Chapter 7

The negro did not recognize him at first and was about to run away when Griswold shook off the benumbing weakness and called out.

"T'ank de good Lawd! is dat you-all, Cap'm Gravitt? I's dat shuck up I couldn' recconize my ol' mammy! Tek dishyer cunjah-bag o' yourn 'fo' I gwine drap hit. Hit's des been _bu'nin'_ my han's ev' sense I done tuk out wid it!"

Griswold took the handkerchief bundle, and the mere touch of it put new life into him.

"Where is the fellow who was chasing you, Mose?" he asked.

"I's nev' gwine tell you dat; no, suh. Las' time I seed him, he's des t'arin' off strips up de levee after turrer fellah."

"What other fellow?"

The negro laughed and did a double shuffle at the mere recollection of it.

"Hi-yah! Turrer fellah is de fellah what done tuk my job. Hit was des dis-a-way: when I t'ink dat white man gwine catch me, sho_ly_, I des drap down in de darkes' cawneh I kin fin'; dat's what I done, yas, suh. He des keep on agoin', _spat, spat, spat_, an' when he come out front de _Gineral Jackson_ over yondeh, one dem boys what's wukkin' on her, _he_ tuk out, an' dat white man des tu'n hisself loose an' mek his laigs go lak he gwine shek 'um plum off; yas, sah!"

Griswold suffered another lapse into the humanities when he saw the list of participants in his act growing steadily with each fresh complication, and he said, "I'm sorry for that, Mose."

"Nev' you min' 'bout dat, Cap'm. Dat boy he been doin' somepin to mek him touchous, 'less'n he nev' tuk out dat-a-way, no, suh!"

"Maybe so. Well, we can't help it now. Here is the other twenty I promised you."

"T'ank you, suh; t'ank you kin'ly Cap'm. You-all's des de whites' white man ev' I knowned. You sholy is."

"What are you going to do with yourself, now?" Griswold inquired.

"Who, me? I's gwine up yondeh to dat resteraw an' git me de bigges' mess o' fried fish I kin hol'--dat's me; yas, suh."

"M'Grath says he'll pay you levee wages if you'll come back to the boat and help get the cargo out of her."

"Reckon I ain't gwine back to de _Julie_: no, suh. Dat'd be gittin' rich too fas' for dis niggeh. Good-night, Cap'm Gravitt; an' t'ank you kin'ly, suh."

Griswold went his way musing upon the little object-lesson afforded by the negro's determination. Here was a fellow man who was one of the feeblest of the under dogs in the great social fight; and with money enough in hand to give him at least a breathing interval, his highest ambition was a mess of fried fish.

The object-lesson was suggestive, if not specially encouraging, and Griswold made a mental note of it for further study when the question of present safety should be more satisfactorily answered.

XIII

GRISWOLD EMERGENT

Half an hour or such a matter after the hue-and-cry runaway from the curb in front of the saloon two doors above, Mr. Abram Sonneschein, dealer in second-hand clothing and sweat-shop bargains, saw a possible customer drifting across the street, and made ready the grappling hooks of commercial enterprise.

The drifter was apparently a passenger from some lately arrived steamboat; but even to the trained eye of so acute an observer as Mr. Sonneschein he presented difficulties in the way of classification. Only temporarily, however. The long-tailed coat and the wide-brimmed, soft felt hat were the insignia of the down-river, back-country planter, and the merchant drew his conclusions accordingly.

"My, my! Rachel," he remarked to his helpmate behind the counter. "See dis chay from de backvoods across der street coming! Maype ve could sell him some odder t'ings to go vit dot coat, ain'd it? Come right in, _mein_ frient; dis is der blace you vas looking for," this last to the drifter, with a detaining finger hooked persuasively into a buttonhole of the long-tailed coat.

So much for the grappling. But the possible customer was not to be landed so easily. Twice and yet once again he broke away from the detaining finger; and when at last he finally allowed himself to be drawn into the garish, ill-smelling little shop, he proved to be discouragingly indifferent and hard to please in the matter of prices, hanging back and taking refuge in countrified reticence when Mr. Sonneschein's eloquence grew pathetically pressing.

