The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (67 page)

They understood me at once and grinned. But even then I was struck with their peculiar reasons for understanding at once. Jem Bottles understood at once because he had been a highwayman; Paddy understood at once because he was an Irishman. One had been all his life a rogue; the other had been born on an intelligent island. And so they comprehended me with equal facility.

They departed on their errand, and when I turned I found myself in the clutches of a maddened Doctor Chord.

“Monster,” he screamed, “you have ordered him to be killed!”

“Whist,” said I, “it would never do to order him to be killed. He is too valuable.”

“You appear more at your ease when you are calm,” said I to the Doctor as I squashed him into a chair. “Your ideas of murder are juvenile. Gardeners are murdered only by other gardeners, over some question of a magnolia-tree. Gentlemen of position never murder gardeners.”

“You are right, sir,” he responded frankly. “I see my mistake. But really, I was convinced that something dreadful was about to happen. I am not familiar with the ways of your nationality, sir, and when you gave the resolute directions to your men it was according to my education to believe that something sinister was at hand, although no one could regret more than I that I have made this foolish mistake.”

“No,” said I, “you are not familiar with the ways of my nationality, and it will require an indefinite number of centuries to make your country-men understand the ways of my nationality; and when they do they will only pretend that after great research they have discovered something very evil indeed. However, in this detail, I am able to instruct you fully. The gardener will not be murdered. His fluency with a blunderbuss was very annoying, but in my opinion it was not so fluent as to merit death.”

“I confess,” said Doctor Chord, “that all peoples save my own are great rascals and natural seducers. I cannot change this national conviction, for I have studied politics as they are known in the King’s Parliament, and it has been thus proved to me.”

“However, the gardener is not to be murdered,” said I, “and although I am willing to cure you in that particular ignorance I am not willing to take up your general cure as a life work. A glass of wine with you.”

After we had adjusted this slight misunderstanding we occupied our seats comfortably before the fire. I wished to give Paddy and Jem plenty of time to conciliate Strammers, but I must say that the wait grew irksome. Finally I arose and went into the corridor and peered into the taproom. There were Paddy and Jem with their victim, the three of them seated affectionately in a row on a bench, drinking from quart pots of ale. Paddy was clapping the gardener on the shoulder.

“Strammers,” he cried, “I am thinking more of you than of my cousin Mickey, who was that gay and that gallant it would make you wonder, although I am truthful in saying they killed him for the peace of the parish. But he had the same bold air with him, and devil the girl in the country-side but didn’t know who was the lad for her.”

Strammers seemed greatly pleased, but Jem Bottles evinced deep disapproval of Paddy’s Celtic methods.

“Let Master Strammers be,” said he. “He be a-wanting a quiet draught. Let him have his ale with no talking here and there.”

“Ay,” said Strammers, now convinced that he was a great man and a philosopher, “a quiet draught o’ old ale be a good thing.”

“True for you, Master Strammers,” cried Paddy enthusiastically. “It is in the way of being a good thing. There you are now. Ay, that’s it. A good thing! Sure.”

“Ay,” said Strammers, deeply moved by this appreciation, which he had believed should always have existed. “Ay, I spoke well.”

“Well would be no name for it,” responded Paddy fervidly. “By gor, and I wish you were knowing Father Corrigan. He would be the only man to near match you. ‘A quiet draught o’ old ale is a good thing,’ says you, and by the piper ’tis hard to say Father Corrigan could have done it that handily. ’Tis you that are a wonderful man.”

“I have a small way o’ my own,” said Strammers, “which even some of the best gardeners has accounted most wise and humorous. The power o’ good speech be a great gift.” Whereupon the complacent Strammers lifted his arm and buried more than half his face in his quart pot.

“It is,” said Paddy earnestly. “And I’m doubting if even the best gardeners would be able to improve it. And says you: ‘A quiet draught o’ old ale is a good thing,’ ’Twould take a grand gardener to beat that word.”

“And besides the brisk way of giving a word now and then,” continued the deluded Strammers, “I am a great man with flowers. Some of the finest beds in London are there in my master’s park.”

“Are they so?” said Paddy. “I would be liking to see them.”

“And ye shall,” cried the gardener with an outburst of generous feeling. “So ye shall. On a Sunday we may stroll quietly and decently in the gardens, and ye shall see.”

Seeing that Paddy and Jem were getting on well with the man, I returned to Doctor Chord.

“’Tis all right,” said I. “They have him in hand. We have only to sit still, and the whole thing is managed.”

Later I saw the three men in the road, Paddy and Jem embracing the almost tearful Strammers. These farewells were touching. Afterward my rogues appeared before me, each with a wide grin.

