MILES MORSE was his name. He lived over on the north side of Our Square,
two doors from the Varick Mansion, in a small, neat, solid, and very
private house. His age was uncertain. His appearance was arid. His garb
was plain and black. His expression was unfriendly. His business was
making money and his pleasure keeping the money when made. He was a
fixture of long standing in our little community, as much so as the
paving stones in the park space facing his house, and as insensate to
the human struggle around him as they. As to his neighbors, he asked
nothing and gave nothing. Behind his back, and not always very far
behind it, he was called the Meanest Man in Our Square.
Every morning at eight o'clock the Meanest Man went to his office
somewhere far downtown where, it was understood, he did something sly
and underhanded connected with notes and loans. Every afternoon at four
o'clock he visited the local Y. M. C. A., where he was (mistakenly)
supposed to put in his hour and a half in reading, on the theory that
it was cheaper to patronize that library than to buy books or rent
them from the penny circulator. The rest of his life was strictly and
determinedly private. Passing to and fro upon his concerns, he faced the
denizens of Our Square with the blank regard of huge, horn-rimmed,
blue glasses which he always wore out of doors. Only for Terry the Cop,
MacLachan, the Little Red Doctor, and Cyrus the Gaunt, did he have a
curt, silent nod, and for the Bonnie Lassie an awkward bow. The rest of
us might as well not have existed. Naturally there were few who had a
good word for him. Of these Terry the Cop was one.
“Anyway, he has a grand pair of hands,” Terry has been heard to aver.
On the strength of this opinion, the Bonnie Lassie, who needed a really
superior pair of hands for a sculpture which she was then employed upon,
made a point of catching Miles Morse in the park and compelling him to
shake hands with her, to his resentful embarrassment. Subsequently she
took our guardian of the peace to task.
“I don't know what you could have been thinking of, Terry,” she
declared. “His hands are knuckly outside and puffy inside.”
“You should see'em in the court,” said Terry cryptically.
Not clearly comprehending what standing in court Mr. Morse's hands would
give him, the Bonnie Lassie dropped the subject. On her own account,
however, she had a suspicion of redeeming qualities in the Meanest Man.
For one thing, she knew of a battered and disreputable kitten, rescued
by Miles Morse from a strong and hostile combination of small boys and
big dogs, at no small peril to himself, and taken to the very private
house, where it grew into battered and disreputable but competent
cathood and now welcomed him home every evening with extravagant
demonstrations of regard. Also a certain scene enacted in sight of her
studio windows had stuck in her memory; a powerful and half-drunken
brute of a teamster flaying an overdone horse; the interposition of the
Meanest Man; the infuriated descent, whip in hand, of the driver; the
rush at the spare, trim, uncombative-looking man who had removed his
spectacles and pocketed them; then the inexplicable and dismayed check
in mid onset of the assailant. The Bonnie Lassie couldn't understand
it at all; she couldn't see why that avalanche of wrath, profanity, and
bulk didn't simply overwhelm its object--until she ran to the door
and opened it. Then she saw Miles Morse's face and understood. It had
hardened into a contraction of rage so savage, so concentrated, so
murderous, that the drink-inspired fury of the human brute paled before
it.
“Back on your wagon!” ordered Morse. He spoke not as man speaks to man,
but as man speaks to beast.
“Wot--wotcha goin't' do, boss?” faltered the other.
“Put you in jail.”
Sobered now, and cowed, the man jumped to his seat and whipped up his
horses, in the hope of escaping. The Meanest Man broke into a long,
effortless stride. There was no need to tell the witness that he would
not be shaken off until the quarry was in the hands of the police.
Now it happened that the High Gods of Council who unofficially rule Our
Square held conference not long thereafter upon a project, advanced by
the Little Red Doctor, for a local legal-aid organization with an office
and an attendant. Money was needed, and money is one of our rarest
phenomena.
It was the Bonnie Lassie who suggested that the Meanest Man in Our
Square be approached for a contribution. Polite jeers greeted the
proposal. Thereupon the Bonnie Lassie narrated the instance of the
beaten horse and backed it up with Emerson:--
“'T is a sin to Heaven above
One iota to abate
Of a just, impartial hate.”
“Where does that get in with the Meanest Man?” inquired Cyrus the Gaunt.
“He doesn't hate anything except giving up money,” added the Little Red
Doctor.
“He hates cruelty,” retorted the Bonnie Lassie. “And he's brave. Two
points to his credit. I believe you could do anything with the Meanest
Man if you could get him mad enough.”