"I did think maybe I'd buy me a suit of clothes," he admitted, finally, drawling the words to make his speech fit the countrified rôle, "but there isn't any hurry. I reckon I'll wait a spell and look around and see what kind of fashions they're wearing now."

This was a tacit acknowledgment that he had money to spend, and the eager merchant redoubled his efforts. His perseverance was rewarded, at length, and when the ship of bargain and sale was bowling merrily along before a fair breeze of suggestion, Mr. Sonneschein interlarded his solicitations with an account of the recent miscarriage of justice in front of the near-at-hand saloon.

The customer listened with apparent incuriosity, as one whom these doings in the city world touched but remotely; but the two or three questions he asked were nicely calculated to bring out the more important facts. The detectives had cautiously kept their own counsel as to the details of their quest. Mr. Sonneschein had gossiped with the policeman on the beat, and the policeman had talked with the red-faced man who had come alone in the cab, and had taken an unofficial drink with the roundsman before going down to the steamboat landing. He and his "partner" were from New Orleans, and they were after a man who was wanted for big money: that was all he would tell the roundsman.

"I suppose they've caught him again long before this," said the hesitant customer, trying on a coat which might have been modelled upon a man twice his size, and surveying himself in the shop looking-glass while Mr. Sonneschein lovingly smoothed the lapels into place and gathered a generous handful of the surplus material at the back.

"I don't know if dey have--ain'd dot der elegantist fit in der vorld, now. See, Rachel; ain'd dot schplendit?"

"They didn't happen to mention the fellow's name, did they?" asked the prospective purchaser.

"Not much dey didn't! Dem dedectifs iss too schmart for dot. Dey don't give it avay when somepody else might got der rewards. How you like dot schplendit coat, now?"

"Seems tolerable big, doesn't it?" said the customer, whose speech still fitted his part to the final drawl. "Suppose we try something else. So there is a reward, is there?"

Mr. Sonneschein took the reward for granted and expressed a devout wish that he might be able to finger it. Whereupon the customer said he wished _he_ might; and here the topic died a natural death and the business of buying and selling went on without further interruption.

There was little suggestion of the tramp roustabout, and still less, perhaps, of the gentleman, about the person who presently emerged from the Sonneschein emporium. Nevertheless, he appeared to be well satisfied with his acquisitions, bearing himself as a purchaser who has by no means had the worse in the bargaining. At the first street corner he inquired his way of a policeman and was directed cityward. A square farther on he selected a barber's shop of cleanly promise, went in, tossed his newly acquired hand-bag to the porter, and took the first vacant chair.

"A hair-cut, a clean shave--not too close, and a bath afterward," was his laconic order; and a modest tip facilitated things and provided the little luxuries.

An hour later no one who had known him bearded and unkempt would have recognized the clean-shaven, athletic-looking young man who ran down the steps of the barber's shop and went swinging along on his way up-town. But the transformation was still incomplete. Reaching the retail district, he strolled purposefully up one street and down another, passing many brilliantly lighted shops until he found one exactly to his liking. A courteous salesman caught him up at the door, and led the way to the designated departments.

By this time Mr. Sonneschein's hesitant and countrified customer had undergone a complete metamorphosis. No longer reluctant and hard to please, he passed rapidly from counter to counter, making his selections with man-like celerity and certainty and bargaining not at all. When he was quite through, there was enough to furnish a generous travelling wardrobe; a head-to-foot change of garmentings with a surplus to fill two lordly suit-cases; so he bought the suit-cases also, and had them taken with his other purchases, to the dressing-room.

Here, in quiet and great comfort, he made his second change of clothing, first carefully removing from each garment all the little tags and trademarks which declared it St. Louis-bought. These tags, together with the Gavitt and the Sonneschein costumes, were crowded into the Sonneschein hand-bag, with the soiled red handkerchief to keep them company; and he was carrying this hand-bag when he reappeared to the waiting salesman.

"I see you have steam heat," he remarked. "Is your boiler-room accessible?"

