CHAPTER XXXII.
THE LITTLE PARTNER.
It was a lovely sunny afternoon, two days after the occurrence narrated in the preceding chapter. Canal Street was crowded with the wealth and beauty and fashion of the Crescent City. Fair-haired daughters of the North swept by in pleasing contrast to the black-eyed beauties of the far South. Men lounged through the crowd who looked like pictures from some old canvas; with dark, swarthy, oval faces, and eyes of midnight darkness. The delicate physique of the octoroon, the creamy tint of a still lighter-tainted blood, the voluptuous forms of the griff, the olive-hued creole, and the clear pink and white of the Anglo-Saxon southron, blended in an ever-moving, ever-shifting panorama of life that entranced the eye and bewildered the sense of the stranger within the city's gates.
A tall, square-shouldered, handsome young man floated along in the living stream. He was dressed in the height of fashion, yet with the pleasing restrictions of good taste and good sense. He strolled along with the easy careless step of one accustomed to seeing and being seen. Many were the admiring flashes dark voluptuous eyes cast upon him, many the smiles he received. But he paid but little heed to the homage. His face, though bronzed, was pale, and there was a weary, restless, unsatisfied look in his eye that illy comported with his bearing.
It was our friend, Benjamin Cleveland, rehabilitated, revamped, repolished, reset, rehumanized, and restored to society. So much for good clothes. Clothes do not make the man, but a man is unmade without them. They introduce him to society and keep him in it afterward. We like to rebel against their tyranny, and say contemptuous things about them, but we fear, honor, and obey them all the same. It is a pity he could not have clothed that restless, unsatisfied eye. For it but too plainly indicated that our hero's thoughts were not pleasant or satisfactory ones. Which indeed they were not, for at that identical moment Ben was wishing himself at the Hotel de Log, in the old livery of poverty and trampdom, and the old liberty of vagabondage. He sighed for the "foot-path." He longed to be atrampagain. His good clothes felt queer and uncomfortable. They were shackles upon his actions. He did not possess them, but they possessed him. In his rags he could have sat on the curbstone and taken a rest, with no one to give him particular notice. He dared not do it now. As a tatterdemalion he could have stuck his hands in his pockets, leaned against a lamppost with crossed legs and enjoyed the scene. Now—he was on exhibition himself. The first night he attempted to sleep in a bed he laid awake a long time, and ultimately had to get up and roll himself in a blanket on the floor, with the washbasin for a pillow, before sleep would come to him. He had no hopes, no aspirations, no promptings to be or to do. He seriously thought of resuming tramping as a profession. A panacea for a mind diseased. A balm for the wounds of his disappointments. A trunk full of his clothing had been forwarded to New Orleans, and his wardrobe was satisfactory. He had four hundred dollars in his pocket. All the money he had in the world. What was he to do? He did not know, and did not care. He had lost the woman he loved—for whom had he to labor? Himself? Bah! The "foot-path" was a luxury and a release. He was half inclined to lock his trunk and send it to some charitable institution for the benefit of the inmates, go on one tremendous spree with his four hundred dollars, and when the last cent was used up start out on the tramp.
While these thoughts were looking out of his eyes he nearly ran against a ragged boy, who was lounging on the sidewalk.
"Why, Tommy!" he cried in surprise. "You here in New Orleans!"
But Tommy drew back and looked at him distrustfully.
"Why Tom, don't you know me? Are you going back on an old friend? I am Ben, your old friend Ben."
"I'll—be—blowed!" and Tommy said no more, but gazed upon him in astonishment.
"Come Tommy, shake hands, little partner."
"Great guns! The prodigal's got home, the calf's been slaughtered, he's got his ring on, and—Benisit you?"
"Me for a fact, Tommy. Do I look so much altered?"
"Altered!Why you are a regularswell. Who'd ever think you'd been a tramp!" and Tommy was again lost in astonishment. Then in the old familiar tone, he said, seizing Ben's hand and caressing it in his own peculiar way, "but I'm so glad Bennie,soglad you are in luck. Do you live here? Do your folks live here?"
"No, Tommy dear, I do not live here nor have I any relatives here—nor am I in luck. But never mind that, I want you to come with me and get a new suit of clothes."
"Oh, never mind my togs, Ben, these will do very well," and Tommy blushed, and laughed a little. "This suit I'm used to and itsuitsme. I want you to walk over there to a bench in the park, and we will sit down and have a long chat."
After they had seated themselves the boy said:
"I never expected to see you again, Ben, and I've cried night after night thinking about you. I thought you were drowned. When we were thrown into the water I caught hold of a spar, but a piece of timber struck against it and knocked me off. I got hold of the timber, however, and was picked up by another boat, an Arkansas River packet, and brought clear down here. Now tell me how it all happened with you."
