The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon, and other humorous tales
by Richard Edward Connell · English · Gutenberg #37430 · 397,096 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon, and other humorous tales
Author: Richard Edward Connell
Release date: September 15, 2011 [eBook #37430]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIN OF MONSIEUR PETTIPON, AND OTHER HUMOROUS TALES ***
Produced by Veronika Redfern, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
_The Sin of
Monsieur Pettipon_
AND
_Other Humorous Tales_
_Richard Connell_
_The Sin of
Monsieur Pettipon_
AND
_Other Humorous Tales_
BY
_Richard Connell_
[Illustration]
_New York_
_Copyright, 1922,
By George H. Doran Company_
[Illustration]
_Copyright, 1922, by P. F. Collier & Son Co._
_Copyright, 1921, by The Century Co._
_Copyright, 1920, by Street and Smith Corporation_
_Copyright, 1921, by The McCall Company_
_Copyright, 1920, 1921, 1922, By the Curtis Publishing Company_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO LOUISE FOX CONNELL
_My Wife Who Helped Me With These Stories_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I _The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon_ 11
II _Mr. Pottle and the South-Sea Cannibals_ 31
III _Mr. Pottle and Culture_ 51
IV _Mr. Pottle and the One Man Dog_ 69
V _Mr. Pottle and Pageantry_ 101
VI _The Cage Man_ 127
VII _Where is the Tropic of Capricorn?_ 145
VIII _Mr. Braddy's Bottle_ 165
IX _Gretna Greenhorns_ 187
X _Terrible Epps_ 207
XI _Honor Among Sportsmen_ 239
XII _The $25,000 Jaw_ 263
I: _The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon_
Moistening the tip of his immaculate handkerchief, M. Alphonse Marie
Louis Camille Pettipon deftly and daintily rubbed an almost
imperceptible speck of dust from the mirror in Stateroom C 341 of the
liner _Voltaire_ of the Paris-New York Steamship Company, and a little
sigh of happiness fluttered his double chins.
He set about his task of making up the berths in the stateroom with the
air of a high priest performing a sacerdotal ritual. His big pink hands
gently smoothed the crinkles from the linen pillow cases; the woolen
blankets he arranged in neat, folded triangles and stood off to survey
the effect as an artist might. And, indeed, Monsieur Pettipon considered
himself an artist.
To him the art of being a steward was just as estimable as the art of
being a poet; he was a Shelley of the dustpan; a Keats of the sheets. To
him the making up of a berth in one of the cabins he tended was a
sonnet; an orange pip or burnt match on the floor was as intolerable as
a false quantity. Few poets took as much pains with their pens as he did
with his whisk. He loved his work with a zeal almost fanatical.
Lowering himself to his plump knees, Monsieur Pettipon swept the floor
with a busy brush, humming the while a little Provence song:
_"My mama's at Paris,
My papa's at Versailles,
But me, I am here,
Sleeping in the straw._
CHORUS:
_"Oo la la,
Oo la la,
Oo la, oo la,
Oo la la."_
As he sang the series of "Oo la las" he kept time with strokes of his
brush, one stroke to each "la," until a microscope could not have
detected the smallest crumb of foreign matter on the red carpet.
Then he hoisted himself wheezily to his feet and with critical eye
examined the cabin. It was perfection. Once more he sighed the happy
little sigh of work well done; then he gathered up his brush, his
dustpan and his collection of little cleaning rags and entered the
stateroom next door, where he expertly set about making things tidy to
an accompaniment of "Oo la las."
Suddenly in the midst of a "la la," he broke off, and his wide brow
puckered as an outward sign that some disquieting thought was stirring
beneath it. He was not going to be able to buy his little son Napoleon a
violin this trip either.
The look of contentment he usually wore while doing the work he loved
gave way to small furrows of worry. He was saying silently to himself:
"Ah, Alphonse, old boy, this violin situation is getting serious. Your
little Napoleon is thirteen, and it is at that tender age that virtuosos
begin to find themselves. And what is a virtuoso without a violin? You
should be a steward of the first class, old turnip, where each trip you
would be tipped the price of a violin; on second-class tips one cannot
buy even mouth organs. Alas!"
Each trip now, for months, Monsieur Pettipon had said to his wife as he
left his tiny flat in the Rue Dauphine, "This time, Therese, I will have
a millionaire. He will see with what care I smooth his sheets and pick
the banana skins from the floor, and he will say, 'This Pettipon is not
such a bad lot. I will give him twenty dollars.' Or he will write to M.
Victor Ronssoy about me, and Monsieur Ronssoy will order the captain to
order the chief steward to make me a steward of the first class, and
then, my dear, I will buy a violin the most wonderful for our little
cabbage."
To which the practical Therese would reply, "Millionaires do not travel
second class."
And Monsieur Pettipon would smile hopefully and say "Who can tell?"
although he knew perfectly well that she was right.
And Therese would pick a nonexistent hair from the worn collar of his
coat and remark, "Oh, if you were only a steward of the first class, my
Alphonse!"
"Patience, my dear Therese, patience," he would say, secretly glowing as
men do when their life ambition is touched on.
"Patience? Patience, indeed!" she would exclaim. "Have you not crossed
on the _Voltaire_ a hundred and twenty-seven times? Has a speck of dust
ever been found in one of your cabins? You should have been promoted
long ago. You are being done a dirtiness, Monsieur Pettipon."
And he would march off to his ship, wagging his big head.
This trip, clearly, there was no millionaire. In C 341 was a young
painter and his bride; his tip would be two dollars, and that would be
enough, for was he not a fellow artist? In C 342 were two lingerie
buyers from New York; they would exact much service, give hints of much
reward and, unless Monsieur Pettipon looked sharp, would slip away
without tipping him at all. In C 343 were school-teachers, two to a
berth; Monsieur Pettipon appraised them at five dollars for the party; C
344 contained two fat ladies--very sick; and C 345 contained two thin
ladies--both sick. Say a dollar each. In C 346 was a shaggy-bearded
individual--male--of unknown derivation, who spoke an explosive brand of
English, which burst out in a series of grunts, and who had economical
habits in the use of soap. It was doubtful, reasoned Monsieur Pettipon,
if the principle of tipping had ever penetrated the wild regions from
which this being unquestionably hailed. Years of experience had taught
Monsieur Pettipon to appraise with a quite uncanny accuracy the amount
of tips he would get from his clients, as he called them.
Still troubled in his mind over his inability to provide a new violin
for the promising Napoleon, Monsieur Pettipon went about his work, and
in the course of time reached Stateroom C 346 and tapped with soft
knuckles.
"Come," grunted the shaggy occupant.
Monsieur Pettipon, with an apologetic flood of "pardons," entered. He
stopped in some alarm. The shaggy one, in violently striped pajamas, was
standing in the center of the cabin, plainly very indignant about
something. He fixed upon Monsieur Pettipon a pair of accusing eyes. With
the air of a conjurer doing a trick he thrust his hand, palm upward,
beneath the surprised nose of Monsieur Pettipon.
"Behold!" cried the shaggy one in a voice of thunder.
Monsieur Pettipon peered into the outstretched hand. In the cupped palm
was a small dark object. It was alive.
Monsieur Pettipon, speechless with horror, regarded the thing with round
unbelieving eyes. He felt as if he had been struck a heavy, stunning
blow.
At last with a great effort he asked weakly, "You found him here,
monsieur?"
"I found him here," declared the shaggy one, nodding his bushy head
toward his berth.
The world of Monsieur Pettipon seemed to come crashing down around his
ears.
"Impossible!" panted Monsieur Pettipon. "It could not be."
"It could be," said the shaggy one sternly, "because it was."
He continued to hold the damnatory evidence within a foot of Monsieur
Pettipon's staring incredulous eyes.
"But, monsieur," protested the steward, "I tell you the thing could not
be. One hundred and twenty-seven times have I crossed on this
_Voltaire_, and such a thing has not been. Never, never, never."
"I did not make him," put in the passenger, with a show of irony.
"No, no! Of course monsieur did not make him. That is true. But perhaps
monsieur----"
The gesture of the overwhelmed Pettipon was delicate but pregnant.
The shaggy passenger glared ferociously at the steward.
"Do you mean I brought him with me?" he demanded in a terrible voice.
Monsieur Pettipon shrugged his shoulders.
"Such things happen," he said soothingly. "When one travels----"
The shaggy one interrupted him.
"He is not mine!" he exploded bellicosely. "He never was mine. I found
him here, I tell you. Here! Something shall be done about this."
Monsieur Pettipon had begun to tremble; tiny moist drops bedewed his
expanse of brow; to lose his job would be tragedy enough; but this--this
would be worse than tragedy; it would be disgrace. His artistic
reputation was at stake. His career was tottering on a hideous brink.
All Paris, all France would know, and would laugh at him.
"Give me the little devil," he said humbly. "I, myself, personally, will
see to it that he troubles you no more. He shall perish at once,
monsieur; he shall die the death. You will have fresh bedding, fresh
carpet, fresh everything. There will be fumigations. I beg that monsieur
will think no more of it."
Savagely he took the thing between plump thumb and forefinger and bore
it from the stateroom, holding it at arm's length. In the corridor, with
the door shut on the shaggy one, Monsieur Pettipon, feverishly agitated,
muttered again and again, "He did bring it with him. He did bring it
with him."
All that night Monsieur Pettipon lay in his berth, stark awake, and
brooded. The material side of the affair was bad enough. The shaggy one
would report the matter to the head steward of the second class;
Monsieur Pettipon would be ignominiously discharged; the sin, he had to
admit, merited the extremest penalty. Jobs are hard to get, particularly
when one is fat and past forty. He saw the Pettipons ejected from their
flat; he saw his little Napoleon a cafe waiter instead of a virtuoso.
All this was misery enough. But it was the spiritual side that tortured
him most poignantly, that made him toss and moan as the waves swished
against the liner's sides and an ocean dawn stole foggily through the
porthole. He was a failure at the work he loved.
Consider the emotions of an artist who suddenly realizes that his
masterpiece is a tawdry smear; consider the shock to a gentleman, proud
of his name, who finds a blot black as midnight on the escutcheon he had
for many prideful years thought stainless. To the mind of the crushed
Pettipon came the thought that even though his job was irretrievably
lost he still might be able to save his honor.
As early as it was possible he went to the head steward of the second
class, his immediate superior.
There were tears in Monsieur Pettipon's eyes and voice as he said,
"Monsieur Deveau, a great misfortune, as you have doubtless been
informed, has overtaken me."
The head steward of the second class looked up sharply. He was in a
bearish mood, for he had lost eleven francs at cards the night before.
"Well, Monsieur Pettipon?" he asked brusquely.
"Oh, he has heard about it, he has heard about it," thought Monsieur
Pettipon; and his voice trembled as he said aloud, "I have done faithful
work on the _Voltaire_ for twenty-two years, Monsieur Deveau, and such a
thing has never before happened."
"What thing? Of what do you speak? Out with it, man."
"This!" cried Monsieur Pettipon tragically.
He thrust out his great paw of a hand; in it nestled a small dark
object, now lifeless.
The head steward gave it a swift examination.
"Ah!" he exclaimed petulantly. "Must you trouble me with your pets at
this time when I am busy?"
"Pets, monsieur?" The aghast Pettipon raised protesting hands toward
heaven. "Oh, never in this life, monsieur the head steward."
"Then why do you bring him to me with such great care?" demanded the
head steward. "Do you think perhaps, Monsieur Pettipon, that I wish to
discuss entomology at six in the morning? I assure you that such a thing
is not a curiosity to me. I have lived, Monsieur Pettipon."
"But--but he was in one of my cabins," groaned Monsieur Pettipon.
"Indeed?" The head steward was growing impatient. "I did not suppose you
had caught him with a hook and line. Take him away. Drown him. Bury him.
Burn him. Do I care?"
"He is furious," thought Monsieur Pettipon, "at my sin. But he is
pretending not to be. He will save up his wrath until the _Voltaire_
returns to France, and then he will denounce me before the whole ship's
company. I know these long-nosed Normans. Even so, I must save my honor
if I can."
He leaned toward the head steward and said with great earnestness of
tone, "I assure you, monsieur the head steward, that I took every
precaution. The passenger who occupies the cabin is, between ourselves,
a fellow of great dirtiness. I am convinced he brought this aboard with
him. I have my reasons, monsieur. Did I not say to Georges Prunier--he
is steward in the corridor next to mine--'Georges, old oyster, that
hairy fellow in C 346 has a look of itchiness which I do not fancy. I
must be on my guard.' You can ask Georges Prunier--an honest fellow,
monsieur the head steward--if I did not say this. And Georges said,
'Alphonse, my friend, I incline to agree with you.' And I said to
Georges, 'Georges, my brave, it would not surprise me if----'"
The head steward of the second class broke in tartly: "You should write
a book of memoirs, Monsieur Pettipon. When I have nothing to do I will
read it. But now have I not a thousand and two things to do? Take away
your pet. Have him stuffed. Present him to a museum. Do I care?" He
started to turn from Monsieur Pettipon, whose cheeks were quivering like
spilled jelly.
"I entreat you, Monsieur Deveau," begged Pettipon, "to consider how for
twenty-two years, three months and a day, such a thing had not happened
in my cabins. This little rascal--and you can see how tiny he is--is the
only one that has ever been found, and I give you my word, the word of a
Pettipon, that he was not there when we sailed. The passenger brought
him with him. I have my reasons----"
"Enough!" broke in the head steward of the second class with mounting
irritation. "I can stand no more. Go back to your work, Monsieur
Pettipon."
He presented his back to Monsieur Pettipon. Sick at heart the adipose
steward went back to his domain. As he made the cabins neat he did not
sing the little song with the chorus of "oo la las."
"There was deep displeasure in that Norman's eye," said Monsieur
Pettipon to himself. "He does not believe that the passenger is to
blame. Your goose is cooked, my poor Alphonse. You must appeal to the
chief steward."
To the chief steward, in his elaborate office in the first class, went
Monsieur Pettipon, nervously opening and shutting his fat fists.
The chief steward, a tun of a man, bigger even than Monsieur Pettipon,
peeped at his visitor from beneath waggish, furry eyebrows.
"I am Monsieur Pettipon," said the visitor timidly. "For twenty-two
years, three months and a day, I have been second-class steward on the
_Voltaire_, and never monsieur the chief steward, has there been a
complaint, one little complaint against me. One hundred and twenty-seven
trips have I made, and never has a single passenger said----"
"I'm sorry," interrupted the chief steward, "but I can't make you a
first-class steward. No vacancies. Next year, perhaps; or the year
after----"
"Oh, it isn't that," said Monsieur Pettipon miserably. "It is this."
He held out his hand so that the chief steward could see its contents.
"Ah?" exclaimed the chief steward, arching his furry brows. "Is this
perhaps a bribe, monsieur?"
"Monsieur the chief steward is good enough to jest," said Pettipon,
standing first on one foot and then on the other in his embarrassment,
"but I assure you that it has been a most serious blow to me."
"Blow?" repeated the chief steward. "Blow? Is it that in the second
class one comes to blows with them?"
"He knows about it all," thought Monsieur Pettipon. "He is making game
of me." His moon face stricken and appealing, Monsieur Pettipon
addressed the chief steward. "He brought it with him, monsieur the chief
steward. I have my reasons----"
"Who brought what with whom?" queried the chief steward with a trace of
asperity.
"The passenger brought this aboard with him," explained Monsieur
Pettipon. "I have good reasons, monsieur, for making so grave a charge.
Did I not say to Georges Prunier--he is in charge of the corridor next
to mine--'Georges, old oyster, that hairy fellow in C 346 has a look of
itchiness which I do not fancy. I must be on my guard.' You can ask
Georges Prunier--a thoroughly reliable fellow, monsieur, a wearer of the
military medal, and the son of the leading veterinarian in Amiens--if I
did not say this. And Georges said----"
The chief steward held up a silencing hand.
"Stop, I pray you, before my head bursts," he commanded. "Your repartee
with Georges is most affecting, but I do not see how it concerns a busy
man like me."
"But the passenger said he found this in his berth!" wailed Monsieur
Pettipon, wringing his great hands.
"My compliments to monsieur the passenger," said the chief steward, "and
tell him that there is no reward."
"Now I am sure he is angry with me," said Monsieur Pettipon to himself.
"These sly, smiling, fat fellows! I must convince him of my innocence."
Monsieur Pettipon laid an imploring hand on the chief steward's sleeve.
"I can only say," said Monsieur Pettipon in the accents of a man on the
gallows, "that I did all within the power of one poor human to prevent
this dreadful occurrence. I hope monsieur the chief steward will believe
that. I cannot deny that the thing exists"--as he spoke he sadly
contemplated the palm of his hand--"and that the evidence is against me.
But in my heart I know I am innocent. I can only hope that monsieur
will take into account my long and blameless service, my one hundred and
twenty-seven trips, my twenty-two years, three months and----"
"My dear Pettipon," said the chief steward with a ponderous jocosity,
"try to bear your cross. The only way the _Voltaire_ can atone for this
monstrous sin of yours is to be sunk, here, now and at once. But I'm
afraid the captain and Monsieur Ronssoy might object. Get along now,
while I think up a suitable penance for you."
As he went with slow, despairing steps to his quarters Monsieur Pettipon
said to himself, "It is clear he thinks me guilty. Helas! Poor
Alphonse." For long minutes he sat, his huge head in his hands,
pondering.
"I must, I shall appeal to him again," he said half aloud. "There are
certain points he should know. What Georges Prunier said, for instance."
So back he went to the chief steward.
"Holy Blue!" cried that official. "You? Again? Found another one?"
"No, no, monsieur the chief steward," replied Monsieur Pettipon in
agonies; "there is only one. In twenty-two years there has been only
one. He brought it with him. Ask Georges Prunier if I did not say----"
"Name of a name!" burst out the chief steward. "Am I to hear all that
again? Did I not say to forget the matter?"
"Forget, monsieur? Could Napoleon forget Waterloo? I beg that you permit
me to explain."
"Oh, bother you and your explanations!" cried the chief steward with the
sudden impatience common to fat men. "Take them to some less busy man.
The captain, for example."
Monsieur Pettipon bowed himself from the office, covered with confusion
and despair. Had not the chief steward refused to hear him? Did not the
chief steward's words imply that the crime was too heinous for any one
less than the captain himself to pass judgment on it? To the captain
Monsieur Pettipon would have to go, although he dreaded to do it, for
the captain was notoriously the busiest and least approachable man on
the ship. Desperation gave him courage. Breathless at his own temerity,
pink as a peony with shame, Monsieur Pettipon found himself bowing
before a blur of gold and multi-hued decorations that instinct rather
than his reason told him was the captain of the _Voltaire_.
The captain was worried about the fog, and about the presence aboard of
M. Victor Ronssoy, the president of the line, and his manner was brisk
and chilly.
"Did I ring for you?" he asked.
"No," jerked out Monsieur Pettipon, "but if the captain will pardon the
great liberty, I have a matter of the utmost importance on which I wish
to address him."
"Speak, man, speak!" shot out the captain, alarmed by Monsieur
Pettipon's serious aspect. "Leak? Fire? Somebody overboard? What?"
"No, no!" cried Monsieur Pettipon, trickles of moist emotion sliding
down the creases of his round face. "Nobody overboard; no leak; no fire.
But--monsieur the captain--behold this!"
He extended his hand and the captain bent his head over it with quick
interest.
For a second the captain stared at the thing in Monsieur Pettipon's
hand; then he stared at Monsieur Pettipon.
"Ten thousand million little blue devils, what does this mean?" roared
the captain. "Have you been drinking?"
Monsieur Pettipon quaked to the end of his toes.
"No, no!" he stammered. "I am only too sober, monsieur the captain, and
I do not blame you for being enraged. The _Voltaire_ is your ship, and
you love her, as I do. I feel this disgrace even more than you can,
monsieur the captain, believe me. But I beg of you do not be hasty; my
honor is involved. I admit that this thing was found in one of my
cabins. Consider my horror when he was found. It was no less than yours,
monsieur the captain. But I give you my word, the word of a Pettipon,
that----"
The captain stopped the rush of words with, "Compose yourself. Come to
the point."
"Point, monsieur the captain?" gasped Pettipon. "Is it not enough
point that this thing was found in one of my cabins? Such a thing--in
the cabin of Monsieur Alphonse Marie Louis Camille Pettipon! Is that
nothing? For twenty-two years have I been steward in the second class,
and not one of these, not so much as a baby one, has ever been found. I
am beside myself with chagrin. My only defense is that a passenger--a
fellow of dirtiness, monsieur the captain--brought it with him.
He denies it. I denounce him as a liar the most barefaced. For
did I not say to Georges Prunier--a fellow steward and a man of
integrity--'Georges, old oyster, that hairy fellow in C 346 has a look
of itchiness which I do not fancy. I must be on my guard.' And Georges
said----"
The captain, with something like a smile playing about among his
whiskers, interrupted with, "So this is the first one in twenty-two
years, eh? We'll have to look into this, Monsieur Pettipon. Good day."
"Look into this," groaned Pettipon as he stumbled down a gangway. "I
know what that means. Ah, poor Therese! Poor Napoleon!"
He looked down at the great, green, hungry waves with a calculating eye;
he wondered if they would be cold. He placed a tentative hand on the
rail. Then an inspiration came to him. M. Victor Ronssoy was aboard; he
was the last court of appeal. Monsieur Pettipon would dare, for the sake
of his honor, to go to the president of the line himself. For tortured
minutes Alphonse Pettipon paced up and down, and something closely
resembling sobs shook his huge frame as he looked about his little
kingdom and thought of his impending banishment. At last by a supreme
effort of will he nerved himself to go to the suite of Monsieur Ronssoy.
It was a splendid suite of five rooms, and Monsieur Pettipon had more
than once peeked into it when it was empty and had noted with fascinated
eyes the perfection of its appointments. But now he twice turned from
the door, his courage oozing from him. On the third attempt, with the
recklessness of a condemned man, he rapped on the door.
The president of the line was a white-haired giant with a chin like an
anvil and bright humorous eyes, like a kingfisher.
"Monsieur Ronssoy," began the flustered, damp-browed Pettipon in a
faltering voice, "I have only apologies to make for this intrusion. Only
a matter of the utmost consequence could cause me to take the liberty."
The president's brow knitted anxiously.
"Out with it," he ordered. "Are we sinking? Have we hit an iceberg?"
"No, no, monsieur the president! But surely you have heard what I,
Alphonse Pettipon, steward in the second class, found in one of my
cabins?"
"Oh, so you're Pettipon!" exclaimed the president, and his frown
vanished. "Ah, yes; ah, yes."
"He knows of my disgrace," thought Monsieur Pettipon, mopping his
streaming brow. "Now all is lost indeed." Hanging his head he addressed
the president: "Alas, yes, I am none other than that unhappy Pettipon,"
he said mournfully. "But yesterday, monsieur, I was a proud man. This
was my one hundred and twenty-eighth trip on the _Voltaire_. I had not a
mark against me. But the world has been black for me, monsieur the
president, since I found this."
