not to say chirpy, was the mining promoter's greeting projected into the transmitter which hal turned over to him. straightway, however, a change came o'er his blithe spirit. "something's biting the old geezer," he informed hal and ellis. "seems to have a grouch. says he's coming over, pronto--right quick." five minutes later, while mr. mcquiggan was running over some proofs which he had brought with him, dr. surtaine walked into the office. there was about him a formidable smoothness, as of polished metal. he greeted his old friend with a nod and a cool "back again, i see, elpy." "and doing business at the old stand," rejoined his friend. "worthington's the place where the dollars grow, all right." "grow, _and_ stay," said dr. surtaine. "meaning?" inquired mcquiggan solicitously. "that you've over-medicated this field." "have i got any dollars away from you, andy?" "no. but you have from my people." "well, their money's as good to buy booze with as anybody else's, i reckon." dr. surtaine had sat down, directly opposite the visitor, fronting him eye-to-eye. nothing loath, mcquiggan accepted the challenge. his hard, brisk voice, with a sub-tone of the snarl, crossed the doctor's strong, heavy utterance like a rapier engaging a battle-axe. both assumed a suavity of manner felt to be just at the breaking point. the two spectators sat, surprised and expectant. "i don't suppose," said dr. surtaine, after a pause, "there's any use trying to get you to refund." "still sticking out for the money-back-if-not-satisfied racket--in the other fellow's business, eh, andy? better practice it in your own." "hal,"--dr. surtaine turned to his son,--"has mcquiggan brought in a new batch of copy?" "so i understand." "the 'clarion' mustn't run it." "the hell it mustn't!" said mcquiggan. "it's crooked," said the quack bluntly. the promoter laughed. "a hot one, you are, to talk about crookedness." "he's paying his advertising bills out of my people's pay envelopes!" accused dr. surtaine. "how's that, doc?" asked ellis. "why, when he was here before, he spent some time around the certina plant and got acquainted with the department managers and a lot of the others, and damn me!" cried dr. surtaine, grinning in spite of his wrath, "if he didn't sting 'em all for stock." "how do you know they're stung?" inquired ellis. "from an expert on the ground. i got anxious when i found my own people were in it, and had a man go out there from phoenix. he reports that the streaky mountain hasn't got a thing but expectations and hardly that." "well, you didn't say there was anything more, did you?" inquired the bland mcquiggan. "i? i didn't say?" "yes, _you_. you got up the ads." "well--well--well, of all the nerve!" cried dr. surtaine, grievously appealing to the universe at large. "i got 'em up! you gave me the material, didn't you?" "sure, did i. hot stuff it was, too." "hot bunk! and to flim-flam my own people with it, too!" "anybody that works in your joint ought to be wise to the bunk game," suggested mcquiggan. "i'll tell you one thing: you don't run any more of it in this town." "maybe i don't and then again maybe i do. it won't be as good as your copy, p'r'aps. but it'll get _some_ coin, i reckon. take a look," he taunted, and tossed his proofs to the other. the quack broke forth at the first glance. "look here! you claim fifty thousand tons of copper in sight." "so there is." "with a telescope, i suppose." "well, telescope's sight, ain't it? you wouldn't try to hear through one, would you?" "and $200,000.00 worth, ready for milling," continued the critic. "printer's error in the decimal point," returned the other, with airy impudence. "move it two to the left. keno! there you have it: $2000.00." "very ingenious, mr. mcquiggan," said hal. "but you're practically admitting that your ads. are faked." "admittin' nothin'! i offer you the ads. and i've got the ready stuff to pay for 'em." "and you think that is all that's necessary?" "sure do i!" "mr. mcquiggan," remarked ellis, "has probably been reading our able editorial on the reformed and chastened policy of the 'clarion.'" hal turned an angry red. "that doesn't commit us to accepting swindles." "don't it?" queried mcquiggan. "since when did you get so pick-an'-choosy?" "straight advertising," announced dr. surtaine, "has been the unvarying policy of this paper since my son took it over." "straight!" vociferated mcquiggan. "_straight?_ ladies and gents: the well-known surtaine family will now put on their screamin' farce entitled 'honesty is the best policy.'" "when you're through playing the clown--" began hal. "straight advertising," pursued the other. "did i really hear them sweet words in andy certain's voice? no! say, somebody ring an alarm-clock on me. i can't wake up." "i think we've heard enough from you, mcquiggan," warned hal. "do you!" the promoter sprang from his chair and all the latent venom of his temper fumed and stung in the words he poured out. "well, take another think. i've got some things to tell you, young feller. don't you come the high-and-holy on me. you and your smooth, big, phony stuffed-shirt of a father." "here, you!" shouted the leading citizen thus injuriously designated, but the other's voice slashed through his protest like a blade through pulp. "certina! ho-oh! warranted to cure consumption, warts, heart-disease, softening of the brain, and the bloody pip! and what is it? morphine and booze." "you're a liar," thundered the outraged proprietor: "ten thousand dollars to any one who can show a grain of morphine in it." "changed the formula, have you? pure food law scared you out of the dope, eh? well, even at that it's the same old bunk. what about your testimonials? fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and blackmail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pious plate-pusher stuff about being straight. oh, my gawd! it'd make a straddle-bug spit at the sun, to hear you. why, i'm no saint, but the medical line was too strong for my stomach. i got out of it." "yes, you did, you dirty little dollar-snatcher! you got put of it into jail for peddling raw gin--." "don't you go raking up old muck with me, you rotten big poisoner!" roared mcquiggan: "or you'll get the hot end of it. how about that girl that went batty after taking cert--" "wait a moment! father! please!" hal broke in, aghast at this display. "we're not discussing the medical business. we're talking advertising. mcquiggan, yours is refused. we don't run that class of matter in the 'clarion.'" "no? since when? you'd better consult an oculist, young surtaine." "if ever this paper carried such a glaring fake as your streaky mountain--" "stop right there! stop! look! and listen!" he caught up the day's issue from the floor and flaunted it, riddling the flimsy surface with the stiffened finger of indictment. "look at it! look at this ad.--and this--and this." the paper was rent with the vehemence of his indication. "put my copy next to that, and it'd come to life and squirm to get away." "nothing there but what every paper takes," defended ellis. "every paper'd be glad to take my stuff, too. why, streaky mountain copy is the holy bible compared to what you've got here. take a slant at this: 'consumption cured in three months.'--'cancer cured or your money back.'--catarrh dopes, headache cures, germ-killers, baby-soothers, nerve-builders,--the whole stinkin' lot. don't i know 'em! either sugar pills that couldn't cure a belly-ache, or hell's-brew of morphine and booze. certina ain't the worst of 'em, any more than it's the best. i may squeeze a few dollars out of easy boobs, but you, andy certain, you and your young whelp here, you're playin' the poor suckers for their lives. and then you're too lily-fingered to touch a mining proposition because there's a gamble in it!" he crumpled the paper in his sinewy hands, hurled it to the floor, kicked it high over dr. surtaine's head, and stalking across to hal's desk, slapped down his proofs on it with a violence that jarred the whole structure. "you run that," he snarled, "or i'll hire the biggest hall in worthington and tell the whole town what i've just been telling you." his face, furrowed and threatening, was thrust down close to hal's. thus lowered, the eyes came level with a strip of print, pasted across the inner angle of the desk. "'whose bread i eat, his song i sing,'" he read. "what's that?" "a motto," said mcguire ellis. "the complete guide to correct journalistic conduct. put there, lest we forget." "h'm!" said mcquiggan, puzzled. "it's in the right place, all right, all right. well, does my ad. go?" "no," said hal. "but i'm much obliged to you, mcquiggan." "you go to hell. what're you obliged to me for?" said the visitor suspiciously. "for the truth. i think you've told it to me. anyway you've made me tell it to myself." "i guess i ain't told you much you don't know about your snide business." "you have, though. go ahead and hire your hall. but--take a look at to-morrow's 'clarion' before you make your speech. now, good-day to you." mcquiggan, wondering and a little subdued by a certain quiet resolution in hal's speech, went, beckoning ellis after him for explication. hal turned to his father. "i don't suppose," he began haltingly, "that you could have told me all this yourself." "what?" asked dr. surtaine, consciously on the defensive. "about the medical ads." "mcquiggan's a sore-head"--began the doctor. "but you might have told me about certina, as i've been living on certina money." "there's nothing to tell." all the self-assurance had gone out of the quack's voice. "father, does certina cure bright's disease?" "cure? why, boyee, what _is_ a cure?" "does it cure it?" insisted hal. "sit down and cool off. you've let that skunk, mcquiggan, get you all excited." "this began before mcquiggan." "then you've been talking to some jealous doctor-crank." "for god's sake, father, answer my plain question." "why, there's no such thing as an actual cure for bright's disease." "don't you say in the advertisements that certina will cure it?" "oh, advertisements!" returned the quack with an uneasy smile. "nobody takes an advertisement for gospel." "i'm answered. will it cure diabetes?" "no medicine will. no doctor can. they're incurable diseases. certina will do as much--" "is it true that alcohol simply hastens the course of the disease?" "authorities differ," said the quack warily. "but as the disease is incurable--" "then it's all lies! lies and murder!" "you're excited, boy-ee," said the charlatan with haggard forbearance. "let me explain for a moment." "isn't it pretty late for explanations between you and me?" "this is the gist of the proprietary trade," said the doctor, picking his words carefully. "most diseases cure themselves. medicine isn't much good. doctors don't know a great deal. now, if a patent medicine braces a patient up and gives him courage, it does all that can be done. then, the advertising inspires confidence in the cure and that's half the battle. there's a lot in christian science, and a lot in common between christian science and the proprietary business. both work on the mind and help it to cure the body. but the proprietary trade throws in a few drugs to brace up the system, allay symptoms, and push along the good work. there you have certina." hal shook his head in dogged misery. "it can't cure. you admit it can't cure. and it may kill, in the very cases where it promises to cure. how could you take money made that way?" a flash of cynicism hardened the handsome old face. "somebody's going to make a living off the great american sucker. if it wasn't us, it'd be somebody else." he paused, sighed, and in a phrase summed up and crystallized the whole philosophy of the medical quack: "life's a cut-throat game, anyway." "and we're living on the blood," said hal. "it's a good thing," he added slowly, "that i didn't know you as you are before milly neal's death." "why so?" "because," cried the son fiercely, "i'd have published the whole truth of how she died and why, in the 'clarion.'" "it isn't too late yet," retorted dr. surtaine with pained dignity, "if you wish to strike at the father who hasn't been such a bad father to you. but would you have told the truth of your part in it?" "my part in it?" repeated hal, in dull puzzlement. "you mean the ad?" "you know well enough what i mean. boy-ee, boy-ee,"--there was an edge of genuine agony in the sonorous voice,--"we've drawn far apart, you and i. is all the wrong on my side? can you judge me so harshly, with your own conscience to answer?" "what i've got on my conscience you've put there. you've made me turn back on every principle i have. i've dishonored myself and my office for you. you've cost me the respect of the men i work with, and the faith of the best friend i've got in the world." "the _best_ friend, boy-ee?" questioned the doctor gently. "the best friend: mcguire ellis." hal's gaze met his father's. and what he saw there all but unmanned him. from the liquid depths of the old quack's eyes, big and soft like an animal's, there welled two great tears, to trickle slowly down the set face. hal turned and stumbled from the office. hardly knowing whither he went, he turned in at the first open door, which chanced to be shearson's. there he sat until his self-control returned. as the aftermath of his anger there remained with him a grim determination. it was implicit in his voice, as he addressed shearson, who walked in upon him. "cut out every line of medical from the paper." "when?" gasped shearson. "now. for to-morrow's paper." "but, mr. surtaine--" "every--damned--line. and if any of it ever gets back, the man responsible loses his job." "yes, sir," said the cowed and amazed shearson. hal returned to his sanctum, to find ellis in his own place and dr. surtaine gone. "ellis, you put that motto on my desk." "yes." "what for?" "lest we forget," repeated ellis. "not much danger of that," replied his employer bitterly. "now, i want you to take it down." "is that an order?" "would you obey it if it were?" "no." "you'd resign first?" "yes." "then i'll take it down myself." with his letter-opener he pried the offensive strip loose, tore it across thrice, and scattered the pieces on the floor. "mr. ellis," said he formally, "hereafter no medical advertising will be accepted for or published in the 'clarion.' the same rule applies to fraudulent advertising of any kind. i wish you and the other members of the staff to act as censors for the advertising." "yes, sir," said mcguire ellis. he turned back to his desk, and sprawled his elbows on it. his head lapsed lower and lower until it attained the familiar posture of rest. but mcguire ellis was not sleeping. he was thinking. chapter xxxi the voice of the prophet two hundred and fifty representative citizens, mostly of the business type, with a sprinkling of other occupations not including physicians, sat fanning themselves into a perspiration in the chamber of commerce assembly rooms, and wondering what on earth an emergency health meeting might be. congressman brett harkins, a respectable nonentity, who was presiding, had refrained from telling them: deliberately, it would appear, as his speech had dealt vaguely with the greatness of worthington's material prosperity, now threatened--if one might credit his theory--by a combination of senseless panic and reckless tongues; and had concluded by stating that mr. william douglas, one of the leaders of our bar, as all the chairman's hearers well knew, would explain the situation and formulate a plan for the meeting's consideration. explanation, however, did not prove to be mr. william douglas's forte. coached by that practiced diplomat, certina charley, he made a speech memorable chiefly for what it did not say. the one bright, definite gleam, amidst rolling columns of oratory, was the proposal that an emergency committee of one hundred be appointed to cope with the situation, that the initial sum of twenty-five thousand dollars be pledged by subscription, and that their distinguished fellow citizen, dr. l. andré surtaine, be permanent chairman of said committee, with power to appoint. dr. surtaine had generously offered to subscribe ten thousand dollars to the fund. (loud and prolonged applause; the word "thousand" preceding the word "dollars" and itself preceded by any numeral from one to one million, inclusive, being invariably provocative of acclaim in a subscription meeting of representative citizens.) mr. douglas took pride in nominating that midas of medicine, dr. surtaine. (more and louder applause.) the reverend dr. wales, of dr. surtaine's church, sonorously