To Him That Hath

Then suddenly his fingers unclosed, the bracelet clicked back upon the glass shelf, and his hand withdrew from the cabinet. The coiled spring of his intention had snapped. The touch of what was another man's had readjusted his confused senses. His blurred feelings became definite, his dumb brain articulate. He saw what he was doing, saw it clearly, as a bare act, unjustified by the arguments his bitterness had urged upon him an hour before – saw that he was committing a theft!

A chill swept through him and he sat stiffly upright in his chair and stared at the bracelet he had dropped. In the mood he had been in an hour or two hours before David would not have drawn back from theft, any more than any other normal starving man, could it have been committed quickly, upon impulse. But the hour that had passed, the deliberation which was surrounding the theft, had given opportunity to his moral being to overthrow the impulse and assert itself.

He rose, forgetting even to take the cabinet key. He would leave the house at once.

But as he passed out of the drawing-room it came to him that he could not go away without telling Kate of his purpose. Before him he saw a flight of stairs; she was somewhere above. He stealthily mounted, passed through a doorway and found himself in a library. He stood a moment with strained ears, but got no sound of her. He must go through the floor, and perhaps through the floor above; but before proceeding further he must get the lay of the house.

He moved noiselessly toward the library table, drawing out the plan Kate had given him. He set the lantern on the table beside a telephone, spread out the sheets and was sitting down when cautious footfalls sounded without. The next instant a blade of light stabbed the room's darkness.

"Kate?" he whispered.

"Yes."

They came toward each other and each threw his light into the other's masked face.

"I've got the old lady's twinklers," she said. "Where's your swag?"

"I didn't take it," he whispered. "I've changed my mind. I'm leaving."

"What!"

"I'm not going to take anything. I'm going away. I came to tell you that."

She drew a step nearer and for a space her black eyes gazed up into his in amazement. The deep night silence of the great house flooded over them.

"You mean it?" she demanded.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I cannot. It was a mistake, my coming."

Her eyes suddenly gleamed like knife points, she trembled with passion, and she plunged her whispered words in up to the hilt.

"So that's the kind of nerve you've got! Oh, my God!.. What a damned coward you are!.. Well, get out! I don't want you!"

She brushed him wrathfully by, and tensely erect, her free hand clenched, walked out of the room behind the shaft of light.

He stood motionless where she had left him, alone amid the great hush. Her words had pierced to the seat of life. He quivered with the pain – deserved pain, he realised, for it was not a noble part to leave a comrade at such a time. But he had made a mistake in coming, and the only way to correct it was to go. He wished she would go with him, but he knew the result of asking her. She would stab him again, and walk away in contempt.

He sighed, set his lantern on the table, and folded and pocketed the plans of the house. As he laid hold of his lantern to start away he saw on the table, in the lantern's ribbon of light, three or four letters that had evidently been written during the evening and left to be mailed in the morning. He started, sank to a chair, and gazed fixedly at one of the envelopes. The name on it was "Miss Helen Chambers."

Amid all the sensations that swirled within him, his mind instantly made one deduction: Kate Morgan had, after all, secured a place through Helen Chambers, and they were now in the home of one of her friends.

For a minute or more he sat staring at the envelope. It was almost as if Helen herself had surprised him in his guilty presence here. Then, across the darkness of the room, there came the faintest of sounds.

He thought it was Kate. "Is that you?" he whispered.

There was no answer; only dead quiet. In sudden fear he sprang up and directed the lantern's pointer of light toward whence the sound had come. The white spot fell upon the skirt of a dressing-gown. He jerked the pointer upward. The luminous circle enframed the square-jawed, clean-shaven face of a man – of the man he had seen with Helen Chambers – of Mr. Allen.

Instantly the room was filled with a blinding glare, and David saw Mr. Allen standing in the doorway, his left hand still on the electric-light key, his right holding out a revolver.

"Yes, it's I," said Mr. Allen in a quiet, grim voice. "Suppose you remove your mask and give me the equal pleasure of seeing whom I'm meeting."

There was no disobeying, with a revolver's muzzle staring coldly at him. David drew the handkerchief down and let it fall about his neck.

