On arriving at the Thirty-fourth Street ferry Garrison idly boarded a Forty-second Street car, drifting aimlessly with the main body of Long Island passengers going westward to disintegrate, scatter like the fragments of a bursting bomb, at Broadway. A vague sense of proprietorship, the kiss of home, momentarily smoothed out the wrinkles in his soul as the lights of the Great White Way beamed down a welcome upon him. Then it was slowly borne in on him that, though with the crowd, he was not of it. His mother, the great cosmopolitan city, had repudiated him. For Broadway is a place for presents or futures; she has no welcome for pasts. With her, charity begins at home—and stays there.
Garrison drifted hither and thither with every cross eddy of humanity, and finally dropped into the steady pulsating, ever-moving tide on the west curb going south—the ever restless tide that never seems to reach the open sea. As he passed one well-known café after another his mind carried him back over the waste stretch of “It might have been” to the time when he was their central figure. On every block he met acquaintances who had even toasted him—with his own wine; toasted him as the kingpin. Now they either nodded absently or became suddenly vitally interested in a show-window or the new moon.
All sorts and conditions of men comprised that list of former friends, and not one now stepped out and wrung his hand; wrung it as they had only the other day, when they thought he would retrieve his fortunes by pulling off the Carter Handicap. They did not wring it now, for there was nothing to wring out of it. Now he was not only hopelessly down in the muck of poverty, but hopelessly dishonored. And gentlemanly appearing blackguards, who had left all honesty in the cradle, now wouldn't for the world be seen talking on Broadway to little Billy Garrison, the horribly crooked jockey.
It wouldn't do at all. First, because their own position was so precarious that a breath would send it tottering. Secondly, because Billy might happen to inconveniently remember all the sums of money he had “loaned” them time and again. Actual necessity might tend to waken his memory. For they had modernized the proverb into: “A friend in need is a friend to steer clear of.”
A lesson in mankind and the making had been coming to Garrison, and in that short walk down Broadway he appreciated it to the uttermost.
“Think I had the mange or the plague,” he mused grimly, as a plethoric ex-alderman passed and absent-mindedly forgot to return his bow—an alderman who had been tipped by Garrison in his palmy days to a small fortune. “What if I had thrown the race?” he ran on bitterly. “Many a jockey has, and has lived to tell it. No, there's more behind it all than that. I've passed sports who wouldn't turn me down for that. But I suppose Bender” (the plethoric alderman) “staked a pot on Sis, she being the favorite and I up. And when he loses he forgets the times I tipped him to win. Poor old Sis!” he added softly, as the fact of her poisoning swept over him. “The only thing that cared for me—gone! I'm down on my luck—hard. And it's not over yet. I feel it in the air. There's another fall coming to me.”
He shivered through sheer nervous exhaustion, though the night was warm for mid-April. He rummaged in his pocket.
“One dollar in bird-seed,” he mused grimly, counting the coins under the violet glare of a neighboring arc light. “All that's between me and the morgue. Did I ever think it would come to that? Well, I need a bracer. Here goes ten for a drink. Can only afford bar whisky.”
He was standing on the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, and unconsciously he turned into the café of the Hoffman House. How well he knew its every square inch! It was filled with the usual sporting crowd, and Garrison entered as nonchalantly as if his arrival would merit the same commotion as in the long ago. He no longer cared. His depression had dropped from him. The lights, the atmosphere, the topics of conversation, discussion, caused his blood to flow like lava through his veins. This was home, and all else was forgotten. He was not the discarded jockey, but Billy Garrison, whose name on the turf was one to conjure with.
And then, even as he had awakened from his dream on Broadway, he now awoke to an appreciation of the immensity of his fall from grace. He knew fully two-thirds of those present. Some there were who nodded, some kindly, some pityingly. Some there were who cut him dead, deliberately turning their backs or accurately looking through the top of his hat.
Billy's square chin went up to a point and his under lip came out. He would not be driven out. He would show them. He was as honest as any there; more honest than many; more foolish than all. He ordered a drink and seated himself by a table, indifferently eyeing the shifting crowd through the fluttering curtain of tobacco-smoke.
The staple subject of conversation was the Carter Handicap, and he sensed rather than noted the glances of the crowd as they shifted curiously to him and back again. At first he pretended not to notice them, but after a certain length of time his oblivion was sincere, for retrospect came and claimed him for its own.
