To Him That Hath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

ROGERS MAKES AN OFFER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's he want?"

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

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

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

"You know I am," said David.

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

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

"Well?"

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

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

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

"Rogers is my employer."

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

"Please try!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But – "

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

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

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

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

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

"You understand? – I had to do it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

David nodded. "I see your point."

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

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

They shook hands.

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

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

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

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

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

David still objected, and at length Rogers cried out:

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX

THE MAYOR AND THE INEVITABLE

At the end of a few days Jimmie Morgan had been settled into David's place, and David was established in Rogers's room and thoroughly drilled into his part. Finally, toward the last of the week, a rented typewriter was installed in the office and Kate Morgan installed before it.

"As I told you, there'll be little for you to do," Rogers said to her the afternoon she began work. "When anybody's about you can make a show of being busy – but the rest of the time do as you please."

He went into his room and closed the door. Kate turned to David, who sat at a desk beside her looking a very different man in the well-tailored suit Rogers had made him buy.

"Isn't he fine!" she said in a low voice.

"He certainly is," David returned warmly.

"The way he pretended to get all that money for our furniture! But I'll pay him back some day – you see. I didn't think I could, but I know now that after a little experience I'll be making good money. They told me at the school I was the fastest girl on the machine they'd had for years. Some day I hope my chance'll come to do him a good turn."

David wondered if she guessed, as he had, the kind of turn Rogers, in his dreams, would like best for her to do him. She had guessed, and she guessed too what was running that instant in David's brain, for she shook her head and whispered meaningly:

"You know I don't care for him that way."

David looked abruptly back at his desk, and her machine began a whizzing tattoo that fully corroborated the statement of her teachers. But Kate as he had first known her a year before came into his mind, and his eyes slipped surreptitiously up to view the contrast. She wore a white cotton dress, its folds as smooth as the iron's bottom, in which she looked very fresh and girlish. The hardness and cynicism had gone from her face, and her exaggerated pompadour had subsided into a dressing which allowed the hair to fall loosely about brow and ears, lending an illusion of fulness to her rather thin face. She was a far softer, far more controlled Kate Morgan than the Kate Morgan who had been his first post-prison friend. But the control, he knew, had not extinguished her old personality. It was there, ready to flame forth when occasion provoked it.

That evening, in response to a request sent down by the Mayor of Avenue A, David went up to the Mayor's flat. The sitting-room was a chaos of chairs, newspapers, clothes and photographs of feminine admirers – the confirmed disorder of an unmarried man of forty-five. The Mayor, standing amid his household goods in evening clothes, noted that David was observing the quality of his housekeeping.

"You've seen this before, Aldrich," he said brusquely, "so don't turn your nose up so much, or you'll spoil the ceilin'."

He glanced about the room. "It does look like I was boardin' a pet hurricane, don't it," he admitted. "Sometimes I've been on the point o' askin' Mrs. Hahn (who attended to the three-room flat) to clean up a bit – but, oh say! I can't boss a woman!"

Early in their friendship the Mayor had discovered that David had some acquaintance with the social customs of Fifth Avenue, and he had gradually adopted David as his social and sartorial mentor – though in the item of vests he grumbled against David's taste as altogether too conservative. So David was not now surprised when the Mayor said, "I sent for you to look me over," stepped into the best light, pulled down his vest and coat, and demanded complacently: "Well, friend, do I look fit to be two-steppin' with the ladies?"

David's gaze travelled upward from the broad, but not broad enough, patent-leather shoes, past his large, white-gloved hands, to the white vest girdled with a heavy gold chain, across the broad and glistening area of his evening shirt, and upward to the culminating glory of his silk hat.

"You certainly do!" said David.

"I thought you'd think so," said the Mayor, nodding. "When I get into my dress suit I ain't such a slouch, am I. But since you made me quit wearin' them handy white bows that hooks in the back o' the neck, my ties always look like I'd tied 'em with my feet. Here, fix this blamed thing on me right."