“We have him,” said Paddy, “and ’tis us that has an invitation to come inside the wall next Sunday. ‘I have some fine flowers in the gardens,’ said he. ‘Have you so?’ said I. ‘Well, then, ’tis myself will be breaking your head if you don’t leave us inside to see them.’ ‘Master Paddy,’ said he, ‘you are a gentleman, or if not you are very like one, and you and your handsome friend, Master Jem, as well as another friend or two, is welcome to see the gardens whenever I can make certain the master and mistress is out.’ And with that I told him he could go home.”

“You are doing well,” I said, letting the scoundrel see in my face that I believed his pleasant tale, and he was so pleased that he was for going on and making a regular book out of it. But I checked him. “No,” said I. “I am fearing that I would become too much interested and excited. I am satisfied with what you’ve been telling me. ’Twas more to my mind to have beaten that glass-eyed man, but we have taken the right course. And now we will be returning to where we lodge.”

During the walk back to the “Pig and Turnip” Doctor Chord took it upon himself to discourse in his usual style upon the recent events. “Of course, sir, I would care to hear of the tragic scenes which must have transpired soon after I — I—”

“Abandoned the vicinity?” said I.

“Precisely,” he responded. “Although I was not in the exact neighbourhood during what must have been a most tempestuous part of your adventure, I can assure you I had lost none of my former interest in the affair.”

“I am believing you,” said I; “but let us talk now more of the future. I am much absorbed in the future. It appears to me that it will move at a rapid pace.”

I did not tell him about my meeting with Lady Mary, because I knew, if occasion arose, he would spread the news over half London. No consideration would have been great enough to bridle the tongue of the little gossip from use of the first bit of news which he had ever received warm from the fire. Besides, after his behaviour in front of the enemy, I was quite certain that an imparting of my news could do nothing in the way of impairing his inefficiency. Consequently it was not necessary to trouble him with dramatic details.

“As to the part of the adventure which took place in the garden, you are consistently silent, I observe, sir,” said the Doctor.

“I am,” said I. “I come of a long line of silent ancestors. My father was particularly notable in this respect.”

“And yet, sir,” rejoined the Doctor, “I had gained an impression that your father was quite willing to express himself in a lofty and noble manner on such affairs as attracted his especial notice.”

“He was that,” said I, pleased. “He was indeed. I am only wishing I had his talent for saying all that was in his mind so fast that even the priest could not keep up with him, and goodness knows Father Donovan was no small talker.”

“You prove to me the limitations of science, sir,” said he. “Although I think I may boast of some small education of a scientific nature, I think I will require some time for meditation and study before I will be able to reconcile your last two statements.”

“’Tis no matter,” I cried amiably. “Let it pass.”

For the rest of that week there was conference following conference at the “Pig and Turnip” and elsewhere. My three companions were now as eager as myself for the advent of the critical Sunday when I, with Paddy and Jem, were to attempt our visit to Strammers’s flower-gardens. I had no difficulty in persuading the Doctor that his services would be invaluable at another place; for the memory of the blunderbuss seemed to linger with him. I had resolved to disguise myself slightly, for I had no mind to have complications arising from this gardener’s eyes. I think a little disguise is plenty unless one stalks mysteriously and stops and peers here and there. A little unostentatious minding of one’s own affairs is a good way to remain undiscovered. Then nobody looks at you and demands: “Who is this fellow?” My father always said that when he wished to disguise himself he dressed as a common man, and although this gained him many a hard knock of the fist and blow of the stick from people who were really his inferiors, he found his disguise was perfection. However, my father only disguised when on some secret mission from King Louis, for it does not become a gentleman to accept a box on the ears from anybody unless it is in the service of his sovereign.

I remember my father saying also these tours as a common man taught him he must ever afterward ride carefully through the streets of villages and towns. He was deeply impressed by the way in which men, women, and children had to scud for their lives to keep from under the hoofs of the chargers of these devil-may-care gentlemen who came like whirlwinds through narrow crowded streets. He himself often had to scramble for his life, he said.

However, that was many years back, and I did not fear any such adventures in my prospective expedition. In such a case I would have trembled for what might happen. I have no such philosophy of temper as had my father. I might take the heel of a gay cavalier and throw him out of the saddle, and then there would be a fine uproar. However, I am quite convinced that it is always best to dodge. A good dodger seldom gets into trouble in this world, and lives to a green old age, while the noble patriot and others of his kind die in dungeons. I remember an honest man who set out to reform the parish in the matter of drink. They took him and — but, no matter; I must be getting on with the main tale.