“Well, my dearest,” said Cyrus the Gaunt with that condescending
surrender which is one of his few faults as a husband, “since you
have so good an opinion of Mr. Morse, suppose you tackle him for a
contribution.”
“I will,” said the Bonnie Lassie. “I'll go now.”
She went. Presently she returned. It was not the return of a victress.
“How much?” asked the Little Red Doctor.
The Bonnie Lassie threw out empty and eloquent hands.
“And what did he say?” inquired Cyrus the Gaunt.
“He indicated that he'd see me in Hades first.”
“Then I'll go over and knock his head off,” declared her husband,
reddening. “I've always wanted to do it anyway.”
“Nothing of the sort--goose! I didn't say he _said_ it. I said he
indicated it. It was his manner. Verbally he was polite enough. Said he
didn't believe in charity.” Cyrus the Gaunt snorted.
“Gave his reasons too. He said he doesn't believe in charity because
it makes the recipient think too ill of himself, which is bad, and the
giver think too well of himself, which is worse.”
“Something in that,” grudged the Little Red Doctor.
“Isn't there! I tried to explain the usefulness of the Legal Aid
Society, but he said that people who got into court were fools and
people who hired lawyers to lie for them were knaves. Then”--the Bonnie
Lassie dimpled--“he caught me sniffing at his musty old house and asked
me what was the matter, and I asked him if it had ever been dusted and
aired, and he said that he was afraid he'd have to get a housekeeper
and if I'd get him one--the right kind of a one--an old, respectable,
honest woman who'd do all the work while he was away so that he'd never
have to see her, he'd contribute to our fund”--the Bonnie Lassie paused
for effect--“ten dollars.”
When the assembled council had finished expressing its various emotions
the speaker continued:--“I've got a month to do it in. So I made him
make out the check and hold it, unsigned.”
“What's the idea, Lassie?” asked MacLachan the Tailor.
“The leak-in-the-dike principle,” she explained profoundly. “The ten
dollars is just the first trickle. If we ever get him started, Heaven
help him before we let him stop. I'm going to get that ten dollars if
I have to take the position myself.” But she was not driven to that
length. It is a recognized fact in Our Square that when the Bonnie
Lassie determines to get anything done, Providence, with rank
favoritism, invariably steps in and does it for her. This powerful
and unfailing ally it was that brought Molly Dunstan to Our Square,
white-faced, hot-eyed, and with a gnawing fire of despair at her heart,
plunging blindly against the onset of a furious March wind, until the
lights of Schoenkind's drug store guided her to harbor. In the absence
of Schoenkind, who was dining late at the Elite Restaurant, young Irvy
Levinson was keeping shop, and as Young Irvy is of a cheerful, carefree,
and undiscriminating disposition he made no bones of selling the
wind-beaten customer a bottle of a certain potent drug which has various
properties and virtues back of its skull-and-crossbones label, one of
the latter being that it is prompt though painful. With her purchase,
Molly plunged back into the storm, turned toward the dim park space, and
bumped violently into the Little Red Doctor. Gently releasing her, he
caught a glimpse of her face. Its aspect was not reassuring. Young women
who come blundering out of drug stores with that expression and make for
the nearest quiet spot not infrequently cause needless trouble to the
busy authorities. Opening Schoenkind's door, the Little Red Doctor
thrust into the aperture his earnest face and this no less earnest
query: “What did that last customer buy?”
“Carbolic,” replied Young Irvy light-heartedly. “For a dog. Ast if it
hurt much.”
The door slammed with much the effect of an oath, and the questioner
sprinted for the park. Being wise in the way of human misery, he knew
that mysterious instinct of suicides which guides them, no matter what
their chosen method of self-destruction, toward water. Therefore he took
the shortest route for Our Fountain.
Young Irvy's customer sat huddled on a bench at the water's edge. The
bottle was in her hand, uncorked. She had just made a trial of the
liquid on her hand, and was crying softly because it burned. As the
Little Red Doctor's grip closed on her wrist, she gasped and sought to
raise the drug to her lips.
“Drop it!” said her captor in the voice of authority.
She obeyed. But she misinterpreted the authority. “Is it to jail ye'll
be taking me?” she asked despairingly.
The soft appeal of the voice, with its faint touch of the brogue, shook
the Little Red Doctor. One glance at the piteously lined young face
conquered him. He formulated his program on the spot.
“Jail?” he echoed in affected surprise. “What for?”
She glanced mutely at the shattered bottle.
“Oh, that's foolish stuff to use for warts,” he observed carelessly,
lifting the hand, which was as soft and smooth and free from blemish as
a moth's wing. “Now, you come with me to a friend of mine, and she'll
fix that burnt finger.”
