VI
A Good Samaritan
After such a disheartening experience in a community where I had hadthe help and countenance of a just and charitable head of the policedepartment, I went back to the smaller places. Merely because itseemed foolish to take the time to learn a new trade when I already hadone, I still sought office work. There was little difficulty infinding such employment--at humble wages; the unattainable thing wasthe keeping of it. Though I could never succeed in running it down andbringing it to bay, a pitiless Nemesis seemed to dog me from town totown. Gossiping marshals there may have been, now and then, to spreadmy story; but I had twice been given proof that another agency must beat work--a mysterious persecution that I could neither fight noroutwit, nor account for upon any reasonable hypothesis.
So the hopeless and one-sided battle went on as I fled from post topillar up and down and back and forth in the "permitted" area, doing abit of extra bookkeeping here and another there. The result was alwaysthe same. Work of that kind necessarily carried more or lessresponsibility, and in consequence I was never retained more than a fewdays at a time.
It was borne in upon me more and more that I must sink lower, into somewalk in life in which no questions were asked. This convictionimpressed itself upon me with greater emphasis at each succeedingfailure, and the decision to drop into the ranks of the unidentifiedwas finally reached in a small city in the agricultural section of theState where I had been employed for a few days in a hardware andimplement store as shipping clerk. Once more I was discharged,peremptorily, and with a reproachful reprimand for having thrustmyself, unplacarded, upon well-behaved people.
"I don't admit your right to say such things to me, Mr. Haddon," Iprotested, after the reproach had been well rubbed in. "I have givenyou good service for small pay, and there was no reason why I shouldhave furnished you with an autobiography when you didn't ask it. Inthe circumstances it seems that I am the one to be aggrieved, but I'llwaive the right to defend myself if you'll tell me where you got yourinformation."
The implement dealer was a thin, ascetic person, with cold gray eyesand two distinct sets of manners; one for his customers and another forhis employees; and the look he gave me was meant to be withering.
"I don't recognize your right to question me, at all," he objected,with the air of one who brushes an annoying insect from hiscoat-sleeve. "It is enough to say that my source of information isentirely reliable. By your own act you have placed yourself outside ofthe pale. If you break a natural law, Nature exacts the just penalty.It is the same in the moral field."
"But if any penalty were due from me I have paid it," I retorted.
"No; you have paid only a part of it--the law's part. Society stillhas its claims and they must be met; recognized and satisfied to thefinal jot and tittle."
Though this man was a church member, and a rather prominent one inSpringville--we may call the small city Springville because that isn'tits real name--I did not accuse him, even mentally, of conscioushypocrisy. What I said, upon leaving him, was that I hoped he'd neverhave to pay any of the penalties himself. I did not know then--what Ilearned later--that he was a very whited sepulchre; a man who wasgrowing rich by a systematic process of robbing his farmer customers ontime sales.
Turned out once again upon an unsympathetic world, I was minded to dowhat I had done so many times before--take the first train and vanish.But a small incident delayed the vanishing--for the moment, at least.On the way to the railroad station I saw a sight, commoner at that timein my native State than it is now, I am glad to be able to say; ayoung, farmer-looking fellow overcome by liquor, reeling and stumblingand finding the sidewalk far too narrow. He was coming toward me, andI yielded to the impulse which prompts most of us at such times; thedisposition to give the inebriate all the room he wants--to pass by,like the priest and the Levite, on the other side.
Just as I was stepping into the roadway, the drunken man collidedheavily with a telephone pole, caught clumsily at it to save himself,and fell, striking his head on the curbstone and rolling into thegutter. It was a case for the Good Samaritan, and, as it happened,that time-honored personage was at hand. Before I could edge away, asI confess I was trying to do, a clean-cut young man in the fatigueuniform of the Church militant came striding across the street.
"Here, you!" he snapped briskly to me. "Don't turn your back that wayon a man needing help! That fellow's hurt!"
We got the pole-bombarder up, between us, and truly he was hurt. Therewas a cut over one eye where he had butted into one of theclimbing-steps on the pole, and either that, or the knock on thecurbstone, had made him take the count. Since Springville wasn'tcitified enough to have a hospital or an ambulance, I supposed we wouldcarry the wounded man to the nearest drug store. But my Good Samaritanwasn't built that way. Hastily commandeering a passing dray, he mademe help him load the unconscious man into it, and the three of us weretrundled swiftly through a couple of cross streets to a--to a church, Iwas going to say, but it was to a small house beside the church.
