J. C. MURPHYGeneral Travelling AgentC. S. & Q. R. R.OGDEN, UTAH
The big Liner slowed down and dropped anchor inside the Breakwater. Sweeping toward her, pushing the white foam in long lines from her bow, her flag of black smoke trailing behind, came the company's tender—out from Cherbourg with passengers.
Under the big Liner's upper deck, along its top rail, was strung a row of heads watching the tender's approach—old heads—young heads—middle-aged heads—Miss Jennings's among these last—their eyes taking in the grim Breakwater with its beacon light, the frowning casemates specked with sentinels, and the line of the distant city blurred with masts and spent steam. They saw, too, from their height (they could look down the tender's smokestack) the sturdy figure of her Captain, his white cap in relief against the green sea, and below him the flat mass of people, their upturned faces so many pats of color on a dark canvas.
With the hauling taut and making fast of the fore and aft hawsers, a group of sailors broke away from the flat mass and began tugging at the gangplank, lifting it into position, the boatswain's orders ringing clear. Another group stripped off the tarpaulins from the piles of luggage, and a third—the gangplank in place—swarmed about the heaps of trunks, shouldering the separate pieces as ants shoulder grains of sand, then scurrying toward the tender's rail, where other ants reached down and relieved them of their loads.
The mass of people below now took on the shape of a funnel, its spout resting on the edge of the gangplank, from out which poured a steady stream of people up and over the Liner's side.
Two decks below where Miss Jennings and her fellow-travellers were leaning over the steamer's rail craning their necks, other sights came into view. Here not only the funnel-shaped mass could be seen, but the faces of the individuals composing it, as well as their nationality and class; whether first, second or steerage. There, too, was the line of stewards reaching out with open hands, relieving the passengers of their small belongings; here too stood the First Officer in white gloves and gold lace bowing to those he knew and smiling at others; and here too was a smooth-shaven, closely-knit young man in dark clothes and derby hat, who had taken up his position just behind the First Officer, and whose steady steel gray eyes followed the movements of each and every one of the passengers from the moment their feet touched the gangplank until they had disappeared in charge of the stewards.
These passengers made a motley group: first came a stout American with two pretty daughters; then a young Frenchman and his valet; then a Sister of Charity draped in black, her close-fitting, white, starched cap and broad white collar framing her face, one hand clutching the rope rail as she stepped feebly toward the steamer, the other grasping a bandbox, her only luggage; next wriggled some college boys in twos and threes, and then the rest of the hurrying mass, followed close by a herd of emigrants crowding and stumbling like sheep, the men with pillow-case bundles over their backs, the women with babies muffled in shawls.
When the last passenger was aboard, the closely-knit young man with the steel gray eyes leaned forward and said in a low voice to the First Officer:
"He's not in this bunch."
"Sure?"
"Yes—dead sure."
"Where will you look for him now, Hobson?" continued the officer.
"Paris, maybe. I told the Chief we wouldn't get anywhere on this lead. Well, so long"—and the closely-knit young man swung himself down the gangplank and disappeared into the cabin of the tender.
The scenes on the gangplank were now repeated on the steamer. The old travellers, whose hand luggage had been properly numbered, gave themselves no concern—the stewards would look after their belongings. The new travellers—the Sister of Charity among them—wandered about asking questions that for the moment no one had time to answer. She, poor soul, had spent her life in restful places, and the in-rush of passengers and their proper bestowal seemed to have completely dazed her.
"Can I help you?" asked the First Officer—everybody is ready to help a Sister, no matter what his rank or how pressing his duties.
"Yes, please—I want to know where my room is. It is Number 49, so my ticket says."
Here the Purser came up—he, too, would help a Sister.
"Sister Teresa, is it not—from the Convent of the Sacred Heart? Yes, we knew you would get on at Cherbourg. You are on the lower deck in the same stateroom with Miss Jennings. Steward—take the Sister to—"
"With whom?" she cried, with a look of blank amazement "But I thought I was alone! They told me so at the office. Oh, I cannot share my room with anybody. Please let—"
"Yes, but we had to double up. We would willingly give you a room alone, but there isn't an empty berth on board." He was telling the truth and showed it in his voice.
"But I have the money to pay for a whole room. I would have paid for it at the office in Paris, but they told me it was not necessary."
"I know, Sister, and I'm very sorry, but it can't be helped now. Steward, take Sister Teresa to Number 49." This last came as an order, and ended the discussion.
When the Steward pushed open the door Miss Jennings was sitting on the sofa berth reading, a long gray cloak about her shoulders. She had a quiet, calm face and steady eyes framed in gold spectacles. She looked to be a woman of fifty who had seen life and understood it.
"The officer says I am to share your room," began Sister Teresa in a trembling voice. "Don't think me rude, please, but I don't want to share your room. I want to be alone, and so do you. Can't you help me?"
"But I don't mind it, and you won't after you get used to it." The voice was poised and well modulated—evidently a woman without nerves—a direct, masterful sort of woman, who looked you straight in the eyes, was without guile, hated a lie and believed in human nature. "And we ought to get on together," she continued simply, as if it were a matter of course. "You are a Sister, and from one of the French institutions—I recognize your dress. I'm a nurse from the London Hospital. The First Officer told me you had the other berth and I was looking for you aboard the Cherbourg tender, but I couldn't see you for the smoke, you were so far below me. We'll get on together, never fear. Which bed will you have—this one or the one curtained off?"
"Oh, do you take the one curtained off," she answered in a hopeless tone, as if further resistance was useless. "The sofa is easier perhaps for me, for I always undress in the dark."
