>Some young men ... and four or five chorus girls
Some young men ... and four or five chorus girls.
Nothing, however, in their present make-up could have recalled them to Steve's memory. Molly Martin had exchanged her green silk tights and gauze wings for a red flannel shirt-waist, a black leather belt, blue skirt, and cat-skin jacket. And Jessie Hannibal had shed her frou-frou frills and was buttoned to her red ears in a long gray ulster that reached down to her active little feet, now muffled in a pair of galoshes.
The dispute over the bill at an end, the Business Agent fished up a roll from one pocket and a handful of silver and copper coins from the other, counted out the exact amount, waited until the clerk marked a cross against his room number, calling him at seven o'clockA.M., tucked the receipt in his inside pocket, and began the weary ascent.
Steve shook himself free from the chair. This was about his hour. Rising to his legs, he elongatedone side of his round body with his pudgy arm, and then the other, yawned sleepily, tipped his hat farther over his eyebrows, called to Larry to be sure and put him down for the 5.40, and mounted the stairs to his room. If he had had any doubts as to the fraudulent character of the whole "shooting match," his chance inspection of the caste had removed them.
On entering his room Steve made several discoveries, no one of which relieved his gloom or sweetened the acidity of his mind.
First, that the temperature was so far below that of a Pullman that the water-pitcher was skimmed with ice and the towel frozen as stiff as a dried codfish. Second, that Jerry, the clown, occupied the room to the right, and the two coryphées the room to the left. Third, that the partitions were thin as paper, or, as Steve expressed it, "thin enough to hear a feller change his mind."
With the turning-off of the gas and the tucking of Steve's fat round face and head under the single blanket and quilt, the sheet gripped about his chin, there came a harsh, rasping cough from the roomon his right. Jerry had opened. Steve ducked his head and covered his ears. The clown would stop in a minute, and then Mr. Dodd would drop off to sleep.
Another sound now struck his ear—a woman's voice this time, with a note of sympathy in it. Steve raised his head and listened.
"Say, Jess, ain't that awful? I knew Jerry'd get it on that long jump we made. I ain't heard him cough like that since we left T'ronto."
"Oh, dreadful! And, Molly, he don't say a word 'bout how sick he is. Billy had to help him off with his— Oh, just hear Jerry!"
The talk ceased and Steve snuggled his head again. He wasn't interested in Jerry, or Molly, or Jessie. What he wanted was six hours' sleep, a call at 4.45, and his sample trunk.
Another paroxysm of coughing resounded through the partition, and again Steve freed his ear.
"Jerry ain't got but one little girl left, and she's only five years old. She's up to the Sacred Heart in Montreal. He sends her money every week—he toldme so. He showed me her picture oncet. Say! give me some of the cover; it's awful cold, ain't it?"
Steve heard a rustling and tumbling of the bedclothes as the girls nestled the closer. Molly's voice now broke the short silence.
"Say, Jess, I'm dreadful worried 'bout Jerry. I bet he ain't got no more cover 'n we have. He's right next to us, and 'tain't no warmer where he is than it is here. I'd think he'd tear himself all to pieces with that cough. I hope nothin' 'll happen to him. He ain't like Mathews. Nobody ever heard a cross word out of Jerry, and he'd cut his heart out for ye and——"
Steve covered his head again and shut his eyes. Through the coarse cotton sheet he caught, as he dozed off to sleep (Jerry's cough had now become a familiar sound, and therefore no longer an incentive to insomnia), additional details of Jerry's life, fortunes and misfortunes, in such broken sentences as—
"She never cared for him, so Billy told me. She went off with—Why, sure! didn't you know he got burnt out?—lost his trick ponies when he waswith Forepaugh— It'll be awful if we have to leave him behind, and—I'm goin' to see a doctor just as soon as we get to——"
Here Steve fell into oblivion.
Ten minutes later he was startled by the opening of his door. In the dim glow of the hall gas-jet showing through the crack and the transom, his eyes caught the outline of a girl in her night-dress, her hair in two braids down her neck. She was stepping noiselessly and approaching his bed. In her hand she carried a quilt. Bending above him—Steve lying in the shadow—she spread the covering gently over his body, tucked the end softly about his throat, and as gently tiptoed out of the room. Then there came a voice from the other side of the partition:
"He ain't coughin' any more—he's asleep. I got it over him. Now get all your clo'es, Molly, and pile 'em on top. We can get along."
Steve lay still. His first impulse was to cry out that they had made a mistake—that Jerry was next door; his next was to slip into Jerry's room andpile the quilt on him. Then he checked himself—the first would alarm and mortify the girls, and the second would be like robbing them of the credit of their generous act. Jerry might wake and the girls would hear, and explanations follow and all the pleasure of their sacrifice be spoiled. No, he'd hand it back to the girls, and say he was much obliged but he didn't need it. Again he stopped—this time with a sudden pull-up. Going into a chorus girl's room, under any pretence whatever, in a hotel at night! No, sir-ee, Bob! Not for Stephen! He had been there; none of that in his!
All this time the quilt was choking him—his breath getting shorter every minute, as if he was being slowly smothered. A peculiar hotness began to creep over the skin of his throat and a small lump to rise near his Adam's apple, followed by a slight moistening of the eyes—all new symptoms to Steve, new since his boyhood.
Suddenly there flashed into his mind the picture of a low-roofed garret room, sheltering a trundle-bed tucked away under the slant of the shingles. In the dim light where he lay he caught the squareof the small window, the gaunt limbs of the butternut beyond, and could hear, as he listened, the creak of its branches bending in the storm. All about were old-fashioned things—a bureau with brass handles; a spinning-wheel; ropes of onions; a shelf of apples; an old saddle; and a rocking-chair with one arm gone and the bottom half out. A soft tread was heard upon the stairs, a white figure stole in, and a warm hand nestling close to his cheeks tucked the border of a quilt under his chin. Then came a voice. "I thought you might be cold, son."
With a bound Steve sprang from the bed.
