From a Bench in Our Square Part 34

"And he's going to paint what he wants to."

"Pictures of Barbran," said young Phil.

"And we're going to burn the Wheel sign in effigy, and wipe off the walls and _make_ the place a success," said Barbran.

"And we're going to be married right away," said Phil.

"Next week," said Barbran.

"What do you think?" said both.

Now I know what I ought to have said just as well as MacLachan himself.

I should have pointed out the folly and recklessness of marrying on twenty-five dollars a week and a dowry of debts. I should have preached prudence and caution and delay, and have pointed out--The wind blew the door open: Young Spring was in the park, and the wet odor of little burgeoning leaves was borne in, wakening unwithered memories in my withered heart.

"Bless you, my children!" said I.

It was actually for this, as holding out encouragement to their reckless, f.e.c.kless plans, that Wisdom, in the person of MacLachan, the tailor, reprehended me, rather than for my historical intentions regarding the pair.

"What'll they be marryin' on?" demanded Mac Wisdom--that is to say, MacLachan.

"Spring and youth," I said. "The fragrance of lilac in the air, the glow of romance in their hearts. What better would you ask?"

"A bit of prudence," said MacLachan.

"Prudence!" I retorted scornfully. "The miser of the virtues. It may pay its own way through the world. But when did it ever take Happiness along for a jaunt?"

I was quite pleased with my little epigram until the Scot countered upon me with his observation about two young fools and an old one.

Oh, well! Likely enough. Most unwise, and rash and inexcusable, that headlong mating; and there will be a reckoning to pay. Babies, probably, and new needs and pressing anxieties, and Love will perhaps flutter at the window when Want shows his grim face at the door; and Wisdom will be justified of his forebodings, and yet--and yet--who am I, old and lonely and uncompanioned, yet once touched with the spheral music and the sacred fire, that I should subscribe to the dour orthodoxies of MacLachan and that ilk?

Years and years ago a bird flew in at my window, a bird of wonderful and flashing hues, and of lilting melodies. It came; it tarried--and I let the chill voice of Prudence overbear its music. It left me. But the song endures; the song endures, and all life has been the richer for its echoes. So let them hold and cherish their happiness, the two young fools.

As for the old one, would that some good fairy, possessed of the pigment and secret of perishable youth, might come down and paint his nose green!

PLOOIE OF OUR SQUARE

Whenever Plooie went shuffling by my bench, I used to think of an old and melancholy song that my grandfather sang:

"And his skin was so thin You could almost see his bones As he ran, hobble--hobble--hobble Over the stones."

Before I could wholly recapture the quaint melody, my efforts would invariably be nullified by the raucous shriek of his trade which had forever fixed the nickname whereby Our Square knew Plooie:

"Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees a raccommoder!" He would then recapitulate in English, or rather that unreproducible dialect which was his subst.i.tute for it. "Oombrella for mend? Annie oombrella for mend?"

So he would pa.s.s on his way, shattering the peaceful air at half-minute intervals with his bilingual disharmonies. He was pallid, meagerly built, stoop-shouldered, bristly-haired, pock-marked, and stiff-gaited, with a face which would have been totally insignificant but for an obstinate chin and a pair of velvet-black, pathetically questioning eyes; and he was incurably an outlander. For five years he had lived among us, occupying a cubbyhole in Schepstein's bas.e.m.e.nt full of ribs, handles, crooks, patches, and springs, without appreciably improving his speech or his position. It was said that his name was Garin--n.o.body really knew or cared--and it was a.s.sumed from his speech that he was French.

Few umbrellas came his way. Those of us affluent enough to maintain such non-essentials patch them ourselves until they are beyond reclamation.

Why Plooie did not starve is one of the mysteries of Our Square, though by no means the only one of its kind. I have a notion that the Bonnie La.s.sie, to whom any variety of want or helplessness is its own sufficient recommendation, drummed up trade for him among her uptown friends. Something certainly enlisted his grat.i.tude, for he invariably took off his frowsy cap when he pa.s.sed her house, whether or not she was there to see, and he once unbosomed himself to me to the extent of declaring that she was a kind lady. This is the only commentary I ever heard him make upon any one in Our Square, which in turn completely ignored him until the development of his love affair stimulated our condescending and contemptuous interest.

The object of Plooie's addresses was a little Swiss of unknown derivation and obscure history. She appeared to be as detached from the surrounding world as the umbrella-mender himself. An insignificant bit of a thing she was, anaemic and subdued, with a sad little face, soft hazel eyes slightly crossed, and the deprecating manner of those who scrub other people's doorsteps at fifteen cents an hour.

For a year their courtship, if such it might be termed, ran an uneventful course. I had almost said unromantic. But who shall tell where is fancy bred or wherein romance consists? Whenever Plooie saw the drabbled little worker busy on a doorstep, he would cross over and open the conversation according to an invariable formula.

