whose clerical coat made David guess him to be Morton's successor. The voice of his advice was gentle and persuasive, and when the woman's rising to go revealed his shaven face, David saw that it had strength and kindness, spirit and humility – saw that the man's vigour remained despite his obvious sixty years.
David entered the chapel and approached the director of the Mission. The old man held out his hand. "I'm glad to see you," he said. "Is there anything in which I can serve you?"
David strove for a casual manner, but prison had made him too worn, too nervous, to act a part requiring so much control. "I was just – going by," he stammered, taking the hand. "I used to know the Mission – years ago – when Mr. Morton was here. So I came in."
"Ah, then you knew Mr. Morton!" said the director warmly.
"A – a little."
"Even to know him a little was a great privilege," he said with conviction, admiration. "He was a wonderful man!"
David braced himself for one of the two great questions of his last four years. "Does the neighbourhood still remember him?"
"Just as though he were still here," the director answered, with the enthusiasm an unjealous older brother may feel for the family genius.
"He has left an influence that amounts to a living, inspiring presence. That influence, more than anything I have done, has kept the people just as earnest for truer manhood and womanhood as when he left them. I feel that I am only the assistant. He is still the real head."
David got away as quickly as he could, a mighty, quivering warmth within him. On the other side of the street, he gave a parting glance over his shoulder at the chapel. He stopped short, and stared. While they had talked, the director of the Mission had turned on additional lights, among which had been an arc-light before the great stained-glass window at the street end of the chapel. The window was now a splendid glow of red and blue and purple, and printed upon its colours was this legend:
David stared at the window, weak, dizzy. There was a momentary pang of bitterness that Morton should be so honoured, and he be what he was. Then the glow that had possessed him in the chapel flowed back upon him in even greater warmth. The window seemed to David, in his then mood, to be the perpetuation in glowing colour of Morton's influence. It seemed to throw forth into the street, upon the chance passer-by, the inspiration of Morton's life.
Yes, – his four years had counted!
Half an hour later he took his stand against the shadowed stoop of an empty mansion in Madison Avenue, and gazed across at a great square three-story stone house, with a bulging conservatory running along its left side – the only residence in the block that had re-opened for the autumn. All thought of Morton and the Mission was gone from him. His mind was filled only with the other great fear of his last four years. If she came out of the door he watched, if he glimpsed her beneath a window shade, then probably she still belonged in her father's house – was still unmarried.
A cold drizzle had begun to fall. He drew his head down into his upturned collar, and though his weakened body shivered, he noticed neither the rain nor the protest of his flesh. His whole being was directed at the house across the way. Slow minute followed slow minute. The door did not open, and he saw no one inside the windows. His heart beat as though it would shake his body apart. The sum of four years suspense so weakened him that he could hardly stand. Yet he stood and waited, waited; and he realised more keenly than ever how dear she was to him – though to possess her was beyond his wildest dreams, and perhaps he might not even speak to her again.
At length a nearby steeple called the hour of ten. Presently a carriage began to turn in towards the opposite sidewalk. David, all a-tremble, his great suspense now at its climax, stepped forth from his shadow. The carriage stopped before the Chambers home. He hurried across the street, and a dozen paces away from the carriage he stooped and made pretense of tying his shoe-lace; but all the while his eyes were on the carriage door, which the footman had thrown open. First a man stepped forth, back to David, and raised an umbrella. Who? The next instant David caught the profile. It was Mr. Chambers. After him came an ample, middle-aged woman, brilliantly attired – Mrs. Bosworth, Mr. Chambers's widowed sister, who had been living with him since his wife's death.
A moment later Mr. Chambers was helping a second woman from the carriage. The umbrella cut her face from David's gaze, but there was no mistaking her. So she still lived in the house of her father!
She paused an instant to speak to the footman. For a second a new fear lived in David: might she not come with her father to her father's house, and still be married? But at the second's end the fear was destroyed by the conventional three-word response of the footman. David watched her go up the steps, her face hidden by the umbrella, watched her enter and the door close behind her. Then, collapsed by the vast relief which followed upon his vast suspense, he sank down upon the stoop, and the three words of the footman maintained a thrilling iteration in his ears.
The three words were: "Thank you, Miss."
CHAPTER II
A CALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR
The next morning David was awakened by the ringing of a gong. He tumbled out of bed in order to be ready for the march to breakfast at half past six; and he had begun to dress before it dawned upon him that he was a free man, and that the ringing was a prank a four-year habit had played upon him – a prank that, by the way, was to be repeated every morning for many a week to come.
He slipped back into bed, and lay there considering what he should first do. He had to find work quickly, but he felt his four walled years had earned him a holiday – one day in which to re-acquaint himself with freedom. So, after he had eaten, he felt his way down the dark, heavy-aired stairways, stepped through the doorway, and then paused in wonderment.
All was as fresh, as marvellous, as yesterday. The narrow street was a bustle of freedom – pounding carts, school-going boys and girls, playing children, marketing wives – no stripes, no lock-steps, no guards. And the yellow sun! He held his bleached face up to it, as though he would press against its sympathetic warmth; and he sucked deeply of the September air. And the colours! – the reds and whites and browns of the children, the occasional green of a plant on a window sill, the clear blue of the strip of sky at the street's top. He had almost forgotten there were colours other than stripes, the gray of stone walls, the black of steel bars.
And how calmly the streetful of people took these marvels!
At first he expected the people he threaded among to look into his face, see his prison record there, draw away from him, perhaps taunt him with "thief." But no one even noticed him, and gradually this fear began to fade from him. As he was crossing the Bowery, a car clanged at his back. He frantically leaped, with a cry, to the sidewalk, and leaned against a column of the elevated railroad – panting, exhausted, heart pounding. He had not before known how weak, nerveless, prison had made him.
He found, as he continued his way, that the sidewalk undulated like a ship's deck beneath his giddy legs; he found himself afraid of traffic-crowded corners that women and children unhesitatingly crossed; he found himself stopping and staring with intensest interest at the common-places of street life – at hurrying men, at darting newsboys, at rushing street cars and clattering trucks, at whatever moved where it willed. Old-timers had told him of the dazedness, the fear, the interest, of the first free days, but he was unprepared for the palpitant acuteness of his every sensation.
After a time, in Broadway, he chanced to look into a mirror-backed show-window where luminous satins were displayed. Between two smirking waxen women in sheeny drapery he saw that which brought him to a pause and set him gazing. It was his full-length self, which he had not seen these four years.
