Part 11

"Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice meself. If I'm to be yer next o' kin, I'll be it and be damned. Done 'arder things than this in me life, and pulled 'em off, too. I'll stick to yer, kid, as long as yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my life, and never see another quart bottle."

The pathos of the life for which he might be letting himself in turned his thoughts backward over his career.

"Why, if I'd 'a stuck at not puttin' others before meself I might still 'a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, Eng. That's where I was born. True 'eart-of-oak Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell it in the way I talk. Been over 'ere so long, though, seems to me I 'andle the Yankee end of it pretty good. Englishman I met the other day--steward on one of the Cunarders he was--said he wouldn't 'a knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a gift for langwidges. Used to know a Frenchman onst; and I'll be 'anged if I wasn't soon parley-vooin' with him till he'd thought I was his mother's son. But it's doin' my dooty by others as has brought me where I am, and I don't make no complaint of it. Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I wants one, which ain't always. Quite a tidy little sum in the savings bank in Brooklyn. Friends as 'll stick by me as long as I'll stick by them. And if I hadn't lost me eye--but how was I to know that that low-down butler was a-layin' for me at the silver-pantry door, and 'd let me have it anywhere he could 'it me?... And when that eyeball cracked, why, I yelled fit to bring the whole p'lice-force in New York right atop o' me."

Tom was astounded. "But you said you lost your eye saving a young lady's life."

Mr. Honeybun's embarrassment lasted no more than the time needed for finding the right words.

"Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. Yer've heard that there's always two sides to a story, haven't yer? I can't tell yer both sides to onst, now can I?"

He judged it best, however, to revert to the autobiographical. The son of a dock hand in Liverpool, he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at the age of seventeen.

"But my genius was for somethink bigger. I didn't know just what it'd be, but I could see it ahead o' me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit I come to know it was to fight agin the lor o' proputty. Used to seem to me orful to look around and see that everythink was owned by somebody. Took to goin' to meetin's, I did. Found out that me and me class was the uninherited. 'Gord,' I says to meself then, 'I'll inherit somethink, or I'll bust all Liverpool.' Well, I did inherit somethink--inherited a good warm coat what a guy had left to mark his seat in the Midland Station. Got away with it, too. Knowin' it was mine as much as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten minutes later I was a-wearin' of it in Lime Street. That was the beginnin', and havin' started in, I begun to inherit quite a lot o' things. 'Nothink's easier,' says I, 'onst you realizes that the soul o' man is free, and that nothink don't belong to nobody.' Fightin' for me class, I was. Tried to make 'em see as they ought to stop bein' the uninherited, and get a move on--and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton jail. You're not asleep, Kiddy, are you?"

Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the narrative. Released from Walton jail, Mr. Honeybun had "made tracks" for America.

"Wanted to git away from a country where everythink was owned, and find the land o' the free. But free! Lord love yer, I hadn't been landed a hour before I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it is in a back'ard country like old England. Let me tell you this, Kid. Any man that thinks that by comin' to America he'll git somethink for nothink'll find hisself sold. I ain't had nothink except what I've worked for--or collared. Same old lor o' proputty what's always been a injustice to the pore. Had to begin all over agin the same old game of fightin' it. But what's a few months in chokey when you're doin' it for yer feller creeters, to show 'em what their rights is?"

A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point of view as to his position.

"I've been thinkin', Kiddy, that since yer used to be a State ward, yer'll have to be a State ward agin, if the State knows you're knockin' round loose."

The boy cried out in alarm. "Oh, but I won't be. I'll kill myself first."

He could not understand this antipathy, this horror. In a mechanical way the State had been good to him. The Tollivants had been good to him, too, in the sense that they had not been unkind. But he could not return to the status. It was the status that dismayed him. In Harfrey it had made him the single low-caste individual in a prim and high-caste world, giving everyone the right to disdain him. They couldn't help disdaining him. They knew as well as he did that in principle he was a boy like any other; but by all the customs of their life he was a little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it was still possible to respect himself; but to go back and hang on to the outer fringe of the organized life of a Christian society would have ravaged him within. He said so to Honeybun energetically.

"That's the way I figured that yer'd feel. So long as you're on'y waitin'--or yer can say that you're on'y waitin'--till yer pop comes back, it won't matter much. It'll be when school begins that it'll go agin yer. There's sure to be some pious woman sneepin' round that'll tell someone as you're not in school when you're o' school age, and then, me lad, yer'll be back as a State ward on some down-homer's farm."

