much as I'm looking for a young man that I kind of suspect is been
to see him to-day: a young man that looks like me, only younger. Has
lightish hair and pretty tall and lanky, and carrying a shiny black bag
with him. Did you happen to hev noticed him going into that place across
the way?”
“Nop,” said Snipes.
The old man sighed and nodded his head thoughtfully at Snipes, and
puckered up the corners of his mouth, as though he were thinking deeply.
He had wonderfully honest blue eyes, and with the white hair hanging
around his sun-burned face, he looked like an old saint. But the trailer
didn't know that: he did know, though, that this man was a different
sort from the rest. Still, that was none of his business.
“What is't you want to see him about?” he asked sullenly, while he
looked up and down the street and everywhere but at the old man, and
rubbed one bare foot slowly over the other.
The old man looked pained, and much to Snipe's surprise, the question
brought the tears to his eyes, and his lips trembled. Then he swerved
slightly, so that he might have fallen if Snipes had not caught him and
helped him across the pavement to a seat on a stoop. “Thankey, son,”
said the stranger; “I'm not as strong as I was, an' the sun's mighty
hot, an' these streets of yours smell mighty bad, and I've had a
powerful lot of trouble these last few days. But if I could see this
man Perceval before my boy does, I know I could fix it, and it would all
come out right.”
“What do you want to see him about?” repeated the trailer, suspiciously,
while he fanned the old man with his hat. Snipes could not have told you
why he did this or why this particular old countryman was any different
from the many others who came to buy counterfeit money and who were
thieves at heart as well as in deed.
“I want to see him about my son,” said the old man to the little boy.
“He's a bad man whoever he is. This 'ere Perceval is a bad man. He sends
down his wickedness to the country and tempts weak folks to sin. He
teaches 'em ways of evil-doing they never heard of, and he's ruined my
son with the others--ruined him. I've had nothing to do with the city
and its ways; we're strict living, simple folks, and perhaps we've been
too strict, or Abraham wouldn't have run away to the city. But I thought
it was best, and I doubted nothing when the fresh-air children came to
the farm. I didn't like city children, but I let 'em come. I took
'em in, and did what I could to make it pleasant for 'em. Poor little
fellers, all as thin as corn-stalks and pale as ghosts, and as dirty as
you.
“I took 'em in and let 'em ride the horses, and swim in the river, and
shoot crows in the cornfield, and eat all the cherries they could
pull, and what did the city send me in return for that? It sent me this
thieving, rascally scheme of this man Perceval's, and it turned my boy's
head, and lost him to me. I saw him poring over the note and reading it
as if it were Gospel, and I suspected nothing. And when he asked me if
he could keep it, I said yes he could, for I thought he wanted it for a
curiosity, and then off he put with the black bag and the $200 he's been
saving up to start housekeeping with when the old Deacon says he can
marry his daughter Kate.” The old man placed both hands on his knees and
went on excitedly.
“The old Deacon says he'll not let 'em marry till Abe has $2,000, and
that is what the boy's come after. He wants to buy $2,000 worth of bad
money with his $200 worth of good money, to show the Deacon, just as
though it were likely a marriage after such a crime as that would ever
be a happy one.”
Snipes had stopped fanning the old man, as he ran on, and was listening
intently, with an uncomfortable feeling of sympathy and sorrow,
uncomfortable because he was not used to it.
He could not see why the old man should think the city should have
treated his boy better because he had taken care of the city's children,
and he was puzzled between his allegiance to the gang and his desire
to help the gang's innocent victim, and then because he was an innocent
victim and not a “customer,” he let his sympathy get the better of his
discretion.
“Saay,” he began, abruptly, “I'm not sayin' nothin' to nobody, and
nobody's sayin' nothin' to me--see? but I guess your son'll be around
here to-day, sure. He's got to come before one, for this office closes
sharp at one, and we goes home. Now, I've got the call whether he gets
his stuff taken off him or whether the boys leave him alone. If I say
the word, they'd no more come near him than if he had the cholera--see?
