Ester Ried Yet Speaking Part 6

"SATAN, HE HAS 'EM ALL THE WEEK."

"That Black Dirk is a case," said Policeman Duffer, turning hastily away from an unusually stupid man, who could not be made to understand where a certain street was. "He is the worst of the lot, _I_ believe.

Jerry Tompkins is slyer, and d.i.c.k Bolton is quicker than lightning at mischief; Nimble d.i.c.k they call him; he's a sort of ringleader; what he does the rest are apt to; but, to my thinking, Dirk is ahead of them all for evil. The rest are kind of jolly; fun seems to be about half that they are after; but Dirk, he's sullen; you never know how to take him, nor when he may burst out on you. He's dangerous. I am always looking out for something awful that he will do."

Poor Dirk! Yet he was the boy to whom Mrs. Roberts' desires had gone out the most anxiously. It was over his image that she had lingered that morning in her closet. Policeman Duffer would have been greatly astonished had he known there was that in his words which gave her courage. "Perhaps," she said to herself, with quickening breath, "oh, perhaps the poor boy is the most in danger of them all, and the Saviour, knowing it, sees ways in which I may reach him, and so presses his poor, sullen face on my memory."

"What does he do for a living?" she hastened to ask.

"Well, to the best of my knowledge, he loafs for a living. That's all I've ever known him guilty of doing. He's got a drunken father,--one of the meanest kind of drunkards. If he would go and stay drunk all the time and leave them alone they might manage; but he has spells of getting half over it, and coming home and tearing around like all possessed. Then they have times! I've been in there when it took all my strength to manage him. If he would get killed in one of his rows I'd have some hope of the rest of 'em; but he won't. That kind of folks never do get killed; it's the decent ones. A fellow was carried by here just with a broken leg,--a nice, decent boy; works hard to help his sister. He's the sort now that gets his leg broken and gets laid up for the rest of the winter. How do you account for that? He lives pretty near Black Dirk's. Of course, he's got a drunken father; they all have in that row; but if I was going in for benevolence I'd twice as soon do something for young Calkins as for any of your set; they're a bad lot.

They aren't worth lifting a finger for. Now, that's a fact."

"And yet," said Mrs. Roberts, her voice tremulous with a feeling that just then surged over her, "how can I help remembering that if the Lord Jesus had said that of us, and stayed up there in his glory, we should have been utterly without help or hope to-day?"

Very much astonished was Policeman Duffer. Ladies on all sorts of errands had consulted him. He had been presented with many tracts in his day; but rarely had a clear-voiced, earnest-eyed woman quietly confronted him with that name, as if it contained an unanswerable argument. However, he was not embarra.s.sed; it took a great deal to embarra.s.s him.

"I don't take much stock in him," he said, with a lofty toss of his head, and a careless tone, as though the question were one easy to dispose of. "I don't believe in him myself."

"Do you know him?"

Earnest eyes, raised to his face, fixed steadily on his face, while the questioner waited quietly for an answer.

Policeman Duffer was embarra.s.sed now; he was not used to being confronted with such matter-of-fact questions.

"Do I know him?" with a confused little laugh. "Why, I reckon not, ma'am; according to the popular notion he is too far away for folks to be well acquainted."

"Then popular notion is mistaken, for I know him very well indeed; and he is by no means far away. But what I meant was, Have you studied his life and character, and do you fully understand the arguments for believing in him?"

"I study the folks who profess to belong to him, ma'am, and I find that about as much as I can stand."

This was said with a saucy little laugh, and with the air of a man who believed he had produced an unanswerable argument. The steady eyes did not move from his face, and the voice which answered him had lost none of its quietness:--

"But do you think it is wise to spend your time in studying the imperfect copies, without looking at the perfect pattern? You would not take the child's careless imitation as a proof that his teacher could not write. I thank you for helping me to-day. I wish you would help my boys when you can; and I wish you would study my Master instead of me.

Good morning."

"That's a queer party!" did Policeman Duffer exclaim, as he watched her far down the street. "I'm blessed if I wouldn't like to know who she is; she ain't like the rest, somehow. _Her_ boys! Much she knows about 'em!

Her _bears_ she might as well call 'em! What does she think she can do with that set in her little hour, Sunday afternoon? Satan, he has 'em all the week, and looks after 'em sharp; and then these Christians come in of a Sunday, and mince a little, and think they can upset his doings by it. Shows their sense! But she's a curious little party; sharp, without knowing it. I'm blessed if I don't keep an eye on her, and save her from sc.r.a.pes, if I can."

