Without Capitulation

by Roy Norton

 

WITHOUT CAPITULATION

By Roy Norton

Drawings by George Gibbs

THERE was a big gang clearing the snow from the short street as I came home that night; so big that I stopped and watched it for a moment, despite the cold, before climbing up to the garret like place of my abode There must have been at least a hundred men working there at one o'clock in the morning, shadowy, moving phantoms of black, weaving in and out round shadowy teams of sleeping horses and high, ungainly, shadowy wagons. The lights from the ends of the street made these flitting shapes seem tangled One was standing quietly for the time being, just a few feet from where I halted, and another phantom approached it.

“Are you the foreman?” I heard a voice of peculiar resonance ask.

“Yep.” The crisp reply interested me, and I sidled nearer.

“Well, sir, I'd like to go to work.”

“Nothin' doin'.”

“But the papers say men are wanted to shovel snow, and that the pay is twenty-five cents an hour,” the resonant voice insisted.

The foreman moved farther up the line. He waved an imperative hand at one of the teamsters. “Here you!” he called. “Wake up! Move ahead there! What's the matter with you?”

The applicant, of whose face I could not get a view, followed him. “Can't you give me work?”

The foreman wheeled round as if annoyed by this importunity. “No. I can't! I told you that before.” He peered at the other man for an instant, and then continued, “What can you do? You're too old to be any good. Get out! Don't bother me!”

“But I can hold out an hour.”

The foreman suddenly plunged out into the heart of the gang as if to escape and began giving sharp orders mixed with brisk oaths The rejected one stood for a moment as if inclined to make another attempt; and I, admiring his persistence, moved closer to him, thus beginning our acquaintance.

“Wouldn't give you anything to do, eh?” I questioned almost in his ear.

He swung round abruptly so that the light from one of the arcs at the end of the street shone full on his face, and I was startled. He was for all the world the kind of man one meets in Broadway at the noon hour, whom one would pick out as the small business man, probably well to do, perhaps prosperous, possibly wealthy. His beard was snow white and carefully trimmed. His hat was a soft slouch that had at some time been natty. From all that I could see, standing there in the half-light that was kind to him, he appeared a gentleman.

“You heard what he said?” was his reply.

“Yes, I heard, and—excuse me,”—to save my life I couldn't help apologizing to him,—“you needed the twenty-five cents.”

“Quite true,” he assented; “but I don't blame him. I am rather old for that kind of work. I'm seventy-three. Goodnight.”

HE started for the corner, and I felt properly rebuffed; but I was a trifle irritated by what I conceived to be false pride. So I followed him until we stood in the outer edge of the pool of white light at the street intersection.

“Pardon me. Can't you spare me a moment?”

Perhaps he thought I too was derelict. Anyway, he stopped and stared at me from beneath a thatch of white eyebrows.

“You are desperate,” I said

To my surprise he laughed. “Not in the least. I'm not even discouraged. There are a hundred other gangs of men working to-night. I've exhausted my chances with only those I've met since eight o'clock in the evening.”

“See here!” I said, amazed at his attitude. “I want to help you. You're busted!”

“What of that?” he answered. “That, at most, is not disgraceful. There are probably several other men in a similar state of depletion to-night. How can you help me? Have you any snow to shovel?”

“Yes,” I blurted out; “but it has to be shoveled in the daytime. You can have the job.”

“Where shall I report?” he asked rather eagerly.

I was stumped. I parried for time in front of this impecunious old gentleman whose speech and actions had enlisted my sympathies. “I'll explain to you to-morrow,” I said. “In the meantime perhaps you would like an advance on the work.”

This he accepted thankfully. I had just a dollar in my pocket, and gave it to him, together with the number of my dwelling.

“My name is Howe,” he volunteered as he unbuttoned his worn overcoat and tucked the bill away, “Howe, F. C.”

I was still inquisitive. “What's your postoffice address?”

“General delivery at present; that is, it has been since six o'clock last evening.”

I succeeded in extracting the further information that at that hour he had gone to the place where he owed seventy-five cents for three days' lodging and found the door locked.

“They wouldn't permit me to get my suitcase to sell,” he added. “But I'm all right now. I'll go round and pay them and—I'll be there to shovel that snow. Goodnight!”