An' I'll say it for this oncet, just for you. Hold on,” he commanded, as
the old man raised his voice in surprised interrogation, “don't ask no
questions, 'cause you won't get no answers 'except lies. You find your
way back to the Grand Central Depot and wait there, and I'll steer your
son down to you, sure, as soon as I can find him--see? Now get along, or
you'll get me inter trouble.”
“You've been lying to me, then,” cried the old man, “and you're as bad
as any of them, and my boy's over in that house now.”
He scrambled up from the stoop, and before the trailer could understand
what he proposed to do, had dashed across the street and up the stoop,
and up the stairs, and had burst into room No. 8.
Snipes tore after him. “Come back! come back out of that, you old fool!”
he cried. “You'll get killed in there!” Snipes was afraid to enter room
No. 8, but he could hear from the outside the old man challenging Alf
Wolfe in a resonant angry voice that rang through the building.
“Whew!” said Snipes, crouching on the stairs, “there's goin' to be a
muss this time, sure!”
“Where's my son? Where have you hidden my son?” demanded, the old man.
He ran across the room and pulled open a door that led into another
room, but it was empty. He had fully expected to see his boy murdered
and quartered, and with his pockets inside out. He turned on Wolfe,
shaking his white hair like a mane. “Give me up my son, you rascal you!”
he cried, “or I'll get the police, and I'll tell them how you decoy
honest boys to your den and murder them.”
“Are you drunk or crazy, or just a little of both?” asked Mr. Wolfe.
“For a cent I'd throw you out of that window. Get out of here! Quick,
now! You're too old to get excited like that; it's not good for you.”
But this only exasperated the old man the more, and he made a lunge
at the confidence man's throat. Mr. Wolfe stepped aside and caught him
around the waist and twisted his leg around the old man's rheumatic one,
and held him. “Now,” said Wolfe, as quietly as though he were giving a
lesson in wrestling, “if I wanted to, I could break your back.”
The old man glared up at him, panting. “Your son's not here,” said
Wolfe, “and this is a private gentleman's private room. I could turn
you over to the police for assault if I wanted to; but,” he added,
magnanimously, “I won't. Now get out of here and go home to your wife,
and when you come to see the sights again don't drink so much raw
whiskey.” He half carried the old farmer to the top of the stairs and
dropped him, and went back and closed the door. Snipes came up and
helped him down and out, and the old man and the boy walked slowly and
in silence out to the Bowery. Snipes helped his companion into a car and
put him off at the Grand Central Depot. The heat and the excitement had
told heavily on the old man, and he seemed dazed and beaten.
He was leaning on the trailer's shoulder and waiting for his turn in
the line in front of the ticket window, when a tall, gawky, good-looking
country lad sprang out of it and at him with an expression of surprise
and anxiety. “Father,” he said, “father, what's wrong? What are you
doing here? Is anybody ill at home? Are _you_ ill?”
“Abraham,” said the old man, simply, and dropped heavily on the younger
man's shoulder. Then he raised his head sternly and said: “I thought you
were murdered, but better that than a thief, Abraham. What brought you
here? What did you do with that rascal's letter? What did you do with
his money?”
The trailer drew cautiously away; the conversation was becoming
unpleasantly personal.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Abraham, calmly. “The
Deacon gave his consent the other night without the $2,000, and I took
the $200 I'd saved and came right on in the fust train to buy the ring.
It's pretty, isn't it?” he said, flushing, as he pulled out a little
velvet box and opened it.
The old man was so happy at this that he laughed and cried alternately,
and then he made a grab for the trailer and pulled him down beside him
on one of the benches.
“You've got to come with me,” he said, with kind severity. “You're a
good boy, but your folks have let you run wrong. You've been good to
me, and you said you would get me back my boy and save him from those
thieves, and I believe now that you meant it. Now you're just coming
back with us to the farm and the cows and the river, and you can eat
all you want and live with us, and never, never see this unclean, wicked
city again.”
