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The American Magazine, February 1912, with "The Bust of Lincoln"
"The Bust of Lincoln," Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, NY, 1912
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
For forty years he could not remember feeling a thrill of
joy or sorrow over the happenings of another... God had
flashed before his mental eyes a picture of his own soul.
HIS is the story of a Manhattan miracle. It
concerns a Boy and a Maid, the Miser of Greeley Square, and a
little plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln. The three persons and the
bust came together in a place of boarding-houses in New York
City, and it was there that Providence worked the wonder.
The story opens in April, which is the proper month in which
to lay the foundation for a New York love story. In those crisp
days of budding Spring when the frolicking breezes that charge up
from the Line are filled with all sorts of delicious odours,
strange longings stir the hearts of youths and maidens. For them
the whine of the trolley car is changed to a merry chanson; the
elevated trains grind out Homeric chants to the Red Gods as they
race along the skyline; and the ferryboats hooting in the soft,
velvety nights arouse fancies that have been slumbering through
the days of snow and slush.
So it was in April that the Boy and the Maid fell in love.
Theirs were two of the first hearts that responded to the
witchery of the winds that came cavorting out of the South, those
scouting, reckless, musk-laden winds who lead the advance army of
the Spring Maiden, and who fall desperately upon the flanks of
Winter the moment he turns tail. The Boy's name was John, and the
Maid's name was Lulu, and they lived in boarding-houses on
opposite sides of Thirty-fifth Street. John had a little room on
the third floor of his boarding-house, Lulu had the same kind of
a room on the third floor of hers. John had a little window
opening out on the thoroughfare, so had Lulu. Between the two was
the width of Thirty-fifth Street, but what is Thirty-fifth Street
when hearts are young and Spring has come to Manhattan?
John was a clerk in a shipping office on Broadway, Lulu was a
stenographer in the office of Welsher and Hawksbill, legal lights
who hid their somewhat watery refulgence in a dingy suite on
Liberty Street. And, strange as it may appear, it was the
blear-eyed Welsher who discovered Lulu's secret. On the
twenty-second day of April the lawyer brought a legal conveyance
to the girl and pointed with a stubby forefinger to a word on the
first typed sheet.
"This man's name is not John," he said sternly. "It is Jean,
yet you have typed it John in three different places."
Lulu blushed and seized the sheet with trembling hands.
Hurriedly she erased the first "Jean," with the bewhiskered face
of Welsher peering over her shoulder, then she tapped the keys
with her dainty fingers, and, lo and behold! the word John
appeared again where it should not have appeared!
Welsher whistled softly as Lulu, with flaming cheeks, sprang
from her chair and rushed into the outer office. The lawyer was a
shrewd person. He stared out of the window for a few moments,
sniffed the aromatic breezes that frolicked up the canyons made
by the tall office buildings, then retreated slowly to his own
office. Welsher had sniffed the Spring in the air, and he let the
conveyance wait till Lulu had recovered her composure.
John rode home with Lulu on the afternoon of the day when she
persisted in placing his name in the place that was intended for
another. They rode uptown in a trolley car through an atmosphere
that seemed as if it had been dyed a golden tint in the magic
vats of Samarkand. The sun was setting in a tangle of crimson
cloud that looked like a ravelled piece of Tyrian tapestry.
Velvety puffs of air, balm-drenched, thuriferous, intoxicating,
touched their faces like rollers of satin. Back along the
supporting lines to the tropics the scouting breezes had sent
news of the retreat of Winter, and Spring, like a wild, barbaric
queen, was surging over the city in all the glory of her wondrous
vestments.
Lulu spoke of Mr. Welsher's idiosyncrasies. She told of his
little fits of melancholy and temper when the dollars dodged from
the stubby fingers that looked as if they had been worn blunt in
groping for coins on the board of the god of chance. And John
found imperfections in his superior to suit the girl's critical
mood.
"My boss is bad-tempered too," he said. "His name is
Crabbe."
"C-r-a-b?" asked Lulu, and John thrilled at the manner in
which the little red lips had spelled the word.
They laughed at each other's simple witticisms. When Cupid is
interlocutor it doesn't require a scintillating jeu
d'esprit to bring a smile. But the Boy spared no efforts to
make Lulu smile. When she laughed she displayed a set of teeth
that were sweeter than any string of baby pearls from Bahrein or
Condatchy.
An old man, sitting opposite the pair, neglected his paper to
sun himself in their reflected happiness. He clawed away years
choked with stock-jobbing and trading, and for one ecstatic
moment he caught the perfume of a magnolia-scented night that was
buried under forty years of sordid trade battles. It is wonderful
to contemplate the influence of love. It is the wand by which
Nature works her mysteries.
Thirty-fifth Street was transformed to Lulu and John when they
alighted from the car. The weather-faded houses had been peppered
with gold from the setting sun till they shone like the Ca
d'Oro on the Grand Canal. A Neapolitan with a wheezy organ
played sweeter music than Pierre Vidal, Prince of Troubadours.
All the clangour of the big city, from the screeching of the
junk-man's cart to the infernal tat tat of a pneumatic
riveter, was welded into a mighty symphony with which their own
heart-beats were in cadence.
"And you will come out after dinner?" asked John as they
neared their boarding-houses.