He was gone, his last words floating back as he started across the street. I stood and watched him as he tramped sturdily away, so strong is the lure of the unusual; and had to suppress an impulse to follow him; to steal softly after him, slipping from lamp post to lamp post; to lurk in hallways if perchance he should look backward. I wanted to learn more of him and the place that barred a man from his bed because he owed the stupendous sum of seventy-five cents. But a chill blast sweeping round the gloomy bank corner drove me to the warmth of my rooms.

INTERRUPTIONS to dreams are seldom welcome; because unless it happens to be one of dread, the dreamer hopes to finish the story, to know the climax and finale of those deeds of subconsciousness. So, when I was interrupted by a knocking on my door, I was not good tempered. I had just shot four times at the lion, and he was delivering me an address on the futility of trying to kill him—in dreams—and—

“Hello! Who's there?” I called.

From the barricade of the door that muffles voices came the response, “It is I, Howe, F. C. I've come to shovel that snow.”

My tongue was tempted to objurgation. My philanthropy of the night before paled into foolishness. I wished I had never met Howe. F. C. I jerked my ragged bathrobe from its hook, crawled into it. and jammed the doorcatch back, feeling that my face, hair, and temper were alike ruffled. He entered with an air so businesslike and yet courteous that I was again thrown under the spell of good breeding; indeed, was ashamed of my grouchiness.

“Pardon me,” I said, recovering, “for my appearance.”

He accepted my apology with the words and grace of a gentleman; but looked expectant. “The snow,” he said, “the snow! Where is it?”

I was a culprit of subterfuge and felt my face flush at the thought of having lied to him. And I do not always flush when I lie. I stammered, while his eyes, I sensed rather than saw, never left mine. I was a trifle confused. My position was false, and he knew it.

“Anywhere,” I muttered “There's snow mostly anywhere in New York to-day. Shovel any of it. You can shovel anywhere till you've relieved yourself of that obligation, if that's what you're after.”

There was a spell of silence so extended that I was forced to look up from my tattered rug and meet his accusing stare. He began a deliberate inspection of my cheaply furnished rooms, and I saw his eyes inventory the junk from the ten-cent counters with which I had adorned them, take stock of the frayed Wilton square, travel to the decrepit arm chair, pause at my rusty theodolite, stumble over my huge disorderly pile of second-hand books, and then stop and light up when they discovered the tattered cavalry saber by which my gallant father had won an honorable livelihood. He looked at it for quite a time, and then turned to me with an expression somewhat less distant.

“My boy,” he said as his hand, white and withered, came to rest on my shoulder, “the good God forgives some lies!”

I felt foolish. We sat down together, and he went on. “There's no use in trying to bluff me, as the old slang phrase goes. You have no snow to shovel. You don't own any snow!”

And then, in that softened mood and at seven o'clock in the morning, he dragged from his overcoat a bundle of papers. I glanced at a few of them and saw they were recommendations from men, some of whom are well known. Boston business men most of them, and the dates quite recent. He told me his story without pause, complaint, humiliation, or discouragement. And I, who had been discouraged, found new heart in his simple recital.

He had been a small merchant in Boston for many years, until competitors beat him out. He had gone steadily down the line, fighting with fortitude, until he had dropped in the commercial world to the ownership of a mere cigarstand. This humble business he built up until it attracted the envy of a business rival who endeavored to buy him out—at less than his stock cost! Failing in this, the rival opened a place, gilded, refurbished, and palatial alongside and sold his wares—the same ones he sold—at less than he could, and thus brought him, still grimly fighting, to the end. The end was bankruptcy.

“I sent Mother,” he said.—“that's my wife,—to visit some country friends of hers. We have no children. I made up my mind to start life over again here in New York, where there are more people, more chances for employment, and more hopes of getting ahead.”

The papers in my hand scattered, and I saw a big seal.

“Yes I brought that along too as a sort of certificate of past character,” he said as I opened it.

It was an honorable discharge from the Union army at the close of the Civil War, showing that he had attained no less rank than that of Colonel in that grave test of national cohesion. Now I understood why he had stared so long at the war-worn saber of my father. He saw me glance up at it.

“You can realize,” he added meaningly, “why I cannot accept alms.”

I could, and waited for him to continue. He did so in a firm cheery tone of voice.

“There is some place for a man as sturdy as I am, who has lived without squandering his body in profligacy. I can do many things that many younger men can do. I am starting out again, and must find my place. This is a big world filled with men who should help each other to work, to do something to be independent. In that much you may help me. I owe you one dollar.”