Snipes looked up keenly from under the rim of his hat and rubbed one of
his muddy feet over the other as was his habit. The young countryman,
greatly puzzled, and the older man smiling kindly, waited expectantly in
silence. From outside came the sound of the car-bells jangling, and the
rattle of cabs, and the cries of drivers, and all the varying rush and
turmoil of a great metropolis. Green fields, and running rivers, and
fruit that did not grow in wooden boxes or brown paper cones, were myths
and idle words to Snipes, but this “unclean, wicked city” he knew.
“I guess you're too good for me,” he said, with an uneasy laugh. “I
guess little old New York's good enough for me.”
“What!” cried the old man, in the tones of greatest concern. “You would
go back to that den of iniquity, surely not,--to that thief Perceval?”
“Well,” said the trailer, slowly, “and he's not such a bad lot, neither.
You see he could hev broke your neck that time when you was choking him,
but he didn't. There's your train,” he added hurriedly and jumping away.
“Good-by. So long, old man. I'm much 'bliged to you jus' for asking me.”
Two hours later the farmer and his son were making the family weep and
laugh over their adventures, as they all sat together on the porch with
the vines about it; and the trailer was leaning against the wall of a
saloon and apparently counting his ten toes, but in reality watching for
Mr. Wolfe to give the signal from the window of room No. 8.
“THERE WERE NINETY AND NINE”
Young Harringford, or the “Goodwood Plunger,” as he was perhaps better
known at that time, had come to Monte Carlo in a very different spirit
and in a very different state of mind from any in which he had ever
visited the place before. He had come there for the same reason that
a wounded lion, or a poisoned rat, for that matter, crawls away into a
corner, that it may be alone when it dies. He stood leaning against one
of the pillars of the Casino with his back to the moonlight, and with
his eyes blinking painfully at the flaming lamps above the green tables
inside. He knew they would be put out very soon; and as he had something
to do then, he regarded them fixedly with painful earnestness, as a man
who is condemned to die at sunrise watches through his barred windows
for the first gray light of the morning.
That queer, numb feeling in his head and the sharp line of pain between
his eyebrows which had been growing worse for the last three weeks, was
troubling him more terribly than ever before, and his nerves had thrown
off all control and rioted at the base of his head and at his wrists,
and jerked and twitched as though, so it seemed to him, they were
striving to pull the tired body into pieces and to set themselves free.
He was wondering whether if he should take his hand from his pocket and
touch his head he would find that it had grown longer, and had turned
into a soft, spongy mass which would give beneath his fingers. He
considered this for some time, and even went so far as to half withdraw
one hand, but thought better of it and shoved it back again as he
considered how much less terrible it was to remain in doubt than to find
that this phenomenon had actually taken place.
The pity of the whole situation was, that the boy was only a boy with
all his man's miserable knowledge of the world, and the reason of it all
was, that he had entirely too much heart and not enough money to make
an unsuccessful gambler. If he had only been able to lose his conscience
instead of his money, or even if he had kept his conscience and won, it
is not likely that he would have been waiting for the lights to go
out at Monte Carlo. But he had not only lost all of his money and more
besides, which he could never make up, but he had lost other things
which meant much more to him now than money, and which could not be
made up or paid back at even usurious interest. He had not only lost the
right to sit at his father's table, but the right to think of the girl
whose place in Surrey ran next to that of his own people, and whose
lighted window in the north wing he had watched on those many dreary
nights when she had been ill, from his own terrace across the trees
in the park. And all he had gained was the notoriety that made him a
by-word with decent people, and the hero of the race-tracks and the
music-halls. He was no longer “Young Harringford, the eldest son of the
Harringfords of Surrey,” but the “Goodwood Plunger,” to whom Fortune had
made desperate love and had then jilted, and mocked, and overthrown.
As he looked back at it now and remembered himself as he was then, it
seemed as though he was considering an entirely distinct and separate
personage--a boy of whom he liked to think, who had had strong, healthy
ambitions and gentle tastes. He reviewed it passionlessly as he stood
staring at the lights inside the Casino, as clearly as he was capable
of doing in his present state and with miserable interest. How he had
laughed when young Norton told him in boyish confidence that there was
a horse named Siren in his father's stables which would win the Goodwood
Cup; how, having gone down to see Norton's people when the long vacation
began, he had seen Siren daily, and had talked of her until two every
morning in the smoking-room, and had then staid up two hours later to
watch her take her trial spin over the downs. He remembered how they
used to stamp back over the long grass wet with dew, comparing watches
and talking of the time in whispers, and said good night as the sun
broke over the trees in the park. And then just at this time of all
others, when the horse was the only interest of those around him, from
Lord Norton and his whole household down to the youngest stable-boy and
oldest gaffer in the village, he had come into his money.
