"The daughter hesitated. I imagine she wanted to ask me several things yet,--whether I had cloven feet, for instance, and lived on spiders; but she didn"t. She went back to the other three and they moved on. That was the last I saw of them.
"I worked the rest of that day, did about three men"s work, I remember.
That night I drew my pay and went to bed; but I didn"t go to sleep. I did a lot of thinking and made up my mind to something. I decided I"d been the under dog long enough. I haven"t changed the opinion since. Next day I saw the sun when it was straight overhead and soaked the coal dust out of my skin--as much as possible.... That"s all of the fourth stage.... Hadn"t I better stop?"
The girl shook her head, but still without looking at him.
"No; I want to learn what you did after that, after you woke up."
"I went West. I hadn"t seen the sun or the sky for so long that I was hungry for it. In Omaha I fell in with a bunch of cattlemen and, as I always liked to handle stock, that settled it. I accepted an offer as herder; they didn"t call it that, but it amounted to the same. I had a half-dozen ponies, rations for six months, and something under a thousand head of stock to look after. By comparison it wasn"t work at all; only I was all alone and it took all the time, day and night. I didn"t sleep under a roof half a dozen nights from July to October. When the cattle bunched at night I simply rolled up in a blanket where they were and watched the stars until I forgot them; the next thing I knew it was morning. I had hours to read in though, hours and hours; and that was another thing I was after. For I could read, I wasn"t quite illiterate, and I was dead in earnest at last. When the Fall round-up came I quit and went to Denver, and portered in a big hotel and went to night school.
"There isn"t much to tell after this. I drifted all over the West and the Southwest during the next few years. I got the mining fever and prospected in Colorado and California and Arizona; but I never struck anything. I learned something though; and that was that it isn"t the fellow who makes a find who wins, but the chap who buys the prospect, almost invariably. That was useful. Every Winter I landed in a big city and went to school,--night school or mining school or commercial school.
Finally it dawned upon me that I was taking the long road to an end, that the short cut was to be really ready to do a thing before making the attempt. I decided to go to a university. That would take years, and meantime I had to live. I could make a living in a little city easier than a big one, so I came here.... You know the rest."
Elice Gleason sat up, her fingers locked over her knees.
"Yes, I know the rest; but--" She was silent.
"But you don"t wholly understand," completed the other. "You don"t, even yet, do you, Elice?"
"No, not entirely, even yet."
"Why I can"t forget when I wish or help being hard?"
"Yes, when you have such infinite possibilities now."
"Now," supplemented the man evenly, "when society at large couldn"t pound me down any longer or prevent my getting out of their power."
The girl did not answer.
Deliberately Roberts sat up; no longer listless or tolerantly self-a.n.a.lytic, but very wide awake, very direct.
"I"ll have to tell you a few more reasons, then; read between the lines a bit. I never did this before to any one; never will again--to any one.
But I must make you understand what made me as I am. I must; you know why. Tell me to stop when you wish, I"ll obey gladly; but don"t tell me you don"t understand.
"To begin again at the beginning. My parents abandoned me. Why? They were starved to it, forced to it. Self-preservation is the first law. I don"t clear them, but I understand. They were starving and irresponsible. I merely paid the price of relief, the price society at large demanded.
"At the first home I had afterward the man drank,--drank to forget that he, too, was an under dog. Some one again must pay the price, and I paid it. Now and then I"d succeed in selling a few papers, or do an errand, and earn a few pennies. After the manner of all lesser animals I"d try to hide with them; but he"d find me every time. He seemed to have a genius for it. He"d whip me with whatever was handy; at first for trying to hide, later, when I wouldn"t cry, because I was stubborn. Finally, after he"d got tired or satisfied, he"d steal my coppers and head for the nearest bar. Once in January I remember a lady I met on the street took me into a store and bought me a new pair of shoes. I hid them successfully for a week. One day he caught me with them on--and p.a.w.ned them.
"The old farmer the charity folks traded me to was a Lutheran. Every morning after breakfast he read prayers. He never missed a day. Then he"d send me out with one of his sons,--a grown-up man of twenty-two,--and if I didn"t do exactly as much work as the son I went hungry until I got it done if it took half the night. He also had a willow sapling he relied upon when hunger didn"t prove effective. He"d pray before he used that too,--pray with one hand gripping my neckband so I couldn"t get away. I earned a dollar a day--one single solitary dollar--when I was logging oak in the Ozarks. Day after day when we were on the haul I used to strap myself fast to the load to keep from going to sleep and rolling off under the wheels. I got so dead tired that I fell asleep walking, when I did that to keep awake. You won"t believe it, but it"s true. I"ve done it more than once.
