Many Kingdoms Part 12

Hamilton's lips set.

"My _life!_" he repeated. "My precious, glad, young life! So full of happiness! So useful!" He dropped the savagely bitter tone suddenly.

"No, Frank," he said, quietly, "I won't go through life as the half of a man. I'll let the thing take its course; or if that will be too slow and too--horrible, I'll help the hobbling beast on its way. I think I'd be justified. It's too much to ask--you know it--to be hoisted through life as a remnant."

Van Buren rose, moved his chair nearer to Hamilton's, and sat down close to his friend's side. All nervousness had left him. He was again cool, scientific, professional; but with it all there was the deep sympathy and understanding of a friend.

"No, you won't," he said, firmly; "you won't do anything of the kind, and I'll tell you why you won't. Because it isn't in your make-up to play the coward. That's why. You've got to go through with it and take what comes, and do it all like the strong chap you are. If you think there won't be anything left in life, you are mistaken. You can be of a lot of use; you can do a lot of good. You will have time and inclination and money. You will be able to get around, not as quickly, but as surely. With a good man-servant you'll be entirely independent of drafts on charity or pity. Money has some beautiful uses. If you were a poor devil who hadn't a cent in the world and would be dependent on the grudging service of others, I should wish you to accept and bear, perhaps, but I could not urge you to. Now, your life is helpful to others. You can give and aid and bless. You can be a greater hero than the man who went up San Juan Hill, and there are those who will feel it."

"That is, my money is needed, and because I've got it I should drag out years of misery while I spread little financial poultices on other people's ills," returned Hamilton. "No, thanks; it's not enough good.

They can have the money just the same. That can be amputated with profit to all concerned. I'll leave it to hospitals and homes for the helpless, especially for fractional humanity--needy remnants. But I decline absolutely, once and for all, to accept the n.o.ble future you have outlined. I grant you it would be heroic. But have you ever heard of great heroism with no stimulus to arouse it?"

He raised his hand as he spoke, and brought it down with a gesture of finality. As it fell, it dropped on the little letter. Mechanically, his fingers closed on it.

His boy! His brave little boy who had not flinched or cried, because he meant to be just like Captain Hamilton. What would _he_ think when the truth came to him years hence, as it must do. What would she think now, the mother who was glad that her son should "love and admire a brave man"? The small missive was a stimulus.

Hamilton turned to Van Buren again, checking with a little shake of the head the impetuous speech that rushed to that gentleman's lips.

"Just wait one moment," he said, thoughtfully. He leaned back and shut his eyes, and as he did so the familiar scene of months past came suddenly before them--the quaint old foreign room, the great fireplace with its blazing logs, the mother, the curly haired boy. His life had been a lonely one, always, Hamilton reflected. Few, pathetically few, so far as he knew, would be affected by its continuance or its end. But the _manner_ of its end--that was a different matter. That might touch individuals far and wide by its tragic example to other desperate souls. Still, he was not their keeper. As for Charlie--

Ah, _Charlie!_ Charlie, with his childish but utter hero-worship; Charlie, with his lighted candle; Charlie, with his small-boy love and trust--Charlie would be told some little story and Charlie would soon forget. But--what would Charlie think of him some day when the truth was out--Charlie who at five could set his teeth and bear pain stoically because his hero did! Because he was "His Boy!" Hamilton's mind returned to that problem again and again and lingered there. No, he could not disappoint Charlie. Besides, Van Buren was right. There was work, creditable work to do. And to be plucky, even if only to keep a brave little chap's ideal intact, to maintain its helpful activity, was something worthy of a stanch man. Would he wish his boy to go under when the strain against the right thing was crushing?

He laid the letter down gently, deliberately, turned to his friend, and smiled as Van Buren had not seen him smile since their ingenuous boyhood days. There was that sweetness in the smile which homage to woman makes us dub "feminine," and something of it, too, in the way he laid his hand on his chum's shoulder.

"All right, old sawbones," he said, slowly. "You may do whatever has to be done. I'll face the music. Unbuilding one man may build up another."