"Yes, sir; it's in the basement," was the reply, and the courteous clerk wondered if his liberal customer were thinking of adding the heating plant to his purchases.

Griswold saw the wonder and smiled. "No; I don't want to buy it," he explained, with the exact touch of familiarity which bridges all chasms. "But I'm just up from the coast, where they have a good bit of fever the year round, and it's as well to be on the safe side. May I trouble you to show me the way?"

"Certainly," said the salesman, wondering no more; and when he had led the way to the boiler-room, and had seen his customer thrust the hand-bag well back among the coals in the furnace, he thought it a worthy precaution and one which, if generally practiced, would considerably accelerate the clothing trade.

All traces of the deck-hand Gavitt, and of the Sonneschein planter-customer having been thus obliterated, there remained only the paying of his bill and the summoning of a cab. Oddly enough, the cab, when it came, proved to be a four-wheeler driven by a little, wizen-faced man whose thin, high-pitched voice was singularly familiar.

"The Hotel Chouteau?--yis, sorr. Will you plaze hand me thim grips? I can't lave me harrses."

The driver's excuse instantly tied the knot of recognition, and the man who had just cremated his former identities swore softly.

"Beg your pardon, sorr; was ye spakin' to me?"

"No; I was merely remarking that the world isn't as big as it might be."

"Faith, then, it's full big enough for a man wid a wife and sivin childer hangin' to um. Get in, sorr, and I'll have you at the Chouteau in t'ree shakes av a dead lamb's tail."

The little cabman was better than his word, but on the short drive to the hotel he found time to work out a small problem, not entirely to his satisfaction, but to at least a partial conclusion.

"'Tis the divil's own self he is, and there's nothing left av him but thim eyes and that scar on his forrud, and his manner of spakin'. But thim I'd swear to if I'd live to be as old as Father M'Guinness--rest his sowl."

XIV

PHILISTIA

All things considered, it was the Griswold of the college-graduate days--the days of the slender patrimony which had capitalized the literary beginning--who presented himself at the counter of the Hotel Chouteau at half-past nine o'clock on the evening of the _Belle Julie's_ arrival at St. Louis, wrote his name in the guest-book, and permitted an attentive bell-boy to relieve him of his two suit-cases.

The clerk, a rotund little man with a promising bald spot and a permanent smile, had appraised his latest guest in the moment of book-signing, and the result was a small triumph for the Olive Street furnishing house. Next to the genuinely tailor-made stands the quality of verisimilitude; and the keynote of the clerk's greeting was respectful affability.

"Glad to have you with us, Mr. Griswold. Would you like a room, or a suite?"

Griswold was sufficiently human to roll the long-submerged courtesy prefix as a sweet morsel under his tongue. With a day to spare he might have clinched the clerk's respect by taking a suite; the more luxurious, the better. But St. Louis, with at least two men in it who would sweep the corners in their search for him, was only a place to put behind him. So he said: "Neither; if I have time to get my supper and catch a train. Have you a railway guide?"

"There is one in the writing-room. But possibly I can tell you what you wish to know. Which way are you going?"

Without stopping to think of the critical happenings which had intervened since the forming of the impulsive resolution fixing his destination, Griswold named the chosen field for the hazard of fresh fortunes, and its direction.

"North; to a town in Minnesota called Wahaska. Do you happen to know the place?"

"I know it very well, indeed; southern Minnesota is my old stamping-ground. Are you acquainted in Wahaska?--but I know you are not, or you wouldn't pronounce it 'Wayhaska'."

"You are quite right; I know next to nothing about the town. But I have been given the impression that it is a quiet little place out of the beaten track, where a man might spend a summer without having to share it with a lot of other city runaways of his kind."

The clerk smiled and shook his head.

"You might have done that a few years ago, but there's a fine lake, you know, and some New Orleans people have built a resort house. I understand it does a pretty fair business in the season."

Having assured himself that the New Orleans leaf in his book of experience was safely turned and securely pasted down, Griswold was nettled to find that the mere mention of the name sent creeping little chills of apprehension trickling up and down his spine. But innate stubbornness scoffed at the warning; derided and craved further details.

