Chapter 16

It was strange to pass along that familiar street with her, to glance down at her and see her forward bent face in profile against the dark doorways leading to interiors whose secrets he knew. The drinking dens were noisy at their feet; the tall houses were dark and sinister above them. He heard her breath as she walked at his elbow in the vicious chill of the evening and out upon the water, visible between the sheds as a low green and a high white light sliding, slowly across the night, an outgoing steamer wailed like a hoarse banshee. Once upon a time he had seen the Black Hundred come roaring and staggering along that street under the eyes of the ships, and had backed into one of the doorways past which they now walked to fight for his life. The memory of it came curiously to him now, as the girl at his side led him on, hurrying to bring him to safety.

They turned a corner ere she spoke to him again, and advanced along a street which showed a vista of receding darkness, beaded by the dull house-lamps set over the courtyard gates. Not till then did she slacken the hurry of her gait. She lifted her face towards him.

"But there was something, wasn't there?" she asked. "Between you and that policeman, I mean. You weren't really just chatting?"

Waters shrugged the policeman into the void.

"It's nothin' that you'd need to worry about, Miss Pilgrim," he answered. "He don't amount to anything."

She was still looking at him. She had on a big muffling coat and her face lifted out of the high collar of it.

"But" she paused. "I was watching, you for a minute; I saw you go back to talk to him," she said. "That's why I stopped. You see, that day in the office, I was ever so sorry."

"Oh, that!" Waters was vaguely embarrassed; he was not used to sympathy so openly expressed. "You mean Selby an' all that? That didn't hurt me."

But she would not be denied. "It hurt me," she answered. "To see you go out like that, so quietly, after asking for help and nobody to say a word for you! I've been hoping ever since that I'd see you so that I'd be able to tell you. Of course," she added, in the tone of one who makes reasonable allowances, "of course, Mr. Selby's in a difficult position; he has to consider the authorities. Naturally, being our consul, he'd like to do his best for all Americans; but he has to be careful. You can understand that, can't you?"

"Why, sure!" agreed Waters warmly. "It's mighty good of you to feel like that about me, Miss Pilgrim; and I ain't blamin' Selby any. He was born like that, I guess sort o' poor white trash and his folks didn't find it out in time to smother him. But I wish I was consul here for a time and he'd come to me to have me fix somethin' for him. I'd cert'nly like to have him know how it feels."

"Ah, but I know," she said earnestly. "I can guess like having no home or friends or even a country of your own to belong to. Like finding out suddenly that Uncle Sam wasn't your uncle after all! Tell me, was it what they did to you, I mean was it very bad?"

He smiled a little wryly, looking down into her serious face.

"Well, it wasn't very good," he answered. "It wasn't meant to be. It ain't often these people get a white man to practice on, an' they sure made the most o' the chance. But it didn't kill me; and, anyway, there ain't any reason why it should trouble you, Miss Pilgrim."

He had a feeling that he preferred her to be immune from the knowledge and understanding of such things, to be and remain a mere eyeful of delicate and stimulating feminine effect. But upon his words she half halted, turning to him; she drew a hand from her muff and her fingers touched his sleeve.

"No reason?" she repeated. "Ah, but there is! There is a reason. I haven't got any official position or anything to lose at all. I don't have to consider anybody. So next time if there is a next time I want you to come straight away to me."

He stared at her, not understanding her sudden excitement. "To you, Miss Pilgrim? You mean come round to Selby's again?"

"No, no!" She shook her head impatiently. "You know it's no use to go there. But I live close by here; I'm taking you there now; and I want you to come to me. Then I'll see the Chief of Police for you; I know him quite well."

"So do I," said Waters. "He's a crook. But say, Miss Pilgrim, I don't just see."

She interrupted him. "I'll explain what I mean and then you'll see that it's all right. But now I want you to come home and have a glass of tea and see where I live. It's Number Thirteen only two houses more. You will come, won't you?"

"I'll be glad to," answered he.