Many men there are in whom dogs confide instinctively; fewer who win
offhand the confidence of children, and a rare few whom women trust at
sight. Of this few is the Little Red Doctor. His captive followed him
without protest to the nestling little house with the quaint old door
and the broad, friendly vestibule which had been her husband's wedding
gift to the Bonnie Lassie. There, without fuss or query, Molly Dunstan
was accepted as a guest, and presently, too worn out even to wonder, she
was deep in healing sleep, in the spare room over the studio.
In the morning she presented herself to her hostess's unobtrusive but
keen observation: a wistful slip of a woman of perhaps twenty-five, with
hollow cheeks, deep-brown, frightened eyes, a softly drooping mouth,
and a satiny skin from which the color had ebbed; a woman whose dainty
prettiness had been overlaid but not impaired by privation and some
stress of existence only to be guessed at. For all her simple and worn
dress (all black) and the echo of brogue in her speech, she bore herself
with a certain native dignity and confidence.
“It's good ye've been to me, and I'll not know how to thank you, now
that I'll be going,” she said, and the silken-soft voice with its touch
of accent won the Bonnie Lassie's soft and wise heart from the first.
“But you're not to go yet,” protested the latter. “You must stay until
you're well. And then I want to sculp you, if you'll let me. I'm an
artist, and I think you would make a wonderful model.”
“It's kind ye are,” returned the other. “But how can I be beholden?”
“You won't be. It's you that will be doing the favor. As soon as you're
well enough--”
“I'm well enough now. There's nothing the matter with me.” But her voice
was without life or hope.
So, in many slow sittings, the Bonnie Lassie sculped Molly Dunstan; and
from those sittings grew the heart-moving bronze, “The Broken Wing,” a
figure of a quaintly, pitifully birdlike woman in the foreground of a
group in a hospital clinic, with the verdict of science written in her
face, looking out upon life in the dread realization of helplessness. As
the work progressed the heart of Molly Dunstan opened little by little,
and her story came out.
While a young girl in a good Irish school she had met a traveling
American, Henry Dunstan, and, half for love and half in the elfin Irish
spirit of adventurousness, had run away with him. He was a good husband
to her, and they were happy in a little country place which he had
bought and which she turned to skillful account, raising ducks and
chickens for the market to eke out his income--“until the drink took
him.” It took him the full length of its well-beaten path, from debt to
ruin; from ruin to broken will and health, and presently to death. When
his debts were cleared up the place was gone, and the little widow had
a scant two thousand dollars of his life insurance in the bank. Being
sturdy, able, and courageous, she had come to New York, had found some
fine sewing to do, and had maintained herself, always with the idea
of getting back into the country and to her poultry raising, which she
loved. Here the simple story came to a full stop with the words: “So I
bought a bit of a place, and they took it away from me.”
“Who took it away from you?” asked the Bonnie Lassie.
“Mr. Wiggett,” replied Molly, and fell into such a fit of shuddering
that the Bonnie Lassie forebore to question her further concerning the
transaction.
Little by little, however, there came out bits of information which the
Bonnie Lassie deftly wove together, with the eventual result that Cyrus
the Gaunt looked up an advertisement in a certain newspaper famous for
its traps and pitfalls, and paid a visit to the office, on St. Mark's
Place, of “D. Wiggett & Co., City and Suburban Real Estate.” He returned
much depressed, declaring that the laws against homicide ought to
provide for exceptions in the case of such persons as D. Wiggett.
“There he sat and grinned, a great, plump, pink, powerful, smirking
gorilla; and said that the transaction with Mrs. Dunstan was perfectly
legal--perfectly--and there wasn't anything further to be said.”
“Did you say it?” inquired the Bonnie Lassie, who knew her Cyrus.
“I did. And he threatened to have me arrested for defamatory language.
But he's right--legally. He's got your little widow's two thousand
dollars, every cent of it, and she's got a piece of stamped paper.”
“Why isn't it a case for our Legal Aid?”
“I've just been to Merrivale. There isn't a thing to be done.” Following
the “Legal Aid” line, Cyrus's mind took a sudden but logical jump.
“I never expected to meet a meaner cuss than the Meanest Man in Our
Square,” he observed. “But I have.”
“The very thing!” cried the Bonnie Lassie. “How clever of you, Cyrus! I
mean, how clever of me! Molly wants a place. She's all over that foolish
suicide notion. She shall be Mr. Miles Morse's housekeeper.”
“But he wanted an _old_ woman,” objected Cyrus.