He was aroused by footsteps behind him; they wavered, stopped, and a large hand was laid on his shoulder.
“Hello, kid! You here, too?”
He looked up quickly, though he knew the voice. It was Jimmy Drake, and he was looking down at him, a queer gleam in his inscrutable eyes. Garrison nodded without speaking. He noticed that the book-maker had not offered to shake hands, and the knowledge stung. The crowd was watching them curiously, and Drake waved off, with a late sporting extra he carried, half a dozen invitations to liquidate.
“Kid,” he said, lowering his voice, his hand still on Garrison's shoulder, “what did you come here for? Why don't you get away? Waterbury may be here any minute.”
“What's that to me?” spat out Billy venomously. “I'm not afraid of him. No call to be.”
Drake considered, the queer look still in his eyes.
“Don't get busty, kid. I don't know how you ever come to do it, but it's a serious game, a dirty game, and I guess it may mean jail for you, all right.”
“What do you mean?” Garrison's pinched face had gone slowly white. A vague premonition of impending further disaster possessed him, amounting almost to an obsession. “What do you mean, Jimmy?” he reiterated tensely.
Drake was silent, still scrutinizing him.
“Kid,” he said finally, “I don't like to think it of you—but I know what made you do it. You were sore on Waterbury; sore for losing. You wanted to get hunk on something. But I tell you, kid, there's no deal too rotten for a man who poisons a horse—”
“Poisons a horse,” echoed Garrison mechanically. “Poisons a horse. Good Lord, Drake!” he cried fiercely, in a sudden wave of passion and understanding, jumping from his chair, “you dare to say that I poisoned Sis! You dare—”
“No, I don't. The paper does.”
“The paper lies! Lies, do you hear? Let me see it! Let me see it! Where does it say that? Where, where? Show it to me if you can! Show it to me—”
His eyes slowly widened in horror, and his mouth remained agape, as he hastily scanned the contents of an article in big type on the first page. Then the extra dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he mechanically seated himself at the table, his eyes vacant. To his surprise, he was horribly calm. Simply his nerves had snapped; they could torture him no longer by stretching.
“It's not enough to have—have her die, but I must be her poisoner,” he said mechanically.
“It's all circumstantial evidence, or nearly so,” added Drake, shifting from one foot to the other. “You were the only one who would have a cause to get square. And Crimmins says he gave you permission to see her alone. Even the stable-hands say that. It looks bad, kid. Here, don't take it so hard. Get a cinch on yourself,” he added, as he watched Garrison's blank eyes and quivering face.
“I'm all right. I'm all right,” muttered Billy vaguely, passing a hand over his throbbing temples.
Drake was silent, fidgeting uneasily.
“Kid,” he blurted out at length, “it looks as if you were all in. Say, let me be your bank-roll, won't you? I know you lost every cent on Sis, no matter what they say. I'll give you a blank check, and you can fill it out—”
“No, thanks, Jimmy.”
“Don't be touchy, kid. You'd do the same for me—”
“I mean it, Drake. I don't want a cent. I'm not hard up. Thanks all the same.” Garrison's rag of honor was fluttering in the wind of his pride.
“Well,” said Drake, finally and uncomfortably, “if you ever want it, Billy, you know where to come for it. I want to go down on the books as your friend, hear? Mind that. So-long.”
“So-long, Jimmy. And I won't forget your stand.”
Garrison continued staring at the floor. This, then, was the reason why the sporting world had cut him dead; for a horse-poisoner is ranked in the same category as that assigned to the horse-stealer of the Western frontier. There, a man's horse is his life; to the turfman it is his fortune—one and the same. And so Crimmins had testified that he had permitted him, Garrison, to see Sis alone!
Yes, the signals were set dead against him. His opinion of Crimmins had undergone a complete revolution; first engendered by the trainer offering him a dishonorable opportunity of fleecing the New York pool-rooms; now culminated by his indirect charge.
Garrison considered the issue paramount. He was furious, though so seemingly indifferent. Every ounce of resentment in his nature had been focused to the burning-point. Now he would not leave New York. Come what might, he would stand his ground. He would not run away. He would fight the charge; fight Waterbury, Crimmins—the world, if necessary. And mingled with the warp and woof of this resolve was another; one that he determined would comprise the color-scheme of his future existence; he would ferret out the slayer of Sis; not merely for his own vindication, but for hers. He regarded her slayer as a murderer, for to him Sis had been more than human.
