Mortmain Part 17

"Look here, what's the use wasting time," interrupted the deacon. "How do I know who you are?"

"You have only my word, sir, that is true."

"What did you say you did for a living?"

"I'm a reporter. I live by my pen, sir, and I write articles on various subjects for the newspapers. I have even written a very modest book. But the modern public has crude taste in literature," sighed McCartney.

"Well, go on, now, and tell me about your trip or whatever it was," said the deacon.

"I gave up for the time, as I said, the precarious livelihood of a s.p.a.ce writer. We sublet our rooms. I spent what little money I had saved upon a costume for my wife, and we started out making one-night stands."

"What was the name of your play?" inquired the deacon abruptly.

"'The two Orphans,'" replied McCartney without hesitation. "We got along well enough until we reached Rochester, and there the show broke down--went to the wall. We were stranded, without a cent, in a theatrical boarding house. My wife was taken down with pneumonia and little Cathie----"

"Little what?" asked the deacon.

"Short for Catherine--caught the croup. We had nowhere to turn. I p.a.w.ned my watch to pay our board bill. We were sleeping in a single room--the three of us. For days I tramped the streets of Rochester looking for some work to do, but I was absolutely friendless and could find nothing.

My wife got a little better, but little Catherine seemed to grow worse.

I p.a.w.ned my wife's wedding ring, all my clothes but those I have on, even my baby's tiny little bracelet we bought for her on her second birthday--O G.o.d, how I suffered! We talked it all over and decided that as New York was the only place where I was known, I had better return and earn enough money to send for them as soon as I could. The manager let me use his pa.s.s back to the city. I reached here three days ago, but I have found no work of any sort. Some of the press boys have shared their meals with me, but for the moment I'm penniless. Meantime my wife is lying sick in a strange household and my little girl may be dying!"

McCartney sobbed brokenly. "I'm at my last gasp. I've nowhere to sleep to-night. No money to buy breakfast. I can't even pay for a postage stamp to write to them!"

"What street did you stay in at Rochester?"

"1421 Maple Avenue," shot back McCartney. "I wish you could see my little Catherine--she's such a tiny ball of suns.h.i.+ne. Every morning she used to come and wake me, and say, 'Come, daddy, come to breaf-crust!'

She couldn't p.r.o.nounce the word right--I hope she never will. She called the little dog I gave her a fox 'terrial' dog. Some people say children are all alike. If they could only see _her_--if she's still alive. Why _I_ wouldn't give ten cents to live if I could only make sure Edith would have enough to get along on and give Catherine a decent education.

I want that girl to grow up into a fine n.o.ble woman like her mother. And to think the last time I saw her she was lying in a stuffy hall bedroom in a third-cla.s.s lodging house, her little forehead burning with fever, with my poor sick wife stretched beside her, fearing to move lest she should wake the child. She may be dead by this time, for I've had no work for three days, and I've been able to send them nothing--nothing!

They may have been turned out into the streets, for the board bill was a week overdue when I left them. Don't you see it drives me nearly mad?

I'm worse off a thousand times than if I stayed there with them.

Sometimes I think there can't be any G.o.d, for if there was He'd never let me suffer so. And all for a little money--just because I can't pay the fare back to my sick wife and dying baby--my poor, sweet, little baby!"

McCartney's voice broke and he buried his haggard face on his arms. For a moment or two neither spoke, then the deacon sighed deeply.

"You do seem to have had hard luck," he remarked awkwardly. McCartney was still too overcome with emotion to reply.

"I reckon I'll have to break my rule and help you without references. I don't believe in giving, as a rule, unless you know who you are giving to."

He put his hand in his pocket.

"But I'll do it this time." He placed two quarters upon the table.

"There, half a dollar'll keep you nicely for a while. Of course, there's no use sendin' money to Rochester. Your landlady can't turn sick folks into the street, and if she does they can go to the hospital----"

He paused, startled by the look on McCartney's face, for the latter had risen like an avenging angel, white and trembling. Pointing at the two harmless coins, he cried:

"Is that your answer to the appeal of a starving man? Is that all your religion has done for you? Is that how you obey your Lord's teachings?

'Cup of cold water' indeed! Cold water! Cold water! That's what you've got instead of blood; you withered old epidermis! You miserable, dried-up apology for a human being!" He paused for breath, sweeping the room with indignant scorn.

"I know your kind! You old Christian Shylock! You bought those chromos at an auction! You took that old sideboard for a debt--yes, a debt at eighteen per cent interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing psalms and bag your trousers with kneeling on the platforms at prayer meetings and then loan out the church's money to yourself on worthless securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. You read a penny newspaper and take books out of a circulating library. You put a petticoat on these chairs so your miserly little body won't wear out the seats."

