CHAPTER III—George and His Troubles
Halloran foresaw that it might be late Saturday evening before Miss Davies and he could return to Evanston, so he arranged with another member of the crew to stand his watch from ten to midnight; and then, knowing nothing of what might be before them, these two young people set out on their search for George.
Picture a tenement far out on the North Side, one of thousands of smoke-coloured buildings, somewhere on an obscure street that was discouragingly like dozens of other streets. Without the tenement an electric light (for it was six o'clock and dark on this autumn day) threw its flare on an uneven cedar-block pavement, worn into ruts and holes that had given up, hopeless of repair, to mud and filth; on obscure little tailor shops and masquerade-costume shops, and dirty tobacco shops with windows hung full of questionable prints; on an itinerant popcorn-and-peanut man, who had stationed his glass-enclosed cart on the corner and was himself sitting on the curbstone, the picture of disgust with life; on a prosperous red-brick corner building, that shed light and comfort from half a dozen broad windows, announcing itself by its curtained inner door and its black-and-gilt signs to be Hoffman's sample room. So much for the neighbourhood. Within the tenement, up three flights of stairs, was an apartment of two rooms where lived Mrs. Craig with her daughter and her son, who bore the name of Bigelow.
Lizzie was sewing: her mother, back home for supper in the intermission between the work of afternoon and evening, was taking off her hat.
“Is the fire going, Lizzie?”
The girl shook her head without looking up. “How did I know you were coming home so early?”
“It is six o'clock.”
“Well, how do you suppose I'm ever going to get my work done if I have to make fires for you? Where's George, I'd like to know! That's his business, anyway.”
Mrs. Craig, herself wondering where George was, went to the next room and built the fire herself.
A few moments later Halloran knocked at the door, and Miss Davies and he were admitted. And while Miss Davies was opening the subject, trying with the utmost delicacy to obtain the confidence of this woman, trying to show by simple, honest words how sincerely she and Halloran were interested in George, another boy, a small, wizened-faced boy with thin legs, was hiding in a doorway across the street, watching with keen little eyes for their exit and pondering with a keen little mind on their probably next move.
Miss Davies was beginning to wonder if she had not overestimated the difficulty of talking with Mrs. Craig. Or was it the present topic that made it a little easier? For she had come now with no offers of food, or coal for the fires; but only to talk about George, to see if she and the young man with her might not, by giving their time and interest, make the search easier. And the main difficulty seemed now to be that the woman knew no more about it than they did.
“It was early last week,” she explained, speaking quietly, in a voice that had been brought to a dead level by habitual restraint. “He went off to work as usual, after dinner, and said he would be back to supper. I don't know where he can be. He has never been a bad boy.”
Lizzie, now that so much trouble was going on about George, began to feel unusually sorrowful herself—was even moved to tears, and had to go into the other room and bustle about getting supper ready before she could bring her feelings under control.
“Mr. Halloran thought the best thing would be to go out and search for him,” said Miss Davies. “And he thought you could help—:—” She turned to him and finished by saying, “Won't you explain to Mrs. Craig?”
“Can you tell us,” he responded, “of some place in the neighbourhood that George has been in the habit of going to—some place where he has friends?”
Mrs. Craig shook her head. “No; when he was not working he was almost always at home.”
“But he surely had acquaintances. You see, Mrs. Craig, we must have some place to start from.”
She thought for a moment. “No; so far as I know, there was only one man in the neighbourhood who took the least interest in him. And he wouldn't know anything about this. We have not lived here so very long———”
“Who is this man?”
“Mr. Hoffman, on the corner. He has been kind to George, once or twice.”
Halloran rose, saying aside to Miss Davies, “I will speak to him and come back here,” and went out.
He found a stout German behind the bar in the corner saloon who proved, upon inquiry, to be Hoffman himself. He was a substantial sort of man, speaking excellent English, and representing, if one could judge from the neat, well-stocked bar, the clean floor, the geraniums in the windows, and the general air of thrift and order, what he might have been pleased to call a decent saloon. Halloran began without preliminary by asking Hoffman if he knew George Bigelow.
The saloon-keeper rested both hands on the bar and looked across it, scrutinizing him closely before answering.
“Yes, there is a boy of that name around here.”
“He disappeared from home last week and his family are worried about him. I have been told that you might help me find him.”
Hoffman shook his head, still watching him closely. “No,” he said; “I know nothing about him.”
“Has he been about here at all lately?”
“No; it is two weeks since I saw him.”
The honest German face had the word suspicion plainly written on it, Halloran saw that he was not getting at the man at all, so he leaned on the bar and explained himself.
“I have come from the University Settlement. George has been at class there regularly until lately. His teachers believe in him and want to help him. They are afraid now that he has got into trouble and is afraid to come back. Do you know anything about it?”