And then began the then and still inexplicable plunge into gambling,
and the wagering of greater sums than the owner of Siren dared to risk
himself, the secret backing of the horse through commissioners all
over England, until the boy by his single fortune had brought the odds
against her from 60 to 0 down to 6 to 0. He recalled, with a thrill that
seemed to settle his nerves for the moment, the little black specks at
the starting-post and the larger specks as the horses turned the first
corner. The rest of the people on the coach were making a great deal of
noise, he remembered, but he, who had more to lose than any one or all
of them together, had stood quite still with his feet on the wheel and
his back against the box-seat, and with his hands sunk into his pockets
and the nails cutting through his gloves. The specks grew into horses
with bits of color on them, and then the deep muttering roar of the
crowd merged into one great shout, and swelled and grew into sharper,
quicker, impatient cries, as the horses turned into the stretch with
only their heads showing toward the goal. Some of the people were
shouting “Firefly!” and others were calling on “Vixen!” and others, who
had their glasses up, cried “Trouble leads!” but he only waited until
he could distinguish the Norton colors, with his lips pressed tightly
together. Then they came so close that their hoofs echoed as loudly as
when horses gallop over a bridge, and from among the leaders Siren's
beautiful head and shoulders showed like sealskin in the sun, and the
boy on her back leaned forward and touched her gently with his hand, as
they had so often seen him do on the downs, and Siren, as though he had
touched a spring, leaped forward with her head shooting back and out,
like a piston-rod that has broken loose from its fastening and beats the
air, while the jockey sat motionless, with his right arm hanging at
his side as limply as though it were broken, and with his left moving
forward and back in time with the desperate strokes of the horse's head.
“Siren wins!” cried Lord Norton, with a grim smile, and “Siren!” the
mob shouted back with wonder and angry disappointment, and “Siren!” the
hills echoed from far across the course. Young Harringford felt as if
he had suddenly been lifted into heaven after three months of purgatory,
and smiled uncertainly at the excited people on the coach about him. It
made him smile even now when he recalled young Norton's flushed face
and the awe and reproach in his voice when he climbed up and whispered,
“Why, Cecil, they say in the ring you've won a fortune, and you never
told us.” And how Griffith, the biggest of the book-makers, with
the rest of them at his back, came up to him and touched his hat
resentfully, and said, “You'll have to give us time, sir; I'm very hard
hit”; and how the crowd stood about him and looked at him curiously,
and the Certain Royal Personage turned and said, “Who--not that boy,
surely?” Then how, on the day following, the papers told of the young
gentleman who of all others had won a fortune, thousands and thousands
of pounds they said, getting back sixty for every one he had ventured;
and pictured him in baby clothes with the cup in his arms, or in an Eton
jacket; and how all of them spoke of him slightingly, or admiringly, as
the “Goodwood Plunger.”
He did not care to go on after that; to recall the mortification of his
father, whose pride was hurt and whose hopes were dashed by this sudden,
mad freak of fortune, nor how he railed at it and provoked him until the
boy rebelled and went back to the courses, where he was a celebrity and
a king.
The rest is a very common story. Fortune and greater fortune at first;
days in which he could not lose, days in which he drove back to the
crowded inns choked with dust, sunburnt and fagged with excitement, to
a riotous supper and baccarat, and afterward went to sleep only to see
cards and horses and moving crowds and clouds of dust; days spent in
a short covert coat, with a field-glass over his shoulder and with a
pasteboard ticket dangling from his buttonhole; and then came the change
that brought conscience up again, and the visits to the Jews, and the
slights of the men who had never been his friends, but whom he had
thought had at least liked him for himself, even if he did not like
them; and then debts, and more debts, and the borrowing of money to pay
here and there, and threats of executions; and, with it all, the longing
for the fields and trout springs of Surrey and the walk across the park
to where she lived.