Here, with the help of the driver, we got the John Barleycorn victiminto the house and spread him out on a clean white bed, muddy boots,sodden clothes, bloody head and all. I asked if I should go for adoctor, but the Samaritan shook his head. "No," he said; "you and Ican do all that is necessary." Then he paid the dray driver and wefell to work.
It was worth something to see that handsome, well-built youngtheologue--it didn't seem as if he could have been more than a boyfreshly out of the seminary--strip off his coat and roll up his sleevesand go to it like a veteran surgeon. In a few minutes, with such helpas I could render, he had the cut cleaned and bandaged, the red facesponged off, and the worst of the street dirt brushed from the man'sclothing.
"That is about all we can do--until he gets over the double effects ofthe hurt and the whiskey," he said, when the job was finished; andthen, with a sort of search-warrant look at me: "Are you very busy?"
I told him I was not.
"All right; you stay here with him and keep an eye on him while I goand find out who he is and where he belongs." And with that he put onhis coat and left the house.
He was gone for over an hour, and during that time I sat by the bed,keeping watch over the patient and letting my thoughts wander as theywould. Here was a little exhibition of a spirit which had beenconspicuously absent in my later experiences of the world and itspeopling. Apparently the milk of human kindness had not becomeentirely a figure of speech. One man, at least, was trying to live upto the requirements of a nominally Christian civilization, and if thisbit of rescue work were a fair sample, he was making a success of it.
I took it for granted that he was the minister of the next-door church,and that the house was its parsonage or rectory. It was a simplestory-and-a-half cottage, plainly furnished but exquisitely neat andhome-like. There were books everywhere, and an atmosphere about asmuch of the place as I could see to make me decide that it was a man'shouse--I mean that the young minister wasn't as yet sharing it with awoman. You can tell pretty well. A woman's touch about a houseinterior is as easily distinguishable as the stars on a clear night.
From my place at the bedside I could look through an open door into thesitting-room. There were easy-chairs and a writing-table and a generalair of man-comfort. Among the pictures on the walls was one of astately group of college buildings; another was a class picture takenwith a church, or perhaps it was the college chapel, for a background.
When the hour was about up, the man on the bed began to stir and showsigns that he was coming out of the unconscious fit. Pretty soon heopened his eyes and asked, in a liquor-thickened voice, where he was.I told him he had had an accident and was in the hands of his friends;and at that he dropped off to sleep, and was still sleeping when a farmwagon stopped at the cottage gate and the Good Samaritan came in. Hissearch had been successful. Our broken-winged bird was a young farmerliving a few miles out of town. The young minister had found his team,and a
friend to drive it, and both friend and team were at the gateready to take the battered one home.
With the help of the volunteer driver we got the young farmer up andout and into the wagon; and there the Samaritan outreaching ended--or Isupposed it was ended. But as a matter of fact, it was merelytransferring itself to me. As I was moving off to resume myinterrupted dash for the railroad station, Whitley--I read his name onthe notice board of the near-by church--stopped me.
"What's your hurry?" he asked; adding: "I haven't had time to getacquainted with you yet."
I answered briefly that I was leaving town, and this brought thequestioner's watch out of his pocket.
"There is no train in either direction before nine o'clock thisevening," he demurred. And then: "It is nearly six now: if you haven'tanything better to do, why not stay and take dinner with me? I'm alone bachelor-man, and I'd be mighty glad of your company."
The wagon had driven off and the street was empty. I looked mypotential host squarely in the eyes and said the first thing that cameuppermost.
"I have just been discharged from Mr. Haddon's store--for what Mr.Haddon considers to be good and sufficient cause. I don't believe youwant me at your dinner-table."
His smile was as refreshing as a cool breeze on a hot summer day.
"I don't care what Mr. Haddon has said or done to you. If you can'tgive any better reason than that----"
"But I can," I interposed. "I am a paroled convict."
Without another word he opened the gate and drew me inside with an armlinked in mine. And he didn't speak again until he had planted me inthe easiest of the big chairs before the grate fire in the cozysitting-room, and had found a couple of pipes, filling one for me andthe other for himself.
"Now, then, tell me all about it," he commanded, "You are having plentyof trouble; your face says that much. Begin back a bit and let it leadup to Mr. Zadoc Haddon as a climax, if you wish."
It had been so long since I had had a chance really to confide inanybody that I unloaded it all; the whole bitter burden of it. Whitleyheard me through patiently, and when I was done, put his finger on thesingle omission in the story.
"You haven't told me whether you did or did not use the bank's moneyfor your own account in the mining speculation," he said.
I shook my head. "I have learned by hard experience not to say muchabout that part of it."
