Shorty McCabe Part 18

You see, Mr. Jarvis had treated me so white, and he was such a nice decent chap, that I was feelin' mighty cut up about givin' him the quick exit right before the girl he was gone on. Sure, he'd played for it; but I could see I shouldn't have done it. Knock-outs ain't in my line any more, anyway; but to spring one right before women folks, and in a swell joint like Blenmont--say, it made me feel like a last year's straw hat on the first day of June.

"Shorty," says I, "you're a throw-back. You better quit travelin' with real gents, and commence eatin' with your knife again. Here's Mr. Jarvis gets you to help him out in a little society affair, and you overdoes it so bad he can't square himself in a hundred years. Back to the junction for yours."

Well, I was that grouchy I wouldn't look at myself in the gla.s.s. But I rubs down and gets into my Rialto wardrobe that I'd brought along in a suit-case. Then I waits for Jarvis. Oh, I didn't want to see him, but it was up to me to say my little piece.

It was near an hour before he shows up, wearin' his bathrobe, an'

lookin' as gay as a flower-shop window.

"On the level, now," says I, before he had a show to make any play at me, "if I'd known what a pinhead I was, I'd stayed in the cushion. How bad did I queer you?"

"Shorty," says he, shovin' out his hand, "you're a brick."

"An' cracked in the bakin', eh?" says I.

"But you don't understand," says he. "She's mine, Shorty! The Lady Evelyn--she's promised to marry me."

"Serves you right," says I, as we shakes hands. "But how does she allow to get back at me?"

"Oh, she knows all about everything now," says Jarvis, "and she wants to apologize."

Say, he wasn't stringin' me either. Blow me if she didn't. And sister?

"You're horrid!" says she. "Perfectly horrid. So there!" Now can you beat 'em? But, as I've said before, when it comes to figurin' on what women or horses'll do, I'm a four-flusher.

CHAPTER VII

No, I ain't goin' out to Blenmont these days. Jarvis does his exercisin'

here, and he says his mother's havin' a ball room made out of that gym.

I've been stickin' to the pavements, like I said I would. Lookin'

cheerful, too? Why not? If you'd been a minute sooner you'd heard me wobblin' "Please, Ma-ma, nail a rose on me." But say, I'll give you the tale, and then maybe you can write your own ticket.

You see, I'd left Swifty Joe runnin' the Physical Culture Studio, and I was doin' a lap up the sunny side of the avenue, just to give my holiday regalia an airing. I wasn't thinkin' a stroke, only just breathin' deep and feelin' glad I was right there and nowhere else--you know how the avenue's likely to go to your head these spring days, with the carriage folks swampin' the traffic squad, and everybody that is anybody right on the spot or hurrying to get there, and everyone of 'em as fit and finished as so many prize-winners at a fair?

Well, I wasn't lookin' for anything to come my way, when all of a sudden I sees a goggle-capped tiger throw open the door of one of them plate-gla.s.s benzine broughams at the curb, and bend over like he has a pain under his vest. I was just side-steppin' to make room for some upholstered old battle-ax that I supposed owned the rig, when I feels a hand on my elbow and hear some one say: "Why, Shorty McCabe! is that you?"

She was a dream, all right--one of your princess-cut girls, with the kind of clothes on that would make a turkey-red check-book turn pale.

But you couldn't fool me, even if she had put a Marcelle crimp in that carroty hair of hers, and washed off the freckles and biscuit flour. You can't change Irish-blue eyes, can you? And when you've come to know a voice that's got a range from maple-sugar to mixed pickles, you don't forget it, either. Know her? Say, I was brought up next door to Sullivan's boarding-house.

"You didn't take me for King Eddie, did you, Miss Sullivan?" says I.

"I might by the clothes," says she, runnin' her eyes over me, "only I see you've got him beat a mile. But why the Miss Sullivan?"

"Because I've mislaid your weddin'-card, and there's been other things on my mind than you since our last reunion," says I. "But I'm chawmed to meet you again, rully," and I begins to edge off.

