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Plain Mary Smith: A Romance of Red Saunders

<h2>IX</h2> <h3>ENTER BROTHER BELKNAP</h3> I can slide over my first month's work quick. At least half of us have been boys once, and a good share of that half have run into the stiff proposition when they were boys. I carried on my back most of the trouble in that part of the country—they were a careless people. Jim give me my head and let me bump it into mistakes. "Find out" was his motto. "Don't ask the boss," and I found out, perspiring freely the while. I had to hire men and fire 'em, wrastle with the Spanish language, keep books, keep my temper, learn what a day's work meant, learn to handle a team, get the boys to pull together, and last, but not least, try to get the best of that cussed horse, Archie. I can't tell which was the worst. I know this, though: while my sympathies are with the hired man, yet that season of getting along with him taught me that the boss's job isn't one long, sugar-coated dream, neither. If the hired man knew more, he'd have less wrongs, and also, if he knew more, he wouldn't be a hired man. What that proves, I pass. Keeping books wore down my proud spirit, too. I do hate a puttering job. It was all there, anyhow. Jim pulled at his mustache and wrinkled his manly brow when he first snagged on my bookkeeping. "What the devil is this item?" he'd say. "'Francis Lopez borrowed a dollar on his pay; says his mother's sick. That's a lie, I bet.' You mustn't let the boys have money that way, Bill, and never mind putting your thoughts in the cash-book—save 'em for your diary." I got the hang of it after a while, and one grand day my cash balanced. That was a moment to remember. I don't recall that it ever happened again. The store made most of my trouble. We handled all kinds of truck, from kerosene oil to a jews'-harp, through rough clothes and the hardware department. My helper was the lunkheadest critter God ever trusted outdoors. You'd scarcely believe one man's head could be so foolish. At the same time the poor devil was kind and polite, and he needed the job so bad, I couldn't fire him. But he took some of the color out of my hair, all right. He was a Mexican who talked English, so he was useful that way, anyhow. But Man! What the stuff cost was marked in letters—"Washington" was our cost-mark word. If the thing cost a dollar fifty, it was marked WIN, then you tacked on the profit. Well, poor Pedro used to forget all about the father of his country, if there came a rush, and as he didn't have any natural common sense, you could expect him to sell a barrel of kerosene for two bits and charge eight dollars for a paper of needles. Whenever I heard wild cries of astonishment and saw the arms a-flying, I could be sure that Pedro had lost track of American history. He'd make a statue of William Penn get up and cuss, that feller. I tried everything—wrote out the prices, gave him lists, put pictures of our George all over the store, swore at him till I was purple and him weeping in his pocket-handkerchief, calling the saints to witness how the memory of the G-r-r-eat Ouash-eeng-tong would never depart from his mind again, and in three minutes he'd sell a twenty-five dollar Stetson hat for eighty-seven cents. It took a good deal of my time rushing around the country getting those sales back. Then, when the confinement of the store told too much on my nerves and the gangs had all been looked up, I went to the corral and took a fall out of Archibald. Or, more properly speaking, I took a fall off Archibald. That horse was a complete education in the art of riding. I never since have struck anything, bronco, cayuse, or American horse, that didn't seem like an amateur 'longside of him. He'd pitch for a half hour in a space no bigger than a dining-room table; then he'd run and buck for another half hour. If you stuck so much out, he'd kick your feet out of the stirrups, stick his ears in the ground, and throw a somersault. No man living could think up more schemes than that mustang, and you might as well try to tire a steam-engine. At the end of the first hour Archie was simply nice and limber; the second hour saw him getting into the spirit of it; by the third hour he was warmed up and working like a charm. I'm guessing the third hour. Two was my limit. All these things kept me from calling on my friends in town for some time, till Jim gave me three days off to use as I pleased. I put me on the tallest steeple hat with the biggest bells I could find; I had spurs that would do to harpoon a whale, and they had jinglers on 'em wherever a jingler would go. My neckerchief was a heavenly blue, to match my hair, and it was considerably smaller than a horse-blanket. The hair itself had grown well down to my neck, and she's never been cut from that day, except to trim the ends. In my sash I stuck a horse-pistol and a machete. Contact with the Spaniard had already corrupted me into being proud of my small feet, so I spent one hour getting my boots on, and oh, Lord! the misery of those boots! I tell you what it is, if one man or woman should do to another what that victim will do to himself, for Vanity's sake, the neighbors would rise and lynch the offender. When I worried those boots off at night, I'd fall back and enjoy the blessed relief for five minutes without moving. It was almost worth the pain, that five