Part 2

"I'll get twenty years for this. Perhaps it'll be more. I don't think they hang for it, but it'll be twenty years anyhow, if they find it out." She sprang up, still muttering in broken, only partly articulated phrases. "But they'll never find it out. What's there to find? It's my baby! My precious only baby!" She was on her knees again, dragging herself forward by the sides of the little carriage, her eyes strained toward the infant face. "My little Gracie! I've missed you all the time you've been away. My heart was near broke. Now you've come back to me. You're mine--mine--mine!"

He opened his eyes. It was his usual hour for waking up. For the first time in his history amazement gave an expression to his face which it was often to wear afterward. Instead of being in his own nest, downy, clean, and scentless, he was in a humpy little hole unpleasant to his senses. Instead of the Na-Na with her tender smile, or the Ma-Ma with her love, he saw this terrifying woman's stormy eyes, rousing the sensation he was later to know as fear. Instead of his nursery, spotless and gay, he was dumped amid the forlorn disarray of furniture that has just been moved into an empty tenement. Without getting these impressions in detail, he got them at once. He got them not as separate facts, but as facts in a single quintessence, distilled and distilled again, till no one element can be told from any other element, and held to his lips in a poisoned draught.

All he could do was to wail, but he wailed with a note of anguish which was new to him. It was anguish the more bitter because of the lack of explanation. His only awareness hitherto had been that of power. He had been a baby sovereign, obeyed without having to command. Now he had been born again as a baby serf, into conditions against which his will, imperious in its baby way, would beat in vain. Once more, he knew this, not by reasoned argument, of course, but by heartbroken instinct. It was not merely the distress of the present that was in his cry, but dread of the future. There was something else in the world besides Comfort, Tenderness, and Joy, and he had touched it. Without knowing what it was he shrank back from the contact and sobbed.

And yet such is the need for love in any young thing's heart, that when the strange woman had lifted him up, and cradled him on her bosom, he was partly soothed. He was not soothed easily. Though she held him closely, and sang to him softly, seated in the low rocking-chair in which she had rocked her baby-girl, he went on sobbing. He sobbed, not as he had sobbed in his old nursery, for the sport or the mischief of the thing, but because his inner being had been bruised. But his capacity for sobbing wore itself out. Little by little the convulsions grew calmer, the agony less desperate. Love held him. It was not the love of the Ma-Ma or the Na-Na, but it was love. It had love's embrace, love's lullaby. Arms were about him, he was on a breast. The shipwrecked sailor may be only on a raft, but he is not sinking. Little by little he turned his face into this only available refuge. A dangling embroidery adorned it, and in his struggle not to go down his little hands clutched at that.

IV

His first conscious recollection was of sitting on a high chair drawn up to a table at which he was having a meal. He could never recall whether this was in Harlem, Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey City, or the Bronx. Because they moved so often he had little more memory of places than he had of clouds. Tenements, streets, and suburbs of New York melted into one big sense of squalor. It was not squalor to him because he was used to it. It only obscured the difference between one dwelling and another, as monotony always obscures remembrance. Wherever their wanderings carried them, the background was the same, crowded, dirty, seething, a breeding place rather than a home.

What marked this occasion was a question he asked and the answer he got back.

"Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?"

The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about the kitchen. "What do you want to know for?"

The question was difficult. He knew what he wanted to know for, and yet it wasn't easy to explain. The nearest he could get to it in language was to say: "I'm a little boy, ain't I?"

"Yes, you're a little boy, but you should have been a little girl. It was a little girl I wanted."

"But you want me, don't you, mudda?"

She dropped whatever she was doing to press his head fiercely against her side. "Yes, I want _you_! I want _you_! I want _you_!"

He remembered this paroxysm of affection not because it was special but because it was connected with his gropings after his identity. Paroxysms were what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or of something which frightened him and yet was nameless. He thrummed to himself, beating time on the table with his spoon, while he worked on to another point.

"Wadn't there never no Gracie, mudda?"

She wheeled round from the gas-stove. "For goodness' sake, what's putting this into your head? Of course there was a Gracie. You're her. You don't suppose I stole you, do you?"

He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on the table with his spoon. The mystery of being grew still more baffling.

"Mudda!"

"What's it now?"

"If I wad Gracie I'd be a little girl, wouldn't I?"

She stamped her foot. "Stop it! If you ask me another thing I'll slap you."

He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being slapped. Accustomed to that he had learned to discount its ferocity. A sharp stinging smart, it passed if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. If for the minute he asked no more questions it was in order not to vex his mudda. She was easily vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It was so violent, so overwhelming. He loved love; he loved caressing; he loved to sit in her lap and sing with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed him.

