Chapter 12

The aged negress reconnoitered. "Reckon dey's ridin' a gentmun on a rail," she reported.

"A _gentleman_, Sally? Impossible. No gentleman would endure such an affront. Look again."

"Yessum. It's dat po' white trash dey call Plooie. Mainded yo' umbrella oncet."

"My umbrella-mender!" (The mere fact that the victim had once tinkered for her a decrepit parasol entitled him in her feudal mind to the high protection of the Tallafferr tradition.) "Tell them to desist at once."

Apologetically but shrewdly Sally opined that the neighborhood of the advancing mob was "no place foh a niggah."

With perfect faith in the powers of her superior she added: "You desist 'em, mist'ess."

Sally's confidence in her mistress was equaled or perhaps even excelled by her mistress's confidence in herself.

Leaning upon her cane and attended by the faithful though terrified servitor, Madame Tallafferr rustled forward. She took her stand upon the brink of the fountain in almost the exact spot where she had disarmed MacLachan, the tailor, drunk, songful, and suicidal, two years before. Since that feat an almost mythologic awe had attached itself to her locally.

She waited, small and thin, hawk-eyed, imperious, and tempered like steel. The ring of tempered steel, too, was in her voice when, at the proper moment, she raised it.

"What are you doing?"

The clamor of the mob died down. The sight of Horatia (I beg her pardon humbly, Madame Tallafferr) in the path smote them with misgivings. As in Macaulay's immortal, if somewhat jingly epic, "those behind cried 'Forward' and those before cried 'Back'!" That single hale and fiery old lady held them. No more could those two hundred ruffians have defied the challenge of her contemptuous eyes than they could have advanced into the flaming doors of a furnace.

A cautious voice from the rear inquired: "Who's the dame?"

"She's a witch," conjectured some one.

"It's the Duchess," said another, giving her the local title of veneration.

"It's the lady that shot the tailor," proclaimed an awe-stricken bystander. (Legend takes strange twists in Our Square as elsewhere.) Some outlander, ignorant of our traditions, prescribed in a malevolent squeak:

"T'row 'er in the drink."

"Who spoke?" said Madame Tallafferr, crisp and clear.

Silence. Then the sound of objurgations as the advocate frantically resisted well-meant efforts to thrust him into undesirable prominence. Finally a miniature eruption outward from the mob's edge, followed by a glimpse of a shadowy figure departing at full speed. The Duchess leveled a bony finger at Inky Mike, the nearest figure personally known to her, who began a series of contortions suggestive of a desire to crawl into his own pocket.

"Michael," said the Duchess.

"Yessum," said Inky Mike, whose name happens to be Moe Sapperstein.

"What are you doing to that unfortunate person?"

"J-j-just a little j-j-joke," replied the other in what was doubtless intended for a light-hearted and care-free tone.

"Let him down." Inky Mike hesitated. "At once!" snapped the Duchess and stamped her foot.

"Yessum," said Inky Mike meekly.

Loosing his hold on the scantling, he retreated upon the feet of those behind. They let go also. Plooie slid forward to the ground. Madame Tallafferr's bony finger (backed by the sparkle of an authoritative diamond) swept slowly around a half-circle, with very much the easy and significant motion of a machine gun and something of the effect. A subtle suggestion of limpness manifested itself in the mass before her. Addressing them, she raised her voice not a whit. She had no need to.

"Go about your business," she said. "Rabble!" she added in precisely the tone which one might expect of a well-bred but particularly deadly snake.

The mob wilted to a purposeless and abashed crowd. The crowd disintegrated into individuals. The individuals asked themselves what they were doing there, and, finding no sufficient answer, slunk away. Plooie was triumphantly escorted by Madame Tallafferr and Black Sally, and (less triumphantly) by my limping self, to the nearest haven, which chanced to be the Bonnie Lassie's house. Annie Oombrella pattered along beside him, fumbling his hand and trying not to cry.

But when the Bonnie Lassie saw the melancholy wreck, _she_ cried, as much from fury as from pity, and said that men were brutes and bullies and cowards and imbeciles--and why hadn't her Cyrus been at home to stop it? Whereto Madame Tallafferr complacently responded that Mr. Cyrus Staten had not been needed: the _canaille_ would always respect a proper show of authority from its superiors; and so went home, rustling and sparkling.

