MACLACHAN, the tailor, is as Scotch as his name and as dour as the
Scotch. Our Square goes to his Home of Fashion to have its clothes made,
repaired, and, on rare and special occasions, pressed, as a matter of
local loyalty, which does not in the least imply that it either likes or
approves MacLachan. It is, in fact, rather difficult to like him. He has
a gray-granite face with a mouth like a snapped spring, toppling brows,
and a nose wrinkled into the expression of one suspicious of all mankind
and convinced that his worst suspicions are well founded. He has
also the Scotch habit of the oracle, and deals largely in second-hand
aphorisms.
Once he had a daughter, a wild-rose girl, who lived over the Home of
Fashion with him, and kept him and the place in speckless order. But she
is gone, three years since, and in her place MacLachan has only a bitter
memory and a devouring shame. What they quarreled about Our Square never
knew. The hard-bitten tailor was easy to quarrel with at any time. No
information was offered by him, and public opinion in the neighborhood
does not favor vain and curious inquiries into another man's family
troubles. The night that Meg left, with her gray eyes blazing like
two clear flames and her little chin so fiercely set that the dimple
disappeared from it totally, MacLachan went out blackly glowering, and
came back drunk and singing “The Cork Leg.”
What affinity may exist, even in a Scotchman's mind, between that naive
and chatty ballad and strong liquor is beyond my imagination. But our
dour, sour tailor then and there chose it and has since retained it for
the slogan of his spirituous outbreaks, and sings it only when he is,
in his own phrase, “a bit drink-taken.” The Bonnie Lassie has one of her
queer theories that he used to sing Meg to sleep with it when she was a
baby. “And that's why, you see,” says she. I don't see at all; it seems
to me a psychologically unsound theory. Still, some of the unsoundest
theories I have ever heard from the Bonnie Lassie's lips have been
inexplicably borne out by the facts afterward. When I marvel at this she
laughs and says that an old pedagogue who has spent his life with books
mustn't expect to understand people.
As for the wild-rose Meg, she passed wholly out of the little,
close-knit, secluded world of Our Square. Even those few of us who knew
MacLachan and counted ourselves his friends feared to mention her name,
not so much because of his known temper as of the haunting pain that
grew in his eyes. With the temerity of youth, Henry Groll, one of Meg's
many local adorers, and the best second tenor in the Amalgamated Glee
Clubs, did put it to the tailor, having come to the Home of Fashion on
a matter of international complications, viz., to ascertain whether red
Hungarian wine would come out of a French piqué waistcoat.
“By the way, what d'you hear from Meg?” inquired the young man.
“What!”.The tailor's heavy shears went off at such a bias across the
cloth he was cutting that Lawyer Stedman's coat, when completed, never
could be coaxed to set exactly right under the left arm.
“I--I only ast ye,” said the visitor, somewhat disconcerted. “What's Meg
doin' now?”
Three inches lower--the Little Red Doctor assured Henry a few moments
after his ill-advised query, binding up the spot where the flung
scissors had struck--and he would never again have sung second tenor nor
anything else calling for the employment of intact vocal cords. Henry
sent a messenger after the waistcoat. That night MacLachan reeled home
bellowing “The Cork Leg” in a voice that brought Terry the Cop bounding
across Our Square like a dissuasive antelope.
My one first-hand experience with the ballad of MacLachan's lapse
from sobriety was brought about long after through the Bonnie Lassie's
procuring. She thrust a sunny head from her studio window and beckoned
me from the sidewalk with her modeling tool.
“Dominie, have you seen MacLachan, the tailor, to-day?” she called when
she secured my attention.
“No. Is he looking for me?”
“You should be looking for him.”
I examined my clothing for possible rents or stains. My sober black was
respectable if shiny. The Bonnie Lassie made a gesture of annoyance with
the modeling tool which nearly cost her latest creation its head.
“Do you know what day this is?”
“Tuesday, the sev--”
“Don't be a calendar, please! What day is it in MacLachan's life?”
I groped. “Is it his birthday?” (Not that we are much given to
celebrating birthdays in Our Square.)
