With Caste Against Him
BY HUGH PENDEXTER
TIBERIUS Smith in love was a spectacle I had never conjured up. Billy Campbell, the strolling actor and his patron’s Boswell, had pictured the old showman to me as being arrested for a spy in Russia, for a madman in France, for a too active Carlist in Spain and for smuggling opium in China, but he had never hinted at sentiment. I had taken it for granted that Smith’s many wanderings over the face of the earth with his various theatrical enterprises and circuses had eliminated any inclination for love-sickness, and it seems it had until he met the lord’s daughter.
That was like Smith. It was impossible to conceive of him as married and settled down, and when he did fall in love it was his characteristic to indulge in a hopeless passion. For all that, the lord’s daughter was forced to see him at his best, sturdy and resourceful, when others failed her, and I doubt not but that this knowledge was sadly sweet to the old showman, and that in after years he enjoyed diagnosing the climax and realizing it was superbly dramatic. If she ignored his existence at first, he had the keen pleasure of knowing she had only him to rely on at a most critical finale and that her world was better, much better, for his having lived.
Possibly the trick could have been turned without him, turned in a prosaic manner with some bloodshed and a great waste of gunpowder. But when a lovely girl is the stake, be she a lord’s daughter or a queen from the masses, it is sometimes advisable to finesse. And Tiberius, if slightly melodramatic, solved the problem as he could only do, and as only he could do—that is, in an unusual manner. Campbell used to style him the “assassin of adversity,” and his peculiar faculty of rescuing the weak from undesirable situations was, perhaps, never better demonstrated than when, with cutter bars down, he restored the English girl to her people and incidentally introduced the uses and abuses of modern farming implements to some unsophisticated savages in a lonely Pacific isle.
I had recurred to the time when Tiberius piloted an Uncle Tom’s Cabin company up and down the land, and Billy, gazing sadly into my open grate, irrelevantly observed:
“Yes; and that was when Tib ought to have won her and settled down. He was clear daffy over that girl, and I’ll admit she was a hummer; one, you know, that would make a man abandon his grandmother in a blinding snowstorm if it pleased her. But I reckon Fate had other work cut out for Tiberius besides spooning, love in a cottage and no money for the iceman and all that sort of stuff. Yes, it was fully ten years ago that theKalankebroke her propeller.”
“You are speaking of a boat?” I inquired.
“Lord bless you, yes. TheKalankewas one of Lord Blam’s boats; ran from the Coast to Australia. You see, Tib got the bee that an Uncle Thomas show would take in Australia like four squaws in a no-limit game; and once he had outlined the bill of fare, there were plenty of us come-ons pushing out our plates and begging for a helping. I suppose that when it came to the realm of pure “con” there wasn’t a hypnotist doing a mail order businessthat could lay it on quite so succulent and plausible as he. Lord, wehadto believe him. He believed in himself.
“‘Why, Harriet,’ he cried, drawing up his dear, fat old form and looking more honest than any real estate dealer you ever kenned; ‘why, Harriet, don’t linger over the paltry twelve dollars a week I’m supposed to pay you. Don’t even hesitate. Forget that part of it. Imagine you are paying me for the chance to go. Picture, if you please, Opportunity, clean-shaven and bald-headed, gliding by your door in a seventy-eight horse-power gasolene romp-about at the mirk hour of midnight with you chloroformed and locked in your gilded cage. Picture me with a jiu-jitsu strangle hold on Oppo, detaining him until you can come to, slip into your Horse Show gown and come down and relieve me. Then you are feasting your magnetic orbs on truth. Why, the people down there will be so worked up over your “Papa, dear papa, set Uncle Tom free,” that they’ll wreck your hotel with showers of gold.’
“She was a slim, ingrowing woman, who always played the Little Eva parts and was the teariest thing ever between the wings. Clarence, her husband, booked for Legree, balked a little and said he’d stand a blankety, blank, all blanks, nice chance of getting his showers in lead after he’d massacred Thomas. But Tib poured a little balm into his wounds, and that was how we came to hop theKalankefor Australia.
“The boat was one of Lord Blam’s new line and was fixed up regardless. Besides the passengers, she did quite a freight business and carried our lots of horses and farm implements. Our troupe traveled second class except Tib, who always went the limit—or walked. Besides the company there weren’t many passengers aboard, as it was in the dull season; but we hadn’t cuffed the deep blue for more than two days before Tib met his fate.
