LITTLE-TWEED-SUIT
Little-Tweed-Suit was being bothered by a toad--a toad-person with a
prominent thick watch chain and a loose smirk. She had been bothered
by him ever since dinner--dinner at night at the Cactus House, which
was inclined to be Eastern and effete in its apings--but his
persecutions there had been confined to lurking, contrived meetings,
and long glances which touched her noisomely.
Once she had swept the hotel office with a desperate glance, trying to
select a face to which she might appeal. There wasn't one. Estabrook
was filling with its usual week-end scum; crafty faces, hard faces,
faces shallowly good-natured, and therefore doubly treacherous. Even
the pimply clerk at the desk, discerning her unescorted state, had
changed subtly in voice and manner.
"Alone?"
"Yes, alone."
"Lonesome?"
She had not answered him. But here on the railway platform, where she
had fled to catch the East-bound, nine o'clock express, and where the
toad unhurriedly had followed her; here where she had thought to fear
him less she found she feared him more.
To know herself that such a thing had looked upon her as he had looked
was loathsome; to have others see him accost her and leer over their
interpretations of the insult seemed more than she could bear. And the
platform and hot, foul waiting-room, common to both men and women, were
both as conspicuous as the hotel had been; both peopled with the same
side-long glances.
So she had fled again from the lighted portion of the platform this
time to the darker, far more dangerous end, which was out of the puddle
of illumination. And now he was coming toward her less unhurriedly,
his canine teeth showing wolfishly through a grin. This last move of
hers he believed he understood; he even valued it. A little coquetry
lent zest to the game. And she _had_ led him a pretty chase--but
now . . . he was very sure of himself . . .
How Little-Tweed-Suit--a girl like Tweed-Suit--came there upon the
station platform of Estabrook is a long story; and it is not entirely
hers or ours. Therefore only the briefest part, for this tale's sake,
shall be set down here.
It concerns a white house on a hill, and a man who failed so bleakly
that few could remember, even directly after his funeral, how shining
his successes had been. For his brilliance could not be saved in ink
or perpetuated with paint or brush. To be sure, his friends after his
death now and then found themselves recalling something particularly
keen, something analytical and searching as a probe, which he had
voiced on this occasion or that.
"I remember how Manners used to say," they would begin; and then quote
as accurately as it were possible. But directly, when they discovered
how happily these epigrams were received by those who had not heard
them, they acquired a singular habit; they began to leave out Manners'
name and appropriate the applause to themselves. Thus they robbed the
dead man safely, nor found the practice ghoulish. One or two thereby
even acquired permanent fame as an after-dinner wit.
Even his enemies, implacable, political enemies, who had done the most
to destroy him, more than the temperament which he himself believed to
be a blight, were a little more honest than that. They had fought him
according to their own rules, which debarred nothing, with every foul
trick they knew. If there was a weak spot in a man's record, go after
it; if he had been a weakling, temporarily a fool, seek it out. There
were human bloodhounds always sniffing to come upon such a scent. Hunt
it down; find the woman.
As a matter of fact, there had not been a woman, after all. That had
been a mistake. A bad mistake, for it had killed his wife. But a
lucky mistake for them! For it had delivered into their hands the
secret of an actual and even more vulnerable place to attack.
Before his wife's death he had been proud enough to hide it, and fight
it out when the struggle was on, within the four walls of his home.
But afterward he seemed to cease to care.
Shameless! That was the pass to which they said he had come, in the
very worthy, very tight-traditioned and not very large town in which
the white house stood. And the day he rose drunk in Assembly, white,
haggard drunk, they read his doom aloud. Dead politically the papers
said. Fools! Dead in hopes they should have written; dead in his
debonair heart; dead sick of fighting a losing fight. And dying.
This last, the sudden death of his body, however, took them by
surprise. They had not been observant. Yet on that bright day when
quite as many of his political enemies as friends rode behind him, the
latter were rather quick and proud to notice this. In suitably hushed
voices they remarked that it proved their broad-mindedness as a
community.