After all, Plooie was not much hurt. Perhaps more frightened than anything else. Panic was, in fact, the reason generally ascribed in Our Square for his quiet departure, with his Annie, of course, on the following Sunday. Only the Bonnie Lassie dissented. But as the Bonnie Lassie reasons with her heart instead of her head, we accept her theories with habitual and smiling indulgence rather than respect--until the facts bear them out. She had, it appeared, called on the Plooies to inquire as to their proposed course, and had rather more than hinted that if the head of the house wished to respond to his country's call, Our Square would look after Annie Oombrella. To this he returned only a stubborn and somber silence. The Bonnie Lassie said afterward that he seemed ashamed. She added that he had left good-bye for me and hoped the Dominie would not think too hard of him. Recalling that I had rather markedly failed to acknowledge his salute on the morning before his departure, I felt a qualm of misgiving. After all, judging your neighbor's soul is a kittle business. There is such an insufficiency of data.

So Schepstein lost a renter. The basement cubbyhole remained vacant, with only the picture of Albert of the Kingdom of Sorrows in the window as a memento. Nothing further was seen or heard of Plooie. But Schepstein, wandering far afield in search of tenement sales a full year after, encountered Annie Oombrella washing down the steps of an office far over in Lewis Street, nearly to the river. All the plumpness which she had taken on in the happy days was gone. She looked wistful and haggard.

Schepstein, doing the polite (which, as he accurately states, costs nothing and might get you something some time), asked after Plooie. Where was he? Annie Oombrella shook her head.

"Left you, has he?" asked Schepstein, astonished at this evidence of iniquity.

"Yes," said Annie Oombrella. But there was a ring in her voice that Schepstein failed to understand. It sounded almost like defiance. Her eyes were deep-hollowed and sorrowful, but they met his as squarely as they could, considering their cast. Schepstein was quite shocked to observe that there was no shame in them. I suppose the shock temporarily unbalanced his principles, for, having caught sight of one of her shoes, he offered to lend her three dollars, indefinitely and without interest, on her bare note-of-hand. (When he saw the other shoe, he made it five.) She looked at the money anxiously, but shook her head.

"Well, if you ever need a home, the basement's vacant and there ain't a better basement in Our Square."

Annie Oombrella began to cry quietly, and Schepstein went on about his business.

Through the ensuing years many women cried quietly or vehemently, according to their natures, and many men went away from places that had known them, to be no more known of those places; and the little Kingdom of Sorrows, shattered, blood-soaked, and unconquerable, stood fast, a bulwark between the ravager of the world and his victory until there sped across the death-haunted seas the army that was to turn the scales. Our Square gave to that sacrifice what it can never recover: witness the simple memorials in Our Square.

Many people see ghosts; Our Square is well haunted, as befits its ancient and diminished glories. Few hear ghosts. This is as it ought to be. In their very nature, ghosts should be seen, not heard. Yet, in the year of grace, 1919, under a blazing September sun, with a cicada, vagrant from heaven knows whence, frying his sizzling sausages in our lilac bush, and other equally insistent sounds of reality filling the air, my ears were smitten with a voice from the realm of wraiths.

"Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees," it cried on a faint and cluttering note. "Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees à raccommoder."

Over in the far corner of the park an apparition moved into my visual range. It looked like Plooie. It moved like Plooie. It was loaded like Plooie. It opened a mouth like Plooie's and emitted again the familiar though diminished falsetto shriek. No doubt of it now; it _was_ Plooie. He had come back to us who never thought to see him again, who never wished to see him again, still unpurged of his stigma.

As he passed me, I acknowledged his greeting, somewhat stiffly, I fear, and walked over to Schepstein's. There in the basement, amid the familiar wreckage as of a thousand umbrellas, sat little Annie.

"Bonjour, Dominie," said she wistfully.

"Good-morning, Annie. So you are back."

"Yes, Dominie. Is there need that one wash the step at your house?"

"There is need that one explain one's self. What have you been doing these three years?"

"I work. I work hard."

"And your husband? What has he been doing?" I asked sternly.

