Gallegher and Other Stories Part 9

"Where's my son? Where have you hidden my son?" demanded, the old man.

He ran across the room and pulled open a door that led into another room, but it was empty. He had fully expected to see his boy murdered and quartered, and with his pockets inside out. He turned on Wolfe, shaking his white hair like a mane. "Give me up my son, you rascal you!"

he cried, "or I'll get the police, and I'll tell them how you decoy honest boys to your den and murder them."

"Are you drunk or crazy, or just a little of both?" asked Mr. Wolfe.

"For a cent I'd throw you out of that window. Get out of here! Quick, now! You're too old to get excited like that; it's not good for you."

But this only exasperated the old man the more, and he made a lunge at the confidence man's throat. Mr. Wolfe stepped aside and caught him around the waist and twisted his leg around the old man's rheumatic one, and held him. "Now," said Wolfe, as quietly as though he were giving a lesson in wrestling, "if I wanted to, I could break your back."

The old man glared up at him, panting. "Your son's not here," said Wolfe, "and this is a private gentleman's private room. I could turn you over to the police for a.s.sault if I wanted to; but," he added, magnanimously, "I won't. Now get out of here and go home to your wife, and when you come to see the sights again don't drink so much raw whiskey." He half carried the old farmer to the top of the stairs and dropped him, and went back and closed the door. Snipes came up and helped him down and out, and the old man and the boy walked slowly and in silence out to the Bowery. Snipes helped his companion into a car and put him off at the Grand Central Depot. The heat and the excitement had told heavily on the old man, and he seemed dazed and beaten.

He was leaning on the trailer's shoulder and waiting for his turn in the line in front of the ticket window, when a tall, gawky, good-looking country lad sprang out of it and at him with an expression of surprise and anxiety. "Father," he said, "father, what's wrong? What are you doing here? Is anybody ill at home? Are _you_ ill?"

"Abraham," said the old man, simply, and dropped heavily on the younger man's shoulder. Then he raised his head sternly and said: "I thought you were murdered, but better that than a thief, Abraham. What brought you here? What did you do with that rascal's letter? What did you do with his money?"

The trailer drew cautiously away; the conversation was becoming unpleasantly personal.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Abraham, calmly. "The Deacon gave his consent the other night without the $2,000, and I took the $200 I'd saved and came right on in the fust train to buy the ring.

It's pretty, isn't it?" he said, flushing, as he pulled out a little velvet box and opened it.

The old man was so happy at this that he laughed and cried alternately, and then he made a grab for the trailer and pulled him down beside him on one of the benches.

"You've got to come with me," he said, with kind severity. "You're a good boy, but your folks have let you run wrong. You've been good to me, and you said you would get me back my boy and save him from those thieves, and I believe now that you meant it. Now you're just coming back with us to the farm and the cows and the river, and you can eat all you want and live with us, and never, never see this unclean, wicked city again."

Snipes looked up keenly from under the rim of his hat and rubbed one of his muddy feet over the other as was his habit. The young countryman, greatly puzzled, and the older man smiling kindly, waited expectantly in silence. From outside came the sound of the car-bells jangling, and the rattle of cabs, and the cries of drivers, and all the varying rush and turmoil of a great metropolis. Green fields, and running rivers, and fruit that did not grow in wooden boxes or brown paper cones, were myths and idle words to Snipes, but this "unclean, wicked city" he knew.

"I guess you're too good for me," he said, with an uneasy laugh. "I guess little old New York's good enough for me."

"What!" cried the old man, in the tones of greatest concern. "You would go back to that den of iniquity, surely not,--to that thief Perceval?"

"Well," said the trailer, slowly, "and he's not such a bad lot, neither.

You see he could hev broke your neck that time when you was choking him, but he didn't. There's your train," he added hurriedly and jumping away.

"Good-by. So long, old man. I'm much 'bliged to you jus' for asking me."

Two hours later the farmer and his son were making the family weep and laugh over their adventures, as they all sat together on the porch with the vines about it; and the trailer was leaning against the wall of a saloon and apparently counting his ten toes, but in reality watching for Mr. Wolfe to give the signal from the window of room No. 8.

"THERE WERE NINETY AND NINE"

Young Harringford, or the "Goodwood Plunger," as he was perhaps better known at that time, had come to Monte Carlo in a very different spirit and in a very different state of mind from any in which he had ever visited the place before. He had come there for the same reason that a wounded lion, or a poisoned rat, for that matter, crawls away into a corner, that it may be alone when it dies. He stood leaning against one of the pillars of the Casino with his back to the moonlight, and with his eyes blinking painfully at the flaming lamps above the green tables inside. He knew they would be put out very soon; and as he had something to do then, he regarded them fixedly with painful earnestness, as a man who is condemned to die at sunrise watches through his barred windows for the first gray light of the morning.