“Oh, you men! You men! I've just telephoned the Little Red Doctor and he
didn't know either. It's the second anniversary of the day MacLachan's
Meg left him. Do you remember what happened last year, dominie?”
Did I remember! When Lawyer Sted-man had lured me to perjure my immortal
soul before a magistrate, who let Mac off only upon the strength of
a character sketch (by me) that would have overpraised any one of the
Twelve Apostles! I did remember.
“Very well, then. You and the doctor are to take him away this evening.
Far away and bring him back sober.”
We did our best. And we almost succeeded. For it was close on
midnight and Mac was sleepily homebound between us before what he had
drunk--against a rising current of our protests--awoke the devil of
music in his brain. We were cutting across Second Avenue when he began:
“I'll tell you a story without any sham.
In Holland there lived Mynheer van Flam,
Who every morning said: 'I am
The richest merchant in Rotterdam,
Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nu--da--na--day!
Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nay!”
From the shadow of a tree there moved one of those brazen and piteous
she-ghosts that haunt the locality. She addressed the three of us with
hopeful impartiality. MacLachan shook himself free of our arms and
walked close to her, staring strangely into her face.
“I've got a daughter in your line of trade,” he said.
He spoke quietly, but the she-ghost read his eyes. She shrank back
trembling, stammered something, and hurried away.
Not until we entered Our Square, after ten minutes of strained silence,
did MacLachan look up from the pavement.
“Was there a lassie I spoke to?” he asked vaguely. “What did I say to
her?” The Little Red Doctor told him circumstantially. “Personally, I
think you're a liar,” he added.
“Do ye?” wistfully answered the tailor, slumping upon a bench. “I take
it kind of ye that ye do. But I'm no liar. Once and for all I'll tell ye
both. Then ye'll know, and we'll bury it. When my Meg left me I began
to die--inside. The last thing in me to die was my pride. When that was
dead too--or I thought it so--I set out to seek her. I found her. It was
just off Sixth Avenue. In the broad o' the afternoon it was, and there
she stood bedizened like yon poor hussy that spoke to us. Raddled with
paint too; raddled to the eyes. But the eyes had not changed. They
looked at me straight and brave and hard. I had meant well by her,
however I might find her. God knows I did! But at the sight of her so,
my gorge rose. 'What _are_ ye,' says I, 'that ye should come into the
light of day wearing shame on yer face?' Her look never wavered--you
mind how fearless she always was, dominie--though she must have seen I
was near to killing her with my naked hands. 'I'm as you see me. Take me
or leave me,' she says. So I left her to go her ways, and I went mine.”
There was a long silence. Then the Little Red Doctor deliberately
measured off a short inch on MacLachan's forefinger.
“You're not _that_ much of a man, Mac,” said he, and flipped the hand
from him. “Do you take him home, dominie; I haven't the stomach for any
more of him to-night.”
With any other than the Little Red Doctor it would have been a lasting
quarrel. But the official physician and healer of bodies (and souls at
times) to Our Square is too full of other and more important things to
find room for resentment. So when, a fortnight later, MacLachan sallied
forth to the tune of “The Cork Leg,” and came back raving with
pneumonia, it was, of course, the Red One who pulled him through it. And
in that period of delirium and truth the wise little physician saw deep
into the true MacLachan and realized that a spirit as wistful and
craving as a child's was beating itself to death against the bars of the
dour Scotch tradition of silence and repression.
“He'll kill himself with the drink,” said the Little Red Doctor to me
after the tailor was restored to the Home of Fashion. “Though I'll stop
him if I can. That's my business. Even so, maybe I'll be wrong. For the
man's heart is breaking slowly. I've a notion that my old friend, Death,
Our Square might do better with the case than I can.”