seconded the nomination. so did hollis myers, of the security power products company. so, a trifle grumpily, did elias m. pierce. also col. parker, editor of the "telegram," aaron scheffler, of scheffler and mintz, and councilman carlin. the presiding officer inquired with the bland indifference of the assured whether there were any further nominations. there were not. but turning in his second-row seat, festus willard, who was too important a figure commercially to leave out, though dr. surtaine had entertained doubts of his "soundness," demanded of mcguire ellis, seated just behind him, what it was all about. "ask the chairman," suggested ellis. "i will," said willard. he got up and did. the honorable brett harkins looked uncomfortable. he didn't really know what it was all about. moreover, it had been intimated to him that he'd perhaps better not know. he cast an appealing glance at douglas. "that is not exactly the question before the meeting," began douglas hastily. "it is the question i asked," persisted willard. "before we elect dr. surtaine or any one else chairman of a committee with a fund to spend, i want to know what the committee is for." "to cope with the health situation of the city." "very well. now we're getting somewhere. where's dr. merritt? i think we ought to hear from him on that point." murmurs of assent were heard about the room. dr. surtaine rose to his feet. "if i may be pardoned for speaking to a motion of which i am a part," he said in his profound and mellow voice. "i think i can throw light upon the situation. quite a number of us have observed with uneasiness the increase of sickness in worthington. sensationalists have gone so far as to whisper that there is an epidemic. i have myself made a rigid investigation. more than this, my son, mr. harrington surtaine, has placed the resources of the 'clarion' staff at our disposal, and on the strength of both inquiries, i am prepared to assure this gathering that nothing like an epidemic exists." "well, i _am_ damned!" was mcguire ellis's astounded and none too low-voiced comment upon this bold perversion of the "clarion" enterprise. stretching upward from his seat he looked about for hal. the young editor sat in a far corner, his regard somberly intent upon the speaker. "alarm there has undoubtedly been, and is," pursued dr. surtaine. "to find means to allay it is the purpose of the meeting. we must remove the cause. both our morbidity and our mortality rate, though now retrograding, have been excessive for several weeks, especially in the rookeries district. there has been a prevalence of malaria of a severe type, which, following last winter's epidemic of grip, has proven unusually fatal. dr. merritt believes that he can wipe out the disease quietly if a sufficient sum is put at his disposal." this was not authoritative. merritt had declined to commit himself, but dr. surtaine was making facts of his hopes. "in this gathering it is hardly necessary for me to refer to the municipal importance of old home week and to the damage to its prospects which would be occasioned by any suspicion of epidemic," continued the speaker. "whatever may be the division of opinion as to methods, we are surely unanimous in wishing to protect the interests of the centennial celebration. and this can best be done through a committee of representative men, backing the constituted health authorities, without commotion or disturbance. have i answered your doubts, mr. willard?" he concluded, turning a brow of benign inquiry upon that gentleman. "not wholly," said festus willard. "i've heard it stated on medical authority that there is some sort of plague in the rookeries." a murmur of inquiry rose. "plague? what kind of plague?"--"who says so?"--"does he mean bubonic?"--"no doctor that knows his business--"--"they say doctors are shut out of the rookeries."--"order! order!" through the confusion cleaved the edged voice of e.m. pierce, directed to the chairman: "shut that off." a score took the cue. "question! question!" they cried. "do i get an answer to my question?" persisted willard. "what is your question?" asked the harassed chairman. "is there a pestilence in the rookeries? if so, what is its nature?" "there is not," stated dr. surtaine from his seat. "who ever says there is, is an enemy to our fair and healthy city." this noble sentiment, delivered with all the impressiveness of which the old charlatan was master, roused a burst of applause. to its rhythm there stalked down the side aisle and out upon the rostrum the gaunt figure of the reverend norman hale. "mr. chairman," he said. "how did that fellow get here?" dr. surtaine asked of douglas. "we invited all the ministers," was the low response. "i understood he was seriously ill." "he is a trouble-maker. tell harkins not to let him talk." douglas spoke a word in the chairman's ear. "there's a motion before the house--i mean the meeting," began congressman harkins, when the voice behind him cut in again, hollow and resonant: "mr. chairman." "do you wish to speak to the question?" asked the chairman uncertainly. "i do." "no, no!" called douglas. "out of order. question!" voices from the seats below supported him. but there were other calls for a hearing for the newcomer. curiosity was his ally. the meeting anticipated a sensation. the chairman, lacking a gavel, hammered on the stand with a tumbler, and presently produced a modified silence, through which the voice of the reverend norman hale could be heard saying that he wished but three minutes. he stepped to the edge of the platform, and the men below noticed for the first time that he carried in his right hand a wreath of metal-mounted, withered flowers. there was no mistaking the nature of the wreath. it was such as is left lying above the dead for wind and rain to dissipate. hale raised it slowly above his head. the silence in the hall became absolute. "i brought these flowers from a girl's grave," said the reverend norman hale. "the girl had sinned. death was the wage of her sin. she died by her own hand. so her offense is punished. that account is closed." "what has all this to do--" began the chairman; but he stopped, checked by a wave of sibilant remonstrance from the audience. the speaker went on, with relentless simplicity, still holding the mortuary symbol aloft:-"but there is another account not yet closed. the girl was deceived. not by the father of her unborn child. that is a different guilt, to be reckoned with in god's own time. the deception for which she has paid with her life was not the deception of hot passion, but of cold greed. a man betrayed her, as he has betrayed thousands of other unfortunates, to put money into his own pockets. he promised her immunity. he said to her and to all women, in print, that she need not fear motherhood if she would buy his medicine. she believed the promise. she paid her dollar. and she found, too late, that it was a lie. "so she went to the man. she knew him. and she determined either that he should help her or that she would be revenged on him. all this she told me in a note, to be opened in case of her death. he must have refused to help. he had not the criminal courage to produce the abortion which he falsely promised in his advertisements. what passed between them i do not know. but i believe that she attempted to kill him and failed. she attempted to kill herself and succeeded. the blood of camilla neal is on every cent of dr. surtaine's ten-thousand-dollar subscription." he tossed the wreath aside. it rolled, clattering and clinking, and settled down at the feet of the midas of medicine who stared at it with a contorted face. the meeting sat stricken into immovability. it seemed incredible that the tensity of the silence should not snap. yet it held. "i shall vote 'no' on the motion," said the reverend norman hale, still with that quiet and appalling simplicity. "i came here from a hand-to-hand struggle with death to vote 'no.' i have strength for only a word more. the city is stricken with typhus. it is no time for concealment or evasion. we are at death-grips with a very dreadful plague. it has broken out of the rookeries district. there are half a dozen new foci of infection. in the face of this, silence is deadly. if you elect dr. surtaine and adopt his plan, you commit yourself to an alliance with fraud and death. you deceive and betray the people who look to you for leadership. and there will be a terrible price to pay in human lives. i thank you for hearing me patiently." no man spoke for long seconds after the young minister sat down, wavering a little as he walked to a chair at the rear. but through the representative citizenship of worthington, in that place gathered, passed a quiver of sound, indeterminate, obscure, yet having all the passion of a quelled sob. eyes furtively sought the face of dr. surtaine. but the master-quack remained frozen by the same bewilderment as his fellows. perhaps alone in that crowd, elias m. pierce remained untouched emotionally. he rose, and his square granite face was cold as abstract reason. there was not even feeling enough in his voice to give the semblance of a sneer to his words as he said: "all this is very well in its place, and doubtless does credit to the sentimental qualities of the speaker. but it is not evidence. it is an unsupported statement, part of which is admittedly conjecture. allowing the alleged facts to be true, are we to hold a citizen of dr. surtaine's standing and repute responsible for the death of a woman caused by her own immorality? the woman whose death mr. hale has turned to such oratorical account was, i take it, a prostitute--" "that is a damned lie!" hal surtaine came down the aisle in long strides, speaking as he came. "milly neal was my employee and my father's employee. if she went astray once, who are you to judge her? who are any of us to judge her? i took part of that blood-money. the advertisement was in my paper, paid for with surtaine money. what mr. hale says is the living truth. no man shall foul her memory in my hearing." "and what was she to you? you haven't told us that yet?" there was a rancid sneer in pierce's insinuation. hal turned from the aisle and went straight for him. a little man rose in his way. it was mintz, who had given him the heartening word after the committee meeting. in his blind fury hal struck him a staggering blow. but the little jew was plucky. he closed with the younger man, and clinging to him panted out his good advice. "don'd fighd 'im, nod here. it's no good. go to the pladform an' say your say. we'll hear you." but it was impossible to hear any one now. uproar broke loose. men shouted, stormed, cursed; the meeting was become a rabble. above the din could be distinguished at intervals the voice of the honorable brett harkins, who, in frantic but not illogical reversion to the idea of a political convention, squalled for the services of the sergeant-at-arms. there was no sergeant-at-arms. mintz's pudgy but clogging arms could restrain an athlete of hal's power only a brief moment; but in that moment sanity returned to the fury-heated brain. "i beg your pardon, mintz," he said; "you're quite right. i thank you for stopping me." he returned to the aisle, pressing forward, with what purpose he could hardly have said, when he felt the sinewy grasp of mcguire ellis on his shoulder. "tell 'em the whole thing," fiercely urged ellis. "be a man. own up to the whole business, between you and the girl." "i don't know what you mean!" cried hal. "don't be young," groaned ellis; "you've gone halfway. clean it up. then we can face the situation with the 'clarion.' tell 'em you were her lover." "milly's? i wasn't. it was veltman." "good god of mercy!" "did you think--" "yes;--lord forgive me! why didn't you tell me?" "how could i tell you suspected--" "all right! i know. we'll talk it out later. the big thing now is, what's the paper going to do about this meeting?" "print it." into ellis's face flashed the fervor of the warrior who sees victory loom through the clouds of hopeless defeat. "you mean that?" "every word of it. and run the epidemic spread--" before he could finish, ellis was fighting his way to a telephone. hal met his father's eyes, and turned away with a heartsick sense that, in the one glance, had passed indictment, conviction, a hopeless acquiescence, and the dumb reproach of the trapped criminal against avenging justice. he turned and made for the nearest exit, conscious of only two emotions, a burning desire to be away from that place and a profound gladness that, without definite expression of the change, the bitter alienation of mcguire ellis was past. as hal left, there arose, out of the turmoil, one clear voice of reason: the thundering baritone of festus willard moving an adjournment. it passed, and the gathering slowly dispersed. avoiding the offered companionship of congressman harkins and douglas, dr. surtaine took himself off by a side passage. at the end of it, alone, stood the reverend norman hale, leaning against the sill of an open window. the old quack rushed upon him. "keep off!" warned the young minister, throwing himself into an attitude of defense. "no, no," protested dr. surtaine: "don't think i meant _that_. i--i want to thank you." "thank _me_?" the minister put his hand to his head. "i don't understand." "for leaving my boy out of it." "oh! that. i didn't see the necessity of dragging him in." "that was kind. you handled me pretty rough. well, i'm used to rough work. but the boy--look here, you knew all about this milly neal business, didn't you?" "yes." "maybe you could tell me," went on the old quack miserably. "i can understand hal's getting into a--an affair with the girl--being kinda carried away and losing his head. what i can't get is his--his quittin' her when she was in trouble." "i still don't understand," protested the minister. "my head isn't very good. i've been ill, you know." "you let him off without telling his name to-night. and that made me think maybe he wasn't in wrong so far as i thought. maybe there were--what-ye-call-'em?--mitigating circumstances. were there?" a light broke in upon the reverend norman hale. "did you think your son was milly neal's lover? he wasn't." "are you sure?" gasped the father. "as sure as of my faith in heaven." the old man straightened up, drawing a breath so profound that it seemed to raise his stature. "i wouldn't take a million dollars for that word," he declared. "but your own part in this?" queried the other in wonderment. "i hated to have to say--" "what does it matter?" "you have no concern for yourself?" puzzled the minister. "oh, i'll come out on top. i always come out on top. what got to my heart was my boy. i thought he'd gone wrong. and now i know he hasn't." the old charlatan's strong hand fell on his assailant's shoulder, then slipped down supportingly under his arm. "you look pretty shaky," said he with winning solicitude. "let me take you home in my car. it's waiting outside." the reverend norman hale accepted, marveling greatly over the complex miracle of the soul of man--who is formed in the image of his maker. chapter xxxii the warning tradition of the "clarion" office embalms "the evening the typhus story broke" as a nightmare out of which was born history. chronologically, according to the veracious records of bim the guardian of portals, the tumult began at exactly 10.47, with the arrival of mr. mcguire ellis, traveling up the staircase five steps at a jump and calling in a strangled voice for wayne. that usually controlled journalist rushed out of an inner room in alarm, demanding to know whether new york city had been whelmed with a tidal wave or the king of england murdered in his bed, and in an instant was struggling in the grasp of his fellow editor. "what's left of the epidemic spread?" demanded the new arrival breathlessly. "the killed story?" "what's left of it?" clamored ellis, dancing all over his colleague's feet. "can you find the copy? notes? anything?" "proofs," said wayne. "i saved a set." ellis sat down in a chair and regarded his underling with an expression of stupefied benevolence. "wayne," he said, "you're a genius. you're the fine flower and perfect blossom of american journalism. i love you, wayne. with passionate fervor, i love you. now, _gitta move on_!!!" his voice soared and exploded. "we're going to run it to-morrow!" "to-morrow? how? it isn't up to date. nobody's touched it since--" "bring it up to date! fire every man in the office out on it. tear the hide off the old paper and smear the story all over the front page. haul in your eyes and _start_!" the whirl of what ensued swamped even bim's cynic and philosophic calm. amidst a buzz of telephones and a mighty scurrying of messengers the staff of the "clarion" was gathered into the fold, on a "drop-everything" emergency call, and instantly dispersed again to the hospitals, the homes of the health officials, the undertakers' establishments, the cemeteries, and all other possible sources of information. the composing-room seethed and clanged. copy-readers yelled frantically through tubes, and received columns of proofs which, under the ruthless slaughter of their blue pencils, returned as "stickfuls," that room might be made for the great story. cable news was slashed right and left. telegraph "skeletons" waited in vain for their bones to be clothed with the flesh of print. the home advice department sank with all on board, and the most popular sensational preacher in town, who had that evening made a stirring anti-suffrage speech full of the most unfailing jokes, fell out of the paper and broke his heart. the carnage in news was general and frightful. two pages plus of a story that "breaks" after 10 p.m. calls for heroic measures. at 10.53 mr. harrington surtaine arrived, hardly less tempestuously than his predecessor. he did not even greet bim as he passed through the gate, which was unusual; but went direct to ellis. "can we do it, mac?" "the epidemic story? yes. there was a proof saved." "good. can you do the story of the meeting?" ellis hesitated. "all of it?" "every bit. leave out nothing." "hadn't you better think it over?" "i've thought." "it'll hit the old--your father pretty hard." "i can't help it." a surge of human pity overswept ellis's stimulated journalistic keenness. "you don't _have_ to do this, hal," he suggested. "no other paper--" "i do have to do it," retorted the other. "and worse." ellis stared. "i've got to print the story of milly's death: the facts just as they happened. and i've got to write it myself." the professional zest surged up again in mcguire ellis. "my lord!" he exclaimed. "_what a paper to-morrow's 'clarion' will be!