Meantime, all unconscious of his good intentions, Mrs. Roberts pursued her way down the thronged avenue, and presently turned from it entirely, and moved down one of the side-streets with resolute steps. A daring thought had come into her mind; she would try to find the alley where one at least of her boys lived. It couldn't be worse than some of the alleys at home which she had penetrated. She felt certain that by following the policeman's directions she could find the place, and possibly be able to minister to the boy with a broken limb. At all events, it was necessary for her to know how her boys lived, and where they lived, if she were to reach them. But there are alleys, and _alleys_, as the venturesome lady found to her cost. This one into which she was plunging excelled anything in that line which she had ever imagined,--swarming with life in its most repulsive forms, and growing every moment more terrifying to a well-dressed woman braving its horrors alone.

She stopped in dismay at last, admitting, reluctantly, that the wisest thing she could do was to turn around and go home. Possibly the _wisest_, but not, it appeared, practicable. Where _was_ home? Down which of the cross-streets had she come? Did this one where she stood lead to it, or did it lead, as it appeared to her, in an entirely opposite direction? She looked up and down and across for some familiar landmark, and looked in vain, growing momentarily more frightened at the attention she was attracting by standing irresolutely there. Flossy s.h.i.+pley, in her girlhood days, had been almost a hopeless coward; and Flossy Roberts felt, by the throbbing of her heart, that she had not yet outgrown her girlish character. Suddenly she gave a little exclamation of delight, and with a spring forward laid her hand on the arm of one whom she recognized, none other than "Nimble d.i.c.k" himself.

"I am so glad," she said to the amazed young scamp, a little quiver of satisfaction in her voice, "so glad to have met you. Do you know you are a friend in need? I have lost my way. I cannot decide which way to turn to reach Fifth Avenue again. Will you help me, please?"

When had Nimble d.i.c.k lost an opportunity for fun at the expense of another? Here was a chance for a jolly lark! A woman scared to death because she was on Green alley. What would she think of Burk Street!

Suppose he should send her there? Only three blocks away, through a lovelier part of the city than she had seen yet, he would venture!

If the crowds here showed her too much attention, it would be worth something to see how she got through Burk Street.

"Oh, yes," he said, briskly, "I can show you the way in a twinkling. You just go down this alley till you come to the big house on the corner, that has the windows all knocked out of it; then you turn and go down that street till you get to the third crossing; then turn again to the right, and you'll be on Fifth Avenue before you know it."

Had Mrs. Roberts been looking at his face, she would have seen the wicked light dancing in his eyes over the thought that he had thus mapped out for her a walk through the very worst portion of the city, every step, of course, leading her further and further away from Fifth Avenue. The sights that she might see, and the mishaps which might occur to her,--a handsomely-dressed woman alone,--before she made her way through the horrors of these streets were too much even for Nimble d.i.c.k's imagination, who knew the locality well. He did not try to calculate them, but gave himself up to the enjoyment of imagining how long it would be before she would reach home if she followed his directions. "She won't see no swallowing serpents that I knows of," he reflected, gleefully; "but I'll miss my reckoning if she don't see what will scare her worse than they would."

But Mrs. Roberts was already "scared." She felt her heart beating hard, and knew that her cheeks were aglow with excitement and vague terror.

She was not used to walking such streets alone. She looked ahead at the way pointed out, and could see that the swarming life grew more turbid as far as her eye could reach. She felt that she could not brave its terrors unprotected. Suddenly she turned from looking down the alley, and her hand, a small, delicately-gloved hand, was again laid on Nimble d.i.c.k's arm; he could feel it trembling.

"I suppose I shall seem very foolish to you," she said, gently; "but I am afraid to walk down there alone. Would you mind going along with me to protect me? I am only a woman, you know, and we are apt to be cowards."

A very curious sensation came over Nimble d.i.c.k. He looked up the alley, and down the alley, and was glad that not one of the "fellows" was in sight. What was to become of his lark? But there was that hand still resting on his arm, with a persuasive touch in it; and he had never been appealed to for protection before,--never in his life! Was it possible that with _him_ she would not be afraid? He turned and looked at her, searchingly, a scowl on his face,--no, she was not "shamming;" her eyes were full of anxious fear, and also of pet.i.tion. Nimble d.i.c.k was amazed at himself and ashamed of himself; he did not know how to account for his sudden change of intention. But he suddenly turned in an opposite direction from the one which he had pointed out, and said, "Come on, then; I'll show you a shorter way," and strode forward.