“How is he to tell if he never sees her? I'll manage that,” retorted
his wife confidently. “The only thing is, will she take a place that is
almost like domestic service?”
As to this Molly made not the slightest difficulty. She had regained
her courage and her Irish fighting spirit, and she was now ready to face
life and make it give her an honest return for honest work again; ready
for anything, indeed, except an attempt to get her money back which
might involve her seeing Mr. D. Wiggett. At the mere mention of his name
she fell into a cold and shuddering silence.
With brief preliminaries, and on the Bonnie Lassie's guarantee of “old
Mrs. Dunstan's” reliability, that semi-mythical person was installed
as Miles Morse's housekeeper and general factotum, having taken
the informal triple oath of her employment: industry, senility, and
invisibility. Six dollars a week was the wage which the Goddess from
the Machine had wrung from the Meanest Man's violent protests, with a
warning that it would have to be increased later on. The instructions
given to the new employee were that she was to keep out of her
employer's sight; or if he should arrive at an untimely hour she was
to huddle into a shawl or handkerchief and conceal her age behind a
toothache.
For six weeks all went well and simply. Miles Morse was obliged to
confess, grudgingly, that his house was more livable and comfortable.
Dust disappeared. The furniture took to arranging itself with less
stiffness and more amiability. When he gave a whist party of an evening,
the cigars were in place, the ash trays ready, the rooms aired and
fresh, and the ice box stocked, all by invisible hands. Orders were
issued and requisitions made through the Bonnie Lassie. Meeting
her neighbor in Our Square one day, the Bonnie Lassie hinted at
the ten-dollar check for the Legal Aid Society. “When I'm sure I'm
satisfied,” said the Meanest Man, bending frowning brows from above his
owlish glasses upon her. “D' you know what that old hag has been up to?”
“What old hag?” inquired the Bonnie Lassie unguardedly.
“The Dunstan woman.”
“Oh, you've seen her, then?”
“Not to speak of. She was curled up like a worm, and had her face
swathed up like a harem, and talked like the croak of a frog. And she's
been putting flowers on my breakfast table,” he concluded with the
accents of one detailing an intolerable outrage.
“What of it?” inquired the surprised agent.
“What of it! Flowers cost money, don't they?”
“Have you received any bill for flowers yet?”
“I've received bills for brooms, mops, pails, towels, cups, plates,
nails, tacks, picture hangers, baking tins, soap, and God knows what
all,” replied Mr. Morse in a breathless and ferocious voice.
“Yes? And which of those do you find in the floral catalogues?” queried
the Bonnie Lassie interestedly. “If you want to know,” she added as the
Meanest Man struggled for competent utterance, “those flowers came from
your own back yard. Look at it some time. You'll be pleased.”
The Meanest Man was pleased when he looked, so pleased that one fresh
and glorious June day when he should by the known regimen of his life
have been at the Y. M. C. A. (supposedly reading) he came home early
to putter about among the pansies. At the moment of his arrival Molly
Dunstan, her work finished and her shawl laid aside, was standing in her
neat, close-fitting black dress, inside the area railing, brooding with
deep eyes over the glad flush of summer which glorified Our Square, and
thinking, if the unromantic truth must be told, of the little place up
near White Plains where her ducks and chickens would have been so happy
and productive if D. Wiggett (she shivered) hadn't kept the place and
her money too. The owner of the house stood regarding her with surprise
and disfavor. “What are you doing here?” he barked.
With a startled jump, Molly came out of her brown study and returned the
natural but undiplomatic answer: “I'm the housekeeper.”
“You! What has become of Mrs. Dun-stan?”
“I'm Mrs. Dunstan.” Realization of her self-betrayal came to her. The
soft tears welled up into her soft eyes. “Oh, dear; oh, dear!” she
mourned.
“Don't make that noise,” he ordered testily; “what's the matter with the
woman!”
“Ye'll not--not be wanting me here any more.”
“Oh, I don't say that,” returned the cautious Mr. Morse. “You're not
wholly unsatisfactory. But what does that mummery of an old woman
mean?”
In vain Molly tried to penetrate the blue glasses which masked his
expression. Anyway, his voice had mollified. “I'll tell ye it all, if
ye'll listen,” she said wistfully.
Miles Morse surprised himself by promptly saying: “I'll listen.”
No one could have wished a more intent listener. Molly told it all,
including the deal whereby D. Wiggett had secured her money. At the
conclusion her employer suggested that Molly bring him the deed, or
other documents in the case, on the morrow. She did so. He read the
principal document with a queer tightening of the lips which Molly
couldn't understand at all, but which the Bonnie Lassie, had she been
present, would have interpreted readily enough since she had seen it on
another occasion, when the spare and arid man had set out to trail the
horse-flaying teamster to justice.