For an instant he sat on the edge of the hard mattress, his eyes on the floor, as if in deep thought.
"Those two girls lying there freezing, and all to get that feller warm!" he muttered. "You're a dog, Stephen Dodd—that's what you are—a yellow dog!"
Reaching out noiselessly for his shoes and socks, he drew them toward him, slipped in his feet, dragged on his trousers and shirt, threw his coat around his shoulders—he was beginning to shiver now—opened the door of his room cautiously,letting in more of the glow of the gas-jet, and stole down the corridor to the staircase. Here he looked into a black gulf. The only lights were the one by the clerk's desk and the glow of the stove. Quickening his steps, he descended the stairs to the lower floor. The porter would be up, he said to himself, or the night watchman, or perhaps the clerk; somebody, anyway, would be around. He looked over the counter, expecting to find Larry in his chair; passed out to the porter's room and studied the trunks and boot-stand; peered behind the screen, and finding no one, made a tour of the floor, opening and shutting doors. No one was awake.
Then a new thought struck him. This came with a thumping of one fist in the palm of the other hand, his face breaking out into a satisfied smile at his discovery. He remounted the stairs—the first flight two steps at a time, the second flight one step at a time, the last few levels on his toes. If he had intended to burglarize one of the rooms he could not have been more careful about making a noise. Entering his own apartment, he picked up the quilt the girls had spread over him, folded it carefullyand laid it on the floor. Then he stripped off his own blanket and quilt and placed them beside it. These two packages he tucked under his arm, and with the tread of a cat crept down the corridor to the stairway. Once there, he wheeled and with both heels striking the bare floor came tramping toward the girls' room.
Next came a rap like a five-o'clock call—low, so as not to wake the more fortunate in the adjoining rooms, but sure and positive. Steve knew how it sounded.
"Who's there?" cried Molly in a voice that showed that Steve's knuckles had brought her to consciousness. "'Tain't time to get up, is it?"
"No, I'm the night watchman; some of the folks is complaining of the cold and saying there warn't covering enough, and so I thought you ladies might want some more bedclothes," and Steve squeezed the quilt in through the crack of the door.
"Oh, thank you," began Molly; "we were sort o'——"
"Don't mention it," answered Steve, closing the door tight and shutting off any further remark.
The heels were lifted now, and Steve crept to Jerry's door on his toes. For an instant he listened intently until he caught the sound of the labored breathing of the sleeping man, opened the door gently, laid the blanket and quilt he had taken from his own bed over Jerry's emaciated shoulders, and crept out again, dodging into his own room with the same sort of relief in his heart that a sneak thief feels after a successful raid. Here he finished dressing.
Catching up his grip, he moved back his door, peered out to be sure he was not being watched, and tiptoed along the corridor and so on to the floor below.
An hour later the porter, aroused by his alarm clock to get ready for the 5.40, found Steve by the stove. He had dragged up another chair and lay stretched out on the two, his head lost in the upturned collar of his coat, his slouch hat pulled down over his eyes.
"Why, I thought you'd turned in," yawned the porter, dumping a shovelful of coal into the stove.
"Yes, I did, but I couldn't sleep." There was a note in Steve's voice that made the porter raise his eyes.
"Ain't sick, are ye?"
"No—kind o' nervous—get that way sometimes. Not in your way, am I?"
A MEDAL OF HONOR
He was short and thick-set: round-bodied—a bulbous round, like an onion—with alternate layers of waistcoats, two generally, the under one of cotton duck showing a selvage of white, and the outer one of velvet or cloth showing a pattern of dots, stripes, or checks, depending on the prevailing style at the wholesale clothier's where he traded, the whole topped by a sprouting green necktie. Outside this waistcoat drooped a heavy gold chain connecting with a biscuit-shaped watch, the under convex of its lid emblazoned with his monogram in high relief, and the upper concave decorated with a photograph of his best girl.
The face of this inviting and correctly attired young gentleman was likewise round; the ends of the mouth curving upward, not downward—upward, with a continuous smile in each corner, evenwhen the mouth was shut, as if the laugh inside of him were still tickling his funny-bone and the corners of the mouth were recording the vibrations. These uncontrollable movements connected with other hilarious wriggles puckering with merriment under the pupils of his two keen, searching eyes, bright as the lens of a camera and as sensitive and absorbing.
Nothing escaped these eyes—nothing that was worth wasting a plate on. Men and their uses, women and their needs, fellow-travellers with desirable information who were cutting into the bulbous-shaped man's territory, were all focussed by these eyes and deluded by this mouth into giving up their best cash discounts and any other information needed. Some hayseeds might get left, but not Sam Makin.
"Well, I guess not! No flies on Samuel! Up and dressed every minute and 'next' every time!" Such was the universal tribute.
This knowledge did not end with humans. Sam knew the best train out and in, and the best seat in it; the best hotel in town and the best table in thedining-room, as well as the best dish on the bill of fare—not of one town, but of hundreds all over his territory. That is what he paid for, and that was what he intended to have.
When Sam was on the road, in addition to his grip—which held a change of waistcoats (Sam did his finest work with a waistcoat), some collars and a couple of shirts, one to wash and the other to wear, a tooth-brush and a comb—he held the brass checks of four huge trunks made of rawhide and strapped and cornered with iron. These went by weight and were paid for at schedule prices. When a baggage-master overweighed these trunks an ounce and charged accordingly there came an uncomfortable moment and an interchange of opinions, followed by an apology and a deduction, Sam standing by. Only on occasions like these did the smiles disappear from the corners of Sam's mouth.
Whenever these ironclads, however, were elevated to the upper floor of a hotel, and Sam began to make himself at home, the wriggles playing around the corners of his mouth extended quite up hissmiling cheeks with the movement of little lizards darting over a warm stone.
And his own welcome from everybody in the house was quite as cordial and hilarious.
"Hello, Sam, old man! Number 31's all ready—mail's on your bureau." This from the clerk.
"Oh! is it you ag'in, Mister Sam? Oh—go 'long wid ye! Now stop that!" This from the chambermaid.