That queer, numb feeling in his head and the sharp line of pain between his eyebrows which had been growing worse for the last three weeks, was troubling him more terribly than ever before, and his nerves had thrown off all control and rioted at the base of his head and at his wrists, and jerked and twitched as though, so it seemed to him, they were striving to pull the tired body into pieces and to set themselves free.

He was wondering whether if he should take his hand from his pocket and touch his head he would find that it had grown longer, and had turned into a soft, spongy ma.s.s which would give beneath his fingers. He considered this for some time, and even went so far as to half withdraw one hand, but thought better of it and shoved it back again as he considered how much less terrible it was to remain in doubt than to find that this phenomenon had actually taken place.

The pity of the whole situation was, that the boy was only a boy with all his man's miserable knowledge of the world, and the reason of it all was, that he had entirely too much heart and not enough money to make an unsuccessful gambler. If he had only been able to lose his conscience instead of his money, or even if he had kept his conscience and won, it is not likely that he would have been waiting for the lights to go out at Monte Carlo. But he had not only lost all of his money and more besides, which he could never make up, but he had lost other things which meant much more to him now than money, and which could not be made up or paid back at even usurious interest. He had not only lost the right to sit at his father's table, but the right to think of the girl whose place in Surrey ran next to that of his own people, and whose lighted window in the north wing he had watched on those many dreary nights when she had been ill, from his own terrace across the trees in the park. And all he had gained was the notoriety that made him a by-word with decent people, and the hero of the race-tracks and the music-halls. He was no longer "Young Harringford, the eldest son of the Harringfords of Surrey," but the "Goodwood Plunger," to whom Fortune had made desperate love and had then jilted, and mocked, and overthrown.

As he looked back at it now and remembered himself as he was then, it seemed as though he was considering an entirely distinct and separate personage--a boy of whom he liked to think, who had had strong, healthy ambitions and gentle tastes. He reviewed it pa.s.sionlessly as he stood staring at the lights inside the Casino, as clearly as he was capable of doing in his present state and with miserable interest. How he had laughed when young Norton told him in boyish confidence that there was a horse named Siren in his father's stables which would win the Goodwood Cup; how, having gone down to see Norton's people when the long vacation began, he had seen Siren daily, and had talked of her until two every morning in the smoking-room, and had then staid up two hours later to watch her take her trial spin over the downs. He remembered how they used to stamp back over the long gra.s.s wet with dew, comparing watches and talking of the time in whispers, and said good night as the sun broke over the trees in the park. And then just at this time of all others, when the horse was the only interest of those around him, from Lord Norton and his whole household down to the youngest stable-boy and oldest gaffer in the village, he had come into his money.

And then began the then and still inexplicable plunge into gambling, and the wagering of greater sums than the owner of Siren dared to risk himself, the secret backing of the horse through commissioners all over England, until the boy by his single fortune had brought the odds against her from 60 to 0 down to 6 to 0. He recalled, with a thrill that seemed to settle his nerves for the moment, the little black specks at the starting-post and the larger specks as the horses turned the first corner. The rest of the people on the coach were making a great deal of noise, he remembered, but he, who had more to lose than any one or all of them together, had stood quite still with his feet on the wheel and his back against the box-seat, and with his hands sunk into his pockets and the nails cutting through his gloves. The specks grew into horses with bits of color on them, and then the deep muttering roar of the crowd merged into one great shout, and swelled and grew into sharper, quicker, impatient cries, as the horses turned into the stretch with only their heads showing toward the goal. Some of the people were shouting "Firefly!" and others were calling on "Vixen!" and others, who had their gla.s.ses up, cried "Trouble leads!" but he only waited until he could distinguish the Norton colors, with his lips pressed tightly together. Then they came so close that their hoofs echoed as loudly as when horses gallop over a bridge, and from among the leaders Siren's beautiful head and shoulders showed like sealskin in the sun, and the boy on her back leaned forward and touched her gently with his hand, as they had so often seen him do on the downs, and Siren, as though he had touched a spring, leaped forward with her head shooting back and out, like a piston-rod that has broken loose from its fastening and beats the air, while the jockey sat motionless, with his right arm hanging at his side as limply as though it were broken, and with his left moving forward and back in time with the desperate strokes of the horse's head.