Lulu blushed and nodded her little head. The Spring breezes
had kissed her cheeks to a glowing pink, and her eyes shone
brightly.
"And where will we go?" asked the Boy.
"Anywhere," murmured the Maid.
"Very good," said John. "'Anywhere' it is. I hope your
landlady doesn't serve for dinner the dish you hate more than any
other dish. Mine generally plays that trick on me when I am in a
particularly good humour. Don't forget. Seven-thirty at your
door."
John sprang up the stairs to his little room on the third
floor. The room contained a bed and a chair, a cheap bureau, an
oleograph and a small plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln. Although
the bust is mentioned last it was more important than any of the
other articles. The bed, chair, bureau, and oleograph belonged to
the landlady, the bust of Lincoln belonged to John. Outside his
wardrobe it was the one article he possessed. It stood on a shelf
near his bed, and when John marched into the room on that Spring
afternoon the calm, wise face of Lincoln was turned toward
him.
"Well, Mr. President," said the boy merrily, "the plot
thickens. We are going out this evening. This evening, mind you!
Where to? you ask. She said 'Anywhere,' Mr. President. Anywhere I
like. We'll wander to the Fields of Arcady and the Land Beyond
the Sunset. We'll tie a swing on the Milky Way and find out where
the moon sleeps. Mr. Lincoln, I can't tell you how happy I
am."
The bust always smiled at John's confidences. The long-dead
sculptor who had moulded the head had stamped a strange,
whimsical expression on the lean face, an expression that invited
secrets. Grandfather Robert, who had presented the bust to John,
had a habit of addressing all his remarks to it when the
loneliness of old age came upon him, and the habit took a grip
upon John when he came to New York. Jungle-dwellers, when
afflicted by the god of lonely places, tell their secrets to
trees, and a country boy in New York is lonelier than a trapper
in the kaladang forests of Borneo.
Grandfather Robert, who had followed Grant from Galena to
Appomattox, had presented the little bust to John when he was
dying. John was his favourite grandchild, and the bust of Lincoln
was all that Grandfather Robert had to leave. A few minutes
before he died he picked up the treasured possession and placed
it in his grandson's hands.
"Keep him," he whispered. "Talk to him when you have no one
else to talk to. I've had a lot of comfort from him."
Of course there was a story about the bust. Grandfather Robert
happened to be on guard duty when Lincoln visited Grant at
Richmond, and when the President was passing grandfather, John's
relative, in a burst of emotion, forgot himself so much that he
changed his rifle from his right hand to his left, and thrust out
his dirty right hand to Lincoln.
"Danged if I know what happened to me that day," Grandfather
Robert would mumble in the dream-days of old age. "Something
happened to my blamed right hand. I've been thinkin' about it for
forty years, an' I ain't no wiser yet. Not one bit wiser. It's
lucky I warn't court-martialed for it! There I was, standin'
stiff as a five-year-old hickory; an' jest as the President came
along I jerked the old gun from one hand to the other an' put out
a dirty paw to Lincoln! Warn't I the blamed idjut to do a fool
thing like that? There was the President right in front of me,
an' there was the General lookin' at me like a Kansas farmer
lookin' at a brigade of grasshoppers that has got into his
alfalfy, an' my durned spine got as wobbly as a bit of biled
macaroni. Gee whiz, didn't I wilt!
"'I beg pardon, Mr. President,' I ups an' says. 'I beg
pardon,' says I. 'I jest couldn't help it, sir. It was this
blamed arm of mine that done it. I was jest standin' stiff an'
quiet, an' my danged arm stuck itself out without askin' by your
leave or anything else.' That's what I says to Mr. Lincoln, jest
like that.
"General Grant took his cigar out of his mouth an' looked at
me like as if he was goin' to say somethin' hotter than red
pepper, but jest then old Abe looked at the General kind o'
smiling, an' then, gosh dang it all! the President put out his
hand an' gripped mine till the jints cracked in my fingers. 'I'm
pleased to meet you,' says the President, 'I know you are a good
soldier an' fightin' for your country,' he says, an' when he said
that an' kept that grip on my fingers, why I clean forgot about
the General's black looks. I forgot about everything jest then. I
forgot the army an' every other durned thing I had in my head. I
only saw those calm, good eyes of Abe Lincoln, eyes that were
fuller o' goodness than an egg is of meat, an' I didn't see them
as long as I wanted to. No, I didn't! Some blamed tears got right
across my own peepers, and when I sort of came to myself, Mr.
Lincoln was walkin' away with the General, an' I was snifflin'
like old Gabby Connors when she's tellin' about the four husbands
she buried.
"I guess I was back from the war about five or six weeks when
that little plaster bust came along. There warn't a word of
writin' with it. Jest Abe himself, packed up with excelsy an'
shavin's, an' I don't know to this day who sent it. I don't think
the President ordered it to be sent to me. I guess he clean
forgot me the moment he turned his back, although I don't know,
he warn't one to forget things, was Abe Lincoln. Old Cy Wiggins
reckons as how the President or General Grant might have told
some one about that stunt of mine when my old right hand played a
trick on me, an' that the feller they told might have sent along
the little bust. Cy might be right. Anyhow, there's the bust an'
there's the story. Gosh dang me! didn't old Grant give me a look
for luck when I stuck out my paw, an' didn't Abe make my finger
jints crack when he squeezed my hand! He was some big man was
Abraham Lincoln, you jest bet he was!"
