MRS. JENKINS' TOMMY.
HERE came a low tapping on the green baize door of Mr. Stephens' private office. "Come," said Mr. Stephens from within, and a clerk entered.
"Is Mr. Mallery in, sir? There is a queer looking personage in the store who insists upon seeing him."
"Mallery," said Mr. Stephens, turning his head slightly, and addressing an individual farther back behind a high desk, "are you engaged?"
"Nine seventy-two—one moment, Mr. Stephens—nine eighty-one, nine ninety, one thousand. Now, sir, what is it?" and in a moment thereafter Mr. Mallery emerged. The clerk repeated his statement.
"Very well," said Theodore, "I'll be out in one moment." He still held the package of one thousand dollars which he had just counted in his hand. "There is your money, Mr. Stephens," he said, laying it down as the outer door closed on them.
"All right, is it?"
"All right."
"What have you done with the rest?"
"Locked it up."
"And the key?"
"In my pocket. Do you wish it, sir?"
"No," said Mr. Stephens, smiling. "Did you ever forget anything in your life, Theodore? I did not think you had time to turn a key before you came out."
"I turned it nevertheless," answered Theodore, significantly. "You know I don't trust that young man, sir."
"Not yet?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I hope and trust that time will prove you wrong and me right."
"I hope so, certainly," answered Theodore, dryly.
"But you don't believe it." And Mr. Stephens laughed a little as he added: "Now, Mallery, if you should happen to be mistaken this time!"
Theodore answered him only by a grave smile as he went out of the room. It was a busy spot outside—clerks and cash boys were flying hither and thither, and customers were many and impatient. Making his way through the crowd, bowing here and there to familiar faces, Theodore sought for the person who awaited him.
"A queer looking personage," the clerk had said, and over by one of the windows stood a meek-faced old woman, attired in a faded dress and shawl, and a rather startling bonnet as regarded shape. She looked as if she might be waiting or watching for somebody—at least she was not looking around with the air of a purchaser, and she was being rudely jostled every moment by thoughtless people or hurried clerks. Theodore resolved to discover for himself if this were the one in waiting, and advanced to her side.
"Can I do anything for you, madam?" he asked, with as respectful a tone as he would have used to Miss Hastings herself.
The woman turned a pair of startled eyes upon him; then seeming to be reassured, asked suddenly:
"Be you Mr. Mallery?"
"That is my name. What can I do for you?"
The old lady dropped him a very low, very odd little courtesy ere she answered:
"And I'm the widow Jenkins, and I've come—well, could I possibly see you alone for a bit of a moment? My head is kind of confused like with all this noise and running about; them little boys act as if they was most crazy anyhow, hopping about all over. I didn't know they allowed no playing in these big stores; but then you see I'm from the country, and things is queer all around; but if I only could see you all alone I wouldn't take a mite hardly of your time."
"You may come with me," answered Theodore, not stopping to explain the mystery of the cash boys, and show how very little like play their hopping about was after all. He led the way to a room opening off the private office, and giving the old lady one of the leathern arm-chairs, stood before her, and again inquired kindly:
"Now what can I do for you?"
"Well," began Mrs. Jenkins, her voice trembling with eagerness, "it's about my Tommy. He's the only boy I've got, and I'm a widow, and he lives at the Euclid House—works there, you know, and sleeps there, and all; and he's a good-natured, coaxy boy; he kind of wants to do just as everybody says; and he's promised me time and again that he wouldn't drink a mite of their stuff that they live on there, and he doesn't mean to, but they offer it to him, and the other boys they laugh at him, and kind of lead him along—and the long and short of it is, the habit is coming on him, Mr. Mallery, coming on fast. I've coaxed Tommy, and he means all right, only he don't do it; and I've been down there to Mr. Roberts, and talked to him, and he's just as smooth as glass, and the difference between him an' Tommy is that he don't mean it at all, not a word of it, any of the time. I see it in his eyes, and I've tried to coax Tommy away from there, but he thinks he can't find anything else to do, and they are good to him there, and he's kind of bent on staying, and I've done every blessed thing I could think of, and now I am at my wits' ends."
And the voluble little woman paused long enough to wipe two glistening tears from her withered cheeks, while her listener, roused and sympathetic, asked in earnest tones:
"And what is it you would like to have me do? Tommy is in danger, that is evident. I do not wonder that you are alarmed, and I am ready to help you in any possible way. Have you any plan in view in which you would like my assistance?"
