The Start

by Inez Haynes Irwin

 

The Start

By INEZ HAYNES GILLMORE

Illustrated by Harold Heartt Foley

Richard Stanton had scarcely heard the warden's kindly words of exhortation and advice, although he had answered with perfunctory respect. All he could grasp was the fact of his freedom and, out of a clear sky, the edict that released him a full three weeks before the expected time. The warden had said something about exemplary conduct, about a mistake in the reckoning. Richard tried again to realize the whole significance of the announcement. He could not. It was as if a star had burst in his mind, and its four corners were cumbered with flashing, exploding, purple-and-gold fires. He followed the officer out of the warden's office, he changed from his prison-stripes to the clothes they had ready for him, he accepted the money they offered him. he made his brief farewells like a man in a dream.

Outside came his first sense of disillusionment. He had expected the world, when it came his turn to join it again, to have a visible welcoming hand, a palpable atmosphere of joy and tenderness. But there was no such significance to the look of everything about the Charlestown State Prison. Perhaps it was that the neighborhood was familiar—he had often caught wistful glimpses of it from the other side of the gray-stone walls; a sordid, dusty, dreary place it was, too. Perhaps it was Richard's feeling that everybody about, the children playing jump-rope in the court, the woman shaking a rug out of a near-by window, the very iceman staggering under the weight of the ponderous translucent cube that he so sturdily nipped in his enormous pincers, must all recognize him as a discharged prisoner. He hurried up Austin Street and away from the scene.

He came out onto Main Street at the first turn and, gradually, he began to master his self-consciousness, to look people and things boldly in the face. The elevated attracted his attention immediately, and he stood watching the progress of the cars for a few minutes. At first he thought he would take a train over to the city, then he decided to walk. He strolled leisurely across the bridge, staring interestedly at the passers-by. The draw was up, and he had to wait fifteen minutes or more.

A small crowd of people gathered there, workmen rushing back to work, women and girls, in couples, impatient for their shopping, small children on a Saturday exploring tour of the big city,—they all waited in varying degrees of impatience. Something happened to the machinery of the bridge, and there was a protracted delay. The crowd grew steadily. It became impatient, then vindictive, then philosophic and humorous. The men began to chaff the girls, and the latter did not disdain to answer them through the modest medium of remarks ostensibly directed to their companions. Richard leaned back against the fence, and drank it all in. His spirits were rising. He was beginning to enjoy everything. The warm sun and the softness of the clear spring day wrought a seductive enervation in his nerves, and the salt air worked a tangy stimulation in his muscles. He had to bite his lips to keep back meaningless smiles. He amused himself with studying the clothes of the people about him. Ten years, he decided, had made great changes in the fashions. It was obvious in the clothes the men wore. What made the difference with the women it was more difficult for him to find out.

Presently the draw-gates swung slowly apart. The released crowd surged forward and spread over the sidewalk, the more speedy shooting ahead.

Richard was among these. His buoyancy of spirit affected his look and his movements. He would walk over to the Tremont House, he decided, take the Brookline car, and burst upon them all at home suddenly. Home! That meant having about you the people that you loved, and being at liberty to talk with them whenever you wished. It meant silence only when you wanted silence, and it meant noise for as long as you wanted noise. It meant other lovely things, delicious food to eat, delicate china to eat it from, a wide, cool, soft bed in a big, airy room. It meant books, magazines, pictures, music. Oh, God, what did it not mean? Why had he delayed himself by walking over the bridge? He bounded forward as if shot from a cannon's mouth, and his stride became a feverish one.

There was his mother to see first. He had not seen her so often as his father or James in the last ten years. She had come as frequently as the others would let her. But Richard had himself realized that her visits to the prison were a frightful strain upon her, and he had, at last, begged them not to let her come again. He had not seen her for two years. On that last visit he noticed that the hair had begun to gray thickly about her sweet, middle-aged face. Her soft eyes were dim with tears, her mouth worked convulsively all the time she had stayed with him.

Then there would be Patia, his only sister. Patia had been a little girl of thirteen when he left. Now she was a woman. Patia, a woman! It seemed incredible. She had been a quiet little thing, deep in her studies and her books. At eighteen she had gone to college. She had taken her degree the previous June. Richard had not seen her once in the last ten years, and before that, he had had little chance to know her. But he had always felt that, in an odd, unexpresseed way, they understood each other. Patia and he were alike, and they were both different from James, and from their parents. James, the handsome, gifted one of the family, was a curious combination of father and mother. He had their mother's indecision of character, their father's laissez-faire temperament. The combination made him curiously lovable. Patia and himself, Richard reflected, had neither of these weaknesses, even if he, at least, had proved himself the possessor of greater ones.

