LET me tell the worst of the Little Red Doctor at once and get it over
with. He has a hair-trigger temper and a jaw that does not forget or
forgive readily. He insists on regarding gravely many things which
most of us treat flippantly, such as love and death. He has a brutal
disregard of the finesse of illness and never gives, even to an old man
and an old patient like myself, medicine unless one needs it. For the
rest, the nickname which Our Square gave him long since describes him.
One thing more; though he is our friend and fellow and counselor, the
safe repository of our secrets, our sturdy defender against the final
enemy, yet Our Square does not call him “Doc.” There is something about
him which forbids. You would have to see him to understand.
Seeing him, you would not see very much. Nature has done a slack job
with the Little Red Doctor's outside. Even the Bonnie Lassie, stickler
though she is for the eminence of nature as an artist, heretically
admits this. She tried to better it in sculpture, and by force of the
genius in her slim fingers she did succeed in getting at the dominant
meaning of those queer quirks in his queer face--quirks of humor, of
compassion, of sympathy--and thereby in expressing something of his
fiery tenderness, his intrepid wisdom, his inclusive charity of heart
toward good and bad alike, the half-boyish, half-knightly valor of
self-sacrifice which arms him in the lists for the endless combat with
his unconquerable antagonist, “my old friend, Death.” With her happy
sense of character she called her miniature bronze “The Idealist,” and
refused to sell it because, she said, some day Our Square would want to
put up a monument to the Little Red Doctor and her attempt might help
some bigger artist to be worthy of the task.
“Do you know,” she observed to Cyrus the Gaunt the day that she
finished, “I've discovered something about that face? There's no
happiness in it. And it so deserves happiness!”
“Some fool of a girl probably turned him down and he came here to bury
himself,” surmised Cyrus the Gaunt. “We homely, good men are never
properly appreciated. Look at me!”
The Bonnie Lassie looked at him and then kissed him on the ear. “Just
the same I think you're wrong,” she said thoughtfully. “When I first saw
the Little Red Doctor, I wondered whether any woman could possibly love
him. Since I've known him I've wondered how any woman could possibly
help it.”
“That's a pleasant thing for a man to hear from his wife,” observed
Cyrus cheerfully. “Anyway, there's a photograph been scraped out of the
inside of his watch. Mendel, the watchmaker, told Polyglot Elsa so.”
Barring this tenuous evidence, whatever may have passed in the Little
Red Doctor's former existence was wholly unknown to Our Square, even
after he became one of us. He trailed no clouds of glory and apparently
no clues from his previous existence. All that we knew was that he
landed from a long voyage in tropical lands and set up his shingle, “Dr.
Smith,” at No. 11. Business did not rush to him. We are a conservative
and cautious community in Our Square. We watched and weighed him.
Presently he got a little foothold in the reeking slum tenements which
surround our struggling and cherished respectability. It could not have
been a profitable practice. But it afforded experience. Sometimes
he came back with triumph in his face; sometimes with stern gloom;
sometimes with a black eye, for the practice of medicine as carried on
in our immediate environment involves sundry departments not taught in
the schools, and branches out into strange and eclectic activities. In
those early days I overheard Terry the Cop assert that the new physician
could “lick his weight in wildcats.” But when I informed Terry that this
would mean at least five of the species, Terry replied airily that he
was no Zoo attendant, but he knew a scrapper when he saw one.