"It's good to git a look at ye! And them box-cars o' yourn ain't no bird-cages! Yes, sir—thank ye, sir." This from the porter.
But it was when the trunks were opened and their contents spread out on the portable and double-up-able pine tables, and Bullock & Sons' (of Spring Falls, Mass.) latest and best assortment of domestic cutlery was exposed to view, and the room became crowded with Sam's customers, that the smile on his face became a veritable coruscation of wriggles and darts; scurrying around his lips, racing in circles from his nose to his ears, tumbling over each other around the corners of his pupils and beneath the lids; Sam talking all the time, the keeneyes boring, or taking impressions, the sales increasing every moment.
The room became crowded with Sam's customers
The room became crowded with Sam's customers.
When the last man was bowed out and the hatches of the ironclads were again shut, anyone could see that Sam had skimmed the cream of the town. The hayseeds might have what was left. Then he would go downstairs, square himself before a long, sloping desk, open a non-stealable inkstand, turn on an electric light, sift out half a dozen sheets of hotel paper, and tell Bullock & Sons all about it.
On this trip Sam's ironclads were not wide open on a hotel table, but tight-locked aboard a Fall River steamer. Sam had a customer in Fall River, good for fifty dozen of B. & S.'s No. 18 scissors, $9—10 per cent. off and 5 more for cash. The ironclads had been delivered on the boat by the transfer company. Sam had taken a street-car. There was a block, half an hour's delay, and Sam arrived on the string-piece as the gangplank was being hauled aboard.
"Look out, young feller!" said the wharf man; "you're left."
"Look again, you Su-markee!" (nobody knows what Sam means by this epithet), and the drummer threw his leg over the rail of the slowly moving steamer and dropped on her deck as noiselessly as a cat. This done, he lifted a cigar from a bunch stuffed in the outside pocket of the prevailing waistcoat, bit off the end, swept a match along the seam of his "pants" (Sam's own), lit the end of the domestic, blew a ring toward the fast-disappearing wharfman, and turned to get his ticket and state-room, neither of which had he secured.
Just here Mr. Samuel Makin, of Bullock & Sons, manufacturers, etc., etc., received a slight shock.
There was a ticket-office and a clerk, and a rack of state-room keys, just as Sam had expected, but there was also a cue of passengers—a long, winding snake of a cue beginning at the window framing the clerk's face and ending on the upper deck. This crawling line of expectants was of an almost uniform color, so far as hats were concerned—most of them dark blue and all of them banded about with a gold cord and acorns. The shoulders varied a little, showing a shoulder-strap here and there,and once in a while the top of a medal pinned to a breast pressed tight against some comrade's back. Lower down, whenever the snake parted for an instant, could be seen an armless sleeve and a pair of crutches. As the head of this cue reached the window a key was passed out and the fortunate owner broke away, the coveted prize in his hand, and another expectant took his place.
Sam watched the line for a moment and then turned to a by-stander:
"What's going on here?—a camp-meeting?"
"No. Grand Army of the Republic—going to Boston for two days. Ain't been a berth aboard here for a week. Sofas are going at two dollars, and pillows at seventy-five cents."
Sam's mind reverted for a moment to the look on the wharfman's face, and the corners of his mouth began to play. He edged nearer to the window and caught the clerk's eye.
"No hurry, Billy," and Sam winked, and all the lizards darted out and began racing around the corners of his mouth. "'Tend to these gents first—I'll call later. Number 15, ain't it?"
The clerk moved the upper lid of his left eye a hair's breadth, took a key from the rack and slipped it under a pile of papers on his desk.
Sam caught the vibration of the lid, tilted his domestic at a higher angle, and went out to view the harbor and the Statue of Liberty and the bridge—any old thing that pleased him. Then this expression slipped from between his lips:
"That was one on the hayseeds! Cold day when you're left, Samuel!"
When supper-time arrived the crowd was so great that checks were issued for two tables, an hour apart. When the captain of the boat and the ranking officer of the G. A. R. filed in, followed by a hungry mob, a lone man was discovered seated at a table nearest the galley where the dishes were hottest and best served. It was Sam. He had come in through the pantry, and the head steward—Sam had known him for years, nearly as long as he had known the clerk—had attended to the other details, one of which was a dish of soft-shell crabs, only enough for half a dozen passengers, and which toothsome viands the head steward scratchedoff the bill of fare the moment they had been swallowed.
That night Sam sat up on deck until the moon rose over Middle Ground Light, talking shop to another drummer, and then he started for state-room Number 15 with an upper and lower berth (both Sam's), including a set of curtains for each berth—a chair, a washbowl, life-preserver, and swinging light. On his way to this Oriental boudoir he passed through the saloon. It was occupied by a miscellaneous assortment of human beings—men, women and children in all positions of discomfort—some sprawled out on the stationary sofas, some flat on the carpet, their backs to the panelling; others nodding on the staircase, determined to sit it out until daylight. On the deck below, close against the woodwork, rolled up in their coats, was here and there a veteran. They had slept that way many a time in the old days with the dull sound of a distant battery lulling them to sleep—they rather liked it.
The next morning, when the crowd swarmed out to board the train at Fall River, Sam tarried amoment at the now deserted ticket-office, smiled blandly at Billy, and laid a greenback on the sill.
"What's the matter, old man, with my holding on to Number 15 till I come back? This boat goes back to New York day after to-morrow, doesn't she?"
Billy nodded, picked up a lead-pencil and put a cross against Number 15; then he handed Sam back his change and the key.
All that day in Fall River Sam sold cutlery, the ironclads doing service. The next day he went to Boston on a later train than the crowd, and had almost a whole car to himself. The third day he returned to Fall River an hour ahead of the special train carrying the Grand Army, and again with half the car to himself. When the special rolled into the depot and was shunted on to the steamboat dock, it looked, in perspective from where Sam stood, like a tenement-house on a hot Sunday—every window and door stuffed with heads, arms, and legs.
