CHAPTER II

"Would you care to go there and see the child for yourself, Mr. Cleland? A few moments might give you a much clearer idea of her than all that I have told you," suggested the capable young woman to whom he had been turned over in that vast labyrinth of offices tenemented by the "United Charities Organizations of Manhattan and the Four Boroughs, Inc."

John Cleland signed the cheque which he had filled in, laid it on the desk, closed his cheque-book, and shook his head.

"I'm a busy man," he said briefly.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I wish you had time to see her for a moment. You may obtain permission through the Manhattan Charities Concern, a separate organization, winch turns over certain cases to the excellent child-placing agency connected with our corporation."

"Thank you; I haven't time."

"Mr. Chiltern Grismer would be the best man to see – if you had time."

"Thank you."

There was a chilly silence; Cleland stood frowning at space, wrapped in gloomy preoccupation.

"But," added the capable young woman, wistfully, "if you are so busy that you have no time to bother with this case personally – "

"I have time," snapped Cleland, turning red. For the man was burdened with the inconvenient honesty of his race – a sort of tactless truthfulness which characterized all Clelands. He said:

"When I informed you that I'm a busy man, I evidently but unintentionally misled you. I'm not in business. I have time. I simply don't wish to go into the slums to see somebody's perfectly strange offspring."

The amazed young woman listened, hesitated, then threw back her pretty head and laughed:

"Mr. Cleland, your frankness is most refreshing! Certainly there is no necessity for you to go if you don't wish to. The little girl will be most grateful to you for this generous cheque, and happy to be relieved of the haunting terror that has made her almost ill at the prospect of an orphanage. The child will be beside herself with joy when she gets word from us that she need not lose the only home and the only friends she has ever known. Thank you – for little Stephanie Quest."

"What did the other people do to her?" inquired John Cleland, buttoning his gloves and still scowling absently at nothing.

"What people?"

"The ones who – her parents, I mean. What was it they did to her?"

"They were dreadfully inhuman – "

"What did they do to the child? Do you know?"

"Yes, I know, Mr. Cleland. They beat her mercilessly when they happened to be crazed by drugs; they neglected her when sober. The little thing was a mass of cuts and sores and bruises when we investigated her case; two of her ribs had been broken, somehow or other, and were not yet healed – "

"Oh, Lord!" he interrupted sharply. "That's enough of such devilish detail! – I beg your pardon, but such things – annoy me. Also I've some business that's waiting – or pleasure, whichever you choose to call it – " He glanced at his watch, thinking of the exhibition at Christensen's, and the several rival and hawk-like amateurs who certainly would be prowling around there, deriding him for his absence and looking for loot.

"Where does that child live?" he added carelessly, buttoning his overcoat.

The capable young woman, who had been regarding him with suppressed amusement, wrote out the address on a pad, tore off the leaf, and handed it to him.

" – In case you ever become curious to see little Stephanie Quest, whom you have aided so generously – " she explained.

Cleland, recollecting with increasing annoyance that he had three hundred dollars less to waste on Christensen than he had that morning, muttered the polite formality of leave-taking required of him, and bowed himself out, carrying the slip of paper in his gloved fingers, extended as though he were looking for a place to drop it.

Down in the street, where his car stood, the sidewalks were slowly whitening under leisurely falling snowflakes. The asphalt already was a slippery mess.

"Where's that!" he demanded peevishly, shoving the slip of paper at his chauffeur. "Do you know?"

"I can find it, sir."

"All right," snapped John Cleland.

He stepped into the little limousine and settled back with a grunt. Then he hunched himself up in the corner and perked the fur robe over his knees, muttering. Thoughts of his wife, of his son, had been heavily persistent that morning. Never before had he felt actually old – he was only fifty-odd. Never before had he felt himself so alone, so utterly solitary. Never had he so needed the comradeship of his only son.

He had relapsed into a sort of grim, unhappy lethargy, haunted by memories of his son's baby days, when the car stopped in the tenement-lined street, swarming with push-carts and children.

