Lo, Michael! Part 39

It was odd that while he was saying it the vision of the church filled with the fashionable world, waiting for a wedding which did not materialize, came to his thoughts.

"Oh, that doesn't make the slightest difference in the world!" said the worried man. "You know the subject from _a_ to _z_, and I don't know another available soul to-night who does. Just tell them what you know, you needn't talk long; it'll be all right anyway. Just smile your smile and they'll give all right. Good night, and thank you from my heart! I must take this cab," and he hailed a pa.s.sing cab and sprang inside, calling out above the city's din, "Eight o'clock the meeting is. Don't worry! You'll come out all right. It'll be good practice for your business."

Michael stood still in the middle of the crowded pavement and looked after the departing cab in dismay. If ever in all his life had he come to a spot where he felt so utterly inadequate to fill a situation. Frantically he tried as he started down the street again, to think of some one else to ask. There seemed to be no one at all who was used to speaking that knew the subject. The few who knew were either out of town or at a great distance. He did not know how to reach them in time. Besides, there was something about Michael that just would not let him shirk a situation no matter how trying it was to him. It was one of the first principles he had been taught with football, and before he reached his boarding place, his chin was up, and his lips firmly set. Anyone who knew him well would have felt sure Michael was going into a scrimmage and expected the fighting to be hard.

It was Will French who dug it out of him after dinner, and laughed and slapped him gleefully on the shoulder. Will was engaged to Hester now and he was outrageously happy.

"Good work, old fellow! You've got your chance, now give it to 'em! I don't know anybody can do it better. I'd like to bring a millionaire or two to hear you. You've been there, now tell 'em! Don't frown like that, old fellow, I tell you you've got the chance of your life. Why don't you tell 'em about the tenement in the alley?"

Michael's face cleared.

"I hadn't thought of it, Will. Do you think I could? It isn't exactly on the subject. I understood him I was to speak of the tenement in relation to the Playground."

"The very thing," said Will. "Didn't he tell you to say what you knew?

Well, give it to 'em straight, and you'll see those rich old fellows open their eyes. Some of 'em own some of those old rickety shacks, and probably don't know what they own. Tell 'em. Perhaps the old man who owns our tenement will be there! Who knows?"

"By the way," said Michael, his face all alight, "did I tell you that Milborn told me the other day that they think they're on track of the real owner of our tenement? The agent let out something the last time they talked with him and they think they may discover who he is, though he's hidden himself well behind agents for years. If we can find out who he is we may be able to help him understand what great need there is for him to make a few changes--"

"Yes, a few changes!" sneered Will. "Tear down the whole rotten death-trap and build a new one with light and air and a chance for human beings to live! Give it to 'em, old man! He may be there to-night."

"I believe I will," said Michael thoughtfully, the look of winning beginning to dawn on his speaking face; and he went up to his room and locked his door.

When he came out again, Will who was waiting to accompany him to the meeting saw in his eyes the look of the dreamer, the man who sees into the future and prophesies. He knew that Michael would not fail in his speech that night. He gave a knowing look to Hester as she came out to go with them and Hester understood. They walked behind him quietly for the most part, or speaking in low tones. They felt the pride and the anxiety of the moment as much as if they had been going to make the speech themselves. The angel in the man had dominated them also.

Now it happened that Starr had come down with her father for a week's shopping the last time he ran up to his sister's and on this particular evening she had claimed her father's society.

"Can't you stay at home, Daddy dear?" she asked wistfully. "I don't want to go to Aunt Frances' 'quiet little evening' one bit. I told her you needed me to-night as we've only a day or two more left before I go back."

Aunt Frances was Starr's mother's sister, and as the servants of the two families agreed mutually, "Just like her, only more so." Starr had never been quite happy in her company.

"Come with me for a little while, daughter. I'm sorry I can't stay at home all the evening, but I rather promised I'd drop into a charitable meeting at Madison Square for a few minutes this evening. They're counting on my name, I believe. We won't need to stay long, and if you're with, me it will be easier to get away."

"Agreed!" said Starr eagerly, and got herself ready in a twinkling. And so it came about that as the roll of martial music poured forth from the fine instruments secured for the occasion, and the leaders and speakers of the evening, together with the presidents of this Society, and that Army, or Settlement, or Organization for the Belief and Benefit of the Poor, filed on to the great platform, that Starr and her father occupied prominent seats in the vast audience, and joined in the enthusiasm that spread like a wave before the great American Flag that burst out in brilliant electric lights of red and white and blue, a signal that the hour and the moment was come.

