(PART III.)
The new official and his wife, to whom I have already alluded, had both
been in Cuba during the war between the United States and the Spaniards.
The woman had some years before the war had a manicuring and shampooing
establishment at Havana, but when the American troops came pouring in
she decided to turn her parlors into a barber shop. So she shaved troops
with much success, and married a Rough Rider in T. R.’s famous troops of
cavaliers.
When T. R. became President of the U. S. A. he gave this particular
Rough Rider the only position that he could fill. He was an illiterate
man, but he was imbued with a social bug, and he had a dream of becoming
a prominent social lion on the Isthmus. The fair barberess was
good-looking, vivacious, a good dancer, and a lady of good style. Judge
of the surprise of the official pair upon their arrival on Ancon Hill to
find that virgin spot was dotted with tents in which lived the soldiers
of fortune whom the lady had shaved in the dreaming old war days.
“We sure are in bad,” said the official. “Here’s the whole bunch of
chumps that used to be in Havana.”
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed the lady; “what shall we do? Even old Dr.
Moll is here. Now he’ll tell every one that I was a barber and that he
lovingly called me the little shaver.”
“If he does I’ll have the old devil put in jail,” said the official.
The presence of the old-time acquaintances had been made known to the
official pair by Martin Luther, upon their request to have me sent to
them as a servant.
“What--what do you suppose?” said the little old doctor to Martin
Luther. “Mike is here, and is now an official. We were all awfully fond
of her when she used to shave us. I wonder will she notice us now.”
“Not on your life,” answered Martin L.
The lawyer, who occupied one of the tents, and who was regularly
employed as a timekeeper in one of the nearby offices, gave the doctor
some good advice, as follows: “If you pretend that you ever knew Mike
and the little shaver in the old war days, you’ll find yourself floating
around at high tide in Chiriqui prison, for you know that Mike was a
snob, and now that he has this official position, he’ll put it all over
us, even though we all fared alike in the corral in Havana.”
“She was always good and nice to me, and when I told her once that I
loved her she was real sorry that she was in love with Mike instead of
me.”
“So you told her you loved her, did you? Well, I see your finish. Mike
will never allow a man to live that once was a suitor for the hand of
the little shaver, especially a man who is working in the carpenter
shop.”
“She’ll be glad to see us all,” said the little doctor, with the
conviction that every one on earth had a nature as simple and noble as
his own.
Two days later he was arrested for stealing one thousand dollars from
his room mate, who had the money tied up in the sleeve of an old coat,
which was kept in a trunk in one corner of the tent in which the two men
lived. The official measured carefully the ground on which the tent
stood, and found that the part of the trunk in which the coat lay was on
Panamanian territory. He therefore turned the poor little old doctor
over to the Panamanian authorities, and the gentle little old man was
handcuffed to a negro murderer, and, while the crowds looked on and
jeered, he was led through the streets of Panama to Chiriqui prison,
where he was kept for five months, until a kind-hearted Panamanian
lawyer investigated the matter and learned that the money had been found
three days after the little old man had been committed.
Then the little old doctor was liberated from Chiriqui prison and
resumed his occupation in the carpenter shop, with bowed head and broken
spirit. His old comrades endeavored to cheer him, but, in spite of the
gentleness of his nature, he nursed the terrible wrong until it became a
nightmare. He had a fear that the official called Mike was plotting
against his life, and he began to have dreams that he thought came true.
Each evening he sought his best friends and told them that he had not
long to live. He would conjure up a picture for them of his mother and
father, who were dead about twenty years, and of an old sweetheart
called Betty, whose father, away back in old Virginia, was not only a
colonel, but a judge as well. He would stand in the center of a group of
his friends and tell them that he could close his eyes and see his dead
loved one. “There they are now,” he would say. “There’s little Betty,
like a pink and white carnation, and there’s the judge and colonel
sitting beside Betty and looking lovingly at her like he used to when I
used to go to court her. Ah, see, she loves me still, and I’ll soon be
with her, boys.” At first the men tried to soothe him, but after a time
they decided to agree with him that his end was at hand, and this, as
Martin L. put it, “made the wheels go round faster,” and the little old
man became quite ill in anticipation of his coming demise. Then he was
sent to Taboga to recuperate, and there he fell madly in love with a
young nurse, and became, as a result, quite restored to his normal frame
of mind.
Meantime Mike and the little shaver were leading society by the nose, as
the tent lawyer tritely put it. They had moved into a more palatial
dwelling house and were entertaining foreign ministers and their ladies,
while their old-time friends of the dreamy old war days spent their
waking hours of leisure playing poker.
I had lived in the tent five months, and the time for me to depart to
the United States was drawing to a close. Every day for five months I
had sat on the piazza and gazed upon the lovely Pacific in all its
splendor. Every night during that time I listened to the quiet games of
poker that were being played about me, and I heard the exultant shouts
of the revellers as they cheered the performers in the cantina of
Edmardillo, as they bounded to the fandango and wriggled to the bolero.
In all the five months no woman ever called upon me, and I can safely
say that never in my life have I had so long a period of perfect peace.
Finally the day came when I was to sail away to the U. S. A., and I
impartially distributed the furnishings of the tent among the other tent
residents. The little doctor declined to accept anything of commercial
value, but he begged to be allowed to take as a souvenir a lock of my
hair. He finally consented taking a photograph which some one of the
tent dwellers had taken of me as I sat reading on the tent piazza. On
the ninth of July, with a sad heart, I left the hill to go to New York.
