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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Our Square and the People in It - -Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams - -Illustrator: Scott Williams - -Release Date: December 1, 2013 [EBook #44328] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger - - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44328 *** OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT @@ -7924,358 +7892,4 @@ THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Square and the People in It, by Samuel Hopkins Adams -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT *** - -***** This file should be named 44328-0.txt or 44328-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/3/2/44328/ - -Produced by David Widger - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Our Square and the People in It - -Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams - -Illustrator: Scott Williams - -Release Date: December 1, 2013 [EBook #44328] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger - - - - - -</pre> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44328 ***</div> <div style="height: 8em;"> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> @@ -9951,379 +9916,6 @@ THE END <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> </div> - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Square and the People in It, by -Samuel Hopkins Adams - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT *** - -***** This file should be named 44328-h.htm or 44328-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/3/2/44328/ - -Produced by David Widger - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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-Our Square and the People in It, by Samuel Hopkins Adams
-</title>
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-Project Gutenberg's Our Square and the People in It, by Samuel Hopkins Adams
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-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Our Square and the People in It
-
-Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams
-
-Illustrator: Scott Williams
-
-Release Date: December 1, 2013 [EBook #44328]
-Last Updated: March 12, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-<div style="height: 8em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h1>
-OUR SQUARE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT
-</h1>
-<h2>
-By Samuel Hopkins Adams
-</h2>
-<p>
-<br />
-</p>
-<h3>
-Illustrated by Scott Williams
-</h3>
-<p>
-<br />
-</p>
-<h5>
-Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company <br /> <br /> 1917
-</h5>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="frontispiece" width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-<br />
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/titlepage.jpg" alt="titlepage" width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-<br /> <br />
-</p>
-<blockquote>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ALLED in by slums stands Our Square, a valiant green space, far on the
-flank of the Great City. Ours is an inglorious little world Sociologists
-have-not yet remarked and classified us. The Washington Square romancers
-who bold sentimental revel at the foot of Fifth Avenue reck nothing of
-their sister park, many blocks to the east. But we are patient of our
-obscurity. Close-knit, keeping our own counsel, jealous of our own
-concerns, and not without our own pride of place, we live our quiet
-lives, a community sufficient unto itself. So far as may be for mortals
-under the sway of death and love and fate, we maintain ourselves with
-little change amid the kaleidoscopic shiftings of the surrounding
-metropolis. Few come into Our Square except of necessity. Few go out but
-under the same stem impulsion. Some of us are held by tradition, some by
-poverty, some by affection, and some through loyalty to what once was
-and is no more. Here we live, and here hope to die, “the kind hearts,
-the true hearts that loved the place of old.” And of all, there is no
-truer heart or kinder than that of the gentle, shrewd, and neighborly
-old dominie through whose lips I tell these tales, the real historian of
-the folk whom I, too, have known and loved in Our Square.
-</p>
-</blockquote>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-<b>CONTENTS</b>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0001"> OUR SQUARE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE CHAIR THAT WHISPERED </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0007"> MACLACHAN OF OUR SQUARE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0008"> THE GREAT 'PEACEMAKER </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0009"> ORPHEUS </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0010"> A TALE OF WHITE MAGIC IN OUR SQUARE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0011"> THE MEANEST MAN IN OUR SQUARE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0012"> PAULA OF THE HOUSETOP </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0013"> THE LITTLE RED 'DOCTOR OF OUR SQUARE </a>
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-<b>List of Illustrations</b>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0001"> Whirled Her out of a Pit Of Darkness </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0002"> Read from Left to Right </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0003"> Her Hands Slipped to his Shoulder </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0004"> What Do I Owe Ye But a Curse </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0005"> We Have Successfully Terminated the Negotiation
-</a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0006"> I Puh-hut It in My Huh-huh-hair </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#linkimage-0007"> Jogging Appreciatively Along Behind Schutz's
-Mouse-hued Mare </a>
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-OUR SQUARE
-</h2>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-I
-</h2>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/024.jpg" alt=" " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>UR Square lies broad and green and busy, in the forgotten depths of the
-great city. By day it is bright with the laughter of children and shrill
-with the bickering of neighbors. By night the voice of the spellbinder is
-strident on its corners, but from the remoter benches float murmurs where
-the young couples sit, and sighs where the old folk relax their weariness.
-New York knows little of Our Square, submerged as we are in a circle of
-slums. Yet for us, as for more Elysian fields, the crocus springs in the
-happy grass, the flash and song of the birds stir our trees, and Romance
-fans us with the wind of its imperishable wing.
-</p>
-<p>
-The first robin was singing in our one lone lilac when the Bonnie Lassie
-came out of the Somewhere Else into Our Square and possessed herself of
-the ground floor of our smallest house, the nestly little dwelling with
-the quaint old door and the broad, friendly vestibule, next but one to the
-Greek church. Before she had been there a month she had established
-eminent domain over all of us. Even MacLachan, the dour tailor on the
-corner, used to burst into song when she passed. It was he who dubbed her
-the Bonnie Lassie, and as it was the first decent word he'd spoken of
-living being within the memory of Our Square, the name stuck. Apart from
-that, it was eminently appropriate. She was a small girl who might have
-been perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four if she hadn't (more probably)
-been twenty, and looked a good deal like a thoughtful kitten when she
-wasn't twinkling at or with somebody. When she twinkled—and she did
-it with eyes, voice, heart, and soul all at once—the cart-peddlers
-stopped business to look and listen. You can't go further than that, not
-in Our Square at least.
-</p>
-<p>
-How long Cyrus the Gaunt had been there before she discovered him is a
-matter of conjecture. He slipped in from the Outer Darkness quite
-unobtrusively and sat about looking thoughtful and lonely. He was
-exaggeratedly long and loose and mussed-up and melancholy-looking, and
-first attracted local attention on a bench which several other people
-wanted more than he did. So he got up and gave it to them. Later, when the
-huskiest of them met him and explained, by way of putting him in his
-proper place, what would have happened to him if he hadn't been so
-obliging, Cyrus absent-mindedly said, “Oh, yes,” threw the belligerent one
-into our fountain, held him under water quite as long as was safe, dragged
-him out, hauled him over to Schwartz's, and bought him a drink. Thereafter
-Cyrus was still considered an outlander, but nobody actively objected to
-his sitting around Our Square, looking as melancholy and queer as he
-chose. Nobody, that is, until the Bonnie Lassie took him in hand.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nothing could have been more correct than their first meeting, sanctioned
-as it was by the majesty of the law. Terry the Cop, who presides over the
-destinies of Our Square, led the Bonnie Lassie to Cyrus's bench and said;
-“Miss, this is the young feller you asked me about. Make you two
-acquainted.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thereupon the young man got up and said, “How-d'ye-do?” wonderingly, and
-the young woman nodded and said, “How-d'ye-do?” non-committally, and the
-young policeman strolled away, serene in the consciousness of a social
-duty well performed.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie regarded her new acquaintance with soft, studious eyes.
-There was something discomfortingly dehumanizing in that intent appraisal.
-He wriggled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, I think you'll do,” she ruminated slowly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thanks,” murmured Cyrus, wondering for what.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Suppose we sit down and talk it over,” said she.
-</p>
-<p>
-Studying her unobtrusively from his characteristically drooping position,
-Cyrus wondered what this half-fairy, half-flower, with the decisive manner
-of a mistress of destiny, was doing in so grubby an environment.
-</p>
-<p>
-On her part, she reflected that she had seldom encountered so homely a
-face, and speculated as to whether that was its sole claim to interest.
-Then he lifted his head; his eyes met hers, and she modified her estimate,
-substituting for “homely,” first “queer,” then “quaint,” and finally
-“unusual.” Also there was something impersonally but hauntingly
-reminiscent about him; something baffling and disconcerting, too. The face
-wasn't <i>right</i>.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you mind answering some questions?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Depends,” he replied guardedly. “Well, I'll try. Do you live here?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just around the corner.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What do you do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothing much.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How long have you been doing it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Too long.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why don't you stop?”
- </p>
-<p>
-For the second time Cyrus the Gaunt lifted his long, thin face and looked
-her in the eye. “Beautiful Incognita,” he drawled with mild impertinence,
-“did you <i>write</i> the Shorter Catechism or are you merely
-plagiarizing?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” she said. Surprise and the slightest touch of dismay were in the
-monosyllable. “I'm afraid I've made a mistake. I thought—the
-policeman said you were a down-and-outer.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm the First Honorary Vice-President of the Life Branch of the
-Organization.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He slumped back into his former attitude. Again she studied him. “No, I
-don't understand,” she said slowly.
-</p>
-<p>
-But the dehumanizing tone had gone from the soft voice. Cyrus began to
-rescue his personality from her impersonal ignoring of it. He also felt
-suddenly a livelier interest in life. Then, unexpectedly, she turned his
-flank.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You lurk and stare at my house in the dark,” she accused.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Which house?” he asked, startled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You know quite well. You shouldn't stare at strange houses. It
-embarrasses them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is that the miniature mansion with the little bronzes of dancing
-street-children in the windows?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She nodded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why shouldn't I stare? There's a secret in that house!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A secret? What secret?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The secret of happiness. Those dancing kiddies have got it. I want it. I
-want to know what makes'em so happy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I do,” said the girl promptly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes. I shouldn't be surprised,” he assented, lifting his head to
-contemplate her with his direct and grave regard. “Do you live there with
-them?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“They're mine. I model them. I'm a sculptor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Good Lord! You! But you're a very good one, aren't you?—if you did
-those.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've been a very bad one. Now I'm trying to be a very good one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A gleam of comprehension lit his eye. “Oh, then it's as a subject that you
-thought I'd do. You wanted to sculp me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, I do. For my collection. You see, I've adopted this Square.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And now you're sculping it. I see.” He raised himself to peer across at
-the windows where the blithe figures danced, tiny mænads of the gutter,
-Bacchæ of the asphalt. “But I don't see why on earth you want me. Do you
-think you could make <i>me</i> happy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I shouldn't try.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hopeless job, you think? As a sculptor you ought to be a better judge of
-character. You ought to pierce through the externals and perceive with
-your artistic eye that beneath this austere mask I'm as merry a little
-cricket as ever had his chirp smothered by the slings and arrows of
-outrageous Fortune.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was then that she twinkled at him, and the twinkle grew into a laugh,
-such golden laughter as brightened life to the limits of its farthest
-echo. Cyrus had the feeling that the gray April sky had momentarily opened
-up and sent down a sun-ray to illumine the proceedings.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How wonderfully you mix them!” she cried. “Shall I sculp you in cap and
-bells?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why should I let you sculp meat all?” She stopped laughing abruptly and
-looked up at him with wondering eyes and parted lips, drooping just the
-tiniest bit at the corners. “Everybody does,” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-At once he understood why everybody did that or anything else she wished.
-“All right,” he yielded. “What am I to sit for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Fifty cents an hour.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then the Bonnie Lassie got her second surprise from him. His face changed
-abruptly. An almost animal eagerness shone in his eyes. “Fif-fif-fif—”
- he began, then recovered himself. “Pardon my performing like a deranged
-steam-whistle, but do I understand that you offer to pay me for sitting
-about doing nothing while you work? Did all those cheerful dancers in the
-window collect pay at that rate?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Some of them did. Others are my friends.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, you draw social distinctions, I perceive.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I think we needn't fence,” said the girl spiritedly. “When I came to you
-I thought you were of Our Square. If you will tell me just what variety of
-masquerader you are, we shall get on faster.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you think I don't belong quite as much to Our Square as you do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I! This is my workshop. This is my life. But you—I should have
-suspected you from the first word you spoke. What are you? Don't tell me
-that you are here Settlementing or Sociologizing or Improving the
-Condition of Somebody Else! Because I really do need your face,” she
-concluded with convincing earnestness. “It's yours at fifty cents an
-hour.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And you're not an Improver?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Absolutely not. Do I look as if I'd improved myself?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You wouldn't do at all for my present purpose, improved,” she observed.
-“Please don't forget that. When can you come to me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Any time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Haven't you anything else to do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothing but look out for odd jobs. That's why I'm so grateful for regular
-employment.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But this isn't regular employment.” His face fell. “It's most irregular,
-and there's very little of it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, well, it's fifty cents an hour. And that's more than I've ever earned
-in my life, Miss Sculptor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am Miss Willard.”.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then, Miss Willard, you're employing Cyrus Murphy. Do you think I'll
-sculp up like a Murphy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't think you'll sculp up like a Murphy at all, and I've too many
-friends who are Murphys to believe that you are one. In fact, I could do
-you much better if I knew what you are.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's quite simple. I'm a suicide. I walked right spang over the edge of
-life and disappeared. Splash! Bubble-bubble! There goes nothing. The only
-difference between me and a real suicide is that I have to eat. At times
-it's difficult.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Haven't you any trade? Can't you do <i>anything?</i>” With a sweep of her
-little hand she indicated the bustling activities with which the outer
-streets whirred. “Isn't there any place for you in all this?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He contemplated the world's work as exemplified around Our Square. His
-gaze came to rest upon a steam-roller, ponderously clanking over a
-railed-off portion of the street. “I suppose I could run that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Could you? That's a man's job at least. Have you ever run one?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, but I know I could. Any kind of machinery just eats out of my hand.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, that's something. It's better than being a model. Be at my house
-tomorrow at nine please.”
- </p>
-<p>
-For an hour thereafter Cyrus the Gaunt sat on the bench musing upon a
-small, flower-like, almost absurdly efficient young person who had
-contracted, as he viewed it, to inject light and color into life at fifty
-cents an hour, and who had plainly intimated that, in her view, he was not
-a man. It was that precise opinion expressed by another and a very unlike
-person which was responsible for his being where he was. At that time it
-had made him furious. Now it made him thoughtful.
-</p>
-<p>
-Presently he went through his pockets, reckoned his assets, rose up from
-the bench, and made a trip to MacLachan's “Home of Fashion,” where he left
-his clothes to be pressed overnight. In the morning he reappeared again,
-shaved to the closest limit of human endurance, and thus addressed the
-Scot:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Have you got my clothes pressed?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Aye,” said the tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, unpress 'em again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Eh?” said the tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Unpress'em. Sit on'em. Roll'em on the floor. Muss'em up. Put all the
-wrinkles back, just as they were.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mon, ye shud leave the whiskey be,” advised the tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-Thereupon Cyrus caught up his neatly creased suit and proceeded to play
-football with it, after which he put it on and viewed himself with
-satisfaction.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And I almost forgot that she wouldn't have any use for me, improved,” he
-muttered as he wended his way to the little, old friendly house. “Lord, I
-might have lost my job!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Any expectation of social diversion at fifty cents an hour which Cyrus the
-Gaunt may have cherished was promptly quashed on his arrival. It was a
-very businesslike little sculptor who took him in hand.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sit here, please—the right knee farther forward—let the chin
-drop a little—” and all that sort of thing.
-</p>
-<p>
-He might not even watch the soft, strong little hands as they patted and
-kneaded, nor the vivid face as plastic as the material from which the
-hands worked their wonders, for when he attempted it:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't wish you to look at me. I wish you to look at nothing, as you do
-when you sit on the bench. Make your eyes tired again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The difficulty was that his eyes, tired so long with that weariness which
-lies at the very roots of being, didn't feel tired at all in the little
-studio. For one thing, there was an absurd, fluffed-up whirlwind of a
-kitten who performed miracles of obstacle-racing all over the place. Then,
-in the most unexpected crannies and corners lurked tiny bronzes, instinct
-with life: a wistful dog submitting an injured paw to a boy hardly as
-large as himself; “Androcles” this one was labeled. Then there was
-“Mystery,” a young, ill-clad girl, looking down at a dead butterfly;
-“Remnants,” a withered and bent old woman, staggering under her load of
-builders' refuse; “The Knight,” a small boy astride across the body of his
-drunken father, brandishing a cudgel against a circle of unseen
-tormentors; and many others, all vivid with that feeling for the human
-struggle which alone can make metal live.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Recess!” cried the worker presently. “You're doing quite well!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus encouraged, Cyrus ventured a question:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Where are the dancers?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“They're all in the window.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But this in here is quite as big work, isn't it? Why isn't some of it on
-display?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's for outsiders. It isn't for my people.” She put a world of
-protectiveness in the two final words.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I can't see why not.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Because the people of Our Square don't need to be told of the tragedy of
-life. Joy and play and laughter is what they need. So I give it to them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A light came into his tired, old-young eyes. “Do you know, I begin to
-think you're a very wonderful person.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Time to work again,” said she. Whereby, being an understanding young man,
-he perceived that there would be no safe divergence from the strict
-relations of employer and employed, for the present at least. Half a dozen
-times he sat for her, sometimes collecting a dollar, sometimes only fifty
-cents, the money being invariably handed over with a demure and determined
-air of business procedure, and duly entered in a tiny book, which was a
-never-failing source of suppressed amusement to him. Then one day the
-basis abruptly changed, for a reason he did not learn about until long
-after.
-</p>
-<p>
-It had to do with a process which I must regretfully term eavesdropping,
-on the part of the little sculptor. The subjects were two-on-a-bench, in
-Our Square. One was Cyrus the Gaunt; the other an inconsiderable and
-hopeless lounger, grim and wan.
-</p>
-<p>
-Silver passed between them, and something else, less tangible, something
-which lighted a sudden flame of hope in the hopeless face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A real job?” the lurking sculptor overheard him say, hoarsely.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus nodded. “Nine o'clock to-morrow morning, here,” said he.
-</p>
-<p>
-Slipping quietly away, the girl almost ran into the grim and wan lounger,
-no longer so grim and several degrees less wan, as he rounded the opposite
-curve of the circle and passed out on the street in front of her. The next
-instant Cyrus shot by her at a long-legged gallop and caught the man by
-the shoulder.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here! Wait! Not nine o'clock,” he cried breathlessly. “I forgot. I've got
-an engagement, a—very important business engagement.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The other's jaw dropped. “What the—” he began, when there appeared
-before them both a trim and twinkling vision of femininity.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm glad I saw you,” said the vision to Cyrus, “because I shan't want you
-until ten-thirty to-morrow.” Then she passed on, so deep in thought that
-she hardly responded to the greetings which accosted her on all sides. “I
-don't understand it at <i>all</i>” she murmured.
-</p>
-<p>
-Promptly upon the morrow's hour Cyrus appeared at the studio, rumpled and
-mussed as usual. “How do you do?” the artist greeted him. “Before we go to
-work I want you to meet Fluff.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Cyrus glanced at the kitten, who was chasing a phantom mouse up the
-swaying curtain. “I already know Fluff,” said he.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no, you don't,” she corrected gently. “That is, Fluff doesn't know
-you. She doesn't know that you are alive. Fluff is a person of fine
-distinctions. Come here, Mischief.” The kitten gave over the chase, after
-one last lightning swipe, and trotted across the room. “Fluff,” said her
-mistress, “this is our friend, Cyrus.” The kitten purred and nosed Cyrus's
-foot.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thank you,” said the young man gratefully. “I also am not wholly
-insensible to fine distinctions. Fluff, do you know how those ancient
-barbarian parties looked and acted when they were called 'friend of the
-state of Rome'? Well, regard me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-His employer twinkled at him with her eyes. “I've sold you,” she remarked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“At a good price?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. You were really very good.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It would have been kind to let me see myself before you bartered me away
-into eternal captivity.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Kinder not.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You mean I shouldn't have liked your idea of me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Didn't I say that it was <i>good?</i>” she returned with composed pride.
-“My idea of you wouldn't be good, as modeling. This is the real <i>you</i>,
-the man underneath.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's worse. You think I oughtn't to like myself as I am.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She looked up at him with intimate and sympathetic friendliness. “Well, <i>do</i>
-you?” was all she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Whether I do or not, it's pretty evident what you think of me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It ought to be. I've introduced you to Fluff. One can't be too careful as
-to whom one introduces to one's young and guileless daughter.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Thank you.” For the first time in their acquaintance he smiled. The smile
-changed his face luminously.
-</p>
-<p>
-She tossed the tiny iron with which she was working into the far corner of
-the studio. “That settles it,” she said. “I'm through.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“For the day?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Wrong! All wrong!” she cried vehemently, disregarding his question. “Why
-did you have to go and smile that way? I haven't done you at all. Do you
-know what I've been sculping you as?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You wouldn't tell me, you know. Nothing very flattering, I judged.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As a disenchanted and uncontrolled drifter.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And now you think perhaps I'm not?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't know what you are, but I think I might as well be clicking the
-shutter of a camera, for all I've done with you. The point is, that I've
-come to the end of you for the present.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You don't want me any more?” he cried, aghast.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If I did, you wouldn't have time. I've got you a real man's job.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What kind of slavery have you sold me into this time?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The steam-roller. I've used my influence—you don't know what a pull
-I've got around here—and I can name my man for the late night-shift.
-Will you take it?” His face was elate. “Will I take it! Will a duck eat
-pie?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm sure I don't know. Will it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It will if it can't get anything else to eat. How long is this job good
-for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“All summer and more. How long are you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Till released.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You have made a promise. I'll enter it in my ledger.” Which she did,
-writing it down in her absurd little booklet with a delicious solemnity of
-importance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But can't I come and sit for you afternoons?” he pleaded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How many wages do you want to earn? No; not at present. But Miss Fluff
-and I are at home to honest working friends on Friday evenings. Come here,
-Miss Fluff, and tell the new engineer that we'll be glad to have him come
-and tell us about the job when he's learned it.” But the kitten paid no
-heed, being at that moment engaged in treacherously and scientifically
-stalking an imaginary butterfly along the window-sill.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Before I'm banished,” said Cyrus, “may I ask a question?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You might try it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you mind telling me your given name? Not for use,” he added, as she
-looked up at him with her grave, speculative gaze, “but just as a guaranty
-of good faith. I set great store by other people's names, having been
-cursed since birth with my own Persian abomination.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't think Cyrus is bad at all,” she said. “Mine is Carol.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh,” said he blankly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't you like it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's a very nice name, for some people,” he said guardedly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You don't like it. Why?”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was no evading the directness of that demand. “I never knew but one
-girl named Carol,” he said. “She squinted.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What of it? I don't squint. Do I? Do I? DO I?”
- </p>
-<p>
-With each repetition of her defiance she took one step nearer him, until
-at the last she was fairly standing on tiptoe under his nose. Cyrus the
-Gaunt looked down into those radiant eyes that grew wider and deeper and
-deeper and wider, until his heart, which had been slipping perilously of
-late, fell into them and was hopelessly lost. “Do I?” she demanded once
-more.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus responded with a loud yell. Inappropriate as the outcry was, it
-saved a situation becoming potentially dangerous, for not far below those
-luminous eyes was a dimple that flickered at the corner of a challenging
-mouth; unconsciously challenging, doubtless, yet—And then Fluff,
-opportunely descrying her imaginary butterfly on the side of Cyrus's
-trouser-leg, made a flying leap and drove ten keen claws through the
-fabric into the skin beneath. Her mistress dislodged the too ardent
-entomologist, and apologized demurely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You see,” said she, “you've become an intimate of the household. When
-you're too busy to come and see us, Fluff and I will peek out and admire
-you as you go plunging past on your irresistible course.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's going to be a lonely job,” said Cyrus the Gaunt wistfully, “compared
-to this one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nonsense!” she retorted briskly as she handed him a dollar bill. “Here's
-your pay. You'll be too busy to be lonely. Good luck, Mr. Engineer.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-II
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hus Cyrus the Gaunt became a toiler in, and by slow degrees a citizen of,
-Our Square. We are a doubtful people where strangers are concerned. The
-ritual of initiation for Cyrus was, at first, chance words and offhand
-nods, then an occasional bidding to sit in at Schwartz's, and finally
-consultations and confidences on matters of import, political, social, or
-private. Thus was Cyrus the Gaunt adopted as one of us. Quite from the
-outset of his job he became a notable pictorial asset of the place,
-standing out, lank and black, in the intermittent gleam of his own engine,
-as he rolled on his appointed course amidst firmamental thunderings.
-Acting as chauffeur to ten tons of ill-balanced metal, he promptly
-discovered, is an occupation to which the tyro must pay explicit heed if
-he would keep within the bounds of his precinct. About the time when he
-was beginning to feel at ease with his charger, he came to a stop, one
-misty night, directly opposite the window of a taxicab, and met a pair of
-eyes which straightway became fixed in a paralysis of amazed doubt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No; it isn't. It can't be,” said the owner of the eyes presently.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, it is,” contradicted Cyrus.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, I'm jiggered!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's all that the pious young Presbyterian boss of a fashionable church
-has a right to be.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>What</i> are you doing up there?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Piloting a submarine under Governor's Island.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So I see.” The taxi-door opened, and some six feet of well-tailored
-manhood mounted nimbly to Cyrus's side. “What's the fare? And why? Is it a
-bet?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Cyrus the Gaunt grinned amiably in the face of the Reverend Morris
-Cartwright, whose appearance in that quarter did not greatly surprise him.
-“How did you know? It's leaked out at the club, has it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not that I know of. I guessed it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Thought nothing short of a bet would account for such a reversal of form,
-eh? Keep it to yourself, and I'll tell you the rest.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You've hired an ear,” observed the young cleric.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Maybe you heard that I had a nervous breakdown last spring. Kind of a
-mixture of things.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes; I know the mixture. Three of gin to one of Italian.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You know too much for a minister,” growled the other. “Besides, it was
-only part that. I just sort of got sick of doing nothing and being
-nothing, and the sickness struck in, I expect. Well, one morning, after a
-night of bridge, I came out into the breakfast-room nine hundred plus to
-the good, and about ready to invest the whole in any kind of painless dope
-that would save me from being bored with this life any more. There sat Doc
-Gerritt, pink and smooth like a cherry-stone clam. I stuck out my hand,
-and it was shaking. I dare say my voice was shaking, too, for Gerry looked
-up pretty sharp, when I said, 'Doc, can you do anything for me?' 'No,'
-says he. 'Is it as bad as that?' I asked. 'It's worse,' says he. 'I'm a
-busy man with no time to waste on sure losses. Flat down, Cyrus, you
-aren't worth it.' 'This is all I've got of me,' I said. 'I'm worth it to
-myself.' 'Then do it for yourself,' he snapped. 'You're the only one that
-can.' 'Will you tell me how?' 'I will,' says he. 'But you won't do it. You
-aren't man enough.' 'Gerry,' I said, 'you may be a good doctor, but you're
-a damn liar.' 'Am I?' says he. 'Prove it. Cut the booze and go to work.'
-'Work won't do me any good,' I said. 'I've tried it, and it bored me worse
-than the other thing. When I'm bored, I naturally reach for a drink.'
-(There's a great truth in that, you know, Carty, if the temperance people
-would only grab it: boredom and booze —cause and effect.) 'That's a
-hot line of advice, Doc,' I said. 'Maybe you'll think better of it when
-you get my bill for fifty,' says he. (I got it, too. I've still got it.)
-'I don't mean Wall Street, Cyrus,' says he. 'I mean work. You've never
-tried work. You've just played at it. I'll bet you a thousand,' he went on
-(he was playing me up to this all the time, Carty), 'that you'd starve in
-six months if you tried to make your living where nobody knows you.' Well,
-Carty, you know how I am with a bet. It comes just as natural to me to say
-'You're on,' as 'Here's how,' or 'Have another.' I said it, and here I am.
-I'll bet Doc Gerritt's laughing yet,” he concluded with a wry face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They say he's the best diagnostician going, in his own line.” The young
-clergyman studied Cyrus out of the corner of his eye. “I wouldn't wonder
-if it were true. How do you like the prescription so far?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Interesting,” said Cyrus the Gaunt. “I've been hungry, and I've been
-lonely, and I've been scared, and I've even been near-yellow, but I
-haven't been bored for a minute. You never get bored, Carty, when you have
-the probabilities of your next meal to speculate on, pro and con. Odd jobs
-have been my stay mostly, before I landed this. And when there wasn't
-anything in my own line, I kept up my nerve by catching 'em on the way
-down and shoving 'em into jobs on Jink Hereford's Canadian preserve.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Good man!” approved the Reverend Morris Cartwright. “What'll you have?”
- he added.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Frankfurters and a glass of milk, if it's an open order. But you'll have
-to fetch it to me from Schwartz's. I can't leave this here skittish little
-pet of mine.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then and there some Sunday supplement missed a “throbbing human-interest
-story” in that no reporter was present to witness one of New York's
-fashionable young pastors emerging from an obscure saloon bearing food and
-drink to the grimy driver of an all-night thunder-wagon.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And now,” said Cyrus the Gaunt, handing down the empty glass, “if it
-isn't one of your disgraceful secrets, what are <i>you</i> doing in this
-galley? Heading off some poor unfortunate who wants to go to the devil
-peacefully, in his own way?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, I leave that to the doctors,” retorted the other mildly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Quite so,” chuckled Cyrus. “Throw some water in my face and drag me to my
-corner, will you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“This is an errand of diplomacy,” continued Cartwright. “I'm an envoy. Do
-you happen to know which house—” His ranging vision fell upon the
-row of figures joyously dancing in the window. “Never mind,” he said,
-“I've found it.” He disappeared between the portals of the old-fashioned,
-hospitable door.
-</p>
-<p>
-Quite a considerable part of his week's wages would Cyrus the Gaunt have
-forfeited to interpret the visitor's expression when he came out, a long
-hour later. He looked at once harassed, regretful, and yet triumphant, as
-one might look who had achieved the object of a thankless errand.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie came to the door with him and stood gazing out across
-the flaring lights and quivering shadows of Our Square. It seemed to Cyrus
-that the flower-face drooped a little.
-</p>
-<p>
-And indeed the Bonnie Lassie was not feeling very happy. When one's
-adopted world goes well, the claims that draw one back become irksome
-ties. The messenger from the world which she had temporarily foregone was
-far from welcome. But at least she had claimed and won some months of
-respite and freedom for her work.
-</p>
-<p>
-So engrossed did she become with that work that she saw little or nothing
-of Cyrus the Gaunt until Chance brought them together in the climatic
-fashion so dear to that Protean arbiter of destinies. Returning one
-evening from a call upon a small invalid friend in a tenement quite remote
-from Our Square, the Bonnie Lassie essayed a cross-cut which skirted the
-mouth of a blind alley. From within there sounded a woman's scream of pain
-and fear.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie hesitated. It was a forbidding alley, and the scream was
-not inspiriting. It was repeated. Not for nothing is one undisputed
-empress of Our Square. The Bonnie Lassie had the courage of one who rules.
-She swooped into that black byway like a swallow entering a cave. Now the
-screams were muffled, with a grisly, choked sound. They led her flying
-feet toward a narrow side passage. But before she reached the turn, a
-towering bulk sped by her, almost filling the thin slit between the walls.
-</p>
-<p>
-When she came within view, the matter was apparently settled. A swarthy,
-vividly clad woman cringed against one wall. Against the other Cyrus had
-pinned a swarthier man. The man, helpless, seemed to be wheedling and
-promising. With a final shake and a growl—the girl likened it in her
-mind to that of a great, magnanimous dog—the gaunt one released the
-Sicilian and stopped to pick up his hat, which had fallen in the struggle.
-Then the girl's heart leaped and clogged her throat with terror, for, as
-Cyrus turned, the pretense fell from the face of his opponent and it
-changed to a mask of murder. His hand darted to his breast and came forth
-clutching the thin, terrible, homemade stiletto of the rag-picking tribe,
-a file ground to a rounded needle-point. The girl strove to cry out. It
-seemed to her only the whisper of a nightmare. But it was enough.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus spun around and leaped back. His arm went out stiff as a bar. At the
-end of it was a formidable something which flashed with an ugly glint of
-metal in the Sicilian's face. Whether or not she heard a report, the
-terror-stricken onlooker could not have said. But the would-be murderer
-screamed, tottered, withered. His weapon tinkled upon the coping. Then an
-arm of inordinate size and strength encircled the Bonnie Lassie, whirled
-her up out of a pit of blackness, and supported her through a reeling
-world. At her ear a quietly urgent voice kept insisting that she must walk—walk—walk,
-and not let herself lapse. A shock jolted her brain. It was the smell of
-ammonia. The darkness dissipated, became an almost intolerable light, and
-she found herself seated opposite Cyrus the Gaunt at a polished metal
-table in an ice cream parlor.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/064.jpg" alt="Whirled Her out of a Pit Of Darkness 064 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-“Don't let go of my hand,” she whispered faintly.
-</p>
-<p>
-His big, reassuring clasp tightened. “We got away before the crowd came,”
- he said. “You have wonderful nerve. I thought you were gone.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't speak of it,” she shuddered. “I can't stand it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Not until, after a slow, silent walk, they were seated on a bench in Our
-Square could she gather her resolution for the dreadful question. “Did you
-kill him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Good Lord, no!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Whirled her up out of a pit of blackness, and supported her through a
-reeling world.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But—but—you shot him!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, with this.” He thrust his hand in his pocket, and again, as she
-closed her eyes against the sight, she caught faintly the pungent stimulus
-that had revived her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What is it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ammonia-pop. Model of my own.” Her eyes flew open, the color flooded into
-her cheeks, but receded again. “He might have killed you!” she exclaimed.
-“I thought when you turned away and I saw the dagger that— Oh, how
-could you take such a desperate chance?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just fool-in-the-head, I guess. I supposed he was through. Don't know
-that breed, you see. But for you, he'd have got me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But for <i>you</i>,” she retorted, “I don't know what might have happened
-to me. How came you to be down in that slum?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh,” said he carelessly, “I prowl.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As far away as that?” She looked at him, sidelong.
-</p>
-<p>
-“All around. I know that neighborhood like a book.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What's the name of that alley?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Alley? Er—what alley?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Cyrus Murphy, how long have you been following me about?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He turned an unpicturesque, dull red. “Well, that's no place for a girl
-alone,” he growled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You know, one evening I thought I saw you, down near Avenue C, but I
-couldn't be sure. Was it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It might have been,” he grudged. “Avenue C is a public thoroughfare.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And you've been guarding me,” she murmured.
-</p>
-<p>
-Her eyes brooded on him, and the color was rising in her face to match
-his. But, while Cyrus blushed like a brick, the Bonnie Lassie blushed like
-the hue of flying clouds after sunset.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why don't you take a policeman?” he blurted out. “If anything should
-happen to you—It isn't safe,” he concluded lamely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not even when I'm chaperoned with an ammonia popgun?” she smiled. “Why do
-you carry that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“For dogs. Dogs don't always like me. It's my clothes, I suppose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Any dog who wouldn't like and trust you on sight,” she pronounced with
-intense conviction, “is an imbecile.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He smiled his acknowledgment. At that her face altered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There you go, smiling once more,” she said fretfully. “You do it very
-seldom, but—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm always smiling, deep inside me, at you,” he said quietly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But when you smile outside, it makes you so different. And I find I've
-done you all wrong.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Are you still sculping me?” he asked in surprise.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I—I have been, but I stopped.” She paused, trying again to think of
-him as merely a model, and found, to her discomfiture, that it caused a
-queer, inexplicable little pang deep inside her heart. Nevertheless, the
-artist rose overpoweringly within her at his next question.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you want me to sit for you again?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, would you? Now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He glanced at the church clock. “I've forty-seven minutes,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-Much may be accomplished in forty-seven minutes. In the studio she sprang
-to her work with a sort of contained fury. And as the eager, intent eyes
-regarded him with an ever-increasing impersonality, a pain was born in his
-heart and grew and burned, because to this woman who had clung to him in
-the abandonment of mortal weakness but an hour before, whose pulses had
-leaped and fluttered for his peril, he had become only a subject for
-exploitation, something to further her talent, wax to her deft hand.
-</p>
-<p>
-Perhaps he had been that since the first. Well, what right had he to
-expect anything more?
-</p>
-<p>
-Nothing of this reached the absorbed worker. She was intent upon her
-model's mouth and chin, whereon she had caught the sense of significant
-changes. Had she but once come forth from her absorption to see and
-interpret the man's eyes, she might have known. For only in the eyes does
-a brave man's suffering show; the rest of his face he may control beyond
-betrayal. Something happily restrained her from offering payment as usual,
-when she finally threw the cloth over the unfinished sketch.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You spoke of dogs not liking your clothes,” she said lightly. “Do you
-always sleep in them?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no. They sleep on the floor at the foot of my bed and keep watch. May
-I have them pressed?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It would be an interesting change. But why ask my permission?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Because you told me once to come as is.'”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So I did,” she laughed. “But that was before you were an honest
-workingman. Go and get pressed out.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No more use for me as a model?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I don't say that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But I'm to see you sometimes?” he persisted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How could it be otherwise, with you doing patrol duty in front of my
-door?” she twinkled.
-</p>
-<p>
-With unnecessary emphasis she shut the door upon the retiring form of
-Cyrus the Gaunt. But his double, already inalienable, returned to the
-studio with her and formed a severely accusative third party to her dual
-self-communion. Said the woman within her, woefully: “I mustn't see him
-again. I mustn't! I mustn't!” Said the sculptor within her, exultingly:
-“I've got him. I've got what I wanted. It's there and I've fixed it
-forever.” Which was a mistake of the sculptor's, however nearly right or
-wrong the woman may have been.
-</p>
-<p>
-Thenceforward, it appeared to Cyrus the Gaunt, the Bonnie Lassie exhibited
-an increasing tendency toward invisibility. When he did see her, there
-were sure to be other people about, and she seemed subdued and distrait.
-Presently the suspicion dawned upon Cyrus that she was avoiding him. Being
-a simple, direct person, he laid his theory before her. She denied it with
-unnecessary heat; but that didn't go far toward rehabilitating the old
-cheerful and friendly status. Cyrus the Gaunt, despite a wage which
-assured three excellent meals per day, began to grow gaunter. Our Square
-commented upon it with concern.
-</p>
-<p>
-There came a time when, for ten consecutive days, Cyrus the Gaunt never
-set eyes upon the Bonnie Lassie, nor did his ear so much as catch a single
-lilt of her laughter. At the end of that period, strolling moodily past
-his now flavorless job full two hours early, he beheld mounting the steps
-of the funny little mansion a heavy male figure, clad from head to foot in
-what had a grisly suggestion of professional black. The sight sent a chill
-to Cyrus's heart. The chill froze solid when on a nearer approach to the
-house he heard the sound of voices within, joined in a slow chant.
-Half-blind and shaking, he made his way to the rail and clung there.
-Slowly the words took form and meaning, and this was their solemn message:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-The Good Man,
-When-he-falleth-in-Love
-And-getteth-Snubbed,
-Breaketh Forth In-to Tears:
-But-the-Ungawdly Careth Notta Damn!
-For Woman,
-She-is-but-Vanity
-Ay, Verily, and False-Curls.
-And-the-Wooing Thereof Is Bitterness.
-For-he-Wasteth-his-Substance-Upon-Her,
-Taking-her-Pic-nics and Balls.
-And she Danceth with some
-Other Feller.
-Oh-hh SLUSH!!!
-</pre>
-<p>
-A window-shade floated sideways, revealing to the peerer's gaze a gnome
-with blue ears beating out the tempo with the fire-tongs for a quartette,
-consisting of an aeroplane, a Salvation Army captain, a white rabbit, and
-an Apache, while a motley crowd circulated around them. In the intensity
-of his relief, Cyrus the Gaunt took a great resolve: “Invited or not
-invited, I'm going to that party.”
- </p>
-<p>
-MacLachan's “Home of Fashion” on the corner was long since dark, but
-Cyrus's pedal fantasia on the panels brought forth the indignant
-proprietor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What have you got for me to go to a fancy party in, Mac?” demanded his
-disturber.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Turnverein or Pansy Social Circle?” inquired the practical tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Neither. A dead swell party.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Go as ye are-rr, ye fule!” said the Scot, and slammed the door.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Perfectly simple,” said Cyrus the Gaunt. “I'll do it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He hastened around to Schwartz's to wash his hands and smut his face
-artistically.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-III
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">U</span>pon the reiterated testimony of the Oldest Inhabitant, Our Square had
-never before witnessed such scenes or heard such sounds of revelry by
-night as the Bonnie Lassie's surprise party, given for her by her friends
-of the far-away world. None of us was bidden in at first, as the Bonnie
-Lassie had not the inviting in her hands. But to her—little loyalist
-that she is!—a celebration without her own neighbors was
-unthinkable; so she sent her messengers forth and gathered us in from our
-beds, from Schwartz's, from Lavansky's Pinochle Parlors, from the late
-shift of the “Socialist Weekly Battlecry,” and even from the Semi-Annual
-Soirée and Ball of the Sons of Gentlemen of Goerck Street, far out on our
-boundaries of influence; and though we wore no fancier garb than our best,
-we made a respectable showing, indeed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Along with the early comers, and while Cyrus the Gaunt was still putting
-the final touches to his preparation, there appeared at the hospitable
-door an unexpected guest, a woman of sixty with a strong, bent figure, and
-a square face lighted by gleaming eyes with fixed lines about them. The
-black-hued Undertaker who had constituted himself master of ceremonies met
-her at the door, and immediately hustled her within.