Sam studied the mob for a few minutes, felt in his"pants" pocket for his key, gave it one or two loving pats with his fingers, and took a turn up the dock where it was cooler and where the human avalanche wouldn't run over him.
When the tenement-house was at last unloaded, it was discovered that it had contained twice as many people as had filled it two days before. They had gone to Boston by different lines, and being now tired out and penniless were returning home by the cheapest and most comfortable route. They wanted the salt zephyrs of the sea to fan them to sleep, and the fish and clams and other marine delicacies so lavishly served on the Fall River Line as a tonic for their depleted systems.
Not the eager, expectant crowd that with band playing and flags flying had swept out of the depot the day of the advance on Boston! Not that kind of a crowd at all, but a bedraggled, forlorn, utterly exhausted and worn-out crowd; children crying, and pulled along by one arm or hugged to perspiring breasts; uniforms yellow with dust; men struggling to keep the surging mass from wives who had hardly strength left for another step;flags furled; bass drum with a hole in it; band silent.
Sam looked on and again patted his key. The hayseeds had aired their collars and had "got it in the neck." No G. A. R. for Samuel; no excursions, no celebrations, no picnics for him. He had all his teeth, and an extra wisdom molar for Sundays.
The contents of the tenement now began to press through the closed shed on their way to the gangplank, and Sam, realizing the size of the mob, and fearing that half of them, including himself, would be left on the dock, slipped into the current and was swept over the temporary bridge, across the deck and up the main staircase leading to the saloon—up to the top step.
Here the current stopped.
Ahead of him was a solid mass, and behind him a pressure that increased every moment and that threatened to push him off his feet. He could get neither forward nor back.
A number of other people were in the same predicament. One was a young woman who, in sheer exhaustion, had seated herself upon the top steplevel with the floor of the saloon. Her hair was dishevelled, her bonnet awry, her pretty silk cape covered with dust. On her lap lay a boy of five years of age. Close to her—so close that Sam's shoulder pressed against his—stood a man in an army hat with the cord and acorn encircling the crown. On his breast was pinned a medal. Sam was so close he could read the inscription: "Fair Oaks," it said, and then followed the date and the name and number of the regiment. Sam knew what it meant: he had had an uncle who went to the war, and who wore a medal. His sword hung over the mantel in his mother's sitting-room at home. The man before him had, no doubt, been equally brave: he had saved the colors the day of the fight, perhaps, or had carried a wounded comrade out of range of a rifle pit, or had thrown an unexploded shell clear of a tent—some little thing like that.
Sam had never seen a medal that close before, and his keen lens absorbed every detail—the ribbon, the way it was fastened to the cloth, the broad, strong chest behind it. Then he looked into the man's firm, determined, kindly face with its piercing black eyesand closely trimmed mustache, and then over his back and legs. He was wondering now where the ball had struck him, and what particular part of his person had been sacrificed in earning so distinguishing a mark of his country's gratitude.
Then he turned to the woman, and a slight frown gathered on his face when he realized that she alone had blocked his way to the open air and the deck beyond. He could step over any number of men whenever the mass of human beings crushing his ribs and shoulder-blades began once more to move, but a woman—a tired woman—with a boy—out on a jamboree like this, with——
Here Sam stopped, and instinctively felt around among his loose change for his key. Number 15 was all right, any way.
At the touch of the key Sam's face once more resumed its contented look, the lizards darting out to play, as usual.
The boy gave a sharp cry.
The woman put her hand on the child's head, smoothed it softly, and looked up in the face of the man with the medal.
"And you can get no state-room, George?" she asked in a plaintive tone.
"State-room, Kitty! Why, we couldn't get a pillow. I tried to get a shake-down some'ers, but half these people won't get six feet of space to lie down in, let alone a bed."
"Well, I don't know what we're going to do. Freddie's got a raging fever; I can't hold him here in my arms all night."
Sam shifted his weight to the other foot and concentrated his camera. The man with the medal and the woman with the boy were evidently man and wife. Sam had no little Freddie of his own—no Kitty, in fact—not yet—no home really that he could call his own—never more than a month at a time. A Pullman lower or a third story front in a three-dollar-a-day hotel was often his bed, and a marble-top table with iron legs screwed to the floor of a railroad restaurant and within sound of a big-voiced gateman bawling out the trains, generally his board. Freddie looked like a nice boy, and she looked like a nice woman. Man was O. K., anyhow—didn't give medals of honor to any otherkind. Both of them fools, though, or they wouldn't have brought that kid out——
Again the child turned its head and uttered a faint cry, this time as if in pain.
Sam freed his arm from the hip bone of the passenger on his left, and said in a sympathetic voice—unusual for Sam:
"Is this your boy?" The drummer was not a born conversationalist outside of trade matters, but he had to begin somewhere.
"Yes, sir." The woman looked up and a flickering smile broke over her lips. "Our only one, sir."
"Sick, ain't he?"
"Yes, sir; got a high fever."
The man with the medal now wrenched his shoulder loose and turned half round toward Sam. Sam never looked so jolly nor so trustworthy: the lizards were in full play all over his cheeks.
"Freddie's all tired out, comrade. I didn't want to bring him, but Kitty begged so. It was crossing the Common, in that heat—your company must have felt it when you come along. The sun beatdown terrible on Freddie—that's what used him up."
Sam felt a glow start somewhere near his heels, struggle up through his spinal column and end in his fingers. Being called "comrade" by a man with a medal on his chest was, somehow, better than being mistaken for a millionaire.
"Can't you get a state-room?" Sam asked. Of course the man couldn't—he had heard him say so. The drummer was merely sparring for time—trying to adjust himself to a new situation—one rare with him. Meanwhile the key of Number 15 was turning in his pocket as uneasily as a grain of corn on a hot shovel.
The man shook his head in a hopeless way. The woman replied in his stead—she, too, had fallen a victim to Sam's smile.
