by Leroy Scott
CHAPTER VII
Larry was still gazing at where Maggie had stood, flashing her defianceat him, when Hunt came thumping down the stairway.
"Hello, young fellow; what you been doing to Maggie?" demanded thepainter.
"Why?"
"Her door was open when I came by and I called to her. She didn'tanswer, but, oh, what a look! What's in the air?"
And then Hunt noted the Duchess apart in her corner. "I say,Duchess--what were Larry and Maggie rowing about?"
"Grandmother!" Larry exclaimed with a start. "I'd forgotten you werehere! You must have heard it all--go ahead and tell him."
"Tell him yourself," returned the Duchess.
Larry and Hunt took chairs, and Larry gave the gist of what he had saidabout his decision to Barney and Old Jimmie and Maggie. The Duchess,still motionless at her desk as she had been all during Larry's scenewith Old Jimmie and Barney, and then his scene with Maggie, regardedher grandson with that emotionless, mummified face in which only thered-margined eyes showed life or interest.
"So you're going to go straight, eh?" queried Hunt. The big painter satwith his long legs sprawling in front of him, a black pipe in his mouth,and looked at Larry skeptically. "You certainly did hand a jolt to yourfriends who'd been counting on you. And yet you're sore because theywere sore at you and didn't believe in you."
"Did I say that I was sore?" queried Larry.
"No, but you're acting it. And you're sore at Maggie because she didn'tbelieve that you could make good or that you'd stick it out. Well, Idon't believe you will either."
"You're a great painter, Hunt, and a great cook--but I don't give a damnwhat you believe."
"Keep your shirt on, young fellow," Hunt responded, puffingimperturbably. "I say I believe you won't win out--but that's not sayingI don't want you to win out. If that's what you want to do, go to it,and may luck be with you, and may the devil stay in hell. The morals ofother people are out of my line--none of my business. I'm a painter, andit's my business to paint people as I find them. But Maggie certainlydid put her finger on the tough spot in your proposition: for a crook tofind a job and win the confidence of people. It's up grade all the way,and it takes ten men's nerve to stick it out to the top. Yep, Maggie wassure right!"
And then the Duchess broke her accustomed silence with her thin croak:
"Never you mind Maggie! She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn'tknow anything."
Larry looked in surprise at his grandmother. There was a flash in herold eyes; but the next moment the spark was gone.
"Sure you're up against it--but I'll be rooting for you." Hunt wasgrinning. "But say, young fellow, what made you decide to vote the otherticket?"
Larry was trained at reading faces; and in the rough-hewn, grinningfeatures of Hunt he read good-fellowship. Larry swiftly responded inkind, for from the moment he had pulled the mask of being a fool fromthe painter and shown him to be a real artist, he had felt drawn towardthis impecunious swashbuckler of the arts. So he now repeated thebusiness motives which he had presented to Barney and Old Jimmie. AsLarry talked he became more spontaneous, and after a time he was tellingof the effect upon him of seeing various shrewd men locked up andunexercised in prison. And presently his reminiscence settled upon oneprison acquaintance: a man past middle age, clever in his generation,who had already done some fifteen years of a long sentence. He was, saidLarry, grim and he rarely spoke; but a close, wordless friendship haddeveloped between them. Only once, in an unusually relaxed mood, hadthe old convict spoken of himself, but what he had then said had had agreater part in rousing Larry to his new decision than the words of anyother man.
"It was a queer story Joe let out," continued Larry. "Before he wassent away he had a kid, just a baby whose mother was dead. He told mehe wanted to have his kid brought up without ever knowing anything aboutthe kind of people he knew and the kind of life he'd lived. He wanted itto grow up among decent people. He had money put away and he had anold friend, a pal, that he'd trust with anything. So he turned over hismoney and his baby to his friend, and gave orders that the kid was tobe brought up decent, sent to school, and that the kid was never toknow anything about Joe. Of course the baby was too young then ever toremember him; and when he gets out he's going to keep absolutely clearof the kid's life--he wants his kid to have the best possible chance."
"What is his whole name, and what was he sent up for?" queried theDuchess, that flickering fire of interest once more in her old eyes.
"Joe Ellison. He was an old-time confidence man. He got caught ina jam--there had been drinking--there was some shooting--and he hadattempted manslaughter tacked on to the charge of swindling. But Joesaid everybody had been drinking and that the shooting was accidental."
"Joe Ellison--I knew him," said the Duchess. "He was about the cleverestman of his day. But I never knew he had a child. Who was this bestfriend of his?"