_ but why? why? why the neal story--now?" "because i can't print the epidemic spread unless i print the other. i've given my word. i told my father if ever i suppressed news for my own protection, i'd give up the fight and play the game like all the other papers. i've tried it. mac, it isn't my game." "no," replied his subordinate in a curious tone, "it isn't your game." "you'll write the meeting?" "yes." "save out a column for my story." ellis returned to wayne at the news desk. "hell's broke loose at the emergency health meeting," he remarked, employing the conventional phrasing of his craft. and wayne, in the same language, inquired: "how much?" "two columns. and a column from the boss on another story." "whew!" whistled wayne. "we _shall_ have some paper." from midnight until 2.30 in the morning the reporters on the great story dribbled in. each, as he arrived, said a brief word to wayne, got a curt direction, slumped into his seat, and silently wrote. it was all very methodical and quiet and orderly. a really big news event always is after the first disturbance of adjustment. newspaper offices work smoothest when the tension is highest. at 12.03 a.m. bim received two flurried aldermen and the head of a city department. at 12.35 he held spirited debate with the deputy commissioner of health. just as the clock struck one, two advertising managers, arriving neck and neck, merged their appeals in an ineffectual attempt to obtain information from the youthful cerberus, which he loftily declined to furnish, as to the whereabouts of anyone with power to ban or bind, on the "clarion." at 1.30 the guardian of the gate had the honor and pleasure of meeting, for the first time, his honor the mayor of the city. finally, at 1.59 he "took a chance," as he would have put it, and, misliking the autocratic deportment of a messenger from e.m. pierce, told that emissary that he could tell mr. pierce exactly where to go to--and go there himself. all the while, unmoved amidst protestation, appeal, and threat, the steady news-machine went on grinding out unsuppressible history for itself and its city. sharp to the regular hour, the presses clanged, and the building thrilled through its every joint to the pulse of print. hal surtaine rose from his desk and walked to the window. mcguire ellis also rose, walked over and stood near him. "three pretty big beats to-morrow," he said awkwardly, at length. "the milly neal story won't be a beat," replied hal. "no? how's that?" "i've sent our proofs to all the other papers." "well, i'm--what's the idea? "we lied to them about the story in the first instance. they played fair, according to the rules, and took our lie. we can't beat 'em on our own story, now." "right you are. bet none of 'em prints it, though." wherein he was a true prophet. there was a long, uneasy pause. "hal," said ellis hesitantly. "well?" "i'm a fool." the white weariness of hal's face lit up with a smile. "why, mac--" he began. "a pin-head," persisted the other stubbornly. "a block of solid ivory from the collar up. i'm--i'm _young_ in the head," he concluded, with supreme effort of self-condemnation. "it's all right," said his chief, perfectly knowing what ellis meant. "have i said enough?" "plenty." "you didn't put veltman in your story?" "no. what was the good?" "that's right, too." "good-night, mac, i'm for the hotel." "good-night, hal. see you in the morning." "yes. i'll be around early." ellis's eyes followed his chief out through the door. he returned to his desk and sat thinking. he saw, with pitiless clearness, the storm gathering over the "clarion": the outburst of public hostility, the depletion of advertisers and subscribers, the official opposition closing avenues of information, the disastrous probabilities of the pierce libel suits, now soon to be pushed; and his undaunted spirit of a crusader rose and lusted for the battle. "they may lick us," he said to his paste-pot, the recipient of many a bitter confidence and thwarted hope in the past; "but we'll show 'em what a real newspaper is, for once. and"--his eyes sought the door through which hal surtaine had passed--"i've got this much out of it, anyway: i've helped a boy make himself a man." ten thousand extra copies sped from the new and wonder-working press of the "clarion" that night, to be absorbed, swallowed, engulfed by a mazed populace. in all the city there was perhaps not a man, woman, or child who, by the following evening, had not read or heard of the "clarion's" exposure of the epidemic--except one. max veltman lay, senseless to all this, between stupor and a fevered delirium in which the spirit of milly neal called on him for delayed vengeance. chapter xxxiii the good fight earthquake or armed invasion could scarce have shocked staid worthington more profoundly than did the "clarion's" exposure. of the facts there could be no reasonable doubt. the newspaper's figures were specific, and its map of infection showed no locality exempt. the city had wakened from an untroubled sleep to find itself poisoned. as an immediate result of the journalistic tocsin, the forebodings of dr. surtaine and his associates as to the effects of publicity bade fair to be justified. undeniably there was danger of the disease scattering, through the medium of runaways from the stricken houses. but the "clarion" had its retort pat for the tribe of "i-told-you-so," admitting the prospect of some primary harm to save a great disaster later. more than one hundred lives, it pointed out, giving names and dates, had already been sacrificed to the shibboleth of secrecy; the whole city had been imperiled; the disease had set up its foci of infection in a score of places, and there were some three hundred cases, in all, known or suspected. one method only could cope with the situation: the fullest public information followed by radical hygienic measures. of information there was no lack. so tremendous a news feature could not be kept out of print by the other dailies, all of whom now admitted the presence of the pestilence, while insisting that its scope had been greatly exaggerated, and piously deprecating the "sensationalism" of their contemporary. thus the city administration was forced to action. an appropriation was voted to the health bureau. dr. merritt, seizing his opportunity, organized a quarantine army, established a detention camp and isolation hospital, and descended upon the tenement districts, as terrible (to the imagination of the frantic inhabitants) as a malevolent god. the emergency health committee, meantime, died and was forgotten overnight. something not unlike panic swept the rookeries. wild rumors passed from mouth to mouth, growing as they went. a military cordon, it was said, was to be cast about the whole ward and the people pent up inside to die. refugees were to be shot on sight. the infected buildings were to be burned to the ground, and the tenants left homeless. the water-supply was to be poisoned, to get rid of the exposed--had already been poisoned, some said, and cited sudden mysterious deaths. such savage imaginings of suspicion as could spring only from the ignorant fears of a populace beset by a secret and deadly pest, roused the district to a rat-like defiance. such of the residents as were not home-bound by the authorities, growled in saloon back rooms and muttered in the streets. hatred of the "clarion" was the burden of their bitterness. two of its reporters were mobbed in the hard-hit ward, the day after the publication of the first article. nor was the paper much better liked elsewhere. it was held responsible for all the troubles. though the actuality of the quarantine fell far short of the expectant fears, still there was a mighty turmoil. families were separated, fugitives were chased down and arrested, and close upon the heels of the primary harassment came the threat of economic complications, as factories and stores all over the city, for their own protection, dismissed employees known to live within the near range of the pestilence. in the minds of the sufferers from these measures and of their friends, the "clarion" was an enemy to the public. but it was read with avid impatience, for wayne, working on the principle that "it is news and not evil that stirs men," contrived to find some new sensational development for every issue. do what the rival papers might, the "clarion" had and held the windward course. representative business, that great mogul of worthington, was, of course, outraged by the publication. hal surtaine was an ill bird who had fouled his own nest. the wires had carried the epidemic news to every paper in the country, and worthington was proclaimed "unclean" to the ears of all. the old home week committee on arrangements held a hasty meeting to decide whether the celebration should be abandoned or postponed, but could come to no conclusion. denunciation of the "clarion" for its course was the sole point upon which all the speakers agreed. also there was considerable incidental criticism of its editor, as an ingrate, for publishing the article on milly neal's death which reflected so severely upon dr. surtaine. as the paper had been bought with dr. surtaine's hard cash, the least hal could have done, in decency, was to refrain from "roasting" the source of the money. such was the general opinion. the representative business intellect of worthington failed to consider that the article had been confined rigidly to a statement of facts, and that any moral or ethical inference must be purely a derivative of those facts as interpreted by the reader. several of those present at the meeting declared vehemently that they would never again either advertise in or read the "clarion." there was even talk of a boycott. one member was so incautious as to condole with dr. surtaine upon his son's disloyalty. the old quack's regard fell upon his tactless comforter, dull and heavy as lead. "my son is my son," said he; "and what's between us is our own business. now, as to old home week, it'll be time enough to give up when we're licked." and, adroit opportunist that he was, he urged upon the meeting that they support the health bureau as the best hope of clearing up the situation. amongst the panic-stricken, meanwhile, moved and worked the volunteer forces of hygiene, led by the reverend norman hale. weakened and unfit though he was, he could not be kept from the battle-ground, notwithstanding that dr. merritt, fearing for his life, had threatened him with kidnaping and imprisonment in the hospital. at hale's right hand were esmé elliot and kathleen pierce. there had been one scene at greenvale approaching violence on dr. elliot's part and defiance on that of his niece when her guardian had flatly forbidden the continuance of her slum work. it had ended when the girl, creeping up under the guns of his angry eyes, had dropped her head on his shoulder, and said in unsteady tones:-"i--i'm not a very happy esmé, uncle guardy. if i don't have something to do--something real--i'll--i'll c-c-cry and get my pretty nose all red." "quit it!" cried the gruff doctor desperately. "what d'ye mean by acting that way! go on. do as you like. but if merritt lets anything happen to you--" "nothing will happen, guardy. i'll be careful," promised the girl. "well, i don't know whatever's come over you, lately," retorted her uncle, troubled. "neither do i," said esmé. she went forth and enlisted kathleen pierce, whose energetic and restless mind was ensnared at once by what she regarded as the romantic possibilities of the work, and the two gathered unto themselves half a dozen of the young males of the species, who readily volunteered, partly for love and loyalty to the chieftainesses of their clan, partly out of the blithe and adventurous spirit of youth, and of them formed an automobile corps, for scouting, messenger service, and emergency transportation, as auxiliary to hale and merritt; an enterprise which subsequently did yeoman work and taught several of the gilded youth something about the responsibilities of citizenship which they would never have learned in any other school. tip o'farrell was another invaluable aide. he had one brief encounter, on enlistment, with the health officer. "you ought to be in jail," said dr. merritt. "what fer?" demanded o'farrell. "smuggling out bodies without a permit." "ferget it," advised the politician. "i tried my way, an' it wasn't good enough. now i'll try yours. you can't afford to jug me." "why can't i?" "i'm too much use to you." "so far you've been just the other thing." "ain't i tellin' you i'm through with that game? on the level! doc, these poor boobs down here _know_ me. they'll do as i tell 'em. gimme a chance." so o'farrell, making his chance, did his work faithfully and well through the dismal weeks to follow. it takes all kinds of soldiers to fight an epidemic. those two sturdy volunteers, miss elliot and miss pierce, were driving slowly along the fringe of the rookeries,--yes, slowly, notwithstanding that kathleen pierce was acting as her own chauffeur,--having just delivered a consignment of emergency nurses from a neighboring city to dr. merritt, when the car slowed down. "did you see that?" inquired miss pierce, indicating, with a jerk of her head, the general topography off to starboard. "see what?" inquired her companion. "i didn't notice anything except a hokey-pokey seller, adding his mite to the infant mortality of the district." "esmé, you talk like nothing human lately!" accused her friend. "you're a--a--regular health leaflet! i meant that man going into the corner tenement. i believe it was hal surtaine." "was it?" "and you needn't say, 'was it?' in that lofty, superior tone, like an angel with a new halo, either," pursued her aggrieved friend. "you know it was. what do you suppose he's doing down here?" "the epidemic is the 'clarion's special news. he spends quite a little time in this district, i believe." "oh, you believe! then you've seen him lately?" "yes." miss pierce stared rigidly in front of her and made a detour of magnificent distance to avoid a push-cart which wasn't in her way anyhow. "esmé," she said. "yes?" "did you give me away to him?" "no. he didn't give me an opportunity." "oh!" there was more silence. then, "esmé, i was pretty rotten about that, wasn't i?" "why, kathie, i think you ought to have written to him." "i meant to write and own up, no matter if i did tell you i wouldn't. but i kept putting it off. esmé, did you notice how thin and worn he looks?" the other winced. "he's had a