-</p>
-<p>
-“While I have not the privilege of this lady's personal acquaintance,” he
-announced, “I have the honor of presenting, ladies and gentlemen, the
-eminent and professional chaperon, Mrs. Sparkles.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The newcomer paused, blinking and irresolute. “But I did not know—”
- she began, in a faintly foreignized accent From a far corner the Bonnie
-Lassie spied her, and flew across the floor, flushed, radiant, and
-confused. “You!” she cried—and there was something in her voice that
-drew upon the pair curious looks from the other guests. “Oh, Madame! Why
-didn't you let me know?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The newcomer set her finger to her lips. “I am incognita. What is it the
-somber person called me? Mrs. Sparkles? Yes.” The Bonnie Lassie nodded her
-comprehension. “If I had known that you were making fête this evening—I
-cannot see your work now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Indeed, you can. I'll shut just us two into the studio. They won't miss
-me.” She gently pushed the new guest through a side door, which she closed
-after them. Confronted with the little sculptor's work, the visitor moved
-about with a swift certainty of judgment, praising this bit with a brief
-word, shrugging her shoulders over that, indicating by a single touch of
-the finger the salient defect of another, while her hostess followed her
-with anxious eyes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not bad,” murmured the critic. “You have learned much. What is under that
-sheet?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Experiments,” answered the girl reluctantly.
-</p>
-<p>
-The woman swept the covering aside. Beneath were huddled a number of
-studies, some finished, others in the rough, ungrouped.
-</p>
-<p>
-“All the same subject, <i>n'est-ce-pas?</i>”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The visitor examined them carefully. “Very interesting. Any more of this?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Some notes in pencil.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Let me see them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie drew out and submitted a sheaf of papers.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You have done very badly with this,” was the verdict, after concentrated
-study. “Or else—you have worked hard and honestly upon it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Harder than on anything I've done.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There are signs of that, too. What is it you are aiming at? What is the
-subject? Inside, I mean?” She tapped her forehead and regarded with her
-luminous stare the eager girl-face before her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, I hardly know. At first it was one thing, then it changed. I had
-thought of doing him as 'The Pioneer.' 'Something lost beyond the ranges,'
-you know.” The woman nodded. “Then later, I wanted to do 'The Last
-American,' and I modeled him for that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Good!” The older woman's endorsement was emphatic. “How Lincoln-like the
-formation of the face is, here.” She touched one of the unfinished bits.
-“That's the American of it. Or <i>is</i> it? Albrecht Dürer did the same
-thing in his ideal Knight four centuries ago. You know it? It's like a
-portrait of Lincoln. Did you consciously mould that line in?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah!” The girl contemplated her own work with glowing eyes. “That's the
-haunting resemblance I felt but couldn't catch when I first saw my model.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It isn't in most of these.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“My fault. It must have been there, underneath, all the time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hm! You consider those pretty faithful studies?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As faithful as I could make them. But I haven't been able to catch and
-fix the face. It's most provoking,” she added fretfully, “but I'm
-constantly having to remodel.” Before she had finished, the elderly
-woman's swift hands were busy with the figures, manipulating them here and
-there, until they were presently set out in a single row with the sketches
-interspersed. “Read from left to right,” she said curtly. “Is not that the
-order of time in which the work was done?”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/082.jpg" alt="Read from Left to Right 082 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-“Pure magic!” breathed the girl. “How could you know?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How could I help but know? Child, child! Can't you see you have the
-biggest subject ready to your hand that any artist could pray for?” The
-girl looked her question mutely. “The man is making himself. How? God
-knows—the God that helps all real work. Look! See how the lines of
-grossness <i>there</i>”—she touched the first figure in her
-marshaled line —“have planed out <i>here</i>.” The swift finger
-found a later study. “How could you miss it! The upbuilding of character,
-resolve, manhood, and with it all something gentler and finer softening
-it. You have half-done it, but only half, because you have not understood.
-<i>Why</i> have you not understood?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Because I'm not a genius.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Who knows? To have half-done it is much. The master-genius, Life, has
-been carving that face out before your eyes. You need but follow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Tell me what to do.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Leave it alone for six months. Come back and take the face as it will be
-then.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then will be too late,” said the girl in a low voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What!” cried the critic, startled. “Your model isn't dying, is he?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no. I—I had something else in mind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Dismiss it. Have nothing else in mind but to finish this.” She paused. “I
-have seen all I need to. Let us return to your friends.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Hardly had the hostess seated her guest in the most comfortable corner of
-the big divan when there was a stir at the door, and a rangy, big-boned
-figure, clad in the unmistakable garb of honest labor, appeared, blinking
-a little at the lights. Instantly the Undertaker, in his rôle of official
-announcer, dashed forward to greet him. “Gentlemen <i>and</i> ladies,” he
-proclaimed, “introducing Mr. Casey Jones, late of the Salt Lake Line.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sing it, you Son of Toil!” shouted somebody, and Cyrus the Gaunt promptly
-obliged, in a clear and robust baritone, leading the chorus which came in
-jubilantly.
-</p>
-<p>
-The elderly “Mrs. Sparkles” was not interested in the harmony; but she was
-interested in the face of her hostess, which had flushed a startled pink.
-She asked a question under cover of the music.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That is your model, is it not?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What is he in real life?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As you see him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In—deed? What is he doing it for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Two and a half a day, I believe.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Quite enough. But why?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I never asked him.” And the Bonnie Lassie tripped over to her newest
-guest, leaving her next-to-newest quite busy with thought.
-</p>
-<p>
-Owing to the demands upon a hostess,
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus the Gaunt saw very little of her in the brief hour remaining to him.
-One dance he succeeded in claiming.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You see,” he remarked, “I came to your party anyway, although uninvited.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I didn't give it. It was a surprise,” she explained. “But the job?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“They've put me on an hour later.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You still like it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It limits one socially more than being a model,” he replied solemnly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But you are sticking to it?” she persisted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, yes, I'm sticking to it, all right.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Even if—No matter what happens?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What is going to happen?” he asked gravely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nothing,” she said hurriedly. “But it's the job for the job's sake with
-you now, isn't it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I like the feel of it, if that's what you mean. The feel of being
-competent to hold it down.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She nodded with content in her eyes. But he was troubled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You had something in mind—” he began, when another partner claimed
-her, while he was dragged off to assist in an improvised glee-club.
-</p>
-<p>
-His time was up all too soon, and without chance of a further word from
-her, other than a formal farewell. In the little rear hallway whither he
-had made his way through his protesting fellow-revelers, he reached up for
-his coat, and felt something lightly brush the top of his head. He looked
-up. It was a sprig of mistletoe. At the same moment two firm hands closed
-over his eyes, and light, swift lips just grazed his cheek.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus the Gaunt fell a-trembling. He turned slowly, and found himself
-confronting a total stranger. The stranger had gray hair and a tired face
-lighted by crinkly eyes. “Oh!” said Cyrus the Gaunt with an irrepressible
-bitterness of disappointment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Frankness,” observed his salutant, “may or may not be a compliment to the
-object of it.” Cyrus remained mute. “Who did you <i>hope</i> it was?”
- Silence seemed still the best policy. “If you are offended”—the eyes
-twinkled with added keenness—“I will apologize honorably.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Let me do it for you,” said Cyrus the Gaunt politely, and kissed the
-unknown square upon the lips.
-</p>
-<p>
-She drew back. “Well!” she began; then she laughed. “The <i>entente
-cordiale</i> having been established, <i>what</i> are you doing here,
-Cyrus Staten?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He gasped and gaped. “Do I know you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Having neither memory nor manners, you do not. But I spent weeks at your
-country place when you were a boy, painting your father. Permit me to
-introduce myself.” And she gave a name so great that even Cyrus's
-comprehensive carelessness of art was not ignorant of it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Great snakes!” he ejaculated. “I—I'm sorry I kissed you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I'm human. I rather liked it,” she chuckled, “even though I am old
-and stately. But how have you contrived to preserve your incognito?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Easy enough. This is another world. Look out!” he added as the curtain
-behind them moved. “Somebody's coming.” The hanging swung aside and the
-Bonnie Lassie emerged. “Oh!” she said in surprise. “Do you know each
-other?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“We were becoming acquainted when you interrupted,” replied the woman. She
-turned a disconcerting gaze upon her hostess. “Where did you get him?” she
-demanded, exactly as if Cyrus weren't there. “Oh, please!” cried the girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't mind me,” said Cyrus politely, sensible that something was going on
-which he didn't grasp. “I'm used to it.” He turned to the mighty artist.
-“You see, in real life I'm a studio model.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Are you?” retorted the genius. “I thought you were an engineer. Now I
-begin to suspect you are a fraud. Well, I have something to say to Miss
-Prim, here. Run you away and play with your job.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So that's your young Lincoln,” she observed, as Cyrus moodily accepted
-his dismissal, and passed out.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He doesn't know it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You have missed even more than I thought, in him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've done my best,” said the girl dispiritedly. “He's too big for little
-me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hm! You haven't told me yet where you got him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“'The wild wind blew him to my close-barred door,'” quoted the girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A good many wild winds have blown about Cyrus Staten from time to time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Who?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Cyrus Staten; don't you <i>know</i> him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, I picked him up from the bench in Our Square.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Which the Statens used to own, by the way. Well, the <i>facilis descensus</i>
-of an idle waster from the world of white lights and black shadows to a
-park-bench is nothing new.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Does he look like an idle waster?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He does <i>not</i>. Therein lies a miracle. What is he doing now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Running the steam-roller, outside.” The face of the girl melted into
-lovely and irrepressible mirth.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ah! That explains much. But not all. What is your part in this?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You have seen it.” She nodded backward toward the studio.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not that. As a woman? What have you been doing to that boy to make him
-what he is?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The girl took her soft lip grievously between her teeth for a moment
-before answering. “I've been playing my child's tricks with a real man—and
-now I'm being sorry.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And paying for it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie's head drooped.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is he paying for it, too?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No? Well, when I played a little surprise on him and kissed him under the
-mistletoe, I thought that tall and massive youth was going to faint away
-like a school-miss in my supporting arms, until he saw who it was. What do
-you suppose his expectations—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You had no right to take such an advantage,” flashed the girl, turning
-crimson.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So?” The great woman smiled. “But I think my own thoughts. When one pays,
-or the other pays, that is well. It is the chance of the play. But when
-both pay—oh, that is wrong, wrong, wrong as wrong can be!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I can't help it,” said the girl, very low. “There is a previous debt.”
- And she turned aside a face so woe-begone that her interrogator forbore
-further pressure.
-</p>
-<p>
-“At least,” she said, “the artist must complete the work, at whatever cost
-to the woman. You will finish <i>that?</i>” She jerked her head toward the
-studio.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I—I suppose so. If I can.”
- </p>
-<p>
-On the way home the genius caught a glimpse of Cyrus the Gaunt upon his
-triumphal chariot, and halted her auto the better to laugh. As the
-lumbering, clamoring monster drew opposite, she signaled. Cyrus did
-something abstruse to the mechanism, which groaned and clanked itself into
-stillness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Young man,” she hailed, “I have a message for you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“From whom?” said Cyrus hopefully. “From myself. This is it: Be careful.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am,” said Cyrus with conviction, “the carefulest captain that ever
-ploughed the stormy pave.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Be careful,” she repeated, disregarding his interpretation, “or she'll
-make a man of you yet. The process is sometimes painful—like most
-creative processes, Home, Joseph.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Many of the Bonnie Lassie's outlander guests passed Cyrus the Gaunt that
-night, but none other identified or noticed him. The latest departures
-were two heavily swathed youths who paused to light cigarettes in the lee
-of Cyrus's iron steed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Some little farewell party, wasn't it?” the engineer overheard them say.
-“Why wasn't the happy Bascom there?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not back from Europe yet. I understand Morris Cartwright fixed things up,
-and the engagement is to be formally announced on his return.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's a shame,” growled the first speaker. “Bascom's all right, but he's
-old enough to be her father. Wasn't she a dream and a vision to-night!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It was one of those legacy engagements, I believe. Dead-father's-wish
-sort of thing. All right, I suppose, so long as there's no one else. Who
-was the engineer guy? He seemed to be a reg'lar feller.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The twain passed on, leaving Cyrus the Gaunt stiff and stricken in his
-seat. How he got through the next hour he hardly knew. He remembered
-vaguely a protest from sundry citizens who resented being charged off the
-cross-walks by a zigzagging juggernaut, a query from Terry the Cop whether
-he was off his feed, and the startled face of old man Sittser, who paused
-to pass the time of night on his way home from the late shift on the
-linotype and was incontinently cursed for his pains. Full consciousness of
-the practical world was brought back to Cyrus by the purring of a sleek
-auto close at hand as he curved out at the corner for his straightaway
-course. He was just gathering momentum when he caught sight of the Bonnie
-Lassie's face, white and wistful, soft-eyed and miserable, confronting
-darkness and vacancy from within the luxurious limousine.
-</p>
-<p>
-Well, nobody can catch a sixty-horsepower motor-car with a ten-ton
-steamroller.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus, to do him justice, tried his best. They stopped one dollar and
-forty cents out of his Saturday's envelope for what he and the roller did
-to the barriers and lanterns. By the time he had swung into the
-cross-street, trailing wreckage, the Bonnie Lassie was out of sight and
-out of his world.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-IV
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>inter comes, stern and sharp, like an unpaid landlord, to Our Square,
-with sleet and gale for its agents of eviction. No longer are the benches
-blithe with the voice of love or play or gossip. The wind has blown them
-all away. A few tenacious leaves still cling, withered, brown, and
-clattering, to the trees, “bare, ruin'd choirs where late' the sweet birds
-sang,” and a few hardy stragglers beat across the unprotected spaces, just
-to maintain, as it were, the human right of way against the gray rigor of
-the skies. But, for the most part, we of Our Square, going about our
-concerns, huddle as close as may be to the lee of walls, for—though
-we would not for the world have it known—many of us are none too
-warmly clad. Behind the blank opaqueness of the bordering windows one may
-surmise much want and penury and cold, which, also, we keep to ourselves.
-Our Square has its pride. We do not publish our trials.
-</p>
-<p>
-Perhaps Cyrus the Gaunt knew as much of them as any. For, by imperceptible
-gradations, he had become the 'confidant, the judge, the arbiter of our
-difficulties, and the friend of the shyest, the hardest, and the proudest
-of us alike. His engine-seat was become a throne, from whence he dispensed
-every good thing but charity. That word and all that follows in its train
-he hated. Which shows that he had learned Our Square. After hours he would
-“drop in,” almost secretly, on some friend; and it was a curious
-coincidence that Cyrus's friends were chosen apparently on the basis of
-need and distress. He had that rare knack of helping out without involving
-the aided one in the coils of obligation. There is nothing Our Square
-wouldn't have done for Cyrus the Gaunt. I believe he could even have been
-elected alderman.
-</p>
-<p>
-Winter drove Cyrus from his perch and put a brake on the thunder-wagon
-before the job was quite finished. There still remained some final repairs
-which must now wait for the spring, on the side where the Bonnie Lassie's
-little house stood, bleak and desolate. Not wholly deserted, however, for
-one brave and happy dancer still stuck to her post in the window, lifting
-a thrilled face to the sky. Other employment claimed Cyrus the Gaunt until
-his iron steed should come out of the stable; a day job on a stationary
-engine around in Pike Street. Our Square remarked with concern that the
-indoor employment didn't seem to suit Cyrus the Gaunt. He became gaunter
-and thinner and more melancholy-looking, and more than once he was seen on
-wild nights, when nobody was supposed to be out late, staring at the now
-quite unembarrassed house with the quaint little door and the broad
-vestibule. But though the light and cheer that Our Square had seen grow in
-Cyrus's face in the early days of his job, were graying over, there
-increased the new understanding and sympathy and determination, in lines
-that he had put there himself in the building of his new manhood. Thus,
-only, in this perplexing world, does a man lift himself by his own
-boot-straps.
-</p>
-<p>
-Though Cyrus the Gaunt could boast a thousand friends, he had accepted but
-one intimate. That was MacLachan the tailor. Every day they lunched on
-frankfurters and kohlrabi at Schwartz's. Thither Cyrus was wont to have
-his scanty mail sent from the house where he lodged. One blustery December
-day the tailor arrived late, to find his friend fingering a pink slip of
-paper, of suggestive appearance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ye'll have been aimin' a bit ootside!” commented MacLachan.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus flipped the paper over to him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Save us!” cried the awe-stricken Scot. “It's a thousan' dollars. All in
-the one piece!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Two months overdue. He didn't have my address, I suppose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ha'e ye been drawin' a lottery?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. It's a bet. Also my release. I'd almost forgotten. My time's up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ye'll not be leavin' us?” said the tailor. Cyrus avoided his eyes. “I'm
-through, Mac,” he said dully. “It's no use. It's not worth while.
-Nothing's worth while.” There was a long pause. “Mon,” said MacLachan
-finally, “ha'e ye tho't what this'll mean to Our Square?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Cyrus the Gaunt thought. Behind the curtain of his impenetrable face there
-passed a panorama of recent memories; events which had, for the first time
-in his career, made him one with the fabric of life. Faces appealed to
-him; hands were outstretched to him confidently for the friendly help that
-he could give so well; the voices of the children hailed him as a fellow;
-the baseball team which did most of its practice at noon on the asphalt
-claimed a corner of his memory; his ears rang with the everyday greetings
-of his own people, and another panorama, summoned up by the pink slip,
-faded away. Cyrus folded the check and put it carefully in the pocket of
-his overalls.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ye'll be stayin' here,” said MacLachan contentedly, having read his
-expression.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus nodded. Then the tailor's dour-ness fell from him for the moment. He
-laid a hand on his friend's shoulder. “Laddie,” he said, “the little
-bronze dancer is in the window yet.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Cyrus turned a haggard face to him. “I know,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do ye make nothin' o' that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothing. You know why—what she went away for.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I ha'e haird.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I'm learning to forget.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The little bronze dancer is in the window yet,” repeated the obstinate
-Scot.
-</p>
-<p>
-How Cyrus won through that long winter is his own affair. Our Square
-respects other people's troubles. It asked no questions. Finally winter
-broke and fled before a southeast wind full of fragrance, and the trees
-began to whisper important tidings to each other; and a pioneer butterfly
-of the deepest, most luminous purple-black, with buff edges to its wings,
-arrived and led the whole juvenile populace such a chase as surely never
-was since the Pied Piper fluted his seductions long ago; and the benches
-came out of their long retreat, fresh-painted, to stand sturdy and stiff
-in their old places; and so did Cyrus's thun-der-wagon, whereon he perched
-nightly once more, and was even more than before the taciturn, humorous,
-kindly, secret, friendly adviser to all and sundry.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then, one crisp March evening he became aware of a strong, bent, feminine
-figure beckoning him from the curbstone. Clanging to a halt, he heard a
-voice, unforgettable through its tinge of foreign accent, say: —
-</p>
-<p>
-“How do you do? I have been seeing your face all through my travels.”
- Cyrus took off his working-cap and shook hands. “So I have come back to
-look at it. It's thin. Would you like to be painted?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't think so, thank you. I've been sculped within an inch of my
-life.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So I have understood,” said the Very Great Woman with a smile not devoid
-of sympathy. “You are not done with it yet. She is coming.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The face of Cyrus the Gaunt lighted marvelously.. “Coming back to Our
-Square?” he cried. Then the light faded. “But—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But me no buts. She is coming. I did it. I found that she had never
-finished you. So I told her that if she did not come back and finish, I
-would take you away from her and finish you myself. And, oh, I am as bad a
-sculptor as I am a good painter—-almost!” Her laughter rang in the
-chill air. “So she comes. And I have traveled all the way to this
-impossible spot to play traitor. The question is: Are you a man? You look
-it, at last!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The question is—Will you answer me one?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No! No! No! No! No! Put your questions where they belong. Farewell, my
-Phaëthon of the Slums.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The world was mad with the wine of the wind the night the Bonnie Lassie
-came back to Our Square. All our trees waved their lean arms in welcome
-and sent down little buds as messengers of joy over her return. Of living
-welcomers there was none, for the gale had swept all humans before it,
-except Terry the Cop, and he didn't recognize her, from the distance, in
-her other-worldly raiment. That must have cost her a pang. Unnoticed she
-crept into the little, old, quaint, friendly house, and its doors closed
-behind her like the reassurance of a friendly arm. She set herself in the
-dark window where the blithe dancer still tripped it, faithful and lonely,
-and waited for Cyrus the Gaunt. But when she saw his face, the Bonnie
-Lassie didn't sculp. She cried.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus mounted to his seat and pulled the lever over. The engine was
-running badly that night, and the wind almost blew him from his perch.
-Aside from the improbability that the little sculptor would brave such
-weather, the charioteer was presently so immersed in his own immediate
-concerns that he all but forgot the prospective visit. When he had brought
-his charge to its senses and reduced it to some control, he was
-interrupted by the plight of a belated push-cart woman, who was dragging
-anchor and drifting fast to leeward under the furious impulsion of the
-nor'easter. Cyrus had just dragged her almost from under his ponderous
-wheels, when a beam flashed in his eyes, and he looked up to see a truck
-close upon them. His yell split the darkness. The truck-driver, with a
-mighty wrench, swung his vehicle sharp to the left, and up on the
-sidewalk.
-</p>
-<p>
-The uptilted lights shone full into the lower window of the little, old,
-friendly house. Pressed against that window Cyrus saw the apparition of a
-tear-softened, desolate visage. Reason, prudence, and propriety deserted
-their posts in his brain simultaneously. A dozen long-legged leaps carried
-him as far as the vestibule of the little house. There his knees basely
-weakened. Perhaps her heart divined his step and sent her forth to meet
-him; or perhaps it was his old ally, Chance, that brought her into the
-vestibule as he stood there shaking.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” she cried, and shrank back into a corner, with a deprecatory
-movement, which to him was infinitely pathetic.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm sorry,” said Cyrus. “I saw your face and thought you were in trouble.
-If—if you wanted me to sit for you again,” he said composedly, “I
-should be very glad to, until you've finished your sketch.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no. I couldn't ask you. I couldn't think of—after—what—what—”
- Her voice waned into silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't feel that way at all,” he encouraged her with resolved
-cheerfulness. “I can be a model and nothing more, again, I assure you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Her upturned eyes implored him. “Don't be cruel,” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Cruel?” he repeated wonderingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not at all. I'll be polite. It isn't too late to offer my best wishes.
-Though I'm not sure I know the name.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What name?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Your—your married name.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then you don't know?” she gasped. The brain of Cyrus the Gaunt suddenly
-went numb. “I know you went away from us to get married.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I did,” she quavered. “But I couldn't. I—I—I tried to make
-myself go through with it. I couldn't. No woman could when—when—”
- Her voice trembled into silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-A boisterous back-draft of the tempest thrust its way through the door and
-puffed out the little vestibule light. With a sense of irreparable loss
-impending he felt, rather than heard, her moving from him into the
-blackness of the outer world. Yet his mind seemed clogged and chained as
-he strove to grasp the meaning of what she had said—or was it what
-she had left unsaid?
-</p>
-<p>
-And in a moment she would be gone forever.
-</p>
-<p>
-Suddenly—miracle of miracles!—he felt those soft, strong hands
-on his arm, and heard her sobbing appeal: “Oh, Cyrus! Aren't you ever
-going to smile at me inside again?”
- </p>
-<p>
-His arms went out. The Bonnie Lassie's hands slipped up to his shoulder.
-The flower-face pressed, close and cold and sweet, against his.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/110.jpg" alt="Her Hands Slipped to his Shoulder 110 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-“Love of my heart!” he cried, “I'll never do anything else all my life
-long.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Summer is tyrant in Our Square now. The leaves droop, flaccid and dusty,
-on the trees, and the sun gives a shrewish welcome to the faithful who
-still cling to the benches. Gone is Cyrus's chariot of flame and thunder.
-The work is done. Gone, too, is Cyrus, and with him the Bonnie Lassie,
-after a wedding duly set forth with much pomp and splendor in the public
-prints. Among those present was Our Square.
-</p>
-<p>
-So now the little, quaint, old, friendly house stands vacant, with eager
-sunbeams darting about it in search of entry. Vacant but not cheerless,
-for behind the panes, against which the Bonnie Lassie once pressed her
-sorrowful face, troop the elfin company of her dream-children, the dancing
-figurines. Cyrus the Gaunt would have it so. He deeded her the house as a
-wedding-gift, that the happy dancers might remain with us lonely and
-unforgetting folk. They are the promise that one day Our Bonnie Lassie
-will come back to Our Square.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-THE CHAIR THAT WHISPERED
-</h2>
-<h3>
-An Idyl of Our Square
-</h3>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>PRING was in Our Square when I first saw the two of them. They sat on a
-bench under the early lilacs. It must have been the beginning of it all
-for them, I think, for there was still a dim terror in her face, and he
-gestured like one arguing stormily. At the last she smiled and drew a
-cluster of the lilac bloom down to her cheek. It was not deeper-hued than
-her eyes, nor fresher than her youth. They rose and passed me, alone on my
-bench, and I, who am wise in courtships, having watched so many bud and
-blossom on the public seats of Our Square, saw that this was no wooing,
-but some other persuasion, though what I could not guess.
-</p>
-<p>
-So those two drifted out of sight; out of mind, too, for life in our
-remote, unconsidered, and slum-circled little park is a complex and
-swiftly changing actuality, and it crowds in with many pressures upon a
-half-idle old pedagogue like myself. It was the Little Red Doctor who,
-weeks later, recalled the episode, one blistering evening of the summer's
-end. He captured me as I emerged from the “penny-circulator” with my thumb
-in a book.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What are we ruining our eyes with to-night?” he demanded.
-</p>
-<p>
-I held up the treasure.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Victory,'” he read. “Good! He'll like Conrad.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Perceiving what was expected, I fulfilled the requirements by asking: “Who
-will like Conrad?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The Gnome.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I remembered that I had not seen Leon Coventry since the day he passed me
-with the girl who had youth and spring and terror in her face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Am I to loan it to him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You're to read it to him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“When?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“To-night. It's your turn to sit up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is the Gnome ill?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Worse.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mad?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Haunted.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Since when has your practice branched out into the supernatural, doctor?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, as for that, his trouble is physical too.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is it anything that a simple lay mind could grasp?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor grunted. “His legs have turned to lamp-wicking. I
-don't vouch for the diagnosis. It's his own.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Paralysis?” I hazarded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Grip,” was the Little Red Doctor's curt rejoinder.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't tell me that grip turns a young Hercules's legs to lamp-wicks?” I
-objected.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Grip does if the young Hercules's legs are fools enough to carry him out
-and around the city with a temperature of one-naught-four-point-two,”
- retorted the Little Red Doctor with bitter exactitude. “Under such
-conditions grip turns to pneumonia. And pneumonia is the favorite ally of
-my old friend, Death.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You don't mean that the Gnome is going to die?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not of pneumonia: that fight was fought out some weeks ago. But what
-pneumonia doesn't do to a young Hercules worry may. Another aid of my old
-friend, Death, worry is. That's a bothersome Gnome, tossing about in the
-heat with his sick brain full of plots to get away and no legs to carry'em
-out. His next try will be his last.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then he got away once?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“On all fours. As far as the sidewalk. There Cyrus the Gaunt and the
-Bonnie Lassie found him and brought him back. Cyrus was on duty again last
-night.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I began to see. I'm to be watchdog. It's No. 7, isn't it? At what hour?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. 7. Top floor. Nine o'clock.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll be there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thanks for neighborly services, which are a taken-for-granted part of our
-close-pressed life, are not deemed good form in Our Square. The Little Red
-Doctor nodded and prepared to pass on to the rounds of his unending bout
-with his old friend and antagonist, Death. I detained him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Just a moment. What is the object of the Gnome's excursions? To get
-work?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. To search.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“For what?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor moved toward an approaching horse car, almost the
-last of that perishing genus in New York City. “Heaven knows!” he called
-back. “And Mac, the tailor, at least suspects. That's as far as I can
-get.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He leaped upon the bobtailed vehicle, was immediately held up by a
-forehanded conductor, and too tardily bethought himself of a forgotten
-point. “The chair! The chair!” he bellowed. “Look out for the chair!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What chair?” I shouted back.
-</p>
-<p>
-He made as if he would jump off and return. But he had already paid his
-nickel, so he only waved despairingly. Nickels count in Our Square.
-</p>
-<p>
-No. 7 opened to me with a musty smell of stale heat. Built in the
-magnificent days of the neighborhood, by a senator of the United States,
-it had fallen to the base uses of machine workers on the lower and
-furnished lodgings on the upper floors. The very walls seemed to sweat as
-I made my way up to the dim light at the top, where the Gnome's door stood
-open, hopelessly inviting a draft. Upon my entrance a huge and fumbling
-creature from the lithographic plant where the Gnome was an assistant rose
-and made gloomy and bashful adieus.
-</p>
-<p>
-Leon Coventry reached a great, thin hand across the littered bed to make
-me welcome. Even in his illness he preserved that suggestion of bowed and
-gnarled power, strangely alien to his youthfulness, which had given him
-his nickname in Our Square. Some would have called him ugly of face. But
-his mouth had the austere sweetness of a saint or a sufferer, and in his
-eyes glowed a living fire which might tame beasts or subdue hearts.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How are you feeling to-night?” I asked perfunctorily.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Wild,” he answered. “When are they going to let me out? When? When?” The
-little Red Doctor had given me no hint upon this point. So I said
-non-committally: “Soon, I think,” and moved around the bed to where an
-easy-chair invited. It was a wicker chair, broad-seated, wide-armed, and
-welcoming, a chair made conformable and gracious by long usage, a chair
-for lovers, for high hopes and for dreams, a chair to solace troubles and
-soothe weariness. Into it I would have dropped gratefully, when the sick
-man's fingers closed on my wrist like the jaws of an animal, and I was all
-but jerked from my feet.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not there!” he snarled insanely. “Not there!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I beg your pardon,” I said, much discomposed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I didn't mean to hurt you,” he returned with a return to that habitual
-gentleness of address which, by its contrast with his formidable physique,
-gave him the aspect of a kindly and companionable bear. “But if you don't
-mind sitting here on the bed? Or yonder on the sofa? Or anywhere except—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not in the least,” I assured him. “The fact is, I detest wicker chairs
-anyway. I had to get rid of mine.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did you? Why?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It was no companion for an old, lonely man.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Gnome clutched me again. His fingers quivered as they bit into my arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I know! It whispered. Didn't it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I nodded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So does mine. Strange things. Echoes of what you can't forget.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, yes. I know.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you, now? I wonder. Perhaps you do.” He studied my face with his
-luminous eyes, and then closed them and fell back, speaking slowly and
-dreamily. “In the darkness when I can see the chair just enough to know
-that it's empty as—as an empty heart—I hear it stirring,
-stirring softly, adjusting itself to—to what is not there. And I
-hold my breath and pray. But—nothing more.” He opened his eyes that
-seemed to gaze out across barriers of pain and incomprehension. “Dominie,
-does yours—did yours keep its secrets?”
- </p>
-<p>
-That way, obviously, ran the boy's malady toward madness. Regretting that
-I had chanced upon so unfortunate a topic, I said nothing. But he took my
-assent for granted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So does mine,” he sighed. “It has not been moved nor touched since it was
-left vacant.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Shall I read to you?” I asked, to turn his mind aside.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No. Talk to me. Tell me what they are doing in the Square.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So I gave him the news of Tailor Mac-Lachan's latest drunk, and Pushcart
-Tonio's luck in the lottery, and Grandma Souchet's <i>faux pas</i> at the
-movies (her first experience) when she rose and yelled for the police to
-stop the pickpocket in the flagrant act of abstracting the heroine's aged
-father's watch, thereby disgracing her (grandma's) progeny and making them
-a derision and a byword even unto the third and fourth generation; and the
-Morrissey mumps, the whole kit and b'ilin' of juvenile Morrisseys having
-been sent to school looking like five little red balloons, whereby holiday
-for the rest of the scholars and great rejoicing, and the unavailing wrath
-of the authorities upon Mrs. Morrissey's head; and Terry the Cop's extra
-stripe; and the passing of the skat championship into the unworthy but
-preposterously lucky hands of the Avenue B Evening Dress Suit Club; and
-the battle over Orpheus the Piper (which was a jest of the Lords of High
-Derision, touching the boundaries of uttermost tragedy); and the exotic
-third stage of the affair, not yet ended, between Mary Moore and the
-Weeping Scion of Wealth; and the newspaper discovery of a barroom poet at
-Schmidt's free-lunch counter; and the joke which his fashionable uptown
-club put up on Cyrus the Gaunt; and politics and social doings, and the
-whisper of scandal; exactly as it might be in any other little world than
-Our Square; and, finally, for I was leading up to a delicate and difficult
-point, my own little smile of fortune, in the form of a small textbook
-finally accepted and advance royalty duly paid thereon. For the difficult
-and dangerous point was how to help the Gnome in case he needed it. Offer
-of charity, even when glossed over with the euphemism of a “loan,” is not
-accepted in ease of spirit by the people of Our Square. In fact, it isn't
-accepted at all, as a rule. The likelihood of ability to pay back is too
-dubious and remote. So it was in my most offhand manner that I inquired:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“By the way, how are you off for ready cash?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Leon fluttered his hand among the papers on the bed. They were opened
-envelopes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Look inside them,” he directed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Within were checks. They were on various mercantile and commercial firms.
-Mostly the amounts were small; two dollars, two-and-a-half, three, and
-four, and the largest for ten dollars. Totaled up they amounted to
-affluence as Our Square understands the term.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Something new?” I asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes. Advertising sketches. They've caught on.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I didn't know that you could draw, Leon.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Neither did I, beyond scratchy, sketchy blobs, until the Bonnie Lassie
-told me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If the Bonnie Lassie has been giving you lessons, you're in a good
-school,” I said, for the local sculptress, nymph, and goddess of Our
-Square had already begun to make us and herself famous with her tiny
-bronzes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not lessons exactly. But pointers.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You're in luck to be making money while you 're laid up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The doc says I oughtn't to work at it. But I had to do something or go
-crazy. A man can't live by just waiting; can he? So when I can't sleep I
-sketch. And the checks come in. It's like a miracle. Only—it isn't
-the miracle that I want. When do you think I'll be strong enough to get
-out? Can't you tell me? Can't you find out from doc? I'd get better if I
-only had something to go on!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Always that was the beginning and end of our talks; talks which often
-skirted the borders of the secret that was wearing his life down, but
-never revealed it. When I sought to shift the burden of the query upon the
-Little Red Doctor, he looked glum and shook his head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But go there when you can, dominie. He likes to have you. You rest him.
-Sometimes he sleeps after you've gone.” Though the Gnome never spoke of it
-again, I knew why he liked me with him. The bond of sympathy was that in
-my life, too, had been an empty chair that whispered. So the harsh summer
-elongated itself like the stretching of a white-hot metal bar, and through
-the swelter and hush of long nights I watched the rugged Gnome slowly
-dwindle.
-</p>
-<p>
-My first weekly watch night in September came with one of the savagest
-onslaughts of belated heat in the memory of Our Square. For the sake of
-what little air there was I had drawn the couch out between the two
-windows. Discouraged by the handicap of a forearm which stuck clammily to
-his drawing board, the Gnome had turned off his overhead light, and now
-lay rigid. But I knew that he did not sleep. From some merciful cleft in
-the brazen sky came a waft of coolness. It fanned me into a doze.
-</p>
-<p>
-I awoke with a start, to hear the Gnome's voice, in a hard-breathed
-whisper: “My heart! Oh, my heart!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“This,” I thought, “is the end.” I tried to rise, but a paralysis of the
-will held me, though my senses seemed preternaturally acute.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the bedside I heard the stir of the wicker chair. The withes moved
-softly upon themselves with delicate, smooth rustlings. The chair,
-whispering, sagged and yielded as if to the pressure of some light, sweet
-burden. Then the voice of the Gnome came, out of the darkness, again, and
-I knew that my fear was without cause, for he was leaning toward the chair
-and speaking to that which whispered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“My Heart! Oh, my Heart! Will you never come back? Don't you know that I
-can't come to find you? I've tried. God of pity, how I've tried! Can't you
-hear me, can't you feel me calling for you? If I could see you once again!
-Only once. It isn't so much to ask. And the time is short. Come back to
-me, my Heart!”
- </p>
-<p>
-I heard the chair whispering, whispering messages beyond the little reach
-of human understanding. Then the beggar of ghosts fell back, and the bed
-creaked and shook. I knew what made it creak and shake. Chairs that
-whisper have no balm for that misery.
-</p>
-<p>
-Two of us lay still and wakeful through the rest of that night. In the
-morning we faced each other pallidly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Did you hear me in the night?” asked my host.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then I'm going to tell you the rest, for I think I haven't much longer
-time to tell anything.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, nonsense!” I protested; but it was lip speech only, and he smiled at
-the pretense.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Of course, nonsense, if you like. But I'll go, shriven of <i>that</i>
-secret. The wicker chair is where She used to sit.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That much I gathered.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How can I describe Her to you? How can I make you understand as you would
-if you'd seen Her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Perhaps I have.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“When? Where?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sitting with you on a bench in the Square the week the lilacs bloomed.
-She looked afraid.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She was. A brute of a foreman had insulted her. So she lost her job as a
-feather finisher—did you see her beautiful hands?—and she
-could find no other, and there was nobody in the world for her to turn to.
-Down below her last dollar, and twenty years old, and lovely. There's
-terror enough in that, isn't there?”
- </p>
-<p>
-My mind went back to certain black-and-scarlet tragedies which Our Square
-makes brave pretense of having forgotten; tragedies of its unforgotten
-daughters. Terror enough, indeed!
-</p>
-<p>
-“Was she some one you knew?”
- </p>
-<p>
-No; she was not some one whom the Gnome knew. How to get to know her and
-help her (for help was his one, all-effacing, loyal purpose from the first
-moment he looked into her face); there was the heart of the problem. At
-any moment she might pass on, out of reach of his aid.
-</p>
-<p>
-Yet to speak to her was too much risk. She sat poised as ready for
-startled flight as a bird. Into which deadlock of fateful chances intruded
-Susan Gluck's Orphan, aged six, and with a passion for scientific
-pursuits. The immediate object of his research was to discover what
-treasure so strongly interested a honeybee in a lilac bell, and if need be
-assist in the operation, his honorable purpose also being to help.
-Unfortunately the Busy One misunderstood and resented, whereupon Susan
-Gluck's Orphan lifted up his voice and smote the far heavens with his
-lamentations. To him, running in agonized circles with his finger in his
-mouth, the girl extended arms and invitation to come and be comforted. The
-voice, with its clear, soft, mothering appeal, tugged at the Gnome's
-heart-strings; to Susan Gluck's Orphan it was, however, but the voice of a
-stranger, and therefore to be feared. There, however, sat Leon the Gnome,
-unnoted before, but now an appreciated refuge. For to the young of the
-species in Our Square the Gnome is a delight, because of his athletic
-habit of using a child—and sometimes two—in evening dumb-bell
-exercises, for the upkeep of his mighty muscles. To his knees fled the
-wailful orphan. Gently though clumsily the Gnome extracted the stinger, in
-astonished contemplation of which the sufferer temporarily forgot his
-woes; presently, however, as the poison took hold of the nerves, lapsing
-again into woe.
-</p>
-<p>
-All this the girl had been watching from the corner of her eye, making,
-one may guess, a private estimate of the singular-looking youth who had
-been covertly spying upon her fear and despair. Wise in a lore of which
-the Gnome was as ignorant as the Orphan, she now offered wet mud. It was
-applied, and the adoptive pride of the Glucks raced off to vaunt his
-wounds to his fellows, leaving two people with quick-beating hearts gazing
-at each other. The Gnome took a quick resolve.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have been frightened, too, in my time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He is well over it,” answered the girl, following the now boasting Orphan
-with her gaze.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't mean that. I have been hungry too.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Now she understood, and drew back, flushing. But she, too, was one to go
-straight to a point. Perhaps two more direct spirits than those twain
-seldom meet. “You mean me?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm not hungry, and I'm not afraid,” she lied.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Could you believe,” he said slowly, “that I mean as well to you as I did
-to that child—and the same?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She did not answer at once, but the defensive look wavered in her eyes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you ever gamble?” was his next question.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gamble?” she repeated in amazement.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Like matching pennies. I'll match you for the dinners.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I—I've only got a dollar,” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Plenty.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It isn't really a dollar,” she murmured. “I've only got—forty-three
-cents—in the world.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was her first confidence, and he thrilled to it. But he accepted it
-quite as a matter of course.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Even on that it can be done. Come; where are you any worse off, even if
-you lose? And, at dinner, we might figure out some way for you to be
-better off.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She got out a penny and looked at it a long time and then said: “Do I toss
-it up?” And of course the Gnome said no; because a tossed penny shows for
-itself. So they matched, and he looked at his coin (which showed the
-winning side up) and said:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“I lose; I didn't match you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And then her lost misgiving surged over her and they sat and argued it.
