Lo Michael! (18 page)

Endicott turned to the 'phone, took up the receiver and called up a number. Michael saw that the conversation was ended. Slowly, with heavy step and heavier heart, he went out of the office.

There were new lines of sadness on Michael's face that day, and when he went down to the alley that evening his gentleness with all the little “kids,” and with the older ones, was so great that they looked at him more than once with a new kind of awe and wonder. It was the gentleness of sacrifice, of sacrifice for them, that was bringing with it the pain of love.

Old Sal who came over to “look in” that evening, as she put it, shook her head as she stumped back to her rejuvenated room with its gaudy flowered wall, bit of white curtain and pot of flowers in the window, all the work of Michael and his follower Sam.

“I'm thinkin' he'll disuppeer one o' these days. Ye'll wake up an' he'll be gahn. He's not of this worrld. He'll sprid his wings an' away. He's a man-angel, thet's wot he is!”

Michael went home that night and wrote a letter to Mr. Endicott that would have broken a heart of stone, telling his inmost thought; showing his love and anguish in every sentence; and setting forth simply and unassumingly the wonderful work he was doing in the alley.

But though he waited in anxiety day after day he received not a word of reply. Endicott read the letter every word, and fairly gloated over the boy's strength, but he was too stubborn to let it be known. Also he rather enjoyed the test to which he was putting him.

Michael even watched the outgoing vessels on Saturday, looked up the passenger lists, went down to the wharf and tried to see him before he sailed, but for some reason was unable to get in touch with him.

Standing sadly on the wharf as the vessel sailed he caught sight of Endicott, but though he was sure he had been seen he received no sign of recognition, and he turned away sick at heart, and feeling as if he had for conscience's sake stabbed one that loved him.

CHAPTER XVIII

Those were trying days for Michael.

The weather had turned suddenly very warm. The office was sometimes stifling. The daily routine got upon his nerves, he who had never before known that he had nerves. There was always the aching thought that Starr was gone from him—forever—and now he had by his own word cut loose from her father—forever! His literal heart saw no hope in the future.

About that time, too, another sorrow fell upon him. He was glancing over the paper one morning on his way to the office, and his eye fell on the following item:

LONE TRAIN BANDIT HURT IN FIGHT AFTER GETTING LOOT

Captured by Conductor After
H
e Had Rifled Mail Bags on Union
Pacific Express

Topeka, Kan.
, July—. A
daring bandit was captured last night a
s
he had robbed the mail car on Union Pacific train No.——which left
Kansas City for Denver
at 10 o'clock.

The train known as the Denver
Express, carrying heavy mail, was just leaving K
ansas City, when a
man ran across the depot platform and l
eaped into the mail car through
the open door. The clerk in charge
faced the man, who aimed a revolver at him. He was
commanded to bind
and gag his f
ive associates, and obeyed. The
robber then went through
all the r
egistered pouches, stuffing the
packages into his pockets.
Then he commanded the clerk to untie his comrades.

At Bonner Springs where the train made a brief stop the bandit ordered the men to continue their work, so as not to attract the attention of
persons at the station.
When Lawrence was reached the robber dropped
from the car and ran toward the rear of the train. The conductor
summoned two Lawrence policemen and all three followed. After a quick
race, and a struggle during which the bandit's arm was broken, he was
captured. It appears that the prisoner is an old offender, for whom the police of New York have been searching in vain for the past ten months. He is known in the lower districts of New York City as “Fighting Buck,” and has a list of offenses against him too numerous to mention.

Michael did not know why his eye had been attracted to the item nor why he had read the article through to the finish. It was not the kind of thing he cared to read; yet of late all crime and criminals had held a sort of sorrowful fascination for him. “It is what I might have done if I had stayed in the alley,” he would say to himself when he heard of some terrible crime that had been committed.

But when he reached the end of the article and saw Buck's name his heart seemed to stand still.

Buck! The one of all his old comrades whom he had loved the most, who had loved him, and sacrificed for him; to whom he had written and sent money; whose brain was brighter and whose heart bigger than any of the others; for whom he had searched in vain, and found only to lose before he had seen him; whom he had hoped yet to find and to save. Buck had done this, and was caught in his guilt. And a government offense, too, robbing the mail bags! It would mean long, hard service. It would mean many years before Michael could help him to the right kind of life, even if ever.

He asked permission to leave the office that afternoon, and took the train down to the farm where Sam had been staying for some weeks. He read the article to him, hoping against hope that Sam would say there was some mistake; would know somehow that Buck was safe. But Sam listened with lowering countenance, and when the reading was finished he swore a great oath, such as he had not uttered before in Michael's presence, and Michael knew that the story must be true.

Nothing could be done now. The law must have its course, but Michael's heart was heavy with the weight of what might have been if he could but have found Buck sooner. The next day he secured permission to begin his vacation at once, and in spite of great need of his presence at Old Orchard he took the train for Kansas. He felt that he must see Buck at once.