"No, turn on the light. It won't wake me—I'm used to sleeping anywhere—sometimes bolt upright in my chair with my hand on my patient."
"But it is one of the rules of our order to dress and undress in the dark," the Sister pleaded; "candles are luxuries only used for the sick, and so we do without them."
"All right—just as you say," rejoined Miss Jennings cheerily. "My only desire was to make you comfortable."
That night at dinner Sister Teresa and Nurse Jennings found themselves seated next to each other, the Chief Steward, who had special orders from the First Officer to show Miss Jennings and her companion every courtesy, having conducted them to their seats.
Before the repast was half over, the two had attracted the attention of all about them. What was particularly noticed was the abstemious self-denying life of the Sister so plainly shown in the lines of her grave, almost hard, face, framed close in the tight bands of white linen concealing every vestige of her hair, the whole in strong contrast to the kind, sympathetic face of the Nurse, whose soft gray locks hung loosely about her temples. Their history, gleaned at the First Officer's table had also become public property. Nurse Jennings had served two years in South Africa, where she had charge of a ward in one of the largest field hospitals outside of Pretoria; on her return to England, she had been placed over an important case in one of the London hospitals—that of a gallant Canadian officer who had been shipped home convalescent, and who had now sent for her to come to him in Montreal. The good Sister was one of those unfortunate women who had been expelled from France under the new law, and who was now on her way to Quebec, there to take up her life-work again. This had been the fifth refugee, the officer added, whom the Line had cared for.
When the hour for retiring came, Sister Teresa, with the remark that she would wait until Miss Jennings was in bed before she sought her own berth, followed her companion to the stateroom, bade her good-night, and then, with her hand on the knob, lingered for a moment as if there was still some further word on her lips.
"What is it?" asked the Nurse, with one of her direct, searching glances. "Speak out—I'm a woman like yourself, and can understand."
"Well, it's about the Hour of Silence. I must have one hour every day when I can be alone. It has been the custom of my life and I cannot omit it. It will be many days before we reach the land, and there is no other place for me to pray except in here. Would you object if I—"
"Object! Of course not! I will help you to keep it, and I will see, too, that the Stewardess does not disturb you. Now, is there anything else? Tell me—I love people who speak right out what they mean."
"No—except that I always rise at dawn, and will be gone when you wake. Good-night."
The morning after this first night the two lay in their steamer chairs on the upper deck. The First Officer, noticing them together, paused for a moment on his way to the bridge:
"You knew, of course, Miss Jennings, that Hobson went back to Cherbourg on the tender. He left good-by for you."
"Hunting for somebody, as usual, I suppose?" she rejoined.
"Yes"—and he passed on.
"A wretched life, isn't it," said Nurse Jennings, "this hunting for criminals? This same man, Mr. Hobson, after a hunt of months, found one in my ward with a bullet through his chest."
"You know him then?" asked Sister Teresa, with a tremor in her voice.
"Yes—he's a Scotland Yard man."
"And you say he was looking for some one on board and didn't find him?"
"No, not yet, but he will find him, he always does; that's the pity of it. Some of these poor hunted people would lead a different life if they had another chance. I tried to save the one Hobson found in my ward. He was quite frank with me, and told me everything. When people trust me my heart always goes out to them—so much so that I often do very foolish things that are apt to get me into trouble. It's when they lie to me—and so many do—making one excuse after another for their being in the ward—that I lose all interest in them. I pleaded with Hobson to give the man another chance, but I could do nothing. Thief as he was, he had told the truth. He had that quality left, and I liked him for it. If I had known Hobson was on his track I'd have helped him in some way to get off. He stole to help his old mother, and wasn't a criminal in any sense—only weak-hearted. The law is cruel—it never makes allowances—that's where it is wrong."
"Cruel!—it's brutal. It is more brutal often than the crime," answered Sister Teresa in a voice full of emotion. "Do you think the man your friend was looking for here on board will escape?"
"No, I'm afraid not. There is very little chance of any criminal escaping when they once get on his track, so Mr. Hobson has told me. If he is on this steamer he must run another gauntlet in New York, even if he is among the emigrants. You know we have over a thousand on board. If he is not aboard they will track him down. Dreadful, isn't it?"
"Poor fellow," said Sister Teresa, a sob in her voice, "how sorry I am for him. If men only knew how much wiser mercy is than justice in the redemption of the world." Here she rose from her chair, and gathering her black cloak about her crossed to the rail and looked out to sea. In a few minutes she returned. "Let us walk out to the bow where we can talk undisturbed," she said. "The constant movement of the passengers on deck, passing backward and forward, disturbs my head. I see so few people, you know."
When they reached the bow, she made a place beside her for the Nurse.