minutes. I used to know a man who said he got more real value out of the two weeks his wife went to visit her mother than he did out of a year, before he was married. But I looked great, you bet. Probably my expression was foolish, but I wouldn't mind feeling myself such a thumping hunk of a man once more, expression and all. And I rode a little mouse-colored American horse, with a cream mane and tail and two white feet forward,—a pretty, playful little cuss with no sin in him, as proud of me and himself as I was. There was only one more thing to make that trip complete, and about ten mile out of Panama I filled. Out of a side draw pops a blackavised road-agent, and informs me that he wants my money. I drew horse-pistol and machete and charged with a loud holler. That brigand shed his gun and threw his knees higher than his shoulders getting out of that. I paused and overtook him. He explained sadly and untruthfully that nothing but a starving wife and twenty-three children drove him to such courses. I told him the evil of his ways—no short story, neither. You bet I spread myself on that chance,—then I gave him two dollars for the family and rode my cheerful way. It really is beautiful to think of anybody being so pleased with anything as I was with myself. And the story I had now to tell Mary! We did a fast ten mile into Panama. I found the house where Mary boarded without much trouble. It was one of the old-fashioned Spanish houses where the upper stories stick out, although not like some of 'em, as it had a garden around it. A bully old house, with sweet-smelling vines and creepers and flowers, and statues and a fountain in the garden. The fountain only squirted in the rainy season, but it was good to look at. A garden with a fountain in it was a thing I'd always wanted to see. Seemed to me like I could begin to believe in some of the stories I read, when I saw that. Everything had a far-away look. For a full minute I couldn't get over the notion that I'd ridden into a story-book by mistake. So I sat on my horse and stared at it, glad I came, till a soft rush of feet on the grass and a voice I'd often wanted to hear in the past month calling, "Why, Will! I was sure it was you!" made me certain of my welcome. Now, I'd been too busy to think much lately, but when my eyes fell on that beautiful girl, running to see me, glad to see me—eyes, mouth, and outstretched hands all saying she was glad to see me—I just naturally hopped off my horse, over the wall, and gathered her in both arms. She kissed me, frank and hearty, and then we shook hands and said all those things that don't mean anything, that people say to relieve their feelings. Then she laughed and fixed her hair, eying me sideways, and she says: "I don't know that I should permit that from so large and ferocious looking a person. But perhaps it's too late, so tell me everything—how do you get on with Mr. Holton? What are you doing? Why haven't I heard from you? I thought certainly you wouldn't desert me in this strange country for a whole month—I've missed you awfully." "Have you, Mary!" I said; "have you really?" I couldn't get over it, that she'd missed me. "I should say I had, you most tremendous big boy, you!" she says, giving me a little loving shake. "Do you suppose I've forgotten all our walks and talks on the Matilda? And all your funny speeches? Oh, Will! I've been homesick, and your dear old auburn locks are home!" "Why, there's Sax!" says I, in the innocence of my heart. "Hasn't he been around?" "I haven't seen much of Mr. Saxton," she answers, cooling so I felt the need of a coat—"and that's quite different." Well, I hustled away from the subject fast, sorry to know something was wrong between my friends, but too durned selfish to spoil my own greeting. I plunged into the history of Mr. William Saunders, from the time of leaving the Matilda. Mary was the most eloquent listener I ever met. She made a good story of whatever she harkened to. Well, sir, I had a pleasant afternoon. There was that story-book old house and garden, Mary and me at a little table, drinking lime-juice lemonade, me in my fine clothes out for a real holiday, smoking like a real man, telling her about the crimp I put in that road-agent. Yes, I was having a glorious time, when the gate opened and a man came in. Somehow, from the first look I got of him I didn't like him. Something of the shadow that used to hang over home lay in that lad's black coat. Mary's face changed. The life went out. Something heavy, serious, and tired came into it, yet she met the newcomer with the greatest respect. As they came toward me I stiffened inside. Mr. Belknap and Mr. Saunders shook hands. His closed upon mine firmly and coldly, like a machine. He announced that he was glad to meet me in a tone of voice that would leave a jury doubtful. We stood around, me embarrassed, and even Mary ill at ease, until he said: "Shall we not sit down?" Feeling at school once more, down I sat. If he'd said: "Shall we not walk off upon our ears!" I'd felt obliged to try it. He put a compulsion on you. He made you want to please him, though you hated him. Well, there we sat. "Mr. Belknap is doing a wonderful work among these poor people," explained Mary to me. There was something prim in her speech that knocked another color off the meeting. "You are too good," said Mr. Belknap. He was modest, too, in a way that reproached