All during that long dismal ride Michael's heart was beating over and over with the story of his own life. “I might have done this thing. I would have dared and thought it brave if I had not been taught better. I might be even now in jail with a broken arm and a useless life: the story of my crime might be bandied through the country in the newspapers if it had not been for Mr. Endicott—and little Starr! And yet I have hurt his feelings and alienated his great kindness by refusing his request. Was there no other way? Was there no other way?” And always his conscience answered, “There was no other way!”

Michael, armed with a letter from the senior Holt to a powerful member of western municipal affairs, found entrance to Buck in his miserable confinement quite possible. He dawned upon his one-time friend, out of the darkness of the cell, as a veritable angel of light. Indeed, Buck, waking from a feverish sleep on his hard little cot, moaning and cursing with the pain his arm was giving him, started up and looked at him with awe and horror! The light from the corridor caught the gold in Michael's hair and made his halo perfect; and Buck thought for the moment that some new terror had befallen him, and he was in the hands of the angel of death sent to summon him to a final judgment for all his misdeeds.

But Michael met his old friend with tenderness, and a few phrases that had been wont to express their childish loyalty; and Buck, weakened by the fever and the pain, and more than all by his own defeat and capture, broke down and wept, and Michael wept with him.

“It might have been me instead of you, Buck. If I had stayed behind, I'd have done all those things. I see it clearly. I might have been lying here and you out and free. Buck, if it could give you my chance in life, and help you see it all as I do I'd gladly lie here and take your place.”

“Mikky! Mikky!” cried Buck. “It's me own Mikky! You was allus willin' to take de rubs! But, Mikky, ef you'd hed de trainin' you'd hev made de fine robber! You'd hev been a peach an' no mistake!”

Michael had found a soft spot in the warden's heart and succeeded in doing a number of little things for Buck's comfort. He hunted up the chaplain and secured a promise from him to teach Buck to read and write, and also to read to him all letters that Buck received, until such a time as he should be able to read them for himself. He sent a pot of roses with buds and full bloom to perfume the dark cell, and he promised to write often; while Buck on his part could only say over and over; “Oh, Mikky! Mikky! Ef we wos oney kids agin! Oh, Mikky, I'll git out o' here yit an' find ye. Ye'll not be ashamed o' me. Ef I oney hadn't a bungled de job. It were a bum job! Mikky! A bum job!”

Michael saw that there was little use in talking to Buck about his sin. Buck had nothing whatever to build upon in the line of morals. To be loyal to his friends, and to do his “work” so that he would not get caught were absolutely the only articles in his creed. To get ahead of the rich, to take from them that which was theirs if he could, regardless of life or consequences, that was virtue; the rich were enemies, and his daring code of honor gave them the credit of equal courage with himself. They must outwit him or lose. If they died it was “all in the day's work” and their loss. When his turn came he would take his medicine calmly. But the trouble with Buck now was that he had “bungled the job.” It was a disgrace on his profession. Things had been going against him lately, and he was “down on his luck.”

Michael went back from the West feeling that the brief time allowed him with Buck was all too short for what he wanted to do for him; yet he felt that it had been worth the journey. Buck appreciated his sympathy, if he did not have an adequate sense of his own sinfulness. Michael had talked and pitied and tried to make Buck see, but Buck saw not, and Michael went home to hope and write and try to educate Buck through sheer love. It was all he saw to do.

It was about this time that Michael began to receive money in small sums, anonymously, through the mail. “For your work” the first was labelled and the remittances that followed had no inscriptions. They were not always addressed in the same hand, and never did he know the writing. Sometimes there would be a ten-dollar bill, sometimes a twenty, and often more, and they came irregularly, enclosed in a thin, inner envelope of foreign-looking paper. Michael wondered sometimes if Starr could have sent them, but that was impossible of course, for she knew nothing of his work, and they were always postmarked New York. He discovered that such thin foreign-looking envelopes could be had in New York, and after that he abandoned all idea of trying to solve the mystery. It was probably some queer, kind person who did not wish to be known. He accepted the help gladly and broadened his plans for the farm accordingly.

Sam and his five friends had gone down early in the spring, bunking in the old house, and enjoying the outing immensely. Under Sam's captaincy, and the tutelage of an old farmer whom Michael had found, who could not work much himself but could direct, the work had gone forward; Michael himself coming down Saturdays, and such of the tail ends of the afternoons as he could get. It is true that many mistakes were made through ignorance, and more through stupidity. It is true that no less than five times the whole gang went on a strike until Michael should return to settle some dispute between the new scientific farming that he had taught them, and some old superstition, or clumsy practice of the farmer's. But on the whole they did tolerably good work.

The farm colony had been meantime increasing. Michael picked them up in the alley; they came to him and asked to be taken on for a trial. They had heard of the experiment through Sam, or one of the other boys who had come back to the city for a day on some errand for the farm.

One glorious summer morning Michael took ten small eager newsboys down to pick wild strawberries for the day, and they came back dirty, tired, strawberry-streaked, and happy, and loudly sang the praises of Old Orchard as though it had been a Heaven. After that Michael had no trouble in transplanting any one he wished to take with him.

