Part 9

He leaned forward with his arms on a table and his head on his arms, his eyes hidden from the light. "Why, my dear boy," said Howard, going to him, touching him gently, "don't look at it that way. It is not so bad as that."

"It is worse," said Bodney, in a smothered voice. "It is worse than you can possibly picture it. And when I tell you, you will hate me as you never hated a human being on the earth. Don't ask me now, for I can't tell you. Just simply don't pay any attention to me. But I beg of you not to say a word at home. I have been led into hell, Howard, and there is no way out."

"Oh, yes, there is, my boy. There is the door through which you went in. Go out at it."

"I can't. You don't know."

"Are you in financial trouble? Has that fellow led you--"

"Worse than that, Howard. But I can't tell you now."

Once his long-delayed confession flowed to the very brim of utterance, but he forced it back and sat in silence. Howard went out and Bodney was thankful to be alone with his own misery; but he was not to be long alone--Goyle came in.

"Why, what's the matter, old chap? You seem to be in the dumps. Come, cheer up now. You've got no cause to be so blue? You don't see those fellows over yonder in the bank blue, do you? I guess not. And they are the biggest sort of robbers. I beat the horses today. And here's thirty of what I owe you. Oh, it's coming around all right. You can't keep a squirrel on the ground, you know."

"That's all right," replied Bodney, brightening as he took the bank notes. "Can't keep a squirrel on the ground, but you can shoot him out of a tree."

"But we haven't been shot out of the tree yet. Things will begin to come our way now, you see if they don't. I've got a proposition to submit to you that will make us both rich--regular gold mine, with not a dull moment in it--life from beginning to end. I can't, tell you now, but hold yourself in readiness for it. You can take that thirty and maybe win a hundred at the Wexton. In the meantime I'll be perfecting my plans. We shall need four or five agents, but I can get them all right, and if we don't live in clover a bumble bee never did. Now, don't you feel better? Look at me."

"Yes, I feel better."

"And don't you believe we'll pull out all right? Hah?" He put his hand on Bodney's shoulder and looked into his eyes.

"Yes, I do."

"Of course you do. We have been living in the night, but the sun is rising now. Let's go over to the Wexton and eat dinner."

"I ought to stay here till Howard comes back."

"Why, just to tell him you are going out? If you go out he'll know you are gone, won't he?"

"You go on and I will come pretty soon. I said something to Howard just now that I want to correct."

"All right," said Goyle. "But come over as soon as you can."

When Howard returned he found Bodney idly drawing comic pictures on a sheet of paper. He looked at him in astonishment. "Why, what has happened?" Howard asked.

"My fit's passed, that's all. I must have talked like a wild man."

"I rather think you did. You alarmed me--said you were worse than ruined. What has occurred to change it all?"

Bodney laughed as he looked about, making ready to take his leave. He was beginning to be restless, for the fever was rising fast. He turned his eye inward to look for full hands and flushes.

"Nothing has occurred," said he. "The fit of melancholy has simply passed. That's all." He was moving toward the door.

"Don't be in a hurry," said Howard. "There is something I want to talk about."

"I haven't time now," Bodney replied. "I have thought of something that must be attended to at once."

"Just a moment, George. Hasn't Goyle been here?"

"Goyle? No, not today. And, by the way," he added, turning toward Howard, "I think I must have spoken rashly about him just now. There is nothing wrong in his make-up; he may appear queer, but he's all right when you come down to principle. He thinks the world of you."

"I don't want him to think anything of me."

Bodney did not stay to reply. His fever was now so strong that it would have taken two giants to hold him. He fought his way through the crowd, and, panting, rushed into the poker room. They greeted him with the complimentary encouragement usually poured out upon the arrival of the "sucker." "He'll make you look at your hole card." "Cash my chips." "None of us got any show now." It was nearly dinner time when Bodney sat down to the game, and when the meal was announced he was winner. Goyle came in and sat beside him at the dinner table. "The scheme I spoke to you about is a sure road to fortune," he said, in a low tone.

"Bank robbery?" Bodney asked, smiling with the brightness of a winner.