great deal to worry him." "well, he hasn't got our lawsuit to worry him any more. that's off." "off?" a light flashed into esmé's face. "your father has dropped it?" "yes. he had to. i told him the accident was my fault, and if i was put on the stand i'd say so. i'm not so popular with pop as i might be, just now. but, esmé, i _didn't_ mean to run away and leave her in the gutter. i got rattled, and brother was crying and i lost my head." "that will save the 'clarion,'" said esmé, with a deep breath. kathleen looked at her curiously, and then made a singular remark. "yes; that's what i did it for." "but what interest have you in saving the 'clarion'?" demanded esmé, bewildered. "the failure of the 'clarion' would be a disaster to the city," observed miss pierce in copy-book style. "kathie! you should make two jabs in the air with your forefinger when you quote. otherwise you're a plagiarist. let me see." esmé pondered. "hugh merritt," she decided. kathleen kept her eyes steady ahead, but a flood of color rose in her face. "i had an awful fight over it with him before--before i gave in," she said. "are you going to marry hugh?" demanded esmé bluntly. the color deepened until even the velvety eyes seemed tinged with it. "i don't know. _he_ isn't exactly popular with pop, either." esmé reached over and gave her friend a surreptitious little hug, which might have cost a crossing pedestrian his life if he hadn't been a brisk dodger. "hugh merritt is a _man_," said she in a low voice: "he's brave and he's straight and he's fine. and oh, kathie, dearest, if a man of that kind loves you, don't you ever, ever let anything come between you." "hello!" said kathleen in surprise. "that don't sound much like the great american man-eating pumess of yore. there's been a big change in you since you sidetracked will douglas, esmé. did you really care? no, of course, you didn't," she answered herself. "he's a nice chap, but he isn't particularly brave or fine, i guess." a light broke in upon her: "esmé! is it, after all--" "no, no, no, no, no!" cried the victim of this highly feminine deduction, in panic. "it isn't any one." "no, of course it isn't, dear. i didn't mean to tease you. hello! what have we here?" the car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the quarantined section. seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the stiffened form of a young child. the boy's teeth were clenched and his face darkly suffused. "convulsions," said esmé. the two girls were out of the car simultaneously. the agonized mother, an italian, was deaf to esmé's persuasions that the child be turned over to them. "what shall we do?" she asked, turning to kathleen in dismay. "i think he's dying, and i can't make the woman listen." something of her father's stern decisiveness of character was in kathleen pierce. "don't be a fool!" she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the child away from her. "start the car, esmé." the woman began to shriek. a crowd gathered. o'farrell providentially appeared from around a corner. "grab her, you," she directed o'farrell. the politician hesitated. "what's the game?" he began. then he caught sight of esmé. "oh, it's you, miss elliot. sure. hi! can it!" he shouted, fending off the distracted mother. "they'll take the kid to the hospital. see? you go along quiet, now." speeding beyond all laws, but under protection of their red cross, they all but ran down dr. merritt and stopped to take him in. he confirmed esmé's diagnosis. "it'll be touch and go whether we save him," said he. esmé carried the stricken child into the hospital ward. the two volunteers waited outside for word. in an hour it came. the boy would probably live, thanks to their promptitude. "but you ought not to be picking up chance infants around the district," he protested. "it isn't safe." "oh, we belong to the st. bernard tribe," retorted miss pierce. "we take 'em as we find 'em. hugh, come and lunch with us." the grayish young man looked at her wistfully. "haven't time," he said. "no: i didn't suppose you'd step aside from the thorny path, even to eat," she retorted; and esmé, hearing the new tone under the flippant words, knew that all was well with the girl, and envied her with a great and gentle envy. chapter xxxiv vox populi these were the days when hal surtaine worked with a sense of wild freedom from all personal bonds. he had definitely broken with his father. he had challenged every interest in worthington from which there was anything to expect commercially. he had peremptorily banished esmé elliot from his heart and his hopes, though she still forced entrance to his thoughts and would not be denied, there, the precarious rights of an undesired guest. he was now simply and solely a journalist with a mind single to his purpose, to go down fighting the best fight there was in him. defeat, he believed, was practically certain. he would make it a defeat of which no man need be ashamed. the handling of the epidemic news, hal left to his colleagues, devoting his own pen to a vigorous defense of the "clarion's" position and assertion of its policy, in the editorial columns. concealment and suppression, he pointed out, had been the chief factor in the disastrous spread of the contagion. early recognition of the danger and a frank fighting policy would have saved most of the sacrificed lives. the blame lay, not with those who had disclosed the peril, but with those who had fostered it by secrecy; probing deeper into it, with those who had blocked such reform of housing and sanitation as would have checked a filth disease like typhus. in time this would be indicated more specifically. tenements which netted twelve per cent to their owners and bred plagues, the "clarion" observed editorially, were good private but poor public investments. whereupon a number of highly regarded christian citizens began to refer to the editor as an anarchist. the "clarion" principle of ascertaining "the facts behind the news" had led naturally to an inquiry into ownership of the rookeries. wayne had this specifically in charge and reported sensational results from the first. "it'll be a corking follow-up feature," he said. "later we can hitch it up to the housing reform bill." "make a fifth page full spread of it for monday." "with pictures of the owners," suggested wayne. "why not this way? make a triple lay-out for each one. first, a picture of the tenement with the number of deaths and cases underneath. then the half-tone of the owner. and, beyond, the picture of the house he lives in. that'll give contrast." "good!" said wayne. "fine and yellow." by sunday, four days after the opening story, all the material for the second big spread was ready except for one complication. some involution of trusteeship in the case of two freeholds in sadler's shacks, at the heart of the rookeries, had delayed access to the records. these two were number 3 and number 9 sperry street, the latter dubbed "the pest-egg" by the "clarion," as being the tenement in which the pestilence was supposed to have originated. these two last clues, wayne was sure, would be run down before evening. already the net of publicity had dragged in, among other owners of the dangerous property, a high city official, an important merchant, a lady much given to blatant platform philanthropies, and the reverend dr. wales's fashionable church. it was, indeed, a noble company of which the "clarion" proposed to make martyrs on the morrow. one man quite unconnected with any twelve per cent ownership, however, had sworn within his ravaged soul that there should be no morrow's "clarion." max veltman, four days previously, had crawled home to his apartment after a visit to the drug store where he had purchased certain acids. with these he worked cunningly and with complete absorption in his pursuit, neither stirring out of his own place nor communicating with any fellow being. consequently he knew nothing of the sensation which had convulsed worthington, nor of the "clarion's" change of policy. to his inflamed mind the surtaine organ was a noxious thing, and harrington surtaine the guilty partner in the profits of milly's death who had rejected the one chance to make amends. carrying a carefully wrapped bundle, he went forth into the streets on sunday evening, and wandered into the rookeries district. a red-necked man, standing on a barrel, was making a speech to a big crowd gathered at one of the corners. dimly-heard, the word "clarion" came to veltman's ears. "what's he saying?" he asked a neighbor. "he's roastin' the ------'clarion,'" replied the man. "we ought to go up there an' tear the buildin' down." to veltman it seemed quite natural that popular rage should be directed toward the object of his hatred. he sat down weakly upon the curb and waited to see what would happen. another chance auditor of that speech did not wait. mcguire ellis stayed just long enough to scent danger, and hurried back to the office. "trouble brewing down in the rookeries," he told hal. "more than usual?" "different from the usual. there's a mob considering paying us a visit." "the new press!" exclaimed hal. "just what i was thinking. a rock or a bullet in its pretty little insides would cost money." "we'd better notify police headquarters." "i have. they gave me the laugh. told me it was a pipe-dream. they're sore on us because of our attack on the department for dodging saloon law enforcement." "i don't like this, mac," said hal. "what a fool i was to put the press in the most exposed place." "fortify it." "with what?" "the rolls." print-paper comes from the pulp-mills in huge cylinders, seven feet long by four in diameter. the highest-powered small arm could not send a bullet through the close-wrapped fabric. ellis's plan offered perfect protection if there was enough material to build the fortification. the entire pressroom force was at once set to work, and in half an hour the delicate and costly mechanism was protected behind an impenetrable barrier which shut it off from view except at the south end. the supply of rolls had fallen a little short. "let 'em smash the window if they like," said ellis. "plate-glass insurance covers that. i wish we had something for that corner." "with a couple of revolvers we could guard it from these windows," said hal. "but where are we to get revolvers on a sunday night?" "leave that to me," said ellis, and went out. hal, standing at the open second-story window, surveyed the strategic possibilities of the situation. his outer office jutting out into a narrow l overlooked, from a broad window, the empty space of the street. from the front he could just see the press, behind its plate-glass. this was set back some ten feet from the sidewalk line proper, and marking the outer boundary stood a row of iron posts of old and dubious origin, formerly connected by chains. hal had a wish that they were still so joined. they would have served, at least, as a hypothetical guard-line. the flagged and slightly depressed space between these and the front of the building, while actually of private ownership, had long been regarded as part of the thoroughfare. overlooking it from the north end, opposite hal's office, was another window, in the reference room. any kind of gunnery from those vantage-spots would guard the press. but would the mere threat of firing suffice? that is what hal wished to know. he had no desire to pump bullets into a close-packed crowd. on the other hand, he did not propose to let any mob ruin his property without a fight. his military reverie was interrupted by the entrance of bim currier, followed by dr. elliot. "why the fortification?" asked the latter. "we've heard rumors of a mob attack." "so've i. that's why i'm here. want any help?" "why, you're very kind," began hal dubiously; "but--" "rope off that space," cut in the brisk doctor, seizing, with a practiced eye, upon the natural advantage of the sentinel posts. "got any rope?" "yes. there's some in the pressroom. it isn't very strong." "no matter. moral effect. mobs always stop to think, at a line. i know. i've fought 'em before." "this is very good of you, to come--" "not a bit of it. i noticed what the 'clarion' did to its medical advertisers. i like your nerve. and i like a fight, in a good cause. have 'em paint up some signs to put along the ropes. 'danger.'--'keep out.'--'trespassers enter here at their peril'; and that sort of thing." "i'll do it," said hal, going to the telephone to give the orders. while he was thus engaged, mcguire ellis entered. "hello!" the physician greeted him. "what have you got there? revolvers?" "count 'em; two," answered ellis. "gimme one," said the visitor, helping himself to a long-barreled .45. "here! that's for hal surtaine," protested ellis. "not by a jug-ful! he's too hot-headed. besides, can he afford to be in it if there _should_ be any serious trouble? think of the paper!" "you're right there," agreed ellis, struck by the keen sense of this view. "if they could lay a killing at his door, even in self-defense--" "pree-cisely! whereas, i don't intend to shoot unless i have to, and probably not then." they explained the wisdom of this procedure to hal, who reluctantly admitted it, agreeing to leave the weapons in the hands of dr. elliot and mcguire ellis. "put ellis here in this window. i'll hold the fort yonder." he pointed across the space to the reference room in the opposite l. "nine times out of ten a mob don't really--" he stopped abruptly, his face stiffening with surprise, and some other emotion, which hal for the moment failed to interpret. following the direction of his glance, the two other men turned. dr. surtaine, suave and smiling, was advancing across the floor. "ellis, how are you? good-evening, dr. elliot. ah! pistols?" "yes. have one?" invited ellis smoothly. "i brought one with me." he tugged at his pocket, whence emerged a cheap and shiny weapon. hal shuddered, recognizing it. it was the revolver which milly neal had carried. "so you've heard?" asked ellis. "ten minutes ago. i haven't any idea it will amount to much, but i thought i ought to be here in case of danger." dr. elliot grunted. ellis, suggesting that they take a look at the other defense, tactfully led him away, leaving father and son together. they had not seen each other since the emergency health committee meeting. something of the quack's glossy jauntiness faded out of his bearing as he turned to hal. "boy-ee," he began diffidently, "there's been a pretty bad mistake." "there's been worse than that," said hal sadly. "about milly neal. i thought--i thought it was you that got her into trouble." "why? for god's sake, why?" "don't be too hard on me," pleaded the other. "i'd heard about the road-house. and then, what she said to you. it all fitted in. hale put me right. boy-ee, i can sleep again, now that i know it wasn't you." the implication caught at hal's throat. "why, dad," he said lamely, "if you'd only come to me and asked--" "somehow i couldn't. i was waiting for you to tell me." he slid his big hand over hal's shoulder, and clutched him in a sudden, jerky squeeze, his face averted. "now, that's off our minds," he said, in a loud and hearty voice. "we can--" "wait a minute. father, you saw the story in the 'clarion,'--the story of milly's death?" "yes, i saw that." "well?" "i suppose you did what you thought was right, boy-ee." "i did what i had to do. i hated it." "i'm glad to know that much, anyway." "but i'd do it again, exactly the same." the doctor turned troubled eyes on his son. "hasn't there been enough judging of each other between you and me, boy-ee?" he asked sorrowfully. in wretched uncertainty how to meet this appeal, hal hesitated. he was saved from decision by the return of mcguire ellis. "no movement yet from the enemy's camp," he reported. "i just had a telephone from hale's club." "perhaps they won't come, after all," surmised hal. "there's pretty hot talk going. somebody's been helping along by serving free drinks." "now who could that be, i wonder?" "maybe some of our tenement-owning politician friends who aren't keen about having to-morrow's 'clarion' appear." "we ought to have a reporter down there, mac." "denton's there. well, as there's nothing doing, i'll tackle a little work." and seating himself at his desk beside the broad window ellis proceeded to annihilate some telegraph copy, fresh off the wire. with the big tenement story spread, the morrow's paper would be straitened for space. excusing himself to his father, hal stepped into his private office--and recoiled in uttermost amazement. there, standing in the further