And that is how it came about that the little plaster bust of
Lincoln came to New York from Galena, Illinois. The bust was a
sacred possession. Its intrinsic value was small, but its
sentimental value could not be gauged. And to the bust John
confided his joys and sorrows. The Rock Caves of Elephanta are
lonely, but the brick caves of New York City are lonelier by far
to the country boy who comes to the big town to make his fortune.
So Lincoln was the first to hear of Lulu, and the Boy chattered
about her as he made himself ready for the meeting.
"She's as sweet as clover," he said, turning toward the bust.
"She is everything that you could wish for. Golly, yes! And she
is all alone in the city like I am, Mr. President. I see her
coming out of the front door now. Good-bye."
Lulu, in assenting to the Boy's proposal, had remarked that
they would go "anywhere," and it is possible to go "anywhere" in
New York on a Spring night. That is if you have Youth and Love to
carry you. Byzantium or Babylon, Tyre or Carthage was never more
wonderful than Manhattan. It seemed so to John and Lulu on that
evening. They rode uptown on an elevated train that sang the Song
of the Zinganis that can only be heard by lovers whose hearts are
pure. An argent moon, circled with a ring of amber haze, was
swinging in the eastern sky, and it played hide-and-seek with the
lovers as the car rolled on through the night. There was magic in
the air. The stars peeped at them like the bright eyes of angels
watching at spyholes in the dome of cloud-flecked pearl.
At One Hundred and Fortieth Street they alighted, climbed the
steps and stairs to the hill on which the City College stands
like a great baronial castle, and from this point they looked
down on the big apartment houses that shouldered each other down
to Riverside Drive. In the distance they caught a glimpse of the
mighty Hudson that looked like a gigantic insertion of ivory
satin between light-spangled Manhattan and the dark Jersey
shore.
"Let us explore," said John.
"Oh, do!" cried Lulu excitedly. "I have never been up here
before."
With the pure spirit of adventure in their hearts, the spirit
that makes palaces out of paupers' huts and princes out of peanut
venders, they wandered past the illuminated entrances of large
apartment houses, speculating upon their own chances of ever
holding at beck the uniformed attendants at the doors. They were
two little lonely hall-roomers turning the night into one of
enchantment by the very intensity of their craving for Romance.
They had a desire to chant songs—strange songs that sprang
to their lips unbidden. They felt near to the little stars that
winked curiously when the dawdling clouds dragged their ragged
fringe-lengths across the sky.
They came out upon Riverside Drive, and clasping each other's
hands they stood to drink in the beauty of the place.
"It is lovely!" cried Lulu.
"It is fine!" said John.
From a white yacht moored near the Manhattan shore, the notes
of a violin went up into the soft night like subtle threads that
enmeshed the senses, and it seemed to the two watchers that the
ghostly shapes of schooner and barge, battered scow and lowly
punt, were moving to the delicious strains that came from the
illuminated fairy ship. The silent, shadowy river-craft bobbed
and curtsied and circled while the glittering yacht poured forth
its song.
The Boy and the Maid walked on with the tireless feet of true
adventurers. The Drive was a magic vat in which the mystery and
intoxication of the night was stirred and blended, and they
quaffed like thirsty things. They pitied the poor foolish people
who were sitting in music-halls and nickelodeans. The night
called to the two hall-roomers. It put its soft arms around them
and caressed them till they were delirious with the joy of it
all. The place was as strange to them as the Kayman's Gate at
Colombo or the camelia-bordered road to Nikko.
"If it was always Spring!" cried the Boy, walking with head
erect, and open nostrils drinking in the night air. "If it was
always Spring, what a glorious time we'd have!"
"Wouldn't we?" murmured the Maid. "There'd be no snow or
slush. Look, John, look at the big glowworms climbing up the hill
on the other side of the river!"
"The big glowworms" were the Fort Lee cars climbing up from
the ferry, and the two adventurers stood and watched them follow
one another in slow procession. What a wonderful place it was. On
the big viaduct they leaned over and waved to the cars that
whizzed up and down far beneath them. Along the moon-washed Drive
an occasional auto dashed like a bright-eyed goblin that had been
lured out by the beauty of the night.
The water called the two, as it calls to all adventurers. The
river sang a song that lured them down to it. They took tickets
on one of the old red ferryboats that swish from shore to shore,
like important duchesses, leaving a train of lacy foam in their
wake. To Spuyten Duyvil and beyond was a stretch of silver. Up
stream the white yacht was still spraying the night with golden
music, and still the ghostly shapes of tug and brick barge danced
a rigadoon to the strains.
On the Jersey shore the two consumed ice-cream
sodas—Romance doesn't shudder at the consumption of ice-cream
sodas by those who seek her—and on another matronly
ferryboat they recrossed the river to the city. John thought of
Grandfather Robert and President Lincoln at that moment. As they
stood on the upper deck as the old ferryboat butted its way
across the Hudson, Grant's Tomb stood up majestic and inspiring
in the moonlight, and the picture brought to the mind of the boy
that other picture which the story of his grandfather had etched
within his brain. It was then that he told Lulu the history of
the little bust, and how Grandfather Robert, after thrusting out
his dirty hand to the President, was afraid that Grant was going
to say "somethin' hotter than red pepper."