"Don't misunderstand what I said about the brutality of the law," she began. "There must be laws, and brutal men who commit brutal crimes must be punished. But there are so many men who are not brutal, although the crimes may be. I knew of one once. We had educated his little daughter—such a sweet child! The man himself was a scene-painter and worked in the theatres in London. Sometimes he would take part in the play himself, making up for the minor characters, although most of his time was spent in painting scenery. He had married a woman who was on the stage, and she had deserted him for one of the actors, and left her child behind. Her faithlessness nearly broke his heart. Through one of our own people in London he found us and sent the child to the convent where we have a school for just such cases. When the girl got to be seventeen years old he sent for her and she went to London to see him. He remembered her mother's career, and guarded her like a little plant. He never allowed her to come to the theatre except in the middle of the day. Then she would come where he was at work up on the top of the painting platform high above the stage. There he and she would be alone. One morning while he was at work one of the scene-shifters—a man with whom he had had some difficulty—met the girl as she was crossing the high platform. He had never seen her before and, thinking she was one of the chorus girls, threw his arm about her. The girl screamed, the scene-painter dropped his brushes, ran to her side, hit the man in the face—the scene-shifter lost his balance and fell to the stage. Before he died in the hospital he told who had struck him; he told why, too; that the scene-painter hated him; and that the two had had an altercation the day before—about some colors; which was not true, there only having been a difference of opinion. The man fled to Paris with his daughter. The girl today is at one of our institutions at Rouen. The detectives, suspecting that he would try to see her, have been watching that place for the last five months. All that time he has been employed in the garden of a convent out of Paris. Last week we heard from a Sister in London that some one had recognized him, although he had shaved off his beard—some visitor or parent of one of the children, perhaps, who had come upon him suddenly while at work in the garden beds. He is now a fugitive, hunted like an animal. He never intended to harm this man—he only tried to save his daughter—and yet he knew that because of the difficulty that he had had with the dead man and the fact that his daughter's testimony would not help him—she being an interested person—he would be made to suffer for a crime he had not intended to commit. Now, would you hand this poor father over to the police? In a year his daughter must leave the convent. She then has no earthly protection."
Miss Jennings gazed out over the sea, her brow knit in deep thought. Her mind went back to the wounded criminal in the hospital cot and to the look of fear and agony that came into his eyes when Hobson stood over him and called him by name. Sister Teresa sat watching her companion's face. Her whole life had been one of mercy and she never lost an opportunity to plead its cause.
The Nurse's answer came slowly:
"No, I would not. There is misery enough in the world without my adding to it."
"Would you help him to escape?"
"Yes, if what you tell me is true and he trusted me."
Sister Teresa rose to her feet, crossed herself, and said in a voice that seemed to come through pent-up tears:
"Thank God! I go now to pray. It is my Hour of Silence."
When she returned, Nurse Jennings was still in her seat in the bow. The sun shone bright and warm, and the sea had become calm.
"You look rested, Sister," she said, looking up into her face. "Your color is fresher and the dark rings have gone from your eyes. Did you sleep?"
"No, I wait for the night to sleep. It is hard enough then."
"What did you do?"
"I prayed for you and for myself. Come to the stateroom—I have something to tell you."
"Tell it here," said Nurse Jennings in a more positive tone.
"No, it might hurt you, and others will notice. Come quick, please, or my courage will fail."
"Can't I hear it to-night—" She was comfortable where she was and remembered the narrow, steep steps to the lower deck.
"No! come now—and QUICK."
At the tone of agony in the Sister's voice Miss Jennings scrutinized her companion's face. Her trained ear had caught an indrawn, fluttering sob which she recognized as belonging to a certain form of hysteria. Brooding over her troubles, combined with the effects of the sea air, had unstrung the dear Sister's nerves.
"Yes, certainly," assented Miss Jennings. "Let me take your arm—step carefully, and lean on me."
On reaching the stateroom, Sister Teresa waited until Miss Jennings had entered, then she locked the door and pulled the curtains close.
"Listen, Miss Jennings, before you judge me. You remember yesterday how I pleaded with you to help me find a bedroom where I could be alone. You would not, and I could do nothing but let matters take their course. Fate has placed me in your hands. When you said that you were on the lookout for me and that you knew Hobson, the detective, I knew that all was lost unless your heart went out to me. I know him, too. I faced his eyes when I came aboard. I staggered with fright and caught at the ropes, but he did not suspect—I saw in his face that he did not. He may still trace me and arrest me when I land. If anybody comes for me, say you met me in the hospital where you work."
Nurse Jennings stood staring into the woman's eyes. Her first impulse was to ring the bell for the Steward and send for the ship's doctor. Sudden insanity, the result of acute hysteria, was not uncommon in women leading sedentary lives who had gone through a heavy strain, and the troubles of this poor Sister had, she saw, unseated her reason.
"Don't talk so—calm yourself. No one is seeking you. You ought to lie down. Come—"
"Yes, I know you think I am crazy—I am crazy—crazy from a horrible fear that stares me in the face—from a spectre that—"
"Sister, you MUST lie down! I'll ring for the Doctor and he—"
Sister Teresa sprang forward and caught the hand of the Nurse before it touched the bell.
"Stop! STOP!—or all will be lost! I am not a Sister—I am the scene-painter—the father of that girl! See!" He threw back his hood, uncovering his head and exposed his short-cropped hair.
Nurse Jennings turned quickly and looked her companion searchingly in the face. The surprise had been so great that for an instant her breath left her. Then slowly the whole situation rushed over and upon her. This man had made use of her privacy—had imposed upon her—tricked her.
"And you—you have dared to come into this room, making me believe you were a woman—and lied to me about your Hour of Silence and all the—"
"It was the only way I could be safe. You and everybody else would detect me if I did not shave and fix up my face. You said a minute ago the dark rings had gone from my eyes—it is this paint-box that did it. Think of what it would mean to me to be taken—and my little girl! Don't—don't judge me wrongly. When I get to New York I promise never to see you again—no one will ever know. If you had been my own sister I could not have treated you with more respect since I have been in the room. I will do anything you wish—to-night I will sleep on the floor—anything, if—"
"To-night! Not another hour will you stay here. I will go to the Purser at once and—"
"You mean to turn me out?"
"Yes."
