Lo, Michael! Part 25

"Never mind, Sam, you couldn't help it, and I suppose I wouldn't have known the difference myself if I hadn't gone away. We mustn't judge Buck harshly.

He'll see it the other way by and by."

Sam straightened perceptibly. There was something in this speech that put him in the same cla.s.s with Michael. He had never before had any qualms of conscience concerning gambling, but now he found himself almost unawares arrayed against it.

"I guess mebbe!" he said comfortingly, and then seeking to change the subject. "Say, is dat guy in dere goin' along to de farm?"

"Who?"

"Why, dat ike you lef' in de room. Is he goin' down 'long when wees go?"

"Oh, Will French! No, Sam. He doesn't know anything about it yet. I may tell him sometime, but he doesn't need that. He is studying to be a lawyer.

Perhaps some day if he gets interested he'll help do what I want for the alley, and all the other alleys in the city; make better laws and see that they're enforced."

"Laws!" said Sam in a startled voice. "What laws!"

Laws were his natural enemies he thought.

"Laws for better tenement houses, more room and more windows, better air, cleaner streets, room for gra.s.s and flowers, pure milk and meat, and less crowding and dirt. Understand?"

It was the first time Michael had gone so deep into his plans with Sam, and he longed now to have his comradeship in this hope too.

"Oh, sure!" said Sam much relieved that Michael had not mentioned laws about gambling dens and pickpockets. Sam might be willing to reform his own course in the brilliant wake of Michael but as yet he had not reached the point where he cared to see vice and dishonesty swept off the globe.

They went slowly back to the white room to find Will French leading a chorus of small urchins in the latest popular melody while they kept time with an awkward shuffle of their ill-shod feet.

Sam growled: "Cut it out, kids, you scratch de floor," and Will French subsided with apologies.

"I never thought of the floor, Endicott. Say, you ought to have a gymnasium and a swimming pool here."

Michael laughed.

"I wish we had," he declared, "but I'd begin on a bath-room. We need that first of all."

"Well, let's get one," said Will eagerly. "That wouldn't cost so much. We could get some people to contribute a little. I know a man that has a big plumbing establishment. He'd do a little something. I mean to tell him about it. Is there any place it could be put?"

Sam followed them wondering, listening, interested, as they went out into the hall to see the little dark hole which might with ingenuity be converted into a bath-room, and while he leaned back against the door-jamb, hands in his pockets, he studied the face of the newcomer.

"Guess dat guy's all right," he rea.s.sured Michael as he helped him turn the lights out a little later, while Will waited on the doorstep whistling a new tune to his admiring following. Will had caught "de kids."

"I say, Endicott," he said as they walked up the noisy midnight street and turned into the avenue, "why don't you get Hester to go down there and sing sometime? Sunday afternoon. She'd go. Ask her."

And that night was the beginning of outside help for Michael's mission.

Hester fell into the habit of going down Sunday afternoons, and soon she had an eager following of sad-eyed women, and eager little children; and Will French spent his leisure hours in hunting up tricks and games and puzzles, for "the kids."

Meantime, the account he had given to Holt and Holt of the way Michael spent his evenings, was not without fruit.

About a week after French's first visit to the alley, the senior Mr. Holt paused beside Michael's desk one afternoon just before going out of the office and laid a bit of paper in his hand.

"French tells me you're interested in work in the slums," he said in the same tone he used to give Michael an order for his daily routine. "I'd like to help a little if you can use that." He pa.s.sed on out of the office before Michael had fully comprehended what had been said. The young man looked down at the paper and saw it was a check made out to himself for one hundred dollars!

With a quick exclamation of grat.i.tude he was on his feet and out into the hall after his employer.

"That's all right, Endicott. I don't get as much time as I'd like to look after the charities, and when I see a good thing I like to give it a boost.

Call on me if you need money for any special scheme. And I'll mention it to some of my clients occasionally," said the old lawyer, well pleased with Michael's grat.i.tude.

He did, and right royally did the clients respond. Every little while a ten-dollar bill or a five, and now and then a check for fifty would find its way to Michael's desk; for Will French, thoroughly interested, kept Holt and Holt well supplied with information concerning what was needed.

CHAPTER XVI

Before the winter was over Michael was able to put in the bath-room and had bought a plow and a number of necessary farm implements, and secured the services of a man who lived near Old Orchard to do some early plowing and planting. He was able also to buy seeds and fertilizer, enough at least to start his experiment; and toward spring, he took advantage of a holiday, and with Sam and a carpenter went down to the farm and patched up the old house to keep out the rain.

After that a few cots, some boxes for chairs and tables, some cheap comfortables for cool nights, some dishes and cooking utensils from the ten-cent store, and the place would be ready for his alley-colony when he should dare to bring them down. A canvas cot and a wadded comfortable would be luxury to any of them. The only question was, would they be contented out of the city?

Michael had read many articles about the feasibility of taking the poor of the cities into the country, and he knew that experience had shown they were in most cases miserable to get back again. He believed in his heart that this might be different if the conditions were made right. In the first place they must have an environment full of new interest to supply the place of the city's rush, and then they must have some great object which they would be eager to attain. He felt, too, that they should be prepared beforehand for their new life.

