Fate, who, as Doctor Vardaman's favourite classic assures us, calls,
equal-footed, upon carpenters and kings, must surely have laid a
directing hand on the old gentleman's shoulder that morning; not yet
were his adventures over, even when he reached his own door. The
Lexington and Amherst Street car crawled with him laboriously as far
as the corner of Amherst and Richmond, where he must disembark and
trudge the remaining five blocks of board sidewalk to number 201. The
trolley whisks you out there in five minutes now. Not long ago I saw in
somebody's back yard, a back yard of the proletariat, next door to a
tenement, one of these dilapidated old horse-cars, pygmy ancestor of a
race of giants, thrown aside, weather-worn, ancient as the palæolithic
period, serving as a play-house for the proletarian youngsters. The
windows were all out of it, even the purple glass lights overhead; but
you might dimly discern the legend: "No. 5. Lexington and Amherst. No.
5." along its battered sides. The thing was as romantic as a derelict
galleon; sentimental melancholy possessed me as I looked at it; all
my youth rode in that decrepit chariot, if not with comfort, at least
with tolerable satisfaction. Will the rising generation treasure so
picturesque a memory? I think not. In cold weather there was a layer
of straw, doubtful-tinted, breathing strange odours, in the bottom of
it, thoughtfully provided by the street-car company to protect its
patrons' feet. It was lit by two oil lamps, in two niches, fortified by
wire-work, one at either end of the car. These vehicles were banded
about the body with a wide stripe in various colours to distinguish the
various lines, an amazingly ingenious idea if people had only been able
to see after dark, like cats; and, as the spectrum had been exhausted
by the time the builders got around to the Lexington and Amherst line,
they designated these cars, in a creditable burst of originality, by
a sash of black-and-red squares, like the Rob Roy plaid. Immediately
arose some genius with an equally fertile invention and baptised them
"the checker-board cars," a title which they wore to the end. There was
one very steep hill at the foot whereof it was the custom to hitch on
an extra team of mules; I know of no more gallant spectacle than that
furnished by a quadriga of mules nobly breasting Wade Street hill, with
a checker-board car plunging in the rear. When it got off the track, as
not infrequently happened, all the male passengers got out and helped
push it back. We were firmly persuaded that this was rapid transit! Yet
spare your merriment, youth of to-day; impartial Fate is waiting for
your admired institutions, too, your Twentieth Century Flyers, your
automobiles, your seven-league-boots. In twenty-five years, how will
your sons and daughters deride you; with what longing, with what amused
tenderness, will you not look back to these kind, simple days!
Doctor Vardaman, then, with Destiny stalking viewless at his side,
swung off the checker-board car, and began the homeward walk. Some way
ahead of him he saw a figure diminished by distance, plodding through
his yard toward the kitchen door; and as he drew nearer, two more
figures emerged from his front porch. The doctor recognised Bob Carson,
and in the over-tall, lankily-graceful young woman, Mazie Pallinder,
in an extremely modish tan-coloured cloth coat with dark brown plush
collar and pocket flaps. Mazie's sleeves were about as tight as Bob's
trousers--that is to say, they were as tight as human skill could make
them, or human arms and legs endure. Thus were we clad in the eighties.
"Oh, hello, Doctor," said Bob, dropping Mazie's hand--I suppose he had
been fastening her glove--and addressing the old gentleman with unusual
vivacity and a notable increase of colour. "Ah--we--we've just been
getting Huddesley to hear us our parts--in 'Mrs. Tankerville,' you
know."
"I hope you have mastered yours," said Doctor Vardaman, without a
smile. Bob's part, as he and everyone else knew, might have been
omitted altogether without materially damaging the performance; he
was a footman in "Mrs. Tankerville," and his lines were hardly more
than "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," stated at the proper intervals. He got
redder than ever under the doctor's grave survey, and affected to be
busy knocking invisible mud from his boot heel with his cane as they
stood by the gate. Mazie did not blush--for the best of reasons. Her
face was too carefully arranged to permit of it. And, besides, what was
there to blush about? Bob changed colour almost whenever she looked at
him; but then Bob was a quiet and rather shy youth.