Mr. Allen gazed a moment at David's face, thin, haggard, yet rare in its fineness. "H'm. A new variety." His gaze shifted till its edge took in the telephone on the table, and there it rested reflectively. Then he remarked, as though completing his thought aloud, "I guess it will be safer for you to do the telephoning. Will you please call up Central and ask her to give you Police Headquarters?"

Wild, contrary impulses tugged at David, but man's primal instinct, self-preservation, controlled him the first moment.

"I have been near starvation," he said, forcing his words to calmness. "I came here to steal – yes; but when I tried to steal, I could not. I – I did not steal!"

His plea snapped off harshly. The world had driven him here, and with a rush he realised the world would not forgive him for being here. Bitterness swept into him in a great wave, and the recklessness that feels that all is lost. Besides, he could not ask mercy of Helen Chambers's lover.

Mr. Allen gave an ironic laugh. "I've been hearing that sort of story for fifteen years. There never was a guilty man. – Call up Central."

The natural animal hatred of a rival flared up. David looked Mr. Allen defiantly in the face. "If you want Central, call her yourself!" he said slowly.

Mr. Allen was surprised, but his surprise passed immediately under his control. "Of course you are aware," he said quietly, "that you have the choice between calling up and being shot."

"And you are aware," David returned, "that you have the choice between calling up and shooting."

Mr. Allen was silent a moment. "The killing of a man who enters your house is justified by law," he warned grimly.

"Well – why don't you shoot?"

"Are you going to call up?"

"So then – you're afraid to shoot!" taunted David.

Mr. Allen remained silent. He gazed at David over the pistol barrel, and David gazed back at the pistol and at Mr. Allen. Their wills had locked horns, stood braced.

"I'm getting very tired," said David, throwing a leg over a corner of the table. "If you don't shoot soon I'll have to go."

At this instant David saw in the doorway behind Mr. Allen the small figure of Kate Morgan. In her right hand there shone a little pistol, in her left she held a heavy walking-stick.

Mr. Allen broke his silence. "If you make a move toward your pocket while I cross the floor, it'll be your last move."

David's will had conquered, but his exultation did not speak. He was watching Kate Morgan, fascinated. Her pistol rose, then fell, and the pistol and walking-stick exchanged hands. Mr. Allen took the first step toward the telephone. The stick came up, whizzed down upon Mr. Allen's pistol hand. The weapon went flying upon the rug, and Mr. Allen let out a sharp cry and started to whirl around. As the stick struck flesh David sprang forward, and with the skill of his old boxing-days, with all his strength and weight focussed in the blow, he drove his fist against Mr. Allen's unguarded chin. Mr. Allen fell limply upon the deep carpet.

"Come on! Out of here!" cried David, seizing Kate's arm.

She jerked away and stood tensely erect, glaring at him. "Go, you coward! I stay here!"

"But you'll get caught!"

"That's my business!" she blazed. "Get out! – I'm going to finish the job."

She whirled about, jerked the handkerchief from her face, thrust it into Allen's mouth, and tied this gag securely in place with a handkerchief which she took from the pocket of Allen's dressing-gown. Then she tied his feet with the dressing-gown's rope girdle, and his hands with one of the silken ropes that held back the hangings in the broad doorway. This done, she sprang to the electric-light key, and the room filled with blackness.

She flashed her lantern on David, who had stood watching her rapid actions in amazement. "Why don't you go? Get out!"

"See here, it's crazy to stay here. You know it. You've got to come with me."

His lantern, which he had taken up, showed a face that darted scorn and rage. "Go with you? – I'll die first!" she returned in a low, fierce whisper. And then she added, each slow word edged with infinite contempt:

"Oh, what a poor damned coward!"

He quivered, but he said quietly, "If you won't go, I'll stay with you."

"Stay with me? You'll not! I won't have you!"

She turned abruptly and left the room. He stood thinking for a space; then he went out and crept down the stairway. As he passed the drawing-room door he saw Kate bending in front of the open curio cabinet. He crept down another flight to the first floor and hid himself behind a palm in an angle of the great hall. He strained his ears for trouble, ready to rush upstairs at the first sound. After a time a wand of light was thrust down the stairway. Then came Kate, the suit-case in one hand, feeling her way with the wand like a blind man with a cane. For a moment the searching light pierced through the palm into his face, and David thought he was discovered; but she glided on and down the basement stairs. He let several minutes pass; then he too slipped out into the street.

Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was the direction of the subconscious, that led David in his circuitous homeward journey, past St. Christopher's Mission. He was walking slowly along, the caution of the first part of his flight forgotten in the mixture of despair and shame that now possessed him, when he waded into pools of coloured light that lay upon the sidewalk and the street. He looked up. There, aglow with its inspiration, was the window to the memory of Philip Morton. He involuntarily stepped back a pace or two, and leaning against a stack of bricks designed for repairs in the Mission's basement, alone in the deserted street, he gazed steadfastly at the luminous words.

He had often looked at that tribute, as he had upon the whole Mission, with a sense of thankfulness that his life was counting. But now there was no thankfulness within him. Anger began to burn, revolt to rise. That sainted man there was the cause of all his misery, all his degradation. The shame of his trial, the loss of his four prison years, the refusal of work, his insults, his lost strength, his lost character, his ragged clothes, his starving, his uttermost poverty, his uttermost despair – all these rushed upon him in one hot turbulent flood of rebellion. Of all these inflictions that man was directly the cause! And more – that man had made him a thief! And yet that man was worshipped as a saint – while he, he was a starving outcast!

His resentment culminated in a wild impulse. His right hand clutched one of the bricks on which it rested, and he took a quick step forward. The brick crashed through Morton's glowing name.

BOOK III

TOWARD THE LIGHT

CHAPTER I

THE MAYOR OF AVENUE A

Three or four blocks east of the Bowery and lying north of the Jewish quarter is a little region somewhat less crowded, somewhat quieter, somewhat more clean, than the rest of the tenement country that lies about it. It is held by Germans – Americanised Germans. But Poles and Magyars, Jews of Roumania, Hungary and Russia, are edging their way into it; such frequent signs as "Gyogyszertár," which, evil as it strikes the eye, signifies nothing more malignant than "drugstore," announce this invasion even to casual passers-by. Some day the region will know the children of Germany no more; it will be a Babel of the tongues of central Europe. But as yet, if you walk along its four avenues, A, B, C and D, all lined with little shops, or lounge about its shady Tompkin's Square, you will see many a face that will carry your memory back to Berlin and Cologne and the beer-gardens and Sunday promenades of their work-people and petty bourgeois.

It was the evening after David's adventure with Kate Morgan. From the snowy air of broad Avenue A a good-natured crowd was turning into a gilded entrance, over which incandescent lights pricked the words "Liberty Assembly Hall." The crowd was chiefly German, but in it were many of the newer peoples of the neighbourhood. There were broad husbands and broad wives; children led by hand, babies carried in arms; young people in couples and in hilarious groups; solitary and furtive men and women. Most were in their finest, and some of the finery would not have made the opera ashamed; but many were dressed in shabbiness – though they, too, wore their best.

David, who had wandered into Avenue A, as he often did in his aimless night walks, paused momentarily and listlessly watched the in-going stream of people. A New Year's ball, he decided; but the word "Mayor" recurred so often in the bits of conversation he overheard that his inert curiosity prompted him to draw near a friendly-looking man who stood without the entrance.

"What's going on in there?" he asked.

"Installing the Mayor of Avenue A," the man returned.

David had vaguely heard of the "Mayors" who exercise an unofficial authority in several districts of New York. "How's the Mayor chosen?" he asked. "By election?"

"No. Carl Hoffman's the most popular man on the Avenue; he's got coin and influence; we all want him. That's how it is."

"What does he do?"

"If you need a dollar, and ain't got it, you go to Carl. If a poor woman ain't got any coal, she lets Carl know and she's got it. If you're dispossessed or in trouble with the police, Carl fixes you up. If you can't get work, you go see Carl. He's the poor man's friend – everybody's friend."

For several moments David was silent. Then he asked abruptly, "Is this a private ceremony?"

"Oh, no; go on in, if you want to."

David joined the entering crowd, mounted a broad flight of stairs, passed through a short hallway, and came into a large hall. Every chair was taken and people stood in the aisles and along the sides. Three electric-light chandeliers, wound in bunting and loaded with glass pendants, were each a glittering sun. The maroon walls were relieved by raised gold-and-white scroll work, and by alternate mirrors and oil-paintings set into the plastering. These paintings were Tyrolean scenes, cascades and moon-lit seas – such as the art-fostering department store supplies at a dollar or two, golden frame included.