-That is when I first noticed them. The Gnome won. Of course.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I took her to Marot's,” said the young giant, sitting up against his
-pillows and letting his gaze fare out into the humming heat of the day;
-“because I knew that, on a pinch, Mme. Marot would look after her. And I
-had an awful time keeping the bill of fare away from her and making her
-believe that she was getting only forty-three cents' worth. Courage came
-back to her with the food. She told me a little of her story; not much,
-then or afterward. I think she didn't want to claim anything of me, ever,
-not even sympathy. You see?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I did see, if only vaguely. Leon the Gnome was building up a character to
-match the curious beauty of the face I had seen that once.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That foreman brute wasn't her first experience. She had had to fight
-before; to leave good employment. To her the world was a jungle full of
-men who were only a horrible sort of pursuing ape. That came out later
-when I knew her better. My business there at that first dinner at Marot's
-was to get her to believe in me. Well,” he sighed, as over the memory of a
-formidable task accomplished, “I did it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-He did it! Think of the gulf between those two; full, for her, of shameful
-memories and bristling fears; a gulf to be crossed with a shrinking heart
-before she could trust him; and across it he had led her by the mere power
-of words. Well, no; not words alone. Something shining and clear and
-trust-compelling back of the words; the nature of the man. Have I said
-that our Gnome was rather a wonderful person? He was.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But how did you do it, miracle worker?” I demanded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No miracle at all. I don't understand you. I just told her about myself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Quite so. What, for example?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, everything,” he said, with a gesture of his big hands, indicating a
-broad generality. “Just a sort of outline of my life. I wanted her to know
-me as I was.” I wondered how many youths of my acquaintance in Our Square,
-or out, could afford to tell “everything” as a method of winning a young
-girl's confidence. But the Gnome, as I have indicated, was something of a
-phenomenon.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I lent her money and courage to go on with. And that evening, when we
-had walked and talked I said to her: 'Where will you go to-night?' and she
-said: 'Tell me.' So I brought her here to live.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Here?” I exclaimed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What are you thinking?” he growled. “Don't think it. Open that door.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He pointed to the far corner of the room. I did as directed. “Look on the
-other side of it. What do you see?”
- </p>
-<p>
-What I saw on the further side of the door was an oak bar set in iron
-clamps. Beyond was a tiny room and a tiny white bed and a flower in a pot
-on the window sill, dead and withered in the heat. Opposite the window an
-exit led to the hallway.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There she lived and sang and was happy for fifty-five days. Each day was
-more glorious than the last for me. She stopped being afraid almost at
-once. It was just an even week after she came that she tapped on the door,
-when I had settled down to read my evening away.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'May I come in?' she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Yes,' I said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'For quite a time she made no move. Then: 'Are you sure?' she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I understood. That was her way—to make you understand more than she
-said.” The sick man leaned out from his pillow toward the little door. “I
-can see her now, as she came into the room. She was all in fresh white,
-with a touch of some color at her waist. I had bought that dress for her.
-Do you know the delight of buying the realities of life for the woman you
-love? Oh, yes! I loved her then. I had loved her from the first sight,
-when I spoke to her on the bench because she seemed so desolate and
-scared.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She came straight to me, and I stood up and put down my book. She looked
-me in the eyes, hard. Then she held out her hand. 'Shake hands,' she said.
-I shook. 'I'll keep the bargain,' I said. 'I know you will,' said she. She
-sat down in the wicker chair. No one has sat in it since; not even the
-Bonnie Lassie when she came. Yes; she sat down in the chair as if she were
-adopting it for her own. And we talked.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What did you talk about?” I asked. A foolish question, for what do youth
-and youth always talk about, when they encounter? But his reply surprised
-me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Money, mostly, that first evening. We went over accounts. She was keeping
-strict record of every cent I spent on her, to pay back when she got a
-job. Room rent, too. Oh, it was all very businesslike throughout.
-Afterward we talked about life and books and things. I lent her my books.
-I read a good deal, you know; all of us in the printing trades are great
-readers,” he added with a touch of guild pride. “She was better educated
-than I, though. Where did she get it? I never found out. Of course I
-didn't ask any questions. That was part of the bargain, as I understood
-it. She asked me a million. She turned me inside out and sometimes she
-laughed at me. But her laughter never hurt. It wasn't that kind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mightn't she have thought that your not asking questions of your own
-showed a lack of interest in her?” I suggested.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How could she? I hadn't the right to ask questions. I hadn't the right to
-do anything but watch over her and guard her and keep to my bargain. Every
-evening she knocked and came in and sat in the wicker chair, and we
-talked. It was the sweetest thing in life to me, that absolute confidence.
-But the greater her confidence grew the more I was bound not to let her
-see what I felt for her. Isn't it so? You see, I know nothing about
-women.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Having my grave doubts upon the point, I offered no advice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She got a job. I don't know where. Next week she began to pay me up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did you make any protests?” I asked, sounding him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Protests? Certainly not. I couldn't, could I? It was a question of her
-self-respect.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Of course. I beg your pardon for asking.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There was one night—we had been to a concert, Dutch treat, of
-course—and she came into my room to sit and talk it over for a few
-minutes. Passing me on her way back to her own room, she stopped behind my
-chair, and I felt something just brush my temple; and then the door shut
-behind her and the bar fell, and I heard her voice: 'Good-night,
-Gala-had.' For the next three days I never set eyes on her.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did that tell you nothing?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What should it tell me?” retorted that pathetic young idiot. “It was just
-part of her mystery, of the mystery of woman, I suppose. The next Saturday
-night that drunken sot, MacLachan, came and ruined everything.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Soft words, Leon,” I protested, for the dour-faced, harsh-spoken,
-sore-hearted tailor of Our Square has his own reasons for drink and
-forgetfulness, and, drunk or sober, he is my friend.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I wish he had broken his neck on the stairs,” said the Gnome savagely.
-“He sat over there, bleating to me some gibberish about Scotch philosophy,
-when Vera came into her room, and knocked as she always did. It was he
-that called 'Come in.' She came and stopped, looking at him with surprise.
-'Oh,' she said, 'I didn't know.' 'No more did I,' said MacLachan, standing
-up with solemn, drunken politeness. 'I was not aweer there was a Mrs. Leon
-Coventry here.' She turned color, but looked him in the eye. 'There
-isn't,' said she. 'Then take shame to yerself,' he said. 'Ye should make
-at least the pretex'.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“If she hadn't jumped between us, I would have pitched him out of the
-window. But she checked me long enough for him to get away and run down
-the stairs. It was the first time I had felt her arms and it turned me
-sick with longing. She backed away from me and said: 'I'm sorry, Leon. I
-didn't know there was any one here.' 'Wait,' I said. 'We've <i>got</i> to
-be married now.' If you could have seen her face, you'd have thought I'd
-struck her.” He stopped and swept the beads of sweat from his temples.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is that all you said?” I asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-He stared at me. “That's almost what she asked me?” he replied. “She said:
-'Is that all you have to say to me, Leon?' I didn't get her meaning. I was
-intent on the one thing—the bargain: that I mustn't make love to
-her; that I mustn't catch her in my arms and hold her against my heart
-that was bursting with love of her. The fever was on me, then, too, and I
-suppose that kept me to the one idea that was burning in my brain.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'We can go to the Greek church, on the other side of the square,' I said.
-'When can you be ready?'
-</p>
-<p>
-“She walked back into her room, and I never saw her again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“God forgive you for a fool!” I said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why didn't you tell her what every woman wants to hear, that you loved
-her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, she must have known it; she must have realized it a thousand times,
-by a thousand signs. Yet she left me—that way.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You've had nothing from her since?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. A money order for the balance of what she owed me.” An involuntary,
-jealous clutch at his pillow told me that the money order had not been and
-would not be cashed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No word with it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just gratitude.” The Gnome's sensitive lips quivered. “What do I want
-with gratitude? I want <i>her!</i> I want to find her. Suppose she were in
-trouble again. She's so young and helpless!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“MacLachan never meant—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I went out to kill MacLachan next day. I was having pretty good luck at
-it too, when Terry the Cop came in. They brought me back here and called
-the doctor, and MacLachan cried out of one eye, for the other was closed.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I recalled the tailor's black eye. Further I recalled that when some
-other-world business had taken me to Fifth Avenue I had there encountered
-Mac (of all persons) in (of all places) a millinery store. The fragments
-of his conversation which I caught related to ostriches. To my inquiry he
-replied that he was pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp, and that it was a lawful
-occupation. The suspicion now lodged in my mind that Mac had been
-searching for a lost trail. Of this I said nothing to Leon.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sometimes at night,” the sick man went on, “when I am not longing to
-smash up all the world because I can't get out and find her, she comes and
-sits in the wicker chair, and I hear the pressure of her dear body against
-the withes, and I feel her breath in the silence, but she never speaks. Is
-she dead, do you think?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I most emphatically declined to entertain any such hypothesis. As for the
-Gnome, it seemed that he soon might be. The Little Red Doctor's visits
-grew more frequent, and his brow more corrugated, and his eyes more
-perplexed. Once he went so far as to observe in my hearing that nature
-could go just about so far without sleep and then it cracked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Through that crack,” he remarked, “enters sometimes my old friend, Death,
-sometimes madness. Let's pray that it won't be madness in the Gnome's
-case.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Indications seemed to point in that direction, however. Leon's association
-with the spirit of the chair became closer and more constant. Night after
-night I heard him murmuring in the darkness, and the soft creak and rustle
-and whisper of the chair in reply, until the hairs of my neck quivered.
-</p>
-<p>
-There came a night when the heat broke under a pressure of wild wind and
-rain from the northwest that swept Our Square like an aerial charge. It
-whirled me, breathless, into No. 7, and pursued me up the stairs, puffing
-out the light at the top. The Gnome was working. Beside him on a stand
-rustled a little pile of checks, weighted down.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm going to leave a legacy,” he said gayly. “Will you be my executor?
-You'll have to find Her, you know.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ask me ten years from now, if I'm alive,” I answered. “What's to-night?
-Reading?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sleep, for you. You look done up. Take the couch and a blanket.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I took them and, with them, what I had originally planned to be a brief
-nap, for there was medicine to be given now. When I woke up the room was
-dark. It seemed to me that a cold draft had passed over and roused me.
-Above the rush and whistle of the wind I could hear the chair whispering.
-</p>
-<p>
-“My Heart! Oh, my Heart! Have you come back?” pleaded the Gnome's voice in
-the silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then all the blood in my body made one great leap and stopped. The chair
-had sobbed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It has seemed so often that I could stretch out my hand and touch you,”
- went on the piteous, quiet voice from the bed. “But you were never there.
-And my soul is tired with waiting and longing.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The chair rustled again with the sound of release from weight. There was a
-broken cry of love and fear and gladness that was of this and not the
-other world, and I knew without seeing that it was a woman of flesh and
-blood who lay on the Gnome's breast, covering his face with her kisses.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Darling fool! Darling fool! Why didn't you tell me?” she sobbed. “Why
-didn't you tell me that you loved me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I thought that I did,” said the Gnome, and I started at the changed
-voice, for it had suddenly taken on life and vigor. “I thought I told you
-in every word and look that you were all my world.” There was a pause,
-then: “Who <i>did</i> tell you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mr. MacLachan. He found me at last. He took me by the arm and said:
-'Lassie, the love o' you is the life o' him. An' it's going if you don't
-come back an' save him!' Is it true, dearest one?” she cried passionately.
-“Tell me I'm not too late.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then I judged it best to tiptoe quite circumspectly out of the room. On
-the landing below I met the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who went up the stairs just now?” he cried.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Love,” said I. “Did you fear it was Death?”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-MACLACHAN OF OUR SQUARE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ACLACHAN, the tailor, is as Scotch as his name and as dour as the Scotch.
-Our Square goes to his Home of Fashion to have its clothes made, repaired,
-and, on rare and special occasions, pressed, as a matter of local loyalty,
-which does not in the least imply that it either likes or approves
-MacLachan. It is, in fact, rather difficult to like him. He has a
-gray-granite face with a mouth like a snapped spring, toppling brows, and
-a nose wrinkled into the expression of one suspicious of all mankind and
-convinced that his worst suspicions are well founded. He has also the
-Scotch habit of the oracle, and deals largely in second-hand aphorisms.
-</p>
-<p>
-Once he had a daughter, a wild-rose girl, who lived over the Home of
-Fashion with him, and kept him and the place in speckless order. But she
-is gone, three years since, and in her place MacLachan has only a bitter
-memory and a devouring shame. What they quarreled about Our Square never
-knew. The hard-bitten tailor was easy to quarrel with at any time. No
-information was offered by him, and public opinion in the neighborhood
-does not favor vain and curious inquiries into another man's family
-troubles. The night that Meg left, with her gray eyes blazing like two
-clear flames and her little chin so fiercely set that the dimple
-disappeared from it totally, MacLachan went out blackly glowering, and
-came back drunk and singing “The Cork Leg.”
- </p>
-<p>
-What affinity may exist, even in a Scotchman's mind, between that naive
-and chatty ballad and strong liquor is beyond my imagination. But our
-dour, sour tailor then and there chose it and has since retained it for
-the slogan of his spirituous outbreaks, and sings it only when he is, in
-his own phrase, “a bit drink-taken.” The Bonnie Lassie has one of her
-queer theories that he used to sing Meg to sleep with it when she was a
-baby. “And that's why, you see,” says she. I don't see at all; it seems to
-me a psychologically unsound theory. Still, some of the unsoundest
-theories I have ever heard from the Bonnie Lassie's lips have been
-inexplicably borne out by the facts afterward. When I marvel at this she
-laughs and says that an old pedagogue who has spent his life with books
-mustn't expect to understand people.
-</p>
-<p>
-As for the wild-rose Meg, she passed wholly out of the little, close-knit,
-secluded world of Our Square. Even those few of us who knew MacLachan and
-counted ourselves his friends feared to mention her name, not so much
-because of his known temper as of the haunting pain that grew in his eyes.
-With the temerity of youth, Henry Groll, one of Meg's many local adorers,
-and the best second tenor in the Amalgamated Glee Clubs, did put it to the
-tailor, having come to the Home of Fashion on a matter of international
-complications, viz., to ascertain whether red Hungarian wine would come
-out of a French piqué waistcoat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“By the way, what d'you hear from Meg?” inquired the young man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What!”.The tailor's heavy shears went off at such a bias across the cloth
-he was cutting that Lawyer Stedman's coat, when completed, never could be
-coaxed to set exactly right under the left arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I—I only ast ye,” said the visitor, somewhat disconcerted. “What's
-Meg doin' now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Three inches lower—the Little Red Doctor assured Henry a few moments
-after his ill-advised query, binding up the spot where the flung scissors
-had struck—and he would never again have sung second tenor nor
-anything else calling for the employment of intact vocal cords. Henry sent
-a messenger after the waistcoat. That night MacLachan reeled home
-bellowing “The Cork Leg” in a voice that brought Terry the Cop bounding
-across Our Square like a dissuasive antelope.
-</p>
-<p>
-My one first-hand experience with the ballad of MacLachan's lapse from
-sobriety was brought about long after through the Bonnie Lassie's
-procuring. She thrust a sunny head from her studio window and beckoned me
-from the sidewalk with her modeling tool.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dominie, have you seen MacLachan, the tailor, to-day?” she called when
-she secured my attention.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No. Is he looking for me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You should be looking for him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I examined my clothing for possible rents or stains. My sober black was
-respectable if shiny. The Bonnie Lassie made a gesture of annoyance with
-the modeling tool which nearly cost her latest creation its head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you know what day this is?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Tuesday, the sev—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't be a calendar, please! What day is it in MacLachan's life?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I groped. “Is it his birthday?” (Not that we are much given to celebrating
-birthdays in Our Square.)
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, you men! You men! I've just telephoned the Little Red Doctor and he
-didn't know either. It's the second anniversary of the day MacLachan's Meg
-left him. Do you remember what happened last year, dominie?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Did I remember! When Lawyer Sted-man had lured me to perjure my immortal
-soul before a magistrate, who let Mac off only upon the strength of a
-character sketch (by me) that would have overpraised any one of the Twelve
-Apostles! I did remember.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Very well, then. You and the doctor are to take him away this evening.
-Far away and bring him back sober.”
- </p>
-<p>
-We did our best. And we almost succeeded. For it was close on midnight and
-Mac was sleepily homebound between us before what he had drunk—against
-a rising current of our protests—awoke the devil of music in his
-brain. We were cutting across Second Avenue when he began:
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“I'll tell you a story without any sham.
-In Holland there lived Mynheer van Flam,
-Who every morning said: 'I am
-The richest merchant in Rotterdam,
-Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nu—da—na—day!
-Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nay!”
- </pre>
-<p>
-From the shadow of a tree there moved one of those brazen and piteous
-she-ghosts that haunt the locality. She addressed the three of us with
-hopeful impartiality. MacLachan shook himself free of our arms and walked
-close to her, staring strangely into her face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I've got a daughter in your line of trade,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-He spoke quietly, but the she-ghost read his eyes. She shrank back
-trembling, stammered something, and hurried away.
-</p>
-<p>
-Not until we entered Our Square, after ten minutes of strained silence,
-did MacLachan look up from the pavement.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Was there a lassie I spoke to?” he asked vaguely. “What did I say to
-her?” The Little Red Doctor told him circumstantially. “Personally, I
-think you're a liar,” he added.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do ye?” wistfully answered the tailor, slumping upon a bench. “I take it
-kind of ye that ye do. But I'm no liar. Once and for all I'll tell ye
-both. Then ye'll know, and we'll bury it. When my Meg left me I began to
-die—inside. The last thing in me to die was my pride. When that was
-dead too—or I thought it so—I set out to seek her. I found
-her. It was just off Sixth Avenue. In the broad o' the afternoon it was,
-and there she stood bedizened like yon poor hussy that spoke to us.
-Raddled with paint too; raddled to the eyes. But the eyes had not changed.
-They looked at me straight and brave and hard. I had meant well by her,
-however I might find her. God knows I did! But at the sight of her so, my
-gorge rose. 'What <i>are</i> ye,' says I, 'that ye should come into the
-light of day wearing shame on yer face?' Her look never wavered—you
-mind how fearless she always was, dominie—though she must have seen
-I was near to killing her with my naked hands. 'I'm as you see me. Take me
-or leave me,' she says. So I left her to go her ways, and I went mine.”
- There was a long silence. Then the Little Red Doctor deliberately measured
-off a short inch on MacLachan's forefinger.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You're not <i>that</i> much of a man, Mac,” said he, and flipped the hand
-from him. “Do you take him home, dominie; I haven't the stomach for any
-more of him to-night.”
- </p>
-<p>
-With any other than the Little Red Doctor it would have been a lasting
-quarrel. But the official physician and healer of bodies (and souls at
-times) to Our Square is too full of other and more important things to
-find room for resentment. So when, a fortnight later, MacLachan sallied
-forth to the tune of “The Cork Leg,” and came back raving with pneumonia,
-it was, of course, the Red One who pulled him through it. And in that
-period of delirium and truth the wise little physician saw deep into the
-true MacLachan and realized that a spirit as wistful and craving as a
-child's was beating itself to death against the bars of the dour Scotch
-tradition of silence and repression.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He'll kill himself with the drink,” said the Little Red Doctor to me
-after the tailor was restored to the Home of Fashion. “Though I'll stop
-him if I can. That's my business. Even so, maybe I'll be wrong. For the
-man's heart is breaking slowly. I've a notion that my old friend, Death,
-Our Square might do better with the case than I can.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At shorter and ever shortening intervals thereafter the booming baritone
-rendition of “The Cork Leg” apprised Our Square that the tailor was “on it
-again.” One late August day, as the doctor was passing the Home of
-Fashion, he heard from behind the closed door the sound of MacLachan's
-mirthless revelry. He stepped in and found the Scot, cross-legged and with
-a bottle at his elbow, rocking in time to his own melody while he
-stylishly braided mine host Schmidt's pants (“trousers” is an effete term
-not favored by Arbiter MacLachan) for the morrow's picnic and outing of
-the Pinochle Club:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“One day when he'd stuffed him as full as an egg
-A poor relation came to beg,
-But he kicked him out without broaching a keg,
-And in kicking him out he broke his own leg.
-Ri-tu, di-nu, di—”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Shut up, Mac! Stop it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've stopped. You've rooned my music. The noblest song, bar Bobbie Burns—What's
-yer wish, little mannie?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've some work for you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've no time—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's important. I must surely have it to-morrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“'Must is a master word, but will not is no man's slave,'” pronounced
-MacLachan, the oracle.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Listen, Mac,” pleaded the other. “I've a consultation to-morrow, and I
-must have my other coat fixed up for it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What's wrong wi' the garrment?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's—it's ripped: torn across the skirt,” floundered the Little Red
-Doctor, who is a weak, unreliable prevaricator at best.
-</p>
-<p>
-The dour tailor leaned forward and shook his goose at the visitor. “Peril
-yer salvation with no more black lies about yer black coat,” said he
-firmly. “It's' the drink ye're strivin' to wean me from. But I'm proof
-against yer strategy, ye pill-an'-pellet Macchiavelli! Ye've no more rip
-nor tear in yer black coat than I've a ring in my nose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I'd have made one, then,” returned the shameless doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ye'd have wasted time and money. Go yer own gait an' fight yer old
-friend, Death. But leave me with my friend, the Drink.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Listen to me, Mac. As sure as you keep it up, just so sure the
-dissecting-room will get your kidneys and the devil will get your soul.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Carefully setting aside the bottle, MacLachan leaned forward to fasten a
-claw on the Little Red Doctor's shoulder.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do <i>you</i> listen now, and I'll tell ye a secret. While I'm still
-sober I'll tell it ye, so you'll believe it and fash me no more about the
-drink. Ye say the devil will get my soul. Ye're a backward prophet,
-mannie. He's got it. Yes, he's got it, an' another of the same blood to
-boot. An' all he ever gave me in trade is this,” he cried, pointing to the
-bottle. “So go an' save them as wants it, or stay an' listen:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“'Mr. Doctor, says he, 'now you've done your work.
-By your sharp knife I lose one fork,
-But on two crutches I never will stalk,
-For I'll have a beautiful leg of cork.'”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Mac.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't delay my work. I've to finish these pants before John Nelson comes
-to fetch me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Who's John Nelson?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Friend of my seafarin' days. Now Captain Nelson, if ye please, in the
-coastwise trade, new back from the deep seas and the roaring trades with a
-tropical thirst. 'T is he sent me yon messenger,” and he indicated the
-bottle of rum. “Be easy. I'll not come back to Our Square till I'm sober.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“If you do, I'll swear you into Bellevue with my own right hand,” declared
-the Little Red Doctor disgustedly. He slammed the door as he went out.
-</p>
-<p>
-The next person to open that door was Captain John Nelson. There was a
-brief ceremonial in which the captain's messenger played an important
-rôle, the newcomer joined his voice, for old friendship's sake, in the
-refrain of MacLachan's favorite ballad, and shortly thereafter the twain
-were seen arm in arm making a straight course across the open for unknown
-lands. All that we of Our Square had to judge MacLachan's sea comrade by
-was a stumping gait, a plump figure, a brown and good-humored face, and a
-most appalling interpretation of the second part in simple harmony.
-</p>
-<p>
-We were to see him once again, briefly; to hear from his lips the events
-of that astonishing evening. Of the Odyssey of the sailor and the tailor
-there is little to be said. Crisscross and back, along Broadway, from
-Fourteenth Street upward, it ran, coming to a stop shortly before
-theater-closing time at a small restaurant which, I am told, has a
-free-and-easy rather than an unsavory repute. There they sat down to a bit
-of supper, having had, as the captain pathetically stated later, not a
-bite to eat since dinner at eight o'clock. I still possess the worthy
-mariner's “chart of the operations,” as he terms it, sketched in order
-that we landlubbers of Our Square might comprehend fully how it all
-developed. From this masterpiece of cartography I learn that the two
-friends occupied a side table some halfway down the room, Captain Nelson
-facing the rear. At the next table back, and therefore directly in his
-view, sat a couple, the lady spreading so much canvas that she covered all
-of ninety degrees, whereby the mariner means, I take it, that his
-neighbor's hat shut off his view of the prospect beyond. Food and drinks
-being ordered, MacLachan had just leaned back to a discussion of the
-relative merits of Burns and Garlyle when the orchestra struck into a tune
-not unlike “The Cork Leg.” To the scandal and distress of the captain,
-MacLachan straightway lifted up his voice:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“A tinker in Rotterdam, 't would seem,
-Had made cork legs his study and theme,
-Each joint was as strong as an iron beam
-And the springs were a compound of clockwork and steam.
-Ri-tu——
-</pre>
-<p>
-The diplomatic dissuasions of the head waiter, added to the pained and
-profane protests of his companion, induced the singer to stop at that
-point. But the lady-under-full-sail arose with a proud, disgusted
-expression and stalked out, drawing her escort in her wake and uttering
-loud and refined reflections upon the vulgar environment. Thus was left to
-Captain Nelson, resuming his seat, a clear view to the far-rear table.
-This table, he was aesthetically pleased to note, was occupied by a
-distinctively pretty girl. The girl, as he was humanly affected in
-perceiving, was exhibiting what, all silly mock modesty apart, he could
-interpret only as a marked interest in his own romantic and attractive
-personality.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What for are you swelling up like a bullpout, John?” inquired his
-companion, who, having his back turned, had seen nothing of the byplay.
-</p>
-<p>
-The sailor waved a jaunty hand. “Nothing; nothing at all. It often happens
-to me. Just a pretty lass in the offing flying signals.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Without turning, MacLachan made some references of a libelous character
-concerning a Babylonian lady whose antiquity is the only excuse for her
-even being mentioned by respectable lips.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Babylon, Long Island?” queried the captain. “I've got an aunt lives
-there. You think this young lady comes from those parts?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How do I know?” growled the tailor, and explained in biting terms that
-his citation was symbolic, not geographic.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Hum!” said the seafarer. “She's a little high-colored, I admit, but that
-don't make her what you say. Anyway, I'll just run down and speak a word
-of politeness to her. By the time you've finished that drink and the next
-I'll be back.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The incognita received Captain Nelson with a direct and unsmiling
-handshake.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You know me,” she instructed him under her breath as a waiter came up.
-“We're old acquaintances.” Then in full voice: “I hardly recognized you at
-first. How long is it since I've seen you?” Necessity for immediate
-invention was obviated by the opportune arrival of the waiter. Glancing at
-the tall, icy glass in front of his new acquaintance, the bold mariner
-said: “I'll take the same,” and was considerably disconcerted when the
-waiter passed along the word: “One lemonade.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Now,” said the girl sharply as soon as the waiter had left, “who is your
-friend that sings?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“His name's MacLachan. He's all right, only—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Bring him here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But first can't I—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Bring him here,” repeated the girl inexorably. “I like his voice.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Sadly the shattered seafarer retraced his course. MacLachan listened,
-demurred, growled, acquiesced. As the pair walked along, the tailor
-reeling a bit, the girl was busy searching for something under the table.
-She did not lift her face until the men were beside her. Then she rose and
-looked up at MacLachan.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dad,” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-MacLachan went stark, staring sober in one pulse-beat. But all he said was
-“Oh!” That is all, I am told, that men say when they are shot through the
-heart. Nelson slid a chair behind his friend's trembling knees. He sat
-down. Bending forward, he glared into the garishly splotched face of his
-daughter and put his hand to his throat, struggling for speech. A door
-behind closed, and a cheerful, boyish voice said:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Hello, little girl. Been waiting long?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The wild-rose face dimpled and blossomed into sweetness under the layers
-of paint. “Hello, Jim-boy. Get yourself a chair.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Introduce me to your friends,” said the newcomer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That one used to be my old dad,” said the girl slowly.
-</p>
-<p>
-The young man whistled as he drew in his chair. “Quite a family party,” he
-remarked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who is this?” demanded MacLachan.
-</p>
-<p>
-“My husband.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Your—your husb—” MacLachan took a deep gulp from the lemonade
-glass which the resourceful captain thoughtfully thrust into his hand.
-“Why, he—he's a mere laddie. Can he support ye?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He's making seventy-five a week every week in the year,” said the girl
-quietly. “And I'm good for about that average.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You? In what trade?” demanded the father slowly and fearfully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The movies. Both of us. He's a set designer. I'm an <i>ingénue</i>. Why
-else would I be all gommered up like this” (she touched her cheeks), “not
-having time to wash off my make-up?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How long have ye been in the business?” faltered MacLachan.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Since I left. It was hard at first.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“When I saw ye in the street that day—”
- </p>
-<p>
-She nodded. “Yes; I was just out of rehearsal.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then the devil's pride of the Scot, recalling with fierce self-pity his
-long heartbreak and loneliness, rose in a flame of resentment and seared
-the flowering love in his heart.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ye gave me no word,” he snarled, rising. “Ye knew I was killing myself
-for lo—, for shame of ye, and ye let be. What do I owe ye but a
-curse!”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/174.jpg" alt="What Do I Owe Ye But a Curse 174 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-“That's enough,” said the boy husband; but his voice had become that of a
-man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dad!” cried the girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-MacLachan, the dour, turned away. Nelson set a hand on his arm, but he
-struck it down.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, Jim-boy!” whispered the girl to her husband. “I can't let him go
-again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He was a youth of resource, that husband; I'm not prepared to say that he
-didn't have even a touch of genius. “Granddad!” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Eh?” MacLachan stopped, as if stricken in his tracks.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What do you think of her?” Jim-boy had produced, quick as conjuring, a
-little leather-mounted photograph which he held up before MacLachan's
-eyes. “Did Meg look like her when she was a baby?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The varra spit an' image,” cried MacLachan, reverting to his broadest
-Scotch. Then, with a cry that shook him: “My bairnie!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Meg went to his arms in a leap.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And you may believe it or not—I would not, on the oath of a
-chaplain if I had not seen it with my own eyes,” ran Captain Nelson's
-subsequent narrative to Our Square, “but I saw the tears on those twin
-gray rocks that serve MacLachan for cheeks. So I drifted down to leeward
-and gathered my coat and gave three waiters a quarter each for not staring
-and came away to tell you. And you'll forgive me for waking the two of you
-up, and it gone eight bells—I mean midnight—but that was Mac's
-last word as I left, that I was to tell you. He said you'd be glad.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Glad we were, and all Our Square joined in the gladness, for it was a
-changed and softened MacLachan that came back to us, sober and strangely,
-gently awkward, the next day after a night spent with “my family.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ye'll not see me drink-taken again,” he promised the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-That good word went swiftly. Consequently it was the greater shock when,
-on the very next Thursday afternoon, several of us who had run into the
-Bonnie Lassie's studio for tea and the weekly inspection of ourselves as
-mirrored in her work, heard in the familiar rumbling baritone from the
-open park space:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“Horror and fright were in his face,
-The neighbors thought he was running a race,
-He clung to a lamp-post to stay his pace,
-But the leg broke away and kept up the chase,
-Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nu—di—na—day!
-Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nay!”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“My God!” cried the Little Red Doctor in consternation. “Mac's off again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He jumped up, but the Bonnie Lassie was quicker. “Let me get him,” she
-said, and ran from the room.
-</p>
-<p>
-Almost at once she was back, her face quivering. “Come and look!” she bade
-us.
-</p>
-<p>
-We crowded the front windows. On a bench in Our Square slouched a thin,
-hard, angular figure, terminating in a thin, hard, angular face, at the
-moment wide open and pouring forth unabashed melody for the apparent
-benefit of a much befrilled vehicle, which was being propelled back and
-forth by a thin, long leg. MacLachan was entertaining his granddaughter.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-THE GREAT 'PEACEMAKER
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> Story of Neutrality in Our Square ONE of the notable sporting events of
-Our Square is the nightly chess duel at Thomsen's Elite Restaurant. Many a
-beer, not a few dinners, and once even a bottle of real champagne won and
-lost, have marked the enthusiasm and partisanship of the backers.
-Personally I prefer David's cavalry dash as exemplified in long-range
-handling of doubled rooks, but there are plenty who swear and bet by the
-sapper-and-miner doggedness of Jonathan's pawn manipulations. The
-contestants have been known as David and Jonathan to Our Square for ten
-years, except for the late, melancholy months following the combat which
-broke off all relations and left the corner table at Thomsen's Square
-vacant. Since then the light-minded—such as Cyrus the Gaunt—have
-called them David and Goliath.
-</p>
-<p>
-David is a little, old, hot-hearted Frenchman whose real name is Henri
-Dumain. Hermann Groll, <i>alias</i> Jonathan, <i>alias</i> (alas!)
-Goliath, is a ponderous and gentle old German. Their first meeting was at
-Thomsen's, back early in the century, when there were only ten tables in
-the place and the front window shyly invited the public through the medium
-of a guinea-chicken, a fish in season, and two chops with their
-paper-frilled shanks engaged like buttoned foils. In those days Henri, a
-newcomer, sat back against the side wall and unobtrusively watched a
-guerrilla campaign between Hermann and a nondescript casual patron with
-weak eyes and a deprecating manner, of whom none of us knew anything
-except that he came from somewhere on Avenue B and had an irritating trick
-of answering queen's gambit by pawn to king's rook 4. But one evening two
-thick-booted strangers interrupted the game and took away the eccentric
-pawn-pusher. He had, it appeared, flavored his aged aunt's soup with
-arsenic. Life has its thrills in Our Square!
-</p>
-<p>
-Hermann was disconsolate. “A pity,” he murmured. “I should have checkmated
-in four moves.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Your pardon, but I think not,” said a courteous but positive voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-Hermann looked up and saw Henri. “You think not?” he said mildly. “Maybe
-so. We will try. Sit down.”
- </p>
-<p>
-They played it out. Owing to an unforeseen brilliant diversion on the part
-of the newcomer's knight, the struggle was prolonged for twenty moves
-before victory went to the Teuton. He rose.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The sacrifice of the rook's pawn,” he observed, “was able. Very able.
-Tomorrow evening?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“With pleasure,” answered his adversary. Thereafter they played nightly,
-with almost equal fortunes, and as they played their association ripened
-into friendship, and their friendship, through sympathies subtle and
-strange in two characters so apparently unlike, into the love that passeth
-the love of woman. They became David and Jonathan indeed, and one of the
-pleasantest sights that helped me to peaceful dreams was the frequent
-glimpse I got of the big German and the little Frenchman walking home
-after the battle arm in arm across Our Square.
-</p>
-<p>
-Each had been a lone spirit, craving companionship. And nearest to the
-lonely heart of each was the struggle and achievement of an only son in
-the other half of the world; one carving out a business career in Algiers,
-the other introducing American ideas in horticulture to the staid garden
-scientists of Würtemberg. Presently they took to reading their boys'
-letters in common; and they would chuckle, or look serious, or debate, or
-prophesy with a single and equal interest whether it were a matter of
-Hermann, Jr., or of young Robert in Africa. Comradeship can go no deeper.
-The flash of a foreign postage stamp across the marble-topped table was
-the signal for Elsa, the polyglot cashier of the Elite, to set down one
-more drink than usual, for it invariably meant a prolonged and
-confidential confab after the game was over. Tradition held their chosen
-table always in reserve. And tradition has all the force and more than the
-respect of law in Our Square.
-</p>
-<p>
-Judge, then, of our amazement at the unprecedented behavior of Inky Mike
-on a certain evening a little before the regular hour for the
-chess-players to appear. The world without was big with the presage of
-tremendous events just then, but this was forgotten for the moment in the
-shock of Mike's performance. He sauntered down the length of the aisle, an
-expression of self-confidence upon his smeary countenance, and coolly
-dropped into Jonathan's chair, nodding to Elsa, the pretty polyglot. Now
-Inky Mike plumes himself upon a “connection with the press” (through the
-rollers, it is understood in Our Square, though he is loftily vague about
-it) and the passion of his life is to pick news “off the wires” and
-announce it in advance of print, in some startling manner. This might be
-one of his coups. Elsa regarded him with puzzled suspicion. Then she
-descended upon him, polite but with firm purpose of eviction.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>Bitte</i>,” she said, with the queenly gesture of one accustomed to
-command.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mike lifted one eyebrow, and that with an effort. Otherwise he stirred
-not.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>S'il vous plait!</i>” said the little cashier determinedly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mine's a beer,” returned the smeary one.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If you please!” she stamped her foot in the universal and unmistakable
-language.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I got you the foist time,” drawled Mike. “You should worry. They
-won't be here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No—o—o—oah?” queried Elsa in a soaring whoop of
-amazement.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not this evenin', nor any other evenin'! You can plant a 'To Let' sign on
-their table. They won't care.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>Warum? Pourquoi pas?</i> W'y not?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The repository of terrible secrets delivered himself of his theme in
-complacent triumph. “War's just declared between France and Germany.
-That's w'y not.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus the tremendous news came to Thomsen's. On the heels of it came the
-Teutonic Jonathan. Inky Mike rose astounded and hastily moved, for he is
-sufficiently one of us to respect the Square's traditions.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Excuse <i>me</i>,” he apologized. “Is Mister—is your side pardner
-coming?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The answer to the question was given in the person of the Gallic David.
-Inky Mike gaped at them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Will they mix it, d'ye think?” he inquired in an awed and hopeful tone of
-Cyrus the Gaunt, who was eating ice cream at an adjoining table with the
-Bonnie Lassie. Those were the days when the Bonnie Lassie was sculping
-Cyrus the Gaunt and Cyrus was acting as chauffeur to ten tons of steam
-roller on a bet, and each was discovering the other to be the most
-wonderful person in the world—in which they weren't so far wrong as
-a cynical mind might suppose.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus did not think; at least not for the inkful one's benefit. He acted.
-It was done unobtrusively, his shifting to the table next the chess
-rivals. They did not notice it. They did not notice anything but each
-other. David was breathing hard, as he took his seat, and a queer light
-flickered in his eyes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You take black to-night,” said Jonathan slowly.
-</p>
-<p>
-His friend pushed the chessboard aside. “You have heard?” he said, and
-pulling a newspaper from his pocket slapped it on the table.
-</p>
-<p>
-Now the doubly damned devil of mischance influenced him to reach into the
-wrong pocket, so he drew forth not the “Extry—Extry” which he had
-just bought of Cripple Chris on the corner, but an earlier copy of the
-“Courrier des Etats-Unis.” Jonathan stiffened in his chair.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I do not read that language,” he said deliberately.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You have then perhaps lost your mind since yesterday,” said the fiery
-little Frenchman.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have the mind I have always had. It is a German mind,” was the grim
-response.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then it is the mind of a savage!” cried the other.
-</p>
-<p>
-The big man got to his feet. The little one was up as quickly. Cyrus the
-Gaunt laid a hand, every finger of which had the grip of a lobster's claw,
-on the shoulder of each.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sit down,” he said quietly. “Let's arbitrate.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But,” began the Frenchman, “I—he—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There's a lady waiting to speak to you,” interrupted Cyrus.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie stood, smiling but anxious-eyed, behind his shoulder.
-David sprang to get her a chair. Then they invited me into consultation,
-and we sat in solemn conclave while Inky Mike hovered, with diminishing
-hopes, on the outskirts. At the close there was ratified what I believe to
-have been the first agreement of total neutrality in the present world
-conflict. By its provisions every topic having to do with the war or any
-of the parties to it was rigorously tabooed. Both the German and the
-French language, even for purposes of exclamation and emphasis, were to be
-eschewed. Literature, art, and music were, however, to remain open topics,
-irrespective of nationality. And chess, that studious mimicry of what is
-most terrible in the world, was to proceed as usual. That evening David
-and Jonathan walked homeward across Our Square arm in arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-By what unremitting exercise of self-control and loyalty those two kept
-the pact through the tinder-and-powder events of succeeding months only
-they themselves know. It was pitiful and at the same time beautiful to see
-the subterfuges whereby they preserved their affection from the blight of
-the all-devouring war, even in its remote associations. There came a day
-when mails arrived by a Holland steamer. That evening David waited
-expectant. But his friend gave out no news. The natural impatience of the
-Frenchman broke bounds.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And the young Hermann?” he demanded. “How goes it with our special
-assistant to Mother Nature?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It goes—it goes well,” answered Jonathan.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He persuades the others to his ideas, always?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hermann is no longer in the gardens. He—he has left.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Left!” cried David. “Given up—” He stopped short, looking into the
-face of his friend, a face whose eyes shifted uneasily away from his. Then
-comprehension came to him, and he did a fine and beautiful thing.