"Huddesley's simply _fine_!" she said with enthusiasm. "I asked him how
he came to know so much about the stage, and he says he was dresser for
an actor once when he was right young, and used to be behind the scenes
a lot. Come home and take lunch with us, won't you, Doctor?"
"I can't very well to-day. I was just about to ask you to stay here.
Huddesley, you can get us up something, can't you?"
"Bit of 'am and a glass of porter, sir," said Huddesley deferentially,
holding the door open. "Beg parding, Doctor Vardaman, sir, but Mrs.
Maginnis is 'ere with your wash."
"I guess we'd better not stop so long's I've got so much company in the
house," said Mazie. "Good-bye, Doctor; you'll come up this evening,
anyway?" And as they walked away, the doctor heard Bob say, "Isn't
Huddesley _immense_, though? 'Bit of 'am and a glass of porter.' Sounds
just like Dickens, don't it?"
The doctor, still squired by unseen Fortune, went upstairs to his
bedroom--and there, it may be presumed, the goddess left him, having
executed her appointed task. Mrs. Maginnis awaited him, and Huddesley
was already laying the doctor's shirts out of the basket. The laundress
generally performed this rite herself, but to-day she stood watching
the man with an oddly flustered manner, twisting the fringes of her old
shawl between her fingers. Her bonnet, that feathered and beribboned
structure indigenous to washerwomen, had worked askew a little; her
face, with its premature wrinkles, its sunken mouth, was flushed with
exercise or excitement. The doctor, observant as all physicians from
lifelong habit, looked at her in some surprise. It crossed his mind
that at some prehistorically distant time, when Mrs. Maginnis was a
fresh barefoot girl, running the green swards of Connemara, she might
have been pretty; her Irish blue eyes, faded with years, with toil,
with sickness, with care, were quite bright to-day. A kind of tremulous
happiness, an anxious joy, irradiated her; she was like a child to whom
one should have given a new toy, scarcely daring to be glad yet in its
possession.
"Got change for a fifty-dollar bill, Mrs. Maginnis?" said the old
gentleman jocosely.
"Yez will have yer joke, now, won't ye, Docthor?" she retorted with
gaiety, and tossed her head with the upstanding plumes in a roguish
manner. "Niver moind. Some day I'll change ut for yez aisy enough.
'Taint much longer I'll be comin' 'round for me dollar and a half, at
all, at all."
"Has Tim got well? Is he going back to work?" asked the doctor,
beginning to fish for the required sum amongst the loose silver in his
pockets. He spoke of her husband.
Tim was what Doctor Vardaman called a "non-combatant." To say that
he was a washerwoman's husband describes him. Who ever heard of a
washerwoman with a husband that was worth anything?
"Naw, it ain't that, Docthor," said Mrs. Maginnis, looking momentarily
a little dashed. "Naw, Tim's awful bad with rheumatics this spring. But
it's meself that's afther ma-akin me fortune in--in stocks. Yez didn't
see me in the Turrner Buildin' th' marrnin'?"
Doctor Vardaman's hand paused, rigidly suspended over the money spread
on his palm. "What--what's that you say?" he asked abruptly.
"I was goin' to ask yez to spake a wurrd to me characther wid
Misther--I mane Meejor Pallinder," went on Mrs. Maginnis, happily
unconscious. "But he seemed to be in a hurry, an' says I to meself,
'Betther not worry him, Nora Maginnis. Th' Meejor's thrustin' yez
anyhow, an' ye're thrustin' him an' iverythin's fair an' square an'
aboveboord. 'Taint as if yez were a gurrl goin' to ta-ake a new
pla-ace, ye goose,' says I. So I just held me tongue, an' walked
off. It's a grand gintleman th' Meejor is intoirely," she finished
enthusiastically.