The house to which she brought him had a cavernous courtyard arch like a tunnel, outside whose gates the swaddled dvornik huddled upon the sheltered side of the arch. Of all his body, only his eyes moved as they approached, pivoting under his great hood to scan them and follow them through the gate. Within, the small court was a pit of gloom roofed by the windy sky; a glass-paneled door let them in to a winding stone stair with an iron handrail that was greasy to the touch. It was upon the second floor that Miss Pilgrim halted and put a key into a door.

There was a hall within, a narrow passage cumbered with big furniture, wardrobes and the like, which had obviously overflowed from the rooms. At the far end of it, a door was ajar, letting out a slit of bright light and a smell of cabbage. Miss Pilgrim opened a nearer door, reached for the switch and turned to summon Waters where he waited in the entry, browsing with those eager eyes of his upon this new pasture.

"Here's where you'll come when you want me," she said.

He entered the room, walked as far as the middle of it and looked about him. To his sensitive apprehension, whetted to fineness in the years of his wandering and gazing, it was as though a chill and dead air filled the place, a suggestion as of funerals. Opposite the door, two tall windows, like sepulchral portals, framed oblongs of the outer darkness; and the white-tiled stove in the corner was like a mausoleum. The cheap parquet of the floor had a clammy gleam; a tiny icon, roosting high in a corner, showed a tawdry shine of gilding; the whole room, square and lofty, with its sparse furniture grouped stiffly about its emptiness, was gaunt and forbidding. Of a personality that should be at home within it and leave the impress of its life upon the place, there was not a sign; it was the corpse of a room. Waters turned from his scrutiny of it towards Miss Pilgrim, standing yet by the door and clear to see at last in the light. She smiled at him with her pale, quiet face, and he marked how, when she ceased to smile, her mouth drooped and her face returned to shadow. "That's Selby," he told himself hotly. "Selby done that to her!"

There was another door in the corner, near the white stove. It stood a few inches open, revealing nothing. But as he glanced towards it, it seemed to him that he detected in the lifeless air a nuance of fragrance, something elusive as a shade that emanated from the farther room, and had in its very slightness and delicacy a suggestion of femininity. He knew that it must be her bedroom that lay beyond the door, and he found himself wondering what that was like.

Presently he was seated by the little sham mahogany table, upon which the big brass samovar steamed and whispered, listening to her and watching her. She gave him his glass of the pale-yellow Russian tea that neither cheers nor inebriates, but merely distends and irrigates, and sat over against him, sipping at her glass and returning his gaze with her steady eyes.

"I've only had this room a little time," she remarked. "I've had just a bedroom before. But I had to have somewhere for people to come the people who can't go to Mr. Selby, I mean. You know what they call me at the Police Bureau? Mr. Selby's the vice-consul and I'm the vice-vice. So this," her gaze traveled round the barren room with gentle complacency "this is my Vice-vice Consulate."

"Oh!" Waters looked up at her over the rim of his glass with a changed interest. "The vice-vice? That's a pretty good name. Then you've been doin' this for fellers already?"

He marked a faintness of pink that dawned for a moment in her face at the question. She smiled involuntarily and a little ruefully.

"Well," she hesitated; "I've tried, but I'm afraid I haven't actually done anything for anybody. I haven't had a real chance yet. But, anyhow, there's this room all ready and there's me; and any American who can't go to Mr. Selby for help can come here."

He nodded.

"It was really from you I got the idea," she went on; "when you went out of the Consulate like that and there was nowhere you could go. And later on, there was a sailor from one of the ships, and afterwards a man who said he was a Mormon missionary; and Mr. Selby wouldn't couldn't see his way to do anything for them. The sailor was brought in by two policemen, though he was only a boy! He couldn't speak a word of Russian, of course, and it made me so sorry to think of him all alone with those people, having things done to him and not understanding anything. So, after hours, I went round to see the Chief of Police."

Waters moved a little on his chair. Her face had a mild glow of enthusiasm which touched it with sober beauty. He shook his head.