He held out his hand so that the president could view the remains lying
in it.
"Ah," exclaimed the president, adjusting his pince-nez, "a perfect
specimen!"
"But note, monsieur the president," begged Monsieur Pettipon, "that he
is a mere infant. But a few days old, I am sure. He could not have been
aboard long. One can see that. I am convinced that it was the passenger
who brought him with him. I have my reasons for making this serious
charge, Monsieur Ronssoy. Good reasons too. Did I not say to Georges
Prunier--a steward of the strictest honesty, monsieur--'Georges, old
oyster, that hairy fellow in C 346 has a look of itchiness which I do
not fancy.' And Georges said, 'Alphonse, my friend----'"
"Most interesting," murmured the president. "Pray proceed."
With a wealth of detail and with no little passion Monsieur Pettipon
told his story. The eyes of the president encouraged him, and he told of
little Napoleon and the violin, and of his twenty-two years on the
_Voltaire_ and how proud he was of his work as a steward, and how severe
a blow the affair had been to him.
When he had finished, Monsieur Ronssoy said, "And you thought it
necessary to report your discovery to the head steward of the second
class?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And to the chief steward?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And to the captain?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And finally to me, the president of the line?"
"Even so, monsieur," said the perspiring Pettipon.
M. Victor Ronssoy regarded him thoughtfully.
"Monsieur Pettipon," he said, "the sort of man I like is the man who
takes his job seriously. You would not have raised such a devil of a
fuss about so small a thing as this if you were not that sort of man. I
am going to have you made steward of my suite immediately, Monsieur
Pettipon. Now you may toss that thing out of the porthole."
"Oh, no, monsieur!" cried Alphonse Pettipon, great, grateful tears
rushing to his eyes. "Never in this life! Him I shall keep always in my
watch charm."
II: _Mr. Pottle and the South-Sea Cannibals_
Sec.1
Mr. Pottle was a barber, but also a man of imagination, and as his hands
went through their accustomed motions, his mind was far away, recalling
what he had read the night before.
"Bright Marquesas sunlight glinted from the cutlass of the
intrepid explorer as with a sweep of his arm he brought the
blade down on the tattooed throat of the man-eating savage."
Mr. Pottle's errant mind was jerked back sharply from the South Seas to
Granville, Ohio, by a protesting voice.
"Hey, Pottle, what's bitin' you? You took a slice out o' my Adam's apple
that time."
Mr. Pottle, with apologetic murmurs, rubbed the wound with an alum
stick; then he dusted his victim with talcum powder, and gave the
patented chair a little kick, so that its occupant was shot bolt
upright.
"Bay rum?" asked Mr. Pottle, professionally.
"Nope."
"Dandruff-Death?"
"Nope."
"Sweet Lilac Tonic?"
"Nope."
"Plain water?"
"Yep."
"Naked savages danced and howled round the great pot in which
the trussed explorer had been placed. The cannibal chief,
fire-brand in hand, made ready to ignite the fagots under the
pot. It began to look bad for the explorer."
Again a shrill voice of protest punctured Mr. Pottle's day-dream.
"Hey, Pottle, come to life! You've went and put Sweet Lilac Tonic on me
'stead of plain water. I ain't going to no coon ball. You've gone and
smelled me up like a screamin' geranium."
"Why, so I have, so I have," said Mr. Pottle, in accents of surprise and
contrition. "Sorry, Luke. It'll wear off in a day or two. Guess I must
be gettin' absent-minded."
"That's what you said last Saddy when you clipped a piece out o' Virgil
Overholt's ear," observed Luke, with some indignation. "What's bitin'
you, anyhow, Pottle? You used to be the best barber in the county before
you took to readin' them books."
"What books?"
"All about cannibals and explorers and the South-Sea Islands," answered
Luke.
"They're good books," said Mr. Pottle warmly. His eyes brightened. "I
just got a new one," he said. "It's called 'Green Isles, Brown
Man-Eaters, and a White Man.' I sat up till two readin' it. It's about
the Marquesas Islands, and it's a darn' excitin' book, Luke."
"It excited you so much you sliced my Adam's apple," grumbled Luke,
clamping on his rubber collar. "You had better cut out this fool
readin'."
"Don't you ever read, Luke?"
"Sure I do. 'The Mornin' News-Press' for week-days, 'The P'lice Gazette'
when I come here to get shaved Saddy nights, and the Bible for Sundays.
That's readin' enough for any man."
"Did you ever read 'Robinson Crusoe'?"
"Nope, but I heard him."
"Heard him? Heard who?"
"Crusoe," said Luke, snapping his ready-tied tie into place.
"Heard him? You couldn't have heard him."
"I couldn't, hey? Well, I did."
"Where?" demanded Mr. Pottle.
"Singin' on a phonograph," said Luke.
Mr. Pottle said nothing; Luke was a regular customer, and in successful
modern business the customer is always right. However, Mr. Pottle seized
a strop and by his vigorous stroppings silently expressed his disgust at
a man who hadn't heard of "Robinson Crusoe," for Robinson was one of Mr.
Pottle's deities.
When Luke reached the door, he turned.
"Say, Pottle," he said, "if you're so nutty about these here South Sea
Islands, why don't you go there?"
Mr. Pottle ceased his stropping.
"I am going," he said.
Luke gave a dubious hoot and vanished. He did not realize that he had
heard Mr. Pottle make the big decision of his life.
Sec.2
That night Mr. Pottle finished the book, and dreamed, as he had dreamed
on many a night since the lure of the South Seas first cast a spell on
him, that in a distant, sun-loved isle, bright with greens and purples,
he reclined beneath the _mana-mana-hine_ (or umbrella fern) on his own
_paepae_ (or platform), a scarlet _pareu_ (or breech-clout) about his
middle, a yellow _hibiscus_ flower in his hair, while the _kukus_ (or
small green turtle-doves) cooed in the branches of the _pevatvii_ (or
banana-tree), and _Bunnidori_ (that is, she, with the Lips of Love), a
tawny maid of wondrous beauty, played softly to him on the ukulele. The
tantalizing fragrance of a bowl of _popoi_ (or pudding) mingled in his
nostrils with the more delicate perfume of the golden blossoms of the
_puu-epu_ (or mulberry-tree). A sound in the jungle, a deep _boom! boom!
boom!_ roused him from this reverie.
"What is it, O Bunnidori?" he asked.
"'Tis a feast, O my Pottle, Lord of the Menikes (that is, white men),"
lisped his companion.
"Upon what do the men in the jungle feast, O plump and pleasing daughter
of delight?" inquired Mr. Pottle, who was up on Polynesian etiquette.
She lowered her already low voice still lower.
"Upon the long pig that speaks," she whispered.
A delicious shudder ran down the spine of the sleeping Mr. Pottle, for
from his reading he knew that "the long pig that speaks" means--man!
For Mr. Pottle had one big ambition, one great suppressed desire. It was
the dearest wish of his thirty-six years of life to meet a cannibal, a
real cannibal, face to face, eye to eye.
Next day he sold his barber's shop. Two months and seventeen days later
he was unpacking his trunk in the tiny settlement of Vait-hua, in the
Marquesas Islands, in the heart of the South Seas.
The air was balmy, the sea deep purple, the nodding palms and giant
ferns of the greenest green were exactly as advertised; but when the
first week or two of enchantment had worn off, Mr. Pottle owned to a
certain feeling of disappointment.
He tasted _popoi_ and found it rather nasty; the hotel in which he
stayed--the only one--was deficient in plumbing, but not in fauna. The
natives--he had expected great things of the natives--were remarkably
like underdone Pullman porters wrapped in bandana handkerchiefs. They
were not exciting, they exhibited no inclination to eat Mr. Pottle or
one another, they coveted his pink shirt, and begged for a drink from
his bottle of Sweet Lilac Tonic.
He mentioned his disappointment at these evidences of civilization to
Tiki Tiu, the astute native who kept the general store.
Mr. Pottle's mode of conversation was his own invention. From the books
he had read he improvised a language. It was simple. He gave English
words a barbaric sound, usually by suffixing "um" or "ee," shouted them
at the top of his voice into the ear of the person with whom he was
conversing, and repeated them in various permutations. He addressed Tiki
Tiu with brisk and confident familiarity.
"Helloee, Tiki Tiu. Me wantum see can-balls. Can-balls me wantum see. Me
see can-balls wantum."
The venerable native, who spoke seventeen island dialects and tongues,
and dabbled in English, Spanish, and French, appeared to apprehend his
meaning; indeed, one might almost have thought he had heard this
question before, for he answered promptly:
"No more can-balls here. All Baptists."
"Where are can-balls? Can-balls where are? Where can-balls are?"
demanded Mr. Pottle.
Tiki Tiu closed his eyes and let blue smoke filter through his nostrils.
Finally he said:
"Isle of O-pip-ee."
"Isle of O-pip-ee?" Mr. Pottle grew excited. "Where is? Is where?"
"Two hundred miles south," answered Tiki Tiu.
Mr. Pottle's eyes sparkled. He was on the trail.
"How go there? Go there how? There go how?" he asked.
Tiki Tiu considered. Then he said:
"I take. Nice li'l' schooner."
"How much?" asked Mr. Pottle. "Much how?"
Tiki Tiu considered again.
"Ninety-three dol's," he said.
"Goodum!" cried Mr. Pottle, and counted the proceeds of 186 hair-cuts
into the hand of Tiki Tiu.
"You take me to-mollow? To-mollow you take me? Me you take to-mollow?
To-mollow? To-mollow? To-mollow?" asked Mr. Pottle.
"Yes," promised Tiki Tiu; "to-mollow."
Mr. Pottle stayed up all night packing; from time to time he referred to
much-thumbed copies of "Robinson Crusoe" and "Green Isles, Brown
Man-Eaters, and a White Man."
Tiki Tiu's nice li'l' schooner deposited Mr. Pottle and his impedimenta
on the small, remote Isle of O-pip-ee; Tiki Tiu agreed to return for him
in a month.
"This is something like it," exclaimed Mr. Pottle as he unpacked his
camera, his ukulele, his razors, his canned soup, his heating outfit,
and his bathing-suit. Only the wild parrakeets heard him; save for their
calls, an ominous silence hung over the thick foliage of O-pip-ee. There
was not the ghost of a sign of human habitation.
Mr. Pottle, vaguely apprehensive of sharks, pitched his pup-tent far up
on the beach; to-morrow would be time enough to look for cannibals.
He lay smoking and thinking. He was happy. The realization of a life's
ambition lay, so to speak, just around the corner. To-morrow he could
turn that corner--if he wished.
He squirmed as something small nibbled at his hip-bone, and he wondered
why writers of books on the South Seas make such scant mention of the
insects. Surely they must have noticed the little creatures, which had,
he discovered, a way of making their presence felt.
He wondered, too, now that he came to think of it, if he hadn't been a
little rash in coming alone to a cannibal-infested isle with no weapons
of defense but a shot-gun, picked up at a bargain at the last minute,
and his case of razors. True, in all the books by explorers he had read,
the explorer never once had actually been eaten; he always lived to
write the book. But what about the explorers who had not written books?
What had happened to them?
He flipped a centipede off his ankle, and wondered if he hadn't been
just a little too impulsive to sell his profitable barber-shop, to come
many thousand miles over strange waters, to maroon himself on the lonely
Isle of O-pip-ee. At Vait-hua he had heard that cannibals do not fancy
white men for culinary purposes. He gave a little start as he looked
down at his own bare legs and saw that the tropic sun had already
tinted them a coffee hue.
Mr. Pottle did not sleep well that night; strange sounds made his eyes
fly open. Once it was a curious scuttling along the beach. Peeping out
from his pup-tent, he saw half a dozen _tupa_ (or giant tree-climbing
crabs) on a nocturnal raid on a cocoanut-grove. Later he heard the big
nuts come crashing down. The day shift of insects had quit, and the
night shift, fresh and hungry, came to work; inquisitive vampire bats
butted their soft heads against his tent.
At dawn he set about finding a permanent abode. He followed a small
fresh-water stream two hundred yards inland, and came to a coral cave by
a pool, a ready-made home, cool and, more important, well concealed. He
spent the day settling down, chasing out the bats, putting up
mosquito-netting, tidying up. He dined well off cocoanut milk and canned
sardines, and was so tired that he fell asleep before he could change
his bathing-suit for pajamas. He slept fairly well, albeit he dreamed
that two cannibal kings were disputing over his prostrate form whether
he would be better as a ragout or stuffed with chestnuts.
Waking, he decided to lie low and wait for the savages to show
themselves, for he knew from Tiki Tiu that the Isle of O-pip-ee was not
more than seven miles long and three or four miles wide; sooner or later
they must pass near him. He figured that there was logic in this plan,
for no cannibal had seen him land; therefore he knew that the cannibals
were on the isle, but they did not know that he was. The advantage was
his.
Sec.3
For days he remained secluded, subsisting on canned foods, cocoanuts,
_mei_ (or breadfruit), and an occasional boiled baby _feke_ (or young
devil-fish), a nest of which Mr. Pottle found on one furtive moonlight
sally to the beach.
Emboldened by this sally and by the silence of the woods, Mr. Pottle
made other expeditions away from his cave; on one he penetrated fully
five hundred yards into the jungle. He was prowling, like a Cooper
Indian, among the _faufee_ (or lacebark-trees) when he heard a sound
that sent him scurrying and quaking back to his lair.
It was a faint sound that the breezes bore to him, so faint that he
could not be sure; but it sounded like some far-off barbaric instrument
mingling its dim notes with those of a human voice raised in a weird,
primeval chant.
But the savages did not show themselves, and finding no cannibals by
night, Mr. Pottle grew still bolder; he ventured on short explorations
by day. He examined minutely his own cove, and then one morning crept
over a low ledge and into the next cove. He made his way cautiously
along the smooth, white beach. The morning was still, calm, beautiful.
Its peace all but drove thoughts of cannibals from his mind. He came to
a strip of land running into the sea; another cove lay beyond. Mr.
Pottle was an impulsive man; he pushed through the _keoho_ (or
thorn-bushes); his foot slipped; he rolled down a declivity and into the
next cove.
He did not stay there; he did not even tarry. What he saw sent him
dashing through the thorn-bushes and along the white sand like a
hundred-yard sprinter. In the sand of the cove were many imprints of
naked human feet.
A less stout-hearted man than Mr. Pottle would never have come out of
his cave again; but he had come eight thousand miles to see a cannibal.
An over-mastering desire had spurred him on; he would not give up now.
Of such stuff are Ohio barbers made.
Sec.4
A few days later, at twilight, he issued forth from his cave again.
Around his loins was a scarlet _pareu_; he had discarded his
bathing-suit as too civilized. In his long, black hair was a yellow
_hibiscus_ flower.
Like a burglar, he crept along the beach to the bushy promontory that
hid the cove where the foot-prints were, he wiggled through the bush, he
slid down to the third beach, and crouched behind a large rock. The
beach seemed deserted; the muttering of the ocean was the only sound Mr.
Pottle heard. Another rock, a dozen feet away, seemed to offer better
concealment, and he stepped out toward it, and then stopped short. Mr.
Pottle stood face to face with a naked, brown savage.
Mr. Pottle's feet refused to take him away; a paralysis such as one has
in nightmares rooted him to the spot. His returning faculties took in
these facts: first, the savage was unarmed; second, Mr. Pottle had
forgotten to bring his shot-gun. It was a case of man to man-eater.
The savage was large, well-fed, almost fat; his long black hair fringed
his head; he did not wear a particularly bloodthirsty expression;
indeed, he appeared startled and considerably alarmed.
Reason told Mr. Pottle that friendliness was the best policy.
Instinctively, he recalled the literature of his youth, and how Buffalo
Bill had acted in a like circumstance. He raised his right hand solemnly
in the air and ejaculated, "How!"
The savage raised his right hand solemnly in the air, and in the same
tone also ejaculated, "How!" Mr. Pottle had begun famously. He said
loudly:
"Who you? You who? Who you?"
The savage, to Mr. Pottle's surprise, answered after a brief moment:
"Me--Lee."
Here was luck. The man-eater could talk the Pottle lingo.
"Oh," said Mr. Pottle, to show that he understood, "you--Mealy."
The savage shook his head.
"No," he said; "Me--Lee. Me--Lee." He thumped his barrel-like chest with
each word.
"Oh, I see," cried Mr. Pottle; "you Mealy-mealy."
The savage made a face that among civilized people would have meant that
he did not think much of Mr. Pottle's intellect.
"Who you?" inquired Mealy-mealy.
Mr. Pottle thumped his narrow chest.
"Me, Pottle. Pottle!"
"Oh, you Pottle-pottle," said the savage, evidently pleased with his own
powers of comprehension.
Mr. Pottle let it go at that. Why argue with a cannibal? He addressed
the savage again.
"Mealy-mealy, you eatum long pig? Eatum long pig you? Long pig you
eatum?"
This question agitated Mealy-mealy. He trembled. Then he nodded his head
in the affirmative, a score of rapid nods.
Mr. Pottle's voice faltered a little as he asked the next question.
"Where you gottum tribe? You gottum tribe where? Tribe you gottum
where?"
Mealy-mealy considered, scowled, and said:
"Gottum velly big tribe not far. Velly fierce. Eatum long pig. Eatum
Pottle-pottle."
Mr. Pottle thought it would be a good time to go, but he could think of
no polite excuse for leaving. An idea occurred to Mealy-mealy.
"Where your tribe, Pottle-pottle?"
His tribe? Mr. Pottle's eyes fell on his own scarlet _pareu_ and the
brownish legs beneath it. Mealy-mealy thought he was a cannibal, too.
With all his terror, he had a second or two of unalloyed enjoyment of
the thought. Like all barbers, he had played poker. He bluffed.
"My tribe velly, velly, velly, velly, velly, velly big," he cried.
"Where is?" asked Mealy-mealy, visibly moved by this news.
"Velly near," cried Mr. Pottle; "hungry for long pig; for long pig
hungry----"
There was suddenly a brown blur on the landscape. With the agility of an
ape, the huge savage had turned, darted down the beach, plunged into the
bush, and disappeared.
"He's gone to get his tribe," thought Mr. Pottle, and fled in the
opposite direction.
When he reached his cave, panting, he tried to fit a cartridge into his
shot-gun; he'd die game, anyhow. But rust had ruined the neglected
weapon, and he flung it aside and took out his best razor. But no
cannibals came.
He was scared, but happy. He had seen his cannibal; more, he had talked
with him; more still, he had escaped gracing the festal board by a
snake's knuckle. He prudently decided to stay in his cave until the
sails of Tiki Tiu's schooner hove in sight.
Sec.5
But an instinct stronger than fear drove him out into the open: his
stock of canned food ran low, and large red ants got into his flour. He
needed cocoanuts and breadfruit and baby _fekes_ (or young octopi). He
knew that numerous succulent infant _fekes_ lurked in holes in his own
cove, and thither he went by night to pull them from their homes.
Hitherto he had encountered only small _fekes_, with tender tentacles
only a few feet long; but that night Mr. Pottle had the misfortune to
plunge his naked arm into the watery nest when the father of the family
was at home. He realized his error too late.
A clammy tentacle, as long as a fire hose, as strong as the arm of a
gorilla, coiled round his arm, and his scream was cut short as the giant
devil-fish dragged him below the water.
The water was shallow. Mr. Pottle got a foothold, forced his head above
water, and began to yell for help and struggle for his life.
The chances against a nude Ohio barber of 140 pounds in a wrestling
match with an adult octopus are exactly a thousand to one. The giant
_feke_ so despised his opponent that he used only two of his eight
muscular arms. In their slimy, relentless clutch Mr. Pottle felt his
strength going fast. As his favorite authors would have put it, "it
began to look bad for Mr. Pottle."
The thought that Mr. Pottle thought would be his last on this earth was,
"I wouldn't mind being eaten by cannibals, but to be drowned by a trick
fish----"
Mr. Pottle threshed about in one final, frantic flounder; his strength
gave out; he shut his eyes.
He heard a shrill cry, a splashing in the water, felt himself clutched
about the neck from behind, and dragged away from the _feke_. He opened
his eyes and struggled weakly. One tentacle released its grip. Mr.
Pottle saw by the tropic moon's light that some large creature was doing
battle with the _feke_. It was a man, a large brown man who with a busy
ax hacked the gristly limbs from the _feke_ as fast as they wrapped
around him. Mr. Pottle staggered to the dry beach; a tentacle was still
wound tight round his shoulder, but there was no octopus at the other
end of it.
The angry noise of the devil-fish--for, when wounded, they snarl like
kicked curs--stopped. The victorious brown man strode out of the water
to where Mr. Pottle swayed on the moonlit sand. It was Mealy-mealy.
"Bad fishum!" said Mealy-mealy, with a grin.
"Good manum!" cried Mr. Pottle, heartily.
Here was romance, here was adventure, to be snatched from the jaws, so
to speak, of death by a cannibal! It was unheard of. But a disquieting
thought occurred to Mr. Pottle, and he voiced it.
"Mealy-mealy, why you save me? Why save you me? Why you me save?"
Mealy-mealy's grin seemed to fade, and in its place came another look
that made Mr. Pottle wish he were back in the anaconda grip of the
_feke_.
"My tribe hungry for long pig," growled Mealy-mealy. He seemed to be
trembling with some powerful emotion. Hunger?
Mr. Pottle knew where his only chance for escape lay.
"My tribe velly, velly, velly hungry, too," he cried. "Velly, velly,
velly near."
He thrust his fingers into his mouth and gave a piercing school-boy
whistle. As if in answer to it there came a crashing and floundering in
the bushes. His bluff had worked only too well; it must be the fellow
man-eaters of Mealy-mealy.
Mr. Pottle turned and ran for his life. Fifty yards he sped, and then
realized that he did not hear the padding of bare feet on the sand
behind him or feel hot breath on the back of his neck. He dared to cast
a look over his shoulder. Far down the beach the moonlight showed him a
flying brown figure against the silver-white sand. It was Mealy-mealy,
and he was going in the opposite direction as fast as ever his legs
would take him.
Surprise drove fear temporarily from Mr. Pottle's mind as he watched the
big cannibal become a blur, then a speck, then nothing. As he watched
Mealy-mealy recede, he saw another dark figure emerge from the bush
where the noise had been, and move slowly out on the moon-strewn beach.
It was a baby wild pig. It sniffed at the ocean, squealed, and trotted
back into the bush.
As he gnawed his morning cocoanut, Mr. Pottle was still puzzled. He was
afraid of Mealy-mealy; that he admitted. But at the same time it was
quite clear that Mealy-mealy was afraid of him. He was excited and more
than a little gratified. What a book he could write! Should he call it
"Cannibal-Bound on O-pip-ee," or, "Cannibals Who have almost Eaten Me"?
Tiki Tiu's schooner would be coming for him very soon now,--he'd lost
track of the exact time,--and he would be almost reluctant to leave the
isle. Almost.
