# Peewee/Chapter 8

Peewee's determination to avoid his father had become an emotion very much like being afraid. He did not like to think what his father would do, if he caught him, to a child whose existence compelled him to pay blackmail and threatened such unhappiness to his wife. What would Lampert do to a boy who by running away had interfered with his getting an easy life without doing any work? Peewee's imagination shrank from picturing these things. To avoid rediscovery by Lampert he gave up selling flowers.
He realized that he did not know what his father looked like. Twice he had heard his father's voice and would recognize that, but on neither occasion had he seen him. He could not be sure of recognizing him by his likeness to ​himself. Any man he passed who had dark hair and blue eyes might be his father.
These considerations put a limitation on the streets he frequented. He did not want to go to the North Side, where his father lived, or to Madison Street, where boys knew him and where the agents of his father would probably be watching for him, or to the South Side where Lampert was. He stayed on the West Side, but this was where representatives of the Juvenile Court were most likely to apprehend him, and he suspected that his father and Lampert would be watching the Juvenile Court.
His daily expenditures for living were not quite ten cents. He could, by strict economy, reduce this slightly, but reduction of expenditures did not solve the problem, since he had no money coming in. Mrs. Markyn, he knew, would have given him something to eat, but he did not know whether Lampert had not told her more about him, and he was determined not to see her if that was so. When his money was gone, he began to spend long periods outside of bakery windows looking at the food, and to ​haunt the alleys next to factories where the employees ate their lunch, and construction jobs at the hour when the laborers opened their tin pails. He found, in default of other place to sleep, a nightly shelter under a tarpaulin spread over bags of cement where the new Market Street bridge was being built.
The day was damp with a mist off the lake; the hour was noon; the laborers engaged upon the bridge had stopped work for lunch. Seated inconspicuously upon a pile of iron, Peewee watched the man nearest him devouring a huge chunk of bread. Some of the bread, it was incontestible, was going to be left. Peewee had considered asking in advance for this prospective remainder. He had decided against that as likely to arouse opposition. The more effective way, he had decided, was merely to sit close by and watch.
Assured finally that the man had eaten all he could, he moved to attract attention. The man looked at him. Having given him this long, reflective look, the man's gaze returned with satiety to the bread and he threw it into ​the river. Peewee sighed deeply and stood up to find himself confronted by a larger boy.
"Hungry kid?" the boy inquired.
The question wrung a forced reply. "Sure."
"I know where we can eat."
Peewee doubtfully surveyed the boy. He could not, he decided, be an emissary of his father or of Lampert. "All right," he said.
He followed as the boy crossed the railroad tracks to Kinzie Street and there turned east. They were, it seemed likely, headed toward a neighborhood where he would have preferred not to go; his father lived to north and east of them. But the boy's indifference as to whether Peewee followed him or not appeared additional testimony that he could not have anything to do with Peewee's father. Having traveled a half-dozen blocks east on Kinzie Street, they turned north on Rush.
Peewee looked inquiringly at the numerous small restaurants on this street, but he comprehended that if any of these had been their destination they would have been traveling in the alleys; he was not welcome at restaurant front ​doors. When they had gone a full mile north, past the point where Rush Street merged into State, the boy again turned east and north, and Peewee began to study him with disturbance. They were near his father's house, on a street of fine houses, which he spelled out was "Astor Street." The inhabitants of these houses, he felt, sure, would not extend any courtesies to a small and very dirty person like himself. Yet the boy could not be merely taking him through this neighborhood, bordered within sight ahead of them by Lincoln Park. He followed the boy doubtfully through a narrow passage between two of the houses, and emerged behind another dwelling which, his immense experience of the backs of houses and of areaways and yards assured him, must face upon the Lake Shore Drive. He could not remember ever having seen a larger house.
He halted suspiciously to observe the boy. To his amazement, the boy pushed open a basement door, and Peewee, bewildered by his guide's temerity, followed him in and looked curiously around a large, square hall. The hall ​he saw, connected with rooms for servants' uses and with a labyrinth of passages and stairs. A very old colored man, dressed in a dark green suit with peculiarly obvious buttons, came to one of the doors at which the boy had knocked, listened to something said to him by the boy, and looked inquiringly at Peewee.