At shorter and ever shortening intervals thereafter the booming baritone
rendition of “The Cork Leg” apprised Our Square that the tailor was “on
it again.” One late August day, as the doctor was passing the Home of
Fashion, he heard from behind the closed door the sound of MacLachan's
mirthless revelry. He stepped in and found the Scot, cross-legged and
with a bottle at his elbow, rocking in time to his own melody while he
stylishly braided mine host Schmidt's pants (“trousers” is an effete
term not favored by Arbiter MacLachan) for the morrow's picnic and
outing of the Pinochle Club:--
“One day when he'd stuffed him as full as an egg
A poor relation came to beg,
But he kicked him out without broaching a keg,
And in kicking him out he broke his own leg.
Ri-tu, di-nu, di--”
“Shut up, Mac! Stop it.”
“I've stopped. You've rooned my music. The noblest song, bar Bobbie
Burns--What's yer wish, little mannie?”
“I've some work for you.”
“I've no time--”
“It's important. I must surely have it to-morrow.”
“'Must is a master word, but will not is no man's slave,'” pronounced
MacLachan, the oracle.
“Listen, Mac,” pleaded the other. “I've a consultation to-morrow, and I
must have my other coat fixed up for it.”
“What's wrong wi' the garrment?”
“It's--it's ripped: torn across the skirt,” floundered the Little Red
Doctor, who is a weak, unreliable prevaricator at best.
The dour tailor leaned forward and shook his goose at the visitor.
“Peril yer salvation with no more black lies about yer black coat,” said
he firmly. “It's' the drink ye're strivin' to wean me from. But
I'm proof against yer strategy, ye pill-an'-pellet Macchiavelli! Ye've
no more rip nor tear in yer black coat than I've a ring in my nose.”
“Well, I'd have made one, then,” returned the shameless doctor.
“Ye'd have wasted time and money. Go yer own gait an' fight yer old
friend, Death. But leave me with my friend, the Drink.”
“Listen to me, Mac. As sure as you keep it up, just so sure the
dissecting-room will get your kidneys and the devil will get your soul.”
Carefully setting aside the bottle, MacLachan leaned forward to fasten a
claw on the Little Red Doctor's shoulder.
“Do _you_ listen now, and I'll tell ye a secret. While I'm still sober
I'll tell it ye, so you'll believe it and fash me no more about the
drink. Ye say the devil will get my soul. Ye're a backward prophet,
mannie. He's got it. Yes, he's got it, an' another of the same blood to
boot. An' all he ever gave me in trade is this,” he cried, pointing to
the bottle. “So go an' save them as wants it, or stay an' listen:--
“'Mr. Doctor, says he, 'now you've done your work.
By your sharp knife I lose one fork,
But on two crutches I never will stalk,
For I'll have a beautiful leg of cork.'”
“Mac.”
“Don't delay my work. I've to finish these pants before John Nelson
comes to fetch me.”
“Who's John Nelson?”
“Friend of my seafarin' days. Now Captain Nelson, if ye please, in the
coastwise trade, new back from the deep seas and the roaring trades with
a tropical thirst. 'T is he sent me yon messenger,” and he indicated the
bottle of rum. “Be easy. I'll not come back to Our Square till I'm
sober.”
“If you do, I'll swear you into Bellevue with my own right hand,”
declared the Little Red Doctor disgustedly. He slammed the door as he
went out.
The next person to open that door was Captain John Nelson. There was a
brief ceremonial in which the captain's messenger played an important
rôle, the newcomer joined his voice, for old friendship's sake, in the
refrain of MacLachan's favorite ballad, and shortly thereafter the
twain were seen arm in arm making a straight course across the open for
unknown lands. All that we of Our Square had to judge MacLachan's sea
comrade by was a stumping gait, a plump figure, a brown and good-humored
face, and a most appalling interpretation of the second part in simple
harmony.