If one may credit the Murphy family, the Little Red Doctor gained his
real foothold in Our Square through force, invasion, violence, and
brutal assault. The Murphys occupy the ground floor of the corner house
abutting on Our Alley, under the workroom of Dead-Men's-Shoes, who,
through their unwitting instrumentality, became sponsor for the Little
Red Doctor. Dead-Men's-Shoes comes by his name from his business, which
is the purchase and resale of the apparel of the recently deceased,
collected on wagon trips over a wide radius about New York. Thus it
comes about that the feet of the mighty have been represented in Our
Square, and more than one of us has worn the giant's robe as tailored on
Fifth Avenue. The ol'-clo' man's real name is Dadmun Schütz, and he is a
Yankee from Connecticut where there are many Dadmuns and more Schutzes,
but how and why he came to Our Square is a story that I do not care to
tell. The slight alteration in his name to fit his trade was so logical
as to be inevitable. Dead-Men's-Shoes is tall and rugged and powerful
and slow, and he always wears an extinct species of silk hat on his
business rounds. In the day which introduced him to the Little Red
Doctor, the Murphys had declared holiday and gone fishing and caught
fish. Naturally they held alcoholic celebration in the evening. Passing
the house, the Little Red Doctor heard the sounds of revelry; also
another sound which checked his progress. He stuck his head in at the
window, took a hasty survey, followed the head into the room and laid
hands upon Timmy Murphy _aetat_ ten. Astonished but in no way dismayed
by the invasion, Paterfamilias Murphy immediately threw a whiskey bottle
at the intruder and rushed to the rescue, followed by the partner of
his bosom. It was no time for diplomacy or fine distinctions as to
the rights of the non-combatant sex. The Little Red Doctor acted with
promptitude and both hands, and the Murphys came to in the kitchen with
the door barred against reëntry. Thereupon they raised such lamentable
outcry that Dad-mun Schütz loped downstairs to the rescue. Seeing a
stranger in the act of throttling the scion of the house of Murphy,
the ol'-clo' man undertook to dissuade him by fixing a bony hand in
his collar; but in so doing forgot the existence of what is technically
termed, I understand, the pivot blow. Upon discovering its uses he lay
down in the hallway to meditate upon it. The Little Red Doctor finished
his job before Terry the Cop's substitute arrived to arrest him. He went
peacefully. Dead-Men's-Shoes followed to the court, escorting Murphy
senior, who was extensively bandaged. The bench was occupied and
ornamented by Magistrate Wolfe Tone Hanrahan, the Irish Solon of Avenue
B. Judge Hanrahan possesses a human stratum in his judicial temperament.
His examination of the prisoner (suppressed from the stenographer's
official notes) proceeded as follows:--
The Judge--What were you doing in Murphys' flat?
The Accused--I was there professionally.
The Judge--Professionally, say ye? (With a look at the ill-repaired
Murphys.) Are ye a prize-fighter?
The Accused--I am a physician and surgeon.
The Judge--Mostly surgeon, I'm thinkin'. Ye seem to have removed three
teeth from the patient an' partly ampytated an ear. Besides, he swears
ye tried to murder the boy. Is such yer usual practice?
The Accused--The boy had a fish bone in his throat. He was strangling.
Here is the bone. The boy is in bed. I ought to be with him now.
The Judge--Officer, ye're a fool. Murphy, y' oughta get ten days. Mrs.
Murphy, back to yer child! Defendant, cud ye come to my house, No. 36,
to-morra mornin'? My cook has a bile on her neck. I like yer style. Yere
discharged.
Dead-Men's-Shoes escorted the physician back apologizing at every step,
and thenceforth touted for him (greatly to his embarrassment) until Our
Square grew afraid to call in any other practitioner lest the partisan
ol'-clo' man should accuse us of attempted suicide by negligence. Within
a year of his arrival the little Red Doctor had become, as it were,
official healer to the whole place. And where he began as physician he
ended as friend and ally.
The Little Red Doctor was intensely personal in his permanent engagement
with his old friend, Death.
While I am, of course, a part of the Little Red Doctor's large practice,
I do not add much to his meager income. In fact, he usually laughs me
and my minor ailments out of court and declines to administer anything
but free advice. On the particular June evening when I unwittingly
became a partner of the fates, nothing really ailed me except that I had
not been sleeping for some nights and was tired of it. The Little Red
Doctor went over me briefly and prescribed.
“One full day in the open sunrise to sundown.”
“Where?”
He reflected. “Go crêpe-hunting with Dead-Men's-Shoes,” he said at
length.
Thus it was that from nine o'clock on, of a balmy, sweet-scented
morning, the sleek and raucous automobiles of West-Chester County hooted
disdainfully at Dadmun Schütz and myself, jogging appreciatively along
behind Schutz's mouse-hued mare, Dolly Gray, through a world so alien to
Our Square as to suggest another scheme of creation; a world of birds
and butterflies and bees and trees and flowers and song and color and
blithe winds.
[Illustration: Jogging appreciatively along behind Schutz's mouse-hued
mare 420]
This world was, most appropriately, inhabited by a brown-and-gold fairy.
Any one could tell that she was a fairy by the sunlight in her hair,
and the starlight in her eyes, and the fact that, at the moment when we
discovered her, two butterflies were engaged in aerial combat to decide
winch one should settle on the pink rose above her ear. The flower
flaunted there like a challenge against the somberness of her costume,
for the fairy was dressed entirely in black. She was leaning on a gate
in a tall hedge. Through the opening we could see, across broad flower
gardens, a solid, spacious, kindly house, amid rustling shade, flying
the insignium of death at its door.
