To Him That Hath. Scott Leroy
who had stopped him. She wore a yellow dress of some cheap goods, with bands of bright red about the bottom of the skirt, bands of red about the short loose sleeves that left the arms bare from the elbows, a red girdle, and about the shoulders a red fulness. The dress was almost barbaric in its colouring, yet it suited her dark face, with its brilliant black eyes.
There was neither embarrassment nor over-boldness in the face; rather the composure of the woman who is acting naturally. There was a touch of hardness about the mouth and eyes, and a touch of cynicism; in ten years, David guessed, those qualities would have sculptured themselves deep into her features. But it was an alert, clear, almost pretty face – would have been decidedly pretty, in a sharp way, had the hair not been combed into a tower of a pompadour that exaggerated her face's thinness.
She did not lose an instant in speaking her errand. "I want you to promise not to lend my father a cent," she began in a concise voice. "I have to ask that of every new person that moves in the house. He's an old soak. I don't dare give him a cent. But he borrows whenever he can, and if he gets enough it's delirium tremens."
"He told me he wanted a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee," David said in excuse of himself.
"Soup and coffee! Huh! Whiskey. That's all he thinks of – whiskey. His idea of God is a bartender that keeps setting out the drinks and never strikes you for the price. If I give him a decent suit of clothes, it's pawned and he's drunk. He used to pawn the things from the house – but he don't do that any more! He mustn't have a cent. That's why I've come to ask you to turn him down the next time he tries to touch you for one of his 'loans.'"
"That's an easy promise," David answered with a smile.
"Thanks."
Her business was done, but she did not rise. Her swift eyes ran over the furnishings of the room – the bed, the crippled wash-stand, with its chipped bowl and broken-lipped pitcher, the dishes in the soap-box cupboard, the gas stove under the bed, the bare, splintered floor, the walls from which the blue kalsomine was flaking – ran over David's shapeless clothes. Then they stopped on his face.
"You're a queer bird," she said abruptly.
He started. "Queer?"
She gave a little jerk of a nod. "You didn't always live in a room like this, nor wear them kind of clothes. And you didn't learn your manners over on the Bowery neither. What's the matter? Up against it?"
David stared at her. "Don't you think there may be another queer bird in the room?" he suggested.
She was not rebuffed, but for a second she studied his face with an even sharper glance, in which there was the least glint of suspicion. "You mean me," she said. "I live across the hall with my father. When I'm at work I'm a maid in swell families – sometimes a nurse girl. Nothing queer about that."
"No – o," he said hesitatingly.
She returned to the attack. "What do you do?"
"I'm looking for work."
"What have you worked at?"
The directness with which she moved at what interested her might have amused David had that directness not been searching for what he desired for the present to conceal. "I only came to New York yesterday," he said evasively.
"But you've been in New York before?"
"Not for several years."
She was getting too close. "I'm a very stupid subject for talk," he said quickly. "Now you – you must have had some very interesting experiences in the homes of the rich. You saw the rich from the inside. Tell me about them."
She was not swerved an instant from her point. "You're very interesting. The first minute I saw you I spotted you for a queer one to be living in a place like this. What've you been doing since you were in New York before?"
David could not hold back a flush; no evasive reply was waiting at his lips. Several seconds passed. "Pardon me, but don't you think you're a little too curious?" he said with an effort.
Her penetrating eyes had not left him. Now understanding flashed into her face. She emitted a low whistle.
"So that's it, is it!" she exclaimed, her voice softer than it had been. "So you've been sent away, and just got out. And you're starting in to try the honesty game."
There was no foiling her quick penetration. He nodded his head.
He had wondered how the world would receive him. She was the first member of the free world he had met who had learned his prison record, and he waited, chokingly, her action. He expected her face to harden accusingly – expected her to rise, speak despisingly and march coldly out.
"Well, you are up against it good and hard," she said slowly. There was sympathy in her voice.
The sympathy startled him; he warmed to her. But straightway it entered his mind that she would hasten to spread her discovery, and to live in the house might then be to live amid insult.
"You have committed burglary on my mind – you have stolen my secret," he said sharply.
"Oh, but I'll never tell," she quickly returned. And David, looking at her clear face, found himself believing her.
She tried with quick questions to break into his past, but he blocked her with silence. After a time she glanced at a watch upon her breast, rose and reached for the door-knob. But David sprang quickly forward. "Allow me," he said, and opened the door for her.
The courtesy did not go unnoticed. "You must have been a real 'gun,' a regular high-flyer, in your good days," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Oh, your kind of manners don't grow on cheap crooks."
She held out her hand. "Well, I wish you luck. Come over and see me sometime. Good night."
When he had closed the door David sat down and fell to musing over his visitor. She was dressed rather too showily, but she was not coarse. She was bold, but not brazen; hers seemed the boldness, the directness, of a child or a savage. Perhaps, in this quality, she was not grown up, or not yet civilised. He wondered how a maid or a nurse girl could support a father on her earnings, as he inferred she did. He wondered how she had so quickly divined that he was fresh from prison. He remembered a yellow stain near the ends of the first two fingers of her left hand; cigarettes; and the stain made him wonder, too. And he wondered at her manner – sharp, no whit of coquetry, a touch of frank good fellow-ship at the last.
Presently a hand which had been casually fumbling in the inside pocket of his coat drew out a folded paper. It was the bulletin of the work at St. Christopher's, and he now remembered that the director of the Mission (Dr. Joseph Franklin, the bulletin gave his name) had handed it to him the night before and that he had mechanically thrust it into his pocket and forgotten it. He began to look it through with pride; in a sense it was the record of his work. He read the schedule of religious services, classes, boys' clubs and girls' clubs. Toward the middle of the latter list this item stopped him short:
Whittier Club – Members aged 17 to 20. Meets Wednesday evenings. Leader, Miss Helen Chambers.
This was Wednesday evening. David put on his hat, and ten minutes later, his coat collar turned up, his slouch hat pulled down, he was standing in the dark doorway of a tenement, his eyes fastened on the club-house entrance twenty yards down the street.
After what seemed an endless time, she appeared. Dr. Franklin was with her, evidently to escort her to her car. David gazed at her, as they came toward his doorway, with all the intensity of his great love. She was tall, almost as tall as Dr. Franklin; and she had that grace of carriage, that firm poise of bearing, which express a noble, healthy womanhood under perfect self-control. David had not seen her face last night; and he now kept his eyes upon it, waiting till it should come within the white circle of the street lamp near the doorway.
When the lamp lifted the shadows from her face, a great thrill ran through him. Ah, how beautiful it was! – beauty of contour and colour, yes, but here the fleshly beauty, which so often is merely flesh for flesh's sake, was the beautiful expression of a beautiful soul. There was a high dignity in the face, and understanding, and womanly tenderness. It was a face