"No, sir, that's the worst of it," she said in a choking voice. "If we only had a pillow we could put Freddie's head on it and I could find some place where he might be comfortable. I don't much mind for myself, but it's dreadful about Freddie—" and she bent her head over the child.
Sam thought of the upper berth in Number 15 with two pillows and the lower berth with two more. By this time the key of Number 15 had reached a white heat.
"Well, I guess I can help out," Sam blurted. "I've got a state-room—got two berths in it. Just suit you, come to think of it. Here"—and he dragged out the key—"Number 15—main deck—you can't miss it. Put the kid there and bunk in yourselves—" and he dropped the key in the woman's lap, his voice quivering, a lump in his throat the size of a hen's egg.
"Oh, sir, we couldn't!" cried the woman.
"No, comrade," interrupted the man, "we can't do that; we——"
Sam heard, but he did not tarry. With one of his nimble springs he lunged through the crowd, his big fat shoulders breasting the mob, wormed himself out into the air; slipped down a ladder to the deck below, interviewed the steward, borrowed a blanket and a pillow and proceeded to hunt up the ironclads. If the worst came to the worst he would string them in a row, spread his blanket ontop and roll up for the night. Their height would keep him off the deck, and the roof above them would protect him from the weather should a squall come up.
This done, he drew out a domestic from the upper pocket, bit off the end, slid a match along the well-worn seam and blew a ring out to sea.
"Couldn't let that kid sit up all night, you know," he muttered to himself. "Not your Uncle Joseph: no sir-ee—" and he wedged his way back to the deck again.
An hour later, with his blanket over his shoulder and his pillow under his arm, Sam again sought his ironclads. Steward, chief cook, clerk—everything had failed. The trunks with the pillow and blanket were all that was left.
It was after nine o'clock now, and the summer twilight had faded and only the steamer's lanterns shone on the heads of the people. As he passed the companion-way he ran into a man in an army hat. Backing away in apology he caught the glint of a medal. Then came a familiar voice:
"Comrade, where you been keeping yourself? I've been hunting you all over the boat. You're the man gave me the key, ain't you?"
"Sure!How's the kid? Is he all right? Didn't I tell you you'd find that up-to-date? It's a cracker-jack, that room is; I've had it before. Tell me, how's the kid and the wife—kind o' comfy, ain't they?"
"Both are all right. Freddie's in the lower berth and Kitty sitting by him. He's asleep, and the fever's going down; ain't near so hot as he was. You're white, comrade, all the way through." The man's big hand closed over Sam's in a warm embrace. "I thank you for it. You did us a good turn and we ain't going to forget you."
Sam kept edging away; what hurt him most was being thanked.
"But that ain't what I've been hunting you for, comrade," the man continued. "You didn't get a state-room, did you?"
"No," said Sam, shaking his head and still backing away. "But I'm all right—got a pillow and a blanket—see!" and he held them up. "You needn'tworry, old man. This ain't nothing to the way I sleep sometimes. I'm one of those fellows can bunk in anywhere." Sam was now in sight of his trunks.
"Yes," answered the man, still keeping close to Sam, "that's just what we thought would happen; that's whatdoesworry us, and worry us bad. You ain't going to bunk in anywhere—not by a blamed sight! Kitty and I have been talking it over, and what Kitty says goes! There's two bunks in that state-room; Kitty's in one 'longside of the boy, and you got to sleep in the other."
"Me!—well—but—why, man!" Sam's astonishment took his breath away.
"You got to!" The man meant it.
"But I won't!" said Sam in a determined voice.
"Well, then, out goes Kitty and the boy! You think I'm going to sleep in your bunk, and have you stretched out here on a plank some'ers! No, sir! Yougotto, I tell you!"
"Why, see here!" Sam was floundering about now as helplessly as if he had been thrown overboard with his hands tied.
"There ain't no seeing about it, comrade." Theman was close to him now, his eyes boring into Sam's with a look in them as if he was taking aim.
"You say I've got to get into the upper berth?" asked Sam in a baffled tone.
"Yes."
Sam ruminated: "When?"
"When Kitty gets to bed."
"How'll I know?"
"I'll come for you."
"All right—you'll find me here."
Then Sam turned up the deck muttering to himself: "That's one on you, Sam-u-e-l—one under the chin-whisker. Got to—eh? Well, for the love of Mike!"
In ten minutes Sam heard a whistle and raised his head. The man with the medal was leaning over the rail looking down at him.
Sam mounted the steps and picked his way among the passengers sprawled over the floor and deck. The man advanced to meet him, smiled contentedly, walked along the corridor, put his hand on the knob of the door of Number 15, opened it noiselessly, beckoned silently, waited until Sam hadstepped over the threshold and closed the door upon him. Then the man tiptoed back to the saloon.
Sam looked about him. The curtains of the lower berth were drawn; the curtains of the upper one were wide open. On a chair was his bag, and on a hook by the shuttered window the cape and hat of the wife and the clothes of the sleeping boy.
At the sight of the wee jacket and little half-breeches, tiny socks and cap, Sam stopped short. He had never before slept in a room with a child, and a strange feeling, amounting almost to awe, crept over him. It was as if he had stepped suddenly into a shrine and had been confronted by the altar. The low-turned lamp and the silence—no sound came from either of the occupants—only added to the force of the impression.
Sam slipped off his coat and shoes, hung the first on a peg and laid the others on the floor; loosened his collar, mounted the chair, drew himself stealthily into the upper berth; closed the curtains and stretched himself out. As his head touched the pillow a soft, gentle, rested voice said:
"I can't tell you how grateful we are, sir—good-night."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," whispered Sam in answer; "mighty nice of you to let me come," and he dropped off to sleep.
At the breaking of the dawn Sam woke with a start; ran his eye around the room until he found his bearings; drew his legs together from the coverlet; let himself down as stealthily as a cat walking over teacups; picked up his shoes, slipped his arms into his coat, gave a glance at the closed curtains sheltering the mother and child, and crossed the room on his way to the door with the tread of a burglar.