They rode downtown on the elevated, the moon now high above
the tallest buildings, and their souls were drenched with the
magic of the night.
"How long is it since we left here?" asked John, as they
neared their dingy boarding-houses in Thirty-fifth Street.
"I am doubtful if we ever lived here," said Lulu gently. "I am
wondering if there is really such a man as Welsher, a man with
stubby fingers and a skrimpy beard. Good-night. Oh,
good-night!"
John looked at the little bust of Lincoln when he climbed to
his room. "I've had a grand evening, Mr. President," he said
gravely. "I've had a wonderful evening, and she is more wonderful
than anything I can think of. I bet you would say the same if you
could see her. I'm sure you would."
This may seem a very prosaic description of an evening's
pleasure if read to your tired and very blasé friend who
has seen Montmartre in the sickly dawn, who has bought midnight
suppers at Ciro's at Monte Carlo, or found his enjoyment in
racing home from Coney with a bicycle-policeman at his auto
wheel, but John and Lulu had clean hearts. To them the
Adirondacks in Springtime would be more beautiful than all the
tinsel palaces that were ever built for jaded voluptuaries. They
had all the passionate purity of youth, and that wonder night was
the first of many excursions. They detested the hot picture shows
where the endless fluttering films brought on a species of mental
torpor. They longed for the open places and the cool
nights—the nights that wrapped them round like fairy
godmothers. They made nickels do the work of magic carpets, and
Love, pure Love, bound them together in their loneliness.
And every evening when John reached his little room on the
third floor of his boarding-house, he would tell his happiness to
the smiling bust of Lincoln. He would relate the wonders of each
trip, and tell of the hopes and ambitions that had flared up
during the outing.
"She is wonderful," he would say over and over again. "I don't
know what I would do in this town if it wasn't for her
friendship, Mr. President. I couldn't mope about the streets or
go into poolrooms. But you wait till I hit this city a whack! You
wait! Wait till they begin to speak of the Boy from Galena.
Galena, Mr. Lincoln! Your fighting bulldog knew that spot, didn't
he?"
The wonder nights continued through the days of early Summer,
through the sun-smitten months of July and August, when the city
sweltered in a dead atmosphere. Autumn slipped over the Jersey
shore and flung her yellow shawls over the treetops. Winter was
close. Little flurries came down from the north and shook the
park elms like invisible hands. Leaves fell on the sidewalks and
huddled in clusters like frightened things.
John and Lulu shuddered as the hoarse notes of the Snow King's
bugle came out of the north. Who ever stops to think of the
boarding-house lovers in Winter time? Where can they go on nights
of snow and slush? The Boy and the Maid were engaged. They were
dreaming of a little flat in Harlem where the bust of Lincoln
would have the position of importance on the dresser of bird's-eye
maple. John had proposed a place on the bric-à-brac
shelf in the dining room, but Lulu had objected.
"No, no," she cried. "He must be by himself. You know, John, I
think it was the President who sent the bust to your grandfather.
Mr. Lincoln would have done it if he thought your dear old
grandfather would have got one tenth the pleasure from the gift
that he really did get."
John gripped the girl's little hand and kissed it gently.
"You're right, Lulu," he said. "You're always right. Mr. Lincoln
would have sent the bust, or ten thousand busts, if he thought
the gift would bring happiness to the person receiving it. You
just bet he would. He was that sort. He understood what happened
to grandfather's right arm, and that showed that his heart was in
the right place."
And then one day came Winter. It sprang upon the city like a
pawing, snorting terror of the air. Mad blasts went scurrying up
and down the streets, clashed with one another at the corners,
and clutched! the throats of pedestrians with frigid fingers. And
in that first onslaught of the Snow King's Cossacks John fell a
victim. He went home spirit-frozen, and when the landlady peeped
into his room next morning he was suffering the tortures of the
damned.
O you brick caves of New York City! O you poor, pinched-souled
landladies! You know from long experience the amount of sentiment
there is in shipping companies whose clerks fall sick. John's
landlady knew. She had the prevision of her class. In the weary
weeks that followed that first day's sickness she guessed how
things would go. The shipping-office forgot him, the clerks
forgot him, the office boys forgot him, only Lulu
remembered—Lulu and the bust of Abraham Lincoln. And it was
to Lincoln that John, with throbbing head and smarting eyes,
turned for comfort.
"It's mighty hard, but I'm not kicking, Mr. President," he
would whisper. "I'm not kicking, but this is tough, mighty tough.
You weren't one to grumble about hard knocks though, so I suppose
you think I ought to battle through. Well, I will."
It is awkward for a girl to do anything for a sick man in a
different boarding-house, even if she is engaged to marry him.
John's landlady wore the cap of Mother Grundy and the
suspicion-breeding eye of Sheridan's Mrs. Candor. She would
permit Lulu to be in the room with John only while she, poor
acrid soul, was there to act as chaperon, and when John's purse
ran low those few minutes were given grudgingly.