For reply Hoffman asked:
“What is your name?”
“Halloran.”
“You come from the Settlement?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen Mrs. Craig?”
“I have just come from there. Miss Davies, George's teacher, is with her now.”
The big man slowly turned it over in his mind. Finally he said:
“I will tell you all I know, but it is not very much. There is another little boy named McGinnis who is around with him most of the time. The McGinnis boy worked at the ball park until the season closed last week. For ten days now he has been coming here for a glass of beer pretty often, and he always carries away the lunch. You say you want to help George?”
Halloran nodded.
“Well, I will tell you what I think.” He used the word “think,” but his expression showed that he knew pretty nearly the facts. “McGinnis has an uncle, a boat-builder, who has a place under the Wells Street Bridge. You go down there and you will learn more than I can tell you.”
Halloran thanked him and returned to Miss Davies, Mrs. Craig, he found, was getting ready to go back to work. They were all waiting anxiously for him.
“I think we are started right,” he said cheerily, addressing the mother. “I will be back later in the evening and report progress.” To Miss Davies he said: “You would rather wait at the Settlement, I suppose. I shan't be back probably before eight or nine o'clock.”
“Why,” she said in a low voice as they were passing out the door, “don't you want me to go with you?”
“I am afraid not. I could hardly take you prowling around the wharves at night.” And he told her, as they went down the stairs behind Mrs. Craig, what directions the saloon-keeper had given him. They were still talking about it when they joined the woman on the sidewalk; and then the three of them walked together to the second corner, talking it over and over again. For Mrs. Craig was beginning to discover that the young people were downright interested in her and in her boy. There was no gracious down-reaching here, no lending a kind hand to the unfortunate; but just a young woman who believed she could help, and a young man who knew a little of what it all meant; in short, here were two real persons who said little and meant more. She was not afraid, as she looked at them, that they would pray for her, loudly and zealously, kneeling on the floor of her own tenement rooms. And she was inclined to wonder, looking out at them across her own sea of troubles, what life was to hold for them.
Something of this last thought got into her manner as she took their hands at parting; indeed, her reserve so nearly broke that she gave them—not singly, but the two of them together—a look that brought a faint blush to the young woman's cheek and to her mind other thoughts than George and his difficulties—-thoughts that disturbed her a little later when she and Halloran were walking toward the Settlement, so foolish and trivial were they beside the realities of the scene that had passed—thoughts that were resolutely put from her mind.
At the Settlement steps she lingered a moment.
“I wish I were going with you,” she said, hesitating. “There is pride in the family, and George has his share of it. If you—if he should think you blamed him or looked down on him, he would never come back with you. He has always been hard to reach, and I think it is because of a rough sort of sensitiveness.”
Was it unreasonable that she should wish to continue handling this case, just now when tact was so urgently needed? Or that she should give Halloran a hint of the best course to take with the boy?
“I don't blame him,” he replied. “The way to help him is to make him feel like somebody. If you once let him get to thinking that he is good for nothing he'll run down hill fast. Jimmie McGinnis, now, will take all the knocks you can give him, and go right on turning his pennies; he will be in the City Council yet.”
She nodded, for she saw that he understood. And he turned away to begin the search, walking over to the car-line. As he sat down in the first trailer a small boy ran alongside the rear car and swung himself aboard, hurriedly drawing in a pair of thin legs after him.
Through gloomy Kinzie Street walked Halloran, when he had reached the river district, and after him, half a block or more, came the thin legs. He got to the bridge by the Northwestern Station, crossed over, and looked around for a means of descent to the wharves. After a moment he saw in the shadow of a brick building—a building that was a South Water Street market in front, a factory in the upper half and a tug-office behind—what seemed to be a break in the railing. He crossed to it and found, sure enough, a narrow stairway, covered with mud and slime, leading down toward the oily surface of the river. It was curious—he had crossed the bridge a hundred times, but it had never occurred to him that there was any life below the street, that men came and went down there on the strip of wharf, so narrow that it seemed little more than a fender for the buildings that backed on the river. Picking his way carefully to avoid slipping, he walked down.
Not far away, in the basement of one of these buildings, was a sailors' grog-shop: hardly three rods from the bridge-walk, even in sight from it, yet so quietly tucked away below story on story of brick building, behind half a dozen smoking tugs, in a spot where no sober doorway, no saloon doorway even, had a right to be—so hidden, in fact, that not half a dozen of the tens of thousands of people on the bridge daily had ever observed it. It was a wonder how a drunken man could ever get out through the door without falling into the river—perhaps one did fall now and then. There was music in the saloon now—a squeaking fiddle and loud noises.
