Part 10 (1/2)
I saw what a gentleman should do. I turned my back on the piteous figure of Jimmie Time. I moved idly off, as if the spectacle of his ignominy had never even briefly engaged me.
”Shoot up a good cook, will you?” said the lady grimly. ”I'll give you your needings.” She followed me to the house.
On the west porch, when she had exchanged the laced boots, khaki riding breeches, and army s.h.i.+rt for a most absurdly feminine house gown, we had tea. Her nose was powdered, and her slippers were bronzed leather and monstrous small. She mingled Scotch whiskey with the tea and drank her first cupful from a capacious saucer.
”That fresh bunch of campers!” she began. ”What you reckon they did last night? Cut my wire fence in two places over on the west flat--yes, sir!--had a pair of wire clippers in the whip socket. What I didn't give 'em! Say, ain't it a downright wonder I still retain my girlish laughter?”
But then, after she had refused my made cigarette for one of her own deft handiwork, she spoke as I wished her to:
”Yes; three years ago. Me visiting a week at the home of Mrs. W.B.
Hemingway and her husband, just outside of Yonkers, back in York State.
A very nice swell home, with a nice front yard and everything. And also Mrs. W.B.'s sister and her little boy, visiting her from Albany, the sister's name being Mrs. L.H. c.u.mmins, and the boy being nine years old and named Rupert c.u.mmins, Junior; and very junior he was for his age, too--I will say that. He was a perfectly handsome little boy; but you might call him a blubberhead if you wanted to, him always being scared silly and pestered and rough-housed out of his senses by his little girl cousin, Margery Hemingway--Mrs. W.B.'s little girl, you understand--and her only seven, or two years younger than Junior, but leading him round into all kinds of musses till his own mother was that demoralized after a couple of days she said if that Margery child was hers she'd have her put away in some good inst.i.tution.
”Of course she only told that to me, not to Margery's mother. I don't know--mebbe she would of put her away, she was that frightened little Margery would get Junior killed off in some horrible manner, like the time she got him to see how high he dast jump out of the apple tree from, or like the time she told him, one ironing day, that if he drank a whole bowlful of starch it would make him have whiskers like his pa in fifteen minutes. Things like that--not fatal, mebbe, but wearing.
”Well, this day come a telegram about nine A.M. for Mrs. W.B., that her aunt, with money, is very sick in New Jersey, which is near Yonkers; so she and Mrs. L.H. c.u.mmins, her sister, must go to see about this aunt--and would I stay and look after the two kids and not let them get poisoned or killed or anything serious? And they might have to stay overnight, because the aunt was eccentric and often thought she was sick; but this time she might be right. She was worth all the way from three to four hundred thousand dollars.
”So I said I'd love to stay and look after the little ones. I wanted to stay. Shopping in New York City the day before, two bargain sales--one being hand-embroidered Swiss waists from two-ninety-eight upward--I felt as if a stampede of longhorns had caught me. Darned near bedfast I was!
Say, talk about the pale, weak, nervous city woman with exhausted vitality! See 'em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right--no holds barred, an arm like first-growth hick'ry across my windpipe, and me up against a solid pillar of structural ironwork! Once I was wrastled by a cinnamon bear that had lately become a mother; but the poor old thing would have lost her life with this dame after the hand-embroidereds. Gee! I was lame in places I'd lived fifty-eight years and never knew I had.
”So off went these ladies, with Mrs. L.H. c.u.mmins giving me special and private warning to be sure and keep Junior well out of it in case little mischievous Margery started anything that would be likely to kill her.
And I looked forward to a quiet day on the lounge, where I could ache in peace and read the 'Famous Crimes of History,' which the W.B.'s had in twelve volumes--you wouldn't have thought there was that many, would you? I dressed soft, out of respect to my corpse, and picked out a corking volume of these here Crimes and lay on the big lounge by an open window where the breeze could soothe me and where I could keep tabs on the little ones at their sports; and everything went as right as if I had been in some A-Number-One hospital where I had ought to of been.