Garrison came to himself by hearing his name mentioned. Behind him two young men were seated at a table, evidently unaware of his identity, for they were exchanging their separate views on the running of the Carter Handicap and the subsequent poisoning of the favorite.
“And I say,” concluded the one whose nasal twang bespoke the New Englander; “I say that it was a dirty race all through.”
“One paper hints that the stable was in on it; wanted to hit the bookies hard,” put in his companion diffidently.
“No,” argued the wise one, some alcohol and venom in his syllables, “Waterbury's all right. He's a square sport. I know. I ought to know, for I've got inside information. A friend of mine has a cousin who's married to the brother of a friend of Waterbury's aunt's half-sister. So I ought to know. Take it from me,” added this Bureau of Inside Information, beating the table with an insistent fist; “it was a put-up job of Garrison's. I'll bet he made a mint on it. All these jockeys are crooked. I may be from Little Falls, but I know. You can't fool me. I've been following Garrison's record—”
“Then what did you bet on him for?” asked his companion mildly.
“Because I thought he might ride straight for once. And being up on Sis, I thought he couldn't help but win. And so I plunged—heavy. And now, by Heck! ten dollars gone, and I'm mad; mad clear through. Sis was a corker, and ought to have had the race. I read all about her in the Little FallsDaily Banner. I'd just like to lay hands on that Garrison—a miserable little whelp; that's what he is. He ought to have poisoned himself instead of the horse. I hope Waterbury'll do him up. I'll see him about it.”
Garrison slowly rose, his face white, eyes smoldering. The devil was running riot through him. His resentment had passed from the apathetic stage to the fighting. So this was the world's opinion of him! Not only the world, but miserable wastrels of sports who “plunged heavy” with ten dollars! His name was to be bandied in their unclean mouths! He, Billy Garrison, former premier jockey, branded as a thing beyond redemption! He did not care what might happen, but he would kill that lie here and now. He was glad of the opportunity; hungry to let loose some of the resentment seething within him.
The Bureau of Inside Information and his companion looked up as Billy Garrison stood over them, hands in pockets. Both men had been drinking. Drake and half the café's occupants had drifted out.
“Which of you gentlemen just now gave his opinion of Billy Garrison?” asked the jockey quietly.
“I did, neighbor. Been roped in, too?” Inside Information splayed out his legs, and, with a very blasé air, put his thumbs in the armholes of his execrable vest. He owned a rangy frame and a loose mouth. He was showing the sights of Gotham to a friend, and was proud of his knowledge. But he secretly feared New York because he did not know it.
“Oh, it was you?” snapped Garrison venomously. “Well, I don't know your name, but mine's Billy Garrison, and you're a liar!” He struck Inside Information a whack across the face that sent him a tumbled heap on the floor.
There is no one so dangerous as a coward. There is nothing so dangerous as ignorance. The New Englander had heard much of Gotham's undercurrent and the brawls so prevalent there. He had heard and feared. He had looked for them, fascination in his fear, but till the present had never experienced one. He had heard that sporting men carried guns and were quick to use them; that when the lie was passed it meant the hospital or the morgue. He was thoroughly ignorant of the ways of a great city, of the world; incapable of meeting a crisis; of apportioning it at its true value. And so now he overdid it.
As Garrison, a contemptuous smile on his face, turned away, and started to draw a handkerchief from his hip pocket, the New Englander, thinking a revolver was on its way, scrambled to his feet, wildly seized the heavy spirit-bottle, and let fly at Garrison's head. There was whisky, muscle, sinew, and fear behind the shot.
As Billy turned about to ascertain whether or not his opponent meant fight by rising from under the table, the heavy bottle landed full on his temple. He crumpled up like a withered leaf, and went over on the floor without even a sigh.
It was two weeks later when Garrison regained full consciousness; opened his eyes to gaze upon blank walls, blank as the ceiling. He was in a hospital, but he did not know it. He knew nothing. The past had become a blank. An acute attack of brain-fever had set in, brought on by the excitement he had undergone and finished by the smash from the spirit-bottle.
