by Leroy Scott
CHAPTER I
DAVID RE-ENTERS THE WORLD
The history of the next four years of David's life is contained in thedaily programme of Croton Prison. At six o'clock the rising gongsounded; David rolled out of his iron cot, washed himself at the faucetin his cell, and got into his striped trousers and striped jacket. Atsix-thirty he lock-stepped, with a long line of fellows, to a breakfastof hash, bread and coffee. At seven he marched to shoe factory orfoundry, where he laboured till twelve, when the programme called him todinner. At one he marched back to work; at half-past five he marched tohis cell, where his supper of bread and coffee was thrust in to himthrough a wicket. He read or paced up and down till nine, when the goingout of his light sent him into his iron cot. Multiply this by fifteenhundred and the product is David's prison life.
It would be untruth to say that a sense of the good he was doingsustained a passionate happiness in David through all these years.Moments of exaltation were rare; they were the sun-blooming peaks in anexpanse of life that was otherwise low and gloom-hung. David had alwaysunderstood that prisons in their object were not only punitive--theywere reformative. But all his intelligence could not see any stronginfluence that tended to rouse and strengthen the inmates' better part.Occasional and perfunctory words from chaplains could not do it.Monotonous work, to which they were lock-stepped, from which they werelock-stepped, and which was directed and performed in the lock-step'sdeadening spirit, this could not do it. Constant silence, while eating,marching, working, could not do it. The removal for a week of a man'slight because he had spoken to a neighbour, this could not do it. Norcould a day's or two days' confinement, on the charge of "shamming" whentoo ill to work, in an utterly black dungeon on a bit of bread and a fewswallows of water.
Rather this routine, these rules, enforced unthinkingly, withoutsympathy, had an opposite energy. David felt himself being madeunintelligent--being made hard, bitter, vindictive--felt himself beingdehumanised. One day as he sat at dinner with a couple of hundred mates,silent, signalling for food with upraised fingers, a man and woman whowere being escorted about the prison by the warden, came into the room.The woman studied for several minutes these first prisoners she had everseen--then the dumb rows heard her exclaim: "Why look,--they're human!"To David the discovery was hardly less astonishing. He had beenforgetting the fact.
Yes, moments of exaltation were rare. More frequent were the dark timeswhen the callousness and stupidity of some of the regulations enragedhim, when the weight of all the walls seemed to lie upon his chest--whenhe frantically felt he must have light and air, or die;--and he cursedhis own foolishness, and would have traded the truth to the people ofSt. Christopher's for his freedom. Prometheus must often have repentedhis gift of fire. But the momentum of David's resolve carried himthrough these black stretches; and during his normal prison mood, whichwas the restless gloom of all caged animals, his mind was in control andheld him to his bargain.
But always there was with him a great fear. Was Morton's memoryretaining its potency over the people of St. Christopher's? Were theystriving to hold to their old ideals, or were they gradually looseningtheir grip and slipping back into the old easy ways of improvidence anddissipation? Perhaps, even now, they were entirely back, and his fouryears had paid for nothing. The long day carrying the liquid iron to themoulds would have been easier, the long night in the black cell wouldhave been calmer, had he had assurance that his sacrifice was fulfillingits aim. But never a word came from St. Christopher's through thoseheavy walls.
And always he thought of Helen Chambers. He could never forget the stareof her white face when he had acknowledged his guilt, how she had firsttried to speak, then turned slowly and walked away. The four walls ofhis mind were hung with that picture; wherever he turned, he saw it. Hehad wanted to spring after her and whisper his innocence, but there hadflashed up a realisation that his plan was feasible only with a perfectsecrecy, and to admit one person to his confidence might be to admit theworld. Besides, she might not believe him. So, silent, he had let herwalk from the room with his guilt.
He often wondered if she ever thought of him. If she did, it wasdoubtless only to despise him. More likely, he had passed from her mind.Perhaps she was married. That thought wrung him. He tried to still theheavy pain by looking at the impassable gulf that lay between them, andby telling himself it was natural and fitting that she should havemarried. He wondered what her husband was like, and if she were happy.But the walls were mute.
Long before his release he had decided he should settle in New York.Life would be easiest, he knew, if he were to lose himself in a new partof the world. But St. Christopher's, where four prison years and thebalance of his dishonoured life were invested, was in New York; HelenChambers was in New York. The rest of the world had no like attractions;it could hide him--that was all. But save at first while he was gaininga foothold--and could he not then lose himself among New York'smillions?--he did not desire to hide himself.