"Oh, merciful God! Don't! Listen—you MUST listen. Let me stay! What difference should it make to you. You have nursed hundreds of men. You have saved many lives. Save mine—give me back my little girl! She can come to me in Quebec and then we can get away somewhere in America and be safe. I can still pass as a Sister and she as a child in my charge until I can find some place where I can throw off my disguise. See how good the real Sisters are to me; they do not condemn me. Here is a letter from the Mother Superior in Paris to the Mother Superior of a convent in Quebec. It is not forged—it is genuine. If they believe in me, why cannot you? Let me stay here, and you stay, too. You would if you could see my child."
The sound of a heavy step was heard outside in the corridor.
Then came a quick, commanding voice: "Miss Jennings, open the door, please."
The Nurse turned quickly and made a step toward the door. The fugitive sank upon the sofa and drew the hood over his face.
Again her name rang out—this time in a way that showed them both that further delay was out of the question.
Nurse Jennings shot back the bolt.
Outside stood the First Officer.
"There has been a bad accident in the steerage. I hate to ask you, Miss Jennings, knowing how tired you are—but one of the emigrants has fallen down the forecastle hatch. The Doctor wants you to come at once."
During the rest of the voyage Nurse Jennings slept in the steerage; she would send to Number 49 during the day for her several belongings, but she never passed the night there, nor did she see her companion. The case was serious, she told the Stewardess, who came in search of her, and she dared not leave.
The fugitive rarely left the stateroom. Some days he pleaded illness and had his meals brought to him; often he ate nothing.
As the day approached for the vessel to arrive in New York a shivering nervousness took possession of him. He would stand behind the door by the hour listening for her lightest footfall, hoping against hope that, after all, her heart would soften toward him. One thought absorbed him: would she betray him, and if so, when and where? Would it be to the First Officer—the friend of Hobson—or would she wait until they reached New York and then hand him over to the authorities?
Only one gleam of hope shone out illumining his doubt, and that was that she never sent to the stateroom during the Hour of Silence, thus giving him a chance to continue his disguise. Even this ray was dimmed when he began to realize as they approached their destination that she had steadily avoided him, even choosing another deck for a breath of fresh air whenever she left her patient. That she had welcomed the accident to the emigrant as an excuse for remaining away from her stateroom was evident. What he could not understand was, if she really pitied and justified him, as she had done his prototype, why she should now treat him with such suspicion. At her request he had opened his heart and had trusted her; why then could she not forgive him for the deceit of that first night—one for which he was not responsible?
Then a new thought chilled him like an icy wind: her avoidance of him was only an evidence of her purpose! Thus far she had not exposed him, because then it would be known aboard that they had shared the stateroom together. He saw it all now. She was waiting until they reached the dock. Then no one would be the wiser.
When the steamer entered her New York slip and the gangplank was hoisted aboard, another thick-set, closely-knit man pushed his way through the crowd at the rail, walked straight to the Purser and whispered something in his ear. The next moment he had glided to where the Nurse and fugitive were standing.
"This is Miss Jennings, isn't it? I'm from the Central Office," and he opened his coat and displayed the gold shield. "We've just got a cable from Hobson. He said you were on board and might help. I'm looking for a man. We've got no clew—don't know that he's on board, but I thought we'd look the list over. The Purser tells me that you helped the Doctor in the steerage—says somebody had been smashed up. Got anything to suggest?—anybody that would fit this description: 'Small man, only five-feet-six; blue eyes'"—and he read from a paper in his hand.
"No, I don't think so. I was in the steerage, of course, four or five days, and helped on a bad case, but I didn't notice anybody but the few people immediately about me."
"Perhaps, then, among the first-class passengers? Anybody peculiar there? He's a slick one, we hear, and may be working a stunt in disguise."
"No. To tell you the truth, I was so tired when I came aboard that I hardly spoke to any one—no one, really, except my dear Sister Teresa here, who shared my stateroom. They have driven her out of France and she is on her way to a convent in Quebec. I go with her as far as Montreal."
"You eat too much, Marny." It was Joplin, of Boston, who was speaking—Samuel Epigastric Joplin, his brother painters called him. "You treat your stomach as if it were a scrap-basket and you dump into it everything you—"
"I do? You caricature of a codfish ball!"
"Yes, you do. You open your mouth, pin back your ears and in go pickles, red cabbage, Dutch cheese. It's insanity, Marny, and it's vulgar. No man's epigastric can stand it. It wouldn't make any difference if you were a kangaroo with your pouch on the outside, but you're a full-grown man and ought to have some common-sense."
"And you think that if I followed your idiotic theory it would keep me out of my coffin, do you? What you want, Joppy, is a square meal. You never had one, so far as I can find out, since you were born. You drank sterilized milk at blood temperature until you were five; chewed patent, unhulled wheat bread until you were ten, and since that time you've filled your stomach with husks—proteids, and carbohydrates, and a lot of such truck—isn't that what he calls em, Pudfut?"
The Englishman nodded in assent.
"And now just look at you, Joppy, instead of a forty-inch chest—"
"And a sixty-inch waist," interjected Joplin with a laugh, pointing at Marny's waistcoat.
