The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery

by William Augustine Leahy

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  MATER DOLOROSA.

  Honora Riley, who washed for Mrs. Barlow, lived in a ramshackle,desolate district of the city which was appropriately known as "theBarrens." Colliers, sooty to the eyerims, trudging home; ashydump-pickers; women cowled in drab shawls from beneath whose foldspeeped pitchers brimmed with foam like the whipped surface of the milkpail, but the liquor was not milk; such were the sights Emily noticedwhen she called at Mrs. Riley's to inquire whether it was a spell ofillness that had prevented her from coming to wash that Monday.

  "Come in," a feeble voice answered her knock. "Oh, is it you, MissBarlow?"

  Emily saw that the supper on the table, laid for two, was untasted, andthat the eyes of the woman who sat on the chair clasping her kneesbefore her, were red.

  "We thought you might be ill, Mrs. Riley," she said.

  "It is heartsick I am, and too broken-hearted to work, dear. Land knowsI have good reason or I wouldn't fail your mother."

  "It isn't the pneumonia again, I hope."

  "Shame and loneliness have come upon me in my old age," said Mrs. Riley,wiping her tears with the corner of her tidy apron. "They've takenWalter away."

  "Who took him away?"

  "The officer came with a warrant this morning--and he my only child, andthe kindest boy to his mother, with no harm or wickedness in him at all,at all."

  Walter was Mrs. Riley's only child, the last of seven. All the othershad preceded their father to the grave, narrowing the resources of thelittle family with continual illnesses and funerals. Finally her husbandhimself, an honest roofer, had been fatally injured in a fall and hadpassed away, kissing the six-months' infant who would never know afather. This was long ago. For this child the good mother had providedby her willing labor, and he had grown to be her pride and hope, apromising boy of 14.

  "'It was a bicycle he stole,' said the officer, 'away out in thecountry.' 'But I never meant to steal it, mother,' says Walter, and theboy was that truthful he never lied to a soul that breathes. 'I nevermeant to steal it, mother,' he says," repeated Mrs. Riley softly, hergrief overmastering her.

  "Did you say Walter stole a bicycle?" asked Emily, a vague reminiscencecoming back to her.

  "It was the bad company I warned him against, especially that Fenton boyand Mrs. Watts' little imp that has more tricks in him than a monkey.'Keep away from them, Walter,' says I, but no, he would choose them forcompanions. And 'tis old Bagley, the junkman, I blame most of all. Uponmy word, I believe he put them up to the trick. What would three littleboys travel out to the country like that for, and ride away on threebicycles and then sell them to Bagley?"

  "Walter sold it, then?" said Emily, thoughtfully.

  "Indeed, Walter did not. 'Mine is safe and sound in the club-room,' sayshe; that's Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen he lets them use for a meetingplace. 'It's in the club-room,' says Walter, 'and I wouldn't sell it,mother, but I was afraid to give it back; only I never meant to stealit.'"

  "That I believe, Mrs. Riley, for I saw him take that bicycle."

  Mrs. Riley's tears stopped flowing for a moment in her surprise. ThenEmily related the story of her trip to Hillsboro and the conversation ofthe boys which she had overheard, not forgetting to explain her ownshare in frightening them away.

  "So perhaps by my officiousness I converted an innocent prank intosomething more serious," she concluded.

  "If it was the price of it only, I'd give double that, and land knowsI've no stockingful, like some that go to the city for help, for I'drather rub my knuckles off than beg," said the good woman.

  There was a piece of old carpet stuffed in one window-pane, adequate insummer, no doubt, but hardly impregnable to the winter winds--and Emilyjudged from the table before her that more than once the mother and sonhad sat down to a Barmecide feast, in which the imagination had to becalled on to help appease the palate. So it was by inheritance that theWhistler came by his aversion to Shagarach's charity.

  "I think it strange Walter and I have never become acquainted."

  "Indeed he knows all your goodness to me."

  "Is he still at school?"

  "Graduated this year, and his masters recommend him for thebest-tempered boy and as innocent--but full of the old Harry, like hisfather, that would always be dancing, even with seven children betweenhim and his youth."

  "What a pity if he should turn out bad now after you've made so manysacrifices for him."

  "Oh, for the sacrifices, Walter's willing to take his share. With hispaper route he would bring me in sometimes $2 a week, and there wasnothing he wouldn't do, distribute handbills, deliver baskets in themeat-market on Saturday nights. Look, here's the shoeblack's kit he justbought. Come in, Miss Barlow."