"You ah shuah," the old man asked quaveringly, "dat dis am de right boy?"
The boy answered something which Peewee could not hear. The old man, leaving the door open, shuffled back into the room and got some money and gave it to the boy.
Peewee darted toward the door, but he had not got half way across the hall when he felt the boy clutch him from behind. He at once stood still; there was no hope in struggling with the larger boy. He allowed his captor to lead him back to the old man, who put him into the room and turned the key upon him.
He panted as he clung for support against the door; he had forgotten he was hungry. He was caught, he felt certain, by his father. The trembling in his legs appeared to denote that he ​was in danger of feeling frightened, and he went to a chair and sat down. He could hear nothing except the ticking of a clock. He must have been here fully half an hour when the key turned in the lock and the old servant put in his head.
"Follow me, boy," he directed.
Peewee got up belligerently and followed him up a winding stair into the most luxurious hall that he had ever seen. There were dark pictures on the wall which seemed very old; there were hangings of dim-colored cloths into which figures of mounted men fighting with swords had been woven. The negro led him across the hall to a room with books about its walls—a library more luxurious even than the hall, with spindling reading-lamps of bronze and great padded chairs and couches. He hung back, recognizing that whoever he was being taken to must be in that room, and his heart stopped as the servant pushed him in, for the person awaiting him was Mrs. Markym.
She flushed eagerly at sight of him and seemed to check herself. Her first interest in him, ​caused merely by his interest in her, had been increased by her anxiety when she had recognized his likeness to his father. It had become still deeper and now more definite; he did not realize this, but her manner terrified him with suspicion that she certainly now knew who he was. She had her hat on, he noted, and the kind of dress which women wear upon the street; she had come then from outside, and she was breathing quickly as though she had come on foot. He recalled the half hour he had waited in the room below. Had he been kept there while she had been sent for?
"That is all, Burtin," she said to the servant.
He drew back from her, but she came toward him impulsively, when the servant had gone out, and took his small, dirty hands and seated herself holding him in front of her.
"Where have you been?" she asked, looking eagerly in his eyes.
He looked up at her without answer. The feelings she excited in him were deepened by his anxiety as to how much she knew. She drew him against her knee. A faint sweetness came ​from her as though her clothes were kept where there was a pleasant smell.
"It has been a long time," she said, "weeks. You didn't come where I used to see you."
He shuffled one foot upon the other and fixed his eyes upon her nervously.
"Was that because you hadn't told me the truth about yourself?"
He seized this as an excuse. "Yes'm."
"Why did you tell me what you did?"
He hung his head, not finding any plausible answer to this.
"You aren't afraid of me?"
"No'm."
"Then why was it? You told me what you said was your name," she urged, "and where you lived. I thought perhaps there was something I could do for you. I went there to find out and I found there was no family of that name."
"Yes'm," he admitted. It was not safe to try to lie.
"The boys at the children's bathing beach knew you by sight—they'd seen me talking ​with you. I told them I would pay any boy who brought you here."
Why here? he wondered. What was this place?
"Was any of what you told me true?" she questioned.
"No'm."
"Then why did you tell it to me?"
He swallowed. In the doubt he felt his wide experience with workers of charity and justice had taught him that the safest method was pathos. "I didn't want to say I didn't know," he answered mournfully.
"You mean you haven't any family."
"Yes'm."
"And you were ashamed to tell me that?"
"Yes'm." He seized eagerly this motive which she had supplied him; she could not know, he understood, that he had been glad he had no family.
"What is your real name?"
"Peewee."
"You haven't any other name than that?"
"No'm."
​"You mean, I think, that you don't know what your name ought to be. Is that it?"
"Yes'm."
"You don't know who your mother is?"
If she asked that, she herself did not know. The time to lie had come. "No'm."
"Or your father?"
"No'm." He watched to see what the effect of this would be upon her. She released him and stood up. Her full lip trembled and she caught it between her teeth. "I thought that," she whispered to herself. "Oh, that is what I thought!"