doorway, lovely, palpitant, with the color flushing in her cheeks and the breath fluttering in her throat, stood esmé elliot. "oh!" she gasped, stretching out her hands to him. "i've tried so to get you by 'phone. there's a mob coming--" "yes, i know," said hal gently. he led her to a chair. "we're ready for them." "are you? i'm so glad. i was afraid you wouldn't know in time." "how did you find out?" "i've been working with mr. hale down in the district. i heard rumors of it. then i listened to what the people said, and i hurried here in my car to warn you. they're drunk, and mean trouble." "that was good of you! i appreciate it." "no. it was a debt. i owed it to the 'clarion.' you've been--splendid about the typhus." "worthington doesn't look at it that way," returned hal, with a rather grim smile. "when they understand, they will." "perhaps. but, see here, you can't stay. there may be danger. it's awfully good of you to come. but you must get away." she looked at him sidelong. in her coming she had been the new esmé, the esmé who was norman hale's most unselfish and unsparing worker, the esmé who thought for others, all womanly. but, now that the strain had relaxed, she reverted, just a little, to her other self. it was, for the moment, the great american pumess who spoke:-"won't you even say you're glad to see me?" "glad!" the echo leaped to his lips and the fire to his eyes as the old unconquered longing and passion surged over him. "i don't think i've known what gladness is since that night at your house." her eyes faltered away from his. "i don't think i quite understand," she said weakly; then, with a change to quick resolution:-"there is something i must tell you. you have a right to know it. it's about the paper. will you come to see me to-morrow?" "yes. but go now. no! wait!" from without sounded a dull murmur pierced through with an occasional whoop, jubilant rather than threatening. "too late," said hal quietly. "they're coming." "i'm not afraid." "but i am--for you. stay in this room. if they should break into the building, go up those stairs and get to the roof. they won't come there." he went into the outer room, closing the door behind him. from both directions and down a side street as well the dwellers in the slums straggled into the open space in front of the "clarion" office. to hal they seemed casual, purposeless; rather prankish, too, like a lot of urchins out on a lark. several bore improvised signs, uncomplimentary to the "clarion." they seemed surprised when they encountered the rope barrier with its warning placards. there were mutterings and queries. "no serious harm in them," opined dr. elliot, to whom hal had gone to see whether he wanted anything. "just mischief. a few rocks maybe, and then they'll go home. look at old mac." opposite them, at his brilliantly lighted window desk, sat mcguire ellis, in full view of the crowd below, conscientiously blue-penciling telegraph copy. "hey, mac!" yelled an acquaintance in the street. "come down and have a drink." the associate editor lifted his head. "don't be young," he retorted. "go home and sleep it off." and reverted to his task. "what are we doin' here, anyway?" roared some thirster for information. nobody answered. but, thus recalled to a purpose, the mob pressed against the ropes. "ladies _and_ gentlemen!" a great, rounded voice boomed out above them, drawing every eye to the farthermost window where stood dr. surtaine, his chest swelling with ready oratory. "hooray!" yelled the crowd. "good old doc!"--"he pays the freight."--"speech!" "say, doc," bawled a waggish soul, "i gotta corn, marchin' up here. will certina cure it?" and another burst into the final lines of a song then popular; in which he was joined by several of his fellows: "father, he drinks seltzer. redoes, like hell! (_crescendo_.) he drinks cer-tee-nah!" "ladies _and_ gentlemen," boomed the wily charlatan. "unaccustomed as i am to _extempore_ speaking, i cannot let pass this opportunity to welcome you. we appreciate this testimonial of your regard for the 'clarion.' we appreciate, also, that it is a warm night and a thirsty one. therefore, i suggest that we all adjourn back to the old twelfth ward, where, if the authorities will kindly look the other way, i shall be delighted to provide liquid refreshments for one and all in which to drink to the health and prosperity of an enlightened free press." the crowd rose to him with laughter. "good old sport!"--"mine's certina."--"come down and make good."--"free booze, free speech, free press!"--"you're on, doc! you're on." "he's turned the trick," growled dr. elliot to hal. "he's a smooth one!" indeed, the crowd wavered, with that peculiar swaying which presages a general movement. at the south end there was a particularly dense gathering, and there some minor struggle seemed to be in progress. cries rose: "let him through."--"what's he want?" "it's max veltman," said hal, catching sight of a wild, strained face. "what is he up to?" the former "clarion" man squirmed through the front rank and crawled slowly under the ropes. above the murmur of confused tones, a voice of terror shrilled out: "he's got a bomb." the mass surged back from the spot. veltman, moving forward upon the unprotected south end of the press, was fumbling at his pocket. "i'll fix your free and enlightened press," he screamed. dr. elliot turned on hal with an imperative question. "is it true, do you think? will he do it? quick!" "crazy," said hal. "god forgive me!" prayed the ex-navy man as his arm whipped up. there were two quick reports. at the second, veltman stopped, half turned, threw his arms widely outward, and vanished in a blinding glare, accompanied by a gigantic _snap!_ as if a mountain of rock had been riven in twain. to hal it seemed that the universe had disintegrated in that concussion. blackness surrounded him. he was on the floor, half crouching, and, to his surprise, unhurt. groping his way to the window he leaned out above an appalling silence. it endured only a moment. then rose the terrible clamor of a mob in panic-stricken flight, above an insistent undertone of groans, sobs, and prayers. "i had to kill him," muttered dr. elliot's shaking voice at hal's ear. "there was just the one chance before he could throw his bomb." every light in the building had gone out. guiding himself by the light of matches, hal hurried across to his den. he heard esmé's voice before he could make her out, standing near the door. "is any one hurt?" hal breathed a great sigh. "you're all right, then! we don't know how bad it is." "an explosion?" "veltman threw a bomb. he's killed." "boy-ee!" called dr. surtaine. "here, dad. you're safe?" "yes." "thank god! careful with that match! the place is strewn with papers." men from below came hurrying in with candles, which are part of every newspaper's emergency equipment. they reported no serious injuries to the staff or the equipment. although the plate-glass window had been shattered into a million fragments and the inner fortification toppled over, the precious press had miraculously escaped injury. but in a strewn circle, outside, lay rent corpses, and the wounded pitifully striving to crawl from that shambles. with the steadiness which comes to nerves racked to the point of collapse, hal made the rounds of the building. two men in the pressroom were slightly hurt. their fellows would look after them. wayne, with his men, was already in the street, combining professional duty with first aid. the scattered and stricken mob had begun to sift back, only a subdued and curious crowd now. then came the ambulances and the belated police, systematizing the work. quarter of an hour had passed when dr. surtaine, esmé elliot, her uncle--much surprised at finding her there--and hal stood in the editorial office, hardly able yet to get their bearings. "i shall give myself up to the authorities," decided dr. elliot. he was deadly pale, but of unshaken nerve. "why?" cried hal. "it was no fault of yours." "rules of the game. well, young man, you have a paper to get out for to-morrow, though the heavens fall. good-night." hal gripped at his hand. "i don't know how to thank you--" he began. "don't try, then," was the gruff retort. "where's mac?" he turned to mcguire ellis's desk to bid that sturdy toiler good-night. there, dimly seen through the flickering candlelight, the undisputed short-distance slumber champion of the world sat, his head on his arms, in his familiar and favorite attitude of snatching a few moments' respite from a laborious existence. "will you _look_ at _that!_" cried the physician in utmost amazement. at the sight a wild surge of mirth overwhelmed hal's hair-trigger nerves. he began to laugh, with strange, quick catchings of the breath: to laugh tumultuously, rackingly, unendurably. "stop it!" shouted dr. elliot, and smote him a sledge-blow between the shoulders. for the moment the hysteria was jarred out of hal. he gasped, gurgled, and took a step toward his assistant. "hey, mac! wake up! you've spilled your ink." [illustration: "don't go near him. don't look"] before he could speak or move further, esmé elliot's arms were about him. her face was close to his. he could feel the strong pressure of her breast against him as she forced him back. "no, no!" she was pleading, in a swift half-whisper. "don't go near him. don't look. _please_ don't. come away." he set her aside. a candlelight flared high. from ellis's desk trickled a little stream. dr. elliot was already bending over the slackened form. "so it wasn't ink," said hal slowly. "is he dead, dr. elliot?" "no," snapped the other. "esmé, bandages! quick! your petticoat! that'll do. get another candle. dr. surtaine, help me lift him. there! surtaine, bring water. _do you hear?_ hurry!" when hal returned, uncle and niece were working with silent deftness over ellis, who lay on the floor. the wounded man opened his eyes upon his employer's agonized face. "did he get the press?" he gasped. "keep quiet," ordered the doctor. "don't speak." "did he get the press?" insisted ellis obstinately. "mac! mac!" half sobbed hal, bending over him. "i thought you were dead." and his tears fell on the blood-streaked face. "don't be young," growled ellis faintly. "did--he--get--the--press?" "no." the wounded man's eyes closed. "all right," he murmured. up to the time that the ambulance surgeons came to carry ellis away, dr. elliot was too busy with him even to be questioned. only after the still burden had passed through the door did he turn to hal. "a piece of metal carried away half the back of his neck," he said. "and we let him sit there, bleeding his life away!" "is there any chance?" demanded hal. "i doubt if they'll get him to the hospital alive." "the best man in worthington!" said hal passionately. "oh!" he shook his clenched fists at the outer darkness. "i'll make somebody pay for this." esmé's hand fell upon his arm. "do you want me to stay?" she asked. "no. you must go home. it's been a terrible thing for you." "i'll go to the hospital," she said, "and i'll 'phone you as soon as there is any news." "better come home with me, hal," said his father gently. the younger man turned with an involuntary motion toward the desk, still wet with his friend's blood. "i'll stay on the job," he said. understanding, the father nodded his sympathy. "yes; i guess that would have been mac's way," said he. work pressing upon the editor from all sides came as a boon. the paper had to be made over for the catastrophe which, momentarily, overshadowed the typhus epidemic in importance. in hasty consultation, it was decided that the "special" on the ownership of the infected tenements should be set aside for a day, to make space. hal had to make his own statement, not alone for the "clarion," but for the other newspapers, whose representatives came seeking news and also--what both surprised and touched him--bearing messages of sympathy and congratulation, and offers of any help which they could extend from men to pressroom accommodations. not until nearly two o'clock in the morning did hal find time to draw breath over an early proof, which stated the casualties as seven killed outright, including veltman who was literally torn to pieces, and twenty-two seriously wounded. from his reading hal was called to the 'phone. esmé's voice came to him with a note of hope and happiness. "oh, hal, they say there's a chance! even a good chance! they've operated, and it isn't as bad as it looked at first. i'm so glad for you." "thank you," said hal huskily. "and--bless you! you've been an angel to-night." there was a pause: then, "you'll come to see me--when you can?" "to-morrow," said he. "no--to-day. i forgot." they both laughed uncertainly, and bade each other good-night. hal stayed through until the last proof. in the hallway a heavy figure lifted itself from a chair in a corner as he came out. "dad!" exclaimed hal. "i thought i'd wait," said the charlatan wistfully. no other word was necessary. "i'll be glad to be home again," said hal. "you can lend me some pajamas?" "they're laid out on your bed. every night." the two men passed down the stairs, arm in arm. at the door they paused. through the building ran a low tremor, waxing to a steady thrill. the presses were throwing out to the world once again their irrevocable message of fact and fate. chapter xxxv tempered metal monday's newspapers startled hal surtaine. despite the sympathetic attitude expressed after the riot by the other newspaper men, he had not counted upon the unanimous vigor with which the local press took up the cudgels for the "clarion." that potent and profound guild-fellowship of newspaperdom, which, when once aroused, overrides all individual rivalry and jealousy, had never before come into the young editor's experience. to his fellow editors the issue was quite clear. here was an attack, not upon one newspaper alone, but upon the principle of journalistic independence. little as the "banner," the "press," the "telegram," and their like had practiced independence of thought or writing, they could both admire and uphold it in another. their support was as genuine as it was generous. the police department, and, indeed, the whole city administration of worthington, came in for scathing and universal denunciation, in that they had failed to protect the "clarion" against the mob's advance. the evening papers got out special bulletins on mcguire ellis. none too hopeful they were, for the fighting journalist, after a brief rally, had sunk into a condition where life was the merest flicker. always a picturesque and well-liked personality, ellis now became a species of popular hero. sympathy centralized on him, and through him attached temporarily to the "clarion" itself, which he now typified in the public imagination. his condition, indeed, was just so much sentimental capital to the paper, as the honorable e.m. pierce savagely put it to william douglas. nevertheless, the two called at the hospital to make polite inquiries, as did scores of their fellow leading citizens. ellis, stricken down, was serving his employer well. not that hal knew this, nor, had he known it, would have cared. sick at heart, he waited about the hospital reception room for such meager hopes as the surgeons could give him, until an urgent summons compelled him to go to the office. wayne had telephoned for him half a dozen times, finally leaving a message that he must see him on a point in the tenement-ownership story, to be run on the morrow. wayne, at the moment of hal's arrival, was outside the rail talking to a visitor. on the copy-book beside his desk was stuck an illustration proof, inverted. idly hal turned it, and stood facing his final and worst ordeal of principle. the half-tone picture, lovely, suave, alluring, smiled up into his eyes from above its caption:- "_miss esmé elliot, society belle and owner of no. 9 sadler's shacks, known as the pest-egg."