"Why?" he asked.
"If you knew convicts you wouldn't ask. They will all tell you thatthey were innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced."
He smoked in silence for a minute or two and then said: "You are not acriminal, Weyburn."
"I am not far from it at the present time--whatever I was in thebeginning."
Another silence, and then: "It seems incredible to me that you, or anyman in your situation, should find the world so hard-hearted. It isn'thard-hearted as a whole, you know; on the contrary, it is kind andhelpful and charitable to a degree that you'd never suspect until youappeal to it. I know, because I am appealing to it every day."
Again I shook my head.
"It draws a line in its charity; and the ex-convict is on the wrongside of that line." I was going on to say more, but at that moment awhite-haired old negro in a spotless serving jacket came to the door tosay that dinner was ready, and we went together to the tiny dining-roomin the rear.
At dinner, which was the most appetizing meal I had sat down to in manya long day, Whitley told me more about himself, sparing me, as I madesure, the necessity of further talk about my own wretched experiences.He was Southern born and bred--which accounted for the old negroserving man--and Springville was his first parish north of the OhioRiver. He was enthusiastic over his work, and he seemed to forgetcompletely who and what I was as he talked of it.
Later, when we had come again to the sitting-room with its cheerfulfire, we talked of books, finding common ground in the field ofautobiography and travel. Whitley's reading in this field had beenmuch wider than mine, and his knowledge of far countries and the menwho wrote about them was a revelation to such a dabbler as I had been.Book after book was taken from the shelves and dipped into, and beforeI realized it the evening--so different from any I had enjoyed formonths and years--had slipped away and the little clock on the mantelwas chiming the half-hour after eight. It was time for me to effacemyself, and I said so--a bit unsteadily, perhaps, for the pleasantevening had been as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.
"No," said Whitley, quite definitely. "You are not going to-night. Ihave a spare bed upstairs and I want you to stay--as my guest. Beyondthat, you are not going to leave Springville merely because Mr. Haddonhas seen fit to deny you your little meed of justice and a fair show."
"It's no use," I said. "The story is out, and it will follow mewherever I go--doubtless with Mr. Haddon's help. You'd best let me gowhile the going is easy."
"No," he Insisted. "You are a part of my work--one of my reasons forexistence. Christianity means something, Weyburn, and I am here todefine its meaning in specific cases. There is a little legacy ofcommon justice due you, and I shall take it upon myself to see that youget it. As for Zadoc Haddon, you needn't worry about him. I amashamed to say that he is a member of my own church, but that doesn'tprevent him from being a wolf in sheep's clothing. I have told him soto his face, and he has tried to get me ousted--without success, sofar."
I saw difficulties and more difficulties for this generous young fellowwho was so ready to champion my cause, and it seemed only decent tospare him if I could. But at the end of my protest he summed thesituation up in a single sentence:
"What you say about me is all beside the mark; somebody has got to giveyou the chance you are needing, and the fight may just as well be madehere in Springville as anywhere. Sit down again and let's dig a littledeeper into that Mexican book of Enock's. I do like his blunt Englishway of describing things; don't you?"
Though the next three days were full of hopes and despairings for me Ishall pass over them lightly. Each day, though he did not tell me indetail what he was doing, I knew that Whitley was trying his best tofind a place for me; and I knew, too, that he was meeting with nosuccess. He was such a fine, upstanding fellow, and so full of holyzeal and enthusiasm, that it was hard for him to acknowledge defeat.But on the third evening, after a dinner at which he had tried vainlyto bridge the gaps that were continually opening out in the talk, hethrew up his hands.
"Weyburn," he began, when the pipes were lighted and he had poked thegrate fire into a roaring blaze, "don't you know, these last three dayshave come mighty near to making me lose faith in my kind. It's simplywretched--miserable!"
"I would have saved you if you had been willing to let me," I remindedhim.
"The question is much bigger than Bert Weyburn or John Whitley, or bothof them put together," he asserted soberly. "It involves the entirefabric of Christianity, and our so-called Christian civilization. TheChurch is here to shadow forth the spirit and teachings of Christ, orit isn't--one of the two. If it falls in its mission it is a hollowmockery; a thing beneath contempt. I go to my fellow Christians with asimple plea for justice for a man who needs it, and what do I get? Iam told, with all the sickening variations, that it won't do; that thething I am proposing is one of the things that 'isn't done'; thatsociety must be protected, and all that!"
"The mills of the gods," I suggested.