-</p>
-<p>
-“To the brave,” said he, lifting his glass, “who face death for the
-country that they love.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Was there, perhaps, a small savor of salt to the beer which Jonathan set
-down after his draught? If so, he need not have been ashamed. It seemed to
-me, when I saw them going home that night, that their arms were hooked a
-little closer than common.
-</p>
-<p>
-Not long after it was David's turn to get a letter. He sat fingering it
-when Jonathan entered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“From our young Robert?” asked the German.
-</p>
-<p>
-David nodded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Am I to see it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He says—he says some things about—about the war,” faltered
-the Frenchman. “Youth is perhaps harsh. And he is a high spirit—my
-boy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Something in the tone told the German. “He has enlisted?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The other father nodded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I am glad,” said the German simply. “And may God bring him safely
-through!”
- </p>
-<p>
-How that could have happened which did thereafter come to pass between two
-souls so fine, so brave, so forbearing, is one of the mysteries of the
-madness of the human heart. It was on the evening when Elsa, the polyglot,
-had just completed her <i>chef-d'ouvre</i> of embroidery which still hangs
-upon the wall. It is a legend subscribed in a double scroll, which is held
-in the beak of a dove of peace about half the size of the scroll, the
-whole being tastefully surrounded by a frieze of olive branches done in
-blue, Elsa's green yarn having given out prematurely. The legend reads:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-BE NEUTRAL
-SPEAK ENGLISH
-THINK AMERICAN
-</pre>
-<p>
-Out of compliment she had hung it over the chess-players' table. The game
-developed a swift and interesting attack, that evening, down an open
-center, David having castled on the queen's side, and brought both rooks
-into early action. All was going well for him, when a band outside halted
-and began to play “Die Wacht am Rhein.” That they played it atrociously
-out of tune is unimportant to the issue. Rendered by a celestial choir
-that particular song would probably have inspired David with frenzy. The
-first symptom was that he moved his queen upon a. diagonal with his king,
-open to an opposing bishop. Just what the course of events subsequently
-was I cannot say, as my table was in the far end. But I heard Elsa's
-lamentable voice, startled quite out of the practice of the language
-neutrality which she preached, and this is what I heard: —“Oh, <i>Messieurs!</i>
-Oh! <i>Meine Herren!! Gents!!!</i>”
- </p>
-<p>
-Crash! The chessboard was swept to the floor, and the contestants rolled
-after it, tight clinched. They tipped over two neighboring tables, and a
-plate of salad, a soft-shell crab, and a fried chicken, violating <i>their</i>
-neutrality, descended to take a conspicuous part in the fight. Over and
-over rolled the combatants, now one on top, now the other, clawing,
-kicking, pummeling, and filling the air with bilingual fury. It was all
-very comic, for the onlookers who didn't understand, and the “Tribune”
- reporter made a good story of it next day. But he did not know—how
-could he?—the underlying tragedy; the tragedy of hate, where love
-had been and loneliness in the place of comradeship. With ordinary luck it
-might have been kept out of the newspapers and the police court, but,
-unfortunately, Terry the Cop, a wise young Daniel of Our Square, was
-followed in by a strange policeman. “And so,” Terry explained to me,
-regretfully,
-</p>
-<p>
-“I had to make the pinch. Wouldn't it make you sick?” he added. “Two good
-old guys like them! War sure <i>is</i> hell!” Of the subsequent
-proceedings, Inky Mike brought us a fuller report than the newspapers. The
-Little Red Doctor, being appealed to to procure bail, had done so, and had
-further taken two stitches in, the big man's head and set a disjointed
-thumb for the little man. In the police court, thanks to Terry, who “put
-him wise,” the judge had bidden the two belligerents shake hands and go
-free. They shook hands, at arm's length, and went free, separately.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No more David an' Jonathan stuff,” gloated Inky Mike. “David and Goliath
-is more in their line. This finishes their game.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, Smart Aleck!” said Elsa resentfully. “You know nothing. <i>'S macht
-nichts aus! Ça ne signifie rien!</i> Fudge is what I try to say. They come
-back this evening, good as new.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Come back they did not, however. In vain did Elsa keep her eyes on the
-clock and her hopes high. When nine o'clock struck and the table beneath
-her desk was still vacant she burst into tears, gave a Magyar from Second
-Avenue eight dollars and sixty cents change out of a five-dollar bill (the
-Magyar hasn't been seen since), and rushed forth from the place with her
-apron over her head, finding refuge on a bench of Our Square, where she
-sat openly wailing until Terry the Cop led her home.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Will they never come back to their little table, do you think?” miserably
-inquired. Polyglot Elsa of the Little Red Doctor several evenings later,
-gazing with blurred eyes down upon the stolidly opposing armies of
-chessmen in their brave array.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor shook a dubious head. “That's a bad mess,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But they have nothing else but themselves!” cried the girl. “So sad it
-is. Perhaps,” she added with timid hopefulness, “you could make a peace
-again between them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've tried. The only peacemaker strong enough to bring them together, I'm
-afraid, is my old friend Death.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Jonathan almost wholly disappeared from Our Square after the rupture. Not
-so David. He was much in evidence. Usually he whistled as he walked with a
-lightsome and swaggering step to show that he hadn't a care in the world.
-But when you got near him you saw the hollows under his eyes. Pride
-carried him even into Thomsen's, and almost to the vacant table in the
-corner. Not quite. For thereon stood the little wood soldiers, sturdy and
-stanch, and above them leaned Elsa, smiling welcome to him—and hope.
-David, the irreconcilable, stopped short, dropped into the nearest chair,
-turned his back upon that haunted corner, and ordered his favorite
-refreshment in a voice so cheerful that it almost chirped. Halfway through
-his <i>carafon</i>, having caught Elsa's gaze, melancholy, accusing, and
-imploring, he swore, choked over his <i>vin ordinaire</i>, and retreated
-in bad order to the shelter of the outer darkness without paying his
-check.
-</p>
-<p>
-How long he wandered about Our Square I cannot say. He was there when I
-crossed to Thomsen's at nine o'clock. He was there when I peered out at
-ten. He was still there when I returned home at eleven-fifteen.
-</p>
-<p>
-So was Jonathan. The reason why we of the Square had not seen him of late
-was that he had chosen for his promenade an hour when he would be unlikely
-to encounter any of us. This time he met David. They passed each other
-within a foot. Jonathan was profoundly absorbed in the condition of a tree
-trunk which he had passed without interest some thousands of times. David
-studied the constellation Orion with a concentrated attention quite
-creditable in one so new to a passion for astronomy. I sat down on a bench
-and gave vent to my feelings. Said Terry the Cop to me, approaching
-solicitously:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Are ye laughing, dominie, or choking to death?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am laughing, Terry,” I said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And why are ye laughing, dominie?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am laughing, Terry,” I informed him, “because it is better to laugh
-than to do a certain other thing.” And I declined, with proper dignity,
-his well-meant but ill-informed offer to escort me home.
-</p>
-<p>
-There came a black day for our fiery old French David when the Dutch liner
-arrived bearing assorted mails. That afternoon he paced, stony-eyed and
-silent, a square swept vacant by savage rain blasts, with a half-ounce of
-letter over his heart and a thousand tons of grief pressing down above it.
-Presently another bedraggled wayfarer entered the Square, wandered
-aimlessly, and sprawled his ponderous bulk upon the corner bench, where
-the umbrella tree affords a partial shelter. The Teuton Jonathan was also
-braving the storm.
-</p>
-<p>
-Back and forth, back and forth, through the fierce, gray slant of the
-rain, marched the Frenchman, drawing at each turn a little nearer to the
-corner bench. The German did not move nor look up. He seemed lost in
-reverie. A square of white cardboard lay on his knee. His eyes stared out
-over it, brooding. At length the marcher in the rain came to the
-rightabout directly in front of the bench and stopped, rubbing his
-forehead like a man struggling out of a dream. David had recognized
-Jonathan.
-</p>
-<p>
-He took an impetuous step forward. A gust of wind plucked the square of
-cardboard from the unheeding German's knee. It fell, displaying to the
-newcomer the double eagle of imperial Germany. David's face, which had
-softened, became a mask of fury. Another step forward and he saw something
-else above the <i>insigne</i>, a bar of black. He stooped and picked up
-the card. Jonathan neither saw nor moved.
-</p>
-<p>
-Beneath the symbol on the card stood a line of German script. David lifted
-his eyes from it and looked about him. In the doorway of the Elite
-Restaurant, just across the asphalt, he saw Polyglot Elsa.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>Behüte!</i>” cried Elsa when she saw his face. “<i>Sainte Vierge!</i>
-What has happened?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mademoiselle, translate for me,” cried the little old Frenchman: “'<i>Auf
-dem Felde der Ehre gefallen</i>'.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“'Dead on the field of honor.' What—” But he was already halfway
-back, fighting his way through the gusts. With grave misgivings Elsa saw
-him advance upon his former friend and bitter foe. She wished Terry would
-come. Terry was a mighty discourager of trouble and violence.
-</p>
-<p>
-David advanced to the sheltered bench without speaking. Quietly he seated
-himself beside Jonathan. Jonathan might have been dead for all that he
-heeded. His mind was in another world. David touched him on the shoulder.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>Hein?</i>” said the big German vaguely. “'<i>S ist du?</i>” using
-involuntarily the tender pronoun of affection. Comprehension and
-remembrance came back to him instantly, and he shrank away with an
-inarticulate snarl of hatred.
-</p>
-<p>
-David drew from his pocket the letter that had crushed the heart beneath
-it. He spread it on his knee.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have seen, Hermann,” he said brokenly. “Look you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Hermann looked. He looked from the gallant tricolor to the words below,
-and one phrase stood forth and went to his heart. “<i>Mort dans la gloire
-pour la patrie: Robert Humain</i>.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Jonathan's fingers crept to David's knee and clung there. David's hand
-went to Jonathan's shoulder. The two old heads sagged lower and lower and
-closer and closer.
-</p>
-<p>
-And Terry the Cop, who had crossed the street in five leaps with the
-liveliest anticipation of trouble in the first degree, took one look,
-turned hastily away, and huskily commanded a storm-beaten sparrow in the
-path to move on.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-ORPHEUS
-</h2>
-<h3>
-Who Made Music in Our Square
-</h3>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> PLAYWRIGHT named Euripides was the means of bringing us together. He sat
-hunched upon a bench in Our Square—not Euripides, of course, but
-this strange disciple of his—over a little book. When the church
-clock struck twelve he arose and unfolded himself to preposterous lengths.
-He stepped casually over a four-foot wire, strode across forbidden grass
-plots, and leaned pensively against the northern boundary fence. Although
-it was a six-foot fence, he jutted considerably above it. I glanced from
-him back to the bench he had just quitted. There lay his book. I picked it
-up. It was “The Bacchae.” In the original, if you please!
-</p>
-<p>
-Now, to find a gigantic and unexplained stranger in the metropolitan hurry
-and stress of Our Square perusing the classic version of the very
-'Greekest and most mystic of dramas, by the spluttering ray of Jove's own
-lightning pent up and set to work in a two-by-one frosted globe at so many
-cents per kilowatt, is a startling experience for a quiet, old
-semi-retired pedagogue like myself. I pocketed the volume (which was in a
-semiuncial text like running tendrils) and sat down to consider its owner.
-Another of the Thunderer's bottled bolts diffused its light where he now
-stood, and set forth his face. It was young and comely and gallant, with a
-wrapt, intent melancholy; the face of a seeker, baffled but still defiant
-of despair. It seemed to be turned toward a star that I could not see.
-</p>
-<p>
-I sat and waited for Terry the Cop to arrive on his stated rounds. If that
-shrewd young guardian of the local peace did not already know about the
-classical stranger, he could be depended upon to find out. When his heavy
-tread paused before my bench I indicated the trespassing giant. “Terry,”
- said I, “what is that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That,” replied Terry promptly, “is a Nut.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where does it come from?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Search me, dominie. It just kinda drops in.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Often?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Every night.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why haven't I seen it before?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You hit the hay too early. This bird is an owl, and it don't begin to
-hoot till late.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hoot?” I repeated. Terry's symbolism sometimes tends to the obscure.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Stick around a few minutes,” advised the wise young policeman, “and
-you'll hear something.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is he an amateur astronomer?” I asked. “Or what is it he is staring at?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Terry pointed. “Look between those two roofs. See a little light, way up
-there?” I did. “That's it. That's the window.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah,” said I. “Romeo, I suppose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Long-distance to the balcony,” returned Terry the Cop, who does not lack
-literary background. “That's the upper wing of the Samaritan Hospital, two
-blocks away. Sh-h-h! He's going to begin.” The stranger had taken from his
-coat a short, slender object which he fitted together with precision. Now
-he threw up his head and set it to his lips. Faint and pure as the song of
-a bird, heard across the hushed reaches of a forest, the music came to us.
-It was a wild, soaring melody unknown to me, but as I listened I thought
-of all the songs with which reed and pipe have ever answered to the breath
-of man; Pan's minstrels, and the glorified penny whistle of Svengali and
-the horns of elfland faintly blowing, and the witchery of the Pied Piper
-of Hamelin; and it seemed to me that all these and more blended in the
-rise and fall of those magic measures.
-</p>
-<p>
-Silence fell. A wakened sleeper in a tree twittered a sleepy request for
-more. The player had lowered his instrument and was leaning against the
-rail, gazing. At that distance there could have been no answer from the
-far hospital window; the tones of his pipe were so soft as hardly to be
-audible where we stood. Yet he presently nodded and threw up his hand, and
-his face was transfigured with a wistful passion as he lifted the slender
-pipe to his lips again. This time, indeed, I knew what he played. It was
-that music which, above all other, embodies the soul and spirit of
-immortal youth; youth that hopes and fears and despairs and hopes again;
-youth that hungers and loves and suffers; youth that ever, through all
-turmoil and grief and wreckage, is imperishably young and immortally
-lovely, the music of “Bohême.” Again the strains sank and died in the
-darkness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's all,” Terry the Cop informed me. “It's their signal. And he always
-ends on that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Signal? At that distance? Do you mean to tell me she—whoever she is
-—can hear?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Whether she hears or not, she seems to get somethin' over to this Romeo
-guy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, Terry,” I said. “Not Romeo. An older singer and a greater.” And, with
-my hand on the little volume in my pocket, I gave my policeman friend the
-benefit of Gilbert Murray's matchless translation:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“In the elm woods and the oaken,
-There where Orpheus harped of old,
-And the trees awoke and knew him,
-And the wild things gathered to him,
-As he sang amid the broken
-Glens his music manifold.”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Some rag!” said Terry the Cop admiringly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That, Terry,” said I, indicating the stranger, who was once more lost in
-watchfulness, “is Orpheus.”
- </p>
-<p>
-This was too much of a strain on Terry's classic lore. “You're in wrong
-there, dominie. He don't belong to any Orpheus nor Arion nor Liedertafel.
-He's a Greek and his name is Philip, two pops, and an oulos.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“All very well; Terry,” said I, trying him out. “But does that give him
-the right to play a musical instrument in a public place at an unlawful
-hour?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Come off, dominie,” said Terry the Cop uneasily. “He ain't doing any
-harm.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Disturbing the peace,” I pursued severely, “and tramping down the park
-grass against the statute thereunto made and provided. What do you let him
-do it for, Terry?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Aw, I kinda like the guy,” admitted Terry shamefacedly. “He's a nut. But
-he's a good nut. I'm sorry for him. He's up against it with that girl. She
-ain't ever coming out of the hospital, I guess. Besides, he did me a good
-turn once.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The good turn, it appeared, had consisted in the prompt and effective
-wielding of a cane, unceremoniously borrowed from a passer-by when a
-contingent of the Shadow Gang from Second Avenue had undertaken, in pure
-wantonness of spirit, to “jump” Terry. Subsequently, Orpheus had initiated
-Terry into some technical and abstruse mysteries of stick work, whereby,
-he explained, the Orthian shepherds defended themselves against robbers
-and wolves alike.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I told him to keep a stick with him,” said Terry. “He'll need it, for
-that bunch will get to him some time. They don't forget.”
- </p>
-<p>
-No weapon was in the Greek's hand, however, as he turned away toward the
-nearest exit. Halfway there he paused, felt in his pocket, and hurried
-over to his bench with a look of dismay. I met him, holding out the
-precious book. He took it with a sigh of relief, thanking me with precise
-but curiously accented courtesy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is a beautiful text,” I observed. “You can read it?” he said with
-kindling eyes. “You read the Greek?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sure,” put in Terry the Cop. “The dominie knows all the languages from
-Chinese to Williamsburg. Domine, make you acquainted with Mr. Phil.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus I met Orpheus. We sat on a bench until the stroke of three brought me
-to my senses, while he declaimed selected passages in a voice as of
-rolling waters. That was the first of many nights of Dionysian revelry on
-the slopes of Mount Olympus, with “The Bacchae” for guidebook and the
-strange piper for leader. Never would he pipe for me, however. If I wished
-to hear the soft marvel of his music I must wait until midnight and stand
-apart in the shadow to listen while he played to the far-away beam of
-light in the hospital wing. Though our acquaintance ripened swiftly into a
-species of intimacy, he made no reference to the devotion in which his
-life centered. He had the gift of an impenetrable reserve.
-</p>
-<p>
-Concerning himself, he was only less reticent. From casual references,
-however, I gathered that he was the son of a merchant of Lamia, educated
-in England, and sent to this country on an errand of commerce, and that he
-would long since have returned but for the light in that window.
-</p>
-<p>
-It is not good for man to live on hope alone. So I sought to involve my
-Greek in the close-woven interests of Our Square. I took him to dine at
-the Elite Restaurant, and introduced him to Polyglot Elsa, the cashier
-(who put a fearful strain on his courtesy with her barbarous modern
-Greek), and impressed him into the amateur police to escort MacLachan the
-Tailor home, drunk and singing “The Cork Leg,” and even got him to pipe
-gay tunes of an early evening for our little asphalt-dancers to practice
-by; but always back of his gentle courtesy and tolerant kindness there was
-an aloofness of the spirit, as if he had but stepped out, a godlike
-spectator, from the limbo of some remote world hidden behind the tendrils
-and leafage of that wonderful semiuncial text. Then one night, when he had
-sent his heart and hope and longing out upon the wings of music through
-the night, I asked him to help me soothe the wakefulness of Leon Coventry.
-Together we climbed the stifling stairs of the old mansion to the top
-floor where Leon the Gnome lay eating his heart out and staring from an
-empty chair that whispered to the door of an empty room, its oaken bar
-fallen, its little white bed smooth, its one flower withered and dead on
-the window sill. Little was said between the swarthy Gnome on the bed and
-the splendid young god sitting beside him, but there passed between them
-some subtle understanding of the spirit. Orpheus made his music for the
-sick man; almost such music as he had sent winging through the outer
-darkness. At the end he took the Gnome's gnarled hand in his own.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She will come back,” he said. “Believe always that she will come back. It
-is only by faith that we hold the dreams that are truer than reality.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Outside Orpheus turned to me. “You believe that, do you not?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-I muttered something.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I must believe it,” he said vehemently. “I must—or there is nothing
-left.” Then, simply, as if he were relating some impersonal anecdote, he
-told me his story, one of those swift, inevitable, pregnant romances of
-two outlanders in this great wilderness which we call New York.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I met her in a language class. We were both taking Spanish. It was to
-help her in the corporation office where she worked. We lunched at the
-same place. We used to talk, to help out over lessons. She was French. Her
-name was Toinette.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He handed me his watch, open. The print was dim and vague, but in the very
-poise of the head was the incarnation of mirth and youth. “She is very
-lovely,” I said. I should have said it in any case. In this case it
-happened to be true.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She is little and quick and brown and laughing. We Greeks love laughter.
-She laughed at me because she said I had solemn eyes like an owl. Then I
-kissed her and she did not laugh, but clung to me, and I felt her tears.
-That evening we heard 'La Bohême.' hand in hand, and I played it to her
-afterward. I have played it to her ever since. When I would speak to her
-of marriage she would set her fingers to my lips and the joy would die out
-of her face. Once she said I must go back and forget her. Then it was my
-turn to laugh. We do not love and forget, we Greeks.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She had a brother serving in the Argonne. He died dragging a wounded
-comrade to safety. She was very proud of it. But the heart that had been
-working so poorly almost stopped working at all when they brought her the
-news. She sent for me to tell me that she must go to the hospital. That
-was why she would not let me speak of marriage. Her heart had always been
-weak, and she feared she might be an invalid and a burden on me. As if
-that mattered! 'So I could not let you speak,' she said, 'because I loved
-you so, and I might have been weaker than my heart.' They took her to the
-Samaritan. That is her room, just beyond where you see the speck of light.
-Every night I stand where I can see it and make my music for her. So it
-was arranged between us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But,” I began, and bit my tongue into silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“True,” he said equably. “At such a distance she cannot hear. It does not
-matter. She knows I make my music for her. That is all that matters.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How long since you have seen her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“April the 24th.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And this is August! Four months! Good Heavens, man, how is that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“'<i>Anangke,</i> Fate.” he murmured. “It could not be otherwise.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Surely it could,” I protested. “Won't they let you see her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He shook his head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But that's barbarous! Think what she must be suffering.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no. She understands. It is I who suffer.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Needlessly,” I cried. “It can be arranged. You <i>must</i> see her. Four
-months! Will you let me arrange it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It is useless.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I believe I took him by the shoulder and shook him. “Don't be a fool,” I
-bade him savagely. “I tell you, you <i>shall</i> see her. At once.
-To-morrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He turned upon me eyes like those of an animal that pleads dumbly against
-torture. “It cannot be,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She is dead,” he whispered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dead?” I loosed my grasp on him. “But you play—How can she—When
-did you—” All my thought and speech were jumbled within me. “Dead?”
- I finally contrived to get out. “When did she die?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“On the last day of April. When they told me of it the little children
-were dancing in the park. She was like a little lovely child herself. They
-told me she was dead, but it is only at times that I am weak enough to
-believe them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I gazed at him, utterly bewildered. He returned my look with a gaze of
-infinite despair.
-</p>
-<p>
-“To-morrow,” he said bravely, “I shall again know that she is alive and
-loving me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Later I learned how the blow had fallen; a grim and brutal experience for
-so gentle a spirit as his.
-</p>
-<p>
-Three weeks after his Toinette was admitted to the Samaritan a
-forlorn-hope operation was determined upon. Happily, Orpheus knew nothing
-about it until it was all over, with unexpected promise of success and
-even complete cure. Once a week they let him see her. On the other six
-days he might call at the office for such information as a stolid and
-blank official chose to dole out. But no official could interpose his
-stolidity between Orpheus, piping at dead of night, and his Eurydice lying
-happily awake in the far upper wing of the hospital, knowing that he made
-his music for her and perhaps hearing it—who knows?—with the
-finer ear of the spirit. Vary his choice as he might, he told me, she
-always knew what he had played and could tell when they next saw each
-other. So all went well with those two young, brave hearts, and the meager
-reports grew increasingly hopeful, until one bright spring morning Orpheus
-paid his unfailing daily visit for information. A brusque young brute of
-an interne was at the desk, the regular official having stepped out.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Twenty-one?” he repeated in reply to Orpheus's gentle-voiced question.
-“That's the heart case. Died yesterday afternoon.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But last night I played to her,” protested Orpheus in a piteous, stricken
-whisper, “and she heard and answered. It cannot be.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nutty!” said the interne to the information official who returned at this
-point. “Takes'em that way sometimes. Better get him out before he busts
-loose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-They got him out without trouble. He wandered into Our Square and watched
-the children dancing-in the May. They seemed to him like unreal creatures
-moving in a world of unrealities. More and more unreal grew everything
-about him until late that night he faced the grim reality of a barred door
-which kept him from his beloved dead, and that door he attacked with such
-fury and power that it took two policemen, in addition to the hospital
-corps, to subdue him. As he was a foreigner and vague and sorrow-stricken,
-the magistrate naturally gave him two months. He came out dazed but
-steadied. The one hold he had upon happiness was the delusion to which he
-so pathetically clung, the pretense, passionately cherished, that she was
-still alive. Poor Orpheus! He had indeed gone down into Hades for his
-Eurydice and stayed there. If he could find solace in his limbo of minor
-madness, perhaps that was best for him.
-</p>
-<p>
-So thought the Little Red Doctor, wise in human suffering, to whom alone I
-told the story of Orpheus. Said the Little Red Doctor first: “There are
-times when I blame my old friend Death for doing a job by halves”; and
-second: “Cure him? Who wants to cure peace with pain! Let him play his
-music”; and third: “God help that interne if I ever meet up with him!”
- </p>
-<p>
-If Death resented his friendly opponent's strictures, he never showed it,
-but kept on doing business as usual in Our Square. And Orpheus continued
-to make, among the broken glens of our brick-and-stucco sky line, his
-music manifold to ears that heard not. As for the interne, the Little Red
-Doctor did, in the fullness of time, meet up with him, and improved the
-occasion to lay down certain ethics and principles of conduct as
-pertaining to the profession of healing. Whereupon the interne, who should
-have known better, being not more than half again as big as the Little Red
-Doctor, treated the lesson in a light and flippant vein, and asserted that
-when he wished to learn his business he wouldn't apply to a half-boiled
-shrimp.
-</p>
-<p>
-Thus it happened that he who had come forth from the hospital an interne
-intact and unafraid returned thereto a battered and terrified patient with
-a broken nose and two displaced ribs urgently requiring attention. The
-practice of medicine in Our Square, as exemplified by so thoroughgoing an
-exponent as the Little Red Doctor, is not wholly a lily-fingered science.
-</p>
-<p>
-<i>Minora cano!</i> And why should I sing of such lesser matters as the
-correction of the interne, when there awaits my historical pen a conflict
-worthy of Euripides's own strophes! Cyrus the Gaunt and the Bonnie Lassie
-had been serving the midnight rarebit to three of their uptown friends who
-had dropped down through the slums to the friendly little old house with
-the dancing figurines in the window, and Cyrus had undertaken to pilot his
-friends to the corner, lest their evening raiment be locally
-misinterpreted and resented. Coming, later than my wont, from the Elite
-Restaurant, I crossed Our Square a few rods in advance of them. Orpheus
-stood in his corner, piping to his lost young love. From without there
-approached him swiftly a dark group, close gathered. It was the Shadow
-Gang, from Second Avenue, bent upon reprisals. There were eight or nine of
-them, under the leadership of “Mixer” Boyle, a local middle-weight of ill
-repute. They closed in upon the Greek, and as I ran, shouting for Terry
-the Cop, I saw him go down under the pack. More than music was in that
-soul, however. If he was Orpheus, he had something, too, in him of
-Thersites and Achilles and Agamemnon. Like a bear struggling from beneath
-an onset of dogs, he up-heaved his big shoulders. From behind me came an
-answering shout, not Terry the Cop, indeed, but the next best thing, Cyrus
-the Gaunt, followed closely by the Rev. Morris Cartwright, Gerrit Bascom,
-and two other visions of white shirt fronts protruding and black coat
-tails streaming in the wind. They passed me as if I were a milestone, and
-the battle was joined.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus the Gaunt is a mighty man of his hands. But the hands are those of
-an amateur. Mixer Boyle's are those of a professional. They crossed, and
-Cyrus went down under a left swing. Before the Mixer could turn he was
-toppled with the blessing (full arm to the ear) of the Rev. Morris
-Cartwright. Two others fell upon the Rev. Morris and the Rev. Morris fell
-upon the Mixer, and then they all rose and went at it again.
-</p>
-<p>
-I am old who once was young, but never do I look upon the stricken field
-without remembering that in my prime I was a man of deeds and juggled
-deftly with seventy-five-pound dumb-bells. Talents of this sort are never
-wholly wasted. Upon attaining the outskirts of the mêlée I selected the
-largest hostile bulk in reach, seized it around the hips, and lifted it
-clear. It struggled and developed a solid fist which, in contact with my
-jaw, utterly destroyed my equilibrium. I fell, but contrived so to twist
-myself that the hostile bulk fell beneath me. It lay quiet. But when I
-strove to rise, a paralysis across my shoulders strongly advised against
-it. So I sat upon my captive's chest and dizzily watched the combat.
-</p>
-<p>
-Now do I fully understand why war correspondents are not permitted at the
-front. It destroys their special usefulness. The fighting spirit and
-historical accuracy are totally incompatible. Nobody could have had a
-better view of the stirring events which succeeded than I. The forces and
-topography of the combat were clear in my mind: nearly two to one in favor
-of the enemy, but with our party fighting on home soil and in momentary
-hope of reenforcements. Yet all that I can recall is the sound of thumps
-and stifled curses and a confused mess of strained faces, violently
-working arms, and broad white shirt fronts now splotched with a harsher
-color. Then it seemed to me that I saw a little circle cleared about the
-mighty Greek, and a heavy cane which he brandished by the middle in both
-hands gave me the clue. The odds were balancing better, though still with
-the invaders. As if the Fates themselves were concerned to assure a more
-even field, there sounded a far, furious whoop, and the Little Red Doctor
-descended joyously upon the riot. At this critical juncture my captive
-came to and bit me in the leg. I lost all interest, temporarily, in the
-art and practice of war correspondence.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having secured a hold (not prescribed by the formal rules of wrestling, I
-am informed) with my knee upon my opponent's neck, I turned to view the
-battle again. The defenders were against the fence now; but alas! the Rev.
-Morris Cartwright was on his hands and knees, and one of the other uptown
-knights was reeling. The gangsters pressed in hard, striving to edge
-around the Greek and get him in the rear. Cyrus, with his heavy fists,
-guarded one side of him; the Little Red Doctor was fighting like a fury on
-the other. I prayed (kneeling upon my captive's neck) for Heaven's success
-to the just, and Terry the Cop.
-</p>
-<p>
-A shrill shout marked the next swift development.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>Look out! He's got a knife!</i>”
- </p>
-<p>
-A bright gleam of steel slanted toward Cyrus's shoulder. But the deft
-Greek had seen it. He chopped with his stick. The knife whirled free and
-descended. Like a football team plunging for a loose ball, the contestants
-dived for it. For a moment they groveled, struggling. Then out of the mass
-rose a shriek of the uttermost agony. It seemed to me that the group was
-stricken into sudden silence and immobility. Slowly it disintegrated,
-drawing apart in two sections. A half-doubled figure ran, staggering and
-dodging, into the shadows. A policeman's whistle shrilled. The gangsters
-turned and ran. Mine ran too. He tried, I regret to say, to give me a
-parting kick as I let him up. On the ground lay the knife. There was just
-a little trickle of red on it.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cyrus picked it up and looked around. Every man of our party was battered,
-but none was stabbed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Must have got his own man in the mix-up,” quoth the Little Red Doctor.
-“Come to my place and get fixed up.” After much minor repairing with
-plaster and patch we separated upon our respective ways, disheveled,
-disreputable, but exultant. Orpheus, with his face one mass of cuts and
-bruises, went back, if you will believe it, to play the final “Bohême” to
-the little beam of light in the window.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I hope,” he whispered to me, “that she could not hear the noise. It would
-frighten her.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In consideration of my strained back the Little Red Doctor escorted me
-home. As we set foot to the steps we heard a soft groan from the black
-areaway. From between two barrels the physician dragged a cowering wretch.
-His hands were pressed to his abdomen. There was a pool of blood where he
-had crouched.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The Samaritan Hospital for you,” said the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not me!” snarled the youth. “Guess again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Got any last message?” asked the doctor coolly.
-</p>
-<p>
-The young fellow's eyelids fluttered. “Am I croaked?” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Unless you're on the table within the hour.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The gangster summoned his bravado. “Let'er go as she lies. No Samaritan
-for mine. I was there oncet. They don't allow you no cigs. 'No smoking.'
-I'll croak foist.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor scratched his head in perplexity. I looked at the
-wounded man. His face was sullen and brave, but his hands were quivering.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Take him up to my room, doctor,” I said.
-</p>
-<p>
-That is how I came by my first lodger. His name was Pinney the Rat.
-</p>
-<p>
-After the Little Red Doctor had saved his body, many and various visitors
-climbed my stair for the purpose of saving the Rat's soul. The Rev. Morris
-Cartwright came all the way downtown (with an ear tastefully framed in
-surgeon's plaster) to convert him to decency. Cyrus the Gaunt strove
-manfully to convert him to the gospel of work with offers of regenerating
-labor in Canadian wildernesses. MacLachan the Tailor undertook to curse
-him into sobriety. Our French David and our German Jonathan dropped in
-separately to forecast to him respectively the Entente and the Alliance
-arguments of the Great War and to hint at enlistment when he should be
-recovered. Herman Groll undertook to convert him to music. All of this he
-accepted with noncommittal and rather contemptuous tolerance. It served to
-pass the time of his halting recovery. As a patient he was docile; as a
-guest he was not inconsiderate, though I could hardly say that he was
-grateful. To Orpheus alone of his visitors he exhibited a distinctive
-attitude. When the Greek dropped in upon us Pin-ney's face became a mask
-of cold watchfulness. He would freeze up into silence, following the big,
-gentle visitor's every movement with his unwinking eyes. The Little Red
-Doctor noted this with uneasiness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's not a rat,” he warned me. “It's a rattlesnake. And I don't like
-the way it looks at our Greek friend.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What can he have against Orpheus?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Probably thinks it was he that knifed him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It wasn't. I can swear to that much.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Save your breath. You'll never argue the resolve to get even out of the
-mind of a gangster.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What shall I do? Tell Orpheus to keep away?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. But see that our patient doesn't get his hands on any sort of
-weapon.” Strangely enough, the wounded man seemed to exercise a strange
-fascination upon the Greek. Day after day he would come and sit, talking
-or reading, while the gangster lay silent, maturing murder in his soul.
-What a pair they made; the secretive, time-abiding, venomous Rat and the
-gentle madman!
-</p>
-<p>
-In time the Rat's patience was rewarded. He got his weapon. He got it from
-the Bonnie Lassie. She had taken to dropping in upon us to see my lodger.
-She, at least, did not try to convert him. At first she just sat and
-twinkled at him, and the man does not live who can resist the Bonnie
-Lassie when she twinkles. On her second visit she brought him cigarettes
-in profusion and announced that she was going to sculp him in miniature,
-and proceeded forthwith to do it. Before the job was done they were sworn
-comrades. She would sit by his couch with her modeling tools and clay and
-work while he boasted in a hoarse, thin pipe of the evil things he had
-done. He was openly flattered that she should make him the chief figure of
-a group to be called “Ambush.” One day while she was absorbed in a
-difficult line he quietly annexed her compasses. A pair of compasses is
-two excellent stilettos. Pinney the Rat secreted his booty in the bed.
-That evening I found him cautiously practicing, first with his right, then
-with his left hand, what I supposed to be that method pugilistically
-termed an uppercut. Had I been more expert, I might have noted that his
-thumb was turned sidewise and upward.
-</p>
-<p>
-Concern and ignorance were choicely blended in the Rat's manner when, next
-day, the Bonnie Lassie came in to inquire for her lost tool, bringing as
-usual some “smokes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you like this kind better?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They're all right,” said the Rat. “But, say, lady, not wishin' to ast too
-much—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Go on,” she encouraged him as he—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Woddya know,” pursued the patient hesitantly, “about a big, fat cig with
-funny letters like this on?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Those look like Greek letters,” said the Bonnie Lassie, studying the
-marks which he had scrawled. “I'll see if I can get some for you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Search for that brand proved unavailing, however. It seemed to be a
-special importation.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Where did you ever smoke them?” she asked the Rat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Over to th' S'maritan.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do they serve cigarettes in the hospital?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“They do—I don't think! It was a little lady there give'em to me on
-the quiet. She seen what them big stiffs o' doctors never seen, that I was
-goin' batty for a smoke. She sneaked'em in to me. She was one real baby!
-Some guy outside useter send'em in to her to give me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Was she a nurse?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No; a case. Pretty near all in when she came. After she got well nobody
-wanted her to leave; and she didn't want to, I guess. So they made a job
-for her. I useter tell her she was hired out for sunshine. I ain't seen
-her since.” He sighed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Would you like to see her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Pinney the Rat's eyes became human. “Oh, Gee!” he murmured.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll bring her,” said the Bonnie Lassie. “Whom shall I ask for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jus' leave word for Miss Tony that Pin—that No. 7, Men's Surgical—is
-hurted again, but O. K., and could she come and see him, maybe, some day.”
- She came at once, Pinney the Rat's Miss Tony. She was little and quick and
-brown and lovely, but not laughing. There was a depth of woe and loss in
-her big eyes. Let that be my excuse that I did not at once identify her as
-Eurydice—that and the fact that, as far as I knew, Eurydice was dead
-and buried these four months and lived only in Orpheus's resolutely
-self-deluded mind.
-</p>
-<p>
-For Pinney's sake, his visitor summoned up the phantom of past gayety. She
-shook, first her finger and then her little fist at him, upbraiding him in
-quaintly accented English, while he lay and visibly worshiped.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You haf sayed that you will go straight. An' now voilà you, wit' your
-pro-mess broke an' a stick in your estomac.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yessum,” said Pinney the Rat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That learn you something? That learn you to be'ayve?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yessum,” assented that murderous gangster like an abashed schoolboy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You give me your han' now that you be a good boy an' go no more wit' <i>les
-Apaches</i> an' get you a job?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Rat's face hardened. He squirmed away from those clear eyes. “I got
-one little account to square up,” he muttered. “After that if I make my
-getaway, I'll join the Salvationists if you tell me to. An' say, Miss
-Tony, you know them cigs you useta gimme? Them with the dinky letters on?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The girl's trembling hand went to her throat. She looked at him strangely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If I could get a handful o' them,” he continued shyly, “they—I—it'd
-kinda remind me when—when you ain't here. How's me unknown friend on
-the outside that useta send'em in?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Tony leaned her head against the wall and burst into a passion of
-tears. I led her out, still sobbing, while the ex-Men's Surgical No. 7 sat
-up in his bed and cursed himself with wild, blasphemous, wondering oaths.
-</p>
-<p>
-Whatever surmise our young gangster may have entertained he kept to
-himself. And, on the following morning, sterner matters claimed his
-attention, for, while I was out, Orpheus, the Greek, dropped in, and
-Pinney, once more the Rat, saw the hour of his revenge upon his supposed
-assailant at hand. For the Greek, forgetful of caution, had seated himself
-well within arm's length of the patient's couch. Beneath the sheet the Rat
-clutched the needle-pointed compasses and waited. Should he risk the jump
-and the stroke? No! He might miss. And he knew, from the memory of the
-Battle of Our Square, the Greek's swiftness of eye and hand. He must get
-him nearer. It was a time for strategy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Hey, sport. Got a smoke on you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Orpheus drew a box from his pocket, extracted a fattish cylinder, and
-leaned forward to the other—not quite far enough. “Gimme a light,
-will ye?” piped the Rat hoarsely, taking the cigarette in his left hand.
-</p>
-<p>
-His right was working, wriggling slowly, slowly out from beneath the
-sheet. Orpheus struck a match and leaned toward the bed. His heart was
-almost over the lurking point. Slowly advancing the tip for the flame,
-Pinney the Rat—now the Rattlesnake with death in his stroke—raised
-his arm to blind his victim's vision against the blow. The movement
-brought the flimsy-papered cylinder directly before his own eyes. Familiar
-characters leaped out at him from the paper.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gawd!” croaked Pinney the Rat.
-</p>
-<p>
-Though it had the sound of an oath, it was perhaps as near a prayer as the
-gangster had ever uttered. His frame, tense as a spring, slumped back
-among the covers. Orpheus dropped the match. “What is it?” he cried with
-quick concern. “You suffer?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where didje get that cig?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The cigarette? From Greece. I always smoke this kind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Have ye—didje ever send 'em to a little lady in the S'maritan
-Hospital fer a—a guy she was good to?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.” The Greek's eyes widened. He began to shake through all his frame.
-“My God! You knew her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did I <i>know</i> her?” The Rat turned away and closed his eyes. His
-right hand moved furtively under the bed clothing, away from his body.
-Something fell, with a soft clink between the bed and the wall. The Rat
-shuddered and sighed like a man freed from a great peril, “Go on. Spiel,”
- he bade Orpheus.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Spiel?” queried the trembling Greek. “Spill your talk. Tell me about
-her.” Orpheus opened his heart and spoke. To that silent listener (for
-Pinney the Rat uttered no word) he poured forth his love and longing and
-his delusion, speaking of the girl as if she still lived. One word from
-Pinney might have brought the climax, perhaps disastrously, for that mind,
-desperately clinging to its delusion, might have collapsed under too
-sudden a shock of reality. The Rat lay quiet, drinking it in and revolving
-tangled problems. There were strange echoes in the Greek's talk which he
-failed to understand.
