The animals went in two by two.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
Given Bower for a last name, the boys are bound to call you "Right" or
"Left." They called me "Right" because I usually held it, one way or
another. I was shot with luck. No matter what happened, it always worked
out to my advantage. All inside of six months, for instance, the mate
fell overboard and I got his job; the skipper got drunk after weathering
a cyclone and ran the old _Boldero_ aground in "lily-pad" weather--and I
got his. Then the owner called me in and said: "Captain Bower, what do
you know about Noah's Ark?" And I said: "Only that 'the animals went in
two by two. Hurrah! Hurrah!'" And the owner said: "But how did he feed
'em--specially the meat-eaters?" And I said: "He got hold of a Hindu who
had his arm torn off by a black panther and who now looks after the same
at the Calcutta Zoo--and he put it up to him."
"The Bible doesn't say so," said the owner.
"Everything the Bible says is true," said I. "But there're heaps of true
sayings, you know, that aren't in it at all."
"Well," says the owner, "you slip out to yon Zoo and you put it up to
yon one-armed Hindu that a white Noah named Bower has been ordered to
carry pairs of all the Indian fauna from Singapore to Sydney; and you
tell him to shake his black panther and 'come along with.'"
"What will you pay?" I asked.
The owner winked his eye. "What will I promise?" said he. "I leave that
to you."
But I wasn't bluffed. The owner always talked pagan and practised
Christian; loved his little joke. They called him "Bond" Hadley on the
water-front to remind themselves that his word was just as good.
I settled with Yir Massir in a long confab back of the snake-house, and
that night Hadley blew me to Ivy Green's benefit at the opera-house.
Poor little girl! There weren't fifty in the audience. She couldn't act.
I mean she couldn't draw. The whole company was on the bum and
stone-broke. They'd scraped out of Australia and the Sandwich Islands,
but it looked as if they'd stay in Calcutta, doing good works, such as
mending roads for the public, to the end of time.
"Ivy Green is a pretty name for a girl," said the owner.
"And Ivy Green is a pretty girl," I said; "and I'll bet my horned soul
she's a good girl."
To tell the truth, I was taken with her something terrible at first
sight. I'd often seen women that I wanted, but she was the first
girl--and the last. It's a different sort of wanting, that. It's the
good in you that wants--instead of the bad.
Her little face was like the pansies that used to grow in mother's
dooryard; and a dooryard is the place for pansies, not a stage. When her
act was over the fifty present did their best; but I knew, when she'd
finished bobbing little curtsies and smiling her pretty smile, she'd
slip off to her dressing-room and cry like a baby. I couldn't stand it.
There were other acts to come, but I couldn't wait.
"If Ivy Green is a pretty name for a girl, Ivy Bower is a prettier name
for a woman," I said. "I'm going behind."
He looked up, angry. Then he saw that I didn't mean any harm and he
looked down. He said nothing. I got behind by having the pull on certain
ropes in that opera-house, and I asked a comedian with a face like a
walrus which was Miss Green's dressing-room.
"Friend of hers?" he says.
"Yes," says I, "a friend."
He showed me which door and I knocked. Her voice was full of worry and
tears.
"Who's there?" she said.
"A friend," said I.
"Pass, friend," said she.
And I took it to mean "Come in," but it didn't. Still, she wasn't so
dishabilled as to matter. She was crying and rubbing off the last of her
paint.
"Miss Green," I said, "you've made me feel so mean and miserable that I
had to come and tell you. My name is Bower. The boys call me 'Right'
Bower, meaning that I'm lucky and straight. It was lucky for me that I
came to your benefit, and I hope to God that it will be lucky for you."
"Yes?" she says--none too warm.
"As for you, Miss Green," I said, "you're up against it, aren't you? The
manager's broke. You don't know when you've touched any salary. There's
been no balm in your benefit. What are you going to do?"
This time she looked me over before she spoke.
"I don't know," she said.
"I don't have to ask," said I, blushing red, "if you're a good girl.
It's just naturally obvious. I guess that's what put me up to butting
in. I want to help. Will you answer three questions?"
She nodded.
"Where," said I, "will you get breakfast to-morrow?--lunch
to-morrow?--and dinner to-morrow?"
"We disband to-night," she said, "and I don't know."
"I suppose you know," said I, "what happens to most white girls who get
stranded in Indian cities?"
"I know," she said, "that people get up against it so hard that they
oughtn't to be blamed for anything they do."
"They aren't," I said, "by--Christians; but it's ugly just the same.
Now----"
"And you," she said, flaring up, "think that, as long as it's got to be,
it might as well be you! Is that your song and dance, Mr. Smarty?"