VI

THE COMMUNITY'S SUNBEAM

Miss Clarkson looked at the small boy, and the small boy looked back at Miss Clarkson with round, unwinking eyes. In the woman's glance were sympathy and a puzzled wonder; the child's gaze expressed only a calm and complete detachment. Subtly, but unmistakably, he succeeded in conveying the impression that he regarded this human object before him because it was in his line of vision, but that he found no interest in it, nor good reason for a.s.suming an interest he did not feel: that if, indeed, he was conscious of any emotion at all, it was in the nature of a vaguely dawning desire that the object should remove itself, should cease to shut off the view from the one window of the tenement room that was his home. But it really did not matter much. Already, in his seven years of life, the small boy had decided that nothing really mattered much, and his dark, grim little face, with its deep-cut, unchildish lines, bore witness to the unwavering strength of this conviction. If the object preferred to stay--He settled himself more firmly on the rickety chair he occupied, crossed his feet with infinite care, and continued to regard the object with eyes that held the invariable expression with which they met the incidents of life, whether these incidents were the receiving of a banana from Miss Clarkson's hands, or, as had happened half an hour before, the spectacle of his dead mother being carried down-stairs.

It was not a stupid look; it was at once intent, unsympathetic, impersonal. Under it, now, its object experienced a moment of actual embarra.s.sment. Miss Clarkson was not accustomed to the indifferent gaze of human eyes, and in her philanthropic work among the tenements she had been somewhat conspicuously successful with children. They seemed always to like her, to accept her; and if her undoubted charm of face, of dress, and of smile failed to win them, Miss Clarkson was not above resorting to the aid of little gifts, of toys, even to the pernicious power of pennies. She did good, but she did it in her own way. She was young, she was rich, she was independent. She helped the poor because she pitied them, and wished to aid them, but her methods were unique, and were followed none the less serenely when, as frequently happened, they conflicted with all the accepted notions of organized philanthropy.

She had come to this room almost daily, Miss Clarkson remembered, since she had discovered the dest.i.tute Russian woman and her child there a month ago. The mother was dying of consumption; the child was neglected and hungry--yet both had an unmistakable air of birth, of breeding; and the mother's French was as perfect as the exquisitely finished manner that drew from Anne Clarkson, in the wretched tenement room, her utmost deference and courtesy. The child, too, had glints of polish.

Punctiliously he opened doors, placed chairs, bowed; punctiliously he stood when the lady stood, sat when the lady sat, met her requests for small services with composure and appreciation. And (here was the rub) each time she came, bringing in her generous wake the comforts that lightened his mother's dreary journey into another world, he received her with the air of one courteously greeting a stranger, or, at best, of one seeking an elusive memory as one surveys a half-familiar face.

Doggedly Anne Clarkson had persisted in her attentions to them both.

The mother was grateful--there was no doubt of that. Under the ministrations of the nurse Miss Clarkson supplied, under the influence of food, of medicines, and of care, she brightened out of the apathy in which her new friend had found her. But to the last she retained something of her son's unresponsiveness, and an uncommunicativeness which tagged his as hereditary. She never spoke of herself, of her friends, or of her home. She made no last requests, left no last messages. Once, as she looked at her boy, her eyeb.a.l.l.s exuded a film of moisture. Miss Clarkson interpreted this phenomenon rightly, and quietly said:

"I will see that he is well cared for." The sick woman gave her a long look, and then nodded.

"You will," she answered. "You are not of those who promise and do not perform. You are very good--you have been very good to us. Your reward should come. It does not always come to those who are good, but it should come to you. You should marry and have children, and leave this terrible country, and be happy."

The words impressed Miss Clarkson, because, as she reminded herself now, they were almost the last her protegee uttered. She considered them excessively unmodern, and strongly out of place on the lips of one whose romance had ended in disillusionment.

Well, it was over. The mother was gone. But the child remained, and his future--his immediate future, at least--must be decided here and now.

With a restless movement Anne Clarkson leaned toward him. In her abstraction she had shifted her glance from him for a few moments, and he had taken advantage of the interval to survey dispa.s.sionately the toes of the new shoes she had given to him. He glanced up now, and met her look with the singular unresponsiveness which seemed his note.

