BARON COMES HOME ON A BEER-DRAY
Baron was not at all confident that any of the dramatic editors would
want him to write a review of “The Break of Day.” He merely hoped his
services might be required. And he was disappointed.
He might have had the assignment for the asking, perhaps; but he felt a
hesitancy about asking. He had “fathered” the play, somewhat. He had a
personal interest in it.
Moreover, there was one reason why he was glad to be disengaged. Now
he could attend the performance as an ordinary spectator, and he could
take Bonnie May with him.
The day of the first performance arrived. Baron left the mansion early
in the forenoon, more for the purpose of escaping the half-insane
Baggot than for any other reason. Baggot didn’t really believe that
Baron could help him, perhaps, but his nature demanded that he talk
about his play all the time, and Baron listened well.
Bonnie May was not about when Baron left the mansion. He had had no
final understanding with her as to whether she was to go to the theatre
that night or not. And it was for this reason that he was coming home
in a particularly eager mood, late in the afternoon, to tell her that
he was foot-loose, and that she might depend upon him as an escort to
the theatre.
He was coming home with much eagerness--and then an accident happened.
He started to alight from the cross-town car before it stopped, and
his foot struck a loose fragment of stone, and he lost his balance.
Thinking of the matter afterward, he decided that he could not recall
an experience more banal, more needless. But he did not reach this
conclusion at the time, for the good reason that his head struck the
pavement and he lost consciousness. There had been just one instant of
sharp agony.
He opened his eyes presently to find himself supported by two men.
Every passenger in the crowded car, which had stopped, was staring at
him. A crowd of pedestrians had also stopped to see what had happened.
He looked dazedly at the two men who were supporting him. One was the
car-conductor, whose eyes expressed fear and disgust. The other man’s
appearance was in some degree familiar to Baron. He was gigantic,
ruddy, wholly self-possessed.
Baron wondered who this man was, and then, as his gaze roved weakly
from point to point, he saw a red beer-dray--and he knew. This was the
beer-driver whom he and Bonnie May had watched and discussed one day
from the attic window.
“He’s all right,” declared the beer-driver, getting a firmer grip on
Baron’s arm.
Baron was greatly relieved to hear that he was “all right.” He had
his doubts. The back of his head seemed to be asleep, and there was a
horrible pain in his left leg when he tried to touch the pavement with
his foot.
“I’ll want your name and address, and the names of witnesses,” said the
conductor. He had produced a little note-book.
“You don’t need them,” declared Baron. “It was my own fault. I don’t
want to be detained here.”
“But the rules require--” said the conductor.
“Just forget the rules,” advised the beer-driver, who perceived that
Baron meant what he said. And in an instant Baron was feeling a new
sort of embarrassment, because the ruddy giant of the beer-dray had
picked him up in his arms, and was taking long strides in the direction
of his dray. “Out of the way!” he ordered, and people obeyed.
Baron had the helpless sensation of one who rides on an elephant. He
thought he realized now just what it must be to perform the tasks of
a mahout. “Though I don’t seem to need an ankus--yet,” he meditated.
Baron had read his Kipling.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, speaking in a general downward
direction.
“You’re not troubling me,” came back the answer.
The driver had reached his dray, and greatly to Baron’s amazement,
he put a foot on the hub of the wheel, a disengaged hand on the iron
bar surrounding the back of the seat, and had vaulted into a sitting
posture, carrying his burden with him.
It seemed to Baron that he had been swung through limitless space, as
if he had been a star, held to its place by gravity. He held his hat
in place, as he might have done if a cyclone had seized him in its
clutch. And with such attention as he could command he was observing
the performance of the driver.
“Sit down,” commanded that individual: needlessly, for already Baron
was by his side, holding on to the iron bar at the back of the seat,
and feeling uncomfortably light and dizzy. His companion looked into
his eyes. “A pretty hard jolt,” he said, thrusting a protecting arm
about his charge. “Gee-app!” He pulled the reins dexterously with the
aid of thumb and little finger, and the horses began to move.
Much to Baron’s surprise, the driver did not ask him where he lived,
but quietly turned his horses’ heads in the right direction, adjusting
the brake with his foot, and glancing ahead to see that the right of
way was clear.
