Lo, Michael! Part 11

Then through the boy's mind there tumbled a confusion of questions all more or less unanswerable, in the midst of which he slept.

He seemed to have wandered out into the open again with the pines he loved above him, and underneath the springy needles with their slippery resinous softness; and he lay looking up into the changeless blue that covered all the heights, asking all the tumultuous questions that throbbed through his heart, asking them of G.o.d.

Silently the noises of the city slunk away and dropped into the ceaseless calm of the southland he had left. The breeze fanned his cheek, the pines whispered, and a rippling bird song touched his soul with peace. A quietness came down upon his troubled spirit, and he was satisfied to take the burden that had been laid him and to bear it greatly. The peace was upon him when he awoke, far into the next morning.

The hot June sun streamed into his stuffy room and fell aslant the bed. He was sodden and heavy with the heat and the oppression of his garments. His head ached, and he felt as nearly ill as he had ever felt in his life. The spectre of the day before confronted him in all its torturing baldness, but he faced it now and looked it squarely in the eyes. It was not conquered yet, not by any means. The sharp pain of its newness was just as great, and the deep conviction was still there that it was because of wrong that this burden was laid upon him, but there was an adjustment of his soul to the inevitable that there had not been at first.

The boy lay still for a few minutes looking out upon a new life in which everything had to be readjusted to the idea of himself and his new limitations. Heretofore in his mind there had been no height that was not his for the climbing. Now, the heights were his, but he would not climb because the heights themselves might be marred by his presence. It was wrong, it was unfair, that things should be so; but they were so, and as long as Sin and Wrong were in the world they would be so.

He must look upon life as he had looked upon every contest through his education. There were always things to be borne, hard things, but that only made the conquest greater. He must face this thing and win.

And what had he lost that had been his before? Not the beautiful girl who had been the idol of his heart all these years. She was still there, alive and well, and more beautiful than ever. His devotion might yet stand between her and harm if need arose. True, he had lost the hope of companions.h.i.+p with her, but that had been the growth of a day. He had never had much of it before, nor expected it when he came North. It would have been a glory and a joy beyond expression, but one could live without those things and be true. There was some reason for it all somewhere in the infinite he was sure.

It was not like the ordinary boy to philosophize in this way, but Michael had never been an ordinary boy. Ever his soul had been open to the greatness of the universe and sunny toward the most trying surroundings. He had come out of the hardest struggle his soul had yet met, but he had come out a man. There were lines about his pleasant mouth that had not been there the day before, which spoke of strength and self-control. There were new depths in his eyes as of one who had looked down, and seen things unspeakable, having to number himself with the lowly.

A new thought came to him while he lay there trying to take in the change that had come to him. The thought of his childhood companions, the little waifs like himself who came from the offscourings of the earth. They had loved him he knew. He recalled slowly, laboriously, little incidents from his early history. They were dim and uncertain, many of them, but little kindnesses stood out. A bad out on his foot once and how Buck had bathed it and bound it up in dirty rags, doing double duty with the newspapers for several days to save his friend from stepping. There was a bitter cold night way back as far as he could remember when he had had bad luck, and came among the others supperless and almost freezing. Buck had shared a crust and found a warm boiler-room where they crawled out of sight and slept. There were other incidents, still more blurred in his memory, but enough to recall how loyal the whole little gang had been to him. He saw once more their faces when they heard he was going away to college; blanched with horror at the separation, lighting with pleasure when he promised to return!

The years, how they had changed and separated! Where were they, these who really belonged to him; who were his rightful companions? What had the years done to them? And he had a duty toward them unperformed. How was it that he had been in the city all these hours and not even thought of going to look for those loyal souls who had stood by him so faithfully when they were all mere babies? He must go at once. He had lost his head over attempting to reach things that were not for him, and this shock had come to set him straight.

Gravely he rose at last, these thoughts surging through his brain.

The heat, the stifling air of the room, his recent struggling and the exhausting stupor made him reel dizzily as he got up, but his mettle was up now and he set his lips and went about making himself neat. He longed for a dip in the crystal waters of the little lake at college. The tiny wash-bowl of his room proved a poor subst.i.tute with its tepid water and diminutive towel.

He went out and breakfasted carefully as if it were a duty, and then, with his map in his pocket, started out to find his old haunts.

CHAPTER VIII

Thirteen years in New York had brought many changes. Some of the well-remembered landmarks were gone and new buildings in their places. A prosperous looking saloon quite palatial in its entrance marked the corner where he used to sell papers. It used to be a corner grocery store.

Saloons! Always and everywhere there were saloons! Michael looked at them wonderingly. He had quite forgotten them in his exile, for the college influence had barred them out from its vicinity.

The boy Mikky had been familiar enough with saloons, looking upon them as a necessary evil, where drinking fathers spent the money that ought to have bought their children food. He had been in and out of them commonly enough selling his papers, warming his feet, and getting a crust now and then from an uneaten bit on the lunch counter. Sometimes there had been gla.s.ses to drain, but Mikky with his observing eyes had early decided that he would have none of the stuff that sent men home to curse their little children.