"Siren wins!" cried Lord Norton, with a grim smile, and "Siren!" the mob shouted back with wonder and angry disappointment, and "Siren!" the hills echoed from far across the course. Young Harringford felt as if he had suddenly been lifted into heaven after three months of purgatory, and smiled uncertainly at the excited people on the coach about him. It made him smile even now when he recalled young Norton's flushed face and the awe and reproach in his voice when he climbed up and whispered, "Why, Cecil, they say in the ring you've won a fortune, and you never told us." And how Griffith, the biggest of the book-makers, with the rest of them at his back, came up to him and touched his hat resentfully, and said, "You'll have to give us time, sir; I'm very hard hit"; and how the crowd stood about him and looked at him curiously, and the Certain Royal Personage turned and said, "Who--not that boy, surely?" Then how, on the day following, the papers told of the young gentleman who of all others had won a fortune, thousands and thousands of pounds they said, getting back sixty for every one he had ventured; and pictured him in baby clothes with the cup in his arms, or in an Eton jacket; and how all of them spoke of him slightingly, or admiringly, as the "Goodwood Plunger."

He did not care to go on after that; to recall the mortification of his father, whose pride was hurt and whose hopes were dashed by this sudden, mad freak of fortune, nor how he railed at it and provoked him until the boy rebelled and went back to the courses, where he was a celebrity and a king.

The rest is a very common story. Fortune and greater fortune at first; days in which he could not lose, days in which he drove back to the crowded inns choked with dust, sunburnt and f.a.gged with excitement, to a riotous supper and baccarat, and afterward went to sleep only to see cards and horses and moving crowds and clouds of dust; days spent in a short covert coat, with a field-gla.s.s over his shoulder and with a pasteboard ticket dangling from his b.u.t.tonhole; and then came the change that brought conscience up again, and the visits to the Jews, and the slights of the men who had never been his friends, but whom he had thought had at least liked him for himself, even if he did not like them; and then debts, and more debts, and the borrowing of money to pay here and there, and threats of executions; and, with it all, the longing for the fields and trout springs of Surrey and the walk across the park to where she lived.

This grew so strong that he wrote to his father, and was told briefly that he who was to have kept up the family name had dragged it into the dust of the race-courses, and had changed it at his own wish to that of the Boy Plunger--and that the breach was irreconcilable.

Then this queer feeling came on, and he wondered why he could not eat, and why he shivered even when the room was warm or the sun shining, and the fear came upon him that with all this trouble and disgrace his head might give way, and then that it had given way. This came to him at all times, and lately more frequently and with a fresher, more cruel thrill of terror, and he began to watch himself and note how he spoke, and to repeat over what he had said to see if it were sensible, and to question himself as to why he laughed, and at what. It was not a question of whether it would or would not be cowardly; It was simply a necessity.

The thing had to be stopped. He had to have rest and sleep and peace again. He had boasted in those reckless, prosperous days that if by any possible chance he should lose his money he would drive a hansom, or emigrate to the colonies, or take the shilling. He had no patience in those days with men who could not live on in adversity, and who were found in the gun-room with a hole in their heads, and whose family asked their polite friends to believe that a man used to firearms from his school-days had tried to load a hair-trigger revolver with the muzzle pointed at his forehead. He had expressed a fine contempt for those men then, but now he had forgotten all that, and thought only of the relief it would bring, and not how others might suffer by it. If he did consider this, it was only to conclude that they would quite understand, and be glad that his pain and fear were over.

Then he planned a grand _coup_ which was to pay off all his debts and give him a second chance to present himself a supplicant at his father's house. If it failed, he would have to stop this queer feeling in his head at once. The Grand Prix and the English horse was the final _coup_. On this depended everything--the return of his fortunes, the reconciliation with his father, and the possibility of meeting her again. It was a very hot day he remembered, and very bright; but the tall poplars on the road to the races seemed to stop growing just at a level with his eyes. Below that it was clear enough, but all above seemed black--as though a cloud had fallen and was hanging just over the people's heads. He thought of speaking of this to his man Walters, who had followed his fortunes from the first, but decided not to do so, for, as it was, he had noticed that Walters had observed him closely of late, and had seemed to spy upon him. The race began, and he looked through his gla.s.s for the English horse in the front and could not find her, and the Frenchman beside him cried, "Frou Frou!" as Frou Frou pa.s.sed the goal. He lowered his gla.s.ses slowly and unscrewed them very carefully before dropping them back into the case; then he buckled the strap, and turned and looked about him. Two Frenchmen who had won a hundred francs between them were jumping and dancing at his side. He remembered wondering why they did not speak in English. Then the sunlight changed to a yellow, nasty glare, as though a calcium light had been turned on the gla.s.s and colors, and he pushed his way back to his carriage, leaning heavily on the servant's arm, and drove slowly back to Paris, with the driver flecking his horses fretfully with his whip, for he had wished to wait and see the end of the races.