"I acknowledge it, old man, and I'm proud of it," retorted Marny, patting his rotundity. "Instead, I say, of a decent chest your shoulders crowd your breast-bone; your epigastric, as you call it—it's your solar plexus, Joppy—but that's a trifle to an anatomist like you—your epigastric scrapes your back-bone, so lonely is it for something warm and digestible to rub up against, and your— Why, Joppy, do you know when I look at you and think over your wasted life, my eyes fill with tears? Eat something solid, old man, and give your stomach a surprise. Begin now. Dinner's coming up—I smell it. Open your port nostril, you shrivelled New England bean, and take in the aroma of beatific pork and greens. Doesn't that put new life into you? Puddy, you and Schonholz help Joppy to his feet and one or two of you fellows walk behind to pick up the pieces in case he falls apart before we can feed him. There's Tine's dinner-bell!"
White-capped, rosy-checked, bare-armed Tine had rung that bell for this group of painters for two years past—ever since Mynheer Boudier of the Bellevue over the way, who once claimed her services, had reproved Johann, the porter, for blocking up with the hotel trunks that part of the sidewalk over which the steamboat captain slid his gangplank. Thereupon Tine slipped her pretty little feet into her white sabots—she and Johann have been called in church since—and walked straight over to the Holland Arms. Johann now fights the steamboat captain, backed not only by the landlord of the Arms, who rubs his hands in glee over the possession of two of his competitor's best servants, but by the whole coterie of painters whose boots Johann blacks, whose kits be packs and unpacks, whose errands he runs; while Tine, no less loyal and obliging, darns their stockings, mends their clothes, sews on buttons, washes brushes, stretches canvases, waits on table, rings the dinner-bell, and with her own hands scrubs every square inch of visible surface inside and out of this quaint old inn in this sleepy old town of Dort-on-the-Maas—side-walks, windows, cobbles—clear to the middle of the street, her ruddy arms bare to the elbow, her sturdy, blue-yarn-stockinged legs thrust into snow-white sabots to keep her trim feet from the wet and slop.
Built in 1620, this inn of the Holland Arms—so the mildewed brick in the keystone over the arch of the doorway says—and once the home of a Dutchman made rich by the China trade, whose ships cast anchor where Fop Smit's steamboats now tie up (I have no interest in the Line); a grimy, green-moulded, lean-over front and moss-covered, sloping-roof sort of an inn, with big beams supporting the ceilings of the bedrooms; lumbering furniture blackened with the smoke of a thousand pipes flanking the walls of the coffee-room; bits of Delft a century old lining the mantel; tiny panes of glass with here and there a bull's-eye illumining the squat windows; rows of mugs with pewter tops crowding the narrow shelves beside the fireplace, and last, and by no means least, a big, bulky sun-moon-and-stars clock, with one eye always open, which strikes the hours as if it meant to beat the very life out of them.
But there is something more in this coffee-room—something that neither Mynheer Boudier of the Bellevue nor any other landlord in any other hostelry, great or small, up and down the Maas, can boast. This is the coffee-room picture gallery—free to whoever comes.
It began with a contribution from the first impecunious painter in payment of an overdue board-bill, his painting being hung on a nail beside the clock. Now; all over the walls—above the sideboard with its pewter plates and queer mugs; over the mantel holding the Delft, and between the squat windows—are pinned, tacked, pasted and hung—singly and in groups—sketches in oil, pastel, water color, pencil and charcoal, many without frames and most of them bearing the signature of some poor, stranded painter, preceded by the suggestive line, "To my dear friend, the landlord"—silent reminders all of a small cash balance which circumstances quite beyond their control had prevented their liquidating at the precise hour of their departure.
Mynheer had bowed and smiled as each new contribution was handed him and straightway had found a hammer and a nail and up it went beside its fellows. He never made objection: the more the merrier. The ice wind would soon blow across the Maas from Papendrecht, the tall grasses in the marshes turn pale with fright, and the lace-frost with busy fingers pattern the tiny panes, and then Johann would pack the kits one after another, and the last good-byes take place. But the sketches would remain. Oh! yes, the sketches would remain and tell the story of the summer and every night new mugs would be filled around the coal-fire, and new pipes lighted—mugs and pipes of the TOWNSPEOPLE this time, who came to feast their eyes,—and, although the summer was gone, the long winter would still be his. No, Mynheer never objected!
And this simple form of settlement—a note of hand (in color), payable in yearly patronage—has not been confined to modern times. Many an inn owes its survival to a square of canvas—the head of a child, a copper pot, or stretch of dune; and more than one collector now boasts of a masterpiece which had hung for years on some taproom wall, a sure but silent witness of the poverty of a Franz Hals, Wouverman or Van der Helst.
Each year had brought new additions to the impecunious group about Mynheer's table.
Dear old Marny, with his big boiler amidships, his round, sunburned face shaded by a wide-brimmed, slouch hat—the one he wore when he lived with the Sioux Indians—loose red tie tossed over one shoulder, and rusty velveteen coat, was an old habitue. And so was dry, crusty Malone, "the man from Dublin," rough outside as a potato and white inside as its meal. And so, too, was Stebbins, the silent man of the party, and the only listener in the group. All these came with the earliest birds and stayed until the boys got out their skates.
But there were others this year who were new. Pudfut, the Englishman, first—in from Norway, where he had been sketching on board some lord's yacht—he of the grizzly brown beard, brown ulster reaching to his toes, gray-checked steamer-cap and brierwood pipe—an outfit which he never changed—"slept in them," Marny insisted.
"Me name's Pudfut," he began, holding out his hand to Marny. "I've got a letter in my clothes for ye from a chap in Paris."
