The Under Dog Part 30

While m.u.f.fles shaved and the group about him discussed the several ways--some of them rather shady, I'm afraid--in which they and their const.i.tuents earned their daily bread, the stable-boy--he was a street waif, picked up to keep him from starving--served the beverages. m.u.f.fles had no Sunday license, of course, but a little thing like that never disturbed m.u.f.fles or his friends--not with the Captain of the Precinct as part owner.

My intimacy with m.u.f.fles dated from a visit I had made him a year before, when I stopped in one of my sketching-tramps to get something cooling. A young friend of mine--a musician--was with me. m.u.f.fles's garden was filled with visitors: some celebration or holiday had called the people out. m.u.f.fles, in expectation, had had the piano tuned and had sent to town for an orchestra of three. The cornet and ba.s.s-viol had put in an appearance, but the pianist had been lost in the shuffle.

"De bloke ain't showed up and we can't git nothin' out o' de fish-horn and de sc.r.a.pe--see?" was the way m.u.f.fles put it.

My friend was a graduate of the Conservatoire, an ex-stroke, crew of '91, owned a pair of shears which he used twice a year in the vaults of a downtown bank, and breakfasted every day at twelve--but none of these things had spoiled him.

"Don't worry," he said; "put a prop under your piano-lid and bring me a chair. I'll work the ivories for you."

He played till midnight, drank his free beers between each selection, his face as grave as a judge except when he would wink at me out of the corner of his eye to show his intense enjoyment of the whole situation.

You can judge of its effect on the audience when I tell you that one young girl in a pink s.h.i.+rt-waist was so overcome with emotion and so sorry for the sad young man who had to earn his living in any such way, that she laid a ten-cent piece on the piano within reach of my friend's fingers. The smile of intense grat.i.tude which permeated his face--a "thank-G.o.d-you-have-saved-me-from-starvation" smile, was part of the evening's enjoyment. He wears the dime now on his watch-chain; he says it is the only money he ever earned by his music; to which one of his club-friends added, "Or in your life."

Since that time I have been _persona grata_ to m.u.f.fles. Since that time, too, I have studied him at close range: on snowy days--for I like my tramps in winter, with the Bronx a ribbon of white, even though it may be too cold to paint--as well as my outings on Sunday summer mornings when I sit down with his other friends to watch m.u.f.fles shave.

On one of these days I found a thin, cadaverous, long-legged, long-armed young man behind the bar. He had yellow-white hair that rested on his head like a window-mop, whitey blue eyes, and a pasty complexion. When he craned his neck in his anxiety to get my order right, I felt that his giraffe throat reached down to his waist-line and that all of it would come out of his collar if I didn't make up my mind at once "what it should be."

"Who's he, m.u.f.fles?" I asked.

"Dat's me new bar-keep. I've chucked me job."

"What's his name?"

"Bowser."

"Where did you get him?"

"Blew in here one night las' month, purty nigh froze--out of a job and hungry. De Missus got soft on him--she's dat kind, ye know. Yer oughter seen him eat! Well, I guess! Been in a littingrapher's shop--ye kin tell by his fingers. Say, Bowser, show de gentleman yer fingers."

Bowser held them up as quickly as if the order had come down the barrel of a Winchester.

"And ye oughter see him draw. Gee! if I could draw like him I wouldn't do nothin' else. But I ain't never had nothin' in my head like that. A feller's got to have sumpin' besides school-larnin' to draw like him.

Now you're a sketch-artist, and know. Why, he drawed de Sheriff last Sunday sittin' in de porch huggin' his bitters, to de life. Say, Bowse, show de gentleman de picter ye drawed of de Sheriff."

Bowser slipped his hand under the bar and brought out a charcoal sketch of a black mustache surrounded by a pair of cheeks, a treble chin, and two dots of eyes.

"Kin hear him speak, can't ye? And dat ain't nothin' to de way he kin print. Say, Bowse"--the intimacy grew as the young man's talents loomed up in m.u.f.fles's mind--"tell de gentleman what de boss said 'bout yer printin'."

"Said I could print all right, only there warn't no more work." There was a modesty in Bowser's tone that gave me a better opinion of him.

"Said ye could print all right, did he? Course he did--and no guff in it, neither. Say, Missus"--and he turned to his wife, who had just come in, the youngest child in her arms. She weighed twice as much as m.u.f.fles--one of those shapeless women with a kindly, Alderney face, and hair never in place, who lets everything go from collar to waist-line.

"Say, Missus, didn't de Sheriff say dat was a perfec' likeness?" And he handed it to her.