"Oh, thank you!" she said, relief and grat.i.tude in her voice. "I shall be so much obliged to you for coming with me; I am quite bewildered; cannot decide which way I came, or anything about it. I was trying to find the house of a young man who has been hurt. A policeman told me that he lived on this street, and that his name is Calkins. I was thinking about him, and walked on without noticing, until I did not know where I was. Do you know anything of the young man?"

"You are too far down for him," said Nimble d.i.c.k. "He's quality, and lives at the upper end of the alley. That's his house, away up there.

He's hurt bad, they say; but I s'pose he'll get well. He's got a quality doctor,--a regular swell, who never come into these alleys before. He was going along when they brought Mark home, and he followed them in, and he come there again last night and this morning. I dunno what for, I'm sure. Mark Calkins can't pay no doctor's bills, if he does work regular, and pay more rent than the rest of folks."

There was a curious mixture of complaint and satisfaction in d.i.c.k's tone. Mrs. Roberts gathered from it that the young man, Mark Calkins, in whom the policeman had tried to interest her, was superior to the rest of the miserable people in the alley, and that they resented it as an insult to themselves; but that, at the same time, the reflected honor of having a "swell" doctor come into their midst, attendant upon one who really belonged to their cla.s.s, was very great. Could she possibly get a little influence over them by following up the injured young man, and giving what help was needful? She had hardly meant to call, though trying to find the house. Her method of reasoning had been something like this: "The policeman said he lived about two blocks from my poor Dirk's home. Since there has so recently been an accident, there may be something to mark the house,--a doctor pa.s.sing in, possibly, or something that shall give me a landmark, and I can have a glimpse of the outside of one of the homes." In her ignorance of life at that end of the social scale she did not know that a doctor pa.s.sing in and out, even after an accident, was a sufficiently rare occurrence to make much more of a mark than she was looking for. So absorbed had she been over the boys belonging to her cla.s.s that she had rather ignored the policeman's manifest hint to add this one to her list. Yet, was it possibly an answer to her prayer, an entering-wedge of some sort, that might open the way to influence?

"Who is the doctor?" she asked her guide, as the possibility of making an entrance through him occurred to her. "Do you know his name?"

Oh yes, d.i.c.k knew his name and where he lived, and even the names of some of his "swell" patients;--trust him for gaining information about anything that came into the alley.

"It's Dr. Everett," he said promptly, that curious touch of pride appearing again in his voice. "He lives away up among the Twenty-thirders, and he goes to Cady's house to doctor, and lots of them places where the big ones lives. I dunno how he happens to come here."

Mrs. Roberts had never heard the name, but she reflected that she was a new-comer, and wisely desisted from taking from the glory of Dr. Everett by admitting that he was not known to all the world. He might be a good doctor and a philanthropic one; his visits to this region looked like it.

"Do you know where any of the boys in our cla.s.s live?"

This was her next carefully-worded question. She did not know whether to hint that she had heard of one who lived in that alley, or whether this would be considered an insult.

"Well," said Nimble d.i.c.k, the sly twinkle coming back to his eyes that the strangeness of the situation had driven away for a moment, "I calculate that I know where I live _myself_; sometimes I do, anyhow."

"To be sure!" she said, laughing at his humor. "I should have said, where any of the others live. Of course you will give me your address, after being so kind as to see me to--some point where I am acquainted."

She had nearly said a place of safety, but checked herself in time. I am not sure, though, that d.i.c.k would have noticed it; he was lost in astonishment over the idea of giving anybody his address!

"This is Dirk Colson's house," he said, suddenly, "and he is one of our fellows."

Mrs. Roberts uttered an exclamation. The house was one of the most forlorn in the row, seeming, if the miserable state of the buildings would admit of comparison, to be more out of repair than the others. It came home to her just then, with a sudden, desolating force, that human beings, such as she was trying to reach, and such as she hoped would live in heaven forever, called such earthly habitations as these homes.

What possible idea could they ever get of heaven by calling it "home"?

"Do they have the whole of the house?"

She asked the question timidly, for the building looked very large, but she was utterly unused to city tenement life.

"The _whole_ of that house?" d.i.c.k fairly shouted the sentence, and bent himself double with laughter. "Well, I should say not, mum! As near as I can calculate, about thirty-five different families have that pleasure.

The whole of the house! Oh, my! What a greeny!" And he laughed again.

Mrs. Roberts exerted herself to laugh with him, albeit she was horror-stricken. Thirty-five families in one house! How could they be other than awful in their ways of living?

"I know almost nothing about great cities," she said; "my home was in a much smaller one."