“This isn't a deed at all,” said he.
“That's what Mr. Wiggett was telling me.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“He told me if I'd pay him the two thousand dollars and would go out
there he'd see I got enough embroidery work so that I could easily make
the twenty-dollar-a-month payments till I owned it all.”
“He didn't tell you that if you failed in a payment you'd lose it
all?”
“Not till after.”
“It's here in the agreement to sell. That's all this paper is”;--he
flecked the document with a contemptuous finger--“an agreement to sell;
not a deed. You've bought nothing but empty print. Did you never read
this?”
She shook her head. “I trusted Mr. Wiggett. He seemed so kind and
helpful at first.”
“Until the fly was in his web. You signed that paper without knowing
what you were undertaking,” he accused. “Did you know that you were
promising to pay taxes, interest, and insurance on the buildings?”
“No,” said Molly Dunstan meekly.
“And to keep the buildings in good repair and painted? What buildings
were they?”
“A house and a barn. They leaked.”
“Naturally. Also”--Miles Morse referred to the document in his
hand--“'to plant a good, live California privet hedge and to entertain
the same.' What's your notion of a California privet hedge and
entertaining the same? Could you do that?”
Into Molly Dunstan's Irish-brown eyes there crept a little Irish
devil of a twinkle. “Could I not!” said she. “Can ye not see me, of a
moonlight night, taking me foot in me hand, and going out to entertain
me dull and lonely hedge with a turn of Kilkenny jigging!” Her sole
tapped the ground as she spoke.
“Don't do it here,” he interposed hastily. “How you can joke about it is
beyond me, with your two thousand dollars in the pocket of D. Wiggett.
And what makes you look sick at the name of him?” he concluded sharply.
“That's a terrible man,” she answered with a catch of the breath. “When
I went to him to ask for a bit more time he swore at me. He threatened
me with jail. He said he'd ruin my reputation. He said if I sent
a lawyer there he'd hammer him to pulp. He could do it, for he's a
terrible, big, strong, angry man. I came away sick to live in the same
world with him. And that's why I got the carbolic,” she finished in a
low, shamed tone.
“Carbolic! You were going to kill yourself?”
“Didn't Mrs. Staten tell ye?”
“She told me nothing--but lies.”
Miles Morse spoke harshly because he was experiencing within himself a
stir of strange and wrathful and protective emotion. Abruptly he changed
the subject. “Would you,” he said hesitantly, “for a raise of wa--ahem
---salary, come a little earlier and get me my breakfast?”
“I'll not wait on table,” she returned with a flash of color.
“It was not my idea,” he said quite humbly. “But if you would have a
coffee machine and a toaster and sit opposite at the table, and--and--it
would save me money as against the restaurant,” he added lamely.
“I'll consult my manager,” returned his housekeeper with a twinkle.
The gist of her consultation with the Bonnie Lassie bore upon the point
as to whether Our Square, which was already adopting her since she had
rented a little room there, would regard the new basis as proper.
“That old thing!” said the arbitress of destinies scornfully. “He's
a hundred years old, and he'll be two hundred, I'm afraid,” she added
ruefully, “before I get that check out of him.”
Molly looked dubious. “I'm not sure he's so old,” she said. “And I'm
sure he's not so mean as people think him. But I do need the money.”
Behold, then, Mrs. Molly Dunstan, housekeeper, seated opposite Miles
Morse, the Meanest Man in Our Square, with a coffee apparatus, a
toaster, and a little centerpiece bright with flowers, both of them
breakfasting in a dim and painful silence. But food is a great solvent
of embarrassment, and breakfast coffee has powers beyond the spirit of
grape, corn, or rye, to break down the barriers between human and human.
So that, by the end of a week, Molly was chattering like a cheery bird
with just enough instigation from her employer to keep her going. One
subject was tacitly tabooed as a kill-joy; to wit, the devil as embodied
by Mr. D. Wiggett and all his works.
Not that Miles Morse had forgotten. Quite the contrary. But he was a
calculating, careful, and meticulous person, prone to plan out every
step before taking it. On a Monday morning some six weeks after Molly's
installation as a breakfast fixture he spoke abruptly: “I've been up
there.”
“Where?” she asked.
“To the place you thought you'd bought. It's a trap.”
“I'm out of it, at least with my life.”
