To Him That Hath

by Leroy Scott

  CHAPTER IV

  THE ORDEAL OF KATE MORGAN

  That night David and Rogers had a long talk. In consequence,correspondence was re-opened with the sanitarium at Colorado Springs,and David began to spend part of his time in helping equip Rogers forthe distant struggle against death.

  During the two weeks since his exposure Rogers had not railed; he hadborne his defeat in grim, quiet despair. His bitterness did not nowdepart; he had not forgotten his defeat, and he had not forgiven theworld. But his life now had an object, and the hope, which the reallybrave always save from even the worst wreck, began to stir within him.

  The next two weeks David worked with his pen as he had never workedbefore. He was in that rare mood when things flow from one. Before theend of the two weeks he turned in to Mr. Osborne two short stories whichMr. Osborne, with the despatch a publisher gives a new author he isdesirous of holding, immediately examined, accepted and paid for at avery respectable rate. Mr. Osborne suggested a series of articles forhis magazine, spoke of more stories, assured David he would have nodifficulty in marketing his writing elsewhere; and when David left thepublisher's office it was with the exultant sense that financially hisfuture was secure.

  Mr. Osborne assured him his book was going to turn much serious thoughtto our treatment of the criminal and other wasted people, and that hisshorter writings were going to help to the same end. His publisher askedhim to speak before a club interested in reform measures, and his talk,straight from the heart and out of his own experience, made a profoundimpression. The success of this speech suggested to him another means ofhelping--the spoken word. He felt that at last his life was reallybeginning to count.

  But he realised he was still only at the beginning. Before him was thatgiant's task, conquering the respect of the world--with the repayment ofSt. Christopher's as the first step. The task would require all his mindand strength and courage and patience, for years and years andyears--with success at the end no more than doubtful.

  The more David pondered upon the ills he saw about him, the less faithdid he have in superficial reforms, the deeper did he find himself goingfor the real cure. And gradually he reached the conclusion that the ideabehind the present organization of society was wrong. That idea,stripped to its fundamentals, was selfishness--and even a mistakenselfishness: for self to gain for self all that could be gained. Underthis organization they that have the greatest chance are they that arestrong and cunning and unscrupulous, and he that is all three ingreatest measure can take most for himself. So long as the world andits people are at the mercy of such an organization, so long asself-interest is the dominant ideal--just so long will the great mass ofthe people be in poverty, just so long will crime and vice remainunchecked.

  He began to think of a new organization of society, where individualselfishness would be replaced as the fundamental idea by the interest ofthe whole people--where "all men are born free and equal" would not bemerely a handsome bit of rhetoric, but where there would be trueequality of chance--where the development of the individual in thetruest, highest sense would be possible--where that major portion ofvice and crime which spring from poverty and its ills would be wipedout, and there would remain only the vice and crime that spring from theinstincts of a gradually improving human nature. And so, without losinginterest in immediate changes that might alleviate criminal-makingconditions, David set his eyes definitely upon the great goal of afundamental change.

  Since Rogers would soon be gone, David began to look for new quarters.His pride shrunk from a boarding-house, where he knew he would be liableto snubs and insults. As money matters troubled him no longer, he leaseda small flat with a bright southern exposure, in an apartment house justoutside the poorer quarter. If he and Tom prepared most of their ownmeals they could live here more cheaply than in a boarding-house, and hecould save more to quiet Lillian Drew and to pay off the debt to St.Christopher's.

  One afternoon, while David was at the Pan-American talking to theMayor, and Kate was at her desk type-writing a manuscript, the officedoor opened and closed, and a low, satiric voice rasped across the room:

  "Hello, little girl!"

  Kate looked about, then quickly rose. Her cheeks sprang aflame. At thedoor stood Lillian Drew, smiling mockingly, her face flushed withspirits.

  "Hello, little girl!" she repeated.

  Kate's instinctive hatred of this woman, founded partly on what LillianDrew obviously was, but more on the certainty that she had some closeand secret connection with David's life, made Kate tremble. A yearbefore the wrathful words that besought to pass her lips would haveburst forth unchecked. But she controlled herself.

  "What do you want?" she demanded.

  To pain a person who stirred her antagonism, this twenty uncurbed yearshad made one of Lillian Drew's first instincts. She had observed beforethat Kate disliked her and stung under her "little girl;" consequentlyto inflict her presence and the phrase on Kate was to gratify instinct.

  She walked with a slight unsteadiness to David's chair, sat down andsmiled baitingly up into Kate's face. "I've just come around to have avisit with you, little girl. Sit down."

  Kate grew rigid. "If you want Mr. Aldrich, he's not here."

  "Oh, yes, he is. But I don't want him just yet. I want to have a visitwith you." She looked Kate up and down. "Well, now, for such a littlegirl, you're not so bad."

  Kate's eyes blazed. "I tell you he's not here. There's no use of yourwaiting."