As she washed the dishes or switched about the kitchen, he watched her with that trepidation which makes the children of the poor sharp-witted. Though under five years of age, he was already developing a sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity of a wholly straightforward little face, which had the even tan of a healthy fairness, in keeping with his crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment had come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle himself against her petticoats.

"Mudda, sing!"

"I can't sing now. Don't you see I'm busy! Look out, or this hot dish-water'll scald you."

Nevertheless, a few minutes later they were settled in the rocking chair, he on her knee, with his cheek against her shoulder. She was not as ungracious as her words would have made her seem, a fact of which he was aware.

"What'll I sing, Troublesome?"

"Sing 'Three Cups of Cold Poison.'"

So she sang in a sweet, true voice, the sort of childish voice which children love, her little boy joining in with her whenever he knew the words, but with only a hit-or-miss venture at the tune.

"Where have you been dining, Lord Ronald, my son? Where have you been dining, my handsome young man?" "I've been dining with my true love, mither, make my bed soon, There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."

"And what did she give you, Lord Ronald, my son? And what did she give you, my handsome young man?" "Three cups of cold poison, mither, make my bed soon, There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."

"What'll you will to your mither, Lord Ronald, my son? What'll you will to your mither, my handsome young man?" "My gowd and my silver, mither, make my bed soon, There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."

"What'll you will to your brither, Lord Ronald, my son? What'll you will to your brither, my handsome young man?" "My coach and six horses, mither, make my bed soon, There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."

"What'll you will to your truelove, Lord Ronald, my son? What'll you will to your truelove, my handsome young man?" "A rope for to hang her, mither, make my bed soon, There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."

His next conscious memory was more dramatic. He had been playing in the street, in what town he could never remember. They had recently moved, but they had always recently moved. A month in one set of rooms, and his mother was eager to be off. Rarely did they ever stay anywhere for more than the time of moving in, giving the necessary notice, and moving out again. When they stayed long enough for him to know a few children he sometimes played with them.

In this way the thing happened. The boy's name was Frankie Bell, a detail which remained long after the larger facts had escaped him. Frankie Bell and he had been engaged in scraping the dust and offal of the street into neat little piles, with the object of building what they called a "dirt-house." The task was engrossing, and to it little Tom Coburn gave himself with good will. Suddenly, as each bent over his pile, Frankie Bell threw off the observation, casually uttered:

"My mother says your mother's crazy."

Tom Coburn raised himself from his stooping posture, standing straight, and looking straight. The expression in his dark blue eyes, over which the eyebrows even now stood out bushily, was of pain, and yet of pain that left him the more dauntless. Though knowing but vaguely what the word crazy meant, he knew it was insulting.

"She ain't."

Frankie Bell, a stout young man, lifted himself slowly. "Yes, she is. My mother says so."

"Well, your mudda id a liar."

One rush and Frankie Bell lay sprawling with his head in the cushioned softness of his own dirt-heap. The attack had taken him so much by surprise that he went down before he could bellow. Before he could bellow his enemy was upon him, filling his mouth with the materials collected for architectural purposes. Victor in the fray, Tom Coburn ran homeward blinded with his tears.

He found his mother at the stove, stirring something with a tablespoon.

"Mudda, you're _not_ crazy, _are_ you?"

His reply was a blow on the head with the spoon. The woman was beside herself.

"Who said that?"

Rubbing his head, he told her.

"Don't you ever let them say no such thing again. If you do I'll kill you." She threw back her head, her arms outstretched, the spoon in her right hand. "God! God! What'll they say next? They'll say I stole him. It'll be twenty years for me; it'll be forty; it may be life. I won't live to begin it. I know what'll end it before they can...."

He was terrified now, terrified as he had never been in all his terrifying moments. Throwing himself upon her, he clutched at her skirts.

"Don't, mudda, don't! I'm your little boy! You didn't steal me. Don't cry, mudda! Oh, don't cry! don't cry!"

When, in one of her sudden reactions, she sank sobbing to the floor, he sank with her, petting her, coaxing her, wiping away her tears, forcing himself to laugh so that she should laugh with him; but a few days afterward they moved.

V

"Mudda, can I have a book and learn to read?"

The ambition had been inspired in the street, where he had seen a little boy who actually had a book, and was spelling out the words. Tom Coburn was now nominally six years old, though it was in the nature of things that of his age no exact record could be kept. His mother had changed his birthday so many times that he observed it whenever she said it had come round.

Bursting into the room with his eager question, he found her sitting by a window looking out at a blank wall. Given her feverish restlessness, the attitude called attention to itself. The apartment was poorer and dingier than any they had lived in hitherto, while it had not escaped his observation that she was living on the ragged edge of her nerves. This made him the more sorry for her, and the more loving. He put his hand on her shoulder, tenderly.

