Quinby and Son/Chapter 10
A MOMENT after throwing the cup Bert would have given all he possessed in the world to have stopped it in its flight. With Sam lying in the street, sanity came back and drove the violence from his blood. There was a rear door to the store . . . another boy might have run. But through a trembling fear was fast overwhelming him he held his ground. There was in him, in some ways, what Tom Woods would have called "the courage to take his medicine."
A moment before Sam staggered out through the doorway, Washington Avenue was a deserted, rain-swept thoroughfare; a moment later a crowd was beginning to gather. They came running, giving tongue to a weird, low murmur of excitement. Bert heard voices: "What happened to him? His head is cut. Who hit him? Stand back, there, and give him air!" There was a sudden movement at one edge of the crowd, and it broke and fell away. Policeman Glynn pushed his way through.
Bert, forcing himself to move, went down to the door. Had he hurt Sam badly? It didn't seem possible that a cup could do much damage. The door was still open. He laid one hand on the knob, and clutched it, and stood there at the edge of the gathering.
The coming of the policeman had brought order out of confusion. Two men bent down and lifted the clerk to his feet. His eyes opened, and he came back to consciousness, and struggled to find his balance. Bert, from his heart, breathed a prayer of relief.
"What happened to you?" Policeman Glynn asked. "Did you fall?"
"I was hit," Sam said weakly.
"By what?"
"I don't know."
"Who hit you?"
Sam's eyes roved about the circle of faces. "He did," he said, and pointed to Bert in the doorway.
"You," said Policeman Glynn, and shook his head. "Bad business. I always thought you were one of the nice, easy lads who would never give a peep of trouble. I'll have to take you in if this gentleman's going to make a complaint."
Sam was rapidly recovering. "You can bet I'm going to make a complaint. He assaulted me. I hadn't done anything to him. I was walking out and he hit me with something."
The policeman stooped and picked up half of the cup. "This it?" he asked Bert. The boy nodded, and the officer stuck the fragment in his pocket and began to give businesslike directions. "You get to a doctor and have your head looked after. It may need a bandage. After that come down to the station and sign a complaint."
Half a dozen sympathetic voices in the crowd spoke up and offered to take Sam to Dr. Elman's office. When he moved off, walking a bit unsteadily, a few of the bystanders went with him. The majority remained to watch the next act of the drama. Arrests were few and far between in peaceful Springham. They did not want to miss this one.
Policeman Glynn beckoned to Bert. "You'll have to come with me."
Bert got his hat and coat and locked the door. As he stepped away he saw Bill Harrison on the outside of the crowd. Bill swung around and hobbled away as fast as he could on his crutch.
The distance to the police station in the municipal building was four blocks, and the group that followed policeman and prisoner grew as it went along. At the second corner Peg Scudder joined the escort. Clamoring voices told him the nature of the trouble. Peg made haste to come abreast of Bert.
"So you beaned him with a cup, did you?"
Bert made no answer.
"Blast me, but I didn't think you had spunk enough for such a trick. What did he do, give you some fresh lip? Why didn't you bend a chair over his knob? That would have rattled him up some. My old man was a great hand at cleaning up a gang with a chair."
Bert's eyes besought the guardian of the law, and Policeman Glynn stuck his club persuasively into Peg's ribs.
"Run along," he commanded. "Nobody sent for you. When we want your advice we'll ask for it."
Peg made haste to drop back among the crowd. The incident was not without its effect on Bert. Bill Harrison had shunned him. Peg Scudder, town bully and loafer, drunkard and general noaccount, saw in his arrest a claim to brotherhood.
A vision of a barred cell came to Bert as he entered the municipal building. Policeman Glynn led him down a small corridor and turned in through a door to the left. A sergeant in uniform was behind a long high desk down at one end and along one wall was a board heavily tacked with circulars advertising the features and histories of criminals wanted in different parts of the country. Bert hastily turned his eyes away from the board.
The sergeant, writing in a big book, lifted his head. "What's the charge, Officer?"
"Assault and battery," said Policeman Glynn.
The words had a sinister sound. Bert hung his head; but not before the sergeant had peered over the top of the high desk and had noted him.
"Are you Mr. Quinby's boy? Nice mess you've got yourself into. What was it, street fight?"
"He let go a cup at that fellow who was running the store with him," said the policeman. "Somebody took the lad to Dr. Elman's to get fixed up."
The sergeant reached for a telephone and gave a number. "Dr. Elman? Sergeant Rockwell speaking. How is that fellow who came in to get his head dressed? Doesn't amount to much? Thank you."