"Don't pull it out," had come the answer. "Put it there!" and within an hour the breezy fellow, his arm through the Englishman's, had trotted him all over Dort from the Groote Kerk to the old Gate of William of Orange, introducing him to every painter he met on the way, first as Pudfut, then as Puddy, then as Pretty-foot, then as Tootsie-Wootsie, and last as Toots—a name by which he is known in the Quartier to this day. This done, he had taken him up to his own room and had dumped him into an extra cot—his for the rest of the summer.
Then Schonholz wandered in—five gulden a week board was the magnet—a cheese-faced, good-natured German lad with forehead so high that when he raised his hat Marny declared, with a cry of alarm, that his scalp had slipped, and only regained his peace of mind when he had twisted his fat fingers in the lad's forelock to make sure that it was still fast. Schonholz had passed a year at Heidelberg and carried his diploma on his cheek—two crisscross slashes that had never healed—spoke battered English, wore a green flat-topped cap, and gray bobtailed coat with two rows of horn buttons ("Come to shoot chamois, have you?" Marny had asked when he presented his credentials.)—laughed three-quarters of the time he was awake, and never opened his kit or set a palette while he was in Dort. "Too vet and too fodgy all dime," was the way he accounted for his laziness.
Last came Joplin—a man of thirty-five; bald as an egg and as shiny. ("Dangerous to have a hen around," Marny would say, rubbing the pate after the manner of a phrenologist.) Gaunt, wiry; jerky in his movements as a Yankee clock and as regular in his habits: hot water when he got up—two glasses, sipped slowly; cold water when he went to bed, head first, feet next, then the rest of him; window open all night no matter how hard it blew or rained; ate three meals a day and no more; chewed every mouthful of food thirty times—coffee, soup, even his drinking-water (Gladstone had taught him that, he boasted)—a walking laboratory of a man, who knew it all, took no layman's advice, and was as set in his ways as a chunk of concrete.
And his fads did not stop with his food; they extended to his clothes—everything he used, in fact. His baggy knickerbockers ended in leather leggins to protect his pipe-stem shanks; his shirts buttoned all the way down in front and went on like a coat; he wore health flannels by day and a health shirt at night ("Just like my old Aunt Margaret's wrapper," whispered Marny in a stage voice to Pudfut); sported a ninety-nine-cent silver watch fastened to a leather strap (sometimes to a piece of twine); stuck a five-hundred-dollar scarab pin in his necktie—"Nothing finer in the Boston Museum," he maintained, and told the truth—and ever and always enunciated an English so pure and so undefiled that Stebbins, after listening to it for a few minutes, proposed, with an irreverence born of good-fellowship, that a subscription be started to have Joplin's dialect phonographed so that it might be handed down to posterity as the only real and correct thing.
"Are you noticing, gentlemen, the way in which Joplin handles his mother tongue?" Stebbins had shouted across the table: "never drops his 'g's,' never slights his first syllable; says 'HUmor' with an accent on the 'HU.' But for the fact that he pronounces 'bonnet' 'BUNNIT' and 'admires' a thing when he really ought only to 'like' it, you could never discover his codfish bringing up. Out with your wallets—how much do you chip in?"
These peculiarities soon made Joplin the storm-centre of every discussion. Not only were his views on nutrition ridiculed, but all his fads were treated with equal disrespect. "Impressionism," "plein air," the old "line engraving" in contrast to the modern "half-tone" methods—any opinion of Joplin's, no matter how sane or logical, was jostled, sat on, punched in the ribs and otherwise maltreated until every man was breathless or black in the face with assumed rage—every man except the man jostled, who never lost his temper no matter what the provocation, and who always came up smiling with some such remark as: "Smite away, you Pharisees; harmony is heavenly—but stupid. Keep it up—here's the other cheek!"
On this particular night Joplin, as I have said, had broken out on diet. Some movement of Marny's connected with the temporary relief of the lower button of his waistcoat had excited the great Bostonian's wrath. The men were seated at dinner inside the coffee-room, Johann and Tine serving.
"Yes, Marny, I'm sorry to say it, but the fact is you eat too much and you eat the wrong things. If you knew anything of the kinds of food necessary to nourish the human body, you would know that it should combine in proper proportions proteid, fats, carbohydrates and a small percentage of inorganic salts—these are constantly undergoing oxidation and at the same time are liberating energy in the form of heat."
"Hear the bloody bounder!" bawled Pudfut from the other end of the table.
"Silence!" called Marny, with his ear cupped in his fingers, an expression of the farthest-away-boy-in-the-class on his face.
Joplin waved his hand in protest and continued, without heeding the interruption: "Now, if you're stupid enough to stuff your epigastrium with pork, you, of course, get an excess of non-nitrogenous fats, and in order to digest anything properly you must necessarily cram in an additional quantity of carbohydrates—greens, potatoes, cabbage—whatever Tine shoves under your nose. Consult any scientist and see if I am not right—especially the German doctors who have made a specialty of nutrition. Such men as Fugel, Beenheim and—"
Here a slice of Tine's freshly-cut bread made a line-shot, struck the top of Joplin's scalp, caromed on Schonholz's shirt-front and fell into Stebbins's lap, followed instantly by "Order, gentlemen!" from Marny. "Don't waste that slab of proteid. The learned Bean is most interesting and should not be interrupted."
"Better out than in," continued Joplin, brushing the crumbs from his plate. "Bread—fresh bread particularly—is the very worst thing a man can put into his stomach."
"And how about pertaties?" shouted Malone. "I s'pose ye'd rob us of the only thing that's kep' us alive as a nation, wouldn't ye?"
