WHEN WE HAVE WAITED
OH! I beg your pardon,” some one said politely from before me in the darkness.
This I thought was remarkably handsome, as I must have all but knocked the speaker off his feet.
Then, in an instant, I was wondering who had spoken.
If it were Jackson he would have said—I knew, for I had heard him more than once on occasions when I was endeavoring to mount the narrow stairs at the identical moment he was trying to descend them—“Get out of the way, you beast! What the devil do you mean by walking all over me?”
Therefore, being vastly amazed at the politeness emanating from the blackness in front of me, I put up my hand to find the gas-jet—we were on the second-floor landing—and having found it, fumbled in my pocket for a match and lighted the gas.
This enabled me to see who had ventured to introduce civility into the atmosphere of mild ruffianism that prevailed among the outcasts at Mrs. Tauton's.
Standing jammed rather close against the wall, where he had evidently considered it safe and expedient to withdraw in view of my hurried ascent of the steps, was a young man with a round boyish face.
“I really beg your pardon,” he repeated. I was so astonished at his continued politeness that, with the mistaken intention of turning on the gas still farther, I turned it out altogether, and we were a part of the surrounding gloom again. But in the momentary brightness lent by the flickering flame I saw Gavan for the first time.
From this not entirely favorable beginning there came about a speaking acquaintance that soon ripened into friendship.
I was a clerk in a down-town office, and had by a series of misfortunes gravitated from the outskirts of cheap respectability to the dingy apartments that Mrs. Tauton kept for the exclusive use of single gentlemen of uniformly large hopes and small means, and I took my meals—they had a marked tendency to cast a cloud over any sunniness of temper I might have originally possessed—with wretches of my kind at the same low-priced resort just around the corner.
In after years some of us will remember the dyspepsia, there acquired, particularly young Tompkins, who ruined a fine constitution in a vain endeavor to subsist on a diet of pie interspersed with milk.
Tompkins subsequently made a million or two by a singularly soulless operation in railway shares. I have never blamed him for his consciousless greed, as I attribute it to the food his early poverty compelled him to live on in the effort to keep body and soul together.
I simply think he failed in his object.
It was on the steps at Mrs. Tauton's that I first met Gavan. It was not long until he gave me his complete confidence and I was permitted to know his aims and ambitions.
He desired to write plays and to dispose of those he had already written.
It soon became his custom to make nightly reports to me, giving me detailed accounts of his doings, and I came to know what actor or manager had promised to read his work.
His appearance was so youthful, I do not question but that it condemned him unheard in the minds of most. I think it prevented his being taken seriously.
When the people he wished to reach were kind and considerate, it was because they were amused and regarded the whole thing as a joke.
In any event his plays were being returned to him with almost every mail, accompanied by letters more or less encouraging, as they reflected various degrees of kindliness on the writer's part.
I had not known him for many months before I was aware of a change. His face wore an anxious look, but he retained his cheerfulness, which was, however, more a habit than a condition of thought. I knew that he was wretchedly lonely and that disappointment came to end each hope he dared indulge in.
It was a mighty step from the sleepy little southern town where he had lived, to New York, with its supreme indifference to so small a unit in the struggling mass.
With his grave earnest eyes, which were almost pathetic in their seriousness, and the face, that the days of waiting had stamped with lines—markings of the hand that was empty for him—he was only one of many.
His mother was an invalid, his father had long been dead, and they were very poor. This bit of information he imparted with the utmost reluctance. I guessed at it without the telling, as no one, unless there was the grim incentive of pressing poverty, ever braved the terrors of life at Mrs. Tauton's.
Little by little he told me of his mother, and I saw that love for her was the one strong passion of his heart. She lived—none too happily—with relatives in the town that had been the home of his family for a great many generations.
He seldom or never spoke of what he would do for himself when he should achieve success; it was his mother who was to profit by it.
One night he came into my room and dropped dejectedly down on the edge of the bed, that answered all the purposes of a chair when not in actual use as a couch.
“What is it, Gavan?” I asked.
“Nothing much. Only my first year in New York is about at an end, and there is no gain of any sort to show for it. The whole thing has been miserably discouraging.”
“Why, Gavan, you are making important acquaintances all the time, who will aid you on to what you want.”
“It is deadly slow. It's forever and eternally to-morrow.”
He made a troubled little gesture with his hand.
