the move to boston was made during august, so that they might be settled in time for the opening of the schools. the flitting was with the ease of the obscure. also with the ease of the obscure, lemuel changed his name to george, while tom quidmore became again tom whitelaw. there were reasons to justify these decisions on the part of both.
"got into trouble onst in boston under the name of lemuel, and if any old sneeper was to look me up.... not but what lemuel isn't a more aristocraticker name than george; but there's times when somethink what no one won't notice'll suit you best. so i'll be george honeybun, a pal o' yer father's, what left yer to me on his dyin' deathbed."
the name of tom whitelaw was resumed on grounds both sentimental and prudential. in the absence of any other tie to the human race, it was something to the boy to know that he had had a father. his father had been a whitelaw; his grandfather had been a whitelaw; there was a whole line of whitelaws back into the times when families first began to be known by names. a slim link with a past, at least it was a link. the quidmore name was no link at all; it was disconnection and oblivion. it signified the ship that had never had a port. as a whitelaw, he had sailed from somewhere, even though the port would forever be unknown to him.
[pg 183]
it was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his traces. in the unlikely event of the state of new york busying itself with the fate of its former ward, the name of quidmore would probably be used. a well-behaved tom whitelaw, living with his next of kin, and attending school in boston according to the law, would have the best chance of going unmolested.
they found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, on that northern slope of beacon hill which within living memory has more than once changed hands with the silent advance and recession of a tide coming in and going out. there are still old people who can remember when some of the worthiest of the sons of the puritans had their windows, in these steep and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the setting sun. then, with an almost ghostly furtiveness, they retired as the negro came and routed them. the negro seemed fixed in possession when the hebrew stole on silently, and routed him. at the time when george honeybun and tom whitelaw came looking for a home, the ancient inhabitant of the land was beginning to creep back again, and the hebrew taking flight. in a red-brick house of forbidding expression in grove street they found a room with two beds.
within a few days honey, whose strength was his skill, was working as a stevedore on the charlestown docks. tom was picking up small jobs about the markets. by september he had passed his examinations and had entered the latin school. a new life had begun. from the old life no pursuit or interference ever followed them.
[pg 184]
the boy shot up. in the course of a year he had grown out of most of his clothes. to the best of his modest ability, honey was generous with new ones. he was generous with everything. that tom should lack nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed to have none but the most elemental. of his "nice times" in new york nothing had followed him to boston but a love of spirits and tobacco. of the two, the spirits went completely. when tom's needs were pressing the supply of tobacco diminished till it sometimes disappeared. if on sundays he could venture over the hill, to listen to the band on the common, or stroll with the boy in the public gardens, it was because the sunday suit, bought in the days when he had no one to provide for but himself, was sponged and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous devotion. the motive of so much self-denial puzzled tom, since, so far as he could judge, it was not affection.
he was old enough now to perceive that affection had inspired most of his good fortune. people were disposed to like him for himself. there was rarely a teacher who did not approve of him. by the market men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars on saturdays and in vacations, he was always welcomed heartily. in school he never failed to hold his own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, or something, was a stevedore, after which he was ignored. girls regarded him with a hostile interest, while toward them he had no sentiments of any kind. he could go through a street and scarcely notice that there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn't leave him
[pg 185]
alone. they bothered him with overtures of friendship to which he did not respond, or tossed their heads at him, or called him names. but in general the principle was established that he could be liked.
but honey was an enigma. love was apparently not the driving power urging him to these unexpected fulfillments. if it was, it had none of the harmless dog-and-puppy ways which tom had grown accustomed to. honey never pawed him, as the masters often pawed the boys, and the boys pawed one another. he never threw an arm across his shoulder, or called him by a more endearing name than kiddy. apart from an eagle-eyed solicitude, he never manifested tenderness, nor asked for it. that tom would ever owe him anything he didn't so much as hint at. "dooty o' next o' kin" was the blanket explanation with which he covered everything.