He had selected Monte Carlo as the place for it, because it was more unlike his home than any other spot, and because one summer night, when he had crossed the lawn from the Casino to the hotel with a gay party of young men and women, they had come across something under a bush which they took to be a dog or a man asleep, and one of the men had stepped forward and touched it with his foot, and had then turned sharply and said, "Take those girls away"; and while some hurried the women back, frightened and curious, he and the others had picked up the body and found it to be that of a young Russian whom they had just seen losing, with a very bad grace, at the tables. There was no pa.s.sion in his face now, and his evening dress was quite unruffled, and only a black spot on the shirt front showed where the powder had burnt the linen. It had made a great impression on him then, for he was at the height of his fortunes, with crowds of sycophantic friends and a retinue of dependents at his heels. And now that he was quite alone and disinherited by even these sorry companions there seemed no other escape from the pain in his brain but to end it, and he sought this place of all others as the most fitting place in which to die.

So, after Walters had given the proper papers and checks to the commissioner who handled his debts for him, he left Paris and took the first train for Monte Carlo, sitting at the window of the carriage, and beating a nervous tattoo on the pane with his ring until the old gentleman at the other end of the compartment scowled at him. But Harringford did not see him, nor the trees and fields as they swept by, and it was not until Walters came and said, "You get out here, sir,"

that he recognized the yellow station and the great hotels on the hill above. It was half-past eleven, and the lights in the Casino were still burning brightly. He wondered whether he would have time to go over to the hotel and write a letter to his father and to her. He decided, after some difficult consideration, that he would not. There was nothing to say that they did not know already, or that they would fail to understand. But this suggested to him that what they had written to him must be destroyed at once, before any stranger could claim the right to read it. He took his letters from his pocket and looked them over carefully. They were most unpleasant reading. They all seemed to be about money; some begged to remind him of this or that debt, of which he had thought continuously for the last month, while others were abusive and insolent. Each of them gave him actual pain. One was the last letter he had received from his father just before leaving Paris, and though he knew it by heart, he read it over again for the last time. That it came too late, that it asked what he knew now to be impossible, made it none the less grateful to him, but that it offered peace and a welcome home made it all the more terrible.

"I came to take this step through young Hargraves, the new curate,"

his father wrote, "though he was but the instrument in the hands of Providence. He showed me the error of my conduct toward you, and proved to me that my duty and the inclination of my heart were toward the same end. He read this morning for the second lesson the story of the Prodigal Son, and I heard it without recognition and with no present application until he came to the verse which tells how the father came to his son 'when he was yet a great way off.' He saw him, it says, 'when he was yet a great way off,' and ran to meet him. He did not wait for the boy to knock at his gate and beg to be let in, but went out to meet him, and took him in his arms and led him back to his home. Now, my boy, my son, it seems to me as if you had never been so far off from me as you are at this present time, as if you had never been so greatly separated from me in every thought and interest; we are even worse than strangers, for you think that my hand is against you, that I have closed the door of your home to you and driven you away. But what I have done I beg of you to forgive: to forget what I may have said in the past, and only to think of what I say now. Your brothers are good boys and have been good sons to me, and G.o.d knows I am thankful for such sons, and thankful to them for bearing themselves as they have done.

"But, my boy, my first-born, my little Cecil, they can never be to me what you have been. I can never feel for them as I feel for you; they are the ninety and nine who have never wandered away upon the mountains, and who have never been tempted, and have never left their home for either good or evil. But you, Cecil, though you have made my heart ache until I thought and even hoped it would stop beating, and though you have given me many, many nights that I could not sleep, are still dearer to me than anything else in the world. You are the flesh of my flesh and the bone of my bone, and I cannot bear living on without you. I cannot be at rest here, or look forward contentedly to a rest hereafter, unless you are by me and hear me, unless I can see your face and touch you and hear your laugh in the halls. Come back to me, Cecil; to Harringford and the people that know you best, and know what is best in you and love you for it. I can have only a few more years here now when you will take my place and keep up my name. I will not be here to trouble you much longer; but, my boy, while I am here, come to me and make me happy for the rest of my life. There are others who need you, Cecil. You know whom I mean. I saw her only yesterday, and she asked me of you with such splendid disregard for what the others standing by might think, and as though she dared me or them to say or even imagine anything against you.

You cannot keep away from us both much longer. Surely not; you will come back and make us happy for the rest of our lives."