Mr. Pottle had another glimpse of a cannibal next day. Toward evening he
stole out to pick some supper from a breadfruit-tree not far from his
cave, a tree which produced particularly palatable _mei_ (or
breadfruit).
He drew his _pareu_ tight around him and slipped through the bushes; as
he neared the tree he saw another figure approaching it with equal
stealth from the opposite direction; the setting sun was reflected from
the burnished brown of the savage's shoulders. At the same time Mr.
Pottle spied the man, the man spied him. The savage stopped short,
wheeled about, and tore back in the direction from which he had come.
Mr. Pottle did not get a good look at his face, but he ran uncommonly
like Mealy-mealy.
Sec.6
Mr. Pottle thought it best not to climb the _mei_-tree that evening; he
returned hastily to his cave, and finished up the breakfast cocoanut.
Over a pipe he thought. He was pleased, thrilled by his sight of a
cannibal; but he was not wholly satisfied. He had thought it would be
enough for him to get one fleeting glimpse of an undoubted man-eater in
his native state, but it wasn't. Before he left the Isle of O-pip-ee he
wanted to see the whole tribe in a wild dance about a bubbling pot.
Tiki Tiu's schooner might come on the morrow. He must act.
He crept out of the cave and stood in the moonlight, breathing the
perfume of the jungle, feeling the cool night air, hearing the mellow
notes of the Polynesian nightingale. Adventure beckoned to him. He
started in the direction Mealy-mealy had run.
At first he progressed on tiptoes, then he sank to all fours, and
crawled along slowly, pig-wise. On, on he went; he must have crept more
than a mile when a sound stopped him--a sound he had heard before. It
was faint, yet it seemed near: it was the sound of some primitive
musical instrument blending with the low notes of a tribal chant. It
seemed to come from a sheltered hollow not two dozen yards ahead.
He crouched down among the ferns and listened. The chant was crooned
softly in a deep voice, and to the straining ears of Mr. Pottle it
seemed vaguely familiar, like a song heard in dreams. The words came
through the thick tangle of jungle weeds:
"Eeet slon ay a teep a ari."
Mr. Pottle, fascinated, wiggled forward to get a look at the tribe. Like
a snake, he made his tortuous approach. The singing continued; he saw a
faint glow through the foliage--the campfire. He eased himself to the
crest of a little hummock, pushed aside a great fern leaf and looked.
Sitting comfortably in a steamer-chair was Mealy-mealy. In his big brown
hands was a shiny banjo at which he plucked gently. Near his elbow food
with a familiar smell bubbled in an aluminum dish over a trim
canned-heat outfit; an empty baked-bean can with a gaudy label lay
beside it. From time to time Mealy-mealy glanced idly at a pink
periodical popular in American barber-shops. The song he sang to himself
burst intelligibly on Mr. Pottle's ears--
"It's a long way to Tipperary."
Mealy-mealy stopped; his eye had fallen on the staring eyes of Mr.
Pottle. He caught up his ax and was about to swing it when Mr. Pottle
stood up, stepped into the circle of light, pointed an accusing finger
at Mealy-mealy and said:
"Are you a cannibal?"
Mealy-mealy's ax and jaw dropped.
"What the devil are you?" he sputtered in perfect American.
"I'm a barber from Ohio," said Mr. Pottle.
Mealy-mealy emitted a sudden whooping roar of laughter.
"So am I," he said.
Mr. Pottle collapsed limply into the steamer-chair.
"What's your name?" he asked in a weak voice.
"Bert Lee, head barber at the Schmidt House, Bucyrus, Ohio," said the
big man. He slapped his fat, bare chest. "Me--Lee," he said, and laughed
till the jungle echoed.
"Did you read 'Green Isles, Brown Man-Eaters, and a White Man'?" asked
Mr. Pottle, feebly.
"Yes."
"I'd like to meet the man who wrote it," said Mr. Pottle.
III: _Mr. Pottle and Culture_
Out of the bathtub, rubicund and rotund, stepped Mr. Ambrose Pottle. He
anointed his hair with sweet spirits of lilac and dusted his anatomy
with crushed rosebud talcum. He donned a virgin union suit; a pair of
socks, silk where it showed; ultra low shoes; white-flannel trousers,
warm from the tailor's goose; a creamy silk shirt; an impeccable blue
coat; a gala tie, perfect after five tyings; and then went forth into
the spring-scented eventide to pay a call on Mrs. Blossom Gallup.
He approached her new-art bungalow as one might a shrine, with diffident
steps and hesitant heart, but with delicious tinglings radiating from
his spinal cord. Only the ballast of a three-pound box of Choc-O-late
Nutties under his arm kept him on earth. He was in love.
To be in love for the first time at twenty is passably thrilling; but to
be in love for the first time at thirty-six is exquisitely excruciating.
Mr. Pottle found Mrs. Gallup in her living room, a basket of undarned
stockings on her lap. With a pretty show of confusion and many
embarrassed murmurings she thrust them behind the piano, he protesting
that this intimate domesticity delighted him.
She sank back with a little sigh into a gay-chintzed wicker chair, and
the rosy light from a tall piano lamp fell gently on her high-piled
golden hair, her surprised blue eyes, and the ripe, generous outlines of
her figure. To Mr. Pottle she was a dream of loveliness, a poem, an
idyl. He would have given worlds, solar systems to have been able to
tell her so. But he couldn't. He couldn't find the words, for, like many
another sterling character in the barbers' supply business, he was not
eloquent; he did not speak with the fluent ease, the masterful flow that
comes, one sees it often said, from twenty-one minutes a day of
communion with the great minds of all time. His communings had been
largely with boss barbers; with them he was cheery and chatty. But Mrs.
Gallup and her intellectual interests were a world removed from things
tonsorial; in her presence he was tongue-tied as an oyster.
Mr. Pottle's worshiping eye roved from the lady to her library, and his
good-hearted face showed tiny furrows of despair; an array of fat crisp
books in shiny new bindings stared at him: Twenty-one Minutes' Daily
Communion With the Master Minds; Capsule Chats on Poets, Philosophers,
Painters, Novelists, Interior Decorators; Culture for the Busy Man, six
volumes, half calf; How to Build Up a Background; Talk Tips; YOU, Too,
Can Be Interesting; Sixty Square Feet of Self-Culture--and a score more.
"Culture"--always that wretched word!
"Are you fond of reading, Mr. Pottle?" asked Mrs. Gallup, popping a
Choc-O-late Nuttie into her demure mouth with a daintiness almost
ethereal.
"Love it," he answered promptly.
"Who is your favorite poet?"
"S-Shakspere," he ventured desperately.
"He's mine, too." Mr. Pottle breathed easier.
"But," she added, "I think Longfellow is sweet, don't you?"
"Very sweet," agreed Mr. Pottle.
She smiled at him with a sad, shy confidence.
"He did not understand," she said.
She nodded her blonde head toward an enlarged picture of the late Mr.
Gallup, in the full regalia of Past Grand Master of the Beneficent Order
of Beavers.
"Didn't he care for--er--literature?" asked Mr. Pottle.
"He despised it," she replied. "He was wrapped up in the hay-and-feed
business. He began to talk about oats and chicken gravel on our
honeymoon."
Mr. Pottle made a sympathetic noise.
"In our six years of married life," she went on, "he talked of nothing
but duck fodder, carload lots, trade discounts, selling points, bran,
turnover----"
How futile, how inadequate seem mere words in some situations. Mr.
Pottle said nothing; timidly he took her hand in his; she did not draw
it away.
"And he only shaved on Saturday nights," she said.
Mr. Pottle's free hand went to his own face, smooth as steel and art
could make it.
"Blossom," he began huskily, "have you ever thought of marrying again?"
"I have," she answered, blushing--his hand on hers tightened--"and I
haven't," she finished.
"Oh, Blossom----" he began once more.
"If I do marry again," she interrupted, "it will be a literary man."
"A literary man?" His tone was aghast. "A writing fella?"
"Oh, not necessarily a writer," she said. "They usually live in garrets,
and I shouldn't like that. I mean a man who has read all sorts of
books, and who can talk about all sorts of things."
"Blossom"--Mr. Pottle's voice was humble--"I'm not what you might
call----"
There was a sound of clumping feet on the porch outside. Mrs. Gallup
started up.
"Oh, that must be him now!" she cried.
"Him? Who?"
"Why, Mr. Deeley."
"Who's he?" queried Mr. Pottle.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you! He said he might call to-night. Such a nice
man! I met him over in Xenia last week. Such a brilliant
conversationalist. I know you'll like each other."
She hastened to answer the doorbell; Mr. Pottle sat moodily in his
chair, not at all sure he'd like Mr. Deeley.
The brilliant conversationalist burst into the room breezily,
confidently. He was slightly smaller than a load of hay in his belted
suit of ecru pongee; he wore a satisfied air and a pleased mustache.
"Meet Mr. Pottle," said Mrs. Gallup.
"What name?" asked Mr. Deeley. His voice was high, sweet and loud; his
handshake was a knuckle pulverizer.
"Pottle," said the owner of that name.
"I beg pardon?" said Mr. Deeley.
"Pottle," said Mr. Pottle more loudly.
"Sorry," said Mr. Deeley affably, "but it sounds just like 'Pottle' to
me."
"That's what it is," said Mr. Pottle with dignity.
Mr. Deeley laughed a loud tittering laugh.
"Oh, well," he remarked genially, "you can't help that. We're born with
our names, but"--he bestowed a dazzling smile on Mrs. Gallup--"we pick
our own teeth."
"Oh, Mr. Deeley," she cried, "you do say the most ridiculously witty
things!"
Mr. Pottle felt a concrete lump forming in his bosom.
Mr. Deeley addressed him tolerantly. "What line are you in, Mr. Bottle?"
he asked.
"Barbers' supplies," admitted Mr. Pottle.
"Ah, yes. Barbers' supplies. How interesting," said Mr. Deeley.
"Climbing the lather of success, eh?"
Mr. Pottle did not join in the merriment.
"What line are you in?" he asked. He prayed that Mr. Deeley would say
"Shoes," for by a happy inspiration he was prepared to counter with,
"Ah, starting at the bottom," and thus split honors with the Xenian.
But Mr. Deeley did not say "Shoes." He said "Literature." Mrs. Gallup
beamed.
"Oh, are you, Mr. Deeley? How perfectly thrilling!" she said
rapturously. "I didn't know that."
"Oh, yes indeed," said Mr. Deeley. He changed the subject by turning to
Mr. Pottle. "By the way, Mr. Poodle, are you interested in Abyssinia?"
he inquired.
"Why, no--that is, not particularly," confessed Mr. Pottle. He looked
toward her who had quickened his pulse, but her eyes were fastened on
Mr. Deeley.
"I'm surprised to hear you say that," said Mr. Deeley. "A most
interesting place, Abyssinia--rather a specialty of mine."
He threw one plump leg over the other and leaned back comfortably.
"Abyssinia," he went on in his high voice, "is an inland country
situated by the Red Sea between 5 deg. and 15 deg. north latitude, and 35 deg. and
42 deg. east longitude. Its area is 351,019 square miles. Its population is
4,501,477. It includes Shoa, Kaffa, Gallaland and Central Somaliland.
Its towns include Adis-Ababa, Adowa, Adigrat, Aliu-Amber, Debra-Derhan
and Bonger. It produces coffee, salt and gold. The inhabitants are
morally very lax. Indeed, polygamy is a common practice, and----"
"Polly Gammy?" cried Mrs. Gallup in imitation of Mr. Deeley's
pronunciation. "Oh, what is that?"
Mr. Deeley smiled blandly.
"I think," he said, "that it is hardly the sort of thing I care to
discuss in--er--mixed company."
He helped himself to three of the Choc-O-late Nutties.
"That reminds me," he said, "of abbreviations."
"Abbreviations?" Mrs. Gallup looked her interest.
"The world," observed Mr. Deeley, "is full of them. For example, Mr.
Puttle, do you know what R. W. D. G. M. stands for?"
"No," answered Mr. Pottle glumly.
"It stands for Right Worshipful Deputy Grand Master," informed Mr.
Deeley. "Do you know what N. U. T. stands for?"
"I know what it spells," said Mr. Pottle pointedly.
"You ought to," said Mr. Deeley, letting off his laugh. "But we were
discussing abbreviations. Since you don't seem very well informed on
this point"--he shot a smile at Mrs. Gallup--"I'll tell you that N. U.
T. stands for National Union of Teachers, just as M. F. H. stands for
Master of Fox Hounds, and M. I. C. E. stands for Member of Institute of
Civil Engineers, and A. O. H. stands for----"
"Oh, Mr. Deeley, how perfectly thrilling!" Mrs. Gallup spoke; Mr. Pottle
writhed; Mr. Deeley smiled complacently, and went on.
"I could go on indefinitely; abbreviations are rather a specialty of
mine."
It developed that Mr. Deeley had many specialties.
"Are you aware," he asked, focusing his gaze on Mr. Pottle, "that there
is acid in this cherry?" He held aloft a candied cherry which he had
deftly exhumed from a Choc-O-late Nuttie.
"My goodness!" cried Mrs. Gallup. "Will it poison us? I've eaten six."
"My dear lady"--there was a world of tender reassurance in Mr. Deeley's
tone--"only the uninformed regard all acids as poisonous. There are
acids and acids. I've taken a rather special interest in them. Let's
see--there are many kinds--acetic, benzoic, citric, gallic, lactic,
malic, oxalic, palmitic, picric--but why go on?"
"Yes," said Mr. Pottle; "why?"
"Do not interrupt, Mr. Pottle, if you please," said Mrs. Gallup
severely. "I'm sure what Mr. Deeley says interests me immensely. Go on,
Mr. Deeley."
"Thank you, Mrs. Gallup; thank you," said the brilliant
conversationalist. "But don't you think alligators are more interesting
than acids?"
"You know about so many interesting things," she smiled. Mr. Pottle's
very soul began to curdle.
"Alligators are rather a specialty of mine," remarked Mr. Deeley.
"Fascinating little brutes, I think. You know alligators, Mrs. Gallup?"
"Stuffed," said the lady.
"Ah, to be sure," he said. "Perhaps, then, you do not realize that the
alligator is of the family _Crocodilidoe_ and the order _Eusuchia_."
"No? You don't tell me?" Mrs. Gallup's tone was almost reverent.
"Yes," continued Mr. Deeley, in the voice of a lecturer, "there are two
kinds of alligators--the _lucius_, found in the Mississippi; and the
_sinensis_, in the Yang-tse-Kiang. It differs from the _caiman_ by
having a bony septum between its nostrils, and its ventral scutes are
thinly, if at all, ossified. It is carnivorous and piscivorous----"
"How fascinating!" Mrs. Gallup had edged her chair nearer the speaker.
"What does that mean?"
"It means," said Mr. Deeley, "that they eat corn and pigs."
"The strong tail of the alligator," he flowed on easily, "by a lashing
movement assists it in swimming, during which exercise it emits a loud
bellowing."
"Do alligators bellow?" asked Mr. Pottle with open skepticism.
"I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard them bellow," answered
Mr. Deeley pugnaciously. "Apparently, Mr. Puddle, you are not familiar
with the works of Ahn."
Mr. Pottle maintained a blank black silence.
"Oh, who was he?" put in Mrs. Gallup.
"Johann Franz Ahn, born 1796, died 1865, was an educationalist," said
Mr. Deeley in the voice of authority. "His chief work, of which I am
very fond, is a volume entitled, 'Praktischer Lehrgang zur Schnellen und
Leichten Erlergung der Franzoesischen Sprache.' You've read it, perhaps,
Mr. Pobble?"
"No," said Mr. Pottle miserably. "I can't say I ever have." He felt that
his case grew worse with every minute. He rose. "I guess I'd better be
going," he said. Mrs. Gallup made no attempt to detain him.
As he left her presence with slow steps and a heart of lead he heard the
high voice of Mr. Deeley saying, "Now, take alcohol: That's rather a
specialty of mine. Alcohol is a term applied to a group of organic
substances, including methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl, amyl----"
Back in his bachelor home the heartsick Mr. Pottle flung his new tie
into a corner, slammed his ultra shoes on the floor, and tossed his
trousers, heedless of rumpling, at a chair, sat down, head in hand, and
thought of a watery grave.
For that he could not hope to compete conversationally or otherwise with
the literary Deeley of Xenia was all too apparent. Mrs. Gallup--he had
called her Blossom but a few brief hours ago--said she wanted a literary
man, and here was one literary to his manicured finger tips.
He would not give up. Pottles are made of stern stuff. Reason told him
his cause was hopeless, but his heart told him to fight to the last. He
obeyed his heart.
Arraying himself in his finest, three nights later he went to call on
Mrs. Gallup, a five-pound box of Choc-O-late Nutties hugged nervously to
his silk-shirted bosom.
A maid admitted him. He heard in the living room a familiar high
masculine voice that made his fists double up. It was saying,
"Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, was born at Stagira in 384 B. C.
and----"
Mr. Deeley paused to greet Mr. Pottle casually; Mrs. Gallup took the
candy with only conventional words of appreciation, and turned at once
to listen, disciple-like, to the discourses of the sage from Xenia, who
for the rest of the evening held the center of the stage, absorbed every
beam of the calcium, and dispensed fact and fancy about a wide variety
of things. He was a man with many and curious specialties. Mrs. Gallup
was a willing, Mr. Pottle a most unwilling listener.
At eleven Mr. Pottle went home, having uttered but two words all
evening, and those monosyllables. He left Mr. Deeley holding forth in
detail on the science of astronomy, with side glances at astrology and
ancestor-worship.
Mr. Pottle's heart was too full for sleep. Indeed, as he walked in the
moonlight through Eastman Park, it was with the partially formed intent
of flinging himself in among the swans that slept on the artificial
lake.
His mind went back to the conversation of Mr. Deeley in Mrs. Gallup's
salon. She had been Blossom to him once, but now--this loudly learned
stranger! Mr. Pottle stopped suddenly and sat down sharply on a park
bench. The topics on which Mr. Deeley had conversed so fluently passed
in an orderly array before his mind: Apes, acoustics, angels, Apollo,
adders, albumen, auks, Alexander the Great, anarchy, adenoids----He had
it! A light, bright as the sun at noon, dawned on Mr. Pottle.
Next morning when the public library opened, Mr. Pottle was waiting at
the door.
A feverish week rushed by in Mr. Pottle's life.
"We'll be having to charge that little man with the bashful grin, rent
or storage or something," said Miss Merk, the seventh assistant
librarian, to Miss Heaslip, the ninth assistant librarian.
Sunday night firm determined steps took Mr. Pottle to the bungalow of
Mrs. Gallup. He heard Mr. Deeley's sweet resonant voice in the living
room. He smiled grimly.
"I was just telling Blossom about a curious little animal I take rather
a special interest in," began the man from Xenia, with a condescending
nod to Mr. Pottle.
Mr. Pottle checked the frown that had started to gather at "Blossom,"
and asked politely, "And what is the beast's name?"
"The aard-vark," replied Mr. Deeley. "He is----"
"The Cape ant bear," finished Mr. Pottle, "or earth pig. He lives on
ants, burrows rapidly, and can be easily killed by a smart blow on his
sensitive snout."
Mr. Deeley stared; Mrs. Gallup stared; Mr. Pottle sailed on serenely.
"A very interesting beast, the aard-vark. But to my mind not so
interesting as the long-nosed bandicoot. You know the long-nosed
bandicoot, I presume, Mr. Deeley?"
"Well, not under that name," retorted the Xenia sage. "You don't mean
antelope?"
"By no means," said Mr. Pottle with a superior smile. "I said
bandicoot--B-a-n-d-i-coot. He is a _Peramelidoe_ of the Marsupial
family, meaning he carries his young in a pouch like a kangaroo."
"How cute!" murmured Mrs. Gallup.
"There are bandicoots and bandicoots," pursued Mr. Pottle; "the
_Peragale_, or rabbit bandicoot; the _Nasuta_, or long-nosed bandicoot;
the _Mysouros_, or saddle-backed bandicoot; the _Choeropus_, or
pig-footed bandicoot; and----"
"Speaking of antelopes----" Mr. Deeley interrupted loudly.
"By all means!" said Mr. Pottle still more loudly. "I've always taken a
special interest in antelopes. Let's see now--the antelope family
includes the gnus, elands, hartebeests, addax, klipspringers, chamois,
gazelles, chirus, pallas, saigas, nilgais, koodoos--pretty name that,
isn't it, Blossom--the blessboks, duikerboks, boneboks, gemsboks,
steinboks----"
He saw that the bright blue eyes of the lady of his dreams were fastened
on him. He turned toward Mr. Deeley.
"You're familiar with Bambara, aren't you?" he asked.
"I beg pardon?" The brilliant conversationalist seemed a little
confused. "Did you say Arabia? I should say I do know Arabia. Population
5,078,441; area----"
"One million, two hundred and twenty-two thousand square miles,"
finished Mr. Pottle. "No, I did not say Arabia; I said Bambara.
B-a-m-b-a-r-a."
"Oh, Bambara," said Mr. Deeley feebly; his assurance seemed to crumple.
"Yes," said Mrs. Gallup. "Do tell us about Bambara; such an intriguing
name."
"It is a country in Western Africa," Mr. Pottle tossed off grandly,
"with a population of 2,004,737, made up of Negroes, Mandingoes and
Foulahs. Its principal products are rice, maize, cotton, millet, yams,
pistachio nuts, French beans, watermelons, onions, tobacco, indigo,
tamarinds, lotuses, sheep, horses, alligators, pelicans, turtles,
egrets, teals and Barbary ducks."
"Oh, how interesting! Do go on, Mr. Pottle." It was the voice of Mrs.
Gallup; to Mr. Pottle it seemed that there was a tender note in it.
"Bambara reminds me of baboons," he went on loudly and rapidly, checking
an incipient remark from Mr. Deeley. "Baboons, you know, are
_Cynocephali_ or dog-headed monkeys; the species includes drills,
mandrills, sphinx, chacma and hamadryas. Most baboons have ischial
callosities----"
"Oh, what do they do with them?" cried wide-eyed Mrs. Gallup.
"They--er--sit on them," answered Mr. Pottle.
"I don't believe it," Mr. Deeley challenged.
Mr. Pottle froze him with a look. "Evidently," he said, "you, Mr.
Deeley, are not familiar with the works of Dr. Oskar Baumann, author of
'Afrikanische Skizzen.' Are you?"
"I've glanced through it," said Mr. Deeley.
"Then you don't remember what he says on Page 489?"
"Can't say that I do," mumbled Mr. Deeley.
"And you appear unfamiliar with the works of Hosea Ballou."
"Who?"
"Hosea Ballou."
"I doubt if there is such a person," said Mr. Deeley stiffly. He did not
appear to be enjoying himself.