He was on Washington Street by this time, walking swiftly, his head bent to the clamor of his thoughts.

“Hullo,” a voice called suddenly, “you're just the kind of fellow I'm looking for.”

Richard started violently, and stared hard at the man who blocked his progress.

It was little Willett. He had been discharged three months before. Everybody in the prison had been sorry to see him go. He was the comedian of their grim company. He was, moreover, a jolly companion and a pleasant work-mate. He was a little pasty-faced fellow with a complexion so deeply lined that it seemed to crack when he smiled. His profession was one not found in the curriculum of colleges, but a difficult one, nevertheless. Its requirements were a clear head, a strong arm, a soft step, and the ability to work quickly and quietly. Incidentally, members in good standing were owners of a set of curious but innocent-looking tools, not unlike, indeed, the slender, refined instruments employed by dentists.

“Oh, hullo, Wil—” Richard was beginning.

“Jones, please,” Willett interrupted; “the other fellow's skipped—had to go,” he continued, his eyes twinkling; “this town's no place for a decent man. Just out?”

Illustration: THE RELEASED CROWD SURGED FORWARD.

“This morning.”

“Looking for a job?”

“Oh, no,” Richard said, “there's no need of that yet. I'm going home first. I suppose my father'll have some plans for me.”

“Going home!” Willett repeated, “Lord, you're an awful fool to do that. They don't want to see you. They may say they will, but they don't. I should think you'd have more sense than to go home and queer them.”

Richard flushed. “I know they'll be glad to see me. You—I—I don't think I shall queer them,” he ended humbly.

“Well, if it's the first time,” Willett conceded, “they'll try to make you think they're glad, but you'll see through the bluff easy enough. Now, listen to me, Stanton, I'm not going to stand here and watch you go up against it in that way. You'll get all the spunk jammed out of you. Here, have a cigar.”

Richard recalled with surprise that the first thing he had promised himself after his release was a good smoke. He had forgotten all about it.

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. It was a good cigar. Its first whiff transported him.

“I'll walk along with you, Stanton,” Willett went on. “The fact is, I've got a good thing, and I want to put you next. Of course, you can do as you please about it, but it's the chance of your life. There's two friends of mine that are wise to it besides me, and we want another man, someone that can put up a good appearance. You're just the man for us. There's no risk. It's a good thing—you can take my word for that. What do you say?”

Richard knew without further explanation what the character of the “good thing” was. “I can't do it,” he said, looking Willett steadily in the eye, “but I appreciate your kindness.” He held out his hand. “You see, I've made up my mind to keep straight. If I didn't feel that my people would stand behind me, it might be different—but they will.”

“Oh, don't make up your mind so soon,” Willett protested. “There's no hurry about it. See here, Stanton, you think this matter over. I tell you it's a big thing, and there's big money in it. You go home to-night if you want to. Lord, don't I know how you feel? But come in to-morrow and see me. Perhaps, by that time, you'll have changed your mind. I'll hold the question open until then, and you'll find me ready to talk business. I'll be on the Common, at the Joy Street end of the frog-pond, about three, say. How's that for you?”

“It's all right for me,” Richard said, “only I won't be there.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” Willett prophesied confidently. “Well, I turn up here. Don't forget. To-morrow at three. So long!”

Richard continued up Washington Street. Suddenly all his buoyancy of spirit had evaporated. His cigar, too, was smoked out. He threw the end away. He turned up Bromfield Street, meaning to take his car. The Tremont House had disappeared. There were no familiar car-tracks on Tremont Street.

“Where do you get a Brookline car?” he asked of a hurrying passer-by.

“In the subway,” the man responded without stopping.

The subway—of course. He remembered now. It was one of the first things that he had wanted to see. He walked over to the Common and studied the entrance. As he stood watching the flood of people disappearing into the bowels of the earth, suddenly a mood of deadly doubt and despair enveloped him. Mechanically he turned and walked up the Park Street Mall and took a seat under the arch of trees.