The damp, rank stench of the unwashed smote him as he stepped out and entered the dirty hallway, set with bells and letter boxes and littered with débris and filthy melting snow.

The place was certainly vile enough. A deformed woman with sore eyes directed him to the floor where the Schmidt family lived. On the landing he stumbled over several infants who were playing affectionately with a dead cat – probably the first substitute for a doll they had ever possessed. A fight in some room on the second floor arrested his attention, and he halted, alert and undecided, when the dim hallway resounded with screams of murder.

But a slatternly young woman who was passing explained very coolly that it was only "thim Cassidys mixing it"; and she went her way down stairs with her cracked pitcher, and he continued upward.

"Schmidt? In there," replied a small boy to his inquiry; and resumed his game of ball against the cracked plaster wall of the passage.

Answering his knock, a shapeless woman opened the door.

"Mrs. Schmidt?"

"Yes, sir," – retying the string which alone kept up her skirt.

He explained briefly who he was, where he had been, what he had done through the United Charities for the child, Stephanie.

"I'd like to take a look at her," he added, "if it's perfectly convenient."

Mrs. Schmidt began to cry:

"Ex-cuse me, sir; I'm so glad we can keep her. Albert has all he can do for our own kids – but the poor little thing! – it seemed hard to send her away to a Home – " She gouged out the tears abruptly with the back of a red, water-soaked hand.

"Steve! Here's a kind gentleman come to see you. Dry your hands, dearie, and come and thank him."

A grey-eyed child appeared – one of those slender little shapes, graceful in every unconscious movement of head and limbs. She was drying her thin red fingers on a bit of rag as she came forward, the steam of the wash-boiler still rising from her bare arms.

A loud, continuous noise arose in the further room, as though it were full of birds and animals fighting.

For a moment the tension of inquiry and embarrassment between the three endured in silence; then an odd, hot flush seemed to envelop the heart of Cleland Senior – and something tense within his brain loosened, flooding his entire being with infinite relief. The man had been starving for a child; that was all. He had suddenly found her. But he didn't realize it even now.

There was a shaky chair in the exceedingly clean but wretchedly furnished room. Cleland Senior went over and seated himself gingerly.

"Well, Steve?" he said with a pleasant, humourous smile. But his voice was not quite steady.

"Thank the good, kind gentleman!" burst out Mrs. Schmidt, beginning to sob again, and to swab the welling tears with the mottled backs of both fists. "You're going to stay with us, dearie. They ain't no policeman coming to take you to no institoot for orphan little girls! The good, kind gentleman has give the money for it. Go down onto your knees and thank him, Steve – !"

"Are you really going to keep me?" faltered the child. "Is it true?"

"Yes, it's true, dearie. Don't go a-kissing me! Go and thank the good, kind – "

"Let me talk to the child alone," interrupted Cleland drily. "And shut the door, please!" – glancing into the farther room where a clothes-boiler steamed, onions were frying, five yelling children swarmed over every inch of furniture, a baby made apocryphal remarks from a home-made cradle, and a canary bird sang shrilly and incessantly.

Mrs. Schmidt retired, sobbing, extolling the goodness and kindness of John Cleland, who endured it with patience until the closed door shut out eulogies, yells, canary and onions.

Then he said:

"Steve, you need not thank me. Just shake hands with me. Will you? I – I like children."

The little girl, whose head was still turned toward the closed door behind which had disappeared the only woman who had ever been consistently kind to her, now looked around at this large, strange man in his fur-lined coat, who sat there smiling at her in such friendly fashion.

And slowly, timidly, over the child's face the faintest of smiles crept in delicate response to his advances. Yet still in the wonderful grey eyes there remained that heart-rending expression of fearful inquiry which haunts the gaze of children who have been cruelly used.

"Is your name Stephanie?"

"Yes, sir."

"Stephanie Quest?"

"Yes, sir."

"What shall I call you? Steve?"

"Yes, sir," winningly grave.