"How large a place is it?"

"Oh, four or five thousand, I should say; possibly more: big enough and busy enough so that a hundred-room resort house doesn't make it a souvenir town. It's a nice little city; modern, progressive, and business-like; trolleys, electric lights, and some manufacturing. Good people, too. _Front!_ Check the gentleman's grips and show him the café. I'm sorry we can't give you dinner, but the dining-room closes at nine."

"Plenty of time, is there?" Griswold asked.

"Oh, yes; didn't I tell you? Your train leaves the Terminal at eleven-thirty; but you can get into the sleeper any time after eight o'clock."

The guest had crossed the lobby to the café, and the clerk was still dallying with the memories stirred up by the mention of his boyhood home, when a little man with weak eyes and a face that out-caricatured all the caricatures of the Irish, sidled up to the registry desk. The round-bodied clerk knew him and spoke in terms of accommodation.

"What is it, Patsy?"

"The young gentleman ye was spakin' to: is he gone?"

"He is in the café, getting his supper. What did you want of him?"

The weak-eyed little man was running a slow finger down the list of names on the guest-book, blinking as if the writing or the glare of the lights on the page dazzled him.

"I drove him, and he did be overpaying me, I think. What was ye saying his name would be?"

"It's right there, under your finger: Kenneth Griswold, New York."

"Um. And I wondher, now, where does he be living, whin he's at home?"

"I don't know; New York, I suppose, since he registers from there."

"And does he be staying here f'r awhile?"

"No; he is on his way to Minnesota."

"Um." A long pause followed in which the cabman appeared to be counting the coins in his pocket by the sense of touch. Then: "Would yez be writing that down for me on a bit av paper, Misther Edwards?--his name, and the name av the place where he does be going, I mane?"

"So you can write to him and refund the over-payment after you've been to confession?" laughed the clerk. Nevertheless, he wrote the name and address on a card for the petitioner.

"Thank ye, sorr; thank ye kindly. Whin a man has a wife and sivin childer hangin' to um--" but here the singsong voice of the porter calling the Burlington westbound silenced all other sounds and the clerk heard no more.

Seated at a well-appointed table in the Chouteau café, Griswold had ample time to overtake himself in the race reconstructive, and for the moment the point of view became frankly Philistine. The luxurious hotel, with its air of invincible respectability; the snowy napery, the cut glass, the shaded lights, the deferential service; all these appealed irresistibly to the epicurean in him. It was as if he had come suddenly to his own again after an undeserved season of deprivation, and the effect of it was to push the hardships and perils of the preceding weeks and months into a far-away past.

He ordered his supper deliberately, and while he waited for its serving, imagination cleared the stage and set the scenes for the drama of the future. That future, with all its opportunities for the realizing of ideals, was now safely assured. He could go whither he pleased and do what seemed right in his own eyes, and there was none to say him nay.

It was good to be able to pick and choose in a whole worldful of possibilities, and he gave himself a broad credit mark for persevering in the resolution which held him steadfastly to the modest, workaday plan struck out in the beginning. Apart from Miss Farnham's recognition of him on the _Belle Julie_--a recognition which, he persuaded himself, would never carry over from Gavitt the deck-hand to Griswold the student and benefactor of his kind--there was nothing to fear; no reason why he should not make Wahaska his workshop.

In this minor city of the clerk's describing he would find the environment most favorable for a re-writing of his book and for a renewal of his studies. Here, too, he might hope to become by unostentatious degrees the beneficent god-in-the-car of his worthier ambition, raising the fallen, succoring the helpless, and fighting the battles of the oppressed.

Farther along, when she should have quite forgotten the _Belle Julie's_ deck-hand, he would meet Miss Farnham on an equal social footing; and the conclusion of the whole matter should be a triumphant demonstration to her by their refutable logic of good deeds and a life well-lived that in his case, at least, the end justified the means.

Just here, however, there was an unresolved discord in the imaginative theme. It was struck by the reflection that since he could never take her fully into his confidence her approval would always lack the seal of completeness. She knew the masquerading deck-hand, and what he had done; and she would know Griswold the benefactor, and what he meant to do. But until she could link the two together, there could be no demonstration. Though he should build the bastion of good deeds mountain high, it could never figure as a bastion to her unless she might come to know what it was designed to defend.

