The Under Dog Part 21

"Every July and Christmas I'd go for her, and she'd allus be waitin' for me at the head o' the stairs or would come runnin' down with her arms wide open, and she'd kiss me and hug me and call me dear Uncle Jim, and tell me how she loved me, and how there warn't nothin' in the world she loved so much; and then when she'd git home we'd tramp the woods together every chance we got."

Jim stopped and bent forward, his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees. For a time he was silent; then he went on:

"This last time when I went for her she pretty nigh took my breath away.

She seemed just as glad to see me, but she didn't git into my arms as she ueeter, and she looked different, too. She had growed every way bigger, and wider, and older. I kep' a-lookin' at her, tryin' to find the little girl I'd left some months afore, but she warn't there. She acted different, too--more quiet like and still, so that I was feared to touch her like I useter, and took it out in talkin' to her and listenin'

to all she told me o' what she was larnin' and how this winter she was goin' to git through and git her certificate, and then she was goin' to teach and help her mother--she allus called Marm Marvin mother. Then she told me o' how one o' the teachers--a young fellow from a college--was goin' to set up a school o' his own and goin' to git some o' the graduates to help teach when he got started, and how he had asked her to be one o' 'em, and how she was goin' with him.

"Since you been here and us three been together and I begun to see how happy she was a-talkin' to you and askin' you questions, I got worse'n ever over her. I begun to see that I warn't what I had been to her. When we was trampin' and fishin' it was all right and she'd talk to me 'bout the ways o' the birds and what flowers come up fust and all that, but when it got to geography and history I warn't in it with her, and you was. That sickened me more'n ever. Pretty soon I began to feel as if everything I had in life war slippin' away from me. I didn't want her to shut me out from anything she had. I wanted to have half, same's we allus had--half for me and half for her. Why, lately, when I lay awake nights a-thinkin' it over, I've wished sometimes that she hadn't growed up at all, and that she'd allus be my baby-girl and I her Uncle Jim.

"Yesterday mornin'--" Jim's voice broke, and he cleared his throat.

"Yesterday mornin' we went down the branch, as ye know, and she was a-settin' on a log throwin' her fly into the pool, when one o' them song-sparrows lit on a bush and looked at her, and begin to sing like he'd bust his little chest, and she sung back at him with her eyes a-laughin' and her hair a-flyin', and I stood lookin' at her and my heart choked up in my throat, and I leaned over and took the rod out o' her hand.

"'Baby-girl,' I says, 'there ain't a bird 'round here that ain't got a mate; and that's what makes 'em so happy. I ain't got n.o.body but you, Ruby--don't go 'way from me, child--stay with me.' And I told her. She looked at me startled like, same as a deer does when he hears a dog bark; then she jumped up and begin to cry.

"'Oh, Jim--Jim--dear Jim!' she says. 'I love you so, and you've been so good to me all my life, but don't--don't never say that to me again.

That can never be--not so long as we live.' And she dropped down on the ground and cried till she couldn't git her breath. Then she got up and kissed my hands and went home, leavin' me there alone feelin' like I'd fell off a scaffoldin' and struck the sidewalk."

Jim arose from his seat and began pacing the platform again. I had not spoken a word through his long story.

"Jim," I began, "how old are you?"

"Forty-two," he said, in a patient, listless way.

"More than twice as old as Ruby, aren't you? Old enough, really, to be her father. You love her, don't you--love her for herself--not yourself?

You wouldn't let anything hurt her if you could help it. You were right when you said every bird has its mate. That's true, Jim, and the way it ought to be--but they mate with _this_ year's birds, not _last_ year's.

When men get as old as you and I we forget these things sometimes, but they are true all the same."

"I know it," he broke out, "I know it; you can't tell me nothin' about it. I thought it all over more'n a hundred times lately. I could bite my tongue off for sayin' what I did to her, and spilin' her visit, but it's done now and I can't help it, and I've got to stay here and bear it."

"No, Jim, don't stay here. So long as she sees you around here she'll be unhappy, and you will be equally miserable. Go away from here; find work somewhere else."

"When?" he said, quietly.

"Now; right away; before she comes back at Christmas."

"No, I can't do it, and I won't. Not till she graduates and gits her certificate. That'll be next June."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Got a good deal to do with it. If I should leave now jes's winter's comin' on I mightn't git another job, and she'd have to come home and her eddication be sp'ilt."

"What would bring her home?" I asked in surprise.

"What would bring her home?" he repeated, with some irritation. "Why they'd send her if the bills warn't paid--that's what Marm Marvin couldn't help her, and Jed wouldn't give her a cent. Them school-bills, you know, I've always paid out o' my wages--that's why Jed let her go.