_ "you've seen it," said wayne's voice at his elbow. "yes." "well; it was that i wanted to ask you about." "ask it," said hal, dry-lipped. "i knew you were a--a friend of miss elliot's. we can kill it out yet. it--it isn't absolutely necessary to the story," he added, pityingly. he turned and looked away from a face that had grown swiftly old under his eyes. in hal's heart there was a choking rush of memories: the conquering loveliness of esmé; her sweet and loyal womanliness and comradeship of the night before; the half-promise in her tones as she had bid him come to her; the warm pressure of her arms fending him from the sight of his friend's blood; and, far back, her voice saying so confidently, "i'd trust you," in answer to her own supposititious test as to what he would do if a news issue came up, involving her happiness. blotting these out came another picture, a swathed head, quiet upon a pillow. in that moment hal knew that he was forever done with suppressions and evasions. nevertheless, he intended to be as fair to esmé as he would have been to any other person under attack. "you're sure of the facts?" he asked wayne. "certain." "how long has she owned it?" "oh, years. it's one of those complicated trusteeships." hope sprang up in hal's soul. "perhaps she doesn't know about it." "isn't she morally bound to know? we've assumed moral responsibility in the other trusteeships. of course, if you want to make a difference--" wayne, again wholly the journalist, jealous for the standards of his craft, awaited his chief's decision. "no. have you sent a man to see her?" "yes. she's away." "away? impossible!" "that's what they said at the house. the reporter got the notion that there was something queer about her going. scared out, perhaps." hal thought of the proud, frank eyes, and dismissed that hypothesis. whatever esmé's responsibility, he did not believe that she would shirk the onus of it. "dr. elliot?" he enquired. "refused all information and told the reporter to go to the devil." hal sighed. "run the story," he said. "and the picture?" "and the picture." going out he left directions with the telephone girl to try to get miss elliot and tell her that it would be impossible for him to call that day. "she will understand when she sees the paper in the morning," he thought. "or think she understands," he amended ruefully. the telephone girl did not get miss elliot, for good and sufficient reasons, but succeeded in extracting a promise from the maiden cousin at greenvale that the message would be transmitted. through the day and far into the night hal worked unsparingly, finding time somehow to visit or call up the hospital every hour. at midnight they told him that ellis was barely holding his own. hal put the "clarion" to bed that night, before going to the surtaine mansion, hopeless of sleep, yet, nevertheless, so worn out that he sank into instant slumber as soon as he had drawn the sheets over him. on his way to the office in the morning, he ran full upon dr. elliot. for a moment hal thought that the ex-officer meant to strike him with the cane which he raised. it sank. "you miserable hound!" said dr. elliot. hal stood, silent. "what have you to say for yourself?" "nothing." "my niece came to your office to save your rag of a sheet. i shot down a poor crazy devil in your defense. and this is how you repay us." hal faced him, steadfast, wretched, determined upon only one thing: to endure whatever he might say or do. "do you know who's really responsible for that tenement? answer me!" "no." "i! i! i!" shouted the infuriated man. "you? the records show--" "damn the records, sir! the property was trusteed years ago. i should have looked after it, but i never even thought of its being what it is. and my niece didn't know till this morning that she owned it." "why didn't you say so to our reporter, then?" cried hal eagerly. "let us print a statement from you, from her--" "in your sheet? if you so much as publish her name again--by heavens, i wish it were the old days, i'd call you out and kill you." "dr. elliot," said hal quietly, "did you think i wanted to print that about esmé?" "wanted to? of course you wanted to. you didn't have to, did you?" "yes." "what compelled you?" demanded the other. "you won't understand, but i'll tell you. the 'clarion' compelled me. it was news." "news! to blackguard a young girl, ignorant of the very thing you've held her up to shame for! the power of the press! a power to smirch the names of decent people. and do you know where my girl is now, on this day when your sheet is smearing her name all over the town?" demanded the physician, his voice shaking with wrath and grief. "do you know that--you who know everybody's business?" chill fear took hold upon hal. "no," he said. "in quarantine for typhus. here! keep off me!" for hal, stricken with his first experience of that black, descending mist which is just short of unconsciousness, had clutched at the other's shoulder to steady himself. "where?" he gasped. "i won't tell you," retorted the doctor viciously. "you might make another article out of that, of the kind you enjoy so much." but this was too ghastly a joke. hal straightened, and lifted his head to an eye-level with his denouncer. "enjoy!" he said, in a low tone. "you may guess how much when i tell you that i've loved esmé with every drop of my blood since the first time i ever spoke with her." the doctor's grim regard softened a little. "if i tell you, you won't publish it? or give it away? or try to communicate with her? i won't have her pestered." "my word of honor." "she's at the typhus hospital." "and she's got typhus?" groaned hal. "no. who said she had it? she's been exposed to it." hardly was the last word out of his mouth when he was alone. hal had made a dash for a taxi. "health bureau," he cried. by good fortune he found dr. merritt in. "you've got esmé elliot at the typhus hospital," he said breathlessly. "yes. in the isolation ward." "why?" "she's been exposed. she carried a child, in convulsions, into the hospital. the child developed typhus late saturday night; must have been infected at the time. as soon as i knew, i sent for her, and she came like the brave girl she is, yesterday morning." "will she get the fever?" "god forbid! every precaution has been taken." "merritt, that's an awful place for a girl like miss elliot. get her out." "don't ask me! i've got to treat all exposed cases alike." "but, merritt," pleaded hal, "in this case an exception can't injure any one. she can be completely quarantined at home. you told wayne you owed the 'clarion' and me a big debt. i wouldn't ask it if it were anything else; but--" "would you do it yourself?" said the young health officer steadily. "have you done it in your paper?" "but this may be her life," argued the advocate desperately. "think! if it were your sister, or--or the woman you cared for." dr. merritt's fine mouth quivered and set. "kathleen pierce is quarantined with esmé," he said quietly. the pair looked each other through the eyes into the soul and knew one another for men. "you're right, merritt," said hal. "i'm sorry i asked." "i'll keep you posted," said the official, as his visitor turned away. meantime, esmé had volunteered as an emergency nurse, and been gladly accepted. in the intervals of her new duties she had received from her distracted cousin, who had been calling up every half-hour to find out whether she "had it yet," hal's message that he would not be able to see her that day, and, not having seen the "clarion," was at a loss to understand it. chance, by all the truly romantic, is supposed to be a sort of matrimonial agency, concerned chiefly in bringing lovers together. in the rougher realm of actuality it operates quite as often, perhaps, to keep them apart. certainly it was no friend to esmé elliot on this day. for when later she learned from her guardian of his attack upon hal (though he took the liberty of editing out the _finale_ of the encounter as he related it), she tried five separate times to reach hal by 'phone, and each time chance, the frustrator, saw to it that hal was engaged. the inference, to esmé's perturbed heart, was obvious; he did not wish to speak to her. and to a woman of her spirit there was but one course. she would dismiss him from her mind. which she did, every night, conscientiously, for many weary days. chapter xxxvi the victory nation-wide sped the news, branding worthington as a pest-ridden city. every newspaper in the country had a conspicuous dispatch about it. the bulletin of the united states public health service, as in duty bound, gave official and statistical currency to the town's misfortune. other cities in the state threatened a quarantine against worthington. commercial travelers and buyers postponed their local visits. the hotel registers thinned out notably. business drooped. for all of which the "clarion" was vehemently blamed by those most concerned. conversely, the paper should have received part credit for the extremely vigorous campaign which the health authorities, under dr. merritt, set on foot at once. using the "clarion" exposure as a lever, the health officer pried open the council-guarded city tills for an initial appropriation of ten thousand dollars, got a hasty ordinance passed penalizing, not the diagnosing of typhus, but failure to diagnose and report it,--not a man from the surtaine army of suppression had the temerity to oppose the measure,--organized a medical inspection and detection corps, threw a contagion-proof quarantine about every infected building, hunted down and isolated the fugitives from the danger-points who had scattered at the first alarm, inspired the county medical society to an enthusiastic support, bullied the police into a state of reasonable efficiency, and with a combined volunteer and regular force faced the epidemic in military form. not least conspicuous among the volunteers were miss esmé elliot and miss kathleen pierce, who had been released from quarantine quite as early as the law allowed, because of the need for them at the front. "we could never have done our job without you," said dr. merritt to hal, meeting him by chance one morning ten days after the publication of the "spread." "if the city is saved from a regular pestilence, it'll be the clarion's doing." "that doesn't seem to be the opinion of the business men of the place," said hal, with a rather dreary smile. he had just been going over with the lugubrious shearson a batch of advertising cancellations. "oh, don't look for any credit from this town," retorted the health officer. "i'm practically ostracized, already, for my share in it." "but are you beating it out?" "god knows," answered the other. "i thought we'd traced all the foci of infection. but two new localities broke out to-day. that's the way an epidemic goes." and that is the way the worthington typhus went for more than a month. throughout that month the "clarion" was carrying on an anti-epidemic campaign of its own, with the slogan "don't give up old home week." wise strategy this, in a double sense. it rallied public effort for victory by a definite date, for the committee on arrangements, despite the arguments of the weak-kneed among its number, and largely by virtue of the militant optimism of its chairman, had decided to go on with the centennial celebration if the city could show a clean bill of health by august 30, thus giving six weeks' leeway. furthermore, it put the "clarion" in the position of champion of the city's commercial interests and daily bade defiance to those who declared the paper an enemy and a traitor to business. in editorials, in interviews, in educational articles on hygiene and sanitation, in a course of free lectures covering the whole city and financed by the paper itself, the "clarion" carried on the fight with unflagging zeal. slowly it began to win back general confidence and much of the popularity which it had lost. one of its reporters in the course of his work contracted the fever and barely pulled through alive, thereby lending a flavor of possible martyrdom to the cause. mcguire ellis's desperate fight for life also added to the romantic element which is so potent an asset with the sentimental american public. business, however, still sulked. the defiance to its principles was too flagrant to be passed over. if the "clarion" pulled through, the press would lose respect for the best interests and the vested privileges of commercial worthington. indeed, others of the papers, since the "clarion's" declaration of independence, had exhibited a deplorable tendency to disregard hints hitherto having the authority of absolutism over them. in withholding advertising patronage from the surtaine daily, the business men were not only seeking reprisals, but also following a sound business principle. for according to information sedulously spread abroad, it was doubtful whether the "clarion" would long survive. elias m. pierce's boast that he would put it out of business gained literal interpretation, as he had intended that it should. contrary to his accustomed habit of reticence, he had sought occasion to inform his friends that he expected verdicts against the libeler of his daughter which would throw the concern into bankruptcy, and, perhaps, its proprietor into jail. no advertiser cares to put money into a publication which may fail next week. hence, though the circulation of the "clarion" went up pretty steadily, the advertising patronage did not keep pace. hal found himself hard put to it, at times, to cling to his dogged hopes. but it was worth while fighting it out to the last dollar. so much he was assured of by the messages of praise and support which began to come in to him, not from "representative citizens," but from the earnest, thoughtful, and often obscure toilers and thinkers of the city: clergymen, physicians, laboring-men, working-women, sociological workers--his peers. then, too, there was the profound satisfaction of promised victory over the pest. for at the end of six weeks the battle was practically won; by what heroisms, at the cost of what sacrifices, through what disappointments, reversals, and set-backs, against the subtleties of what underground opposition of political influence and twelve per cent finance, is not to be set down here. the government publications tell, in their brief and pregnant records, this story of one of the most complete and brilliant victories in the history of american hygiene. my concern is with the story, not of the typhus epidemic, but of a man who fought for and surrendered and finally retrieved his own manhood and the honor of the paper which was his honor. his share, no small one, in the wiping-out of the pestilence was, to him, but part of the war for which he had enlisted. but though the newspapers, with one joyous voice, were able to announce early in august, on the authority of the federal reports, "no new case in a week," the success of old home week still swayed in the balance. outside newspapers, which had not forgotten the scandal of the smallpox suppression years before, hinted that the record might not be as clear as it appeared. the president of the united states, they pointed out, who was to be the guest of honor and the chief feature of the celebration, would not be justified in going to a city over which any suspicion of pestilence still hovered. in fact, the success or failure of the event practically hung upon the chief executive's action. if, now, he decided to withdraw his acceptance, on whatever ground, the country would impute it to a justified caution, and would maintain against the city that intangible moral quarantine which is so disastrous to its victim. throughout, hal surtaine in his editorial columns had vigorously maintained that the president would come. it was mostly "bluff." he had nothing but hope to build on. two more "clean" weeks passed. at the close of the second, hal stopped one day at the hospital to see mcguire ellis, who was finally convalescent and was to be discharged on the following week. at the door of ellis's room he met dr. elliot. somewhat embarrassed, he stepped aside. the physician stopped. "er--surtaine," he said hesitantly. "well?" "i've had time to think things over. and i've had some talks with mac. i--i guess i was wrong." "you were right enough from your point of view." "think so?" said the other, surprised. "yes. and i know i was right, from mine." "humph!" there was an uncomfortable pause. then: "i called names. i apologize." "that's all right, then," returned hal heartily. "woof!" exhaled the physician. "that's off my chest. now, i've got an item for you." "for the 'clarion'?" "yep. the president's coming." "coming? to old home week?" "to old home week." "an item! great cæsar! a spread! a splurge!! a blurb!!! where did you get it?" "from washington. just been there." "tell me all of it." "know redding? he and i saw some tough service together in the old m.h.s. that's the united states public health service now. redding's the head of it; surgeon-general. first-class man, every way. so i went to see him and told him we had to have the president, and why. he saw it in a minute. knew all about the 'clarion's fight, too. he went to the white house and explained the whole business. the president said that a clean bill of health