Tom lashed the bed in the darkness. "I won't go! I won't go!"

"That's what I used to say the first few times they pinched me; but yer'll jolly well have to go if they send yer. Now what I was thinkin' is this. It's in New York State that yer'd be a State ward. If you was out o' this State there'd be all kinds o' laws that couldn't git yer back again. Onst when I'd been doin' a bit o' socializin' in New Jersey, and slipped back to Manhattan--well, you wouldn't believe the fuss it took to git me across the river when the p'lice got wind it was me. Never got me back at all! Thing died out before they was able to fix up all the coulds and couldn'ts of the lor."

He allowed the boy to think this over before going on with his suggestion.

"Now if you and me was to light out together to another State, they wouldn't notice that we'd gone before we was safe beyond their clutches. If we was to go to Boston, say! Boston's a good town. I worked Boston onst, me and a chap named...."

The boy felt called on to speak. "I wouldn't be a socialist, not if it gave me all Boston for my own."

The statement, coming as it did, had the vigor of an ultimatum. Though but a repetition of what he had said a few days before, it was a repetition with more force. It was also with more significance, fundamentally laying down a condition which need not be discussed again.

After long silence Mr. Honeybun spoke somewhat wistfully. "Well, I dunno as I'd count that agin yer. I sometimes thinks as I'll quit bein' a socialist meself. Seems to me as if I'd like to git back with the old gang, and be what they calls a orthodock. You know what a orthodock is, don't yer?"

"It's a kind of religion, isn't it?"

"It ain't so much a kind of religion as it's a kind o' way o' thinkin'. You're a orthodock when you don't think at all. Them what ain't got no mind of their own, what just believes and talks and votes and lives the way they're told to, they're the orthodocks. It don't matter whether it's religion or politics or lor or livin', the people who don't know nothink but just obeys other people what don't know nothink, is the kind that gits into the least trouble."

"Yes, but what do you want to be like that for? You _have_ got a mind of your own."

"Well, there's a good deal to be said, Kiddy. First there's you."

"Oh, if it's only me...."

"Yes, but when I'm yer next o' kin it isn't on'y you; it's you first and last. I got to bring you up an orthodock, if I'm going to bring you up at all. Yer can't think for yerself yet. You're too young. Stands to reason. Why, I was twenty, and very near a trained gasfitter, before I'd begun thinkin' on me own. What yer does when yer're growed up'll be no concern o' mine. But till you _are_ growed up...."

Tom had heard of quicksands, and often dreamed that he was being engulfed in one. He had the sensation now. Circumstances having pushed him where he would not have ventured of his own accord, the treacherous ground was swallowing him up. He couldn't help liking Honey Lem, since he liked everyone in the world who was good to him; he was glad of his society in these lonely nights, and of the sense of his comradeship in the background even in the day; but between this gratitude and a lifelong partnership he found a difference. There were so many reasons why he didn't want permanent association with this fairy godfather, and so many others why he couldn't find the heart to tell him so! He was casting about for a method of escape when the fairy godfather continued.

"This 'ere socialism is ahead of its time. People don't understand it. It don't do to be ahead o' yer time, not too far ahead, it don't. Now I figure out that if I was to go back a bit, and git in among them orthodocks, I might do 'em good like. Could explain to 'em. I ain't sure but what I've took the wrong way, showin' 'em first, and explainin' to 'em afterwards. Now if I was to stop showin' 'em at all, and just explain to 'em, why, there'd be folks what when I told 'em that nothink don't belong to nobody they'd git the 'ang of it. Begins to seem to me as if I'd done me bit o' sufferin' for the cause. Seen the inside o' pretty near every old jug round New York. It's aged me. But if I was to sackerfice me opinions, and make them orthodocks feel as I was one of 'em, I might give 'em a pull along like."

The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the morning. In the afternoon Honey Lem had a new idea. Without saying what it was, he took the boy to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an electric bus going northward, and Tom had a new experience. Except for having crossed it in the market lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him.

Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when shops were shut, residences closed, and saunterers relatively few, it added a new concept to those already in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. These ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these pictures, jewels, flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more than appeal to his eye. They set free a function of his being that had hitherto been sealed. The first atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware was consciously in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in some life before he was born, rich and beautiful things had been his accessories. He had been used to them. They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a matter of course. To see them was not so much a discovery as it was a return to what he had been accustomed to. He was thinking of this, with an inward grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when Honey went back to the topic of the night before.

"The reason I said Boston is because they've got that great big college there. If I'm to bring yer up, I'll have to send yer to college."