We were to see him once again, briefly; to hear from his lips the events
of that astonishing evening. Of the Odyssey of the sailor and the tailor
there is little to be said. Crisscross and back, along Broadway, from
Fourteenth Street upward, it ran, coming to a stop shortly before
theater-closing time at a small restaurant which, I am told, has a
free-and-easy rather than an unsavory repute. There they sat down to a
bit of supper, having had, as the captain pathetically stated later, not
a bite to eat since dinner at eight o'clock. I still possess the worthy
mariner's “chart of the operations,” as he terms it, sketched in order
that we landlubbers of Our Square might comprehend fully how it all
developed. From this masterpiece of cartography I learn that the two
friends occupied a side table some halfway down the room, Captain Nelson
facing the rear. At the next table back, and therefore directly in his
view, sat a couple, the lady spreading so much canvas that she covered
all of ninety degrees, whereby the mariner means, I take it, that his
neighbor's hat shut off his view of the prospect beyond. Food and drinks
being ordered, MacLachan had just leaned back to a discussion of the
relative merits of Burns and Garlyle when the orchestra struck into
a tune not unlike “The Cork Leg.” To the scandal and distress of the
captain, MacLachan straightway lifted up his voice:--
“A tinker in Rotterdam, 't would seem,
Had made cork legs his study and theme,
Each joint was as strong as an iron beam
And the springs were a compound of clockwork and steam.
Ri-tu----
The diplomatic dissuasions of the head waiter, added to the pained and
profane protests of his companion, induced the singer to stop at that
point. But the lady-under-full-sail arose with a proud, disgusted
expression and stalked out, drawing her escort in her wake and uttering
loud and refined reflections upon the vulgar environment. Thus was
left to Captain Nelson, resuming his seat, a clear view to the far-rear
table. This table, he was aesthetically pleased to note, was occupied
by a distinctively pretty girl. The girl, as he was humanly affected in
perceiving, was exhibiting what, all silly mock modesty apart, he could
interpret only as a marked interest in his own romantic and attractive
personality.
“What for are you swelling up like a bullpout, John?” inquired his
companion, who, having his back turned, had seen nothing of the byplay.
The sailor waved a jaunty hand. “Nothing; nothing at all. It often
happens to me. Just a pretty lass in the offing flying signals.”
Without turning, MacLachan made some references of a libelous character
concerning a Babylonian lady whose antiquity is the only excuse for her
even being mentioned by respectable lips.
“Babylon, Long Island?” queried the captain. “I've got an aunt lives
there. You think this young lady comes from those parts?”
“How do I know?” growled the tailor, and explained in biting terms that
his citation was symbolic, not geographic.
“Hum!” said the seafarer. “She's a little high-colored, I admit, but
that don't make her what you say. Anyway, I'll just run down and speak
a word of politeness to her. By the time you've finished that drink and
the next I'll be back.”
The incognita received Captain Nelson with a direct and unsmiling
handshake.
“You know me,” she instructed him under her breath as a waiter came up.
“We're old acquaintances.” Then in full voice: “I hardly recognized you
at first. How long is it since I've seen you?” Necessity for immediate
invention was obviated by the opportune arrival of the waiter. Glancing
at the tall, icy glass in front of his new acquaintance, the bold
mariner said: “I'll take the same,” and was considerably disconcerted
when the waiter passed along the word: “One lemonade.”
“Now,” said the girl sharply as soon as the waiter had left, “who is
your friend that sings?”
“His name's MacLachan. He's all right, only--”
“Bring him here.”
“But first can't I--”
“Bring him here,” repeated the girl inexorably. “I like his voice.”
Sadly the shattered seafarer retraced his course. MacLachan listened,
demurred, growled, acquiesced. As the pair walked along, the tailor
reeling a bit, the girl was busy searching for something under the
table. She did not lift her face until the men were beside her. Then she
rose and looked up at MacLachan.
“Dad,” she said.
MacLachan went stark, staring sober in one pulse-beat. But all he
said was “Oh!” That is all, I am told, that men say when they are shot
through the heart. Nelson slid a chair behind his friend's trembling
knees. He sat down. Bending forward, he glared into the garishly
splotched face of his daughter and put his hand to his throat,
struggling for speech. A door behind closed, and a cheerful, boyish
voice said:--
“Hello, little girl. Been waiting long?”
The wild-rose face dimpled and blossomed into sweetness under the layers
of paint. “Hello, Jim-boy. Get yourself a chair.”