"Oh, you do, do you?" retorted Mr. Pottle. "Suppose you look him up in
your encyclopedia--if," he added with crushing emphasis--"if you have
one. You'll find that Hosea Ballou was born in 1771, founded the Trumpet
Magazine, the Universalist Expositor, the Universalist Quarterly Review,
and wrote Notes on the Parables."
"What has that to do with baboons?" demanded Mr. Deeley.
"A lot more than you think," was Mr. Pottle's cryptic answer. He turned
from the Xenian with a shrug of dismissal, and smiled upon Mrs. Gallup.
"Don't you think, Blossom," he said, "that Babylonia is a fascinating
country?"
"Oh, very," she smiled back at him. "I dote on Babylonia."
"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Pottle, "Mr. Deeley will be good enough to tell
us all about it."
Mr. Deeley looked extremely uncomfortable.
"Babylonia--let's see now--well, it just happens that Babylonia is not
one of my specialties."
"Well, tell us about Baluchistan, then," suggested Mr. Pottle.
"Yes, do!" echoed Mrs. Gallup.
"I've forgotten about it," answered the brilliant conversationalist
sullenly.
"Well, tell us about Beethoven, then," pursued Mr. Pottle relentlessly.
"I never was there," growled Mr. Deeley. "Say, when does the next
trolley leave for Xenia?"
"In seven minutes," answered Mrs. Gallup coldly. "You've just got time
to catch it."
The bungalow's front door snapped at the heels of the departing sage
from Xenia.
Mr. Pottle hitched his chair close to the sofa where Mrs. Gallup sat.
"Oh, Mr. Pottle," she said softly, "do talk some more! I just love to
hear you. You surprised me. I didn't realize you were such a well-read
man."
Mr. Pottle looked into her wide blue eyes.
"I'm not," he said. "I was bluffing."
"Bluffing?"
"Yes," he said; "and so was your friend from Xenia. He's no more in the
literary line than I am. His job is selling a book called 'Hog
Culture.'"
"But he talks so well----" began Mrs. Gallup.
"Only about things that begin with 'A,'" said Mr. Pottle. "He memorized
everything in the encyclopedia under 'A.' I simply went him one better.
I memorized all of 'A,' and all of 'B' too."
"Oh, the deceitful wretch!"
"I'm sorry, Blossom. Can you forgive me?" he pleaded. "I did it
because----"
She interrupted him gently.
"I know," she said, smiling. "You did it for me. I wasn't calling you a
wretch, Ambrose."
He found himself on the sofa beside her, his arm about her.
"What I really want," she confessed with a happy sigh, "is a good strong
man to take care of me."
"We'll go through the rest of the encyclopedia together, dearest," said
Mr. Pottle.
IV: _Mr. Pottle and the One Man Dog_
"Ambrose! Ambrose dear!" The new Mrs. Pottle put down the book she was
reading--Volume Dec to Erd of the encyclopedia.
"Yes, Blossom dear." Mr. Pottle's tone was fraught with the tender
solicitude of the recently wed. He looked up from his book--Volume Ode
to Pay of the encyclopedia.
"Ambrose, we must get a dog!"
"A dog, darling?"
His tone was still tender but a thought lacking in warmth. His smile, he
hoped, conveyed the impression that while he utterly approved of
Blossom, herself, personally, her current idea struck no responsive
chord in his bosom.
"Yes, a dog."
She sighed as she gazed at a large framed steel-engraving of Landseer's
St. Bernards that occupied a space on the wall until recently tenanted
by a crayon enlargement of her first husband in his lodge regalia.
"Such noble creatures," she sighed. "So intelligent. And so loyal."
"In the books they are," murmured Mr. Pottle.
"Oh, Ambrose," she protested with a pout. "How can you say such a thing?
Just look at their big eyes, so full of soul. What magnificent animals!
So full of understanding and fidelity and--and----"
"Fleas?" suggested Mr. Pottle.
Her glance was glacial.
"Ambrose, you are positively cruel," she said, tiny, injured tears
gathering in her wide blue eyes. He was instantly penitent.
"Forgive me, dear," he begged. "I forgot. In the books they don't have
'em, do they? You see, precious, I don't take as much stock in books as
I used to. I've been fooled so often."
"They're lovely books," said Mrs. Pottle, somewhat mollified. "You said
yourself that you adore dog stories."
"Sure I do, honey," said Mr. Pottle, "but a man can like stories about
elephants without wanting to own one, can't he?"
"A dog is not an elephant, Ambrose."
He could not deny it.
"Don't you remember," she pursued, rapturously, "that lovely book,
'Hero, the Collie Beautiful,' where a kiddie finds a puppy in an ash
barrel, and takes care of it, and later the collie grows up and rescues
the kiddie from a fire; or was that the book where the collie flew at
the throat of the man who came to murder the kiddie's father, and the
father broke down and put his arms around the collie's neck because he
had kicked the collie once and the collie used to follow him around with
big, hurt eyes and yet when he was in danger Hero saved him because
collies are so sensitive and so loyal?"
"Uh huh," assented Mr. Pottle.
"And that story we read, 'Almost Human'," she rippled on fluidly, "about
the kiddie who was lost in a snow-storm in the mountains and the brave
St. Bernard that came along with bottles of spirits around its neck--St.
Bernards always carry them--and----"
"Do the bottles come with the dogs?" asked Mr. Pottle, hopefully.
She elevated disapproving eyebrows.
"Ambrose," she said, sternly, "don't always be making jests about
alcohol. It's so common. You know when I married you, you promised never
even to think of it again."
"Yes, Blossom," said Mr. Pottle, meekly.
She beamed.
"Well, dear, what kind of a dog shall we get?" she asked briskly. He
felt that all was lost.
"There are dogs and dogs," he said moodily. "And I don't know anything
about any of them."
"I'll read what it says here," she said. Mrs. Pottle was pursuing
culture through the encyclopedia, and felt that she would overtake it on
almost any page now.
"Dog," she read, "is the English generic term for the quadruped of the
domesticated variety of _canis_."
"Well, I'll be darned!" exclaimed her husband. "Is that a fact?"
"Be serious, Ambrose, please. The choice of a dog is no jesting matter,"
she rebuked him, and then read on, "In the Old and New Testaments the
dog is spoken of almost with abhorrence; indeed, it ranks among the
unclean beasts----"
"There, Blossom," cried Mr. Pottle, clutching at a straw, "what did I
tell you? Would you fly in the face of the Good Book?"
She did not deign to reply verbally; she looked refrigerators at him.
"The Egyptians, on the other hand," she read, a note of triumph in her
voice, "venerated the dog, and when a dog died they shaved their heads
as a badge of mourning----"
"The Egyptians did, hey?" remarked Mr. Pottle, open disgust on his apple
of face. "Shaved their own heads, did they? No wonder they all turned to
mummies. You can't tell me it's safe for a man to shave his own head;
there ought to be a law against it."
Mr. Pottle was in the barber business.
Unheedful of this digression, Mrs. Pottle read on.
"There are many sorts of dogs. I'll read the list so we can pick out
ours. You needn't look cranky, Ambrose; we're going to have one. Let me
see. Ah, yes. 'There are Great Danes, mastiffs, collies, dalmatians,
chows, New Foundlands, poodles, setters, pointers, retrievers--Labrador
and flat-coated--spaniels, beagles, dachshunds--I'll admit they are
rather nasty; they're the only sort of dog I can't bear--whippets,
otterhounds, terriers, including Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Skye and fox, and
St. Bernards.' St. Bernards, it says, are the largest; 'their ears are
small and their foreheads white and dome-shaped, giving them the well
known expression of benignity and intelligence.' Oh, Ambrose"--her eyes
were full of dreams--"Oh, Ambrose, wouldn't it be just too wonderful for
words to have a great, big, beautiful dog like that?"
"There isn't any too much room in this bungalow as it is," demurred Mr.
Pottle. "Better get a chow."
"You don't seem to realize, Ambrose Pottle," the lady replied with some
severity, "that what I want a dog for is protection."
"Protection, my angel? Can't I protect you?"
"Not when you're away on the road selling your shaving cream. Then's
when I need some big, loyal creature to protect me."
"From what?"
"Well, burglars."
"Why should they come here?"
"How about all our wedding silver? And then kidnapers might come."
"Kidnapers? What could they kidnap?"
"Me," said Mrs. Pottle. "How would you like to come home from Zanesville
or Bucyrus some day and find me gone, Ambrose?" Her lip quivered at the
thought.
To Mr. Pottle, privately, this contingency seemed remote. His bride was
not the sort of woman one might kidnap easily. She was a plentiful lady
of a well developed maturity, whose clothes did not conceal her heroic
mold, albeit they fitted her as tightly as if her modiste were a
taxidermist. However, not for worlds would he have voiced this
sacrilegious thought; he was in love; he preferred that she should think
of herself as infinitely clinging and helpless; he fancied the role of
sturdy oak.
"All right, Blossom," he gave in, patting her cheek. "If my angel wants
a dog, she shall have one. That reminds me, Charley Meacham, the boss
barber of the Ohio House, has a nice litter. He offered me one or two or
three if I wanted them. The mother is as fine a looking spotted coach
dog as ever you laid an eye on and the pups----"
"What was the father?" demanded Mrs. Pottle.
"How should I know? There's a black pup, and a spotted pup, and a yellow
pup, and a white pup and a----"
Mrs. Pottle sniffed.
"No mungles for me," she stated, flatly, "I hate mungles. I want a
thoroughbred, or nothing. One with a pedigree, like that adorably
handsome creature there."
She nodded toward the engraving of the giant St. Bernards.
"But, darling," objected Mr. Pottle, "pedigreed pups cost money. A dog
can bark and bite whether he has a family tree or not, can't he? We
can't afford one of these fancy, blue-blooded ones. I've got notes at
the bank right now I don't know how the dooce I'm going to pay. My
shaving stick needs capital. I can't be blowing in hard-earned dough on
pups."
"Oh, Ambrose, I actually believe
you--don't--care--whether--I'm--kidnaped--or--not!" his wife began, a
catch in her voice. A heart of wrought iron would have been melted by
the pathos of her tone and face.
"There, there, honey," said Mr. Pottle, hastily, with an appropriate
amatory gesture, "you shall have your pup. But remember this, Blossom
Pottle. He's yours. You are to have all the responsibility and care of
him."
"Oh, Ambrose, you're so good to me," she breathed.
The next evening when Mr. Pottle came home he observed something brown
and fuzzy nestling in his Sunday velour hat. With a smothered
exclamation of the kind that has no place in a romance, he dumped the
thing out and saw it waddle away on unsteady legs, leaving him sadly
contemplating the strawberry silk lining of his best hat.
"Isn't he a love? Isn't he just too sweet," cried Mrs. Pottle, emerging
from the living room and catching the object up in her arms. "Come to
mama, sweetie-pie. Did the nassy man frighten my precious Pershing?"
"Your precious what?"
"Pershing. I named him for a brave man and a fighter. I just know he'll
be worthy of it, when he grows up, and starts to protect me."
"In how many years?" inquired Mr. Pottle, cynically.
"The man said he'd be big enough to be a watch dog in a very few months;
they grow so fast."
"What man said this?"
"The kennel man. I bought Pershing at the Laddiebrook-Sunshine Kennels
to-day." She paused to kiss the pink muzzle of the little animal; Mr.
Pottle winced at this but she noted it not, and rushed on.
"Such an interesting place, Ambrose. Nothing but dogs and dogs and dogs.
All kinds, too. They even had one mean, sneaky-looking dachshund there;
I just couldn't trust a dog like that. Ugh! Well, I looked at all the
dogs. The minute I saw Pershing I knew he was my dog. His little eyes
looked up at me as much as to say, 'I'll be yours, mistress, faithful to
the death,' and he put out the dearest little pink tongue and licked my
hand. The kennel man said, 'Now ain't that wonderful, lady, the way he's
taken to you? Usually he growls at strangers. He's a one man dog, all
right, all right'."
"A one man dog?" said Mr. Pottle, blankly.
"Yes. One that loves his owner, and nobody else. That's just the kind I
want."
"Where do I come in?" inquired Mr. Pottle.
"Oh, he'll learn to tolerate you, I guess," she reassured him. Then she
rippled on, "I just had to have him then. He was one of five, but he
already had a little personality all his own, although he's only three
weeks old. I saw his mother--a magnificent creature, Ambrose, big as a
Shetland pony and twice as shaggy, and with the most wonderful
appealing eyes, that looked at me as if it stabbed her to the heart to
have her little ones taken from her. And such a pedigree! It covers
pages. Her name is Gloria Audacious Indomitable; the Audacious
Indomitables are a very celebrated family of St. Bernards, the kennel
man said."
"What about his father?" queried Mr. Pottle, poking the ball of pup with
his finger.
"I didn't see him," admitted Mrs. Pottle. "I believe they are not living
together now."
She snuggled the pup to her capacious bosom.
"So," she said, "its whole name is Pershing Audacious Indomitable, isn't
it, tweetums?"
"It's a swell name," admitted Mr. Pottle. "Er--Blossom dear, how much
did he cost?"
She brought out the reply quickly, almost timidly.
"Fifty dollars."
"Fif----" his voice stuck in his larynx. "Great Caesar's Ghost!"
"But think of his pedigree," cried his wife.
All he could say was:
"Great Caesar's Ghost! Fifty dollars! Great Caesar's Ghost!"
"Why, we can exhibit him at bench shows," she argued, "and win hundreds
of dollars in prizes. And his pups will be worth fifty dollars per pup
easily, with that pedigree."
"Great Caesar's Ghost," said Mr. Pottle, despondently. "Fifty dollars!
And the shaving stick business all geflooey."
"He'll be worth a thousand to me as a protector," she declared,
defiantly. "You wait and see, Ambrose Pottle. Wait till he grows up to
be a great, big, handsome, intelligent dog, winning prizes and
protecting your wife. He'll be the best investment we ever made, you
mark my words."
Had Pershing encountered Mr. Pottle's eye at that moment the marrow of
his small canine bones would have congealed.
"All right, Blossom," said her spouse, gloomily. "He's yours. You take
care of him. I wonder, I just wonder, that's all."
"What do you wonder, Ambrose?"
"If they'll let him visit us when we're in the poor house."
To this his wife remarked, "Fiddlesticks," and began to feed Pershing
from a nursing bottle.
"Grade A milk, I suppose," groaned Mr. Pottle.
"Cream," she corrected, calmly. "Pershing is no mungle. Remember that,
Ambrose Pottle."
* * * * *
It was a nippy, frosty night, and Mr. Pottle, after much chattering of
teeth, had succeeded in getting a place warm in the family bed, and was
floating peacefully into a dream in which he got a contract for ten
carload lots of Pottle's Edible Shaving Cream. "Just Lather, Shave and
Lick. That's All," when his wife's soft knuckles prodded him in the
ribs.
"Ambrose, Ambrose, do wake up. Do you hear that?"
He sleepily opened a protesting eye. He heard faint, plaintive, peeping
sounds somewhere in the house.
"It's that wretched hound," he said crossly.
"Pershing is not a hound, Ambrose Pottle."
"Oh, all right, Blossom, ALL RIGHT. It's that noble creature, G'night."
But the knuckles tattooed on his drowsy ribs again.
"Ambrose, he's lonesome."
No response.
"Ambrose, little Pershing is lonesome."
"Well, suppose you go and sing him to sleep."
"Ambrose! And us married only a month!"
Mr. Pottle sat up in bed.
"Is he your pup," he demanded, oratorically, "or is he not your pup,
Mrs. Pottle? And anyhow, why pamper him? He's all right. Didn't I walk
six blocks in the cold to a grocery store to get a box for his bed?
Didn't you line it with some of my best towels? Isn't it under a nice,
warm stove? What more can a hound----"
"Ambrose!"
"----noble creature, expect?"
He dived into his pillow as if it were oblivion.
"Ambrose," said his wife, loudly and firmly, "Pershing is lonesome.
Thoroughbreds have such sensitive natures. If he thought we were lying
here neglecting him, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he died of a
broken heart before morning. A pedigreed dog like Pershing has the
feelings of a delicate child."
Muffled words came from the Pottle pillow.
"Well, whose one man dog is he?"
Mrs. Pottle began to sniffle audibly.
"I d-don't believe you'd c-care if I got up and c-caught my d-death of
c-cold," she said. "You know how easily I c-chill, too. But I c-can't
leave that poor motherless little fellow cry his heart out in that big,
dark, lonely kitchen. I'll just have to get up and----"
She stirred around as if she really intended to. The chivalrous Mr.
Pottle heaved up from his pillow like an irate grampus from the depths
of a tank.
"I'll go," he grumbled, fumbling around with goose-fleshed limbs for his
chilly slippers. "Shall I tell him about Little Red Riding Hood or
Goody Two Shoes?"
"Ambrose, if you speak roughly to Pershing, I shall never forgive you.
And he won't either. No. Bring him in here."
"Here?" His tone was aghast; barbers are aseptic souls.
"Yes, of course."
"In bed?"
"Certainly."
"Oh, Blossom!"
"We can't leave him in the cold, can we?"
"But, Blossom, suppose he's--suppose he has----"
The hiatus was expressive.
"He hasn't." Her voice was one of indignant denial. "Pedigreed dogs
don't. Why, the kennels were immaculate."
"Humph," said Mr. Pottle dubiously. He strode into the kitchen and
returned with Pershing in his arms; he plumped the small, bushy, whining
animal in bed beside his wife.
"I suppose, Mrs. Pottle," he said, "that you are prepared to take the
consequences."
She stroked the squirming thing, which emitted small, protesting bleats.
"Don't you mind the nassy man, sweetie-pie," she cooed. "Casting
'spersions on poor li'l lonesome doggie." Then, to her husband,
"Ambrose, how can you suggest such a thing? Don't stand there in the
cold."
"Nevertheless," said Mr. Pottle, oracularly, as he prepared to seek
slumber at a point as remote as possible in the bed from Pershing, "I'll
bet a dollar to a doughnut that I'm right."
Mr. Pottle won his doughnut. At three o'clock in the morning, with the
mercury flirting with the freezing mark, he suddenly surged up from his
pillow, made twitching motions with limbs and shoulders, and stalked out
into the living room, where he finished the night on a hard-boiled army
cot, used for guests.
* * * * *
As the days hurried by, he had to admit that the kennel man's
predictions about the rapid growth of the animal seemed likely of
fulfillment. In a very few weeks the offspring of Gloria Audacious
Indomitable had attained prodigious proportions.
"But, Blossom," said Mr. Pottle, eyeing the animal as it gnawed
industriously at the golden oak legs of the player piano, "isn't he
growing in a sort of funny way?"
"Funny way, Ambrose?"
"Yes, dear; funny way. Look at his legs."
She contemplated those members.
"Well?"
"They're kinda brief, aren't they, Blossom?"
"Naturally. He's no giraffe, Ambrose. Young thoroughbreds have small
legs. Just like babies."
"But he seems so sorta long in proportion to his legs," said Mr. Pottle,
critically. "He gets to look more like an overgrown caterpillar every
day."
"You said yourself, Ambrose, that you know nothing about dogs," his wife
reminded him. "The legs always develop last. Give Pershing a chance to
get his growth; then you'll see."
Mr. Pottle shrugged, unconvinced.
"It's time to take Pershing out for his airing," Mrs. Pottle observed.
A fretwork of displeasure appeared on the normally bland brow of Mr.
Pottle.
"Lotta good that does," he grunted. "Besides, I'm getting tired of
leading him around on a string. He's so darn funny looking; the boys are
beginning to kid me about him."
"Do you want me to go out," asked Mrs. Pottle, "with this heavy cold?"
"Oh, all right," said Mr. Pottle blackly.
"Now, Pershing precious, let mama put on your li'l blanket so you can go
for a nice li'l walk with your papa."
"I'm not his papa," growled Mr. Pottle, rebelliously. "I'm no relation
of his."
However, the neighbors along Garden Avenue presently spied a short,
rotund man, progressing with reluctant step along the street, in his
hand a leathern leash at the end of which ambled a pup whose physique
was the occasion of some discussion among the dog-fanciers who beheld
it.
* * * * *
"Blossom," said Mr. Pottle--it was after Pershing had outgrown two boxes
and a large wash-basket--"you may say what you like but that dog of
yours looks funny to me."
"How can you say that?" she retorted. "Just look at that long heavy
coat. Look at that big, handsome head. Look at those knowing eyes, as if
he understood every word we're saying."
"But his legs, Blossom, his legs!"
"They are a wee, tiny bit short," she confessed. "But he's still in his
infancy. Perhaps we don't feed him often enough."
"No?" said Mr. Pottle with a rising inflection which had the perfume of
sarcasm about it, "No? I suppose seven times a day, including once in
the middle of the night isn't often enough?"
"Honestly, Ambrose, you'd think you were an early Christian martyr being
devoured by tigers to hear all the fuss you make about getting up just
once for five or ten minutes in the night to feed poor, hungry little
Pershing."
"It hardly seems worth it," remarked Mr. Pottle, "with him turning out
this way."
"What way?"
"Bandy-legged."
"St. Bernards," she said with dignity, "do not run to legs. Mungles may
be all leggy, but not full blooded St. Bernards. He's a baby, remember
that, Ambrose Pottle."
"He eats more than a full grown farm hand," said Mr. Pottle. "And steak
at fifty cents a pound!"
"You can't bring up a delicate dog like Pershing on liver," said Mrs.
Pottle, crushingly. "Now run along, Ambrose, and take him for a good
airing, while I get his evening broth ready."
"They extended that note of mine at the Bank, Blossom," said Mr. Pottle.
"Don't let him eat out of ash cans, and don't let him associate with
mungles," said Mrs. Pottle.
Mr. Pottle skulked along side-streets, now dragging, now being dragged
by the muscular Pershing. It was Mr. Pottle's idea to escape the
attention of his friends, of whom there were many in Granville, and who,
of late, had shown a disposition to make remarks about his evening
promenade that irked his proud spirit. But, as he rounded the corner of
Cottage Row, he encountered Charlie Meacham, tonsorialist, dog-fancier,
wit.
"Evening, Ambrose."
"Evening, Charlie."
Mr. Pottle tried to ignore Pershing, to pretend that there was no
connection between them, but Pershing reared up on stumpy hind legs and
sought to embrace Mr. Meacham.
"Where'd you get the pooch?" inquired Mr. Meacham, with some interest.
"Wife's," said Mr. Pottle, briefly.
"Where'd she find it?"
"Didn't find him. Bought him at Laddiebrook-Sunshine Kennels."
"Oho," whistled Mr. Meacham.
"Pedigreed," confided Mr. Pottle.
"You don't tell me!"
"Yep. Name's Pershing."
"Name's what?"
"Pershing. In honor of the great general."
Mr. Meacham leaned against a convenient lamp-post; he seemed of a sudden
overcome by some powerful emotion.
"What's the joke?" asked Mr. Pottle.
"Pershing!" Mr. Meacham was just able to get out. "Oh, me, oh my. That's
rich. That's a scream."
