THE PLEBEIAN.
Sir Thomas Harrison sat at a mahogany roll-top desk, big enough and
broad enough to accommodate a brace of men, even if both were as burly
as he. His feet, stoutly and shiningly booted, were planted, toes
pressing down and heels tilted up, in the soft pile of his office rug. A
great, clean window behind him, edged with fairy spectra where the sun
found a prism in the bevelling of the glass, flooded the office with
light.
"Let a lit-tle sun-shine in," Sir Thomas had hummed, with apparent
joviality, to the old hymn tune, as, a moment before, he had shot the
window-blind noisily up to the top of the sash. There had, however, been
an ominous note beneath his outwardly genial, toneless chant, as he had
glanced through a challenging eye-corner at his secretary, who had
previously tiptoed around and pulled down the shade to cut off the sun
that was shining blindingly in his eyes where he sat typing.
"Don't be all night with that letter, Evans," said Sir Thomas, creaking
his swivel chair in a way that made Evans--a nervous father of five, who
sat up patiently until between 2 and 4 a.m., three nights a week,
minding the youngsters, while his wife, who was young and skittish,
"took in" all the dances--writhe in his seat; "show us some speed, ken't
you, for once."
"Yes, sir," said Evans, who had only just finished taking dictation. He
was a very rapid stenographer--he had to be, or he wouldn't have been
long with Sir Thomas Harrison--and the keys of his machine, on its
noise-deadening pad, pattered away like a rain-shower on a pane.
Sir Thomas Harrison squared his elbows before him and stared hard and
embarrassingly at his clerk while the latter worked, until the
concentration of his stare made Evans' eyelids flutter up and down
nervously. This was Sir Thomas' way of exercising what he termed his
"pur-rsonal power, sir".
"They ken't a one of 'em resist it," he was won't to recount, "no, sir,
not a one of 'em. It gets 'em, every time."
In appearance, Sir Thomas Harrison was both tall and stout. His
stoutness was concealed, however, by skilful tailoring; and the youthful
lines given to his clothing, together with the way his coarse black hair
was combed back from his forehead, made him look, to the casual eye at
least, two decades younger than his fifty-two years. He had eyes like a
bulldog; a little flat nose, blunt and crooked at the tip; a stiff,
close-cropped moustache; a month that blathered redly when he
conversed; and a broad, rough blue jowl. Beer had made his face pouchy,
and barbers' cosmetics had given his skin the appearance of old canvas.
Evans finished the letter, whipped it out of his machine, stepped
briskly over, and handed it to his employer. Sir Tom snatched it, thrust
it cracklingly down on the blotter before him, and commenced to read. At
the very first line, something met his disapproval; but he merely made a
mental note of this, moulded his face into approving lines, and went on
reading. He knew Evans, who was watching him a little anxiously, would
conclude by his expression that the letter was all right, and would
commence to put his things away and close up his desk to go home. Sir
Thomas, in fact, protracted his reading of the letter, holding his pen
poised as if to sign it, until Evans had his desk closed up and had
reached up to the hook behind him for his hat.
Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He
dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that
he broke the pen-nib off short.
"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue
blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put
commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they
learn y' no grammar at th' school you went tuh? Take off that hat--'n
git out y'r machine--'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r
job, or what, Evans?"
"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a
fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right
away."
"Oh-h--y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on
his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at
himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to
do it, Evans. I guess yeh _will_ do it over agen--an' ten times over
agen, if I say so."
By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself
about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the
letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it--he was growing
hungry, for it was 6.15--dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a
flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror.
Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language
that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass.
Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots,
showing up disastrously on their gray background--the result of that
pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen.
A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in
front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established
dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on
arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself
another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power."
In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what
he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger
beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another
customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise:
Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until,
after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned,
adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for
the first time that moment, came over briskly.
"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to
tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his
bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman
who faced him across the counter.
"Yes, sir," said the dyer, as, with a business desire to placate a
customer, he took up the coat quickly, turning it over with smooth,
adroit tailors' fingers; "ah, ink-stains. Yes, sir, we can take those
out for you, and make a very good bit of work, too. A valuable coat
sir--fine material."
Sir Thomas Harrison straightened the arm that rested on the counter,
lifted it, and pointed a blunt finger directly toward the coat.
"I want that tomarr' mornin'," he said, rolling out his voice with a
stump orator's cadence, "tomarr' mornin'. First thing. See?"
"I'm sorry, sir," said Benwell, quietly. "We couldn't have it done
before Wednesday--the day after to-morrow, that is. We are a bit behind
this week, owing to press of work."
"Press o' work, nuthin'," said Harrison, jerking his hand, "take a half
an hour off, an' fix that coat--to-marr' mornin'. I'll send around. Nine
o'clock. See that you have it." He turned to go.
"I regret," said Benwell, still politely, "that we cannot break our
fixed rule, made in fairness to all our customers, that all work must
take its turn."
"Well," said Harrison, "you'll break it this time."
"We will not," said Benwell, firmly. "That is the rule by which this
house has built up its business. We have never broken it, and never
shall. It was originally made purely in a spirit of business fairness
and courtesy; but it has paid, as well."
"Well," Sir Thomas leaned hard on the counter, and drove out the words,
"it's a ba-ad rule"--the contractor said the "ba" part of the adjective
with his mouth extended, red as a bull's, till the tongue was visible,
flattened down within its crescent of big coarse white teeth--"a bad
rule, I say, and it wun't pay you this time. I'll give this job to
summun that's out fur business in th' proper way. Keen, see? On th'
jump, see? Out fur th' old he-dollars--get me-e?"