There followed many nights when doctors shook their heads and nurses frowned; nights when it was thought little Billy Garrison would cross the Great Divide; nights when he sat up in the narrow cot, his hands clenched as if holding the reins, his eyes flaming as in his feverish imagination he came down the stretch, fighting for every inch of the way; crying, pleading, imploring: “Go it, Sis; go it! Take the rail! Careful, careful! Now—now let her out; let her out! Go, you cripple, go—” All the jargon of the turf.
He was a physical, nervous wreck, and the doctors said that he couldn't last very long, for consumption had him. It was only a matter of time, unless a miracle happened. The breath of his life was going through his mouth and nostrils; the breath of his lungs.
No one knew his name at the hospital, not even himself. There was nothing to identify him by. For Garrison, after the blow that night, had managed to crawl out to the sidewalk like a wounded beast striving to find its lair and fighting to die game.
There was no one to say him nay, no friend to help him. And hotel managements are notoriously averse to having murder or assault committed in their house. So when they saw that Garrison was able to walk they let him go, and willingly. Then he had collapsed, crumpled in a heap on the sidewalk.
A policeman had eventually found him, and with the uncanny acumen of his ilk had unerringly diagnosed the case as a “drunk.” From the stationhouse to Bellevue, Garrison had gone his weary way, and from there, when it was finally discovered he was neither drunk nor insane, to Roosevelt Hospital. And no one knew who or what he was, and no one cared overmuch. He was simply one of the many unfortunate derelicts of a great city.
It was over six months before he left the hospital, cured so far as he could be. The doctors called his complaint by a learned and villainously unpronounceable name, which, interpreted by the Bowery, meant that Billy Garrison “had gone dippy.”
But Garrison had not. His every faculty was as acute as it ever had been. Simply, Providence had drawn an impenetrable curtain over his memory, separating the past from the present; the same curtain that divides our presents from our futures. He had no past. It was a blank, shot now and then with a vague gleam of things dead and gone.
This oblivion may have been the manifestation of an all-wise Almighty. Now, at least, he could not brood over past mistakes, though, unconsciously, he might have to live them out. Life to him was a new book, not one mark appeared on its clean pages. He did not even know his name—nothing.
From the “W. G.” on his linen he understood that those were his initials, but he could not interpret them; they stood for nothing. He had no letters, memoranda in his pockets, bearing his name. And so he took the name of William Good. Perhaps the “William” came to him instinctively; he had no reason for choosing “Good.”
Garrison left the hospital with his cough, a little money the superintendent had kindly given to him, and his clothes; that was all.
Handicapped as he was, harried by futile attempts of memory to fathom his identity, he was about to renew the battle of life; not as a veteran, one who has earned promotion, profited by experience, but as a raw recruit.
The big city was no longer an old familiar mother, whose every mood and whimsy he sensed unerringly; now he was a stranger. The streets meant nothing to him. But when he first turned into old Broadway, a vague, uneasy feeling stirred within him; it was a memory struggling like an imprisoned bird to be free. Almost the first person he met was Jimmy Drake. Garrison was about to pass by, oblivious, when the other seized him by the arm.
“Hello, Billy! Where did you drop from—”
“Pardon me, you have made a mistake.” Garrison stared coldly, blankly at Drake, shook free his arm, and passed on.
“Gee, what a cut!” mused the book-maker, staring after the rapidly retreating figure of Garrison. “The frozen mitt for sure. What's happened now? Where's he been the past six months? Wearing the same clothes, too! Well, somehow I've queered myself for good. I don't know what I did or didn't. But I'll keep my eye on him, anyway.” To cheer his philosophy, Drake passed into the Fifth Avenue for a drink.
Garrison had flattered himself that he had known adversity in his time, but in the months succeeding his dismissal from the hospital he qualified for a post-graduate course in privation. He was cursed with the curse of the age; it was an age of specialties, and he had none. His only one, the knowledge of the track, had been buried in him, and nothing tended to awaken it.
He had no commercial education; nothing but thesavoir-fairewhich wealth had given to him, and an inherent breeding inherited from his mother. By reason of his physique he was disbarred from mere manual labor, and that haven of the failure—the army.
So Garrison joined the ranks of the Unemployed Grand Army of the Republic. He knew what it was to sleep in Madison Square Park with a newspaper blanket, and to be awakened by the carol of the touring policemen. He came to know what it meant to stand in the bread-line, to go the rounds of the homeless “one-night stands.”