  "I'm in no hurry at all. But you're too thin. You've got to put on tenor fifteen pounds if you expect to catch his eye."

  Kate pointed to the door. "Get out of here!--with that breath of yours!"

  The vindictive fire gathered in Lillian Drew's eyes; the return blow ofher victim had roused her pain-giving desire into wrath.

  "Oh, you want to catch him, all right!" she laughed, malignantly. "I sawthat in a second the other day from the way you looked at him. But d'youthink he'll care for a girl like you? I came the other day and found noone around but that nice father of yours. I had a little talk with him,and--well, I've got you sized up just about right. And you think you'rethe girl for him!"

  Kate took one step forward and drew back her open hand. But the handpaused in mid-blow. "You drunken she-devil!" she blazed forth, "get outof here!--or I'll have the police put you out!"

  Lillian Drew sprang up, as livid as if the hand had indeed cracked uponher cheek, and glared at the flame of hatred and wrath that was KateMorgan. Rage, abetted by liquor, had taken away every thought, everydesire, save to strike this girl down. Her hands clenched; but blowsmake only a passing hurt. All her life she had used words; words, if youhave the right sort, are a better weapon--their wound is deep,permanent.

  "You little skinny alley-cat!" she burst out furiously. "You thinkyou're going to marry him, don't you. You marry him! Oh, Lord!"

  Kate shivered with her passion. "Get out!"

  Lillian Drew gave a sharp, crunching, gloating laugh. "That's it!--youthink you're going to marry him. You think he's a thief, don't you. Youthink you're in his class. Well--let me tell you something."

  She drew close to Kate and her eyes burned upon Kate with wildvindictive triumph. "He's not a thief--he never was one!"

  "It's a lie!" cried Kate.

  "Oh, he says he is, but he's not. He never took that five thousanddollars from St. Christopher's. He pretends he did, but he didn't. Youhear that, little girl?--he didn't. Phil Morton took it. I know, becauseI got it.--D'you understand now?--that he's not a thief?--that he's tenthousand miles above you? And yet you, you skinny little nothing, you'vegot the nerve to think you're going to catch him! Oh, Lord!"

  "You're drunker than I thought!" sneered Kate.

  "If it wasn't true, d'you suppose he'd be paying me to keep still aboutit?"

  "Pay you to keep still about his not being a thief! And you want me tobelieve that too?" Kate laughed with contempt. Then she inquiredsolicitously: "Would you like a bucket of water over you to sober you abit?"
<
br />   At this moment the hall door opened and David entered the room. Hepaused in astonishment. "What's the matter?" he asked sharply.

  The two had turned at his entrance, and, their faces ablaze with anger,were now glaring at him. Kate was the first to speak, and her wordstingled with her wrath.

  "Nothing. Only this charming lady friend of yours--don't come too nearher breath!--has been telling me that you didn't take the money from theMission--that Mr. Morton did--that she got it--that you're paying hernot to tell that you're innocent."

  The colour slowly faded from David's face. He held his eyes a moment onKate's infuriate figure, and then he gazed at Lillian Drew. She gazedback at him defiantly, but the thought that her betrayal of the secretmight cut off her supplies began to cool her anger. David thought onlyof the one great fact that the truth had at last come out; and finallyhe exclaimed, almost stupidly, more in astoundment than wrath:

  "So this's how you've kept it secret!"

  Kate paled. Her eyes widened and her lips fell apart. She caught herselfagainst her desk and stared at him.

  "So--it's the truth!" she whispered with dry lips.

  But David did not hear her. His attention was all pointed at LillianDrew. "This is the way you've kept it, is it!" he said.

  "She's the only one I've told," she returned uneasily.

  Her effrontery began to flow back upon her. "She's only one more you'vegot to square things with. Come, give me a little coin and I'll get out,and give you a chance to settle with her."

  "You've had your last cent!" he said harshly.

  "Oh, no, I haven't. I don't leave till you come up with the dough!" Shesat down, and looked defiantly at him.

  Kate moved slowly, tensely, across to David, gripped his arms and turnedher white, strained face upon his.

  "So--you never took that Mission money!" Her voice was an awed,despairing whisper.

  Her tone, her fierce grip, her white face, sent through him a sickeningshiver of partial understanding. "I'm sorry--but you know the truth."

  She gazed wide-eyed at him; then her voice, still hardly more than awhisper, broke out wildly: "Yes--yes--you took it, David! Say that youtook it!"

  He was silent for a moment. "If I said so--would you believe me?" heasked.

  Her head slowly sank, and her hands fell from his arms. "Oh, David!" shegasped--a wild, choked moan of despair. She took her hat and jacket fromtheir hooks, and not stopping to put them on, not hearing the triumphant"Good-bye, little girl" of Lillian Drew, she walked out of the office.