Michael came in with the others, as calmly as though he had spent his life preparing for the public platform. There was fire in his eyes, the fire of pa.s.sion for the people of the slums who were his kin. He looked over the audience with a throb of joy to think he had so mighty an opportunity. His pulses were not stirred, because he had no consciousness of self in this whole performance. His subject was to live before the people, he himself was nothing at all. He had no fear but he could tell them, if that was all they wanted. Burning sentences hot with the blood of souls had been pouring through his mind ever since he had decided to talk of his people. He was only in a hurry to begin lest they would not give him time to tell all he knew! All he knew! Could it ever be told? It was endless as eternity.

With a strange stirring of her heart Starr recognized him. She felt the color stealing into her face. She thought her father must notice it, and cast a furtive glance at him, but he was deep in conversation about some banking business, so she sat and watched Michael during the opening exercises and wondered how he came to be there and what was his office in this thing. Did lawyers get paid for doing something to help along charitable inst.i.tutions? She supposed so. He was probably given a seat on the platform for his pains. Yet she could not help thinking how fine he looked sitting there in the centre, the place of honor it would seem.

How came he there? He was taller than all the others, whether sitting or standing, and his fine form and bearing made him exceedingly noticeable.

Starr could hear women about her whispering to their escorts: "Who is he?"

and her heart gave strange little throbs to think that she knew. It seemed odd to her that she should be taken back by the sight of him now through all the years to that morning in Florida when she had kissed him in the chapel. Somehow there seemed something sweet and tender in the memory and she dwelt upon it, while she watched him looking calmly over the audience, rising and moving to let another pa.s.s him, bowing and smiling to a noted judge who leaned over to grasp his hand. Did young lawyers like that get to know noted judges? And wherever did he get his grace? There was rhythm and beauty in his every motion. Starr had never had such a splendid opportunity to look at him before, for in all that sea of faces she knew hers would be lost to him, and she might watch him at her will.

"Daddy, did you know that Michael was up there?" she asked after a while when her father's friend went back to his seat.

"Michael? No, where? On the platform? I wonder what in the world he is doing there? He must be mixed up in this thing somehow, I understand he's stuck at his mission work. I tried to stop him several years ago. Told him it would ruin his prospects, but he was too stubborn to give up. So he's here!"

And Mr. Endicott searched out Michael and studied the beautiful face keenly, looking in vain for any marks of degradation or fast living. The head was lifted with its conquering look; the eyes shone forth like jewels.

Michael was a man, a son--to be proud of, he told himself, and breathed a heavy sigh. That was one time when his stubbornness had not conquered, and he found himself glad in spite of himself that it had not.

The opening exercises were mere preliminary speeches and resolutions, mixed with music, and interspersed by the introduction of the mayor of the city and one or two other notables who said a few apathetic words of commendation for the work in hand and retired on their laurels. "I understand this Dr. Glidden who is to speak is quite an eloquent fellow,"

said Starr's father as the President got up to introduce the speaker of the evening whom all had come to hear. "The man who was just talking with me says he is really worth hearing. If he grows tiresome we will slip out. I wonder which one he is? He must be that man with the iron-gray hair over there."

"Oh, I don't want to go out," said Starr. "I like it. I never was in a great meeting like this. I like to hear them cheer."

Her cheeks were rosy, for in her heart she was finding out that she had a great longing to stay there and watch Michael a little longer.

"I am sorry to have to tell you that our friend and advertised speaker for the evening was called away by the sudden and serious illness of his mother, and left for the West on the six o'clock express," said the chairman in his inadequate little voice that seemed always straining beyond its height and never accomplishing anything in the way of being heard.

A sigh of disappointment swept over the part of the audience near enough to the platform to hear, and some men reached for their hats.

"Well, now that's a pity," whispered Endicott. "I guess we better go before they slip in any dry old subst.i.tutes. I've been seen here, that's enough."

But Starr laid a detaining hand on her father's arm.

"Wait a little, Daddy," she said softly.