-</p>
-<p>
-As I came in I met, on the stairs, Orpheus going out. His face was alight
-with a strange radiance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That Mr. Pinney knows her,” he said. “He knows my Toinette. She was once
-good to him.” Then, in a confidential and triumphant whisper: “So she
-lives in another heart beside my own.” It was as if his delusion, his
-creed, his religion of love that was stronger than death, had been blessed
-with convincing proof.
-</p>
-<p>
-Wondering greatly, I returned to my patient. He was lost in thought and
-greeted me only with an absent nod. Not until I started the tea for our
-luncheon did he speak. “Say, boss, about that big wop.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He's a good guy, ain't he?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He is.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But—say. A little bit on the slant here?” He knuckled his head.
-“Huh?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Perhaps. What have you been saying to him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothin'. I been listenin'. A great line of talk about the little lady.
-But—say, boss. What's his kink?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Couldn't you tell?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sometimes I thought I got him,” said the Rat reflectively. “And sometimes
-I don't get him at all. Seems like he speaks of <i>her</i> like she was a
-dead person.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, she is.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Rat's jaw dropped. “Who is?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Orpheus's—the wop, as you call him—the woman he loved.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Are <i>you</i> nutty, too? Wasn't she in here to see me only yesterday?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Light broke in upon me in a great wave. “Merciful powers!” I shouted. “<i>Your</i>
-Miss Tony—his Toinette? It can't be. She died in a hospital the day
-before May Day.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ferget it! She moved out <i>cured</i> a week before May Day. Don't I
-know? Didn't I go humping up to Room 21 to see her, and find an old hen
-with a face like a mustard plaster and a busted mainspring?” The number
-woke remembrance within me. “What became of the woman in 21?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Croaked a few days later.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then the whole tragic comedy of errors was made plain to me. In turn I
-made it clear to my lodger.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who's loony now?” he demanded triumphantly. “You chase out an' find the
-wop an' let's square this.”
- </p>
-<p>
-All very simple, but there was the matter of Orpheus's mental condition to
-be considered. What would be the outcome of so violent a confirmation of
-his delusion? Or was it a delusion, since it was a fact? Neither the Rat
-nor I could lay any claim to be metaphysicians. Obviously this was a case
-for the Little Red Doctor, together with such consultants as he might care
-to call in.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the summons of its official physician Our Square mustered its
-intellectual forces in the Bonnie Lassie's Studio and sat in solemn
-conclave upon the problem. First of all we sent for the Rat's Miss Tony,
-and what the Bonnie Lassie said to her in the little back room and what
-she said to the Bonnie Lassie is a secret of womankind. Not even Cyrus the
-Gaunt was told. All that we heard of it was a cry and a sound of happy
-sobbing and another sound of broken laughter; and then the little, quick,
-brown, lovely face was turned to us from the steps outside, and MacLachan
-observed that two Bonnie Lassies in one house was a strain on human
-credulity as well as on human eyesight, and the Bonnie Lassie returned to
-us with <i>her</i> eyesight looking a trifle strained.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Somebody at the Greek consulate,” said she, “told her that Mister
-Phil-il-op—Mr. Orpheopoulos had gone back to Greece, and she's been
-breaking her poor dear little heart over it. Men are <i>all</i>
-imbeciles.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Thanking you in behalf of one and all,” returned Cyrus the Gaunt, “will
-the volcano of wisdom whom I have the felicity of calling wife tell us who
-is to break it to Orpheus?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Pinney the Rat.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Several protests were promptly entered. “That roughneck?” said MacLachan,
-whose urgency in the cause of abstinence had not been well received. “Take
-thought of the effect on the poor, stray-witted Greek lad.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm not thinking of the effect upon him at all,” said the Bonnie Lassie.
-“I'm thinking of the effect upon Pinney.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Think aloud,” invited the Little Red Doctor. “What beneficial effect will
-the reunion of two loving hearts have upon an incised stab wound in a
-third party's abdomen?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Isn't this wound healed?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Practically.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did you ever know any person to go crazy or get crazier from joy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There are your two patients disposed of, on the medical side. What I am
-attempting is an experiment in psychology. You've all had your chance at
-saving the Rat's soul. I'll have mine.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She perched herself upon a modeling stool and expounded. The Rat, she
-explained, had never had an opportunity to do anything but harm in his
-life. Therefore he did harm with pride, because it was doing something.
-“He's like all of us; he wants to work to some effect. Give him a chance
-to make himself effective for good, and you may see a change.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Upon which theory of vice and virtue the Little Red Doctor commented:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sometimes the Bonnie Lassie thinks around queer corners with her mind,
-but she's got the wisest heart in Our Square.” So Pinney the Rat got his
-instructions and reluctant leave from his doctor to indulge in a brief
-midnight stroll that very night.
-</p>
-<p>
-Our Square was haunted that midnight by uneasy figures slinking about in
-shadowy backgrounds. One by one Terry the Cop trailed them down only to be
-discomfited by successive discoveries of his own particular friends. The
-one logical object of suspicion, Pinney the Rat, sat openly on a bench and
-smoked and waited for Orpheus to finish his music. When it was over, the
-little guttersnipe went to meet the big Olympian. Carefully indeed had we
-rehearsed the Rat in a modulated method of breaking the news. But the
-gangster was an undisciplined soul and a direct. At the crisis he reverted
-to his own way, which perhaps was best. He put a hand on Orpheus's
-shoulder.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Say, bo',” he said, “yer in wrong about the lady.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Greek's face quivered, in anticipation of another blow at the fabric
-of his precious dream. “I know,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, yeh don't know. She didn't croak. She's alive.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Orpheus's hands went to his temples.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She's alive and waiting for you in the dominie's hallway. Come wit' me.
-Ready? Hep!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then Cyrus the Gaunt, Terry the Cop, and I had to fall on the Little Red
-Doctor and pin him to a bench to keep him from ruining it all, for the
-great bulk of the Greek loosened in every fibre and he collapsed into the
-clutch of the fragile Rat in a manner calculated (so the maddened
-physician informed us in technical and violent terms) to rip every
-condemned stitch out of the latter's foreordained peritoneum. Presumably,
-however, the Little Red Doctor had stitched better than he knew. For
-Pinney straightened the big man up and marched him across the way. As the
-strange pair mounted the steps the vestibule door opened. A little, quick
-figure sped to meet them. We heard across the leafage of Our Square the
-cry of a man who has come back to life and of a woman who has come back to
-love. When my eyes, which are growing old and play me strange tricks, had
-cleared, the doors were closed and Pinney the Rat was playing watchdog on
-the steps, jealously guarding that sacred vestibule.
-</p>
-<p>
-Oh, the vestibules of Our Square! What Arcadia has fostered a thousandth
-part of their romance! Between those narrow walls, behind those
-ill-guarded doors, in that pathetic travesty of solitude which is all that
-our teeming hive affords, what heights and depths of love and anguish,
-what hope and despair, what triumphs, what abnegations, what partings,
-what “infinite passion and the pain of finite hearts that yearn,” pass,
-and are forgotten! When the blight of ages shall lie heavy and dusty over
-a forgotten metropolis, when the last human habitation totters to its fall
-in some far future cataclysm, two lovers shall stand clasped in its
-vestibule forgetful of ruin, of death, of all but each other. Oh, for the
-pen of Euripides to celebrate fittingly those narrow and enchanted spaces!
-Or the pipe of my friend Orpheus to turn their echoes into golden music!
-</p>
-<p>
-They came out, those two, arm enlaced in arm, with the glory on their
-faces, into a world that was theirs alone for the time. They vanished into
-the shadows, and the watcher on the step lifted his head and saw them go.
-But the face of Pinney was no longer the face of the Rat.
-</p>
-<p>
-He rose and slouched down the steps. We went forward to meet him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I wanta drink,” he muttered.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie put her hand out to him. “No, you do not,” said she.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, I do not,” said Pinney. He turned to Cyrus the Gaunt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“When do I git that job?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tazmun”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-A TALE OF WHITE MAGIC IN OUR SQUARE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>TRANGERS in Our Square stop and stare at No. 17. In itself the house is
-unremarkable; a dull, brown rectangle with a faintly mildewed air about
-the cornices. It is this sign on the front which attracts the startled
-notice of the wayfarer:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-THE ANGEL OF DEATH
-One Flight Up and Ring Bell
-</pre>
-<p>
-To us of the Square the placard is a commonplace, and the Angel of Death
-just Boggs, a chunky, bristly little man with gold teeth and a weak, meek,
-peanut-whistle voice, who conducts not a private bomb factory or a suicide
-club.
-</p>
-<p>
-Taxmun formed romantics hopefully surmise upon a first reading, but a
-worthy though humble enterprise of hygiene and cleanliness more
-specifically set forth in the legend running, crimson, across the top of
-his business card:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-BOGGS KILLS BUGS
-</pre>
-<p>
-Once in the long ago that explicit announcement had flamed upon the house
-front. It yielded to the more dignified form when Madam Tallafferr took
-Mr. Boggs's top floor. She said that it was objectionable and that she
-could not live over it, and the landlord, duly impressed, sacrificed his
-prized alliteration rather than lose a lodger so elegant and aristocratic.
-Mr. Boggs had a vast, albeit distant, reverence for aristocracy, and he
-recognized in Madam Tallafferr a true exponent. So the sign came down and
-she went up. With her went her furniture, scanty but magnificent, a
-silver-inlaid lock box locally credited with safeguarding the Pemberton
-family diamonds, Sempronius, who was fat and black and a cat, and Old
-Sally, who was fat and black and a thief. For five years Madam Tallafferr
-dwelt above the lethal Boggs, and at the end of that period Our Square
-knew hardly more of her than on the day of her arrival. She was polite,
-but resolutely aloof as befitted her station in life.
-</p>
-<p>
-For Mr. Boggs's lodger was all that is most glorious in Southern lineage.
-Her full style and title was Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr,
-with two Is, two fs, and two rs, if you valued her favor. She was
-passionately devoted to the Lost Cause, and belonged to no less than seven
-“Daughters-of” organizations with sumptuous stationery. Mr. Boggs was very
-proud of her mail. He said she had the swellest correspondence in Our
-Square. When letters arrived bearing her name without the requisite double
-Is, fs, and rs, they were invariably returned to the postman indorsed in a
-firm, fine hand: “No such individual known here.” But if the letters
-appeared important, the kindly and admiring Angel of Death used to
-intercept them and supply the missing consonants from his own inkwell. In
-this way he accumulated considerable information, and was able to apprise
-Our Square that his lodger was superstitious, subscribed to a dream
-magazine, and belonged to a Spirit Guidance Group. He darkly suspected the
-spirits of giving her bad advice about investments.
-</p>
-<p>
-In person Madam Tallafferr was spare, tall, and straight. Her age when she
-first came to us was, to borrow caution from the war-zone censorship,
-“somewhere in the sixties,” though to Old Sally she was still “my young
-mist'ess.” Age had sharpened her personality, like her features, to a fine
-point. She was, I think, the most serene, incisive, and authoritative
-person I have ever encountered. Her speech was precise and trenchant. She
-dressed always in elegant, rustling black. Mr. Boggs said that she walked
-like a duchess. Quite likely. Though where Mr. Boggs got his data, I don't
-know. Our Square is not extensively haunted by persons of ducal rank.
-However, she became known to the locality, behind her back, as the
-Duchess. She and Old Sally were supposed to live in sumptuous luxury above
-the sign of the Destroyer. They had come to Our Square for their sojourn
-because, generations before in the days of its glory, madam's maternal
-grandfather had visited a distant cousin in that same No. 17. From beneath
-the ominous signboard she made occasional excursions, going westward and
-uptown, sometimes actually in an automobile, and always escorted by Old
-Sally. It was understood (from the boastful Mr. Boggs) that on such
-occasions his lodger was going into Society.
-</p>
-<p>
-Once, that Our Square knew of, she put her ante-bellum principles into
-practice. She undertook disciplinary measures upon Old Sally, who in a
-moment of exaltation had been bragging indiscreetly of past glories “back
-in Fuhginia.” With a light but serviceable cane she corrected that
-indiscretion. Yes, in this emancipated twentieth century, among the
-populous, crowded habitations of our little metropolitan community, within
-earshot of Terry the Cop, the conscientious and logical slave-owner
-committed the startling anachronism of beating her slave. Hearing the
-resultant groans, Mr. Boggs, the lethal, rushed up to his top floor in
-great perturbation of spirit and burst in upon the finale of the
-performance. From what he could observe the castigation was purely formal
-and innocuous and the outcries merely a concession to what was expected
-and proper in the circumstances. But when he made his presence known, the
-Duchess in few cold and measured terms explained to him his exact purport
-and significance in the cosmic scheme, which he promptly perceived to bean
-approximate zero. “She wizened me up,” said the Angel of Death, “like a
-last season's roach.”
- </p>
-<p>
-One after another she wizened us all up sufficiently to convince Our
-Square that she desired no personal share in its loosely communal, kindly,
-and village-like life.
-</p>
-<p>
-But though aloof she was not alien. As befitted her name and station, she
-could in time of need descend from her remote Olympus above the
-insecticidal Mr. Boggs and lend a hand. The first occasion was when a
-sudden and disastrous spring epidemic of that Herod of diseases,
-diphtheria, swept down upon Our Square, bringing panic in its train, an
-insane and bestial panic which barred doors against the authorities,
-against help, against medicine, against even our fiery and beloved Little
-Red Doctor, who stands like a bulwark between us and death and the fear of
-death. Then the Duchess appeared. She consulted briefly with the Little
-Red Doctor. She put on the black silk of splendor, the Pinckney laces and
-the Pemberton diamonds, and thus girded for the fray went forth, a spare,
-thin-lipped, female St. George, against our local dragon. Wherever that
-sane and confident presence appeared, panic gave way to reason and mutiny
-to obedience. There were no heroics. She nursed no dying children, saved
-no sudden emergency. She simply restored and enforced courage through the
-authority of a valiant and assured personality. Just before the Little Red
-Doctor collapsed, at the close of the crisis, he delivered his estimate of
-her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Cold nerve and tradition. Our Square ought to put up a statue to her—in
-steel.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Against which may be set off the Duchess's complacent and bland summing up
-of the Little Red Doctor:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“He seems a worthy young man.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In retort, Mr. Boggs, for once forgetting his reverential attitude,
-indignantly piped: “God give you understanding!” The Duchess merely lifted
-her eyebrows fractionally. Being a Pemberton by birth and a Tallafferr by
-name, she perceived no necessity of understanding lesser forms of life.
-</p>
-<p>
-Yet she possessed understanding, too, and of a subtle, fine, and profound
-kind. Otherwise she could never have done for Schepstein what she did when
-Schep-stein's twenty-year-old Metta killed herself through taking poison
-tablets (by mistake of course, as the Little Red Doctor perjuriously
-certified). In his hour of lonely grief and shame, Our Square turned its
-back upon the little cross-eyed, cross-grained, agnostic trafficker in old
-debts, old furniture, old books, old stamps, old silver, and anything else
-old which he could buy from the uninformed and sell to the covetous; not
-because he had at one time or another got the better of most of us in some
-deal and was the best-hated habitant within the four inclosing streets,
-but because we did not know what to do for him and feared his savage and
-cynical rebuffs. But when the furtive hearse and the one carriage for
-Schepstein, which was to have been the whole of little Metta's funeral,
-drew up at night before the Schepstein flat, Madam Rachel Pinckney
-Pemberton Tal-lafferr descended her steps, and crossed Our Square,
-rustling and in the high estate of black silk and lace. She must have been
-watching. Behind her waddled Old Sally with an armful of white roses. They
-met Schepstein at the foot of his steps, following his dead. As the casket
-passed her, Madame Tallafferr took the wealth of bloom from the servant
-and scattered its snowy purity above the girl. At that the face of
-Schepstein, which had been cold lead-gray, changed and flushed and
-softened, and he staggered suddenly where he stood and might have fallen
-had not that strong old woman thrust an arm under his to help him on his
-way. So two mourners went in the lone carriage to little Metta's funeral.
-</p>
-<p>
-Only long afterward was this known to Our Square. What established the
-Duchess as a local heroine and an Olympian controller of destinies was her
-handling of MacLachan the Tailor. MacLachan, on his black, alcoholic days,
-was wont to sing “The Cork Leg” under circumstances which I have set forth
-elsewhere. On this occasion he sang it, sitting on the coping of the
-fountain with his legs in the water, and beating time with a revolver
-which might or might not have been loaded. Nobody knew at the time.
-Regarding MacLachan there was no such room for doubt. Between stanzas he
-would announce his purpose of presently ending all his troubles with a
-bullet, previous to which, candidates for coffins would be considered in
-the order of their applications. In the natural logic of events this was a
-case for Terry the Cop, but Polyglot Elsa of the Elite Restaurant had
-early observed MacLachan's ready weapon, and with more cunning than
-conscience had dispatched the intrepid Terry to the farther end of the
-beat upon a purely fictitious Italian riot. For reasons of her own she did
-not wish Terry punctured. Hence Our Square, deprived of the official
-protection to which we were entitled, lurked about in the night shadows,
-watching the balladist from a respectful distance and wondering what would
-come next.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Duchess came next. She rustled stiffly up to the fountain and bade
-MacLachan hold his peace. Old Sally followed with a market basket.
-MacLachan elevated his voice a pitch.
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“Horror and fright were in his face.
-The neighbors thought he was running a race;
-He clung to a lamp-post to stay his pace,
-But the leg broke away and kept up the chase,”
- </pre>
-<p>
-bellowed MacLachan. “I am not aweer,” he added, still rhythmic, though
-with a change of meter, “that now and here, you possess any legal
-authority in this Squeer!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Duchess pointed a stiletto-like finger at MacLachan. “You are a
-rum-wastrel,” she pronounced severely.
-</p>
-<p>
-MacLachan pointed his revolver at the Duchess, though rather waveringly.
-“I am,” said he, “and proud of it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You will do some harm with that firearm.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I will,” said MacLachan, “and glad to do it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Go home to your bed and pray,” ordered the stiff old lady contemptuously.
-</p>
-<p>
-MacLachan regarded her gravely. “Fly, witch,” he said. “Awa' wi' ye on yer
-broomstick. I have a silver bullet for yer life.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Give me that pistol,” she directed and stretched out a hand for it.
-</p>
-<p>
-Quietly but firmly MacLachan shot her. At the same moment Old Sally hit
-him expertly on the head with a bottle which she took from her market
-basket. MacLachan slumped forward and took his whirling thoughts carefully
-between his two hands. “I ha' done wrong,” he presently concluded. “I ha'
-murdered my aged an' respectable aunt in cold blood. Tak' my weepon an'
-hale me to the gallus.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He passed his revolver over to a firm grasp. It was that of the Duchess.
-She was bleeding very slightly, the merest trickle, from the ear which
-MacLachan's bullet had grazed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do not strike him again,” she bade Old Sally, composedly, and that
-faithful amazon dropped her bottle and lost fifty cents' worth of catchup.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come home before you get into trouble,” was the lady's command to the now
-cowed and repentant tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-Whimpering and rubbing his head, he suffered himself to be marched back to
-his Home of Fashion. So promptly was the retirement executed that Terry
-the Cop never knew (officially) what had taken place. Unofficially all of
-Our Square knew. And the following day a deputation of us marched
-MacLachan around to No. 17 to apologize. As we stood on the stairway
-awaiting her pleasure, we could hear Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton
-Tallafferr directing Old Sally to inform the deputation that she had not,
-to the best of her recollection, evinced any intention of receiving on
-that particular day, and that she sent her compliments to us, and was not
-at home.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's the high-toned way of saying she don't want to see us,” chirped
-the admiring Mr. Boggs between gratification and apology. “Aristocrat to
-the finger tips! Haven't I always told you so?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He had, to the uttermost wearying of the flesh. But there came a time when
-he boasted less assuredly of his top-floor grandeur. To the little circle
-at the Elite Restaurant it became evident that something was preying upon
-the blithe spirit of the Angel of Death, something having to do with his
-Duchess. One evening, in a burst of confidence, he unburdened himself to
-the Little Red Doctor and me. Madam was, he feared, losing interest in the
-lofty social sphere to which she had been called. Seldom, nowadays, did
-she go in her full regalia uptown. Automobiles came no more to his
-flattered door. Worst of all, her fascinating mail had dwindled. Where
-formerly there would be as many as eight or ten envelopes per week,
-decorated with splendid and significant insignia and inclosing proud and
-stiff cardboard, now there was but one regular communication of the sort,
-the letter bearing the mystic double circle of the Spirit of Guidance
-Group and, as that was postmarked Brooklyn, Mr. Boggs had a small notion
-of its social import. Most of her days the aristocratic lodger now spent
-at solitaire, with Sempronius, the black cat, for critic. Mr. Boggs
-surmised sadly that the goddess of his top-floor Olympus was growing old.
-</p>
-<p>
-Very likely the phenomenon would have gone unexplained to this day had not
-both the Rosser twins fallen into the fountain simultaneously, contrary to
-their usual custom, which is for one of them to take the careless plunge
-while the other dances frantically on terra firma and yells till help
-comes. Madam Tallafferr once termed them “Death's playmates,” because of
-this ineradicable passion for gambling on the brink of the pool which is
-just deep enough to cover their two-year-old heads. On this occasion Old
-Sally was the nearest aid. So she waddled fatly over and hauled them out
-easily enough. Then, quite inexplicably, she fell in herself and lay
-gently oscillating at the bottom of three feet of water. Still more
-inexplicably, she refused to come to properly when Mr. Boggs and I fished
-her out after not more than thirty seconds' immersion. Also she looked
-queerly flattened and misshapen and unnatural. So we ran her into the
-Little Red Doctor's office and awaited the verdict.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a long wait. When at length the Little Red Doctor emerged there was
-a wild kind of glint in his eye.
-</p>
-<p>
-“D' you know what's the matter with that old black idiot?” he demanded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Martyr to her own hee-roism,” suggested Mr. Boggs, the romantic. “Is she
-drowned?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor snorted: “She's starved. That's what she is!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She's as fat as butter,” I protested.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Fat like a sliver!” retorted the physician scornfully. “Padded!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What on earth should she pad for?” I cried.
-</p>
-<p>
-“To fool her mistress. She's been going without food so as to buy more for
-madam.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At this information the eyes of the Destroying Angel bade fair to pop from
-their sockets and injure the Little Red Doctor toward whom they were
-violently protruding. “D' ye meantersay they're poor?” he gasped.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor outlined the history of the aristocratic pair, as he
-had extracted it from Old Sally. In the extraction he had grossly violated
-his professional ethics, as he shamelessly admitted, by giving her a half
-glass of port, which, on her pinched stomach operated as a tongue-loosener
-and betrayed her secret into his hands.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm not going to have two aged females dying of want in Our Square just
-for the sake of a paper ethic or two,” he declared rebelliously.
-</p>
-<p>
-According to what he had learned, the Duchess had left Virginia to save
-money and appearances, dragging along like a fetter a debt of honor
-contracted by a worthless scamp of a brother. Of course it was not in any
-sense a legal debt, but she, with her old-world ideas, had considered it
-to be a blot upon the family 'scutcheon, and had been paying interest, and
-bit by bit the principal, from her rigidly conserved little income.
-Presently an investment which had been indicated through the Spirit of
-Guidance Group's interpretation of one of madam's dreams reduced its
-dividends and madam cut off a few of her filial memberships. Another
-recommended by the dream magazine went wholly wrong. More memberships were
-reluctantly resigned. Old Sally, as head of the commissary, with full
-powers and responsibilities, was compelled to operate on a radically
-reduced apportionment. Two items took precedence of all else—the
-rent and the debt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You meantertellme,” chirped Mr. Boggs, “that Madam Tallafferr hasn't had
-enough to eat?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I do not,” said the Little Red Doctor emphatically. “She has. Old Sally
-hasn't. But her mistress doesn't know that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Boggs raised pious eyes to the ceiling. “Wotche going to do about it?”
- he inquired. He was, I take it, reminding Providence of its responsibility
-in the matter.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor wasn't for leaving it to Providence. “We've got to
-find a way to help.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Charity? To madam?” twittered Mr. Boggs. “I'd hate to try it on.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor scratched his large red head in perplexity. Then he
-called Old Sally in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, Sally,” said he, “we're all friends of yours here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yessuh,” said Old Sally gratefully. “And friends of your mistress's.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Old Sally bristled. “My young mist'ess ain' needin' no <i>frien's</i>
-'roun' yeah. She hol's her haid <i>high!</i>”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, admirers, then,” the Little Red Doctor tactfully amended. “The
-point is, we want to help. Now, haven't you got some things there you
-could sell without missing them? Some of that old furniture must be
-valuable.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sell the Tallaffeh homestead fuhni-ture!” cried Old Sally, scandalized.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, perhaps madam has more of that old lace than she needs.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The Pinckney lace!” said Old Sally in a tone of flat finality, which
-settled that point.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Possibly, then, the diamonds,” I suggested diffidently.
-</p>
-<p>
-At this Old Sally's lips, which had been pressed firmly inward, inverted
-themselves. She began to blubber. The blubbering became a sobbing. The
-sobs waxed to subdued howls. From the midst of the howls one coherent and
-astounding statement emerged:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“I stole'em.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Stole the Pemberton diamonds!” cried Mr. Boggs in consternation. His
-structure of social splendor was fast disintegrating. “What did you do
-with em?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hocked,” wept that sorry and shrunken old negress. “Gossome cheap trash
-in deir place to fool my young mist'ess. Her sight ain' good no mo'.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And the money went for food,” I suggested.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Some. Rest I put on a dream figgah.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Policy,” explained the Little Red Doctor, who is wise in the ways of the
-world. “She dreamed a number and put her money on it in a policy shop. And
-it didn't come out. They never do.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ef it had,” said Old Sally eagerly, “I'd'a' had money to pay dat eighteen
-hund'ed an' fo'ty-five dollahs an' fifty cents debt, an' plenty mo'
-besides.” Obviously she had been wearing that hair-shirt debt next to her
-soul's skin. “But I must'a' disremembered my dream figgah.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Very likely,” agreed the Little Red Doctor gravely. “Come now, Sally;
-think. Isn't there anything you could sell out of the house?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old face began to work again. “My young mist'ess she'll like to skin
-me if I tell,” she whimpered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll cross your eyes like Schepstein's, if you don't,” threatened the
-Little Red Doctor savagely.
-</p>
-<p>
-A deep breath signified the termination of her struggle between two fears.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tazmun,” she enunciated in a mystical voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-We looked at each other, puzzled. “What?” queried Mr. Boggs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tazmun. You know, tazmun.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What on earth is tazmun?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Tazmun,” she repeated determinedly. “Like whut you keep aroun' you to
-fotch luck.” Seeing us still at a loss, she sought and evolved an
-illustration.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Rabbit foot's a tazmun.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Talisman,” I translated in a burst of inspiration.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dass it, tazmun.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But you can't sell a talisman,” objected the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dis tazmun you can,” eagerly asserted Old Sally. “Wuth a heap o' money.
-My young mist'ess keep it locked up in her jool box. Lawzee! How I has
-tried to get my han's on'at ol' tazmun lettah.'Cause we sho' need de money
-fo' it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A letter?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Dass it. Aut'graph tazmun letter. Fum Gen'al Stonewall Jackson, wrote to
-ol' Massah Pemberton, befo' de war.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Boggs turned to me. “Dominie, you know everything.” (This is one of
-the perquisites of professing the classics in Our Square; it has also its
-drawbacks in the shape of disappointed expectations.) “Would that kind of
-letter be worth real money?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's a fo'tellin' lettah,” put in Old Sally eagerly. “It fo'tells de wah
-mo' dan ten yeahs befo' de wah.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In that case, I thought, it might be valuable historically. Anyway it
-would do no harm to get an offer from an expert. But could “young
-mist'ess” be induced to let it out of her hands? Young mist'ess's Old
-Sally thought it doubtful. Young mist'ess, with her passion for the things
-of the Lost Cause, held that document in sacred veneration. Once a week
-she took it from its neatly addressed envelope to read it. Her spirit
-guide had repeatedly advised her of its preciousness, and had declared
-that it would eventually bring fortune and happiness to her, if she would
-await the sign. What sign? Old Sally did not know. But she was certain
-that a marvelous “tazmun” such as General Stonewall Jackson's foretelling
-letter would furnish a sign beyond all misconception.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sign? She shall have a sign,” muttered the Little Red Doctor, who is
-wholly without conscience in any matter where he can pamper his insatiable
-appetite for help-ing others. Then to Sally: “But don't you say a word to
-her of what you have told us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Cotch me!” said that aged crone. “I don' want to get <i>skint</i>.”
- </p>
-<p>
-How to come to negotiations with the secluded and exclusive Madam Rachel
-Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr was something of a problem. Strategy was
-useless against that keen old woman. The direct way was decided upon and
-Mr. Boggs was appointed emissary. He respectfully petitioned that the lady
-grant a conference to the Little Red Doctor, myself, and himself upon a
-matter of business. Prefacing her gracious consent with the comment that
-she could not conceive what it was about, she set an hour for receiving
-us. When we climbed to the top floor above the Angel of Death sign, we
-found her a faded and splendid figure amid the faded splendor of her
-belongings. She was clad in her stiffest black, she sat in the biggest
-Tallafferr chair, her throat emerged from the delicate and precious
-Pinckney lace, and there glittered in her innocent ears a grotesque
-travesty upon the small but time-honored Pemberton diamonds. I knew on
-sight what she would say. She said it: “To what am I indebted, sirs, for
-this visit?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor explained that we were interested, historically, in
-a document which she possessed. The Duchess's sharp glance passed over me
-to rest sardonically upon Mr. Boggs, seeming to inquire with what
-historical interest that insecticidal nemesis might be credited; then
-leaped upon and fixed the spokesman: “How, may I ask, did you learn of
-this document?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Through a dream,” replied that shameless one.
-</p>
-<p>
-Her glance livened. “Strange,” she murmured. “You dreamed—what?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That there was preserved at the top of this house a prophetic letter of
-Stonewall Jackson's.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old lady's eyebrows twitched. He had touched the right chord of
-superstition. Her voice was quite animated as she asked: “And you actually
-expect this dream to be confirmed?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Pardon me; it is already confirmed. A few days after, I saw a newspaper
-clipping, stating that such a letter was said to be in existence, but that
-its whereabouts was unknown.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I shuddered. Couldn't the reckless idiot foresee the next question? It
-came, straight and sharp:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Have you the clipping?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I have.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I gasped with relief, wonder, and admiration.
-</p>
-<p>
-He had. That wise young Ananias had quietly provided for it all by getting
-Inky Mike, who loftily terms himself a journalist (being a pressman's
-assistant in a socialist weekly office), to set up and strike off a brief
-and vague article which the Little Red Doctor himself had composed for the
-occasion. Madam Tallaffer read it with heightened color.
-</p>
-<p>
-“This,” she said to Old Sally calmly, “is without doubt the Sign.”
- </p>
-<p>
-From a beautifully inlaid box she reverently took an old buff envelope,
-stamped and postmarked, and put it in the Little Red Doctor's hands.
-“This, sirs,” said she, “is my talisman. It was given to me, as his most
-prized possession, by my father, to whom it was written.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What do you value this at, Madam Tallafferr?” asked the physician.
-</p>
-<p>
-Her reply came without hesitation. “Eighteen hundred and forty-five
-dollars and fifty cents.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor's jaw fell. “Eighteen—did I understand you to
-say eighteen <i>hundred?</i>”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And forty-five dollars and fifty cents. That is the minimum. It is
-perhaps worth more.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Er—yes. Certainly. Very likely,” said the Little Red Doctor
-jerkily.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I bid you good day, sirs,” said the Duchess. “You will, of course,
-exercise every care of General Jackson's letter.”
- </p>
-<p>
-We bowed ourselves out. On the sidewalk we looked upon each other in
-dismay. “And Old Sally down to the last dollar,” said the Little Red
-Doctor, neglecting to mention that he had given her the dollar.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Let's try the letter on the trade, anyway,” piped Boggs hopefully. “You
-can't tell but maybe it might be worth the money. <i>Is</i> there an
-autograph trade, dominie?”
- </p>
-<p>
-In my capacity of omniscience, I chanced, happily for my reputation, to be
-informed upon this and to be able to make some definite suggestions. We
-went to Mr.
-</p>
-<p>
-Barker's small and recherché curio shop, with the talisman. Mr. Barker did
-not bark. He purred. The substance of his purring was that while the
-letter was authentic beyond question and would be of interest to some
-Southern historical society, it could claim no special value. As for the
-prophetic feature, upon which so much stress had been laid, a mere opinion
-that, “Be it sooner or be it later, the moot question of State rights will
-demand a final settlement,” could hardly be regarded as an inspired
-forecast of the Civil War. However, should we say twenty-five dollars?
-</p>
-<p>
-As the business brains of our delegation, Mr. Boggs, intrusted with the
-bargaining, would not say twenty-five dollars. Mr. Boggs would not say
-anything remotely suggesting twenty-five dollars. Mr. Boggs would say good
-day, which he forthwith did in great disgust of spirit. From Mr. Barker we
-went to Mr. Pompany. Mr. Pompany neither barked nor purred. He mumbled.
-The upshot of his submaxillary communication was a dim “Twenty dollars,
-take it or leave it.” We left it, and Mr. Pompany, the latter with a
-Parthian arrow sticking in his soul (if he had one) in the form of Mr.
-Boggs's firm opinion, delivered in a baleful squeak, that he might be only
-an ignoramus, but had rather the appearance and bearing of a swindler.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thieves!” piped Mr. Boggs on the sidewalk. “Thieves and fatheads, the
-whole trade. What now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Schepstein,” said the Little Red Doctor. “He's a thief too. But he
-knows.” Schepstein received us in his grubby, grimy, desolated front room,
-which did duty as an office, with a malevolent cross-fire from his
-distorted eyes. “Bit of business?” he repeated after Mr. Boggs. “What
-business? State your business.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“For sale,” piped Mr. Boggs, handing him the letter which he had taken
-from the envelope.
-</p>
-<p>
-Hardly a glance did Schepstein give it. “Thomas Jonathan Jackson? Who'she?
-And who's this Major Pemberton?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Boggs explained, in indignant piccolo tones, who Thomas Jonathan
-Jackson was. Not about Major Pemberton, however. No authority had been
-given to our deputation to disclose the ownership of the letter; So far as
-we were aware at that time, it would have meant nothing to Schepstein
-anyway. We had no reason, then, to suppose that he even knew Madam
-Tallafferr.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Humph!” grunted Schepstein. “Stonewall Jackson, eh? Might be worth
-something. Lessee the envelope.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He looked it over carefully, front and back, folded the letter which he
-had not even read, and slipped it back in. “Leave it with me overnight,”
- he suggested negligently. “I'll think it over and make you a price in the
-morning.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Think as much as you like,” returned Mr. Boggs, retrieving the treasure.
-“We'll keep this. And we'll be back at eleven to-morrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Observe, now, the advantages of living in a small self-centered community
-like Our Square, where everybody has an intimate (if not invariably
-friendly) interest in everybody else's affairs. Inky Mike had noted with
-curiosity our visit to Schepstein. As a press tender, the inky one
-naturally aspires to be a reporter, but his ideal reporter, being derived
-mainly from journalism as set forth in the movies, is a species of
-glorified compromise between Sherlock Holmes and Horace Greeley in a rich
-variety of disguises. He had no disguise handy, but he washed his face and
-followed Schepstein when that astute bargainer set forth immediately after
-our visit. Further, he listened outside the booth while the object of his
-sleuthing phoned a telegram. As he reported it in great excitement to our
-trio, it was addressed to a gentleman named Olds, in Cincinnati and read
-to this esoteric effect:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Alexandra local five forty-six perfect. What price? Answer quick.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Who's Olds?” asked the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Olds? Doncher know Olds?” cried Inky Mike. “The oil king? The
-multamillionaire?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What has this to do with us?” I asked. “It seems to be some oil
-quotation. What does Alexandra local' mean?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Search me!” offered the amateur sleuth. “But don'choo fool yourself! It's
-your business, awright. He snook out after you went, shakin' all over.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Boggs, who from the first had been profoundly impressed by his
-Duchess's tradition-inspired estimate of the autograph, nodded a sagacious
-head. “Trust old Schep!” he fluted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“When I've his money in hand; not before,” grunted the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-When we called at the dingy and lonely flat on the following morning,
-Schepstein's face was a mask of smiling craft.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's worth possibly—pos-sib-bly fifteen dollars as a spec,” he
-said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” cheeped Mr. Boggs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But the autograph market is looking up. I'll take a chanst and give you
-twenty-five. Cash,” he added impressively.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” repeated Mr. Boggs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's the matter with you?” demanded Schepstein with rising truculence.
-“D' you wan ta sell or don't cha? What's your price?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Eighteen hundred and forty-five dollars and fifty cents,” said Mr. Boggs
-in a clear, businesslike soprano.
-</p>
-<p>
-Schepstein did not sneer, nor explode, nor curse, nor do any of the things
-which I confidently expected him to do. His convergent vision seemed to
-focus on the buff envelope in Mr. Boggs's lumpy hand. He looked
-thoughtful, and, it seemed to me, almost respectful. “As she stands?” he
-asks.
-</p>
-<p>
-“As she stands,” assented Mr. Boggs. “Bought,” said Schepstein. And he
-wrote out a check to “Bearer.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At this the Little Red Doctor lost his head and profoundly altered the
-situation. “By thunder!” he cried, “Madam Tal-lafferr knew what she was
-talking about all the time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Schepstein dropped his pen. “Who?” he asked in a rasping voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Madam Tallafferr, across Our Square in Seventeen.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Was that her letter?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. We are acting as her agents.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, hell!” said Schepstein softly. Then an astounding thing happened. Two
-small, pinched tears welled out from the ill-matched points of flint which
-serve Schepstein for eyes. They were followed by two more. The little,
-gnarly, cross-grained Jew drooped over the desk and his shoulders shook. A
-voice of falsetto anguish roused him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't cry on the check! You'll smudge it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Schepstein lifted his head and gloomed at Boggs. “Nevamind that; it's all
-off,” he gulped. “I got something to tell you people.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Between queer, shamed breath-catch-ings, he told us about his Metta's
-funeral. At the end he read us a telegram from Quentin Olds. When I was
-able to assimilate its full meaning, I found myself shaking hands with
-Schepstein, while Mr. Boggs danced a jig with the Little Red Doctor. Then.
-Schepstein tore up the check for $1845.50 and invited us around to the
-Elite Restaurant to luncheon, thereby affording a sensational titbit of
-news for Polyglot Elsa's relating for a fortnight after. “Mr. Schepstein,
-he paid the whole compte. Was kennst du about that!” Three days were
-required to finish the deal. Then through Old Sally the deputation trio
-sought and obtained another audience from the Duchess. Mr. Boggs did the
-talking in terms worthy of his environment. “We have successfully
-terminated the negotiations, Madame Tallafferr,” he began.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/292.jpg"
- alt="We Have Successfully Terminated the Negotiation 292 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-The Duchess bowed in silent dignity.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And I have now the honor of turning over to you eighteen hundred and
-forty-five dollars and fifty cents, as—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hally-loo-yah, tazmun!” burst out Old Sally. “Hally—hally—hally—”
- She caught her mistress's austere glance. “I knowed it was cornin' so all
-along,” she concluded, heroically compressing herself to a calm if belated
-assurance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“—as the minimum price stipulated,” pursued Mr. Boggs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I thank you,” said the Duchess.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Also,” concluded the agent, “a balance, after deducting all expenses, of
-two thousand one hundred and fifty-three dollars and twenty cents.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Duchess's face never so much as changed. “That is entirely
-satisfactory,” she observed. “I have to thank you all for your successful
-efforts in securing a suitable price. My only regret,” the quiet voice
-faltered a little, “is that circumstances should have forced me to part
-with an expression of esteem for my beloved father from one who was the
-greatest military hero of all history.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You're in wrong, lady,” caroled Mr. Boggs, his rhetoric suddenly melting
-in his excitement. “We sold the envelope alone for four thousand dollars
-pet. There's only three other of them 1846 Alexandria postmaster's stamps
-in the world today. So here's your Stonewall letter as good as new.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“My Gawsh!” said old Sally, and fell down upon the floor and rolled and
-gave praise after the manner of her race, unrebuked this time of her
-mistress.