  She moved through the acid-sharp November air, a white-faced automaton.She felt a vague, numb infinity of pain. She perceived neither thecauses of the blow nor its probable results; she merely felt its impact,and that impact had made her whole being inarticulate.

  But presently her senses began to rouse. She began to see the outlinesof her disaster, its consequences; her great vague pain separated intodistinct pangs, each agonisingly acute. She felt an impulse to cry outin the street, but her instinctive pride closed her throat. She turnedback and hurried to her room, locked herself in, and flung her hat uponthe floor and herself upon the bed.

  But even here she could not cry. All her life she had been strong,aggressive, self-defending; she had cried so rarely that she knew nothow. So she lay, dry-eyed, her whole body clenched, retched with sobsthat would not come up.

  Lillian Drew's words, "He's ten thousand miles above you," sat upon herpillow and cried into her ear. She had seen David's superior quality andhis superior training; but she and he had both been thieves--they wereboth struggling to rise clear of thievery. This commonness of experienceand of present effort had made him seem very near to her--veryattainable. It was a bond between them, a bond that limited them to oneanother. And she had steadfastly seen a closer union a little fartherahead.

  But now he was not a thief. The bond was snapped--he was ten thousandmiles above her! Her despair magnified him, diminished herself; and whenshe contrasted the two she shrunk to look upon the figure of herinsignificance. He must see her as such a pigmy--how could he ever carefor such paltriness? He never could. He was lost to her--utterly lost!

  All that afternoon she was tortured by her hopelessness. In the eveningshe became possessed by an undeniable craving to see David, and she wentto David's house and asked him to walk with her. For the first minuteafter they were in the street the silence of constraint was betweenthem. David could but know, in a vague way, of Kate's suffering; he waspained, shamed, that he was its cause.

  In the presence of her suffering, to him, with his feeling of guilt, allelse seemed trivial. But there was one matter that had to be spoken of."You've not told a soul, have you, what you learned this afternoon?" heasked.

  "No," she returned, in a muffled voice.

  "I was sure you hadn't. I was afraid this afternoon that Rogers hadoverheard, but he didn't; either you talked in low voices, or he wasasleep. No one must ever know the truth--no one--and especially Rogers."

  "Why him especially?" she asked mechanically.

  David hesitated. "Well, you see one thing that makes him feel close tome is that he believes we have both been in the same situation. In a waythat has made us brothers. If he knew otherwise, it might make adifference to him."

  "I understand!" said Kate's muffled voice.

  She asked him details of the story Lillian Drew had revealed, and sinceshe already knew so much, he told her--though he felt her interest wasnot in what he told her.

  At length--he had yielded himself to her guidance--they came out uponthe dock where they had talked a month before. She had wanted to be withhim alone, and she had thought of no better place. Despite the wind'sbeing filled with needles, they took their stand at the dock's end.

  They looked out at the river that writhed and leaped under the wind'spricking--black, save beneath the arc lamps of the Williamsburg bridge,where the rearing little wave-crests gleamed, sunk, and gleamed again.For several minutes they were silent. Then the choked words burst fromher:

  "I'm not fit to be your friend!"

  "You mustn't let this afternoon make a difference, Kate," he besought."It doesn't to me. Fit to be my friend! You are--a thousand times over!I admire you--I honour you--I'm proud to have you for a friend!"

  She quickly looked up at him. The light from the bridge lamps, a giantstring of glowing beads, lay upon her face. In it there gleamed thesudden embers of hope.

  "But can you love me--some time?" she whispered.

  It was agony to him to shake his head.

  "I knew it!" she breathed dully.

  When he saw the gray, dead despair in her face, he cried out, in hisagony and abasement:

  "Don't take it so, Kate! I'm not worthy to be the cause of so muchpain."

  She looked back at the river; the wind had set her shivering, but shedid not know she was cold. He saw that she was thinking, so he did notspeak. After several minutes she asked in a low voice:

  "Do you still love Miss Chambers?"

  He remained silent.

  "Do you?"

  "Yes."

  "As much as I love you?"

  "Yes."

  There was a pause. When she next spoke she was looking him tensely inthe face.

  "Would she love you if she knew the truth?"

  "I shall never tell her."

  "But would she love you?" she repeated, fiercely. She clutched his armsand her eyes blazed. "She'd better not!--I'd kill her!"

  The face he looked down into was that of a wild animal. He gazed at itwith fear and fascination.

  The vindictive fire began slowly to burn lower, then, at a puff, it wasout. "No!--No!" she cried, convulsively, gripping his arms tighter. "Iwouldn't! You know I wouldn't!"

  The face, so rageful a minute before, was now twitching, and the tears,that came so hard, were trembling on her lashes. Her eyes embraced hisface for several moments.

  "Ah, David!" she cried, and her words were borne upward on the sobs thatnow shook her, "even if you don't love me, Da
vid--I want you to behappy!"