"You're a lucky boy," Policeman Glynn said in an undertone.
The sergeant caught the words. "Lucky is right. Suppose you had fractured his skull? That would be nice, wouldn't it? How now, Officer? Is that fellow going to come over from the doctor's office and sign a complaint? All right. Here, Quinby; sit over there on that bench. How about Mr. Quinby, Officer? Does he know anything about this? You'd better go down and tell him."
Bert wet his lips, and walked over to the bench and sat down. His father! A cell lost its terror. He would rather go to a cell than face the meeting that must soon come.
By and by there was a shuffle of feet along the corridor. He steeled himself. But it was Sam, his head bandaged, accompanied by two of the men who had gone with him to Dr. Elman's. The clerk signed a paper. Bert knew it was the complaint. There was some talk up at the big desk; he did not hear it. Then Sam went out without looking at him, and he was left alone upon his bench.
A clock on the wall ticked with noisy emphasis. He shifted his position. A shadow seemed to fall across the floor. He looked up. His father, stern and rigid, stood before him.
"Arrested," Mr. Quinby said as though talking to himself. "You've done it this time, haven't you? One thing after another, and now this. A prisoner in a police station. They tell me Sam was lying senseless in the street. Did you do it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Carted through the streets by a policeman with the rabble of the town following." Abruptly the man walked over to the desk and spoke to Sergeant Rockwell. Justice of the Peace Manning, it developed, would sit at eight o'clock that night, and the case would then go to a hearing.
"I'll release him in your custody, Mr. Quinby," the sergeant offered, "if you'll have him here again at that hour."
"Let him stay here," Mr. Quinby said shortly, "and learn his lesson." On the way out he paused an instant before his son. "A nice story to take home to your mother, isn't it?"
There came to Bert, as the minutes passed, the most lonesome feeling that can overwhelm either man or boy—the feeling of having been discarded and deserted. Policeman Glynn came back, made a report at the desk, and paused beside the bench.
"Had any dinner?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"Got any money? I'll send you in a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and you can pay the man when he brings it."
Bert said he was not hungry. Something in Policeman Glynn's gruff bearing told him of the officer's unspoken sympathy. "Will . . . will they send me to jail?" he asked.
"Well, now, I'm not saying you don't deserve it, but I don't see the use of worrying a kid who's plainly sorry for what he's done. The Judge doesn't usually send boys to the county jail."
Some of the load left Bert's heart. The clock said half-past four, and the short winter twilight was turning to night. Three and a half more hours to wait! He fell to thinking of his mother, and for the first time felt the sting of a tear. So that the sergeant might not see this sign of emotion he turned his head away.
And then a familiar voice fell upon his ear.
"Good evening, Sergeant. Have you a boy here named Quin . . ."
Bert jumped to his feet. "Mr. Woods."
The Butterfly Man crossed the room with half a dozen quick strides. "Bert, old man, I'm sorry to see you in a fix like this. I didn't think things would go this far. Bill Harrison saw you arrested, and legged it for a telephone to let me know. I was out at the time; he kept after me until I answered. I got the car and came right down."
So that was why Bill had stumped away. "I might have known he wasn't running away from me," Bert said.
"Who? Bill? Bill would never run out on a friend. Now, let's get at the bottom of this. Is Sam seriously hurt?"
"Only a cut on the head."
"That's good to begin with. How did it happen?"
Bert told him the story, beginning with the visit and the proposals of Old Man Clud, and ending with the attack on Sam.
The Butterfly Man's face was grave. "Sam was on his way out of the store?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then you hit him from behind."
Bert sighed and, after a moment, dropped his head.
"There, there!" the man said gently. "Forgive me, Bert; but hitting from behind always has a bad ring. I guess you didn't think."
"I didn't think of anything," the boy answered, "except that he was walking out free and leaving me to face everything. It made me wild, and I threw what was in my hand."
"Does your father know?"
A nod.
"Has he been in to see you?"
Another nod.
"Wouldn't they let him give bail for you until you have a hearing?"
"He said I could stay here and learn my lesson." Something sullen crept into his words, and their purport was to accuse his father of a grievous crime. Up to this point he had been a penitent, sorry for what he had done, a-tremble as to the outcome, accepting his father's action as no more than he could expect. But Tom Woods' presence, the fact that the man had ridden far to reach him, made the contrast of his father's desertion a bitter and resentful pill. Self-pity, always quick to flower in a boy, pictured him as a martyr to outrageous fortune.