you for daring to talk of him so careless. I wished that Mr. Belknap would get to work on his poor people and leave us alone, but he had no such intention. "Miss Smith," says he, "is one of those who credit others with the excellencies they believe in from possession." Mary colored, and a little frown I could not understand lay on her forehead for the second. It was curious, that man's way. When he made his speech it was like he put a rope upon the girl. I didn't see much meaning to it, except a compliment, but I felt something behind it, and suddenly I understood her frown. It was the way you look when something you feel you ought to do, that you've worked yourself into believing you want to do, although at the bottom of your heart you'd chuck it quick, comes up for action. I'd have broken into the talk if I could, but Brother Belknap had me tongue-tied, so I just sat, wishful to go, in spite of Mary, and unable to start. It seemed like presuming a good deal to leave, or do anything else Mr. Belknap hadn't mentioned. We talked like advice to the young in the third reader. Mr. Belknap announced his topics and smiled his superior knowledge. I'd have hit him in the eye for two cents, and at the same time if he told me to run away like a good little boy, darned if I don't believe I'd done it—me, that chased the road-agent up the valley not three hours before! Mary moved her glass in little circles and looked off into distance. Something of the change from our first being together, to this, was working in her. "It is hard," she said, trying to pass it off lightly, "to bear the weight of virtues that don't belong to me!" Mr. Belknap leaned forward. He was a heavy-built, easy-moving man; you had to grant him a kind of elegance that went queer enough with the preacher-air he wore of his own will. He put his head out and looked at her. I watched him close, and I saw a crafty, hard light in his eyes as if the tiger in him had come for a look out of doors. He purred soft, like a tiger. "Nowhere is humility more becoming than in a beautiful woman." At that minute his hold on me snapped. Believing him honest, he had me kiboshed—seeing that expression, which, I suppose, he didn't think worth while hiding from a gawky kid—I was my own man again, hating him and ready for war with him, in a blaze. Too young to understand much about love-affairs and the like of that, I still knew those eyes, that had shifted in a second from pompous piety to cunning, meant no good to Mary. "I don't know about humility," says I, "but I'll go bail for Mary's honesty." I laid my hand on hers as I spoke. Funny that I did that and spoke as I did. It came to me at once, without thinking—like I'd been a dog and bristled at him for a sure-enough tiger. Mary wasn't the kind to go back on a friend in any company. She put her other hand on mine and said: "That's the nicest thing you could say, Will." Mr. Belknap didn't like it. He swung around as if he found me worth more attention than at first, and when our eyes met he saw I was on to him, bigger than a wolf. All he changed was a quick tightening of the lips. We looked at each other steady. He ought to have showed uneasiness, consarn him, but he didn't. Instead he smiled, like I was amusing. I loved him horrible for that—me and my steeple hat and sash to be amusing! "You have a most impulsive nature, Mr. Saunders," says he. I wanted to tell him he was entirely correct, and that I'd like to chase two rascals the same day. I had sense enough not to, but said: "I'm not ashamed to own it—particularly where Mary's concerned." "Ah!" he says, raising his eyebrows, "you are old friends?" "Not so very old," says Mary. "That seems cold—we're very warm, young friends." "It is pleasant for the young to have friends," says he. "That's hardly as surprising a remark as your face led me to expect," says I. "It's pleasant for anybody to have friends." It was his turn not to be overjoyed. I hid my real meaning under a lively manner for Mary's benefit, and while perhaps she didn't like my being quite so frivolous to the overpowering Mr. Belknap, she saw no harm in the speech. He did, though. "Am I to count you among my friends?" says he. "Any friend of Mary's is a friend of mine," I answered. He took. "Then that is assured," he says, with his smoothest smile. We all waited. "Ah, Youth!" says Mr. Belknap, with a look at Mary, and an explaining, indulgent smile at me. "How heartening it is to see its readiness, its resource in the untried years! Rejoice in your youth and strength, my young friend!—as for me—" he stopped and looked so grave he near fooled me again. "I am worn down so I barely believe in hope. My poor, commonplace ambitions, my dull idea of duty puts me out of the pale of friendship entirely—I have nothing pleasant to offer my friend." "Oh, no! Mr. Belknap!" says Mary. "How can you speak like that? With your great work—how can you call it dull? I'm sure it is a high privilege to be listed with your friends!" I felt a chill go over me—the whole business was tricky, stagy; of a piece with the highfalutin talk. Belknap was no old man, not a day over forty, and powerful as a bull, by the look of him, yet the tone of his voice, the air he threw around it, made him the sole and lonely survivor of a great misfortune, without a helping hand at time of need. I felt mad and disgusted with Mary for being taken in. I had yet to