When David had complied, the Mayor lowered himself into a chair, taking care to pull up his trousers and to see that the bending did not crumple his shirt bosom.

"It's the first fall affair – at the Liberty Assembly Hall – very small crowd – very select," he announced to David in a confidential voice that could have been heard in the street. "If only the dear ladies – oh Lord! – leave me alone!"

He sighed, and shook his head.

"I may look like a happy man, friend, but I ain't. I'm gettin' near my finish. Yes, sir! The bunch after me is narrowin' down to a few – the rest has sorter dropped out o' the runnin'. And them few is closin' in on me – closin' in on me. They're in earnest, every one of 'em. Oh, you can't count the chances I have to set alone with 'em in their parlours, walk home alone with 'em at night, and all them sort o' tricks. And me" – he groaned, and despair made a vain effort to wrinkle his smooth face – "me, I like it. That's the hell of it!

"Yes, one's goin' to get me sure. I wish I knew which one'd win out. I'd be almost willin' to put my money on Carrie Becker. I guess she's as good as any of 'em. She's just had a row with Mrs. Schweitzer. You know Mrs. Schweitzer sets in one corner o' Schweitzer's café every afternoon, and holds a kind o' reception with the people that drop in. Carrie Becker wants to marry me and do the same thing in my café, which is ten times as good as Schweitzer's. She wants to snow Mrs. Schweitzer under. Oh, I'm onto her! That makes two reasons she has for marryin' me. Yes – if I was bettin', I'd bet on Carrie Becker."

He heaved a great sigh and rose. "Well, I'd better be goin'. You're sure, are you, that I look all right?"

"Perfect."

The joy of living spread over his face. "Yes, I guess I do."

They walked together to the stoop. David watched the Mayor's progress down the street, saw the heads turn to stare at his effulgent amplitude, and he guessed how the Mayor's gratification was chirrupping to itself beneath the Mayor's waistcoat.

David had ceased cooking his own meals since he had moved from his basement room, and had become a boarder at the Pan-American Café. When he, Rogers and Tom appeared at breakfast the next morning the Mayor, pale and agitated, yet striving to look composed, hurried over to their table.

"I want to see you as soon's you're through eatin'," he whispered in David's ear.

"All right," said David.

The Mayor kept an impatient eye on David, and the moment breakfast was done he was at David's side, hat in hand. "We can't talk in here," he said. "I've got a key to the Liberty Assembly Hall. Let's go over there." And excusing themselves to Rogers, he led David out.

The big ball-room, scattered about with the débris of the previous night's pleasure, had in the cold light of morning a look of desolation which even the mural cascades and seas and mountains could not dispel. The room was a fit setting for the despairing face the Mayor turned upon David when the hall door was locked behind them. The Mayor did not speak for several seconds, held his gaze straight on David; then he shouted, his mask of self-control flung aside:

"Well, you see me! What d'you think o' me?"

"What's up?

"It's all up! I've gone and done it!"

"Done what?"

"What? – I've done It! – I'm engaged!"

There was frantic hopelessness in the Mayor's voice and in the Mayor's face.

"You don't say so!" David ejaculated.

"I did say so!"

David could hardly restrain a laugh at the Mayor's desperate appearance. "Engaged! You don't look it!"

"A-a-h! quit your kiddin'!" roared the Mayor fiercely. "This ain't nothin' to laugh at. It's serious."

"To which one?" David queried, with the required gravity.

"Carrie Becker. I knew she'd get me. Oh, she's a slick one all right! Say, friend, if you want a job kicking me at five dollars an hour, get busy!"

He began to pace wildly to and fro across the room, then let himself drop with a groan into a chair beneath an Alpine cascade, so that it seemed the water was splashing upon his polished head.

"It was last night – in this damned hall – in that damned corner there – that it happened," he burst out to David, who had taken a chair beside him. "The hall was all fixed up fancy. There was a line o' them green, shiny, greasy-lookin' perpetuated palms across each corner. What's anybody want a hall fixed like that for! – ain't the old way good enough, I'd like to know?