The opening was obvious. "But, Honey, you don't have to bring me up."

"How can I be yer next o' kin if I don't bring ye' up, a young boy like you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer ch'ice is between me and the State, and I'd be a lot better nor that, wouldn't I? The State won't be talkin' o' sendin' yer to college, mind that now."

There was no controverting the fact. As a State ward, he would not go to college, and to college he meant to go. If he could not go by one means he must go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of some sort, he might be obliged to depend on him.

The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by which Fifth Avenue borders the Park, when Honey rose, clinging to the backs of the neighboring seats. "We'll git out at the next corner."

Having reached the ground, he led the way across the street, scanning the houses opposite.

"There it is," he said, with choked excitement, when he had found the façade he was looking for. "That big brown front, with the high steps, and the swell bow-winders. That's where the Whitelaw baby used to live."

Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of interest. He listened with attention while Honey explained how the baby carriage had for the last time been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was wheeled away by the nurse.

"Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one day, when Goody and me was standin' 'ere. Nice little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. Yes, Goody and me'd sniggle and snaggle ourselves every which way to see how we could cook up a yarn that'd ketch on to some o' that money. We sure did read the papers them days! There wasn't nothink about the Whitelaw baby what we didn't know. Now, if yer've looked long enough at the 'ouse, Kid, I'll show yer somethink else."

They went into the Park by the same little opening through which the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to return. Like a detective reconstructing the action of a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash had taken, almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to a fan-shaped elm, in the shade of which there was a seat. Beyond the seat was a clump of lilac, so grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in its heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived the scene as if he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had sat here; her baby carriage had stood there. The other nurse, name o' Miss Messenger, had put her baby beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she could watch it. All he was obliged to leave out was the actual exchange of the image for the baby, which remained a mystery.

"This 'ere laylock bush ain't the same what was growin' 'ere then. That one was picked down, branch by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had a sprig of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little memoriums is instructive. I recolleck there was a man 'anged in Liverpool, and the 'angman, a friend of my guv'nor's, give me a bit of the chap's shirt, what he'd left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to be 'anged in. Well, I kep' that bit o' shirt for years. Always reminded me not to murder no one. Wish I had it now. Funny it'd be, wouldn't it, if you turned out to be the Whitelaw baby? He'd a' been just about your age."

Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where Miss Nash had read _Juliet Allingham's Sin_, and laughed lazily. "I couldn't be, because his name was Harry, and mine's Tom."

"Oh, a little thing like that wouldn't invidiate your claim."

"But I haven't got a claim. You don't suppose my mother stole me, do you? That's the very thing she used to tell me not to...."

The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood looking down at him there was a light in his blue-gray eye like the striking of a match. Tom knew that the same thought was in both their minds. Why should a woman have uttered such a warning if she had not been afraid of a suspicion? A flush that not only reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the roots of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry with himself. He sprang to his feet.

"Look here, Honey! Aren't there animals in this Park? Let's go and find them."

To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his mother and stolen babies as they went off to the Zoo.

XXII

The move to Boston was made during August, so that they might be settled in time for the opening of the schools. The flitting was with the ease of the obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore became again Tom Whitelaw. There were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of both.

"Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of Lemuel, and if any old sneeper was to look me up.... Not but what Lemuel isn't a more aristocraticker name than George; but there's times when somethink what no one won't notice'll suit you best. So I'll be George Honeybun, a pal o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed."

The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and prudential. In the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was something to the boy to know that he had had a father. His father had been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had been a Whitelaw; there was a whole line of Whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be known by names. A slim link with a past, at least it was a link. The Quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. It signified the ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he had sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to him.

It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. In the unlikely event of the State of New York busying itself with the fate of its former ward, the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending school in Boston according to the law, would have the best chance of going unmolested.

They found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, on that northern slope of Beacon Hill which within living memory has more than once changed hands with the silent advance and recession of a tide coming in and going out. There are still old people who can remember when some of the worthiest of the sons of the Puritans had their windows, in these steep and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the setting sun. Then, with an almost ghostly furtiveness, they retired as the negro came and routed them. The negro seemed fixed in possession when the Hebrew stole on silently, and routed him. At the time when George Honeybun and Tom Whitelaw came looking for a home, the ancient inhabitant of the land was beginning to creep back again, and the Hebrew taking flight. In a red-brick house of forbidding expression in Grove Street they found a room with two beds.

