But it so chanced that, a few days later, owing to press of work on the "Informer," he was obliged to forego his usual Sunday holiday out of town, and that morning found him, while the bells were ringing for church, in his room with a pile of manuscript and proof before him. For these were troublous days in San Francisco; the great Vigilance Committee of '56 was in session, and the offices of the daily papers were thronged with eager seekers of news. Such affairs, indeed, were not in the functions of the assistant editor, nor exactly to his taste; he was neither a partisan of the so-called Law and Order Party, nor yet an enthusiastic admirer of the citizen Revolutionists known as the Vigilance Committee, both extremes being incompatible with his habits of thought.
Consequently he was not displeased at this opportunity of doing his work away from the office and the "heady talk" of controversy.
He worked on until the bells ceased and a more than Sabbath stillness fell upon the streets. So quiet was it that once or twice the conversation of passing pedestrians floated up and into his window, as of voices at his elbow.
Presently he heard the sound of a child's voice singing in subdued tone, as if fearful of being overheard. This time he laid aside his pen--it certainly was no delusion! The sound did not come from the open window, but from some space on a level with his room. Yet there was no contiguous building as high.
He rose and tried to open his door softly, but it creaked, and the singing instantly ceased. There was nothing before him but the bare, empty hall, with its lathed and plastered partitions, and the two smaller rooms, unfinished like his own, on either side of him.
Their doors were shut; the one at his right hand was locked, the other yielded to his touch.
For the first moment he saw only the bare walls of the apparently empty room. But a second glance showed him two children--a boy of seven and a girl of five--sitting on the floor, which was further littered by a mattress, pillow, and blanket. There was a cheap tray on one of the trunks containing two soiled plates and cups and fragments of a meal. But there was neither a chair nor table nor any other article of furniture in the room. Yet he was struck by the fact that, in spite of this poverty of surrounding, the children were decently dressed, and the few scattered pieces of luggage in quality bespoke a superior condition.
The children met his astonished stare with an equal wonder and, he fancied, some little fright. The boy's lips trembled a little as he said apologetically--
"I told Jinny not to sing. But she didn't make MUCH noise."
"Mamma said I could play with my dolly. But I fordot and singed," said the little girl penitently.
"Where's your mamma?" asked the young man. The fancy of their being near relatives of the night watchman had vanished at the sound of their voices.
"Dorn out," said the girl.
"When did she go out?"
"Last night."
"Were you all alone here last night?"
"Yes!"
Perhaps they saw the look of indignation and pity in the editor's face, for the boy said quickly--
"She don't go out EVERY night; last night she went to"--
He stopped suddenly, and both children looked at each other with a half laugh and half cry, and then repeated in hopeless unison, "She's dorn out."
"When is she coming back again?"
"To-night. But we won't make any more noise."
"Who brings you your food?" continued the editor, looking at the tray.
"Woberts."
Evidently Roberts, the night watchman! The editor felt relieved; here was a clue to some explanation. He instantly sat down on the floor between them.
"So that was the dolly that slept in my bed," he said gayly, taking it up.
God gives helplessness a wonderful intuition of its friends. The children looked up at the face of their grown-up companion, giggled, and then burst into a shrill fit of laughter. He felt that it was the first one they had really indulged in for many days. Nevertheless he said, "Hush!" confidentially; why he scarcely knew, except to intimate to them that he had taken in their situation thoroughly. "Make no noise," he added softly, "and come into my big room."
They hung back, however, with frightened yet longing eyes. "Mamma said we mussent do out of this room," said the girl.
"Not ALONE," responded the editor quickly, "but with ME, you know; that's different."
The logic sufficed them, poor as it was. Their hands slid quite naturally into his. But at the door he stopped, and motioning to the locked door of the other room, asked:--
"And is that mamma's room, too?"
Their little hands slipped from his and they were silent.
Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence of the girl, said in a half whisper, "Yes."
The editor did not question further, but led them into his room.
Here they lost the slight restraint they had shown, and began, child fashion, to become questioners themselves.
In a few moments they were in possession of his name, his business, the kind of restaurant he frequented, where he went when he left his room all day, the meaning of those funny slips of paper, and the written manuscripts, and why he was so quiet. But any attempt of his to retaliate by counter questions was met by a sudden reserve so unchildlike and painful to him--as it was evidently to themselves--that he desisted, wisely postponing his inquiries until he could meet Roberts.
He was glad when they fell to playing games with each other quite naturally, yet not entirely forgetting his propinquity, as their occasional furtive glances at his movements showed him. He, too, became presently absorbed in his work, until it was finished and it was time for him to take it to the office of the "Informer." The wild idea seized him of also taking the children afterwards for a holiday to the Mission Dolores, but he prudently remembered that even this negligent mother of theirs might have some rights over her offspring that he was bound to respect.