Was Willett right, he wondered. Of course he was. Who wanted a State prison-bird on his hands? They would be glad to see him at first, he knew. But afterward the situation would be embarrassing. There would be constant social friction, a thousand tiny personal smarts. Could any love survive that? Of course not. What was the use of putting it to the test when he knew it would fail? And he so much needed love and faith. Not alone to make up for his ten years of loneliness. There was the matter of his invention. The idea of that had come to him while he was in prison. He had thought it all out down to the minutest detail. It lay in his mind as clear and complete as his mother's face. He had made an idol, a fetich of it. It was a secret that he cherished with the jealous care that men show for the key to buried treasure. It was a key to him—the key to work, to wealth, to self-respect, to reinstated social position. Whether or no he could make a success of it all depended, he knew, upon the start, and the start depended on the home-coming. He had no doubts about the invention—but he would need money and sustaining hope for a little while at least. Once started, he could fight the whole world, but he required a start, and he knew that the start depended not on himself, but on others. What would the home-coming be like? He was afraid to let himself think. He cursed himself for a weakling, but his mood rode and rowelled him. All the afternoon he sat there mulling over his hopeless past, and his doubtful future, not daring to start homeward. Toward dusk he felt faint. He went into a restaurant and ordered dinner, but when it came he found that, although he was almost weak from hunger, he could not eat. He paid his bill and went out into the street again.

It had become dark. There were parallel rows of lights in all directions. There were more people than formerly, he observed, on the Boston streets at night. He walked back to the place he had left on the Common, sat down, and tried to think the matter out once more. His head ached, and his thoughts flew volatilely in all directions. Suddenly he jumped up, strode down the subway stairs, and flew into the Brookline car that seemed, providentially, to be waiting there.

•••••••••

The house was blazing with lights. They must be entertaining, he reflected. That seemed strange. The life had been a quiet one in his boyhood. He tiptoed across the velvet lawn, and peered in one of the front windows. The huge drawing-rooms were full of people, all seated, their chairs arranged in tiers, rows and rows of them, facing the further end of the room. There were dozens of pretty, bare-shouldered girls, laughing and talking. Here and there were matronly elderly women. There were groups of men standing at the back and in the aisles. Richard recognized nobody. It was like a dream. Suddenly his mother's face flashed out from a laughing group. The sight gave him courage. He walked to the back of the house, and went in at the kitchen door.

“Tell Mr. James that there is somebody here who would like to see him,” he said shortly to one of the surprised maids sitting there.

“I'm afraid he's too busy,” the girl began.

“Tell him,” Richard commanded. She disappeared.

He waited for several minutes, still standing. Then his brother appeared.

“Richard!” he exclaimed. “Good heavens!—come in here,” he ended with a quick glance at the curious faces of the two women. Richard followed him into the dining-room.

Illustration: “LOOKING FOR A JOB!”

He was aware, even in the instant before his brother spoke, of a new look to the room, that was not entirely to be accounted for by the exquisite appointments of the many tiny tables that filled it and the adjacent hall, nor by the huge vases of blush-roses, and the pink-petticoated silver candlesticks that were everywhere. An inexplicable atmosphere hung about it. His brief glance into the drawing-rooms had surprised it there also. It was as if the big, old-fashioned house had suddenly grown younger.

James was holding out his hand to his brother. “I'm awfully glad to see you, Richard,” he said. “We did not expect you so soon, or we should have been prepared—you see, we're doing some entertaining to-night. I'm wondering—” he laughed embarrassedly.

Richard took his brother's hand. He was still standing.

“Tell Mr. Stanton to come here, please,” James called to a maid passing in the hall.

Illustration: MULLING OVER HIS HOPELESS PAST.

There was a pause. Richard looked at his brother, as handsome in his evening clothes as an illustration in a magazine. He caught a glimpse of his own figure in a mirror. He did not know himself at first. It seemed impossible to him that the ghastly mask, surmounting a thin figure, that almost looked as if it might rattle in its loose, bagging clothes, could be kin to the fresh-colored face across the table.

In the midst of this train of thought, his father came in.

“What's the matter, James?” he asked briskly. “Is—Richard, my poor boy! How does it happen that you're here? They told us three weeks later. If we'd only known. Now you must—come right up—” He stopped in perplexity. “The trouble is that every room and every bed in the house is filled up. We've a lot of out-of-town people on our hands. Now, where can we put you for the night, or until we've got rid of these people?”

“There's the hotel,” James suggested. There was an awkward pause. Richard said nothing. He was still standing.

“Tell Mrs. Stanton to come here,” Mr. Stanton ordered an invisible somebody in the hall.