Within a few days Honey, whose strength was his skill, was working as a stevedore on the Charlestown docks. Tom was picking up small jobs about the markets. By September he had passed his examinations and had entered the Latin School. A new life had begun. From the old life no pursuit or interference ever followed them.

The boy shot up. In the course of a year he had grown out of most of his clothes. To the best of his modest ability, Honey was generous with new ones. He was generous with everything. That Tom should lack nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed to have none but the most elemental. Of his "nice times" in New York nothing had followed him to Boston but a love of spirits and tobacco. Of the two, the spirits went completely. When Tom's needs were pressing the supply of tobacco diminished till it sometimes disappeared. If on Sundays he could venture over the hill, to listen to the band on the Common, or stroll with the boy in the Public Gardens, it was because the Sunday suit, bought in the days when he had no one to provide for but himself, was sponged and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous devotion. The motive of so much self-denial puzzled Tom, since, so far as he could judge, it was not affection.

He was old enough now to perceive that affection had inspired most of his good fortune. People were disposed to like him for himself. There was rarely a teacher who did not approve of him. By the market men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars on Saturdays and in vacations, he was always welcomed heartily. In school he never failed to hold his own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, or something, was a stevedore, after which he was ignored. Girls regarded him with a hostile interest, while toward them he had no sentiments of any kind. He could go through a street and scarcely notice that there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn't leave him alone. They bothered him with overtures of friendship to which he did not respond, or tossed their heads at him, or called him names. But in general the principle was established that he could be liked.

But Honey was an enigma. Love was apparently not the driving power urging him to these unexpected fulfillments. If it was, it had none of the harmless dog-and-puppy ways which Tom had grown accustomed to. Honey never pawed him, as the masters often pawed the boys, and the boys pawed one another. He never threw an arm across his shoulder, or called him by a more endearing name than Kiddy. Apart from an eagle-eyed solicitude, he never manifested tenderness, nor asked for it. That Tom would ever owe him anything he didn't so much as hint at. "Dooty o' next o' kin" was the blanket explanation with which he covered everything.

"But you're not my next of kin," Tom, to whom schooling had revealed the meaning of the term, was bold enough to object. "Next of kin means that you'd be my nearest blood relation; and we're not relations at all."

Honey was undisturbed in his Olympian detachment. "Do yer suppose I dunno that? But I believes as Gord sees we're kin lots o' times when men don't take no notice. You was give to me. You was put into my 'ands to bring up. And up I'm goin' to bring yer, if it breaks me."

It was a close Sunday evening in September, the last of the summer holidays. Tom would celebrate next day by entering on a higher grade at school. He had had new boots and clothes. For the first time he was worried by the source of this beneficence. As night closed down they sat for a breath of fresh air on the steps of the house in Grove Street. Grove Street held the reeking smell of cooking, garbage, and children, which only a strong wind ever blows away from the crowded quarters of the cities, and there had been no strong wind for a week. Used to that, they didn't mind it. They didn't mind the screeching chatter or the raucous laughter that rose from doorways all up and down the hill, nor the yelling of the youngsters playing in the roadway. Somewhere round a corner a group of Salvationists, supported by a blurting cornet, sang with much gusto:

Oh, how I love Jesus! Oh, how I love Jesus! Oh, how I love Jesus! Because He first loved me.

They didn't mind it when Mrs. Danker, their landlady, a wiry New England woman, sitting in the dark of the hall behind them, joined in, in her cracked voice, with the Salvationists, nor when Mrs. Gribbens, a stout old party who picked up a living scrubbing railway cars, joined in with Mrs. Danker. From neighboring steps mothers called out to their children in Yiddish, and the children answered in strident American. But to Honey and Tom all this was the friendly give-and-take of promiscuity which they would have missed had it not been there.

Each was so concentrated on his own ruling purpose that nothing external was of moment. Honey was to give, and Tom was to receive, an education. That the recipient's heart should be fixed on it, Tom found natural enough; but that the giver's should be equally intense seemed to have nothing to account for it.

He glanced at the quiet figure, upright and muscular, his hands on his knees, like a stone Pharaoh on the Nile.

"Why don't you smoke?"

"I don't want to drop no ashes on this 'ere suit."

"Have you got any tobacco?"

"I didn't think to lay in none when I come 'ome yesterday."

"Is that because there was so much to be spent on me?"

"Oh, I dunno about that."

Tom gathered all his ambitions together and offered them up. "Well, I guess this can be the last year. After I've got through it I'll be ready to go to work."

"And not go to college!" The tone was one of consternation. "Lord love yer, Kiddy, what's bitin' yer now?"