"He's no good," he said. "You hadn't oughter gone to him by yourself."

"But," Miss Pilgrim protested, "lots of people have said that, and it's all wrong. It was he that nicknamed me the 'vice-vice,' and now all the police in the streets salute me when they see me. Even that first time, before I knew him or anything, he was just as nice as he could be. He was in his office, writing at a table under a lamp, and he just looked up at me, hard and well, taking stock of me, you know, while I told him who I was and what I'd come for. And then he gave me a chair and sat and listened to everything I'd got to say, leaning on his elbow and watching me close. I suppose a Chief of Police gets used to watching people like that."

"I, I wouldn't wonder," answered Waters vaguely. He was seeing, in a swift vision, that interview, with the black-browed man in uniform under the lamp, listening and staring.

"I told him how I felt about it," Miss Pilgrim continued, "and how, since there wasn't anybody else to speak for the boy, I'd come along to see if I could do anything. And when I'd finished he let me go on till I hadn't another word to say that I could think of! he just bowed and said he'd have been delighted to oblige me, but the sailor's captain had been in and paid his fine and taken him away three hours before. Then he sent for glasses of tea and we sat and had a talk, and I got him to say I could always come again when I wanted to. But, you see, if it hadn't been for the captain."

"Sure," agreed Waters. "They'd have turned the kid loose for you. And the Mormon? Seems to me I seen that Mormon, unless there's a couple of them strayin' around. How did you fix it for him?"

Again, at the query, that ghost of pink showed on her cheeks.

"Oh, he--he wasn't very nice," she answered. "He was a big stout man, with a curly black beard like fur growing close to his face all round and shiny round knobs of cheek bulging out of it. I never did get to hear just what the trouble was with him, because when he was telling Mr. Selby, he looked round at me first and then bent over the desk and whispered. Whatever it was, it made Mr. Selby very angry; he simply bounced out of his chair and shouted the man right out of the room. And the man, I couldn't help being sorry for him, just went walking backwards, fending Mr. Selby off with his hands, with his mouth open and his eyes staring, looking as helpless and aghast as could be. And when he got to the door, he burst out crying like a little child."

Waters smacked his knee. "That's him," he cried. "That's the feller! He was up the river same time as me, an' gettin' plenty to cry for, too. But what in what made you try to do anything for one o' them?"

"He said he was an American citizen," answered Miss Pilgrim; "and Mr. Selby wouldn't help him; so he was qualified. What made it difficult in his case was that somehow I never found out what he'd done; and the Chief of Police was queer about him too. I remember once that he told me that if he were to let the man go, he'd be afraid to sleep at nights, for fear he'd hear children's voices weeping in the dark. I couldn't get anything else out of him. And the next time I went, they'd found out that the Mormon wasn't an American at all; he'd just been in the States for a couple of years and then come back to Russia. So there wasn't any more I could do."

Waters put his empty glass upon the square iron tray by the samovar. He reached under his chair for his cap.

"That's so," he agreed. "You couldn't do nothin' for that feller. Maybe you'll land with the next one."

He smiled at her across the little table. He understood now why the gaunt room reflected nothing of her. It was a city of refuge she had built and the refugees had failed to come; it was a makeshift temple of her patriotism and her pity. He caught her small answering smile, noting with what a docility of response her lips shaped themselves to it. No doubt she had smiled just as obediently at the "Mormon."

"It's a great idea, too," he went on. "Maybe Selby's all right as far as he goes, but he certainly don't go very far. This here" he gathered the room into his gesture "starts off where he stops. It's great!"

It was good to see her brighten under the brief praise.

"Then you see now what I meant when I told you to come here to me?" she asked. "Because I'll do everything I can, and the Chief of Police will always listen to me. And you will come, won't you, if you should happen ever to need help or or anything?"

"Why, you bet I will," he promised heartily. "I reckon I got a right to. You're my vice-vice and we don't want to waste a room like this."

Watching her while he spoke, he had to hold down a smile which threatened to show. She needed somebody in trouble and she was relying on him.