The Butterfly Man, apparently, paid no heed. He fumbled through his pockets and found his pipe and tobacco.
"Bert?" he asked quietly, "did it ever dawn on you that it might be a mighty good thing for you to learn the lesson? You've been hit pretty hard, but you had it coming to you. You've been riding on the edge of a volcano, and at last the volcano has spat fire and you're looking for someone to bind your wounds and tell you you're a poor, abused lamb. This is no time for honey and molasses; this is a time for plain, straight talk. You've been up to your eyes in trouble for months. Why? You think because luck was against you. That's only half the story. You've been in trouble because you threw your father overboard. You're sitting in a police station to-night with a charge over your head because you told the captain of the ship he didn't know the landmarks. You took the wheel and tried to be your own pilot, and you've landed on the rocks."
Coming from Tom Woods, staunch friend and whimsical comrade, the attack was staggering. Bert's confidence of consolation gave way to dismay. Shaken and jarred, he could only stare and try in his bewilderment to reason what had happened. "You're turning against me, too," he said miserably.
"Bosh!" said Tom Woods. "That's baby talk. Nobody went out and dug a hole for you and invited you to fall in. You dug the hole yourself. And you've been a long time digging it. Let's go back to the beginning. When you and Sam started out together, what was in your mind? You saw success. For whom? For yourself. You were going to show people what a great fellow you were. And what were your father's thoughts when he started his business? Did you ever stop to think about that? He was looking years ahead. He was seeing the day when, instead of battling the world for a foothold, you'd find a pinnacle waiting, a tower of success built by his hands all ready for you. Every time he looked at his sign he was thinking of the day when it would read 'Quinby and Son' and he and you would be in there working, planning and achieving together. What did that mean to you? Nothing. You thought so little of it that you wouldn't put your shoulder to the wheel and push when you were needed. He had to fire you and hire an outsider in your place. Did you ever stop to think how he must have felt about that? Sam's desertion angered you so much that you knocked him senseless. Yet you deserted your father. What right have you to whine if he deserts you now?"
Bert, smarting, was stung to angry speech. "Is this what you came to Springham for?"
"You came to me for advice several times. Are you one of those soft fellows that wants only talk that runs their way? Buck up and do some straight thinking. You've come to a point where you've got to think straight. You brought me your troubles; and yet I might move away from here to-morrow and in six weeks forget all about you. You pinned your faith on Sam, and Sam played you for a fool. And the one man who'll be with you all his life, who'll always make your troubles his, who'd risk his life to-morrow to drag you out of danger, was never consulted. That man was your father. In all the world what other man will you find who'll care for you as he cares? And what kind of consideration have you given him?"
The boy was silent.
"Who would have a greater desire to see yo succeed? Yet, when Sam broached this service idea, what did you do? One question, one request for advice, and your father could have saved you all the worry you've been through. Of course he knew you were riding toward disaster. I knew it. Even Bill Harrison knew it. But then it was too late. You had closed the door and had shut out your best friend. You told him he wasn't wanted. You ordered him out of your affairs. You told him, in effect, that you valued the judgment of Sam more than all the counsel he could give you. And now you find that Sam's judgment was just about the rottenest egg in the basket. Don't you wish you had gone to your father at the start?"
The boy's lips quivered.
"That wasn't the only time you threw him down, Bert. The day I stepped in to see the store I read a quick finish. What would happen then I didn't know, but I knew you'd need somebody strong enough for you to lean on. I made you promise to go to your father if anything queer turned up. Instead you pushed him aside again and went to Clud. One suggestion then of what was in your mind and he'd have moved heaven and earth to have saved you from the hands of that shark. Ignoring him completely, turning your back upon the salvation he could have brought you, you went out and contracted a debt that he might be called upon to pay. If you had asked him, out of his wisdom he could have steered you into safe channels. You should have asked him. But you didn't do it. You cast aside his protecting arm, and to-night Clud has you in his clutches. To-night you're waiting to stand trial in a police court. To-night your father's at home eating out his heart in grief and disappointment. Don't you wish now that you had gone to him at the start?"
"Yes," said the boy in a shaky whisper.
"Then you've got to go to him the first chance you get and make a manful confession that you've been a fool. You've got to square things and stand right in his eyes. You've got to make him feel that all through the future he'll be able to depend upon you."
"He . . . he'll think I'm saying it just because. . . ."
"Bert," the Butterfly Man broke in gently, "you don't know much about fathers."
"I guess," the boy faltered, "I don't know much about anything."