"Joe Ellison didn't mention his name," answered Larry. "You see Joespoke of his story only once. But he then said that he'd had lettersonce a month telling how fine the kid was getting on--till three orfour years ago when he got word that his friend had died. The way thingsstand now, Joe won't know how to find the kid when he gets out even ifhe should want to find it--and he wouldn't know it even if he saw it.Up in Sing Sing when I had nothing else to do," concluded Larry, "Itell you I thought a lot about that situation--for it certainly is somesituation: Joe Ellison for fifteen years in prison with just one bigidea in his life, the idea being the one thing he felt he was reallydoing or ever could do, his very life built on that one idea:that outside, somewhere, was his kid growing up into a fine youngperson--never guessing it had such a father--and Joe never intending tosee it again and not being able to know it if he ever should see it.I tell you, after learning Joe's story, it made me feel that I'd hadenough of the old life."
Again the Duchess spoke. "Did Joe ever mention its name?"
"No, he just spoke of it as 'his kid.'"
Larry was quiet a moment. "You see," he added, "I want to get settledbefore Joe comes out--his time's up in a few months--so that I can givehim some sort of place near me. He's all right, Joe is; but he's tooold to have any show at a fresh start if he tries to make it all on hisown."
"Larry, you haven't got such a tough piece of old brass for a heartyourself," commented Hunt. "What are your own plans?"
"I know I've got the makings of a real business man--I've already toldyou that," said Larry confidently. He had thought this out carefullyduring his days as a coal-passer and his long nights upon theeighteen-inch bunk in his cell. "I've got a lot of the finishingtouches; I know the high spots. What I need are the rudiments--thefundamentals--connecting links. You see, I had part of a businesscollege training a long time before I went to work in a broker's office,stenography and typewriting; I've been a secretary in the warden'soffice the last few months and I've brushed up on the old stuff andI'm pretty good. That ought to land me a job. Then I'm going to studynights. Of course, I'd get on faster if I could have private lessonswith one of the head men of one of these real business schools. I'd mopup this stuff about organization and management mighty quick, for thatbusiness stuff comes natural to me. A bit of that sort of going toschool would connect up and give a working unity to what I already know.But then I'll find a job and work the thing out some way. I'm in this towin out, and win out big!"
Once more the rarely heard voice of the Duchess sounded, and though thinit had a positive quality:
"You're not going to take any job at first. First thing, you're going togive all your time to those private lessons."
Larry gazed at the Duchess, surprised by the tone in which she spoke."But, grandmother, these lessons cost money. And I didn't have a thindime left when my lawyers finished with me."
"I've got plenty of money--and it's yours. And the money you get from mewill be honest money, too; the interest on loans made in my pawnshopis honest all right. It'll be better, anyhow, for you to be out in theworld a few days, getting used t
o it, before you take a job."
"Why, grandmother!"
The explanation seemed bald and inadequate, but Larry did not know whatelse to say, he was so taken aback. The Duchess, as far as he had beenable to see, had never shown much interest in him. And now, unless hewas mistaken, there was something very much like emotion quavering inher thin voice and shining in her old eyes.
"I don't interfere with what people want to do," she continued--"but,Larry, I'm glad you've decided to go straight."
And then the Duchess went on to make the longest speech that any livingperson had ever heard issue from her lips, and to reveal more thanhad yet been heard of that unmysterious mystery which lived within hershriveled, misshapen figure:
"That's what made me interested in Joe Ellison's story--his wanting toget his child clear of the life he was living; though I didn't know hehad any such ideas till you told me. Larry, I couldn't get out of thislife myself; I was part of it, I belonged to it. But I felt the same asJoe Ellison, and over forty years ago I got your mother out of it, andyour mother never came back to it. I did that much. After she died itmade me sick when you, all I've got left, began to go crooked. But I hadno control over you; I couldn't do anything. So I'm glad that at lastyou're going to go straight. I'm glad, Larry!"
The emotion that had given her voice a strange and increasing vibrance,was suddenly brought under control or snuffed out; and she added in herusual thin, mechanical tone: "The money will be ready for you in themorning."
Startled and embarrassed by this outbreak of things long hidden beneaththe dust in the secret chambers of her being, and wishing to avoidthe further embarrassment of thanks, the Duchess turned quickly andawkwardly back to her desk, and her bent old body became fixed aboveher figures. In a moment the ever-alert Hunt had out the little blockof drawing-paper he always carried in a pocket, and with swift, eagerstrokes he was sketching the outline of that bent, shrunken shape thathad subsided so swiftly from emotion to the commonplace.
Larry gazed at the Duchess in silent bewilderment. He had thought he hadknown his grandmother. He was now realizing that perhaps he did not knowhis grandmother at all.