"Nothing of the sort! It's a radical defect in the existing scheme ofthings. Heavens and earth, Weyburn, you are not a pariah! Assumingthat you really did the thing for which you were punished--and I don'tbelieve you did--is that any reason why we should stultify ourselvesabsolutely and deny the very first principles of the religion weprofess? But I mustn't be unfair. Perhaps the fault is partly mine,after all. Perhaps I haven't done my duty by these people."
"No; the fault is not yours," I hastened to say.
"I'm hoping it is; some of it, at least. Just the same, the wretchedfact remains. You might be
the biggest villain unhung--if only youhadn't passed through the courts and the penitentiary. As you thoughtprobably was the case, your story is known all over town; though how ithas got such a wide publication in so short a time is more than I canfathom. Men whom I would bank on; men to whom I have felt that I couldgo in any conceivable extremity, have turned me down as soon as Imentioned your name. The prison story is like a big, brutal, inanimatemountain standing squarely in the way; and I--I haven't the faithneedful for its removal!"
Being under the deepest obligation to this dear young fellow who wasbruising himself for me, I said what I could to lighten his burden.But in the midst of it he got up and reached for his hat and overcoat.
"I have just thought of something," he explained hastily; "somethingthat may throw a good bit of light on this thing. You sit right hereand toast your shins. I'm going out for a little while."
He was gone for the better part of an hour, during which interval Iobeyed his injunction literally, sitting before the fire and basking inits home-like warmth; making the most of the comfort of it all before Ishould again go forth to face an inclement world. When Whitley came inand flung himself into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth hisdark eyes were blazing.
"Weyburn," he began abruptly, "what I have to tell you will stir everyevil passion you've ever harbored; and yet, in decent justice to you,it must be told. Have you ever suspected that your fight forreinstatement has been deliberately handicapped, right from thebeginning?"
"I have suspected it at times; yes," I returned. "But there is noproof."
"There _is_ proof," he shot back. "By the merest chance I stumbledupon it a few minutes ago. I went out with the intention of going toZadoc Haddon and making him tell me where he got the information thatyou are the desperate criminal he professes to believe you to be.While we were sitting here it struck me all at once that this thing wasbeing helped along by some one who had an object in view. At Haddon'shouse the doorman told me that Haddon had an appointment with anout-of-town customer and had gone to the hotel to keep it; and ratherthan wait, I went over to the Hamilton House to try to find my man. Ididn't find him; but in the lobby of the hotel somebody found me. As Iwas turning away from the desk after asking for Haddon, a heavy-setyoung man, neatly dressed, stepped up and asked if my name was Whitley.I admitted it. Then he asked if I would give him a few minutes, and wewent aside to sit facing each other in a couple of the lobby chairs.Weyburn, that young man is in the employ of a private detective agency,and what he wished to do, and did do, was to warn me that I wassheltering a dangerous criminal in my house!"
In a flash all the small mysteries that had been befogging me formonths made themselves transparently clear: the man I had called atraveling salesman who had followed me from the prison gates to thescene of my first humble effort; the memorandum Chief Callahan hadconsulted; the "outfit" that was to be notified when my nextdestination was known; the second appearance of the "salesman" on thetrain at the capital, and his disappearance when he had learned fromthe conductor the name of my next stopping-place; and after this thelong series of hitherto unaccountable blacklistings. My mouth was dry,but I contrived to tell Whitley to go on.
"I will," he conceded; "but you must promise me to control yourself.Naturally, my first impulse, when this scamp began on me, was to cuthim off short and tell him what I thought of the despicable business towhich he was lending himself. But the second thought was craftier, andI hope I may be forgiven for yielding to it. By leading him on I gotthe entire brutal story. It seems that the two old men upon whosecomplaint you were indicted knew when you were to be paroled. Theyprofess to believe that you are a menace to society; that the prisonauthorities were at fault in releasing you short of the limit of yoursentence. Hence, through his employers, they have set this man uponyour track to see to it--I use his own words--that you do not have anopportunity to rob some one else."
I suppose I should have been driven mad with vindictive fury at thisplain revelation of the true cause of most of my misfortunes, but thereis a point beyond which the beaten man cannot rise to renew the fight,and I had reached and passed it. Wherefore I found myself saying,quite calmly:
"Neither Abel Geddis nor Abner Withers would spend one copper penny forany such altruistic reason as this man has given you, Whitley. Theirmotive is strictly selfish and personal. They are either afraid that Imay go back to Glendale and try to expose them; or that I may take theshorter and surer way of balancing the account by killing them--as, atone time, I meant to."