"We're going away, Ivan," she said, speaking with that artificial cheerfulness practised so universally upon the helpless and the young.

"Mother has gone, you know, and we can't stay here any more. We're going to the country, to a beautiful place where there are flowers, and birds, and dogs, and other little boys and girls. So get your cap, dear."

Ivan looked unimpressed, but he rose with instant obedience and crossed the room to its solitary closet. His little figure looked very trim in the new suit she had bought for him; she noticed how well he carried himself. His preparations for departure were humorously simple. He took his cap from its peg, put it on his head, and opened the door for her to precede him in the utter abandonment of his "home." Earlier in the day Miss Clarkson had presented to pleased neighbors the furniture and clothing of the dead woman, taking the precaution to have it fumigated in an empty room in the building. On the same impulse she had given to an old bedridden Irishwoman a few little articles that had soothed the Russian's last days: a small night-lamp, a bed-tray, and the like.

Ivan's outfit, consisting solely of the things she herself had given him, had been packed in his mother's one small foreign trunk, whose contents until then, Miss Clarkson, observed, was an ikon, quaintly framed. Of letters, of souvenirs, of any clue of any kind to the ident.i.ty of mother and son, there was none. She felt sure that the names they had given her were a.s.sumed.

Stiffly erect, Ivan waited beside the open door. Miss Clarkson gave a methodical last look around the dismantled room, and walked out of it, the child following. At the top of the stairs she turned her head sharply, a sudden curiosity uppermost in her mind. Was he glancing back? she wondered. Was he showing any emotion? Did he feel any? He seemed so horribly mature--he _must_ understand something of what this departure meant. Did he, by chance, need comforting? But Ivan was close by her side, his sombre black eyes looking straight before him, his new shoes creaking freshly as he descended the rickety steps. Miss Clarkson sighed. If only he were pretty, she reflected. There were always sentimental women ready and willing to adopt a handsome child. But even Ivan's mother would have declared him not pretty. He was merely small, and dark, and foreign, and reserved, and horribly self-contained. His black hair was perfectly straight, his lips made a straight line in his face. He had no dimples, no curls, none of the appealing graces and charms of childhood. He was seven--seven decades, she almost thought, with a sudden throb of pity for him. But he had one quality of childhood--helplessness. To that, at least, the Community to which she had finally decided to intrust him would surely respond. She took his small hand in hers as they reached the street, and after an instinctive movement of withdrawal, like the startled fluttering of a bird, he suffered it to remain there. Together they walked to the nearest corner, and stood awaiting the coming of a trolley-car, the heat of an August sun blazing upon them, the stifling odors of the tenement quarter filling their nostrils. Rude, half-naked little boys jeered at them, and made invidious remarks about Ivan's new clothes; a small girl smiled shyly at him; a wretched yellow dog snapped at his heels. To these varying attentions the child gave the same quietly observant glance, a glance without rancor as without interest. Miss Clarkson experienced a sense of utter helplessness as she watched him.

"Did you know the little girl, Ivan?" she asked, in English.

"Yes, madam."

"Do you like her?"

"No, madam."

"Why not? She seemed a nice little girl."

There was no response. She tried again.

"Are you tired, dear?"

"No, madam."

"Are you glad you are going into the country and away from the hot, dirty city?"

"No, madam."

"Would you rather stay here?"

"No, madam."

The quality of the negative was the same in all.

Miss Clarkson gave him up. When they entered the car she sank into a depressed silence, which endured until they reached the Grand Central Station. There, after she had sent off several telegrams and bought their tickets, and established herself and her charge comfortably side by side on the end seat in a drawing-room car, she again essayed sprightly conversation adapted to the understanding of the young.

"Do you know the country, Ivan?" she asked, ingratiatingly. "Have you ever been there to see the gra.s.s and the cows and the blue skies?"

"No, madam."

"You will like them very much. All little boys and girls like the country, and are very happy there."

"Yes, madam."

"Do you like to play?"