No; I'll stick it out here till she finishes, if it kills me. Baby-girl sha'n't miss nothin' through me."

One beautiful spring day I swung back the gate of a garden on the outskirts of the village of Plymouth and walked up a flower-bordered path to a cottage porch smothered in vines.

Ruby was standing in the door, her hands held out to me. I had not seen her for years. Her husband had not returned yet from their school, but she expected him every minute.

"And dear old Jim?" I asked. "What has become of him?"

"Look," she said, pointing to a shambling, awkward figure stooping under the apple-trees, which were in full bloom. "There he is, picking blossoms with little Ruby. He never leaves her for a minute."

COMPARTMENT NUMBER FOUR--COLOGNE TO PARIS

He was looking through a hole--a square hole, framed about with mahogany and ground gla.s.s. His face was red, his eyes were black, his mustache--waxed to two needle-points--was a yellowish brown; his necktie blue and his uniform dark chocolate seamed with little threads of vermilion and incrusted with silver poker-chip b.u.t.tons emblazoned with the initials of the corporation which he served.

I knew I was all right when I read the initials. I had found the place and the man. The place was the ticket-office of the International Sleeping-Car Company. The man was its agent.

So I said, very politely and in my best French--it is a little frayed and worn at the edges, but it arrives--sometimes----

"A lower for Paris."

The man in chocolate, with touches of the three primary colors distributed over his person, half-closed his eyes, lifted his shoulders in a tired way, loosened his fingers, and, without changing the lay-figure expression of his face, replied:

"There is nothing."

"Not a berth?"

"Not a berth."

"Are they all _paid_ for?" and I accented the word _paid_. I spend countless nights on Pullmans in my own country and am familiar with many uncanny devices.

"All but one."

"Why can't I have it? It is within an hour of train-time. Who ordered it?"

"The Director of the great circus. He is here now waiting for his troupe, which arrives from Berlin in a special car belonging to our company. The other car--the one that starts from here--is full. We have only two cars on this train--Monsieur the Director has the last berth."

He said this, of course, in his native language. I am merely translating it. I would give it to you in the original, but it might embarra.s.s you; it certainly would me.

"What's the matter with putting the Circus Director in the special car?

Your regulations say berths must be paid for one hour before train-time.

It is now fifty-five minutes of eight. Your train goes at eight, doesn't it? Here is a twenty-franc gold piece--never mind the change"--and I flung a napoleon on the desk before him.

The bunch of fingers disentangled themselves, the shoulders sank an inch, the waxed ends of the taffy-colored mustache vibrated slightly, and a smile widened in circles across the flat dulness of his face until it engulfed his eyebrows, ears, and chin. The effect of the dropping of the coin had been like the dropping of a stone into the still smoothness of a pool--the wrinkling wavelets had reached the uttermost sh.o.r.e-line.

The smile over, he opened a book about the size of an atlas, dipped a pen in an inkstand, recorded my point of departure--Cologne, and my point of arrival--Paris; dried the inscription with a pinch of black sand filched from a saucer--same old black sand used in the last century--cut a section of the page with a pair of shears, tossed the coin in the air, listened to its ring on the desk with a satisfied look, slipped the whole twenty-franc piece into his pocket--regular fare, fifteen francs, irregular swindle, five francs--and handed me the billet. Then he added, with a trace of humor in his voice:

"If Monsieur the Director of the Circus comes now he will go in the special car."

I examined the billet. I had Compartment Number Four, upper berth, Car 312.

I lighted a cigarette, gave my small luggage-checks to a porter with directions to deposit my traps in my berth when the train was ready--the company's office was in the depot--and strolled out to look at the station.

You know the Cologne station, of course. It is as big as the Coliseum, shaped like an old-fashioned hoop-skirt with a petticoat of gla.s.s, and connects with one of the most beautiful bridges in the world. It has two immense waiting-rooms, with historical frescos on the walls and two huge fireplaces supported on nudities shivering with the cold, for no stick of wood ever blazes on the well-swept hearths. It has also a gorgeous restaurant, with panelled ceiling, across which skip bunches of b.u.t.terfly Cupids in shameless costumes, and an inviting cafe with never-dying palms in the windows, a portrait of the Kaiser over the counter holding the coffee-urn, and a portrait of the Kaiserin over the counter holding the little sticky cakes, the baby bottles of champagne, and the long lady-finger sandwiches with bits of red ham hanging from their open ends like poodle-dogs' tongues.