College influence, while there had been little said on the subject, had filled the boy with horror for saloons and drunkards. He stood appalled now as he turned at last into an alley where familiar objects, doorsteps, turnings, cellars, met his gaze, with grog shops all along the way and sentinelling every corner.

A strange feeling came over him as memory stirred by long-forgotten sights awoke. Was this really the place, and was that opening beyond the third steps the very blind alley where Janie used to live? Things were so much dirtier, so much, worse in every way than he remembered them.

He hurried on, not noticing the attention he was attracting from the wretched little children in the gutters, though he scanned them all eagerly, hurriedly, with the, wild idea that Buck and the rest might be among them.

Yes, the alley was there, dark and ill-smelling as ever, and in its dim recesses on a dirty step a woman's figure hunched; a figure he knew at once that he had seen before and in that very spot. Who was she? What had they called her? Sally? Aunt Sal?

He hurried up to where she sat looking curiously, apathetically at him; her gray hair straggling down on her dirty cotton frock open at the neck over shrivelled yellow skin; soiled old hands hanging carelessly over slatternly garments; stockingless feet stuck into a great tattered pair of men's shoes. Nothing seemed changed since he saw her last save that the hair had been black then, and the skin not so wrinkled. Aunt Sally had been good natured always, even when she was drunk; her husband, when he came home was always drunk also, but never good natured. These things came back to the boy as he stood looking down at the wreck of a woman before him.

The bleary eyes looked up unknowing, half resentful of his intrusion.

"Aunt Sally!" impulsively cried the boyish voice. "Aren't you Aunt Sally?"

The woman looked stupidly surprised.

"I be," she said thickly, "but wot's that to yous? I beant no hant o'

yourn."

"Don't you remember Mikky?" he asked almost anxiously, for now the feeling had seized him that he must make her remember. He must find out if he could whether anything was known of his origin. Perhaps she could help him.

Perhaps, after all, he might be able to trace his family, and find at least no disgrace upon him.

"Mikky!" the woman repeated dully. She shook her head.

"Mikky!" she said again stolidly, "Wot's Mikky?"

"Don't you remember Mikky the little boy that sold papers and brought you water sometimes? Once you gave me a drink of soup from your kettle. Think!"

A dim perception came into the sodden eyes.

"Thur wus a Mikky long ago," she mused. "He had hair like a h'angel, bless the sweet chile; but he got shot an' never come back. That war long ago."

Michael took off his hat and the little light in the dark alley seemed to catch and tangle in the gleam of his hair.

The old woman started as though she had seen a vision.

"The saints presarve us!" she cried aghast, shrinking back into her doorway with raised hands, "an' who be yez? Yeh looks enough like the b'y to be the father of 'im. He'd hair loike the verra suns.h.i.+ne itself. Who be yez? Spake quick. Be ye man, b'y, er angel?"

There was something in the woman's tone that went to the heart of the lonely boy, even while he recoiled from the repulsive creature before him.

"I am just Mikky, the boy, grown a little older," he said gently, "and I've come back to see the place where I used to live, and find the people I used to know."

"Y've lost yer way thin fer shure!" said the woman slightly recovering her equilibrium. "The loikes uv yous nivver lived in dis place; fer ef yous ain't angel you's gintulmun; an' no gintulmun ivver c.u.m from the loikes o'

this. An' besoides, the b'y Mikky, I tel'd yez, was shot an' nivver comed back no more. He's loikely up wid de angels where he b'longs."

"Yes, I was shot," said Michael, "but I wasn't killed. A good man sent me to college, and I've just graduated and come back to look up my friends."

"Frinds, is it, ye'll be afther a findin'? Thin ye'd bist look ilsewhar, fer thur's no one in this alley fit to be frinds with the loikes uv you. Ef that's wot they does with b'ys at co-lidge a pity 'tis more uv um can't git shot an' go there. But ef all yous tell is thrue, moi advice to yez is, juist bate it as hoird as ivver yez kin out'n yere, an' don't yez nivver set oies on this alley agin. Ye'd better stay to co-lidge all the days uv yer loife than set fut here agin, fer juist let 'em got holt uv yez an'

they'll spile the pretty face uv ye. Look thar!" she pointed tragically toward a wreck of humanity that reeled into the alley just then. "Would yez loike to be loike that? My mon come home loike that ivvery day of his loife, rist his bones, an' he nivver knowed whin he died."

Maudlin tears rolled down the poor creature's cheeks, for they could be no tears of affection. Her man's departure from this life could have been but a relief. Michael recoiled from the sight with a sickening sadness.

Nevertheless he meant to find out if this woman knew aught of his old friends, or of his origin. He rallied his forces to answer her.

"I don't have to be like that," he said, "I've come down to look up my friends I tell you, and I want you to tell me if you know anything about my parents. Did you ever hear anything about me? Did anybody know who I was or how I came to be here?"

The old woman looked at him only half comprehending, and tried to gather her scattered faculties, but she shook her grizzled head hopelessly.

"I ain't niver laid oies on yea before, an' how cud I know whar yez c.u.m from, ner how yez cam to be here?" she answered.

He perceived that it would require patience to extract information from this source.

"Try to think," he said more gently. "Can you remember if anyone ever belonged to the little boy they called Mikky? Was there ever any mother or father, or--anybody that belonged to him at all."