He came perilously near reaching the level of the sodden. His morality had suffered with it all. Where in his former days of hardship he had health, ambition, a goal to strive for, friends to keep him honest with himself, now he had nothing. He was alone; no one cared.
If he had only taken to the track, his passion—legitimate passion—for horse-flesh would have pulled him through. But the thought that he ever could ride never suggested itself to him.
He had no opportunity of inhaling the track's atmosphere. Sometimes he wondered idly why he liked to stop and caress every stray horse. He could not know that those same hands had once coaxed thoroughbreds down the stretch to victory. His haunts necessarily kept him from meeting with those whom he had once known. The few he did happen to meet he cut unconsciously as he had once cut Jimmy Drake.
And so day by day Garrison's morality suffered. It is so easy for the well-fed to be honest. But when there is the hunger cancer gnawing at one's vitals, not for one day, but for many, then honesty and dishonesty cease to be concrete realities. It is not a question of piling up luxuries, but of supplying mere necessity.
And day by day as the hunger cancer gnawed at Garrison's vitals it encroached on his original stock of honesty. He fought every minute of the day, but he grimly foresaw that there would come a time when he would steal the first time opportunity afforded.
Day by day he saw the depletion of his honor. He was not a moralist, a saint, a sinner. Need sweeps all theories aside; in need's fierce crucible they are transmuted to concrete realities. Those who have never known what it is to be thrown with Garrison's handicap on the charity of a great city will not understand. But those who have ever tasted the bitter crust of adversity will. And it is the old blatant advice from the Seats of the Mighty: “Get a job.” The old answer from the hopeless undercurrent: “How?”
There came a day when the question of honesty or dishonesty was put up to Garrison in a way he had not foreseen. The line was drawn distinctly; there was no easy slipping over it by degrees, unnoticed.
The toilet facilities of municipal lodging-houses are severely crude and primitive. For the sake of sanitation, the whilom lodger's clothes are put in a net and fumigated in a germ-destroying temperature. The men congregate together in one long room, in various stages of pre-Adamite costumes, and the shower is turned upon them in numerical rotation.
This public washing was one of the many drawbacks to public charity which Garrison shivered at. As the warm weather set in he accordingly took full advantage of the free baths at the Battery. On his second day's dip, as he was leaving, a man whom he had noticed intently scanning the bathers tapped him on the arm.
He was shaped like an olive, with a pair of shrewd gray eyes, and a clever, clean-shaven mouth. He was well-dressed, and was continually probing with a quill tooth-pick at his gold-filled front teeth, evidently desirous of excavating some of the precious metal.
“My name's Snark—Theobald D. Snark,” he said shortly, thrusting a card into Garrison's passive hand. “I am an eminent lawyer, and would be obliged if you would favor me with a five minutes' interview in my office—American Tract Building.”
“Don't know you,” said Garrison blandly.
“You'll like me when you do,” supplemented the eminent lawyer coolly. “Merely a matter of business, you understand. You look as if a little business wouldn't hurt you.”
“Feel worse,” added Billy mildly, inspecting his crumpled outfit.
He was very hungry. He caught eagerly at this quondam opening. Perhaps it would be the means of starting him in some legitimate business. Then a wild idea came to him, and slowly floated away again as he remembered that Mr. Snark had agreed that he did not know him. But while it lasted, the idea had been a thrilling one for a penniless, homeless wanderer. It had been: Supposing this lawyer knew him? Knew his real identity, and had tracked him down for clamoring relatives and a weeping father and mother? For to Garrison his parents might have been criminals or millionaires so far as he remembered.
The journey to Nassau Street was completed in silence, Mr. Snark centering all his faculties on his teeth, and Garrison on the probable outcome of this chance meeting.
The eminent lawyer's office was in a corner of the fifth shelf of the American Tract Building bookcase. It was unoccupied, Mr. Snark being so intelligent as to be able to dispense with the services of office-boy and stenographer; it was small but cozy. Offices in that building can be rented for fifteen dollars per month.
After the eminent lawyer had fortified himself from a certain black bottle labeled “Poison: external use only,” which sat beside the soap-dish in the little towel-cabinet, he assumed a very preoccupied and highly official mien at his roller-top desk, where he became vitally interested in a batch of letters, presumably that morning's mail, but which in reality bore dates ranging back to the past year.