"I certainly would, 'Loney, except in very small quantities. Raw potatoes contain twenty-two per cent. of the worst form of non-nitrogenous food, and seventy-eight per cent. of water. You, Malone, with your sedentary habits, should never touch an ounce of potato. It excites the epigastric nerve and induces dyspepsia. You're as lazy as the devil and should only eat nitrogenous food and never in excess. What you require is about one hundred grams of protein, giving you a fuel value of twenty-seven hundred calories, and to produce this fifty-five ounces of food a day is enough. When you exceed this you run to flesh—unhealthy bloat really—and in the wrong places. You've only to look at Marny's sixty-inch waist-line to prove the truth of this theory. Now look at me—I keep my figure, don't I? Not a bad one for a light-weight, is it? I'm in perfect health, can run, jump, eat, sleep, paint, and but for a slight organic weakness with my heart, which is hereditary in my family and which kills most of us off at about seventy years of age, I'm as sound as a nut. And all—all, let me tell you, due to my observing a few scientific laws regarding hygiene which you men never seem to have heard of."
Malone now rose to his feet, pewter mug in hand, and swept his eye around the table.
"Bedad, you're right, Joppy," he said with a wink at Marny—"food's the ruination of us all; drink is what we want. On yer feet, gintlemen—every mother's son of ye! Here's to the learned, livin' skeleton from Boston! Five per cint. man and ninety-five per cint. crank!"
The next morning the group of painters—all except Joplin, who was doing a head in "smears" behind the Groote Kerk a mile away—were at work in the old shipyard across the Maas at Papendrecht. Marny was painting a Dutch lugger with a brown-madder hull and an emerald-green stern, up on the ways for repairs. Pudfut had the children of the Captain posed against a broken windlass rotting in the tall grass near the dock, and Malone and Schonholz, pipe in mouth, were on their backs smoking. "It wasn't their kind of a mornin'," Malone had said.
Joplin's discourse the night before was evidently lingering in their minds, for Pudfut broke out with: "Got to sit on Joppy some way or we'll be talked to death," and he squeezed a tube of color on his palette. "Getting to be a bloody nuisance."
"Only one way to fix him," remarked Stebbins, picking up his mahlstick from the grass beside him.
"How?" came a chorus.
"Scare him to death."
The painters laid down their brushes. Stebbins rarely expressed an opinion; any utterance from him, therefore, carried weight.
"Go for him about his health, I tell you," continued Stebbins, dragging a brush from the sheaf in his hand.
"But there's nothing the matter with him," answered Marny. "He's as skinny as a coal-mine mule, but he's got plenty of kick in him yet."
"You're dead right, Marny," answered Stebbins, "but he doesn't think so. He's as big a fool over every little pain as he is over his theories."
"Niver cracked his jaw to me about it," sputtered Malone from between the puffs of his pipe.
"No, and he won't. I don't jump on him as you fellows do and so I get his confidence. He's in my room two or three times every night going over his symptoms. When his foot's asleep he thinks he's got creeping paralysis. Every time his breath comes short, his heart's giving out."
"That's hereditary!" said Marny; "he said so."
"Hereditary be hanged! Same with everything else. Last night he dug me out of bed and wanted me to count his pulse—thought it intermitted. He's hipped, I tell you, on his health!"
"That's because he lives on nothing," rejoined Marny. "Tine puts the toast in the oven over night so it will be dry enough for him in the morning—she told me so yesterday. Now he's running on sour milk and vinegar—'blood too alkaline,' he says—got a chalky taste in his mouth!"
"Well, whatever it is, he's a rum-nuisance," said Pudfut, "and he ought to be jumped on."
"Yes," retorted Stebbins, "but not about his food. Jump on him about his health, then he'll kick back and in pure obstinacy begin to think he's well—that's his nature."
"Don't you do anything of the kind," protested Marny. "Joppy's all right—best lad I know. Let him talk; doesn't hurt anybody and keeps everything alive. A little hot air now and then helps his epigastric."
Malone and Schonholz had raised themselves on their elbows, twisted their shoulders and had put their heads together—literally—without lifting their lazy bodies from the warm, dry grass—so close that one slouch hat instead of two might have covered their conspiring brains. From under the rims of these thatches came smothered laughs and such unintelligible mutterings as:
"Dot's de vay, by chimminy, 'Loney! And den I—"
"No, begorra! Let me have a crack at him fu'st!"
"No, I vill before go and you come—"
"Not a word to Marny, remimber; he'd give it away—"
"Yes, but we vill tell Poodfut und Sthebbins, eh?"
That afternoon the diabolical plot was put in motion. The men had finished for the day; had crossed the ferry and had found Joplin wandering around the dock looking for a new subject. The Groote Kerk "smear" was under his arm.
Pudfut, under pretence of inspecting the smear—a portrait of the old Sacristan on a bench in front of the main entrance—started back in surprise on seeing the Bostonian, and asked with an anxious tone in his voice:
"Aren't you well, old man? Look awfully yellow about the gills. Worked too hard, haven't you? No use overdoing it."
"Well? Of course I'm well! Sound as a nut. Little bilious, maybe, but that's nothing. Why?"
"Oh, nothing! Must say, though, you gave me a twist when I came on you suddenly. Maybe it's your epigastric nerve; maybe it's your liver and will pass off, but I'd knock off work for a day or two if I were you."
Malone now took a hand.
"Let me carry yer kit, Joppy, ye look done up. What's happened to ye, man, since mornin'?"
"Never felt better in my life," protested Joplin. "No, I'll carry it—not heavy—"
Then he quickened his pace—they were all on their way back to the inn—and overtook Stebbins and Schonholz.