Beyond, the river was splashed with red and white and green from lanterns and side-lights; and a dozen masts, their spars and rigging apparently interlaced, were outlined against the western sky. At the moment a big freighter, bound out, was headed for the draw, forging slowly and almost silently down the sluggish stream, passing along like some dim modern Flying Dutchman. Above, on the bridge, cars were rumbling and footsteps were pattering—the feet of the late suburbanites hurrying to their trains. All Chicago was alive and bustling above him and around him; but here, at the end of a crooked passage, was a quiet spot—a shop filled with boats, completed and uncompleted; and sprawled on his stomach behind one of the boats, a cigarette in his mouth, an Old Sleuth story spread on the boards before him, a candle stuck in a beer bottle at his elbow, was a boy, who was trying to believe that he was, in spite of cold feet and sniffling nose, really tough and comfortable.
“Well, George,” said Halloran, “how's business?”
George started, turned pale, and hastily took the cigarette from his mouth; then remembering his independence, he as hastily put it back. Halloran sat down on the stem of a ship's boat and filled his pipe.
“Miss Davies and I heard you were in hard luck,” he went on, “and I thought I'd look you up and see what's the matter.”
George had not been able to speak until now. He sat up, pulled doggedly a moment at his cigarette, and said in a very sulky tone:
“Who told you I was here?”
Halloran would have been glad to answer him, but as it fell out no reply was necessary. For just as he was pausing to light his pipe a step was heard in the passage and a wizened-faced boy appeared in the outer circle of the candle-light.
It was Jimmie, eyeing Halloran with distrust, glancing apologetically at George, more disturbed, in fact, than Halloran had yet seen him. To him now George turned a reproachful face.
“I never done it, George,” said Jimmie. “I'd a-busted first. He went around to old Hoffman and he put him onto my uncle. I see him go in there and I followed him up.”
“That's right, George,” Halloran put in by way of seconding Jimmie. “We couldn't get a word out of him. It was your mother that sent me to Hoffman. But I've come down to talk with you, and I'm not sorry that Jimmie is here. Now, what's the trouble? Tell me about it; and then I will see what we can do for you.”
The two boys looked at each other. George had been told so often by certain Settlement workers never to smoke, never to read bad books, never to be seen in company with beer bottles, he had supposed that of course these things would be the first subjects under discussion; and the omission disconcerted him. Jimmie, meanwhile, being the shrewder of the two, was signaling him to go ahead and spit it out. So he began, in a blundering, sullen sort of a way; stumbled, blushed and stopped. Finally Jimmie had to take it up.
“You see, it's just this way. George's folks was getting down pretty close to the boards, and they was the rent coming, and George he had his week's pay, but it wasn't enough, so I just told him”—very patronizing here, was Jimmie, as became a young capitalist who had once clasped the hand of Captain Anson—“I told him to give it to me and I'd put it up on the Washington game, with a little wad of my own. It was an easy mark, 'cause the Washingtons were tail-enders, and I had hold of their mascot, and he was willing to put up even. It was like taking the money out of his pocket, but a man can't throw away a chance like that—and then I'll be damned if Billy Connors didn't up and throw the game.”
“He's a hell of a pitcher,” was George's comment, spoken with a sidelong glance at Halloran.
“Never you mind,” said Jimmie, “Watson 'll never sign him again, after a trick like that.”
Rather an interesting situation this—an odd confusing of good motives with bad—an amusing symptom of good feeling in speculator Jimmie, to be taking up the support of a young man who had been ruined through his advice. He would doubtless get over it as he grew older. If every man were to feel the same responsibility, what a wreck it would make of our institutions! What a scrambling there would be in Wall Street, in La Salle Street! Incipient socialism this—a bad thing, very bad!
Halloran nodded and smiled a little. “I know,” he said. “We're all of us likely to fall down now and then. I don't know as I should have done just that, though. A man can't afford to gamble unless he can afford to lose; and there aren't many such men. I'm not sure there are any.” He smiled again—he knew just how George felt, just about what he was thinking behind that clouded face. “But now the question is, how are we going to fix you up again? You can't stay here. How much did you lose?”
Again it was Jimmie that answered, “Three fifty.”
Halloran thought for a moment, doing some sums in his head; then he took a purse from his pocket and counted out the money.
“Now, George,” he said, “this is a loan. I know you're square, and I'm willing to take your word for it. There is no hurry; but some day, when you feel you can, you may pay it back. We needn't either of us say anything about it.” George's expression was changing every moment; but he took the money. “Suppose we go back to the house now, George. You will find your mother and sister mighty glad to see you. And Miss Davies is waiting at the Settlement to hear about you. She has worried a good deal. Then Monday we will see if we can't get the factory to give you another trial.”
George's armour was not proof against such an attack as this. He got up, put the story in his pocket, and lighted Halloran and Jimmie along the passage with his candle; then he snuffed it out and put it in his pocket, threw the bottle into the river and followed the two others up the stairway to the street.