learn that even the best of women are easy worked through the medium of making 'em feel they are the support of a big man. They'll take his word for his size, and swallow almost anything for the fun of supporting him. Saxton made the great mistake of admitting his foolishnesses to be foolish, and swearing at 'em; he should have sadly regretted them as accidents. A woman has to learn a heap before she can appreciate a thoroughly honest man. There is a poetry in being honest, but like some kinds of music, it takes a highly educated person to enjoy it. Sing to the girls in a sweet and melancholy voice about a flower from your angel mother's grave, and most of 'em will forget you never contributed a cent to the angel mother's support—and it ain't that they like honesty the less, but romance the more, as the feller said about Julius Cæsar. But when a woman like Mary does get her bearings she has 'em for keeps. Now Sax was a durned sight more romantic really than this black-coated play-actor, but he would insist on stripping things to the bones, and the sight of the skeleton—good, honest, flyaway man frame that it was—scart Mary. It came across me bitter that she looked at Brother Belknap the way she did. I got up. "I must go," I says. "Why, Will! won't you stay to supper? I thought you surely would." "No," I says, "I've got another friend here it's time to remember—I'll take supper with Arthur Saxton." Mary looked very confused and bothered. Belknap shot his eyes from her to me and back again, learning all he could from our faces. And in a twinkle I knew that he was the cause, through lies or some kind of devilry, of the coolness between Mary and Arthur Saxton. The blood went to the top of my head. "Good-by, Mr. Belknap," I says, "we'll meet again." "I most certainly hope so," says he, bowing and smiling most polite. "You keep that hope green, and not let it get away from you like the rest of 'em, and it sure will happen," says I. I turned and looked hard at Mary. "Have you any message for Arthur?" I asked her. She bit her lips, and glanced at Belknap. "No," says she, short, "I have no message for Mr. Saxton." "Too bad," says I. "He was a good friend of yours." With that I turned and stalked off. She followed me, and caught me gently by the sleeve. "You're not angry at me, Will? I'm all alone here, you know." I had it hot on my tongue to tell her I was angry plenty, but it crossed my mind how that would play into Belknap's hand, whatever scheme he was working, for Mary wouldn't stand too much from anybody; so, with an unaccountable rush of sense to the brain, I said: "Not angry, Mary, but jarred, to see you go back on a friend." "Will, you don't understand! It is not I who have gone back—who have been unfriendly to Mr. Saxton, it is he who has put it out of my power to be his friend—I can't even tell you—you must believe me." "Did he tell you this?" I asked her. "No," she said. "Well, until he does, I'd as soon believe Arthur as Mr. Belknap." "Mr. Belknap! How did you know—why, what do you mean, Will?" "I mean that I don't like Belknap a little bit," said I most unwisely. "And I do like you and Saxton." "You don't know Mr. Belknap, and you are very unreasonable," she said, getting warm. "Unreasonable enough to be afire all over at the thought of any one cheating you, Mary—will you excuse that?" I held out my hand, but she gave me a hug. "I'm not going to pretend to be angry at you, for I can't," she said. "'You do not love me—no? So kiss me good-by, and go!' One minute, Will, may I speak to you as if you really were my brother?" "I should say you could." "Well, then, will you promise me that in this place you will do nothing, nor go anywhere with Arth—with any one that would make me ashamed to treat you as I do? Will you keep yourself the same sweet, true-hearted boy I have known, for your mother's sake, and for my sake?" Her eyes had filled with tears. I'd have promised to sit quietly on a ton of dynamite until it went off—and kept my word at that. "I promise, Mary," says I. "Will, boy, I love you," she said, "and I love you because there's nothing silly in that honest red head of yours to misunderstand me. I want to be your dear sister—and to think that you might, too—" She broke off, and the tears overflowed. Looking at her, a hard suspicion of Saxton jolted me. I didn't know a great deal of the crooked side, but, of course, I had a glimmer, and it struck me that if he had been cutting up bad, when he pretended to care for this girl, he needed killing. "Tell me, Mary," I asked her, "has Arthur—" "Hush, Will—I can tell you nothing. You must see with your own eyes. And here's a kiss for your promise—which will be kept! And to-morrow at three you're to be here again." And off I goes up the road sitting very straight, and I tell you, if it hadn't been for the mean suspicion of Saxton, what with the mouse-colored horse waving his cream mane and tail, my new steeple hat, the sash with a gun and machete in it, the spurs jingling, the memory of having chased a fierce road-agent to a finish, and the kiss of the most beautiful woman in the world on my lips, I'd been a medium well-feeling sort of boy. I guess my anxiety about Saxton didn't quite succeed in drowning the other, neither. You can't expect too much of scant eighteen. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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