Annie Oombrella's soft face drooped. "Soyez gentil, Dominie," she implored. "Be a kind, good man and ask him not. That make him so triste--so sad."

"He doesn't look well, Annie."

"He have been ver' seeck. Now we come home he is already weller."

"But do you think it is wise for you to come back here?" I demanded, feeling brutal as I put the question. Annie Oombrella's reply did not make me feel any less so. She sent a quivering look around that unspeakably messy, choked-up little hole in the wall that was home to Plooie and her.

"We have loved each other so much here," said she.

Our Square is too poor to be enduringly uncharitable, either in deed or thought. War's resentments died out quickly in us. No longer was Plooie in danger of mob violence. By common consent we let him alone; he made his rounds unmolested, but also unpatronized. But for Annie Oombrella's prodigies of industry with pail and brush, the little couple in Schepstein's basement would have fared ill.

Annie earned for both. In the process, happiness came back to her face.

To the fat Rosser twin accrues the credit of a pleasurable discovery about Plooie. This was that, if you sneaked softly up behind him and shouted: "Hey, Plooie! What was _you_ doing in the war?" his jaw would drop and his whole rackety body begin to quiver, and he would heave his burden to his shoulder and break into a spavined gallop, muttering and sobbing like one demented. As the juvenile sense of humor is highly developed in Our Square, Plooie got a good deal of exercise, first and last.

Eventually he foiled them by coming out only in school hours. This didn't help his trade. But then his trade had dwindled to the vanishing point anyway. Even Madame Tallafferr had dropped him. She preferred not to deal with a poltroon, as she put it.

On the day of the great exodus, Plooie put in some extra hours. He was in no danger from his youthful persecutors, because they had all gone up to line Fifth Avenue and help cheer the visiting King of the Belgians. So had such of the rest of Our Square as were not at work. The place was practically deserted. Nevertheless, Plooie prowled about, uttering his cracked and lugubrious cry in the forlorn hope of picking up a parapluie to raccommode. I was one of the few left to hear him, because Mendel, the jeweler, had most inconsiderately gone to view royalty, leaving my unrepaired glasses locked in his shop; otherwise I, too, would have been on the Fifth Avenue curb shouting with the best of them. Do not misinterpret me. For the divinity that doth hedge a king I care as little as one should whose forbears fought in the Revolution. But for the divinity of high courage and devotion that certifies to the image of God within man, I should have been proud to take off my old but still glossy silk hat to Albert of the Belgians. So I was rather cross, and it was well for my equanimity that the Bonnie Lassie, who had remained at home for reasons which are peculiarly her own affair and that of Cyrus the Gaunt, should have come over to my favorite bench to cheer me up. Said the Bonnie Lassie:

"I wonder why Plooie didn't go to see his king."

"Sense of shame," I suggested acidly.

"Yes?" said the Bonnie Lassie in a tone which I mistrusted.

"It is no use," I assured her, "for you to favor me with that pitying and contemptuous smile of yours, for I can't see it. Mendel has my nearer range of vision locked in his shop."

"I was just thinking," said the Bonnie Lassie in ruminant accents, "how nice it must be to look back on a long life of unspotted correctness with not an item in it to be ashamed of. It gives one such a comfortable basis for sitting in judgment."

"Her lips drip honey," I observed, "and the poison of asps is under her tongue."

"Your quotations are fatally mixed," retorted my companion.

From across the park sounded Plooie's patient falsetto: "Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees! Annie Oombrella for mend? Parapluie-ee-ee-" The call broke off in a kind of choke.

"What's happened to Plooie?" I asked. "The youngsters can't have got back from the parade already, have they?"

"A very tall man has stopped him," said the Bonnie Lassie. "Plooie has dropped his kit.... He's trying to salute.... It must be one of the Belgian officers.... Oh, Dominie!"

"Well, what?" I demanded impatiently and cursed the recreant Mendel in my heart.

"It can't be ... you don't think they can be arresting poor Plooie at this late day for evading service?"

"Serve him right if they did," said I.

"I believe they are. The big man has taken him by the arm and is leading him along. Poor Plooie! He's all wilted down. It's a shame!" cried the Bonnie Lassie, beginning to flame. "It ought not to be allowed."