Baron’s mind reverted to Bonnie May for an instant, and he remembered
that she had noted how the driver had held his reins with authority,
and sat with his great legs planted purposefully before him. Yes, that
was precisely right.
“You haven’t asked me where I live,” he remarked, trying to be partly
independent of his companion’s support.
“I don’t have to. I know.”
“How?”
“I’ve noticed you before now. You’re one of the Barons.”
The injured man felt flattered. Still, he reflected, the driver might
have noticed him for any number of unflattering reasons. For a moment
he tried to fathom this thought: Was it an evidence that the driver was
simple and stupid, that he had interested himself in the people who
lived in his neighborhood? He couldn’t reach a satisfactory conclusion.
“It’s awfully good of you to give me a lift like this,” he remarked. He
was beginning to feel a little less shaken and strange.
“Oh, I don’t know. You’d do as much for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Carry you around and lift you up on a high seat?” asked Baron
incredulously.
The driver threw back his immense head, revealing a bronzed, bull-like
throat from which a sound like thunder came. “Well, no, I guess you
wouldn’t do _that_,” he admitted.
The horses, with their ears turned alternately toward the driver and
pointed ahead, were brought to a halt in front of the mansion.
“Now you sit up here and hold tight, and try to look as if nothing had
happened,” directed the driver. He removed his arm and sprang to the
pavement.
“Why?” Baron wanted to know.
“I want to call your old lady out, so she can see you sitting up on the
seat.”
Baron frowned. “Why?” he asked again.
“If I’d carry you to the door and ring the bell, she’d have a fit when
she came out. She’s pretty high-strung, anyway.” It was as if he were
describing a woman of his own household, instead of Baron’s.
“Oh!” responded Baron. He was thinking that it was difficult to know
where to expect chivalry in one form or another, and that there were
various ways of manifesting it. “I believe you’re right,” he added.
It was Mrs. Baron who came to the door in response to a ring. It is not
improbable that she had been looking out of the upper window.
“Your son wants to speak to you,” said the driver, dragging off his
German cap and revealing a shock of dishevelled hair.
Mrs. Baron seemed to ignore the man utterly. She stood, pale and rigid,
staring at Baron. She comprehended at least one thing: he had driven up
to the door of the mansion in a beer-dray.
Then she smiled ominously. “What a quaint idea!” said she, passing
the driver and descending the steps. “Of course, this is one of your
jokes!”
She paused then. She had swiftly become less assured in her anger.
“I’ve had a mean fall, mother,” said Baron, trying to keep a
martyr-like tone out of his voice. “I’m afraid I’ll have to be carried
into the house. This man was good enough to bring me home. He was
afraid of alarming you. It was his idea that you ought to be notified
before he carried me in.”
“Oh, I didn’t understand!” There was swift, childlike remorse in her
bearing. “It was kind of you,” she added to the driver, by way of
atonement for her rudeness. She regarded him with flickering eyes. She
could not help shrinking from the warm, gross bulk of the man, yet she
admired him somewhat as a lamb might admire a benevolent bull that has
just driven a wolf away.
She went as far as the curb and looked up at Baron critically. Yes, he
was seriously injured. Something told her that. A strained expression
about his lips and eyes, perhaps, and his attitude.
She turned anxiously to the driver. “Do you suppose you can get him in
without any help?” she asked.
“Sure!” The driver derived no joy from her sudden discomfiture--in the
sudden levelling of her high spirit to the lowly plane of a fearful
mother. Perhaps he did not realize that she had been wrathful toward
her son, and rude to him. “You go and push the door open and get things
ready.” He approached Baron and held his arms up.
Baron put his hands on the immense fellow’s shoulders, and again he
experienced that sensation of being swung through space. In an instant
he was being borne up his own front steps.
“Can you carry him up-stairs?” inquired Mrs. Baron dubiously.
“Why not?” And up the stairs the driver proceeded, without the
slightest evident effort.
At the top Mrs. Baron led the way into Baron’s old room--now Bonnie
May’s. But the driver paused on the threshold, leisurely casting his
eyes over the evidences of feminine proprietorship.
“You’d better let me take him to his own room, mother,” he declared
decisively. He seemed quite unconscious of bearing a burden. He was
woodenly indifferent to Baron’s efforts to get down.
“But that’s up another flight,” was Mrs. Baron’s faltering response.