At the further end of the hall was a stage, draped with American flags. At the stage's back a band, in purple and gold braid, was blowing out its brass instruments; and at the stage's front, beneath "OUR MAYOR" in evergreen letters that hung from the proscenium arch, sat four rotund men in a row.

David slipped into a corner at the rear, where his shabbiness saw more of its own kind. A moment later "The Watch on the Rhine" thundered from the stage and rolled among the Alps and the cascades and over the moon-lit seas. Then "The Star-Spangled Banner" sent forth its reverberations, and when its last echo had been lost far down an Alpine gorge, the most rotund of the four rotund men – they were the Mayors of Avenues A, B, C and D, a neighbour told David – stepped to a table and rapped for order. He assumed his most impressive attitude, gazed slowly over the polyglot audience, drew a deep breath, and began in a sonorous voice that, now swelling, now softening, was the perfect servant of his eloquence.

"It is not within the power of human speech to express how much I, as Mayor of Avenue B, feel the great honour of acting as master of ceremonies on this brilliant and distinguished occasion, graced by so much fairness of the softer sex, made by the Creator as the greatest reward and adornment of life, when your honourable Mayor is to be installed to serve his eleventh successive and successful term." But despite the impotence of speech, the Mayor of Avenue B filled ten minutes in an attempt to suggest faintly the contents of his prideful breast. Then he swept onward into a eulogy of the Mayor of Avenue A, ending with, "And now, Carl Hoffman, rise and receive the oath of office."

Cheers and hand-clapping echoed through the Alps. The tallest of the four Mayors stepped forward. The applause doubled and the band thundered into "Hail the Conquering Hero." The Mayor of Avenue A bowed and smiled and smiled and bowed, and swept his arm, now to this side, now to that, in magnificent salutation. His face was inflated with good feeding, and was as smooth as a child's balloon; a few hairs lay in pencil lines across his shiny head; from pocket to pocket athwart his snow-white vest hung a heavy golden chain – in lieu of a hoop, one could fancy, to hold fast the bulging flesh. It was well that his face was broad; a thin face would have cramped the wide, shining smile he held upon his uproaring constituency.

When the tumult had somewhat abated, the master of ceremonies, his portly dignity replaced by portly lightsomeness, caught the Mayor's arm. "Here he is, ladies and gents!" he shouted. "Look at him! The champion heavyweight, catch-as-catch-can philanthropist of New York. I am authorized to challenge any other philanthropist of his class in the city for a match, the gate receipts to the winner, and a thousand dollars side bet!"

The crowd again broke loose. A deep, gruff, joyous voice rose from the Mayor's interior. "Moxie, get your wife to sew a button on your mouth!"

The hall was one gleeful roar at this sally.

"Raise your right hand," said the Mayor of Avenue B, when there was partial quiet. "Now repeat after me: I, Carl Hoffman, do hereby promise to the best of my ability – "

"Why, sure!" approved the deep voice.

"To be a friend to any man, woman or child that needs a friend. So help me God!"

"Sure thing!" responded a hearty rumble.

The crowd once more applauded, and David noted that the hands which clapped longest were feminine.

The Mayor of Avenue A beamed upon the audience. "That's me," he said, with a grand upward sweep of his right arm. "I don't need to tell you what I'm goin' to do. I been doin' it for ten years. I guess my record'll do all the talkin' that's needed. But this much I'll say for myself: If anybody durin' this new year needs a friend and he don't chase himself around to the Pan-American Café and ask for Carl Hoffman – well, he deserves a lot more trouble than he's got!"

He went on and told how glad he was to see his friends, and how proud he was to be their Mayor, but through it all David was hearing only the oath of office and the Mayor's first few sentences; and when later the ushers began to clear away the chairs for dancing, and David slipped down to the street and walked homeward through the swirling snow, he still thought only of the Mayor's offer to the man who needed a friend.