"If you know that much," Tom Woods said with a return of his old humor, "you're beginning to know a lot. How old are you?"
Bert told him.
"You're in luck. I was thirty before I realized I didn't know anything, and then there was nobody to goto. My dad was gone. Yours is still here. Think that over. I've got an errand or two that will keep me busy for a while."
"You'll be here when. . . ."
"When you face the scratch? Yes; I'll be here. I want to see how certain things are going to break."
Out in Washington Avenue the man turned down the street as though he knew exactly where he was going. He made one pause . . . at a men's furnishing store temporarily in charge of a placid, uninspiring, but dependable clerk. Ten minutes later he mounted a stoop and rang the door-bell of a house. A woman opened the door.
"Mrs. Quinby?" he asked.
"Yes." It was plain that she wondered who he might be.
"We are both interested," he said gravely, "in a very fine boy who finds himself in trouble. My name is Thomas Woods. May I come in?"
She held the door wide for him in quick welcome, for his praise of Bert had reached her troubled heart. Up the hall, near the dining room doorway, a harassed man stood and surveyed him.
"Tom Woods! Are you the man who deals in butterflies?"
"Yes. Rather queer business, isn't it?"
"Rather," Mr. Quinby agreed coldly. "Bert has spent quite a bit of time out at your place. Were you one of those who encouraged him in the mad things he's done?"
"Don't you think," Tom Woods said, "that you're a little bit late asking that question? You don't know me from the King of Denmark. If I walked into your store to-night and requested you to sell me a suit of clothes on credit, what would you do?"
"I'd demand references. I'd want to know something about you."
"Exactly. But you permitted Bert to stay over night at my place and never inquired what caliber of man I was. I couldn't have one of your suits, but I could have your boy. Isn't it rather late to probe into what my influence over him has been?"
A flush of anger was rising in Mr. Quinby's cheeks. "Do you know anything about what caused this thing to-day?"
"Yes; do you?"
"No."
"You saw him at the police station."
"He didn't tell me. He reserves his confidences for those outside the family."
"Did you," Tom Woods said sharply, "bother to ask him? Great Christopher, don't you know your own son? Is there anything about him that would stamp him as a thug? Something must have happened to fire him enough to commit an assault. What was it? You don't know? You didn't even take the trouble to get his side of the story. You've condemned him without a hearing."
"Mary." Mr. Quinby's voice was of ice. "Will you please open the door for the gentleman? He wants to go."
"Just a moment," Tom Woods said quietly. "I do not want to go, but I will go if you insist. I have nothing to gain by this interview. I have always thought that the greatest tragedy in the world is for mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, to drift apart. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's such a ghastly, unnecessary blunder. Bert, without meaning to, has let me read a lot between the lines. I knew that you and he were pulling in opposite directions. Often, when the chance arose, I asked him to come to you. He didn't; and the fact that he didn't means that there was something wrong. Who was wrong, you or he? Do you want this thing to goon? My liking for the boy is sincere. There's wonderful stuff in him. I want to see him what he ought to be—his father's pal. But if his father objects to hearing me I can only go my way and wonder why men are sometimes so blind in dealing with the persons they love the most."
All the time he had been speaking Mrs. Quinby's eyes had never left his face. Still looking at him she went down the hall and put out a hand and found her husband's arm.
"Harry!" she said. "He is Bert's friend."
"Stay," said Mr. Quinby after a moment of silence, and led the way into the dining room. There he sat and stared with fixed gaze across the table.
"How did this thing happen?" he asked at last.
"The business had failed," Tom Woods answered. "They were at the end of their rope. Last November they were up against the wall; but Sam said that the Christmas season would put them on their feet and Bert believed him. All they needed, Sam said, was money to tide them over. Bert went out and got the money; but instead of borrowing in the name of the firm, he unthinkingly borrowed in his own name. To-day Sam refused to bear his share of the loss. Sam was on his way out of the store to take a train for the city when Bert, furious at the treachery, threw what he had in his hand. It happened to be a cup."
"You said Bert borrowed money. Whom did he borrow it from?"
"Clud."
"Clud!" Mr. Quinby sprang to his feet. "I told him not to go near Clud. I warned him. And instead of listening to me. . . . It's been that way for months. He's ignored every word I've spoken to him and done as he pleased. I wash my hands of him. Let him take his medicine. Next time, perhaps, he'll heed my words."
"Next time?" The Butterfly Man shook his head. "If you desert him now there may never be a next time. If you fail him now, he may never seek you out again. Can't you see that to-night, sitting in that police station among the utter ruin of his hopes, he's at a crossroads of his life?"