At the sight Dead-Men's-Shoes pulled up and took off his extinct hat.
It was one of the most extinct hats wherewith I have ever known him
to grace his calling. Its brim was fractured in two places, its crown
leaned like Pisa's Tower, and it bristled in universal offense against
the outer world. Despite all this it was indisputably a Silk Hat,
and, as such, official to the lawful occasions of the wearer. The
brown-and-gold fairy looked at it with unfeigned surprise. From its
interior Dead-Men's-Shoes extracted a slip of paper which he perused. He
then addressed the fairy in a soft and respectful tone.
“You ain't on the list, mum.”
“What list?” inquired the fairy with interest. “And why should I be on
it?”
“Not you, mum. The house.”
He re-covered his head and contemplated her speculatively. She returned
his regard with sparkling eyes and a dimpling and twitching mouth.
“Why do you wear that extraordinary hat?” she broke out.
“Business,” murmured Dead-Men's-Shoes. “It's my business hat. If I could
have a few words with you on business?”
“You've come at an unfortunate time,” said the brown-and-gold fairy.
“There is a death in the family.”
“Yessum. I observed that the Grim Reaper had visited the premises,” said
Dead-Men's-Shoes, who prides himself upon a stock of correct, elegant,
and felicitous mortuary phrases. “May I proffer my humble condolences?”
He removed the silk hat with an official and solemn flourish. “Are you
the bereaved, mum?”
“The what?”
“The relic of the late lamented?”
“No; only a cousin, but my father and I are Mr. Bennington's nearest
relatives. What is it you wish?”
“In that case,” said Dead-Men's-Shoes, with evident relief, “an' beggin'
your pardon for intrudin' on your nach'ral grief an' distress, we might
trade.” He coughed austerely. “About clothes now,” he suggested.
“Clothes? What clothes?” said the fairy.
“The deceased's. Or shoes, maybe? Or even hats.”
“What on earth do you mean, you extraordinary person?”
“I mean fair,” said Dead-Men's-Shoes firmly. “I'm here to buy the
deceased's garments. You see, lady, I read all the death notices in the
N'York papers, an' when I've got ten or a dozen good prospects in one
locality I hitch up Dolly Gray an' make my rounds. An' though you ain't
on my list, I won't count that against you when we come to dicker.”
“But we don't want to sell Cousin Ben's clothes,” said the fairy in
bewilderment.
“Dont-cha!” Dead-Men's Shoes took on a persuasively argumentative air.
“Listen, lady. Wotcha goin' to do with them garments?”
“I hadn't thought about it.”
“Was the late lamented a charitable gent? Good to the poor and that sort
of thing?”
“Very.”
“There you are, then!” said he triumphantly. “Sell me the garments for a
lot o' money. I'm soft on swell garments. Take the cash an' give it to
charity. Le's begin with shoes. How many pair of shoes woild you say the
untimely victim had?” Mirth quivered at the corners of the fairy's soft
lips, “He wasn't an untimely victim. He was seventy-six years old and
he had gout so dreadfully that he had to have one shoe made much longer
than the other.”
My companion's face fell, but immediately brightened with hope. “Which
foot?”
She considered. “The left.”
“If they was right in size an' price,” he mused, “they might do for the
Little Red Doctor.”
The brown-and-gold fairy's eyes widened. “For whom?” she asked.
“The Little Red Doctor.”
“Why do you call him that?”
“Because he's little an' red-headed an' the smartest doctor in N'York.
An' if your loved-an'-lost one had had him, he'd be alive to-day,” he
added with profound conviction.
“Where does he live?”
“Down in Our Square--No. 11, on the East Side; office hours nine to one.
If you was any ways ailin' you couldn't do better'n to call.”
“And there is something the matter with his left foot?” she pursued,
ignoring this well-meant advice. “What?”
“It's dummed hard to fit,” replied Dead-Men's-Shoes disconsolately.
“I can tell you,” I interjected. “He injured it while swimming.”
“Oh!” said the brown-and-gold fairy. “And--and this gentleman's
description of him is accurate?”
“But not adequate,” I said. “He is wise (a confirmatory nod from the
brown-and-gold fairy) and brave (another nod) and unselfish (a third
nod) and obstinate (two nods) and beautiful--”
“Oh!” said the brown-and-gold fairy, with obvious disappointment.
“--to us who know him, I mean.” She smiled up at me. “And his name is
Smith.”
“It is,” I averred.