"No, it's not the robbery of the robbers. It is less dangerous and more profitable--almost legitimate."

"Almost!"

"Yes--but full of sauce."

"Don't you think you'd better tell me what it is?"

"Not now. I want to see you alone--tomorrow. In the meantime make up your mind."

"How can I make up my mind to do something that hasn't been proposed?"

"Make up your mind to agree to my plan no matter what it may be. We are going to ride in carriages."

"Or in a police van, which?" said Bodney, smiling.

Goyle put his hand on Bodney's shoulder. "I see you are in a hurry to get back to the game. All right, but keep your mind on my proposition."

"A proposition that hasn't been made," replied Bodney, getting up from the table. The game was re-forming, for the poker player does not dawdle over a meal; he eats just as a pig does--as fast as he can.

It seemed that Bodney's luck had come to stay. "You make your third man every time," said a losing wretch whose rent was past due. A kindlier eye might have seen through him his ragged children, but the eye of the winner looks at his stack--no poverty and no wretchedness softens its glitter.

The offensive fellow was there, sitting to the left of Bodney, but he was not offensive now; defeat had subdued him; and the Professor was present, in the darkness of hard luck, and with his air of mystery. "You either made your hand or you didn't," he said to a man who had drawn one card.

"You ought to know," the man replied, looking at him with a steady eye. "You are a mind-reader."

"Yes, when there is a mind to read. I will call you." He did so and lost his money.

"You knew what I had in my note," said Bodney. "Don't you remember, when I met you on the corner? You said it was written with a pencil. Why couldn't you tell what that man held--whether or not he had made his flush?"

"Both science and psychology stop and grow dizzy when they come to cards," the Professor replied.

Goyle came in and put his hand on Bodney's shoulder. "Slaughter 'em," he said. "You've got everything coming your way."

"But I don't know how long it will last," Bodney replied.

"Don't scare away your luck with mistrust. And above all, don't forget that I have a proposition to make. Well, I'll see you tomorrow." He went out, humming a tune. Bodney looked round to see whether he was gone, and seemed to be relieved upon seeing him pass out. Now it was time to quit, the slave thought. He had not counted his chips, for that was bad luck, but he must have won nearly sixty dollars. Still the cards kept coming, two pairs holding good, and to quit was an insult to the goddess of good fortune. He remembered hearing a gambler say, speaking of an unlucky player: "He stays to lose, but not to win." At ten o'clock he felt that he had reached his limit, and counted his chips--eighty-seven dollars. "I'll have to quit you," he said, shoving back. And now how bright and spirited the streets were. He threw a piece of silver upon the banner of the Salvationists.

*CHAPTER XV.*

*DID NOT TOUCH HER.*

As Howard was going out he met Bradley coming up the stairs. "I have caught you in time," said the preacher. "I want you to go to dinner with me--at a place off Van Buren Street, where they cater to the poor."

"It is rather a tough neighborhood for a dinner," Howard replied. "Wouldn't you rather go to a better place?"

"No, I would rather like to see how the unfortunate dine."

They went to a restaurant that opened into an alley. The long room was furnished with plain tables, without cloths, and not clean. There was sand on the floor, and on the whitewashed walls, together with Scriptural texts, against one of which some brute had thrown a quid of tobacco, were placards which read, "Lodging ten cents." They took seats at a table and a girl came up and put down a piece of paper, scrawled upon with a pencil. It was a bill of fare. The price set opposite each dish was five cents, and at the bottom it was announced that any order included bread. The place was gradually filling up with a mottled crowd, negroes, a sprinkle of Chinamen, Greeks, Polish Jews, tramps--and off in a corner sat an American Indian. "The air is bad," said the preacher.

"No worse than the bill of fare," Howard replied. "Let us get out. Don't you see how they are eyeing us?"

"Let us at least make a pretense of eating. I like to watch these odd pieces of driftwood."

"Washed from the wreck of humanity," said Howard.

The preacher looked at him with a sad smile. "Yes, and perhaps not all of them are responsible for the wreck. They couldn't weather the storm."

