A strained, tense gesture as Hawksley seized the photograph; then his
chin sank slowly to his chest. A moment later Cutty was profoundly
astonished to see something sparkle on its way down the bed quilt.
Tears!
"I'm sorry!" cried Cutty, troubled and embarrassed. "I'm terribly sorry!
I should have had the decency to wait a day or two."
"On the contrary, thank you!" Hawksley flung up his head. "Nothing in
all God's muddied world could be more timely--the face of my mother!
I am not ashamed of these tears. I am not afraid to die. I am not even
afraid to live. But all the things I loved--the familiar earth, the
human beings, my dog--gone. I am alone."
"I'm sorry," repeated Cutty, a bit choked up. This was honest misery and
it affected him deeply. He felt himself singularly drawn.
"I want to live. Because I am young? No. I want to prove to the shades
of those who loved me that I am fit to go on. So my identity is known to
you?"--dejectedly.
"Yes. You wish me to forget what I know?"
"Will you?"--eagerly. "Will you forget that I am anything but a naked,
friendless human being?"
"Yes. But your enemies know."
"I rather fancy they will keep the truth to themselves. Let them publish
my identity, and a hundred havens would be offered. Your Government
would protect me."
"It is doing so now, indirectly. But why do you not want it known?"
"Freedom! Would I have it if known? Could I trust anybody? Would it not
be essentially the old life in a new land? I want a new life in a new
land. I want to be born again. I want to be what you patently are, an
American. That is why I risked life a hundred times in coming all these
miles, why I sit in this chair before you, with the room rocking because
they battered in my head. I do not offer a human wreck, an illiterate
mind, in exchange for citizenship. I bring a tolerably decent manhood.
Try me! Always I have admired you people. Always we Russians have.
But there is no Russia now that I can ever return to!" Hawksley's head
drooped again and his bloodshot eyes closed.
Cutty sensed confusion, indecision; all his deductions were upset in
the face of this strange appeal. Russian, born of an Italian mother
and speaking Oxford English as if it were his birthright; and wanting
citizenship! Wasn't ashamed of his tears; wasn't afraid to die or to
live! Cutty searched quickly for a new handhold to his antagonism, but
he found only straws. He was honest enough to realize that he had built
this antagonism upon a want, a desire; there was no foundation for it.
Downright likeable. A chap who had gone through so much, who was in such
a pitiable condition, would not have the wit to manufacture character,
camouflage his soul.