Reaching out his hand in the dim light he studied the lock for an instant, settled in his mind which knob to turn so as to make the least noise, and swung back the door.
Outside on the mat, sound asleep, so close that he almost stepped on him, lay the Man with the Medal.
THE RAJAH OF BUNGPORE
It was the crush hour at Sherry's. A steady stream of men and women in smart toilettes—the smartest the town afforded—had flowed in under the street awning, through the doorway guarded by flunkeys, past the dressing-rooms and coat-racks, and were now banked up in the spacious hall waiting for tables, the men standing about, the women resting on the chairs and divans listening to the music of the Hungarian band or chatting with one another. The two cafés were full—had been since seven o'clock, every table being occupied except two. One of these had been reserved that morning by my dear friend Marny, the distinguished painter of portraits—I being his guest—and the other, so the head-waiter told us, awaited the arrival of Mr. John Stirling, who would entertain a party of six.
When Marny was a poor devil of an illustrator, and worked for the funny column of the weekly papers—we had studios in the same building—we used to dine at Porcelli's, the price of the two meals equalling the value of one American trade dollar, and including one bottle of vin ordinaire. Now that Marny wears a ribbon in his button-hole, has a suite of rooms that look like a museum, man-servants and maid-servants, including an English butler whose principal business is to see that Marny is not disturbed, a line of carriages before his door on his reception days, and refuses two portraits a week at his own prices—we sometimes dine at Sherry's.
As I am still a staid old landscape painter living up three flights of stairs with no one to wait on me but myself and the ten-year-old daughter of the janitor, I must admit that these occasional forays into the whirl of fashionable life afford me not only infinite enjoyment, but add greatly to my knowledge of human nature.
As we followed the waiter into the café, a group of half a dozen men, all in full dress, emerged from a side room and preceded us into the restaurant, ledby a handsome young fellow of thirty. The next moment they grouped themselves about the other reserved table, the young fellow seating his guests himself, drawing out each chair with some remark that kept the whole party laughing.
When we had settled into our own chairs, and my host had spread his napkin and looked about him, the young fellow nodded his head at Marny, clasped his two hands together, shook them together heartily, and followed this substitute for a closer welcome by kissing his hand at him.
Marny returned the courtesy by a similar handshake, and bending his head said in a low voice, "The Rajah must be in luck to-night."
"Who?" I asked. My acquaintance with foreign potentates is necessarily limited.
"The Rajah—Jack Stirling. Take a look at him. You'll never see his match; nobody has yet."
I shifted my chair a little, turned my head in the opposite direction, and then slowly covering Stirling with my gaze—the polite way of staring at a stranger—got a full view of the man's face and figure; rather a difficult thing on a crowded nightat Sherry's, unless the tables are close together. What I saw was a well-built, athletic-looking young man with a smooth-shaven face, laughing eyes, a Cupid mouth, curly brown hair, and a fresh ruddy complexion; a Lord Byron sort of a young fellow with a modern up-to-date training. He was evidently charming his guests, for every man's head was bent forward seemingly hanging on each word that fell from his lips.
"A rajah, is he? He don't look like an Oriental."
"He isn't. He was born in New Jersey."
"Is he an artist?"
"Yes, five or six different kinds; he draws better than I do; plays on three instruments, and speaks five languages."
"Rich?"
"No—dead broke half the time."
I glanced at the young fellow's faultless appearance and the group of men he was entertaining. My eye took in the array of bottles, the number of wineglasses of various sizes, and the mass of roses that decorated the centre of the table. Such appointments and accompaniments are not generallythe property of the poor. Then, again, I remembered we were at Sherry's.
"What does he do for a living, then?" I asked.
"Do for a living? He doesn't do anything for a living. He's a purveyor of cheerfulness. He wakes up every morning with a fresh stock of happiness, more than he can use himself, and he trades it off during the day for anything he can get."
"What kind of things?" I was a little hazy over Marny's meaning.
"Oh, dinners—social, of course—board bills, tailor's bills, invitations to country houses, voyages on yachts—anything that comes along and of which he may be in need at the time. Most interesting man in town. Everybody loves him. Known all over the world. If a fellow gets sick, Stirling waltzes in, fires out the nurse, puts on a linen duster, starts an alcohol lamp for gruel, and never leaves till you are out again. All the time he is pumping laughs into you and bracing you up so that you get well twice as quick. Did it for me once for five weeks on a stretch, when I was laid up in my studio with inflammatory rheumatism, with my grub bills hungup in the restaurant downstairs, and my rent three months overdue. Fed me on the fat of the land, too. Soup from Delmonico's, birds from some swell house up the Avenue, where he had been dining—sent that same night with the compliments of his hostess with a 'Please forgive me, but dear Mr. Stirling tells me how ill you have been, and at his suggestion, and with every sympathy for your sufferings—please accept.' Oh, I tell you he's a daisy!"
Here a laugh sounded from Stirling's table.
"Who's he got in tow now?" I asked, as my eyes roamed over the merry party.
"That fat fellow in eyeglasses is Crofield the banker, and the hatchet-faced man with white whiskers is John Riggs from Denver, President of the C. A.—worth ten millions. I don't know the others—some bored-to-death fellows, perhaps, starving for a laugh. Jack ought to go slow, for he's dead broke—told me so yesterday."
"Perhaps Riggs is paying for the dinner." This was an impertinent suggestion, I know; but then sometimes I can be impertinent—especially when some of my pet theories have to be defended.
"Not if Jack invited him. He's the last man in the world to sponge on anybody. Inviting a man to dinner and leaving his pocketbook in his other coat is not Jack's way. If he hasn't got the money in his own clothes, he'll find it somehow, but not intheirclothes."
"Well, but at times hemusthave ready money," I insisted. "He can't be living on credit all the time." I have had to work for all my pennies, am of a practical turn of mind, and often live in constant dread of the first of every month—that fatal pay-day from which there is no escape. The success, therefore, of another fellow along different and more luxurious lines naturally irritates me.