"but you're not my next of kin," tom, to whom schooling had revealed the meaning of the term, was bold enough to object. "next of kin means that you'd be my nearest blood relation; and we're not relations at all."
honey was undisturbed in his olympian detachment. "do yer suppose i dunno that? but i believes as gord sees we're kin lots o' times when men don't take no notice. you was give to me. you was put into my 'ands to bring up. and up i'm goin' to bring yer, if it breaks me."
it was a close sunday evening in september, the last of the summer holidays. tom would celebrate next day by entering on a higher grade at school. he had had new boots and clothes. for the first time he was
[pg 186]
worried by the source of this beneficence. as night closed down they sat for a breath of fresh air on the steps of the house in grove street. grove street held the reeking smell of cooking, garbage, and children, which only a strong wind ever blows away from the crowded quarters of the cities, and there had been no strong wind for a week. used to that, they didn't mind it. they didn't mind the screeching chatter or the raucous laughter that rose from doorways all up and down the hill, nor the yelling of the youngsters playing in the roadway. somewhere round a corner a group of salvationists, supported by a blurting cornet, sang with much gusto:
oh, how i love jesus!
oh, how i love jesus!
oh, how i love jesus!
because he first loved me.
they didn't mind it when mrs. danker, their landlady, a wiry new england woman, sitting in the dark of the hall behind them, joined in, in her cracked voice, with the salvationists, nor when mrs. gribbens, a stout old party who picked up a living scrubbing railway cars, joined in with mrs. danker. from neighboring steps mothers called out to their children in yiddish, and the children answered in strident american. but to honey and tom all this was the friendly give-and-take of promiscuity which they would have missed had it not been there.
each was so concentrated on his own ruling purpose that nothing external was of moment. honey was to give, and tom was to receive, an education. that
[pg 187]
the recipient's heart should be fixed on it, tom found natural enough; but that the giver's should be equally intense seemed to have nothing to account for it.
he glanced at the quiet figure, upright and muscular, his hands on his knees, like a stone pharaoh on the nile.
"why don't you smoke?"
"i don't want to drop no ashes on this 'ere suit."
"have you got any tobacco?"
"i didn't think to lay in none when i come 'ome yesterday."
"is that because there was so much to be spent on me?"
"oh, i dunno about that."
tom gathered all his ambitions together and offered them up. "well, i guess this can be the last year. after i've got through it i'll be ready to go to work."
"and not go to college!" the tone was one of consternation. "lord love yer, kiddy, what's bitin' yer now?"
"it's biting me that you've got to work so hard."
"if it don't bite me none, why not let it go at that?"
"because i don't seem able to. i've taken so much from you."
"well, i've had it to 'and out, ain't i?"
"but i don't see why you do it."
"a young boy like you don't have to see. there's lots o' things i didn't understand at your age."
"you don't seem specially—" he sought for words less direct, but without finding them—"you don't seem—specially fond of me."
"i never was one to be fond o' people, except it was
[pg 188]
a dog. always had a 'ankerin' for a dog; but a free life don't let yer keep one. a dog'll never go back on yer."
"well, do you think i would?"
"i don't think nothink about it, kid. when the time comes that you can do without me...."
"that time'll never come, honey, after all you've done for me."
"i don't want yer to feel yerself bound by that."
"i don't feel myself bound by it; but—dash it all, honey!—whatever you feel or don't feel about me, i'm fond of you."
he was still imperturbable. "well, kid, you wouldn't be the first, not by a lot."
"but if i can never be anything for you, or do anything for you...."
"there's one thing you could do."
"what is it? i don't care how hard it is."
"well, when you're one o' them big lawyers, or bankers, or somethink—drorin' yer fifty dollars a week—you can have a shy at this 'ere lor o' proputty. it don't seem right to me that some people should have all the beef to chaw, and others not so much as the bones; but i can't git the 'ang of it. if nothink don't belong to nobody, then what about all your dough in the new york savin's bank, and mine in the one in brooklyn? we're keepin' it agin yer goin' to college, ain't we? and don't that belong to us? yes, by george, it do! so there you are. but if when yer gits yer larnin' yer can steddy it out...."