"Pershing," said Mr. Pottle, stoutly, "Audacious Indomitable. You ought
to see his pedigree."
"I'd like to," said Mr. Meacham, "I certainly would like to."
He was studying the architecture of Pershing with the cool appraising
eye of the expert. His eye rested for a long time on the short legs and
long body.
"Pottle," he said, thoughtfully, "haven't they got a dachshund up at
those there kennels?"
Mr. Pottle knitted perplexed brows.
"I believe they have," he said. "Why?"
"Oh, nothing," replied Mr. Meacham, struggling to keep a grip on his
emotions which threatened to choke him, "Oh, nothing." And he went off,
with Mr. Pottle staring at his shoulder blades which titillated oddly as
Mr. Meacham walked.
Mr. Pottle, after a series of tugs-of-war, got his charge home. A worry
wormed its way into his brain like an auger into a pine plank. The worry
became a suspicion. The suspicion became a horrid certainty. Gallant man
that he was, and lover, he did not mention it to Blossom.
But after that the evening excursion with Pershing became his cross and
his wormwood. He pleaded to be allowed to take Pershing out after dark;
Blossom wouldn't hear of it; the night air might injure his pedigreed
lungs. In vain did he offer to hire a man--at no matter what cost--to
take his place as companion to the creature which daily grew more
pronounced and remarkable as to shape. Blossom declared that she would
entrust no stranger with her dog; a Pottle, and a Pottle only, could
escort him. The nightly pilgrimage became almost unendurable after a
total stranger, said to be a Dubuque traveling man, stopped Mr. Pottle
on the street one evening and asked, gravely:
"I beg pardon, sir, but isn't that animal a peagle?"
"He is not a beagle," said Mr. Pottle, shortly.
"I didn't say 'beagle'," the stranger smiled, "I said
'peagle'--p-e-a-g-l-e."
"What's that?"
"A peagle," answered the stranger, "is a cross between a pony and a
beagle." It took three men to stop the fight.
Pershing, as Mr. Pottle perceived all too plainly, was growing more
curious and ludicrous to the eye every day. He had the enormous head,
the heavy body, the shaggy coat, and the benign, intellectual face of
his mother; but alas, he had the bandy, caster-like legs of his putative
father. He was an anti-climax. Everybody in Granville, save Blossom
alone, seemed to realize the stark, the awful truth about Pershing's
ancestry. Even he seemed to realize his own sad state; he wore a
shamefaced look as he trotted by the side of Ambrose Pottle; Mr.
Pottle's own features grew hang-dog. Despite her spouse's hints, Blossom
never lost faith in Pershing.
"Just you wait, Ambrose," she said. "One of these fine days you'll wake
up and find he has developed a full grown set of limbs."
"Like a tadpole, I suppose," he said grimly.
"Joke all you like, Ambrose. But mark my words: you'll be proud of
Pershing. Just look at him there, taking in every word we say. Why,
already he can do everything but speak. I just know I could count on him
if I was in danger from burglars or kidnapers or anything. I'll feel so
much safer with him in the house when you take your trip East next
month."
"The burglar that came on him in the dark would be scared to death,"
mumbled Mr. Pottle. She ignored this aside.
"Now, Ambrose," she said, "take the comb and give him a good combing. I
may enter him in a bench show next month."
"You ought to," remarked Mr. Pottle, as he led Pershing away, "he looks
like a bench."
It was with a distinct sense of escape that Mr. Pottle some weeks later
took a train for Washington where he hoped to have patented and
trade-marked his edible shaving cream, a discovery he confidently
expected to make his fortune.
"Good-by, Ambrose," said Mrs. Pottle. "I'll write you every day how
Pershing is getting along. At the rate he's growing you won't know him
when you come back. You needn't worry about me. My one man dog will
guard me, won't you, sweetie-pie? There now, give your paw to Papa
Pottle."
"I'm not his papa, I tell you," cried Mr. Pottle with some passion as he
grabbed up his suit-case and crunched down the gravel path.
In all, his business in Washington kept him away from his home for
twenty-four days. While he missed the society of Blossom, somehow he
experienced a delicious feeling of freedom from care, shame and
responsibility as he took his evening stroll about the capital. His trip
was a success; the patent was secured, the trade-mark duly registered.
The patent lawyer, as he pocketed his fee, perhaps to salve his
conscience for its size, produced from behind a law book a bottle of an
ancient and once honorable fluid and pressed it on Mr. Pottle.
"I promised the wife I'd stay on the sprinkling cart," demurred Mr.
Pottle.
"Oh, take it along," urged the patent lawyer. "You may need it for a
cold one of these days."
It occurred to Mr. Pottle that if there is one place in the world a man
may catch his death of cold it is on a draughty railroad train, and
wouldn't it be foolish of him with a fortune in his grasp, so to speak,
not to take every precaution against a possibly fatal illness? Besides
he knew that Blossom would never permit him to bring the bottle into
their home. He preserved it in the only way possible under the
circumstances. When the train reached Granville just after midnight, Mr.
Pottle skipped blithely from the car, made a sweeping bow to a milk can,
cocked his derby over his eye, which was uncommonly bright and playful,
and started for home with the meticulous but precarious step of the
tight-rope walker.
It was his plan, carefully conceived, to steal softly as thistledown
falling on velvet, into his bungalow without waking the sleeping
Blossom, to spend the night on the guest cot, to spring up, fresh as a
dewy daisy in the morn, and wake his wife with a smiling and coherent
account of his trip.
Very quietly he tip-toed along the lawn leading to his front door, his
latch key out and ready. But as he was about to place a noiseless foot
on his porch, something vast, low and dark barred his path, and a bass
and hostile growl brought him to an abrupt halt.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't li'l Pershin'," said Mr. Pottle,
pleasantly, but remembering to pitch his voice in a low key. "Waiting on
the porch to welcome Papa Pottle home! Nice li'l Pershin'."
"Grrrrrrr Grrrrrrrrrr Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr," replied Pershing. He continued
to bar the path, to growl ominously, to bare strong white teeth in the
moonlight. In Mr. Pottle's absence he had grown enormously in head and
body; but not in leg.
"Pershin'," said Mr. Pottle, plaintively, "can it be that you have
forgotten Papa Pottle? Have you forgotten nice, kind mans that took you
for pretty walks? That fed you pretty steaks? That gave you pretty
baths? Nice li'l Pershin', nice li'l----"
Mr. Pottle reached down to pat the shaggy head and drew back his hand
with something that would pass as a curse in any language; Pershing had
given his finger a whole-hearted nip.
"You low-down, underslung brute," rasped Mr. Pottle. "Get out of my way
or I'll kick the pedigree outa you."
Pershing's growl grew louder and more menacing. Mr. Pottle hesitated; he
feared Blossom more than Pershing. He tried cajolery.
"Come, come, nice li'l St. Bernard. Great, big, noble St. Bernard. Come
for li'l walk with Papa Pottle. Nice Pershin', nice Pershin', you dirty
cur----"
This last remark was due to the animal's earnest but only partially
successful effort to fasten its teeth in Mr. Pottle's calf. Pershing
gave out a sharp, disappointed yelp.
A white, shrouded figure appeared at the window.
"Burglar, go away," it said, shrilly, "or I'll sic my savage St. Bernard
on you."
"He's already sicced, Blottom," said a doleful voice. "It's me, Blottom.
Your Ambrose."
"Why, Ambrose! How queer your voice sounds! Why don't you come in."
"Pershing won't let me," cried Mr. Pottle. "Call him in."
"He won't come," she wailed, "and I'm afraid of him at night like this."
"Coax him in."
"He won't coax."
"Bribe him with food."
"You can't bribe a thoroughbred."
Mr. Pottle put his hands on his hips, and standing in the exact center
of his lawn, raised a high, sardonic voice.
"Oh, yes," he said, "oh, dear me, yes, I'll live to be proud of
Pershing. Oh, yes indeed. I'll live to love the noble creature. I'll be
glad I got up on cold nights to pour warm milk into his dear little
stummick. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, he'll be worth thousands to me. Here I go
down to Washington, and work my head to the bone to keep a roof over us,
and when I get back I can't get under it. If you ask me, Mrs. Blottom
Pottle nee Gallup, if you ask me, that precious animal of yours, that
noble creature is the muttiest mutt that ever----"
"Ambrose!" Her edged voice clipped his oration short. "You've been
drinking!"
"Well," said Mr. Pottle in a bellowing voice, "I guess a hound like that
is enough to drive a person to drink. G'night, Blottom. I'm going to
sleep in the flower bed. Frozen petunias will be my pillow. When I'm
dead and gone, be kind to little Pershing for my sake."
"Ambrose! Stop. Think of the neighbors. Think of your health. Come into
the house this minute."
He tried to obey her frantic command, but the low-lying, far-flung bulk
of Pershing blocked the way, a growling, fanged, hairy wall. Mr. Pottle
retreated to the flower bed.
"What was it the Belgiums said?" he remarked. "They shall not pash."
"Oh, what'll I do, what'll I do?" came from the window.
"Send for the militia," suggested Mr. Pottle with savage facetiousness.
"I know," cried his wife, inspired, "I'll send for a veterinarian. He'll
know what to do."
"A veterinarian!" he protested loudly. "Five bones a visit, and us the
joke of Granville."
But he could suggest nothing better and presently an automobile
discharged a sleepy and disgusted dog-doctor at the Pottle homestead. It
took the combined efforts of the two men and the woman to entice
Pershing away from the door long enough for Mr. Pottle to slip into his
house. During the course of Mrs. Pottle's subsequent remarks, Mr. Pottle
said a number of times that he was sorry he hadn't stayed out among the
petunias.
In the morning Pershing greeted him with an innocent expression.
"I hope, Mr. Pottle," said his wife, as he sipped black coffee, "that
you are now convinced what a splendid watch dog Pershing is."
"I wish I had that fifty back again," he answered. "The bank won't give
me another extension on that note, Blossom."
She tossed a bit of bacon to Pershing who muffed it and retrieved it
with only slight damage to the pink roses on the rug.
"I can't stand this much longer, Blossom," he burst out.
"What?"
"You used to love me."
"I still do, Ambrose, despite all."
"You conceal it well. That mutt takes all your time."
"Mutt, Ambrose?"
"Mutt," said Mr. Pottle.
"See! He's heard you," she cried. "Look at that hurt expression in his
face."
"Bah," said Mr. Pottle. "When do we begin to get fifty dollars per pup.
I could use the money. Isn't it about time this great hulking creature
did something to earn his keep? He's got the appetite of a lion."
"Don't mind the nassy mans, Pershing. We're not a mutt, are we,
Pershing? Ambrose, please don't say such things in his presence. It
hurts him dreadfully. Mutt, indeed. Just look at those big, gentle,
knowing eyes."
"Look at those legs, woman," said Mr. Pottle.
He despondently sipped his black coffee.
"Blossom," he said. "I'm going to Chicago to-night. Got to have a
conference with the men who are dickering with me about manufacturing my
shaving cream. I'll be gone three days and I'll be busy every second."
"Yes, Ambrose. Pershing will protect me."
"And when I come back," he went on sternly, "I want to be able to get
into my own house, do you understand?"
"I warned you Pershing was a one man dog," she replied. "You'd better
come back at noon while he's at lunch. You needn't worry about us."
"I shan't worry about Pershing," promised Mr. Pottle, reaching for his
suit-case.
He had not overstated how busy he would be in Chicago. His second day
was crowded. After a trip to the factory, he was closeted at his hotel
in solemn conference in the evening with the president, a vice-president
or two, a couple of assistant vice-presidents and their assistants, and
a collection of sales engineers, publicity engineers, production
engineers, personnel engineers, employment engineers, and just plain
engineers; for a certain large corporation scented profit in his shaving
cream. They were putting him through a business third degree and he was
enjoying it. They had even reached the point where they were discussing
his share in the profits if they decided to manufacture his discovery.
Mr. Pottle was expatiating on its merits.
"Gentlemen," he said, "there are some forty million beards every morning
in these United States, and forty million breakfasts to be eaten by men
in a hurry. Now, my shaving cream being edible, combines----"
"Telegram for Mr. Puddle, Mr. Puddle, Mr. Puddle," droned a bell hop,
poking in a head.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Mr. Pottle. He hoped they would think it an
offer from a rival company. As he read the message his face grew white.
Alarming words leaped from the yellow paper.
"_Come home. Very serious accident. Blossom._"
That was all, but to the recently mated Mr. Pottle it was enough. He
crumpled the message with quivering fingers.
"Sorry, gentlemen," he said, trying to smile bravely. "Bad news from
home. We'll have to continue this discussion later."
"You can just make the 10:10 train," said one of the engineers,
sympathetically. "Hard lines, old man."
Granville's lone, asthmatic taxi coughed up Mr. Pottle at the door of
his house; it was dark; he did not dare look at the door-knob. His
trembling hand twisted the key in the lock.
"Who's that?" called a faint voice. It was Blossom's. He thanked God she
was still alive.
He was in her room in an instant, and had switched on the light. She lay
in bed, her face, once rosy, now pale; her eyes, once placid, now
red-lidded and tear-swollen. He bent over her with tremulous anxiety.
"Honey, what's happened? Tell your Ambrose."
She raised herself feebly in bed. He thanked God she could move.
"Oh, it's too awful," she said with a sob. "Too dreadful for words."
"What? Oh, what? Tell me, Blossom dearest. Tell me. I'll be brave,
little woman. I'll try to bear it." He pressed her fevered hands in his.
"I can hardly believe it," she sobbed. "I c-can hardly believe it."
"Believe it? Believe what? Tell me, Blossom darling, in Heaven's name,
tell me."
"Pershing," she sobbed in a heart-broken crescendo, "Pershing has become
a mother!"
Her sobs shook her.
"And they're all mungles," she cried, "all nine of them."
* * * * *
Thunderclouds festooned the usually mild forehead of Mr. Pottle next
morning. He was inclined to be sarcastic.
"Fifty dollars per pup, eh?" he said. "Fifty dollars per pup, eh?"
"Don't, Ambrose," his wife begged. "I can't stand it. To think with eyes
like that Pershing should deceive me."
"Pershing?" snorted Mr. Pottle so violently the toast hopped from the
toaster. "Pershing? Not now. Violet! Violet! Violet!"
Mrs. Pottle looked meek.
"The ash man said he'd take the pups away if I gave him two dollars,"
she said.
"Give him five," said Mr. Pottle, "and maybe he'll take Violet, too."
"I will not, Ambrose Pottle," she returned. "I will not desert her now
that she has gotten in trouble. How could she know, having been brought
up so carefully? After all, dogs are only human."
"You actually intend to keep that----"
She did not allow him to pronounce the epithet that was forming on his
lips, but checked it, with----
"Certainly I'll keep her. She is still a one man dog. She can still
protect me from kidnapers and burglars."
He threw up his hands, a despairing gesture.
* * * * *
In the days that followed hard on the heels of Violet's disgrace, Mr.
Pottle had little time to think of dogs. More pressing cares weighed on
him. The Chicago men, their enthusiasm cooling when no longer under the
spell of Mr. Pottle's arguments, wrote that they guessed that at this
time, things being as they were, and under the circumstances, they were
forced to regret that they could not make his shaving cream, but might
at some later date be interested, and they were his very truly. The bank
sent him a frank little message saying that it had no desire to go into
the barber business, but that it might find that step necessary if Mr.
Pottle did not step round rather soon with a little donation for the
loan department.
It was thoughts of this cheerless nature that kept Mr. Pottle tossing
uneasily in his share of the bed, and with wide-open, worried eyes doing
sums on the moonlit ceiling. He waited the morrow with numb pessimism.
For, though he had combed the town and borrowed every cent he could
squeeze from friend or foe, though he had pawned his favorite case of
razors, he was three hundred dollars short of the needed amount. Three
hundred dollars is not much compared to all the money in the world, but
to Mr. Pottle, on his bed of anxiety, it looked like the Great Wall of
China.
He heard the town clock boom a faint two. It occurred to him that there
was something singular, odd, about the silence. It took him minutes to
decide what it was. Then he puzzled it out. Violet nee Pershing was not
barking. It was her invariable custom to make harrowing sounds at the
moon from ten in the evening till dawn. He had learned to sleep through
them, eventually. He pointed out to Blossom that a dog that barks all
the time is a dooce of a watch-dog, and she pointed out to him that a
dog that barks all the time thus advertising its presence and its
ferocity, would be certain to scare off midnight prowlers. He wondered
why Violet was so silent. The thought skipped through his brain that
perhaps she had run away, or been poisoned, and in all his worry, he
permitted himself a faint smile of hope. No, he thought, I was born
unlucky. There must be another reason. It was borne into his brain cells
what this reason must be.
Slipping from bed without disturbing the dormant Blossom, he crept on
wary bare toes from the room and down stairs. Ever so faint chinking
sounds came from the dining room. With infinite caution Mr. Pottle slid
open the sliding door an inch. He caught his breath.
There, in a patch of moonlight, squatted the chunky figure of a masked
man, and he was engaged in industriously wrapping up the Pottle silver
in bits of cloth. Now and then he paused in his labors to pat
caressingly the head of Violet who stood beside him watching with
fascinated interest, and wagging a pleased tail. Mr. Pottle was clamped
to his observation post by a freezing fear. The busy burglar did not see
him, but Violet did, and pointing her bushel of bushy head at him, she
let slip a deep "Grrrrrrrrrrr." The burglar turned quickly, and a
moonbeam rebounded from the polished steel of his revolver as he
leveled it at a place where Mr. Pottle's heart would have been if it had
not at that precise second been in his throat, a quarter of an inch
south of his Adam's apple.
"Keep 'em up," said the burglar, "or I'll drill you like you was an
oil-well."
Mr. Pottle's hands went up and his heart went down. The ultimate straw
had been added; the wedding silver was neatly packed in the burglar's
bag. Mr. Pottle cast an appealing look at Violet and breathed a prayer
that in his dire emergency her blue-blood would tell and she would fling
herself with one last heroic fling at the throat of the robber. Violet
returned his look with a stony stare, and licked the free hand of the
thief.
A thought wave rippled over Mr. Pottle's brain.
"You might as well take the dog with you, too," he said.
"Your dog?" asked the burglar, gruffly.
"Whose else would it be?"
"Where'd you get her?"
"Raised her from a pup up."
"From a pup up?"
"Yes, from a pup up."
The robber appeared to be thinking.
"She's some dog," he remarked. "I never seen one just like her."
For the first time in the existence of either of them, Mr. Pottle felt a
faint glow of pride in Violet.
"She's the only one of her kind in the world," he said.
"I believe you," said the burglar. "And I know a thing or two about
dogs, too."
"Really?" said Mr. Pottle, politely.
"Yes, I do," said the burglar and a sad note had softened the gruffness
of his voice. "I used to be a dog trainer."
"You don't tell me?" said Mr. Pottle.
"Yes," said the burglar, with a touch of pride, "I had the swellest dog
and pony act in big time vaudeville once."
"Where is it now?" Mr. Pottle was interested.
"Mashed to bologny," said the burglar, sadly. "Train wreck. Lost every
single animal. Like that." He snapped melancholy fingers to illustrate
the sudden demise of his troupe. "That's why I took to this," he added.
"I ain't a regular crook. Honest. I just want to get together enough
capital to start another show. Another job or two and I'll have enough."
Mr. Pottle looked his sympathy. The burglar was studying Violet with
eyes that brightened visibly.
"If," he said, slowly, "I only had a trick dog like her, I could start
again. She's the funniest looking hound I ever seen, bar none. I can
just hear the audiences roaring with laughter." He sighed reminiscently.
"Take her," said Mr. Pottle, handsomely. "She's yours."
The burglar impaled him with the gimlet eye of suspicion.
"Oh, yes," he said. "I could get away with a dog like that, couldn't I?
You couldn't put the cops on my trail if I had a dog like that with me,
oh, no. Why, I could just as easy get away with Pike's Peak or a flock
of Masonic Temples as with a dog as different looking as her. No,
stranger, I wasn't born yesterday."
"I won't have you pinched, I swear I won't," said Mr. Pottle earnestly.
"Take her. She's yours."
The burglar resumed the pose of thinker.
"Look here, stranger," he said at length. "Tell you what I'll do. Just
to make the whole thing fair and square and no questions asked, I'll buy
that dog from you."
"You'll what?" Mr. Pottle articulated.
"I'll buy her," repeated the burglar.
Mr. Pottle was incapable of replying.
"Well," said the burglar, "will you take a hundred for her?"
Mr. Pottle could not get out a syllable.
"Two hundred, then?" said the burglar.
"Make it three hundred and she's yours," said Mr. Pottle.
"Sold!" said the burglar.
* * * * *
When morning came to Granville, Mr. Pottle waked his wife by gently,
playfully, fanning her pink and white cheek with three bills of a large
denomination.
"Blossom," he said, and the smile of his early courting days had come
back, "you were right. Violet was a one man dog. I just found the man."
V: _Mr. Pottle and Pageantry_
Sec.1
"He wouldn't give a cent," announced Mrs. Pottle, blotting up the
nucleus of a tear on her cheek with the tip of her gloved finger. "'Not
one red cent,' was the way he put it."
"What did you want a red cent for, honey?" inquired Mr. Pottle,
absently, from out the depths of the sporting page. "Who wouldn't give
you a red cent?"
"Old Felix Winterbottom," she answered.
Mr. Pottle put down his paper.
"Do you mean to say you tackled old frosty-face Felix himself?" he
demanded with interest and some awe.
"I certainly did," replied his wife. "Right in his own office."
Her spouse made no attempt to conceal his admiration.
"What did you say; then what did he say; then what did you say?" he
queried.
"I was very polite," Mrs. Pottle answered, "and tactful. I said 'See
here, now, Mr. Winterbottom, you are the richest man in the county, and
yet you have the reputation of being the most careful with your
money----'"
"I'll bet that put him in a good humor," said Mr. Pottle in a murmured
aside.
"You know perfectly well, Ambrose, that old Felix Winterbottom is never
in a good humor," said his wife. "After talking with him, I really
believe the story that he has never smiled in his life. Well, anyhow, I
said to him, 'See here now, Mr. Winterbottom, I'm going to give you a
chance to show people your heart is in the right place, after all. The
Day Nursery we ladies of the Browning-Tagore Club of Granville are
starting needs just one thousand dollars. Won't you let me put you down
for that amount?'"
Mr. Pottle whistled.
"Did he bite you?" he asked.
"I thought for a minute he was going to," admitted Mrs. Pottle, "and
then he said, 'Are the Gulicks interested in this?' I said, 'Of course,
they are. Mrs. P. Bradley Gulick is Chairman of the Pink Contribution
Team, and Mrs. Wendell Gulick is Chairman----' 'Stop,' said Mr.
Winterbottom, giving me that fishy look of his, like a halibut in a cake
of ice, 'in that case, I wouldn't give a cent, not one red cent.
Good-day, Mrs. Pottle.' I went."
Mr. Pottle wagged his head sententiously.