The crowd was noisy and profane. The preacher spoke to a waitress, a girl with a hard, unconcerned face. "I thought that this place was under the auspices of the gospel," said he.

She did not look at him as she replied: "I believe some sort of a church duck did start it, but a feller named Smith runs it now."

"Then services are not held here."

She looked at him. "What sort of services?"

"Church services."

"Well, I guess not. These guys don't want services--they want grub."

"I believe I will address them," the preacher said to Howard.

"On the subject of foreign missions?" Howard asked.

"A merited sarcasm," the minister replied. "Let us go."

In the alley near the door a woman and a ruffian were quarreling. The woman held a piece of money in her hand and the ruffian was trying to take it from her. A policeman passed down the alley, but paid no attention. The ruffian demanded the money. The woman refused. He knocked her down, took it from her hand and was walking off when Bradley touched him on the shoulder. "Give her back that money," he said. The man drew back his ponderous fist. At that moment Howard ran up. The ruffian looked at him and let his arm fall. Bradley called the policeman. He turned and came walking slowly back, swinging his club. "What's wanted?" he asked. Bradley told him what had occurred. "It's a lie!" exclaimed the woman, stepping forward. "You never hit me, did you, Jack?"

"Never touched her," said Jack, and a group about the door of the restaurant roared with laughter. "Move on," said the policeman, and Howard and the preacher moved on, the crowd jeering them.

"What put it into your head to go there?" Howard asked.

"I thought it was my duty."

"A man's duty lies mostly among his own people," said the young lawyer.

"No, among stricken humanity."

"A heroic idea, but fallacious. The Lord takes care of His own. These people are evidently not His own. Pardon my slang, but here is a genuine gospel shop. Let us go in."

At the door of a room forbiddingly neat to the class which it intended to feed, they were met by a cool young woman and a ministerial man. It was a coffee house established to offset the influence of the saloon. At the rear end of the room a young fellow played upon a wheezing melodion. Girls were serving coffee. On the walls were pictures of the Prodigal's Return, Daniel in the Lion's Den, Jacob before Pharaoh, The Old Home, several cows, a horse with his head over a barred gate, and a child lamenting over a broken doll. Howard called attention to the fact that the sandwiches were thin and that the coffee looked pale. "It is charity," said he, "and charity is pale. Now, let me take you to the enemy--the den against which these mild batters are directed."

They went to a saloon. The place was ablaze with light. The walls were hung with paintings, some of them costly, some modest, others representing figures as nude as Lorado's nymphs. On a side counter was a roast of beef, weighing at least a hundred pounds. "Look at that," said Howard. "Vice sets us a great roast--and for five cents, a glass of beer, the vagabond may feast."

"The devil pandering to the drunkard and the glutton," replied the preacher.

"But the devil is not pale; he is not niggardly--he is bountiful. To cope with him, Virtue must be more liberal--give more beef and better coffee."

"Good," said the minister. "I am going to preach a sermon on the Virtue of Vice."

"Red beef versus pale coffee," Howard said, as they stepped out. "And now," he added, "let us get something to eat and then go home."

"Home," repeated the preacher. "I have no home--I have lodgings.

"I know, and I mean that you must go home with me."

Bradley muttered a protest, but was delighted at the thought of seeing Agnes again so soon. He had spent the afternoon at the Judge's house, had left to unite in marriage a servant girl and a hackman, and now wanted an excuse to return, not that he needed one, for the Judge had urged upon him the freedom of the house; but timid love must show cause, or rather must apologize to appearances. And, though the cause now was not strong, yet he argued that the fact of meeting Howard would make it valid enough. He felt that his secret was not known to the Judge, as if that would have made any difference; and he was sure that the girl did not more than suspect him. He wanted her to suspect him, for there was a sweetness in it, but he wanted it to be as yet only a suspicion. He did not acknowledge that he had quite made up his mind regarding her fitness as a wife; and when a man thus reasons he is hopelessly entangled. When a man decides that a woman is not fitted to be his wife he may have arrived at reason but has stopped short of love.

They went to a place that makes a specialty of crabs and sat down in the cool breath of an electric fan. "Quite a difference in our bill of fare," said Bradley, taking up a long card framed in brass edged wood.