“That’s all right. You see, I’m used to delivering beer-barrels, and
they always find they save trouble if they let me put ’em just where
they belong.”
Baron, thinking of the difficulties which might arise when this willing
and capable Atlas was gone, quite agreed with the suggestion. “I’m sure
he’s right, mother,” he said, “if he doesn’t mind.”
Up another flight Baron was borne, and at the top the driver turned
about haltingly, but still seemingly unaware of having his strength
taxed, and called down: “You better see about getting a doctor,
mother. He’ll need to have himself looked after. I can put him to bed.”
Baron was able to grin weakly at the driver’s simple generalship--and
at the fact that his mother obeyed with nervous promptitude. “That
way,” said he, pointing, and then he essayed a little joke. “I think
you forgot to carry me around the block a time or two before you
started up here, didn’t you?” he asked the driver.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” came back the response. “If I had a twelve-year-old
boy who didn’t weigh more than you do, I’d drown him.”
With this the attic room was entered, and Baron was placed carefully on
a chair. Then his shoes and other garments were removed with caution,
and before he quite realized what had happened, he was in bed.
“I wish I had your strength,” he said, feeling that such service as he
had received ought to be acknowledged somehow.
“What? Oh, you’d better leave that to me. I need it and you don’t. I
guess that’s about the only thing I’ve got.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve got the right kind of a heart, too.”
This created instant embarrassment. By way of escape from praise, the
big fellow whispered loudly: “Say the word and I’ll jump out and get a
bucket of beer before the mother gets back.”
“Beer!” exclaimed Baron. He had always associated beer with festive
occasions, and he was quite sure the present moment was not a festive
occasion. “I don’t believe I care for any beer--just now.” He believed
he had achieved a commendably diplomatic stroke by adding the two last
words. He was prompted to add: “But if you’re sure your horses won’t
get restless, I’d be glad to have you stay until mother comes.”
The driver sat down, selecting a straight-backed chair, and holding
himself so upright that he made Baron think of a huge, benevolent
heathen god. He had dropped his cap to the floor beside him, and his
hands were clasped about his capacious stomach. There was now a restful
placidity as well as extraordinary power in his presence.
“And it isn’t just your strength that I envy,” said Baron, catching the
luminous blue eyes of the driver for an instant, “it’s the generous way
you’ve got of treating a fellow as if he were a brother!”
This, too, created great embarrassment. The driver’s face flamed and he
struggled to get away from anything resembling praise. “Yes, sir!” he
exclaimed, as if he were merely continuing, “that bay horse would stand
in his tracks until I came back, even if the owner of the brewery tried
to drive him away.”
Baron laughed. “Well, I won’t say anything more to your credit, if you
don’t want to hear it,” he said. But after a moment’s silence he went
on, more seriously than he had yet spoken, “but do tell me, for my own
good, how you manage to feel so well disposed toward people--toward
everybody!”
“Who, me? Oh, I just drink a bucket of beer every time I get thirsty,
and every time I begin to feel mean I go out and dance with the girls
pretty near all night. The bigger they are the easier I swing ’em.” He
leaned back and laughed until things in the room shook. A book fell off
the table.
Mrs. Baron came in with the doctor then, and it remained for her to
make the mistake which Baron had avoided.
“You must let me pay you for your trouble,” she said. “I don’t know
what would have happened but for you.”
But the extraordinary creature grasped his cap in both hands and
reddened again. “Who, me?” he said. “Oh, no, mother. I make mine
flirting with beer-barrels.” He made his exit uneasily. They heard him
whistling on the stairs. In the distance the front door closed with a
bang.
“What an extraordinary creature!” exclaimed Mrs. Baron.
“Yes,” replied Baron, “I’m afraid he is--extraordinary.”
He was remembering something about the misleading effects of a make-up.
Surely this big fellow’s immense body and his rough speech were only
a make-up, after all, hiding those qualities which even from the
standpoint of a Baron were most to be sought and cherished! That was
what Bonnie May had tried to impress upon him.
Then, with sudden anxiety, Baron turned to his mother. “Where is Bonnie
May?” he asked.
“She went away this afternoon,” was the response. Mrs. Baron avoided
her son’s eyes. She spoke rather guiltily.
“She went away,” Baron mused disconsolately. “And it was to-night she
was so eager to have somebody take her to see ‘The Break of Day.’”