"Oh, but my dear fellow!" Whitley protested. "In that case they wouldhardly take a course which was calculated to drive you to desperation!"
"You don't understand it all," I rejoined. "Everything has been donesecretly, and it is only by the merest chance that I have now learnedthe truth. This man you have been talking to has been following me, orkeeping track of me, ever since I left the penitentiary. I have seenhim twice, and I took him to be a traveling salesman--as he doubtlessintended I should. You can see how it was designed to work out. Witha sufficient amount of discouragement it was reasonable to assume thatthe prison bird would finally yield to the inevitable; become acriminal in fact and get himself locked up again out of harm's way."
"You think that was the motive?"
"I am as certain of it as I should be if I could read the minds ofthose two old plotters in my home town. You see, I've summered andwintered them. The only thing I can't understand is why I have been soblind; why I didn't assume all this long ago and act accordingly."
"But why, _why_ should they be so utterly lost to every sense of rightand justice; to all the promptings of common humanity? It's hideouslyincredible!"
"I have given you two reasons, and you may take your choice. It iseither the fear of death--the fear of the vengeance of a man whose lifethey have ruined, or else the transaction in which they involved me,and in which they made me their scapegoat, was more far-reaching thanI, or anybody in Glendale, supposed it was."
Whitley sat for a full minute staring absently into the fire. Then hesaid, very gently: "Now that you know the truth, what will you do?"
"I know well enough what I ought to do. We may pass over the fellow atthe Hamilton House; he is only a poor tool in the hands of the masterworkmen. I bear him no malice of the blood-letting sort. But really,Whitley, I ought to go back to Glendale and rid the earth of those twoold villains who have earned their blotting-out."
Again there was a pause, and then: "Well, why don't you do it?"
I laughed rather bitterly.
"Because all the fight has been taken out of me, Whitley. That is thereason and the only reason."
His smile was beatific. "No, it isn't," he denied. "You know youcouldn't do it; you couldn't bring yourself to do it. Maybe, in theheat of passion . . . but to go deliberately: no, Weyburn; if you thinkyou could do such a thing as that, I can tell you that I know youbetter than you know yourself."
"I merely said that that was what I ought to do. I know well enoughthat I shan't do it, but the reason is far beneath that which you aregood enough to hint at. I'm a broken man, Whitley; what I have gonethrough in the past few months has smashed my nerve. You can'tunderstand that--I don't expect you to. But if I should meet those twoold men when I leave this house, I should probably run away from themand try to hide."
"But what _will_ you do?" he queried.
"What can I do, more than I've been doing?"
Again a silence intervened.
"I wish I knew how to advise you," Whitley said at length. "If therewere only some way in which you might shake off this wretched hiredspy!"
"I can't. If I dodge him, he has only to wait until I report myselfagain to the prison authorities. The one thing I can do is to relieveyou of my threatening presence, and I'll do that now--to-night, whilethe going is good."
He was at the end of his resources, as I knew he must be, and he madeno objections. But at train-time he got up and put on his overcoat to
accompany me as far as the station. It was a rough night outside, andI tried to dissuade him, but he wouldn't have it that way. "No," hesaid; "it's my privilege to speed the parting guest, if I can do nomore than that," and so we breasted the spitting snow-storm which wassweeping the empty streets, tramping in silence until we reached theshelter of the train-shed.
It was after the train had whistled for the crossing below the townthat Whitley asked me again what I intended doing. I answered himfrankly because it was his due.
"It has come down to one of two things: day-labor, in a field where aman is merely a number on the pay-roll--or that other road which isalways open to the prison-bird."
He put his hand on my shoulder. "You are not going to take the otherroad, Weyburn," he said gravely.
"I hope not--I hope I shan't be driven to."
"You mustn't make it conditional. I know you are not a criminal; youwere not a criminal when you were convicted. You can't afford to beginto be one now."
"Neither can I afford to starve," I interposed. "Other men live bytheir wits, and so can I, if I'm driven to it. But I'll play fair withyou, Whitley. So long as I can keep body and soul together, with apick and shovel, or any other implement that comes to hand, I'll stick.I owe you that much, if only for the reason that you are--with thesingle exception of an old police chief who lives at the other edge ofthe State--the one really human being I've met since I shook hands withthe warden."
The train was in and the conductor was waving his lantern. Whitleygrasped my hand and wrung it. "Be a man, and God bless you!" he saidin low tones. "And when the pinch comes again and you are tempted tothe limit, just remember that there is a fellow back here inSpringville who believes in you, and who will limp a little all therest of his days if you stumble and fall and refuse to get up.Good-night and good-by!"