But whenever anything particularly crooked was being crammed through
thereafter at the State Capitol, his name was sure to come up.
"It's a good thing Charlie isn't here," they'd chuckle. "We couldn't
fool him this easy; he'd spot it; he'd tear us to pieces with his
tongue."
His enemies were more honest; they remembered and appreciated him as an
antagonist.
The others, save for the epigrammatic quotations already mentioned,
were more immediately concerned with his daughter. She had been proud
of her father--proud! She had never belittled him with hidden pity,
not even on that night when she surprised him, all in evening black and
white, immaculate and wasted, before a mirror which hung over the
buffet in the dining-room. He was holding a goblet in an uplifted
hand, the skin cruelly taut, though he neither swayed nor stammered.
"Your damnation, my friend," she heard him say. "Your deep damnation."
And he drank it to his reflection.
The friends were immediately concerned with the daughter. And her
pride! They didn't say so, not aloud, but they thought to see it break
now. And the day that Ostermoor--Young Ostermoor was his title, though
his given name was Howard Davenport--broke his never announced and
merely tacitly accepted engagement to her they knew great joy. But she
robbed them of half their triumph. In public she never dropped her
chin. And only Ostermoor and she knew the shame of that private
conversation by which they were unplighted.
"You must see my predicament." So spoke Ostermoor. "I'm dependent on
the old man. If he cuts me off, and he says he will if--"
Even callow young Ostermoor, hair slick and scented, a thick-limbed,
small-town Brummel confident in his best-clothes smartness, had not had
quite the courage to tell her to her uplifted, flushed face what his
father had shouted:--That he'd have no blood of his crossed with hers;
that it was dangerous blood--tainted--wild.
"He says," he finished lamely instead, "it's better to wait."
Yet how easily she read his lameness, and estimated his father's words.
Dangerous blood--tainted? Ostermoor had feared her tongue; the women
in his household talked shrilly and long upon far less provocation.
But she only sat and seemed to smile.
"I see," was all she said.
And while she smiled, her cheeks hot, his eyes had crept over her. Her
slenderness was rounded, her slimness soft and full. A girl, it came
upon him, for whom a man's arms might still yearn in spite of himself.
"This--this needn't mean any real break between us," he hoped, with
what he intended as a worldly careless air. He'd never have dared that
a week earlier; he had always been too conscious until that moment of a
certain unapproachability, a transcendent daintiness, audacious and the
reverse from fragile, which nevertheless had kept him at arms' length.
But with his father's words in his ears--dangerous!--tainted!--he
managed it easily.
"Of course we couldn't arrange it here in town, where we're known--"
"Arrange what?"
"Well, I thought maybe--" Her calmness, hers by right of breeding,
lamed him again and angered him to coarse effrontery.
"I don't suppose there's many in town now who'd care to take a chance--"
"A chance on what?"
"Well, on marrying you. This is a pretty conservative community. But
I thought if we could find a place quietly, not too far away, where
we--"
She rang a bell and summoned a butler who was also cook, and coachman
too.
"Show Mr. Ostermoor out," she directed, calm still. But the terms of
that order were only out of regard for the extreme age of the servitor.
He would attempt to obey her she knew; had he been younger she would
have directed that Mr. Ostermoor be thrown out.
A week later the estate was settled up. Naturally Ostermoor's father,
who was president of the local bank, knew that there wasn't going to be
any estate, yet the total of her father's paper must have staggered
him. I hope so. And when she was proved to be practically penniless,
immediately they all felt that they had evened their score with her.
For what? Oh, for driving so sweet and cool along a dusty,
maple-shaded main street, as pleasant and courteous to ordinary
tradespeople as she was to better folk.
Then, in a surprisingly short while, whenever somebody happened to
mention her and wonder where she had gone, they found that they had
already started to forget her.
"Somewhere West. I did hear the name of the place. But I can't
remember it."
They were above reproach,--in their geography. She had gone somewhere
west, and sometimes I am not sure that there isn't a heartache in the
reason for her going.