”Lunchtime come before I knew it; and I had mine brought to my bed of pain by the Swede on a tray, while the kids et theirs in an orderly and uproarious manner in the dining-room. Rupert, Junior, was dressed like one of these boy scouts and had his air gun at the table with him, and little Margery was telling him there was, too, fairy princes all round in different places; and she bet she could find one any day she wanted to. They seemed to be all safe enough, so I took up my Crimes again.
Really, ain't history the limit?--the things they done in it and got away with--never even being arrested or fined or anything!
”Pretty soon I could hear the merry prattle of the little ones again out in the side yard. Ain't it funny how they get the gambling spirit so young? I'd hear little Margery say: 'I bet you can't!' And Rupert, Junior, would say:' I bet I can, too!' And off they'd go ninety miles on a straight track: 'I bet you'd be afraid to!'--'I bet I wouldn't be!'--'I bet you'd run as fast!'--'I bet I never would!' Ever see such natural-born gamblers? And it's all about what Rupert, Junior, would do if he seen a big tiger in some woods--Rupert betting he'd shoot it dead, right between the eyes, and Margery taking the other end. She has by far the best end of it, I think, it being at least a forty-to-one shot that Rupert, the boy scout, is talking high and wide. And I drop into the Crimes again at a good, murderous place with stilettos.
”I can't tell even now how it happened. All I know is that it was two o'clock, and all at once it was five-thirty P.M. by a fussy gold clock over on the mantel with a gold young lady, wearing a spear, standing on top of it. I woke up without ever suspicioning that I'd been asleep.
Anyway, I think I'm feeling better, and I stretch, though careful, account of the dame in the plush bonnet with forget-me-nots; and I lie there thinking mebbe I'll enter the ring again to-morrow for some other truck I was needing, and thinking how quiet and peaceful it is--how awful quiet! I got it then, all right. That quiet! If you'd known little Margery better you'd know how sick that quiet made me all at once. My gizzard or something turned clean over.
”I let out a yell for them kids right where I lay. Then I bounded to my feet and run through the rooms downstairs yelling. No sign of 'em! And out into the kitchen--and here was Tillie, the maid, and Yetta, the cook, both saying it's queer, but they ain't heard a sound of 'em either, for near an hour. So I yelled out back to an old hick of a gardener that's deef, and he comes running; but he don't know a thing on earth about the kids or anything else. Then I am sick! I send Tillie one way along the street and the gardener the other way to find out if any neighbours had seen 'em. Then in a minute this here Yetta, the cook, says: 'Why, now, Miss Margery was saying she'd go downtown to buy some candy,' and Yetta says: 'You know, Miss Margery, your mother never 'ets you have candy.' And Margery says: 'Well, she might change her mind any minute--you can't tell; and it's best to have some on hand in case she does.' And she'd got some poker chips out of the box to buy the candy with--five blue chips she had, knowing they was nearly money anyway.
”And when Yetta seen it was only poker chips she knew the kid couldn't buy candy with 'em--not even in Yonkers; so she didn't think any more about it until it come over her--just like that--how quiet everything was. Oh, that Yetta would certainly be found bone clear to the centre if her skull was ever drilled--the same stuff they slaughter the poor elephants for over in Africa--going so far away, with Yetta right there to their hands, as you might say. And I'm getting sicker and sicker! I'd have retained my calm mind, mind you, if they had been my own kids--but kids of others I'd been sacredly trusted with!
”And then down the back stairs comes this here sandy-complected, horse-faced plumber that had been frittering away his time all day up in a bathroom over one little leak, and looking as sad and mournful as if he hadn't just won eight dollars, or whatever it was. He must have been born that way--not even being a plumber had cheered him up.
”'Blackhanders!'” he says right off, kind of brightening a little bit.
”I like to fainted for fair! He says they had lured the kids off with candy and popcorn, and would hold 'em in a tenement house for ten thousand dollars, to be left on a certain spot at twelve P.M. He seemed to know a lot about their ways.
”'They got the Honourable Simon T. Griffenbaugh's youngest that way,'
he says, 'only a month ago. Likely the same gang got these two.'
”'How do you know?' I asks him.
”'Well,' he says, 'they's a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles up the road. That's how I know,' he says. 'That's plain enough, ain't it? It's as plain as the back of my hand. What chance would them two defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred Blackhanders?'