The tent dwellers accompanied me to Colon and stood in a group, waving
their handkerchiefs until the ship was out of sight. With the exception
of three, I have never seen them since. When I returned two years later
I found that they were scattered far and wide. Many are now in
California, in Ecuador, in Brazil, in Peru, in Alaska, and many of them
are dead. But the most pleasant experience of my life was the months in
the tent on Ancon Hill, and I shall always remember with gratitude the
chivalry and kindness with which I was treated by the poor soldiers of
fortune when I was alone, friendless and a stranger in Panama.
Two years later I alighted from a train at Panama and was driven to the
Tivoli Hotel. There was to be a ball there that night, and I sat in the
lobby and watched the smiling throng passing from the dining-room to
the ballroom and balconies.
Men and women in correct evening dress stood about in groups and chatted
with an expectant air, as if some one of consequence was yet to arrive.
Soft lights glowed in the ballroom, and there was good music.
The revellers were beginning to consult their programs, and in less than
five minutes I would be alone in the lobby. I felt a sadness steal upon
me, and I began to wonder where I was, when, lo! who should come
downstairs but Martin Luther.
My heart leaped. He was clad in khaki and leather leggins, and carried
his cowboy hat in his hand.
“Well, so you’re back again. What do you think of this?” said he, by way
of greeting.
“It is like a scene in fairyland,” I replied. “What does it mean, and
who are all these people? What hotel is this?”
“Don’t you know any of ’em?” he asked.
“No, not one,” I replied.
“Well, some of them are the main guys, an’ many of ’em are just
carpenters, plumbers, steam-fitters, steam-shovel men and powder men,
and the washed-out, conceited-looking guys are $125 doctors and clerks.
They were all here in your time, but they didn’t buck up to this gait
then.”
“But what hotel is this?” I asked.
“Why, it’s the Tivoli, and this is the Tivoli Club that’s dancing. They
were just going to start this building when you were here two years
ago.”
“It is all very wonderful,” I replied.
“Well, wait till you hear all about it. Bates, he’s a carpenter; and
Barrett, a policeman; and Norman, a guy that shins up electric light
poles and is a cousin of Shanklin, the American Consul--he’s here
to-night. Awhile ago they got their heads together, an’ they thought
’twould be a good idea to get their best girls an’ have a dance here
every Saturday night. They are all getting good pay, so they sent to the
States for swallowtail suits an’ they started. Well, they hired
musicians in Panama, and the girls looked so swell that some other guys
got in.
“Notices got in the papers in Panama, and the highbrows began to get
interested, so they tried to get the ballroom away from the fellows that
started the thing, and when that didn’t work they came right along to
the dances without saying ‘By your leave,’ and here they are, dancing to
beat the band, and as bold as brass.”
“Where are the men who used to live in the tents?” I asked.
“They’ve gone away to Brazil, to Peru, to Ecuador and to Alaska. They
didn’t like this civilized business; they’d rather be in some new
country, where there ain’t no style. Them fellows were men of the world.
“Catch on to that little man with the whiskers on his chin? He’s the guy
that has the soft snap. He’s running a little paper about the size of a
postage stamp, and he has seven other guys, probably relatives,
assisting in the editing of it. He has the finest house on Ancon Hill, a
pair of horses, two carriages, two saddle horses, one for himself and
one for his daughter, and twelve thousand a year. Looks like a slick
guy, don’t he? He’s got his first dollar, an’, what do you think? His
house stands right where your tent used to stand. The hill is covered
with beautiful houses now.”
So Martin Luther chatted on as I watched, fascinated, the late comers.
“Suppose we go to the ballroom and watch ’em caper--see the snobs an’
the two-cent nobodies, eh? I ain’t in a swallowtail coat, but every one
knows me, and they know that I’ve been up in the roof tryin’ to stop a
leak.”
I followed him into the ballroom, and he gallantly offered me his arm
and led me to a seat.
Each man danced with his wife, daughter or sweetheart, and if he
happened to be without either he sat and looked on with arms folded upon
his breast. Elderly ladies sat straight against the wall, their hands
folded, and a patient smile upon their faded faces. An iciness clutched
my very soul as I sat mute while Luther talked.
“There’s Bates, the best carpenter I have, and he’s rigged up like a
scarecrow. Look at the white shoes and red stockings and red
necktie--things that no one but a fool would wear with a swallowtail
suit. There’s Mike Lyman, wearing a yellow soft shirt, when he ought to
wear a boiled one, and, doggone it, look at Dodson. He’s got on a blue
tie, russet shoes and a watch chain with a shark’s tooth mounted on it
that would moor a ship. Wait till to-morrow when I see them guys. I’ll
have some fun with them. Catch on to Red Mike and the little shaver. And
there’s Garabaldi and Major Brooks. They are the real thing, but
Garabaldi can’t get any one to dance with him, because he don’t put on
lugs; he’s just a simple chap, but he’s good-looking, ain’t he? He’s a
grandson of that old general who put the Pope in prison, or something
like that.
“Some fellows tried to tell me that Garabaldi was only the name of a
race horse on Long Island. Well, anyway, no one has anything to do with
him but Major Brooks.
“Do you see that old guy over there with the glassy bald head that looks
like a cross between a barn door and a wooden leg? Well, he’s another
guy that’s got a soft snap. He lives on the hill, and his house stands
right where my tent used to be. He got in trouble here in the Tivoli
once because he was fresh with the black chambermaids.”
While all this gossip was being poured into my ear I sized up the
ensemble, which was a pleasant picture. When supper was served there was
a grand rush for the dining-room that seemed like the sort of stampede
one might see at a bargain sale on Sixth Avenue, New York. A more motley
crew never blended together at any function. Every craft and profession
had a representative, and there were at the Tivoli that night one or
more persons from every nation in the world.