Read Ebook: The Happy Isles by King Basil Williams John Alonzo Illustrator

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Ebook has 2639 lines and 118993 words, and 53 pages

They came to an office, where their party, his mother, himself, the two forceful women, and two floorwalkers, were shut in with an elderly man who sat behind a desk. It was still the first of the forceful women who took the lead.

"Mr. Corning, we've caught this woman shop-lifting."

"I haven't been," the boy heard his mother deny. "Honest to God, I haven't been."

"We've been watching her for some time past," the forceful woman continued, "but we never managed before to get her with the goods."

The elderly man was gray, pale-eyed, and mild-mannered. He listened while the story was given him in detail.

"I'm afraid we must give you in charge," he said, gently, when the facts were in.

"No, don't do that, don't do that," she implored, tearfully. "I've got my little boy. He can't do without me."

"He hasn't done very well with you, has he?" the elderly man reasoned. "A woman who's taught a boy of that age to steal...."

He was interrupted by the coming in of a policeman, summoned by telephone. At sight of him the unhappy woman gave a loud inarticulate gasp of terror. All that for seven years she had dreaded seemed now about to come true. The boy felt terror too, but the knowledge that his mother needed him nerved him to be a man.

"Don't you be afraid, mudda. If they put you in jail I'll go to jail too. I won't let them take me away from you."

"You'd better come with me, missus," the policeman said, with gruff kindliness, when the situation was explained to him. "The kid can come too. 'Twon't be so bad. Lots of these cases. You'll live through it all right, and it'll learn you to keep straight. One of these days you may be glad that it happened."

They went out through a dimly lighted passageway, clogged with parcels and packing-cases which men were loading into drays. It was dark by this time, the streets being lighted as at night. The police-station was not far away, and to it they were led through a series of byways in which there were few foot-passengers. The policeman allowed them to walk in front of him, so that the connection was not too obvious. The boy held his mother's hand, which clutched at his with a nervous loosening and tightening of the fingers. As the situation was beyond words they made no attempt to speak.

"This way."

Within the police-station the officer turned them to the right, where they entered a small bare room. Brilliantly lighted with unshaded electrics, its glare was fierce upon the eyes. At a plain oak desk a man in uniform was seated with a ledger in front of him. Another man in uniform standing near the door picked his teeth to kill time.

"Shoplifting case," was the simple introduction of the party.

They stood before the man at the desk, who dipped his pen in the ink, and barely glanced at them. What to the boy and his mother was as the end of the world was to him all in the day's work.

"Name?"

She gave her name distinctly, and less to the lad's surprise than if she hadn't often used pseudonyms. "Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw."

"Address?"

She gave the address correctly.

"Boy's name?"

She spoke carefully, as one who had prepared her statements. "He's been known as Thomas Coburn. He's really Thomas Whitelaw. His father was my second husband."

"If he's your second husband's child why is he called by your first husband's name?"

She was prepared here too. "Because I'd given up using my second husband's name. I was unhappily married."

"Is he dead?"

"Yes, he is."

Never having heard before so much of his private history, the boy registered it all. It was exactly the sort of detail for which he had been eager. It explained too that name of Whitelaw, allusions to which had puzzled him. He was so engrossed by the fact that he was not Tom Coburn but Tom Whitelaw as hardly to listen while it was explained to his mother that she would spend the night in the Female House of Detention, and be brought before the magistrate in the morning. If the boy had no friends to whom to send him he would be well taken care of elsewhere.

The phlegm to which she had for a few minutes schooled herself broke down. "Oh, can't I keep him with me? He'll cry his eyes out without me."

She was given to understand that no child above the nursing age could be put in prison even for its mother's sake. From his reverie as to Tom Whitelaw he waked to what was passing.

"But I won't leave my mudda," he wailed, loudly. "I want to go to jail."

The kindly policeman put his arm about the boy's shoulder.

In a side of the room a door opened noiselessly. A woman, wearing a uniform, with a bunch of keys hanging at her side, stood there like a Fate. She was a grave woman, strongly built, and with something inexorable in her eyes. Even the boy guessed who she was, throwing himself against her, and crying out, "Go 'way! go 'way! You won't take my mudda away from me."

But the folly of resistance became evident. The mother herself understood it so. Walking up to the woman with the keys, she said in an undertone:

"For God's sake get me out of this. I can't look on while he breaks his little heart. He's always been an angel."

That was all. She gave no backward look. Before the boy knew what was about to happen, she had passed into a corridor, and the door had closed behind her.

She was gone. He was left with these strange men. The need for being brave was not unknown to him. Not unknown to him was the power of calling to his aid a secret strength which had already carried him through tight places. He could only express it to himself in the words that he mustn't cry. Crying had come to stand for everything cowardly and babyish. He was so prone to do it that the struggle against it was the hardest he had to make. He struggled against it now; but he struggled vainly. He was all alone. Even the three policemen were talking together, while he stood deserted, and futile. His lips quivered in spite of himself. The tears gathered. Disgraced as he was anyhow, this weakness disgraced him more.

The room had an empty corner. Straight into it he walked, and turned his back, his face within the angle. The head with an old cap on it was bowed. The sturdy shoulders, muffled in a cheap top-coat, heaved up and down. But the legs in their knickerbockers were both straight and strong, and the feet firmly planted on the floor. Except for an occasional strangled sound which he couldn't control, he betrayed himself by nothing audible.

The three policemen, all of them fathers, glanced at him, but forbore to glance at one another. One of them tried to say, "Poor kid!" but the words stuck in his throat. It was the kindly fellow who had brought the lad and the woman there who recovered himself first.

"All right, then, boys. The Swindon Street Home. One of you can 'phone that we're on the way." He went over and laid his hand on the child's shoulder. "Say, sonny, I'm goin' to take you out to see the Christmas Tree."

The thought was a happy one. Tom Coburn had never seen any Christmas Trees, though he had often heard of them. He had specially heard of the community Christmas Tree which was new that year in that particular city. It was to be a splendid sight, and against the fascination of splendor even grief was not wholly proof. He looked shyly round, an incredible wonder in his tear-stained, upturned face.

In the street they walked hand in hand, pausing now and then to admire some brightly lighted window. The boy was in fairyland, but in spite of fairyland long deep sighs welled up from the springs of his loneliness and sorrow. To distract him the policeman took him into a druggist's and bought him a cone of ice-cream. The boy licked it gratefully, as they made their way to the open space consecrated to the Tree.

The night was brisk and frosty; the sky clear. In the streets there was movement, light, gayety. At a spot on a bit of pavement a vendor was showing a dancing toy, round which some scores of idlers were gathered. The dancing was so droll that the little boy laughed. The policeman bought him one.

When they came to the Christmas Tree the lad was in ecstasy. Nothing he had ever dreamed of equalled these fruits of many-colored fires. A band was playing, and suddenly the multitude broke into song.

O come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem!

Even the policeman joined in, humming the refrain in Latin.

Venite, adoremus; Venite, adoremus; Venite, adoremus, Dominum.

Passing thus through marvels they came to the Swindon Street Home. The night-nurse, warned by telephone, was expecting them. She was a motherly woman who had once had a child, and knew well this precise situation.

"Oh, come in, you poor little boy! Have you had your supper?"

He hadn't had his supper, though the cone of ice-cream had stilled the worst pangs of hunger.

"Then you shall have some; and after that I'll put you in a nice comfy bed."

"He's a fine kid," the policeman commended, before going away, "and won't give you no trouble, will you, sonny?"

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