I TRIED to induce him to make it two but he surmised that it strained my scant treasury and refused. Quite courteously he departed, in the flesh, leaving behind a spirit of courage that brightened my rooms, made the winter sunlight warmer and my own difficulties less formidable. In remembrance I saw him as he watched the saber, and my fancy reviewed the scenes he had survived and through which I wished I might have passed,—brave scenes enlivened by the blare of brave bugles and the clash of valiant arms.

A rap on the door disturbed me. It was Mulligan, the janitor, an important personage, descended from a line of domineering and militant Princes, I should presume, of whom I had stood in awe.

“Everything all right?” he queried.

“Certainly, your Excellency,” I responded. “But why this grave solicitude?”

That made him remove his hat. Indeed, he became deferential. “Because, sir, I was afraid the steam had gone down. You see, we have boilers for steam—”

“Thank you for the information,” I interposed

“And the man who fires them got angry this morning, and—and—”

I observed that one of his eyes was bruised.

However, an inspiration seeped through me, and I became the deferential one. “See here, Mulligan!” I asserted. “My room has been cold, but far be it from me to indulge in lamentations! Do you want to make a five-spot?”

He became the embodiment of accretion.

“I've got a friend that wants a job, and he isn't husky. He couldn't possibly give you that kind of ocular decoration if he wanted to. He's white winged peace, he is! Moreover, he's a mighty shoveler of coal. Are you next? Job for him; five for you? Does it go?”

It did. I proved it, or rather it was proved to me; for on the following morning a somewhat begrimed gentleman knocked at my door to tender thanks. It was my Colonel.

“It is an honest situation,” he commented, “and one that pays me adequately for the work I do: sufficient so that I can assist Mother.”

“Forty dollars?”

“Yes, and, more than that, your janitor permits me to sleep in a lumber room back of the coalbin. Quite warm, really comfortable. Considerable discarded furniture there to make it cozy with.”

I was glad that I was to pay the five, for certainly his gratitude and hopefulness were worth it.

“You can do me one more favor,” he added, and then halted as if abashed by his own temerity. He reached in his pocket and pulled out his “Honorable Discharge,” which I had seen before. “I've no place of security for these and wish you would keep them for me.”

I took them reluctantly realizing that they were priceless official evidences of an honorable life. He went away, and after finding a place to hide them, I sought the janitor to cancel my obligation. I found him in the basement.

“Good old feller, that,” he said with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder. “Sings hymns when he works. Them singin' kind always tends to business.”

I WANDERED back through that heated dungeon and slunk away when I saw how unrecognizable had become my friend, the veteran. The coal dust had not spared even his venerable beard. For some weeks I occasionally sighted him, always having to venture into the basement to do so, however. He had made quite a den for himself, and I found that he too loved and lived in books, gathered as best he might from departing tenants or from the stalls where such derelict records of brains are bartered. Once I found the landlord's two daughters—tiny things they were, whose father dwelt on one floor of his own building—comfortably ensconsed in the Colonel's palace listening to the marvelous tales he told.

Just about that time I had a windfall, on the fifteenth of February. I remember, because an impecunious engineer doesn't forget his first big job. It took me to Boston, and on the way back I rode in the Pullman with my new employer, a man who had just been elected to Congress and was rather proud of it. He bored me after awhile, and I gained a respite by poring over the morning newspaper which a boy brought in. Really nothing much in it that was more interesting than the conversation,—same old ring politics, funny incident in a police court where an ex-Judge had been fined for fast driving, fire where an unknown man had proved great heroism by rescuing some one over a red hot fire escape, and so forth.

SAME old guff, but as I threw the paper down my client sighted the staring “Hero” headlines, and somehow the conversation turned to war stories. He having been a soldier, told a star story of valor about a Colonel who led a charge of such desperation that his shattered regiment, after having saved the day, was able to muster only a few score of men at rollcall. I sat up in my seat with a bounce when he mentioned the name “Howe, F. C.”

“I suppose he was rewarded?” I said by way of urging him on.

“No. He came to Boston after the war, went into business and after many years was whipped. Failed because he wouldn't appeal to his friends—”

“Oh, friendship's a thing that has to be appealed to, is it?” I interjected

He was somewhat embarrassed by my covert accusation but was game enough to admit the truth. “Yes, I'm sorry to say that sometimes it is obtuse. We were all to blame. We thought he was doing well, until one day he vanished, and then it was too late.”