"What's the matter, mudda?"

It was one of the minutes when a touch made her frantic. "Get away!"

He got away, not through fear, but because she pushed him. He didn't mind that, though the rejection hurt him inside. He stood in the middle of the floor, pity in his young countenance, wondering what he could do for her, when she spoke again.

"I've got hardly any money left. I don't know what to do."

It was the first time his attention had been called to finance. He knew there was such a thing as money; he knew it had purchasing value; but he had not known its relation to himself.

"Why don't you get money where you got it before?"

"Because I ain't got a husband to die and leave me another five thousand dollars of insurance."

"And did you have, mudda?"

"Of course I had. What did you think?"

The question voiced his inner difficulty. He had not known what to think. Having observed that a fundamental social unit was formed of husbands and wives, he had also understood that husbands and wives could, in the terms which were the last to hang over from the lingo of his babyhood, be translated into faddas and muddas. They in turn implied children. The methods were mysterious, but the unit was so composed. The exception to this rule seemed to be himself. Though he had a mudda, he could not remember ever to have heard of a fadda. He had pondered on this deficiency more times than anyone suspected. The effort to link himself up with the human family was far more important to him now than the ways and means of getting cash. Standing pensive, he peered into the blinding light, or the unfathomable darkness, whichever it may be, out of which comes human life.

"Mudda, did Gracie have a fadda?"

She snapped peevishly, her gaze again turned outward to the stone wall. "Of course she did."

He came nearer to his point. "Did I?"

"I--I suppose so."

He approached still nearer. "Did I have the same fadda what Gracie had?"

"No, you hadn't." She caught herself up hurriedly, rounding on him in one of her fits of wrath. "Yes, you had."

The inconsistency was evident. "Well, which was it, mudda?"

She jumped to her feet, threateningly. "Now you quit! The next thing you'll be saying is that your name is Whitelaw, and that I stole you. Take that, you nasty little brat!"

A smack on the cheek brought the color to his face, and the tears to his eyes. "No, I won't, mudda. I won't say you stole me, or that my name is--" oddly enough he had caught it--"or that my name is Whitelaw. My name is Tom Coburn, and I'm your little boy."

Rushing at her in the big outpouring of his love, he threw his arms about her and cried against her waist. He cried so seldom that his grief drove her to one of her paroxysms of repentance. Her self-reproaches abating, all she could do to comfort him was to promise him a book, and begin to teach him to read.

The book was procured two days later, and by a method new to him. Doubtless some other means could have been adopted, but the necessity for sparing pennies had become imperative. Moreover, she had never willingly looked at print since the day when she opened a paper to find that, without knowing who she was, all the forces of the country had been organized against her.

They went out together. After traversing a series of streets he had never been in before they stopped in front of a little shop, in the window of which stationery, ink, wallpaper, rubber bands, and books were arranged in artistic confusion. The impression on the fancy of a little boy already groping toward the treasures of the mind was like that made on the tourist in Dresden by the heaped up riches of the Grüne Gewölbe.

The geography of the shop was explained to him before entering. The stationery counter was on the right as soon as you passed the door. The children's books were opposite, on the left. Books forming a cheap circulating library were back of that, and opposite these, where the shop was dark, were the wallpapers, in small, tight rolls on shelves. She was going to inspect wallpapers. The woman in the shop would exhibit them. He would remain alone in the front part of the shop, and close to the counter with the children's books. He was to keep alert and attentive, waiting for a sign which she would give him. When she turned round in the dark part of the shop, and called out, "Are you all right, darling?" he was to understand it as permissible to slip from the counter any small work on which he could lay his hands, and button it up inside his overcoat. He was to do it quickly, keeping his booty out of sight, and above all saying nothing about it. The plan was exciting, with a savor of adventure and manly incentive to skill.

If in the Grüne Gewölbe you were told you could take anything you pleased you would have some of Tom Coburn's sense of enchantment as he stood by the book counter, waiting for the sign. He could see his mother dimly. More dimly still he could follow the movements of the shop-woman eager for a sale. Sample after sample, the wallpapers were unrolled, and hung on an easel where their flowers lighted the obscurity. Even at a distance he could do justice to their beauty, but more captivating than their glories were the wonders at his hand. Pages in which children and animals disported in colors far beyond those of nature were piled in neat little rows, and so tempting that he ached for the signal. He couldn't choose; there was too much to choose from. He would put out his hand without looking, guided by fate.

"Are you all right, darling?"