Romance was in her hungry heart; such romance as the Sunday-groomed
youths who frequented the house on the hill might never satisfy. She'd
read books, all sorts of books, but one of the plains she loved. In it
a somewhat saturnine horseman, a son of the sage-brush, unlettered but
tutored much by life, had wooed and won a prim little schoolmistress
from the East. Whether she went with the hope of emulation in her
heart or not none can venture to say. Maybe it was in search of
manhood, a different kind of man.
Anyhow, she went. And found a school to teach. And disillusionment.
She could not teach school; she knew more than her scholars, yet not so
much more of what they needed to be taught. It was not always clear in
her mind whether it had been the Delaware or the Rappahannock which
furnished Washington's transportation problem. And two and two didn't
always make four; not if she didn't keep her mind terribly
concentrated, when she wanted to dream.
The children loved her; they cried, unaccountably to their parents,
when she had to leave. But the parents were ruthless about it; they
weren't paying school taxes to support a slip of a girl who couldn't
hammer the three essential R's into their undoubtedly gifted
offsprings' heads, even though her hair was high-piled and tawny-red,
and her skin like cream; even though there were violet lights in her
singularly eager eyes.
When one less practical than the rest tried to point out that she had a
bearing different from theirs; "genteel" he called it, yet without
offense to the most humble, and that she "talked good, too," and in a
less nasal way, they rode him down. Their progeny was yet a long step
from a drawing-room they averred, or the need to know how to enter one.
She lost her position. In Estabrook, loath to acknowledge herself
disappointed, she found another, and lost that. But she considered
this scarcely a mishap, for she couldn't have lived upon what it paid
anyway. Moreover she was becoming rapidly afraid of this country; it
was bigger and she was littler than she had supposed. And no dashing
horsemen had ridden up to her schoolhouse door and handed her nosegays
and assured her that her eyes were the same shade of blue. She'd
pricked that bubble! Most of them chewed tobacco with no delicate
regard for outward appearances.
With her money running perilously low she had taken stock of her
wardrobe and found it already shabby, and decided to go back East while
there was still time. She'd try New York. Her pride would not
handicap her there any more than it had here, for no one would know
her. She'd find something to do in New York; of course she would.
She'd have to!
Then the toad-person had laid unclean eyes upon her in the dining-room
of the Cactus House, and contrived meetings where their bodies must
brush close in passing. And followed her to the station. And she was
biting her lip now to keep from being silly and screaming; trying to
plan in panic the scathing things which she must say.
It was dark there. The toad could not see her face and thus learn that
her eyes were dilated. The East-bound roared in as he came up. She
tried to run--it was her train--and couldn't. The toad put a hand upon
her. And then Blue Jeans--blue serge now--dropped off the steps of the
smoker in the shadow close behind her, and became instantly absorbed in
the tableau.
Blue Jeans had whipped Condit. Indeed, he had considered it an unfair
thing. Why, Condit was only a boy--not more than twenty-one or
twenty-two at the most--a baby!--no bigger than himself. Not half so
big as the superintendent! And he could not fight well, either. He
danced a lot, and feinted, and made a great show of annihilation, but
he couldn't really fight. Blue Jeans had been sorry for him a little;
not much, because he'd ought to be in some other business if he
couldn't take care of himself. But he'd dropped so still, the first
time Blue Jeans hit him. So huddled like!
"Have I killed him?" he asked Larrabie, remorsefully, after it had
happened.
Condit had folded up like a sick accordion.
"Have I killed him?"
"Hell, no!" And Larrabie had stared curiously while neither of them
heard the applause.
Before an hour passed Larrabie wired the huge man who had an office in
New York, an office lined with books. The books were never used; the
office saw strange usage.
"A bear-cat," Larrabie wired. "What shall I do with him?"
And an answer had come back:
"Keep him under cover. Work him a little. Will send Devereau when the
time is right."
So Blue Jeans had suddenly found his Dream in the process of coming
true. For he had done, not happy at heart, just what the huge man had
said he would do; he had decided to accumulate other and just as easy
two hundreds.
"I'll herd by myself," was the way he argued himself to this decision.