"You'll never get a nickel out of him now," he declared. "Never. You
might have known that Felix Winterbottom would not go into anything the
Gulicks were in. And," added Mr. Pottle thoughtfully, "I can't say that
I blame old Felix much."
"Ambrose!" reproved Mrs. Pottle, but her rebuke lacked a certain
whole-heartedness, "The Gulicks are nice people; the nicest people in
Granville."
"That's the trouble with them," retorted Mr. Pottle, "they never let you
forget it. That's what ails this town; too much Gulicks. I'm not the
only one who thinks so, either."
She did not attempt rebuttal, beyond saying,
"They're our oldest family."
"Bah," said Mr. Pottle. He appeared to smolder, and then he flamed out,
"Honest, Blossom, those Gulicks make me just a little bit sick to the
stummick. Just because some ancestor of theirs came over in the
Mayflower, and because some other ancestor happened to own the farm this
town was built on, you'd think they were the Duke of Kackiack, or
something. The town grew up and made 'em rich, but what did they ever do
for the town?"
"Well," began Mrs. Pottle, more for the sake of debate than from
conviction, "there's Gulick Avenue, and Gulick Street, and Gulick
Park----"
"Oh, they give their name freely enough," said Mr. Pottle. "But what did
they give to the Day Nursery fund?"
"They did disappoint me," Mrs. Pottle admitted. "They only gave fifty
dollars, which isn't much for the second wealthiest family in town, but
Mrs. P. Bradley Gulick said we could put her name at the head of the
list----"
Mr. Pottle's affable features attained an almost sardonic look.
"Oho," he said, pointedly. "Oho."
He flamed up again,
"That's exactly the amount those pirates added to the rent of my barber
shop," he stated, and then, passion seething in his ordinarily amiable
bosom, he went on, "A fine lot, they are, to be snubbing a self-made man
like Felix Winterbottom, and turning up their thin, blue noses at Felix
Winterbottom's tannery."
"Ambrose," said his wife, with lifted blonde eyebrows, "please don't
make suggestive jokes in my presence."
"Honey swat key Molly pants," returned Mr. Pottle with a touch of
bellicosity. "It's no worse than other tanneries; and it's the biggest
in the state. Those Gulicks give me a pain, I tell you. You can't pick
up a paper without reading, 'Mr. P. Bradley Gulick, one of our leading
citizens, unveiled a tablet in the Gulick Hook and Ladder Company
building yesterday in honor of his ancestor, Saul Gulick, one of the
pioneers who hewed our great state out of the wilderness, and whose
cider-press stood on the ground now occupied by the hook and ladder
company.' Or 'Mrs. Wendell Gulick read a paper before the Society of
Descendants of Officers Above the Rank of Captain on General
Washington's Staff on the heroic part played by her ancestor, Major Noah
Gulick, at the battle of Saratoga.' If it isn't that it's 'The Spinning
Wheel Club met at Mrs. Gulick's palatial residence to observe the
anniversary of the birth of Phineas Gulick, the first red-headed baby
born in Massachusetts.' Bah, is what I say, Bah!"
He seethed and bubbled and broke out again.
"You'd think to hear them blow that the Gulicks discovered ancestors and
had 'em patented. I guess the Pottles had an ancestor or two. Even Felix
Winterbottom had ancestors."
"Probably haddocks," said Mrs. Pottle coldly. "He can keep his old red
cents."
"He will, never fear," her husband assured her. "After the way he and
his family have been treated by the Gulicks, I don't blame him."
Mrs. Pottle pumped up a sigh from the depths of a deep bosom and sank
tearfully to a divan.
"And I'd set my heart on it," she sobbed.
"What, dear?"
"The Day Nursery. And it's to fail for want of a miserable thousand
dollars."
"Don't speak disrespectfully of a thousand dollars, Blossom," Mr. Pottle
enjoined his spouse. "That's five thousand shaves. And don't expect me
to give anything more. You know perfectly well the barber-business is
not what it used to be. I can't give another red cent."
Mrs. Pottle sniffed.
"Who asked you for your red cents?" she inquired, with spirit. "I'll
make the money myself."
"You, Blossom?"
"Yes. Me."
"But how?"
She rose majestically; determination was in her pose, and the light of
inspiration was in her bright blue eyes.
"We'll give a pageant," she announced.
"A pageant?" Mr. Pottle showed some dismay. "A show, Blossom?"
"Evidently," she said, "you have not read your encyclopedia under 'P.'"
"I'm only as far as 'ostriches,'" he answered, humbly.
"'A pageant,'" she quoted, "'is an elaborate exhibition or spectacle, a
series of stately tableaux or living pictures, frequently historic, and
often with poetic spoken interludes.'"
"Ah," beamed Mr. Pottle, nodding understandingly, "a circus!"
"Not in the least, Ambrose. Does your mind never soar? A pageant is a
very beautiful and serious thing, with lots of lovely costumes, hundreds
of people, horses, historic scenes----" she broke off suddenly. "When
was Granville founded?"
He told her. Her eyes sparkled.
"Wonderful," she cried. "This year it will be two hundred years old.
We'll give an historic pageant--the Growth of Civilization in
Granville."
"It sounds expensive," objected Mr. Pottle.
"Don't be sordid, Ambrose," said his wife.
"I'm not sordid, Blossom," he returned. "I'm a practical man. I know
these kermesses and feats. My cousin Julia Onderdonk got up a pageant in
Peoria once and now she hasn't a friend in the place. Besides it only
netted fourteen dollars for the Bide-a-wee Home. Now, honey, why not
give a good, old-fashioned chicken supper in the church hall, with
perhaps a minstrel show afterward? That would get my money----"
"Chicken supper! Minstrel show! Oh, Ambrose." His wife's snort was the
acme of refinement. "Have you no soul? This pageant will be an inspiring
thing. It will make for, I might almost say militate for, a community
spirit. Other communities give pageant after pageant. Shall Granville
lag behind? Here is a chance for a real community get-together. Here is
a chance to give our young people the wonderful history of their native
town----"
"And also a chance for all the Gulick tribe to parade around in colonial
clothes with spinning wheels under their arms," put in Mr. Pottle.
"I'm afraid we can't avoid that," admitted his wife, ruefully. "After
all, they are our oldest family."
She meditated.
"I suppose," she mused, "that Mrs. P. Bradley Gulick would have to be
the Spirit of Progress----"
"Progress shouldn't be fat and wall-eyed," interposed Mr. Pottle. She
ignored this.
"And I suppose that odious freckled daughter of hers would have to be
the Spirit of Liberty or Civilization or something important, and I
suppose that pompous Mr. Gulick would have to be the Pioneer
Spirit--still, I think it could be managed. Now, you, Ambrose, can
be----"
"I don't want to be the spirit of anything," he declared. "Count me out,
Blossom."
Mrs. Pottle assumed a hurt pout.
"For my sake?" she said.
"I'm no actor," he stated.
"Oh, I don't want you to act," she said. "You're to be treasurer."
He wrinkled up his nose and brow into a frown.
"The dirty work," he exclaimed. "That's the way the world over. Us
Pottles do the dirty work and the Gulicks get the glory. No, Blossom,
no, no, no."
An appealing tear, and another, stole down her pink cheek.
"Mr. Gallup wouldn't have treated me that way," she said. Mr. Gallup had
been her first husband.
Mr. Pottle knew resistance was futile.
"Oh, all right. I'll be treasurer."
She smiled. "Now one more tiny favor?"
"Well?"
"I want you to be the Spirit of History and read the historic epilogue."
"Me? I'm no spirit. I'm a boss barber."
"Well, if you don't take the job, I suppose I can get one of the
Gulicks."
He considered a second.
"All right," he said. "I'll be the Spirit of History. But understand one
thing, right here and now: I will not wear tights."
She conceded him that point.
"Say," he asked, struck by a thought, "how do you know what spirits are
going to be in this? Who is going to write this thing, anyhow?"
"I am," said Mrs. Pottle.
Sec.2
"It's not decent," objected Mr. Pottle fervidly. "How can I keep the
respect of the community if I go round like this?"
He indicated his pink knees, which blushed like spring rosebuds beneath
a somewhat nebulous toga of cheese-cloth.
"If I can't wear pants, I don't want to be the Spirit of History," he
added.
"For the fifth and last time," said the tired and harassed voice of Mrs.
Pottle, "you cannot wear pants. Spirits never do. That settles it. Not
another word, Ambrose. Haven't I trouble enough without my own husband
adding to it?"
She pressed her brow as if it ached. Piles of costumes, mostly tinsel
and cheese-cloth, shields, tomahawks, bridles and bits of scenery were
strewn about the Pottle parlor. She sank into a Morris chair, and
stitched fiercely at an angel's wing. Her eyes were the eyes of one at
bay.
"It's been one thing after another," she declaimed. "Those Gulicks are
making my life miserable. And just now I had a note from Etta Runkle's
mother saying that if in the Masque of the Fruits and Flowers of Botts
County her little Etta has to be an onion while little Gertrude Crump is
a violet, she won't lend us that white horse for the Paul Revere's Ride
Scene. So I had to make that hateful stupid child of hers a violet and
change Gertrude Crump to an onion and now Mrs. Crump is mad and won't
let any of her children appear in the pageant."
"Well," remarked Mr. Pottle, "I don't see why you had to have Paul
Revere's Ride anyhow. He didn't ride all the way out here to Ohio, did
he?"
"I know he didn't," she replied, tartly, "I didn't want to put him in.
But Mrs. Gulick insisted. She said it was her ancestor, Elijah Gulick,
who lent Paul Revere the horse. That's why I have to have Paul Revere
stop in the middle of his ride and say,
"_Gallant stallion, swift and noble,
Lent me by my good friend Gulick,
Patriot, scholar, king of horsemen,
Speed ye, speed ye, speed ye onward!_"
Mr. Pottle groaned.
"Is there anything in American history the Gulicks didn't have a hand
in?" he asked. "But say, Blossom, that horse of the Runkle's is no
gallant stallion. She's the one Matt Runkle uses on his milk route.
Every one in town knows Agnes."
"I can't help it," said Mrs. Pottle wearily. "Wendell Gulick, Jr., who
plays Paul Revere, insisted on having a white horse, and Agnes was the
only one I could get."
"They're the insistingest people I ever knew," observed Mr. Pottle.
His wife gave out the saddest sound in the world, the short sob of
thwarted authorship.
"They've just about ruined my pageant," she said. "Mrs. Gulick insisted
on having that battle between the settlers and the Indians just because
a great, great uncle of hers was in it. I didn't want anything rough
like that in my pageant. Besides it happened in the next county, and the
true facts are that the Indians chased the settlers fourteen miles, and
scalped three of them. Of course it wouldn't do to show a Gulick running
from an Indian, so she insisted that I change history around and make
the settlers win the battle. None of the nice young men were willing to
be Indians and be chased, so I had to hire a tough young fellow named
Brannigan--I believe they call him 'Beansy'--and nine other young
fellows from the horseshoe works to play Indian at fifty cents apiece."
Mr. Pottle looked anxious.
"I know that Beansy Brannigan," he said. "How is that gang behaving?"
"Oh, pretty well. But ten Indians at fifty cents an Indian is five
dollars, and we c-can't afford it."
She was tearful again.
"Already the costumes have cost four hundred dollars and more. We'll be
lucky to make expenses if the Gulicks keep on putting in expensive
scenes," she moaned.
She busied herself with the angel's wing, then paused to ask, "Ambrose,
have you learned your historical epilogue?"
For answer he sprang to his feet, wrapped his cheese-cloth toga about
him, struck a Ciceronian attitude, and said loudly:
"_Who am I, oh list'ning peoples?
His'try's spirit, stern and truthful!
Come I here to tell you fully,
Of our Granville's thrilling story,
How Saul and other noble Gulicks,
And a few who shall be nameless,
Hewed a city from the forests,
Blazed the way for civ'lization._"
"Stop," cried Mrs. Pottle. "I can't bear to hear another word about
those Gulicks. You know it well enough."
"There are a few things I wish I could have put in," remarked Mr.
Pottle, wistfully.
His tone made her look up with quick interest.
"What do you mean?" she inquired.
"Oh, I found out a thing or two," he replied, "when I was down at the
capital last week. I happened to drop into the state historical
society's library and run over some old records."
He chuckled.
"P. Bradley Gulick told me I didn't have to go down there to get the
facts. He'd give them to me, he said. So he did. Some of them."
"Ambrose, what do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing. All I will say is this: I'm a patient man and can be
pestered a lot, but just let one of these Gulicks pester me a little too
much one of these days, and I'll rear up on my hind legs, that's all."
There was a glint in his eye, and she saw it.
"Ambrose," she said, "if you do anything to spoil my pageant, I'll never
forgive you."
He snorted.
"Your pageant? It's just as I said it would be. We Pottles will do the
dirty work and the Gulicks will grab the glory. They've behaved so
piggish that everybody in town is sore at them, and I don't see how the
pageant is going to come out on top. You'd probably have gotten that
thousand from old Felix Winterbottom if it hadn't been for them. Then
you wouldn't have to be losing a pound a day over this pageant. Now if
you'd only gotten up a nice old-fashioned chicken supper, and a minstrel
show----"
"Ambrose! Go put on your trousers!"
Sec.3
Despite Mr. Pottle's pessimistic predictions, there was not a vacant
seat or an unused cubic foot of air in the Granville Opera House that
clinging Spring night, when the asbestos curtain, tugged by tyro hands,
jerkily ascended on the prologue of the Grand Historical Pageant of the
Growth of Civilization in Granville for the Benefit of the
Browning-Tagore Club's Day Nursery. Those who did not have relatives in
the cast appeared to have been lured thither by a certain morbid
curiosity as to what a pageant was. Their faces said plainly that they
were prepared for anything.
After the orchestra had raced through "Poet and Peasant," with the
cornet winning by a comfortable margin, Mrs. P. Bradley Gulick, somewhat
short of breath and rendered doubly wall-eyed by an inexpert make-up,
appeared in red, white and blue cheese-cloth, and announced in a high
voice that she was the Spirit of Progress and would look on with a
kindly, encouraging eye while history's storied page was turned and
spread before them, and, she added, in properly poetic language, she
would tell them what it was all about. The audience gave her the
applause due the dowager of the town's leading family, and not one
hand-clap more. Mr. P. Bradley Gulick, bony but impressive, in a Grecian
robe, appeared and proclaimed that he was the Spirit of Civilization. A
Ballet of the Waters followed, and as a climax, Evelyn Gulick, age
thirteen, in appropriate green gauze, announced:
"_Who am I, oh friends and neighbors?
I'm the Spirit of the Waters,
Lordly, swift, Monongahela;
Argosies float on my bosom----_"
She tapped her narrow chest, and a look of horror crept into her face;
her mind seemed to be groping for something. Tremulously she repeated,
"_Argosies float on my bosom._"
The voice of Mrs. Pottle prompted from the wings,
"_And fleets of ships with treasures laden._"
Evelyn clutched at the sound, but it slipped from her, and she wildly
began,
"_Argosies float on my bosom_ (Slap, slap)
_And sheeps of flits--and sheeps of flits----_"
She burst into tears, and turning a spiteful face toward one of the
boxes, she cried,
"You stop making faces at me, Jessie Winterbottom."
Then she fled to the wings.
This served to bring to the attention of the audience the fact that a
strange thing had happened: Felix Winterbottom and his family had come
to the pageant. He was there, concealed as far as possible by the red
plush curtains of the box, defiant and forbidding. From the glance he
now and then cast at the decollete back of his wife, it was evident that
he had not come voluntarily.
Mrs. Pottle, in the wings, bit a newly manicured fingernail.
"I begged Mrs. Gulick to make that dumb child of hers learn her part,"
she whispered wrathfully to her husband.
"Mrs. Gulick says it's your fault for not prompting loud enough," said
Mr. Pottle.
"She did, did she?" Mrs. Pottle assumed what is known in ring circles as
a fighting face.
"I can't stand much more of their pestering," said Mr. Pottle darkly.
"Ssssh," said his wife. "The Paul Revere scene is going to start."
In the wings, Wendell Gulick, Junior, was making ready to mount his
charger. The charger, as he had specified, was white, peculiarly white,
for it had been found necessary at the last moment to conceal some
harness stains by powdering her liberally with crushed lilac talcum.
Agnes looked resentful but resigned. Mr. Gulick, Junior, was a plump
young man, with nose-glasses, and satisfied lips, who had the
distinction of being the only person in Granville who had ever ridden to
hounds. He cultivated a horsey atmosphere, wore a riding crop pin in his
tie, and was admittedly the local authority on things equine. He looked
most formidable in hip-high leathern boots, a continental garb, and a
powdered wig. It was regretable that the steed did not measure up to her
rider. Save for being approximately white, Agnes had little to
recommend her for the role. She had one of those long, sad, philosophic
faces, and she appeared to be considerably taller in the hips than in
the shoulders. She had a habit of looking back over her shoulder with a
surprised expression, as if she missed her milk wagon.
Encouraged by a slap on the flank from a stage-hand, Agnes advanced to
the center of the stage at a brisk, business-like trot, and there
stopped, and nodded to the audience.
"Whoa, Agnes," shouted some bad little boy in the gallery.
Young Mr. Gulick, in the role of Paul Revere, affected to pat his
mount's head, and in a voice of thunder, roared:
"_Gallant stallion, swift and noble,_"
Agnes reached out a long neck and nibbled at the scenery.
"_Lent me by my good friend, Gulick,_"
Agnes looked over her shoulder and smiled at her rider.
"_Patriot, scholar, king of horsemen,_"
Agnes scratched herself heartily on a property rock.
"_Speed ye, speed ye, speed ye onward!_"
The business of the scene called for a spirited exit by Paul Revere,
waving his cocked hat. But Agnes had other plans. She liked the taste of
scenery. She did not budge. In vain did the scion of the Gulicks beat
with frantic heels upon her flat flanks.
"Speed ye onward, or we'll be late," he improvised cleverly.
She masticated a canvas leaf from a convenient shrub and did not speed
onward.
"Gid-ap, Agnes," shrilled the boy in the gallery. "The folks is waitin'
for their milk."
The audience grew indecorous.
Even his ruddy make-up could not conceal the fact that Mr. Wendell
Gulick, Junior, was very red in the face, and that his lips were forming
words not in that, or any other pageant. His leathern heels boomed
hollowly on Agnes's barrel of body. To ring down the curtain was
impossible; Agnes had taken her place directly beneath it.
Paul Revere turned a passionate face to the wings,
"Hey, Pottle," he bellowed, "why don't you do something instead of
standing there grinning like a baboon?"
Thus charged, Mr. Pottle's toga-clad figure came nimbly from the wings,
to great applause, and seized Agnes by the bridle. Pottle tugged
lustily. Agnes smiled and did not give way an inch.
"Send for Matt Runkle," hissed Mr. Gulick, Junior.
"Send for Matt Runkle," echoed Mr. Pottle.
"Send for Matt Runkle," cried voices in the audience.
"He's home in bed," wailed Mrs. Pottle from the wings.
"Get one of the Runkle kids," shouted Mr. Pottle, seeking to arouse
Agnes with kicks of his sandal-shod feet.
Little Etta Runkle, partly clad in the tinsel and cheese-cloth of a
violet, and partly in her everyday underwear, was fetched from a
dressing room. She was a bright child and sensed the situation as soon
as it had been explained to her twice.
"Oh," she said, "Pa always says Agnes won't start unless you clink two
milk bottles together."
The audience was calling forth suggestions to Paul Revere, astride, and
Pottle, on foot. They included a bonfire beneath Agnes, and dynamite.
Even the rock-bound face of old Felix Winterbottom, in the depths of the
box, showed the vestige of a crease that might, with a little
imagination, be considered the start of a smile.
A fevered search back stage netted two bottles, dusty and smelling of
turpentine and gin, respectively. Mr. Pottle grasped their necks and
clinked them together with resounding clinks. The effect on Agnes was
electrical. From utter immobility she started with a startled hop. The
unready Mr. Gulick, Junior, after one mad grasp at her mane, rolled
ignominiously from her broad back, and landed on the stage in a position
that was undignified for a Revere and positively painful for a Gulick.
Agnes bolted to the wings. The curtain darted down.
The audience seemed to take this occurrence in a spirit of levity, but
not so Mrs. Pottle. Hot tears gathered in her eyes.
"That wretch would have a white horse," she said. "They would put Paul
Revere's Ride in. Now look. Now look!"
"There, there, honey," said Mr. Pottle, between sympathetic teeth.
"We'll fix 'em."
The pageant pursued its more or less majestic way, but as the history of
Granville was unfolded, scene upon scene, it became all too apparent to
Mrs. Pottle that her poetic opus could not recapture the first serious
mood of the audience. It positively jeered when Miss Eltruda Gulick
announced that she was the Spirit of the Bogardus Canal. But it grew
more interested as the curtain slid up on the battle scene. This, Mrs.
Pottle felt, was her dramatic masterpiece. There lay the peaceful
pioneer settlement--artfully fashioned from paste-board--while the
simple but virile settlers strolled up and down the embryo Main Street
and exchanged couplets. The chief settler, an adipose young man with a
lisp, was Mr. Gurnee Gulick, until then noted as the most adept
practitioner of the modern dance-steps in that part of Ohio. Through a
beard, he announced, falsetto,
"_I give thee greeting, neighbor Gulick,
Upon this blossom-burgeoning morning,
I trust 'tis not the wily red-skin
I just heard whooping in the forest._"
His trust was misplaced. It was, indeed, the wily red-skin in the
persons of Mr. Edward Brannigan--known to intimates as "Beansy," and
nine of his fellow horseshoe makers who had been hired to impersonate
red-men, in rather loose-fitting brown cotton skins. Mr. Brannigan and
fellow red-skins had done their part dutifully at rehearsals, and had
permitted themselves to be knocked down, cuffed about a bit, and finally
put to inglorious rout by the settlers. But on the fateful night of the
pageant, while waiting for their turn to appear, they had passed the
moments with a jug of cider that was standing with reluctant feet at
that high point in its career where it has ceased to be sweet and has
not yet become vinegar. That was no reason why they should not do their
part, for it was not an intricate one. They were to rush on, with
whoops, be annihilated, and retire in confusion.
They did rush on with whoops that left nothing to be desired from the
standpoint of realism. Mrs. Pottle, tense in the wings, was
congratulating herself that one scene at least had dramatic strength. It
was at this moment that Mr. Brannigan, as Chief Winipasuki, sachem of
the Algonquins, encountered Mr. Gulick, the principal settler. In his
enthusiasm, Mr. Gulick over-acted his part. He smote the red-skin
warrior so earnestly on the ear that Mr. Brannigan described a parabola
and dented a papier-mache rock with his hundred and seventy pounds of
muscular body. His part called for him to lie there, prone and impotent,
while the settlers drove off his band.