“You are not the only one that's been caught. He's fleeced four others
that I know of on that plant--all perfectly legal. I have a notion,”
said Miles Morse with an effect of choosing his words, “that D. Wiggett
& Co. was incorporated in hell, and the silent partner is his Satanic
Majesty.”
“Why did ye go up there?”
“Curiosity.”
“Not kindness--just a little bit?”
“I wanted to see the work of a man meaner than the Meanest Man in Our
Square,” he said with a sour grin.
Molly Dunstan flushed.
“I'd not be letting them call me that!” she declared. “And I'll not
believe it true of ye.” This was, indeed, an advance upon the dim realm
of personal relationship, but Molly's loyal Irish blood was up. “What
ails ye at the world, at all!” she demanded.
“I'll tell you since you ask,” he replied defiantly. “I'm getting even
with it for treating me like a dog.”
“So that's it.” There was a pause. “Would ye tell me about it!” she
asked shyly.
Much to his astonishment, Miles Morse discovered that he wanted to tell
her about it. Quite to his chagrin, he found that it didn't seem a very
convincing indictment, when he tried to formulate it. However, he did
his best.
“A man that I thought my friend cheated me out of the first ten thousand
dollars that I made.”
“Whish! Ye made more, didn't ye?” she replied calmly. “I wouldn't be
hating the world for that.”
“Then there was a woman,” he said with more difficulty. “I thought--she
made me believe she cared for me. I was young. She got me into a fake
stock proposition with some confederates, and they fleeced me.”
“Whoof!” Molly blew an imaginary thistledown from her dainty fingers.
“She was a light thing.'T was your bank account she hurt, not your
heart.”
Suddenly Miles Morse realized that this was so. It wasn't wholly
pleasant, however, to have his cherished grudges thus lightly dismissed.
“There's nothing else worth speaking of,” he said, a bit sullenly,
“except a bit of boy's silliness that you'd laugh at.”
“Tell it to me.”
“It was when I was seven years old and we lived in the country. My
father was a hard sort of man; he saw no sense in play or such nonsense,
and when Fourth of July came he'd give me no fireworks nor let me
draw any of my little money out of the bank. All the other boys had
firecrackers but me. So I got a spool and filled it with sand and put a
bit of string in it and I lighted the end. When it didn't go off I
ran away and hid and felt pretty bad. I've always laid that up against
things. Foolish, isn't it!”
The little woman opposite lifted eyes which had grown suddenly bright
and soft with a disturbing hint of tears. “Ye poor lamb!” she said.
“Tut-tut!” gruffly retorted the Meanest Man in Our Square, who had never
before been called a poor lamb. He spoke without conviction.
“But that shouldn't make ye hate the world,” argued Molly earnestly. “It
should only make ye hate what's mean and unfair in the world.”
“Well, there's D. Wiggett,” replied the other hopefully. “I think I
could learn to hate him. In fact, I think I'll make a trial of it by
calling on him to-day.”
“Oh, don't do that,” she implored tremulously. “He'll do ye harm. He's a
terrible man, and twice the size of ye!”
“This will be a strictly peaceable errand,” he averred, meaning what he
said.
By no means reassured, Molly Dunstan made her way, at the hour when she
thought that her employer would call upon D. Wiggett & Co., to a spot in
St. Mark's Square which gave her a good view of the real-estate office.
After an hour's wait, devoted to the most dismal forebodings, she
saw her employer stride around the corner and enter the door. Had she
actually summoned the nerve to interpose, as she had vaguely designed to
do, there was no time. Her brief and alarmed glimpse of Miles Morse had
oppressed her with a quality hitherto unknown in him. He was clad in his
accustomed neat and complete black, even to the black string tie. His
big blue glasses were set as solemnly level as usual upon his ample
nose. His spare figure was held stiffly erect, in its characteristic
attitude. But there was something about the way he walked which
suggested an arrow going to keep an important engagement with a
bull's-eye.
Three minutes later Mr. Miles Morse emerged.
He emerged by force and arms; a great deal of the former and a large
number of the latter. To the terrified watcher there seemed to be at
least half a dozen tangled persons engaged in the eviction of
Mr. Morse, of whom D. Wiggett was not one. Having propelled the
unwelcome guest out upon the stoop, the persons withdrew in pell-mell
haste, and the sound of a door being violently barred after them
eloquently testified to their distaste for any more of Mr. Morse's
society. That gentleman descended the steps as one who walks upon the
clouds, albeit with a considerable limp.
