VI
THE COMMUNITY'S SUNBEAM
Miss Clarkson looked at the small boy, and the small boy looked back at Miss Clarkson with round, unwinking eyes. In the woman's glance were sympathy and a puzzled wonder; the child's gaze expressed only a calm and complete detachment. Subtly, but unmistakably, he succeeded in conveying the impression that he regarded this human object before him because it was in his line of vision, but that he found no interest in it, nor good reason for assuming an interest he did not feel: that if, indeed, he was conscious of any emotion at all, it was in the nature of a vaguely dawning desire that the object should remove itself, should cease to shut off the view from the one window of the tenement room that was his home. But it really did not matter much. Already, in his seven years of life, the small boy had decided that nothing really mattered much, and his dark, grim little face, with its deep-cut, unchildish lines, bore witness to the unwavering strength of this conviction. If the object preferred to stay—He settled himself more firmly on the rickety chair he occupied, crossed his feet with infinite care, and continued to regard the object with eyes that held the invariable expression with which they met the incidents of life, whether these incidents were the receiving of a banana from Miss Clarkson's hands, or, as had happened half an hour before, the spectacle of his dead mother being carried down-stairs.
It was not a stupid look; it was at once intent, unsympathetic, impersonal. Under it, now, its object experienced a moment of actual embarrassment. Miss Clarkson was not accustomed to the indifferent gaze of human eyes, and in her philanthropic work among the tenements she had been somewhat conspicuously successful with children. They seemed always to like her, to accept her; and if her undoubted charm of face, of dress, and of smile failed to win them, Miss Clarkson was not above resorting to the aid of little gifts, of toys, even to the pernicious power of pennies. She did good, but she did it in her own way. She was young, she was rich, she was independent. She helped the poor because she pitied them, and wished to aid them, but her methods were unique, and were followed none the less serenely when, as frequently happened, they conflicted with all the accepted notions of organized philanthropy.
She had come to this room almost daily, Miss Clarkson remembered, since she had discovered the destitute Russian woman and her child there a month ago. The mother was dying of consumption; the child was neglected and hungry—yet both had an unmistakable air of birth, of breeding; and the mother's French was as perfect as the exquisitely finished manner that drew from Anne Clarkson, in the wretched tenement room, her utmost deference and courtesy. The child, too, had glints of polish. Punctiliously he opened doors, placed chairs, bowed; punctiliously he stood when the lady stood, sat when the lady sat, met her requests for small services with composure and appreciation. And (here was the rub) each time she came, bringing in her generous wake the comforts that lightened his mother's dreary journey into another world, he received her with the air of one courteously greeting a stranger, or, at best, of one seeking an elusive memory as one surveys a half-familiar face.
Doggedly Anne Clarkson had persisted in her attentions to them both. The mother was grateful—there was no doubt of that. Under the ministrations of the nurse Miss Clarkson supplied, under the influence of food, of medicines, and of care, she brightened out of the apathy in which her new friend had found her. But to the last she retained something of her son's unresponsiveness, and an uncommunicativeness which tagged his as hereditary. She never spoke of herself, of her friends, or of her home. She made no last requests, left no last messages. Once, as she looked at her boy, her eyeballs exuded a film of moisture. Miss Clarkson interpreted this phenomenon rightly, and quietly said:
"I will see that he is well cared for." The sick woman gave her a long look, and then nodded.
"You will," she answered. "You are not of those who promise and do not perform. You are very good—you have been very good to us. Your reward should come. It does not always come to those who are good, but it should come to you. You should marry and have children, and leave this terrible country, and be happy."
The words impressed Miss Clarkson, because, as she reminded herself now, they were almost the last her protegee uttered. She considered them excessively unmodern, and strongly out of place on the lips of one whose romance had ended in disillusionment.
Well, it was over. The mother was gone. But the child remained, and his future—his immediate future, at least—must be decided here and now. With a restless movement Anne Clarkson leaned toward him. In her abstraction she had shifted her glance from him for a few moments, and he had taken advantage of the interval to survey dispassionately the toes of the new shoes she had given to him. He glanced up now, and met her look with the singular unresponsiveness which seemed his note.