The fire-escape was cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a s.p.a.ce with her foot and sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and from the narrow pa.s.sage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below.

From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. But each time the cry of pain rang out she tried in vain to stop her ears. At last, hot, hungry, lonesome, and afraid, she laid her dirty face against the baby's fuzzy head and they sobbed together in undisturbed misery.

When at last the child fell into a restless sleep, Nance sat patiently on, her small arms stiffening under their burden, and her bare feet and legs smarting from the stings of hungry mosquitos.

By and by the limp garments on the clothes line overhead began to stir, and Nance, lifting her head gratefully to the vagrant breeze, caught her breath. There, just above the cathedral spire, white and cool among fleecy clouds, rose the full August moon. It was the same moon that at that moment was turning ocean waves into silver magic; that was smiling on sleeping forests and wind-swept mountains and dancing streams. Yet here it was actually taking the trouble to peep around the cathedral spire and send the full flood of its radiance into the most sordid corners of Calvary Alley, even into the unawakened soul of the dirty, ragged, tear-stained little girl clasping the sick baby on Snawdor's fire-escape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry"]

Something in Nance responded. Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry. With eyes grown big and wistful, she watched the shining orb. All the bravado, the fear, and rebellion died out of her, and in hushed wonder she got from the great white night what G.o.d in heaven meant for us to get.

CHAPTER III

THE CLARKES AT HOME

While the prodigal son of the house of Clarke was engaged in breaking stained-gla.s.s windows in Calvary Alley, his mother was at home entertaining the bishop with a recital of his virtues and accomplishments. Considering the fact that Bishop Bland's dislike for children was notorious, he was bearing the present ordeal with unusual fort.i.tude.

They were sitting on the s.p.a.cious piazza at Hill-crest, the country home of the Clarkes, the ma.s.sive foundation of which was popularly supposed to rest upon bottles. It was a piazza especially designed to offset the discomforts of a Southern August afternoon and to make a visitor, especially if he happened to be an ecclesiastical potentate with a taste for luxury, loath to forsake its pleasant shade for the glaring world without.

"Yes, yes," he agreed for the fourth time, "a very fine boy. I must say I give myself some credit for your marriage and its successful result."

Mrs. Clarke paused in her tea-pouring and gazed absently off across the tree tops.

"I suppose I ought to be happy," she said, and she sighed.

"Every heart knoweth its own--two lumps, thank you, and a dash of rum. I was saying--Oh, yes! I was about to remark that we are all p.r.o.ne to magnify our troubles. Now here you are, after all these years, still brooding over your unfortunate father, when he is probably long since returned to France, quite well and happy."

"If I could only be sure. It has been so long since we heard, nearly thirteen years! The last letter was the one you got when Mac was born."

"Yes, and I answered him in detail, a.s.suring him of your complete recovery, and expressing my hope that he would never again burden you until with G.o.d's help he had mastered the sin that had been his undoing."

Mrs. Clarke shook her head impatiently.

"You and Macpherson never understood about father. He came to this country without a friend or a relation except mother and me. Then she died, and he worked day and night to keep me in a good boarding-school, and to give me every advantage that a girl could have. Then his health broke, and he couldn't sleep, and he began taking drugs. Oh, I don't see how anybody could blame him, after all he had been through!"

"For whatever sacrifices he made, he was amply rewarded," the bishop said. "Few fathers have the satisfaction of seeing their daughters more successfully established in life."

"Yes, but what has it all come to for him? Made to feel his disgrace, aware of Macpherson's constant disapproval--I don't wonder he chose to give me up entirely."

"It was much the best course for all concerned," said the bishop, with the a.s.sured tone of one who enjoys the full confidence of Providence.

"The fact that he had made shipwreck of his own life was no reason for him to make shipwreck of yours. I remember saying those very words to him when he told me of Mr. Clarke's att.i.tude. Painful as was your decision, you did quite right in yielding to our judgment in the matter and letting him go."

"But Macpherson ought not to have asked it of me. He's so good and kind and good about most things, that I don't see how he could have felt the way he did about father."