"But he has sent a subst.i.tute," went on the chairman, "a man whom he says is a hundred per cent. better able to talk on the subject than himself. He spoke to me from the station 'phone just before he left and told me that he felt that you would all agree he had done well to go when you had heard the man whom he has sent in his place. I have the pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Michael Endicott who will speak to you this evening on the "Needs of the Tenement Dwellers"--Mr. Endicott."

Amid the silence that ensued after the feebly-polite applause Michael rose.

For just an instant he stood, looking over the audience and a strange subtle thrill ran over the vast a.s.semblage.

Then Michael, insensibly measuring the s.p.a.cious hall, flung his clear, beautiful voice out into it, and reached the uttermost bounds of the room.

"Did you know that there are in this city now seventy-one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven totally dark rooms; some of them connected with an air-shaft twenty-eight inches wide and seventy feet deep; many of them absolutely without access to even a dark shaft; and that these rooms are the only place in the whole wide, beautiful world for thousands of little children, unless they stay in the street?"

The sentence shot through the audience like a great deliberate bolt of lightning that crashed through the hearts of the hearers and tore away every vestige of their complacency. The people sat up and took notice.

Starr thrilled and trembled, she knew not why.

"There is a tenement with rooms like this, a 'dumb-bell' tenement, it is called, in the alley where, for aught I know, I was born--"

"Oh!" The sound swept over the listeners in a great wave like a sob of protest. Men and women raised their opera gla.s.ses and looked at the speaker again. They asked one another: "Who is he?" and settled quiet to hear what more he had to say.

Then Michael went on to tell of three dark little rooms in "his" tenement where a family of eight, accustomed to better things, had been forced by circ.u.mstances to make their home; and where in the dark the germs of tuberculosis had been silently growing, until the whole family were infected. He spoke of a little ten-year-old girl, living in one of these little dark rooms, pushed down on the street by a playmate, an accident that would have been thought nothing of in a healthy child, but in this little one it produced tubercular meningitis and after two days of agony the child died. He told of a delicate girl, who with her brother were the sole wage earners of the family, working all day, and sewing far into the night to make clothes for the little brothers and sisters, who had fallen prey to the white plague.

He told instance after instance of sickness and death all resulting from the terrible conditions in this one tenement, until a delicate, refined looking woman down in the audience who had dropped in with her husband for a few minutes on the way to some other gathering, drew her soft mantle about her shoulders with a shiver and whispered: "Really, Charles, it can't be healthy to have such a terrible state of things in the city where we live. I should think germs would get out and float around to us. Something ought to be done to clean such low creatures out of a decent community. Do let's go now. I don't feel as if I could listen to another word. I shan't be able to enjoy the reception."

But the husband sat frowning and listening to the end of the speech, vouchsafing to her whisper only the single growl:

"Don't be a fool, Selina!"

On and on Michael went, literally taking his audience with him, through room after room of "his" tenement, showing them horrors they had never dreamed; giving them now and again a glimmer of light when he told of a curtained window with fifteen minutes of sun every morning, where a little cripple sat to watch for her sunbeam, and push her pot of geraniums along the sill that it might have the entire benefit of its brief shining. He put the audience into peals of laughter over the wit of some poor creatures in certain trying situations, showing that a sense of humor is not lacking in "the other half"; and then set them weeping over a little baby's funeral.

He told them forcibly how hard the workers were trying to clean out and improve this terrible state of things. How cruelly slow the owner of this particular tenement was even to cut windows into dark air shafts; how so far it had been impossible to discover the name of the true owner of the building, because he had for years successfully hidden behind agents who held the building in trust.

The speech closed in a mighty appeal to the people of New York to rise up in a ma.s.s and wipe out this curse of the tenements, and build in their places light, airy, clean, wholesome dwellings, where people might live and work and learn the lessons of life aright, and where sin could find no dark hole in which to hatch her loathsome offspring.

As Michael sat down amid a burst of applause such as is given to few speakers, another man stepped to the front of the platform; and the cheers of commendation were hushed somewhat, only to swell and break forth again; for this man was one of the city's great minds, and always welcome on any platform. He had been asked to make the final appeal for funds for the playgrounds. It had been considered a great stroke of luck on the part of the committee to secure him.

"My friends," said he when the hush came at last and he could be heard, "I appreciate your feelings. I would like to spend the remainder of the night in applauding the man who has just finished speaking."