Then the eminent lawyer delved importantly into an empty letter-file; emerged after ten minutes' study in order to give Blackstone a few thoroughly familiar turns, opened the window further to cool his fevered brain, lit a highly athletic cigar, crossed his legs, and was at last at leisure to talk business with Garrison, who had almost fallen asleep during the business rush.
“What's your name?” he asked peremptorily.
Ordinarily Garrison would have begged him to go to a climate where thermometers are not in demand, but now he was hungry, and wanted a job, so he answered obediently: “William Good.”
“Good, William,” said the eminent lawyer, smiling at himself in the little mirror of the towel-cabinet. He understood that he possessed a thin vein of humor. Necessary quality for an eminent lawyer. “And no occupation, I presume, and no likelihood of one, eh?”
Garrison nodded.
“Well”—and Mr. Snark made a temple of worship from his fat fingers, his cigar at right angles, his shrewd gray eyes on the ceiling—“I have a position which I think you can fill. To make a long story short, I have a client, a very wealthy gentleman of Cottonton, Virginia; name of Calvert—Major Henry Clay Calvert. Dare say you've heard of the Virginia Calverts,” he added, waving the rank incense from the athletic cigar.
He had only heard of the family a week or two ago, but already he persuaded himself that their reputation was national, and that his business relations with them dated back to the Settlement days.
Garrison found occasion to say he'd never heard of them, and the eminent lawyer replied patronizingly that “we all can't be well-connected, you know.” Then he went on with his short story, which, like all short stories, was a very long one.
“Now it appears that Major Calvert has a nephew somewhere whom he has never seen, and whom he wishes to recognize; in short, make him his heir. He has advertised widely for him during the past few months, and has employed a lawyer in almost every city to assist in this hunt for a needle in a haystack. This nephew's name is Dagget—William C. Dagget. His mother was a half-sister of Major Calvert's. The search for this nephew has been going on for almost a year—since Major Calvert heard of his brother-in-law's death—but the nephew has not been found.”
The eminent lawyer cleared his throat eloquently and relighted the athletic cigar, which had found occasion to go out.
“It will be a very fine thing for this nephew,” he added speculatively. “Very fine, indeed. Major Calvert has no children, and, as I say, the nephew will be his heir—if found. Also the lawyer who discovers the absent youth will receive ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars is not a sum to be sneezed at, Mr. Good. Not to be sneezed at, sir. Not to be sneezed at,” thundered the eminent lawyer forensically.
Garrison agreed. He would never think of sneezing at it, even if he was subject to that form of recreation. But what had that to do with him?
The eminent lawyer attentively scrutinized the blue streamer from his cigar.
“Well, I've found him at last. You are he, Mr. Good. Mr. Good, my heartiest congratulations, sir.” And Mr. Snark insisted upon shaking the bewildered Garrison impressively by the hand.
Garrison's head swam. Then his wild dream had come true! His identity had been at last discovered! He was not the offspring of some criminal, but the scion of a noble Virginia house! But Mr. Snark was talking again.
“You see,” he began slowly, focusing an attentive eye on Garrison's face, noting its every light and shade, “this nice old gentleman and his wife are hard up for a nephew. You and I are hard up for money. Why not effect a combination? Eh, why not? It would be sinful to waste such an opportunity of doing good. In you I give them a nice, respectable nephew, who is tired of reaping his wild oats. You are probably much better than the original. We are all satisfied. I do everybody a good turn by the exercise of a little judgment.”
Garrison's dream crumbled to ashes.
“Oh!” he said blankly, “you—you mean to palm me off as the nephew?”
“Exactly, my son, the long-lost nephew. You are fitted for the role. They haven't ever seen the original, and then, by chance, you have a birthmark, shaped like a spur, beneath your right collar-bone. Oh, yes, I marked it while you were bathing. I've hunted the baths in the chance of finding a duplicate, for I could not afford to run the risks of advertising.
“It seems this nephew has a similar mark, his mother having mentioned it once in a letter to her brother, and it is the only means of identification. Luck is with us, Mr. Good, and of course you will take full advantage of it. As a side bonus you can pay me twenty-five thousand or so when you come into the estate on your uncle's death.”
The eminent lawyer, his calculating eye still on Garrison, then proceeded with much forensic ability and virile imagination to lay the full beauties of the “cinch” before him.
“But supposing the real nephew shows up?” asked Garrison hesitatingly, after half an hour's discussion.