Before Mrs. Jenkins answered she bestowed a look of undisguised admiration on the earnest face before her, as she said:
"They told me you'd do it. Jim said—says he, 'if that man can't help you no man can, and if he can he will. He told my Katie that last night, and I made up my mind to come right straight to you." And then she dashed eagerly into the important part of her subject. "I've laid awake nights, and I've thought and thought, and planned. Now that Mr. Roberts, he's a slippery man, and when you talk to him he says he's under orders, and he does just as he is directed. Now, according to my way of thinking, it ain't no ways likely that Mr. Hastings goes and orders him to feed them boys on rum. But then it flashed on me last night about that Mr. Hastings—why he must be a good kind of a man, he give five hundred dollars to the Orphans' Home only last week."
"He ought to," interrupted Mallery. "He helps to manufacture the orphans."
"Well, that's true, too; but then like enough he don't stop and think what he is about—that's the way with half the folks in this world, anyhow; he may be willing to kind of help to keep them boys from ruin, and save his rum at the same time, and I was just thinking if somebody would just go and have a good kind plain talk with him, like enough he would promise to send Mr. Roberts word not to let them boys have any more drink, and that would help along the other boys as well as mine."
Theodore could scarcely restrain a smile at the poor woman's simple faith in human nature; he almost dreaded to explain to her how utterly improbable he felt it to be that Mr. Hastings would listen to any such plea as the one proposed.
"Why don't you go to him?" he questioned suddenly, as the eager eyes were raised to his awaiting his answer.
"Oh dear me!" she answered in consternation, "I should be flustered all out of my head entirely. I never spoke to such a man in my life. I shouldn't know what to say at all, and it wouldn't do any good if I did. Jim, he said if you couldn't do it nobody need try."
"Jim overestimates my powers in this direction as in all others," Theodore said, smiling. "I have perhaps less influence with Mr. Hastings than with any other person, and I haven't the slightest hopes that—" And here he stopped and listened to his thoughts. "After all," they said to him, "perhaps you misjudge the man—perhaps he really does not think what an injury he is doing to those boys simply by his good-natured carelessness. Suppose you should go to him and state the case plainly? You really have some curiosity to see how he will meet the question; besides, it will at least be giving him a chance to do what is right if the trouble arises from carelessness; and, moreover, how can you be justified in disappointing this poor old mother? At least it would do no harm to gratify her, if it did no good."
"Well," he said aloud, "I will make the attempt, although I am afraid it will be a failure; but we will try it. I will see Mr. Hastings at the earliest possible moment, and will do what I can; but, in the meantime, are you doing all you can for your boy? Do you take him to God in prayer every day?"
The mother's eyes drooped, a little flush crept into the faded cheek, a little silence fell between them, until at last she said with low and faltering voice:
"That's a thing I never learned to do. I don't know how to do it for myself."
"Then you must remember that there is one all-important thing which you have left undone. My mother's prayer saved me from a drunkard's life. I know of no more powerful aid than that."
Very grave and sorrowful looked the poor mother; evidently she knew nothing about the compassionate Savior, who was ready and willing to help her bear her burden. Well for her that the young man in whom she trusted leaned on an arm stronger than his own. The mother had one more request to make of him.
"Could you possibly go to see my Tommy?" she asked, with glistening eyes. "If you only could know him, and kind of coax him, he would take a notion to you like enough, and then he would go through fire and water to please you; he's always so when he takes notions, Tommy is."
Theodore promised again, and finally walked with the old lady down the long bewildering store to the very door, and bowed her out, she meantime looking very happy and hopeful.
Being familiar of old with the habits of the Euclid House, Theodore chose next day the hour when he judged that Tommy would be most at leisure, and sought him out. The landlord was a trifle grayer, decidedly more portly, but was in other respects the same smooth-tongued, affable host that he was when Tode Mall ran hither and thither to do his bidding. Theodore attempted nothing with him further than to beg a few minutes' chat with Tommy. He was directed to the identical little room with its patch of red and yellow carpet, upon which he found Tommy seated, mending a hole in his jacket pocket.
"So you're a tailor, are you?" asked Theodore, cheerily, seating himself familiarly on one corner of the little bed, and having a queer feeling come over him that the room belonged to him, and that Tommy was quite out of place sitting on his piece of carpet.
The young tailor looked up and laughed good-humoredly.
"Queer tailor I'd make!" he said, gaily. "Mother, she does them jobs for me generally, but this is a special occasion. I've lost ten cents and a jack-knife to-day, and I reckoned it was time for me to go to work."
"I used to live here," said Theodore, confidentially. "This was my room. I used to have the table in that corner though, and I've always intended to come back here and have a look at the old room, but I never have until this afternoon."
Tommy suspended his work, and took a good long look at his visitor before he asked his next question.
"Be you the chap who made the row about the bottles?"
"The very chap, I suspect," answered Theodore, laughing.
Tommy sewed away energetically before he exploded his next remark.