from the service was good enough for him, and he'd come, sure. here's his letter to the surgeon-general. it goes out for publication to-morrow. there's a line in it speaking of the 'clarion's good work." "great cæsar!" said hal again, rather weakly. "does that square accounts between us?" "more! a hundred times more! that's the biggest indorsement any paper in this town ever had. old home week's safe. did you tell mac?" "yes. he's up there cursing now because they won't let him go to the office to plan out the article." to the "clarion," the presidential encomium was a tremendous boom professionally. financially, however, it was of no immediate avail. it did not bring local advertising, and advertising was what the paper sorely needed. still, it did call attention to the paper from outside. a few good contracts for "foreign" advertising, a department which had fallen off to almost nothing when hal discarded all medical "copy," came in. with these, and a reasonable increase in local support which could be counted upon, now that commercial bitterness against the paper was somewhat mollified, hal reckoned that he could pull through--if it were not for the pierce suits. there was the crux of the situation. nothing was being done about them. they had been postponed more than once, on motion of pierce's counsel. now they hung over hal's head in a suspense fast becoming unbearable. at length he decided that, in fairness to his staff, he should warn them of the situation. he chose, for the explanation, one of the talk-it-over breakfasts, the first one which mcguire ellis, released temporarily from the hospital for the occasion, had attended since his wound. he sat at hal's right, still pale and thin, but with his look of bulldog obstinacy undiminished; enhanced, rather, by the fact that one ear had been sharpened to a canine pointedness by the missile which had so narrowly grazed his life. ellis had been goaded to a pitch of high exasperation by the solicitude and attentions of his fellows. it was his emphatically expressed opinion that the whole gathering lay under a blight of superlative youthfulness. in his mind he exempted hal, over whose silence and distraction he was secretly worried. the cause was explained when the chairman rose to close the meeting. "there is something i have to say," he said. "i've put it off longer than i should. i may have to give up the 'clarion.' it depends upon the outcome of the libel suits brought by e.m. pierce. if, as we fear, miss cleary, the nurse who was run over, testifies for the prosecution, we can't win. then it's only a question of the size of the damages. a big verdict would mean the ruin of the paper, i'm telling you this so that you may have time to look for new jobs." there was a long silence. then a melancholy, musing voice said: "gee! that's tough! just as the paper pulled off the home week stunt, too." "how much of a verdict would bust us?" asked another. "twenty-five thousand dollars," said hal, "together with lawyers' fees. i couldn't go on." "say, i know that old hen of a nurse," said one of the sporting writers, with entire seriousness. "wonder if it'd do any good to marry her?" a roar went up from the table at this, somewhat relieving the tension of the atmosphere. shearson, the advertising manager, lolling deep in his chair, spoke up diffidently, as soon as he could be heard: "i ain't rich. but i've put a little wad aside. i could chip in three thou' if that'd help." "i've got five hundred that isn't doing a stitch of work," declared wainwright. "some of my relations have wads of money," suggested young denton. "i wouldn't wonder if--" "no, no, no!" cried hal, in a shaken voice. "i know how well you fellows mean it. but--" "as a loan," said wainwright hopefully. "the paper's good enough security." "_not_ good enough," replied hal firmly. "i can't take it, boys. you--you're a mighty good lot, to offer. now, about looking for other places--" "all those that want to quit the 'clarion,' stand up," shouted mcguire ellis. not a man moved. "unanimous," observed the convalescent. "i thought nobody'd rise to that. if anybody had," he added, "i'd have punched him in the eye." the gathering adjourned in gloom. "all this only makes it harder, mac," said hal to his right-hand man afterward. "they can't afford to stick till we sink." "if a sailor can do it, i guess a newspaper man can," retorted the other resentfully. "i wish i could poison pierce." at dinner that night hal found his father distrait. since the younger man's return, the old relations had been resumed, though there were still, of necessity, difficult restraints and reservations in their talk. the "clarion," however, had ceased to be one of the tabooed subjects. since the publication of the president's letter and the saving of old home week, dr. surtaine had become an avowed clarionite. also he kept in personal touch with the office. this evening, however, it was with an obvious effort that he asked how affairs were going. hal answered listlessly that matters were going well enough. "no, they aren't, boy-ee. i heard about your talk to-day." "did you? i'm sorry. i don't want to worry you." "boy-ee, let me back you." "i can't, dad." "because of that old agreement?" "partly." "call it a loan, then. i can't stand by and see the paper licked by pierce. fifty thousand won't touch me. and it'll save you." "please, dad, i can't do it." "is it because it's certina money?" hal turned miserable eyes on his father. "hadn't we better keep away from that?" "i don't get you at all on that," cried the charlatan. "why, it's business. it's legal. if i didn't sell 'em the stuff, somebody else would. why shouldn't i take the money, when it's there?" "there's no use in my trying to argue it with you, dad. we're miles apart." "that's just it," sighed the older man. "oh, well! you couldn't help my paying the damages if pierce wins," he suggested hopefully. "yes. i could even do that." "what do you want me to do, boy-ee?" cried his father, in desperation. "give up a business worth half a million a year, net?" "i'm not asking anything, sir. only let me do the best i can, in the way that looks right to me. i've got to go back to the office now. good-night, dad." the arch-quack looked after his son's retreating figure, and his big, animal-like eyes were very tender. "i don't know," he said to himself uncertainly,--"i don't know but what he's worth it." chapter xxxvii mcguire ellis wakes up on implication of the highest authority we have it that the leopard cannot change his spots. the great american pumess is a feline of another stripe. stress of experience and emotion has been known to modify sensibly her predatory characteristics. in the very beautiful specimen of the genus which, from time to time, we have had occasion to study in these pages, there had taken place, in a few short months, an alteration so considerable as to be almost revolutionary. many factors had contributed to the result. no woman of inherent fineness can live close to human suffering, as esmé had lived in her slum work, without losing something of that centripetal self-concern which is the blemish of the present-day american girl. constant association with such men as hugh merritt and norman hale, men who saw in her not a beautiful and worshipful maiden, but a useful agency in the work which made up their lives, gave her a new angle from which to consider herself. then, too, her brief engagement to will douglas had sobered her. for douglas, whatever his lack of independence and manliness in his professional relations, had endured the jilting with quiet dignity. but he had suffered sharply, for he had been genuinely in love with esmé. she felt his pain the more in that there was the same tooth gnawing at her own heart, though she would not acknowledge it to herself. and this taught her humility and consideration. the pumess was not become a saint, by any means. she still walked, a lovely peril to every susceptible male heart. but she no longer thirsted with unquenchable ardor for conquests. meek though a reformed pumess may be, there are limits to meekness. when miss eleanor stanley maxwell elliot woke up to find herself pilloried as an enemy to society, in the very paper which she had tried to save, she experienced mingled emotions shot through with fiery streaks of wrath. presently these simmered down to a residue of angry amazement and curiosity. if you have been accustomed all your life to regard yourself as an empress of absolute dominance over slavish masculinity, and are suddenly subjected to a violent slap across the face from the hand of the most highly favored slave, some allowance is due you of outraged sensibilities. chiefly, however esmé wondered why. why, in large capitals, and with an intensely ascendant inflection. her first impulse had been to telephone hal a withering message. more deliberate thought suggested the wisdom of making sure of her ground, first. the result was a shock. from her still infuriated guardian she had learned that, technically, she was the owner, with full moral responsibility for the "pest-egg." the information came like a dash of extremely cold water, which no pumess, reformed or otherwise, likes. miss elliot sat her down to a thoughtful consideration of the "clarion." she found she was in good company. several other bright and shining lights of the local firmament, social, financial, and commercial, shared the photographic notoriety. slowly it was borne in upon her open mind that she had not been singled out for reprehension; that she was simply a part of the news, as hal regarded news--no, as the "clarion" regarded news. that hal would deliberately have let this happen, she declined to believe. unconsciously she clung to her belief in the natural inviolability of her privilege. it must have been a mistake. hal would tell her so when he saw her. yet if that were so, why had he sent word, the day after, that he couldn't keep his appointment? would he come at all, now? doubt upon this point was ended when dr. elliot, admitted on the strength of his profession to the typhus ward, and still exhibiting mottlings of wrath on his square face, had repeated his somewhat censored account of his encounter with "that puppy." esmé haughtily advised her dear uncle guardy that the "puppy" was her friend. uncle guardy acidulously counseled his beloved esmé not to be every species of a mildly qualified idiot at one and the same time. esmé elevated her nose in the air and marched out of the room to telephone hal surtaine forthwith. what she intended to telephone him (very distantly, of course) was that her uncle had no authority to speak for her, that she was quite capable of speaking for herself, and that she was ready to hear any explanation tending to mitigate his crime--not in those words precisely, but in a tone perfectly indicative of her meaning. furthermore, that the matter on which she had wished to speak to him was a business matter, and that she would expect him to keep the broken appointment later. none of which was ever transmitted. fate, playing the rôle of miching mallecho, prevented once again. hal was out. in the course of time, esmé's quarantine (a little accelerated, though not at any risk of public safety) was lifted and she returned to the world. the battle of hygiene _vs_. infection was now at its height. esmé threw herself into the work, heart and soul. for weeks she did not set eyes on hal surtaine, except as they might pass on the street. twice she narrowly missed him at the hospital where she found time to make an occasional visit to ellis. a quick and lively friendship had sprung up between the spoiled beauty and the old soldier of the print-columns, and from him, as soon as he was convalescent, she learned something of the deeper meanings of the "clarion" fight and of the higher standards which had cost its owner so dear. "i suppose," he said, "the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life was to print your picture." "did he _have_ to print it?" "didn't he? it was news." "and that's your god, isn't it, mr. mac?" said his visitor, smiling. "it's only a small name for truth. good men have died for that." "or killed others for their ideal of it." "miss esmé," said the invalid, "hal surtaine has had to face two tests. he had to show up his own father in his paper." "yes. i read it. but i've only begun to understand it since our talks." "and he had to print that about you. wayne told me he almost killed the story himself to save hal. 'i couldn't bear to look at the boy's face when he told me to run it,' wayne said. and he's no sentimentalist. newspapermen generally ain't." "_aren't_ you?" said esmé, with a catch in her breath. "i should think you were, pretty much, at the 'clarion' office." from that day she knew that she must talk it out with hal. yet at every thought of that encounter, her maidenhood shrank, affrighted, with a sweet and tremulous fear. inevitable as was the end, it might have been long postponed had it not been for a word that ellis let drop the day when he left the hospital. mrs. festus willard, out of friendship for hal, had insisted that the convalescent should come to her house until his strength was quite returned, instead of returning to his small and stuffy hotel quarters, and esmé had come in her car to transfer him. it was the day after the talk-it-over breakfast at which hal had announced the prospective fall of the "clarion." "i'll be glad to get back to the office," said ellis to esmé. "they certainly need me." "you aren't fit yet," protested the girl. "fitter than the boss. he's worrying himself sick." "isn't everything all right?" "all wrong! it's this cussed pierce libel case that's taking the heart out of him." "oh!" cried esmé, on a note of utter dismay. "why didn't you tell me, mr. mac?" "tell you? what do you know about it?" "lots! everything." she fell into silent thoughtfulness. "i supposed that you had heard from mr. pierce, or his lawyer, at the office. i _must_ see hal--mr. surtaine--now. does he still come to see you?" "everyday." "send word to him to be at the willards' at two to-morrow. and--and, please, mr. mac, don't tell him why." "now, what kind of a little game is this?" began ellis, teasingly. "am i an amateur cupid, or what's my cue?" he looked into the girl's face and saw tears in the great brown eyes. "hello!" he said with a change of voice. "what's wrong, esmé? i'm sorry." "oh, _i'm_ wrong!" she cried. "i ought to have spoken long ago. no, no! i'm all right now!" she smiled gloriously through her tears. "here we are. you'll be sure that he's there?" "fear not, but lean on dollinger and he will fetch you through"-quoted the other in oratorical assurance, and turned to mrs. willard's greeting. at one-thirty on the following day, mr. mcguire ellis was where he shouldn't have been, asleep in a curtained alcove window-seat of the big willard library. at one minute past two he was where he should have been still less; that is, in the same place and condition. now mr. ellis is not only the readiest hair-trigger sleeper known to history, but he is also one of the most profound and persistent. entrances and exits disturb him not, nor does the human voice penetrate to the region of his dreams. to everything short of earthquake, explosion, or physical contact, his slumber is immune. therefore he took no note when miss esmé elliot came in, nor when, a moment later, mr. harrington surtaine arrived, unannounced. nor, since he was thoroughly shut in by the draperies, was either of them aware of his presence. esmé rose slowly to her feet as hal entered. she had planned a leading-up to her subject, but at sight of him she was startled out of any greeting, even. "oh, how thin you look, and tired!" she exclaimed. "strenuous days, these," he answered. "i didn't expect to see you here. where's ellis?" "upstairs. don't go. i want to speak to you. sit down there." at her direction hal drew up a chair. she took the corner of the lounge near by and regarded him silently from under puckered brows. "is it about ellis?" said hal, alarmed at her hesitation. "no. it is about mr. pierce. there won't be any libel suit." "what!" "no." she shook her head in reassurance of his evident incredulity. "you've nothing to worry about, there." "how can you know?" "from kathie." "did her father tell her?" "she told her father. there's a dreadful quarrel." "i don't understand at all." "kathie absolutely refuses to testify for her father. she says that the accident was her own fault, and if there's a trial she will tell the truth." before she had finished, hal was on his feet. her