“Impossible. I am fully convinced he's dead. Possession is nine points of the law, my son. If he should happen to turn up, which he won't, why, you have only to brand him as a fraud. I'm a kind-hearted man, and I merely wish Major Calvert to have the pleasure of killing fatted calf for one instead of a burial. I'm sure the real nephew is dead. Anyway, the search will be given up when you are found.”
“But about identification?”
“Oh, the mark's enough, quite enough. You've never met your kin, but you can have very sweet, childish recollections of having heard your mother speak of them. I know enough of old Calvert to post you on the family. You've lived North all your life. We'll fix up a nice respectable series of events regarding how you came to be away in China somewhere, and thus missed seeing the advertisement.
“We'll let my discovery of you stand as it is, only we'll substitute the swimming-pool of the New York Athletic Club in lieu of the Battery. The Battery wouldn't sound good form. Romanticism always makes truth more palatable. Trust me to work things to a highly artistic and flawless finish. I can procure any number of witnesses—at so much per head—who have time and again distinctly heard your childish prattle regarding dear Uncle and Aunty Calvert.
“I'll wire on that long-lost nephew has been found, and you can proceed to lie right down in your ready-made bed of roses. There won't be any thorns. Bit of a step up from municipal lodging-houses, eh?”
Garrison clenched his hands. His honor was in the last ditch. The great question had come; not in the guise of a loaf of bread, but this. How long his honor put up a fight he did not know, but the eminent lawyer was apparently satisfied regarding the outcome, for he proceeded very leisurely to read the morning paper, leaving Garrison to his thoughts.
And what thoughts they were! What excuses he made to himself—poor hostages to a fast-crumbling honor! Only the exercise of a little subterfuge and all this horrible present would be a past. No more sleeping in the parks, no more of the hunger cancer. He would have a name, friends, kin, a future. Something to live for. Some one to care for; some one to care for him. And he would be all that a nephew should be; all that, and more. He would make all returns in his power.
He had even reached the point when he saw in the future himself confessing the deception; saw himself forgiven and being loved for himself alone. And he would confess it all—his share, but not Snark's. All he wanted was a start in life. A name to keep clean; traditions to uphold, for he had none of his own. All this he would gain for a little subterfuge. And perhaps, as Snark had acutely pointed out, he might be a better nephew than the original. He would be.
When a man begins to compromise with dishonesty, there is only one outcome. Garrison's rag of honor was hauled down. He agreed to the deception. He would play the role of William C. Dagget, the lost nephew.
When he made his intention known, the eminent lawyer nodded as if to say that Garrison wasted an unnecessary amount of time over a very childish problem, and then he proceeded to go into the finer points of the game, building up a life history, supplying dates, etc. Then he sent a wire to Major Calvert. Afterward he took Garrison to his first respectable lunch in months and bought him an outfit of clothes. On their return to the corner nook, fifth shelf of the bookcase, a reply was awaiting them from Major Calvert. The long-lost nephew, in company with Mr. Snark, was to start the next day for Cottonton, Virginia. The telegram was warm, and commended the eminent lawyer's ability.
“Son,” said the eminent lawyer dreamily, carefully placing the momentous wire in his pocket, “a good deed never goes unrewarded. Always remember that. There is nothing like the old biblical behest: 'Let us pray.' You for your bed of roses; me for—for——” mechanically he went to the small towel-cabinet and gravely pointed the unfinished observation with the black bottle labeled “Poison.”
“To the long-lost nephew, Mr. William C. Dagget. To the bed of roses. And to the eminent lawyer, Theobald D. Snark, Esq., who has mended a poor fortune with a better brain. Gentlemen,” he concluded grandiloquently, slowly surveying the little room as if it were an overcrowded Colosseum—“gentlemen, with your permission, together with that of the immortal Mr. Swiveller, we will proceed to drown it in the rosy. Drown it in the rosy, gentlemen.” And so saying, Mr. Snark gravely tilted the black bottle ceilingward.
The following evening, as the shadows were lengthening, Garrison and the eminent lawyer pulled into the neat little station of Cottonton. The good-by to Gotham had been said. It had not been difficult for Garrison to say good-by. He was bidding farewell to a life and a city that had been detestable in the short year he had known it. The lifetime spent in it had been forgotten. But with it all he had said good-by to honor. On the long train trip he had been smothering his conscience, feebly awakened by the approaching meeting, the touch of new clothes, and the prospect of a consistently full stomach. He even forgot to cough once or twice.