"It will do him no good for you to sit chatterin' to him," she
said sharply to Lulu on the first evening that John failed to
hand over the week's board money.﹃It only does him harm. What he
wants is quiet an' good food, an' he's gettin' that!﹄And Lulu,
with her knowledge of the cheerless abodes of the unattached,
wept as the acrid one escorted her down the stairs where the red
roses of the carpet had faded 'neath the tread of the army of
top-floor Fronts and Backs.
"Thinkin' o' marriage," said the landlady to her best
Permanent, as the girl crossed the street, "an' here he is sick
an' with precious few dimes behind him I'm thinkin'. He couldn't
come up with the board money to-day an' things going higher an'
higher in the food line every day."
So John was left alone with the bust of Lincoln for hours
uncountable. They were hours that split his heart with the wedge
of loneliness. Grandfather Robert's habit of talking to the bust
gripped him hard in those hours. The god of lonely places grinned
at him from the enamel-chipped bed rail, and he found sometimes
that he had been chattering to the bust without being aware of
the fact.
"I can't help it, Mr. Lincoln," he would cry, as the bust
smiled down upon him with the same old, whimsical smile that had
delighted Grandfather Robert. "I can't help growling. I know you
stood some hard knocks, Mr. President, but you were in the
country. Gee! if I was only in the country instead of being in
this rabbit warren."
The Winter tore along with rain and snow, and stifling
radiators that groaned like souls in pain. The devils imprisoned
in the radiators battered John's aching brain with their clanging
hammers. They whistled and shrieked at him, waking him from
fitful slumber with mad pounding on their iron prison. He spoke
to Lincoln of them in moments of semi-delirium, and Lincoln
smiled the quiet, tired smile that had soothed Grandfather
Robert.
Lulu paid the doctor. John didn't know of this, but doctors
must live. Out of the scant remains of the small salary she
received from Welsher, the girl bought fruit for the sick boy,
and the landlady sniffed disdainfully.
"He doesn't want fruit," she would growl. "He should eat up
the good food I bring up to him, an' he would get well quick."
But John, in the moments when he could forget the devils in the
radiator, would eat the fruit that Lulu brought and leave the
uninviting messes of the landlady untouched. When a "Top Front"
is ill there is a likelihood that he will get his meals half an
hour after they are cooked, and the veneer of grease that forms
during the wait does not make the dishes inviting.
John got worse. He craved to get away from the odour of the
boarding-house carpets that rose to torment him on damp days. Is
there anything more horrible than the odour of boarding-house
carpets on wet days? He wanted to escape the fiends in the
radiator that tormented him with their everlasting pounding. Lulu
wept. The doctor shook his head. The landlady spoke about
something overdue, a record of which, in Thibetan-like
characters, was preserved in a greasy notebook hanging over the
kitchen sink.
"I can't bring you sunshine!" she cried irritably, once when
the boy had expressed a longing for the return of Spring. "I
can't buy it for you either. You owe me enough already!"
We must not blame the landlady. Landladies have hard times in
Manhattan, but the thrust was a cruel one. The god of lonely
places danced a jig on the bent rail of the bed, and the boy
looked at Lincoln with moist eyes.
"I guess I'll pull through, Mr. Lincoln," he said, "but I'm
glad that I have you here in the room."
The landlady consulted with her best Permanent. Poor devil of
a landlady! The Permanent, thinking to do John a favour, advised
her to keep the boy in the house instead of sending him to a
hospital, but the Permanent knew nothing of the cold food or the
bitter words that hurt like bludgeon blows. If John had gone to a
hospital—but then the miracle would not have happened.
The boy's increasing indebtedness made the landlady more
acidulous to Lulu. She made caustic remarks to the unhappy little
girl, and when Lulu informed her that she did not need her
advice, the landlady retaliated savagely. She slammed the door in
the girl's face when she came across on the following evening,
and even refused to open it again to take the basket of fruit
that the little stenographer carried.
Lulu took the fruit back to the corner shop, ordered the
greengrocer's boy to take it to the boarding-house on the
following morning, then went home and penned a letter to John.
She avoided wetting the letter with her tears by holding her head
away from the bureau as she wrote. She was all real girl, was
Lulu.
John read and reread her letter as the radiator fiends
whistled at him next morning. He looked at Lincoln and smiled
bravely, then he painfully scribbled a note in reply to the
girl's message. As he sealed the envelope he addressed the
plaster bust on the shelf above the bed.
"Mr. President, I have a position of great trust for you," he
said. "I am writing Lulu to tell her that you will convey to her
the news of my daily condition. You don't understand how you will
do it, but I have fixed it all. I have told her in this letter
that I will put you at the window, and that you will tell her how
I am from day to day. It's a great scheme, Mr. Lincoln. The
landlady will not let Lulu in to see me, so I am going to turn
your smiling face to the street when I am feeling better; turn
you side on when I am not feeling so good, and turn your back to
the street when I am—when I am any old how. What do you
think of that idea, eh? I hate to think of turning your back to
Lulu, Mr. President, but when I am very bad I will want your face
turned this way to comfort me. If you are gone from the window
altogether, I guess that she will conclude that I have died
peacefully, and that my very estimable landlady has thrown you
out. Now, when I get that same landlady to post this letter, I
will put you at your new duties, old friend."
