I must collect myself. This hour may decide the whole course of my life. I have only to hold the telephone receiver to my ear, and directly the house-porter will call in the police. Before noon the boy will be gone, and I shall never see him again.
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Why should it concern me? It would be sheer folly if I gave way to a sickly sentimentality and wished to keep this small tramp. Small as he is, he seems to be endowed with every vice.
I feel as if I had dreamed it all, and not seen it with my eyes.... And it all comes of my freak of using the subway under the river instead of taking a motor. What induced me to waste time in that fashion? I who, of all others, detest subterranean zigzagging?
Was it a presentment? Did I expect a sensation, and wish to gloat over the sight of roofless night-wanderers, who for five cents travel backwards and forwards by this route all day? One’s way of living and thinking is different in New York from what it is in great European capitals. We don’t follow each other like sheep. We think more for ourselves.
I felt so tired inwardly on the journey, so utterly without an anchor. I tried to fall asleep before we reached the river to escape hearing the ghastly rushing sound in the air behind. The boy had seen me at once. I believe I inspired him with a certain awe. My clothes probably were too smart for him.
He hurled himself past me without calling out rude words, or making grimaces. I could not take my eyes off him. At first I thought it was one of the dwarfs out of the Hippodrome, and I squirmed with disgust. Then I saw that it was a child. A child sick with a fever which his senses could not master. I, like the other passengers, thought him mad, till we grasped what was the matter with him.
He jumped on ladies’ laps, and spat in their faces; he kicked gentlemen’s legs violently with his heels. When the guard caught hold of his wrists and commanded him to be quiet, he bit the man so hard he was obliged to let him go. At the next station he was ejected. But directly the train was in motion again, he swung himself on to the car, and this process was repeated at every station. No one knew how to cope with him; no one knew where he came from, or to whom he belonged. Suddenly he began to sing, what, I couldn’t understand, but from the expression on the faces of the men present, and from his own gestures, I gathered that it was something indecent.
How shall I describe my feelings? Were they prompted by horror, repulsion, or compassion? I must try to analyse them clearly.... I felt as if I had brought this wretched creature into the world, as if I were responsible for him. I experienced a mother’s agony and a mother’s boundless tenderness.
Directly it became plain to me that the child was not speaking in the delirium of fever, but of drunkenness, I had to bite my lips till they bled, so as not to cry out. Then the boy came to me, and threw himself across my lap. There he stayed, nestling his head against me, and went to sleep.