Ben related the adventures already known to the reader and moreover told Tommy of the object of his tramp to New Orleans, and how he had lost his wager.
"It's all up with me now, Tom," said he sorrowfully. "I have a great mind to put on the old clothes, and you and I will go tramping again."
"No, no, Bennie,don'tdo that. Do something noble and worthy of yourself. You are young, the world is before you; it has honors and happiness for those who earn them; be true to yourself, Ben, dear.Don'tsink to the horrid level of an outcast, a tramp, when you may live to honor yourself and do good to your fellowmen."
Ben gazed at him in blank amazement. He could not believe his ears.
"Tommy, what—what in the world's come over you? You speak like—like the top line of a copy book!"
"Ben," and he gently laid a hand on Ben's arm; "Ben, I speak what I feel. I like you, Ben—more than you know or understand. I want to see you worthy of yourself, so that I may be proud of you. And then, sometime, maybe, when the little tramp comes to you and says: 'Hi, Bennie, old boy; remember old times?' you'll think kindly of your little partner—that once was—perhaps, maybe, you'll love him, just a little bit, for the sake of old times, and—and—"
"Why Tommy, what are you crying about? My dear boy, there's something wrong with you. Tell me what it is. If money can be of any assistance, Tom, I've four hundred dollars and you're welcome to the whole of it."
"No, no, Ben," said Tommy, checking his tears, "I do not want money. I—I want you to like me Ben—to—to—Ben, I haven't any one toloveme!" and the tears came again.
"There, there, my dear boy, don't give way that way. I love you, Tommy, and I always will. Why little one, I have nobody to love me. I'm alone in the world myself. And—and—"
"'And' what, Ben?"
"And I always expect to be," he concluded bitterly.
"Oh, you will find some one to love, Benjamin," said the lad more cheerfully. "Where there's a Jack there's a Jill, you know. And didn't you improve the chances of your wreck on the sandbar? I thought you were smitten, Ben?"
"Hold on, Tommy. Don't speak that way. I love that dear girl more than words can express. She is an angel, Tom, and—"
"Oh, bah! Angel nothing. She's just a pretty, simpering, bread-and-butter do-nothing—"
"Tommy, stop! I won't have it. I will not allow you to speak so of that young lady."
"But I say she is. She's a flirt! She just is and nothing more!"
"Why Thomas, what in the name of Heaven has come over you? You look and speak so strange. You vilify this young lady whom you do not know, and whom I so love. You—"
"She ain't worthy of you, Ben, indeed and 'deed she aint," and Tommy's voice softened and the tears commenced to flow again.
Ben looked at him anxiously. He is sick, he thought. Troubles and privations and the terrors of the wreck on the river have exhausted and worried him into illness.
"Poor, little fellow," said he, putting his arm about the boy's body and drawing him close to him. "You aint well, Tommy, and I know it. There, there—never mind what you said. I know you meant nothing rude. You are only mistaken, Tommy. Bertha is one of the noblest girls that lives. Why do you know she is about to marry a man, whom I know she despises, so that she can give her widowed mother and poor bed-ridden little sister a home?"
"No! Is that so?" and Tommy stared incredulously at Ben.
"It is Tommy. She is to marry her cousin to secure a home for her mother and sister," and Ben related to the boy what Bertha Ford had told him relative to her uncle's will.
"Andhe, doeshelove her?"
"From the conversation we both overheard in Pittsburg I should say not. I think he only marries her to secure the money."
"Her fate will beterrible," and the boy shuddered.
"Terrible indeed, Tommy. We speak about womensellingthemselves, who of us knows the fearful yet noble sacrifices they may be making in their sale?"
"Good, Ben, good! That shows your heart in the right place, my boy, and please God it stay there," said Tommy, very earnestly. "But she little knows the man she is about to marry."
"Doyouknow him, Tom?"
"Ben," said the boy speaking sharp and quick, "Listen to me before I change my mind. What you have told me has—has altered some intentions of my own. You love this girl; does she love you?"
"Iknowshe does."
"Very well. Now don't ask me a question; don't say a word to me. There is to be a wedding to-morrow at St. Martin's Church, Georges Street.Herwedding. You attend it.Don't fail.You shall have her.I, Tommy, your little tramp friend, will make her your wife; but—oh, Bennie, Bennie—" and frantically throwing his arm's around Ben's neck, he kissed our hero's lips, and breaking from him, rushed away.
Long, Ben sat, lost in astonishment. Stupefied. Then he slowly made his way back to his hotel.