"That is your prerogative, sir," said Benwell.
"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a
step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up
on the Crescent. Yoe know that"--the contractor's head oscillated
laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this
forth--"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same
Crescent street. You won't get none of it--none that I ken ketch an'
head off. Understand!"
Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the
door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas
Harrison pleasantly.
"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you.
Good evening."
Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out.
"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This from Gary, the dyer's bookkeeper,
whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above
Benwell's ledger.
The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat--not
his--which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its
hook.
"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the
hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great
credit for his energy and push--even though sometimes that energy may be
a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary--especially
about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us
instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to."
Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused
cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but
audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation:
"Shoelaces, sir?"
The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from
across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man,
stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat
across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his
pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting
the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the
"greenback" he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar
note.
"Change it," he grated, his eyes glowing with the stir of the
spite-devil jumping up and down inside him; "change it, an' it's yours,
an' keep the shoelaces."
Jim McMunn eyed the bill imperturbably a moment. Then a slit appeared in
the lower part of the leather face--a slit whose corners curled slowly
upward as Jim, laying on the sidewalk his tray of shoelaces, pulled up
the faded skirt of his coat and slipped one twisted hand, not into his
pocket but inside his trousers, deep down to where the stout fabric was
folded back and forth under the iron-shod pad that protected the end of
his right leg-stump. When, after a moment, the hand returned into view,
it held a money-roll not unlike Sir Thomas' own. The slit in Jim
McMunn's countenance kept on curling upward at the ends as he laid on
the end of the shoelace tray, one after another, four hundred-dollar
bills, then nine tens, then a five and four ones; then, out of his
vest-pocket ninety cents in silver; then, on top of all, a neatly coiled
and knotted pair of shoelaces.
"Brah-_vo_!" came in leisurely comment from an unexpected quarter;
"Harrison, old chappie, you lose, you know."
The contractor jerked about. Leaning across the automobile from the
street-side, with gloved hands resting on the tonneau door and cane
hooked over one arm, stood no less a person than Sir William Ware,
Baronet, man-about-town and sportsman, president of the Northern Bank
and also of a certain exclusive club where Sir Thomas' application for
membership was even now awaiting consideration.
Sir Thomas Harrison, whose idea of "having the laugh" on the shoelace
man, in spite of the latter's unexpected display of financial strength,
had been to call a policeman and give McMunn in charge for judicial
investigation as to the source of his wealth, abruptly changed his cue.
"Y'bet," he jetted, gustily; "ya, y'bet. Laugh's on me--hey!" He
crumpled the bill in his hand carelessly and tossed it toward its
winner. As Mr. McMunn, in spite of his infirmity, very adroitly and
gleefully caught the light, elusive paper ball, Harrison swung around
upon the baronet and hooked the latter by the arm, tight as an anaconda.
"I got strict orders frum th' Missis," he said, "for to bring you home
to supper, one of these here nights. Well, we'll just make to-night the
night, hey? How about it, Bohunk?"
Sir William's features were composed. His eyes, blinking manfully,
fought back a smile.
"Why,--er--," he set his cane on the ground, leaned on it a moment;
looked away, mentally conning over his engagements for the evening;
then brought his face around with a gentlemanly look of polite elation;
"I should be very delighted, d'you know. Most unexpected pleasure, Sir
Thomas."
It was a rule of conduct with Ware to do, whenever possible, the thing
he saw would give pleasure. He had met Harrison several times, and had
tried hard to be sympathetically interested in him as a neighbor--but
the baronet's mind was naturally of a speculative turn, and, in spite of
his intention to be brotherly, he had to admit to himself that his
interest in the contractor-knight had less of a human than an
anthropological bearing. As now, he climbed bustlingly into Harrison's
auto, Sir William tried hard to persuade himself that he was off to a
pleasant neighborly dinner; but all the while he knew in his heart that
the impelling motive was merely cold curiosity. He was anxious to see
the beast in its native haunts--to note how it lived, and what it ate.
Harrison, getting in from the opposite side of car, bumped down, bulging
like a balloon in his ostentation. As the automobile slid into motion,
Sir Thomas glanced from side to side, watching closely among pedestrians
and passing cars for prominent citizens, especially members of Sir
William's club. When such an one, in response to Harrison's deliberate
hail or a sharp, shrewd "toot" of the contractor's horn, glanced
around, Sir Thomas would bring his arm up in a flourishing salute. If
the citizen were sufficiently notable and the street-din permitted,
there would be a brief volley of social inanities from Harrison,
engaging the notable citizen long enough to let the latter see Ware.
"A-ow, Mr. Archbishop," the contractor, for instance, would megaphone,
through his curved palm, "what's th' good word?"
And Archbishop Markham, a man of long social experience, would roar back
humorously, though with no more than a passing glance, "A-ow! A-ow!"
Sir William, sitting back with his cane between his knees, was too deep
in amused contemplation to note the capital that was being made of his
presence in Harrison's vigorously-snorting, frequently-tooting car as it
progressed down Main Street. The contractor's guest was, in fact,
engaged in practising the pronunciation of a certain word he had, after
entering the auto, jotted down phonetically in a little leather-covered
note-book. When he would get it right, or as nearly right as possible,
Sir William would chuckle and slap his leg in immense enjoyment. The
word was "Bohunk."