-</p>
-<p>
-That aged and grand dame took back the letter with a hand which, for all
-that it had been rock-firm when it received MacLachan's revolver, now
-trembled a little. But her sole comment was: “And yet there are those so
-obstinate and shortsighted as to deny that the spirits guide us for our
-own good.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Once more, finely embossed stationery came pouring in at No. 17, Our
-Square, proudly edifying the soul of Mr. Boggs. Once more Madam Tallafferr
-went forth on missions of social splendor, westward and uptown, sometimes
-in an automobile. Once more the restored Pemberton diamonds glistened in
-the fine, withered ears, Old Sally having confessed and been duly beaten
-and forgiven.
-</p>
-<p>
-Old Sally herself, replete and pompous, trotted to and fro in Our Square,
-brimful of smiling hints of a great honor that was to come to us. Her
-young mist'ess, she let it be known, was graciously pleased to be
-recognizant of the part, useful though humble, which Our Square had played
-in her reestablished fortunes, and she was about to acknowledge it in a
-manner worthy of her family and her traditions. In Old Sally's own words,
-she was going to “mo' dan even it up wif you all.” Curiosity, speculation,
-and surmise had become almost morbid in Our Square, when one morning there
-burst upon us, in an effulgence of glory, a mail as splendid as any which
-had ever brightened Mr. Boggs's worshiping eyes on its passage upward to
-his top floor. To Mr. Boggs himself it came, to Schepstein, to the Little
-Red Doctor, to me, to Polyglot Elsa, and to many others, even down the
-scale as far as Inky Mike, this big white envelope, sealed with a square
-of black sealing wax and inclosing a most gratifyingly proud and stiff
-pasteboard card. That card still stands carefully dusted on many a mantel
-of Our Square, a guerdon and manifesto of social glory. At the top of it
-is blazoned the crest of the Tallafferrs, standing between the flag of the
-Confederacy and the coat of arms of Old Virginia. Below runs this legend—in
-real engraving if you please:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-MADAM RACHEL PINCKNEY PEMBERTON TALLAFFERR
-solicits the honor of your presence at
-Number Seventeen, Our Square,
-on Friday, November Eighteenth,
-to view an autograph letter
-indited to her honored father,
-the late Major Bently Pemberton,
-
-by
-
-LIEUTENANT (AFTERWARD GENERAL) THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON
-
-Of the Army of the Confederate States of America.
-
-Refreshments. R. S. V. P
-</pre>
-<p>
-Our Square had won social recognition.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-THE MEANEST MAN IN OUR SQUARE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ILES MORSE was his name. He lived over on the north side of Our Square,
-two doors from the Varick Mansion, in a small, neat, solid, and very
-private house. His age was uncertain. His appearance was arid. His garb
-was plain and black. His expression was unfriendly. His business was
-making money and his pleasure keeping the money when made. He was a
-fixture of long standing in our little community, as much so as the paving
-stones in the park space facing his house, and as insensate to the human
-struggle around him as they. As to his neighbors, he asked nothing and
-gave nothing. Behind his back, and not always very far behind it, he was
-called the Meanest Man in Our Square.
-</p>
-<p>
-Every morning at eight o'clock the Meanest Man went to his office
-somewhere far downtown where, it was understood, he did something sly and
-underhanded connected with notes and loans. Every afternoon at four
-o'clock he visited the local Y. M. C. A., where he was (mistakenly)
-supposed to put in his hour and a half in reading, on the theory that it
-was cheaper to patronize that library than to buy books or rent them from
-the penny circulator. The rest of his life was strictly and determinedly
-private. Passing to and fro upon his concerns, he faced the denizens of
-Our Square with the blank regard of huge, horn-rimmed, blue glasses which
-he always wore out of doors. Only for Terry the Cop, MacLachan, the Little
-Red Doctor, and Cyrus the Gaunt, did he have a curt, silent nod, and for
-the Bonnie Lassie an awkward bow. The rest of us might as well not have
-existed. Naturally there were few who had a good word for him. Of these
-Terry the Cop was one.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Anyway, he has a grand pair of hands,” Terry has been heard to aver.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the strength of this opinion, the Bonnie Lassie, who needed a really
-superior pair of hands for a sculpture which she was then employed upon,
-made a point of catching Miles Morse in the park and compelling him to
-shake hands with her, to his resentful embarrassment. Subsequently she
-took our guardian of the peace to task.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't know what you could have been thinking of, Terry,” she declared.
-“His hands are knuckly outside and puffy inside.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You should see'em in the court,” said Terry cryptically.
-</p>
-<p>
-Not clearly comprehending what standing in court Mr. Morse's hands would
-give him, the Bonnie Lassie dropped the subject. On her own account,
-however, she had a suspicion of redeeming qualities in the Meanest Man.
-For one thing, she knew of a battered and disreputable kitten, rescued by
-Miles Morse from a strong and hostile combination of small boys and big
-dogs, at no small peril to himself, and taken to the very private house,
-where it grew into battered and disreputable but competent cathood and now
-welcomed him home every evening with extravagant demonstrations of regard.
-Also a certain scene enacted in sight of her studio windows had stuck in
-her memory; a powerful and half-drunken brute of a teamster flaying an
-overdone horse; the interposition of the Meanest Man; the infuriated
-descent, whip in hand, of the driver; the rush at the spare, trim,
-uncombative-looking man who had removed his spectacles and pocketed them;
-then the inexplicable and dismayed check in mid onset of the assailant.
-The Bonnie Lassie couldn't understand it at all; she couldn't see why that
-avalanche of wrath, profanity, and bulk didn't simply overwhelm its object—until
-she ran to the door and opened it. Then she saw Miles Morse's face and
-understood. It had hardened into a contraction of rage so savage, so
-concentrated, so murderous, that the drink-inspired fury of the human
-brute paled before it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Back on your wagon!” ordered Morse. He spoke not as man speaks to man,
-but as man speaks to beast.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Wot—wotcha goin't' do, boss?” faltered the other.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Put you in jail.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Sobered now, and cowed, the man jumped to his seat and whipped up his
-horses, in the hope of escaping. The Meanest Man broke into a long,
-effortless stride. There was no need to tell the witness that he would not
-be shaken off until the quarry was in the hands of the police.
-</p>
-<p>
-Now it happened that the High Gods of Council who unofficially rule Our
-Square held conference not long thereafter upon a project, advanced by the
-Little Red Doctor, for a local legal-aid organization with an office and
-an attendant. Money was needed, and money is one of our rarest phenomena.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was the Bonnie Lassie who suggested that the Meanest Man in Our Square
-be approached for a contribution. Polite jeers greeted the proposal.
-Thereupon the Bonnie Lassie narrated the instance of the beaten horse and
-backed it up with Emerson:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“'T is a sin to Heaven above
-One iota to abate
-Of a just, impartial hate.”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Where does that get in with the Meanest Man?” inquired Cyrus the Gaunt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He doesn't hate anything except giving up money,” added the Little Red
-Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He hates cruelty,” retorted the Bonnie Lassie. “And he's brave. Two
-points to his credit. I believe you could do anything with the Meanest Man
-if you could get him mad enough.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, my dearest,” said Cyrus the Gaunt with that condescending surrender
-which is one of his few faults as a husband, “since you have so good an
-opinion of Mr. Morse, suppose you tackle him for a contribution.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I will,” said the Bonnie Lassie. “I'll go now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She went. Presently she returned. It was not the return of a victress.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How much?” asked the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie threw out empty and eloquent hands.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And what did he say?” inquired Cyrus the Gaunt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He indicated that he'd see me in Hades first.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then I'll go over and knock his head off,” declared her husband,
-reddening. “I've always wanted to do it anyway.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothing of the sort—goose! I didn't say he <i>said</i> it. I said
-he indicated it. It was his manner. Verbally he was polite enough. Said he
-didn't believe in charity.” Cyrus the Gaunt snorted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gave his reasons too. He said he doesn't believe in charity because it
-makes the recipient think too ill of himself, which is bad, and the giver
-think too well of himself, which is worse.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Something in that,” grudged the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Isn't there! I tried to explain the usefulness of the Legal Aid Society,
-but he said that people who got into court were fools and people who hired
-lawyers to lie for them were knaves. Then”—the Bonnie Lassie dimpled—“he
-caught me sniffing at his musty old house and asked me what was the
-matter, and I asked him if it had ever been dusted and aired, and he said
-that he was afraid he'd have to get a housekeeper and if I'd get him one—the
-right kind of a one—an old, respectable, honest woman who'd do all
-the work while he was away so that he'd never have to see her, he'd
-contribute to our fund”—the Bonnie Lassie paused for effect—“ten
-dollars.”
- </p>
-<p>
-When the assembled council had finished expressing its various emotions
-the speaker continued:—“I've got a month to do it in. So I made him
-make out the check and hold it, unsigned.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What's the idea, Lassie?” asked MacLachan the Tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The leak-in-the-dike principle,” she explained profoundly. “The ten
-dollars is just the first trickle. If we ever get him started, Heaven help
-him before we let him stop. I'm going to get that ten dollars if I have to
-take the position myself.” But she was not driven to that length. It is a
-recognized fact in Our Square that when the Bonnie Lassie determines to
-get anything done, Providence, with rank favoritism, invariably steps in
-and does it for her. This powerful and unfailing ally it was that brought
-Molly Dunstan to Our Square, white-faced, hot-eyed, and with a gnawing
-fire of despair at her heart, plunging blindly against the onset of a
-furious March wind, until the lights of Schoenkind's drug store guided her
-to harbor. In the absence of Schoenkind, who was dining late at the Elite
-Restaurant, young Irvy Levinson was keeping shop, and as Young Irvy is of
-a cheerful, carefree, and undiscriminating disposition he made no bones of
-selling the wind-beaten customer a bottle of a certain potent drug which
-has various properties and virtues back of its skull-and-crossbones label,
-one of the latter being that it is prompt though painful. With her
-purchase, Molly plunged back into the storm, turned toward the dim park
-space, and bumped violently into the Little Red Doctor. Gently releasing
-her, he caught a glimpse of her face. Its aspect was not reassuring. Young
-women who come blundering out of drug stores with that expression and make
-for the nearest quiet spot not infrequently cause needless trouble to the
-busy authorities. Opening Schoenkind's door, the Little Red Doctor thrust
-into the aperture his earnest face and this no less earnest query: “What
-did that last customer buy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Carbolic,” replied Young Irvy light-heartedly. “For a dog. Ast if it hurt
-much.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The door slammed with much the effect of an oath, and the questioner
-sprinted for the park. Being wise in the way of human misery, he knew that
-mysterious instinct of suicides which guides them, no matter what their
-chosen method of self-destruction, toward water. Therefore he took the
-shortest route for Our Fountain.
-</p>
-<p>
-Young Irvy's customer sat huddled on a bench at the water's edge. The
-bottle was in her hand, uncorked. She had just made a trial of the liquid
-on her hand, and was crying softly because it burned. As the Little Red
-Doctor's grip closed on her wrist, she gasped and sought to raise the drug
-to her lips.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Drop it!” said her captor in the voice of authority.
-</p>
-<p>
-She obeyed. But she misinterpreted the authority. “Is it to jail ye'll be
-taking me?” she asked despairingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-The soft appeal of the voice, with its faint touch of the brogue, shook
-the Little Red Doctor. One glance at the piteously lined young face
-conquered him. He formulated his program on the spot.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jail?” he echoed in affected surprise. “What for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She glanced mutely at the shattered bottle.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, that's foolish stuff to use for warts,” he observed carelessly,
-lifting the hand, which was as soft and smooth and free from blemish as a
-moth's wing. “Now, you come with me to a friend of mine, and she'll fix
-that burnt finger.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Many men there are in whom dogs confide instinctively; fewer who win
-offhand the confidence of children, and a rare few whom women trust at
-sight. Of this few is the Little Red Doctor. His captive followed him
-without protest to the nestling little house with the quaint old door and
-the broad, friendly vestibule which had been her husband's wedding gift to
-the Bonnie Lassie. There, without fuss or query, Molly Dunstan was
-accepted as a guest, and presently, too worn out even to wonder, she was
-deep in healing sleep, in the spare room over the studio.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the morning she presented herself to her hostess's unobtrusive but keen
-observation: a wistful slip of a woman of perhaps twenty-five, with hollow
-cheeks, deep-brown, frightened eyes, a softly drooping mouth, and a satiny
-skin from which the color had ebbed; a woman whose dainty prettiness had
-been overlaid but not impaired by privation and some stress of existence
-only to be guessed at. For all her simple and worn dress (all black) and
-the echo of brogue in her speech, she bore herself with a certain native
-dignity and confidence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's good ye've been to me, and I'll not know how to thank you, now that
-I'll be going,” she said, and the silken-soft voice with its touch of
-accent won the Bonnie Lassie's soft and wise heart from the first.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But you're not to go yet,” protested the latter. “You must stay until
-you're well. And then I want to sculp you, if you'll let me. I'm an
-artist, and I think you would make a wonderful model.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's kind ye are,” returned the other. “But how can I be beholden?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You won't be. It's you that will be doing the favor. As soon as you're
-well enough—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm well enough now. There's nothing the matter with me.” But her voice
-was without life or hope.
-</p>
-<p>
-So, in many slow sittings, the Bonnie Lassie sculped Molly Dunstan; and
-from those sittings grew the heart-moving bronze, “The Broken Wing,” a
-figure of a quaintly, pitifully birdlike woman in the foreground of a
-group in a hospital clinic, with the verdict of science written in her
-face, looking out upon life in the dread realization of helplessness. As
-the work progressed the heart of Molly Dunstan opened little by little,
-and her story came out.
-</p>
-<p>
-While a young girl in a good Irish school she had met a traveling
-American, Henry Dunstan, and, half for love and half in the elfin Irish
-spirit of adventurousness, had run away with him. He was a good husband to
-her, and they were happy in a little country place which he had bought and
-which she turned to skillful account, raising ducks and chickens for the
-market to eke out his income—“until the drink took him.” It took him
-the full length of its well-beaten path, from debt to ruin; from ruin to
-broken will and health, and presently to death. When his debts were
-cleared up the place was gone, and the little widow had a scant two
-thousand dollars of his life insurance in the bank. Being sturdy, able,
-and courageous, she had come to New York, had found some fine sewing to
-do, and had maintained herself, always with the idea of getting back into
-the country and to her poultry raising, which she loved. Here the simple
-story came to a full stop with the words: “So I bought a bit of a place,
-and they took it away from me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Who took it away from you?” asked the Bonnie Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Wiggett,” replied Molly, and fell into such a fit of shuddering that
-the Bonnie Lassie forebore to question her further concerning the
-transaction.
-</p>
-<p>
-Little by little, however, there came out bits of information which the
-Bonnie Lassie deftly wove together, with the eventual result that Cyrus
-the Gaunt looked up an advertisement in a certain newspaper famous for its
-traps and pitfalls, and paid a visit to the office, on St. Mark's Place,
-of “D. Wiggett & Co., City and Suburban Real Estate.” He returned much
-depressed, declaring that the laws against homicide ought to provide for
-exceptions in the case of such persons as D. Wiggett.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There he sat and grinned, a great, plump, pink, powerful, smirking
-gorilla; and said that the transaction with Mrs. Dunstan was perfectly
-legal—perfectly—and there wasn't anything further to be said.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did you say it?” inquired the Bonnie Lassie, who knew her Cyrus.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I did. And he threatened to have me arrested for defamatory language. But
-he's right—legally. He's got your little widow's two thousand
-dollars, every cent of it, and she's got a piece of stamped paper.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why isn't it a case for our Legal Aid?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've just been to Merrivale. There isn't a thing to be done.” Following
-the “Legal Aid” line, Cyrus's mind took a sudden but logical jump. “I
-never expected to meet a meaner cuss than the Meanest Man in Our Square,”
- he observed. “But I have.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The very thing!” cried the Bonnie Lassie. “How clever of you, Cyrus! I
-mean, how clever of me! Molly wants a place. She's all over that foolish
-suicide notion. She shall be Mr. Miles Morse's housekeeper.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But he wanted an <i>old</i> woman,” objected Cyrus.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How is he to tell if he never sees her? I'll manage that,” retorted his
-wife confidently. “The only thing is, will she take a place that is almost
-like domestic service?”
- </p>
-<p>
-As to this Molly made not the slightest difficulty. She had regained her
-courage and her Irish fighting spirit, and she was now ready to face life
-and make it give her an honest return for honest work again; ready for
-anything, indeed, except an attempt to get her money back which might
-involve her seeing Mr. D. Wiggett. At the mere mention of his name she
-fell into a cold and shuddering silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-With brief preliminaries, and on the Bonnie Lassie's guarantee of “old
-Mrs. Dunstan's” reliability, that semi-mythical person was installed as
-Miles Morse's housekeeper and general factotum, having taken the informal
-triple oath of her employment: industry, senility, and invisibility. Six
-dollars a week was the wage which the Goddess from the Machine had wrung
-from the Meanest Man's violent protests, with a warning that it would have
-to be increased later on. The instructions given to the new employee were
-that she was to keep out of her employer's sight; or if he should arrive
-at an untimely hour she was to huddle into a shawl or handkerchief and
-conceal her age behind a toothache.
-</p>
-<p>
-For six weeks all went well and simply. Miles Morse was obliged to
-confess, grudgingly, that his house was more livable and comfortable. Dust
-disappeared. The furniture took to arranging itself with less stiffness
-and more amiability. When he gave a whist party of an evening, the cigars
-were in place, the ash trays ready, the rooms aired and fresh, and the ice
-box stocked, all by invisible hands. Orders were issued and requisitions
-made through the Bonnie Lassie. Meeting her neighbor in Our Square one
-day, the Bonnie Lassie hinted at the ten-dollar check for the Legal Aid
-Society. “When I'm sure I'm satisfied,” said the Meanest Man, bending
-frowning brows from above his owlish glasses upon her. “D' you know what
-that old hag has been up to?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What old hag?” inquired the Bonnie Lassie unguardedly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The Dunstan woman.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, you've seen her, then?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not to speak of. She was curled up like a worm, and had her face swathed
-up like a harem, and talked like the croak of a frog. And she's been
-putting flowers on my breakfast table,” he concluded with the accents of
-one detailing an intolerable outrage.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What of it?” inquired the surprised agent.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What of it! Flowers cost money, don't they?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Have you received any bill for flowers yet?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I've received bills for brooms, mops, pails, towels, cups, plates, nails,
-tacks, picture hangers, baking tins, soap, and God knows what all,”
- replied Mr. Morse in a breathless and ferocious voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes? And which of those do you find in the floral catalogues?” queried
-the Bonnie Lassie interestedly. “If you want to know,” she added as the
-Meanest Man struggled for competent utterance, “those flowers came from
-your own back yard. Look at it some time. You'll be pleased.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Meanest Man was pleased when he looked, so pleased that one fresh and
-glorious June day when he should by the known regimen of his life have
-been at the Y. M. C. A. (supposedly reading) he came home early to putter
-about among the pansies. At the moment of his arrival Molly Dunstan, her
-work finished and her shawl laid aside, was standing in her neat,
-close-fitting black dress, inside the area railing, brooding with deep
-eyes over the glad flush of summer which glorified Our Square, and
-thinking, if the unromantic truth must be told, of the little place up
-near White Plains where her ducks and chickens would have been so happy
-and productive if D. Wiggett (she shivered) hadn't kept the place and her
-money too. The owner of the house stood regarding her with surprise and
-disfavor. “What are you doing here?” he barked.
-</p>
-<p>
-With a startled jump, Molly came out of her brown study and returned the
-natural but undiplomatic answer: “I'm the housekeeper.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You! What has become of Mrs. Dun-stan?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm Mrs. Dunstan.” Realization of her self-betrayal came to her. The soft
-tears welled up into her soft eyes. “Oh, dear; oh, dear!” she mourned.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't make that noise,” he ordered testily; “what's the matter with the
-woman!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ye'll not—not be wanting me here any more.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I don't say that,” returned the cautious Mr. Morse. “You're not
-wholly unsatisfactory. But what does that mummery of an old woman mean?”
- </p>
-<p>
-In vain Molly tried to penetrate the blue glasses which masked his
-expression. Anyway, his voice had mollified. “I'll tell ye it all, if
-ye'll listen,” she said wistfully.
-</p>
-<p>
-Miles Morse surprised himself by promptly saying: “I'll listen.”
- </p>
-<p>
-No one could have wished a more intent listener. Molly told it all,
-including the deal whereby D. Wiggett had secured her money. At the
-conclusion her employer suggested that Molly bring him the deed, or other
-documents in the case, on the morrow. She did so. He read the principal
-document with a queer tightening of the lips which Molly couldn't
-understand at all, but which the Bonnie Lassie, had she been present,
-would have interpreted readily enough since she had seen it on another
-occasion, when the spare and arid man had set out to trail the
-horse-flaying teamster to justice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“This isn't a deed at all,” said he.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's what Mr. Wiggett was telling me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What else did he tell you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He told me if I'd pay him the two thousand dollars and would go out there
-he'd see I got enough embroidery work so that I could easily make the
-twenty-dollar-a-month payments till I owned it all.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He didn't tell you that if you failed in a payment you'd lose it all?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not till after.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's here in the agreement to sell. That's all this paper is”;—he
-flecked the document with a contemptuous finger—“an agreement to
-sell; not a deed. You've bought nothing but empty print. Did you never
-read this?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She shook her head. “I trusted Mr. Wiggett. He seemed so kind and helpful
-at first.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Until the fly was in his web. You signed that paper without knowing what
-you were undertaking,” he accused. “Did you know that you were promising
-to pay taxes, interest, and insurance on the buildings?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No,” said Molly Dunstan meekly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And to keep the buildings in good repair and painted? What buildings were
-they?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A house and a barn. They leaked.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Naturally. Also”—Miles Morse referred to the document in his hand—“'to
-plant a good, live California privet hedge and to entertain the same.'
-What's your notion of a California privet hedge and entertaining the same?
-Could you do that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Into Molly Dunstan's Irish-brown eyes there crept a little Irish devil of
-a twinkle. “Could I not!” said she. “Can ye not see me, of a moonlight
-night, taking me foot in me hand, and going out to entertain me dull and
-lonely hedge with a turn of Kilkenny jigging!” Her sole tapped the ground
-as she spoke.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't do it here,” he interposed hastily. “How you can joke about it is
-beyond me, with your two thousand dollars in the pocket of D. Wiggett. And
-what makes you look sick at the name of him?” he concluded sharply.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's a terrible man,” she answered with a catch of the breath. “When I
-went to him to ask for a bit more time he swore at me. He threatened me
-with jail. He said he'd ruin my reputation. He said if I sent a lawyer
-there he'd hammer him to pulp. He could do it, for he's a terrible, big,
-strong, angry man. I came away sick to live in the same world with him.
-And that's why I got the carbolic,” she finished in a low, shamed tone.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Carbolic! You were going to kill yourself?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Didn't Mrs. Staten tell ye?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She told me nothing—but lies.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miles Morse spoke harshly because he was experiencing within himself a
-stir of strange and wrathful and protective emotion. Abruptly he changed
-the subject. “Would you,” he said hesitantly, “for a raise of wa—ahem
-—-salary, come a little earlier and get me my breakfast?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll not wait on table,” she returned with a flash of color.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It was not my idea,” he said quite humbly. “But if you would have a
-coffee machine and a toaster and sit opposite at the table, and—and—it
-would save me money as against the restaurant,” he added lamely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll consult my manager,” returned his housekeeper with a twinkle.
-</p>
-<p>
-The gist of her consultation with the Bonnie Lassie bore upon the point as
-to whether Our Square, which was already adopting her since she had rented
-a little room there, would regard the new basis as proper.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That old thing!” said the arbitress of destinies scornfully. “He's a
-hundred years old, and he'll be two hundred, I'm afraid,” she added
-ruefully, “before I get that check out of him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Molly looked dubious. “I'm not sure he's so old,” she said. “And I'm sure
-he's not so mean as people think him. But I do need the money.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Behold, then, Mrs. Molly Dunstan, housekeeper, seated opposite Miles
-Morse, the Meanest Man in Our Square, with a coffee apparatus, a toaster,
-and a little centerpiece bright with flowers, both of them breakfasting in
-a dim and painful silence. But food is a great solvent of embarrassment,
-and breakfast coffee has powers beyond the spirit of grape, corn, or rye,
-to break down the barriers between human and human. So that, by the end of
-a week, Molly was chattering like a cheery bird with just enough
-instigation from her employer to keep her going. One subject was tacitly
-tabooed as a kill-joy; to wit, the devil as embodied by Mr. D. Wiggett and
-all his works.
-</p>
-<p>
-Not that Miles Morse had forgotten. Quite the contrary. But he was a
-calculating, careful, and meticulous person, prone to plan out every step
-before taking it. On a Monday morning some six weeks after Molly's
-installation as a breakfast fixture he spoke abruptly: “I've been up
-there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“To the place you thought you'd bought. It's a trap.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm out of it, at least with my life.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You are not the only one that's been caught. He's fleeced four others
-that I know of on that plant—all perfectly legal. I have a notion,”
- said Miles Morse with an effect of choosing his words, “that D. Wiggett
-& Co. was incorporated in hell, and the silent partner is his Satanic
-Majesty.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why did ye go up there?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Curiosity.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not kindness—just a little bit?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I wanted to see the work of a man meaner than the Meanest Man in Our
-Square,” he said with a sour grin.
-</p>
-<p>
-Molly Dunstan flushed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'd not be letting them call me that!” she declared. “And I'll not
-believe it true of ye.” This was, indeed, an advance upon the dim realm of
-personal relationship, but Molly's loyal Irish blood was up. “What ails ye
-at the world, at all!” she demanded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll tell you since you ask,” he replied defiantly. “I'm getting even
-with it for treating me like a dog.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So that's it.” There was a pause. “Would ye tell me about it!” she asked
-shyly.
-</p>
-<p>
-Much to his astonishment, Miles Morse discovered that he wanted to tell
-her about it. Quite to his chagrin, he found that it didn't seem a very
-convincing indictment, when he tried to formulate it. However, he did his
-best.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A man that I thought my friend cheated me out of the first ten thousand
-dollars that I made.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Whish! Ye made more, didn't ye?” she replied calmly. “I wouldn't be
-hating the world for that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then there was a woman,” he said with more difficulty. “I thought—she
-made me believe she cared for me. I was young. She got me into a fake
-stock proposition with some confederates, and they fleeced me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Whoof!” Molly blew an imaginary thistledown from her dainty fingers. “She
-was a light thing.'T was your bank account she hurt, not your heart.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Suddenly Miles Morse realized that this was so. It wasn't wholly pleasant,
-however, to have his cherished grudges thus lightly dismissed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There's nothing else worth speaking of,” he said, a bit sullenly, “except
-a bit of boy's silliness that you'd laugh at.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Tell it to me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It was when I was seven years old and we lived in the country. My father
-was a hard sort of man; he saw no sense in play or such nonsense, and when
-Fourth of July came he'd give me no fireworks nor let me draw any of my
-little money out of the bank. All the other boys had firecrackers but me.
-So I got a spool and filled it with sand and put a bit of string in it and
-I lighted the end. When it didn't go off I ran away and hid and felt
-pretty bad. I've always laid that up against things. Foolish, isn't it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The little woman opposite lifted eyes which had grown suddenly bright and
-soft with a disturbing hint of tears. “Ye poor lamb!” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tut-tut!” gruffly retorted the Meanest Man in Our Square, who had never
-before been called a poor lamb. He spoke without conviction.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But that shouldn't make ye hate the world,” argued Molly earnestly. “It
-should only make ye hate what's mean and unfair in the world.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, there's D. Wiggett,” replied the other hopefully. “I think I could
-learn to hate him. In fact, I think I'll make a trial of it by calling on
-him to-day.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, don't do that,” she implored tremulously. “He'll do ye harm. He's a
-terrible man, and twice the size of ye!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“This will be a strictly peaceable errand,” he averred, meaning what he
-said.
-</p>
-<p>
-By no means reassured, Molly Dunstan made her way, at the hour when she
-thought that her employer would call upon D. Wiggett & Co., to a spot
-in St. Mark's Square which gave her a good view of the real-estate office.
-After an hour's wait, devoted to the most dismal forebodings, she saw her
-employer stride around the corner and enter the door. Had she actually
-summoned the nerve to interpose, as she had vaguely designed to do, there
-was no time. Her brief and alarmed glimpse of Miles Morse had oppressed
-her with a quality hitherto unknown in him. He was clad in his accustomed
-neat and complete black, even to the black string tie. His big blue
-glasses were set as solemnly level as usual upon his ample nose. His spare
-figure was held stiffly erect, in its characteristic attitude. But there
-was something about the way he walked which suggested an arrow going to
-keep an important engagement with a bull's-eye.
-</p>
-<p>
-Three minutes later Mr. Miles Morse emerged.
-</p>
-<p>
-He emerged by force and arms; a great deal of the former and a large
-number of the latter. To the terrified watcher there seemed to be at least
-half a dozen tangled persons engaged in the eviction of Mr. Morse, of whom
-D. Wiggett was not one. Having propelled the unwelcome guest out upon the
-stoop, the persons withdrew in pell-mell haste, and the sound of a door
-being violently barred after them eloquently testified to their distaste
-for any more of Mr. Morse's society. That gentleman descended the steps as
-one who walks upon the clouds, albeit with a considerable limp.
-</p>
-<p>
-Molly ran to meet him. Five yards away she stopped dead, lifting dismayed
-hands to heaven. Mr. Morse was a strange and moving sight. A small stream
-of blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth, which was expanded in
-an astounding and joyous smile. His sober black string necktie was
-festooned over his left ear. Half of his large, solemn blue spectacles was
-jammed down his neck inside a dislocated collar; the other half presented
-a scandalous and sightless appearance, having lost its lens. His coat was
-split in three places and torn in one. His hat simply was not; it could be
-identified as a hat solely from the circumstance that it was jammed
-inextricably down upon his head. From his right cheek bone there had
-already sprouted a “hickey” fit to hang a bucket on. But these were minor
-injuries compared to the condition of Mr. Morse's hands. Bruised and cut,
-scarified, scalped, and swelling, the “grand pair of hands” which Terry
-the Cop so admired, testified unmistakably to having come into violent and
-repeated contact with some heavy and hard object. Horror-stricken, Molly
-turned her eyes from them to the real-estate office of D. Wiggett &
-Co. A front window flew up. The countenance of D. Wiggett appeared
-therein, and Molly at once identified it as the heavy and hard object to
-which her employer's manual plight was due. The countenance opened,
-somewhat slantwise, and sent forth a gasping and melancholy bellow:
-“Police!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Without a word, Molly seized one of the battered hands and ran. Perforce,
-her employer ran with her. A taxi was prowling up Second Avenue. Mollie
-hailed it.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the trip Mr. Miles Morse exhibited silent but alarming symptoms.
-Arrived at home, he flatly refused to enter. “Air and space,” he said,
-were his special and immediate needs. He made his way to the most secluded
-bench in the park, followed by his dismayed housekeeper, sat down, and
-began to chuckle. The chuckle grew into a laugh, the laugh into a series
-of chokes, the chokes into a protracted convulsion of mirth. When at
-length it had passed, leaving him spent and gasping, Molly Dunstan spoke
-seriously to him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Are ye finished?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Have ye been drinking?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I have not.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What did ye do to him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I did everything,” said Mr. Miles Morse with a long reminiscent sigh of
-utter satisfaction, “but bite him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ye told me,” accused Molly with heaving bosom, “that it would be a
-strictly peaceable errand.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So it would,” replied the other calmly, “if he hadn't said something
-about you.” Molly's brown eyes widened and brightened with amazement. Her
-lips parted. “About me!” she said. Then she committed what the lawyers
-call a non sequitur. “Mother of all the Saints!” cried Molly. “How old are
-ye?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Thirty-seven years and four months,” replied the Meanest Man in Our
-Square gravely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And me thinking—” He never found out what she was thinking, for she
-broke off abruptly, and said: “Clap a bit of raw beef to that cheek,” and
-vanished from his sight.
-</p>
-<p>
-No Molly appeared for breakfast in the morning. In her stead arrived a
-court officer with a warrant in which the term “feloniously” played a
-conspicuous and dispiriting part. At court Miles Morse, prisoner, found a
-delegation from Our Square awaiting him, including Molly, Cyrus the Gaunt,
-the Bonnie Lassie, Terry the Cop, and Inky Mike, the tipster disguised in
-a clean collar and taking copious notes with an absorbed and ferocious
-expression, with a view to daunting wrongdoers by the prospective fierce
-white light of the Press. This was part of the Bonnie Lassie's strategy.
-So also was the presence of Merrivale, the young lawyer of the Legal Aid
-branch, for the Bonnie Lassie had correctly guessed that the accused would
-disdain to spend money on a lawyer. As he awaited his turn at the bar of
-judgment (before Wolf Tone Hanrahan, the Human Judge, his friends remarked
-with satisfaction) Terry the Cop caught sight of his damaged knuckles. “I
-always said he had a grand pair of hands,” murmured Terry to the Bonnie
-Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And here they are in court, where you said they were at their best,” she
-commented.
-</p>
-<p>
-An expression of bewilderment gave place to a grin on Terry's handsome
-face. “<i>The</i> court,” I said, “the hand-ball court at the Y. M. C. A.
-He packs a wallop in either hand'ud kill a bull.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then the plaintiff came in, and there was no further need of explanations.
-</p>
-<p>
-D. Wiggett was a horrid sight. He would have been a horrider sight if he
-hadn't been almost totally obscured by bandages. The gist of his testimony
-was comprised in the frequently repeated word “murder.” The accused put in
-no defense. In the Human Judge's eye were doubt and indecision. Obviously
-there was something behind this case. As he hesitated, the Legal Aid
-lawyer came forward with the light-pink document of D. Wiggett & Co.,
-and handed it to the judge with a few words. D. Wiggett's lawyer entered
-vehement objections. Stilling his protests with a waving hand, Magistrate
-Hanrahan read the “Agreement to Sell.” Then he called for Mrs. Molly
-Dunstan. More objections. Overruled. At the conclusion of Molly's
-testimony he turned to the protesting lawyer. “Did ye drah up this
-dockyment?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I did, your honor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's as full of holes as the witch's cullender. Y'otta be disbarred fer
-it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The lawyer hastily receded. The remains of D. Wiggett were led forward to
-listen to a few brief but pointed dicta by the court, while Inky Mike
-(under promptings) edged up and took copious notes in a book such as no
-reporter ever carried except upon the stage. At the end of the ordeal, D.
-Wiggett, in broken and terrified accents, disclosed that his motives were
-of spotless purity, that his document was a harmless joke, and that Mrs.
-Dunstan could have the place and a deed thereto if she'd just make the
-payments.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll guarantee that,” put in Cyrus the Gaunt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And I'll see that she gets work to keep going on,” added the Bonnie
-Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-Whereupon both D. Wiggett, the party of the first part (in the document)
-and Mrs. M. Dunstan, the party of the second part, dissolved in tears,
-though for very different reasons. The court then proceeded to the
-sentence of the defendant. Judgment was delivered in two mediums;
-full-voiced for the proper judicial process, and sotto voice for the
-benefit of those most concerned.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Prisoner at the Bar-r-r: Ye have brootally assaulted a peaceful citizen (<i>not
-more than half-agin as big as yerself</i>). Ye have bate him to a poolp (<i>an'
-him but a scant tin years younger, an with a repitation for bein' a
-roughneck—with women and childer</i>). Ye have haff murdered him (<i>an'
-take shame to yerself ye didn't do th' other haff</i>). Because of yer
-youth an' inexperience (<i>I mane yer age an the wallop ye carry</i>) I
-will let ye off light with a fine of fifty dollars (an if ye'll sind me
-word when yer goin' to operate again I'll remit the fine). Nixt Ca-ase!”
- </p>
-<p>
-For a culprit who had got off easy, Mr. Miles Morse presented far from a
-cheerful appearance when Molly Dunstan presented herself on the following
-morning. Molly exhibited strange and inexplicable symptoms, flushing and
-paling, finding no place for her regard to rest, until she discovered that
-Miles Morse was much worse confused than herself. Thereupon, after the
-manner of women, she became quite composed and easy. Through breakfast he
-was very silent. After lingering over his coffee to an unwonted degree, he
-finally arose, with an air of great determination, said “Well” in what was
-meant to be a businesslike tone, walked briskly to the door, then turned
-and stood in the most awkward unease.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The house won't be like a home without you,” said he desolately.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Won't it?” said Molly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You'll be going out to your own place very soon now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Suppose I don't want to.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's all arranged. I've been talking to Mr. and Mrs. Staten.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Have ye now!” said Molly with a mutinous uptilt of the chin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She's arranged for you to get your own kind of work out there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I like my own job here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's all arranged,” said Miles Morse with dismal iteration.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Does that mean I'm discharged?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“If you want to put it that way.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And I'm to go up there to the country—alone—and entertain my
-California privet hedge?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Her little foot tapped the ground as it had on the unforgettable occasion
-of that first interview. The Meanest Man in Our Square winced. Molly saw
-it, and her eyes grew, tender, but her tone was still uncompromising.
-“What am I discharged for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“For not being old enough to be your housekeeper?” She looked the merest
-wisp of a girl with her color coming and going as she spoke.
-</p>
-<p>
-He muttered something undistinguish-able.
-</p>
-<p>
-“For not being ugly enough?” And she contrived to look bewilderingly
-pretty.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why do you plague me, Molly?” he burst out.
-</p>
-<p>
-She pointed a finger at his chin. “I dare ye, Miles Morse,” she said, her
-voice fluttering in her throat, for all her audacious words; “I dare ye to
-discharge me. For all ye're called the Meanest Man in Our Square, ye
-wouldn't be that mean as to send me away from ye!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And, with the finger still leveled, she walked' straight to him and was
-caught and held close to the sober and respectable black coat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'd never dared have asked you, Molly,” said Miles Morse in the voice of
-one who walks ecstatic amid the wonders of a dream.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't I know that!” she retorted. And then, with a quiver: “Oh, Miles,
-it's I will make it up to you for that sand-and-spool firecracker!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Opening her morning mail on the following day, the Bonnie Lassie (for
-whose schemes and stratagems the stars in their courses fight) gave a
-little cry and let a bit of paper slip through her fingers. Quickly
-retrieving it, she turned it over to Cyrus the Gaunt. It was the promised
-check of Mr. Miles Morse to the Legal Aid Society. Between the words “ten”
- and “dollars” was a caret, and, above, the added word “hundred” with an
-indorsement. The signature had also undergone an addendum. It now read:
-“Miles Morse, per Mrs. M. M. M.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Meanest Man in Our Square had abdicated.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-PAULA OF THE HOUSETOP
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HAT first struck you about the house was that it frowned. Not angrily,
-but with a kind of dull scorn. Perhaps this was its way of emphasizing its
-superior aloofness from the other houses in Our Square which had gone down
-in the social scale while it maintained its aristocracy untainted. It was
-squat and broad and drab, like the first Varick who had built it, and the
-succeeding Varicks who had inherited and dwelt in it even to the sixth and
-seventh generations. Being numbered 13, it would naturally have a sinister
-repute; and this was not improved by the two suicides which had marked its
-occupancy; suicides not of despair or remorse or fury, but of cold, grim
-disgust. Then there was the episode of old Vernam Varick, who dabbled in
-diabolical mixtures in his secret room on the third floor front under the
-tutelage of no less an instructor than the Devil, and, having quarreled
-with Old Nick over a moot point in alchemy, chased him out of the window
-and followed, himself, to the accompaniment of a loud and sulphurous
-detonation. What became of His Satanic Majesty has never been properly
-determined, but old Ver-nam arrived upon the pavement in due time,
-crumpled up, and thereafter circulated in a wheeled chair, sniffing about
-after real-estate investments to pass the time. He it was whose purchases
-of uptown property (when anything above Forty-second Street was “uptown”)
-severely reprehended by the rest of the clan, subsequently reestablished
-the Varick fortunes, piling up riches beyond the imagination of Our
-Square. Except that he had more imagination, he was a pattern of all the
-Varicks, each broad and squat of architecture like the house they dwelt
-in; each, if possible, more crabbed and pigheaded and stupidly haughty
-than his predecessor. In time, his son, heritor of the qualities of the
-breed, grew up and married. And then the dull generations burst into
-flower in Paula Varick. So the Varicks put her in a cage.
-</p>
-<p>
-Old Vernam built the cage out of gas pipe and thick-meshed wire and
-established it on the roof. From my front window, looking diagonally
-across Our Square, I command a view of it. How well I remember the day
-that little Paula was put into it! A black-and-white-banded nurse led her
-in by the hand, held up an admonitory finger for half a minute of
-directions, and disappeared down the scuttle door, leaving her alone in a
-remote world. One might have expected the little girl to cry. She didn't.