“They say my work is good, that it is eminently clever—sometimes even that it's great; but that is not enough, and I try again. Try to be more like—not myself—but some one else; for it seems they don't want me on any terms. I wonder if there is such a thing as a man's being absolutely unavailable in the world—being of such an odd size and shape of both soul and mind that there is no niche he can fill. Do you know, I am beginning to think it of myself, that I don't fit—just don't fit anywhere.”
And he looked at me questioningly. I had never seen him so despondent before.
He must have understood my thought, for he continued:
“I am ashamed to burden you with my woes. If I were the only one concerned it wouldn't be so bad,—I could stand it.”
A wistful far-away look came into his eyes as he said softly:
“But there's my mother. It's for her I am working much more than for myself. Her life is so hard, with poverty and the contemptible pettiness of those about her.”
He turned from me to hide the tears that would gather against his will.
“And there she sits,” his voice sank to a whisper, “counting the days till I shall come and take her away. And what if I never can,—what if I end in failure! We wouldn't require much for perfect happiness, but small as the sum needed is, I can't make it. I shan't stay here much longer. I'll go home and settle down at something else.”
“You wouldn't give up your work!” I cried.
“I can't keep her on the ragged side of uncertainty. I'll go back; unless soon there is a change for the better in my prospects.” There was an abrupt pause. His voice had broken on the last word.
For a time we sat in silence, and when he spoke again it was cheerfully and of other things.
A few days later Gavan left the shelter of Mrs. Tauton's roof and went farther down-town, where he had rooms with an old shoemaker and his wife, who were “just as good and kind as could be,” he informed me; and I think they were, but the apartments he had quitted were palatial by comparison with those he now had.
About the same time I made a move in the opposite direction toward my former mild respectability.
One Sunday he came to my lodgings, his face radiant. At last a play was accepted. There were only a few minor changes to be made; he could do them in a week or so, and then the company would begin to get up in their parts.
“I shan't have to quit and go home after all,” he said. “I've written mother all about it. I'd give a good deal to be there and enjoy it with her. It would be such fun! Perhaps it isn't many months off till she can join me here, and then, old fellow, you are to come and live with us.”
This last was one of his favorite ideas for the future. When he felt elated or particularly hopeful it was always broached, and it was characteristic of his general goodness that he wished to share all he had, or was to have, with his friends.
When I saw him a week later his work was progressing and the play would surely go on before the season ended. But by our next meeting his hope had evidently moderated, for he looked downcast and troubled as he explained the production had to be deferred. “They haven't the money it will take. A heavy outlay for scenery is involved, you know. It will go on the first of the coming season, and that's about the most I can expect under the circumstances. In the meantime there's a lot of work I wish to do, so it doesn't much matter. I can wait, only”—and his glance became tender—“it will go hard with mother. She won't understand why it's not as I said it was going to be.”
Unfortunately, when the manager returned from his summer trip abroad, he brought with him from Paris the success of a thousand nights.
“He will do that at once, and then try mine. He really prefers my work, but thinks that more immediate profits are to be expected from the French piece,” Gavan told me, and this was all he had to say.
The imported play had a long run in New York, half the winter and better. Then it was taken on tour.
“They can't drop a sure thing,” he explained nervously when he informed me of the new arrangement. “However, the very first opening is to belong to me; no telling or guessing when it will come, but scarcely until next year. I'll have to do what I can meanwhile to drag out an existence. I can't give up. I've done so much it would be foolish even to think of stopping. If there is only a decent bit of luck in the end, a few months will pay up for the two years of misery. Of course, it's tiresome, this everlasting putting off, but if I wait long enough and don't starve, I am sure to see the play go on. The manager has said over and over that he wanted to stage it, and I think he does. It wouldn't be so rough if I were the only one concerned, but there's my mother. I know she is feeling it keenly, though she tries not to show it.”
He was still brave, but the deep secret joy was gone from his eyes. He was slowly drifting back to the despondency that had marked the last weeks of his stay at Mrs. Tauton's.
“I don't suppose,” he added, “that mother can comprehend how slow a matter it is, and I don't know that I make it clear to her.”
How he lived through the winter and the spring that followed, I never knew.
When summer came I tried to induce him to go into the country with me for an outing.
He was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, but felt that he must remain in the city. The season was almost over and soon everybody would be there. It was his opportunity.
“I don't know why it is,” he wound up reflectively, “but I seem to have a harder pull of it than most do. I wish I didn't look so young. Then, too, my work is original, and I find originality is an offense to most people. I can't do clever trifles.”
No, his work was not clever; I appreciated that. It was only great.