"Probably they're taking him away. Do you see an official-looking automobile anywhere about?"

"There's a strange car over on the Avenue. Oh, dear! Poor Annie Oombrella! But--but they're not going there. They're going into Schepstein's basement."

I could feel the Bonnie Lassie fidgeting on the bench. For a moment I endured it. Then I said:

"Well, Lassie, why don't you?"

"Why don't I what?"

"Take your usual constitutional, over by the railings. Opposite Schepstein's."

"That isn't my usual constitutional, and you know it, Dominie," said the Bonnie Lassie with dignity.

"Isn't it? Well, curiosity killed a cat, you know."

"How shamelessly you garble! It was--"

"Never mind; the quotation is erroneous, anyway. It should be: _suppressed_ curiosity killed a cat."

The Bonnie Lassie sniffed.

"Rather than be dislodged from my precarious perch on this bench," I pursued, "through the trembling imparted to it by your clinging to the back to restrain yourself from going to see what is up, I should almost prefer that you would go--and peek."

"Dominie," said the Bonnie Lassie, "you are a despicable old man.... I'll be back in a minute."

"Don't stay long," I pleaded. "Pity the blind."

Her golden laughter floated back to me. But there was no mirth in her voice when she returned.

"It's so dark in there I can hardly see. But the big man is sitting on a pile of ribs talking to Plooie, and Annie Oombrella's face is all swollen with crying. I saw it in the window for a minute."

Pro and con we argued what the probable event might be and how we could best meet it. So intent upon our discussion did we become that we did not note the approach of a stranger until he was within a few paces of the bench. With my crippled vision I apprehended him only as very tall and straight and wearing a loose cape. The effect upon the Bonnie Lassie of his approach was surprising. I heard her give a little gasp. She got up from the bench. Her hand fell upon my shoulder. It was trembling. Where, I wondered, had those two met and in what circumstances, that the mere sight of the stranger caused such emotion in the unusually self-controlled wife of Cyrus Staten. The man spoke quickly in a deep and curiously melancholy voice:

"Madame perhaps does me the honor to remember me?"

"I--I--I--" began the Bonnie Lassie.

"The Comte de Tournon. At Trouville we met, was it not? Several years since?"

"Y-yes. Certainly. At Trouville."

(Now I happen to know that the Bonnie Lassie has never been at Trouville, which did not assuage my suspicions.)

"You are friends of my--countryman, Emile Garin, are you not?" he pursued in his phraseology of extreme precision, with only the faint echo of an accent.

"Who?" I said. "Oh, Plooie, you mean. Friends? Well, acquaintances would be more accurate."

"He tells me that you, Monsieur, befriended him when he had great need of friends. And you, Madame, always. So I have come to thank you."

"You are interested in Plooie?" I asked.

"Plooie?" he repeated doubtfully. I explained to him and he laughed gently. "Profoundly interested," he said. "I have here one of his finest umbrellas which his good wife presented to me. There was also a lady of whom he speaks, a _grande dame_, of very great authority." For all the sadness of the deep voice, I felt that his eyes were twinkling.

"Madame Tallafferr," supplied the Bonnie Lassie. "She is away on a visit."

"I should like to have met that queller of mobs. She ought to be knighted."

"Knighthood would add nothing to her status," said I, dryly. "She is a Pinckney and a Pemberton besides being a Tallafferr, with two _f_s, two _l_s, and two _r_s."

"Doubtless. I do not comprehend the details of your American orders of merit," said the big sad-voiced man courteously. "But I should have been proud to meet her."

"May I tell her that?" asked the Bonnie Lassie eagerly.

"By all means--when I am gone." Again I felt the smile that must be in the eyes. "But there were others here, not so friendly to the little Garin. That is true, is it not?"

"Yes," said the Bonnie Lassie.

"There is at least a strong suspicion that he is not a deserving case," I pointed out defensively.

"Then it is only because he does not explain himself well," returned the Belgian quickly.

"He does not explain himself at all," I corrected. "Nor does Annie Oom--his wife."

"Ah? That will clarify itself, perhaps, in time. If you will bear with me, I should like to tell you a little story to be passed on to those who are not his friends. Will you not be seated, Madame?"