Nobody spoke for a minute or two.

Mrs. Stanton came bustling in, soft and motherly; radiant, too, as Richard had never before seen her, in gray satin, lace, and pearls. “My boy, my boy,” she called from the doorway. She rushed over to Richard, and kissed him lovingly. “When—how—we didn't know—if we'd only been notified, dear, we'd have—tell me all about it. I'm so glad. Take Richard up—no, there's no—what are we going to do, Dick?” She turned to her husband. “Every corner in the house is taken. James is even going to sleep on the couch in the library, We could send Richard down to Cousin Amy's. I know she'd be lovely about it.”

Cousin Amy! Richard recalled her acid and vinegar aspect. Ten years ago she had always frozen him. What would she be like under the conditions of the present? Well, he wouldn't bother them. Willett was right. There was no place in the social scheme for the returned State-prison bird. He would stay at the hotel that night. And the next day at three he would keep his appointment with Willett. He must be doubly careful to call him Jones now—now that they were going to l)e pals. Jones had understood. How sure he had been that Richard would return.

“Don't bother about me, mother,” he said steadily. “I'll go to the hotel for the night. To-morrow I have a business engagement, but as soon as I have time——”

“For goodness' sake! what are you doing out here?” a spirited voice interrupted. “It's so queer for you all to leave, and everybody's ready for the first tableau.”

A young girl stood in the doorway. It was Patia. Richard knew her at once. Her slender figure did not look her twenty-three years, but her earnest little face more than showed them. It was a beautiful face, Richard decided swiftly; proud in its poise on the slender neck, proud in the expression of the velvety eyes. These eyes were really black, but they were set in a skin as white as milk, its only other relieving color the satiny dark of her hair and eyebrows, and the curved scarlet of her delicious mouth.

“Oh,” she said uncertainly, “you've got—” She stared intently at Richard. “You're my brother Richard,” she burst out suddenly, rushing to his side. Her slender, bare arms went about his neck, and she kissed him again and again. “Oh, my dear, I'm so glad to have you here! It was all I needed to make my birthday-party a success. Oh, how I've longed to see you, Richard! But you must be tired and hungry. Sit down and let me bring you some wine.”

She pushed him into a chair at one of the little tables, making ruthless confusion of its dainty completeness. She brought a decanter from the sideboard, and poured him a glassful of wine. Richard drank, weakly obedient.

“We were just wondering what we should do,” her father was saying. “Where can we put Richard to-night, Patia? There seems to be no place in the house that we can think of.”

Illustration: “YOU'RE MV BROTHER RICHARD!”

“I suggested the hotel,” James said perplexedly.

“Oh, no, not a hotel,” Mrs. Stanton protested. “I couldn't do that, and I am sure Cousin Amy will take Richard home for the night. But if she happens to have company I don't know what I'll do.”

Patia had stopped at her brother's side, her arm about his neck. She stared at them each in turn. “Well, I know what we'll do,” she said; “he'll stay here—he'll have my room.”

“But, Patia,” James expostulated, “how can we explain—what shall we say?”

Patia looked at him for a second. “I'll tell you what we'll say,” she said. “Listen.” She disappeared through the door-way.

“What is that crazy girl going to do?” James muttered. He walked over to the door that led to one of the drawing-rooms, and pulled its portière aside. His father and mother followed him and stood watching. Impelled, against his will, Richard joined the group.

He watched Patia enter from another door. She held her head high, and her eyes flamed. The delicate lace of her overdress, the muslin ruffles of her skirt, the ribbons at her belt, even the fluted hanging sleeves were floated out like banners by the haste of her progress. She looked neither to right nor left, and, the skirt-encumbered aisle was rapidly cleared for her until she reached the platform at the other end of the room. She mounted this, and for a second she stood silent, a slender, white figure that cut into the gloom of the green curtains.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. The buzz of conversation died out. “Before we go on with the tableaux,” she continued clearly, “I wish to make an announcement to you. My brother Richard has just come home. He is in the house now. You know—every one of you—what he has come home from, and what he comes home to. If there are any among you who do not wish to speak with him to-night, nor to receive him in your homes afterward, will you kindly leave our house now, before he comes in here to join us?”

She stopped, and there was an instant of dead silence. Then the room filled with tumultuous applause. It followed her as she went into the hall, and the walls seemed actually to rock with its violence when she returned, leaning on Richard's arm.