On Saturday night I called the lads to my room and gave them their final instructions.

“Now, you rogues,” said I to them, “let there be no drinking this night, and no trapesing of the streets, getting your heads broke just at the critical moment; for, as my father used to say, although a broken head is merrily come by, a clear head’s worth two of it when business is to be transacted. So go to your beds at once, the two of you, if there’s any drinking to be done, troth it’s myself that’ll attend to it.”

With that I drove them out and sat down to an exhilarating bottle, without ever a thought of where the money was to come from to pay for it. It is one of the advantages of a public house frequented by the nobility that if you come to it with a bold front, and one or two servants behind your back, you have at least a clear week ahead before they flutter the show of a bill at you and ask to see the colour of your gold in exchange for their ink and paper.

My father used to say that a gentleman with money in his pocket might economize and no disgrace to him; but when stomach and purse are both empty, go to the best house in the town, where they will feed you, and lodge you, and drink you, before asking questions. Indeed I never shed many salt tears over the losses of a publican, for he shears so closely those sheep that have plenty of wool that he may well take care of an innocent lamb like myself, on which the crop is not yet grown.

I was drinking quietly and thinking deeply on the wisdom of my father, who knew the world better than ever his son will know it, when there was an unexpected knock at the door, and in walked Doctor Chord. I was not too pleased to see the little man, for I had feared he had changed his mind and wanted to come with us in the morning, and his company was something I had no desire for. He was a coward in a pinch, and a distrustful man in peace, ever casting doubt on the affection I was sure sometimes that Lady Mary held for me; and if he wasn’t talking about that, sure he went rambling on, — great discourses on science which held little interest for a young man so deeply in love as I was. The proper study of mankind is womankind, said a philosopher that my father used to quote with approval, but whose name I’m forgetting at this moment. Nevertheless I welcomed the little Doctor and said to him:

“Draw you up a chair, and I’ll draw out a cork.”

The little man sat him down, and I placed an open bottle nice and convenient to his elbow.

Whether it was the prospect of good wine, or the delight of better company, or the thought of what was going to happen on the morrow, I could not tell; but it seemed to me the little Doctor laboured under a great deal of excitement, and I became more and more afraid that he would insist on bearing us company while the Earl and the Countess were away at church. Now it was enough to have on my hands two such models of stupidity as Paddy and Jem without having to look after Doctor Chord as well, and him glancing his eyes this way and that in apprehension of a blunderbuss.

“Have you made all your plans, O’Ruddy?” he inquired, setting down his cup a good deal emptier than when he lifted it.

“I have,” said I.

“Are you entirely satisfied with them?” he continued.

“My plans are always perfect plans,” I replied to him, “and trouble only comes in the working of them. When you have to work with such raw material as I have to put up with, the best of plans have the unlucky habit of turning round and hitting you in the eye.”

“Do you expect to be hit in the eye to-morrow?” asked the Doctor, very excited, which was shown by the rattle of the bottle against the lip of his cup.

“I’m only sure of one thing for to-morrow,” said I, “and that is the certainty that if there’s blunder to be made one or other of my following will make it. Still, I’m not complaining, for it’s good to be certain of something.”

“What’s to be your mode of procedure?” said the Doctor, giving me a touch of his fine language.

“We wait in the lane till the church bells have stopped ringing, then Paddy and Jem go up to the little door in the wall, and Paddy knocks nice and quietly, in the expectation that the door will be opened as quietly by Strammers, and thereupon Jem and Paddy will be let in.”

“But won’t ye go in with them?” inquired the little Doctor very hurriedly.

“Doctor Chord,” said I, lifting up my cup, “I have the honour to drink wine with you, and to inform you that it’s myself that’s outlining the plan.”

“I beg your pardon for interrupting,” said the Doctor; then he nodded to me as he drank.

“My two villains will go in alone with Strammers, and when the door is bolted, and they have passed the time of day with each other, Paddy will look around the garden and exclaim how it excels all the gardens that ever was, including that of Eden; and then Jem will say what a pity it was they couldn’t have their young friend outside to see the beauty of it. It is my expectation that Strammers will rise to this, and request the pleasure of their young friend’s company; but if he hesitates Paddy will say that the young friend outside is a free-handed Irishman who would no more mind a shilling going from his pocket into that of another man than he would the crooking of an elbow when a good drink is to be had. But be that as it may, they’re to work me in through the little door by the united diplomacy of England and Ireland, and, once inside of the walls, it is my hope that I can slip away from them and see something of the inside of the house as well.”

“And you have the hope that you’ll find Lady Mary in the withdrawing-room,” said the Doctor.