“She was the English girl, all blue eyes, and peaches for complexion; and Tib haunted her usual promenade like a mosquito. She was the lord’s only daughter and was making a flying trip to Sydney, where her father lay ill. She had hurried from Washington to ’Frisco and caught the boat with her maid. The Captain was the rest of her bodyguard. But Tib had the Captain solid at the go-in, and through him and his own gall he managed to speak to Miss Mary.
“She was about as approachable as the Eiffel Tower. She was the first bit of peerage I had ever seen traveling alone, and I would prefer trying to get chummy with an iceberg to speaking to her. But a man or a woman had to be armor plate to withstand Tib when he put himself out, and at the end of one day he had made her laugh; then she got a bit interested in him and I knew he was spinning romance.
“When he got to giving his Vermont family an old chateau environment and spoke of the good old days at ‘The Oaks,’ and his father’s pack of hounds, aristocracy wanted to crawl into a safe deposit vault and slam the door or get scalped. He could jam more poetry andpâté de foie grasbreeding into his round form and look more dreamy passion from his pleading eyes than any man that ever made a house believe a bum show was a good one. He was all right, I tell you, and if Little Eva hadn’t butted in when we were doing things to the equator, and asked him to come down and play stud-poker in the smoking-room, I reckoned he’d have won a few plighted troths anyway. I shall always believe he had her clinging to the ropes when Eva made the fatal stab.
“‘Do you know those people in the second cabin?’ demanded Her Lordship with an eighty-two degrees north voice.
“Tib groaned and tore his brown hair and admitted he owned us. ‘The vase is broken,’ he cried. ‘I’ve got the bell and it’s back to the barriers.’
“Well, he felt so bad over that girl that he almost wept. It wa’n’t her titled papa, or the coat of arms; it was just a case of She. When he was talking to her he forgot he was merely a showman. He believed all about the old ivy-covered manse and the hounds.Why, I’ve even heard him call the pups by name. And his father never owned anything more blue-blooded than a sheepdog.
“‘Billy,’ he said to me as we smoked down aft, ‘I never met a girl yet I felt so soft over. I know I’m older than she by some years, but I keep my age locked up in the baggage-room and we might have been happy if not for Little Eva.’
“And Miss English was mad. She scolded the Captain for presenting Tib, and told him her father would do things once we’d sighted old earth. And the Captain was on the anxious seat, for her father was his meal ticket and had delegated him to fetch out his daughter O. K. But on the next night we began to forget it, when we steamed into the heart of a flying wedge of terrific winds.
“I decided that if ever we got ashore it would be to have the folks come down to the beach and look at us and say, ‘How natural they look.’ Some of the gingerbread works were carried away the first night of the blow, and whenever the wind let up a bit the live stock would throw in a fewensemblesthat made one pray for more breeze. Yet the boat behaved well, and if something hadn’t happened to the propeller we’d have come through in rare form. But when the chief engineer began to parade out his kit and try to mend things while standing on his head I knew the game was getting serious. Now we were bumped by every billow, and I heard a petty officer whisper that we were being driven far from our course.
“At last the kick stopped, or else we’d slipped out of the storm zone, and at about three o’clock in the morning we dropped anchor near a dear little island that the Captain couldn’t name with any great degree of exactness.
“The anchorage was so good and the water so smooth that our engineer said it would be easy to take the boat to pieces and put it together without losing even a shingle nail. Well, you can indulge in a small wager that we were all up and happy when we came near enough to smell the land. The sky was clear and peppered over with incandescent lights, and Tib felt so good that he waltzed up to the She Saxon and observed: ‘I regret you have been inconvenienced by the storm.’
“Say, she just turned and dragged her two sapphires up and down his anatomy as if he were a seven-leaf clover. Then she stabbed him four times with as many glances and turned and walked forward to the Captain. Cap wheeled around with his lips pursed up to say something unwholesome, but seeing who it was he swallowed it, and it hurt. Then she asked something in a low voice and he shook his head slowly. Then she stamped her hoof and he seemed to give way. At last he called a man to him and gave some orders. The next thing we knew a boat was dropped and she was being rowed ashore by four sailors.
“‘Isn’t it rather dangerous to let the lady go ashore?’ asked Tib of the Captain.
“This gave the Captain a fine chance to ease his mind, and he did it by pouring out his whole heart to Tib in a comprehensive flow of profanity. He cursed Tib up hill and down, but Tib was so round it all glanced off. Cap told him that Miss Mary had gone ashore to get rid of his presence. Tib shuddered. Then the Cap reminded him that a British skipper takes sass from no one except the owners, and ordered him back with the rest of us. Another gilt braid sneaked up and told Tib the Cap meant nothing, that he was only feeling cross at being delayed. As to Miss Mary, he swore she was as safe when guarded by the four tars as she would be on her father’s deck. Besides, the island was probably vacant, he added, and she would take a short stroll on the beach beneath the stars and then return. But Tib was uneasy. He said no one could ever diagnose the disposition of the average cut-up residing on an oceanian isle. ‘Billy,’ he concluded, ‘I’m cut to the heart. She won’t even look at the same ocean with me.’