John's plan was a great success. Lulu, looking out of her
window before rushing down to the office of Welsher, could tell
John's condition from the position of the little bust of Lincoln
in the window opposite. When the face of Abraham was turned
squarely to the street she laughed and clapped her hands in glee,
and in the days that followed the inauguration of the plan,
Lincoln was always turned toward her. But if the bust could have
moved it would, in its desire to let her know the truth, have
turned right about face so that she would have begged the
landlady on her knees to allow her to come to the sick boy's
bedside. O you brick caves of New York City! What tragedies you
could tell if you had tongues to speak! You could tell of the
country boys that lie on the mean beds while the landladies
confer with the best Permanents as to whether it is better to
lose the unpaid board by sending them to the hospital, or chance
another week to see if they will recover and pay up. And John's
indebtedness to the landlady was like a sandbag that she used
each time she came into the room to hammer his aching brain.
"He wants sunshine and heat," said the doctor. "He'll die in
this atmosphere. Can't you find any of his friends?"
"Friends?" sniffed the landlady. "All the friends he has is
the little girl that pays your bills. He signals to her with that
plaster statoo in the window. I went to move the thing away
yesterday, an' he nearly took the roof off the place with the
yell he let out of himself."
The doctor sighed and went away. The stuffiness of the room
was unbearable that morning. The air in the chamber was heavy,
although the window-panes were snow-encrusted on the outside.
48
John got out of his bed after the doctor left the room, and he
dragged himself to the window. The effort pained him, but he knew
that the coating on the panes made it impossible for Lulu to see
the bust. And Lincoln was the only means of communication. With
weak, trembling hands he lifted the sash about nine inches,
pushed Abraham forward, turned him squarely and bravely to the
front, and then crawled back to bed.
"We're not squeaking, are we, Mr. President?" he said with a
grim smile. "You never let any one know when you got an upper-cut,
did you? And, by golly! I won't own up to Lulu that I am
inclined to take the count. I've been too long with you to show
the white feather. You've taught me to be game, Mr. Lincoln."
John went back to bed and dreamed of that first night in early
Spring when he had wandered with Lulu along the moon-washed Drive
and listened to the strains from the white yacht. It was a
wonderful dream. He dreamed that Lulu and President Lincoln and
himself were riding on one of "the big glowworms"—Lulu's
name for the Fort Lee cars—and behind them a million
radiator devils screamed in hot pursuit.
The dream car had distanced the devils, and the President was
just explaining matters to Lulu when John was awakened. The
landlady was speaking outside the door of his room, and her loud
voice echoed through the little chamber. She was addressing some
one, and John's aching brain caught scraps of the
conversation.
"He's sick, you know"—the harsh voice grated on the
boy's ears—"and he insists on puttin' that thing there,
no matter what I say to him. Yes, sir, that's what I say. The
danger of it, yes!.... I'm sorry it happened from my house, but
I'd like you to tell him yourself of the foolishness of it....
These young men don't like being spoken to. No, no, you won't
disturb him. Come right in."
John's brain tried hard to solve the enigma constructed by her
words. What had he insisted on doing? How had he annoyed any one?
Who was the person with the landlady? He attempted to lift
himself upon his elbow, but the effort was too great. The long
weeks of illness had sapped his strength, and he fell back upon
the mattress at the moment that the landlady stalked into the
room, beckoning vigorously to a tall man in a shabby overcoat,
who followed nervously in the rear.
"Here's a nice thing yer tricks 'as gone an' done for you!"
cried the shrewish woman. "This gentleman was walkin' down the
street, an' that old bust of yours tumbled out o' the winder an'
nearly brained him!"
"No, no," protested the shabby one; "it fell on my shoulder,
not on my head. I gathered up the pieces and——"
John interrupted with a scream of agony. It was a scream that
was wrenched from the inmost recesses of the boy's heart. In the
thin, claw-like hands of the man were a dozen pieces of shattered
plaster, and the sick youth thrust his face into the pillow and
sobbed wildly. His companion had left him! The smiling,
comforting face of Lincoln had gone forever! In his anxiety to
give Lulu a free view of the plaster bust he had forgotten the
snapping window curtain, and the treasure had been dashed to the
sidewalk!
The landlady folded her arms and stared at the sobbing figure
on the bed.﹃It would suit you better to apologize to the
gentleman instead of cryin',﹄she said sternly. "That thing
fallin' from a height like that might have brained him, so it
might. I knew a little boy that was killed by a milk bottle
fallin' from a top winder. P'raps the
gentleman——"
The thin, shabby man lifted his hand and the garrulous woman
stopped. "Don't bother him," he said quietly. "Let him cry. I
don't need an apology—really I don't."
He sat down upon the solitary chair and stared at the sobbing
boy, and the landlady was not pleased by the look upon his face.
The landlady loved a fight. She had wasted time to bring the
stranger upstairs after he had explained the happening at the
street door, and now he didn't seem to be half as indignant as
she hoped he would. The boy's tears seemed to have swept away the
slight show of temper that was noticeable when he climbed the
stairs to reproach the careless boarder.
The landlady ruminated over the peculiarities of mankind, and
thought of the luncheon which she had to prepare for her hungry
boarders. If there was to be no explosion on the part of the
shabby man she could not afford to waste time on the top floor.
And the shabby man showed no desire to attack or retreat. He sat
studying the youth, who was weeping bitterly as he contemplated
the broken pieces of the bust of Lincoln.
