The Under Dog Part 13

Then, bending over me, he added:

"Monsieur, I do not think I am mistaken. Were you not painting along the river this morning?"

"Yes."

"And a little child stood beside you while you worked?" Something in his voice as he spoke made me raise my head. To my intense amazement the listless eyes were alight with a tenderness that seemed to permeate his whole being, and a smile of infinite sweetness was playing about his mouth--the smile of the old saint--the Ribera of the Prado!

"Yes, of course; the one playing with the priest," I answered, quickly.

"But--"

"No; that was me, Monsieur. I have often been taken for a priest, especially when I am off duty. It is the smooth face that misled you--"

and he pa.s.sed his hand over his cheeks and chin.

"You the priest!" This came as a distinct surprise. "Ah, yes, I do see the resemblance now. And so your sweetheart is the woman in the white cap." At last I had reached his tender spot.

"No, you are wrong again, Monsieur. The woman in the white cap is my sister. My sweetheart is the little girl--my granddaughter, Susette."

I raised my own white umbrella over my head, picked up my sketch-trap, and took the path back to the river. The rain had ceased, the sun was s.h.i.+ning--brilliant, radiant suns.h.i.+ne; all the leaves studded with diamonds; all the gra.s.ses strung with opals, every stone beneath my feet a gem.

I didn't know when I left what became of Mademoiselle Ernestine Beraud, with her last lover under the sod, and the new one shut up in the kiosk, and I didn't care. I saw only a little girl--a little girl in a brown-madder dress and yellow-ochre hat; with big, blue eyes, a tiny pug-nose, a wee, kissable mouth, and two long pig-tails down her back.

Looking down into her bonny face from its place, high up on the walls of the Prado, was an old cracked saint, his human eyes aglow with a light that came straight from heaven.

"DOC" s.h.i.+PMAN'S FEE

It was in the Doctor's own office that he told me this story. He has told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience, like strands of worsted from an old-fas.h.i.+oned reticule. Some were bright-colored, some were gray and dull--some black; most of them, in fact, sombre in tone, for the Doctor has spent much of his life climbing up the rickety stairs of gloomy tenements. Now and then there comes out a thread of gold which he weaves into the mesh of his talk--some gleam of pathos or heroism or unselfishness, lightening the whole fabric. This kind of story he loves best to tell.

The Doctor is not one of your new-fas.h.i.+oned doctors quartered in a brownstone house off the Avenue, with a butler opening the door; a pair of bob-tailed grays; a coupe with a note-book tucked away in its pocket bearing the names of various millionnaires; an office panelled in oak; a waiting-room lined with patients reading last month's magazines until he should send for them. He has no such abode nor belongings. He lives all alone by himself in an old-fas.h.i.+oned house on Bedford Place--oh, Such a queer, hunched-up old house and such a quaint old neighborhood poked away behind Jefferson Market--and he opens the door himself and sees everybody who comes--there are not a great many of them nowadays, more's the pity.

There are only a few such houses left up the queer old-fas.h.i.+oned street where he lives. The others were pulled down long ago, or pushed out to the line of the sidewalk and three or four stories piled on top of them.

Some of these modern ones have big, carved marble porticos, made of painted zinc and fastened to the new brickwork. Inside these portals are a row of bronze bells and a line of speaking tubes with cards below bearing the names of those who dwell above.

The Doctor's house is not like one of these. It would have been had it not belonged to his old mother, who died long ago and who begged him never to sell it while he lived. He was thirty years younger then, but he is still there and so is the old house. It looks a little ashamed of its shabbiness when you come upon it suddenly hiding behind its pus.h.i.+ng neighbors. First comes an iron fence with a gate never shut, and then a flagged path dividing a gra.s.s-plot, and then an old-fas.h.i.+oned wooden stoop with two steps, guarded by a wooden railing (many a day since these were painted); and over these railings and up the supports which carry the roof of the portico straggles a honeysuckle that does its best to hide the shabbiness of the s.h.i.+ngles and the old waterspout and sagging gutter, and fails miserably when it gets to the farther cornice, which has rotted away, showing under its dismal paint the black and brown rust of decaying wood.

Then way in under the portico comes the door with the name-plate, and next to it, level with the floor of the piazza or portico--either you please, for it is a combination of both--are two long French windows, always open in summer evenings and a-light on winter nights with the reflection of the Doctor's soft-coal fire, telling of the warmth and cheer within.

For it is a cheery place. It doesn't look like a doctor's office. There are dingy haircloth sofas, it is true, and a row of shelves with bottles, and funny-looking boxes on the mantel--one an electric battery--and rows and rows of books on the walls. But there are no dreadful instruments about. If there are, you don't see them.

The big chair he sits in would swallow up a smaller man. It is covered with Turkey red and has a roll cus.h.i.+on for his head. There are two of these chairs--one for you, or me; this last has big arms that come out and catch you under the elbows, a mighty help to a man when he has just learned that his liver or lungs or heart or some other part of him has gone wrong and needs overhauling.