On my return from the country he met me in Jersey City.
“I didn't write you about it, old fellow,” he said, as we crossed on the ferry. “My time comes in a month. Everything is in shape for the production—scenery painted and costumes made. I've hung around for three years, but my day has come at last!”
He took my congratulations with the graciousness that was characteristic of him.
“It isn't unmitigated bliss,” he remarked. “I have had to all but ruin the piece to get it on. I guess it will pass muster and that's all I care for now. Three years such as I have spent are warranted to take the pride out of any man's soul.”
Lightly as he spoke, I knew he was staking all his future on the event.
“Drop in for the first night,” he said, as he left me at my lodgings. “I want your opinion. I have great faith in your judgment,” he added politely.
I knew he hadn't, but he was invariably kind, even at the expense of truth.
During the month, the last one of waiting, I saw him frequently. The many interests relating to the presentation went forward with unexpected smoothness, and there was but one drop of bitterness in Gavan's cup. His mother was unwell. He had observed a decided change in the tone of her letters, something that was deeper than mere sorrow at his absence. One of his relatives (for like a true Southerner he had a surpassingly large number of them) had written that it was his duty to come home at his earliest possible convenience.
When Gavan told me this, he said:
“And it's the truth; I have been away a long while. Once the first night's over with, I turn my back on New York. My mother needs me.”
I could see that he was very much exercised about his mother's condition.
“You know she may be a lot worse than they say. I have no idea that they would go into detail even if it were a serious matter, and mother herself would be the last person in the world to expect information of that sort from.”
The eventful night came. I was late, having been detained at my office, and the first act was ended when I reached the theater, but I was in time to see Gavan bow his thanks to those in front from the stage. This I saw through the blur of lights and the mist that swam before my eyes.
The curtain had gone down on the last act when I made my way around back and joined him.
“Come,” he said, as I took his hand. “Come, let's go home. I am tired—and I am satisfied.”
He was silent until we reached his door.
“Come in,—don't leave me yet.”
And I followed him up to his room.
He had again relapsed into silence, but I could see that he was happy. Finally he roused himself from his reverie to say:
“You don't mind if I go to bed, do you?—and stay a little longer; I want to talk to you. It's such a comfort to have you here.”
I said I would stay all night if he desired it. I was too excited to sleep.
He was soon in bed, and I drew up a chair close beside him.
Then he began to talk of his mother, to tell me of what he would do for her. “For I fancy the turning point is past,” he said. “I signed contracts to-night for more work, and now money goes to bind the bargain. They are not the barren formality they were when I put my name to the first one two years ago. I'll go home and see how mother is before I do anything else, and take a rest of a month or so. I can afford it, for the play's a big hit. There can be no mistake about it. Now that success has come, somehow it's not quite all I anticipated. A part of the satisfaction has been lost in the struggle, and a part of my ambition as well. I've served my apprenticeship to art. I have starved, hoping against hope, for three years, and now I'll be content with the money it will mean. After all, it narrows down to this: We begin with different aims before we have exhausted ourselves in trying to overcome the ignorance and prejudice of others.”
When I left him he was sleeping with his head upon his arm. The boyish roundness seemed to have returned to his face and the anxious look was gone. He was as I remembered him in the old days at Mrs. Tauton's.
The night was at an end when I went into the street. Boys were calling the morning papers and the city was wide awake. I made a collection of the various papers and left them with the old shoemaker, who was already at work in his little basement shop, to give Gavan when he should have had out his sleep. Then I went uptown to breakfast in my own rooms.
It was late in the afternoon when I started back to see him, and as I reached the house the old shoemaker met me at the street-door. I saw his kind face was grave and serious, with lines of grief upon it.
“Is he sick?” I asked.
The old man motioned me to follow and without a word we went up the stairs. In the bare desolate hall above, with its unpalliated hideousness now garishly alight with day and sun, stood a policeman, the center of a group of curious men and women.
Still I did not comprehend.
I entered the room. Gavan was lying upon the bed just as I had left him. In his hand was clutched a crushed and torn scrap of yellow paper.
As I paused, looking stupidly down at the bed and its burden, I became dimly conscious that the old man was standing at my side speaking to me, telling me how it had happened.
“He got a message from home. His mother died last night. It's that he's holding so tight in his hand. Poor lad! a power of promise and real goodness went out of the world with him.”
There were dark stains upon the bed-clothes, and he lay in the midst of the papers that told him of his triumph.