"Annie oombrella for mend? Annie oombrella?" Thereby the little Swiss became known as, and ever will be called locally, "Annie Oombrella."

Like most close-knit, centripetal communities, we have a fatal penchant for nicknames in Our Square.

She would look up and smile wanly, and shake her head. Where, indeed, should the like of her get an umbrella to be mended!

Then would he say--I shall not attempt to torture the good English alphabet into a reproduction of his singular phonetics: "It makes fine to-day, it do!"

And she would reply "Yes, a fine day"; and look as if the sun were a little warmer upon her pale skin because of Plooie's greeting, as, perhaps, indeed, it was.

After that he would nod solemnly, or, if feeling especially loquacious, venture some prophecy concerning the morrow, before resuming his unproductive rounds and his lugubrious yawp. One day he discovered that she spoke French. From that time the relationship advanced rapidly. On Christmas he gave her a pair of red woolen gloves. On New Year's he took her walking among the tombstones in G.o.d's Acre, which is a serious and sentimental, not to say determinative, social step. Twice in the following week he carried her bucket from house to house. And in the glowing dusk of a crisp winter afternoon they sat together hand in hand, on a bench back of my habitual seat, and looked in each other's eyes, and spoke, infrequently, in their own language, forgetful of the rest of the world, including myself, who was, perhaps, supposed not to understand. But even without hearing their words, I could have guessed.

It was very simple and direct, and rather touching. Plooie said:

"If one marries themselves?"

And she replied: "I believe it well."

They kissed solemnly, and their faces, in the gleam of the electric light which at that moment spluttered into ill-timed and tactless activity, were transfigured so that I marveled at the dim splendor of them.

But the Bonnie La.s.sie was scandalized. On general principles she mistrusts that any marriage is really made in heaven unless she acts as earthly agent of it. What had those two poverty-stricken little creatures to marry on? She put the question rhetorically to Our Square in general and to the two people most concerned in particular. Courts of law might have rejected their replies as irrelevant. Humanly, however, they were convincing enough.

Said Plooie: "Who will have a care of that little one if I have not?"

Said Annie Oombrella: "He is so lonely!"

So those two unfortunates united their misfortunes, and lo! happiness came of it. Luckily that is all that did come of it. What disposition the pair would have made of children, had any arrived, it is difficult to conjecture. Only by miraculous compression of ribs, handles, and fabrics was s.p.a.ce contrived in the bas.e.m.e.nt cubbyhole for Annie Oombrella to squeeze in. However, she set up housekeeping cheerily as a bird, with an odd lot of pots and pans which Schepstein had picked up at an auction and resold to them at not more than two hundred per cent profit, plus a kerosene stove, the magnificent wedding gift of the Bonnie La.s.sie and her husband, Cyrus the Gaunt. Twice a week they had meat. They were rising in the social scale.

Habitude is the real secret of tolerance. As we became accustomed to Plooie, Our Square ceased to resent his invincible outlandishness; we endured him with equanimity, although it would be exaggeration to say that we accepted him, and we certainly did not patronize him professionally. Nevertheless, in a minor degree, he nourished. Annie Oombrella must have lavished care upon him. His pinched-in shoulders broadened perceptibly. His gait, still a halting shuffle, grew noticeably brisker. There was even a heartier note in his lamentable trade cry:

"Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees a raccommoder!"

As for Annie Oombrella, having some one to look after quite transformed her. She grew plump and chirpy, and bustling as a blithe little sparrow, though perhaps duck would be a happier comparison, for she was dabbling and splashing in water all the day long, making the stairs and porches of her curatorship fairly glisten with cleanliness. Her rates went up to twenty cents an hour. There were rumors that she had started a savings account. Life stretched out before the little couple, smooth and peaceful and sunny with companionship.

Then came the war.

The calamitous quality of a great world tragedy is that it brings to so many helpless little folk bitter and ign.o.ble tragedies of shame and humiliation and misunderstanding. With a few racial exceptions, Our Square was vehemently pro-Ally. In spirit we fought with valiant France and prayed for heroic Belgium. What a G.o.dspeed we gave to the few sons of Gaul who, in those early days, left us to fight the good fight! How sourly we looked upon Plooie continuing his peaceful rounds. Whence arose the rumor, I cannot say, but it was noised about just at that time of wrath and tension that Plooie was born in Liege. Liege, that city of fire and slaughter and heroism, upon which the eyes and hopes of the world were turned in wonder and admiration. Somebody had seen the entry on the marriage register! The Bonnie La.s.sie told me of it, pausing at my bench with a little furrow between her bright eyes.

"Dominie, you know Emile Garin pretty well?"

"Not at all," I replied, failing to identify the rickety Plooie by his rightful name.

"Of course you do! Never a morning but he stops at your bench and asks if you have an umbrella to mend."

"I never have. What of him?"