At this juncture Dead-Men's-Shoes, who had been fidgeting on his wagon
seat, deemed it time to interfere in the interests of commerce. “Don't
butt in, dominie,” he protested in an injured aside. “These mourners
has to be handled with tac'. It takes a professional. You're spoilin'
trade.”
Herein he did me injustice. The brown-and-gold fairy threw the gate
open and invited Dead-Men's-Shoes in to bargain. Highly advantageous
bargaining it was, I judged from the ill-suppressed jubilance of my
associate's face when he emerged some minutes later, tottering under a
burden of assorted clothing, while she brought up the rear, carrying one
pair of shoes. The rose was gone from her hair.
“Remember,” she cautioned him, “the suits you may dispose of as you
please, but the shoes are to go to the--the Little Red Doctor just as
they are. Will you see that they do?” She appealed to me.
“I'll take them myself,” I promised.
“Will you? That's kind of you. But you mustn't tell him where they came
from.” She looked up at me and I seemed to discern something wistful in
her eyes. “You are a friend of Dr. Smith's?”
“Yes. And you?”
“I used to be,” said she indifferently. Dead-Men's-Shoes climbed into
the wagon and lifted the lines. “Accept the assurances of my respec'ful
sympathy,” he recited, “an' remember the address if there's anything
further in my line. Wake up, Dolly Gray.”
The brown-and-gold fairy floated out through the gate and came to my
side.
“Does he still limp?” she asked in a half whisper.
“Imperceptibly,” I answered.
“I don't _want_ him to limp,” she cried imperiously and was gone.
Dolly Gray took us and the shoes of the deceased cousin on our way.
The day's journey ended in front of the Little Red Doctor's office.
The Little Red Doctor looked up from some sort of complicated mechanism
which he was making for crippled Molly Rankin (who could never by any
possibility pay him for it) and appeared astonished at the sight of the
very elegant footwear which Dead-Men's-Shoes extended to him.
“What for?” he asked. “I'm not buying second-hand shoes.”
“Ask the dominie,” said Dead-Men's Shoes.
“They're a present,” I explained.
The Little Red Doctor looked both puzzled and suspicious. “They won't
fit my queer foot,” he objected.
“Try,” encouraged Dead-Men's-Shoes.
The Little Red Doctor tried on the left boot. “Pretty good,” he said.
He stood up to stamp his foot down. Then he bounded into the air like a
springbok, and on alighting, tore off the shoe, saying something harsh
and profane about practical jokers. “There's a pin in it,” he growled.
“Gosh!” exclaimed Dead-Men's-Shoes, greatly perturbed at this evidence
of woman's perfidy. “An' her in the sollim presence of death, too!”
“Her? Who?” demanded the Little Red Doctor, looking up from his
explorations after the pin.
“Dadmun,” said I, “you are too loquacious. Go out and look after Dolly
Gray.”
Duly impressed and oppressed by my well-chosen word, the ol'-clo'
man trudged out and leaned against the railing. The Little Red Doctor
extracted a small object from the shoe. It proved to be a pink rose,
impaled upon a fine golden wire which might once have been a hairpin.
The wire held in place a thin strip of paper. When he saw the
handwriting on the paper the Little Red Doctor gave another leap. It was
not as athletic and deerlike as his first, but was still a creditable
performance. Then he flung the whole combination out through the open
window.
“Ow!” ejaculated Dead-Men's-Shoes from his place against the railing.
We could hear him scuffling around after the missile, which had
evidently hit him on a tender spot. His voice came clearly to us reading
painfully in the dim light.
“'An'-no-bird-sings-in-Arcady!'”
“Dadmun,” said I, severely, “that letter is not addressed to you.”
“It ain't a letter,” retorted Dead-Men's-Shoes aggrievedly. “It ain't
begun like a letter oughta be. It ain't signed, like a letter oughta
be. It's just that one fool line. Where's Arcady an' what's to stop the
birds singin' there if they want to? Here's yer valentine.”
He flipped it back through the window. We heard the creaking of the
wagon springs, Dolly Gray's patient, responsive grunt and her retreating
footsteps on the asphalt. I retrieved the carrier rose and turned to the
Little Red Doctor.
“Well?” I said. “Where _is_ Arcady, my friend?”
He shook his head.
“I know that song,” I continued. “How does the verse run?
“And no bird sings in Arcady;
The little fauns have left the hill;
Even the tired daffodil
Has closed its gilded doors, and still--”
“Don't!” said the Little Red Doctor hoarsely. “I used to know that
song.” He lifted haggard eyes to me. “You've seen her?”