The woman stood up and moved toward the door. She waited for
the shabby man to accompany her downstairs, but he showed a
desire to stay. His stupidity annoyed her.
"Well, you can find yer own way out if yer want to wait till
he finishes his cryin' fit," she said sharply. "As for me, I've
got to prepare a lunch for seven people with only an idjut of a
girl to help me."
She flounced away, and the ill-dressed stranger drew his chair
closer to the bed. John had managed to claw himself into a
sitting position, and now, still sobbing, he was making an
attempt to put the pieces of plaster together. He looked at his
visitor and tried in a halting way to express the cause of his
emotion.
"It was Lincoln, sir," he said quietly.
The shabby one started slightly, then peered at the piece of
plaster which was the detached brow of the great man. A look of
wonder crept over his shrivelled face, and he wet his thin lips
on hearing the boy's simple explanation.
"Lincoln?" he stammered. "Abraham Lincoln?"
"Yes, sir," answered John. "He's been—Oh, you wouldn't
understand, but he's been a sort of companion to me for months.
It's been—been——"
"Been what?" questioned the other. The little eyes that had a
look of vague surprise within them were fastened upon the
boy.
"It's been lonely," said John.
"Lonely?" cried the man. "Haven't you any friends?"
"Only one, and the landlady doesn't like her to come
here."
The shabby one moved closer and fingered the bits of plaster.
"But this bust," he said. "The landlady told me when we were
coming up the stairs that you persisted in putting it in the
window."
"I—I—" stammered the boy, "I used it as a—as
a signal to her. You see, sir, she lives just across the street.
The friend, I mean."
A look of wonder and comprehension appeared in the small eyes
of the visitor. The chatter of the landlady as she dragged him up
the stairs was becoming plain. When he had reported the happening
at the door, she had loudly asserted that it was the fault of a
boarder who would insist on putting a plaster bust upon his
window-sill.
"So you used the bust as a signal?" said the shabby man
softly.
"Yes," murmured the boy. "I would turn him—Mr. Lincoln,
I mean—face to the street when I was feeling better, side
on when I was only middling, and back to the street when I was
feeling very bad."
"And—and what position—I mean how was he facing
when he fell out?" asked the visitor.
"Facing the street," said John. "You see, I haven't been
really bad since I put him there."
The stranger's eyes grew large with surprise. He looked at the
hollow cheeks and the thin, white hands of the sick boy, glanced
around the miserable room, and twisted his lips up as if he felt
inclined to whistle in an effort to show his astonishment. The
boy had stated that he was not really sick, but the keen eyes of
the other pictured Death waiting at the bedside.
"And was it your bust?" he asked. "I mean, did you own it, or
was it the property of the landlady?"
"It was mine!" cried the boy proudly. "It was grandfather's
once, and—and grandfather gave it to me when he was dying.
It was sent to him. He—Grandfather Robert, I mean—he
shook the President's hand, and some one sent him the bust."
The tragedy represented by the fall of the treasured memento
came to John with full force as he thought of the many times that
Grandfather Robert had told of the happening at Richmond when the
great President had gripped his hand "till the j'ints cracked."
The picture of the old soldier telling how his love for Lincoln
had forced him against his will to thrust out his hand as the
President came down the line, sprang up before his eyes, and he
wept with his head upon his knees.
The shabby man waited patiently till the fit had passed, then
he renewed his cross-examination.
"And your grandfather shook Lincoln's hand," he said. "Did he
know him personally?"
"No, sir, he was a soldier under General Grant," answered
John, and then, in a desire to sing the praises of the President
with the heart of gold, he told the story of the handshake as
Grandfather Robert had told it a thousand times, and the visitor
listened like a man in a dream.
"And he helped you to fight your sickness?" he asked gently.
"I mean, the bust and the memory of Lincoln helped you?"
"Helped me?" sobbed the boy. "Why, he was everything to me.
Only for him—only for Lulu and him,
I—I——"
The door of the little room was thrust open at that moment,
and the white, frightened face of a girl appeared at the opening.
The shabby man pushed back his chair as she sprang forward with a
half-choked cry and clasped the thin hands of the boy.
"Oh, John, dear John!" she cried hysterically.﹃I came home at
lunch-time, and—and—oh, John, I couldn't see the bust
at the window! I didn't know what to think! I thought something
might have happened, John. Your front door was open, and
I—I rushed right up without asking permission. Oh, John,
your poor, thin hands! Oh, what can I do? What can I do?﹄She
burst into tears and flung herself on her knees at the side of
the mean bed.
The shabby man stood up and turned his back upon the two. From
the tail of his torn overcoat he brought a scrap of discoloured
linen and rubbed vigorously at his nose.
The girl controlled herself with an effort and endeavoured to
apologize for her intrusion.﹃I—I didn't see the bust,
John,﹄she gasped. "I looked for it when I got to my room. Why
did you take it away? I thought that—that
something——"
Her eyes fell upon the shattered pieces of plaster that lay
upon the shabby coverlet, and she knew what had happened.﹃Oh,
poor John,﹄she sobbed. "Oh, poor, poor John!"