"All right, then. Steve, will you shake hands?"

The child laid her thin, red, water-marred fingers in his gloved hand. He retained them, and drew her nearer.

"You've had a rather tough deal, Steve, haven't you?"

The child was silent, standing with head lowered, her bronzed brown hair hanging and shadowing shoulders and face.

"Do you go to school, Steve?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not to-day?"

"No, sir. It's Saturday."

"Oh, yes. I forgot. What do you learn in school?"

"Things – writing – reading."

"Do you like school?"

"Yes, sir."

"What do you like best?"

"Dancing."

"Do they teach that? What kind of dancing do you learn to do?"

"Fancy dancing – folk-dances. And I like the little plays that teacher gets up for us."

"Do you like any other of your studies?" he asked drily.

"Droring."

"Drawing?"

"Yes, sir," she replied, flushing painfully.

"Oh. So they teach you to draw? Who instructs you?"

"Miss Crowe. She comes every week. We copy picture cards and things."

"So you like to draw, Steve," nodded Cleland absently, thinking of his only son, who liked to write, and who, God willing, would have every chance to develop his bent in life. Then, still thinking of his only son, he looked up into the grey eyes of this little stranger.

As fate would have it, she smiled at him. And, looking at her in silence he felt the child-hunger gnawing in his heart – felt it, and for the first time, vaguely surmised what it really was that had so long ailed him.

But the idea, of course, seemed hopeless, impossible! It was not fair to his only son. Everything that he had was his son's – everything he had to give – care, sympathy, love, worldly possessions. These belonged to his son alone.

"Are you happy here with these kind people, Steve?" he asked hastily.

"Yes, sir."

But though his conscience should have instantly acquitted him, deep in his lonely heart the child-hunger gnawed, unsatisfied. If only there had been other children of his own – younger ones to play with, to have near him in his solitude, to cuddle, to caress, to fuss over as he and his dead wife had fussed over their only baby! —

"Steve?"

"Sir?"

"You are sure you will be quite happy here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you – " A pause; and again he looked up into the child's face, and again she smiled.

"Steve, I never had a little girl. It's funny, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

A silence.

"Would you like to – to go to a private school?"

The child did not understand. So he told her about such schools and the little girls who went to them. She seemed deeply interested; her grey eyes were clear and seriously intelligent, and very, very intently fixed on him in the effort to follow and understand what he was saying.

He told her about other children who lived amid happy surroundings; what they did, how they were cared for, schooled, brought up; what was expected of them by the world – what was required by the world from those who had had advantages of a home, of training, of friends, and of an education. He was committing himself with every word, and refused to believe it.

At times he paused to question her, and she always nodded seriously that she understood.

"But this," he added smilingly, "you may not entirely comprehend, Steve; that such children, brought up as I have explained to you, owe the human race a debt which is never cancelled." He was talking to himself now, more than to her; voicing his thoughts; feeling his way toward the expression of a philosophy which he had heretofore only vaguely entertained.

"The hope of the world lies in such children, Steve," he said. "The world has a right to expect service from them. You don't understand, do you?"

Her wonderfully clear eyes were almost beautiful with intelligence as they looked straight into his. Perhaps the child understood more than she herself realized, more than he believed she understood.

"Shall I come to see you again, Steve?"

"Yes, sir, please."

There was a pause. Very gently the slight pressure of his arm, which had crept around her, conveyed to her its wistful meaning; and when she understood she leaned slowly toward him in winning response, and offered her lips with a gravity that captivated him.

"Good-bye, Steve, dear," he said unsteadily. "I'll come to see you again very soon. I surely, surely will come back again to see you, Steve."

Then he put on his hat and went out abruptly – not down town to Christensen's, but back to the United Charities, and, after an hour, from there he went down town to his attorney's, where he spent the entire day under suppressed excitement.

For there were many steps to take and much detail to be attended to before this new and momentous deal could be put through – a transaction concerning a human soul and the measures to be taken to insure its salvage.