"Yes, now and then he does need money. But that never bothers Jack. When his tailor, or his shoemaker, or his landlord gets him into a corner, he sends the bill to some of his friends to pay for him. They never come back—anybody would do Stirling a favor, and they know that he never calls on them unless he is up against it solid."
I instinctively ran over in my mind which of my own friends I would approach, in a similaremergency, and the notes I would receive in reply. Stirling must know rather a stupid lot of men or they couldn't be buncoed so easily, I thought.
Soup was now being served, and Marny and the waiter were discussing the merits of certain vintages, my host insisting on a bottle of '84 in place of the '82, then in the waiter's hand.
During the episode I had the opportunity to study Stirling's table. I noticed that hardly a man entered the room who did not stop and lay his hand affectionately on Stirling's shoulder, bending over and joining in the laugh. His guests, too—those about his table—seemed equally loyal and happy. Riggs's hard business face—evidently a man of serious life—was beaming with merriment and twice as wide, under Jack's leadership, and Crofield and the others were leaning forward, their eyes fixed on their host, waiting for the point of his story, then breaking out together in a simultaneous laugh that could be heard all over our part of the room.
When Marny had received the wine he wanted—it's extraordinary how critical a man's palate becomes when his income is thousands a yearinstead of dollars—I opened up again with my battery of questions. His friend had upset all my formulas and made a laughing-stock of my most precious traditions. "Pay as you go and keep out of debt" seemed to belong to a past age.
"Speaking of your friend, the Rajah, as you call him," I asked, "and his making his friends pay his bills—does he ever pay back?"
"Always, when he gets it."
"Well, wheredoeshe get it—cards?" It seemed to me now that I saw some comforting light ahead, dense as I am at times.
"Cards! Not much—never played a game in his life. Not that kind of a man."
"How, then?" I wanted the facts. There must be some way in which a man like Stirling could live, keep out of jail, and keep his friends—friends like Marny.
"Same way. Just chucks around cheerfulness to everybody who wants it, and 'most everybody does. As to ready money, there's hardly one of his rich friends in the Street who hasn't a Jack Stirling account on his books. And they are always lucky,for what they buy for Jack Stirling is sure to go up. Got to be a superstition, really. I know one broker who sent him over three thousand dollars last fall—made it for him out of a rise in some coal stock. Wrote him a note and told him he still had two thousand dollars to his credit on his books, which he would hold as a stake to make another turn on next time he saw a sure thing in sight. I was with Jack when he opened the letter. What do you think he did? He pulled out his bureau drawer, found a slip of paper containing a list of his debts, sat down and wrote out a check for each one of his creditors and enclosed them in the most charming little notes with marginal sketches—some in water-color—which every man of them preserves now as souvenirs. I've got one framed in my studio—regular little Fortuny—and the check is framed in with it. Never cashed it and never will. The Rajah, I tell you, old man, is very punctilious about his debts, no matter how small they are. Gave me fifteen shillings last time I went to Cairo to pay some duffer that lived up a street back of Shepheard's, a red-faced Englishman who had helped Jack out ofa hole the year before, and who would have pensioned the Rajah for life if he could have induced him to pass the rest of his years with him. And he only saw him for two days! That's the funny thing about Jack. He never forgets his creditors, and his creditors never forget him. I'll tell you about this old Cairo lobster—that's what he looked like—red and claw-y.
"When I found him he was stretched in a chair trying to cool off; he didn't even have the decency to get on his feet.
"'Who?' he snapped out. Just as if I had been a book agent.
"'Mr. John Stirling of New York.'
"'Owesmefifteen shillings?'
"'That's what he said, and here it is,' and I handed him the silver.
"'Young man,' he says, glowering at me, 'I don't know what your game is, but I'll tell you right here you can't play it on me. Never heard ofMister-John-Stirling-of-New-York in my life. So you can put your money back.' I wasn't going to be whipped by the old shell-fish, and then I didn'tlike the way he spoke of Jack. I knew he was the right man, for Jack doesn't make mistakes—not about things like that. So I went at him on another tack.
"'Weren't you up at Philæ two years ago in a dahabieh?'
"'Yes.'
"'And didn't you meet four or five young Americans who came up on the steamer, and who got into a scrape over their fare?'
"'I might—I can't recollect everybody I meet—don't want to—half of 'em—' All this time I was standing, remember.
"'And didn't you—' I was going on to say, but he jumped from his chair and was fumbling about a bookcase.
"'Ah, here it is!' he cried out. 'Here's a book of photographs of a whole raft of young fellows I met up the Nile on that trip. Most of 'em owed me something and still do. Pick out the man now you say owes me fifteen shillings and wants to pay it.'
"'There he is—one of those three.'
"The old fellow adjusted his glasses.
"'The Rajah! That man! Know him? Best lad I ever met in my life. I'm damned if I take his money, and you can go home and tell him so.' He did, though, and I sat with him until three o'clock in the morning talking about Jack, and I had all I could do getting away from him then. Wanted me to move in next day bag and baggage, and stay a month with him. He wasn't so bad when I came to know him, if he was red and claw-y."
I again devoted my thoughts to the dinner—what I could spare from the remarkable personage Marny had been discussing, and who still sat within a few tables of us. My friend's story had opened up a new view of life, one that I had never expected to see personified in any one man. The old-fashioned rules by which I had been brought up—the rules of "An eye for an eye," and "Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow," etc.—seemed to have lost their meaning. The Rajah's method, it seemed to me, if persisted in, might help solve the new problem of the day—"the joy of living"—always a colossal joke with me. I determined to know something more of this lazy apostle in a dress suit whodispensed sweetness and light at some other fellow's expense.
"Why do you call him 'The Rajah,' Marny?" I asked.
"Oh, he got that in India. A lot of people like that old lobster in Cairo don't know him by any other name."
"What did he do in India?"
"Nothing in particular—just kept on being himself—just as he does everywhere."
"Tell me about it."