The shabby man snuffled openly as the girl and the boy wept
over the shattered remnants of Lincoln's bust. The shabby man was
experiencing sensations that were new and terrible. For forty
years he could not remember feeling a thrill of joy or sorrow
over the happenings of another. He was a man of flint. The men
that he had overthrown in the realms of finance had said that he
was a devil in granite. They shuddered when he came near. They
thought of him as an octopus with tentacles ever ready to squeeze
the life blood out of any one who stood in his path.
But in the few brief moments when the tears of the two lonely
hall-roomers were flowing over the fragments of Lincoln's bust,
God had flashed before his mental eyes a picture of his own soul.
He cowered before that picture. For one fear-fledged moment he
saw his own soul, stripped and naked, a wizened, devilish thing,
wrapped in a cyst of greed and avarice, of hate and selfishness!
He saw himself as a niggardly skinflint, an extortioner, a miser
who would be remembered with curses, and with a cry of pain he
staggered toward the bed.
"I—I forgot something!" he shouted hoarsely. "When the
bust fell on the sidewalk—excuse me for forgetting, but I
am an old man—when it fell on the stones this—this
little scrap of paper fell out of it. I don't know what it is. I
haven't opened it, see. It was curled up like this, like a
pipelight. I forgot it, boy, listening to your story. It's yours,
it's yours."
He flung the piece of paper upon the pillow, and stood with
wet eyes watching the two lovers.
"Take it, boy!" he shouted. "Take it, it's your property."
John took the scrap of paper with trembling fingers. As the
shabby one said, it had been rolled so tight that it resembled a
pipelight. Slowly, very slowly, the boy unwound it, smoothed it
out upon the pillow; then, in a silence that one could feel, he
turned his white, pinched face up to the girl and the man. The
piece of paper was a thousand-dollar bill!
It was the sobbing girl that broke the silence. "Oh, my God!"
she cried. "Oh, my dear, sweet God! John, John, it is yours! The
President must have sent it to your grandfather in the bust. He
must have! Oh, the dear, brave, good Mr. Lincoln! You will be
able to go away in the sunshine and get well, John! You will get
nice food and warmth. Oh, I wish that Mr. Lincoln was here for me
to hug! John, say that you will get well! You must, John, you
must! And when the spring comes again we'll walk along the Drive
and look at the Fort Lee cars, and—and—Oh, God
bless Mr. Lincoln!"
The shabby man wept openly. Tears seemed to be a solvent for
the cyst of greed and cunning that gripped his heart. He sat upon
the bed, took the boy's thin hands in his own claw-like fingers
and fondled them.
"It is your money, boy," he stammered. "You'll get well now,
won't you?"
John looked at the bill and then at Lulu.﹃If I could pay the
landlady I—I think I'd get well quick,﹄he gasped. "She
tells me what I owe her, Lulu, and—and there are the noises
in the radiator and the smell of the carpets and—change
the bill into small money, Lulu, change it, please!"
The shabby man wiped away his tears and clawed for his wallet.
"If you would permit me I think I could change it," he
spluttered. "I was just going to the bank when the little bust
struck me, and I have with me two thousand dollars in small
bills."
He pulled out a bursting pouch and started to count out the
bills. Lulu crowed and John laughed hysterically. The Boy and the
Maid had never seen so much money. And it was theirs! Twenties
and tens, fives and singles, they covered the worn coverlet, and
the colour came into John's face as he fingered them. They
belonged to him, so the stranger said, and, of course, that meant
that they belonged to Lulu as well. He gave little cries of joy,
and the man in the shabby overcoat tried to whoop as he laid the
last bill upon the bed. It was a glorious display of wealth.
They counted them three times to make sure that the stranger
had neither defrauded John nor himself, then the shabby man,
still weeping tears of joy, reached for his hat and prepared to
depart.
"I must be going now," he said, "but I'm coming to see you
again."
John gripped the claw-like hands and thanked him over and over
again. "Oh, I'm thankful to you!" cried the boy. "It seems as if
Providence sent you at the moment the bust fell. If any one else
had found the money I might not have got it. I'll never forget
you, Mr.— Mr.——"
"My name is Nixon," stammered the shabby one, "but the
papers—the humorous papers, call me the Miser of Greeley
Square. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
Like a drunken man he staggered down the stairs. The shrewish
landlady met him in the hall, but he did not see her. He saw
nothing. Through the open door he went like a man in a trance,
but in a dark doorway some distance down the street he stopped
and held his skinny hands high above his head.
"Oh, God! God! God!" he cried. "What a contemptible life I
have lived! I thank you, Almighty God, for letting me do that
little deed in his name. In his name, God! Book it to
him, not to me! I changed the thousand-dollar bill so that
they will never know but what he sent it. Forgive me, God,
forgive me!"
With clasped hands he staggered forward, his dry lips moving
in prayer. Passersby turned and stared at him. A policeman
touched his helmet, but the salute went unanswered. The Miser of
Greeley Square, the man who had crushed thousands to satisfy his
greed, the man who had never thrilled at the story of a great
act, the man who had scraped together a million dollars by fraud
and extortion, was looking at his own wizened soul.
"Book it to him, God!" he mumbled. "Book it to him. He shamed
me. Yes, he did! Oh, Lincoln, Lincoln! Help me, dear God, help me
to live a better life; help me to make good, to make some one
love me. Oh, God! let me do something that will make a lonely
heart sorrow for me when I am gone."
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