  Emily entered the small side room which completed Mrs. Riley's suite.

  "There's the blacking-box. Bought it himself with his own savings."

  "But he was too changeable. I should think he would have done better tostick to one thing."

  "That's what I told him. But you know how a boy is fickle-minded. 'Getme something good, mother,' says he. There's the little cradle I rockedhim in that I kept all these years--" Emily herself could hardly checkher tears at thought of the mother rocking this empty memento.

  "His Aunt Mary gave it to me--not that we couldn't afford it--plenty andto spare I had when my husband was alive, but it wasn't lucky to buy acradle for your first baby, she said, and so I rocked them all in hers,and now six of them are in heaven with their father, God ha' mercy, andWalter, all that was left me, is in the lockup this night with the badpeople."

  Walter's little room was bare but not squalid. A knockabout suit hung onpegs at one side, and a washbowl stood on a cheap commode, like aprophecy of cleanliness in the occupant.

  "Don't worry, Mrs. Riley. Since I helped Walter into this scrape, I ambound to help him out of it."

  "Heaven bless you, if you can save my Walter--and I know you would tryif you knew him. The lovingest boy, full of mischief like his father,but he'd give the blood out of his heart to a soul in trouble. Oh, wellI knew he had something on his mind all these weeks. For he wouldn't runup stairs two steps at a time, as he used to, and whistle so that it wassweeter and louder than a cage full of canaries. When I heard himwhistle low I knew it was something troubling his mind. 'Yes, mother, itis,' says he, but that was all I could get out of him."

  "Suppose I bring a very great lawyer to be his counsel," said Emily,deeply moved by the lonely mother's sorrow, and haunted, too, by a dimremembrance of the central face among the three gamins--a frankboy-face, with red lips and cheeks. "Wouldn't he stand a better chanceof getting off?"

  "Just as you say, Miss Barlow," answered the sad woman, brightening alittle.

  "He is very busy, but I feel sure that he will attend to this if I askhim. I'll see him to-night. Don't brood over it too much and never mindabout the washing. I will have Mr. Shagarach call at the station andtalk with Walter, and then let you know. Good-night."

  "Good-night and bless you," said Mrs. Riley, holding the littlecandlestick high at the landing. Emily picked her way down two crazyflights of stairs and a doorway barred with sprawling children on to thesidewalk. "While we wink, the lightning may have flashed," was a mottoshe had copied out of an old book of maxims and embroidered into herlife; so, without taking time even for a wink, she hailed a passing carthat would carry her near Shagarach's house.

  Not all that Mrs. Riley had said of her boy, the Whistler, should be setdown to a mother's partiality. Mischievous Walter was, if theunquenchable avidity for excitement which reigns at fourteen entitles aboy to such an aspersion. The five hours' rigid confinement at a schooldesk especially provoked him to perpetual fidget, and no teacher had yetbeen found who could make him buckle to his books so long. Yet he was afavorite with one and all, less because of his deft hand at the drawinglesson than because of the real salubrity of his nature, which made himexceptional among the slum children who were his fellow-pupils.

  To these very s
choolmates Walter figured as a hero, an AdmirableCrichton, invincible at all games and master of most things worthknowing for boys. There was no swimmer of his age could equal him ingrace or speed, and his dive from the top of the railroad dock wasfamous in local annals. So was his successful set-to in the brewery yardwith Lefty Dinan, the Tenth street cock-of-the walk.

  Yet for all his proficiency in the art of give, take and avoid, Walterwas the least combative of boys, being, as his mother said, "loving" indisposition. The great gray Percherons with shaggy fetlocks, that drewthe fire-engines, knew this, and admitted him to a brotherlycomradeship, bowing with delight when he patted and stroked them.Mechanics found him handy beyond his years, and often employed him atodd jobs. For he had a carpenter's eye for short distances and asurveyor's for long, and there was no tool that did not fit his fingers.If he had run away to join the circus last summer, that was not theunpardonable sin.

  Shagarach heard Emily gravely.

  "An important witness for our cause," he answered, when she hadfinished. "We surely cannot suffer him to be thrust into prison." Emilyknew that it was unnecessary for her to press the matter further, so shespent a brief evening in conversation with the quaint, affectionatemother, rarely alluding to the Floyd case or the mysterious oaf who hadso alarmed her in that oriental room.