"I'm no lily, but I'll not soil myself worse with this bunch."
And Larrabie had kept him under cover, and worked him twice, until
another telegram had finally come, advising them that Devereau was on
his way West,--that the "time was right." But Larrabie had been
perplexed again on this occasion by Blue Jeans' lack of enthusiasm. He
reread the telegram aloud and emphasized the other's great luck.
"There's not a man that wouldn't give up a big slice to get him for a
manager," he said. "He's in right, too. He's the ace!"
"Huh!" remarked Blue Jeans. Indeed, Blue Jeans baffled him.
And when Devereau arrived in Estabrook on a train twenty minutes late,
Blue Jeans was not there to keep the appointment which Larrabie, duly
aware of the Easterner's importance, had arranged.
"Devereau'll be taking you East, likely," he had surmised. So waiting
not an instant past the hour when he was scheduled to arrive, Blue
Jeans had gone, stricken with homesickness at the thought of leaving
her, to see Girl o' Mine. It took him twenty miles down the line, but
he'd made the appointment with her before he knew Devereau was coming,
anyhow, and he'd keep it. Therefore Devereau--but you've guessed it.
Devereau is Fox-face of the private car. Devereau is the toad.
It was dark at the end of the platform. He could not see that her eyes
were dilated. He laid his hand upon her. She couldn't run; her legs
felt frozen and useless.
"No hurry, dearie," said Devereau. "Let's talk this over. Maybe
you'll be glad you missed your train."
But Blue Jeans, who had landed lightly on the gravel, saw what Devereau
had missed. He saw that Tweed-Suit was afraid--that she was numbed
with fear. His single back-hand thrust sent Devereau spinning under a
truck.
"Your train?"
"Yes."
"Give me your bag."
She obeyed him. They had told her that the train did not wait very
long. His hand found her arm, a different touch than Devereau's.
"Now run," he ordered.
They found most of the vestibules already closed; then one far down
still open. So they made it, though he had to toss the bag and fairly
lift her on. And it was done so swiftly that it was a full half minute
before she caught her breath.
"Oh, thank you!" she exclaimed then.
The porter was fussing with her bag, and her fervor overwhelmed him.
But her next words were a shock.
"I--I want to get off," she blurted.
The porter shook his head; he had expected better from her, but all
women were riddles.
"We's rolling now, ma'am," he answered. "No stop for two hundred
miles."
That night Cecille Manners--Tweed-Suit will no longer serve--lay in her
berth and watched the stars reel by. She had misjudged the west and
come away too soon; she knew that now. She put her hand upon her arm.
No, that wasn't the way it had felt; it had been strong, infallible.
And though he had turned quickly away, after putting her aboard; though
she had no way of guessing that he had gone back to find Devereau, she
was filled just the same with what remained, for a long time at least,
a happy certainty. She'd see him again sometime. She had to!
But Devereau had known better than to linger near the baggage truck.
So after he had looked beneath it and upon it and all around it and
found nobody, Blue Jeans turned and watched the red tail-light of the
train disappear.
Who shall say where fancy first was bred? Not you--or I--nor even Blue
Jeans. For he had not even seen her yet, not with seeing eyes. Here
was yet no chapter of his Dream.
"A decent girl!" was what he muttered. "A decent girl--I'd swear it!"
And he looked again, eagerly, beneath the truck.
An hour later when Blue Jeans heard a man asking for Perry Blair in the
Cactus House, he stepped up. He didn't care for his looks, which was
no novelty so far in this venture.
"I'm Perry Blair," he said.
"I'm Devereau."
And later, over a contract:
"This mentions mighty little money," said Perry, "and that little
bashful and meek."
Perry's manner did not even approximate the respect which Devereau felt
was his due.
"You'll be well taken care of," he stated curtly.
But Perry's answer, like one he had made the huge man, made Devereau
pause and think.
"No doubt at all," said he. "I'll be seeing to that myself."
And they didn't know, not till a long time afterward, that they had met
only a little while before. It had been dark at the platform's end.
Perry had caught nothing save a canine grin.