Having a sensitive ear for the imaginative harmonies, the unresolved discord annoyed him. The effort to eliminate it brought him face to face with a blunt demand, a query that was almost psychic in its clear-cut distinctness. Why did these forecastings of the future always lead him up to the closed door of this young woman's approval and leave him there?

For one whose experience had all been bought on a rising market, Griswold was singularly heart-whole and normal in his attitude toward women. Beautiful women he had met before, among them a few who had lent themselves facilely to the idealizing process; but in each instance it was the artistic temperament, and not the heart, that was touched and inspired. Was Charlotte Farnham going to prove the exception? Since he could ask the question calmly and with no perceptible quickening of the pulses, he concluded that she was not. Nevertheless----

The train of reflective thought was broken abruptly by the seating of two other supper guests at his table; a big-framed man in the grizzled fifties, and a young woman who looked as if she might have stepped the moment before out of the fitting-rooms of the most famous of Parisian dressmakers.

Griswold's supper was served, and for a time he made shift to ignore the couple at the other end of the table. Then an overheard word, the name of the town which he had chosen as his future abiding place, made him suddenly observant.

It was the young woman who had named Wahaska, and he saw now that his first impression had been at fault; she was not overdressed. Also he saw that she was piquantly pretty; a bravura type, slightly suggesting the Rialto at its best, perhaps, but equally suggestive of sophistication, travel, and a serene disregard of chaperonage.

The young woman's companion was undeniably her father. Gray, heavy-browed, and with a face that was a life-mask of crude strength and elemental shrewdness, the man had bequeathed no single feature to the alertly beautiful daughter; yet the resemblance was unmistakable. Griswold did not listen designedly, but he could not help overhearing much of the talk at the other end of the table. From it he gathered that the young woman was lately returned from some Florida winter resort; that her father had met her by appointment in St. Louis; and that the two were going on together; perhaps to Wahaska, since that was the place-name oftenest on the lips of the daughter.

Griswold was only moderately interested. The deliberately ordered supper, enticing in anticipation, had fallen short of the zestful promise in the fact. It came to him with a little shock that at least one part of him, the civilized appetite, had become debased by the plunge into the deck-hand depths, and he fought the suggestion fiercely. It was an article in his creed that environment is always subjective, and when one opens the door to an exception a host of ominous shapes may be ready to crowd in. He was fighting off the evil shapes while he listened; otherwise his interest might have been more acute.

It was at this point that the apex of Philistine contentment was passed and the reaction set in. He had been spending strength and vitality recklessly and the accounting was at hand. The descent began when he took himself sharply to task for the high-priced supper. What right had he to order costly food that he could not eat when the price of this single meal would feed a family for a week?

After that, nothing that the obsequious and attentive waiter could bring proved tempting enough to recall the vanished appetite. Never having known what it was to be sick, Griswold disregarded the warning, drank a cup of strong coffee, and went out to the lobby to get a cigar, leaving his table companions in the midst of their meal. To his surprise and chagrin the carefully selected "perfecto" made him dizzy and faint, bringing a disquieting recurrence of the vertigo which had seized him while he was searching for his negro treasure-bearer on the levee.

"I've had an overdose of excitement, I guess," he said to himself, flinging the cigar away. "The best thing for me to do is to go down to the train and get to bed."

He went about it listlessly, with a curious buzzing in his ears and a certain dimness of sight which was quite disconcerting; and when a cab was summoned he was glad enough to let a respectfully sympathetic porter lend him a shoulder to the sidewalk.

The drive in the open air was sufficiently tonic to help him through the details of ticket-buying and embarkation; and afterward sleep came so quickly that he did not know when the Pullman porter drew the curtains to adjust the screen in the window at his feet, though he did awake drowsily later on at the sound of voices in the aisle, awoke to realize vaguely that his two table companions of the Hotel Chouteau café were to be his fellow travellers in the Pullman.