The doctor looked at her through a mist. "What have you been doing?"
he said at last, striving to speak in his natural voice. He might have
spared the trouble; Mrs. Maginnis was only too proud and pleased at his
interest, at her own importance.
"Ah, thin, I've been investin'--investin' in stocks--or is it shares,
I dinnaw?" she said eagerly, lifted her skirt, and drew out a paper,
carefully hoarded, from a pocket in her petticoat. She held it toward
him. "I got a letther about thim in th' mail, a printed letther, an'
ut says: 'Dear Madame, we want to call your attintion----' like that
ut begun, Docthor. I can't raymimber th' rest of ut, but yez ought to
hear me little Danny, he's got ut by hearrt. Anyway, I was to call on
or com-communicate with William Pallinder, Turrner Buildin', like what
ut says there. They was iver so many on our sthreet got th' sa--ame,
th' Hogans 'crost th' way, an' th' Schwartzes nixt dure but wan, but
they ain't anybody wint but me, an' th' Meejor says it's a grreat pity,
an' they'll all git left, for they won't be anny more shares or stocks,
whichever ut is, sold so low. An' it's just loike pickin' money off of
trees, he says, yez git tin for wan. That's four thousan' I'll git,
Docthor, for it's four hundred I'm ta-akin out o' th' Buildin' an'
Loan, where we been puttin ut for th' last tin years--an' weary wurrk
ut is, too, savin' so slow, nothin' loike this, where yez just put in
yer money, an' set back an' twiddle yer thumbs! It kapes goin' higher
ivery breath yez draw purty near, th' Meejor says. An' whin I give
him th' money, he wrote off a grand pa-aper, a receipt, he called ut,
an' says he: 'I congrat'late yez, Mrs. Maginnis,' says he. 'It's th'
smarrt woman yez arre, an' plucky, too,' says he. 'Nothin' venture,
nothin' have, yez may have hearrd th' sayin',' he says. 'That's the
way I begun meself,' says he. 'I had just a little, 'twasn't be
half so much as yours, an' I put ut in, an' ut kep' a-goin' up an'
a-goin' up, an' there I was, like a big fool'--that's what he said,
Docthor--'shiverin' an' shakin' an' layin' awake noights, for fear
somethin' would happen to ut, an' whin ut doubled, I fair et up th'
road gittin to th' office to sell out--an' th' very nixt day it was
thribbled already! But I'm all over thim days now,' he says, laughin'
that way he has, 'an' yez can see wid wan eye shut how I live, Mrs.
Maginnis. Well, all that come from that little lump o' money not be
half so big as yours, as I was just afther tellin' yez, an' that's
where yez'll be, too, inside of a year, if yez'll be guided by me,' he
says. Indade, it's th' foine gintleman he is, an' th' koind man, to be
doin' all that for th' loikes of me, an' so I tould him."
For the second time that day Doctor Vardaman gazed silently at "El Paso
& Rio Grande," "$172,000,000.00 in dividends," until the characters
swam before his eyes.
"At least you'll want your dollar and a half in the meantime, Mrs.
Maginnis," he said finally with an effort, and counted the money into
her hand. She had on a pair of black worsted gloves, the fingers too
long for her own, crooked, hardened and disfigured with work. She took
the coins clumsily, and some of them dropped and rolled about the floor.