To this end he had been for six months spending two or three hours a week with five or six young fellows Sam had tolled in. He had brought the agricultural papers to the room, and made much of the ill.u.s.trations. The boys as a rule could not read, so he read to them, or rather translated into their own slang-ful English. He told them what wonders had been attained by farming in the right way. As these fellows had little notion about farming in any way, or little knowledge of farm products save as they came to them through the markets in their very worst forms, it became necessary to bring cabbages and apples, and various other fruits and vegetables for their inspection.

One night he brought three or four gnarled, little green-skinned, sour, speckled apples, poorly flavored. He called attention to them very carefully, and then because an apple was a treat, however poor it might be, he asked them to notice the flavor as they ate. Then he produced three or four magnificent specimens of apple-hood, crimson and yellow, with polished skin and delicious flavor, and set them in a row on the table beside some more of the little specked apples. They looked like a sunset beside a ditch. The young men drew around the beautiful apples admiringly, feeling of their shiny streaks as if they half thought them painted, and listening to the story of their development from the little sour ugly specimens they had just been eating. When it came to the cutting up of the perfect apples every man of them took an intelligent pleasure in the delicious fruit.

Other nights, with the help of Will and Hester, Michael gave demonstrations of potatoes, and other vegetables, with regular lessons on how to get the best results with these particular products. Hester managed in some skilful manner to serve a very tasty refreshment from roasted potatoes, cooked just right, at the same time showing the difference in the quality between the soggy potatoes full of dry rot, and those that were grown under the right conditions. Occasionally a cup of coffee or some delicate sandwiches helped out on a demonstration, of lettuce or celery or cold cabbage in the form of slaw, and the light refreshments served with the agricultural lessons became a most attractive feature of Michael's evenings. More and more young fellows dropped in to listen to the lesson and enjoy the plentiful "eats"

as they called them. When they reached the lessons on peas and beans the split pea soup and good rich bean soup were ably appreciated.

Not that all took the lessons with equal eagerness, but Michael began to feel toward spring that his original five with Sam as their leader would do comparatively intelligent work on the farm, the story of which had been gradually told them from night to night, until they were quite eager to know if they might be included in those who were to be pioneers in the work.

Will French faithfully reported the condition of the work, and more and more friends and clients of the office would stop at Michael's desk and chat with him for a moment about the work, and always leave something with him to help it along. Michael's eyes shone and his heart beat high with hopes in these days.

But there was still a further work for him to do before his crude apprentices should be ready to be sent down into the wilds of nature.

So Michael began one evening to tell them of the beauty and the wonder of the world. One night he used a coc.o.o.n as ill.u.s.tration and for three evenings they all came with bated breath and watched the strange little insignificant roll, almost doubting Michael's veracity, yet full of curiosity, until one night it burst its bonds and floated up into the white ceiling, its pale green, gorgeously marked wings working a spell upon their hearts, that no years could ever make them quite forget. It was the miracle of life and they had never seen it nor heard of it before.

Another night he brought a singing bird in a cage, and pictures of other birds who were naturally wild. He began to teach them the ways of the birds they would see in New Jersey, how to tell their songs apart, where to look for their nests; all the queer little wonderful things that a bird lover knows, and that Michael because of his long habits of roaming about the woods knew by heart. The little bird in its cage stayed in the yellow and white room, and strange to say thrived, becoming a joy and a wonder to all visitors, and a marvel to those who lived in the court because of its continuous volume of brilliant song, bursting from a heart that seemed to be too full of happiness and must bubble over into music. The "kids" and even the older fellows felt a proprietorship in it, and liked to come and stand beneath the cage and call to it as it answered "peep" and peeked between the gilded bars to watch them.

One night, with the help of Will French who had some wealthy friends, Michael borrowed a large picture of a sunset, and spoke to them about the sunlight and its effects on growing things, and the wonder of its departure for the night.

By this time they would listen in awed silence to anything Michael said, though the picture was perhaps one too many for most of them. Sam, however, heard with approval, and afterwards went up reverently and laid his finger on the crimson and the purple and the gold of the picture. Sam knew, and understood, for he had seen the real thing. Then he turned to the others and said:

"Say, fellers, it's aw-right. You wait till yer see one. Fine ez silk, an'

twicet as nateral."

One big dark fellow who had lately taken to coming to the gatherings, turned scornfully away, and replied: "Aw shucks! I don't see nodding in it!" but loyalty to Michael prevented others who might have secretly favored this view from expressing it, and the big dark fellow found himself in the minority.

And so the work went on. Spring was coming, and with it the end of Jim's "term," and the beginning of Michael's experiment on the farm.

Meantime Michael was working hard at his law, and studying half the night when he came back from the alley work. If he had not had an iron const.i.tution, and thirteen years behind him of healthy out-door life, with plenty of sleep and exercise and good food, he could not have stood it. As it was, the hard work was good for him, for it kept him from brooding over himself, and his own hopeless love of the little girl who was far across the water.