Then there is a canary that sings all the time, and a small dog--oh, such a low-down, ill-bred, tousled dog; kind of a dog that might have been raised around a lumber-yard--was, probably--one ear gone, half of his tail missing; and there are some pots of flowers, and on the wall near the window where everybody can see is a case of b.u.t.terflies impaled on pins and covered by a gla.s.s. No, you wouldn't think the Doctor's office a grewsome place, and you certainly wouldn't think the Doctor was a grewsome person--not when you come to know him.

If you met him out on Sunday afternoon in his black clothes, white neck-cloth, and well-brushed hat, his gray hair straggling over his coat-collar, pounding his cane on the pavement as he walked, you would say he had a Sunday-school cla.s.s somewhere. If you should come upon him suddenly, seated before his fire, his gold spectacles clinging to his finely chiselled nose, his thoughtful face bending over his book, you would conclude that you had interrupted some savant, and bow yourself out.

But you must ring his bell at night--say two o'clock A.M.; catch his cheery voice calling through the tube from his bedroom in the rear--"Yes; coming right away--be there soon as I get my clothes on"--feel the strength and sympathy and readiness to help in the man, and try to keep step with him as he hurries on, and then watch him when he enters the sick-room, diffusing hope and cheer and confidence, and listen to the soft, soothing tones of his voice, before you really get at the inside lining of "Doc" s.h.i.+pman.

All this brings me to the story. Of course, I could have told you the bare facts without giving you an idea of the man and his surroundings, but that wouldn't be fair to you, for you would have missed knowing the Doctor, and I the opportunity of introducing him to you.

We were sitting in the old-fas.h.i.+oned office, then, one snowy night in January, the Doctor leaning back in his chair, his meerschaum pipe in his mouth--the one with the gold cap that a long-ago patient gave him--when he straightened his back and tugged at his fob, bringing to the surface a small gold watch--one I had not seen before.

"Where's the silver one?" I asked, referring to an old silver-backed watch I had seen him wear.

The Doctor looked up and smiled.

"That's in the drawer. I don't wear it any more--not since I got this one back."

"What happened? Was it broken?"

"No, stolen."

"When?"

"Oh, some time ago. Help yourself to a cigar and I'll tell you about it.

"One night last summer I came in late, took off my coat and vest, hung them on a chair by the window and went to bed, leaving the sashes ajar, for it was terribly hot and I wanted a draught of air through from my bedroom."

(I must tell my reader here that the Doctor is a born story-teller and something of an actor as well. He seldom explains his characters or situations as he goes on by putting in "I said" and "he said" and similar expressions. You know by the tones of his voice who is speaking, and his gestures supply the rest.)

"I always carried this watch in my vest-pocket. I carry it now inside my waistband so they will have to pull me to pieces to get it.

"Well, about three o'clock in the morning--I had just heard the old clock in the tower strike, and was dozing off to sleep again--a footstep awoke me to consciousness. I looked through these doors"--here the Doctor was pointing to the folding doors of the office where we sat--"and through my bedroom saw the dim outline of a man moving about this room. He had my vest and trousers over his arm. I sprang up, but he was too quick for me, and before I could reach him he had slipped through the windows out on to the porch, down the yard, through the gate, and was gone.

"With him went my mother's watch, which was in the upper vest-pocket, and some fifty dollars in money. I didn't mind the money, but I did the watch. It was my mother's, a present from my father when they were first married, and had the initials '_E.M.S. from J.H.S_.' engraved on the under side of the case. When she died I pasted the dear old lady's photograph inside the upper lid. I know almost everybody around here, and they all know me; they come in here with broken heads for me to sew up, and stab wounds, and such-like misfortunes, and when they heard what had happened to me they all did what they could.

"The Captain of the precinct came around, and everybody was very sorry, and they hunted the p.a.w.nshops, and I offered a reward--in fact, did all the foolish things you do when you have lost something you think a heap of. But no trace of the watch could be found, and so I gave it up and tried to forget it and couldn't. That's why I bought that cheap silver one. My only clew to the thief was the glimpse I had of a scar on his cheek and a slight dragging of his foot as he stepped about my room.

"One night last autumn there came a ring at the bell, and I let in a man with a slouch hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of his coat turned up. He was soaking wet, the water oozing from his shoes and slopping the oilcloth in the hall where he stood. I had never seen him before.

"'Doc,' he said, 'I want you.' They all call me 'Doc' around here--especially this kind of a man--and I saw right away where he belonged.

"'What for?'

"'My pal's sick.'

"'What's the matter with him?'

"'Well, he's sick--took bad. He'll die if he don't git help.'

"'Where is he?'

"'Down in Was.h.i.+ngton Street.'

"'Queer,' I said to myself, 'his wanting me to go two miles from here, when there are plenty of doctors nearer by,' and so I said to him:

"'You can get a doctor nearer than me. I'm waiting for a woman case and may be sent for any minute. Try the Dispensary on Ca.n.a.l Street; they've always a doctor there.'