“Introduce me to your friends,” said the newcomer.
“That one used to be my old dad,” said the girl slowly.
The young man whistled as he drew in his chair. “Quite a family party,”
he remarked.
“Who is this?” demanded MacLachan.
“My husband.”
“Your--your husb--” MacLachan took a deep gulp from the lemonade glass
which the resourceful captain thoughtfully thrust into his hand. “Why,
he--he's a mere laddie. Can he support ye?”
“He's making seventy-five a week every week in the year,” said the girl
quietly. “And I'm good for about that average.”
“You? In what trade?” demanded the father slowly and fearfully.
“The movies. Both of us. He's a set designer. I'm an _ingénue_. Why else
would I be all gommered up like this” (she touched her cheeks), “not
having time to wash off my make-up?”
“How long have ye been in the business?” faltered MacLachan.
“Since I left. It was hard at first.”
“When I saw ye in the street that day--”
She nodded. “Yes; I was just out of rehearsal.”
Then the devil's pride of the Scot, recalling with fierce self-pity his
long heartbreak and loneliness, rose in a flame of resentment and seared
the flowering love in his heart.
“Ye gave me no word,” he snarled, rising. “Ye knew I was killing myself
for lo--, for shame of ye, and ye let be. What do I owe ye but a curse!”
[Illustration: What do I owe ye but a curse 174]
“That's enough,” said the boy husband; but his voice had become that of
a man.
“Dad!” cried the girl.
MacLachan, the dour, turned away. Nelson set a hand on his arm, but he
struck it down.
“Oh, Jim-boy!” whispered the girl to her husband. “I can't let him go
again.”
He was a youth of resource, that husband; I'm not prepared to say that
he didn't have even a touch of genius. “Granddad!” he said.
“Eh?” MacLachan stopped, as if stricken in his tracks.
“What do you think of her?” Jim-boy had produced, quick as conjuring,
a little leather-mounted photograph which he held up before MacLachan's
eyes. “Did Meg look like her when she was a baby?”
“The varra spit an' image,” cried MacLachan, reverting to his broadest
Scotch. Then, with a cry that shook him: “My bairnie!”
Meg went to his arms in a leap.
“And you may believe it or not--I would not, on the oath of a chaplain
if I had not seen it with my own eyes,” ran Captain Nelson's subsequent
narrative to Our Square, “but I saw the tears on those twin gray rocks
that serve MacLachan for cheeks. So I drifted down to leeward and
gathered my coat and gave three waiters a quarter each for not staring
and came away to tell you. And you'll forgive me for waking the two of
you up, and it gone eight bells--I mean midnight--but that was Mac's
last word as I left, that I was to tell you. He said you'd be glad.”
Glad we were, and all Our Square joined in the gladness, for it was
a changed and softened MacLachan that came back to us, sober and
strangely, gently awkward, the next day after a night spent with “my
family.”
“Ye'll not see me drink-taken again,” he promised the Little Red Doctor.
That good word went swiftly. Consequently it was the greater shock when,
on the very next Thursday afternoon, several of us who had run into the
Bonnie Lassie's studio for tea and the weekly inspection of ourselves as
mirrored in her work, heard in the familiar rumbling baritone from the
open park space:--
“Horror and fright were in his face,
The neighbors thought he was running a race,
He clung to a lamp-post to stay his pace,
But the leg broke away and kept up the chase,
Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nu--di--na--day!
Ri-tu, di-nu, di-nay!”
“My God!” cried the Little Red Doctor in consternation. “Mac's off
again.”
He jumped up, but the Bonnie Lassie was quicker. “Let me get him,” she
said, and ran from the room.
Almost at once she was back, her face quivering. “Come and look!” she
bade us.
We crowded the front windows. On a bench in Our Square slouched a thin,
hard, angular figure, terminating in a thin, hard, angular face, at the
moment wide open and pouring forth unabashed melody for the apparent
benefit of a much befrilled vehicle, which was being propelled back and
forth by a thin, long leg. MacLachan was entertaining his granddaughter.