The Bonnie Lassie resumed her place on the bench. Standing before us, the big man began to speak. Many times since have I wished that I might have taken down what he said verbatim; so gracious it was, so simple, so straightly the expression of a great and generous personality.

"Emile Garin," he said, "was a son of Belgium. He was poor and his people were little folk of nothing-at-all. Moreover, they were dead. So he came to your great country to make his living. When our enemies invaded my country and the call went out to all sons of Belgium, the little Garin was ashamed because he knew that he was physically unfit for military service. But he tried. He tried everywhere. In the mornings they must sweep him away from our Consul-General's doorsteps here because otherwise he would not--You spoke, Monsieur?"

"Nothing. I only said, 'God forgive us!'"

"Amen," said the narrator gravely. "Everywhere they rejected him as unfit. So he became morbid. He hid himself away. Is it not so?"

"That is why they left Our Square so mysteriously," confirmed the Bonnie Lassie.

"After that he hung about the docks. He saw his chance and crawled into the hold of a vessel as a stowaway. He starved. It did not matter. He was kicked. It did not matter. He was arrested. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except that he should reach Belgium. And he did reach my country at the darkest hour, the time when Belgium needed every man, no matter who he was. But he could not be a soldier, the little Garin, because he was unable to march. He had weak legs."

At this point the eternal feminine asserted itself in the Bonnie Lassie. "I _told_ you there was something," she murmured triumphantly.

"Hush!" said I.

"I am glad to find that he had one true defender here," pursued the biographer of Plooie. "Though he could not fight in the ranks there was use for him. There was use for all true sons of Belgium in those black days. He was made driver of a--a charette; I do not know if you have them in your great city?" He paused, and I guessed that the rumble of heavy wheels on the asphalt, heard near by, had come opportunely. "Ah, yes; there is one."

"A dump-cart," supplied the Bonnie Lassie.

"Merci, Madame. A dump-cart. It is perhaps not an evidently glorious thing to drive a dump-cart for one's country--unless one makes it so. But it was the best the little Garin could do. His legs were what you call quaint--I have already told you. He was faithful and hard-working. They helped build roads near the front, the little Garin and his big cart."

"Not precisely safety-first," whispered the Bonnie Lassie to me, maliciously.

"You are interrupting the story," said I with dignity.

"One day he was driving a load of mud through a village street. Here on this side is a hospital. There on that side is another hospital. Down the middle of the road walks an idiot of a sergeant carrying a new type of grenade with which we were experimenting. One moves a little lever--so. One counts; one, two, three, four, five. One throws the grenade, and at the count of ten, all about it is destroyed, for it is of terrible power. The idiot sergeant sets down the grenade in the middle of the road between the two hospitals full of the helplessly wounded. For what? Perhaps to sneeze. Perhaps to light a cigarette. Heaven only knows, for the sergeant has the luck to be killed next day by a German shell, before he can be court-martialed. As he sets down the grenade, the little lever is moved. The sergeant loses his head. He runs, shouting to everybody to run also.

"But the hospitals, they cannot run. And the wounded, they cannot run. They can only be still and wait. In the nearest hospital there is a visitor. A great lady. A great and greatly loved lady." The sad voice deepened and softened.

"I know," whispered the Bonnie Lassie; "I can guess."

"Yes. But the little Garin, approaching on his big dump-cart, does not know. He knows the danger, for he hears the shouts and sees the people escaping. He sees the grenade, too. A man running past him shouts, 'Turn your cart, you fool, and save yourself.' Oh, yes; he can save himself. That is easy. But what of the people in the hospitals? Who can save them? The little Garin thinks hard and swiftly. He drives his big dump-cart over the grenade. He pulls the lever which dumps the mud. The mud buries the grenade; much mud, very soft and heavy. The grenade explodes, nevertheless.

"One mule blows through one hospital, one through another. Everything near is covered with mud. The great lady is thrown to the floor, but she is not hurt. She rises and attends the injured and calms the terrified. The hospitals are saved. It is a glorious thing to have driven a dump-cart for one's country--so."

"But what became of our Plooie?" besought the Bonnie Lassie.