Curiously to the little boy, the question came just when he himself could perceive that the shop-woman had dived beneath the counter for another example of her wares. All the conditions were propitious. No one was entering the shop; no one was looking through the window. Without knowing the moralities of his act, he understood the need for secrecy. He stretched forth his arm. His fingers touched paper. In the fraction of a fraction of a second the object was within his overcoat, and pressed to his pounding heart.

A few minutes later his mother came smiling and chatting down toward the exit, giving her address, which the shop-woman jotted in a notebook. "I think it will have to be the pale-green background with the roses. The room is darkish, and it would light it up. But I'll decide by to-morrow, and let you know. Yes, that's right. Mrs. F.H. Grover, 321 Blaisdel Avenue. So much obliged to you. Good morning."

Having bowed themselves out they went some yards up the street before the little boy dared to express his new wonderment.

"Mudda, what did you say you was Mrs. F.H. Grover for? And we don't live on Blaisdel Avenue. We live on Orange Street."

"You mind your own business. Did you get your book? Well, that's what we went for, isn't it?"

The expedition having proved successful, it was tried on other planes. Now it was in the line of groceries; now in that of hardware; now in that of drygoods; now in that of fruit. Needed things could be used; useless things could be sold, especially after they had moved to distant neighborhoods. While the procedure didn't supply an income, it eked out very helpfully such income as remained.

It furnished, moreover, a motive in life, which was what they had lacked hitherto. There was something to which to give themselves. It was like devotion to an art, or even a religion. They could pursue it for its own sake. For her especially this outside interest appeased the wild something which wasted her within. She grew calmer, more reasonable. She slept and ate better. She had fewer fits of frenzy.

With but faint pangs of misgiving the little boy enjoyed himself. He enjoyed his finesse; he enjoyed the pride his mother took in him. In proportion as they grew more expert they enlarged their field, often reversing their rôles. There were times when he created the distraction, while she secreted any object within reach. They did this the more frequently after she became recognized as his superior in selection.

For a superior in selection the great department stores naturally offered the widest field for operation. They approached them, however, cautiously, going in and out and out and in for a good many days before they ventured on anything. When they did this at last it was amid the crowding and pushing of a bargain day.

The system evolved had the masterly note of simplicity. The little boy carried a satchel, of the kind in which school-boys sometimes carry books. He stood near his mudda, or farther away, according to the dictates of the moment's strategy. On the first occasion he kept close to her, sincerely admiring a display of colored silk scarves conspicuously marked down to the price at which it was intended, even before their importation, that they should be sold. Women thronged about the counter, the little boy and his mudda having much ado to edge themselves into the front to where these products of the loom could be handled.

The picking and choosing done, the mother still showed some indecision.

"I'll just ask my sister to step over here," she confided to the saleswoman. "Her judgment is so much better than mine. Run over, dear, to your Aunt Mary," she begged of the boy, "and ask her to come and speak to me." Holding the scarf noticeably in her hands, she smiled at the saleswoman affably. "I'll just make room for this lady, who seems to be in a hurry."

She did not step back; she merely allowed herself to be crowded out. From the front row she receded to the second, from the second to the third. Keeping in sight of the saleswoman, she looked this way and that, plainly for Aunt Mary to appear. At times she made little dashes, as Aunt Mary seemed to come within sight. From these she did not fail to return, but on each occasion to a point more distant from that of her departure. With sufficient time the poor saleswoman, who had fifty other customers to attend to, would be likely to forget her, for a few minutes if no more.

The moment seemed to have come. With the scarf thrown jauntily over her arm where anyone could see it, the mother forced her way amid the crowds in search of her little boy. If intercepted she had her explanation. He had gone on an errand, and had not come back. When she had found him she would return and pay for the scarf, or decide not to take it. Her story couldn't help being plausible.

"Aunt Mary" was a spot agreed upon near one of the side doors, and far from the center of interest in silk scarves. Agreed upon was also a little bit of comedy, for the benefit of possible lookers-on.

"Oh, my dear, I've kept you waiting so long. I'm so sorry. Tell your mother this is the best I could do for her. I knew you were waiting, so I didn't let the lady wrap it up. Open your bag, and I'll put it in."

The bag closed, the little boy went out through one door, and his mother through another. The point where she was to rejoin him was not so far away but that he could walk to it alone.

VI

"It's all right, mudda, isn't it?"

He asked this after their campaign had been carried on for a good part of a year, and when they were nearing Christmas. He was now supposed to be seven. For reasons he could not explain the great game lost its zest. In as far as he understood himself he hated the sneaking and the secrecy. He hated the lying too, but lying was so much a part of their everyday life that he might as well have hated bread.

"Of course it's all right," his mother snapped. "Haven't I said so time and again? We get away with it, don't we? And if it wasn't all right we shouldn't be able to do that."