“Of course no one could blame his friends for not watching more closely and reasoning out that he was slowly drowning,” I responded. “They couldn't be censured for not seeing that the raft of commercialism was breaking beneath his desperate hold to leave him at best a derelict. Oh, no! You couldn't any of you help him! Some men aren't built that way. They have hearts but they prefer to blubber sentiment over the dead rather than get in and boost for the living.”

This post mortem sympathy made me a trifle bitter when I mentally pictured a white haired ex-Colonel shoveling coal under Mulligan for forty a month.

“Well, I would help him now and could,” my new client retorted with some asperity, showing that the probe had struck a nerve. “Colonel Howe is entitled to a pension that would enable him to live decently, and the accrued arrears would buy him a home If I could only find him!”

“Have you looked for him—very hard?”

“Yes, and so have others who have known him all his life. You inferentially in a sweeping arraignment, accuse us all of—”

“But what would be necessary for this—er—act of sacrifice on the part of you gentlemen who have suddenly wakened to your duties as his friends, as fellow parts in a big struggling far reaching humanity?”

He didn't answer for a moment, and in that time I too cooled down.

“Nothing more than his discharge papers.”

I sat and thought for a few moments, and then told him all I knew of Howe. It was his turn to be surprised; but his sincerity was shown by his announcing that we should lose no time whatever in visiting the Colonel. At the Grand Central station he engaged a taxicab,—something I can't afford,—and I was as elated as he was, because it was almost the same as if I myself was about to present Howe, F. C. with a few thousands back pension and get him out of the coalbin for life. I pictured the joy that would come over him at this unexpected fortune. I prepared a speech for the occasion bubbling over with a lot of slush about ancient heroes and all that sort of stuff.

THE taxi skidded round the corner into my street and came to a stop that was startling. I looked out to learn the cause. Great Scott! Where my house had stood was nothing but a pile of fire blackened debris, some tottering walls, and a fire patrol working round the still steaming ruins. I think I spoke more energetically than reverentially of the tricks of Fate, anyway, I made my companion understand.

“Was your stuff insured?” he asked, trying to appear sympathetic.

“Insurance be hanged!” I answered, starting to crawl out. “That isn't what counts. I had the Colonel's discharge papers in my room, and now he can't get his pension! I've played the devil as a custodian, I have! It's all my fault!”

In the faint hope that something might have been rescued, we interviewed the fireman, to learn that nothing whatever had been saved.

“The folks that lived in that dump,” he volunteered, “were bloomin' lucky to get out in their little nighties.” He spat at a smoking ember and started away. Another man was there with a bundle of notepaper. “Insurance fellow,” I said, and asked him. All he could tell me was that the landlord, with his family, had gone to another uptown building he owned. So we climbed back in the taxi and went up to 72d, I cursing myself all the way for having been the innocent cause of the Colonel's ruin. Mvy dreams of doing him a good turn had all gone up in a cloud. We found my ex-landlord looking gloomy and dressed in a nice new hand-me-down suit. He started in to tell me all about it,—quick alarm, lots of smoke, horrible rush, burned like tinder, narrow escapes, and all that rubbish,—when I interrupted him. “Do you know what became of a man named Howe, who had just been put on as assistant janitor in the other building?“

Say! I never heard a plutocrat turn himself loose the way he did. He couldn't speak of Howe without tears in his eyes. It appears the veteran had played the star part. My landlord and others, befuddled by smoke, had been dragged to the pavement before it was discovered that the two little girls were still in the building, which was about due to fall. The firemen ran round to the rear escape; but the Colonel had thought of it first and was there before them. He was bringing the two little kiddies to the ground when they arrived, and was about all in. How he did it no one knows but it must have taken some grit to climb those iron ladders in the teeth of the smoke and the flame, gain the third story crawl through burning halls, and rescue the tots. But, though the irons were hot when he brought them down, half-clinging, half-held, he succeeded, and then keeled over when he got to the bottom. My ex-landlord swore he was the greatest hero ever, and that so long as he lived he should never want for anything.

“The odd part of it is,” he concluded, “that I couldn't get him to accept money. Wouldn't even go to the hospital till his blisters healed. All he would accept was another job.”

“Where?” the Congressman and I asked together.

“He's down in the basement of this house now—shoveling coal.”