She left open the door for him while he went down the winding staircase, that he might have light to see his way. When he was at the bottom, he looked up, to see her head across the handrail, silhouetted above him and still oddly recognizable and suggestive of her. Her voice came down to him, echoing in the well of the stairway.

"Good night," it said. "You won't, you won't forget?"

He was smiling as he went forth through the long hollow of the arch to the dim street; the huddled dvornik with his swiveling eyes saw him, his face lifted to the light of the numbered house-lamp, still with the shape of a smile inhabiting his lips. The night wind, bitter from the water, met him as he went, driving through the meagerness of his clothes, and still he smiled, cherished his mood like a treasure. And below his mirth, cordial as a testimony of friendship, there endured the memory of the barren and lifeless room, waiting for its fulfillment.

In the lodging which he discovered for himself, he lay that night upon his crackling mattress, hands under his head, smoking a final cigarette and staring up at the map of stains upon the ceiling. It had been a day tapestried with sensations; there was much for the thoughtful mind of a connoisseur of life to dwell upon; but, as he lay, in that hour of his leisure, the memory that persisted in him was of the inner door in the dull room where he had drunk tea and talked with the girl, and all the suggestion and enticement of it. He wished that for a moment he could have looked beyond it and viewed just once the delicate and fragrant privacy which it screened. The outer room had a purpose as plain as a kitchen; the girl in it had shown him of herself only that purpose; the rest of her was shut from him.

He pitched the end of his cigarette from him, turning his head to watch it roll to safety in the middle of the bare floor.

"I'll go after a job in the morning," he said half aloud to the emptiness of the mean chamber, and turned to sleep upon the resolution.

It was nearing noon of the next day when, following the trail of that redeeming job, he went towards the Mathieson yards. While he was yet afar off he could see between the roofs the cathedral-like scaffolding clustering around the shape of a ship in the building; the rapid-fire of the hammers and riveting guns at work upon her, plates was loud above the noises of the street. But he went slowly; he had already been some hours upon his quest, and there was a touch of worry and uncertainty in his face. It seemed that the world he had known so well had changed its heart. The gatekeeper at the wharves where he formerly had driven a winch had refused to admit him, and at the Russian foundry he had been curtly ordered away. Policemen had hailed him familiarly and publicly, and twice passing istvostchiks had swerved their little clattering vehicles to the curb to jeer down into his face as they rumbled by. The smudged impress of a rubber-stamp upon his passport and three lines of sprawling Russian handwriting recording his conviction and punishment had marked him with the local equivalent of the brand of Cain; henceforward he was set apart from other men. He pondered it as he went in an indignant bewilderment; it was strange that others should find him so different when he knew himself to be the same as ever.

The Scottish foreman-shipwright in the yard office looked up from his standing-desk, lifting, to the light of the open door a red monkey-face comically fringed with coppery whiskers, and stared at him ferociously with little stone-blue eyes. He listened in fierce stillness while Waters put forward his request to be taken on.

"It's you, is it?" he said then. "I know ye. When did they let ye out?"

"Yesterday," answered Waters wearily. "Say, boss, it was only for beatin' up an istvostchik, and I got to have a job."

The fiery monkey-face, pursed in sourest disapproval, did not relax a line. "Yesterday an' now ye come here! Well, we're no' wantin' hands just now, d'ye see? An' if we was, we'd no' want you. So now ye know!"

The angry mask of a face continued to lower at him unwaveringly; it was almost bitter and righteous enough to be funny. Waters surveyed it for a space of moments with a faint interest in its mere grotesqueness; it did not change nor shift under his scrutiny, but continued to glare inhumanly like a baleful lamp. He humped a thin shoulder in resignation and turned away. When he was halfway to the gate, he heard behind him the foreman ordering the gatekeeper not to admit him in future.

