Plain Mary Smith Part 16

He smiled at me. "Did you ever see a man of peace in more unpeaceful place? Well, Senor Saunders, your plan has that daring which often cows success. It remains to be seen whether Arthur can by any means be brought to think of it: his pride will be afire at the thought--yes, that is it. Listen. If you can gain his acceptance--and you have no plan without it--I am with you, heart and soul."

"Good!" says I. "Shake hands on it. I sha'n't strike Arthur at once. I mean to work up the disagreement with Brother Belknap first. 'T will do no harm in any case if his head is punched."

Perez laughed. "You are warrior, pure and not so simple," says he.

"Heaven send strength to your arm when you meet."

"I ask no odds of top, bottom, nor middle," says I. "Give me a fair field."

"There spoke a better spirit than Achilles of old times," says Perez.

"So should I be, if I had an arm like that."

"I'll bet there'd be some danger in you, my friend!" says I.

The light went out of his face. "Mention it not," he said sternly. "Once it was my misfortune to kill a man--you are not offended at my speech?"

"Not on your family portraits!--but, of course, I couldn't know--you ain't put out, for your part?"

"Only what is right I should be--what is it your great poet says--'bears yet a precious jewel in its head'? So with me. To walk with a ghost has done me no harm. In pity for myself, I pity others. But this is a melancholy talk--come, I shall show you my pictures. Some are wonderful, all are good."

So we went into the fine old house again and saw the paintings. They were beyond my calculations. Outside of the things Sax never finished and bar a chromo or two, I'd never seen a picture--I don't count the grandfathers' portraits at home--decent people enough, them and their wives, but not what you'd call beautiful except Great-Grandmother De La Tour--she was a corker.

Seeing that I enjoyed 'em, Perez explained the pictures to me, what were the good points. When I've told people the names on the pictures in Perez's gallery, I've simply been told I lied.

Next Perez said, "You like music, Senor Saunders?"

"You bet!" says I. So he led the way into a room off the gallery. It was a long, high room rounded at one end, with an arched ceiling. The least whisper in there rang clear. At the round end was an organ. Perez called; a little Injun boy came to pump the organ.

Perez seated himself on the bench. "Now," said he, "if only we had Arthur--foolish fellow! Here is this great house with only one small man in it! I beg him to live here, but he will not--he says he must live in a place rough, as you saw."

"I'm inclined to think Sax knows his pasture, Mr. Perez," I answered.

He nodded. "I only spoke as I often do," he said, "of what I wish, instead of what must be--so little a change would make this so much better a world." He thought for a second. "An easier world," he corrected; "really it is better as it is--well, I am more musician than philosopher,--what will you, _amigo mio_? Something grand? military? of sentiment, or peace?"

"I tell you, Mr. Perez," says I, "I don't know anything about music.

Can't you play pieces not too high for me, yet good to listen to, so I feel it, and learn at the same time?"

He laughed as if I tickled him. "There speaks that so practical Northern head," says he, "that will have the heart lifted and also a dollar in the pocket."

"Am I foolish?" I asked. I never yet played being big before a man who knew something. When he _knows_ he sees your little play and despises you for it.

"Not foolish, _chico_," says Perez. "Only wise with a wisdom strange to me." He wheeled and looked at me. "A most strange young man you are; the strength of a giant, roaring health and no fool, and yet you will listen to an older man--you _wish_ to listen. Receive the thanks of an older man. The hope of such service is the one poor vanity remaining to him.

May time so deal with you that you shall never know the compliment you pay--listen!"

The old organ burst into a pride of sound. Big and splendid--steel and fair ladies--roses and sudden death. Made my heart get big and want to do something. Perhaps talking with Perez, his air of decent sadness, and his old-time way of speaking, kind of lofty for this date, yet never slopping over; and perhaps the beautiful old house with its hangings, pictures, and armor helped the music, but anyhow, as I listened, I had visions. I felt like a lost calf that's got back to the herd and a sight of mama. I was still in my dream when I realized the music had stopped and that Perez was looking at me.

"May I take a liberty?" said he. "A resemblance has perplexed me since I met you."

"Sure," says I, waking up.

He walked to the corner where there stood an old suit of armor. It was made for a sizable man. Together we put the corselet on me, and then I fixed the helmet and followed Perez's lead.

He held a lamp before us, as we went down a pa.s.sage into a small side room. There I thought I saw my image in a gla.s.s. Perez laughed at my face, when I found it was a picture. It seemed magic to me.

"What in the world!" says I.

"Behold the Marquis De La Tour!" says he.

"The devil it is!" says I. "Still respected, though forty greats removed! Perez, old man, that's my grandpa!"

"The face proves it," he answered. "He is also mine. Cousin, I felt the pull of blood this day. Your hand, and we shall have a bottle of wine."

"It ain't often that a man meets his forty-ply great-grandpa and so nice a Spanish cousin," says I. "I reckon I can square it with Mary later.

Lead on, McDuff, and dammed be he who cannot hold enough."

A very tidy little tidal wave of joy broke over the Perez mansion.

Everybody rejoiced; we had the man-servant and the maid-servant and the rest of the menagerie in drinking healths to the new-met relatives. To this day I ain't exactly sure how close connected Perez and I are.

Grandpa De La Tour was a little nearer than Adam, to be sure, but not near enough, so there wouldn't have been some fussing about his will, if it should suddenly be discovered.