WE all rushed down to find him. It was a better dungeon than the one he had worked in before. We poked back through the dusk until we reached the boiler room, and there he was, both hands swathed in bandages, clumsily stoking an open furnace. He whirled round when we hailed him, and I scarcely recognized him. His beard, eyebrows, and some of his hair had been singed off, and his face shone with some kind of ointment to relieve the blisters.

“Good God!” I heard the Congressman mutter, and he bumped back against a steampipe and knocked off his silk hat. He didn't stop to pick it up; just ran over and put his arms round the old chap.

Well, we got him back into his new den, and I burst out bemoaning the loss of his documents. He tried to pacify me and make me believe it didn't matter.

“But you can't get a pension now!” I said in despair.

“Pension! Pension!” Who wants a pension?” he asked, abruptly coming to his feet and throwing out his chest. “I've never asked for one. I never should have done so, even though the papers had not been lost as long as I am able to earn my own living!”

I tried to check him; but he was very dignified and stood very erect

“Stop!” he commanded, and— By Jove! I could understand how, in the strength of his youth, men had obeyed him. “Stop, sir! My Government owes me not one penny! I fought for the flag because it was mine. Mine, sir! The embodiment of a cause I believed in! That it still floats is reward enough for any man, something that can't be paid for in dollars and cents. You insult the motive for my service! Furthermore, you belittle my physical capabilities when you insinuate, sir, that I am not abundantly able to take care of myself.”

His eyes were flaring like points of light from his furnace fires, and somehow he appeared many years younger and stalwart, standing there in his singed rags with his bandaged hands and blistered, scarred face. I couldn't say anything; but my Congressman friend, who understood him better pacified him.

“Colonel,” he said at last, quite softly, “nobody gives a cuss whether you get a pension or not, but there are some of us think it would make it some easier for your wife in her old age. Hold on now! Just wait a moment! You can earn money, it's true, but not enough to give her a home where the sun shines through open windows, where there are trees and flowers and birds, and where she won't be ashamed to entertain her old friends. You and I are soldiers, but a woman's a woman.”

The Colonel appeared to be touched by the argument; but did not surrender. “Maybe I have I have been selfish,” he said tremblingly. “This wouldn't be much of a home for Mother. She doesn't hold her youth the way I do. Why, I'm good for twenty years yet, but—but—” The old fellow almost broke down and appeared to wilt a trifle. For an instant only though. Then he threw his head up and smiled through his cracked lips.

“What's the use in arguing over it now?” he went on, with the air of relief as it dismissing it from his mind. “The cause of temptation is gone, because it would be almost impossible to do anything without those discharge papers. They're burned. I'm here, and I've got a good job. It's nice and warm, and our friend,” he waved his hand at the landlord who stood in the rear as though stupefied, “says I can have the place as long as I live, or until I can get a start. More than that,” he added with a note of jubilation, “this very morning he raised my salary ten dollars a month. Oh, where a man is determined enough he finds a way. There is a God in Heaven, you know!”

The Congressman threw up his hands with a gesture of hopelessness and began ironing his hat with his elbow. The landlord seemed to admire the Colonel's nerve and I being young and obdurate, was hot under the collar.

“Got to watch my fire,” the Colonel said cheerfully, and slid out into the passageway as if to end the interview. “Come back at noon it you want to see any more of me. I have lunch then.”

WE were dismissed. He wouldn't neglect his work. He was bound to make good on that job of shoveling coal if he never accomplished anything more in this world. We filed out like a group of whipped schoolboys and stood in the areaway, buttoning our overcoats and speechless. The door behind opened, and we heard:

“Oh, there you are! Glad you didn't get away. I've got something for you,” he ended, addressing me. “Wait a minute.”

He ducked back into the shadows, to return in an instant. There was a fine glow in his eyes as he put in my hands the saber of my father passing it over reverentially as though presenting me with some sacred relic entangled with his own life and a nation's history.

“I saved it for you, boy! It was the best I could do.”

Bang! went the door, and he was gone again, back to his shovel and his coal.

And I elated, drew the nicked blade from its rusted scabbard. My fingers trembled as I found, where I had concealed them for safe keeping, the Colonel's papers. I handed them to the Congressman, who after a single glance, gave a low whoop of exultation, buttoned them inside his coat, shook my hand in both his own. and said:

“Leave the rest to me! Leave the rest to me!”