But the conscience was only feebly awakened. The eminent lawyer had judged his client right. For as one is never miserly until one has acquired wealth, so Garrison was loath to vacate the bed of roses now that he had felt how exceedingly pleasant it was. To go back to rags and the hunger cancer and homelessness would be hard; very hard even if honor stood at the other end.
“There they are—the major and his wife,” whispered Snark, gripping his arm and nodding out of the window to where a tall, clean-shaven, white-haired man and a lady who looked the thoroughbred stood anxiously scanning the windows of the cars. Drawn up at the curb behind them was a smart two-seated phaeton, with a pair of clean-limbed bays. The driver was not a negro, as is usually the case in the South, but a tight-faced little man, who looked the typical London cockney that he was.
Garrison never remembered how he got through his introduction to his “uncle” and “aunt.” His home-coming was a dream. The sense of shame was choking him as Major Calvert seized both hands in a stone-crushed grip and looked down upon him, steadily, kindly, for a long time.
And then Mrs. Calvert, a dear, middle-aged lady, had her arms about Garrison's neck and was saying over and over again in the impulsive Southern fashion: “I'm so glad to see you, dear. You've your mother's own eyes. You know she and I were chums.”
Garrison had choked, and if the eminent lawyer's wonderful vocabulary and eloquent manner had not just then intervened, Garrison then and there would have wilted and confessed everything. If only, he told himself fiercely, Major Calvert and his wife had not been so courteous, so trustful, so simple, so transparently honorable, incapable of crediting a dishonorable action to another, then perhaps it would not have been so difficult.
The ride behind the spanking bays was all a dream; all a dream as they drove up the long, white, wide Logan Pike under the nodding trees and the soft evening sun. Everything was peaceful—the blue sky, the waving corn-fields, the magnolia, the songs of the homing birds. The air tasted rich as with great breaths he drew it into his lungs. It gave him hope. With this air to aid him he might successfully grapple with consumption.
Garrison was in the rear seat of the phaeton with Mrs. Calvert, mechanically answering questions, giving chapters of his fictitious life, while she regarded him steadily with her grave blue eyes. Mr. Snark and the major were in the middle seat, and the eminent lawyer was talking a veritable blue streak, occasionally flinging over his shoulder a bolstering remark in answer to one of Mrs. Calvert's questions, as his quick ear detected a preoccupation in Garrison's tones, and he sensed that there might be a sudden collapse to their rising fortunes. He was in a very good humor, for, besides the ten thousand, and the bonus he would receive from Garrison on the major's death, he had accepted an invitation to stay the week end at Calvert House.
Garrison's inattention was suddenly swept away by the clatter of hoofs audible above the noise contributed by the bays. A horse, which Garrison instinctively, and to his own surprise, judged to be a two-year-old filly, was approaching at a hard gallop down the broad pike. Her rider was a young girl, hatless, who now let loose a boyish shout and waved a gauntleted hand. Mrs. Calvert, smilingly, returned the hail.
“A neighbor and a lifelong friend of ours,” she said, turning to Garrison. “I want you to be very good friends, you and Sue. She is a very lovely girl, and I know you will like her. I want you to. She has been expecting your coming. I am sure she is anxious to see what you look like.”
Garrison made some absent-minded, commonplace answer. His eyes were kindling strangely as he watched the oncoming filly. His blood was surging through him. Unconsciously, his hands became ravenous for the reins. A vague memory was stirring within him. And then the girl had swung her mount beside the carriage, and Major Calvert, with all the ceremonious courtesy of the South, had introduced her.
She was a slim girl, with a wealth of indefinite hair, now gold, now bronze, and she regarded Garrison with a pair of very steady gray eyes. Beautiful eyes they were; and, as she pulled off her gauntlet and bent down a slim hand from the saddle, he looked up into them. It seemed as if he looked into them for ages. Where had he seen them before? In a dream? And her name was Desha. Where had he heard that name? Memory was struggling furiously to tear away the curtain that hid the past.
“I'm right glad to see you,” said the girl, finally, a slow blush coming to the tan of her cheek. She slowly drew away her hand, as, apparently, Garrison had appropriated it forever.
“The honor is mine,” returned Garrison mechanically, as he replaced his hat. Where had he heard that throaty voice?