“Yes.”
“How did she look?”
I meditated. “Like a child that doesn't understand why it isn't happy,”
I said at length.
I saw the Little Red Doctor's sensitive mouth quiver; but the jaw set
hard and firm and ended that struggle.
“I won't ask you where,” he said.
“It would be no use. I couldn't tell you.”
“No.” He accepted that. “Then why, in the name of Heaven,” he cried,
looking at the rose, “should she--Oh, well, never mind that.” He sat
thoughtfully for a time. “Dominie,” he said, “I'm going to tell you. It
will do me good, I think. And then I'll forget it again.”
It was not altogether a pretty story. Four years before, it began, when
the brown-and-gold fairy must have been little more than a child. At a
fashionable cottage place which is merely a glowing, newspaper-glorified
name to Our Square, the Little Red Doctor, who had come down for a
tennis tournament, had jumped off a pier after a small boy who had
fallen in. He referred to it and to the brown-and-gold fairy's romantic
view of it with tolerant contempt. “The _hee-ro_ business,” he said with
the medical man's disdain of the more obvious forms of physical peril.
“I run more real risks every day of my life.” However, a well-meaning
but blundersome launch had broken his foot with its wheel, and the girl,
who had seen the whole adventure, carried him off in her motor-car.
Followed the usual discovery of friends in common, and by the time the
crutches were discarded, the victim was hopelessly enslaved. Whether
they were ever actually engaged or not did not clearly appear. The
Little Red Doctor was carefully and gallantly defensive of her course.
Nevertheless, knowing the Little Red Doctor as I do, I was resentfully
sure that she had treated him shamefully. Finally there was an issue
of principle between them. He alluded to it vaguely. “She didn't really
care, of course,” he said. “Why should she? So I went away and knocked
about the world for a bit. Then I came here because in Our Square there
wouldn't be much chance of meeting her, you see. There's just one thing
to do. Forget her. So I've forgotten her.” And the Little Red
Doctor, taking the rose from the table where I had tossed it, held it
cherishingly in his hands as if it were a human, beating heart.
“Forget her.” Quite so! It was just and simple and sensible. Yet, while
I agreed heartily, I had my private misgivings that it might not be so
easy to forget a face with that particular quality of witchery about
it, a witchery wholly distinct from mere beauty. I've known quite homely
women to have it. Not that the brown-and-gold fairy was homely. But I
cannot quite think that she was beautiful, either, by the standards of
calm and balanced judgment. Only, the calmest judgment would be put to
it to preserve its balance with those eyes turned upon it. She had an
unbalancing personality, that brown-and-gold fairy, even to an old and
rusty-fusty pedagogue like myself.
In fact, she was quite unreasonably vivid to my thoughts for weeks after
my one brief meeting with her. I believe that I was actually thinking
about her and the Little Red Doctor, seated on my favorite bench in Our
Square, on the August morning when a small, soft voice quite close
behind me said:--
“Mr. Dominie.”
I got up and turned around. There stood the brown-and-gold fairy. I
frowned upon her severely. Not as severely as she doubtless deserved,
considering how the Little Red Doctor had winced at the mention of
her, but as severely as was practicable in the face of the way she was
smiling at me.
“What do you mean by coming up behind me and startling me with your 'Mr.
Dominie'?” I demanded.
“I heard the man with the funny hat call you that. Isn't it your name?”
“It will serve. What are you doing in Our Square?”
“I came down to see the place.”
“You came down to see the Little Red Doctor,” I charged.
“Oh, no,” she protested softly. “Just to see the place where he lives. I
went near there, but he came out and I ran away.”
“You needn't have,” I said. “He has forgotten you.”
“I don't think it nice of you to say that, Mr. Dominie.”
There was a little break in her voice. I looked away hastily. Though,
if I had made her cry, it served her right. I looked back and found that
she was not crying. She was laughing. At me!
“He has forgotten you,” I repeated positively, “as he ought.”
“Yes; I suppose he ought,” she assented dolorously. “But he hasn't,” she
added with a sudden change to an adorable impertinence. “You know he
hasn't. Nobody ever forgets me. You didn't forget me, did you? And you'd
only seen me once.”
“Why am I seeing you now?”
“Because you're old and wise and you look kind.”
“I am very old and extremely wise,” I answered, “but my kindly
expression is mere senile deterioration of the facial muscles. I am
really brutal.”
“But you'll be kind to me,” she averred trustfully.