-She set about playing, like a happy little squirrel. Presently there
-floated across the tree-tops a strange and alien sound for that grim
-mansion to be making—a sweet, light, joyous, childish piping. The
-little Paula was singing.
-</p>
-<p>
-Her song disturbed young Carlo and me at our lesson. Carlo was my one
-educational luxury. An assistant professor of a forgotten branch of
-learning, already in middle age, as I was then, who ekes out his income by
-tutoring, cannot well afford to take pupils for love. But Carlo's father
-had paid in the beginning, and, when he could no longer pay, the boy's
-vivid, leaping imagination and his passionate love for all that was fine
-and true in reading had captivated me. I could not let him go. So we kept
-up the lessons, and ranged the field of the classics, Greek and Latin,
-English, French, and German, together. He was to be a poet, I foresaw, or
-perhaps a dramatist, and I believe I bragged of him unconscionably to my
-associates. Well, they are kindly souls and have forborne to taunt the
-prophet! Carlo's father was a Northern Italian, the second son of a noble
-family, who quarreled with the head of the clan and came to this country
-and a top floor in Our Square to paint masterpieces, and subsequently died
-at three o'clock one winter morning, pressing another man's coat.
-MacLachan the Tailor, then just starting his Home of Fashion, had given
-him the work to save the pair from being evicted, after their money gave
-out. At the last the elder Trentano took to drink. Then Carlo got jobs as
-a model, for he was strong and beautiful like a young woods creature. But
-he let nothing interfere with our lessons.
-</p>
-<p>
-Paula, the happy singer, did interfere, however. From time to time my
-pupil's eyes wandered from his book to fix themselves with a puzzled gaze
-on the roof beyond the tree-tops. Curiosity proved too much for him at
-length.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dominie!” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why do they put the little girl in a cage?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“To keep her from falling off the roof.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why do they put her on the roof?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“To play.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why doesn't she play in Our Square?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She is not allowed to play with the children in Our Square.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Carlo pondered this. A theory born of temporary local conditions occurred
-to him. “Has she got measles?”
- </p>
-<p>
-This was an easy way out. To enlighten Carlo as to the reasons why the
-descendant of all the Varicks was not permitted to take part in the
-degenerated social activities of Our Square, would be to undermine my
-carefully instilled doctrine of the blessings of democracy where all are
-free and equal. Therefore with mendacious, though worthy, intent I
-answered:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not measles, exactly.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” said Carlo. “She must get lonesome.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Doubtless.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The cheery singing had ceased now, and the child was busy with some other
-concern. Carlo's sharper vision identified it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She's setting a tea-table.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is she?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And nobody will come to tea at it, will they?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Perhaps her dolls.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't see any dolls.” His lustrous eyes brooded on the lonely little
-hostess. “Dominie, do you think she'd like it if I came?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Are you thinking of storming the house?” I asked, amused.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's our roof there.” He pointed to a shabby structure overtopping the
-squat Varick domicile by some ten feet, and separated from it by a well,
-four or five feet broad. “I could lean over and speak to her, couldn't I?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I hardly think her family would approve.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Her family are <i>mean</i>,” declared Carlo heatedly, “to shut her up in
-a cage.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Come back from the realms of romance,” I bade him sternly, “and attend to
-the lesson.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Before it was over the black-and-white-banded nurse had retrieved her
-charge and taken her below.
-</p>
-<p>
-Three days later I beheld two small figures on the Varick roof. One was
-inside the cage; one outside. They appeared to be engaged in amicable
-discourse. The caged figure was little Paula. As to the free one, I could
-scarcely believe my eyes which tried to assure me that it was Carlo
-Trentano. It had come about in this way: For two days rain had kept the
-little prisoner from the roof. She was swaying to and fro on a
-rocking-horse, crooning to herself, and this was the burden of her
-improvised chant:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“I wi-ish I had some one to play-ay-ay wif!
-Oh, I wi-ish I had some one to play-ay-ay wif!
-Oh, I wi-ish I had somebuddy to play-ay wif!
-I don't like to play all alone!”
- </pre>
-<p>
-Perhaps she had sung it over ten or twelve times when her wish
-materialized from behind the broad chimney at the rear. She heard his
-footfall first and then her sweet, wondering eyes beheld the visitor, a
-shabby, clean, and marvelous boy, some years her elder and about twice her
-size. Nevertheless, with the superiority of sex she immediately addressed
-him as “Little Boy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Little Boy, where did you come from?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Up there,” replied her caller, pointing.
-</p>
-<p>
-The caged one turned her solemn regard “up there” and saw a great, white,
-softly rolling mass floating in a sky of azure.
-</p>
-<p>
-“From that?” she inquired.
-</p>
-<p>
-Carlo considered the cloud and was pleased with it as a source. “Yes,” he
-said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It looks soft and sleepy,” she observed, after a more critical
-consideration.
-</p>
-<p>
-They contemplated each other in a silence which threatened to become a
-deadlock, when he broke it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you like gum?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's gum?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Chewing-gum, of course.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't know what that is.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He stared at her in utter incredulity. “You honestly never chewed gum?” A
-shake of the tawny head answered him. “Nor ate an all-day sucker?” Another
-shake. “Nor played marbles?” Still another mute denial. “Nor flew kites,
-nor pegged the cat, nor rollered on the asphalt, nor spun tops?” The
-questions came too fast for detailed answer, but the child's face grew
-more and more dismal as she was thus led, step by step, to confront a
-wasted life. Her inquisitor drew a long breath. “What did they put you in
-for?” he asked. “In where?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In that cage.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“To play.” Her inventiveness rose in arms to offset the recondite and
-mysterious joys which he had enumerated, and with it her spirits. “I play
-I'm a wild animal. Gr-rr-rr-rr! If I could get out I'd eat you up, Little
-Boy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He played up to her. “I know what you are. You're a tiger. A big stripy
-tiger.
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-'Tiger! Tiger! burning bright—
-In the forests of the night!'”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Say some more,” she demanded imperiously. “I like poetry.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's all I remember. I'll tell you; I'll be a keeper, and I'll come to
-the cage to feed you.” He felt in his pocket and produced a fresh stick of
-gum which he thrust through the wire meshes. Being a realist, Paula
-promptly bit him on the finger.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ow!” he exclaimed and dropped the gum. She pounced upon it, growling
-ferociously. “You play awfully hard, don't you?” he observed, caressing
-the mark of a sharp little tooth.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You have to when you don't have anybody but yourself to play with, or it
-isn't real,” replied the child with unconscious pathos. “Now I'm going to
-eat this all up!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't swallow it,” he warned. “You just chew it. It's gum.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Um-m-m!” mumbled the Tiger appreciatively. “I like it. I like you. When
-do you have to go back to your cloud?” She looked up apprehensively at
-that fleecy domicile which was moving rapidly away.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, any time. No, I'll tell you,” he added confidentially; “I didn't
-really come from the cloud. I came from that roof up there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Down a rope.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did you? I like that almost as well. Where did you get the rope?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It was over the fire escape. I live on the top floor there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“S'posen you'd fall right down between the two houses,” surmised the
-little Tiger.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then I'd be killed.” This, as a matter of fact, was highly probable. But
-Carlo, like most of the highland Italians, was strong, supple, and daring;
-ingenious, too, for he had made loops in his rope to help him climb up
-again.
-</p>
-<p>
-Paula the Tiger was now considering cognate matters with appropriate
-gravity. “I think I'd rather have you live in the cloud,” she decided.
-“Angels live in clouds. If you 're an angel, you won't fall and get
-killed,” she continued, finding a kindly refuge in theology. “I'd rather
-have you an angel.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“All right. I'll be an angel,” he agreed. “Nurse doesn't let me play with
-little boys and girls. Maybe she wouldn't let me play with an angel
-either. I think you'd better come when nurse isn't here. When will you
-come again, Angel?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“To-morrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Must I give back the nice gum?” she asked anxiously.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No. But you'd better leave it in your cage. Grown-ups don't like gum
-around,” he instructed her with precocious worldly wisdom.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thank you, Angel. Good-bye, Angel”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Good-bye, little girl.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Gr-rr-rr-rr!” The growl was a savage reminder of the dramatic
-proprieties.
-</p>
-<p>
-Carlo was quick of apprehension. “Good-bye, Tiger,” he amended. And the
-Tiger purred.
-</p>
-<p>
-Often thereafter I saw them, at the hour when the banded nurse took her
-outing, playing together on opposite sides of the barrier. Many, various,
-and ingenious were the diversions which Carlo the free found to amuse the
-captivity of Paula the caged. There were delightful things to be contrived
-out of knotted strings, in which Carlo was of incomparable skill. He
-invented a game of marbles which could be played by opponents on different
-sides of a twelve-foot steel mesh; an abstruse pastime, but apparently
-interesting, since it developed into an almost daily contest in which, to
-judge from the joyous prancings about the cage at the conclusion, she was
-invariably allowed to win. Also, there were gifts of candy shared, and the
-delights of the chase with a bean-shooter for weapon and the indignant
-sparrows for quarry, and instructions in the principles of kinetic stasis
-as exemplified by the rotary or spinning top. All of which was doubtless
-very wicked and deceitful and clandestine, and, being so, should have been
-stopped by a word from me before disaster could come. For, any day, Carlo
-might slip from that swaying rope and break his precious neck. Or the
-Varicks might learn of what was going on above their heads, and banish the
-little Tiger from her happy cage, or perhaps even wholly from the
-contaminated atmosphere of Our Square. This last would have been a blow to
-me, for she also was my pupil, and a profitable one, since her father,
-Putnam Varick, a dry, snuffy, stern, lethargic, ill-natured, liverish man,
-paid me liberally to come five times a week and give her a grounding in
-Latin and French. But I could not find it in my heart to deprive my little
-Paula of her one taste of real childhood.
-</p>
-<p>
-Discovery was, of course, inevitable. One day Paula came into the dim and
-solemn Varick library where lessons were conducted with her big, wistful,
-gray eyes all wet and wincing, and her queer, sprightly little face like a
-mask of grief. Behind her came nurse with the expression of a hanging
-judge. The culprit, it appeared, had been found in the possession of
-contraband goods—to wit, a wad of much-chewed gum. Worse, it had
-been discovered in a most inappropriate place.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I puh-hut it in my huh-huh-hair,” wept the sorrowful little Tiger, “and
-it stu-huh-huck.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/364.jpg" alt="I Puh-hut It in My Huh-huh-hair 364 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-“She won't tell me where she got it,” said nurse.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I did. I to-hold you an angel gave it to me,” declared the Tiger, clinging
-with pathetic resolution to her drama of the roof.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nurse sniffed. Her theological imagination did not extend to heavenly
-visitors who dispensed that kind of manna. It was <i>her</i> opinion for
-what it was worth (sniff) that somebody had been throwing things (sniff)
-on the roof. Next time it might be (sniff) poison. Nurse <i>did</i> have
-an imagination of a kind.
-</p>
-<p>
-It wasn't poison next time. It was a kite. Carlo had flown it from his own
-roof and had brought the twine down in his teeth, and had passed the ball
-through the netting to the Tiger. Oh, the thrill of ecstasy running up her
-arm, to spread and glow on live wires through every nerve, as she felt for
-the first time the tug and tremor of the beautiful, soaring, captive thing
-swaying far, far above her, higher than the highest roof-top she could
-see, higher than the biggest mountain in her geography, as high as the
-vanished cloud whence the beneficent angel of her happy drama had
-descended to brighten a hitherto correct and humdrum existence. Alas for
-angels' visits! From a bench in Our Square, nurse saw the aerial messenger
-and traced the string to the Varick roof. She hurried home and upstairs to
-the roof-top a good twenty minutes before her scheduled return.
-</p>
-<p>
-But the scuttle stuck, and Carlo's quick ear, catching the sound, warned
-him. With a quick word to his playfellow, he dodged behind the chimney and
-began to climb the looped rope. There was a little space in which the
-climber always emerged above the chimney into the view of the child in the
-cage before he surmounted the coping of the upper roof. Paula's eyes were
-fixed upon this point. The nurse's glance followed hers. Carlo appeared,
-climbing in hot haste. He missed one of the loops. There was a muffled
-cry. His body turned, swayed, and plunged down into the fifty-foot abyss
-between the two buildings. The nurse, scared out of her senses, rushed
-down the scuttle-way and hid in her room, accusing herself of being an
-involuntary murderess, while poor Paula tore and battered with her tender
-fingers at the cruel iron meshes in a passion of grief and despair, long
-after nurse had disappeared.
-</p>
-<p>
-A low call from above stopped her. Her angel leaned over the roof.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Has she gone?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-The child nodded in silent terror and wonder. He came down the rope
-swiftly and steadily. When he approached the cage, she saw that he was
-bleeding from a gash above his temple.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I struck on a clothesline,” he said. “It tipped me into a balcony. Just
-below your roof. Lucky!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I thought you were killed,” she whispered. “Oh, Angel, I thought you were
-dead.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not hurt a bit,” he averred valiantly. “Did she see me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then they won't let me come any more.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“They'll take me away,” wailed the Tiger.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was a pause. “I'll be sorry,” said the boy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So'll I.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll be aw'f'ly sorry,” said the boy painfully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So'll I.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll come and find you when I'm grown up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Will you?” she cried eagerly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Cross my heart.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And I'll keep your gum forevern—evern—ever,” she promised
-solemnly. “I've got a piece yet. Hidden. Listen. Somebody's coming!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Good-bye, Tiger,” said the boy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Good-bye, Angel,” said the girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-She put her trembling little lips against the cold mesh of the wires. For
-a moment he hesitated in boyish shamefacedness. Then he bent over to her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll never forget you—never,” said the free little boy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nor I,” said the caged little girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-He ran and climbed: climbed out of her sight and out of her life. For the
-scandalized Varicks took her from that desecrated roof to the country, and
-when they came back Carlo's father was dead, and Carlo left with very
-little visible means of support. So they passed on their sundered ways. He
-went about his business of the fight for existence and his place in the
-world. She went about her business in a life of developing sunshine and
-beauty, herself the developing embodiment of both. The cage stood on the
-roof, lifeless, grim, and sad.
-</p>
-<p>
-Outwardly Our Square changes little. Inwardly it suffers from the
-depredations of the years and an encroaching populace. No more significant
-evidence of its failing fortunes could be adduced than the sale of the
-Varick mansion. It was purchased by a Swedish labor contractor, who sold
-it to a professional gambler, who in turn leased it to a boarding-house
-keeper, and that sinister third-floor front wherefrom Ver-nam Varick had
-so vehemently ousted his Satanic mentor came to be occupied (to what base
-uses!) by a piano-tuner. The cage of the wistful Tiger was found
-convenient for the week's wash.
-</p>
-<p>
-As for the Varicks, Our Square knew them no more. The fussy, fubsy,
-mean-tempered father of Paula became financially venturous (for a Varick),
-dipped extensively into water-rights and power-plants in the Southwest,
-and, having thus further improved the fortune handed down to him by Vernam
-the Devil-Chaser, built himself a smugly splendid palace on the Park,
-wherein to house Paula.
-</p>
-<p>
-This, indeed, was no cage. For the tiny captive of the housetop had grown
-beyond all human captivity; had become such a woman as the great dreamers
-and poets enshrine in the sunlit mist of verse. It is not for a simple,
-old pedagogue who had loved the child to describe the woman. Her face is
-the common property of the public, like a ruling monarch's, so often has
-it appeared in the Sunday papers, for at twenty-three she was one of the
-reigning beauties of a city of lovely women. What no camera could catch or
-painter fix was the joyous and joy-giving quality of her personality. It
-was as if arrears of happiness from her cramped and denied childhood had
-returned upon her tenfold to be scattered in largess wherever she went. A
-great painter who had painted a great portrait of her, which delighted
-every one but himself, had convicted himself of failure because, he said,
-while he had caught the flowerlike delicacy and the sunlike radiance and
-the touch of Varick imperiousness in the background of the face, he had
-failed to fix the charm that made her different and more lovely than a
-dozen other equally lovely women (he was a dealer in paradox, that great
-painter); the look of quiet, unconscious, waiting deep in the wide, gray
-eyes. And a great poet, who was also of her adorers, said that was why she
-had not married. And a great cynic whose cynicism had fallen before her
-said that was why she never would marry unless a star came down from the
-heavens to claim her.
-</p>
-<p>
-About the time of the height of her triumphs, Cyrus the Gaunt came to Our
-Square to run the ten thousand-pound steam roller at night and sit for
-sculpture by day, and eventually marry the Bonnie Lassie and go to live in
-the little, quaint, old friendly house with the hospitable door, almost
-opposite the Varick mansion. Because Cyrus the Gaunt's forbears had owned
-Our Square when it was the Staten Farm and before the first Varick had
-arrived upon the scene, Mr. Putnam Varick was willing enough that his
-daughter should go to see Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Staten, albeit he had heard
-with misgivings that some of their dinners were laxly Bohemian, combining,
-as they did, millionaires, bishops, and diplomats with musicians,
-explorers, reformers, and other anarchists. That is how Paula Varick came
-back into Our Square after fifteen years of absence and change.
-</p>
-<p>
-Another revenant came back about that time, along the dimly blazed trails
-of fate. As I was sunning myself on my favorite bench, one afternoon, I
-felt two sinewy hands on my shoulders, and turned to face a big, smiling
-stranger. There was something in him that told at first sight of the
-making of the man; told that the best life of the open had formed him and
-the best life of the cities had finished him. There was a certain gravity
-and stability about his face, but the lips were mobile as a boy's and a
-shining mirthfulness gleamed from the straight-looking black eyes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dominie!” he said. Then, at my astonished look: “I haven't made a
-mistake, have I?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not in the title at least,” I said.
-</p>
-<p>
-He shook me in his iron grip. “Call on your memory. It's ungrateful to
-forget a man who—who owes you money,” he laughed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That doesn't help me,” I said, probing the vivid face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Have I changed so, where nothing else has changed?” he said, looking
-around—“except that they've put a fire escape outside the window
-where I used to sleep.” I followed his glance, and memory flashed its
-belated recognition: “Carlo Trentano!” He gave me another powerful,
-affectionate shake. It was like being petted by a lion. “No longer,” he
-said. “That's buried with—with <i>him</i>.” He looked again toward
-the high-roofed house where his father had died. “I'm all American now,
-Charles Trent, at your service.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where have I heard that name?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Seen it in the papers probably. They've had their fun with me in the
-Senate Committee hearings.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah! So you're the Trent who's been making all the trouble for the
-water-power people in the Southwest! And I thought that wonderful boy's
-imagination of yours was going to make a poet of you, or at least a
-dramatist.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It made me see visions,” he explained with gravity—“visions that
-had to be expressed in facts. After I had worked my way through college, I
-went out to the desert country. And I saw visions of water brought from
-the mountains. What I saw I made other people see. Now there are growing
-cities and fertile farms where there used to be only dry sand and my
-imagination. Isn't that poetry, dominie,—and drama?”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was all said quite simply, and without brag, as a man would explain the
-working of some power outside of himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But where did you get the money?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“People brought it to me. The people of the dry country first. Afterward
-it came in from all over, much of it from New York; and when I needed more
-for my biggest projects I went to Europe and raised it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You know what they say of you now? That you're advocating government
-control because you've got all you can get, and wish to shut out the
-others.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm offering to put my companies on the same terms with the others,” he
-said impatiently. “All I demand is that eventually, when the development
-concerns have made their fair profit, the rights should revert to the
-people. So I'm an anarchist,” he laughed. “And I've come here to preach my
-anarchy in the face of Wall Street.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And fifteen years ago you were a boy of—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sh-h-h-h,” he warned with mock seriousness. “I pass for thirty-five. It's
-a studied solemnity of demeanor that does the trick. You should see me at
-a board meeting! This is holiday.” He seized and hugged me until my old
-ribs cracked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yet you say you're all American,” I protested, extricating myself.
-“You'll be a Latin till the day you die.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not enough to impair my business sense. Which reminds me. You've got a
-small, accumulated interest in one of my early projects. It isn't much,—just
-the debt for my lessons,—but it pays a twenty-five per cent
-dividend. Now, dominie, I don't wish to hear any protests. What do you
-know about business matters?” He stretched himself like a big, lithe
-animal and took another comprehensive glance about Our Square. “Who's
-left?” he asked. “Any one I knew?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“MacLachan the Tailor. And Thomsen of the Élite Restaurant. Calder the
-artist is dead. And do you remember—” I cut myself short, on second
-thought, of mentioning Paula Varick. A better idea had come to me. The
-Bonnie Lassie loves and loves forever the friend who will bring to her
-house any one genuinely new and interesting, provided only that he be
-presentable. Carlo, otherwise Charles Trent, was all three in an eminent
-degree. “Would you care to dine at the pleasantest house in Our Square?” I
-amended.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If I have the time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Make the time,” I advised. “And I'll see if I can make the place. It'll
-be Wednesday evening.” For the Bonnie Lassie was giving one of her little
-dinners then, and I knew that Paula Varick was to be there.
-</p>
-<p>
-Carlo agreed, gave me his address at a golden caravansary, and left to
-call on MacLachan and Thomsen. I sought out the Bonnie Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Madam,” said I, “I am not coming to your dinner.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You are,” she retorted. “Paula Varick will be there. You'd crawl to San
-Francisco to see Paula.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's the very reason. I've got a substitute.” And I explained.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie, who is an inveterate romanticist, was delighted. “I'll
-have him take her in,” she said. “No, I can't do that. The new Ambassador
-to Spain is to take her in. He shall sit on her left.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“When you present him, introduce her as Miss Mumbleplum or something
-inarticulate and non-committal of that sort. She won't know his name, of
-course. Let's see if they'll discover.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And you accuse me of fixing up dramatic situations,” said the Bonnie
-Lassie scornfully, for she has never quite forgiven my comments upon her
-management of the affair between Ethel Bennington and the Little Red
-Doctor, which was so nearly ruined by the hard, prosaic fact of a
-toothache. “You're worse than an old maid. But you may come to the dinner
-just the same. I don't mind an extra man.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So I went to the dinner, and a very wonderful dinner it was, as all the
-dinners in the Bonnie Lassie's house are. Mr. Charles Trent was very much
-present, looking typically American with his severely correct clothes, and
-big, graceful figure, until you noticed his eyes, which weren't American
-at all, or anything else but individual. Miss Paula Varick was also very
-much present, looking—well, looking as only Paula can look, to the
-utter wreck and ruin of the peace of mankind's mind. In presenting Carlo
-to Miss Mumbleplum (as pre-arranged) the hostess gave them a lead by
-saying:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Trent can tell you all about your water-rights. He's a sort of magic
-lord of the dry desert.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A baron of sand and cactus,” said Trent, smiling. But the new Ambassador
-to Spain arrived just then, and nothing more was said.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the first opportunity afforded by the diplomat, Miss Varick turned to
-the guest on her left.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm a landed proprietor in your country,” she said. “I own ten whole
-shares of stock in a company of some sort.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then you're my fellow citizen,” he claimed. “Perhaps it's one of the
-companies I'm interested in.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She named it, and he was amused to learn that her little ownership was in
-the corporation which was fighting him and his plans most savagely. She
-did not mention that her father was a principal stockholder and an officer
-in that same corporation. Nor did Trent deem it necessary to define his
-position. He didn't wish to talk politics to this wonderful flower-woman
-next him. But he did wish, most determinedly, to keep those luminous eyes
-turned in his direction. What Charles Trent determinedly wished he usually
-got, and he achieved this particular end by talking so well that the
-fresh-bloomed diplomat on the farther side began presently to get fretful.
-As for Mr. Trent's right side, it mattered not a whit whether it knew what
-his left side was doing, for it was on his right that I sat. Carlo fell to
-telling Paula of the romance of the hunt for the treasure of water in a
-dry land—more thrilling to a pioneer of imagination than any search
-for gold or silver or copper because it meant something more basic than
-wealth: it meant life in a country which was dead. There were searches for
-lost canons and unmapped rivers; explorations of wild gorges where the
-adventurers in improvised boats shot down along thou-sand-foot-deep cracks
-in the earth toward unknown rapids, listening for the thunder of possible
-cataracts; and, out of all this rude peril, the growth of vast projects
-and the gathering in from far cities of dollars, pounds, francs, marks,
-and even roubles, that a desert land might flower and new cities arise.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What about your own hairbreadth 'scapes in the imminent, deadly
-thingumbob—I never can remember the whole of a quotation?” she
-inquired. “You're very modest about your own share. Tell me the narrowest
-escape you ever had.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He answered, thoughtfully: “Curiously enough, I fancy the narrowest escape
-I ever had was less than a block from here. I fell down between two
-houses.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The girl's eyes widened suddenly. “On Our Square?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. Except for the prosaic matter of the week's wash on a clothesline
-which shunted me off, I probably shouldn't be here to-day.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Trent,” said she slowly, “do you mind turning around this way?
-Farther. Thank you. Is that scar over your temple—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. I got it there. How could you know?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then recognition flashed between them. They laughed excitedly, like two
-children. To the scandal of the bewildered Ambassador's ears, they then
-entered upon the following incredible conversation:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Little Boy, where did you come from?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Up there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“From that cloud?” (The diplomat looking at the ceiling with pained
-amazement.)
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Let—me—see,” said the girl dreamily. “What comes next? We
-mustn't lose it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you like gum?” he supplied quickly. (The ambassadorial eyes began to
-protrude.)
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's gum?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Chewing-gum, of course. But alas! I haven't any with me,” lamented Carlo.
-“Then there was something about a tiger.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, yes! I'm a tiger in my cage. Gr-rr-rr-rr! If I could get out I'd eat
-you up, Little Boy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Of course!
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-'Tiger! tiger! burning bright—
-In the forests of the night!'”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Say some more. You couldn't remember it, though, could you? Can you
-remember it now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He leaned over to her the merest trifle:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“'What immortal hand and eye
-Framed thy wondrous symmetry?'”
- </pre>
-<p>
-he quoted (slightly altering the text for his own purposes) with a look so
-direct and an intonation so profound that Paula, with all her armored
-experience, felt herself growing pink.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then you brought me wonderful things to play with and a kite to fly and
-gum to chew,” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And you put it in your hair.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So I did. And they found it. But I didn't tell. I said an angel brought
-it to me. You remember? You were Angel.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And you were Tiger.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Now, I realize that diplomats of ambassadorial degree do not snort. But
-the eminent gentleman on Miss Varick's left delivered his emotions of
-what, in a lesser mortal, would have been dangerously near a snort, and
-thenceforward devoted his attention to his hostess exclusively, thereby
-seriously hampering her in her efforts to follow the progress of the
-reunion of old playmates.
-</p>
-<p>
-Dinner being over, the Bonnie Lassie took the pair into her studio to see
-her new series of unfinished bronzes, and, having got them there, obeyed
-an imperative (and purely imaginary) summons from without, and left them.
-Quite unwisely—for she had forgotten one important incident herself—the
-Tiger reproached the Angel with his failure to remember her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You promised,” she accused. “You said you'd never forget—never.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Now, a less ready wit than Carlo's might have retorted with the “ettu”
- argument, which would have been poor strategy. Carlo did better.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have forgotten nothing,” he said calmly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You forgot me. You didn't know me from—from any other tiger.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There never was any other tiger. There couldn't be. Also, I remember
-every episode of our last meeting when I promised never to forget. Do
-you?” Something significant in his tone caused the Tiger certain
-misgivings. She began to feel dimly that her accusation was unfortunate.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you?” persisted the Angel.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I remember the dreadful feeling of seeing you disappear, down into that
-hole. And your coming back with the blood trickling down your cheek. You
-were very brave.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And our parting. Do you remember? When you came close to the wire mesh,
-and lifted your face—Ah, I see you <i>do</i> remember,” he concluded
-quietly.
-</p>
-<p>
-For suddenly the blood had flown into Paula Varick's face, and she stood
-there, amazed, confused, thrilling with an alarm new to her womanhood, and
-wholly glorious. In a moment she had recovered her poise.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I remember that I had a true and loyal friend,” she said sweetly. “Have I
-still?” He bent and lifted her finger-tips to his lips. “For as long as
-you will command him,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-So it was assumed, without definite arrangement, that on his return from
-Washington they were to see each other, and so far had their thoughts
-wandered from the distant Southwestern desert that neither conceived the
-smallest misgivings as to the conflicting interests there of the Trent
-projects and the Varick interests. In the course of a day or two the
-Bonnie Lassie had the pair to tea, and afterward she and Cyrus the Gaunt
-and I stood at the front window, watching them as they crossed Our Square.
-They paused to look up at the cage on the housetop. The Bonnie Lassie
-spoke.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You remember Tarrant, the portrait-painter, bewailing himself over
-Paula?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Because he couldn't catch the look of unconscious waiting in her eyes?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. It's gone,” said the Bonnie Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is there something else in its place?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Wonder,” said the Bonnie Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-As for Carlo, there was no mistaking what had happened to him. He came to
-see me later, and tried hard not to talk of Paula Varick, but all the time
-his eyes kept wandering to the cage on the roof. Once he asked me whether
-I thought the Varick mansion could be bought. As for his affairs in
-Washington, I think he must have commuted while the Senate hearings were
-in progress, for there were few days when he wasn't in New York. By what
-devices he succeeded in being around Our Square when his playmate of other
-days came down to see the Bonnie Lassie, I do not know. Probably the
-Bonnie Lassie was in the conspiracy. It would be like her. All of which
-may have been going on for a fortnight when I stopped in at the quaint,
-little, nestly, old-fashioned house which radiates the happiness of Cyrus
-the Gaunt and the Bonnie Lassie all through Our Square and beyond, and
-found the sculptress hard at work in her studio. My particular purpose was
-to consult her about Orpheus the Greek and his pipings to his lost
-Eurydice. Before I could begin the Bonnie Lassie removed her finger from
-the eye of old Granny Glynn (in wet clay) and pointed it at me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Plotter!” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-By that I knew that something had gone wrong. “Tell me the worst,” I
-besought.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You did it,” she accused, still holding me up at the point of that pink
-and leveled digit.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Guilty!” I pleaded. “What did I do, when, how, and to whom?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You brought those two ex-infants together. And now look at the poor
-things!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Are they engaged?” I cried, in high hope.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Engaged! Have you seen the morning papers?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She waved a modeling tool at a heap of print in the corner and relieved
-her feelings by giving Granny Glynn a vicious whack on the nose with the
-implement. I caught up the top paper and read:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-VARICK FLAYS TRENT AS A FAKER AND SELF-SEEKER AT SENATE HEARING
-</pre>
-<p>
-“Oh, that's only politics,” I said, with an attempt at easiness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Putnam Varick himself turned Mr. Trent out of the house when he went to
-see Paula,” said the Bonnie Lassie, a bright spot of color burning in each
-soft cheek. “Is <i>that</i> politics?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That,” said I, “is war. What is Paula going to do about it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What can she do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Meet him outside, I suppose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you think Paula Varick is the kind of girl to practice hole-and-corner
-meetings at museums or restaurants?” said the sculptress scornfully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There are other places. Here, for instance. Though I suppose you wouldn't
-allow that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-This reasonable hypothesis nearly cost old Mrs. Glynn an ear. “Indeed I
-would! I'd do anything to get ahead of that father of Paula's. The mean
-old skinkum!” said the Bonnie Lassie, who under great provocation
-sometimes uses violent language. “But Paula wouldn't come. It's the Varick
-pride—all that there is of Varick in her, thank Heaven!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It has its disadvantages,” I said. “But the point is, does she care for
-him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Have you seen them together lately? But then, what's the use! You're only
-a man,” said the Bonnie Lassie with sovereign contempt. For the moment she
-ceased to be an artist and became a philosopher. “Some people,” she
-pronounced sagely, “just naturally fall in love by degrees. Some”—her
-face turned unconsciously toward the outer room where Cyrus the Gaunt was
-busy, and became dreamy and tender—“run away from love and are
-overtaken by it. And some go open-hearted and open-armed, to meet it when
-it comes. That is Paula. She's the type of woman to whom there is only one
-possible man in the world. He has found her.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Does she know it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie, smiling, poised her tool above a difficult problem of
-artistry pertaining to Granny Glynn's front hair (which was false).
-“You're less stupid than you might be. Her heart does. But her mind hasn't
-admitted it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Does <i>he</i> know it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. He hardly dares hope. He's so terribly afraid.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's the first time in his life, then.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I believe you, dominie. Perhaps it's the first time he's been in love,
-too. It's good for his soul, but it's hard on the poor man. When he came
-this morning for a sitting he looked more like a pale martyr in a
-stained-glass window than a flesh-and-blood man. I had to send him away.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, well,” I said comfortably, “if they really care for each other, time
-will straighten it out.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It will,” she retorted. “About three days' time. The Varicks start for
-the Far East on Saturday.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Without Paula's seeing Carlo again?” I asked in dismay.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Varick has written a note to Mr. Trent saying that it is by Paula's
-own wish, and that she does not want to see him again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's a lie, isn't it?” I asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Probably it is. But I don't think Paula will see him. If she has promised
-her father, she certainly won't. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
- she concluded calmly, laying down her implement and fixing me with an
-accusing eye.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What am <i>I</i>—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't try to evade your responsibility, dominie. It's all your doing.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just because it isn't turning out right,” I said hotly. “You know
-perfectly well, lassie, that if everything had gone smoothly you would
-have—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Claimed all the credit.” The Bonnie Lassie, dimpling, took the words out
-of my mouth. “And quite right too. When I manage things they're—they're
-<i>managed</i>. Once again I ask you, dominie: What are you going to do
-about it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I walked over to the window and looked out, leaning on my cane. Against a
-pale corner of the sky, the cage top loomed haggard and grim. A swift and
-soaring notion sprang into being in my mind.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm going to borrow your telephone,” said I.
-</p>
-<p>
-Getting Miss Paula Varick was no slight task. I had to run the gauntlet of
-half a dozen questioners—they were guarding her against the
-onslaught of the predatory Trent, I suppose—before she answered me,
-not in the softly ringing music of her familiar voice, but with a deadened
-tonelessness which both startled and reassured me. When I had delivered my
-message, I returned to the studio.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well?” queried the Bonnie Lassie.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have just talked with Paula.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What did she say?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She said, as nearly as I recall, 'Oh!' Also, 'Thank you, dominie!'”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't be a horrid and exasperating old man. What did you say to her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I gave her some interesting news about a local landmark.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie came over to me in three swift little bounds like a
-kitten, and pointed some sort of high-art tool at my chin. “Tell me at
-once,” she commanded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I've just informed Miss Varick that the cage on the roof of No. 13 has
-been ordered removed not later than tomorrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Has it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Thinking,” I pursued serenely, “that she might wish to take a final look
-at the place where she first tasted the delights of chewing-gum,—these
-crucial experiences of childhood, you know—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't be a goose, dominie. Suppose she doesn't come?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then you were wrong, and she doesn't really care for him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie lowered her tool and bestowed a glance of approval upon
-me which encouraged me to continue.
-</p>
-<p>
-“She might even want to go up to the housetop once more.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She might,” agreed the Bonnie Lassie thoughtfully. “That could be
-arranged—in case she does.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A little judicious stimulus to her mind,” I suggested, “if it doesn't
-occur to her.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Leave it to me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-One of the many delightful things about the Bonnie Lassie is that it's
-never necessary to draw diagrams for her. So I left it to her and went to
-telephone Carlo. He said that he had a business engagement or two for the
-following morning, but it didn't matter (in a voice which indicated that
-nothing in the world mattered any more), and if I wished to see him of
-course he'd come.
-</p>
-<p>
-So I bade the Bonnie Lassie good-day and went home to mature a reasonable
-excuse for summoning one of the busiest young men in America to my side.
-By the time he arrived the next day I had a plausible sort of lie fixed up
-about a stock concerning which I wished some advice. Schepstein, our local
-financier, had coached me on it. But when Carlo inquired at the start
-whether it was common or preferred I was talking about, I had to admit
-that I didn't know.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What <i>did</i> you send for me for, then, dominie?” he asked patiently.
-</p>
-<p>
-A motor-car which I recognized had arrived at and departed from the Bonnie
-Lassie's door. I played desperately for time, while Carlo's disconsolate
-regard wandered to the wire-mesh structure, seen only dimly now through
-the half-bare branches of trees which had been small when he was a boy and
-my pupil. From where he sat he could not see—I maneuvered his seat
-to manage that—what I saw; two girlish figures cross Our Square and
-separate at the entrance to No. 13. The Bonnie Lassie had done her part.
-Now for mine.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Carlo,” I said, “are you looking at the Tiger's cage?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“They're tearing it down to-day or to-morrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Are they?” said he vaguely, and lost himself in a sad maze.
-</p>
-<p>
-I reflected with bitterness that sentiment in the man and sentiment in the
-woman often assume different manifestations.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I was in your garret last week,” I continued. “It isn't much changed.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What is it being used for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A sort of loft. The wall panel your father sketched in crayon is still
-there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'd like to see that,” said Carlo.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nothing easier,” I replied with elation. “I know the people. Come along.”
- Five minutes later we were climbing the stairs to the top floor. Carlo
-sought out the blurred sketch and stood before it. “Poor old padre,” he
-mused. “He believed that he was destined to become a great painter. I
-wonder.”
- </p>
-<p>
-His glance roamed. “There's where I used to sleep when the nights were
-hot. And there's my study corner. You were good to me, dominie. What's the
-matter? Aren't you well?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's close here,” I said with desperate strategy, and pushed open the
-dormer half-door leading to the roof.
-</p>
-<p>
-Carlo's face, which had grown dreamy, suddenly became overspread with
-gloom as he looked out upon the roof. He hesitated. And the precious
-moments were passing. Paula must be on her former roof at that moment. Any
-minute she might leave. Would Carlo go out for a look, or—He went
-out. I followed. A high, inspiring wind was blowing. It hummed and cried
-through the meshes of the cage on the roof below with the voice of a
-thousand imperative and untranslatable messages. The girl in the cage held
-her face toward it, yearning to its dim and pregnant music, and I thought
-I had never seen a face so lovely, so lonely, so desolate. Then I turned
-to Carlo and was glad to the root-nerves of my heart that I had brought
-him.
-</p>
-<p>
-That gladness lasted about one heartbeat and died a death of terror. For,
-without a word, Carlo stepped upon the coping, lowered himself over the
-grim well-space between the houses, then threw his body outward, with a
-swift, powerful impulsion. He hurtled down the ten feet, which might be
-fifty, and destruction, if his out-thrust were not forceful enough. But he
-landed, one hundred and ninety-odd pounds of hard, lithe manhood, on the
-edge of the roof, as light and firm as a cat. At the sound she turned and
-saw him coming to her from behind the chimney, as he had come in the days
-of her lonely childhood.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Little Tiger,” he said very softly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Angel!” She tried bravely to laugh, but it was an uncertain, fluttering
-sound. “Have you dropped from your cloud again?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He came straight to the cage door and stood, looking at her with his soul
-in his eyes, and she strove to meet his gaze, her own look fluttering away
-before the sweet terror of full realization.
-</p>
-<p>
-Carlo set his hand to the latch. Some unknown imbecile, solicitous for the
-safety of the week's wash, had put some sort of an infernal patent spring
-lock upon the door. It resisted. His hand fell.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Will you open it to me?” he said quietly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I—I can't,” said the girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is it to be the old barrier, then?” he said passionately—“the
-barrier that has always been set between us?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She made no reply. But there came to her face a wonderful color, and to
-her lips a wonderful smile.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Paula,” said Carlo, “nothing can stand between us except your will.” He
-raised both hands to the heavy meshes. “Shall I come?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Come!” she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then that gate sprang from its hinges with a shriek of tortured metal, the
-voice, as it might be, of all the generations of Varicks, raised in
-frenzied, ineffectual protest. Oh, yes, I suppose the sockets <i>were</i>
-rusted out and ready to give way; nevertheless, it was a startling and
-thrilling thing to see. He tossed the door behind him, where it fell with
-a harsh rattle. And Paula, uncaged at last, came to his heart with a cry,
-and clung there.
-</p>
-<p>
-Age warms itself in reflected fires. I was sitting on my favorite bench in
-Our Square some weeks later, meditating with a mild glow upon the outcome
-of the encounter between Carlo and his Tiger (for which, by the way, the
-Bonnie Lassie put in a wholly unjustified claim of half-credit), when two
-figures walking quite close together approached and stopped in front of
-me. They were very good to look at, those two, as youth and joy and the
-splendor of love are always good for old age to look at. I welcomed them
-to a corner of my bench, facing the Varick mansion, which was poor policy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So you haven't gone to the Far East?” I said to Miss Paula.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” she said, “father decided not to take me. He has gone for his
-health.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothing serious, I trust,” I said politely.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He is Suffering,” said Miss Paula primly, “from unrequited objections.”