"Stebbins, old man—"
"Yes, Joppy."
"What I told you last night is turning out just as I expected. Heart's been acting queer all morning and my epigastric nerve is very sensitive. Puddy says I look awful. Do you see it?"
Stebbins looked into the Bostonian's face, hesitated, and said with an apologetic tone in his voice:
"Well, everybody looks better one time than another. You've been working too hard, maybe."
"But do I look yellow?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, Joppy, you do—yellow as a gourd—not always, just now and then when you walk fast or run upstairs."
"I've been afraid of that. Was my pulse all right when you counted it last night?"
"Yes, certainly—skipped a beat now and then, but that's nothing. I had an uncle once who had a pulse that wobbled like that. He, of course, went off suddenly; some said it was apoplexy; some said it was his heart—these doctors never agree. I wouldn't worry about it, old man. Hold on, Pudfut, don't walk so fast."
Pudfut held on, and so did Schonholz and Malone, and then the four slipped behind a pile of oil barrels and concentrated their slouch hats and Schonholz slapped his thigh and said with a smothered laugh that it was "sphlendeed!" and Malone and Pudfut agreed, and then the three locked arms and went singing up the street, their eyes on Joplin's pipe-stem legs as he trotted beside Marny on his way to the inn.
When the party reached the coffee-room Marny called Tine to his side, spread out the fingers and thumb of one hand, and that rosy-cheeked lass without the loss of a second, clattered over to the little shelf, gathered up five empty mugs and disappeared down the cellar steps. This done the coterie drew their chairs to one of Tine's hand-scrubbed tables and sat down, all but Joplin, who kept on his way to his room. There the Bostonian remained, gazing out of the window until Johann had banged twice on his door in announcement of dinner. Then he joined the others.
When all were seated Schonholz made a statement which was followed with results more astounding to the peace of the coterie than anything which had occurred since the men came together.
"I haf bad news, boys," he began, "offle bad news. Mine fader has wrote dat home I must. Nod anuder mark he say vill he gif me. Eef I could sell somedings—but dat ees very seldom. No, Marny, you don't can lend me noddings. What vill yourselluf do? Starve!"
"Where do you live, Schonholz?" asked Joplin.
"By Fizzenbad."
"What kind of a place is it—baths?"
"Yes."
"What are they good for?" continued Joplin in a subdued tone.
"Noddings, but blenty peoples go."
"I can tell you, Joppy," said Pudfut gravely, with a wink at Malone. "There are two spas, both highly celebrated. Lord Ellenboro spent a month there and came back looking like another man. One is for the liver and the other for something or other, I can't recollect what."
"Heart?" asked Joplin.
"I don't know."
He didn't,—had never heard the place mentioned until Schonholz had called its name a moment before.
Joplin played with his knife and made an attempt to nibble a slice of Tine's toast, but he made no reply. All the fight of every kind seemed to have been knocked out of him.
"Better take Fizzenbad in, Joppy," remarked Pudfut in an undertone. "May do you a lot of good."
"How far is it, Schonholz?" asked Joplin, ignoring the Englishman's suggestion.
"Oh, you leafe in de morgen and you come by Fizzenbad in a day more as do one you go oud mid."
"No—can't afford it."
Here Joplin pushed back his chair, and with the remark that he thought he would go downtown for some colors, left the room.
"It's working like a dose of salts," cried Pudfut when the Bostonian was out of hearing. "Hasn't said 'epigastric nerve,' 'gram' or 'proteids' once. Got real human in an hour. Stebbins, you're a wonder."
The next morning everybody was up bright and early to see Schonholz off. One of Fop Smit's packets was to leave for Rotterdam at seven and Schonholz was a passenger. He could go by rail, but the boat was cheaper. No deceptions had been practised and no illusions indulged in as to the cause of his departure. He had had his supplies cut off, was flat broke and as helpless as a plant without water. They had all, at one time or another, passed through a similar crisis and knew exactly what it meant. A purse, of course, could have been made up—Marny even insisted on sharing his last hundred francs with him—and Mynheer would have allowed the board-bill to run on indefinitely with or without an addition to his collection, but the lad was not built along those lines.
"No—I go home and help mine fader once a leetle, den maybe I come back, don't it?" was the way he put it.
The next morning, when the procession formed to escort him through the Old Gate, every man answered to his name except Joplin—he had either overslept himself or was taking an extra soak in his portable tub.
"Run, Tine, and call Mr. Joplin," cried Marny—"we'll go ahead. Tell him to come to the dock."
Away clattered the sabots up the steep stairs, and away they scurried down the bare corridor to Joplin's room. There Tine knocked. Hearing no response she pushed open the door and looked in. The room was empty! Then she noticed that the bed had not been slept in, nor had anything on the washstand been used. Stepping in softly for some explanation of the unusual occurrence—no such thing had ever happened in her experience, not unless she had been notified in advance—her eye rested on a letter addressed to Stebbins propped up in full view against a book on Joplin's table. Catching it up as offering the only explanation of his unaccountable disappearance, she raced downstairs and, crossing the cobbles on a run, laid the letter in Stebbins's hand.
"For me, Tine?"
The girl nodded, her eyes on the painter's.
The painter broke the seal and his face grew serious. Then he beckoned to Marny and read the contents aloud, the others crowding close:
Dear Stebbins:
Keep my things until I send for them. I take the night train for Rotterdam. Tell Schonholz I'll join him there and go on with him to Fizzenbad. Sorry to leave this way, but I could not bear to bid you all good-by. Joplin.