The wife laughed, pa.s.sed it back to m.u.f.fles and, with a friendly nod to me, kept on to the kitchen.

"Bar-room ain't no place for women," m.u.f.fles remarked in an undertone when his wife had disappeared. "Dat's why de Missus ain't never 'round.

And when de kids grow up we're goin' to quit, see? Dat's what de Missus says, and what she says goes!"

All that summer the Shady Side prospered. More tables were set out under the trees; Bowser got an a.s.sistant; m.u.f.fles wore better clothes; the Missus combed out her hair and managed to wear a tight-fitting dress, and it was easy to see that fame and fortune awaited m.u.f.fles--or what he considered its equivalent. m.u.f.fles entertained his friends as usual on the back porch on Sunday mornings, but he shaved himself upstairs and wore an alpaca coat and boiled s.h.i.+rt over his red flannel underwear. The quality of the company improved, too--or retrograded, according to the point of view. Now and then a pair of deer, with long tails and manes, hitched to a spider-web of a wagon, would drive up to the front entrance and a gentleman wearing a watch-chain, a solitaire diamond ring, a polished silk hat, and a white overcoat with big pearl b.u.t.tons, would order "a pint of fiz" and talk in an undertone to m.u.f.fles while he drank it. Often a number of these combinations would meet in m.u.f.fles's back room and a quiet little game would last until daylight. The orders then were for quarts, not pints. On one of these nights the Captain of the Precinct was present in plain clothes. I learned this from Bowser--from behind his hand.

One night m.u.f.fles was awakened by a stone thrown at his bedroom window.

He went downstairs and found two men in slouch hats; one had a black carpet-bag. They talked some time together, and the three went down into the cellar. When they came up the bag was empty.

The next morning one of those spider-wheeled buggies, driven by one of the silk hat and pearl-b.u.t.toned gentlemen, accompanied by a friend, stopped at the main gate. When they drove away they carried the contents of the black carpet-bag stowed away under the seat.

The following day, about ten o'clock in the morning, a man in a derby hat and with a pair of handcuffs in his outside pocket showed m.u.f.fles a paper he took from his coat, and the two went off to the city. When m.u.f.fles returned that same night--I had heard he was in trouble and waited for his return--he nodded to me with a smile, and said:

"It's all right. Pipes went bail."

He didn't stop, but walked through to the back room. There he put his arms around his wife. She had sat all day at the window watching for his return, so Bowser told me.

II

One crisp, cool October day, when the maples blazed scarlet and the Bronx was a band of polished silver and the h.o.a.r-frost glistened in the meadows, I turned into the road that led to the Shady Side. The outer gate was shut, and all the blinds on the front of the house were closed.

I put my hand on the old bra.s.s knocker and rapped softly. Bowser opened the door. His eyes looked as if he had not slept for a week.

"What's the matter--anybody sick?"

"No--dead!" and he burst into tears.

"Not m.u.f.fles!"

"No--the Missus."

"When?"

"Last night. De boss is inside, all broke up."

I tiptoed across the hall and into the bar-room. He was sitting by a table, his head in his hands, his back toward me.

"m.u.f.fles, this is terrible! How did it happen?"

He straightened up and held out his hand, guiding me to a seat beside him. For some minutes he did not speak. Then he said, slowly, ignoring my question, the tears streaming down his cheeks:

"Dis ends me. I ain't no good widout de Missus. You thought maybe when ye were 'round that I was a runnin' things; you thought maybe it was me that was lookin' after de kids and keepin' 'em clean; you thought maybe when I got pinched and they come near jugging me that some of me pals got me clear--you don't know nothin' 'bout it. De Missus did that, like she done everything."

He stopped as if to get his breath, and put his head in his hands again--rocking himself to and fro like a man in great physical pain. I sat silent beside him. It is difficult to decide what to do or say to a man under such circ.u.mstances. His reference to some former arrest arose in my mind, and so, in a perfunctory way--more for something to say than for any purpose of prying into his former life--I asked:

"Was that the time the Pipe Contractor went bail for you?"

He moved his head slightly and without raising it from his hands looked at me from over his clasped fingers.

"What, dat sc.r.a.pe a month ago, when I hid dem goods in de cellar? Naw!

Dat was two pals o' mine. Dey was near pinched and I helped 'em out.

Somebody give it away. But dat ain't noth-in'--Cap'n took care o' dat.

Dis was one o' me own five year ago. What's goin' to become o' de kids now?" And he burst out crying again.