The Goodwood Plunger turned his back to the lights so that the people pa.s.sing could not see his face, and tore the letter up slowly and dropped it piece by piece over the balcony. "If I could," he whispered; "if I could." The pain was a little worse than usual just then, but it was no longer a question of inclination. He felt only this desire to stop these thoughts and doubts and the physical tremor that shook him.

To rest and sleep, that was what he must have, and peace. There was no peace at home or anywhere else while this thing lasted. He could not see why they worried him in this way. It was quite impossible. He felt much more sorry for them than for himself, but only because they could not understand. He was quite sure that if they could feel what he suffered they would help him, even to end it.

He had been standing for some time with his back to the light, but now he turned to face it and to take up his watch again. He felt quite sure the lights would not burn much longer. As he turned, a woman came forward from out the lighted hall, hovered uncertainly before him, and then made a silent salutation, which was something between a courtesy and a bow. That she was a woman and rather short and plainly dressed, and that her bobbing up and down annoyed him, was all that he realized of her presence, and he quite failed to connect her movements with himself in any way. "Sir," she said in French, "I beg your pardon, but might I speak with you?" The Goodwood Plunger possessed a somewhat various knowledge of Monte Carlo and its _habitues_. It was not the first time that women who had lost at the tables had begged a napoleon from him, or asked the distinguished child of fortune what color or combination she should play. That, in his luckier days, had happened often and had amused him, but now he moved back irritably and wished that the figure in front of him would disappear as it had come.

"I am in great trouble, sir," the woman said. "I have no friends here, sir, to whom I may apply. I am very bold, but my anxiety is very great."

The Goodwood Plunger raised his hat slightly and bowed. Then he concentrated his eyes with what was a distinct effort on the queer little figure hovering in front of him, and stared very hard. She wore an odd piece of red coral for a brooch, and by looking steadily at this he brought the rest of the figure into focus and saw, without surprise,--for every commonplace seemed strange to him now, and everything peculiar quite a matter of course,--that she was distinctly not an _habituee_ of the place, and looked more like a lady's maid than an adventuress. She was French and pretty,--such a girl as might wait in a Duval restaurant or sit as a cashier behind a little counter near the door.

"We should not be here," she said, as if in answer to his look and in apology for her presence. "But Louis, my husband, he would come. I told him that this was not for such as we are, but Louis is so bold. He said that upon his marriage tour he would live with the best, and so here he must come to play as the others do. We have been married, sir, only since Tuesday, and we must go back to Paris to-morrow; they would give him only the three days. He is not a gambler; he plays dominos at the cafes, it is true. But what will you? He is young and with so much spirit, and I know that you, sir, who are so fortunate and who understand so well how to control these tables, I know that you will persuade him. He will not listen to me; he is so greatly excited and so little like himself. You will help me, sir, will you not? You will speak to him?"

The Goodwood Plunger knit his eyebrows and closed the lids once or twice, and forced the mistiness and pain out of his eyes. It was most annoying. The woman seemed to be talking a great deal and to say very much, but he could not make sense of it. He moved his shoulders slightly. "I can't understand," he said wearily, turning away.

"It is my husband," the woman said anxiously: "Louis, he is playing at the table inside, and he is only an apprentice to old Carbut the baker, but he owns a third of the store. It was my _dot_ that paid for it," she added proudly. "Old Carbut says he may have it all for 20,000 francs, and then old Carbut will retire, and we will be proprietors. We have saved a little, and we had counted to buy the rest in five or six years if we were very careful."

"I see, I see," said the Plunger, with a little short laugh of relief; "I understand." He was greatly comforted to think that it was not so bad as it had threatened. He saw her distinctly now and followed what she said quite easily, and even such a small matter as talking with this woman seemed to help him.

"He is gambling," he said, "and losing the money, and you come to me to advise him what to play. I understand. Well, tell him he will lose what little he has left; tell him I advise him to go home; tell him--"

"No, no!" the girl said excitedly; "you do not understand; he has not lost, he has won. He has won, oh, so many rolls of money, but he will not stop. Do you not see? He has won as much as we could earn in many months--in many years, sir, by saving and working, oh, so very hard! And now he risks it again, and I cannot force him away. But if you, sir, if you would tell him how great the chances are against him, if you who know would tell him how foolish he is not to be content with what he has, he would listen. He says to me, 'Bah! you are a woman'; and he is so red and fierce; he is imbecile with the sight of the money, but he will listen to a grand gentleman like you. He thinks to win more and more, and he thinks to buy another third from old Carbut. Is it not foolish? It is so wicked of him."

"Oh, yes," said the Goodwood Plunger, nodding, "I see now. You want me to take him away so that he can keep what he has. I see; but I don't know him. He will not listen to me, you know; I have no right to interfere."