  The following noon she ran down to the jail to see Robert,half-expecting to hear him playing the violin which she had sent him theday before. Robert's own Stradivarius, with all his other personaleffects, had been destroyed at the fire, so Emily, having begged thesheriff's permission, had pinched herself to buy him a new one asrichly toned as her slender means could purchase. Her own instrument wasthe piano, whose keys turned to silver beneath her touch, and it hadbeen in the ensemble classes of the conservatory that she and Robert(through Beulah Ware) first met. When Dr. Silsby, the botanist, who hadjust come home from the west, called yesterday, she had insisted on histaking the violin to Robert, without betraying the giver's name.However, Robert's corridor (murderers' row, the name made her indignant)was silent when she approached it, and she searched his cell vainly fora violin box.

  "Dr. Silsby has been to see you, Robert?" she asked, after the greetingsdue from sweetheart to sweetheart.

  "He came in yesterday to cheer me."

  "His usual method of cheering, I suppose."

  "Oh, yes, said he had never expected me to outlive uncle; I always actedso much older than he did," laughed Robert.

  "He is such a droll tease," said Emily, who never could be brought toadmit that Robert was overserious for his years.

  "But I made myself even with him before he went. He promised to read anarticle I had written while in prison, and took the manuscript under hisarm, little suspecting what was in store for him. You know how he abhorsmy social heresies."

  "And the article was----"

  "My 'Modest Proposal for a Consumers' Trust,' socialistic from kappa tokappa. How Jonas will writhe! The last words he spoke were a thrust atmy 'fad.' Yet every letter-carrier and uniformed employe I meet," addedRobert, returning to his natural gravity, "contented and useful,convinces me more and more that the world is moving towardco-operation."

  "But the reading will be torture to Dr. Silsby."

  "It ought to do him good. How hard that lumper works!" Several negroeswere staggering down the corridor, shouldering huge sides of beef forthe jail cuisine. "And in fifty offices within a radius of a mile menare receiving large salaries for dawdling at elegant desks two or threehours a day."

  "There are no sinecures at $10 a week," sighed Emily, drawing uponexperience for this generalization. "But did Dr. Silsby have nothingwith him when he called?"

  "I believe he had--a violin box."

  "Just so," said a cheerful voice behind them; "a violin-box, and forgotto leave it. You see I had the jacketing of that birch tree so much onmy mind," it was Dr. Silsby himself, "everything else slipped out. Youremember my speaking of the birch tree, Rob?"

  "At least seven times," answered Robert.

  "Cruelty, Miss Barlow, positive cruelty. That fine silver-birch in thejailyard--you saw it, I suppose, coming in--all peeled and naked fromthe ground as high as my reach. Wanton cruelty. Think of the winternights. It will die. It will die."

  One of Jonas Silsby's eccentricities was his keen sympathy for arboreallife, to which his rugged nature yearned even more than to the delicateproducts of the flower garden.

  "I complained to the sheriff. There ought to be an ordinance severelypunishing the barking of trees."

  "Don't they fine the boys who mutilate foliage in the parks?" askedEmily.

  "Fine! Horsewhip them! Rattan their knuckles! I'd teach them a lesson ortwo! The young barbarians! Well, cut it short, thinking of the trees, Iforgot your violin. So last night I ordered a jacket made, good canvascloth, that'll interest you, Rob, if you haven't forgotten all yourbotany in your wild----"

  "How did you like my essay, Jonas?" asked Robert, mischievously.

  "Quackery! A poultice to cure incurable diseases. Bah!"

  "But you brought the violin to-day?" asked Emily, smiling.

  "Yes, with the canvas jacket. You see it's Miss Barlow's present----"

  "What!" cried Robert.

  "There! Thunder! I've let it out. She was going to blindfold you and letyou guess the giver."

  "And the violin is in your vest pocket, I suppose?" asked Emily,innocently, on the brink of a peal of laughter.

  "The violin! Jupiter!" exclaimed Dr. Silsby, thunderstruck. "It's a boxof bulbs. I thought they were rather heavy."

  Emily and Robert had a merry time over the botanist's absentmindedness,but he insisted that the original fault lay with the young barbarianswho had upset him by unbarking the birch tree.

  There was little news to exchange except the arrest of their "importantwitness," and the lunch hour at best was only sixty minutes long, soEmily was soon forced to make her adieus and leave Robert with hissecond best friend.