The bishop laid a consoling hand on her arm.

"Your husband was but protecting you and himself against untold annoyance. Think of what it would have meant for a man of Mr. Clarke's position to have a person of your father's habits a member of his household!"

"But father was perfectly gentle and harmless--more like an afflicted child than anything else. When he was without an engagement he would go for weeks at a time, happy with his books and his music, without breaking over at all."

"Ah, yes! But what about the influence of his example on your growing son? Imagine the humiliation to your child."

Mrs. Clarke's vulnerable spot was touched.

"I had forgotten Mac!" she said. "He must be my first consideration, mustn't he? I never intend for him to bear any burden that I can bear for him. And yet, how father would have adored him, how proud he would have been of his voice! But there, you must forgive me for bringing up this painful subject. It is only when I think of father getting old and being ill, possibly in want, with n.o.body in the world--"

"Now, now, my dear lady," said the bishop, "you are indulging in morbid fancies. Your father knows that with a stroke of the pen he can procure all the financial a.s.sistance from you he may desire. As to his being unhappy, I doubt it extremely. My recollection of him is of a very placid, amiable man living more in his dreams than in reality."

Mrs. Clarke smiled through her tears.

"You are quite right. He didn't ask much of life. A book in his hand and a child on his knee meant happiness for him."

"And those he can have wherever he is," said her spiritual adviser. "Now I want you to turn away from all these gloomy forebodings and leave the matter entirely in G.o.d's hands."

"And you think I have done my duty?"

"a.s.suredly. It is your poor father who has failed to do his. You are a model wife and an almost too devoted mother. You are zealous in your work at the cathedral; you--"

"There!" said Mrs. Clarke, smiling, "I know I don't deserve all those compliments, but they do help me. Now let's talk of something else while I give you a fresh cup of tea. Tell me what the board did yesterday about the foreign mission fund."

The bishop, relieved to see the conversation drifting into calmer waters, accepted the second cup and the change of topic with equal satisfaction.

His specialty was ministering to the sorrows of the very rich, but he preferred to confine his spiritual visits to the early part of the afternoon, leaving the latter part free for tea-drinking and the ecclesiastical gossip so dear to his heart.

"Well," he said, leaning back luxuriously in his deep willow chair, "we carried our point after some difficulty. Too many of our good directors take refuge in the old excuse that charity should begin at home. It should, my dear Elise, but as I have said before, it should not end there!"

Having delivered himself of this original observation, the bishop helped himself to another sandwich.

"The special object of my present visit," he said, "aside from the pleasure it always gives me to be in your delightful home, is to interest you and your good husband in a mission we are starting in Mukden, a most unG.o.dly place, I fear, in Manchuria. A thousand dollars from Mr. Clarke at this time would be most acceptable, and I shall leave it to you, my dear lady, to put the matter before him, with all the tact and persuasion for which you are so justly noted."

Mrs. Clarke smiled wearily.

"I will do what I can, Bishop. But I hate to burden him with one more demand. Since he has bought these two new factories, he is simply worked to death. I get so cross with all the unreasonable demands the employees make on him. They are never satisfied. The more he yields, the more they demand. It's begging letters, pet.i.tions, lawsuits, strikes, until he is driven almost crazy."

The whirr of an approaching motor caused them both to look up. A grizzled man of fifty got out and, after a decisive order to the chauffeur, turned to join them. His movements were quick and nervous, and his eyes restless under their s.h.a.ggy gray brows.

"Where's the boy?" was his first query after the greetings were over.

"He went to choir practice. I thought surely he would come out with you.

Hadn't we better send the machine back for him?"

"We were just speaking of that fine lad of yours," said the bishop, helping himself to yet another sandwich. "Fine eyes, frank, engaging manner! I suppose he is too young yet for you to be considering his future calling?"

"Indeed he isn't!" said Mrs. Clarke. "My heart is set on the law. Two of his Clarke grandfathers have been on the bench."

Mr. Clarke smiled somewhat grimly.