Читать книгу Pawned - Frank L. Packard - Страница 5

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A HANSOM cab, somewhat woebegone in appearance, threaded its way in a curiously dejected manner through the heart of New York's East Side. A fine drizzle fell, through which the street lamps showed as through a mist; and, with the pavements slippery, the emaciated looking horse, the shafts jerking and lifting up at intervals around its ears, appeared hard put to it to preserve its footing.

The cabman on his perch drove with his coat collar turned up and his chin on his breast. He held the reins listlessly, permitting the horse to choose its own gait. At times he lifted the little trap door in the roof of the cab and peered into the interior; occasionally his hand, tentatively, hesitantly, edged toward a bulge in his coat pocket-only to be drawn back again in a sort of panic haste.

The cab turned into a street where, in spite of the drizzle, hawkers with their push-carts under flaring, spitting gasoline banjoes were doing a thriving business. The horse went more slowly. There was very little room. With the push-carts lining the curbs on both sides, and the overflow of pedestrians from the sidewalks into the street, it was perhaps over-taxing the horse's instinct to steer a safe course for the vehicle it dragged behind it. Halfway along the block a wheel of the hansom bumped none too gently into one of the push-carts, nearly upsetting the latter. The hawker, with a frantic grab, saved his wares from disaster-by an uncomfortably narrow margin, and, this done, hurled an impassioned flood of lurid oratory at the two-wheeler.

The cabman lifted his chin from his breast, stared stonily at the hawker, slapped the reins mechanically on the roof of the cab as an intimation to the horse to proceed, and the cab wended its way along again.

At the end of the block, it turned the corner, and drew up before a small building that was nested in between two tenements. The cabman climbed down from his perch, and stood for a moment surveying the three gilded balls that hung over the dingy doorway, and the lettering—“Paul Veniza. Pawnbroker”—that showed on the dully-lighted windows which confronted him.

He drew his hand across his eyes; then, reaching suddenly inside the cab, lifted a bundle in his arms, and entered the shop. A man behind the counter stared at him, and uttered a quick ejaculation. The cabman went on into a rear room. The man from behind the counter followed. In the rear room, a woman rose from a table where she had been sewing, and took the bundle quickly from the cabman's arms, as it emitted a querulous little cry.

The cabman spoke for the first time.

“She's dead,” he said heavily.

The woman, buxom, middle-aged, stared at him, white-faced, her eyes filling suddenly with tears.

“She died an hour ago,” said the cabman, in the same monotonous voice. “I thought mabbe you'd look after the baby girl for a bit, Mrs. Veniza—you and Paul.”

“Of course!” said the woman in a choked voice. “I wanted to before, but—but your wife wouldn't let the wee mite out of her sight.”

“She's dead now,” said the cabman. “An hour ago.”

Paul Veniza, the pawnbroker, crossed to the cabman's side, and, placing his hands on the other's shoulders, drew the man down into a chair.

“Hawkins,” he said slowly, “we're getting on in years, fifty each of us, and we've known each other for a good many of those fifty.” He cleared his throat. “You've made a mess of things, Hawkins.”

The woman, holding the baby, started suddenly forward, a red flush dyeing her cheeks.

“Paul!” she cried out sharply. “How can you be so cruel at such an hour as this?”

The pawnbroker shook his head. He had moved to the back of the cabman's chair. Tall, slight, grave and kindly-faced, with high forehead and the dark hair beginning to silver at the temples, there seemed something almost esthetic about the man.

“It is the hour,” he said deliberately; “the one hour in which I must speak plainly to my old friend, the one hour that has come into his life which may mean everything to him.” His right hand slipped from the cabman's shoulder and started, tentatively, hesitantly, toward a bulge in the cabman's coat pocket—but was drawn back again, and found its place once more on the cabman's shoulder. “I was afraid, Hawkins, when you married the young wife. I was afraid of your curse.”

The cabman's elbows were on the table; he had sunk his chin in his hands. His blue eyes, out of a wrinkled face of wind-beaten tan, roved around the little room, and rested finally on the bundle in the woman's arms.

“That's finished now,” he said dully.

“I pray God it is,” said Paul Veniza earnestly; “but you said that before—when you married the young wife.”

“It's finished now—so help me, God!” The cabman's lips scarcely moved. He stared straight in front of him.