He studied her perplexedly. If she knew this about him, why did not his likeness to his father tell her all? She stooped and put her arms around him.
"Do you know why I had you brought here?" she inquired.
"To ask me."
"The things that I have asked you? Yes. But it wasn't only that. I'm not going to let you go away again. There's someone here who's promised to take care of you."
​He stared about wonderingly. This fine house plainly could not be an institution.
"I'm going to take you to him."
The person was a man then. He speculated nervously on this as she led him across the hall to a doorway hung with curtains.
"You mustn't be afraid of him," she said. "He frightens people sometimes, but he will be kind to you. He was once a boy upon the streets and without friends himself."
"I don't get afraid," he returned to her.
She drew the curtains aside and pushed him gently in and went in with him.
"Here is the boy," he heard her say.
He looked about. It was a small, rich room where a wood fire was burning on the hearth, but his gaze had appreciated no more than this when it stopped with a jerk upon the only occupant. A huge old man sat by the fireside in a great arm chair. His age, to Peewee, seemed great. His cold, fiercely direct gray eyes were fixed on the boy intently; his big, imperious mouth and square, projecting chin were firmly set; his huge hands grasped the elbows ​of his chair, as if even his resting had a sort of violence in it.
His expression, as he studied Peewee, changed from mere attention into startled surprise.
"Come here," he ordered harshly.
He put his immense hand under Peewee's chin, as Mrs. Markyn pushed him forward to him, and turned up his face to look at it. Then he looked as if in amazement at Mrs. Markyn. She met his look courageously, but flushed and bent over Peewee as though to hide her embarrassment.
There was, Peewee perceived, a mystery here. Mrs. Markyn's embarrassment perplexed him. Had the old man recognized his likeness to his father? If he had done that and if Mrs. Markyn also recognized it, she ought to push him away from her, and hate him, and burst into tears perhaps, over the destruction of her happiness. She did not, it was true, look happy; but neither did she look like a person whose life had been reduced to ruin.
The impossibility of accounting for all this confused him.
​"You'll stay here with him?" she asked.
"Yes'm," he answered promptly.
"There's no one else here," she said. "He lives all alone."
He did not need this assurance. He suspected from the old man's manner to her that she came frequently to this house. Now that her suspicions of his identity did not produce the effect he had expected on her, he would have stayed anywhere with anybody, where there was a chance of seeing her.
He stared after her in utter absorption as she went away. He heard a bell ring somewhere and perceived that it was the old man who had rung it and that it caused a servant to appear.
"Get Burtin," the man directed to the servant, "and take him and fix him up."
The servant went away and returned after a moment with the negro. Peewee went with them to the second floor. He did not resist, as in a pretty bedroom the negro began to undress him and the other man turned on the water in a tub. They lifted him and set him in the bath. As they dried him and wrapped him in a blanket, ​the negro looked at his small, bruised body with interest. The inspection seemed to convey some idea to him. He spoke to the other servant, who went away and returned with a tray holding preserves, bread and tea, which was almost milk. Peewee sat with the blanket wrapped about him, and the servant stood by to hand him what he wanted. He ate ravenously, but it interfered a little with his eating to keep his eyes fixed upon the man.
The negro, who had left the room, came back bringing several small suits of clothes of varying sizes. Peewee thrilled expectantly. The man held the clothes against him to find out which size was right, and the smallest nearly fitted. They put underclothing on him; he had not had underclothes since his last confinement in a home for boys. He held out his feet for the stockings and the shoes, and they put his legs into knickerbockers and his arms into a shirt with a wide collar.
He had difficulty in believing that the boy he could see in the mirror was himself. But when he put his hands into the pockets of his new ​clothes the boy in the mirror put his in too, and when he took them out the other boy did the same.
"Dis am to be youah room," the negro told him.
His heart beat fast in his amazement, and he looked about the room with wide opened eyes.
"Is thah anything else dat you-all requiah?" the negro asked him.
He could not find any answer to this, and he followed the servants in a daze to the door and looked after them as they went away.