He did not care to hide himself because the prison had given him amessage, and this message he intended speaking publicly. He had ponderedlong over society's treatment of the man who breaks its law. Thattreatment seemed to him absurd, illogical. It would have been laughablygrotesque in its deforming incompetence had it not been directed athuman beings. It was a treatment bounded on one side by negligence, onthe other by severity. It maimed souls, killed souls; it was criminal.David's sense of justice and humanity demanded that he should protestagainst this great criminal--our prison system. He knew it as prisonreformers did not--from the inside. He could speak from his heart. Andas soon as he had gained a foothold, he would begin.
At length came the day of his liberation, and he found himself back inNew York, twenty dollars, his prison savings, in his pocket, theexhaustion of prison life in his flesh, and in his heart a determinationto conquer the world. He knew but one part of New York--theneighbourhood of St. Christopher's Mission--and that part drew himbecause of his interest in it, and also because he must live cheaply andthere life was on a cheap scale. He hesitated to settle in the immediateneighbourhood; but he could settle just without its edge, where he couldlook on, and perhaps pass unnoticed. He at length found a room on thefifth floor of a dingy tenement, seven or eight blocks from the Mission.The room had a chair, a bed, a promise of weekly change of sheets, and abackyard view composed of clothes-lines, bannered with the block'sunderwear, and the rear of a solid row of dreary tenements. Five yearsbefore the room would have been unbearable; now it was luxury, for itwas Freedom.
After paying the first month's rent of five dollars and buying a fewdishes, a little gas stove and a small supply of groceries, he had ninedollars left with which to face the world and make it give him place. Ifhe spent twenty cents a day for food, and spent not a cent for otherpurposes, he could eat for six weeks. But before then rent would againbe due. Four weeks he could stand out, no longer; by then he must havewon a foothold.
Well, he would do it.
By the time he had made a cupboard out of the soap-box the grocer hadgiven him and had set his room in order, dusk was falling into thegulch-like backyard and the opposite wall was springing into light at ahundred windows. He ate a dinner from his slender store, using his bedas a chair and his chair as a table, and after its signs were clearedaway he sat down and gazed across the court into the privacy of fivestrata of homes. He saw, framed by the windows, collarless men andbare-armed women sitting with their children at table; the odours of ahundred different dinners, entangled into one odour, filled hisnostrils; family talk, and the rumble and clatter of the always-crowdedstreets, came to his ears as a composite murmuring that was aninarticulate summary of life.
But none of these impressions reached his mind; that had slipped away toHelen Chambers. The question that had asked itself ten thousand timesrepeated itself again: was she married? He tried to tell himself quietlythat it was none of his affair, could make no difference to him--but thesuspense of four years was not to be strangled by self-restraint. T
hedesire to know the truth, to see her if he could, mounted to an impulsethere was no withstanding.
And another oft-asked question also came to him. Was the Mission still apower for good? And this also roused an uncontrollable desire to knowthe truth. He left his room and set out for St. Christopher's, wonderingif he would be recognised. But, though often Morton's guest, he hadmixed but little in the affairs of the Mission, and not many from thehard-working neighbourhood had been able to attend his brief trial; sohe was known by sight to few, and no one now gave him a second look.
As he came into the old streets, with here and there a little shop thathad been owned by one of Morton's followers, and here and there amongthe passers-by a face that was vaguely familiar, his suspense grew andgrew--till, when St. Christopher's loomed before him, it seemed hissuspense would almost choke him. He paused across the street in theshadow of a tenement entrance, and stared over at the club-house and atthe chapel with its spire rising into the rain-presaging night. Lightstreamed from the open door of the chapel; on the club-housewindow-sills were the indistinct shapes of flower-boxes; boys and girls,young men and women, parents, were entering the club-house. Everythingseemed just the same. But were the people the same? Had his four yearsbeen squandered--or spent to glorious purpose?
He slipped across the street and looked cautiously into the chapel.There were the three rows of pews, the plain pulpit bearing an openBible, behind which Morton used to preach, the organ at which a stoopedgirl, a shirt-waist maker, used to play the hymns and lead thecongregation's singing--all just as in other days.