There was silence in the little, plainly furnished room for a moment; then the pawnbroker spoke again:

“I was born here in New York, you know, after my parents came from Italy. There was no money, nothing—only misery. I remember. It is like that, Hawkins, isn't it, where you have just come from, and where you have left the young wife?”

“Paul!” his wife cried out again. “How can you say such things? It—it is not like you!” Her lips quivered. She burst into tears, and buried her face in the little bundle she snuggled to her breast.

The cabman seemed curiously unmoved—as though dazed, almost detached from his immediate surroundings. He said nothing.

The pawnbroker's hands still rested on the cabman's shoulders, a strange gentleness in his touch that sought somehow, it seemed, to offer sympathy for his own merciless words.

“I have been thinking of this for a long time, ever since we knew that Claire could not get better,” he said. “We knew you would bring the little one here. There was no other place, except an institution. And so I have been thinking about it. What is the little one's name?”

The cabman shook his head.

“She has no name,” he said.

“Shall it be Claire, then?” asked the pawnbroker gently.

The cabman's fingers, where they rested on his cheeks, gathered a fold of flesh and tightened until the blood fled, leaving little white spots. He nodded his head.

Again the pawnbroker was silent for a little while.

“My wife and I will take little Claire—on one condition,” he said at last, gravely. “And that condition is that she is to grow up as our child, and that, though you may come here and see her as often as you like, she is not to know that you are her father.”

The cabman turned about a haggard face.

“Not to know that I am her father—ever,” he said huskily.

“I did not say that,” said Paul Veniza quietly. He smiled now, leaning over the cabman. “I am a pawnbroker; this is a pawn-shop. There is a way in which you may redeem her.”

The cabman pressed a heavy hand over his eyes.

“What is that way?” He swallowed hard as he spoke.

“By redeeming yourself.” The pawnbroker's voice was low and earnest. “What have you to offer her to-day, save a past that has brought only ruin and misery? And for the future, my old friend? There is no home. There was no home for the young wife. You said when you married Claire, as you have said to-night, that it was all finished. But it was not finished. And your curse was the stronger. Well, little Claire is only a baby, and there would be years, anyhow, before just a man could take care of her. Do you understand, my old friend? If, at the end of those years, enough of them to make sure that you are sure of yourself, you have changed your life and overcome your weakness, then you shall have little Claire back again, and she shall know you as her father, and be proud of you. But if you do not do this, then she remains with us, and we are her parents, and you pledge me your word that it shall be so.”

There was no answer for a long time. The woman was still crying—but more softly now. The cabman's chin had sunk into his hands again. The minutes dragged along. Finally the cabman lifted his head, and, pushing back his chair, stumbled to his feet.

“God—God bless you both!” he whispered. “It's all finished now for good, as I told you, but you are right, Paul. I—I ain't fit to have her yet. I'll stand by the bargain.” He moved blindly toward the door.

The pawnbroker interposed.

“Wait, Hawkins, old friend,” he said. “I'll go with you. You'll need some help back there in the tenement, some one to look after the things that are to be done.”

The cabman shook his head.

“Not to-night,” he said in a choked way. “Leave me alone to-night.”

He moved again toward the door, and this time Paul Veniza stepped aside, but, following, stood bareheaded in the doorway as the other clambered to his perch on the hansom cab.

Hawkins slapped his reins on the roof of the cab. The horse started slowly forward.

The drizzle had ceased; but the horse, left to his own initiative, was still wary of the wet pavements and moved at no greater pace than a walk. Hawkins drove with his coat collar still turned up and his chin on his breast.

And horse and man went aimlessly from street to street—and the night grew late.

And the cabman's hand reached tentatively, hesitantly, a great many times, toward a bulge in his coat pocket, and for a great many times was withdrawn as empty as it had set forth. And then, once, his fingers touched a glass bottle neck... and then, not his fingers, but his lips... and for a great many times.

It had begun to rain again.

The horse, as if conscious of the futility of its own movements, had stopped, and, with head hanging, seemed to cower down as though seeking even the slender protection of the shafts, whose ends now made half circles above his ears.

Something slipped from the cabman's fingers and fell with a crash to the pavement. The cabman leaned out from his perch and stared down at the shattered glass.

“Broken,” said the cabman vacantly.