Passing again along the cobbled street, he halted suddenly and gazed about him like a man seeking. Everything was as it had been before, from the folk moving in it to the pale sky over it. The little shops, showing idealized pictures of their wares on painted boards beside their doors for the benefit of a public that could not read; the cluster of small gold domes on a church at the corner; the great bearded laboring men in their filthy sheepskins; the Jews, sleek and furtive; the cabman who doffed his hat and crossed himself as he drove by a shrine there was not a house nor a man that he could not identify and classify. He had come back to them from the pain and labor of his imprisonment confident of what he should find; and it was as if a home had become hostile and unwelcoming.

"Guess I'll have to be movin' outta this town," he told himself. "Seems as if I'd stopped here long enough!"

He had time to confirm this judgment in the days that followed. The approach of winter was bringing its inevitable slackness to all work carried on in the open air, and the big works could afford to be scrupulous about the characters of the men they engaged; and the little tradesmen feared the ban of the police. His slender store of money came to an end, and but for occasional jobs of wood-splitting as the supplies of winter fuel came in, it would have been difficult merely to live. As it was, he dragged his belt tighter about the waist of the old linen blouse and showed to the daylight a face whose whimsicality and vagueness were darkened with a touch of the saturnine. He showed it likewise to Miss Pilgrim when one day she passed him at the noon hour, hurrying past the corner on which he stood, wrapped to the eyes in her greatcoat.

She recognized him suddenly and stopped.

"Good morning," she said. "It's, it's a cold day, isn't it?"

Waters had his back to the wall for shelter, and though he stood thus out of the wind, the air drenched him with its chill like water. He smiled slowly with stiff lips at the brisk outdoor pink in her cheeks.

"This ain't cold," he answered. "You won't call this cold when you've been through a winter here."

"No," she agreed. "I suppose I won't." She shifted diffidently, looking at him with her frank eyes. "Are you getting along all right," she asked.

He smiled again; in her meaning there was only one kind of "all right" and "all wrong." "Why, yes," he replied. "I'm all right, Miss Pilgrim; an' if I wasn't, I'd know where to come."

She nodded eagerly. "Yes; I don't want you to forget. I I'll always be glad to do everything I can."

"Sure; I know that," he replied. "An' you? You makin' out all right too, Miss Pilgrim? That Vice-vice-Consulate o' yours keepin' you pretty busy?"

The brisk pink flooded across her face in a quick flush, and her mouth drooped. But her eyes, as always, were steady against his.

"There hasn't been anybody yet," she answered, with a look that deprecated his smile.

He hastened to be sympathetic. "Too bad!" he said. "With a room like that all ready an' waitin' too. But maybe it's only that things is kind o' slack just now; somebody'll be cuttin' loose pretty soon and you'll get your turn all right."

She made to move on, but paused again to answer.

"The room will always be there if you if anybody wants it," she said. "Even if nobody ever comes, it shall always be ready, at least. That's all I can do."

She bade him farewell, with the little nod she had, and passed on, muffling her chin down into her great cloth collar. Waters looked after her with a frown of consideration. He was forgetting for the moment that he was cold, that he had fed inadequately upon gruel of barley, that he was all but penniless in an expensive and hostile world. There was astir in his being, as he watched the slight overcoated figure of the girl, that same protective instinct which had galvanized even Selby into generosity; it never fails to make one feel man enough to cope with any array of ills. There crossed and tangled in his mind a moving web of schemes for aiding and consoling her.

Each of them had for a character vagueness of method and utter completeness of result, but none amounted to a programme. Waters, for all his brisk record, was not a man of action; he was rather a mechanism jolted abruptly into action by the impulses of a detached and ardent mind. It was chance, the ironic chance whose marionettes are men and women, and not any design of his, which turned his feet that evening towards the room that was always to be waiting and ready.

He was returning towards his lodging after an afternoon of looking for work, tired, wearing a humor in tune with the early dark and the empty monotony of the streets by which he went. The few folk who were abroad in them went by like shy ghosts; the high fronts of the houses were like barricades between him and all the comfort and security in the world. There was mud in the roads and his boots were no longer weather-proof. Life tasted stale and sour.