“In about an hour’s time, just as the sun was lazily crawling out of his bed of blue—say, old chap, that sounds voluptuous as well as poetic, doesn’t it?—well, as the sun appeared there came to our ears a loud cry from the beach, and we could see some dots bobbing up and down trying to act intelligent. In two jumps the Captain shot off in a boat, and, without seeming to touch land, was back again on the run.
“The lord’s daughter had been carried off by the natives, was the startling intelligence he fed out to his officers. It seems she wanted to walk up a little hill and get a view of the sea, and, although the sailors protested, she had ordered them to remain behind; and, like idiots, they obeyed her. Then they heard a smothered scream and ran to the rescue, only to meet with a shower of spears and clubs and to witness a large band of barefooted taxpayers making off with the skirts. One of the sailors had his arm broken, another had a spear through his shoulder, and all were badly bruised and battered. The Captain was crazy. He ordered his men to arm and rush to the rescue. At first he was going to lead them, but some of his officers soothed him down a bit and made him see his place was with the boat. It was not only necessary to rescue Miss Mary, but the tub must be in condition to carry her away when she was recovered.
“But when Tib asked permission to join the posse the Captain broke loose again and swore he’d have the boss in irons. If it hadn’t been for Tib it never would have happened, he cried. I chipped in then and reminded him Her Lordship was too high and mighty to hunt for an exit just to avoid a mere man, and I closed with the Stars and Stripes and our consul in Australia. This distracted his attention a bit, for he forgot Tib in swearing at our consular service.
“‘Billy,’ groaned Tib, ‘I guess the Cap is right, and I’m to blame for her going ashore. But these volunteers will never get her by hunting the brownies with a brass band.’
“Well, we put in several long hours of waiting, and then two men returned and said reinforcements were needed, as the men had discovered a large village a few miles inland, which they didn’t dare to attack alone.
“‘Guess you’d better let some of the passengers chip into this game now,’ advised Tib.
“The Captain began to rave again, but, seeing that the men left were needed in making repairs, he had to give in. Just then some more of the crew came back to the beach and, once aboard, panted that the colored folk were getting aggressive and wouldn’t even wait to be attacked.
“‘To the boats, men!’ cried the Captain, while the steward served out howitzers.
“Before the order could be obeyed the officers and the rest of the gang rushed down to the beach. Their news was worst of all. They said the heathens had produced Her Lordship in view of all and had threatened to kill her if her friends didn’t beat a retreat.
“‘If we show violence she’s lost,’ sobbed one of the men.
“The Captain was dazed. He was brave enough and would gladly fight to the last gasp; but he didn’t want to recover Miss Mary dead. He tried to mumble something about strategy, and Tib caught it. It was the psychological moment for him.
“‘If you’ll turn the management of this show over to me I’ll go and get her,’ he said simply.
“Some jeered him in wild anger, some eyed him in amazement, and others were ready to grasp at any suggestion.
“‘I mean it,’ he repeated firmly, drawing up his fat form and beginning to radiate heart waves. ‘Force will avail nothing, except to kill the lady. Do as I say and let the galleries back me and a few of my men, and I honestly believe we can turn the riffle.’
“Discipline was lost sight of as all clamored for pointers. ‘Hoist up a few mowing machines from the hold, drop twice as many horses over into the surf, while the carpenters are knocking together a float. Then ferry thegrass clippers ashore and have your mechanics put them together. That’s the scenario.’
“Some said he was crazy, but I believed he could fill his hand if they let him alone, and the Captain asked if he intended to palm off the mowers as machine guns.
“‘If they can’t recognize a mowing machine you don’t expect ’em to be conversant with Maxims, do you?’ groaned Tib. ‘No; I’ll play ’em as mowing machines and win out at that. I believe they’ll be big medicine with the natives.’
“Of course the Captain pooh-poohed the scheme. He said the niggers would kill the lass before the paraphernalia could be thrown together.
