Tramping on Life Part 60

"Get me a drink!"

"All right! I'll get it for you!"

"Let me think! There's none in the house ... none left, Emily said."

"But I brought some with me ... wait a minute." I went into the kitchen, turned on the tap softly, filled a gla.s.s half full of water, brought it back to him.

"Here it is."

"I don't like the colour of it."

"Why, it has a nice, rich colour."

"What is it?--Scotch?"

"Yes."

He sipped of it. Made a rueful face. "I don't like the taste of it ...

it tastes too much like water," he commented, with a quiet, grave, matter-of-fact grimace that set me laughing, in spite of myself....

"Drink it down! I swear it's all right."

He tossed off the water.

"Give me my pants. I want to get out of here."

"Why, wasn't that whiskey that I just gave you?"

"Yes, yes ... but not very good stuff. I know where I can get better."

Humouring him, I helped him into his trousers ... painfully he put on his shirt, neatly tied his tie, while I steadied him. This manual function seemed to better his condition straightway. He startled me by turning to me with a look of amused recognition in his eyes. He was no longer off his head, just a very sick man.

"Well, Johnnie, so you're back again?"

"Yes, Pop--back again!"

"What are you going to do next?" he queried wearily, seating himself laboriously in an armchair.

"Stay, and take care of you!"

"That will be unnecessary. I have had a rather severe attack of malaria ... that is all ... left me rather weak ... but now I'm getting over it ... had to take a lot of whiskey and quinine, though, to break it up!

"Malaria comes on me, every spring, you know ... harder than usual, this spring, though ... it's made me dotty ... made me say things, at times, I'm afraid!"

We sat silent.

"--need any money?" he was reaching into his pocket.

"No, I don't want a cent!"

"Then take this five dollar bill and go around to the corner saloon and buy me a pint ... what I had is all used up, and the chills are not quite out of me yet."

On the way to the saloon I stopped at Hartman's express office ...

related the foregoing story....

"H'm! yes!... I see!" ... Hartman braced his thumbs together meditatively, "--from what you say it's pretty serious ... something will have to be done this very day....

"Yes, go and get the pint ... let him have a drink of it. And--and keep close to him all the time ... don't," he added significantly, "leave the lady in question in the room alone with him for a single moment."

"Have you got the pint, Son?"

"Yes, Father. Here it is ... but just a little!"

"I know what I'm doing!"

He took most of it down at a gulp.

Noticing the anxious look in my eyes.

"Don't worry about me, Johnnie. I can take it or leave it alone ...

--always could!"

Before Mrs. Jenkins could come back, Hartman antic.i.p.ated her with a nurse and a doctor. As Mrs. Jenkins came in, chagrin and indignation showed on her face. But she bowed perforce to the situation. She was too wise not to.

"His lodge-brothers are taking care of Mr. Gregory now, Mrs. Jenkins,"

explained Mr. Hartman suavely, warning her off, at the same time, with a severe, understanding look in his eyes.

She dropped her eyelashes--though with a bit of instinctive coquetry in them--under his straight-thrusting glance.

"Well, I suppose professional care _would_ be better than anything I could do for him ... but," sweetly, "I'll drop in from time to time to see if there's any little thing I can do."

Deprived of the loving care of Emily Jenkins, though he called for her many times, my father mended his condition rapidly. And, after a long, mysterious conference with Hartman and other members of his fraternal order, he consented to allow himself to be sent West on a visit. But not till they had promised to keep his job as foreman in the Composite Works, open for him, till he was well enough to come back.

After I had seen my father off, I stayed in the silent rooms only long enough to pack up my books, which I left in care of Hartman.

I had at last arrived at a definite plan of action.

My grandfather was transacting some sort of business in Washington, as my uncle, Jim, had informed me. There he was living in affluence, married again, in his old age ... just like his former wife.

I had evolved a scheme which seemed to me both clever and feasible, by which to extract from him a few hundred or a thousand dollars with which to prosecute my studies further, and enter, eventually, say, Princeton or Harvard ... perhaps Oxford.