Ann Arbor Tales Part 39

He sat beside her.

"I hardly know where to begin," he commenced and hesitated. He seemed to be arranging the words in his mind, for, after a moment he resumed.

"I told you it wasn't any crime," he said. "Well, maybe it isn't, but Janet," he went on quickly, "while you were standing at the window of the club this afternoon, you saw a man--do you remember? He wore overalls. His face and hands were black. You said you saw a policeman push him back into the crowd, and you believed him to be drunk---- He was drunk, Janet----"

"How do you know?" she asked, quite indifferently, "did you see him again?"

"Yes, I saw him again," he said. "I saw him in a big restaurant that was crowded with students, men whom I know, whom I have eaten with, whose cheers till now have been--been inspiring to me----"

"John--really----" the girl put in impatiently. "I can't see why that drunk man should have made such an impression--that common laborer--nor what he can have to do----"

"Wait a moment," he remonstrated. "You remember, when you called my attention to him, I took you out across the field, and down town another way? Yes? Well, I had a reason. I didn't want that drunken man to see me--to see you----"

"But, dear," she exclaimed with a little laugh.

"It was my father," he said, quietly.

"John!"

Pa.s.sion, shock, anger, perhaps pity, were all in the tone of her exclamation. Unconsciously she drew away from him.

"Don't be afraid," he said, holding out a hand to her, "I shan't smirch you----"

She realized her movement then, and pity filled her heart, pity for this great creature beside her whose own heart, the heart she knew, was like a child's.

"Dear," she murmured, "don't think that. Don't. I didn't mean to."

He seemed not to notice the plea in her voice.

"I don't blame you," he went on as calmly as before, "but it was because I _knew_ you would do just that that I haven't told you before. But now--I can't wait any longer. Listen. My parents are Poles, Janet. My father and mother were born in the same tiny town in Poland a little way from Cracow. They came to this country when I was only five years old--before my sister--my little sister Pauline, was born. My father was a peddler at first; afterward for a time he was a street sweeper; and then, during a strike, a good many years ago, he went into the Stove Works and learned the moulder's trade. It's a good trade, Janet; the men sometimes earn four dollars a day, pouring the hot iron into the sand.

My father earns that now----"

She had listened to him raptly, the pale light white upon her lifted face.

"But John," she exclaimed, "your name--your name isn't foreign?"

He laughed.

"My name isn't 'Adams,'" he replied.

"John!"

"No," he went on--"but maybe my name is, too, after all. I should have said 'perhaps.' My father's name is not. It is Adamowski----" He heard her little quick in-taking of breath and looked away.

"You have never heard of such things before, have you?" he asked. "But it is a custom with Polish young men nowadays. Their names handicap them in their work, in their advancement, so they often change them."

"Yes, I understand," she murmured.

"Well," he went on, "until I was ten years old I attended the parochial school----"

"John, you're not a _Catholic_!" she exclaimed.

"No--you needn't be afraid of that either--I'm not--now," he answered.

"And then," he continued as calmly as before, "I was sent to the public schools. It was the superintendent who wrote my name 'Adams.' He did it perhaps by accident; anyway it has been my name ever since. Plain 'John Adams.' I don't suppose I could make you understand the relation between parents and an only son among my people, so I shan't try, but it is to the son that the parents look for the fulfilment of all their happiest hopes. That I should have been sent here to college is not so surprising as you may consider it. I _was_ sent here. I was sent here by my father who works in the sand of the moulding room; by my mother who, to help, has for three years taken in was.h.i.+ng; and by my little sister, Pauline, who sits all day at a bench and tears the stems out of tobacco leaves in a great, gray factory. They are the ones who have sent me here to college--to study, to learn, to make something of myself----"

Thus far to the girl, save for little moments when from the narrative she had suffered twinges of pain, it was as though she were listening to a story of one whom she knew not. She had been moved and strangely thrilled at times and now leaning forward eagerly she exclaimed:

"And you have made something of yourself; you have, John! Oh, don't you see how brave you are--what you can _do_ with the education they have given you; what you can accomplish for yourself, and so, for them?"

He did not interrupt her but when she had done he looked down at her pityingly and muttered, as though suffering an intense physical agony: "Oh Janet! to hear you talk like that--to hear you say such things; to feel you haven't understood."

She looked away from him piqued, chagrined that she had erred.

"I brave!" he went on, "_I_ brave? Do you think _I_ dare call myself brave when I think of that little girl tearing stems out of tobacco leaves until her fingers are stiff; when I think of my mother bent over a tub, her face wreathed in steam--I can hear the smooth rasp of the wet clothes now as she rubs them on the board? I _brave_ when I see my father working in the awful heat of a moulding room--cooked alive--that I may dawdle here and kick a leather ball about a field." He looked away with a sneer. But the bitterness in his voice failed to move her.

"Your education!" she exclaimed, tersely,--"you have that!"

He laughed harshly. "Education! my education! What is it? There are my people--my father a moulder, a good workman who sometimes is drunk, and, so, a drunkard; my mother a wash-woman; my little sister a stripper in a cigar factory. They have given me my education and in giving me it what have they done? They have made me _hate_ them!"

"John, John, you mustn't say that," she implored.

"I must say it," he replied,--"for it's the truth. They have lifted me above them. All the love I should have for them is gone, obliterated. My feeling toward them is the feeling a man has for a dog that has helped him, perhaps saved him from drowning. It is a feeling but it is not love. I've known this a long time, Janet, but not till now have I known what to do. There is my place, there beside them. Back in the little home I should be ashamed to take you into. I have been educated away from them; from my father, my mother, my little sister; yes," he added with a virulent bitterness, "I have even been educated away from my G.o.d."

She placed her hand on his arm but she did not speak.

"Educated even away from my G.o.d!" he repeated sadly. "They are Catholics. I should be. I am not. And what has been given me in return?

Nothing; less than nothing; yes, something, for I have been given by this 'education' that has been paid for by my sister's blood, my mother's body, and my father's soul, the power to see my own false position. I thank heaven for that! O, don't remonstrate," he said, as she leaned toward him as though to speak. "I understand. From the high plane of your view the picture is not the same. I am closer to it. I see the fault of the method, the absurdity of the thing, the miserable falsity of the conception. You cannot understand, Janet. It is because I have known you could not, that I have not told you till now."

"But, John, dear," she murmured tenderly, pityingly, "I _do_ understand."

"No," he contradicted, gently, "you don't; you can't; it is not _for_ you to understand."

He stood up, and looking down at her where she sat, smiled sadly. The bell in the tower of the library rang out upon the stillness, six times--tang--ting--tang--ting--tang--ting!

"But perhaps you can feel a little as I feel and know something of how I have felt for weeks. I shall go back to-morrow." There was no drama in the declaration. It was uttered calmly.

The girl stood up now suddenly and leaned toward him.

"What do you mean?" she asked, "you're not really going--going back--there?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm going back. I am going to try to find what has been stolen from me. I am going to try to rid myself of my unrest; to undo for myself the wrong that all unconsciously has been done me, by hands that have hit me when they only meant to be gentle. I'm going back, Janet, to work in the moulding-room beside my father."

She stared into his face, in mute wonder.

"And give up your course, John? _Now!_" she cried, as the full force of his determination dawned upon her.

"I am going to give up the false that has been thrust upon me, for the good that I have flung away," he answered. "I shall work until I have paid back all my mother's money and my father's money, and my little sister's money. Would to G.o.d I could pay them for the aching backs, the stiff fingers, and the tortured souls. I shall try. And if when I have tried, I find that, after all, it has been of no avail, that these debts can never be paid, perhaps I shall come back. Good-bye."