“I’ll find her,” says I, “if she’s in the house; for I’m going from room to room on a tour of inspection to see whether I’ll buy the mansion or not.”

“It’s a very good plan,” said the Doctor, drawing the back of his hand across his lips. “It’s a very good plan,” he repeated, nodding his head several times.

“Now, by the Old Head of Kinsale, little man,” said I, “what do you mean by that remark and that motion of the head? What’s wrong with the plan?”

“The plan’s a good one, as I have said,” reiterated the Doctor. But I saw there was something on his mind, and told him so, urging him to be out with it.

“Do you think,” said I, “that Lady Mary will be in church with her father and mother?”

“I do not,” muttered the Doctor, cautiously bringing his voice down to a whisper; “but I want to warn you that there’s danger here in this room while you’re lurking around my Earl’s palace.”

“How can danger harm me here when I am somewhere else?” I asked.

A very mysterious manner fell upon the little man, and he glanced, one after the other, at the four corners of the room, as if he heard a mouse moving and wanted to detect it. Then he looked sternly at the door, and I thought he was going to peer up the chimney, but instead he leaned across the table and said huskily, —

“The papers!”

“What papers?” I asked, astonished.

“Your thoughts are so intent on the young lady that you forget everything else. Have you no recollection of the papers the Earl of Westport is so anxious to put himself in possession of?”

I leaned back in my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling on the edge, as if its teeth were chattering.

Now my father used to say when a man is afraid to meet your eye, be prepared to have him meet your fist. I disremembered saying anything to the Doctor about these same papers, which, truth to tell, I had given but little thought to recently, with other things of more importance to crowd them out of mind.

“How come you to know anything about the papers?” I said at last.

“Oh, your memory is clean leaving you!” cried the little Doctor, as if the cup of wine he drank had brought back his courage to him. “You told me all about the papers when we were in Kensington Gardens.”

“If I did,” says I, “then I must have further informed you that I gave them as a present to Lady Mary herself. Surely I told you that?”

“You told me that, of course; but I thought you said they had come back into your possession again. If I’m wrong, it’s no matter at all, and there’s nothing to be said about them. I’m merely speaking to you by way of a friend, and I thought if you had the papers here in your room it was very unsafe to leave them unprotected by yourself or some one you can trust. I was just speaking as your well-wisher, for I don’t want to hear you crying you are robbed, and us at our wit’s end not getting either the thief or the booty.”

He spoke with great candour and good humour, and the only thing that made me suspicious at first was that for the life of me I could not ever remember mentioning the papers to him, yet it was very likely that I did; for, as my father used to say, an Irishman talks more than the recording angel can set down in his busiest day, and therefore it is lucky that everything he says is not held against him. It seemed to me that we talked more of scandal than of papers in the park, but still I might be mistaken.

“Very good, Doctor,” I cried, genially. “The papers it is, and, true for you, the Earl would like to get his old claws on them. Have you any suggestions to make?”

“Well, it seems to me, O’Ruddy, that if the Earl got wind of them it would be the easiest thing in the world to have your apartment rifled during your absence.”

“That is true enough,” I agreed, “so what would you do about the papers if you were in my boots?”

“If I had a friend I could trust,” said Doctor Chord slowly, “I would give the papers to him and tell him to take good care of them.”

“But why not carry them about in my own pocket?” I asked.

“It seemed to me they were not any too safe last time they were there,” said the Doctor, pleasantly enough. “You see, O’Ruddy, you’re a marked man if once the Earl gets wind of your being in town. To carry the papers about on your own person would be the unsafest thing you could do, ensuring you a stab in the back, so that little use you’d have for the papers ever after. I have no desire to be mixed further in your affairs than I am at the present moment, but nevertheless I could easily take charge of the packet for you; then you would know where it was.”

“But would I be sure to know where
you
were?” said I, my first suspicion of him returning to me.

The little Doctor laughed.

“I am always very easily found,” he said; “but when I offered to take the papers it was merely in case a stranger like yourself should not have a faster friend beside him than I am. If you have any such, then I advise you to give custody of the papers to him.”

“I have no real friend in London that I know of,” said I, “but Paddy.”

“The very thing,” cried the Doctor, joyously, at once putting to rest all my doubts concerning him. “The very thing. I would give the papers to Paddy and tell him to protect them with his life. I’m sure he’ll do it, and you’ll know where to find both them and him when you want them. But to go away from the ‘Pig and Turnip’ right across to the other end of the town, taking your two servants with you, leaving nobody to guard papers that are of importance to you, strikes me as the height of folly. I’ll just fill up another cup, and so bid you good-night, and good luck for the morrow.”