"I see it," said Mrs. Quinby.
Mr. Quinby, after a moment, sighed and sat down. "It seems," he said bitterly, "that a father is not supposed to have any feelings."
"Feelings?" Tom Woods leaned across the table. "He must have feeling and understanding, sympathy and wisdom, patience and faith. There isn't a bigger job in the world than being a father, and there isn't a job that is so often slighted. If a man has a business that's going bad he'll sit up all night with it, plan and scheme for ways and means to put it on its feet, stick to it through years of discouragement, and call no effort too great that offers a chance for success. But let his boy kick over the traces and his patience evaporates, his faith wabbles, his sympathy dies, his understanding clouds, and he says, 'I wash my hands of you.' He doesn't say this to his business; yet if his business failed he might resurrect it. But failure with his son might be failure forever.
"Great Christopher! what have you been thinking of? Father and son live in different worlds. The man sees life through the dearly-bought wisdom of experience; the boy sees only a fairyland in which everything is honest, and true, and possible. The father expects the boy to come over to his world, and the boy can't do it. It is the father who must go to the boy's world. He must make himself part of it and try to understand it. And yet how many do it? Did you?"
"Didn't I?" Mr. Quinby asked.
"You did not. Were you ever a boy? Can't you go back to your own boyhood and marvel at some of the wild ideas that came to you? This idea of business came to Bert, and he followed it. And what then? Did you stop to think that, after all, his was only a boy's brain? No; you expected him to see the situation just as you saw it. Instead of sitting down with an air of man to man and showing him in black and white, with pencil and paper, how impossible it all was, you adopted an air of injured dignity and drove him into a shell of silence and distrust. Even after he was committed to the plan, after the store was open, he was still your son—the most precious thing you own in the world. A chasm had formed between you. Did you try to bridge it? No. You never went into his place, never showed any interest in it, never gave any sign of good will, never prepared for the day when, the timbers of the crazy, flimsy, mistaken structure down about his ears, he would be glad to come to you as to a haven.
"And when the day of disaster came, he didn't come to you. You had predicted failure, and had sat back and had waited for it so that you could prove to him that you had known what was best. A man matching his wisdom against that of a boy! Put yourself in his place. Failure was the last thing he wanted to own up to. You had fashioned things in his mind so that he felt he could not come to you with a manly admission that he had made a mistake, but had to come with none of his pride left. He was too sensitive, stubborn and high-spirited for that. He took a chance on winning out and went to Clud, and Clud squeezed him. When the crash came he found that Clud had used him for an easy mark, and that Sam had played him false. And to-night, sitting alone in the police station, he hasn't even got you.
"You should be there with him. Did you ever read the parable of the Prodigal Son? It's a father's job to stand by, to help a boy over the rough places, to follow him afar if he wanders, to keep a guiding hand on the elbow even when the elbow is pulled away, to bind up his wounds when he's hurt. Of course he's going to make mistakes. He's going to aggravate you and get your blood boiling; and there will be times you'll feel that you'd like to beat sense into him with a club, and that you've failed at every turn, and that the whole game isn't worth the candle. A tough job? Yes. A thankless job? Often. But you've got to stay with it until some day you lead him to sanity and wisdom, until some day you can take your hand away and let him walk alone secure in the knowledge that his head is level and his thinking straight. That is the hour of reward, for in that hour he knows what your help has meant.
"And you talk of washing your hands of him. Have you ever heard boys say 'My old man has no use for me?' Great Christopher, man, suppose he washes his hands of you?"
The room fell into silence. A heightened color had come into Mrs. Quinby's cheeks. Her lips were moving without sound. When her husband glanced at her, a look of thoughtfulness deepened on his face.
"When does that Clud note fall due?" he asked at last.
"Monday," Tom Woods told him.
"Has Clud been to see Bert?"
"To-day."
"Did Clud threaten him?"
"Yes."
Mr. Quinby's hands opened and closed as though they itched to crush something. "How big is the note?"
"One hundred and seventy-five dollars."
The man took a check book from his pocket and wrote out a check for the amount. "Woods?" he asked, "will you do me a favor? Will you see that Clud gets this? If I go into his office, I'm liable to do him harm." He arose, leaned over his wife's shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. "Everything's all right," he said; "I'm going to Bert."
"Good luck," said the Butterfly Man.
Mr. Quinby smiled an uncertain smile. "Thanks to you," he said, "I think it will be good luck . . . now."