He found a poor wretch who had lately moved with his family to one of the crowded tenements in the alley. He was sodden in drink and going to pieces fast. Michael sobered him down, found that he used to be a master carpenter, and forthwith transplanted him to Old Orchard, family and all.

Under the hand of the skilled carpenter there sprang up immediately a colony of tents and later small one-roomed shacks or bungalows. Michael bought lumber and found apprentices to help, and the carpenter of the colony repaired barns and outhouses, fences, or built shacks, whenever the head of affairs saw fit to need another.

The only person in the whole alley whom Michael had invited in vain to the farm was old Sally. She had steadily refused to leave her gaily papered room, her curtained window and her geranium. It was a symbol of “ould Ireland” to her, and she felt afraid of this new place of Michael's. It seemed to her superstitious fancy like an immediate door to a Heaven, from which she felt herself barred by her life. It assumed a kind of terror to her thoughts. She was not ready to leave her little bit of life and take chances even for Michael. And so old Sal sat on her doorstep and watched the alley dwellers come and go, listening with interest to each new account of the farm, but never willing to see for herself. Perhaps the secret of her hesitation after all went deeper than superstition. She had received private information that Old Orchard had no Rum Shop around the corner. Old Sally could not run any risks, so she stayed at home.

But the carpenter's wife was glad to cook for the men when the busy days of planting and weeding and harvesting came, and the colony grew and grew. Two or three other men came down with their families, and helped the carpenter to build them little houses, with a bit of garden back, and a bed of flowers in front. They could see the distant sea from their tiny porches, and the river wound its salty silver way on the other hand. It was a great change from the alley. Not all could stand it, but most of them bore the summer test well. It would be when winter set its white distance upon them, chilled the flowers to slumber, and stopped the labor that the testing time would come; and Michael was thinking about that.

He began hunting out helpers for his purposes.

He found a man skilled in agricultural arts and secured his services to hold a regular school of agriculture during the winter for the men. He found a poor student at Princeton who could run up on the train daily and give simple lessons in reading and arithmetic. He impressed it upon Sam and the other young men that unless they could read for themselves enough to keep up with the new discoveries in the science other farmers would get ahead of them and grow bigger potatoes and sweeter ears of corn than they did. He kept up a continual sunny stream of eager converse with them about what they were going to do, and how the place was going to grow, until they felt as if they owned the earth and meant to show the world how well they were running it. In short, he simply poured his own spirit of enthusiasm into them, and made the whole hard summer of unaccustomed labor one great game; and when the proceeds from their first simple crops came in from the sale of such products as they did not need for their own use in the colony, Michael carefully divided it among his various workmen and at his wish they went in a body and each started a bank account at the little National Bank of the town. It was a very little of course, absurdly little, but it made the workers feel like millionaires, and word of the successes went back to the city, and more and more the people were willing to come down, until by fall there were thirty-eight men, women and children, all told, living on the farm.

Of course that made little appreciable difference in the population of the alley, for as soon as one family moved out another was ready to move in, and there was plenty of room for Michael's work to go on. Nevertheless, there were thirty-eight souls on the way to a better knowledge of life, with clean and wholesome surroundings and a chance to learn how to read and how to work.

The carpenter was set to get ready more tiny houses for the next summer's campaign, the tents were folded away, the spring wheat was all in; the fall plowing and fertilizing completed and whatever else ought to be done to a farm for its winter sleep; half a dozen cows were introduced into the settlement and a roomy chicken house and run prepared. Sam set about studying incubators, and teaching his helpers. Then when the cranberries were picked the colony settled down to its study.

The Princeton student and the agricultural student grew deeply interested in their motley school, and finally produced a young woman who came down every afternoon for a consideration, and taught a kindergarten, to which many of the prematurely grown-up mothers came also with great delight and profit, and incidentally learned how to be better, cleaner, wiser mothers. The young woman of her own accord added a cooking school for the women and girls.

Once a week Michael brought down some one from New York to amuse these poor childish people. And so the winter passed.

Once a wealthy friend of Mr. Holt asked to be taken down to see the place, and after going the rounds of the farm and making himself quite friendly roasting chestnuts around the great open fire in the “big house,” as the original cottage was called, returned to New York with many congratulations for Michael. A few days afterward he mailed to Michael the deed of the adjoining farm of one hundred acres, and Michael, radiant, wondering, began to know that his dreams for his poor downtrodden people were coming true. There would be room enough now for many a year to come for the people he needed to bring down.

Of course this had not all been done without discouragements. Some of the most hopeful of the colonists had proved unmanageable, or unwilling to work; some had run away, or smuggled in some whiskey. There had been two or three incipient rows, and more than double that number of disappointing enterprises, but yet, the work was going on.

And still, there came no word from Mr. Endicott.

Michael was holding well with his employers, and they were beginning to talk to him of a partnership with them when he was done, for he had far outstripped French in his studies, and seemed to master everything he touched with an eagerness that showed great intellectual appetite.