"I was sick one day in the coal mine, deathly sick. The air at times was awful. I laid down just outside the car track. I thought I was going to die and felt distinctly pleased at the prospect. Some one reported me to the superintendent. He evidently knew the symptoms, for he came with a pail of water and soaked me where I lay, marked time, and went away. I laid there for three hours in a puddle of water and soft coal grime; then I went back to work. I know it was three hours because my time check was docked exactly that much.
"When I was going to night school in Denver the day clerk, who"d got me the place, took half my tips, the only pay I received, to permit me to hold the place. It was the rule, I discovered, the under-dog penalty.
"I said I never struck anything prospecting. I did. I struck a silver lead down in Arizona. While I was proving it a couple of other prospectors came along, dead broke--and out of provisions. I divided food with them, of course--it"s the unwritten law--and they camped for the night. We had supper together. That was the last I knew. When I came to it was thirty-six hours later and I was a hundred miles away in a cheap hotel--without even my bill paid in advance. The record showed that claim was filed on the day I disappeared. The mine is paying a hundred dollars a day now. I never saw those two prospectors again. The present owner bought of them square. I don"t hold it up against him.
"I went to night school all one winter in San Francisco with a fellow named Stuart, another under dog like myself. We roomed together in a hall-bedroom to save expense and ate fifteen-cent dinners together at the same soup-house. He clerked in a little tobacco store daytimes. I was running an express elevator. We both saved a little money above what it cost to live. Things went on in this way for four months, until the end of the winter term. One morning when I woke up I found he"d gone. I also found that the little money I"d saved was gone. They went together. I never saw either again.
"I had another friend once, I thought. It was after I"d decided to come here to the university. I was harvesting on a wheat ranch in Nebraska, making money to pay for my matriculation. He was a student too, he said, from New York State, and working for the same purpose. We worked there together all through harvest, boiled side by side in the same sun. One day he announced a telegram from home. His mother was dying. He was crazy almost because he hadn"t nearly enough money to take him back at once.
And there his mother was in New York State dying! I lent him all I had saved,--seventy odd dollars; and he gave me his note, insisted on doing so--though he hoped the Lord would strike him dead if he failed to return the loan within four days. I have that note yet. Perhaps the Lord did strike him dead. I don"t know.
"It was nearly September by this time and harvest was over, my job with it, of course; so I started on east afoot, tramping it. I wasn"t a particularly handsome specimen, but still I was clean, and I never asked for a meal without offering to work for it. Yet in the three hundred miles I covered before school opened I had four farmers" wives call the dog,--I recorded the number; and I only slept under a roof two nights.
"Even after I came here, after--Elice, don"t! I"m a brute to have done this! From the bottom of my soul I beg your pardon."
The girl was weeping repressedly, her face buried in her hands, her whole body tense.
"Elice, please don"t! I"m ashamed. I only wanted you to understand; and now--I"m simply ashamed."
"You needn"t be at all." As suddenly as it had come the storm abated, under compulsion. "I wanted to know several things very much; and now I think I do know them. At least I don"t wonder any more--why." She stood up decisively, disdaining to dry her eyes.
"But we mustn"t stop to chatter any more now," she digressed preventingly. "You made me forget all about time, and cooks should never forget that. It"s nearly sundown and father--he"ll have been hungry for two hours."
Roberts got to his feet slowly. If in the new light of understanding there was more he had intended saying that day, or if at the sudden barring of opportunity he felt disappointment, his face gave no indication of the fact. He merely smiled in tolerant appreciation of the suggestion last made.
"Doesn"t your father know the remedy for hunger yet, at his age?" he queried whimsically.
"Knows it, yes," with an odd laugh; "but it would never occur to him unless some one else suggested it."
A pause, then she looked her companion full in the face, significantly so. "He"s dependent and irresponsible as a child or--as Steve Armstrong.
They"re helpless both, absolutely, left to themselves; and speaking of that, they"re both by themselves now." She started for the motor hastily, again significantly so.
"Come, please," she requested.
CHAPTER VI
CRISIS
It was nearly dark when the big red car drew up in front of the Gleason cottage and, the girl only alighting, moved on again slowly down the street. At the second crossing beyond, out of sight of the house, it switched abruptly to the right for four blocks, into the poorer section of the town, and stopped before a battered, old-fashioned residence. A middle-aged man in his shirt sleeves sat on the step smoking a pipe. At a nod from the driver he advanced to the curb.
"Mr. Armstrong in, Edwards?" asked Roberts directly.
The man shook his head.
"Been here, has he?"
"Not since he left this morning; about ten o"clock it was."
Roberts paused, his hand on the clutch lever.
"Will you have him "phone me when he comes, please?"
"Yes, certainly."