"Troth, what'll I do whin I'm a la-ady, settin' in me kerridge, wid
kid gloves on, I wondher," she said with a laugh. "I'm that awkward
wid these, I'd betther be learnin', I think. I'm goin' to have Maggie
ta-ake pianny lessons, Docthor, an' I'm goin' to git a pair of va-ases
for th' parlour mantelpiece, an' a wheel chair for Tim. That's what
I'm goin' to do whin th' firrst o' th' money comes in. I made up me
moind to that as I was walkin' along wid yer wash th' marrnin', an'
thin all to oncet, I says to meself. 'An' what'll th' docthor be doin'
for somewan to clear-starch his shirrts th' way he loikes? An' to do
up thim white lawn cravats that's all cut on th' bias, an' sthretches
somethin' awful--thim stocks yez call 'em, Docthor. Faith, there's
stocks an' _stocks_, think o' that, now?" She laughed a little,
hysterically, gulping at her own joke. "Yez wouldn't belave ut,
Docthor, for all I was so happy, I cud ha' set right down an' cried to
think that somewan might git hould o' thim, some naygur, mebbe, that
'ud ruin 'em!" The tears came into her faded blue eyes. "It's th' good
man yez arre, Docthor Varrdaman, an' it's koind yez have been to me
all these harrd years, an' I'll niver forgit ut. Whin I'm settin' in
me parlour, wid th' pitchers an' th' Rogers Group like I mane to have
ut, rockin' in me chair, an' listenin' to Maggie play, I'll be thinkin'
of yez often an' often, Docthor, an' of th' ould days, whin I was
sthrugglin' along at th' tub an' yez helped me."
Doctor Vardaman mechanically twisted his features into a smile. "I wish
you luck with all my heart, Mrs. Maginnis," was all he could say; but
the Irishwoman was too emotionally wrought up to heed the strangeness
of his manner. Her sky was radiant with dreams.
"Sure, I kin have thim masses said for me mother--rest her sowl!" she
said, crossing herself fervently; and the next moment, in gleeful
anticipation: "An' buy me a black silk, Docthor, a black silk dhress,
me that hasn't had a new rag to me back for eight years!"
She went; and Doctor Vardaman sat down before his table. He took out
the colonel's fifty-dollar bill--the colonel's! It was Mrs. Maginnis',
like all the rest of the bills in that handsome Russia-leather case!
The doctor was as sure of it as if it had been sworn to in his
presence. He stared at it miserably. Of course, he told himself, he
had known all along that Pallinder was a humbug, had known in a sort
of way that he was a scamp. But the truth is, you and I, even the
most experienced, even the wisest and worldliest and most wary of us,
knows very little about scamps. The doctor had lived his seventy years
with such vicissitudes as fall to the lot of the ruck of mankind, and
had encountered no greater rascality than that of some patient who
ignored a bill or refused to pay it--an offence which he himself was
the first to excuse or condone. By nature a humane and sympathetic man,
he had learned in his profession a large charity, a habit of making
allowances which he now denounced savagely for a contemptible shirking
of responsibilities. _Laissez faire_, indeed! And one-half the world,
not knowing how the other half lives, need not care! Yes, Pallinder
was a scamp; but Doctor Vardaman found, with a wretched surprise, that
he had had no real comprehension of what the word meant--the thing it
denoted. This was its meaning, this shabby trickery, this cheap deceit;
the discovery came upon him like a blow. There is an extraordinary
bitterness to any generous mind in beholding the uncovered shame of
a friend; we hate to see the feet of clay; the pain is two-edged and
strikes us either way with the sense of his unworthiness, of our own
folly. The doctor had liked Pallinder; liked him still--liked him
and despised him. He sat wondering at his own weakness. "If it had
been me," thought the old gentleman, "if it had been me that he had
cheated, fleeced, bamboozled in this way, or anyone of my class, I
could almost say the game was fair and have my laugh at the dupe;
it's our business to know better. But that poor old woman, that poor,
ignorant, faithful, trusting creature, that honest, simple drudge!"