The next day at eleven o'clock – he had figured the morning rush would be over by then – David approached the Pan-American Café. On the café's one side was a delicatessen store, displaying row on row of wurst to entice the Germans within, and on the other side a costumer's shop, its windows filled with suits of armour, night-mare masks, and gorgeous seventeenth-century court gowns of sateen, spangles and mosquito netting. The long glass front of the café was hung with holiday greens, among which appropriate signs informed the street that a Hungarian orchestra played nightly, that real German beer and indubitable Rhenish wine were purchasable within, and that a superlatively good dinner was to be had for only thirty cents.

David came to a pause at the café's storm-door. Doubts and fears that had been rising now stampeded him: the Mayor's talk was only platform talk; the Mayor was doubtless like all others who had refused him, insulted him. He walked up and down the avenue, passing and repassing the café and the narrow little shops that edged the sidewalk. Then he told himself that he had nothing to lose; another refusal would be merely another refusal. He summoned back his courage, delivered himself into its hands, and entered.

He found himself in a wide, long room, whose green walls were hung with signs of breweries and with placards announcing the balls of "The Carl Hoffman Association," "The Twin Brothers," "The Lady Orchids," and a dozen other social organisations of the neighbourhood. Six rows of tables, some marble-topped, some linen-covered, with chairs stacked upon them, stretched the length of the room. Among these black-jacketed waiters, armed with long mops, were scrubbing the linoleum-covered floor.

One of the waiters quickly cleared the chairs from a table and came forward to meet David. "Nothing to eat, thank you," David said. "I want to see Mr. Hoffman."

"Sorry – he's out. But he's likely to be in any minute. Just sit down. No, wait – there he is now."

David looked about. Coming in from the street was the ample form of the Mayor of Avenue A, his cheeks pink with the cold. "Got four discharged and paid two fines," the Mayor announced to the waiters who had all looked up expectantly. "And when I got 'em out o' the court-room I lined 'em up and gave 'em gentle hell. They'll keep sober for awhile – yes, sir!"

He turned to David. "Why some decent men ain't never sure the New Year's really begun till they've poured themselves neck-full o' whiskey – mebbe the God that made 'em understands, but Carl Hoffman certainly don't."

David admitted that no more did he, and then asked for a few minutes' talk – in private.

"Hey, John, take these things," and the Mayor burdened David's waiter with overcoat, muffler and hat; and David saw that a waistcoat of garlanded silk had replaced the white one of last night. "And, say, boys," he shouted to the others, "suppose you let the rest o' that scrubbin' go for a bit and get busy at somethin' out in the kitchen."

He led David to a rear corner where, enclosed by heavy red ropes, was the platform from which the Hungarian orchestra administered its nightly music. They lifted the chairs from a table and sat down facing each other.

"Well, now, what can I do for you?" the Mayor asked.

David did not give his courage time to escape. "I was at your inauguration last night," he began, quickly, "and I heard you say that if any man needed help – "

"The poor man's friend – that's me," broke in the Mayor with a quick nod, folding his plump hands, on one of which burnt a great diamond, upon the table.

"And the poor man – that's me," said David.

"Well, you've come to the right doctor. What's ailin' you?"

The Mayor's eyes became sharp, and his face became as stern as its pink fulness would permit. "But one word first. Some people think I'm an easy mark. I ain't. I've got two rules: never to give a nickel to a man that don't deserve it, and never to give the icy mitt to the man that deserves the warm hand. I guess I ain't never broke either rule. A grafter ain't got no more chance with me than a lump o' lard in a fryin' pan. I ain't sayin' these things to hurt your feelin's, friend. Only just to let you know that if you ain't all on the level you're wastin' your precious time. If you are on the level – fire away. I'm your man."

This was rather disconcerting. "I can only tell you the truth," said David.

"It wouldn't do you no good to tell nothin' else," the Mayor said dryly. "I can generally tell when the chicken in a chicken pie is corned beef."

David gathered his strength. "I shall tell you everything. To begin with, I've been a thief – "

"A thief!" the Mayor ejaculated. He stared. "Tales o' woe always begin with the best thing a fellow can say about himself. If you start off with bein' a thief, Lord man, what'll you be when you get through!"

"I'm beginning with the worst. I'm out of prison about four months. I was sent up for – for stealing money from a mission – from St. Christopher's Mission – four or five years ago."