Molly ran to meet him. Five yards away she stopped dead, lifting
dismayed hands to heaven. Mr. Morse was a strange and moving sight. A
small stream of blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth, which
was expanded in an astounding and joyous smile. His sober black string
necktie was festooned over his left ear. Half of his large, solemn blue
spectacles was jammed down his neck inside a dislocated collar; the
other half presented a scandalous and sightless appearance, having lost
its lens. His coat was split in three places and torn in one. His
hat simply was not; it could be identified as a hat solely from the
circumstance that it was jammed inextricably down upon his head. From
his right cheek bone there had already sprouted a “hickey” fit to hang
a bucket on. But these were minor injuries compared to the condition of
Mr. Morse's hands. Bruised and cut, scarified, scalped, and swelling,
the “grand pair of hands” which Terry the Cop so admired, testified
unmistakably to having come into violent and repeated contact with some
heavy and hard object. Horror-stricken, Molly turned her eyes from them
to the real-estate office of D. Wiggett & Co. A front window flew
up. The countenance of D. Wiggett appeared therein, and Molly at once
identified it as the heavy and hard object to which her employer's
manual plight was due. The countenance opened, somewhat slantwise, and
sent forth a gasping and melancholy bellow: “Police!”
Without a word, Molly seized one of the battered hands and ran.
Perforce, her employer ran with her. A taxi was prowling up Second
Avenue. Mollie hailed it.
On the trip Mr. Miles Morse exhibited silent but alarming symptoms.
Arrived at home, he flatly refused to enter. “Air and space,” he said,
were his special and immediate needs. He made his way to the most
secluded bench in the park, followed by his dismayed housekeeper, sat
down, and began to chuckle. The chuckle grew into a laugh, the laugh
into a series of chokes, the chokes into a protracted convulsion of
mirth. When at length it had passed, leaving him spent and gasping,
Molly Dunstan spoke seriously to him.
“Are ye finished?”
“I am.”
“Have ye been drinking?”
“I have not.”
“What did ye do to him?”
“I did everything,” said Mr. Miles Morse with a long reminiscent sigh of
utter satisfaction, “but bite him.”
“Ye told me,” accused Molly with heaving bosom, “that it would be a
strictly peaceable errand.”
“So it would,” replied the other calmly, “if he hadn't said something
about you.” Molly's brown eyes widened and brightened with amazement.
Her lips parted. “About me!” she said. Then she committed what the
lawyers call a non sequitur. “Mother of all the Saints!” cried Molly.
“How old are ye?”
“Thirty-seven years and four months,” replied the Meanest Man in Our
Square gravely.
“And me thinking--” He never found out what she was thinking, for she
broke off abruptly, and said: “Clap a bit of raw beef to that cheek,”
and vanished from his sight.
No Molly appeared for breakfast in the morning. In her stead arrived a
court officer with a warrant in which the term “feloniously” played a
conspicuous and dispiriting part. At court Miles Morse, prisoner, found
a delegation from Our Square awaiting him, including Molly, Cyrus the
Gaunt, the Bonnie Lassie, Terry the Cop, and Inky Mike, the tipster
disguised in a clean collar and taking copious notes with an absorbed
and ferocious expression, with a view to daunting wrongdoers by the
prospective fierce white light of the Press. This was part of the Bonnie
Lassie's strategy. So also was the presence of Merrivale, the young
lawyer of the Legal Aid branch, for the Bonnie Lassie had correctly
guessed that the accused would disdain to spend money on a lawyer. As he
awaited his turn at the bar of judgment (before Wolf Tone Hanrahan,
the Human Judge, his friends remarked with satisfaction) Terry the Cop
caught sight of his damaged knuckles. “I always said he had a grand pair
of hands,” murmured Terry to the Bonnie Lassie.
“And here they are in court, where you said they were at their best,”
she commented.
An expression of bewilderment gave place to a grin on Terry's handsome
face. “_The_ court,” I said, “the hand-ball court at the Y. M. C. A. He
packs a wallop in either hand'ud kill a bull.”
Then the plaintiff came in, and there was no further need of
explanations.
D. Wiggett was a horrid sight. He would have been a horrider sight if
he hadn't been almost totally obscured by bandages. The gist of his
testimony was comprised in the frequently repeated word “murder.” The
accused put in no defense. In the Human Judge's eye were doubt and
indecision. Obviously there was something behind this case. As he
hesitated, the Legal Aid lawyer came forward with the light-pink
document of D. Wiggett & Co., and handed it to the judge with a few
words. D. Wiggett's lawyer entered vehement objections. Stilling his
protests with a waving hand, Magistrate Hanrahan read the “Agreement
to Sell.” Then he called for Mrs. Molly Dunstan. More objections.
Overruled. At the conclusion of Molly's testimony he turned to the
protesting lawyer. “Did ye drah up this dockyment?”