heart smote her as she saw the gray worry pass from his face and his shoulders square as from the relief of a burden lifted, "has it lain so heavy on your mind?" she asked pitifully. "if you knew!" he walked half the length of the long room, then turned abruptly. "you did that," he said. "you persuaded her." "no. i didn't, indeed." the eager light faded in his face. "of course not. why should you after--do you mind telling me how it happened?" "it isn't my secret. but--but she has come to care very much for some one, and it is his influence." "wonderful!" he laughed boyishly. "i want to go out and run around and howl. would you mind joining me in the college yell? does mac know?" "nobody knows but you." "that's why pierce kept postponing. and i, living under the shadow of this! how can i thank you!" "don't thank me," she said with an effort. "i--i've known it for weeks. i meant to tell you long ago, but i thought you'd have learned it before now--and--and it was made hard for me." "was that what you had to tell me about the paper, when you asked me to come to see you?" she nodded. "but how could i come?" he burst out. "i suppose there's no use--i must go and tell mac about this." "wait," she said. he stopped, gazing at her doubtfully. "i'm tearing down the tenement at number 9." "tearing it down?" "as a confession that--that you were right. but i didn't know i owned it. truly i didn't. you'll believe that, won't you?" "of course," he cried eagerly. "i did know it, but too late." "if you'd known in time would you have--" "left that out of the paper?" he finished, all the life gone from his voice. "no, esmé. i couldn't have done that. but i could have said in the paper that you didn't know." "i thought so," she said very quietly. he misinterpreted this. "i can't lie to you, esmé," he said with a sad sincerity. "i've lived with lies too long. i can't do it, not for any hope of happiness. do i seem false and disloyal to you? sometimes i do to myself. i can't help it. all a man can do is to follow his own light. or a woman either, i suppose. and your light and mine are worlds apart." again, with a stab of memory, he saw that desperate smile on her lips. then she spoke with the clear courage of her new-found womanliness. "there is no light for me where you are not." he took a swift step toward her. and at the call, sweetly and straightly, she came to meet his arms and lips. "poor boy!" she said, a few minutes later, pushing a lock of hair from his forehead. "i've let you carry that burden when a word from me would have lifted it." "has there ever been such a thing as unhappiness in the world, sweetheart?" he said. "i can't remember it. so i don't believe it." "i'm afraid i've cost you more than i can ever repay you for," she said. "hal, tell me i've been a little beast!--oh, no! that's no way to tell it. aren't you sorry, sir, that you ever saw this room?" "finest example of interior architecture i know of. exact replica of the plumb center of paradise." "it's where all your troubles began. you first met me here in this very room." "oh, no! my troubles began from the minute i set eyes on you, that day at the station." "don't contradict me." she laid an admonitory finger on his lips, then, catching at his hand, gently drew him with her. "right in that very window-seat there--" she whisked the hangings aside, and brushed mcguire ellis's nose in so doing. "hoong!" snorted mcguire ellis. "oh!" cried esmé. "were you there all the time? we--i--didn't know--have you been asleep?" "i have been just that," replied the dormant one, yawning. "i hope we haven't disturbed--" began esmé in the same breath with hal's awkward "sorry we waked you up, mac." "don't be--" ellis checked his familiar growl, looked with growing suspicion from esmé's flushed loveliness to hal's self conscious confusion, leaped to his feet, gathered the pair into a sudden, violent, impartial embrace, and roared out:-"go ahead! _be_ young! you can only be it once in a lifetime." xxxviii the convert old home week passed in a burst of glory and profit. true to its troublous type, the "clarion" had interfered with the profit, in two brief, lively, and effective campaigns. it had published a roster of hotels which, after agreeing not to raise rates for the week, had reverted to the old, tried and true principle of "all the traffic can bear," with comparative tables, thereby causing great distress of mind and pocket among the piratical. backed by the consumers' league, it had again taken up the cudgels for the store employees, demanding that they receive pay for overtime during the celebration and winning a partial victory. no little rancor was, of course, stirred up among the advertisers. the usual threats were made. but the business interests of worthington had begun to learn that threatening the "clarion" was a futile procedure, while advertisers were coming to a realization of the fact that they couldn't afford to stay out of so strong a medium, even at increased rates. the raise in the advertising schedule had been partly esmé elliot's doing. as a condition of her engagement to hal, she demanded a resumption of the old partnership. entered into lightly, it soon became of serious moment, for the girl had a natural gift for affairs. when she learned that on the basis of circulation the "clarion" would be justified in increasing its advertising card by forty per cent, but dared not do so because of the narrow margin upon which it was working, she insisted upon the measure, supporting her argument with a considerable sum of money of her own. hal revolted at this, but she pleaded so sweetly that he finally consented to regard it as a reserve fund. it was never called for. the turn of the tide had come for the paper. it lost few old advertisers and put on new ones. it was a success. no one was more delighted than dr. surtaine. forgetting his own prophecies of disaster he exalted hal to the skies as a chip of the old block, an inheritor of his own genius for business. "knew all along he had the stuff in him," he would declare buoyantly. "look at the 'clarion' now! most independent, you-be-damned sheet in the country. and what about the chaps that were going to put it out of business? eating out of its hand!" of esmé the old quack was quite as proud as of hal. to him she embodied and typified, in its extreme form, those things which all his money could not buy. that she disliked the certina business and made no secret of the fact did not in the least interfere with a genuine liking between herself and its proprietor. dr. surtaine could not discuss certina with hal: there were too many wounds still open between them. but with esmé he could, and often did. her attitude struck him as nicely philosophic and impersonal, if a bit disdainful. and in these days he had to talk to some one, for he was swollen with a great and glorious purpose. he announced it one resplendent fall day, having gone out to greenvale with that particular object in view, at an hour when he was sure that hal would be at the office. "esmé, i'm going to make you a wedding present of certina," he said. "never take it, doctor," she replied, smiling up at him in friendly recognition of what had come to be a subject of stock joke between them. "i'm serious. i'm going to make you a wedding present of the certina business. i guess there aren't many brides get a gift of half a million a year. too bad i can't give it out to the newspapers, but it wouldn't do." "what on earth do you mean?" cried the astonished girl. "i couldn't take it. hal wouldn't let me." "i'm going to give it up, for you. you think it ain't genteel and high-toned, don't you?" "i think it isn't honest." "not discussing business principles, to-day," retorted the doctor good-humoredly. "it's a question of taste now. you're ashamed of the proprietary medicine game, aren't you, my dear?" esmé laughed. embarrassment with dr. surtaine was impossible. he was too childlike. "a little," she confessed. "you'd be glad if i quit it." "of course i would. i suppose you can afford it." as if responding to the touch of a concealed spring, the surtaine chest protruded. "you find me something i can't afford, and i'll buy it!" he declared. "but this won't even cost me anything in the long run. esmé, did i ever tell you my creed?" "'certina cures,'" suggested the girl mischievously. "that's for business. i mean for everyday life. my creed is to let providence take care of folks in general while i look after me and mine." "it's practical, at least, if not altruistic." "me, and mine," repeated the charlatan. "do you get that 'and mine'? that means the employees of the certina factory. now, if i quit making certina, what about them? shall i turn them out on the street?" "i hadn't thought of that," admitted the girl blankly. "business can be altruistic as well as practical, you see," he observed. "well, i've worked out a scheme to take care of that. been working on it for months. certina is going to die painlessly. and i'm going to preach its funeral oration at the factory on monday. will you come, and make hal come, too?" in vain did esmé employ her most winning arts of persuasion to get more from the wily charlatan. he enjoyed being teased, but he was obdurate. accordingly she promised for herself and hal. but hal was not as easily persuaded. he shrank from the thought of ever again setting foot in the certina premises. only esmé's most artful pleading that he should not so sorely disappoint his father finally won him over. at the certina "shop," on the appointed day, the fiancés were ushered in with unaccustomed formality. they found gathered in the magnificent executive offices all the heads of departments of the vast concern, a quiet, expectant crowd. there were no outsiders other than hal and esmé. dr. surtaine, glossy, grave, a figure to fill the eye roundly, sat at his glass-topped table facing his audience. above him hung old lame-boy, eternally hobbling amidst his fervid implications. waving the newcomers to seats directly in front of him, the presiding genius lifted a benign hand for silence. "my friends," he said, in his unctuous, rolling voice, "i have an important announcement to make. the certina business is finished." there was a silence of stunned surprise as the speaker paused to enjoy his effect. "certina," he pursued, "has been the great triumph of my career. i might almost say it has been my career. but it has not been my life, my friends. the whole is greater than the part: the creator is greater than the thing he creates. they say, 'surtaine of certina.' it should be, 'certina of surtaine.' there's more to come of surtaine." his voice dropped to the old, pleading, confidential tone of the itinerant; as if he were beguiling them now to accept the philosophy which he was to set forth. "what is life, my dear friends? life is a paper-chase. we rush from one thing to another, little daisy happiness just one jump ahead of us and old man death grabbing at our coat-tails. well, before he catches hold of mine,"--the splendid bulk and vitality of the man gave refutation to the hint of pathos in the voice,--"i want to run my race out so that my children and my children's children can point to me and say, 'one crowded hour of glorious life is worth a cycle of cathay.'" with a superb gesture he indicated hal and esmé, who, he observed with gratification, seemed quite overcome with emotion. "that is why, my friends, i am withdrawing certina, and turning to fresh fields; if i may say so, fields of more genteel endeavor. certina has made millions. it could still make millions. i could sell out for millions to-day. but, in the words of the sweet singer, i come to bury it, not to praise it. certina has done its grand work. the day of medicine is almost over. interfering laws are being passed. the public is getting suspicious of drugs. whether this is just or unjust is not the question which i am considering. i've always wanted my business to be high-class. you can't run a high-class business when the public is on to you. "don't think, any of you, that i'm going to retire and leave you in the lurch. no. i'm looking ahead, for you as well as for me. what's the newest thing in science? foods! specific foods, to build up the system. that's the big thing of the future here in america. we're a tired nation, a nerve-wracked nation, a brain-fagged nation. suppose a man could say to the public, 'get as tired as you like. work to your limit. play to your limit. go the pace. when you're worn out, come to us and we'll repair the waste for a few dollars. we've got a food--no drugs, no medicines--that builds up brain and nerve as good as new. the greatest authorities in the world agree on it.' is there any limit to the business that food could do? "well, i've got it! and i've got the backing for it. mr. belford couch will tell you of our testimonials. tell 'em the whole thing, bel: we're all one family here." "i've been huntin' in europe," said certina charley, rising, in accents of pardonable pride: "and i've got the hottest bunch of signed stuff ever. you all know how hard it is to get any medical testimonials here. they're all afraid, except a few down-and-outers. well, there's none of that in europe. they'll stand for any kind of advertising, so long as it's published only in the united states--provided they get their price. and it ain't such an awful price either. _i got the emperor's own physician for one thousand five hundred dollars cash_. and a line of court doctors and swell university professors anywhere from one thousand dollars way down to one hundred. it's the biggest testimonial stunt ever pulled." "and every mother's son of 'em," put in dr. surtaine, "staking a high-toned scientific reputation that the one sure, unfailing, reliable upbuilder for brain-workers, nervous folks, tired-out, or broken-down folks of any kind at all is"--here dr. surtaine paused, looked about his entranced audience, and delivered himself of his climax in a voice of thunder: "cerebread!" the word passed from mouth to mouth, in accents of experimentation, admiration, and acceptance. "cere, from cerebellum, the brain, and bread the universal food. i doped it out myself, and as soon as i hit on it i shipped belford couch straight to europe to get the backing. i wouldn't take a million for that name, to-day. "see what you can do with a proposition of that sort! it hasn't got any drugs in it, so we won't have to label it under the law. it ain't medical; so the most particular newspaper and magazines won't kick on the advertising. yet, with the copy i'm getting up on it, we can put it over to cure more troubles than certina ever thought of curing. only we won't use the word 'cure,' of course. all we have to do is to ram it into the public that all its troubles are nervous and brain troubles. 'cerebread' restores the brain and rebuilds the nerves, and there you are, as good as new. is that some plan? or isn't it!" there was a ripple of applausive comment. "what's in it?" inquired lauder, the factory superintendent. "millions in it, my boy," cried the other jubilantly. "we'll be manufacturing by new year's." "that's the point. _what'll_ we be manufacturing?" "by crikey! that reminds me. haven't settled that yet. might as well do it right now," said the presiding genius of the place with olympian decision. "dr. de vito, what's the newest wrinkle in brain-food?" "brain-food?" hesitated the little physician. "something new?" "yes, yes!" cried the charlatan impatiently. "what's the fad now? it used to be phosphorus." "ye-es. phosphorus, maybe. maybe some kind of hypophosphite, eh?" "sounds all right. could you get up a preparation of it that looks tasty and tastes good?" "sure. easy." "fine! i'll send you down the advertising copy, so you'll have that to go by. and now, gentlemen, we're the cerebread factory from now on. keep all your help; we'll need 'em. go on with certina till we're sold out; but no more advertising on it. and, all of you, from now on, think, dream, and _live_ cerebread. meeting's adjourned." the staff filed out, chattering excitedly. "he'll put it over."--"you can't beat the chief."--"is'n't he a wonder!"--"cerebread; it's a great name to advertise."--"no come-back to it, either. nobody can kick on a _food_."--"it's a sure-enough classy proposition, with those swell european names to it!"--"wish he'd let us in on the stock." success was in the air. it centered in and beamed from the happy eyes of the reformed enthusiast, as, crossing over the room with hands extended to esmé and hal, he cried in a burst of generous emotion: "it was you two that converted me." the end 