It may have been a sudden rebellion of a proud spirit. It may have been
the wraith of history in protest; it may have been an inherently
perverse nature; or it may have been the cider. In any event, Chief
Winipasuki got to his feet, war-whooped, and knocked the principal
settler through the paste-board wall of the block-house. Those in the
audience who were fond of realism enjoyed what ensued immensely. The
settlers of the town, who were the nice young men, and the Indians, who
were not so nice but were strong and willing, had at one another, and
although they had only nature's weapons, the battle, as it waged up and
down and back and through the shattered scenery, was stirring enough.
When the curtain was at last brought down, Chief Winipasuki had a
half-nelson on Settler Gulick, who was calling in a loud penetrating
voice for the police.
In all the hub-bub and confusion, in all the delirium of the audience,
Mr. Pottle remained calm enough to note that a miracle had taken place;
Mr. Felix Winterbottom was chuckling. It was a dry, unpracticed chuckle
at best, but it was a chuckle, nevertheless. Mr. Pottle was observing
the phenomenon with wide eyes when he felt his elbow angrily plucked.
"You're to blame for this, Pottle," rasped a voice. It was Gurnee
Gulick's irate father.
"Me?" sputtered Mr. Pottle.
"Yes. You. You knew those ruffians had been drinking."
"I did not."
"Don't contradict me, you miserable little hair-cutting fool."
"What? How dare you----" began Mr. Pottle.
"Bah. You wart!" said Mr. Gulick, and turned his square yard of fat back
on the incensed little man.
Mr. Pottle was taking a step after him as if he intended to leap up and
sink his teeth into the back of Mr. Gulick's overflowing neck, when
another hand clutched him. It was his wife.
Her face was white and tear-stained, her lip quivering.
"They've ruined it, they've ruined it," she exclaimed. "I warned that
simpleton Gurnee Gulick not to be rough with those horseshoe boys. Oh,
dear, oh, dear." She pillowed her brimming eyes in his toga-draped
shoulder.
"You've got to go out, now," she sobbed, "and give the historical
epilogue."
"Never," said Mr. Pottle. "A thousand nevers."
"Please, Ambrose. We've got to end it, somehow."
"Very well," announced Mr. Pottle. "I'll go. But mind you, Blossom
Pottle, I won't be responsible for what I say."
"Neither will I," sobbed his spouse.
Mr. Pottle hitched his toga about him, and strode out on the stage.
There was some applause, but more titters. He held up his hand for
silence, as orators do, and glared so fiercely at his audience that the
theater grew comparatively quiet. At the top of his voice, he began,
"_Who am I, oh list'ning peoples?_"
"Pottle the barber," answered a voice in the gallery.
Mr. Pottle paused, fastened an awful eye on the owner of the voice, and,
stepping out of character, remarked, succinctly:
"If you interrupt me again, Charlie Meacham, I'll come up there and
knock your block off." He swept the house with a ferocious glance. "And
that goes for the rest of you," he added. The intimidated audience went
"ssssssh" at each other; Pottle was popular in Granville. He launched
himself again.
"_Who am I, oh list'ning peoples?
Hist'ry's spirit, stern and truthful!
Come I here to give you an earful,
Of our city's inside history,
How the Gulicks grabbed the real estate,
By foreclosing poor folk's mortgages._"
He did not have to ask for silence now. The hush of death was on the
house, and the audience bent its ears toward him; even old Felix
Winterbottom, on the edge of his chair, cupped a gnarled, attentive ear.
Mr. Pottle went on,
"_You have heard the Gulick's blowing,
Of their wonderful relations._
_Lend an ear, and I will slip you,
What the real, true, red-hot dope is._"
He gave his toga a hitch, advanced to the foot-lights, and continued,
"_Old Saul Gulick was a drinker,
Always full of home-made liquor,
And he got the town of Granville,
From the Indians, by cheating,
Got 'em drunk, the records tell us,
Got 'em boiled and stewed and glassy;
Ere they sobered up, they sold him,
All the land in this fair county,
For a dollar and a quarter,
Which, my friends, he never paid them._"
The audience held its breath; Felix Winterbottom cupped both ears.
Pottle hurried on,
"_Now we come to 'Lijah Gulick,
Him that lent the noble stallion
To Revere, the midnight rider.
Honest, folks, you'll bust out laughing,
When I tell you 'Lijah stole him.
For Elijah was a horsethief,
And, as such, was hanged near Boston.
"Patriot, scholar, king of horsemen"--
Honest, folks, that makes me snicker.
Yes, he let Paul ride his stallion--
And charged him seven bucks an hour!
If you think that I am lying,
You will find all this in writing,
In the library in the state house._"
Sensation! Gasps in the audience. Commotion in the wings. Felix
Winterbottom made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was chuckling.
Pottle drew in a deep breath, and spoke again.
"_Then you've heard of Noah Gulick,
Him that won the Revolution.
If he ever was a major,
George J. Washington never knew it.
When they charged at Saratoga,
He was hiding in a cellar.
Was he on the staff of Washington?
Sure he was--but in the kitchen.
I'll admit he made good coffee--
But a soldier? Quit your kidding.
Now I'll take up Nathan Gulick,
His descendants never mention
That he spent a month in prison
More than once, for stealing chickens----_"
Here Mr. Pottle abruptly stopped. The curtain had been dropped with a
crashing bang by unseen hands in the wings.
As it fell, there was a curious, cackling noise in one of the boxes, the
like of which had never before been heard in Granville. It was Felix
Winterbottom laughing as if he were being paid a dollar a guffaw.
Sec.4
Mr. Pottle sat beside the bedside of Mrs. Pottle, sadly going over a
column of figures, as she lay there, wan, weak, tear-marred, sipping
pale tea.
He cleared his throat.
"As retiring treasurer of the Granville Pageant," he announced, "I
regret to report as follows:
Receipts from tickets $1,250.00
Expenses, including rent, music,
scenery, costumes, and damages, $1,249.17
"This leaves a total net profit of eighty-three cents."
Mrs. Pottle wept softly into her pillow. A whistle outside caused her to
lift a woeful head.
"There's the postman," she said, feebly. "Another bill, I suppose. We
won't even make eighty-three cents."
Mr. Pottle returned with the letter; he opened it; he read it; he
whistled; he read it again; then he read it aloud.
"Dear Mrs. Pottle:
"I never laughed at anything in my life till I saw your
pageant. I pay for what I get.
"Yours,
"FELIX WINTERBOTTOM.
"P. S. Inclosed is my check for one thousand dollars
for the Day Nursery."
Mrs. Pottle sat up in bed. She smiled.
VI: _The Cage Man_
All day long they kept Horace Nimms in a steel-barred cage. For
twenty-one years he had perched on a tall stool in that cage, while
various persons at various times poked things at him through a hole
about big enough to admit an adult guinea pig.
Every evening round five-thirty they let Horace out and permitted him to
go over to his half of a double-barreled house in Flatbush to sleep. At
eight-thirty the next morning he returned to his cage, hung his
two-dollar-and-eighty-nine-cent approximately Panama hat on a peg and
changed his blue-serge-suit coat for a still more shiny alpaca. Then he
sharpened two pencils to needle-point sharpness, tested his pen by
writing "H. Nimms, Esq.," in a small precise hand, gave his adding
machine a few preparatory pokes and was ready for the day's work.
Horace was proud, in his mild way, of being shut up in the cage with all
that money. It carried the suggestion that he was a dangerous man of a
possibly predatory nature. He wasn't. A more patient and docile five
feet and two inches of cashier was not to be found between Spuyten
Duyvil and Tottenville, Staten Island. Cashiers are mostly crabbed. It
sours them somehow to hand out all that money and retain so little for
their own personal use. But Horace was not of this ilk.
The timidest stenographer did not hesitate to take the pettiest
petty-cash slip to his little window and twitter, according to custom:
"Forty cents for carbon paper, and let me have it in large bills,
please, Uncle Horace."
He would peer at the slip, pretend it was for forty dollars, smile a
friendly smile that made little ripples round his eyes and--according to
custom--reply: "Here you be. Now don't be buying yourself a flivver with
it."
When the office force in a large corporation calls the office cashier
"uncle" it is a pretty good indication of the sort of man he is.
For the rest, Horace Nimms was slightly bald, wore convict
eye-glasses--the sort you shackle to your head with a chain--kept his
cuffs up with lavender sleeve garters, carried a change purse, kept a
small red pocket expense book, thought his company the greatest in the
world and its president, Oren Hammer, the greatest man, was devoted to a
wife and two growing daughters, dreamed of a cottage on Long Island with
a few square yards of beets and beans and, finally, earned forty dollars
a week.
Horace Nimms had a figuring mind. Those ten little Arabic symbols and
their combinations and permutations held a fascination for him. To his
ears six times six is thirty-six was as perfect a poem as ever a master
bard penned. When on muggy Flatbush nights he tossed in his brass bed he
lulled himself to sleep by dividing 695,481,239 by 433. At other and
more wakeful moments he amused himself by planning an elaborate
cost-accounting system for his firm, the Amalgamated Soap Corporation,
known to the ends of the earth as the Suds Trust. Sometimes he went so
far as to play the entertaining game of imaginary conversations. He
pictured himself sitting in one of the fat chairs in the office of
President Hammer and saying between puffs on one of the presidential
perfectos: "Now, looky here, Mr. Hammer. My plan for a cost-accounting
system is----"
And he limned on his mental canvas that great man, spellbound,
enthralled, as he, Horace Nimms, dazzled him with an array of figures,
beginning: "Now, let's see, Mr. Hammer. Last year the Western works at
Purity City, Iowa, made 9,576,491 cakes of Pink Petal Toilet and
6,571,233 cakes of Lily White Laundry at a manufacturing cost of 3.25571
cents a cake, unboxed; now the selling cost a cake was"--and so on. The
interview always ended with vigorous hand-shakings on the part of Mr.
Hammer and more salary for Mr. Nimms. But actually the interview never
took place.
It wasn't that Horace didn't have confidence in his system. He did. But
he didn't have an equal amount in Horace Nimms. So he worked on in his
little cage and enjoyed a fair measure of contentment there, because to
him it was a temple of figures, a shrine of subtraction, an altar of
addition. Figures swarmed in his head as naturally as bees swarm about a
locust tree. He could tell you off-hand how many cakes of Grade-B soap
the Southern Works at Spotless, Louisiana, made in the month of May,
1914. He simply devoured statistics. When the door of the cage clanged
shut in the morning he felt soothed, at home; he immersed his own small
worries in a bath of digits and decimal points. He ate of the lotus
leaves of mathematics. He could forget, while juggling with millions of
cakes of soap and thousands of dollars, that his rent was due next week;
that Polly, his wife, needed a new dress; and that on forty a week one
must live largely on beef liver and hope.
He sometimes thought, while Subwaying to his office, that if he could
only get the ear of Oren Hammer some day and tell him about that
cost-accounting system he might get his salary raised to forty-five. But
President Hammer, whose office was on the floor above the cage, was as
remote from Horace as the Pleiades. To get to see him one had to run a
gantlet of superior, inquisitive secretaries. Besides Mr. Hammer was
reputed to be the busiest man in New York City.
"I wash the faces of forty million people every morning," was the way he
put it himself.
But the chief reason why Horace Nimms did not approach Mr. Hammer was
that Horace held him in genuine awe. The president was so big, so
masterful, so decisive. His invariable cutaway intimidated Horace; the
magnificence of his top hat dazzled the little cashier and benumbed his
faculties of speech. Once in a while Horace rode down in the same
elevator with him and--unobserved--admired his firm profile, the
concentration of his brow and the jutting jaw that some one had once
said was worth fifty thousand a year in itself, merely as a symbol of
determination. Horace would sooner have slapped General Pershing on the
back or asked President Wilson to dinner in Flatbush than have addressed
Oren Hammer. An uncommendable attitude? Yes. But after all those years
behind bars, perhaps subconsciously his spirit had become a little
caged.
One cool September morning Horace entered the cage humming "Annie
Rooney." Coming over in the Subway he had straightened out a little
quirk in his cost-accounting system that would save the company
one-ninety-fifth of a cent a cake. He took off his worn serge coat, was
momentarily concerned at the prospect of having to make it last another
season and then with a hitch on his lavender sleeve garters he slipped
into his alpaca office coat and added up a few numbers on the adding
machine for the sheer joy of it.
He had not been sitting on his high stool long when he became aware that
a man, a stranger, was regarding him fixedly through the steel screen.
The man had calmly placed a chair just outside the cage and was
examining the little cashier with the scrutinizing eye of an
ornithologist studying a newly discovered species of emu.
Horace was a bit disconcerted. He knew his accounts were in order and
accurate to the last penny. He had nothing to fear on that score.
Nevertheless, he didn't like the way the man stared at him.
"If he has something to say to me," thought Horace, "why does he say it
with glowers?"
He would have asked the starer what the devil he was looking at, but
Horace was incapable of incivility. He began nervously to total up a
column of figures and was not a little upset to find that under the cold
gaze he had made his first mistake in addition since the spring of '98.
He cast a furtive glance or two through the steel netting at the
stranger outside, who continued to focus a pair of prominent blue eyes
on the self-conscious cashier. Horace couldn't have explained why those
particular eyes rattled him; some mysterious power--black art perhaps.
The staring man was quite bald, and his head, shaped like a pineapple
cheese, had been polished until it seemed almost to glitter in the
September sun. The eyes, light blue and bulgy, reminded Horace of
poached eggs left out in the cold for a week. They had also a certain
fishy quality; impassive, yet hungry, like a shark's. Without being
actually fat, the mysterious starer had the appearance of being plump
and soft; perhaps it was the way he clasped two small, perfectly
manicured hands over a perceptible rotundity at his middle, an
unexpected protuberance, as if he were attempting to conceal a honeydew
melon under his vest.
Horace Nimms did his best to concentrate on the little columns of
figures he was so fond of drilling and parading, but his glance strayed,
almost against his will, to the bald-headed man with the fishy blue
eyes, who continued to fasten on Horace the glance a python aims at a
rabbit before he bolts him.
At length, after half an hour, Horace could stand it no longer. He
addressed the stranger politely.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Horace with his avuncular
smile.
The starer, without once taking his eyes off Horace, rose, advanced to
the little window and thrust through it an oversized card.
"You may go on with your work," he said, "just as if you were not under
observation. I am here under Mr. Hammer's orders."
His voice was peculiar--a nasal purr.
The caged cashier glanced at the card. It read:
S. WALMSLEY COWAN
EFFICIENCY EXPERT EXTRAORDINARY
AUTHOR OF "PEP, PERSONALITY, PERSONNEL,"
"HOW TO ENTHUSE EMPLOYEES"
Horace Nimms had a disquieting sensation. He had heard rumors of a man
prowling about in the company, subjecting random employees to strange
tests, firing some, moving others to different jobs, but he had always
felt that twenty-one years of service and the steel bars of his cage
protected him. And now here was the man, and he, Horace Nimms, was under
observation. He had always associated the phrase with reports of lunacy
cases in the newspapers. Mr. Cowan returned to his seat near the cage
and resumed his silent watch on its inmate. Horace tried to do his work,
but he couldn't remember when he had had such a poor day. The figures
would come wrong and his hand would tremble a little no matter how hard
he tried to forget the vigilant Mr. Cowan who sat watching him.
At the end of a trying day Horace dismounted from his high stool,
hitched up his lavender sleeve garters and inserted himself into his
worn blue serge coat. He would be glad to get back to Flatbush. Polly
would have some fried beef liver and a bread pudding for supper, and
they would discuss for the hundredth time just what the ground-floor
plan of that cottage would be--if it ever was.
But Mr. Cowan was waiting for him.
"Step this way, will you--ple-e-ese," said the expert.
Horace never remembered when he had heard a word that retained so little
of its original meaning as Mr. Cowan's "ple-e-ese." Clearly it was
tossed in as a sop to the hypersensitive. His "ple-e-ese" could have
been translated as "you worm."
Horace, with a worried brow, followed Mr. Cowan into one of those
goldfish-bowl offices affected by large companies with many executives
and a limited amount of office space. It contained only a plain table
and two stiff chairs.
"Sit down," said Mr. Cowan, "ple-e-ese."
It is a difficult linguistic feat to purr and snap at the same time, but
Mr. Cowan achieved it.
Horace sat down and Mr. Cowan sat opposite him, with his unwinking blue
eyes but two feet from Horace's mild brown ones and with no charitable
steel screen between them.
"I am going to put you to the test," said Mr. Cowan.
Horace wildly thought of thumbscrews. He sat bolt upright while Mr.
Cowan whipped from his pocket a tape measure and, bending over, measured
the breadth of Horace Nimms' brow. With an ominous clucking noise the
expert set down the measurement on a chart in front of him. Then he
carefully measured each of Horace's ears. The measurements appeared to
shock him. He wrote them down. He applied his tape to Horace's nose and
measured that organ. He surveyed Horace's forehead from several
different angles. He measured the circumference of Horace's head. The
result caused Mr. Cowan acute distress, for he set it down on his
elaborate chart and glowered at it a full minute.
Then he transferred his attention and tape to Horace's stubby hands. He
measured them, counted the fingers, contemplated the thumb gravely and
wrote several hundred words on the chart. Horace thought he recognized
one of the words as "mechanical."
"Now," said Mr. Cowan solemnly, "we will test your mental reactions."
He said this more to himself than to Horace Nimms, on whose brow tiny
pearls of perspiration were appearing. Mr. Cowan drew forth a stop watch
and spread another chart on the table before him.
"Fill this out--ple-e-ese," he said, pushing the chart toward Horace.
"You have just five minutes to do it."
Horace Nimms, dismayed, almost dazed, seized the paper and started to
work at it with feverish confusion. He boggled through a maze full of
pitfalls for a tired, rattled man:
If George Washington discovered America, write the capital of Nebraska
in this space.........But if he was called the Father of His Country,
how much is 49 x 7?........Now name three presidents of the United
States in alphabetical order, including Jefferson, but do not do so if
ice is warm.........If Adam was the first man, dot all the "i's" in
"eleemosynary" and write your last name backward.........Omit the next
three questions with the exception of the last two: How much is 6 x 9 =
54?........What is the capital of Omaha?........How many "e's" are there
in the sentence, "Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home
like you?"........Put a cross over all the consonants in the foregoing
sentence. Now fill in the missing words in the following sentences:
"While picking........I was stung in the........by a........." "Don't
bite the........that feeds you."
How old are you? Multiply your age by the year you were born in. Erase
your answer. If a pound of steel is heavier than a pound of oyster
crackers, don't write anything in this space.........Otherwise write
three words that rhyme with "icicle." Now write your name, and then
cross out all the consonants.
Name three common garden vegetables.........
It seemed to Horace Nimms that he had floundered along for less than a
minute when Mr. Cowan said briskly, "Time," and took the paper from
Horace.
"Now the association test," said Mr. Cowan, drawing forth still another
chart, very much as a magician draws forth a rabbit from a hat.
"I'll say a word," he went on, seeming to grow progressively more
affable as Horace grew more discomfited, "and you will say the word it
suggests immediately after--ple-e-ese," he added as an afterthought.
Horace Nimms moistened his dry lips. Mr. Cowan pulled out his stop
watch.
"Oyster?" said Mr. Cowan.
"S-stew!" quavered Horace.
"Flat?"
"Bush!"
"Hammer?"
"President!"
"Soap?"
"Cakes!"
"Money?"
"Forty-five!"
"Up?"
"Down!"
"Man?"
"Cage!"
"Most peculiar," muttered Mr. Cowan as he noted down the answers. "We'll
have to look into this."
Horace could not suppress a shudder.
"That's all," said Mr. Cowan.
When Horace arrived at his Flatbush flat, late for supper, he did not
enjoy the bread pudding, though it was a particularly good one--with
raisins. Nor did he go to sleep quickly, no matter how many numbers he
multiplied. He was thinking what it would mean to him at his age if Mr.
Cowan should have him put out of his cage. His dreams were haunted by a
pair of eyes like those of a frozen owl.
The next afternoon Horace Nimms, busy in his cage, received a notice
that there would be an organization meeting at the end of the day. He
went. The meeting had been called by S. Walmsley Cowan, who in his talks
to large groups adopted the benevolent big-brother manner and turned on
and off a beaming smile.
"My friends," he began, "it is no secret to some of you that Mr. Hammer
has not been pleased with the way things are going in the company. He
has felt that there has been a great deal of waste of time and money;
that neither the volume of business nor the profits on it are what they
should be. He has commissioned me to find out what is wrong in the
company and to put pep, efficiency, enthusiasm into our organization."
He smiled a modest smile.
"I rather fancy," he continued, "that I'll succeed. I have been
conducting the tests with which you are all doubtless familiar through
reading my books, 'Pep, Personality, Personnel,' and 'How to Enthuse
Employees.' I have made a most interesting and startling discovery. Most
of you are in the wrong jobs!"
He paused. The men and women looked at each other uneasily. Then he went
on.
"I'll cite just one instance. Yesterday I tested the mentality of one of
you. I found that he was of the cage, or solitary, type of worker. See
Page 239 of my book on Getting Into Men's Brains. But he was already
working in a cage! Here was a problem. Could it be that that was where
he would do best? No! Then a happy solution struck me. He was in the
wrong cage. So I am going to transfer him from a mathematical cage to a
mechanical cage. I am going to transfer him to be an elevator operator.
This may surprise you, my friends, but science is always surprising.
Just fancy! This man has been working with figures for more than twenty
years, and I discover by measuring that his thumbs are of the purely
mechanical type, and all that time he would have been much happier
running an elevator. Now by an odd coincidence I found that one of the
elevator operators has a pure type of mathematical ear, so I am
transferring him to the cashier's cage. He may seem a bit awkward there
at first, but we shall see, we shall see."
He turned on his smile. But the eyes of the employees had turned
sympathetically to the pale face of Horace Nimms. How old and tired
Uncle Horace looked, they thought. In a nightmare Horace heard his doom
pronounced. After twenty-one years! His temple of figures!
S. Walmsley Cowan unconcernedly began one of his celebrated
pep-and-punch talks calculated to send morale up as a candle sends up
the mercury in a thermometer.
"Friends," he said, thumping the table before him, "when Opportunity
comes to knock be on the front porch! Don't hold back! He who hesitates
is lost. It may be that the humble will inherit the earth, but that will
be when all the bold have died. Don't hide your light under a basket;
don't keep your ideas locked up in your skulls. Bring 'em out! Let's
have a look at them. You wouldn't wear a diamond ring inside your shirt,
would you? Be sure you're right, then holler your head off. Get what is
coming to you! Nobody will bring it on a platter; you've got to step up
and grab it. When you have an impulse, think it over. If it looks like
the real goods, obey it. Get me? Obey it! Nobody will bite you. Think
all you like, but for heaven's sake, act!"
It was for such talks that Mr. Cowan was famous. Even Horace Nimms
forgot his impending fall as the efficiency expert extraordinary
declaimed the gospel of action and boldness.