“I did, your honor.”
“It's as full of holes as the witch's cullender. Y'otta be disbarred fer
it!”
The lawyer hastily receded. The remains of D. Wiggett were led forward
to listen to a few brief but pointed dicta by the court, while Inky Mike
(under promptings) edged up and took copious notes in a book such as no
reporter ever carried except upon the stage. At the end of the ordeal,
D. Wiggett, in broken and terrified accents, disclosed that his motives
were of spotless purity, that his document was a harmless joke, and that
Mrs. Dunstan could have the place and a deed thereto if she'd just make
the payments.
“I'll guarantee that,” put in Cyrus the Gaunt.
“And I'll see that she gets work to keep going on,” added the Bonnie
Lassie.
Whereupon both D. Wiggett, the party of the first part (in the document)
and Mrs. M. Dunstan, the party of the second part, dissolved in tears,
though for very different reasons. The court then proceeded to the
sentence of the defendant. Judgment was delivered in two mediums;
full-voiced for the proper judicial process, and sotto voice for the
benefit of those most concerned.
“Prisoner at the Bar-r-r: Ye have brootally assaulted a peaceful citizen
(_not more than half-agin as big as yerself_). Ye have bate him to a
poolp (_an' him but a scant tin years younger, an with a repitation for
bein' a roughneck--with women and childer_). Ye have haff murdered him
(_an' take shame to yerself ye didn't do th' other haff_). Because of yer
youth an' inexperience (_I mane yer age an the wallop ye carry_) I will
let ye off light with a fine of fifty dollars (an if ye'll sind me word
when yer goin' to operate again I'll remit the fine). Nixt Ca-ase!”
For a culprit who had got off easy, Mr. Miles Morse presented far from
a cheerful appearance when Molly Dunstan presented herself on the
following morning. Molly exhibited strange and inexplicable symptoms,
flushing and paling, finding no place for her regard to rest, until
she discovered that Miles Morse was much worse confused than herself.
Thereupon, after the manner of women, she became quite composed and
easy. Through breakfast he was very silent. After lingering over his
coffee to an unwonted degree, he finally arose, with an air of great
determination, said “Well” in what was meant to be a businesslike tone,
walked briskly to the door, then turned and stood in the most awkward
unease.
“The house won't be like a home without you,” said he desolately.
“Won't it?” said Molly.
“You'll be going out to your own place very soon now?”
“Suppose I don't want to.”
“It's all arranged. I've been talking to Mr. and Mrs. Staten.”
“Have ye now!” said Molly with a mutinous uptilt of the chin.
“She's arranged for you to get your own kind of work out there.”
“I like my own job here.”
“It's all arranged,” said Miles Morse with dismal iteration.
“Does that mean I'm discharged?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“And I'm to go up there to the country--alone--and entertain my
California privet hedge?”
Her little foot tapped the ground as it had on the unforgettable
occasion of that first interview. The Meanest Man in Our Square
winced. Molly saw it, and her eyes grew, tender, but her tone was still
uncompromising. “What am I discharged for?”
Silence.
“For not being old enough to be your housekeeper?” She looked the merest
wisp of a girl with her color coming and going as she spoke.
He muttered something undistinguish-able.
“For not being ugly enough?” And she contrived to look bewilderingly
pretty.
“Why do you plague me, Molly?” he burst out.
She pointed a finger at his chin. “I dare ye, Miles Morse,” she said,
her voice fluttering in her throat, for all her audacious words; “I dare
ye to discharge me. For all ye're called the Meanest Man in Our Square,
ye wouldn't be that mean as to send me away from ye!”
And, with the finger still leveled, she walked' straight to him and was
caught and held close to the sober and respectable black coat.
“I'd never dared have asked you, Molly,” said Miles Morse in the voice
of one who walks ecstatic amid the wonders of a dream.
“Don't I know that!” she retorted. And then, with a quiver: “Oh, Miles,
it's I will make it up to you for that sand-and-spool firecracker!”
Opening her morning mail on the following day, the Bonnie Lassie (for
whose schemes and stratagems the stars in their courses fight) gave
a little cry and let a bit of paper slip through her fingers. Quickly
retrieving it, she turned it over to Cyrus the Gaunt. It was the
promised check of Mr. Miles Morse to the Legal Aid Society. Between
the words “ten” and “dollars” was a caret, and, above, the added word
“hundred” with an indorsement. The signature had also undergone an
addendum. It now read: “Miles Morse, per Mrs. M. M. M.”
The Meanest Man in Our Square had abdicated.