"And quite as much difference in our company," Howard replied.

"The old saying, Howard: 'One half the world doesn't know how the other half lives.'"

"Doesn't know how the other half dies," said Howard.

"You are sententious tonight. I have led you into a place that has sharpened your wits."

"But not into a place that sharpened my appetite. But it makes a meal all the more enjoyable afterward. Do you find anything that hits your fancy?"

During the meal the preacher talked of the vices of a great city. A truthful farmer could have told him that there are almost as many vices in the country, and an observant moralist could have assured him that the great mass of women parading the sidewalks at night were sent thither by the rural reprobate, proprietor of a horse and buggy.

"Vice is in man," said Howard.

"Ah, but how are we to eradicate it?"

"By educating woman."

"I don't know that I fully comprehend you."

"Were you ever in a place where women are shameless?"

"No," said the preacher. "The only shameless women I ever met are those who accost me in the street."

"And if," said Howard, "you were to go into a thousand such places you would not meet a well-educated woman. Some of them are bright; some speak several languages, but I have yet to find one who speaks good English. But we are on a subject that is as old as the ocean. It is, however, always new to one in your profession, I suppose. You preach about it, and innocence wonders at your insight, but the young fellow who reports your sermon laughs in his sleeve."

"But, my gracious, Howard, what must we do, ignore it all?"

"I give it up."

"You are young to take so gloomy a view."

"Oh, I don't view it at all," said Howard. "I shoulder my way through it."

An elderly woman, handsomely dressed, came up and held out her hand to the preacher, who arose, bowed over it and declared his pleasure at meeting her. Then he introduced her to Howard, a woman noted for her work in the slums. A part of her labor was to talk morality to the girls in department stores, to make them pious and virtuous on three dollars a week. She kept a house of refuge which she visited once a day, to talk to the women who had been gathered in from the streets and the dens rented to vice by the rich. Her register showed that within the past ten years thousands of women had been reclaimed. But the register did not show how many had gone back to loud music and shame, preferring the glare of infamy, tired out with the simmer of the tea-kettle and the shadows of the kitchen. The preacher had visited her place and had complimented her upon the work she was doing.

"Oh, what has become of Margaret, the blonde girl?"

The matron shook her head. "She became dissatisfied and left us."

"And the one called Fanny. Where is she?"

"Oh, she was too pretty and went away."

"And Julia?"

"Didn't you hear about her? Well, well. Why, the newspapers were full of it. She left us and shortly afterward married a rich man. He took her to his mansion and gave her everything that heart could wish, but it did not suffice. He returned home after an absence from the city to find a drunken crowd in his house, and he turned her out. I am so glad to have met you again. Good-bye."

Bradley began to talk of something foreign, to lead Howard's mind away, but the young man looked at him with a smile and said: "You see that a palace is not even sufficient.'

"Her moral nature had not been trained," Bradley replied.

"It is not that, Mr. Bradley. Her miserable little head had not been trained. Morality without intellectual force is a weakness waiting for a temptation."

"Don't say that, Howard; it is a monstrous thought. Brain is not the whole force of this life. There is something stronger than brain. Love is stronger."

"Yes, it overturns brain. And I will not argue against it, though it might be the cause of thousands of wretched feet on our thoroughfares tonight. It is a glory or a disgrace. But we have been moralists long enough. Let us go home."

*CHAPTER XVI.*

*WITH AN EAR TURNED TOWARD THE DOOR.*

Mrs. Elbridge met Howard and the preacher in the hall. She told them that the girls had gone to a meeting of the Epworth League, a short distance away. They had gone to a religious gathering held in the interest of the young, but the preacher felt a deadening sense of disappointment. "They will be back soon," said Mrs. Elbridge, seeming to divine the effect her information had made upon him. Howard heard his father and Uncle William talking in the office. "We will wait for the girls in here," he said, leading the way into the drawing room. Mrs. Elbridge went in to tell the Judge, and shortly afterward entered the drawing room with him. The old gentleman paid no attention to Howard, but warmly shook hands with Bradley, as if he had not seen him only a few hours before.