But when the meeting was over, silent misery came into the heart of the
little cashier and like an automaton he stumbled into the Subway. He ate
his bread pudding without tasting it and tried to talk to Polly about
the proposed living room in the Long Island cottage. He hadn't the
courage to tell her what had happened; indeed he hardly realized what
had happened himself.
In the morning he tried to pretend to himself that it was all a joke;
surely Mr. Cowan couldn't have meant it. But when he reached his cage he
saw another figure already in that temple of addition and subtraction.
He rattled the wire door timidly. The figure turned.
"Wadda yah want?" it asked bellicosely.
Horace Nimms recognized the bluish jaw of Gus, one of the elevator men.
Sick at heart, Horace turned away. In the blur of his thoughts was the
one that he must keep his job, some job, any job. One can't save much on
forty a week in Flatbush. And that he should work for any one but the
Amalgamated Soap Corporation was unthinkable. So without knowing exactly
how it happened, he found himself in a blue-and-gray uniform clumsily
trying to vindicate his mechanical hands and attempting to stop his car
within six inches of the floors. All morning he patiently escorted his
car up and down the elevator shaft--twenty stories up, twenty stories
down, twenty stories up, twenty stories down. He thought of the Song of
the Shirt.
At noon he stopped his car at the eighteenth floor and two passengers
got on. Horace recognized them. One was Jim Wright, assistant to
President Hammer; the other was Mr. Perrine, Western sales manager. They
were in animated conversation.
"That fellow has the crust of a mud turtle and the tact of a
rattlesnake," Mr. Perrine was saying.
"Remember," Jim Wright reminded him, "he is an efficiency expert
extraordinary. The big boss seems to have confidence in him."
"He won't have quite so much," said Mr. Perrine, "when he hears that he
put an elevator man in as cashier. I hear he walked off with six hundred
dollars before he'd been on the job an hour."
Horace pricked up his ears. He made the car go as slowly as possible.
"He did?" Jim Wright was excited. "And this is one of the boss' bad days
too! Just before I left him he was saying, 'The Amalgamated has about as
much system as a piece of cheese. Why, these high-salaried executives
can't tell me how much it costs them to make and sell a cake of soap!'"
Then Horace reluctantly let them out of the elevator at the street
floor.
All that afternoon he struggled with an impulse. The words of Mr.
Cowan's oration of the night before began to come back to him. If only
he had obeyed his impulses----
As he was a new man, they gave him the late shift. At one minute to six
the indicator in his car gave two short, sharp, peremptory buzzes.
Horace, who was mastering the elements of elevator operating, shot up to
the eighteenth floor. A single passenger got on. With a little gasp
Horace recognized the cutaway coat and top hat of the president of the
Amalgamated.
Horace set his teeth. His small frame grew tense. He turned the lever
and the car started to glide downward. Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen,
fourteen, thirteen, twelve! Then with a quick twist of his wrist Horace
stalled the car between the twelfth and eleventh floors and slipped the
controlling key into his pocket. Then he turned and faced the big
president.
"You don't know a hell of a lot about running an elevator," remarked
Oren Hammer.
"No, I don't," said Horace Nimms in a strange, loud voice that he didn't
recognize. "But I do know how much it costs a cake to make Pink Petal
Toilet."
"What's that? Who the devil are you?" The great man was more surprised
than angry.
"Nimms," said Horace briefly. "Office cashier on seventeenth floor
twenty-one years. Elevator operator one day. Mr. Cowan's orders."
Mr. Hammer's brow contracted.
"So you think you can tell me how much Pink Petal costs a cake to make,
eh?" he said.
He had the reputation of never overlooking an opportunity.
The imaginary conversations that Horace had been having crowded back
into his mind.
"Now, looky here, Mr. Hammer," he began. "The Western works made
9,576,491 cakes of Pink Petal Toilet last year. Now the cost a cake
was--" and so on. Horace was on familiar ground now. Figures and
statistics tripped from his tongue; the details he had bottled up inside
him so long came pouring forth. He knew the business of the Amalgamated
down to the last stamp and rubber band. Oren Hammer, listening with
keen interest, now and then put in a short, direct question. Horace
Nimms snapped back short, direct answers. Once launched, he forgot all
about the cutaway coat and the dazzling top hat and even about the
big-jawed man who washed the faces of forty million people every
morning. Horace was talking to get back into his cage and words came
with a new-found eloquence.
"By George," exclaimed President Hammer, "you know more about the
business than I do myself! And Cowan told you you didn't have a figuring
mind, did he? I want you to report at my office the first thing
to-morrow morning."
Horace Nimms, in the black suit he saved for funerals and weddings, and
a new tie, was ushered into the big office of President Hammer the next
morning. Outwardly, it was his hope, he was calm; inwardly, he knew, he
was quaking.
"Have a cigar, Nimms," said Oren Hammer, passing Horace one of the
presidential perfectos of his dreams. Then he summoned a secretary.
"Ask Mr. Cowan to come in, will you?" he said.
The efficiency expert extraordinary entered, beaming affably.
"Good morning to you, Mr. Hammer," he called out in a cheery voice. Then
he stopped short as he recognized Horace.
"Oh, come here, Cowan," said President Hammer genially. "Before you go I
want you to meet Mr. Nimms. He is going to install a new cost-accounting
system for us. Just step down to the cashier's cage with him, will you,
and get your salary to date."
VII: _Where is the Tropic of Capricorn?_
"One, two, three, bend! One, two, three, bend!" So barked the physical
instructor, a bulgy man with muscles popping out all over him as if his
skin had been stuffed with hard-boiled eggs.
Little Peter Mullaney oned, twoed, threed and bent with such earnest and
whole-hearted violence that his blue eyes seemed likely to be jostled
from their sockets and the freckles to be jarred loose from his thin,
wiry arms. Though breathless, and not a little sinew-sore from the stiff
setting-up exercises, his small, sharp-jawed face wore a beatified look,
the look that bespeaks the rare, ecstatic thrill that comes to mortals
so seldom in this life of taxes, prohibitions and denied ambitions. Such
a look might a hero-worshiping boy wear if seen by his gang in the
company of Jack Dempsey, or a writer if caught in the act of taking tea
with Shaw. Peter Mullaney was standing at the very door of his life's
ambition; he was about to be taken "on the cops."
To be taken "on the cops"--the phrase is departmental argot and is in
common use by those who enjoy that distinction--this had been the ideal
of Peter Mullaney since the days when he, an undersized infant, had
tottered around his Christopher Street back-yard, an improvised
broom-stick billy in his hand, solemnly arresting and incarcerating his
small companions. To wear that spruce, brass-button studded blue
uniform, and that glittering silver shield, to twirl a well-trained
night-stick on its cord, to eye the layman with the cold, impassive eye
of authority, to whisper mysterious messages into red iron signal boxes
on street-corners, to succor the held-up citizen and pursue the crook to
his underworld lair, to be addressed as "Officer"--he had lived for this
dream.
And here he was, the last man on a row of thirty panting, perspiring
probationary patrolmen, ranged, according to height, across the
gymnasium of the police training school. From big Dan Mack, six feet
four in his socks, they graded down as gently as a ramp to little Peter
on the end of the line a scant, a bare five feet five and seven-eighths
inches tall including the defiant bristle of his red pompadour.
Peter was happy, and with reason. It was by no generous margin that
Peter had gained admission to the school that was to prepare him for his
career. By the sheerest luck he had escaped being cast into the exterior
darkness; by the slimmest degree he had wiggled into the school, and
whether he could attain the goal on which he had kept his eye for twenty
years--or ever since he was four--was still decidedly in doubt. The law
said in plain, inexorable black and white that the minimum height a
policeman can be is five feet and six inches. Peter Mullaney lacked that
stature by the distance between a bumble-bee's eyes; and this, despite
the fact that for years he had sought most strenuously, by exercise,
diet and even torture to stretch out his body to the required five feet
six. When he was eighteen and it seemed certain that an unsympathetic
fate had meant him to be a short man, his father found him one day in
the attic, lashed to a beam, with a box full of window-weights tied to
his feet, and his face gray with pain.
"Shure, me bye," remarked old man Mullaney as he cut Peter down, "are ye
after thinkin' that the Mullaneys is made of Injy rubber? Don't it say
in the Bible, 'What man by takin' thought can add a Cupid to his
statue?'"
Peter, in hot and anguished rebellion against this all too evident law
of nature had sought relief by going straight out of the house and
licking the first boy he met who was twice as big as he was, in a fight
that is still remembered in the Second Ward. But stretching and wishing
and even eating unpleasant and expensive tablets, alleged by their
makers to be made from giraffes' glands, did not bring Peter up to a
full and unquestionable five feet six.
When Peter came up for a preliminary examination which was to determine
whether he possessed the material from which policemen are made,
Commissioner Kondorman, as coldly scientific as his steel scales and
measures, surveyed the stricken Peter, as he stood there on the scales,
his freckles in high relief on his skin, for he was pale all over at the
thought that he might be rejected.
"Candidate Mullaney," said the Commissioner, "you're too short."
Peter felt marble lumps swelling in his throat.
"If you'd only give me a chance, Commissioner," he was able to gulp out,
"I'd----"
Commissioner Kondorman, who had been studying the records spread on his
desk, cut the supplicant short with:
"Your marks in the other tests are pretty good, though you seem a little
weak in general education. But your strength test is unusually high for
a small man. However, regulations are regulations and I believe in
sticking to them. Next candidate!"
Peter did not go.
"Commissioner," he began urgently, "all I ask is a chance----"
His eyes were tense and pleading.
The Chief Inspector, grizzled Matthew McCabe, plucked at the
Commissioner's coat-sleeve.
"Well, Chief?" inquired Commissioner Kondorman, a little impatiently.
"He's a good lad," put in the Chief Inspector, "and well spoke of in the
Second Ward."
"He's under height," said the Commissioner, briefly.
"But he knows how to handle his fists," argued the old Chief Inspector.
"Does he?" said the Commissioner, skeptically. "He looks rather small."
He examined Peter through his eye-glasses; beneath that chill and
critical gaze Peter felt that he had shrunk to the size of a bantam
rooster; the lumps in his throat were almost choking him; in an agony of
desperation, he cried,
"Bring in the biggest man you got. I'll fight him."
The Commissioner's face was set in hard, and one would have thought,
immovable lines, yet he achieved the feat of turning up, ever so
slightly, the corners of his lips in an expression which might pass as
the germ of a smile, as he gazed at the small, nude, freckled figure
before him with its vivid shaving-brush hair, its intense eyes and its
clenched fists posed in approved prize-ring form. Again the official
bent over the records and studied them.
"Character recommendations seem pretty good," he mused. "Never has used
tobacco or liquor----"
"'Fraid it might stunt me," muttered Peter, "so I couldn't get on the
cops."
The commissioner stared at him with one degree more of interest.
"Give the lad a chance," urged the Chief Inspector. "He only lacks a
fraction of an inch. He may grow."
"Now, Chief," said the Commissioner turning to the official by his side,
"you know I'm a stickler for the rules. What's the good of saying
officers must be five feet six and then taking men who are shorter?"
"You know how badly we need men," shrugged the Chief Inspector, "and
Mullaney here strikes me as having the making of a good cop. It will do
no harm to try him out."
The Commissioner considered for a moment. Then he wheeled round and faced
Peter Mullaney.
"You've asked for a chance," he shot out. "You'll get it. You can attend
police training school for three months. I'll waive the fact that you're
below the required height, for the time being. But if in your final
examinations you don't get excellent marks in every branch, by the Lord
Harry, you get no shield from me. Do you understand? One slip, and
good-by to you. Next candidate!"
They had to guide Peter Mullaney back to his clothes; he was in a dazed
blur of happiness.
Next day, with the strut of a conqueror and with pride shining from
every freckle, little Peter Mullaney entered the police training school.
To fit himself physically for the task of being a limb of the law, he
oned, twoed, threed and bent by the hour, twisted the toes of two
hundred pound fellow students in frantic jiu jitsu, and lugged other
ponderous probationers about on his shoulders in the practice of first
aid to the injured. This physical side of his schooling Peter enjoyed,
and, despite his lack of inches, did extremely well, for he was quick,
tough and determined. But it was the book-work that made him pucker his
brow and press his head with his hands as if to keep it from bursting
with the facts he had to jam into it.
It was the boast of Commissioner Kondorman that he was making his police
force the most intelligent in the world. Give him time, he was fond of
saying, and there would not be a man on it who could not be called
well-informed. He intended to see to it that from chief inspector down
to the greenest patrolman they could answer, off-hand, not only
questions about routine police matters, but about the whole range of the
encyclopedia.
"I want well-informed men, intelligent men," he said. "Men who can tell
you the capital of Patagonia, where copra comes from, and who discovered
the cotton-gin. I want men who have used their brains, have read and
thought a bit. The only way I can find that out is by asking questions,
isn't it?"
The anti-administration press, with intent to slight, called the
policemen "Kondorman's Encyclopedias bound in blue," but he was not in
the least perturbed; he made his next examination a bit stiffer.
Peter Mullaney, handicapped by the fact that his span of elementary
schooling had been abbreviated by the necessity of earning his own
living, struggled valiantly with weighty tomes packed with statutes,
ordinances, and regulations--what a police officer can and cannot do
about mayhem, snow on the sidewalks, arson, dead horses in the street,
kidnaping, extricating intoxicated gentlemen from man-holes, smoking
automobiles, stray goats, fires, earthquakes, lost children, blizzards,
disorderly conduct and riots. He prepared himself, by no small exertion,
to tell an inquiring public where Bedford street is, if traffic can go
both ways on Commerce street, what car to take to get from Hudson street
to Chatham Square, how to get to the nearest branch library, quick
lunch, public bath, zoo, dispensary and garage, how to get to the Old
Slip Station, Flower Hospital, the St. Regis, Coney Island, Duluth and
Grant's Tomb. He stuffed himself with these pertinent facts; he wanted
to be a good cop. He could not see exactly how it would help him to know
in addition to an appalling amount of local geography and history, the
name of the present ruler of Bulgaria, what a zebu is, and who wrote
"Home, Sweet Home." But since questions of this sort were quite sure to
bob up on the examination he toiled through many volumes with a zeal
that made his head ache.
When he had been working diligently in the training school for three
months lacking a day, the great moment came when he was given a chance
to put theory into practice, by being sent forth, in a uniform slightly
too large for him, to patrol a beat in the company of a veteran officer,
so that he might observe, at first hand, how an expert handled the many
and varied duties of the police job. Except that he had no shield, no
night stick, and no revolver, Peter looked exactly like any of the other
guardians of law. He trudged by the side of the big Officer Gaffney,
trying to look stern, and finding it hard to keep his joy from breaking
out in a smile. If Judy McNulty could only see him now! They were to be
married as soon as he got his shield.
But joy is never without its alloy. Even as Peter strode importantly
through the streets of the upper West Side, housing delicious thrills in
every corpuscle from the top of his blue cap to the thick soles and
rubber heels of his shiningly new police shoes, a worry kept plucking at
his mind. On the morrow he was to take his final examination in general
education, and that was no small obstacle between him and his shield. He
had labored to be ready, but he was afraid.
That worry grew as he paced along, trying to remember whether the Amazon
is longer than the Ganges and who Gambetta was. He did not even pay
close attention to his mentor, although on most occasions those five
blue service stripes on Officer Gaffney's sleeve, representing a quarter
of a century on the force, would have caused Peter to listen with rapt
interest to Officer Gaffney's genial flow of reminiscence and advice.
Dimly he heard the old policeman rumbling:
"When I was took on the cops, Pether, all they expected of a cop was two
fists and a cool head. But sthyles in cops changes like sthyles in hats,
I guess. I've seen a dozen commissioners come and go, and they all had
their own ideas. The prisint comish is the queerest duck of the lot, wid
his "Who was Pernambuco and what the divil ailed him, and who invinted
the gin rickey and who discovered the Gowanus Canal." Not that I'm agin
a cop bein' a learned man. Divil a bit. Learnin' won't hurt him none if
he has two fists and a clear head."
He paused to take nourishment from some tabloid tobacco in his
hip-pocket, and rumbled on,
"Whin I was took on the cops, as I say, they was no graduatin' exercises
like a young ladies' siminary. The comish--it was auld Malachi
Bannon--looked ye square in the eye and said, 'Young fella, ye're about
to go forth and riprisint the majesty of the law. Whin on juty be clane
and sober and raisonably honest. Keep a civil tongue in your head for
ivrybody, even Republicans. Get to know your precinct like a book. Don't
borrow trouble. But above all, rimimber this: a cop can do a lot of
queer things and square himself wid me afterward, but there's one sin no
cop can square--the sin of runnin' away whin needed. Go to your post.'"
Little Peter nodded his head.
They paced along in silence for a time. Then Peter asked,
"Jawn----"
"What, Pether?"
"Jawn, where is the Tropic of Capricorn?"
Officer Gaffney wrinkled his grey eyebrows quizzically.
"The Tropic of Whichicorn?" he inquired.
"The Tropic of Capricorn," repeated Peter.
"Pether," said Officer Gaffney, dubiously, scratching his head with the
tip of his night-stick, "I disrimimber but I think--I think, mind ye,
it's in the Bronx."
They continued their leisurely progress.
"'Tis a quiet beat, this," observed Officer Gaffney. "Quiet but
responsible. Rich folks lives in these houses, Pether, and that draws
crooks, sometimes. But mostly it's as quiet as a Sunday in Dooleyville."
He laughed deep in his chest.
"It makes me think," he said, "of Tommie Toohy, him that's a lieutinant
now over in Canarsie. 'Tis a lesson ye'd do well to mind, Pether."
Peter signified that he was all ears.
"He had the cop bug worse than you, even, Pether," said the veteran.
Peter flushed beneath his freckles.
"Yis, he had it bad, this Tommie Toohy," pursued Officer Gaffney. "He
was crazy to be a cop as soon as he could walk. I never seen a happier
man in me life than Toohy the day he swaggers out of the station-house
to go on post up in the twenty-ninth precinct. In thim days there was
nawthin' up there but rows of little cottages wid stoops on thim;
nawthin but dacint, respictable folks lived there and they always give
that beat to a recruity because it was so quiet. Well, Toohy goes on
juty at six o'clock in the evenin', puffed up wid importance and
polishing his shield every minute or two. 'Tis a short beat--up one side
of Garden Avenue and down on the other side. Toohy paces up and down,
swingin' his night-stick and lookin' hard and suspicious at every man,
woman or child that passes him. He was just bustin' to show his
authority. But nawthin' happened. Toohy paced up and back, up and back,
up and back. It gets to be eight o'clock. Nawthin happens. Toohy can
stand it no longer. He spies an auld man sittin' on his stoop,
peacefully smokin' his evenin' pipe. Toohy goes up to the old fellow and
glares at him.
"'What are you doin' there?' says Toohy.
"'Nawthin,' says the auld man.
"'Well,' says Toohy, wid a stern scowl, shakin' his night-stick at the
scared auld gazabo, 'You go in the house.'"
Peter chuckled.
"But Toohy lived to make a good cop for all that," finished the veteran.
"Wid all his recruity monkey-shines, he never ran away whin needed."
"I wonder could he bound Bolivia," said Peter Mullaney.
"I'll bet he could," said Officer Gaffney, "if it was in his precinct."
Late next afternoon, Peter sat gnawing his knuckles in a corner of the
police schoolroom. All morning he had battled with the examination in
general education. It had not been as hard as he had feared, but he was
worried nevertheless. So much was at stake.
He was quivering all over when he was summoned to the office of the
Commissioner, and his quivering grew as he saw the rigid face of
Commissioner Kondorman, and read no ray of hope there. Papers were
strewn over the official desk. Kondorman looked up, frowned.
"Mullaney," he said, bluntly, "you've failed."
"F-failed?" quavered Peter.
"Yes. In general education. I told you if you made excellent marks we'd
overlook your deficiency in height. Your paper"--he tapped it with his
finger--"isn't bad. But it isn't good. You fell down hard on question
seventeen."
"Question seventeen?"
"Yes. The question is, 'Where is the Tropic of Capricorn?' And your
answer is"--the Commissioner paused before he pronounced the damning
words--"'The Tropic of Capricon is in the Bronx.'"
Peter gulped, blinked, opened and shut his fists, twisted his cap in his
hands, a picture of abject misery. The Commissioner's voice was crisp
and final.
"That's all, Mullaney. Sorry. Turn in your uniform at once. Well?"
Peter had started away, had stopped and was facing the commissioner.
"Commissioner," he begged----
"That will do," snapped the Commissioner. "I gave you your chance; you
understood the conditions."
"It--it isn't that," fumbled out Peter Mullaney, "but--but wouldn't you
please let me go out on post once more with Officer Gaffney?"
"I don't see what good that would do," said Commissioner Kondorman,
gruffly.
Tears were in Peter's eyes.
"You see--you see----" he got out with an effort, "it
would be my last chance to wear the uniform--and
I--wanted--somebody--to--see--me--in--it--just--once."
The Commissioner stroked his chin reflectively.
"Were you scheduled to go out on post for instruction," he asked, "if
you passed your examination?"
"Yes, sir. From eight to eleven."
The Commissioner thought a moment.
"Well," he said, "I'll let you go. It won't alter the case any, of
course. You're through, here. Turn in your uniform by eleven thirty,
sure."
Peter mumbled his thanks, and went out of the office with shoulders that
drooped as if he were carrying a safe on them.
* * * * *
It was with heavy steps and a heavier heart that little Peter Mullaney,
by the side of his mentor, passed the corner where Judy McNulty stood
proudly waiting for him. He saluted her gravely with two fingers to his
visor--police officers never bow--and kept his eyes straight ahead. He
did not have the heart to stop, to speak to her, to tell her what had
happened to him. He hadn't even told Officer Gaffney. He stalked along
in bitter silence; his eyes were fixed on his shoes, the stout, shiny
police shoes he had bought to wear at his graduation, the shoes he was
to have worn when he stepped up to the Commissioner and received his
shield, with head erect and a high heart. His empty hands hung heavily
at his sides; there was no baton of authority in them; there never would
be. Beneath the place his silver shield would never cover now was a cold
numbness.
* * * * *
"Damn the Tropic of Capricorn," came from between clenched teeth, "Damn
the Tropic of Capricorn."
Gaffney's quick ears heard him.
"Still thinkin' about the Tropic of Capricorn?" he asked, not knowing
that the words made Peter wince. "Well, me bye, 'twill do no harm to
know where it is. I'm not denyin' that it's a gran' thing for a cop to
be a scholar. But just the same 'tis me firm belief that a man may be
able to tell the difference bechune a begonia and a petunia, he may be
able to tell where the--now--Tropic of Unicorn is, he may know who wrote
"In the Sweet Bye and Bye," and who invented the sprinklin' cart, he may
be able to tell the population of Peking and Pann Yann, but he ain't a
cop at all if he iver runs away whin needed. Ye can stake your shield on
that, me bye."
His shield? Peter dug his nails into the palm of his hand. Blind hate
against the Commissioner, against the whole departm
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