He thought of her tired, work-worn hands in those pitiful gloves with
a throb of pain and unreasoning self-reproach. Colonel Pallinder's
hands were large, white, and very well-kept; a seal ring in pretty
taste, _simplex munditiis_, adorned his little finger, the only piece
of jewelry he wore. It was paid for, if at all, the doctor reflected
grimly, out of the pocket of some other Mrs. Maginnis. The flavour of
the colonel's cigar was yet on his lips; what washerwoman, what widow,
what patient, laborious wage-earner's little savings had paid for
_that_? He got up and walked the floor restlessly. There was a kind of
irony in the thought that he, John Vardaman, must suffer this travail
of spirit, while the guilty one himself pursued his way unmoved,
tranquil, eating and sleeping in triumphant ease. "After all," said
the doctor inwardly, "am I my brother's keeper? No. But I have sat at
Pallinder's table, smoked with him, drunk with him, laughed with him,
sanctioned and encouraged him. All the while I knew he was a rogue; I
did it open-eyed; I shared the spoil--it's late, late in the day, Jack
Vardaman, for you to cry Fie on the thief! Dozens of others are daily
doing the same thing; why not? The Pallinders amuse them. Of what stuff
are we all made?" His glance fell on the bill again; he picked it up
and smoothed it out mechanically, wondering what had prompted Pallinder
to pay him out of all the people he owed. It was certainly not from any
warm friendship, for Colonel Pallinder liked everybody equally well;
his cordiality, his generosity emulated the very sunshine in their
wide diffusion. If he stole meanly, he gave away magnificently--after
his own desires were indulged. He was quite capable of picking Mrs.
Maginnis' pocket one day, and relieving her distress with coal and
warm blankets the next; and it is more than likely that he would have
paid the first comer, whether Doctor Vardaman or somebody else, if the
matter had occurred to him, and if the sum were not inconveniently
large.
Huddesley, coming in with the tray of luncheon, was astonished at the
doctor's haggard look; he moved about noiselessly, disposing the dishes
to the old gentleman's liking, and once or twice sending a sharp glance
into his face unobserved.
"Shall you be going up to Mrs. Pallinder's to dinner this evening,
sir?" he asked at length respectfully. "Miss Pallinder said something
about you----"
"No," said Doctor Vardaman sternly. "No. I shan't be going there again."
Huddesley looked at him with singular blankness. "Beg parding, sir, did
you say----?"
"I said I was not going there again," repeated the doctor with
deliberation. He thought a moment. "I'll write a note and ask the
younger gentleman here to dinner next Friday night, Huddesley, and
you can take it up to Mrs. Pallinder. It's the night of their party;
we shan't see much more of them," said Doctor Vardaman, checking a
sigh. He would not acknowledge to himself how much he should miss the
careless jollity, the youthful fun and freedom of the last two years.
Huddesley was leaving the room when the doctor abruptly called him
back: "Huddesley!"
"Yes, sir."
"I--I seldom interfere in the affairs of my servants, Huddesley,"
said Doctor Vardaman, hesitating. "I realise that I have no more right
to meddle with your business than you with mine. But I--I should
like to ask you if you have ever had any business dealings with
Colonel Pallinder? If you--you have ever bought any of his mining or
'Phosphate' stocks, in short?"
Huddesley, after a moment's puzzled silence, so far forgot his usually
impeccable manners as to utter a queer unpleasant sound between a
sneer and a laugh. "Me?" said he. "Not much. Think I'd be roped in by
any such con game as that? I guess _not_--bet your bottom dollar!" He
caught the doctor's startled look, and faltered. "Hi--Hi 'ope you'll
hexcuse me, sir," he said in genuine and very alarmed confusion; "Hi
'ear so much rough talk sometimes, Hi can't 'elp picking it hup----"
"Never mind," said Doctor Vardaman kindly. "I thought you were too
shrewd a man and had seen too much of the world to--to be taken in, as
you say. I should be sorry to think of your losing money--especially
through over-confidence in--in any friend of mine. I wouldn't like to
feel that you were influenced in that way," the old gentleman concluded
rather sadly.
The servant eyed his downcast face with an unfathomable expression. He
fumbled with the door-knob; then he cleared his throat and spoke with
something of an effort. "You're mighty kind to me, Doctor Vardaman," he
said huskily. "You treat me mighty white--and I won't forget it."
It was the second time within the hour that Doctor Vardaman had
received this agreeable assurance. "'Mighty white,'" he quoted to
himself, almost smiling, as the door closed. "I'm afraid Huddesley is
becoming Americanised."