“‘And while you’re doing nothing and can think of nothing to do, they may kill her,’ cried Tib. ‘And her blood be upon your head! Mine is the only plan that’s been advanced, and it is practical. It’s unusual, but you can’t impress these folks with shotguns. It’s got to be something new in the way of scenic effect. If I had an airship I’d use that. But I haven’t. We can use the mowing machines and stagger the banditti. We can start in three hours if you’ll only give the word. Besides, I shall want the full chorus to follow with their batteries. You lose nothing, unless it be me and some of my friends and the machines.’
“‘Hoist ’em up,’ commanded the Captain, and the gang caught Tib’s enthusiasm.
“‘Now, who’s game for a little romp?’ asked Tib gently of us actors, his brown eyes collecting in two needle points. ‘I want my own men for the leading parts in this deal. Now, who’s game?’
“Of course I said I was, as I owed him poker money. Little Eva’s husband said if he could have one more drink he’d play tag with the devil, and Uncle Tom was on if he didn’t have to black up. Tib wanted one more operator, and a young fellow that was coming out to hold down a stool in his father’s branch house in Sydney agreed to chip in if he could have time to write something sad to his parents. Tib reminded him the postman wouldn’t have time to collect the mail before we returned, and so the five of us made ready. The Captain ached to go, but Tib reminded him he must take command of the rear-guard.
“I was for grabbing up a papaw root and dashing blindly into the weeds, but Tib held us all back as he outlined his scheme more fully. The mowing machines would dazzle the natives, he contended, and while he and his men were trifling with the aborigines’ superstitions the Captain and his bullies were to rush in, surround the captive, or else cover Tib’s retreat, once he had rescued her. And say! You never saw men work as did those boys on theKalanke. The donkey engine was mounted in a trice and the big crates, containing the mowing machines, intended for peaceful pastoral scenes, were yanked out on deck. By that time the carpenters had put a raft together and the clippers were soon ashore with a bevy of mechanics impatiently waiting to get in their work. When the different parts of the machines had been assembled and joined each to his neighbor, some half-crazed draft horses came through the surf and were promptly caught. Then boxes of harness were ripped open, and there we were, as gay a cluster of charioteers as you would meet with outside a star production of ‘Ben Hur.’
“Tib, as the head Mazeppa, jumped onto the first auto completed and tested the gearing. Then with his hat tipped jauntily over his right ear he reminded the Captain that the crew should loiter not too far in the rear, but always out of sight of the enemy, until we gave the signal to advance, three pistol shots. Then he cried, ‘Cutter bars up!’ and away we clanked around the base of the low hill.
“We had received tips as to the course to take, and it would have done your heart good, sir, could you have seen us in that bringing-in-the-sheaves effect. We only needed wide-brimmed straw hats, with handkerchiefs knottedcarelessly about our throats, to be the village heroes in the average rural melodrama.
“The land, lucky for us, lay flat and hard baked by the sun, once we were around the hill. Then Tib’s good sense in picking his own men was demonstrated. Always in the lead as we trundled over the hard ground, he had only to move his hand to cause us to catch the signal and obey. Back of us, scuttling through the occasional brush, was our bodyguard, and the glint of the sun on the gun metal was a wonderful antidote for homesickness. In advance a fringe of woods told where the English girl was held captive. We expected to encounter outposts, but I reckon the foe measured our love for a woman by their own standard and couldn’t conceive of a man risking his life to save a squaw.
“At last we struck the shade and sure enough found a broad avenue between the trees, just as the boatswain had mapped out. Then came another level stretch, only not so long as the first, bounded by a slight rise. It was just beyond this that the village was located. We approached as slyly as we could and cautiously gained the top without being interrupted. Just below us was the encampment, consisting of several scores of low huts. They were arranged like the spokes of a wheel, with broad streets radiating from the centre. The voters were having a big powwow, and they made so much noise that they had failed to catch the sound of our steeds or wheels.
“‘Now, children, list,’ commanded Tib. ‘I’m going to drive straight ahead. Billy will wend his way to the right and pick up the first spoor, followed by Simon Legree, who takes the second trail. Uncle Tom takes the first left aisle, followed by young Add Six and Carry Two. And we’ll form a cluster, God willing, in the centre of the exposition, where there seems to be a commodious green. Attention! Cutter bars down! Forward, trot!’
“And we five chauffeurs dashed into the hippodrome in the most ridiculous fashion. Tib bounced up and down like a rubber ball, and to fall from the seat meant a badly sliced up white man. But the effect was stupendous. I reckon the brunettes never before gazed on such wags as we must have appeared to be. Bang! Smash! we rode through their rotten village, and the machines needed oiling. Of all the rasping, clattering noises you ever heard, sir! Black nightmares rushed to get out of the way as we cleaned out the lanes.