The chapel was empty, save the corner of a rear pew in which sat atroubled, poorly-dressed woman, and a gray-haired man whose clericalcoat made David guess him to be Morton's successor. The voice of hisadvice was gentle and persuasive, and when the woman's rising to gorevealed his shaven face, David saw that it had strength and kindness,spirit and humility--saw that the man's vigour remained despite hisobvious sixty years.
David entered the chapel and approached the director of the Mission. Theold man held out his hand. "I'm glad to see you," he said. "Is thereanything in which I can serve you?"
David strove for a casual manner, but prison had made him too worn, toonervous, to act a part requiring so much control. "I was just--goingby," he stammered, taking the hand. "I used to know the Mission--yearsago--when Mr. Morton was here. So I came in."
"Ah, then you knew Mr. Morton!" said the director warmly.
"A--a little."
"Even to know him a little was a great privilege," he said withconviction, admiration. "He was a wonderful man!"
David braced himself for one of the two great questions of his last fouryears. "Does the neighbourhood still remember him?"
"Just as though he were still here," the director answered, with theenthusiasm an unjealous older brother may feel for the family genius.
"He has left an influence that amounts to a living, inspiring presence.That influence, more than anything I have done, has kept the people justas earnest for truer manhood and womanhood as when he left them. I feelthat I am only the assistant. He is still the real head."
David got away as quickly as he could, a mighty, quivering warmth withinhim. On the other side of the street, he gave a parting glance over hisshoulder at the chapel. He stopped short, and stared. While they hadtalked, the director of the Mission had turned on additional lights,among which had been an arc-light before the great stained-glass windowat the street end of the chapel. The window was now a splendid glow ofred and blue and purple, and printed upon its colours was this legend:
David stared at the window, weak, dizzy. There was a momentary pang ofbitterness that Morton should be so honoured, and he be what he was.Then the glow that had possessed him in the chapel flowed back upon himin even greater warmth. The window seemed to David, in his then mood,to be the perpetuation in glowing colour of Morton's influence. Itseemed to throw forth into the street, upon the chance passer-by, theinspiration of Morton's life.
Yes,--his four years had counted!
Half an hour later he took his stand against the shadowed stoop of anempty mansion in Madison Avenue, and gazed across at a great squarethree-story stone house, with a bulging conservatory running along itsleft side--the only residence in the block that had re-opened for theautumn. All thought of Morton and the Mission was gone from him. Hismind was filled only with the other great fear of his last four years.If she came out of the door he watched, if he glimpsed her beneath awindow shade, then probably she still belonged in her father'shouse--was still unmarried.
A cold drizzle had begun to fall. He drew his head down into hisupturned collar, and though his weakened body shivered, he noticedneither the rain nor the protest of his flesh. His whole being wasdirected at the house across the way. Slow minute followed slow minute.The door did not open, and he saw no one inside the windows. His heartbeat as though it would shake his body apart. The sum of four yearssuspense so weakened him that he could hardly stand. Yet he stood andwaited, waited; and he realised more keenly than ever how dear she wasto him--though to possess her was beyond his wildest dreams, and perhapshe might not even speak to her again.
At length a nearby steeple called the hour of ten. Presently a carriagebegan to turn in towards the opposite sidewalk. David, all a-tremble,his great suspense now at its climax, stepped forth from his shadow. Thecarriage stopped before the Chambers home. He hurried across the street,and a dozen paces away from the carriage he stooped and made pretense oftying his shoe-lace; but all the while his eyes were on the carriagedoor, which the footman had thrown open. First a man stepped forth, backto David, and raised an umbrella. Who? The next instant David caught theprofile. It was Mr. Chambers. After him came an ample, middle-agedwoman, brilliantly attired--Mrs. Bosworth, Mr. Chambers's widowedsister, who had been living with him since his wife's death.
A moment later Mr. Chambers was helping a second woman from thecarriage. The umbrella cut her face from David's gaze, but there was nomistaking her. So she still lived in the house of her father!
She paused an instant to speak to the footman. For a second a new fearlived in David: might she not come with her father to her father'shouse, and still be married? But at the second's end the fear wasdestroyed by the conventional three-word response of the footman. Davidwatched her go up the steps, her face hidden by the umbrella, watchedher enter and the door close behind her. Then, collapsed by the vastrelief which followed upon his vast suspense, he sank down upon thestoop, and the three words of the footman maintained a thrillingiteration in his ears.
The three words were: "Thank you, _Miss_."