One of his daughters married a Spaniard that started the Perez line,--and My! but that line was spread out thin! There'd been pretty husky families on my side, too; however, I was durned proud to claim kin with a man like Perez, and I wouldn't have spoiled the lonesome little man's joy in finding a relative, anyhow. All his tribe but him had been wiped out completely. I was the only relative he had--that is, that he knew about. The United States was full of 'em, if he'd only known it.

Europe, too, I reckon. Still, his talk about the pull of blood wasn't nonsense, neither. I felt drawn to him from the first, and who can say that in feeling and ways of acting we really weren't closer connected than some brothers are? And Grandpa De La Tour was all right for an excuse. I sure did look like him--not so much now, that I wear hair on my face, but then I wouldn't have known which was him and which was me if we met on the street.

Before we turned in for the night I spoke to Perez again about Sax and Mary. He listened eager enough now. What I suggested was all right--little peculiarities of a gentleman. As Perez put it, "The greater courtesy of the heart, that stops not at the puny fences of the fixed way." How different the same thing looks in different lights! He was dead right about the fences. I never saw a fence yet without wanting to tear a hole in it, but you've only to string a thread across, if I've no business there, to keep me out.

It appeared to me then, and it appears to me still, that I had a right to interfere in Mary's affair. At times, of course, you're a plain meddlesome Pete, if you cut in, and you deserve all you probably will get,--as many kicks as the parties can land on you before you escape; on the other hand, Perez was right when he said it sometimes was shameful not to interfere. And while marriage is the most private of all things, it's the most binding, too: you can lose money, get experience, and make more; fall out with your friends and make it up again, but a lifetime tied to one person is the stiffest proposition a human being is called upon to face. Here's Mary, a girl without much experience, putting herself in the way of being hooked for life to a man I knew to be a fraud--let her suffer for her folly? No, by the Lord! Let me suffer for my folly, if necessary, but in it I go. We're all kids and sometimes we've got to be made to do the right thing--and--here's the rub--if strict but kind papa is sure he's right (which he can't be) its easy; if not, I suppose it's up to us as per general orders, do the best you can and prepare to go down with the wreck. I envy the man who's sure he's right, but the Lord have mercy on his friends. Well, that's what Perez and I arrived at; that we were stacked against a blooming mystery and we'd shoot at the one glimmer of light we had. Mary _did_ care for Sax.

Good. Belknap was a fraud. Good. To the devil with the rest of the argument.

However, I didn't reveal my full plan regarding Belknap to my kinsman. I had a hunch that even my likeness to Grandpa De La Tour wouldn't convince him. You see, like most kids, savages, and people not grown up in general, I believed in playing the game as it was played on me. I wouldn't let a rogue escape for want of a helpful lie in season, acted or spoken. I couldn't see why you shouldn't get him his way, so long as you got him. It took me some years to understand Saxton's saying, that it was better for a rascal to escape, than for an honest man to turn rascal in catching him. Plain enough when you think of it. If you work low down on the other feller, to trip him, there's two rascals, that's all. It comes medium hard to see it in that light, though, when before your eyes the rascal is having it all his own way. And, while I disapprove of my own methods, the results was great. No use talking, the wicked sometimes prosper and your Uncle William played in a full-jeweled streak of luck. The next day I opened my campaign.

XIII

RED MAKES A FEW REMARKS

It seemed to me it was only friendly for me to get some sympathy for Saxton, as he wouldn't try for himself. Yet this looked a delicate proposition. I can't give you the proper idea of how quick-witted Mary was, how easy she saw the behind-meaning of your words, or even saw things you didn't know yourself.

It's a good trait to its possessor, but, like everything else in this world, there's a price to pay for it. She sometimes saw things that weren't there. A man with extra good sight is more fooled by mirage than a man who doesn't trust his eyes so much. And it had fallen down on her, on the most important dealing of her life. She saw Saxton wrong, and couldn't see him right, for that trust in her own judgment. She had to root up the very foundation of her belief in everything to upset her wrong judgment of him. She felt the drawing toward him was something to be fought hard, the same as a man would fight a growing inclination to drink. And like a great many people (although it's a thing I can't understand myself), she swung to what was solemn, uninteresting, and hard, for safety.

And changed! Well, that morning, when I slid around to the house of the fountain, I scarcely knew her. It was Sat.u.r.day, and no school. About a dozen or twenty young Panamans walked or sat about the yard. The Reconstructed looked stiff and unhappy in the boiled white s.h.i.+rt of progress, but out of native good nature tried to appear pleasant.

Lots of the Great Works, that spread misery over whole communities, wouldn't come off, if a sense of a joke was left in the conspirators.

Mary was keen for a laugh, and saw the funny side of things as quick as any man, yet those poor little devils all out of place and condition didn't raise a smile on her face. It did on mine, though. I thought of 'em, happy in their fleas, sun, and dirt, and then looked at the early-Christian-martyr expression on their faces and choked, but that laugh rode on sorrow and anger at that. It was a downright wickedness to the children. I looked at Mary, knowing her for a kind woman--one who loved all innocent play. I hit myself on the head at the dumb-foolishness of it. How in the devil's name could she bring herself to approve of this? Why is it we lay a course for somebody else we'd never think of following ourselves? Well, I sat there and echo continued to answer "Why?" as usual, till the silence thickened.

She broke it with a lucky proposition. "You seem very serious this morning, Will," she said.

I told her that was so; looking at the poor little revolutionists in their white s.h.i.+rts of suffering, I made up my mind to let her have it.