“Snip! snip! and Tib had shaved off the corner of a mud villa. Crunch! and Simon picked up a totem pole. Every tooth in those five cutter bars was working and the collateral we chewed up didn’t do ’em a bit of good. But, as Tib said, it was only a one-night stand and our game was to sell tickets and ramble away. So on we careened, the horses wild with fright, now and then the shears picking up a brown toe as some devotee fell prostrate in his flight and babbled a cast-iron prayer to some burglar-proof god. It simply swept them off their feet, sir. Before they woke up we had entered the middle square.
“And if there wasn’t Her Lordship, trussed up between two poles, white as death!
“‘If you’ll pardon the bucolic style of my turnout, dear lady, I should be felicitated to have you accompany me back to the ship,’ cried Tib cheerily as he slashed her free and held her so she would not fall. And during it all he was apparently oblivious to the frescoes of black faces staring in stupid awe in the background.
“‘Can it be I’m saved!’ she whimpered, brushing back her twenty-two-carat hair with an uncertain gesture.
“‘Tut, tut,’ cried Tib heartily as he took her hand and tripped a merry morris toward his chariot. ‘I guess there’s no danger. These people are simply crude in their deportment and evidently believed you some wandering goddess and would detain you awhile.’
“‘You are a brave and a good man,’ she choked.
“‘I guess your hosts think me thedevil. Excuse me, lady,’ salaamed Tib.
“‘Never a man took greater risk,’ she murmured.
“‘An Uncle Tom’s Cabin company, lady, will take any risk, or anything outside a church,’ replied Tib. ‘Whoa, Montezuma. Now hop up here on my knee. These bronze pieces will come to their senses in a second.’
“And when Her Lordship jumped up into his arms the wonder-stricken gang gave a howl and came out of their trance. We countermarched in those rigs so that Tib had the lead when we quit the plaza, but not before one big buck, attired in a war club and a workmanlike spear, gave a grunt of disapproval and raised his trowel behind Tib’s back. I had been expecting one of them would draw to that card, and while his arm was pulled back I pinked him from the hip, and the sunlight was turned off so far as he was concerned. But they didn’t mind crowding into hell so long as they could regain the woman, and my shot took the Japanese out of only one of them. And as we swarmed up the slight rise they came yowling along behind us, disturbing the peace in a variety of ways. But just as Simon Legree fired three shots in quick succession a fringe of strained-faced tars popped over the crest in front, preceded by the busy end of their repeaters. Under cover of their diversion we gained the top and bounced down on the other side with the neighbors renewing their pursuit.
“Just as everything began to look cozy and homelike my pair of Jaspers decided they were afraid of the ocean, and, hang me, if they didn’t turn about and caper back right in the face of the dancing spearmen. I couldn’t hold ’em, and so I just dropped the cutter bar and pulled out my junk, only expecting to muss a few of ’em up before I was registered. My friends began to howl behind me, and I tossed a glance over my shoulder and beheld old Tiberius coming along after me like a madman, his machine jumping and swaying, and he with a big gun in each hand yelling like a fiend. He had tossed Her Lordship to the sailors and was back to play in my drama. Then the heat of it got into my blood, and as Tib drew up beside me I gave a war cry and urged the brutes onward still faster.
“I knew if we tried to turn we were down and out, and that our only show was to put up a bold front and scare the enemy off the ridge. The sailors were now popping away merrily, and just as we had gone the limit the foe threw up the sponge and scampered back down the other side of the rise.
“Maybe we were several hours retreating to the beach! When we got there the whole bunch fell on Tib’s neck and pawed his round form affectionately, the Captain leading in the demonstration. Tib drove them away, but when we got aboard and Her Lordship rushed upon him and throwing both arms about his neck, pressed her red lips with a resounding and most plebeian smack on his chin, you could have heard him blush. It was the first time I had ever known him to lose his nerve. He made a clean break-away and bowing low said something in a murmur and it was all over. Of course she thanked us all, but she realized that Tib was the guiding light.
“To ring off; we left the machines and horses for the natives to get up guessing parties with, and with our machinery repaired steamed out to the open water. Tib never made any advances to Her Lordship after once aboard, although she eyed him with a soft look whenever they met on deck during the run to port.
“‘My old heart got foolish, boy,’ he remarked to me the night we landed, ‘but it’s beating all right now.’ Yet he always kept a handkerchief she dropped.
“And wherever the show played Tib coined money by the barrel, for Her Lordship’s people boomed his game early and late. But Tib got to believing it was because the show was so good. For, you see, he’d explain to me as he counted the receipts, ‘Little Eva is dying better every night.’”