The lean vagabond half shouted his anathema, the pallor of his face and brow darkening red from the violence of his pa.s.sion. It was the very ecstasy of anger. Before it the little man with the white hair shrank into himself, diminis.h.i.+ng into his chair, seeking moral opportunity of escape.

McCartney looked at the two coins contemptuously.

"Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "Half a dollar for a dying child and a starving woman, to say nothing of a shelterless man!" He broke into a mirthless laugh. "Allow me to return your generous answer to my application for a.s.sistance. A code of morals of my own, which doubtless you would not appreciate, compels me to restore what is obviously ten times more precious to the donor than to the recipient."

He filliped the two coins across the table into the lap of his host, who still crouched furtively with his head near the table.

"It makes me sick to look at you! Who could gaze without disgust upon the spectacle of an ossified creature like yourself, creeping through bare, deserted old age toward a grave mortgaged to the devil? Ugh! It is the horridest spectacle I have seen in a month."

"You're mad!" muttered the old man with hoa.r.s.e fearfulness.

"Sometimes, but not now!" retorted McCartney. "I'll hold my evening session for Misers a moment longer. I pity you, Lord Pinhead Penurious!

I pity you that you should have gone through life, a small term of say sixty years, in such stupidity. Sixty years of grubbing, of weighing meat and adding figures, of watching the prices fools pay for stocks, and how many days of _life_? How many good deeds? Oh, marvelous lack of wit! What know you of real happiness? Let me introduce myself, since you're so blind. What do you think I am, my good old Noddy Numbskull?"

"Crazy!" gasped the old man. "Do be quiet! Let me get you something more to eat."

"A thief, at your service. Oh, don't start! I'll not carry away your mahogany sideboard nor your bronze chandelier. I steal only to keep myself in purse--to eat. You dig to add to the column of figures in your pa.s.s book. I walk among the G.o.ds. My brain is worth twenty gray bags like yours. I have thoughts and dreams in terms to you unintelligible. I can live more in a week than haply you have done in the course of your whole crawling existence. What do you know of the spirit? Behind your altar sits a calf of gold. You grovel before it and slip out at the bottom the shekels you drop in at the top. To you the moon will always be made of green cheese, that 'orbed maiden with white fire laden'! Your hands are callous from counting money, your brain is----"

The old fellow arose. "Leave my house! Get out of here!"

He was an absurd figure, not more than five feet high, in his black broadcloth suit and string tie, as he faced McCartney's blazing eyes, and the latter laughed at him.

"I will fast enough. But you see I'm having a sensation--_living_. I'm doing good. Oh, yes, I am. If not to you, at least to myself. Do you think I'll ever forget little 'Cathie'? G.o.d! How I could have loved a real child! And I've only a cat." He laughed again. "I don't blame you for thinking me crazy--even you. Come, now, wasn't my picture of the phthisic wife and moaning child worth a place on the line--I mean, wasn't it good, eh? Worth more than two beggarly quarters? It gave me a thrill--what I need--it'll keep me alive for another twenty-four hours, without this." He held up a nickel-plated hypodermic syringe. It shone in the gaslight, and the old man started back and held out his hands.

"Don't shoot!" he cried in senile terror.

"Carrion!" cried McCartney. "Why do I waste my time on you? Why? Because I'm in your debt. I owe you little Catherine. I shall never forget her.

And you, you--you are her foster father! G.o.d forbid!"

The old man sat down resignedly at the extreme side of the table.

"By G.o.d, I pity you!" exclaimed the lean man. "Do you hear that? _I_ pity _you_--_I_!--a wretched, drugged, wilted, useless bundle of nerves twisted into the image of a man; a chap born with a silver spoon, with gifts, who tossed them all into the gutter--threw 'a pearl away richer than all his tribe'; a miserable creature who can't live without this"

(he pressed the needles into his wrist), "and yet I wouldn't change with you! I'm more of a man than you. My very wants are sweeter than any joys your brutish senses can ever feel.

"O would there were a heaven to hear!

O would there were a h.e.l.l to fear!

Dear Son of G.o.d, in mercy give My soul to flames, but let me live!

"You don't know what that means! Haven't the vaguest idea. You're a mummy. You'll be the same ten thousand years from now. I suppose you think I made it up, eh?

"I am discouraged by the street, The pacing of monotonous feet.

"That's all _you_ want. You couldn't understand anything else, and yet it's my torture, and my salvation!"

The glow came back into McCartney's eyes and he repeated:

"Yes, that picture of little Catherine was worth more than two quarters.

It ought to have been good for twenty dollars. It's worth more than that to me."