"Well, I got it from Ashburton, a member of the Alpine Club in London. But everybody knows the story—wonder you haven't heard it. You ought to come out of your hole, old man, and see what's going on in the world. You live up in that den of yours, and the procession goes by and you don't even hear the band. You ought to know Jack—he'd do you a lot of good," and Marny looked at me curiously—as a physician would, who, when he prescribes for you, tells you only one-half of your ailment.
I did not interrupt my friend—I wasn't gettingthousands for a child's head, and twice that price for the mother in green silk and diamonds. And I couldn't afford to hang out my window and watch any kind of procession, figurative or otherwise. Nor could I afford to exchange dinners with John Stirling.
"Do you want me to tell you about that time the Rajah had in India? Well, move your glass this way," and my host picked up the '84. "Ashburton," continued Marny, and he filled my glass to the brim, "is one of those globe-trotters who does mountain-tops for exercise. He knows the Andes as well as he does the glaciers in Switzerland; has been up the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, and every other snow-capped peak within reach, and so he thought he'd try the Himalayas. You know how these Englishmen are—the rich ones. At twenty-five a good many of them have exhausted life. Some shoot tigers, some fit out caravans and cross deserts, some get lost in African jungles, and some come here and go out West for big game; anything that will keep them from being bored to death before they are thirty-five years of age. Ashburton was that kind.
"He had only been home ten days—he had spent two years in Yucatan looking up Toltec ruins—when this Himalaya trip got into his head. Question was, whom could he get to go with him, for these fellows hate to be alone. Some of the men he wanted hadn't returned from their own wild-goose chases; others couldn't get away—one was running for Parliament, I think—and so Ashburton, cursing his luck, had about made up his mind to try it alone, when he ran across Jack one day in the club.
"'Hello, Stirling! Thought you'd sailed for America.'
"'No,' said Jack, 'I go next week. What are you doing here? Thought you had gone to India.'
"'Can't get anybody to go with me,' answered Ashburton.
"'Where do you go first?'
"'To Calcutta by steamer, and then strike in and up to the foot-hills.'
"'For how long?'
"'About a year. Come with me like a decent man.'
"'Can't. Only got money enough to get home, and I don't like climbing.'
"'Money hasn't got anything to do with it—you go as my guest. As to climbing, you won't have to climb an inch. I'll leave you at the foot-hills in a bungalow, with somebody to take care of you, and you can stay there until I come back.'
"'How long will you be climbing?'
"'About two months.'
"'When do you start?'
"'To-morrow, at daylight.'
"'All right, I'll be on board.'
"Going out, Jack got up charades and all sorts of performances; rescued a man overboard, striking the water about as soon as the man did, and holding on to him until the lifeboat reached them; studied navigation and took observations every day until he learned how; started a school for the children—there were a dozen on board—and told them fairy tales by the hour; and by the time the steamer reached Calcutta every man, woman, and child had fallen in love with him. One old Maharajah, who was on board, took such a fancy to him that he insistedon Jack's spending a year with him, and there came near being a precious row when he refused, which of course he had to do, being Ashburton's guest.
"When the two got to where Jack was to camp out and wait for Ashburton's return from his climb—it was a little spot called Bungpore—the Englishman fitted up a place just as he said he would; left two men to look after him—one to cook and the other to wait on him—fell on Jack's neck, for he hated the worst kind to leave him, and disappeared into the brush with his retainers—or whatever he did disappear into and with—I never climbed the Himalayas, and so I'm a little hazy over these details. And that's the last Ashburton saw of Jack until he returned two months later."
Marny emptied his glass, flicked the ashes from his cigarette, beckoned to the waiter, and gave him an order for a second bottle of '84. During the break in the story I made another critical examination of the hero, as he sat surrounded by his guests, his face beaming, the light falling on his immaculate shirt-front. I noted the size of his arm and the depth of his chest, and his lithe, muscularthighs. I noticed, too, how quickly he gained his feet when welcoming a friend, who had just stopped at his table. I understood now how the drowning sailor came to be saved.
The wine matter settled, Marny took some fresh cigarettes from his silver case, passed one to me, and held a match to both in turn. Between the puffs I again brought the talk back to the man who now interested me intensely. I was afraid we would be interrupted and I have to wait before finding out why his friend was called the "Rajah."
"I should think he would have gone with him instead of staying behind and living off his bounty," I ventured.
"Yes—I know you would, old man, but Jack thought differently, not being built along your lines. You've got to know him—I tell you, he'll do you a lot of good. Stirling saw that, if he went, it would only double Ashburton's expense account, and so he squatted down to wait with just money enough to get along those two months, and not another cent. Told Ashburton he wanted to learn Hindustanee, and he couldn't do it if he was slidingdown glaciers and getting his feet wet—it would keep him from studying."
"And was Stirling waiting for him when Ashburton came back?"
"Waiting for him! Well, I guess! First thing Ashburton ran up against was one of the blackamoors he had hired to take care of Jack. When he had left the fellow he was clothed in a full suit of yellow dust with a rag around his loins. Now he was gotten up in a red turban and pajamas trimmed with gewgaws. The blackamoor prostrated himself and began kotowing backward toward a marquee erected on a little knoll under some trees and surrounded by elephants in gorgeous trappings. 'The Rajah of Bungpore'—that was Jack—'had sent him,' he said, 'to conduct his Royal Highness into the presence of his illustrious master!'
"When Ashburton reached the door of the marquee and peered in, he saw Jack lying back on an Oriental couch at the other end smoking the pipe of the country—whatever that was—and surrounded by a collection of Hottentots of varioussizes and colors, who fell on their foreheads every time Jack crooked his finger. At his feet knelt two Hindoo merchants displaying their wares—pearls, ivories, precious stones, arms, porcelains—stuffs of a quality and price, Ashburton told me, that took his breath away. Jack kept on—he made out he didn't see Ashburton—his slaves bearing the purchases away and depositing them on a low inlaid table—teakwood, I guess—in one corner of the marquee, while a confidential Lord of the Treasury took the coin of the realm from a bag or gourd—or whatever he did take it from—and paid the shot.