- Her smiling and happy regard rested on Carlo and then passed dreamily to
-the squat and broad and drab old mansion facing us.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why!” she cried, “the cage is still there!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So it is,” I answered as nonchalantly as I could.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then they didn't tear it down.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Apparently they didn't.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You told me they were going to. And you told Ang—Carlo they were
-going to.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did I? So I did. They must have changed their minds.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Who ordered it down?” inquired Carlo mildly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The fire department,” I said promptly. “On account of the inflammable
-nature of steel wire, I suppose.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I mean the sanitary inspectors,” I hastily corrected myself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“For fear that somebody might sleep in it and catch cold! Of course!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, the fact is—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The fact is,” said Miss Paula Varick, “that you're a wicked old, scheming
-old, blessed old fibber.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And she then and there pounced upon me and kissed me under the left ear,
-in the full and astounded sight of Our Square. Carlo's hand covered hers
-as it rested on my shoulder, and we three lifted our faces again to the
-cage, standing unchanged on the housetop, gaunt and grim and lifeless. As
-we looked, the sun, striking through the edges of a cloud,—such as
-angels descend from,—touched the harsh, dull metal to flaming
-crimson and glowing gold, and made of it a living glory, as love makes a
-living glory of life.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-THE LITTLE RED 'DOCTOR OF OUR SQUARE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ET me tell the worst of the Little Red Doctor at once and get it over
-with. He has a hair-trigger temper and a jaw that does not forget or
-forgive readily. He insists on regarding gravely many things which most of
-us treat flippantly, such as love and death. He has a brutal disregard of
-the finesse of illness and never gives, even to an old man and an old
-patient like myself, medicine unless one needs it. For the rest, the
-nickname which Our Square gave him long since describes him. One thing
-more; though he is our friend and fellow and counselor, the safe
-repository of our secrets, our sturdy defender against the final enemy,
-yet Our Square does not call him “Doc.” There is something about him which
-forbids. You would have to see him to understand.
-</p>
-<p>
-Seeing him, you would not see very much. Nature has done a slack job with
-the Little Red Doctor's outside. Even the Bonnie Lassie, stickler though
-she is for the eminence of nature as an artist, heretically admits this.
-She tried to better it in sculpture, and by force of the genius in her
-slim fingers she did succeed in getting at the dominant meaning of those
-queer quirks in his queer face—quirks of humor, of compassion, of
-sympathy—and thereby in expressing something of his fiery
-tenderness, his intrepid wisdom, his inclusive charity of heart toward
-good and bad alike, the half-boyish, half-knightly valor of self-sacrifice
-which arms him in the lists for the endless combat with his unconquerable
-antagonist, “my old friend, Death.” With her happy sense of character she
-called her miniature bronze “The Idealist,” and refused to sell it
-because, she said, some day Our Square would want to put up a monument to
-the Little Red Doctor and her attempt might help some bigger artist to be
-worthy of the task.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you know,” she observed to Cyrus the Gaunt the day that she finished,
-“I've discovered something about that face? There's no happiness in it.
-And it so deserves happiness!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Some fool of a girl probably turned him down and he came here to bury
-himself,” surmised Cyrus the Gaunt. “We homely, good men are never
-properly appreciated. Look at me!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie looked at him and then kissed him on the ear. “Just the
-same I think you're wrong,” she said thoughtfully. “When I first saw the
-Little Red Doctor, I wondered whether any woman could possibly love him.
-Since I've known him I've wondered how any woman could possibly help it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's a pleasant thing for a man to hear from his wife,” observed Cyrus
-cheerfully. “Anyway, there's a photograph been scraped out of the inside
-of his watch. Mendel, the watchmaker, told Polyglot Elsa so.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Barring this tenuous evidence, whatever may have passed in the Little Red
-Doctor's former existence was wholly unknown to Our Square, even after he
-became one of us. He trailed no clouds of glory and apparently no clues
-from his previous existence. All that we knew was that he landed from a
-long voyage in tropical lands and set up his shingle, “Dr. Smith,” at No.
-11. Business did not rush to him. We are a conservative and cautious
-community in Our Square. We watched and weighed him. Presently he got a
-little foothold in the reeking slum tenements which surround our
-struggling and cherished respectability. It could not have been a
-profitable practice. But it afforded experience. Sometimes he came back
-with triumph in his face; sometimes with stern gloom; sometimes with a
-black eye, for the practice of medicine as carried on in our immediate
-environment involves sundry departments not taught in the schools, and
-branches out into strange and eclectic activities. In those early days I
-overheard Terry the Cop assert that the new physician could “lick his
-weight in wildcats.” But when I informed Terry that this would mean at
-least five of the species, Terry replied airily that he was no Zoo
-attendant, but he knew a scrapper when he saw one.
-</p>
-<p>
-If one may credit the Murphy family, the Little Red Doctor gained his real
-foothold in Our Square through force, invasion, violence, and brutal
-assault. The Murphys occupy the ground floor of the corner house abutting
-on Our Alley, under the workroom of Dead-Men's-Shoes, who, through their
-unwitting instrumentality, became sponsor for the Little Red Doctor.
-Dead-Men's-Shoes comes by his name from his business, which is the
-purchase and resale of the apparel of the recently deceased, collected on
-wagon trips over a wide radius about New York. Thus it comes about that
-the feet of the mighty have been represented in Our Square, and more than
-one of us has worn the giant's robe as tailored on Fifth Avenue. The
-ol'-clo' man's real name is Dadmun Schütz, and he is a Yankee from
-Connecticut where there are many Dadmuns and more Schutzes, but how and
-why he came to Our Square is a story that I do not care to tell. The
-slight alteration in his name to fit his trade was so logical as to be
-inevitable. Dead-Men's-Shoes is tall and rugged and powerful and slow, and
-he always wears an extinct species of silk hat on his business rounds. In
-the day which introduced him to the Little Red Doctor, the Murphys had
-declared holiday and gone fishing and caught fish. Naturally they held
-alcoholic celebration in the evening. Passing the house, the Little Red
-Doctor heard the sounds of revelry; also another sound which checked his
-progress. He stuck his head in at the window, took a hasty survey,
-followed the head into the room and laid hands upon Timmy Murphy <i>aetat</i>
-ten. Astonished but in no way dismayed by the invasion, Paterfamilias
-Murphy immediately threw a whiskey bottle at the intruder and rushed to
-the rescue, followed by the partner of his bosom. It was no time for
-diplomacy or fine distinctions as to the rights of the non-combatant sex.
-The Little Red Doctor acted with promptitude and both hands, and the
-Murphys came to in the kitchen with the door barred against reëntry.
-Thereupon they raised such lamentable outcry that Dad-mun Schütz loped
-downstairs to the rescue. Seeing a stranger in the act of throttling the
-scion of the house of Murphy, the ol'-clo' man undertook to dissuade him
-by fixing a bony hand in his collar; but in so doing forgot the existence
-of what is technically termed, I understand, the pivot blow. Upon
-discovering its uses he lay down in the hallway to meditate upon it. The
-Little Red Doctor finished his job before Terry the Cop's substitute
-arrived to arrest him. He went peacefully. Dead-Men's-Shoes followed to
-the court, escorting Murphy senior, who was extensively bandaged. The
-bench was occupied and ornamented by Magistrate Wolfe Tone Hanrahan, the
-Irish Solon of Avenue B. Judge Hanrahan possesses a human stratum in his
-judicial temperament. His examination of the prisoner (suppressed from the
-stenographer's official notes) proceeded as follows:—
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge—What were you doing in Murphys' flat?
-</p>
-<p>
-The Accused—I was there professionally.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge—Professionally, say ye? (With a look at the ill-repaired
-Murphys.) Are ye a prize-fighter?
-</p>
-<p>
-The Accused—I am a physician and surgeon.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge—Mostly surgeon, I'm thinkin'. Ye seem to have removed
-three teeth from the patient an' partly ampytated an ear. Besides, he
-swears ye tried to murder the boy. Is such yer usual practice?
-</p>
-<p>
-The Accused—The boy had a fish bone in his throat. He was
-strangling. Here is the bone. The boy is in bed. I ought to be with him
-now.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge—Officer, ye're a fool. Murphy, y' oughta get ten days.
-Mrs. Murphy, back to yer child! Defendant, cud ye come to my house, No.
-36, to-morra mornin'? My cook has a bile on her neck. I like yer style.
-Yere discharged.
-</p>
-<p>
-Dead-Men's-Shoes escorted the physician back apologizing at every step,
-and thenceforth touted for him (greatly to his embarrassment) until Our
-Square grew afraid to call in any other practitioner lest the partisan
-ol'-clo' man should accuse us of attempted suicide by negligence. Within a
-year of his arrival the little Red Doctor had become, as it were, official
-healer to the whole place. And where he began as physician he ended as
-friend and ally.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor was intensely personal in his permanent engagement
-with his old friend, Death.
-</p>
-<p>
-While I am, of course, a part of the Little Red Doctor's large practice, I
-do not add much to his meager income. In fact, he usually laughs me and my
-minor ailments out of court and declines to administer anything but free
-advice. On the particular June evening when I unwittingly became a partner
-of the fates, nothing really ailed me except that I had not been sleeping
-for some nights and was tired of it. The Little Red Doctor went over me
-briefly and prescribed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“One full day in the open sunrise to sundown.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He reflected. “Go crêpe-hunting with Dead-Men's-Shoes,” he said at length.
-</p>
-<p>
-Thus it was that from nine o'clock on, of a balmy, sweet-scented morning,
-the sleek and raucous automobiles of West-Chester County hooted
-disdainfully at Dadmun Schütz and myself, jogging appreciatively along
-behind Schutz's mouse-hued mare, Dolly Gray, through a world so alien to
-Our Square as to suggest another scheme of creation; a world of birds and
-butterflies and bees and trees and flowers and song and color and blithe
-winds.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
-<img src="images/420.jpg"
- alt="Jogging Appreciatively Along Behind Schutz's Mouse-hued Mare 420 " width="100%" /><br />
-</div>
-<p>
-This world was, most appropriately, inhabited by a brown-and-gold fairy.
-Any one could tell that she was a fairy by the sunlight in her hair, and
-the starlight in her eyes, and the fact that, at the moment when we
-discovered her, two butterflies were engaged in aerial combat to decide
-winch one should settle on the pink rose above her ear. The flower
-flaunted there like a challenge against the somberness of her costume, for
-the fairy was dressed entirely in black. She was leaning on a gate in a
-tall hedge. Through the opening we could see, across broad flower gardens,
-a solid, spacious, kindly house, amid rustling shade, flying the insignium
-of death at its door.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the sight Dead-Men's-Shoes pulled up and took off his extinct hat. It
-was one of the most extinct hats wherewith I have ever known him to grace
-his calling. Its brim was fractured in two places, its crown leaned like
-Pisa's Tower, and it bristled in universal offense against the outer
-world. Despite all this it was indisputably a Silk Hat, and, as such,
-official to the lawful occasions of the wearer. The brown-and-gold fairy
-looked at it with unfeigned surprise. From its interior Dead-Men's-Shoes
-extracted a slip of paper which he perused. He then addressed the fairy in
-a soft and respectful tone.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You ain't on the list, mum.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What list?” inquired the fairy with interest. “And why should I be on
-it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Not you, mum. The house.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He re-covered his head and contemplated her speculatively. She returned
-his regard with sparkling eyes and a dimpling and twitching mouth.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why do you wear that extraordinary hat?” she broke out.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Business,” murmured Dead-Men's-Shoes. “It's my business hat. If I could
-have a few words with you on business?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You've come at an unfortunate time,” said the brown-and-gold fairy.
-“There is a death in the family.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yessum. I observed that the Grim Reaper had visited the premises,” said
-Dead-Men's-Shoes, who prides himself upon a stock of correct, elegant, and
-felicitous mortuary phrases. “May I proffer my humble condolences?” He
-removed the silk hat with an official and solemn flourish. “Are you the
-bereaved, mum?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The what?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The relic of the late lamented?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No; only a cousin, but my father and I are Mr. Bennington's nearest
-relatives. What is it you wish?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In that case,” said Dead-Men's-Shoes, with evident relief, “an' beggin'
-your pardon for intrudin' on your nach'ral grief an' distress, we might
-trade.” He coughed austerely. “About clothes now,” he suggested.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Clothes? What clothes?” said the fairy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The deceased's. Or shoes, maybe? Or even hats.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What on earth do you mean, you extraordinary person?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I mean fair,” said Dead-Men's-Shoes firmly. “I'm here to buy the
-deceased's garments. You see, lady, I read all the death notices in the
-N'York papers, an' when I've got ten or a dozen good prospects in one
-locality I hitch up Dolly Gray an' make my rounds. An' though you ain't on
-my list, I won't count that against you when we come to dicker.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But we don't want to sell Cousin Ben's clothes,” said the fairy in
-bewilderment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dont-cha!” Dead-Men's Shoes took on a persuasively argumentative air.
-“Listen, lady. Wotcha goin' to do with them garments?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I hadn't thought about it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Was the late lamented a charitable gent? Good to the poor and that sort
-of thing?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Very.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There you are, then!” said he triumphantly. “Sell me the garments for a
-lot o' money. I'm soft on swell garments. Take the cash an' give it to
-charity. Le's begin with shoes. How many pair of shoes woild you say the
-untimely victim had?” Mirth quivered at the corners of the fairy's soft
-lips, “He wasn't an untimely victim. He was seventy-six years old and he
-had gout so dreadfully that he had to have one shoe made much longer than
-the other.”
- </p>
-<p>
-My companion's face fell, but immediately brightened with hope. “Which
-foot?”
- </p>
-<p>
-She considered. “The left.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“If they was right in size an' price,” he mused, “they might do for the
-Little Red Doctor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The brown-and-gold fairy's eyes widened. “For whom?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The Little Red Doctor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why do you call him that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Because he's little an' red-headed an' the smartest doctor in N'York. An'
-if your loved-an'-lost one had had him, he'd be alive to-day,” he added
-with profound conviction.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Where does he live?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Down in Our Square—No. 11, on the East Side; office hours nine to
-one. If you was any ways ailin' you couldn't do better'n to call.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And there is something the matter with his left foot?” she pursued,
-ignoring this well-meant advice. “What?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's dummed hard to fit,” replied Dead-Men's-Shoes disconsolately.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I can tell you,” I interjected. “He injured it while swimming.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” said the brown-and-gold fairy. “And—and this gentleman's
-description of him is accurate?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But not adequate,” I said. “He is wise (a confirmatory nod from the
-brown-and-gold fairy) and brave (another nod) and unselfish (a third nod)
-and obstinate (two nods) and beautiful—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” said the brown-and-gold fairy, with obvious disappointment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“—to us who know him, I mean.” She smiled up at me. “And his name is
-Smith.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It is,” I averred.
-</p>
-<p>
-At this juncture Dead-Men's-Shoes, who had been fidgeting on his wagon
-seat, deemed it time to interfere in the interests of commerce. “Don't
-butt in, dominie,” he protested in an injured aside. “These mourners has
-to be handled with tac'. It takes a professional. You're spoilin' trade.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Herein he did me injustice. The brown-and-gold fairy threw the gate open
-and invited Dead-Men's-Shoes in to bargain. Highly advantageous bargaining
-it was, I judged from the ill-suppressed jubilance of my associate's face
-when he emerged some minutes later, tottering under a burden of assorted
-clothing, while she brought up the rear, carrying one pair of shoes. The
-rose was gone from her hair.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Remember,” she cautioned him, “the suits you may dispose of as you
-please, but the shoes are to go to the—the Little Red Doctor just as
-they are. Will you see that they do?” She appealed to me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll take them myself,” I promised.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Will you? That's kind of you. But you mustn't tell him where they came
-from.” She looked up at me and I seemed to discern something wistful in
-her eyes. “You are a friend of Dr. Smith's?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes. And you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I used to be,” said she indifferently. Dead-Men's-Shoes climbed into the
-wagon and lifted the lines. “Accept the assurances of my respec'ful
-sympathy,” he recited, “an' remember the address if there's anything
-further in my line. Wake up, Dolly Gray.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The brown-and-gold fairy floated out through the gate and came to my side.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Does he still limp?” she asked in a half whisper.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Imperceptibly,” I answered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't <i>want</i> him to limp,” she cried imperiously and was gone.
-</p>
-<p>
-Dolly Gray took us and the shoes of the deceased cousin on our way. The
-day's journey ended in front of the Little Red Doctor's office. The Little
-Red Doctor looked up from some sort of complicated mechanism which he was
-making for crippled Molly Rankin (who could never by any possibility pay
-him for it) and appeared astonished at the sight of the very elegant
-footwear which Dead-Men's-Shoes extended to him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What for?” he asked. “I'm not buying second-hand shoes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ask the dominie,” said Dead-Men's Shoes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They're a present,” I explained.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor looked both puzzled and suspicious. “They won't fit
-my queer foot,” he objected.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Try,” encouraged Dead-Men's-Shoes.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor tried on the left boot. “Pretty good,” he said. He
-stood up to stamp his foot down. Then he bounded into the air like a
-springbok, and on alighting, tore off the shoe, saying something harsh and
-profane about practical jokers. “There's a pin in it,” he growled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gosh!” exclaimed Dead-Men's-Shoes, greatly perturbed at this evidence of
-woman's perfidy. “An' her in the sollim presence of death, too!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Her? Who?” demanded the Little Red Doctor, looking up from his
-explorations after the pin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dadmun,” said I, “you are too loquacious. Go out and look after Dolly
-Gray.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Duly impressed and oppressed by my well-chosen word, the ol'-clo' man
-trudged out and leaned against the railing. The Little Red Doctor
-extracted a small object from the shoe. It proved to be a pink rose,
-impaled upon a fine golden wire which might once have been a hairpin. The
-wire held in place a thin strip of paper. When he saw the handwriting on
-the paper the Little Red Doctor gave another leap. It was not as athletic
-and deerlike as his first, but was still a creditable performance. Then he
-flung the whole combination out through the open window.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ow!” ejaculated Dead-Men's-Shoes from his place against the railing.
-</p>
-<p>
-We could hear him scuffling around after the missile, which had evidently
-hit him on a tender spot. His voice came clearly to us reading painfully
-in the dim light.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'An'-no-bird-sings-in-Arcady!'”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Dadmun,” said I, severely, “that letter is not addressed to you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It ain't a letter,” retorted Dead-Men's-Shoes aggrievedly. “It ain't
-begun like a letter oughta be. It ain't signed, like a letter oughta be.
-It's just that one fool line. Where's Arcady an' what's to stop the birds
-singin' there if they want to? Here's yer valentine.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He flipped it back through the window. We heard the creaking of the wagon
-springs, Dolly Gray's patient, responsive grunt and her retreating
-footsteps on the asphalt. I retrieved the carrier rose and turned to the
-Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well?” I said. “Where <i>is</i> Arcady, my friend?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He shook his head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I know that song,” I continued. “How does the verse run?
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“And no bird sings in Arcady;
-The little fauns have left the hill;
-Even the tired daffodil
-Has closed its gilded doors, and still—”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Don't!” said the Little Red Doctor hoarsely. “I used to know that song.”
- He lifted haggard eyes to me. “You've seen her?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How did she look?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I meditated. “Like a child that doesn't understand why it isn't happy,” I
-said at length.
-</p>
-<p>
-I saw the Little Red Doctor's sensitive mouth quiver; but the jaw set hard
-and firm and ended that struggle.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I won't ask you where,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It would be no use. I couldn't tell you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No.” He accepted that. “Then why, in the name of Heaven,” he cried,
-looking at the rose, “should she—Oh, well, never mind that.” He sat
-thoughtfully for a time. “Dominie,” he said, “I'm going to tell you. It
-will do me good, I think. And then I'll forget it again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was not altogether a pretty story. Four years before, it began, when
-the brown-and-gold fairy must have been little more than a child. At a
-fashionable cottage place which is merely a glowing, newspaper-glorified
-name to Our Square, the Little Red Doctor, who had come down for a tennis
-tournament, had jumped off a pier after a small boy who had fallen in. He
-referred to it and to the brown-and-gold fairy's romantic view of it with
-tolerant contempt. “The <i>hee-ro</i> business,” he said with the medical
-man's disdain of the more obvious forms of physical peril. “I run more
-real risks every day of my life.” However, a well-meaning but blundersome
-launch had broken his foot with its wheel, and the girl, who had seen the
-whole adventure, carried him off in her motor-car. Followed the usual
-discovery of friends in common, and by the time the crutches were
-discarded, the victim was hopelessly enslaved. Whether they were ever
-actually engaged or not did not clearly appear. The Little Red Doctor was
-carefully and gallantly defensive of her course. Nevertheless, knowing the
-Little Red Doctor as I do, I was resentfully sure that she had treated him
-shamefully. Finally there was an issue of principle between them. He
-alluded to it vaguely. “She didn't really care, of course,” he said. “Why
-should she? So I went away and knocked about the world for a bit. Then I
-came here because in Our Square there wouldn't be much chance of meeting
-her, you see. There's just one thing to do. Forget her. So I've forgotten
-her.” And the Little Red Doctor, taking the rose from the table where I
-had tossed it, held it cherishingly in his hands as if it were a human,
-beating heart.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Forget her.” Quite so! It was just and simple and sensible. Yet, while I
-agreed heartily, I had my private misgivings that it might not be so easy
-to forget a face with that particular quality of witchery about it, a
-witchery wholly distinct from mere beauty. I've known quite homely women
-to have it. Not that the brown-and-gold fairy was homely. But I cannot
-quite think that she was beautiful, either, by the standards of calm and
-balanced judgment. Only, the calmest judgment would be put to it to
-preserve its balance with those eyes turned upon it. She had an
-unbalancing personality, that brown-and-gold fairy, even to an old and
-rusty-fusty pedagogue like myself.
-</p>
-<p>
-In fact, she was quite unreasonably vivid to my thoughts for weeks after
-my one brief meeting with her. I believe that I was actually thinking
-about her and the Little Red Doctor, seated on my favorite bench in Our
-Square, on the August morning when a small, soft voice quite close behind
-me said:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Dominie.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I got up and turned around. There stood the brown-and-gold fairy. I
-frowned upon her severely. Not as severely as she doubtless deserved,
-considering how the Little Red Doctor had winced at the mention of her,
-but as severely as was practicable in the face of the way she was smiling
-at me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What do you mean by coming up behind me and startling me with your 'Mr.
-Dominie'?” I demanded.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I heard the man with the funny hat call you that. Isn't it your name?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It will serve. What are you doing in Our Square?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I came down to see the place.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You came down to see the Little Red Doctor,” I charged.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no,” she protested softly. “Just to see the place where he lives. I
-went near there, but he came out and I ran away.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You needn't have,” I said. “He has forgotten you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't think it nice of you to say that, Mr. Dominie.”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a little break in her voice. I looked away hastily. Though, if I
-had made her cry, it served her right. I looked back and found that she
-was not crying. She was laughing. At me!
-</p>
-<p>
-“He has forgotten you,” I repeated positively, “as he ought.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes; I suppose he ought,” she assented dolorously. “But he hasn't,” she
-added with a sudden change to an adorable impertinence. “You know he
-hasn't. Nobody ever forgets me. You didn't forget me, did you? And you'd
-only seen me once.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why am I seeing you now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Because you're old and wise and you look kind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am very old and extremely wise,” I answered, “but my kindly expression
-is mere senile deterioration of the facial muscles. I am really brutal.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But you'll be kind to me,” she averred trustfully.
-</p>
-<p>
-I surrendered. “What about?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I want to see the—the Little Red Doctor, and yet I—I don't
-want to see him. Do you know what I mean?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. Do you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“N-n-no. I suppose I don't exactly. Do you think he'd like to see me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm sure he wouldn't.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Her lip quivered. “And you said you'd be kind to me,” she murmured
-plaintively.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not at all! <i>You</i> said I'd be kind to you. Are you in love with the
-Little Red Doctor?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Of course I'm not!” she asserted violently.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then why are you here in Our Square at all? Does the scenery entice you?
-Are you enthralled by our social advantages? Would you like to meet some
-of our leading local lights?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I would like to meet somebody who is really wise and kind, too wise and
-kind to make fun of poor little me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's the Bonnie Lassie,” said I with sudden, inspired conviction. “Come
-with me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Where?” asked the brown-and-gold fairy, hanging back doubtfully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“To her studio where she sculps wonderful and beautiful things. If I'm any
-judge she'll sculp you as a butterfly that's lost its way in this wicked—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm not a butterfly,” interrupted my companion. “I'm a very serious
-person on a very serious errand.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“—world,” I proceeded. “And she'll talk to you about the Little Red
-Doctor—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Will she?” murmured the brown-and-gold fairy, moving after me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“—whom she loves devotedly—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Does she!” said the brown-and-gold fairy, stopping short.
-</p>
-<p>
-“—as every one in Our Square does and ought to—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” remarked the fairy, catching up with me again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“—for reasons which you should know as well as any one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't,” retorted the fairy, mutinously. “Who is the Bonnie Lassie? You
-all have such queer names here, Mr. Dominie!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In private life she's Mrs. Cyrus Staten: otherwise Cecily Willard.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The golden lights in the fairy's eyes deepened with astonishment. “Not the
-famous Miss Willard who does the figurines! Does she live way down here in
-this—this—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Slum,” I supplied. “Don't be afraid to say it. Our Square isn't sensitive
-to what outsiders think of us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“This nice, queer old park,” concluded the fairy with dignity. “And I
-suppose she is very old and wise and—is she kind?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She is very young and lovely to look at and as wise as she needs to be
-for her own happiness and—come along and see her.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But you mustn't tell her—'' was as far as she got when the Bonnie
-Lassie came out of the studio with a smudge of clay on the tip of her
-chin, and regarded my pink and captive fairy with undisguised amazement.
-</p>
-<p>
-“This young discovery of mine,” I explained, “has come to Our Square for
-the purpose of <i>not</i> seeing the Little Red Doctor. Dead-Men's-Shoes
-struck up a professional acquaintance with her in the country and told her
-about the Doctor—whom she doesn't want to see—being in Our
-Square. As she hasn't seen him for several years and as he has been trying
-hard and conscientiously to forget her, she has come, <i>incognita</i>,
-where he is, in order to keep on not seeing him and to discover whether he
-has forgotten. It's all just as simple as it sounds.”
- </p>
-<p>
-My fairy suddenly became a person, and a very decided person. “I beg your
-pardon,” she said. “I am <i>not incognita</i>. My name is Ethel
-Bennington, and I think you are a very unkind old man.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie set a slender, strong hand on the visitor's wrist and
-drew her within. “Never mind him, my dear,” she said softly. “He isn't
-really unkind. He's just a tease.” She paused and studied her caller a
-moment. Then, with her irresistible smile, she said: “I know it's dreadful
-of me—but, <i>would</i> you mind if I just sketched you hastily?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Now, that may have been the artist of it breaking through, or it may have
-been just the way of her invincible tact and management; you never can
-tell, with the Bonnie Lassie. But it's a proven fact that nobody can sit
-to her without giving up his heart's secrets, and sometimes she puts them
-in the bronze. Most unfairly I was banished, for the brown-and-gold fairy
-with a flush of pleasure said she'd sit at once. And from that sitting
-grew another sitting and another and many to follow. Sometimes I was
-bidden in. It was a sheer delight to sit there and watch those two young
-creatures, the sculptress gay and sunny and splendid in the glad beauty of
-power and achievement; the model, wistful, sweet, and vivid by turns, a
-fairy from a brighter world bringing her fairy gold to our grim and dusty
-neighborhood. Out of a working silence the brown-and-gold fairy spoke one
-day.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is he poor?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Is who—” I began.
-</p>
-<p>
-But the quicker apprehension of the artist cut in on me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It isn't exactly a fashionable practice, the Little Red Doctor's. Is it,
-dominie?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. But poor—certainly not, by the standards of Our Square. He has
-a new black suit for professional service every year.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Um!” said the fairy doubtfully. Then, after a pause, “He could have been
-rich, you know.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Could he?” said the Bonnie Lassie, holding her iron poised over the
-shadow of a flying dimple.
-</p>
-<p>
-“An invention. Something to do with his surgery,” explained the girl.
-“Father said there were big possibilities in it. He offered to finance it
-himself. But he—the Lit—Dr. Smith wouldn't even take out a
-patent on it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie lowered her weapon. “Do you mean the pressure brace for
-atrophy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said the girl, surprised. “How do you know about it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Cyrus's uncle—he's Dr. Hardaman, the great orthopedic surgeon—says
-that there are thousands of children walking to-day who owe their legs to
-that brace of the Little Red Doctor's.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You never told any of us about that!” I cried.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” she answered composedly. “It seemed to make the Little Red Doctor
-uncomfortable when Cyrus spoke of it. So we kept it quiet.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You see, he might really have made a fortune by patenting it,” said the
-brown-and-gold fairy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That is what I asked Uncle Charles. He said that physicians, the best
-type, don't take out patents. You see, the patent would have made the
-brace cost more, and the more it cost the fewer people could buy it, and
-that would mean more children who ought to have walked and couldn't. And,
-oh, my dear! if you could see the poor, pitiful, wee things as we see them
-in Our Square, withered and hobbling like old, worn-out folk —”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't! Don't!” cried the girl. “I—I never thought of it that way.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why should you? But the Little Red Doctor would.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, but he didn't explain it that way,” said the brown-and-gold fairy
-miserably. “He said something stupid about ethics, and I said something I
-didn't mean—and,”—her head drooped,—“and that was our
-last quarrel.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And you loved him all the time, and still do,” said the Bonnie Lassie
-gently.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I didn't! I don't!” denied the brown-and-gold fairy vehemently.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then why have you come down here?” demanded the inexorable sculptress.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Because,” said the fairy in a fairy's whisper, “I—I just wanted to
-see him again. All the other men are so <i>alike</i>.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes; yes, I know,” said the Bonnie Lassie and threw an arm over her
-shoulder, and gave me a swift and wordless command to go away and be quick
-about it.
-</p>
-<p>
-For the subsequent developments of the affair I expressly disclaim all
-responsibility. True, I was made an agent. But that was coercion, such
-coercion as the Bonnie Lassie practices on all of us. The scheme was hers
-and hers alone. If there is a weakness in the Bonnie Lassie's character,
-it is overfondness for the romantic and the dramatic. She loves to set the
-stage and move the puppets, and be the goddess from the machine generally.
-Miss Ethel Bennington, cast for the leading part, accepted it all
-implicitly, for in the strange environment of Our Square she was uncertain
-and self-distrustful, and she readily fell in with the dramatist's
-principal theme; to wit, that she had treated the Little Red Doctor very
-ill, and said wounding things hard to be forgiven by a high-spirited,
-sensitive, and red-headed lover; that any basis of pardon and
-understanding would be difficult and painful to arrive at, but that if he
-found her in straits and needing him, then the truth would come out and
-she would know at once whether he still cared for her or not, a point upon
-which my brown-and-gold fairy had her dismal doubts, it seems. Therefore
-she would please buy herself a working outfit and take a job with—well—with
-Dead-Men's-Shoes. Just the thing! Dead-Men's-Shoes, knowing so much of the
-matter, would require little explanation. The labor, sorting over and
-classifying his residuary apparel, would be not too violent; and the
-Little Red Doctor passed by the door daily on his way to the top floor to
-visit little Fannie McKay who had the rickets. It was only a question of
-time when he would find the fairy there toiling in poverty. Such was the
-setting devised by the Bonnie Lassie to bring those two together. For the
-rest, let Fate take its course.
-</p>
-<p>
-Fate did. For their own private reasons, or perhaps in sheer derision of
-the human dramatist's puny efforts, the High Gods of Drama took a hand in
-the affair. They smote the Little Red Doctor, if not exactly hip and
-thigh, at least, tooth and jaw; so that he was incapacitated for any sort
-of decent, peaceable human association. They gave him an abominable
-toothache. The Bonnie Lassie came across Our Square to apprise me of the
-fact, with dismay in her face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's a toothache,” I said, “in such circumstances!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Bonnie Lassie looked at me scornfully. “Men have no sense,” she
-sighed. “Do you think I'm going to have their meeting spoiled by a
-wretched thing like that, after all these years? Besides, he's all swollen
-on one side.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I see. You don't wish his classic beauty impaired on this occasion.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't be disagreeable. And do be good. Go to the Little Red Doctor and
-tell him he must have it fixed.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I went to the Little Red Doctor and told him that very thing. To this day
-I believe that my age alone saved me from a murderous assault. “Have it
-fixed?” howled the Little Red Doctor. “Don't you suppose I want to have it
-fixed? Don't be an imbecile, dominie.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then come along now to Doc Selters and get it filled.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't want it filled. I want it pulled. I want to get it out and stamp
-on it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, he will pull it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He will <i>not</i>. He says it's got to be saved. He's killing the nerve—on
-the Spanish Inquisition principle. I'd go to the fifty cent yankers this
-minute if I didn't have a saw-off with Selters.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A what?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A saw-off. A professional exchange. He owes me two liver-attacks and a
-diffuse laryngitis; and the best he'll do,” cried the Little Red Doctor,
-dancing with rage and pain, “is to say that the worst of it is over. D——n
-his eyes!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Plainly, the Bonnie Lassie was right. The Little Red Doctor was in no
-state to meet vital issues. I went over to Dead-Men's-Shoes' place, and
-there beheld the brown-and-gold fairy skillfully sewing trouser buttons on
-waistcoats. She looked tired and pathetic, and when she saw me she jumped
-up and ran to me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, Mr. Dominie!” she cried. “Where is he?”
- </p>
-<p>
-I shook my head. Somehow I hadn't the heart to obtrude as unpoetic a <i>motif</i>
-as a toothache upon that prospective romance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I've worked and worked and worked,” she said, with a drooping mouth, “and
-he doesn't come. And Miss Willard won't tell me why. I'm sure something
-has happened to him. Has there?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, no,” I said. “That is—er—certainly not!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“There has!” She set her hands on my shoulders and explored my face with
-her sweet, anxious eyes. “Tell me. You <i>must</i> tell me! It was you who
-brought me here.” (Oh, the justice of womankind!) “Was it, indeed!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, it is your fault that—that I came. You encouraged me.” She
-let her hands drop and her eyes darkened with reproach. “Won't you tell me
-if he is ill?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He isn't ill. On honor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Despite her workaday garb, she was instantly metamorphosed into the
-brown-and-gold fairy again. “Then, when is he coming?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't know.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You do! But you won't tell. You're playing with me, you and Miss
-Willard.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Didn't you play with the Little Red Doctor? What about that clandestine
-message in the toe of the shoe?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” She had the grace to blush (and a brown-and-gold fairy's blush is
-something to cherish in memory). But at once curiosity overbore shame.
-“Did you give him the shoes yourself? What did he say when he put them
-on?” Recalling the impassioned monosyllable which signalized the Little
-Red Doctor's original discovery of the hairpin, I replied truthfully
-enough: “I don't think that would interest you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't you? Then how did he look?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Severe.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I know! Oh, how well I know!” Her voice declined to a caressing murmur.
-“And all the time there's that twinkle of fun and sympathy underneath the
-frown. Oh, ever so deep underneath! It took me a long time to find it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And longer to forget it?” I suggested with malice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't want to forget it,” retorted the fairy loftily. “I could if I
-chose. You're sure there isn't anything the matter with him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I never said there wasn't anything the matter with him. I said he wasn't
-ill.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, well, I think it's very mean of you. You may go and sit on that pile
-of coats—the unpressed ones—and watch me work my poor fingers
-to the bone sewing on buttons until your hard heart softens and you come
-to a properer frame of mind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Accordingly I sat down and contemplated, not without a certain grim
-satisfaction, the spectacle of a brown-and-gold fairy sentenced to honest
-labor. Shadows deepened in the room until she was almost in darkness. If
-the necessity of labor weighed upon her blithe spirit, she gave no
-evidence of it, for presently she began to hum to herself in a soft,
-crooning undertone, “speech half-asleep or song half-awake.” Clearer and
-clearer grew the melody, waxing to full awakeness, as the fresh and lovely
-young voice filled the room with the verse, one single line of which had
-dragged the Little Red Doctor's heart back across the unforgetting years:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“The falling dew is cold and chill,
-And no bird sings in Arcady;
-The little fauns have left the hill;
-Even the tired daffodil
-Has closed its gilded doors, and still
-My lover comes not back to me.”
- </pre>
-<p>
-The girlish voice trembled and stopped. The singer's hands fell into her
-lap. Her eyes dreamed. I think she must have forgotten, in the spell of
-music that she wove, the presence of an old man in the darkening room. I
-heard a soft, weary little catch of the breath, and then a name pronounced
-low and beseechingly, “Chris.” Now, this drama, as laid out by that
-romantic manageress the Bonnie Lassie, did not include music. The fairy
-song, I strongly suspect, was the interposition of the Higher Gods of
-Destiny. For the spell of it evolved and made real the past, and out of
-the past stepped the Little Red Doctor and stood trembling in the doorway
-of the ol'-clo' repository.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who sang?” he gasped.
-</p>
-<p>
-I sat motionless. Neither the Bonnie Lassie nor the Higher Fates had
-assigned me a speaking part in the crisis.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Whose voice was that?” said the Little Red Doctor fearfully. “Am I
-hearing sounds that don't exist?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Out of the deepest of the shadows came the voice, broken, and thrilling.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Chris! Oh, Chris, is it really you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ethel!” said the Little Red Doctor in a breathless cry.
-</p>
-<p>
-He stumbled halfway across the dim room, encountered a chair, and stopped.
-“What are you doing here?” he demanded. His voice had hardened suddenly to
-that of a cross-examiner.
-</p>
-<p>
-All the appealing and dramatic fiction which the Bonnie Lassie had
-carefully instilled into her subject for this crisis—the once rich
-and careless butterfly girl now brought low in the world and working for
-her precarious living—went by the board. “I—I-d-d-d-don't
-know,” stammered the brown-and-gold fairy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You—don't—know,” he repeated. Then, vehemently; “You must
-know.” Silence from the dim corner.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Have you come back here to make my life wretched with longing again?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No. Oh, no!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well? Why, then?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't be cruel to me, Chris,” pleaded the voice, a very wee, piteous
-voice now. Brown-and-gold fairies should not be bullied by little, red,
-fierce men with the toothache. They are not accustomed to it and they
-don't know how to defend themselves. Up to this moment my one purpose had
-been to tiptoe unobtrusively to the door and escape. Now I wondered
-whether I ought not to stay and offer aid to the abused fairy. At the next
-word from the Little Red Doctor, however, I gave up that notion, and
-resumed my cautious retreat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I? Cruel—to you?” he said desolately. Then, after a long pause: “I
-can't see you. I'm glad I can't see you. If you could know how many times
-I've seen you since—since I went away.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Seen me? Where?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nowhere. Everywhere. Night after weary night. For a year. Or perhaps it
-was two years. Only, then you weren't real. You didn't sing.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah!” The exclamation hardly stirred the air. But I knew, as well as if I
-had seen it, that the woman's eyes of the brown-and-gold fairy were
-yearning to him and that her hands were pressed over her woman's heart,
-which yearned to him, too.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No. You never sang to me. You spoke. You said the same thing over and
-over again. You said, 'I don't love you and I never did love you and I
-never could love you.'”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a stifled cry from the darkness, and a rustle and the sound of
-swift, light feet. Two dim figures met and merged in one. The fairy voice,
-with a desperate effort to be still a voice and not quite a sob of mingled
-pity and joy, murmured brokenly: “I—I d-d-don't love you. But I
-c-c-can't live away from you.” And I passed out, on tiptoe, unnoted. The
-tiptoe feature was, I dare say, superfluous. I suppose I might have
-marched out to the blare of a brass band and with a salvo of artillery,
-and still have been as a formless, soundless wraith to the Little Red
-Doctor who stood holding all heaven and earth in his arms.
-</p>
-<p>
-Quarter of an hour afterward I sat on the front steps of the house of
-Dead-Men's-Shoes musing. The Little Red Doctor and the brown-and-gold
-fairy came out together. They were conversing in demure tones and with a
-commonplace air about the prospects of rain. So wholly at ease and natural
-did they seem that I began to have misgivings. It didn't seem in human
-nature that they should be calmly discussing the weather. Could I have
-fallen asleep on my heap of mortuary clothing and dreamed all that
-happiness of theirs? I rose and intercepted them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How is the toothache?” I asked the Little Red Doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Little Red Doctor turned on me a face transfigured. “What toothache?”
- he said vaguely.
-</p>
-<p>
-Then I knew that my dream was reality.
-</p>
-<h3>
-THE END
-</h3>
-<div style="height: 6em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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