"You act it," says she. "You look tickled to death--almost. But I'm pleased enough for two. Anyway, I'm in need of a man of about your weight to take a ride with me. So step lively, Shorty, and don't stand there scaring trade away from the silver shop. Come, jump in."

"Not me," says I. "I never b.u.t.ts into places where there's apt to be a hubby to ask who's who and what's what."

"But there isn't any hubby now," says she.

"North Dakotaed him?" says I.

"No," says she; "I've got a decree good in any State. His friends called it heart failure. I can't because I used to settle his bar bills. You're not shy of widows, are you?"

Now say, there's widows and widows--gra.s.s, baled hay, and other kinds--and most of 'em I pa.s.ses up on general principles, along with chorus girls and lady demonstrators; but somehow I couldn't seem to place Sadie Sullivan in that line. Why, her mother 'n' mine used to borrow cupfuls of flour of each other over the back fence, and it was to lick a feller who'd yelled "brick-top" after Sadie that started me to takin' my first boxin' lessons in Mike Quigley's barn.

"I ain't much used to traveling in one of these rubber-tired show windows," says I; "but for the sake of old times I'll chance it once,"

and with that I climbs in; the tiger puts on the time-lock, and we joins the procession. "Your car's all to the giddy," I remarks. "Didn't it leave you some short of breath after blowin' yourself to this, Sadie?"

"I buy it by the month," says she, "including Jeems and Henri in front.

It comes higher that way; but who cares?"

"Oh," says I, "he left a barrel, then?"

"A cellarful," says Sadie.

And on the way up towards the park I gets the scenario of the acts I'd missed. His name was Dipworthy--you've seen it on the labels, "Dipworthy's Drowsy Drops, Younsgters Yearn for 'Em"--only he was Dipworthy, jr., and knew as little about the "Drop" business as only sons usually do about such things. Drops wa'n't his long suit; quarts came nearer being his size.

It was while he was having a sober spell that he married Sadie; but that was about the last one he ever had. She stuck to him, though; let him chase her with guns and hammer her with the furniture, until the purple monkeys got him for good and all. Then she cashed in the "Drop"

business, settled a life-insurance president's salary on her mother, bought a string of runnin' ponies for her kid brother, and then hit New York, with the notion that here was where you could get anything you had the price to pay for.

"But I made a wrong guess, Shorty," says she. "It isn't all in having the money; it's in knowing how to make it get you the things you want."

"There's plenty would like to give you lessons in that," says I.

"You?" says she.

"Say, do I look like a con. man?" says I.

"There, there, Shorty!" says she. "I knew better, only I've been gold-bricked so much lately that I'd almost suspect my own grandmother.

I've got two maids who steal my dresses and rings; a lady companion who nags me about the way I talk, and who hates me alive because I can afford to hire her; and even the hotel manager makes me pay double rates because I look too young for a real widow. Do you know, there are times when I almost miss the late Dippy. Were you ever real lonesome, Shorty?"

"Once or twice," says I, "when I was far from Broadway."

"That's nothing," says she, "to being lonesome _on_ Broadway. And I've been so lonesome in a theatre box, with two thousand people in plain sight, that I've dropped tears down on the trombone player in the orchestra. And I was lonesome just now, when I picked you up back there.

I had been into that big jewelry store, buying things I didn't want, just for the sake of having some one to talk to."

"Ah, say," says I, "cut it in smaller chunks, Sadie. I'm no pelican."

"You don't believe me?" says she.

"I know this little old burg too well," says I. "Why, with a hundred-dollar bill I can buy more society than you could put in a hall."

"But don't you see, Shorty," says she, "that the kind you can buy isn't worth having? You don't buy yours, do you? And I don't want to buy mine.

I want to swap even. I'm not a freak, nor a foreigner, nor a quarantine suspect. Look at all these women going past--what's the difference between us? But they're not lonesome, I'll bet. They have friends and dear enemies by the hundreds, while I haven't either. There isn't a single home on this whole island where I can step up and ring the front door-bell. I feel like a tramp hanging to the back of a parlor-car. What good does my money do me? Suppose I want to take dinner at a swell restaurant--I wouldn't know the things to order, and I'd be afraid of the waiters. Think of that, Shorty."