"I wish you had rowed them out of this house, I vum I do. Mother, she don't give me no peace of my life with talkings and cryings, and one thing and another, and a fellow don't know what to do."
The subject was fairly launched at last quite naturally, and what was better still, by Tommy himself; and then ensued a long and earnest conversation—and in proof that the visit had been productive of one effect that the mother had hoped for and prophesied, Tommy stood up and fixed earnest, admiring eyes on his visitor as he was about to leave, and said eagerly:
"There isn't much a fellow couldn't do to please you if he should set out."
"And how much to please the dear mother, whose only son he is?" answered Theodore, quickly.
Tommy's eyes drooped, and his cheeks grew very red.
"I do mean to," he said at last. "I mean to all over, every day; but the fellows giggle and—and—well I don't know, it all gets wrong before I think."
On the whole Theodore understood his subject very well—a good-natured, well-meaning, easily-tempted boy, not safe in a house where liquor was sold or used, certainly not safe where it was freely offered and its refusal laughed at. He even hesitated about going to Mr. Hastings', so sure was he that even with the most favorable results from the call, Tommy would be unsafe in the Euclid House; but then there were other boys who might be reached in this way, and there was his promise to the old lady, and there was besides his eager desire to see what Mr. Hastings would do or say. On the whole he decided to go.
"I do manage to have the most extraordinary errands to this house," he soliloquized, while standing on the steps of Hastings' Hall awaiting the answer to his ring. "I wonder how circumstances will develop this evening?"
He had not long to wait; he had taken the precaution to write on his card under his name, "Special and important business," and Mr. Hastings stared at it and frowned, and finally ordered his caller to be admitted to his library. It was in all respects a singular interview. Mr. Hastings was at first stiffly, and afterward ironically polite; listened with a sort of sneering courtesy to all that the young man had to say concerning Tommy and his companions, and when Theodore paused for a reply delivered himself of the following smooth sentences:
"This is really the most extraordinary of your many extraordinary ideas, Mr. Mall—I beg your pardon (referring to the card which he held in his hand), Mallery, I believe your name is now. I did not suppose I was expected to turn spy, and call to account every drop of wine that chances to be used in my buildings; it would be such utterly new business to me that I feel certain of a failure, and we business men, Mr. Mall, do not like to fail in our undertakings. You really will have to excuse me from taking part in such a peculiar proceeding. If we have such a poor weak-minded boy in our employ as you describe, I feel very sorry for him, and would recommend his mother to take him home and keep him in her kitchen."
Theodore arose immediately, and the only discourteous word that he permitted himself to utter to Dora's father was to say with marked emphasis:
"Thank you, Mr. Hastings, I will suggest your advice to Mrs. Jenkins; and as she is a feeble old lady, I presume if her son becomes a drunkard and breaks her heart you will see that his sisters are comfortably provided for in the Orphans' Home. Good-evening, sir."
"Don Quixote!" Mr. Stephens called him, laughing immensely as his clerk related the story of his attempt and failure.
"I only gave him a chance to carry out some of his benevolent ideas, and save a capable waiter at the same time," answered Theodore, dryly. "But he is evidently too much engrossed with his Orphans' Home to be alive to his own interests."
"So you contemplate a speedy removal of Tommy from the Euclid House, do you?" said Mr. Stephens, reflectively.
"Yes, sir. Just as soon as I can secure him a position elsewhere."
"Can McPherson take him?"
"Hardly. He has a case now not unlike Tommy's in which he is deeply interested, and which occupies all his leisure time."
"Can you make him useful here?" said Mr. Stephens, thoughtfully, balancing his pen on his finger.
"Useful? No, sir, I fear not—at least not just at present."
"Can you keep him busy then?"
"Yes, sir, certainly."
"Then send for him," said Mr. Stephens, briefly, resuming his writing.
Theodore turned suddenly and bestowed a delightful look on his employer as he said eagerly:
"If there were only a few more people actuated by your principles we should need fewer Orphans' Homes."
"Confound that fellow and his impudence!" said the irate Mr. Hastings, as he finished detailing an account of Tommy's exit from the Euclid House under the supervision and influence of Mr. Mallery.
Pliny glanced up from his dish of soup, and opened his eyes wide in pretended surprise.
"One would suppose, sir, that you were not particularly grateful to the fellow for his rescue of your daughter from an untimely grave," he said, demurely.
"Untimely fiddlestick!" was Mr. Hastings' still more irritable reply. "He thinks he is a hero, and presumes upon it to intrude himself in a most insufferable manner. I have no doubt Jonas would have got along without any of his interference."
Dora's face flushed and then paled, but the only remark she made was:
"Papa, you ought to have been there to see."