This grew so strong that he wrote to his father, and was told briefly
that he who was to have kept up the family name had dragged it into the
dust of the race-courses, and had changed it at his own wish to that of
the Boy Plunger--and that the breach was irreconcilable.
Then this queer feeling came on, and he wondered why he could not eat,
and why he shivered even when the room was warm or the sun shining, and
the fear came upon him that with all this trouble and disgrace his head
might give way, and then that it had given way. This came to him at all
times, and lately more frequently and with a fresher, more cruel thrill
of terror, and he began to watch himself and note how he spoke, and to
repeat over what he had said to see if it were sensible, and to question
himself as to why he laughed, and at what. It was not a question of
whether it would or would not be cowardly; It was simply a necessity.
The thing had to be stopped. He had to have rest and sleep and peace
again. He had boasted in those reckless, prosperous days that if by any
possible chance he should lose his money he would drive a hansom, or
emigrate to the colonies, or take the shilling. He had no patience in
those days with men who could not live on in adversity, and who were
found in the gun-room with a hole in their heads, and whose family asked
their polite friends to believe that a man used to firearms from his
school-days had tried to load a hair-trigger revolver with the muzzle
pointed at his forehead. He had expressed a fine contempt for those men
then, but now he had forgotten all that, and thought only of the
relief it would bring, and not how others might suffer by it. If he did
consider this, it was only to conclude that they would quite understand,
and be glad that his pain and fear were over.
Then he planned a grand _coup_ which was to pay off all his debts and
give him a second chance to present himself a supplicant at his father's
house. If it failed, he would have to stop this queer feeling in his
head at once. The Grand Prix and the English horse was the final
_coup_. On this depended everything--the return of his fortunes, the
reconciliation with his father, and the possibility of meeting her
again. It was a very hot day he remembered, and very bright; but the
tall poplars on the road to the races seemed to stop growing just at
a level with his eyes. Below that it was clear enough, but all above
seemed black--as though a cloud had fallen and was hanging just over the
people's heads. He thought of speaking of this to his man Walters, who
had followed his fortunes from the first, but decided not to do so, for,
as it was, he had noticed that Walters had observed him closely of late,
and had seemed to spy upon him. The race began, and he looked through
his glass for the English horse in the front and could not find her,
and the Frenchman beside him cried, “Frou Frou!” as Frou Frou passed the
goal. He lowered his glasses slowly and unscrewed them very carefully
before dropping them back into the case; then he buckled the strap, and
turned and looked about him. Two Frenchmen who had won a hundred
francs between them were jumping and dancing at his side. He remembered
wondering why they did not speak in English. Then the sunlight changed
to a yellow, nasty glare, as though a calcium light had been turned
on the glass and colors, and he pushed his way back to his carriage,
leaning heavily on the servant's arm, and drove slowly back to Paris,
with the driver flecking his horses fretfully with his whip, for he had
wished to wait and see the end of the races.
He had selected Monte Carlo as the place for it, because it was more
unlike his home than any other spot, and because one summer night, when
he had crossed the lawn from the Casino to the hotel with a gay party of
young men and women, they had come across something under a bush which
they took to be a dog or a man asleep, and one of the men had stepped
forward and touched it with his foot, and had then turned sharply and
said, “Take those girls away”; and while some hurried the women back,
frightened and curious, he and the others had picked up the body and
found it to be that of a young Russian whom they had just seen losing,
with a very bad grace, at the tables. There was no passion in his face
now, and his evening dress was quite unruffled, and only a black spot on
the shirt front showed where the powder had burnt the linen. It had
made a great impression on him then, for he was at the height of his
fortunes, with crowds of sycophantic friends and a retinue of dependents
at his heels. And now that he was quite alone and disinherited by even
these sorry companions there seemed no other escape from the pain in his
brain but to end it, and he sought this place of all others as the most
fitting place in which to die.