"Delighted to see you, Mr. Bradley."

Howard glanced at his mother and she read a communication in his eye. It was that in the old man's enthusiasm there was added evidence of mental weakness. The Latin may express delight at seeing one a dozen times a day, but with an Anglo-Saxon more than one "delight" within twenty-four hours is an extreme.

Bradley looked embarrassed. He said that he was glad to see the Judge, which was hardly true, as he was not prepared at that moment to be glad or even pleased. His heart had gone over to the Epworth League, not to worship God, but one of God's creatures, which, after all, is a pardonable backsliding. He remarked that he and Howard had encountered quite an adventure, giving it in detail, but to avoid any moralizing, having had enough of that for one evening, hastened to change the subject, asking if Mr. William had become any nearer settled as to his dates. This brought a flow of good humor. The Judge looked toward the door. "He has so far improved," said he, "as to admit that at times he may possibly be wrong. I asked him if it were possible to be right, and then we had our battle to fight over again." He offered the preacher a cigar, but ignored his son. The mother noticed it and sighed. Howard smiled at her sadly, and shook his head. Bradley took the cigar abstractedly and after holding it for a time, offered it to Howard, who declined it. The Judge glanced at him but said nothing. William came in. "John," said he, after speaking to Bradley, "I saw old Bodsford this morning."

"Not old Bill Bodsford."

"Yes, sir, old Bill."

"I thought he died years ago."

"No, he has been out in Colorado. I haven't seen him since seventy-eight."

"Are you sure?" the Judge asked, winking at Bradley.

"I ought to know. I met him in St. Louis in seventy-eight--seventy-eight or seventy-nine--in July, about the fifth."

"About the fifth. How can a date be about the fifth?"

"I mean that it was either the fourth, fifth or sixth. He told me then that he was on his way to New Orleans, by boat. It was during that intensely hot weather when so many people were sun--but that was in seventy-nine, wasn't it?"

"I don't remember," said the Judge, winking at Howard by mistake and then frowning to undeceive him.

"Yes, I think it was."

"Seventy-nine," said the preacher, at a venture.

"Then I couldn't have seen old Bill in seventy-eight. But I saw him today--and he looks like a grizzly bear. And he didn't seem to be in very good circumstances. But the last time I saw him before that--"

"In seventy-nine," interrupted the Judge.

"Well, I'm not so sure about that, John. Let me see. I was in St. Paul and went from there directly to St. Louis. Yes. Now, I haven't been in St. Paul but once since seventy-eight and that was year before last. Went directly to St. Louis. It must have been seventy-eight, John. Yes, it was."

"Well, go ahead with your story," said the Judge.

"Oh, it's no story. I was simply telling you when I met old Bill the last time."

"And is that all there is to it?"

"All! Isn't it enough? I didn't start to tell a story and you know it well enough. Look here, Howard," he added, turning upon the young lawyer, "are you fixing to jump on me, too?"

"Not at all, Uncle Billy."

"Oh, Uncle Billy, is it? Then I know you've got it in for me. Mr. Bradley, I studied for the ministry--not very hard, I admit--but I studied, and I am sorry sometimes that I didn't go so far as to put on the cloth. It would have at least protected me from ridicule."

Bradley smiled upon him in a lonesome sort of way, with his ear turned toward the front door, listening for the coming of Agnes. The family joke, so eternally green for the Judge, was but dry grass to him. His soul was panting for the sweet waters of love, the babbling brook of a girl's delightful mischief. But the mind can talk shop while the soul is panting. "You no doubt would have added strength to our profession," he said. "I call it profession in want at the present moment of a better term. Why did you give up your intention? Not want of faith, I hope."

Mrs. Elbridge shook her head as if to imply that there could be no want of faith in one connected with her family. "Well, I don't know," said William. "But the scheme, if I may so express it, struck me as being not exactly useless, but, let us say, hopeless."

"Hopeless," echoed the preacher.

"Yes. The warfare has been going on nearly two thousand years, and the victory is not yet in sight."

"At what date did it begin?" the Judge asked.